of its best activities to the welfare of
others. And when this is known to be the native quality and quintessence
of love, no one can regard it anywhere, or at any time, as out of place.
"Prize-lawful or prize-lawless" it is ever a flower, even though it
grow, like the love of the hero of _Turf and Towers_, in slime. Lust,
fleshly desire, which has been too often miscalled love, is its worst
perversion. Love spends itself for another, and seeks satisfaction only
in another's good. But last uses up others for its own worst purposes,
wastes its object, and turns the current of life back inwards, into the
slush and filth of selfish pleasure. The distinction between love and
its perversion, which is impossible in the naive life of an animal,
ought to be clear enough to all, and probably is. Nor should the sexual
impulse in human beings be confused with fleshly desire, and treated as
if it were merely natural, "the mere lust of life" common to all living
things,--"that strive," as Spinoza put it, "to persevere in existing."
For there is no purely natural impulse in man; all that he is, is
transfused with spirit, whether he will or no. He cannot act as a mere
animal, because he cannot leave his rational nature behind him.

He cannot desire as an innocent brute desires: his desire is always love
or lust. We have as little right to say that the wisdom of the sage is
_nothing but_ the purblind savagery of a Terra del Fuegian, as we have
to assert that love is _nothing but_ a sexual impulse. That impulse
rather, when its potency is set free, will show itself, at first
confusedly, but with more and more clearness as it expands, to be the
yearning of soul for soul. It puts us "in training for a love which
knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue and
wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom." The
height to which this passion lifts man, is just what makes possible the
fall into a sensuality and excess of brutishness, in comparison with
which animal life is a paradise of innocence.

If this is clearly recognized, many of the idle questions of casuistry
that are sometimes raised regarding sexual love and marriage will cease
to trouble. For these questions generally presuppose the lowest possible
view of this passion. Browning shows us how to follow with serene
security the pure light of the emotion of love, amidst all the confused
lawlessness of lustful passion, and through all the intricac