(17) The Propagation of the Love is most especially to be observed, for it is the loveliest, pleasantest, and sweetest Fountain of all. When the Love generates again a whole Birth, with all the Fountains of the original Essences out of itself, so that the Love in all the a springing Veins in that new Birth is predominant and chief, so that a Center arises therein, then the first Essence, vis. the Tartness, is wholly desirous or longing, wholly sweet, wholly light, and gives itself forth to be Food to all the Qualities, with a hearty Affection towards them all, as a loving Mother has towards her Children, and here the Bitterness may be rightly called Joy, for it is the Rising or Moving [thereof.] What Joy there is here, there is no other Similitude of it, than when a Man is suddenly and unexpectedly delivered out of the Pain and Torment of Hell, and put into the Light of the Divine Joy.

(18) So also the Sound, where the Love is predominant; it brings most joyful Tidings or News into all the Forms of the Birth, as also the Fire in the Love, that kindles the Love rightly in all the Fountain-Spirits, as is mentioned above; and the Love kindles Love in its Essence. When the Love is predominant in Love, it is the sweetest, meekest, humblest, most loving Fountain of all that springs in all the Fountains; and it confirms and fixes the heavenly Birth, so that it is a holy divine Essence or Substance.

(31) But since Thence come the beauty and light in all, it is Thence that Intellectual-Principle took the brilliance of the Intellectual Energy which flashed Nature into being; Thence soul took power towards life, in virtue of that fuller life streaming into it. Intellectual-Principle was raised thus to that Supreme and remains with it, happy in that presence. Soul too, that soul which as possessing knowledge and vision was capable, clung to what it saw; and as its vision so its rapture; it saw and was stricken; but having in itself something of that principle it felt its kinship and was moved to longing like those stirred by the image of the beloved to desire of the veritable presence. Lovers here mould themselves to the beloved; they seek to increase their attraction of person and their likeness of mind; they are unwilling to fall short in moral quality or in other graces lest they be distasteful to those possessing such merit- and only among such can true love be. In the same way the soul loves the Supreme Good, from its very beginnings stirred by it to love. The soul which has never strayed from this love waits for no reminding from the beauty of our world: holding that love- perhaps unawares- it is ever in quest, and, in its longing to be borne Thither, passes over what is lovely here and with one glance at the beauty of the universe dismisses all; for it sees that all is put together of flesh and Matter, befouled by its housing, made fragmentary by corporal extension, not the Authentic Beauty which could never venture into the mud of body to be soiled, annulled.

By only noting the flux of things it knows at once that from elsewhere comes the beauty that floats upon them and so it is urged Thither, passionate in pursuit of what it loves: never- unless someone robs it of that love- never giving up till it attain.

There indeed all it saw was beautiful and veritable; it grew in strength by being thus filled with the life of the True; itself becoming veritable Being and attaining veritable knowledge, it enters by that neighbouring into conscious possession of what it has long been seeking.

(3) We come now to treat of love in its essential nature. Love may be defined as an inclination to that which is pleasant. This is apparent in the case of the five senses, each of which may be said to love that which gives it delight; thus the eye loves beautiful forms, the ear music, etc. This is a kind of love we share with the animals. But there is a sixth sense, or faculty of perception, implanted in the heart, which animals do not possess, through which we become aware of spiritual beauty and excellence. Thus, a man who only acquainted with sensuous delights cannot understand what the Prophet meant when he said he loved prayer more than perfumes or women, though the last two were also pleasant to him. But he whose inner eye is opened to behold the beauty and perfection of God will despise all outward sights in comparison, however fair they may be.

(51) And in this Joy, in the Water-Spring, [or Source,] the pleasant Source of the bottomless Love rises up, and all that rises up there is the second Principle: For the whole Begetting or Generating falls into a glorious Love; for the Harshness now loves the Light dearly, because it is so refreshing, chearly, and beautiful; for from this pleasant Refreshing it becomes thus sweet, courteous, and humble [or lowly;] and the Bitterness now loves the Harshness, because it is no more dark, nor so strongly [eagerly or fiercely] attractive to itself, but is sweet, mild, pure, and light.

