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05 - Love - Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson · Logic Library

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Love I was as a gem concealed me. My burning bray revealed Koran.
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Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments. Each of its joys ripens into
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a new want nature uncontainable, flowing forelooking in the first sentiment of kindness anticipates
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already a benevolence which shall lose all particular regards in its general light. The
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introduction to this felicity is in a private and tender relation of one to one,
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which is the enchantment of human life, which, like a certain divine
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rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one period, and works of revolution
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in his mind and body, unites him to his race, pledges him to
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the domestic and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy into nature, enhances
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the power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds to his character heroic
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and sacred attributes, establishes marriage, and gives permanence to human society. The
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natural association of the sentiment of love with the heyday of the blood seems to
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require that in order to portray it in vivid tints, which every youth had
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made should confess to be true to their throbbing experience, one must not be
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too old. The delicious fancies of youth reject the least savor of the mature
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philosophy, as chilling with age and pedantry their purple bloom. And therefore I
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know I incur the imputation of unnecessary hardness and stoicism from those who compose the
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court and parliament of love. But from these formidable censors I shall appeal to
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my seniors. For it is to be considered that this passion of which we
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speak, though it begin with the young, yet for sakes not the old,
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or rather suffers no one who is truly its servants to grow old,
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but makes the aged participators of it not less than the tender maiden, though
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in a different and nobler sort. For it is a fire that, kindling
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its first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a
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wandering spark out of another private heart, close and enlarges until it warms and
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beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all,
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and so lights up the whole world, in all nature, with its generous
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flames. It matters not, therefore, whether we attempt to describe the passion
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at twenty, at thirty, or at eighty years. He who paints it
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at the first period will lose some of its later, he who paints it
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at the last some of its earlier traits. Only it is to be hoped
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that by patience and the muses aid, we may attain to that inward view
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of the law, which shall describe a truth every young and beautiful, so
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central that it shall commend itself to the eye at whatever angle beholden. And
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the first condition is that we must leave a too close and lingering adherence to
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facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in hope, and not in
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history. For each man sees his own life defaced and disfigured, as the
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life of man is not to his imagination. Every man sees over his own
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experience a certain stain of error, whilst that of other men looks fair and
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ideal. Let any man go back to those delicious relations which make the beauty
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of his life, which have given him sincerest, instruction and nourishment, he
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will shrink and moan alas I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter in
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mature life the remembrances of budding joy, and cover every beloved name. Everything
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is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth, but
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all is sour if seen as experience. Details are melancholy, The plan is
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seemly anoble in the actual world, the painful kingdom of time and place,
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dwell, care and canker and fear. With thought with the ideal is immortal
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hilarity, the rose of joy round it all the muses seeing, but grief
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cleaves to names and persons and the partial interests of today and yesterday. The
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strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which this topic of personal relations
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usurps in the conversation of society. What do we wish to know of any
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worthy person, so much as how he has sped in the history of this
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sentiment? What books in the circulating libraries circulate? How we glow over these
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novels of passion when the story is told with any spark of truth nature?
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And what fastens attention in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection
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between two parties. Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet
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them again, But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion,
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and we are no longer strangers, we understand them and take the warmest
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interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover. The
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earliest demonstrations of complacency and kindness are nature's most winning pictures. It is the
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dawn of civility and grace. In the course and rustic, the rude village
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boy teases the girls about the schoolhouse door. But to day he comes running
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into the entry and meets one fair child disposing her satchel. He holds her
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books to help her, and instantly it seems to him as if she removed
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herself from him infinitely and was a sacred precinct aong, the throng of girls
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he runs rudely enough, but only one distances him, And these two little
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neighbors, who were so close, just now have learned to respect each other's
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personality. Or who can avert his eyes from the engaging, half artful,
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half artless ways of schoolgirls who go into the country shops to buy a skein
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of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an hour about nothing
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with the broad faced, good natured shop boy in the village. They are
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on a perfect equality which love delights in, and without any coquetry. The
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happy, affectionate nature of woman flows out in this pretty gossip. The girls
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may have little beauty, yet plainly do they establish between them and the good
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boy the most agreeable, confiding relations. What with their fun and their earnest
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About Edgar and Jonas and Almirah, and who was invited to the party,
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and who danced at the dancing school, and when the singing school would begin?
