Any pure and exalted love would at once change its character, if, without any further change, it merely believed it were free to change it.

Its strongest element is the consciousness, not that it is of such a character only, but that this character is the right one.

The ideal bride and bridegroom, the ideal man and wife, would not value purity as they are supposed to do, did they not believe that it was not only different from impurity, but essentially and incalculably better than it.

For the positivist, just as much as the Christian, this sense of rightness in love is interfused with the affection proper, and does as it were give wings to it.

It far more than makes good for the lovers any loss of intensity that may be created by the chastening down of passion: and figuratively at least, it may be said to make them conscious that '_underneath them are the everlasting arms_.' Here then in love, as the positive school at present offer it to us, are all these three characteristics to which that school, as we have seen, must renounce all right.