s all those
shapes of human welfare known as education, refinement, liberty,
happiness. Properly defined, love is that exalted state of mind and
heart when reason is luminous, when judgment and imagination glow under
its influence just as the electric bulb glows under the living current.
There are three possible states and moods under which the mind may
fulfill its functions. There is a dull and quiescent condition when
reason and judgment act, but act without fervor. Power is there, but
it is latent, just as heat is in the unkindled wood lying on the grate,
but the heat is hidden.

Then there is a higher mood of the mind, when, under the influence of
conversation or reading, the mind emits jets and flashes of thought,
through witticism or story; but this creative mood is intermittent and
spasmodic. Last of all is that exalted mood when the mind glows and
throbs, when reason emits thoughts, as stars blaze light; when the
nimbus that overarches the brows of saints in ancient pictures
literally represents the effulgence of the mind. Work done in the
lower moods is called mediocre; work done by the mind in the second
stage is associated with talent, but when, through birth or ancestry,
the mind works ever in regnant and supernal moods, it is called genius.
Affirming that all minds rise into this higher mood at intervals, we
may also affirm that all the best work in literature or art or commerce
has been wrought during these exalted states when love for the work in
hand has rendered the mind luminous and crystalline.

It was love of nature that lent Wordsworth his power to divine nature's
secret. When the poet approached Chamouni and the mountains that gird
it round he tells us he was conscious of a shivering from head to foot,
with mingled awe and fear; his mind glowed with an indescribable
pleasure; his body thrilled as if in the presence of a disembodied
spirit; his heart approached nature with an intensity of joy comparable
only to that joy which Dante felt when approaching Beatrice. But when
the cares of this world gained upon him and the love of nature faded
gradually away in the manner described by him in his "Intimations of
Immortality," then also his power to describe nature faded away. For
only when the heart loves can intellect do great work.

His biographer tells us that when Angelo grew old and blind he was
accustomed to ask his servant to lead him to the torso of Phidias.
Passing his hands slowly ov