Such phenomena--the occasional
occurrence of which I do not altogether deny, although I regard them as
on the whole improbable as far as the sphere of my research is
concerned--are not infrequently met with in history, but their effect
upon civilisation was nil; they were presentiments, incomprehensible in
their day, and for this very reason probably preserved as curiosities.
In spite of the fact, however, that in those far-off days spiritual love
of a man for a woman was unknown, we find Plato contrasting "a base and
degraded Eros with a divine Eros." Pausanias says in the "Symposium":
"The man who loves with his senses only, loves women and boys equally
well. He loves the body more than the soul.... His only striving is to
obtain the object of his desire, and he cares not whether it be worthy
or unworthy. The Eros he worships is the ally of that younger goddess in
whom male and female attributes are blended. But the other Eros is the
companion of Aphrodite, Urania, the divine; unbegotten by a father,
unconceived by a mother, she is the offspring of the male element, the
elder one, unstained by passion.
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