Symposium

“You speak well. Would anyone, then, being great, want to be great, or being strong, strong?”

“Impossible, from what has been agreed.”

“For the one who is these, at least, would not, I take it, lack them.”

“What you say is true.”

“For if, being strong, one should want to be strong as well,” Socrates said, “and being swift, swift, and being healthy, healthy — for perhaps someone might think, about these and all such things, that those who are 200c such and have these things also desire these very things which they have; so it is in order that we may not be deceived that I say this — for these people, Agathon, if you consider it, must have at the present time each of the things they have, whether they want to or not; and who, surely, would desire this? But when someone says, ‘I, being healthy, want to be healthy too, and being rich, want to be rich too, and I desire these very things that I have,’ we should say to him, ‘You, my man, 200d who possess wealth and health and strength, want to possess these in the time to come as well, since at the present moment, at least, whether you want or not, you have them. Look into it, then: when you say this, “I desire what is present,” whether you are saying anything other than this, “I want what is present now to be present in the time to come as well.”’ Would he not agree?” Agathon concurred, he said.

Then Socrates said, “Is this, then, not to be in love with that which is not yet at hand for him and which he does not have: that in the time to come these things be kept safe for him and present?”

200e“Certainly,” he said.

“So this man, and everyone else who desires, desires what is not at hand and what is not present; and what he does not have, and what he is not