A lover was once admitted to the presence of his mistress, but, instead of embracing her, he pulled out a paper of sonnets and read them to her, describing her perfections and charms and his own love towards her at length. His mistress said to him, "You are now in my presence, and these lover's sighs and invocations are a waste of time. It is not the part of a true lover to waste his time in this way. It shows that I am not the real object of your affection, but that what you really love is your own effusions and ecstatic raptures. I see, as it were, the water which I have longed for before me, and yet you withhold it. I am, as it were, in Bulgaria, and the object of your love is in Cathay. One who is really loved is the single object of her lover, the Alpha and Omega of his desires. As for you, you are wrapped up in your own amorous raptures, depending on the varying states of your own feelings, instead of being wrapped up in me." The true mystic must not stop at mere subjective religious emotions, but seek absolute union with God.

(12) And yet it seemed to some of our sacred expounders that the Name of Love is more Divine than that of loving-kindness (ἀγάπης). But even the Divine Ignatius writes, "my own Love (ἔρως) is crucified;" and in the introductions to the Oracles you will find a certain One saying of the Divine Wisdom, "1 became enamoured of her Beauty." So that we, certainly, need not be afraid of this Name of Love, nor let any alarming statement about it terrify us. For the theologians seem to me to treat as equivalent the name of Loving-kindness, and that of Love; and on this ground, to attribute, by preference, the veritable Love, to things Divine, because of the misplaced prejudice of such men as these. For, since the veritable Love is sung of in a sense befitting God, not by us only, but also by the Oracles themselves, the multitude, not having comprehended the Oneness of the Divine Name of Love, fell away, as might be expected of them, to the divided and corporeal and sundered, seeing it is not a real love, but a shadow, or rather a falling from the veritable Love. For the Oneness of the Divine and one Love is incomprehensible to the multitude, wherefore also, as seeming a very hard name to the multitude, it is assigned to the Divine Wisdom, for the purpose of leading back and restoring them to the knowledge of the veritable Love; and for their liberation from the difficulty respecting it. And again, as regards ourselves, where it happened often that men of an earthly character imagined something out of place, (there is used) what appears more euphonius. A certain one says, "Thy affection fell upon me, as the affection of the women." For those who have rightly listened to things Divine, the name of Loving-kindness and of Love is placed by the holy theologians in the same category throughout the Divine revelations, and this is of a power unifying, and binding together, and mingling pre-eminently in the Beautiful and Good; pre-existing by reason of the beautiful and good, and imparted from the beautiful and good, by reason of the Beautiful and Good; and sustaining things of the same rank, within their mutual coherence, but moving the first to forethought for the inferior, and attaching the inferior to the superior by respect.

(22) That light known, then indeed we are stirred towards those Beings in longing and rejoicing over the radiance about them, just as earthly love is not for the material form but for the Beauty manifested upon it. Every one of those Beings exists for itself but becomes an object of desire by the colour cast upon it from The Good, source of those graces and of the love they evoke. The soul taking that outflow from the divine is stirred; seized with a Bacchic passion, goaded by these goads, it becomes Love. Before that, even Intellectual-Principle with all its loveliness did not stir the soul; for that beauty is dead until it take the light of The Good, and the soul lies supine, cold to all, unquickened even to Intellectual-Principle there before it. But when there enters into it a glow from the divine, it gathers strength, awakens, spreads true wings, and however urged by its nearer environing, speeds its buoyant way elsewhere, to something greater to its memory: so long as there exists anything loftier than the near, its very nature bears it upwards, lifted by the giver of that love. Beyond Intellectual-Principle it passes but beyond The Good it cannot, for nothing stands above That. Let it remain in Intellectual-Principle and it sees the lovely and august, but it is not there possessed of all it sought; the face it sees is beautiful no doubt but not of power to hold its gaze because lacking in the radiant grace which is the bloom upon beauty.

Even here we have to recognise that beauty is that which irradiates symmetry rather than symmetry itself and is that which truly calls out our love.

Why else is there more of the glory of beauty upon the living and only some faint trace of it upon the dead, though the face yet retains all its fulness and symmetry? Why are the most living portraits the most beautiful, even though the others happen to be more symmetric? Why is the living ugly more attractive than the sculptured handsome? It is that the one is more nearly what we are looking for, and this because there is soul there, because there is more of the Idea of The Good, because there is some glow of the light of The Good and this illumination awakens and lifts the soul and all that goes with it so that the whole man is won over to goodness, and in the fullest measure stirred to life.

