Symposium

pleasures, pains, fears: none of these is ever present the same in each, but some come to be and others perish. And far more outlandish still than these is this, that our pieces of knowledge too, 208a not only do some come to be and others perish for us, and we are never the same even in our pieces of knowledge, but each single piece of knowledge also suffers the same thing. For what is called practising exists because knowledge departs; for forgetting is the departure of knowledge, and practice, putting in a fresh memory again in place of the one going away, keeps the knowledge safe, so that it seems to be the same. For in this way everything mortal is kept safe: not by being in every way always the same, like the 208b divine, but by what goes away and grows old leaving behind another new thing such as it was itself. By this device, Socrates,’ she said, ‘the mortal shares in immortality, both body and everything else; but the immortal in another way.¹ So do not marvel if everything by nature honours its own offshoot; for it is for the sake of immortality that this earnestness and love follow everything.’

“And when I heard the account I marvelled, and said, ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘most wise Diotima; is this in truth how these things are?’

208c“And she, like the perfect sophists, said, ‘Know it well, Socrates;² since if you are willing to look at the love of honour of human beings too, you would marvel at their want of sense concerning what I have said, unless you consider it, reflecting how dreadfully they are disposed by love of becoming renowned “and laying up immortal fame for all time,”³ and for this they are ready to run all risks, even more than for their 208d children, and to spend money, and to toil any toils whatever, and to die for it. For do you think,’ she said, ’that Alcestis