Beneath this torture of conceits may be seen the idea that woman is that very virtue of which Plato has spoken in his “Phædrus.” Sidney has used the idea to compliment Stella; but Donne’s purpose is to show how woman, as woman, is to be identified with it, and that the differentiation in the concept resulting from the fact that she may be a wife or a mother is due to the necessity that this virtue become visible on earth. The second Platonic conception through which Donne conveys his idea of woman’s nature is the universal soul. In his lyric, “A Fever,” he says, speaking of the object of his love: “But yet thou canst not die, I know; To leave this world behind, is death; But when thou from this world wilt go, The whole world vapours with thy breath. “Or if, when thou, the world’s soul, go’st It stay, ’tis but thy carcase then.” And in “An Anatomy of the World” this idea of the death of the world in the death of a woman is explained at length. Holding thus to this idea of woman, and striving to differentiate love from passion, Donne was able to confine his notion of love to the soul; and through the metaphysical manner of his poetic art he was able to express this notion in the most perplexing intricacies of thought. As Dryden has said, “he affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign: and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.”[22] By imitating his style the other lyric poets of the seventeenth century produced the species of love poems which have already been analyzed. His skill and his sincerity of aim are lacking in their verse; and the result was either a weak dilution of his thought or a striving for his manner in praising a lower conception of love. CHAPTER III GOD AND THE SOUL I. NATURE OF GOD