That is
because you do not reason soundly and it may lead you into great
misfortune.
"The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the
musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite
nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest
elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most
harmonious voices of nature. There was, it is said, at Athens a great
number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles designed them all, one after
another; then from all these diverse types of beauty, each one of which
had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus.
The first man who created a musical instrument and who gave to that art
its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of
reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets who understand life, after
having known much of love, more or less transitory, after having felt
that sublime exaltation which passion can for the moment inspire,
deducting from human nature all elements which degrade it, created the
mysterious names which through the ages are passed from lip to lip:
Daphne and Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe.
"To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is
the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or
to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.
Pages:
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52