o itself, so
that he worships from the heart and beholds what he worships. That the
true object is no natural being, but an ideal form essentially eternal
and capable of endless embodiments, is far from abolishing its worth; on
the contrary, this fact makes love ideally relevant to generation, by
which the human soul and body may be for ever renewed, and at the same
time makes it a thing for large thoughts to be focussed upon, a thing
representing all rational aims.

Whenever this ideality is absent and a lover sees nothing in his
mistress but what everyone else may find in her, loving her honestly in
her unvarnished and accidental person, there is a friendly and humorous
affection, admirable in itself, but no passion or bewitchment of love;
she is a member of his group, not a spirit in his pantheon. Such an
affection may be altogether what it should be; it may bring a happiness
all the more stable because the heart is quite whole, and no divine
shaft has pierced it. It is hard to stanch wounds inflicted by a god.
The glance of an ideal love is terrible and glorious, foreboding death
and immortality together. Love could not be called divine without
platitude if it regarded nothing but its nominal object; to be divine it
must not envisage an accidental good but the principle of goodness, that
which gives other goods their ultimate meaning, and makes all functions
useful. Love is a true natural religion; it has a visible cult, it is
kindled by natural beauties and bows to the best symbol it may find for
its hope; it sanctifies a natural mystery; and, finally, when
understood, it recognises that what it worshipped under a figure was
truly the principle of all good.

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations. Love would never
take so high a flight unless it sprung from something profound and
elementary. It is accordingly most truly love when it is irresistible
and fatal. The substance of all passion, if we could gather it together,
would be the basis of all ideals, to which all goods would have to
refer. Love actually accomplishes something of the sort; being
primordial it underlies other demands, and can be wholly satisfied only
by a happiness which is ultimate and comprehensive. Lovers are vividly
aware of this fact: their ideal, apparently so inarticulate, seems to
them to include everything. It shares the mystical quality of all
primitive life. Sophisticated people can hardly understand how vague
experience i