The fundamental weakness of the mediaeval doctrine of love, despite its refining influence and its exaltation of woman, was that it proved unable to justify love ethically against the claims of the counter-ideal of asceticism. Taking its rise in a relationship which excluded the thought of marriage as the end and justification of love, which presumed in theory that the relation of the 'servant' to his lady must always be one of reverent and unrewarded service, this poetry found itself involved from the beginning in a dualism from which there was no escape. On the one hand the love of woman is the great ennobler of the human heart, the influence which elicits its latent virtue as the sun converts clay to gold and precious stones. On the other hand, love is a passion which in the end is to be repented of in sackcloth and ashes. Lancelot is the knight whom love has made perfect in all the virtues of manhood and chivalry; but the vision of the Holy Grail is not for him, but for the virgin and stainless Sir Galahad. In the high philosophy of the Tuscan poets of the 'sweet new style' that dualism was apparently transcended, but it was by making love identical with religion, by emptying it of earthly passion, making woman an Angel, a pure Intelligence, love of whom is the first awakening of the love of God. 'For Dante and the poets of the learned school love and virtue were one and the same thing; love _was_ religion, the lady beloved the way to heaven, symbol of philosophy and finally of theology.'[2] The culminating moment in Dante's love for Beatrice arrives when he has overcome even the desire that she should return his salutation and he finds his full beatitude in 'those words that do praise my lady'. The love that begins in the _Vita Nuova_ is completed in the _Paradiso_. The dualism thus in appearance transcended by Dante reappears sharply and distinctly in Petrarch. 'Petrarch', says Gaspary, 'adores not the idea but the person of his lady; he feels that in his affections there is an earthly element, he cannot separate it from the desire of the senses; this is the earthly tegument which draws us down. If not as, according to the ascetic doctrine, sin, if he could not be ashamed of his passion, yet he could repent of it as a vain and frivolous thing, regret his wasted hopes and griefs.'[3] Laura is for Petrarch the flower of all perfection herself and the source of every virtue in her lover. Yet his love for Laura is a long and weary aberration of the soul from her true goal, which is the love of God. This is the contradiction from which flow some of the most lyrical strains in Petrarch's poetry, as the fine canzone 'I'vo pensando', where he cries: E sento ad ora ad or venirmi in core Un leggiadro disdegno, aspro e severo, Ch'ogni occulto pensero Tira in mezzo la fronte, ov' altri 'l vede; Che mortal cosa amar con tanta fede, Quanta a Dio sol per debito convensi, Più si disdice a chi più pregio brama.