So far we have encountered only a general, not an individualised, sexual instinct and, in a limited measure at least, a struggling tendency towards individualisation.  But even so it was merely a question of instinct, and did not bear the least resemblance to love as we understand it to-day. Love did not exist in the old world.  I admit that in the legend of Orpheus we are face to face with a sentiment which is not unlike modern love, but, as far as I am aware, this is an isolated case in Greek history, and may be regarded as a divination of something new, just as we find unmistakable anticipations of Christianity in Plato’s writings.  Such phenomena—­the occasional occurrence of which I do not altogether deny, although I regard them as on the whole improbable as far as the sphere of my research is concerned—­are not infrequently met with in history, but their effect upon civilisation was nil; they were presentiments, incomprehensible in their day, and for this very reason probably preserved as curiosities.

In spite of the fact, however, that in those far-off days spiritual love of a man for a woman was unknown, we find Plato contrasting “a base and degraded Eros with a divine Eros.”  Pausanias says in the “Symposium”: 

“The man who loves with his senses only, loves women and boys equally well.  He loves the body more than the soul....  His only striving is to obtain the object of his desire, and he cares not whether it be worthy or unworthy.  The Eros he worships is the ally of that younger goddess in whom male and female attributes are blended.  But the other Eros is the companion of Aphrodite, Urania, the divine; unbegotten by a father, unconceived by a mother, she is the offspring of the male element, the elder one, unstained by passion....  The sensualist who loves the body more than the soul is base.  His love passes away like the object of his passion.  But the companion of the Olympic goddess is the Eros who fills the hearts of the lovers with the longing for virtue.  The other Eros is the confederate of the debased Aphrodite.”  And Aristophanes, another of the participators in the feast, says:  “The yearning does not seem to be a desire for the pleasures of the senses, the one taking delight in his intercourse with the other; far from it, it is obvious that each soul is craving for something which it cannot express in words, but can only divine and conjecture.”  And the mysterious Diotima revealed to Socrates an entirely novel principle in erotic life; the principle which guides man beyond the pleasures of the senses and—­through love—­leads him to the divine.  “The slave of his senses runs after women; but he who loves with his soul and strives to win immortality through virtue and wisdom, seeks a great and beautiful soul that he may surrender himself to it completely.”  But in the opinion of the classical ages, a beautiful soul was only to be found in the body of a man; woman belonged to the lower, animal spheres; she was destined