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."

32. "Our reason," said Fenelon, "is derived from the clearness of
our ideas." But our wisdom, we might add--in other words, all that
is best in our soul and our character, is to be found above all in
those ideas that are not yet clear. Were we to allow our clear ideas
only to govern our life, we should quickly become undeserving of
either much love or esteem. For, truly, what could be less clear
than the reasons that bid us be generous, upright, and just; that
teach us to cherish in all things the noblest of feelings and
thoughts? But it happily so comes to pass that the more clear ideas
we possess, the more do we learn to respect those that as yet are
still vague. We must strive without ceasing to clarify as many ideas
as we can, that we may thus arouse in our soul more and more that
now are obscure. The clear ideas may at times seem to govern our
external life, but the others perforce must march on at the head of
our intimate life, and the life that we see invariably ends by
obeying the invisible life. On the quality, number, and power of our
clear ideas do the quality, number, and power depend of those that
are vague; and hidden away in the midst of these vague ones,
patiently biding their hour, there may well lurk most of the
definite truths that we seek with such ardour. Let us not keep them
waiting too long; and indeed, a beautiful crystal idea we awaken
within us shall not fail, in its turn, to arouse a beautiful vague
idea; which last, growing old, and having itself become clear (for
is not perfect clearness most often the sign of decrepitude in the