ween reason and love; and the peace becomes the profounder as reason
yields up still more of her rights to love.

31. Wisdom is the lamp of love, and love is the oil of the lamp. Love,
sinking deeper, grows wiser; and wisdom that springs up aloft comes
ever the nearer to love. If you love, you must needs become wise; be
wise, and you surely shall love. Nor can any one love with the
veritable love but his love must make him the better; and to grow
better is but to grow wiser. There is not a man in the world but
something improves in his soul from the moment he loves--and that
though his love be but vulgar; and those in whom love never dies must
needs continue to love as their soul grows nobler and nobler. Love is
the food of wisdom; wisdom the food of love; a circle of light within
which those who love, clasp the hands of those who are wise. Wisdom and
love are one; and in Swedenborg's Paradise the wife is "the love of the
wisdom of the wise."

32. "Our reason," said Fenelon, "is derived from the clearness of our
ideas." But our wisdom, we might add--in other words, all that is best
in our soul and our character, is to be found above all in those ideas
that are not yet clear. Were we to allow our clear ideas only to govern
our life, we should quickly become undeserving of either much love or
esteem. For, truly, what could be less clear than the reasons that bid
us be generous, upright, and just; that teach us to cherish in all
things the noblest of feelings and thoughts? But it happily so comes to
pass that the more clear ideas we possess, the more do we learn to
respect those that as yet are still vague. We must strive without
ceasing to clarify as many ideas as we can, that we may thus arouse in
our soul more and more that now are obscure. The clear ideas may at
times seem to govern our external life, but the others perforce must
march on at the head of our intimate life, and the life that we see
invariably ends by obeying the invisible life. On the quality, number,
and power of our clear ideas do the quality, number, and power depend
of those that are vague; and hidden away in the midst of these vague
ones, patiently biding their hour, there may well lurk most of the
definite truths that we seek with such ardour. Let us not keep them
waiting too long; and indeed, a beautiful crystal idea we awaken within
us shall not fail, in its turn, to arouse a beautiful vague idea; which
last, growing old, and having itself becom