According to Diotima, spirits mediate between the mortal and the immortal. The gods, who are immortal, never speak directly to mortal humans. Humans pray through spirits, and gods send their directions to Earth through spirits. Love is one of the spirits that mediate between the mortal and the immortal.

Diotima describes love in terms of good as follows. First, she notes that love was born as the offspring of resource and poverty. She says that even though love is not good in and of itself, it wants the good and yearns for it. Because it is the child of poverty, it is always in need of more, but because it is the child of resource, it finds all sorts of ways to get closer to what it needs.

Love and lovers desire what is good and seek it. Love desires as well to rid itself of what is evil or corrupt. For instance, a lover would want a beloved to amputate a diseased limb or would want to amputate his own diseased limb, because he wouldn't want himself or his beloved to be connected to what is rotten or bad.

Love also seeks birth and finds beauty in birth. Love desires to reproduce what is beautiful. According to Diotima, there are two ways to immortality through reproduction of beauty in love. One is physical reproduction through sex and birth. Humans achieve immortality through constantly reproducing the species. Another way of reproducing (birthing) beauty is through seeking wisdom, as a philosopher does. This is a form of seeking beauty and immortality, because wisdom is beautiful and immortal.