The training afforded by the philosophy of Plato in the realization of the true moral value of beauty has a somewhat different result in the work of Milton. Owing to his preconceived notion of the moral inferiority of woman, Milton does not permit his mind to dwell upon the vision of beauty to be seen in her, as Spenser’s chivalric impulses have led him to do; but in Milton the flowering of Platonic thought is found in a certain conception of chastity, which teaches that love begins and ends only in the soul. And yet the deep sense of beauty which he has, asserts itself at times even in spite of his prejudices; consequently in his work there is a wavering of mind between the conviction that woman’s beauty cannot be the expression of the beauty of a moral order, since she is the moral inferior of man, and the more chivalric notion that in her beauty lies the inspiration of the soul to know goodness. In Milton the love of beauty is the conscious activity of a contemplative mind rather than the pouring out of the soul’s passion in reverent adoration. About Spenser beauty lies as a golden splendour streaming from the hidden world of the moral nature; whenever it shines upon the lover’s sight, it at once moves him to silent adoration. In Milton, on the other hand, beauty is an idea to be known in the soul by him who seeks for it among the beautiful objects of the world of sense; its pursuit is an intellectual quest of a philosophic mind. Writing to his friend, Charles Diodati, he says: “What besides God has resolved concerning me I know not, but this at least: _He has instilled into me, at all events, a vehement love of the beautiful._ Not with so much labour as the fables have it, is Ceres said to have sought her daughter Proserpine, as I am wont day and night to seek for this _idea of the beautiful_ (hanc τοῦ καλοῦ ἰδέaν) through all the forms and faces of things (_for many are the shapes of things divine_), and to follow it leading me on as with certain assured traces.”[2] The expression of this love of beauty is found in Milton’s Satan. Abiding beneath the wreck of his moral character, in spite of the perversion of a malicious will, there remain in Satan a deep sense of beauty and a contemplative love of it for its moral quality. In a speech addressed to Christ in “Paradise Regained” Satan himself confesses this one conviction of his soul. The contemplative love of the beauty of goodness and virtue is the very condition of his soul’s existence. Thus he says: “Though I have lost, Much lustre of my native brightness, lost To be beloved of God, I have not lost To love, at least contemplate and admire, What I see excellent in good, or fair, Or virtuous; I should so have lost all sense.” (I. 377–382.)