ndour.

Here the "sacred fire of love," metaphysical eroticism, has reached its
absolute climax. The universe is represented by a divine woman, and man,
abandoning himself to her, worships her. Goethe's _Faust_ concludes at
this point, but Dante went further, right into the heart of the eternal
glory of the Deity, there to lose himself.

I have previously said that the last scene of _Faust_ was the final
unfolding of the manifold blossom of metaphysical eroticism, and I will
proceed to establish my point. Hitherto I have used the term
metaphysical eroticism always in its narrow sense of love of woman.
Henceforth I shall use it in its broader meaning of mystical love in
general, all love that is projected on the transcendental and the
divine. Emotion is the specific domain of humanity, its power, its
essence. And in the profoundest emotion, in love, a connection between
the temporal and the eternal may be divined. Hence the Christian mystery
of mysteries, God giving His Son to the world for love of humanity; God
unable to approach the world other than as a lover--sacrificing Himself
for the sake of love. We cannot conceive the Sublime with any other
principal function than that of love; for love is the deepest and
profoundest emotion of the human heart, and, in accordance with the
first postulate, must therefore be the soul of the universe. On this
point all mystics and all metaphysical ecstatics are agreed; "God is
love" is written in the Gospel of St. John. "Love which moves the sun
and all the stars," stands at the termination of Dante's masterpiece:
and in _Faust_ the _Pater Profundus_ confesses:

So love, almighty, all-pervading,
Does all things mould, does all sustain.

He is still wrestling for divine love; he still has to fight against the
temptations of doubt (of thought),

Oh, God! My troubled thoughts composing,
My needy heart do thou illume!

But the true enthusiastic lover of the divine, compelled to annihilate
himself so as to become absorbed in God, the lover who no longer knows
the difference between pain and delight, is represented by the _Pater
Ecstaticus_: The condition of rest is foreign to him, ceaselessly moving
up and down, he sings:

Joy's everlasting fire,
Love's glow of pure desire,
Pang of the seething breast,
Rapture a hallowed guest!
Darts pierce me through and through,
Lances my flesh subdue,
Clubs me to atoms dash,
Lig