y that they are now able,
without offence, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and
give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And beholding in
many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each
soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in
the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and
knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls.

Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all ages.
The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch and Apuleius
taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truer
unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which
presides at marriages with words that take hold of the upper world,
whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so that its gravest discourse
has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when this sensualism
intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and
affection of human nature by teaching that marriage signifies nothing
but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim.

But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our
play. In the procession of the soul from within outward, it enlarges
its circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the light
proceeding from an orb. The rays of the soul alight first on things
nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and domestics, on the house
and yard and passengers, on the circle of household acquaintance,
on politics and geography and history. But things are ever grouping
themselves according to higher or more interior laws. Neighborhood,
size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power over us.
Cause and effect, real affinities, the longing for harmony between
the soul and the circumstance, the progressive, idealizing instinct,
predominate later, and the step backward from the higher to the lower
relations is impossible. Thus even love, which is the deification of
persons, must become more impersonal every day. Of this at first it
gives no hint. Little think the youth and maiden who are glancing
at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual
intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this
new, quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in the
irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, they
advance to acts of court