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The Double Search

Studies in Atonement and Prayer

9781465642431
276 pages
Library of Alexandria
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Overview
THERE is a famous myth in Plato’s Symposium told to explain the origin of love. This myth says that primitive man was round, and had four hands and four feet, and one head with two faces looking opposite ways. He could walk on his legs if he liked, but he also could roll over and over with great speed if he wished to go anywhere very fast. Because of their fleetness and skill these “Round people” were dangerous rivals in power to Zeus himself and he adopted the plan of weakening them by cutting each one of them in two. In remembrance of the original undivided state each half, ever since unsatisfied and alone, seeks eagerly for the other half. Each human being is thus a half—a tally—and love is the longing to be united. The two halves are seeking to be joined again in the original whole. Such in briefest compass is the myth. But as the dialogue advances love is traced to a higher source. It is discovered to be a passion for the eternal, a passion which rises in the soul at the sight of an object which suggests the eternal, from which the soul has come into the temporal. The soul is alien here and its chief joy in the midst of the shows of sense is joy at the sight of something which reminds it of its old divine home. Thus, again, Plato tells us that love has its birth in the division of what was once a whole. We yearn for that from which we have come.

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