As soon as he has learned this, he will become a lover of all beautiful
forms; his fervent passion for one will diminish, he will scorn the
individual and hold it cheap."
With the Hellenic homosexuality an element foreign and even hostile to
the original and natural bi-sexual sensuality crept into the erotic life
of the human race; it found its classical representation in the Platonic
dialogues "Symposium" and "Phaedros." In conscious opposition to all
sexuality Platonic love (what is usually called Platonic love is based
on an obstinate misunderstanding) turns to the purely spiritual, that is
to say, the conceptions of truth, beauty and goodness; it is a yearning
for the supernatural, and it knows itself as the path to it. In the
mutual love of all noble souls lies the germ of all higher things; it is
the way to the gods of light which, in this connection, are conceived
philosophically as ideas, though in the true Hellenic spirit as
objective ideas, the prototypes and culminations of everything human.
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