ON LOVE.

Shall the indications then of a forward wanton and corrupt character be found in the faces of women, and shall there be no gleam of chastity and modesty in their appearance? Nay, there are many such, and shall they not move and provoke love? To doubt it would be neither sensible nor in accordance with the facts, for generally speaking, as has been pointed out, all these attractions are the same in both sexes.... But, Daphnæus, let us combat those views which Zeuxippus lately advanced, making Love to be only irregular desire carrying the soul away to licentiousness, not that this was so much his own view as what he had often heard from morose men who knew nothing of love: some of whom marry unfortunate women for their dowries, and force on them economy and illiberal saving, and quarrel with them every day of their lives: while others, more desirous of children than wives, when they have made those women they come across mothers, bid farewell to marriage, or regard it not at all, and neither care to love nor be loved. Now the fact that the word for conjugal love differs only by one letter from the word for endurance, the one being στέργειν the other στέγειν, seems to emphasize the conjugal kindness mixed by time and intimacy with necessity. But that marriage which Love has inspired will in the first place, as in Plato's Republic, know nothing of Meum and Tuum, for the proverb, 'whatever belongs to a friend is common property,'⁶¹ is especially true of married persons who, though disunited in body, are perforce one in soul, neither wishing to be two, nor thinking themselves so. In the second place there will be mutual respect, which is a vital necessity in marriage.