(4) "I see full well," said I, "O sacred lamp! How love unfettered in this court sufficeth To follow the eternal Providence; But this is what seems hard for me to see, Wherefore predestinate wast thou alone Unto this office from among thy consorts." No sooner had I come to the last word, Than of its middle made the light a centre, Whirling itself about like a swift millstone. When answer made the love that was therein: "On me directed is a light divine, Piercing through this in which I am embosomed, Of which the virtue with my sight conjoined Lifts me above myself so far, I see The supreme essence from which this is drawn. Hence comes the joyfulness with which I flame, For to my sight, as far as it is clear, The clearness of the flame I equal make. But that soul in the heaven which is most pure, That seraph which his eye on God most fixes, Could this demand of thine not satisfy; Because so deeply sinks in the abyss Of the eternal statute what thou askest, From all created sight it is cut off.

(4) But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low place.

As it is not for those to speak of the graceful forms of the material world who have never seen them or known their grace- men born blind, let us suppose- in the same way those must be silent upon the beauty of noble conduct and of learning and all that order who have never cared for such things, nor may those tell of the splendour of virtue who have never known the face of Justice and of Moral-Wisdom beautiful beyond the beauty of Evening and of dawn.

Such vision is for those only who see with the Soul's sight- and at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in the realm of Truth.

This is the spirit that Beauty must ever induce, wonderment and a delicious trouble, longing and love and a trembling that is all delight. For the unseen all this may be felt as for the seen; and this the Souls feel for it, every soul in some degree, but those the more deeply that are the more truly apt to this higher love- just as all take delight in the beauty of the body but all are not stung as sharply, and those only that feel the keener wound are known as Lovers.

(1) A true lover is proved such by his pain of heart; The lover's ailment is different from all ailments; Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries. A lover may hanker after this love or that love, However much we describe and explain love, Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, When pen hasted to write, When the discourse touched on the matter of love, In explaining it Reason sticks fast, as an ass in mire; Naught but Love itself can explain love and lovers!

(15) Extract from the "Hymns of Love" by the most holy Hierotheus:-- Love, whether we speak of Divine, or Angelic, or intelligent, or psychical, or physical, let us regard as a certain unifying and combining power, moving the superior to forethought for the inferior, and the equals to a mutual fellowship, and lastly, the inferior to respect towards the higher and superior.

(39) Yet you must know, that the Corporeity of the Element of this Creature is inferior to the Deity; for the Deity is Spirit, and the Element is generated out of the Word from Eternity; and the Lord entered into the Servant, at which all the Angels in Heaven wonder. And it is the greatest Wonder that is done from Eternity, for it is against Nature; and that may [indeed rightly] be [called] Love.

(82) But the lover's love makes his body lean, While the beloved's love makes hers fair and lusty. When in this heart the lightning spark of love arises, When the love of God arises in thy heart, The noise of clapping of hands is never heard From one of thy hands unaided by the other hand The man athirst cries, "Where is delicious water?" Water too cries, "Where is the water-drinker?" This thirst in my soul is the attraction of the water; I am the water's and the water is mine.

(4) "O manhood mine, why dost thou vanish so?" I said within myself; for I perceived The vigour of my legs was put in truce. We at the point were where no more ascends The stairway upward, and were motionless, Even as a ship, which at the shore arrives; And I gave heed a little, if I might hear Aught whatsoever in the circle new; Then to my Master turned me round and said: "Say, my sweet Father, what delinquency Is purged here in the circle where we are? Although our feet may pause, pause not thy speech." And he to me: "The love of good, remiss In what it should have done, is here restored; Here plied again the ill-belated oar; But still more openly to understand, Turn unto me thy mind, and thou shalt gather Some profitable fruit from our delay. Neither Creator nor a creature ever, Son," he began, "was destitute of love Natural or spiritual; and thou knowest it. The natural was ever without error; But err the other may by evil object, Or by too much, or by too little vigour.

(14) So he who hath the whole authority o'er [all] the mortals in the cosmos and o'er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through the Harmony, breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God's fair form. And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven] Rulers as well as God's own Form, she smiled with love; for 'twas as though she'd seen the image of Man's fairest form upon her Water, his shadow on her Earth. He in turn beholding the form like to himself, existing in her, in her Water, loved it and willed to live in it; and with the will came act, and [so] he vivified the form devoid of reason. And Nature took the object of her love and wound herself completely around him, and they were intermingled, for they were lovers.

(5) These Lovers, then, lovers of the beauty outside of sense, must be made to declare themselves.

