Amidst the waste,
Without one blossom of delight,
Of feeling, or of taste!"
Love in one form or another is the ruling element in life. It is the primary source from whence springs all that possesses any real value to man. It may be the love of dominion or power which, though utterly selfish in its aims and methods, has been most marvelously overruled for good in the world's history. It may be the love of knowledge, in the pursuit of which lives have been lost and fortunes spent; but grand secrets have been wrung from nature—secrets which have contributed much for the advancement of human interests. But the love grander than any other, before which all the other elements of civilization pale and dwarf to utter insignificance, which is as powerful to-day as in the morning of time, which will continue to rule until time is ended, is that indefinable, indescribable, ever fresh and beautiful love betwixt man and woman—that love which has the power to tame the savage's heart; which finds man rough, uncultivated, and selfish; which leaves him a refined and courteous gentleman; which transforms the timid, bashful girl to the woman of matchless power for good.
Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart. Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness and wretchedness, and looks forward to happiness and content, feels a necessity of loving. Without it life is unfinished and hope is without aim, nature is defective and man miserable; nor does he come to comprehend the end and glory of existence until he has experienced the fullness of a love that actualizes all indefinite cravings and expectations. Love is the great instrument of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spirit and spring of the universe. It is such an affection as can not so properly be said to be in the soul as the soul to be in that. It is the whole nature wrapped up in one desire. Love is the sun of life, most beautiful in the morning and evening, but warmest and steadiest at noon.
Love blends young hearts in blissful unity, and for the time so ignores past ties and affections as to make a willing separation of the son from his father's house, and the daughter from all the sweet endearments of her childhood's home, to go out together and rear for themselves an altar, around which shall cluster all the cares and delights, the anxieties and sympathies of the family relationship. This love, if pure, unselfish, and discreet, constitutes the chief usefulness and happiness of human life. Without it there would be no organized households, and, consequently, none of that earnest endeavor for a competence and respectability, which is the mainspring to human efforts, none of those sweet, softening, restraining, and elevating influences of domestic life, which can alone fill the earth with the happy influences of refinement.
Love, it has been said, in the common acceptance of the term is folly; but love in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness is not only a consequence, but a proof of our moral excellence. The sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration engendered by it, all prove its claim to a high moral influence. It is the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish part of our nature. No man and no woman can be regarded as complete in their experience of life until they have been subdued into union with the world through their affections. As woman is not woman until she has known love, neither is man a complete man. Both are requisite to each other's completeness.
Love is the weapon which Omnipotence reserved to conquer rebel man when all the rest had failed. Reason he parries; fear he answers blow to blow; future interests he meets with present pleasure; but love, that sun against whose melting beams Winter can not stand, that soft, subduing slumber which brings down the giant, there is not one human soul in a million, not a thousand men in all earth's domain whose earthly hearts are hardened against love. There needs no other proof that happiness is the most wholesome moral atmosphere, and that in which the morality of man is destined ultimately to thrive, than the elevation of soul, the religious aspirations which attend the first assurance, the first sober certainty of true love.
Love is the perpetual melody of humanity. It sheds its effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo around age. It glorifies the present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by the gleams sent forward. The love which is the outcome of esteem has the most elevating and purifying effect on the character. It tends to emancipate one from the slavery of self. It is altogether unsordid; itself is the only price. It inspires gentleness, sympathy, mutual faith, and confidence. True love also in a manner elevates the intellect. "All love renders wise in a degree," says the poet Browning, and the most gifted minds have been the truest lovers. Great souls make all affections great; they elevate and consecrate all true delights. Love even brings to light qualities before lying dormant and unsuspected. It elevates the aspirations, expands the soul, and stimulates the mental powers.