Brings the actual situation in the dialogue - Athens and its intellectuals engaged in spirited debate - alive. Equally alive is the discussions of ideas, which are brought to bear on contemporary experience and made to prove the perennial validity of Socratic wisdom, and its power to excite the mind. The main thesis - that in poetry and in love man is "beside himself," that is, divinely inspired - is discussed with reference to modern poets, novelists, and modern psychology.