And further, just as he requires to possess this taintless conscience himself, so does he require to be assured that the like is possessed by her.  Unless he knows that she loves purity more than him, there is no meaning in his aspiration that he may be found worthy of her.  The gift of her affection that is of such value to him, is not of value because it is affection simply, but because it is affection of a high kind; and its elevation is of more consequence to him than its intensity, or even than its continuance.  He would sooner that at the expense of its intensity it remained pure, than that at the expense of its purity it remained intense.  Othello was certainly not a husband of the highest type, and yet we see something of this even in his case.  His sufferings at his wife’s supposed inconstancy have doubtless in them a large selfish element.  Much of them is caused by the mere passion of jealousy.  But the deepest sting of all does not lie here.  It lies rather in the thought of what his wife has done to herself, than of what she has done to him.  This is what overcomes him.

The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets,
Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth,
And will not hear it.

He could have borne anything but a soul’s tragedy like this: 

              Alas! to make me
      A fixed figure for the time of scorn
    To point his slow unmoving finger at! 
    Yet I could bear that too, well—­very well: 
    But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
    Where I must either live, or bear no life;
    The fountain from the which my current runs
    Or else dries up; to be discarded thence! 
    Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
    To knot and gender in!

Whenever he was with her, Desdemona might still be devoted to him.  She might only give to Cassio what she could not give to her husband.  But to Othello this would be no comfort.  The fountain would be polluted ’from which his current runs’; and though its waters might still flow for him, he would not care to touch them.  If this feeling is manifest in such a love as Othello’s, much more is it manifest in love of a higher type.  It is expressed thus, for instance, by the heroine of Mrs. Craven’s ‘Recit d’une Soeur.’ ‘I can indeed say,’ she says, ’that we never loved each other so much as when we saw how we both loved God:’ and again, ’My husband would not have loved me as he did, if he had not loved God a great deal more.’ This language is of course distinctly religious; but it embodies a meaning that is appreciated by the positive school as well.  In positivist language it might be expressed thus:  ’My husband would not have loved me as he did, if he would not, sooner than love me in any other way, have ceased to love me altogether.’ It is clear that this sentiment is proper, nay essential, to positivist affection, just as well as to Christian.  Any pure