The Nearest Thing to Best
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Aristophanes — γὰρ καὶ οὗτοι τούτων τυγχάνουσιν ὄντες καί εἰσιν ἀμφότεροι τὴν φύσιν ἄρρενες— λέγω δὲ οὖν ἔγωγε καθʼ ἁπάντων καὶ ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν, ὅτι οὕτως ἂν ἡμῶν τὸ γένος εὔδαιμον γένοιτο, εἰ ἐκτελέσαιμεν τὸν ἔρωτα καὶ τῶν παιδικῶν τῶν αὑτοῦ ἕκαστος τύχοι εἰς τὴν ἀρχαίαν ἀπελθὼν φύσιν. εἰ δὲ τοῦτο ἄριστον, ἀναγκαῖον καὶ τῶν νῦν παρόντων τὸ τούτου ἐγγυτάτω ἄριστον εἶναι; τοῦτο δʼ ἐστὶ παιδικῶν τυχεῖν κατὰ νοῦν αὐτῷ πεφυκότων; οὗ δὴ τὸν αἴτιον θεὸν ὑμνοῦντες
for these too happen to be of that kind, and both are male by nature— but I say, at any rate, for my part, concerning absolutely everyone, both men and women, that in this way our race would become happy, if we should fulfill our love and each should meet his own beloved, returning to his ancient nature. And if this is best, it is necessary of the things now available, the nearest to this, must be best: this is, to find a beloved naturally suited to one's own mind— the god responsible for this, hymning him indeed—
Continuing 193b's parenthetical worry that Eryximachus might mock the speech as pointed at Pausanias and Agathon, Aristophanes half-concedes the joke — perhaps they really are of that all-male kind — then pivots to declare the point universal, for men and women alike. He closes with the myth's practical upshot: since the exact original other-half is gone, the nearest available thing is best — a beloved naturally suited to one's own mind. The sentence runs on into 193d, where the god who grants this is named and honored.
The gár that opens this unit is doing real work: it picks up 193b's ísōs mén ("perhaps indeed") and answers Aristophanes' own worry that Eryximachus will hear the speech as a jab at Pausanias and Agathon, the two men reclining at this very dinner. Aristophanes does not deny it. He half-concedes — perhaps they really are of that all-male tmēma ("cut") he has just described — and then pivots fast, insisting kath' hapántōn kaì andrôn kaì gynaikôn, "of absolutely everyone, men and women alike." The joke lands because of the room, not despite it: this is Plato writing a comic speech for a comic poet to give in front of the actual couple it glances at, and the quick generalizing move afterward reads less like a retraction than like Aristophanes covering his exposure with a universal claim he was going to make anyway.
The philosophical turn that follows is compressed but load-bearing. Since the exact original other half is gone — cut apart, scattered, most of them unrecoverable — Aristophanes reasons from what is ariston ("best") in the ideal case to what is engytátō ("nearest") to it among tôn nŷn paróntōn, "the things now actually available." This is a mundane piece of practical reasoning smuggled into a myth: not the metaphysical claim that a perfect match exists somewhere and must be found, but the more modest one that a beloved katà noûn... pephykótōn, "naturally suited to one's mind," is the best a person can actually get, and that this is what the myth was building toward all along. The vocabulary of natural fit (pephykótōn, from the same verb that gave the lost "ancient nature," archaía phýsis) quietly closes the argument's circle: the language of birth and nature that described the mythical whole now describes an ordinary, achievable compatibility between two people.
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