... If I am dear to some one elseThen must I be to myself more dear.
... If I am dear to some one elseThen must I be to myself more dear.
... If I am dear to some one elseThen must I be to myself more dear.
... If I am dear to some one else
Then must I be to myself more dear.
It combines the most trifling things of life into an intelligent whole. He who is loved and loves in this way bears the same stamp as the Christian mystic, who grows ever clearer and yet more rich in mystery; ever fuller of life and yet calmer; ever more introspective and yet more radiant.
There are some who think that this state is visionary and unnatural.
But the truth—for everyone who has beheld it—is thatle vrai amour est simple comme un bas relief antique. Such a relief, which before all others corresponds to the image, is to be found in the Naples museum. It shows a man and a woman, standing still on either side of a tree. An artist of antiquity may have already foreseenall the significance that a son of our time interpreted, when he placed a youth and a maiden beneath the tree of life with a cloven apple in their hands:they divided the apple of life and ate it together....
For a couple who share it thus, everyday life will scintillate with little delights as a wheat-field at midsummer with cornflowers; and the high days will be white with joy as a spring garden with fruit blossoms. A couple who live thus will be able to play so that beyond their sport will always be the calm of tenderness; to smile so that behind their smiles will always lie an easily-aroused seriousness. Unless death interrupts them they will thus build up their life together as the Gothic cathedrals were built: buttress upon buttress, arch above arch, ornament within ornament, until finally the gilding of the topmost spire catches the last rays of the sunset.
Thus great love already gives to two human beings what only completed development can give to mankind as a whole: unity between senses and soul, desire and duty, self-assertion and self-devotion, between the individual and the race, the present moment and the future.
This condition—in which every advantage gained becomes a gift and every gift a profit; in which are united a continual emotion and a calmpeace—is even now that which dreamers await as that of the third kingdom.2