The novelty of Plato’s system was to transfer the beauty to men, which ran counter to all accepted notions. To Bembo this theory seemed intolerable. That women are capable of loving he firmly believed and rejoiced to believe. But to give up loving women appeared to him too cruel. He would much rather give platonism the go-by and acknowledge the reciprocity of beauty and love. In short, he fell back on Petrarchism. Michelangelo proclaimed the true modern platonism with extraordinary ardour in professing a love at once virile and pure. “I have often heard him reason and discourse on love,” writes Condivi, “and I learnt from persons present that he spoke of it no otherwise than may be read in Plato. I do not know what Plato says, but I know well, having long had intimate intercourse with Michelangelo, that I never heard issue from his mouth aught but the most becoming words, apt to repress the lawless and unbridled desires that might spring up in the hearts of young men.” Michelangelo said more than once that God is seen in terrestrial beauty; love is only a hymn to the Creator; “for if every one of our affections is displeasing to heaven, to what end would God have created the world?” A great love makes only for the highest morality, it provides man with wings for a sublime flight:[148] Thy wondrous beauty, image of the grace That fills all heaven with glory, to us shown By the Eternal Artist’s hand alone, When time and age have worn it from thy face, Nor age nor time can from my heart displace, But ever deeplier graven shall it be; For in my thought that beauty I shall see Which Time’s cold finger never can erase. If the soul were not created in the image of God it would seek after nothing but external beauty; but it does in truth penetrate beyond this deceptive outer form, to fix itself on the essential, to rise until it attains the ideal or universal form: _Transcende nella forma universale_.[149] Thus beauty elevates and quickens us into the world of spirits and the elect. Many of Michelangelo’s verses convey the same idea under different forms: The fount that feeds my love is not my heart, For though I love thee, yet my love withal Is not to heart of flesh and blood in thrall, But ever yearneth toward a goal apart, Where no base mortal passion dare intrude, Nor any guilty thought nor impulse rude. A love without heart! Here indeed is the formula of the new platonism![150]