The Hellenic ideal of beauty was almost invariably realised in the male form.  The Greeks of the classical period disdained woman; she was for them inseparably connected with base sensuality, but their contempt had its source partly in a feeling of horror.  The days when matriarchy was the form of government were not very remote; it survived in a great number of myths and also, subconsciously perhaps, in the soul of man.  To the Greek mind woman was the embodiment of the dark side of love, and it was merely the logical conclusion of this conception when, at a later period, she was regarded as the devil’s tool.  It is certain that the origin of the idea must be sought in Plato’s time.

In intercourse with women man dimly felt the vague elementary condition from which he had struggled hard to emerge, and fled to the more familiar companions of his own sex.  Would not love between man and man deliver him from the basely sensual, strengthen his spirituality and lead him to the gods?  In this connection Zeus is called in “Phaedros” [Greek:  philios], the maker of friendships.  Plato, in propounding this doctrine, drew thereby the most radical conclusion of the new, apparently male, but at heart hermaphroditic ideal of civilisation, conceived in the heroic epoch and elaborated and brought to perfection by the Greek of classical times.  This ideal was the victory of the spiritual principle over promiscuous sexuality and irresponsible propagation and, quite in the true Hellenic spirit, it was again interpreted materially.

Because individualised love was an unknown quantity to the ancients, they ornamented their sarcophagi with symbols of ecstatic life, with dancing and embracing fauns and maenads.  Generations passed away, but new ones arose, embracing and begetting life—­for life was eternal.  Death was vanquished in the ecstasy of the nameless millions, for the true meaning of life lay in the preservation of the species.  The death of the individual did not have a deep and poignant meaning until the soul had become the centre and climax of life.  An individual had passed away for ever—­nothing could recall him.  Death had become the final issue, the terror, because it destroyed the greatest of all things:  self-conscious man.  But love, too, had changed; it was no longer sexual impulse, depending on the body and perishing with it, but a craving of the soul, conscious of itself and stretching out feelers far beyond the earth.  A new pang had come into the world, but also a new reconciliation.

THE SECOND STAGE:  LOVE

CHAPTER I

THE BIRTH OF EUROPE