Their approbation causes you to act, and makes you happy.
As for sexual love,' said Herbert, 'of which you were speaking, its
quality and duration depend upon the degree of sympathy that subsists
between the two persons interested. Plato believed, and I believe with
him, in the existence of a spiritual antitype of the soul, so that
when we are born, there is something within us which, from the instant
we live and move, thirsts after its likeness. This propensity develops
itself with the development of our nature. The gratification of the
senses soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated
sentiment, which we call love. Love, on the contrary, is an universal
thirst for a communion, not merely of the senses, but of our whole
nature, intellectual, imaginative, and sensitive. He who finds his
antitype, enjoys a love perfect and enduring; time cannot change it,
distance cannot remove it; the sympathy is complete. He who loves an
object that approaches his antitype, is proportionately happy, the
sympathy is feeble or strong, as it may be. If men were properly
educated, and their faculties fully developed,' continued Herbert,
'the discovery of the antitype would be easy; and, when the day
arrives that it is a matter of course, the perfection of civilisation
will be attained.
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