The Heavenly Aphrodite is true friend to the Earthly.(4) So

Nothing offends love; since love finds in all that savors of the mortal

only a symbol and epitome of the supernatural. And

There is in Love a cosmic force and secret incomprehensible,

incommunicable by man.

Is not, after all, Love the one supreme and significant fact of the

cosmos: indelible, indecipherable: efflorescing in Man; emerging from the

material; idealizing the carnal; pointing to an inscrutable, a spiritual

goal? Can it be that

If we could explain Love, we should explain the cosmos? What if we could

explain why it is that no one single isolated portion of the cosmos can

live alone--and vaunt itself in itself sufficient--(5), but must seek

some other single and isolated portion of the cosmos in order that that

very cosmos shall continue, shall evolve, shall go towards its goal . . .

Do we put our finger here upon some curious and recondite cosmic

fact utterly transcending our mean comprehension?

(4) Cf. Plato, Symposium, 180 et seq.

(5) S.T. Coleridge, "Lectures on Shakespeare".

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Hints for Lovers · 第 121 / 141 题