PDF version - Geae

force in their struggle and aspirations toward a better world. Hope sows with austere flowers the desert paths
they thread.
* * *
All the powers of the soul are confined in three words – to will – to know – and to love. To will, that is
to converge all the activity, all the energy toward the aim to be attained, and to develop will power and direct
it. To know, because without profound study – without the acquaintance of things and laws, the thought and
the will can lose themselves in the midst of forces they seek to conquer, and the elements they aspire to
command.
But above all it is important to love, for without love, will and science will be incomplete and often
sterile. Love illuminates them – fertilizes them, and increases their resources a hundredfold. It is not here a
question of love which contemplates without action, but of that which employs itself in spreading truth and
goodness in the world. Life on earth is a conflict between good and evil forces. The duty of every virile soul is
to take part in the combat, and with all its powers alert, to aid those who struggle in obscurity. The noblest use
one can make of his faculties is to work toward the enlarging and developing of the sense of beauty and being
in this human society, which has its ugly features, but which is rich with magnificent promises. These
promises will be transformed into living realities the day when humanity learns to communicate, by thought
and heart, with the center of love which is the splendor of God. Love, then, with all the power of your heart!
Love to the point of sacrifice, as Jeanne d’Arc loved France! As Christ loved humanity! And all those about
you will feel your influence, and be born to new life.
O men, look about you, and seek to heal wound – to cure evils – to console affliction. Work to build
the high city of peace and harmony which will be the city of Love – the city of God. Enlighten, uplift, and
purify, and what matters it if some one laughs at you – if ingratitude and meanness rise in your path! Those
who love do not fall back before such things. Even if they gather but thistles and thorns, they pursue their
work, because duty is there. They know growth lies in abnegation, and sacrifice has its joys. Accomplished
with love it transforms tears into smiles. To him who truly loves, the most banal things possess an interest –
everything is illuminated, and a thousand new sensations awake in him.
Knowledge requires long and painful efforts to reach the altitudes of thought. Love and sacrifice gain
them at a bound, with one stroke of the wings! Love refines the intelligence and enlarges the heart, and it is by
the amount of love accumulated in us that we can measure the distance we have traveled on the road to God
* * *
To all the interrogations of man, to his hesitations, fears, and blasphemies, a voice powerful and
mysterious responds: “Learn to love! Love is the aim and end and summit of all!” From this summit unfolds
without cessation a network of love, woven of gold and light. To love is the secret of happiness; with one word
love solves all problems and dissipates all obscurities. Love will save the world. Its natural warmth will melt
the ice of doubt, of selfishness, of hate. It will reach the hardest heart – the hearts of the most refractory. Love
is always an effort toward beauty. The sexual love of man and woman loses all vulgar characteristics when it is
aureoled with the poetic ideal, and mingles with the material, aesthetic sentiment a higher emotion. This
depends largely on the woman. She, who truly loves, feels and sees things unknown to man; she possesses in
her heart an inexhaustible reservoir of love, a sort of intuition of love eternal. Woman is ever, on one side,
sister of mystery, and the part of her being which touches the infinite seems broader than ours. When man
responds with her to the call of the Invisible – when their love is exempt from mere bestial desires, then they
become one in spirit and one in body; in the embraces of these two beings a light like a flame passes and
penetrates – a reflection of the highest felicities.
Yet the joys of earthly love are fugitive and mingled with bitterness. They are never without
disappointments and shocks. God only is love in its fullness. He is the foundation of thought and light, from
which emanates, and to which returns eternally, the warm effluvia of the stars, the passionate tenderness of all
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