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Another nothings concerning which the party's could by and by that boy wants a
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wife, and very truly and heartily will he know where to find a sincere
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and sweet mate without any risks, such as Milton deplores. As incident to
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scholars and great men, I have been told that in some public discourses of
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mine, my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal
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relations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words.
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For persons are Love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of
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the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being
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tempted to unsay as treasonable to nature, ought, derogatory to the social instincts.
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For though the celestial rapture falling out of heaven seizes only upon those of
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tender age, and although a beauty overpowering all analysis or comparison, and putting
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us quite beside ourselves, we can seldom see after thirty years. Yet the
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remembrance of these visions outlasts all other remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers
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on the oldest brows. But here is a strange fact. It may seem
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to many men, in revising their experience, that they have no fairer page
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in their life's book than the delicious memory of some passages, wherein affection contrive
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to give a witchcraft, surpassing the deep attraction to its own truth, to
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a parcel of accidental and trivial circumstances. Looking backward, they may find that
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several things which were not the charm have more reality to this groping memory than
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the charm itself, which embalmed them. But be our experience in particulars what
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it may. No man ever forgot the visitations of that power to his heart
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and brain, which created all things anew, which was the dawn in him
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of music, poetry, and art, which made the face of nature radiant
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with purple light, the morning and the night, varied enchantments, when a
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single tone of one voice could make the heart bound, and the most trivial
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circumstance associated with one form is put in the amber of memory, when he
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became all eye, when one was present at all memory, when one was
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gone. When the youth becomes a watcher of windows and studious of a glove
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of veil of ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage, when no place
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is too solitary and none too silent for him who has richer company and sweeter
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conversation in his new thoughts than any old friends, though best and purest can
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give him. For the figures, the motions, the words of the beloved
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object are not like other images written in water, but, as Plutarch said,
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enameled in fire, and make the study of midnight. Thou art not
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gone, being gone, where'er thou art, thou leavest in him thy watchful
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eyes, in him, thy loving heart. In the noon and the afternoon
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of life, we still throb at the recollection of days when happiness was not
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happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear.
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For he touched the secret of the matter, who said, of love,
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all other pleasures are not worth its pains. And when the day was not
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long enough, but the night too must be consumed in keen recollections, when
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the head boiled all night on the pillow with the generous deed it resolved on,
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when the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters,
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and the flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song, when all
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business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women running to and fro
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in the street's mere pictures. The passion rebuilds the world for the youth.
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It makes all things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on
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the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. The notes
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are almost articulate. The clouds have faces as he looks on them. The
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trees of the forest, the waving grass, and the peeping flowers have grown
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intelligent, and he almost fears to trust them with the secret which they seem
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to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude, he
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finds a dearer home than with men. Fountain heads and pathless groves, places
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which pale Passion loves moonlight, walks when all the fowls are safely housed,
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save bats and owls. A midnight bell, a passing groan. These are
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the sounds we feed upon. Behold there in the wood, the fine madmen.
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He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights. He dilates, he
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is twice a man. He walks with arms akimbo, He soliloquizes, He
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accosts the grass and the trees. He feels the blood of the violet,
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the clover, and the lily in his veins, and he talks with the
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brook that wets his foot. The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural
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beauty have made him love music. In verse, it is a fact often
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observed that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot
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write well under any other circumstances. The like force has the passion over all
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his nature. It expands the sentiment. It makes the clown gentle, and
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gives the coward heart into the most pitiful and abject. It will infuse a
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heart and courage to defy the world. So only it have the countenance of
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the beloved object in giving him to another. It still more gives him to
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himself. He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener
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purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer
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appertain to his family and society. He is something, He is a person,
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He is a soul. And here let us examine a little nearer the
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nature of that influence which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty,
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whose revelation to man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases
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to shine, which pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient to
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itself. The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy, poor and solitary,
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like a tree in flower. So much soft, budding and forming loveliness
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is society for itself. And she teaches his eye why beauty was pictured,
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with loves and graces attending her steps. Her existence makes the world rich.
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Though she extrudes all other persons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, she
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indemnifies him by carrying out her own being into something impersonal, large, mundane,
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so that the maiden stands to him for a representative of all select things
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and virtues. For that reason, the lover never sees personal resemblances in his
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mistress to her kindred or to others. Her friends find in her a likeness
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to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood.
