possible, because even here, as I shall prove hereafter, the process is
not complete, and something of religion is still left fermenting. But it
is quite complete enough for our present purpose. It will remind us in
the sharpest and clearest way that love is no force which is naturally
constant in its development, or which if left to itself can be in any
way a moral director to us. It will show us that many of its
developments are what the moralist calls abominable, and that the very
worst of these may perhaps be the most attractive, and be deliberately
presented to us as such by men of the most elaborate culture. We shall
thus see that love as a test of conduct, as an aim of life, or as an
object of any heroic devotion, is not love in general, but love of a
special kind, and that to fulfil this function it must not only be
selected from the rest, but also removed from them, and set above them
at a quite incalculable distance. And the kind thus chosen, let me
repeat again (for this, though less obvious, is more important still),
is not chosen because it is naturally intense, but it becomes intense
because it is the chosen one.

Here then lies the weak point in the position of the positive moralists,
when they hold up such love to us as so supreme a treasure in life. They
observe, and quite correctly, that it is looked upon as a treasure; but
the source of its preciousness is something that their system expressly
takes from it. That choice amongst the loves, so solemn and so imperious
and yet so tender, which descends like a tongue of flame upon the love
it delights to honour; which fixes on a despised and a weak affection,
taking it like Elisha from his furrows, or like David from his
pastures, setting it above all its fellows, and making it at once a
queen and prophetess--this is a choice that positivism has no power to
make; or which, if it makes, it makes only a caprice, or a listless
preference. It does not, indeed, confound pure love with impure, but it