Conjugial Love (Chadwick) n. 382

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382. 'What else can be the source of beauty but love, which turns into beauty as it reaches the eyes of young men and lights them up? Love and beauty are therefore the same thing. For love from the innermost level tinges the face of a marriageable maiden with a kind of flame, and this shining through gives her life the purple glow of dawn. Everyone must be aware that this flame darts rays into her eyes, and from these centres it spreads around the face, and also sinks down to her bosom and fires her heart, so that its heat and light act upon the bystander in the same way as a fire. The heat is love, the light is the beauty of love. The whole world agrees in the firm belief that everyone's love determines his likeableness and beauty. But there is a difference between the love felt by the male sex and that felt by the female sex. Male love is the love of being wise, female love the love of loving the male's love of being wise. Thus the more a young man loves wisdom, the more he is to the maiden loveable and beautiful; and the more the maiden loves the young man's wisdom, the more loveable and beautiful she is to the young man. So just as the love of one goes to meet and embraces the other's, so too do their beauties. I thus arrive at the conclusion that love shapes beauty to resemble itself.'


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