...Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish,
is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his
other half.
Men who are a section of that double nature which
was once called Androgynous
are lovers of women; adulterers are
generally of this breed, and also adulterous
women who lust
after men: the women who are a section of the woman do not
care
for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of
this sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male,
and
while they are young, being slices of the original man, they
hang about
men and embrace them, and they are themselves the
best of boys and youths,
because they have the most manly
nature. Some indeed assert that they are
shameless, but this is
not true; for they do not act thus from any want
of shame, but
because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly countenance,
and they embrace that which is like them. And these when they grow
up become
our statesmen, and these only, which is a great proof
of the truth of what
I am saying. When they reach manhood they
are loves of youth, and are not
naturally inclined to marry or
beget children,-if at all, they do so only
in obedience to the
law; but they are satisfied if they may be allowed
to live with
one another unwedded; and such a nature is prone to love and
ready to return love, always embracing that which is akin to him.
And when
one of them meets with his other half, the actual half
of himself, whether
he be a lover of youth or a lover of another
sort, the pair are lost in
an amazement of love and friendship
and intimacy, and would not be out
of the other's sight, as I
may say, even for a moment: these are the people
who pass their
whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they
desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them
has
towards the other does not appear to be the desire of
lover's intercourse,
but of something else which the soul of
either evidently desires and cannot
tell, and of which she has
only a dark and doubtful presentiment...