The main ocean of the beautiful.

“Turning rather towards the main ocean of the beautiful [one] may by contemplation of this bring forth in all their splendor many fair fruits of discourse and meditation in a plenteous crop of philosophy; until with the strength and increase there acquired he descries a certain single knowledge connected with a beauty which has yet to be told. “And here, I pray you,” said she, “give me the very best of your attention. “When a man has been thus far tutored in the lore of love, passing from view to view of beautiful things, in the right and regular ascent, suddenly he will have revealed to him . . . a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature; and this, Socrates, is the final object of all those previous toils. “First of all, it is ever-existent and neither comes to be nor perishes, neither waxes nor wanes; next, it is not beautiful in part and in part ugly, nor is it such at such a time and other at another, nor in one respect beautiful and in another ugly, nor so affected by position as to seem beautiful to some and ugly to others. “Nor again will our initiate find the beautiful presented to him in the guise of a face or of hands or any other portion of the body, nor as a particular description or piece of knowledge . . . but existing ever in singularity of form independent by itself, while all the multitude of beautiful things partake of it in such wise that, though all of them are coming to be and perishing, it grows neither greater nor less, and is affected by nothing. . . .

“[I]n the end he comes to know the very essence of beauty. In that state of life above all others, my dear Socrates,” said the Mantinean woman, “a man finds it truly worth while to live, as he contemplates essential beauty. . . . “But tell me, what would happen if one of you had the fortune to look upon essential beauty entire, pure and unalloyed . . . ? What if he could behold the divine beauty itself, in its unique form? “[H]is contact is not with illusion but with truth. So when he has begotten a true virtue and has reared it up he is destined to win the friendship of Heaven; he, above all men, is immortal.” - (Diotima of Mantinea - discourses about the different degrees of perception of beauty in the Symposium).