The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1894-02-15
PLAToNIc FRIENDSHIPS.
no Provision Made for Them In Ma
ture's Economy.

SCfl DDer'6 MakazlHe. MT waiter
Besant has been discussing platonic
friendships. and whether or not they
can really be made to work. He thinks
they may, but not between two persons
both OF whom are young.
1t ia we'll that someone should take
thought about platenic friendship, for
nature, who superintends most things,
does not seem to care very much about
them. 1t makes no difference to her,
evidently, whether they work or not.
No one natural law governs them. The
principle OF natural selection shirks
responsibility for them, and no one dares
to assume that the fittist OF them will
survive. They cannot be left to take
care of themselves, but II they exist at
all must be constantly under supervi-
sion, and subjects OF argument and
special pleas.
Consider what the essentials of q
platonic friendship are Are they not
that the parties to it shall be of different
eexes, and that there shall be q con-
siderable degree Of exclusiveness about
their intimacy? Does anyone doubt
that exclusiveness is essential? In
timacy cannot be intimacy unless it is
more or less exclusive. We can only
live one life at time, and if we share
good part Of that with any one person,
there is go much the less for the rest.
If a friendship is not intimate enough
to be noticeably exclusive, does anyone
ever find it necessary to explain that it
is platonic?
Love between women ard men was not
intended for the entertainment OF phil
osophers but largely for domestic pur-
poses and if platonic love is to have
anything better than hazardous and
unstable existence, the conditions OF it
must be such that it may prosper with
out conflict with natures more import
ant ends. Thus we see why platGnic
friendship between young people who
might marry do not endure.
Such couples get married and
their friendship merges into more
durable sentiment, or elee one Of them
marries some one else, and then it
lapses. At least it should lapse, for if it
does not, ii it only initiates againet
peace in family, it but tends to keep
the unmarried platonist from going
about his business and finding himself
mate, according to natures design.
1t is true that there are women, and
young women at that, who can contrive
for time to maintain husband and
some simultaneous platonic intimates
But in such cases one of three things
happens, either the wife makes her
husband happy and her pletonic I'D
mirers miserable, or she makes
her friends happy and her husband mis-
ersble, or she makes all miserable.
II by any chance or miracle
of talent she seems to make them all
happy, she makes society miserable be-
cause it cannot see how she does it.
And when society is miserable it talks
until finally it breaks up the arrange
ment. She is bound to fail, and the
reason does not lie in any defect in her,
but in the fact that her purpose is con-
trary to the economy of nature, which
has provided barely enough men to 90
round. and does not permit woman
who has a man of her own To monopoiize
other men with impunity. Every mar
riageable man besides her husband that
any woman ahsorbs involves the waste
of some other womsn's opportunities,
and nature abhors waste with proverbiRl
antipathy,
AS for the plstonic friendships OF
young married men, they are hardly
worth discussing. The measure of them
is simply the wlte's capacity to control
her feelings. 1t becomes clear, there
I lore, that the only platonlc friendships
that can be trusted are those that do
not interfere with natures plan. Young
lads, :hobbledehoys," If they are not
too rich, may cultivate with impunity
transitory friendships with women some.
what older than themselves. Such
associations are instructive TO the lad
and amuse the lady, without interfering
in any way with her more serious
plans. So, also, there are adult
men, who by reason of hpecisl circum-
stances or exceptional personal quail
ties, gain special privileges of platonic
attachment. 1t ia part of the record Of
Chevalier Bayerd that he loved dearly
and without concealment another gem
tleman's wife, but he was rreproachable
and was not marrying man. and what
was even more important, he was al
most always absent on warlike adven-
lures, 60 that no one grudged him the
occasional solace he found in the lady's
society. A considerable measure OF
pstonic affection can be tolerated in
almost any case, if it is only tempered
by an adequate provision Of absence.