or
less prominent mental trait which ennobles the passion and places it
at the service of the ideal of its fancy. It is accompanied by an
enthusiasm for the good and the beautiful in general, which comes to
most people only during the brief period of love. "It is a temporary
self-exaltation, _purifying the desires_ and urging the lover to
generous deeds."

Des hoechste Glueck hat keine Lieder,
Der Liebe Lust ist still und mild;
Ein Kuss, ein Blicken hin und wieder,
Und alle Sehnsucht ist gestillt.
--_Geibel_.

Schiller defined love as an eager "desire for another's happiness."
"Love," he adds, "is the most beautiful phenomenon in all animated
nature, the mightiest magnet in the spiritual world, the source of
veneration and the sublimest virtues." Even Goethe had moments when he
appreciated the purity of love, and he confutes his own coarse
conception that was referred to in the last section when he makes
Werther write: "She is sacred to me. _All desire is silent in her
presence."_[41]

The French Edward Schure exclaims, in his _History of German Song_:

"What surprises us foreigners in the poems of this
people is the unbounded faith in love, as the supreme
power in the world, as the most beautiful and _divine
thing_ on earth, ... the first and last word of
creation, its only principle of life, because it alone
can urge us to complete self-surrender."

Schure's intimation that this respect for love is peculiar to the
Germans is, of course, absurd, for it is found in the modern
literature of all civilized countries of Europe and America; as for
instance in Michael Angelo's

The might of one fair face sublimes my love,
For it _hath weaned my heart from low desires_.

ENGLISH TESTIMONY

English literature, particularly, has been saturated with this
sentiment for several centuries. Love is "all purity," according to
Shakspere's Silvius. Schlegel remarked that by the manner in which
Shakspere handled the story of _Romeo and Juliet_, it has become

"a glorious song of praise on that inexpressible feeling
which _ennobles the soul_ and gives to it its highest
sublimity, and which _elevates even the senses_ themselves
into soul;"

--which reminds one of Emerson's expression that the body is
"ensouled" through love. Steele declared that "Love is a passion of
the mind (_perhaps the noblest_), which w