There is then a means of escaping from the influence of times and of places: it is to seek truth in the great world, and to make oneself, like Socrates, a citizen of the world. The love of humanity—is the moral law of nature.

CHAPTER XVI.

LOVE A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LAW OF NATURE.

"Seul il tient les rênes de l'empire du monde; partout il dirige son vol: il est accompagné d'une lumière pure qui dissipe les ténebrès du chaos; sa voix rétentit dans toute la nature."

ORPHEE. "Il y a dans l'ame une force qui la portant hors d'elle, vers l'idéal, tend a l'union: c'est l'amour dans le sens le plus etendu."

HEINSTERHUYS.

"Le mariage peut seul faire une vertu de cette passion."

BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE.

THIS law is the life of the universe. We find it existing everywhere, in the highest and in the lowest grade of creation; modifying itself with matter, and deifying itself with mind. As an affinity, it attracts molecules: às an attractive power, it sustains worlds: as a productive power, it renews nature: as a sentiment, it opens out to us infinity. Thus the law, disengaging itself by degrees from its geometrical forms, passes from attraction to love; and already in plants and in animals it seems to be no more than an allurement to pleasure.

In plants, observe it creating chefs-d'œuvre for a marriage of a few hours. Nothing is spared; perfumes, forms, colours, grace, riches; it varies all; it is lavish of all, as if it knew that there existed eyes to see, and souls to admire its productions.

Ascending from plants to animals, the scene becomes more animated, and life expands. Here is a third world, in which pleasure has a voice, in which all the creatures call and seek out each other; in which the bird sings, the insect hums, and lions make the deserts resound with their terrific roarings. Here love begins; a terrestrial and ephemeral love; the love of a season, of a day, of an hour; and this hour having passed, the lions again become solitary, the bird loses its brilliant plumage, the nightingale ceases to sing, and beauty disappears.

So nature wills it. While calling all beings to pleasure, while multiplying love, she has husbanded its flames; for she foresaw the perils of a greater liberality. What would the perpetuity of love have produced in animals? if not an eternal warfare, a frightful multiplication, confusion and chaos.

So far the law has been imposed, though always sweetened by pleasure. Having ascended up to man, it ceases to be an obligation without ceasing to be a power. Its power is even increased by all the charms of the sentiment of the beautiful and of infinity; but, while increasing, it changes its direction, and raises itself, if we may so speak, from earth to heaven. A something which will not die, a sentiment which declares itself eternal is awakened within us. The first emotion of two souls which respond to each other, is to call forth another life; one would say, that nature attaches to love a revelation of immortality.

And yet man remains free, he may refuse the pleasures which are offered to him; he can do what animals cannot, viz. refuse to transmit life. The pleasure is not imposed upon him, and if he obeys the law, it is not because it is a law, it is not because it is a delight, it is because he may make of it a virtue.

On this point the warnings of nature are positive; they leave no pretext to our passions, they condemn all extremes-celibacy, as well as profligacy; and order is thus established in the graceful harmonies of virtue and of pleasure. This is the law.

Among animals, the number of males and females varies according to the species. Sometimes we see a single female to a great number of males, as in the instance of bees; sometimes a single male to many females, as in poultry. Nature has given to the one a court, to the other a harem. Sometimes she multiplies the males more than the females, with the intention of perpetuating the vigour of the species by rivalities and conflicts. Thus tigers, lions, and all the ferocious species, make furious war upon each other at the period of their amours. Sometimes also she multiplies the females a little more than the males, with the intention of uniting flocks, of founding colonies by the allurement of a quiet possession. Thus the cow, the horse, the bull, the goat, the sheep, and all the household species, live in common beneath the roof of man, of whose labours they partake, and of whose prosperity they lay the foundation.

But in arriving at man, the law assumes a more sacred character. In animals, it only occupies itself with the conservation of the species; in man, it appears to think of the happiness of the individual. The moral rule springs from the care which nature always takes to create a man for a woman, a woman for a man; the number of men and women being about equal upon the earth. Thus nature does not give us a seraglio; she gives us a companion; and she gives us this companion not merely for a season, but for the whole of life. Realising in some measure the ingenious fable of Plato, who regards woman as

the half of man, she calls the soul to the search of a congenial soul, and renders us again complete by love.

Unity in marriage, such is the order established by nature, and the civilisation of the earth, depends upon the fulfilment of this law.

It divides the east from the west.

We see on the one hand slavery, imprisonment, and barbarity, forced and voluntary mutilations; on the other, moral and social liberty.

Where youth is without love, where man is without a companion, where the children are without a motherwe must not seek for civilisation.

If love were but a slight convulsion, as Mark Aurelius calls it, man would not raise himself above the brute. He owes all his moral superiority to the moral power of love; and this is so true, that wherever he disallows this power, his superiority ceases.

Then it is that man contemns himself in a part of himself; he vilifies himself when vilifying the woman ; he cuts off from himself the one-half of his soul, and all mutilation demoralises him. And how should he know virtue if he debases his most amiable and most devoted guide? Who will teach him the graces of innocence, the devotedness of the heart, and those pious transports towards heaven which are the life of love? See how love repels ambition, how he despises riches, how ready he is to make all the sacrifices which are made by heroes! That which charms us in love, is not its vivid pleasures, it is its devotedness, its modesty, its fidelity; we see of it only the sublime; we cite only its moral joys and its divine transports.

Our most pleasing dreams do not exhibit to us love either in the palaces of kings, or in the voluptuous festivities of the East, but in a cottage amidst bowers and green meadows. All in nature seems to us made in order to beautify and to centre in love. And when, in travelling

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through a picturesque country, our eyes are attracted by some beautiful spot; a rich orchard with a clear springing fountain; a wood in which we hear the nightingale; we at once picture it to ourselves as a retreat for happy lovers, and the charmed imagination presents to us nothing more delightful than an innocent life, gliding away beneath these shades, in the raptures of love.

These are the desires, these are the ambitions of the heart! love inspires us, with all that wisdom requires; he discloses to us, at fifteen years of age, this enchanted world, in which the beautiful and the infinite appear to us as the sole aim of life. And let it not be said that such a world is imaginary. These ideal perfections, the objects of our reveries, this devotedness which seems so easy to us, all these smiling images of virtue in love, and of happiness in a middle state; all this is true; there is even nothing true but this upon the earth, nature does not deceive us; it is the world which deceives us, when it tears us from these visions of truth, in order to plunge us into the sad realities of its vices and its falsehoods.

The development of the faculties of the soul tends to cause love to reign upon earth, as the development of the intellect tends to produce the reign of ambition. Love is an angel which comes to us with resplendent wings, not as a woman of genius has said, to unite us in egotism, but to introduce us into active life; to render its troubles lighter and its duties easier. It is true, that love has its hours of egotism. At first, the lovers seek and sigh for each other; and, like flowers which a light wind detaches from the maternal stem, they separate themselves from the family, allowing themselves to be carried into solitude. This desire of isolation in tenderness is expressed in the most ancient books. The wife, in the Song of Songs, desires to fly from the tumult of cities;