the innermost
sanctuary pleasure disappears; it has no longer any meaning, it becomes
void before the new consciousness. The supreme ecstasy of great love
proves that the summit of human emotion is beyond pleasure and pain, and
does not acknowledge the limitations of bodily existence. Thus, of
necessity, the rapture of love must engender the idea of its own
eternity, the destruction of individual consciousness. I will quote in
this connection a few verses by Erika Rheinsch:

To open now my lips were vain indeed,
Nor word nor even kiss could e'er confess
What sighs and joy and grief and happiness
Would flash from me to you with lightning speed.

Nor hope nor pray'r can still the soul's desire,
For God Himself can never join us twain;
My bitter tears fall on my heart like rain
And cannot quench its all-consuming fire.

Oh! Now to break the spell--the storm to breast
With broken heart and life-blood ebbing fast,
Bearing the pangs of death for you, at last,
Dark troubled love--at last thou wert at rest!

We perceive that love can no longer content itself with the
penultimate--it must dare the last heroic step which creates beyond body
and soul something new and final, for "God Himself can never join us
twain." The love-death is the last and inevitable conclusion of
reciprocal love which knows of no value but itself, and is resolved to
face eternity, so that no alien influence shall reach it. The two
powers, love and death, tower above human life fatefully and
mysteriously; an isolated experience cannot appease them, they involve
the whole existence. To the individual who loves with an all-absorbing
love, and to the individual on the point of death, everything dwindles
into insignificance. Before the majesty of the love-death life breaks
down, to be laid hold of and transcended in a new (divined) sphere.

The thought of the love-death, the will that the world should be
governed by love, is the most unconditional postulate of feeling ever
laid down. For the love-death is the definite and irrevocable victory of
emotion; it is ecstasy as a solution of the world-problem and the
world-process. It is human to regard love and death as antitheses; to
consider them far removed from each other; marriage and funeral are the
poles of social life. The ecstasy of the love-death, however, owing to
its all-transcending claim, unites the two poles. The climax of life
shall