Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/149

Rh its object divine perfection, and delighting in it only in degree as it symbolizes the essential good. But why is not this love steadily directed to the Central Spirit, since in no form, however suggestive in beauty, can God be fully revealed? Love’s delusion is owing to one of man’s most godlike qualities, — the earnestness with which he would concentrate his whole being, and thus experience the Now of the I Am. Yet the noblest are not long deluded; they love really the Infinite Beauty, though they may still keep before them a human form, as the Isis, who promises hereafter a seat at the golden tables. How high is Michel Angelo’s love, for instance, compared with Petrarch’s! Petrarch longs, languishes; and it is ouly after the death of Laura that his muse puts on celestial plumage. But Michel always soars; his love is a stairway to the heavens.’

‘Might not we women do something in regard to this Texas Annexation project? I have never felt that I had any call to take part in public affairs before; but this is a great moral question, and we have an obvious right to express our convictions. I should like to convene meetings of the women everywhere, and take our stand.’

‘Had Christendom but been true to its standard, while accommodating its modes of operation to the calls of successive times, woman would now have not only equal power with man, — for of that omnipotent nature will never permit her to be defrauded, — but a chartered power, too fully recognized to be abused. Indeed, all that is wanting is, that man should prove his own freedom by making her free. Let him abandon con-