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The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to
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rainbows and the song of birds. The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue.
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Who can analyze the nameless charm which glances from one in another face and
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form? We are touched with emotions of tenderness and complacency when we cannot find
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whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam points It is destroyed for the imagine
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nation by any attempt to refer it to organization. Nor does it point to
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any relations of friendship or love known and described in society. But as it
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seems to me, a quite other and unattainable sphere to relations of transcendent delicacy
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and sweetness, to what roses and violence hints and foreshow, we cannot approach
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beauty. Its nature is like open line dovesnack lusters, hovering an evanescence.
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Herein it resembles the most excellent things which all have this rainbow character, defying
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all attempts at appropriation and use. What else did Jean Pierre Richter signify when
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he said to music away away, Thou speakest to me of things which in
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all my endless life I have not found and shall not find. The same
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fluency may be observed in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is
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then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of
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criticism and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring want, but demands
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an active imagination to go with it and to say what it is. In
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the act of doing, the god or hero of the sculptor is always represented
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in a transition from that which is representable to the senses to that which is
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not. Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same remark holds
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of painting and of poetry. The success is not attained when it lulls and
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satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavors after the unattainable.
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Concerning its lander inquires whether it is not to be referred to some purer
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state of sensation and existence In like manner, personal Beauty is then first charming
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and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end, when it becomes a
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story without an end, when it suggests gleams and visions and not earthly satisfactions,
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when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness, when he cannot feel his
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right to it. Though he were Caesar, he cannot feel more right to
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it than to the firmament and the splendors of the sunset. Hans arose to
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saying, if I love you, what is that to you? We say
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so because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but
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above it. It is not you but your radiance. It is that which
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you know not in yourself, and can never know. This agrees well with
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that high philosophy of beauty, which the ancient writers delighted in, for they
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said that the soul of man, embodied here on earth, went roaming up
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and down in quest of that other world of its own, not of which
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it came into this, but was soon stupefied by the light of the natural
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sun, and unable to see any other objects than those of this world,
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which are but shadows of real things. Therefore the deity sends the glory of
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youth before the soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids
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to its recollection of the celestial good and fair. And the man beholding such
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a person in the female sex, runs to her and finds the highest joy
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in contemplating the form, movement, and intelligence of this person, because it
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suggests to him the presence of that which indeed is within the beauty and the
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cause of the beauty. If, however, from too much conversing with material
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objects, the soul was gross and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it
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reaped nothing but sorrow, body being unable to fulfill the promise which beauty holds
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out. But if accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes
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to his mind, the soul passes through the body and fails to admire strokes
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of character, and the lovers contemplate one another in their discourse and their actions.
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Then they pass to the true palace of beauty, more and more inflame
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their love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as
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the sun puts out the fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure
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and hallowed by conversation with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly,
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and just. The lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities,
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and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he passes from loving them in one
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to loving them in all. And so is the one beautiful soul only the
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door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls.
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In the particular society of his mate, he attains a clearer sight of any
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spot, any taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is
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able to point it out. And this with mutual joy, that they are
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now able, without offense, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other,
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and to give to each all help and comfort in curing the same, and
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beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each
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soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world.
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The lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of
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the Divinity. By steps on this ladder of created souls. Something like this
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had the truly wise tolus of love in all ages. The doctrine is not
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old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch, and Apelaius taught
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it, so have Patriarch Angelo and Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in
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opposition and rebuke to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriages with words that take
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hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar,
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so that its gravest discourse has a savor of hands and powdering tubs. Worst,
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when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women and withers the hope
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and affection of human nature, by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's
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thrift, and that woman's life has no other aim. But this dream of
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love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our play. In the
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procession of the soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles. Ever,
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like the pebble thrown into the pond, or the light proceeding from an orb
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The rays of the soul alight first on things nearest, on every utensil and
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toy, on nurses and domestics, on the house and yard, and passengers,
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on the circle of household, acquaintance, on politics and geography, and
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history, but things are ever grouping themselves according to higher and more interior laws.
