382. "What is the origin of beauty," he said, "other than love? When love flows into the eyes of young men and sets them on fire, it becomes beauty. Therefore love and beauty are the same thing. For love from within suffuses the face of a marriageable young woman with a kind of flame, from whose radiance comes the dawn and crimson glow of her life. Who does not know that that flame emits its rays into her eyes, and from these as centers spreads out into the circumference of her face? And also descends into her breast and kindles the heart, and thus affects one standing by, in the same way that fire does with its warmth and light? The warmth in this case is love, and the light, the beauty of love.
"The whole world agrees in affirming that everyone is lovable and beautiful in accordance with his love. But still the love possessed by the masculine sex is one thing, and the love possessed by the feminine sex another. The love in males is a love of growing wise, and the love in females is a love of loving the love of growing wise in a male. Consequently, in the measure that a youth exhibits a love of growing wise, in the same measure he is lovable and beautiful to a maiden; and in the measure that a maiden exhibits a love of a youth's wisdom, in the same measure she is lovable and beautiful to the youth. Accordingly, as the love of the one meets and kisses the love of the other, so also do the beauty of the one and the beauty of the other. I conclude, therefore, that love forms beauty into a likeness of itself."
