passion is now thought to have something to do with other lives than the present; in short, it is a kind of organic memory of relations that existed in thousands and tens of thousands of former states of being.  Right or wrong though the theories may be, this mysterious moment of love, the period of this illusion, is properly the subject of high poetry, simply because it is the most beautiful and the most wonderful experience of a human life.  And why?

Because in the brief time of such passion the very highest and finest emotions of which human nature is capable are brought into play.  In that time more than at any other hour in life do men become unselfish, unselfish at least toward one human being.  Not only unselfishness but self-sacrifice is a desire peculiar to the period.  The young man in love is not merely willing to give away everything that he possesses to the person beloved; he wishes to suffer pain, to meet danger, to risk his life for her sake.  Therefore Tennyson, in speaking of that time, beautifully said: 

  Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might,
  Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass’d in music out of sight.

Unselfishness is, of course, a very noble feeling, independently of the cause.  But this is only one of the emotions of a higher class when powerfully aroused.  There is pity, tenderness—­the same kind of tenderness that one feels toward a child—­the love of the helpless, the desire to protect.  And a third sentiment felt at such a time more strongly than at any other, is the sentiment of duty; responsibilities moral and social are then comprehended in a totally new way.  Surely none can dispute these facts nor the beauty of them.

Moral sentiments are the highest of all; but next to them the sentiment of beauty in itself, the artistic feeling, is also a very high form of intellectual and even of secondary moral experience.  Scientifically there is a relation between the beautiful and the good, between the physically perfect and the ethically perfect.  Of course it is not absolute.  There is nothing absolute in this world.  But the relation exists.  Whoever can comprehend the highest form of one kind of beauty must be able to comprehend something of the other.  I know very well that the ideal of the love-season is an illusion; in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of the thousand the beauty of the woman is only imagined.  But does that make any possible difference?  I do not think that it does.  To imagine beauty is really to see it—­not objectively, perhaps, but subjectively beyond all possibility of doubt.  Though you see the beauty only in your mind, in your mind it is; and in your mind its ethical influence must operate.  During the time that a man worships even imaginary bodily beauty, he receives some secret glimpse of a higher kind of beauty—­beauty of heart and mind.  Was there ever in this world a real lover who did not believe the woman of his choice to be not only the most beautiful of mortals, but also the best in a moral sense?  I do not think that there ever was.