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He came back to Oxford utterly untouched by the Platonic mysticism or the semi-serious infidelity which characterized the group of scholars round Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was hardly more influenced by their literary enthusiasm. The knowledge of Greek seems to have had one almost exclusive end for him, and this was a religious end.
She was silent after that, and preoccupied as her admirers had never seen her, and presently, hearing Jane's and Neckart's steps on the path, she rose hastily and bade them good-night. They each shook hands with her, that being one of the sacred rites in the Platonic friendships so much in vogue now-a-days among clever men and women. Mr.
"Is it" he put the question with foreboding "that, after all, I was a prophet? Have you and South wiped your feet on the doormat marked 'Platonic friendship'? Have you done that, Drennie?" She looked up into his eyes. Her own were wide and honest and very full of pain. "No," she said; "we haven't done that, yet. I guess we won't.... I think he'd rather stay outside, Wilfred.
Thou art the pattern of virtue, meek with honor, humble with nobility, compliant with fortitude, temperate with ambition, hostile with loyalty, compassionate with pardon, holy with conscientiousness, full of faith with devotion, credulous with sincerity, chaste with love, reserved with secrecy; long-suffering with patience, brave with timidity, moderate with desire, bold with resolution, obedient with subjection., modest with pride, zealous with disinterestedness, skilful with capability, ceremonious with politeness, astute with sagacity, merciful with piety, secretive with modesty, revengeful with valor, poor on account of thy labors with true conformity, prodigal with economy, active with ease, economical with liberality, innocent with sagacity, reformer with consistency, indifferent with zeal for learning: God created thee to feel the raptures of Platonic love!
Such a commerce between two such persons of a different sex could not possibly be long carried on, without degenerating from the Platonic system of sentimental love.
Madame de Berny was not among the credulous ones, nor yet so resigned as the simple bourgeoise Maria, who, to quote Balzac's own words, "fell like a flower from heaven, exacted neither correspondence nor attentions, and said: 'Love me a year and I will love you all my life." Though forced to accept the transformation of her relations with her young lover into a purely platonic friendship, she made occasional protests against being supplanted by younger rivals the imperious Madame de Castries among the number.
His view of intimacy, which is similar to that of many other young people, reveals at least two misunderstandings: first, the separation in his mind between the platonic kind of relationship and the sexual, and secondly, his association of the sexual with "wolf," which is a symbol of the subhuman.
"William Selling," says D'Aubigné, "a young English ecclesiastic, afterwards distinguished at Canterbury by his zeal in collecting valuable manuscripts, his fellow-countrymen, Grocyn, Lilly, and Latimer, 'more bashful than a maiden, and, above all, Linacre, whom Erasmus ranked above all the scholars of Italy, used to meet in the delicious villa of the Medici, with Politian, Chalcondyles, and other men of learning; and there, in the calm evenings of summer, under that glorious Tuscan sky, they dreamt romantic visions of the Platonic philosophy.
From the Jewish millennium or a celestial paradise it could shift its sense to mean the invisible Church, or even the inner life of each mystical spirit. Platonic philosophy, to which patristic theology was allied, had made a contrast not less extreme between sense and spirit, between life in time and absorption in eternity.
Platonic speculations upon the eternal value of beauty displayed in mortal creatures helped him always in his warfare with the flesh and roving inclination. Self-control seems to have been the main object of his conscious striving, not for its own sake, but as the condition necessary to his highest spiritual activity.
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