suggestions by the Rev. L.H. Tafel and others. The new renderings of
_existere_ and _fugere_ are suggestions adopted by the Editorial Committee
and accepted by the translator, but for which he does not wish to be
held solely responsible.


1. PART FIRST.

LOVE IS THE LIFE OF MAN.

Man knows that there is such a thing as love, but he does not know what
love is. He knows that there is such a thing as love from common speech,
as when it is said, he loves me, a king loves his subjects, and subjects
love their king, a husband loves his wife, a mother her children, and
conversely; also, this or that one loves his country, his fellow citizens,
his neighbor; and likewise of things abstracted from person, as when it
is said, one loves this or that thing. But although the word love is so
universally used, hardly anybody knows what love is. And because one is
unable, when he reflects upon it, to form to himself any idea of thought
about it, he says either that it is not anything, or that it is merely
something flowing in from sight, hearing, touch, or interaction with
others, and thus affecting him. He is wholly unaware that love is his
very life; not only the general life of his whole body, and the general
life of all his thoughts, but also the life of all their particulars.
This a man of discernment can perceive when it is said: If you remove
the affection which is from love, can you think anything, or do anything?
Do not thought, speech, and action, grow cold in the measure in which the
affection which is from love grows cold? And do they not grow warm in the
measure in which this affection grows warm? But this a man of discernment
perceives simply by observing that such is the case, and not from any