But, my dear Phædrus, do I appear to you, as I do to myself, to be moved by some divine influence? ----- Footnote 120: I have followed Stallbaum in omitting the words ἐῤῥωμένως and νικήσασα, but still fear that I have failed to convey the full meaning of this difficult and corrupt passage. ----- _Phæ._ Assuredly, Socrates, an unusual fluency has got possession of you. _Socr._ Listen to me then in silence. For in truth the place appears to be divine. If, therefore, in the progress of my speech I should be frequently entranced by the genius of the spot, you must not be surprized. For what I utter now is not very far removed from dithyrambics. _Phæ._ You say most truly. 33. _Socr._ Of this, however, you are the cause. But hear the rest; for perhaps the attack of the trance may be averted: though this will be the care of the deity, but let us again direct our discourse to the boy. Well then, my excellent boy, what that is, about which we are to deliberate, has been declared and defined. Keeping this in view, then, let us proceed to consider what advantage or detriment will probably accrue from one who is in love and one who is not, to him that shews favour to them. He that is ruled by desire and is a slave to pleasure, must necessarily, I think, endeavour to make the object of his love as agreeable to himself as possible. But to one diseased every thing is pleasant that does not oppose his wishes; but that which is superior and equal is hateful to him. A lover therefore will never willingly allow his favourite to be either superior to or on an equality with himself, but is always endeavouring to make him inferior and more deficient. An ignorant person is inferior to a wise one, a coward to a brave one, one who is unable to speak to a rhetorician, a dull to a clever one. 34. Since so many evils, and even more than these, are engendered or naturally exist in the mind of the beloved object, the lover must of necessity rejoice at the existence of the one sort and endeavour to introduce the others, or be deprived of immediate pleasure. He must therefore needs be envious, and by debarring his favourite from much other and that profitable society, whence he might become most manly, he is the occasion of great harm, and of the greatest by debarring him of that by means of which he would become most wise; and this is divine philosophy, from which a lover must needs keep his favourite at a distance, through the fear of being despised; and must so manage every thing else, that he may be ignorant of every thing, and look to the lover for every thing, thus being most agreeable to him, but most detrimental to himself. As concerns the mind, then, a man that is in love is in no respect a profitable guardian and companion.