Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/153

, either direct or under ground or from above the stars. Our love is, besides, some such independent fluid element in respect to our vessels, which still obeys only its own, and not our laws, by any means, without regard to the narrow limits to which we would confine it.

Nor is the least object too small for the greatest love to be bestowed upon.

[From a later Manuscript.]

The end of a celestial marriage, however, as I dream, is not the propagation of the species, but it is the end for which the species is continued,—the maturation of the species. The species is not continued for the sake of continuance. Even by a terrestrial marriage man serves himself mainly, though the ends of nature are being served through him. Nature provides many seeds and generations because of many failures. The only excuse for reproduction is improvement. Nature abhors repetition. The ultimate fruit of a tree is not a seed, but much more a flower, or rather a truly flourishing tree. If the earth began with spring it will end with summer. [105]