an feel what we do not in any sense know,
or that the heart can testify to that of which the intellect is
absolutely silent.

"So let us say--not 'Since we know, we love,'
But rather, 'Since we love, we know enough.'"[A]

[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]

In these two lines there are combined the truth I would acknowledge, and
the error I would confute. Love is, in one way, sufficient knowledge;
or, rather, it is the direct testimony of that completest knowledge, in
which subject and object interpenetrate. For, where love is, all foreign
elements have been eliminated. There is not "one and one with a shadowy
third"; but the object is brought within the self as constituting part
of its very life. This is involved in all the great forms of human
thought--in science and art, no less than in morality and religion. It
is the truth that we love, and only that, which is altogether ours. By
means of love the poet is

"Made one with Nature. There is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ";

and it is because he is made one with her that he is able to reveal her
inmost secrets. "Man," said Fichte, "can will nothing but what he loves;
his love is the sole and at the same time the infallible spring of his
volition, and of all his life's striving and movement." It is only when
we have identified ourselves with an ideal, and made its realization our
own interest, that we strive to attain it. Love is revelation in
knowledge, inspiration in art, motive in morality, and the fulness of
religious joy.

But, although in this sense love is greater than knowledge, it is a
grave error to separate it from knowledge. In the life of man at least,
the separation of the emotional and intellectual elements extinguishes
both. We cannot know that in which we have no interest. The very effort
to comprehend an object rests on interest, or the feeling of ourselves
in it; so that knowledge, as well as morality, may be said to begin in
love. We cannot know except we love; but, on the other hand, we cannot
love that which we do not in some degree know. Wherever the frontiers of
knowledge may be it is certain that there is nothing beyond them which
can either arouse feeling, or be a steadying centre for it. Emotion is
like a climbing plant. It clings to the tree of knowledge, adding beauty
to its strength. But, without knowledge, it is impossible for man. There
is no feeling which