Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 2 (of 2)Alger, Horatio, Jr.
General
Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 2 (of 2)
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Forrest, Edwin, 1806-1872
The principal reason why the married so frequently experience satiety
and weariness, and the consequent sting of a foreign hunger provocative
of the wandering which gives occasion for jealousy, is that in their
long and close familiarity the partners come to feel that they have seen
all through and all around each other, have exhausted each other of all
fresh charm, piquancy, and interest. The genuine remedy for this, the
only really adequate and enduring remedy, is the recognition in each
other of the infinite mystery of all conscious being, a free personality
on endless probation and destined for immortal adventures. Then each
will be to the other—what every human being intrinsically is—a
concentrated epitome of the Kosmos and an explicit revelation of God.
There is no revelation of the free conscious God except in the free
conscious creature, and in every such being there is one. Let a pair be
worthy to see and feel this truth, and there can be no exhaustion of
their mutual interest, because before their reverential observation
there can be no end to the surprises of the infinite in the finite. Then
the sweetness, the wonder, the varying lure of love will never wither
and die into indifference, nor roil and perturb into jealousy and
madness.
No doubt to many these views will seem a transcendental romance, a
delusive dream. Not every one has the nature finely touched to fine
issues capable of living in the ether of these ideal heights. But there
_are_ on the earth holy and entranced souls who live there. It is
obvious enough how absurdly inapplicable all this class of
considerations must be to the basest kinds of persons, those who, like
brutes, wallow in styes of sensuality, or, like devils, surrender
themselves to the tyranny of the lowest passions. Such must needs be
relegated to an inferior standard. Those whose consciences are coarser
and lower than the code of society may most properly be held in
subjection by its laws. But those whose consciences are purer and higher
than the current social code, the nobler natures who sincerely aspire to
the fulfilment of their destiny as children of God, should be a law unto
themselves. They will not be tyrants over or spies upon one another.
Full of self-respect and mutual respect, owning the indefeasible
sovereignty of each personality in the offices of its individual being,
they will pass and repass shrouded in transparent royalty, exacting no
subjection, making no inquiries.
And now this long and central chapter in the life of Forrest, with the
essential lessons it has for others, may be ended by a brief statement
of the moral scale of degrees in the conduct of different men under the
provoking conditions of jealousy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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