Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/91

86 who, living now, yet have passed their ordeals long before this civilization had taken root in the mouldy soil of scores that had preceded it.—Men who make and govern circumstances instead of allowing circumstances to govern them.

XLVII. True Passion is but one, and a minor mode, of Love's expression; its offices are triplicate; and when people understand that one grand secret, farewell to social, domestic, and all other ills; and it is this grand secret I have, for long years, been teaching, somewhat, not fully, in all my books, on both shores of the oceans that girdle the world. I know that brains and intellects differ, but hearts and affection are ever the same; that through these last man can attain unto Godness, and woman reign queen and equal, where she now serves as drudge, toy, and legal and illegal—something worse; that woman, as such, has most of love crystallized within her, and for that reason is entitled to stand the peer of the best man breathing God's free air; not by reason of her beauty, accomplishments, wealth, or any other accident, but because she hath the womb,—the perfected laboratory wherein she fashioneth, and alone completes, what it took God, Nature, and Man, singly and combined, to only begin; and that, too, so badly, that the wonder is, that swarming hordes of murderers do not throng the world's highways where civilized man now walks. But so infinitely great an artiste is she, that from the worst of seed she has raised many a splendid human tree; redeemed the race from savagery; fostered and cultured art, science, religion, and all that renders earth habitable, and that, too, under all sorts of repressions and bad conditions; assuredly entitling her now to a chance of trying what she can do, under favorable circumstances, who did so well under the bad; and I hold this to be the strongest argument for woman ever made since the world began; and I advance it only as one of the external reasons I entertain, holding in reserve others as much stronger and more cogent than these, as a chain-cable is superior to a child's slender whip-cord.

XLVIII. I further hold that there are Æthereal (spacial) centres of Love, Power, Force, Energy, Goodness, and for, and of, every kind, grade, species, and order of knowledge known to man, and whereof