ium of celestial
realities, which shone through it in half-veiled reminiscences. The
originality of the Dantean love consists, first, in the unique
personality of the poet, and the equally peerless personality which
his genius has given to his lady; secondly, in associating and
blending with the Platonic substance of that love the constituents
and scenery of the Christian doctrines of God and the future life.

Abelard and Heloise began with ordinary friendship, in the relation
of teacher and pupil. The extreme beauty, genius, and graces of the
parties soon poured into their intercourse an intoxicating potion,
which swept the senses into the mental whirl; and friendship
fermented into love. After their misfortunes and separation, the
love, refined from passion to memory, rose out of the senses into the
thoughts, and circulated in idea, instead of detaching itself in act.
We imagine Petrarch offering enamored tribute to Laura, who warmly
persuades his homage, but coldly repels his ardor. We think of
Abelard and Heloise in pensive converse, hand in hand, eye to eye,
living over the past with tender regrets. But we see Dante kneeling
before Beatrice, in profound humility and intellectual entrancement,
touching the hem of her robe, while she points upward to the supernal
Glory, whose light is falling on her face.

What distinguishes this Platonic affection from ordinary friendship
is, that the magic of imagination, with a religious emphasis, is in
it. What distinguishes it from love is, that the consciousness of sex
has nothing to do with it, while that element is essential in the
latter. If woman is generally the object to whom this affection
attaches, it is not because she is woman, but because she is purer,
lovelier, more self-abnegating, a clearer mirror of divinity.
Precisely the same affection exists, when favorable conditions meet,
between man and man; as is abundantly shown in the sonnets of
Shakespeare, in the writings of Plato himself, and in many other
places.

The type of affection now defined, many people consider a mere
theory, spun by a finical fancy, incapable of reduction to practice
in the substantial relations of life. But such critics criticise
themselves. They identify their own limitations with the diagram of
human nature. This is the procedure ever characteristic of arrogant
folly, to make its actual experience the measure of possible
experience. All beauty that is sufficiently marked, does, in its