seriously, sometimes in a little discussion or backbiting, in
laughing, and exchanging those nothings which charm, we know not why,
the hours glide away. I leave as late as possible; we give cordial
grasps of the hand, which express our regret at parting. The next
day, or a few days after, I find myself there with renewed pleasure.
It seems as if each evening we become more necessary to one another.
They almost make me forget that they are two, and that I am one."

Such a friendship must be a guardian guidance of virtue and
happiness. The cultivation of such relations cannot be too strongly
recommended. The odious vices of sensuality would die out before
them. Profligacy either rots or petrifies the heart; but a pure
friendship inspires, cleanses, expands, and strengthens the soul. It
is the nutriment of genius and of every form of philanthropic virtue.
"How can one who hates men love a woman without blushing?" is one of
Richter's incisive questions.

In now taking up the subject before us, the meaning of the thing in
debate should first be perceived; for, while the ignorant are always
the least competent, they are often the most forward, to give
decisions. Truly understood, the Platonic sentiment does not denote
love, in the distinctive significance of that word, but a pure and
fervent friendship. Ideal love is ordinary love taken up, out of
material organs and relations, into pure mentality, with the
preserved correspondence of all it had on that lower plane where it
naturally lives. Platonic love is a high personal passion, like the
former, with the exception that no physical influence of sex enters
into it; imagination exalting the soul, instead of inflaming the
senses. Actual love is the marriage of total persons for mutual
happiness, and for the transmission of themselves in new beings.
Ideal love is either the memory of actual love, or the notion of it
prevented from becoming actual by some impediment. Platonic love is
the marriage of souls for the production of spiritual offspring,
ideas, feelings, and volitions. The first looks ultimately to the
perpetuation of life by providing new receptacles for it; the last
looks ultimately to the enhancement of life by a sympathetic
reflection of it. The children of actual love are organic
reproductions of the being of the parents; the children of Platonic
love are spiritual reflections of the being of the parents. The
perfected offspring of love are boys and girls; the