thoughts and actions. Something too of the recollections of childhood
might float about them still; they might regain that old simplicity which
had been theirs in other days at their first entrance on life. And
although their love of one another was ever present to them, they would
acknowledge also a higher love of duty and of God, which united them. And
their happiness would depend upon their preserving in them this principle--
not losing the ideals of justice and holiness and truth, but renewing them
at the fountain of light. When they have attained to this exalted state,
let them marry (something too may be conceded to the animal nature of man):
or live together in holy and innocent friendship. The poet might describe
in eloquent words the nature of such a union; how after many struggles the
true love was found: how the two passed their lives together in the
service of God and man; how their characters were reflected upon one
another, and seemed to grow more like year by year; how they read in one
another's eyes the thoughts, wishes, actions of the other; how they saw
each other in God; how in a figure they grew wings like doves, and were
'ready to fly away together and be at rest.' And lastly, he might tell
how, after a time at no long intervals, first one and then the other fell
asleep, and 'appeared to the unwise' to die, but were reunited in another
state of being, in which they saw justice and holiness and truth, not
according to the imperfect copies of them which are found in this world,
but justice absolute in existence absolute, and so of the rest. And they
would hold converse not only with each other, but with blessed souls
everywhere; and would be employed in the service of God, every soul
fulfilling his own nature and character, and would see into the wonders of
earth and heaven, and trace the works of creation to their author.

So, partly in jest but also 'with a certain degree of seriousness,' we may
appropriate to ourselves the words of Plato. The use of such a parody,
though very imperfect, is to transfer his thoughts to our sphere of