The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-02-07
PLAToN1c FRIENDSHIPS.
No Provision Made for Them in Ma
lures Economy

Mr.. Walter 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 is well that some one should take
thought about platonic friendships, for
nature, who SuperintendS most things
them. 1t makes no difference to her, APP
parently, whether they work or not. No
principal of natural selection shirks re-
sponsibility for them, and no one dares
to assume. that the fittest of them will
survive. They cannot be left to take care
must be constantly under supervision, and
subjects of argument and special pleas.
the parties to it shall be of different
sexes. and that there shall be a. consider
able degree of exclusiVeness about their
clusiveness is essential? Intimacy cannot
be intimacy unless it is more or less ex-
elusive. We can only live one life at a
with any. one person. there is so much
the less for the rest If a friendship is
not intimate enough to be motto ably ex-
sary to explain that it is platonic-
Love between women and men was not
intended for the entertainment of phil
poses; and if platonic love is to have
anything better than a hazardous and
unstable existence, the conditions of it
must be such that ii may prosper with
out conflict with natures more important
ends. Thus we see why platonic friend
ships between young people who might
marry do not endure. Such couples get
married, and their friendship merges into
"a more durable sentiment or else one of
them marries someone else, and then it
does not, it not only initiates against
peace in a family, but it tends to keep
the unmarried platonist from going about
his business and finding himself a mate,
that there are women, and young women
at that, who can contrive for u time 10
maintain husband and one or two sim
infamous platonic intimates. But in such
cases one of three things happens; either
the wife makes her husband happy and
her platonic admirers miserable, or she
makes them all miserable. If by any
chance or miracle of talent she seems to
make them all happy. she makes society
miserable because it cannot see how she
does it. And when society is miserable
1t talks; until finally it breaks up the
arrangement She is bound to fail, and
the reason does not lie in any defect in
her, but in the fact that her purpose is
contrary to the economy of nature, which
has provided barely men enough to so
round, and does not permit a. woman who
has a man of her own to monopolze
other men with impunity. Every mar
riageable man besides her husband that
any woman absorbs. involves the waste
nature abhors waste with proverbial
antipathy.
AS for the platonic friendships of young
married men, they are hardly worth dis
cussing. The measure of Them is simply
the wife's capacity to control her feelings.
1t becomes clear, therefore, that the only
platonic friendships that can be trusted
are those that do not interfere with ma
lures plans. Young lads. "hobbledehoys," .
if they are not too rich. may cultivate
with impunity transitory friendships with
women somewhat older than themselves
Such associations are instructive to the
lad and amuse the lady, without interior
ing in any way with her more serious
plans. So, Also there are adult men.
who by reason of special circumstances
or exceptional personal qualifications
gain special privileges Of platonic attach
neft. 1t is part of the record of Cheva-
lier Bayard that he loved dearly and
without concealment another gentleman S
wife, but he was irreproachable ana was
not a marrying man. and what was even
more important, he was almost always
absent on warlile adventures, SO that no
one grudged him the occasional solace he
found in the ladys society. A consider
able measure of platonic affection can be
tolerated in almost any case, If it is only
tempered by an adequate provision of abb
sence.-Scribners Magazine.