Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/30

 neighbor; or in the sphere of divine love, loving as God loves, universally—not objectively, but subjectively, all the wide universe. There can be but just these three spheres. Now if each of you will investigate, you will readily recognize two of the affections at least to which I have called your attention, self-love, and social love, but more particularly self-love, desire for self-gratification, desiring that you may be first mad happy, and then leaving the world to be happy afterward. The love that goes out of itself, and loves some being out of yourself, is exemplified in the love of a true husband for his wife, of a parent for his child, of a brother for a sister. All these loves give indication of the second sphere of love, known as charity, good-will to the neighbor. This love is the means by which self-love is first overcome or destroyed. The individual is brought from self-love, through charity, to divine love, just as, in his knowledge, he is brought from the sphere of fact, through relation, to the absolute of being; and hence, in the spheres of unfolding, the three degrees are necessarily absolute. Look at society. What is it but the aggregate of individuals composing it? Society, separate from individuals, is nothing. The love of society is only the love of the aggregate of individuals. Now, inasmuch as the love will belong either to the sphere of self-love, charity, or divine love, you will find that society will always be expressive of one of these three loves, never the third, though. We say of society, when we look to the principles that govern it in its administration, it is but the embodiment of the character and will of those constituting the government*