PART SECOND.

ETHICS OF LOVE.

LOVE IS THE FIRST RUDIMENTAL ELEMENT OF THE SOUL.

Love is that liquid, mingling, delicate, inexpressible element which is felt in the depths of every human soul, because it is its germinal essence.

Love is the primary cause of all action, of all will and of all thought. It is the spirit of love which reveals a universal sympathy and relationship. Love is harmony, and the harmonies of nature are the conditions of perfection.

Love is the seed-fountain of affection, volition and intellect. In the center of man's inner life is found that substantial principle, an element as real as light and electricity, which we term love.

Conjugal love is first in all the inspirations of life. Love flows out from the mind in a continuous tide, as the warmth of the sun flows unceasingly—in gentle affections and humane emotions. Love is the social element, and nature has so organized man that he is surrounded by an atmosphere through and by which its attractions and repulsions are expressed. Mightier far

Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway

Of magic, potent over sun and star—

Is Love.

Wisdom is the perfection of love, it flows from love, is directed by experience, modified by will and rendered perfect by knowledge. Wisdom is the thinking principle, the faculty that cogitates, investigates, searches and explores. It is the faculty that analyzes, calculates and commands.

Will is a force which serves as the connecting medium between love and wisdom, being subject to the influence and suggestions of each. The will-power cannot come until knowledge is obtained. But, if a man has an untoward am- . bition, the will is alike favorable to ambition. If he is without ambition, there is no vaulting of the will.

Love, being the first element, or the essence of the soul, is accordingly imperfect, unguided, and, like the lower forms in nature, is developed angularly. It is the parent of eccentricity, impulse, fantasy, imagination and inflated conceptions of all things invisible, intangible and unreal. Wisdom must throw its temporizing influence over love before the soul can become self-poised and upright in character.

Love's holy flame forever burneth;

From heaven it came, to heaven returneth;

Too oft on earth a troubled guest,

At times deceived, at times opprest,

It here is tried and purified,

Then hath in heaven its perfect rest :
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest time of love is there.

Love gives to life its precious nourishment. It is the element of tenderness, kindness, affection, attachment, and of all kinds of pure, unsophisticated sentiments, such as gush spontaneously from the depths of the soul, and are expressed in music, in language, in paintings, in foliage, in embroideries; and in all indescribable beauties under the vaulted chambers of the expanded heavens.

The enchanted dawn of every life is love. Those who have known what is love in its perfection, though on earth and but for a moment, need not ask what reward awaits the just.

Beautiful sincerity and comely Love!

Whose smiles from reason flow

And are of Love the food.

Love manifests itself in conjugal attachments, which is outwardly expressed in individual association and marriage. This same love enlarges the sympathies, and is modified into universal love.

Perfect love exalts every human function. Love has an affection for the invisible and sublime. Love and music are alone adequate to express the heavenly state of spiritual existence. It gives rise to hope, and this clothes itself in an aerial garment of contemplation, anticipation and expectation. Love has many subtle signs that reveal inward emotions and relations, and, being the strongest passion of the human soul, leads all the rest. Love is found to be the parent or resident of all those feelings and impulses and sentiments which characterize the spirit in its threefold external connection with nature, society and nations.

Sentiment fortifies the mind as well as the heart. If we would perfect our natures, we should exalt our affections.

Love is a virtue for heroes!

As white as the snow on the hills,
And immortal, as every great soul is
That struggles, endures and fulfills.

Love must be anchored.

The eccentricity of love and will is modified by the pervading and controlling influence of wisdom. He is the mightiest man who can, amid all circumstances, control the impulse of love by the voice of wisdom.

The intellectual faculties must be cultured and the mind sufficiently developed to impart to the affections a clear image of the ideal companion.

Ye who guide the fates and furies,

Give, O give me, I implore,
From the myriad hosts of nations,
From the countless constellations,
One pure spirit that can love me,

One that I, too, can adore.

LAWS, ESSENCE AND IDEAS OF LOVE.

Let the will be set upon the path of lovely duty. To follow the ebbings and flowings of affections merely, would be living a beautiful life in childhood; but it would not be worthy or characteristic of truly unfolded men and women. Human intelligence and memory are obedient to a different set of laws; and yet they are not antagonistic to the best needs of the affections. Mind obeys the will, and matter obeys the will. Man is conscious of his consciousness, although he cannot fully comprehend the totality of his superior powers. There has come to be an identification of mind with matter. There is a power enthroned in man's consciousness to which both the matter of his body and all the mind in his possession are subservient. This power is the pivot on which his universe revolves. We master by it all that impedes our growth and progress. It inspires us with courage, strength to overcome, patience to endure, fortitude to mold, motive to spiritualize matter, and with a sort of peri-consciousness by which we meet and manage everything and all things within our sphere of consciousness. The pivotal power in man to which both mind and matter are servants, is the energy which is familiarly called will. Upon the diamond point of this power turns the entire universe of mind.

Love is the source of quantity in a person. There is great fullness of life, where there is great affection which flows out of love's fountain; and there is great intelligence where there is great reflection and memory, which arise from the knowing faculties; but there are presence, individuality, self-assertion, independence, courage, heroism, selfpoise, movement and execution, where there is will. The affections, or the reflections, cannot accomplish anything

independent of this power. They may incline or decline, and they may decide or refuse, but nothing less than the pivotal power can impart movement and manifestation.

Without this power, both mind and matter-which are derived alternately from one another-would be motionless, lifeless, formless, dead. It overcomes all forms of evildisease, sensualism in the blood, vices in habits, appetites in the senses; weakness in the moral feelings, hypocrisy, falsehood, and all evil thinking. All this it can do when it is pure; but a wrong-directed will-power inevitably leads to demoralization and social inharmony.

Real individuality and spiritual status can be accurately ascertained by the aural atmosphere which surrounds a person, preceding and following him everywhere and under all circumstances, indicating and analyzing as completely as words can impart an idea to the mind. There is great reality in this atomic emanation about a person, which may do more than the ten commandments to regulate the conjugal relation and perfection of offspring:

Great souls by instinct to each other turn.

LOVE LIFE'S TALISMAN.

Love unfolds, defines and characterizes the individual. Love is the element that conceives of all loveliness, of all gentleness, of all fragrance, of music and of beauty.

Who never loved, never suffered; he feels nothing,
Who nothing feels but for himself alone.

The emotions of love have an import to every soul, as solemn as death. There are duties which cannot be ignored, perfect fidelity to the vows assumed, of mutual assistance, of yielding affection. No outward event can cancel these rights and duties. Pure love which ignores self in a grand benevolence, elevates the lover and the one beloved. It produces

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