dy springs directly from
those ideas of truth, beauty and goodness which are pre-existent in
the universe and therefore springs directly from that emotion of
love which is the synthesis of these.

The forms and shapes of stars and plants and rivers and hills are
all realized and consummated in the form and shape of the human
body. The magic of the elements, the mystery of earth and air and
water and fire, are incarnated in this miracle of flesh and blood. In
the countenance of a human child, in the countenance of a man or
a woman, the whole unfathomable drama of life is expressed. The
most evil of the children of men, asleep or dead, has in his face
something more tragic and more beautiful than all the waters and
all the land.

Not to "love" flesh and blood, not to will the eternal existence of
flesh and blood, is not to know "love" at all. To loathe flesh and
blood, to will the annihilation of flesh and blood, is to be a victim
of that original "motiveless malignity" which opposes itself to the
creative force.

This insistence upon "the eternal idea of the body" does not
necessarily limit "the idea of the body" to the idea of the human
body; but practically it does so. And it practically does so because
the human body evidently incarnates the beauty and the nobility of
all other forms and shapes and appearances which make up our
existing universe.

There may be other and different bodies in the unfathomable
spaces of the world; but for those among us who are content to
deal with the actual experiences which we have, the human body,
summing up the magical qualities of all other terrestrial forms and
shapes, must, as far as we are concerned, remain our permanent
standard of truth and beauty.

The substitution in art, in philosophy, and in religion, of other
symbols, for this natural and eternal symbol of the human body is
always a sign of a weakening of the creative impulse. It is a sign
of a relative disintegration of the power of "love" and a relative
concentration of the power of "malice." Thus when, by an abuse of
the metaphysical reason, "thought-in-the-abstract" assumes the
rights of a personality the principle of love is outraged, because
the eternal idea of the body is denied.

And when, by an abuse of the psychological reason, the other
activities of the soul are so stressed and emphasized that the
attribute of sensation is forgotten, the principle of love is outraged,
because the eternal idea of the b