Читать книгу A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies - Mrs. (Anna) Jameson - Страница 52

A bond is necessary to complete our being, only we must be careful that the bond does not become bondage.

“The secret of peace,” said A. B., “is the resolution of the lesser into the greater;” meaning, perhaps, the due relative appreciation of our duties, and the proper placing of our affections: or, did she not rather mean, the resolving of the lesser duties and affections into the higher? But it is true in either sense.

The love we have for Genius is to common love what the fire on the altar is to the fire on the hearth. We cherish it not for warmth or for service, but for an offering, as the expression of our worship.

All love not responded to and accepted is a species of idolatry. It is like the worship of a dumb beautiful image we have ourselves set up and deified, but cannot inspire with life, nor warm with sympathy. No!—though we should consume our own hearts on the altar. Our love of God would be idolatry if we did not believe in his love for us—his responsive love.

In the same moment that we begin to speculate on the possibility of cessation or change in any strong affection that we feel, even from that moment we may date its death: it has become the fetch of the living love.

“Motives,” said Coleridge, “imply weakness, and the reasoning powers imply the existence of evil and temptation. The angelic nature would act from impulse alone.” This is the sort of angel which Angelico da Fiesole conceived and represented, and he only.

Again:—“If a man’s conduct can neither be ascribed to the angelic or the bestial within him, it must be fiendish. Passion without appetite is fiendish.”

And, he might have added, appetite without passion, bestial. Love in which is neither appetite nor passion is angelic. The union of all is human; and according as one or other predominates, does the human being approximate to the fiend, the beast, or the angel.