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We must, however, take notice that there are natural
unions, as those of similitude, consanguinity, and of
cause and effect; and others which not being natural
may be termed voluntary; for though they be according
to Nature yet they are only made at our will: like
that union which takes its origin from benefits -
which undoubtedly unite him that receives them to the
giver,- that of conversation, society and the like.
Now natural union produces love, and the love which
it produces inclines us to another and voluntary
union, perfecting the natural. Thus the father and
son, the mother and daughter, or two brothers, being
joined in a natural union by the participation of the
same blood, are excited by this union to love, and by
love are borne towards a union of will and spirit
which may be called voluntary, because although its
foundation is natural, yet is its action deliberate.
In these loves produced by natural union we need
look for no other affinity than the union itself, by
which Nature preventing the will, obliges it to
approve, to love, and to perfect the union it has
already made. But as to voluntary unions, which
follow love, love is indeed their effective cause,
but they are its final cause, as being the only end
and aim of love. So that as love tends to union, even
so union very often extends and augments love: for
love makes us seek the society of the beloved and
this often nourishes and increases love; love causes
a desire of nuptial union, and this union
reciprocally preserves and increases love so that in
every sense it is true that love tends to union.
But to what kind of union does it tend? Did you not
note, Theotimus, that the sacred spouse expressed her
desire of being united to her spouse by the kiss, and
that the kiss represents the spiritual union which is
caused by the reciprocal communication of souls? It
is indeed the man who loves, but he loves by his
will, and therefore the end of his love is of the
nature of his will: but his will is spiritual, and
consequently the union which love aims at is
spiritual also, and so much the more because the
heart, which is the seat and source of love, would
not only not be perfected by union with corporal
things, but would be degraded.
It will not hence be inferred that there are not
certain passions in man which, as mistleto comes on
trees by manner of excrescence and over-growth,
sprout up indeed amongst and about love. Nevertheless
they are neither love, nor any part of love, but
excrescences and superfluities thereof; which are so
far from being suited to maintain or perfect love,
that on the contrary they greatly harm it, weaken it,
and at last, if they be not cut away, utterly ruin
it: and here is the reason.
In proportion to the number of operations to which
the soul applies herself (whether of the same or of a
different kind) she does them less perfectly and
vigorously: because being finite, her active virtue
is also finite, so that furnishing her activity to
divers operations it is necessary that each one of
them have less thereof. Thus a man attentive to
several things is less attentive to each of them: we
cannot quietly consider a person's features with our
sight, and at the same time give an exact hearing to
the harmony of a grand piece of music, nor at the
same instant be attentive to figure and to colour: if
we are talking earnestly, we cannot attend to
anything else.
I am not ignorant of what is said concerning
Caesar nor incredulous about what so many great
persons testify of Origen, - that they could apply
their attention at the same time to several objects;
yet every one confesses that according to the measure
they applied it to more objects it became less for
each one of them. There is then a difference between
seeing, hearing and understanding more, and seeing,
hearing, and understanding better, for he that sees
better, sees less, and he that sees more, sees not so
well: it is rare for those who know much to know well
what they know, because the virtue and force of the
understanding being scattered upon the knowledge of
divers things is less strong and vigorous than when
it is restrained to the consideration of one only
object.
Hence it is that when the soul employs her forces
in divers operations of love, the action so divided
is less vigorous and perfect. We have three sorts of
actions of love, the spiritual, the reasonable, and
the sensitive; when love exerts its forces through
all these three operations, doubtless it is more
extended but less intense, but when through one
operation only, it is more intense though less
extended.
Do we not see that fire, the symbol of love,
forced to make its way out by the mouth of the cannon
alone, makes a prodigious flash, which would have
been much less if it had found vent by two or three
passages? Since then love is an act of our will, he
that desires to have it, not only noble and generous,
but also very vigorous and active, must contain the
virtue and force of it within the limits of spiritual
operations, for he that would apply it to the
operations of the sensible or sensitive part of our
soul, would so far forth weaken the intellectual
operations, in which essential love consists.
The ancient philosophers have recognized that there
are two sorts of ecstasies of which the one raises us
above ourselves, the other degrades us below
ourselves: as though they would say that man was of a
nature between angels and beasts: in his intellectual
part sharing the angelical nature, and in his
sensitive the nature of beasts; and yet that he could
by the acts of his life and by a continual attention
to himself, deliver and emancipate himself from this
mean condition, and habituating himself much to
intellectual actions might bring himself nearer to
the nature of angels than of beasts.
If however he did much apply himself to sensible
actions, he descended from his middle state and
approached that of beasts: and because an ecstasy is
no other thing than a going out of oneself, whether
one go upwards or downwards he is truly in an
ecstasy.
