Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/40

 it, then again we do not fully love. There must be the duality of feeling.

Now, friendship, as that feeling is commonly understood, does not include this dual desire; this seeking for physical possession. Friendship sometimes hardly demands large psychical possession, or feels a profound spiritual self-surrender. The physical thrill is not of it, no matter how ardent may the friendship be. Logically and clearly, friendship is divorced from the sexual attraction so inseparable from love, and from love's great master-principle of attraction. Our intense admiration of the mere beauty of a man or woman, that is to say of what seems to us their beauty, is not determining in friendship. Hence friendship can never be as vivid and masterful a power, not to say passion, as love. The latter ever remains the most vivid, mysterious and elementary emotion of the human race.

If friendship be free from real love-emotion, then friendship will be found to reach truest expression between individuals of the same sex. It represents thus what we will call "similisexual friendship". I am not disparaging here warm and dispassionate friendships between the opposite sexes, constantly met, and so-called (by a term long mis-used) "Platonic" in their nature. In place of that phrase we will call these "heterosexual friendships". But, no matter how firm and deep are countless instances of heterosexual friendships between persons of the opposite sexes, they do not compare favourably with similisexual friendships. Too frequently they attack elementary purity of the sentiment.Frequently also are they more or less sustained with self-deceptions; no matter what arguments and examples may bring against such a charge. We shall find it needful presently to question nicely the nature of many heterosexual friendships.