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    suppose that there cannot be a strong attachment , save from love , consider that if that were true , we should not love our children , nor our parents , nor possess faithful friends , who have become bo from other causes than sexual desire . It may be said that you should confer favours upon those most who need them most * But , if this were true , it would follow that you should select for the objects of your benefits , not the best , but the most destitute ; and that in your entertainments you should invite , not your friends , but beggars and the hungry : for they will come the most eagerly , and will be most delighted and most grateful , and will invoke innumerable blessings upon your head .

    4 But the persons fittest to receive favours are not they who most need them , but they who can make the best return : not lovers only , but all who are worthy ; not they who will merely enjoy you during the season of your beauty , but they who when you grow old will continue their benefits ; no * t they who will ostentatiously display their successes to others , but they who will preserve a modest silence ; not they who will pay court to you for a short time , but they who will remain your friends during your whole life ; not they who when their desires have ceased ,

    will looj * out for an excuse to quarrel with you , but they whose excellence will then be most perceived , when their pleasures are over . Remember , then , all these things ; and consider that lovers are continually remonstrated with by their friends , as giving in to an evil practice , but he who loves not , was never for that reason censured by any friend , as consulting ill for his own affairs . You may perhaps ask me , whether I advise you to gratify all who do not love you ? But neither do I think that a lover would bid you comply with the desires of all your lovers , for it would diminish the value of the favour to him who receives

    it , and would increase the difficulty of concealment , Now , harm ought not to arise to either party from the connexion , but advantage to both . ' Having read this discourse , Phaedrus asks Socrates whether he does not admire it exceedingly , both in other respects , and for the excellence of , the language ? Socrates replies , Wonderfully so : for I was looking at you all the while , and you seemed so delighted , that I , thinking you

    know more about these things than I do , was delighted along with you . Phaedrus begged that there might be a truce with jesting , and that Socrates would tell him seriously , whether he thought there was any other man in Greece who could say so much , and all of it so excellent , on the same subject ? What ! said Socrates : must we praise the discourse for the value of the thoughts , as well as for the language ? For

    my part , I only attended to it as a specimen of composition , for I did not suppose that Lysias himself would imagine that he was equal to the proper treatment of the subject . And , moreover , he seemed to me to repeat the same thing two or three times over , as if he had not a very great deal to say : perhaps he did not mind this , but only desired to show that he could say the very same thing in several ways , and always excellently .

    ^ Phaedrus did not like this mode of treating the discourse , and persisted that nothing which was fit to be said had been left out , and that nobody could say any thing more or better on the same subject , after what Lyaiaa had said . This Socrates declared he could not concede ; or many old writers , both men and women , would rise up and beat

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    408 Plato $ Dialogues ; the Phctdrus .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 408, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/26/