Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
A general account of bonding<br />
beauty or goodness, or some such thing, is brought into the external senses.<br />
Second, it is taken on to the centre of the senses, that is, to the common<br />
sense; then, third, into the imagination; and fourth, into the memory. Then<br />
the soul, by its own power, desires first that it be moved, redirected and<br />
captured; second, once redirected and captured, it is enlightened by a ray<br />
of the beautiful or the good or the true; third, once enlightened and illuminated,<br />
it is inflamed by sensory desire; fourth, once inflamed, it desires<br />
to be united to the thing loved; fifth, once united, it is absorbed and incorporated;<br />
sixth, once incorporated, it then loses its previous form and in a<br />
sense abandons itself and takes on an alien quality; seventh, it, itself, is<br />
transformed by the qualities of the object through which it has moved and<br />
has thus been affected. The Platonists call the responses to the initial<br />
motions Cupid’s preparation; the redirecting, Cupid’s birth; the illumination,<br />
Cupid’s nourishment; the inflaming, Cupid’s growth; the union,<br />
Cupid’s attack; the incorporation, Cupid’s domination; and the transformation,<br />
Cupid’s victory or completion.<br />
20. The foundation of the stages of bonds. You can now see how this scale is<br />
based on its individual stages. Cupid’s birth issues first from the body’s<br />
nourishment, sensitivity and sexual expression, and second from the soul<br />
or spirit because of its charm, or playfulness, or contemplation, which is<br />
worthy of a better name, in which beauty is joined with pleasantness.<br />
Cupid’s food, which prevents the newborn from expiring, is the knowledge<br />
of what is beautiful. Cupid’s growth is due to a lingering reflection on the<br />
knowledge of what is beautiful. Cupid’s attack consists in the fact that the<br />
soul slides and spreads from one part to all parts of the beloved so that it<br />
can inflame the whole. Cupid’s domination is grounded in the action by<br />
which the soul of the lover, having abandoned his own body, lives and acts<br />
in the other. Cupid’s transformation occurs when the lover, having died to<br />
himself, lives another life in such a way that he lives there as in his own<br />
house rather than in someone else’s house. Thus, it is said that Jupiter was<br />
transformed into a bull, Apollo into a shepherd, Saturn into a horse and<br />
the other gods into other forms. Likewise, the soul is transformed by the<br />
motion or disturbance of its feelings from one form and type of bond to<br />
another.<br />
21. The condition of bonds. There are some external things which bind, for<br />
example, gifts, acts of deference, honours and favours. But these truly bind<br />
when they are not given in such a way as to earn a favour in return. And<br />
175