DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52538#0076
66
“ The infusion of love from a great soul gives color to our
faults, which will discover them as lunar caustic detects
impurities in water.”* * * §
From its nature, then, love precludes the association of
those who love on any other than the plain of upward aspira-
tion :
“The luxury of affection—there’s the danger ! There
must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter
morning. . . . The love which takes us as it finds us degrades
usT f
b. The Place of Hate in Love.
Thus in perfect love, hate must have a place—hatred and
absolute cutting off of all that does not tend to that per-
fection which is the final aim of Love ;
‘ ‘ Let us love by refusing not by accepting one another. Love
and lust are far asunder. We must love our friend so much
that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts
alone.
“ Let such pure hate still underprop our love,
That we may be
Each other’s conscience.
And have our sympathy mainly from thence. Ӥ
3.—love; universal not personal.
It will be seen that this love does not in any degree bear
a worldly character, but is a going out of soul to soul in the
hope and faith of aspiration ;
“ Friendship as not so kind as is imagined ; it has not much
human blood in it. It requires immaculate and God-like qualities
full-grown, and exists at all only by condescension and anticipation
of the remotest future. ” 11
Such love transcends the limits of the individual ; it con-
fines itself to no person, but is the high passion for virtue and
perfection. Thoreau would thus address his friend :
* Spring, p. 56.
t Letters, p. 249 : “Love and Friendship.”
I Letters, p. 248 : “ Love and Friendship.”
§ Week, p. 379.
|| Week, p. 393.
“ The infusion of love from a great soul gives color to our
faults, which will discover them as lunar caustic detects
impurities in water.”* * * §
From its nature, then, love precludes the association of
those who love on any other than the plain of upward aspira-
tion :
“The luxury of affection—there’s the danger ! There
must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter
morning. . . . The love which takes us as it finds us degrades
usT f
b. The Place of Hate in Love.
Thus in perfect love, hate must have a place—hatred and
absolute cutting off of all that does not tend to that per-
fection which is the final aim of Love ;
‘ ‘ Let us love by refusing not by accepting one another. Love
and lust are far asunder. We must love our friend so much
that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts
alone.
“ Let such pure hate still underprop our love,
That we may be
Each other’s conscience.
And have our sympathy mainly from thence. Ӥ
3.—love; universal not personal.
It will be seen that this love does not in any degree bear
a worldly character, but is a going out of soul to soul in the
hope and faith of aspiration ;
“ Friendship as not so kind as is imagined ; it has not much
human blood in it. It requires immaculate and God-like qualities
full-grown, and exists at all only by condescension and anticipation
of the remotest future. ” 11
Such love transcends the limits of the individual ; it con-
fines itself to no person, but is the high passion for virtue and
perfection. Thoreau would thus address his friend :
* Spring, p. 56.
t Letters, p. 249 : “Love and Friendship.”
I Letters, p. 248 : “ Love and Friendship.”
§ Week, p. 379.
|| Week, p. 393.