Unfortunately, Michelangelo is a striking and titanic exception. He can scarcely be considered the head of a school: and platonism became for the most part nothing more than a fashionable science, the antidote to marriage; an intellectual union between a hard-headed, lusty-armed man and a woman all tenderness and wisdom; the formula of the government of man by woman. Its origin and its end remained equally philosophic; in short, it was a sentimental sociology. If it had been a question of philosophy, no one could better have represented Plato than Savonarola.[151] But Savonarola did not represent the intellect of society; behind him men thought they caught a whiff of all the wretched tatterdemalions in revolt at Rome against the Academy of Laetus, at Florence against the Medici. On the other hand, Tullia d’Aragona, a courtesan, exercised a platonic influence through her excellent book _On the Infinity of Perfect Love_. Others unceremoniously dismissed Socrates and Plato as liars and knaves, and yet passed for good platonists since they extolled the religion of beauty, and woman as essentially its priestess; and since they saw in love the chain binding earth to heaven, and the bulwark against socialism. In short, platonism and feminism are one and the same. It is quite possible to believe implicitly in the dogma of love without splitting love in two and pinning ourselves on an impossible dilemma—matter without spirit or spirit without matter. This latitude of appreciation is not to be called materialism, but merely the need of a material perception in order to arrive at the idea of beauty. This explains why the platonist spirit was so coldly received in France. Platonism was the art of rendering virtue pleasant and contagious; but in France it was the conviction that virtue needed to defend itself like the fretful porpentine.[152] No one troubled about spiritualising love; the inferior clergy, parish parsons, applying in every matter a rough-and-ready system of ethics, drew no distinction between sentiment and sensation, but proscribed everything. They summed up the religious life in a multitude of observances all having for result the subjection of women—a contracted morality which gave rise to startling inconsequences. It was pretended that the mere sight of a lady fidgeting about on her balcony was enough to tell you she was a Frenchwoman.[153] Anne of France forbade lovemaking between fiancés, the best, most innocent, most legitimate in the world, just as strictly as the grossest intrigue; but Louise of Savoy was as little shocked at the one as the other. There was bitter hostility between the two camps.