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68 Do not think I am speaking metaphorically or rhetorically, or with any other than literal and earnest meaning of words. Hear me, I pray you, therefore, for a little while, as earnestly as I speak.

52. Every faculty of man's soul, and every instinct of it by which he is meant to live, is exposed to its own special form of corruption: and whether within Man, or in the external world, there is a power or condition of temptation which is perpetually endeavouring to reduce every glory of his soul, and every power of his life, to such corruption as is possible to them. And the more beautiful they are, the more fearful is the death which is attached as a penalty to their degradation.

53. Take, for instance, that which, in its purity, is the source of the highest and purest mortal happiness—Love. Think of it first at its highest—as it may exist in the disciplined spirit of a perfect human creature; as it has so existed again and again, and does always, wherever it truly exists at all, as the purifying passion of the soul. I will not speak of the transcendental and imaginative