30. We cannot cultivate reason too fully, but by wisdom only should
reason be guided. The man is not wise whose reason has not yet been
taught to obey the first signal of love. What would Christ, all the
heroes, have done had their reason not learned to submit? Is each deed
of the hero not always outside the boundary of reason? and yet, who
would venture to say that the hero is not wiser by far than the
sluggard who quits not his chair because reason forbids him to rise?
Let us say it once more--the vase wherein we should tend the true
wisdom is love, and not reason. Reason is found, it is true, at the
root-springs of wisdom, yet is wisdom not reason's flower. For we speak
not of logical wisdom here, but of wisdom quite other, the favourite
sister of love.
Reason and love battle fiercely at first in the soul that begins to
expand; but wisdom is born of the peace that at last comes to pass
between reason and love; and the peace becomes the profounder as reason
yields up still more of her rights to love.
31. Wisdom is the lamp of love, and love is the oil of the lamp. Love,
sinking deeper, grows wiser; and wisdom that springs up aloft comes
ever the nearer to love. If you love, you must needs become wise; be
wise, and you surely shall love. Nor can any one love with the
veritable love but his love must make him the better; and to grow
better is but to grow wiser. There is not a man in the world but
something improves in his soul from the moment he loves--and that
though his love be but vulgar; and those in whom love never dies must
needs continue to love as their soul grows nobler and nobler. Love is
the food of wisdom; wisdom the food of love; a circle of light within
which those who love, clasp the hands of those who are wise. Wisdom and
love are one; and in Swedenborg's Paradise the wife is "the love of the
wisdom of the wise."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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