rted by some
premature metaphysical synthesis or by some morbid religious
emotion--reluct at the conception of a "parent" of the universe.
Personal love, since it is continually being roused to activity by
pain and is continually being expressed through pain and in spite
of pain, has come to find in pain, perhaps even more than in
pleasure, its natural accomplice. Through the radiant well-being
which results from pleasure, love pours forth its influence with a
sun-like sweetness and profusion. But from the profound depths of
pain, love rises like silence out of a deep sea; and no path of
moonlight upon any ocean reaches so far an horizon.

And it is because of this intimate association of love with pain that
it is found to be impossible to love any living being who has not
experienced pain. Pain can be entirely sensational; and in this case
it needs a very passion of love to prevent it becoming obscene and
humiliating. But it also can be entirely emotional; in which case it
results directly from the struggle of malice with love. When pain is
a matter of sensation or of sensationalized emotion, it depends for
its existence upon the body. But when pain is entirely emotional it
is independent of the body and is a condition of the soul.

As a condition of the soul pain is inevitably associated with the
struggle between love and malice. For in proportion as love
overcomes malice, pain ceases, and in proportion as malice
overcomes love, pain ceases. A human being entirely free from
emotional pain is a human being in whom love has for the moment
completely triumphed; or a human being in whom malice has for
the moment completely triumphed. There is an exultation of love
which fills the soul with irresistible magnetic power, so that it can
redeem the universe. There is also an exultation of malice which
fills the soul with irresistible magnetic power, so that it can corrupt
the universe. In both these extreme cases--and they are cases of no
unfrequent occurrence in all deep souls--emotional pain ceases to
exist.

Emotional pain is the normal condition of the human soul; because
the normal condition of the human soul is a wavering and
uncertain struggle between love and malice; but although love
may overcome malice, or malice may overcome love, with relative
completeness, they neither of them can overcome the other with
absolute completeness. There must always remain in the depths of
the soul a living potentiality; which is