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.
I don’t mean to say that principle is not a finer thing than passion; but passions existed before principles: they came into the world with us; principles are superinduced.
There are bad principles as well as bad passions; and more bad principles than bad passions. Good principles derive life, and strength, and warmth from high and good passions; but principles do not give life, they only bind up life into a consistent whole. One great fault in education is, the pains taken to inculcate principles rather than to train feelings. It is as if we took it for granted that passions could _only_ be bad, and are to be ignored or repressed altogether,—the old mischievous monkish doctrine.
It is easy to be humble where humility is a condescension—easy to concede where we know ourselves wronged—easy to forgive where vengeance is in our power.