But I do not intend to go back now to my inner tragedy. As to love in
general, from the standpoint of a sceptic in regard to the world and
its manifestations, I might say with Solomon, "Vanitas vanitatum;"
but I should be utterly blind did I not perceive that of all active
principles this is the most powerful,--so powerful indeed that
whenever I think of it or my eyes roam over the everlasting ocean
of all-life, I am simply struck with amazement at its almightiness.
Though these are known things, as much known as the rising of the sun
and the tides of the ocean, nevertheless they are always wonderful.
After Empedocles, who divined that Eros evolved the worlds from Chaos,
metaphysics have not advanced one step. Only death is a power equally
absolute; yet in the eternal struggle between the two, love is the
stronger; love conquers death by night and day, conquers it every
spring, follows death step by step, throwing fresh grain into the gulf
it creates. People occupied with every-day affairs forget or do not
wish to remember that they are love's servants. It is strange when we
come to think of it that the warrior, the chancellor of state, the
cultivator of the soil, the merchant, the banker, in all their
efforts, which apparently have nothing to do with love, are merely
furthering its ends; that is, they serve the law of nature which bids
the man to stretch out his arms for the woman.
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