tion
of love. Platonic love, finally, was the perception of perfection, the
Socratic knowledge; its alpha and omega was not, as the mystic and true
erotic would have it, its ardour and passion, the fulness of its own
being. It had an alien purpose: the knowledge of things divine, by a
later period Christianised and understood as the divine mysteries. To
Plato, the essence and climax of antique, ante-Christian culture, every
individual, even the beloved mistress, was but a preliminary, a
finger-post, pointing the way to the perception of perfect beauty. True
virtue is the outcome of profound knowledge; it transforms men into
gods. The purely spiritual woman-worship of the Middle Ages was only
another aspect of this yearning to attain to virtue and perfection
through the love of an individual. We must not lose sight of the fact
that it was already strongly emphasised and upheld in the Platonic ideal
of love.

In the dark excesses of the Mysteries the beauty of the human form
counted for nothing; voluptuousness and intoxication ruled. In the
Asiatic cult of the sexes there was no room for beauty, no time for
selection. The Greeks were the discoverers of the beauty of the human
form. Beauty kindled the flame of love in their souls, beauty was the
gauge which determined their erotic values. Their ideal was a
_kalokagathos_, a youth beautiful in body and soul.

In "Phaedros" Plato contrasts with far greater force than in the
"Symposium" him "who craves for sensual pleasure like the beasts in the
fields" with him "who strives after beauty and perfection." To the
latter "the face of the beloved is the reflection of the sublimely
beautiful." He would like to sacrifice to her, as to the immortal gods.
All beautiful bodies represent to him in an increasing measure the idea
of the beauty of form, which again is subordinate to the beauty of the
soul. It points the way to metaphysical beauty, the eternal and
imperishable idea of mankind. Socrates could scorn the beauty of the
individual because he saw in it merely an imperfect reflection of
perfect beauty. In its truest sense Platonic love is, therefore,
impersonal; it is not spiritual love for a human being, but a peculiar
characteristic of the Greek cult of beauty. We shall again meet this
principle of beauty-worship in metaphysical love, the adoration of
woman; thanks to Plato, it has for all time become the inalienable
property of the human mind. The striving to rise above all