Ficino insists that the biblical command to love one another has a metaphysical basis; he argues that unrequited love is, so to speak, spiritually defective. Mutual love which constitutes a concrete communion between persons is the only true and perfect form of love; it is not only a moral obligation but a cosmic necessity. If love is based on a similarity or equality between the souls of lovers and has the same divine source, then it must exist in both souls equally. A failure of charity is a denial of one’s essential nature. It has recently been suggested that Ficino’s emphasis on Platonic love has a political meaning, that it was meant as a cure for the endemic divisions in Florentine civil society. It has also been argued that Ficino feared
