There are two kinds of love
experienced by high and rich souls. The first seeks, according
to Plato's myth, another half, as being not entire in itself,
but needing a kindred nature to unlock its secret chambers
of emotion, and to act with quickening influence on all its
powers, by full harmony of senses, affections, intellect,
will; the second is purely ideal, beholding in its object
divine perfection, and delighting in it only in degree as
it symbolizes the essential good. But why is not this love
steadily directed to the Central Spirit, since in no form,
however suggestive in beauty, can God be fully revealed?
Love's delusion is owing to one of man's most godlike
qualities,--the earnestness with which he would concentrate
his whole being, and thus experience the Now of the I Am.
Yet the noblest are not long deluded; they love really the
Infinite Beauty, though they may still keep before them a
human form, as the Isis, who promises hereafter a seat at the
golden tables. How high is Michel Angelo's love, for instance,
compared with Petrarch's! Petrarch longs, languishes; and
it is only after the death of Laura that his muse puts on
celestial plumage.
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