Those then who, touched with intellectual and
divine pleasures, let their hearts be carried away by
those feelings, are truly out of themselves, that is,
above the condition of their nature, but by a blessed
and desirable out-going, by which, entering into a
more noble and eminent estate, they are as much
angels by the operation of their soul as men by the
substance of their nature, and are either to be
called human angels or angelic men.
On the contrary, those who, allured by sensual
pleasures give themselves over to the enjoying of
them, descend from their middle condition to the
lowest of brute beasts, and deserve as much to be
called brutal by their operations as men by nature:
miserable in thus going out of themselves only to
enter into a condition infinitely unworthy of their
natural state.
Now according as the ecstasy is greater, either
above us or below us, by so much more it hinders the
soul from returning to itself, and from doing
operations contrary to the ecstasy in which it is. So
those angelic men who are ravished in God and
heavenly things, lose altogether, as long as their
ecstasy lasts, the use and attention of the senses,
movement, and all exterior actions, because their
soul, in order to apply its power and activity more
entirely and attentively to that divine object,
retires and withdraws them from all its other
faculties, to turn them in that direction. And in
like manner brutish men give up all the use of their
reason and understanding to bury themselves in
sensual pleasure. The first mystically imitate Elias
taken up in the fiery chariot amid the angels: the
others Nabuchodonosor brutalized and debased to the
rank of savage beasts.
Now I say that when the soul practises love by
actions which are sensual, and which carry her below
herself, it is impossible that thereby the exercise
of her superior love, should not be so much the more
weakened. So that true and essential love is so far
from being aided and preserved by the union to which
sensual love tends, that it is impaired, dissipated
and ruined by it. Job's oxen ploughed the ground,
while the useless asses fed by them, eating the
pasture due to the labouring oxen.
While the intellectual part of our soul is
employed in honest and virtuous love of some worthy
object, it comes to pass oftentimes that the senses
and faculties of the inferior part tend to the union
which they are adapted to, and which is their
pasture, though union only belongs to the heart and
to the spirit, which also is alone able to produce
true and substantial love.
Eliseus having cured Naaman the Syrian was
satisfied with having done him a service, and refused
his gold, his silver and the goods he offered him,
but his faithless servant Giezi, running after him
demanded and took, against his master's pleasure,
that which he had refused. Intellectual and cordial
love, which certainly either is or should be master
in our heart, refuses all sorts of corporal and
sensible unions, and is contented with goodwill only,
but the powers of the sensitive part, which are or
should be the handmaids of the spirit, demand, seek
after and take that which reason refused, and without
leave make after their abject and servile love,
dishonouring, like Giezi, the purity of the intention
of their master, the spirit. And in proportion as the
soul turns herself to such gross and sensible unions,
so far does she divert herself from the delicate,
intellectual and cordial union.
You see then plainly, Theotimus, that these unions
which tend to animal complacency and passions are so
far from producing or preserving love that they
greatly hurt it and render it extremely weak.
Basil, rosemary, marigold, hyssop, cloves,
chamomile, nutmeg, lemon, and musk, put together and
incorporated, yield a truly delightful odour by the
mixture of their good perfume; yet not nearly so much
as does the water which is distilled from them, in
which the sweets of all these ingredients separated
from their bodies are mingled in a much more
excellent manner, uniting in a most perfect scent,
which penetrates the sense of smelling far more
strongly than it would do if with it and its water
the bodies of the ingredients were found mingled and
united.
So love may be found in the unions proper to the
sensual powers mixed with the unions of intellectual
powers, but never so excellently as when the spirits
and souls alone, separated from all corporeal
affections but united together, make love pure and
spiritual. For the scent of affections thus mingled
is not only sweeter and better, but more lively, more
active and more essential.
True it is that many having gross, earthly and
vile hearts rate the value of love like that of gold
pieces, the most massive of which are the best, and
most current; for so their idea is that brutish love
is more strong, because it is more violent and
turbulent, more solid, because more gross and
terrene, greater, because more sensible and fierce: -
but on the contrary, love is like fire, which is of
clearer and fairer flame as its matter is more
delicate, which cannot be more quickly extinguished
than by beating it down and covering it with earth;
for, in like manner, by how much more exalted and
spiritual the subject of love is, by so much its
actions are more lively, subsistent and permanent:
nor is there a more easy way to ruin love than to
debase it to vile and earthly unions.
"There is this difference," says S. Gregory,
"between spiritual and corporal pleasures, that
corporal ones beget a desire before we obtain them,
and a disgust when we have obtained them; but
spiritual ones, on the contrary, are not cared for
when we have them not, but are desired when we have
them."
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