Emerson on Falling in Love

Emerson in his essay on Love recognizes that man changes when touched by Love. There is both inspiration, passion and possibility to awaken the soul. All men are privy to this rite of passage no matter what the age, character or disposition...Love is a force that comes directly from the gods as a gift to help us in our development of consciousness.


"Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the lily in his veins; and he talks with the brook that wets his foot.

The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made him love music and verse. It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under any other circumstances.

"Alas, how many gentle thoughts, how deep a longing,

had led them to the agonizing pass!" Dante 

The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands the sentiment; it makes the clown gentle, and gives the coward heart. Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In giving him to another, it still more gives him to himself. He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer appertain to his family and society; _he_ is somewhat; he is a person; he is a soul."