very
nature, awaken a blessed ravishment in every soul that is
sufficiently harmonious and sensitive. The charm operates to this
result through the imagination. Now, if the imagination distribute
the spell through the body, as well as through the soul, ordinary
love is the consequence; but, if imagination be confined within the
intellect, Platonic love is the consequence. Some persons, no doubt,
are incapable of the latter; the instant any form of beauty strikes
their perceptions, it is deflected downward, and dips into the
senses. Every esthetic impression, even the loveliness of painting,
music, or a soft landscape, affects them voluptuously. But it is an
outrage for them to attribute this peculiarity of constitutional
structure, or temperamental key, to everybody else. There are persons
built after a nobler pattern, keyed to a loftier music, susceptible
of a more undefiled and eternal stir of the atoms of consciousness.
They look on a beautiful woman, with a delight circling purely in the
mind, with a serene melodious joy, like that given them by an
exquisite picture, statue, or landscape. Dante tells us, in his Vita
Nuova, that he carried about with him a list of the loveliest ladies
in Florence. To attach any prurient association to the act, would be
blasphemy; it can only be understood by reference to that sweet,
poetic, religious worship of lovely forms, which seems to rise
through contemplation of beauty to adoration of God. One man, brought
into intimate relation with an attractive and gifted woman, feels as
if he were a vase of fiery quicksilver; another feels as if he were a
mirror of divine ideas. The latter is capable of a friendship with
her as fervent as love, but without its alloy; the former is not. St.
Beuve says of Maurice de Guerin, "The sympathetic friendship of a
beautiful woman appeased instead of inflaming him."

The exalted friendship of man and woman, known as Platonic love, is
not, then, an empty mirage of sentimentality. But is it not too
dangerous to be cultivated? Is it not liable to go too far, and to
work fatal mischiefs? Many, judging from unworthy instances, With an
inadequate knowledge of the data, answer these questions with a
sweeping affirmative. But justice requires a careful discrimination.
Unquestionably there are some who are unfit for this relation, in
danger of perversion and betrayal at every step of its progress. Such
should either shun the connection, or keep themselves w