Such is Plato's conception of Eros or Love and its object. He represents it as one special form or variety of the universal law of gravitation pervading all mankind. Every one loves, desires, or aspires to _happiness_: this is the fundamental or primordial law of human nature, beyond which we cannot push enquiry. Good, or good things, are nothing else but the means to happiness:[7] accordingly, every man, loving happiness, loves good also, and desires not only full acquisition, but perpetual possession of good. In this wide sense, love belongs to all human beings: every man loves good and happiness, with perpetual possession of them--and nothing else.[8] But different men have different ways of pursuing this same object. One man aspires to good or happiness by way of money-getting, another by way of ambition, a third by gymnastics--or music--or philosophy. Still no one of these is said to love, or to be under the influence of Eros. That name is reserved exclusively for one special variety of it--the impulse towards copulation, generation, and self-perpetuation, which agitates both bodies and minds throughout animal nature. Desiring perpetual possession of good, all men desire to perpetuate themselves, and to become immortal. But an individual man or animal cannot be immortal: he can only attain a quasi-immortality by generating a new individual to replace himself.[9] In fact even mortal life admits no continuity, but is only a succession of distinct states or phenomena: one always disappearing and another always appearing, each generated by its antecedent and generating its consequent. Though a man from infancy to old age is called the same, yet he never continues the same for two moments together, either in body or mind. As his blood, flesh, bones, &c., are in perpetual disappearance and renovation, always coming and going--so likewise are his sensations, thoughts, emotions, dispositions, cognitions, &c. Neither mentally nor physically does he ever continue the same during successive instants. The old man of this instant perishes and is replaced by a new man during the next.[10] As this is true of the individual, so it is still more true of the species: continuance or immortality is secured only by perpetual generation of new individuals. [Footnote 7: Plato, Sympos. pp. 204-205. [Greek: Phe/re, o( e)rô=n tô=n a)gathô=n, ti/ e)ra=|? Gene/sthai, ê)=n d' e)gô/, au)tô=|. Kai\ ti/ e)/stai e)kei/nô| ô(=| a)\n ge/nêtai ta)gatha/? Tou=t' eu)porô/teron, ê)=n d' e)gô/, e)/chô a)pokri/nasthai, o(/ti eu)dai/môn e)/stai. Ktê/sei ga/r, e)/phê, a)gathô=n, oi( eu)dai/mones eu)dai/mones; Kai\ ou)ke/ti prosdei= e)re/sthai, i(/na ti/ de\ bou/letai eu)dai/môn ei)=nai o( boulo/menos, a)lla\ te/los dokei= e)/chein ê( a)po/krisis. . . . Tau/tên dê\ tê\n bou/lêsin kai\ to\n e)/rôta tou=ton, po/tera koino\n ei)=nai pa/ntôn a)nthrô/pôn, kai\ pa/ntas ta)gatha\ bou/lesthai au)toi=s ei)=nai a)ei/, ê)\ pô=s le/geis? Ou(/tôs, ê)=n d' e)gô/, koino\n ei)=nai pa/ntôn.]]