Verily, love is the only vitalizing power in the universe; and when denied the interior union which should exist between a conjoining pair, Love does the best He can, and infuses into the relationship as much of the divine nectar as they will accept.
There is no impure love. I repeat: There is no impure love. The impurity is in the mortal mind of man, obstructing his vision until he fails to see the purity of that which fain would lift him from the Slough of Despond to the Heights of Bliss.
If love be always pure, if it be always the uplifting, unifying, constructive power of the universe, what becomes of the apparent fact that men have sinned for love of woman; that for love of man, women have lost their self-respect, their hope of Heaven; and have sunk to depths below that of the brute creation?
What becomes of the all too many instances where human nature appears to love vice; to be under the spell, as it were of a passionate love for all that is ignoble and defiling? How, then, can we say that love is always pure when it leads to such disaster?
Love never leads to disaster, though love may follow wheresoever the erring mind of man leads, and thus Love is all too frequently dragged from his true place of exaltation, and brought into the arena of human conflict. Love is no fighter; He never opposes; He only concurs; He unites if there is anything with which he can establish an affinity of union.
Egoism is the arch-enemy of love, selfishness is the manifestation of egoism. Selfishness seeks to possess; it is selfishness that causes a man to commit crime, in order that he may bedeck the woman he loves with jewels and fine raiment. He is buying her bodily presence with the baubles which he vainly believes will bind her to him; and he must be taught the lesson of the Yoga sutras "not this way; not this way;" and the more worthy he is of redemption, the more certainly will he be caught in the trap of his own making, lest he really perish; whereas by seeming defeat, outward defeat, he may learn the true path of inwardness. Certainly Love is the only guide to whom he may safely trust his redemption.
If a woman really sinks into the depths of degradation through what appears to be love, it is because selfishness and vanity have temporarily supplanted Love. But there is another side to the question. Society has very erroneous ideas of success and failure; and in looking at these opposite ends of the same pole, Society may be standing on it's head.
A story illustrative of this inverted view of success is worth repeating.
A young Englishman of aristocratic family, tired of the inanities of social life, and denied the privilege of entering the commercial world, emigrated to the South Seas. It was reported at home that he had married a native Samoan woman and was living the simple life of the Islanders. English society, when his name was mentioned at all, spoke of him with hushed voices and with a "what a pity y' know" manner as of one who had sunk below the depths of ordinary failure. Subsequently a friend visited Samoa and found the young man enjoying life and evidently supremely content. In the course of conversation the visitor chanced to speak of a mutual friend who had been rather wild in the days when they both knew him, and thinking to impart agreeable news to the exile, the visitor eagerly assured him that "Sir Arthur is respectably married and settled down now" whereupon the self-constituted exile commiseratingly responded with: "what a pity; and he was such a decent sort, too." So we may see that there is much in the point of view.
Happiness is the final test of success or failure; and we may trust this test, because no one can be happy in any other than the progressive, upward-trending life. Dissipation has never been a satisfactory substitute for happiness. Wealth is valueless to the possessor if it shuts out love; and if love be present, wealth holds but an inconsequential place.