The Star in the West

THE VIRGIN 95 Ah , if pure love could grow material ! There are pure women ! and this is her answer : There you make me laugh ! Remember-I have known such . But besides You ask hot snow and leaden feather - flights ! 1 Which contains a great truth , namely , that platonic love is no love at all . An affection it may be , but love it cannot be if it dare not see its form mirrored in the eyes of a loving woman . Its failure in the end is a certainty ; certain ascetics may compel their wills to conquer their natures , but men as a whole cannot . Certain maniacs such as Origen may emasculate themselves for the Kingdom of God , but the great human masses will let the Kingdom of God go to the Devil , if a pretty pair of lips is in question . Not for long in any case can we change our natures , as the anchorites of the Libyan deserts only too fearfully proved ; boiling with carnalities they feared to see their own mothers , and were even forbidden to keep in their possession animals of the female sex - 0 Sty lites ! they are now in heaven ! How we clave together ! How we strained caresses ! How the swooning limbs sank fainting on the sward ! For the fiery dart raged fiercer ; in excesses Long restrained , it cried , “ Behold I am the Lord !” 2 Such is the ultimate end of platonic love . That it has many noble forms , that it sprang from the true abhorrence of the vile , cannot be denied ; that 1 Tannhäuser , vol . i, p . 237 . 2 The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p . 173 .