What do you feel in presence of the grace you discern in actions, in manners, in sound morality, in all the works and fruits of virtue, in the beauty of souls? When you see that you yourselves are beautiful within, what do you feel? What is this Dionysiac exultation that thrills through your being, this straining upwards of all your Soul, this longing to break away from the body and live sunken within the veritable self?

These are no other than the emotions of Souls under the spell of love.

But what is it that awakens all this passion? No shape, no colour, no grandeur of mass: all is for a Soul, something whose beauty rests upon no colour, for the moral wisdom the Soul enshrines and all the other hueless splendour of the virtues. It is that you find in yourself, or admire in another, loftiness of spirit; righteousness of life; disciplined purity; courage of the majestic face; gravity; modesty that goes fearless and tranquil and passionless; and, shining down upon all, the light of god-like Intellection.

All these noble qualities are to be reverenced and loved, no doubt, but what entitles them to be called beautiful?

They exist: they manifest themselves to us: anyone that sees them must admit that they have reality of Being; and is not Real-Being, really beautiful?

But we have not yet shown by what property in them they have wrought the Soul to loveliness: what is this grace, this splendour as of Light, resting upon all the virtues?

Let us take the contrary, the ugliness of the Soul, and set that against its beauty: to understand, at once, what this ugliness is and how it comes to appear in the Soul will certainly open our way before us.

Let us then suppose an ugly Soul, dissolute, unrighteous: teeming with all the lusts; torn by internal discord; beset by the fears of its cowardice and the envies of its pettiness; thinking, in the little thought it has, only of the perish able and the base; perverse in all its the friend of unclean pleasures; living the life of abandonment to bodily sensation and delighting in its deformity.

What must we think but that all this shame is something that has gathered about the Soul, some foreign bane outraging it, soiling it, so that, encumbered with all manner of turpitude, it has no longer a clean activity or a clean sensation, but commands only a life smouldering dully under the crust of evil; that, sunk in manifold death, it no longer sees what a Soul should see, may no longer rest in its own being, dragged ever as it is towards the outer, the lower, the dark?

An unclean thing, I dare to say; flickering hither and thither at the call of objects of sense, deeply infected with the taint of body, occupied always in Matter, and absorbing Matter into itself; in its commerce with the Ignoble it has trafficked away for an alien nature its own essential Idea.

If a man has been immersed in filth or daubed with mud his native comeliness disappears and all that is seen is the foul stuff besmearing him: his ugly condition is due to alien matter that has encrusted him, and if he is to win back his grace it must be his business to scour and purify himself and make himself what he was.

So, we may justly say, a Soul becomes ugly- by something foisted upon it, by sinking itself into the alien, by a fall, a descent into body, into Matter. The dishonour of the Soul is in its ceasing to be clean and apart. Gold is degraded when it is mixed with earthy particles; if these be worked out, the gold is left and is beautiful, isolated from all that is foreign, gold with gold alone. And so the Soul; let it be but cleared of the desires that come by its too intimate converse with the body, emancipated from all the passions, purged of all that embodiment has thrust upon it, withdrawn, a solitary, to itself again- in that moment the ugliness that came only from the alien is stripped away.

(2) And if, when turned, towards it she incline, Love is that inclination; it is nature, Which is by pleasure bound in you anew Then even as the fire doth upward move By its own form, which to ascend is born, Where longest in its matter it endures, So comes the captive soul into desire, Which is a motion spiritual, and ne'er rests Until she doth enjoy the thing beloved. Now may apparent be to thee how hidden The truth is from those people, who aver All love is in itself a laudable thing; Because its matter may perchance appear Aye to be good; but yet not each impression Is good, albeit good may be the wax." "Thy words, and my sequacious intellect," I answered him, "have love revealed to me; But that has made me more impregned with doubt; For if love from without be offered us, And with another foot the soul go not, If right or wrong she go, 'tis not her merit." And he to me: "What reason seeth here, Myself can tell thee; beyond that await For Beatrice, since 'tis a work of faith.

(1) AND therefore I pray thee, lean listily to this meek stirring of love in thine heart, and follow thereafter: for it will be thy guide in this life and bring thee to bliss in the tother. It is the substance of all good living, and without it no good work may be begun nor ended. It is nought else but a good and an according will unto God, and a manner of well‑pleasedness and a gladness that thou feelest in thy will of all that He doth.

(17) Through the higher love the whole life of man is to be elevated from temporal selfishness to the spring of all love, to God: man will again be master over nature by abiding in God and lifting her up to God.