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Neighborhood size, numbers, habits, persons lose degrees. Their power over
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us cause an effect real affinities, the longing for harmony between the soul and
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the circumstance. The progressive, idealizing instincts predominate later, and the step backward
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from the higher to the lower relations is impossible. Thus, even love,
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which is the deification of persons, must become more impersonal every day. Of
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this. At first, it gives no hint, little think. The youth
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and maiden, who are glancing at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so
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full of mutual intelligence of the precious fruit, long hereafter to proceed from this
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new quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of
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the bark and leaf buds, from exchanging glances that advance to acts of courtesy
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of gallantry, than to fiery passion, to flighting troth and marriage. Passion
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beholds its object as a perfect units. The soul is wholly embodied, and
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the body is wholly and souled. Her pure and elegant blood spoke in her
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cheeks, and so distinctly rots that one might also say her body thought Romeo,
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if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the heavens
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fine. Life with this pair, as no other aim asks no more than
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Juliet than Romeo. Nights day studies, talents, Kingdom's religion are all contained
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in this form, full of soul. In this soul which is all form,
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the lovers delight in endearments, in the vowels of love, in comparisons
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of their regards. When alone, they solace themselves with the remembered image of
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the other. Does that other see the same star, the same melting cloud,
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read the same book, feel the same emotion that now delight me.
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They try and weigh their affection, and adding up costly advantages, friends,
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opportunities, properties, exult in discovering that willingly, joyfully they would give all
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as ransom for the beautiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which
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shall be harmed. But the lot of humanity is on these children. Danger,
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sorrow, and pain arrive to them as to all love praise it makes
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covenance with eternal power, and behalf of this dear mate, the union which
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is thus affected, and which adds a new value to every atom in nature,
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for it transmutes every thread throughout the whole web of relation into a golden
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ray, and bathes the soul in a new and sweeter element. Is yet
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a temporary state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations,
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nor even home in another heart content. The awful soul that dwells in cl
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it arouses itself at last from these endearments as toys and puts on the harness
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and aspires to vast and universal aims. The soul, which is in the
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soul of each craving a perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects, and disproportion
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in the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and pain.
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Yet that which drew them to each other with signs of loveliness signs of
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virtue. And these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They appear and reappear,
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and continue to attract. But the regard changes, quits the sign and
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attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded affection. Meantime, as life
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wears on, it proves a game of permutation and combination of all possible positions
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of the parties, to employ all the resources of each and acquaint each with
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the strength and weakness of the other. For it is the nature and end
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of this relation that they should represent the human race to each other. All
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that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is
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cunningly wrought into the texture of man of woman. The person loved us to
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us, fit like manner, has the taste of all in it. The
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world rolls, the circumstances vary each hour. The angels that inhabit this temple
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of the body appear at the windows, and the gnomes and vices also by
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all the virtues, they are united. If there be virtue, all the
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vices are known. As such, they confess and flee. Their once flaming
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regard is sobered by time, in either breast and losing in violence, what
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it gains in extent it becomes a thorough good understanding design each other without complaint
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to the good offices which man and women are severally appointed to discharge in time
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and exchange the passion which once could not lose sight of its object, for
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a cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether present or absence, of each other's designs.
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At last they discover that all which at first drew them together, those
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once sacred features, that magical play of charms, was desiduous at a prospective
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end, like the scaffolding by which the house was built, and the purification
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of the intellect and the heart from year to year is the real marriage,
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foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above their consciousness. Looking at
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these aims with which two persons, a man and a woman, so variously
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and correlatively gifted, are shot up in one house to spend in the nuptial
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society forty or fifty years, I do not wonder at the emphasis with which
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the heart prophesies this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse beauty with which
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the instincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature and intellect and art emulate each
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other in the gifts and the melody they bring to the Epithalamian. Thus we
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are put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person,
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nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere. To the end of
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increasing virtue and wisdom, we are, by nature observers and thereby learners.
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That is our permanent state. But we are often made to feel that our
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affections are but tenths of a knight. Though slowly and with pain, the
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objects of the affections change as the objects of thought do. There are moments
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when the affections rule and absorb the man and make his happiness dependent on a
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person or person's. But in health the mind it is presently seen again,
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its overarching vaults, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves
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and fears that swept over us. As clouds must lose their finite character and
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blend with God to attain their own perfection. But we need not fear that
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we can lose anything by the progress of the soul. The soul may be
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trusted to the end that which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations must
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be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on forever
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and of love.