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THREE:It has been already mentioned how large a place was given to erotic questions by the literary Platonists of the second century. Even in the school of Plotinus, Platonic love continued to be discussed, sometimes with a freedom which pained and disgusted the master beyond measure.431 His first essay was apparently suggested by a question put to him in the course of some such debate.432 The subject is beauty. In his treatment of it, we find our philosopher at once rising superior to the indecorous frivolities of his predecessors. Physical beauty he declares to be the ideal element in objects, that which they have received from the creative soul, and which the perceptive soul recognises as akin to her own essence. Love is nothing but the excitement and joy occasioned by this discovery. But to understand the truer and higher forms of beauty, we must turn away288 from sensible perceptions, and study it as manifested in wise institutions, virtuous habits, and scientific theories. The passionate enthusiasm excited by the contemplation of such qualities as magnanimity, or justice, or wisdom, or valour can only be explained by assuming that they reveal our inmost nature, showing us what we were destined for, what we originally were, and what we have ceased to be. For we need only enumerate the vices which make a soul hideous—injustice, sensuality, cowardice, and the like—to perceive that they are foreign to her real nature, and are imposed on her by contamination with the principle of all evil, which is matter. To be brave means not to dread death, because death is the separation of the soul from the body. Magnanimity means the neglect of earthly interests. Wisdom means the elevation of our thoughts to a higher world. The soul that virtue has thus released becomes pure reason, and reason is just what constitutes her intrinsic beauty. It is also what alone really exists; without it all the rest of Nature is nothing. Thus foul is opposed to fair, as evil to good and false to true. Once more, as the soul is beautiful by participation in reason, so reason in its turn depends on a still higher principle, the absolute good to which all things aspire, and from which they are derived—the one source of life, of reason, and of existence. Behind all other loves is the longing for this ultimate good; and in proportion to its superiority over their objects is the intensity of the passion which it inspires, the happiness which its attainment and fruition must bestow. He who would behold this supreme beauty must not seek for it in the fair forms of the external world, for these are but the images and shadows of its glory. It can only be seen with the inward eye, only found in the recesses of our own soul. To comprehend the good we must be good ourselves; or, what is the same thing, we must be ourselves and nothing else. In this process of abstraction, we first arrive at pure reason, and then we say that the ideas289 of reason are what constitutes beauty. But beyond reason is that highest good of which beauty is merely the outward vesture, the source and principle from which beauty springs.During the next days I found a hospitable domicile at the convent of the Sacred Heart on the Namur Canal ("Naamsche Vest"). It is a seminary for missionaries, and when I went to them for the first136 time I had a letter from their head, the "provincial" in The Netherlands, who sent the order that all the theological students should be transferred to The Netherlands as quickly as possible. They received me with the greatest kindness, and ever since I enjoyed their hospitality.

THREE:CHAPTER XXVII. A GLASS OF WINE.

THREE:"Near Maastricht. You know where Maastricht is?"

THREE:"Vine Street," came the staccato reply. "Number 107--there you are. You are wanted Vine Street. . . . There you are--speak up."

THREE:"It mourns the lost liberty, the happiness, the peace, the brightness of her past prosperity which has vanished for a long season to come, it laments on account of the prisoners of war, the wounded, the dead.... And every morning the155 brilliant sun rises on the scene, the warm rays bathe town and country, both alike cruelly lashed by the frightful scourge.They crowded threateningly round me, getting more and more excited.