animates, as with another life of overpowering grace, the
lineaments and the gestures of every form which they
inhabit. Their eyes could not have been deep and intricate
from the workings of the mind, and could have entangled no
heart in soul-enwoven labyrinths." Having painted this
life-like picture of the Greek female mind, Shelley goes on
to say perversely:

"Let it not be imagined that because the Greeks were
deprived of its legitimate object, that they were
incapable of sentimental love, and that this passion is
the mere child of chivalry and the literature of modern
times."

He tries to justify this assertion by adding that

"Man is in his wildest state a social being: a certain
degree of civilization and refinement ever produces the want
of sympathies still more intimate and complete; and the
gratification of the senses is no longer all that is sought
in sexual connection. It soon becomes a very small part of
that profound and complicated sentiment, which we call love,
which is rather the universal thirst for a communion not
merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual,
imaginative, and sensitive."

Here Shelley contradicts himself flatly by saying, in two consecutive
sentences, that Greek women were "certainly devoid of the moral and
intellectual loveliness" which inspires sentimental love, but that the
men nevertheless could feel such love. His mind was evidently hazy on