Love Summary and Analysis

Emerson takes a spiritual view of human love, but acknowledges that the love between a man and woman usually begins in hot-blooded youth with a passionate longing and devotion to the beloved. This highly personal form of love reads to marriage, children, the hard work of survival, and eventually to the formation and nurturing of whole communities. The passion of this type of love produces music, poetry and art and even makes the world anew to serve the needs of the lovers, Emerson observes.

At the same time that love drives people into each other's arms, it also opens the senses and awareness to all things of beauty and to the sublime beauty of nature. By giving himself totally to another person, Emerson says, he becomes "a new man with new perceptions, new and keener purposes and a religious solemnity of...