cannot prove that it is unwholesome, or if his friends have no prayers
to say, his entire recommendation dwindles to a declaration of his own
personal taste. But in this case his whole tone will be different. There
will be nothing in it of the moral imperative. He will be only laughed
at and not listened to, if he proclaims his own taste in sweetmeats with
all the thunders of Sinai. And the choice between the various kinds of
love is, on positive principles, only a choice between sweetmeats. It is
this, and nothing more, than this, avowedly; and yet the positivists
would keep for it the earnest language of the Christian, for whom it is
a choice, not between sweetmeats and sweetmeats, but between a
confectioner's wafer and the Host.

It may perhaps be urged by some that, according to this view of it,
purity is degraded into a bitter something, which we only accept
reluctantly, through fear of the consequences of its alternatives. And
it is quite true that a fear of the consequences of wrong love is
inseparably connected with our sense of the value of right love. But
this is a necessity of the case; the quality of the right love is in no
way lowered by it, and it will lead us to consider another important
point.

It is impossible to hold that one thing is incalculably better than
others, without holding also that others are incalculably worse than it.
Indeed, the surest test we can give of the praise we bestow on what we
choose, is the measure of condemnation we bestow on what we reject. If
we maintain that virtuous love constitutes its own heaven, we must also
maintain that vicious love constitutes its own hell. If we cannot do the
last we certainly cannot do the first. And the positive school can do
neither. It can neither elevate one kind of love nor depress the others;
and for this reason. The results of love in both cases are, according to