382. "What other origin of beauty can there be than LOVE? When this flows into the eyes of young men and enkindles them, it becomes beauty. Therefore, love and beauty are one and the same thing; for, from the inmost being of a marriageable virgin love suffuses her face with a certain flame, and from the appearance of this, comes the dawn of her life and its crimson glow. Who does not know that this flame sends its rays into her eyes; that from these as centers, it pours forth into the circuit of her face, and from there lets itself down into her bosom and enkindles her heart, and affects her, not unlike as a fire with its heat and light affects one who stands by it. The heat is love and the light is the beauty of love. The whole world affirms with common consent, that every person is lovely and beautiful according to his love. But the love belonging to the masculine sex is one thing, and that belonging to the feminine sex another. Masculine love is the love of becoming wise, and feminine love, the love of loving the love of becoming wise in the male. So far then as a young man is a love of becoming wise, he is lovely and beautiful to a maiden; and so far as a maiden is a love of the wisdom of a young man, she is lovely and beautiful to the young man. Therefore, as the love of the one meets and kisses the love of the other, so also do the beauties. I conclude, therefore, that love forms beauty into the likeness of itself."