Page:Friendship, love & marriage (1910) Thoreau.djvu/45



HAT the essential difference between man and woman is that they should be thus attracted to one another, no one has satisfactorily answered. Perhaps we must acknowledge the justness of the distinction which assigns to man the sphere of wisdom, and to woman that of love, though neither belongs exclusively to either. Man is continually saying to woman, "Why will you not be more wise?" Woman is continually saying to man, "Why will you not be more loving?" It is not in their wills to be wise or to be loving; but unless each is both wise and loving there can be neither wisdom nor love.

All transcendent goodness is one, though appreciated in different ways, or by different senses. In beauty we see it, in music we hear it in fragrance we scent it, in the palatable the pure palate tastes it, and in rare health the whole boy feels it. The variety is in the surface or manifestation; but the radical identity we fail to express. The lover sees in the glance of his beloved the same beauty that in the sunset paints the Western skies It is the same daimon, here lurking under a human eyelid, and there under the closing eyelids of the day. Here, in small compass, is the ancient and natural beauty of evening and morning. What loving astronomer has ever fathomed the ethereal depths of the eye? 39