In those forms of life which are supposed to be insensate, we find the universal law of sex-attraction and repulsion. The pollen from an oak tree, for example, may be blown about by the wind and may light upon a plant which is far removed in species from its own; but if such be the case, no fertilization takes place. The fundamental law of Love is to attract to itself its own; that which belongs to it by right of Cosmic law and order and justice.
All the inharmony of our social life comes from the attempt to appropriate and possess that which, in the final analysis, in the Absolute, is not ours. When the majority of Mankind shall have mastered this lesson, the human race will enter upon its true spiritual life. The psychic mind with which man alone of all earth's creatures is supposed to be endowed will have conquered the instinctive mind, and the higher expression of love which would protect and preserve, and leave free, will have gained supremacy over selfishness and the desire for possession.
In bird-life we find this higher type of love almost universal. Parental love, that exquisite and refined flower from the seed of sex-attraction, characterizes the bird and we may readily agree that Paradise would be incomplete without birds and flowers as well as babies.
Considering the birds as an infinitely finer type of sex-expression than that offered by any other of the forms of life below man, we note with satisfaction the all-important point, namely, that the sex-urge is more diffused and lasting, and of a finer quality than that of the mammals.
The bird woos its mate with the beauty of its plumage and the harmonious notes of its love-call. Its desire finds so many esthetic ways of expressing itself; in tender pleadings; in cooing promises; in continuous evidences of care and protection. Nor does its intense love, vital as it is, exhaust itself in concentrated expression, but it softens and ripens into something that so closely resembles our ideals of spiritual love, that we are not surprised to find the emblem of the dove employed throughout the history of the world, as the spiritual symbol of pure and holy love. Well, indeed, may human beings learn from the birds the lesson of the higher type of sex-mating, which finds fruition in their mutual love for and care of their progeny. Nor does the love-life of birds cease with sex-expression. It permeates all their intercourse.
The trait which distinguishes the spiritual man from the animal man is analogous to that of the birds; namely, that of finding a deep and lasting joy in the presence of the loved one; in sympathizing with each other's ideals; listening with devoted attention to each other's words; contacting, as it were, each other's inner nature, rather than obeying the merely animal urge of procreation. And above all, in the common aim of altruistic thoughtfulness for the little lives which their love has brought forth.
Thus nature serves the cosmic law, which aims to raise the sex-instinct from the incomplete and unsatisfying plane of physical contact, to that of spiritual union—a wide gulf seemingly; but who would not strive to bridge it, did he but realize what spiritual union with the Beloved One means?