Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/80

Rh lies in the soul alone. Now, by the term power I do not mean, as some have misunderstood me in the past to mean, the mere genital powers common alike to man and brutes; but I do mean that irresistible energy latent in all souls, and developed but in an exceedingly limited few. I hold that no power, such as is here intended to he understood, ever comes to man through the intellect. I affirm that the Baconian adage, "Knowledge is power," is not wholly, but only partially true; for I here repeat, Goodness alone is power, and goodness inheres not in brain, but in heart, metaphysically speaking, or on the emotional side or department of man's intricate and involute nature; wherefore, I lay it down as an axiom, that power can only come to, and be developed in, the soul through Love; not passion or lust, look you, but Love; the underlying, primal fire-life of the immaterial soul; the invisible being that constitutes us man or woman; the fire-energy subtending the very basis of our being and, indeed, of all else that exists outside the Eternal Flame itself, the unimaginable Lord God of the Infinite Universe, that most mystical Heat which fuses all things, subtends all existence, and which is the formative floor of the worlds now rolling in silent majesty through space, cushioned upon the Æther, the very breasts of the mother side of God! Now, the true sensing of that higher, deeper, inner love is the beginning of the road which leads the soul into, and invests it with, real power in the loftier degrees; for Love, I maintain, lieth at the foundation. And it is the very synonym of life and strength, and lordly will, and clingingness, and truth, and real development; wherefore, I lay it down as another immutable truth that the true-love conjugation of man and wife is the loftiest and most sacred prayer to, and imitation of, God, possible to any creature in the whole vast realm of matter and mind, spirit and thought. Thus, in proof: how often it happens that a loving couple continually grow more youthful in soul, fruitful in happiness, and joyous in habitude, instead of servile, decrepit, warped and prematurely wrinkled, as in the cases of those to whom the wondrous realities of love are as thrice-sealed books! Why? Because they who thus truly love, in their sacred, spiritual passion, strike out this divine spark; partake of that celestial fire; replenish themselves