176 THE HEART OF NATURE 



therefore, to make his country behave and act up to 

 this ideal. And his country cannot so act till the 

 general society of nations conducts itself on the same 

 general lines. His country, therefore, will be 

 driven to make the general society of nations behave 

 in accordance with the principles of high fellowship. 



We have made for ourselves the ideal of a man. 

 It remains to show that the finest pitch of all is only 

 reached in the union of man and woman. The man 

 is not complete without the woman, nor the woman 

 without the man. It is in their union, therefore, 

 that the ideal in its greatest perfection will be seen. 

 The flower which results from the working of the 

 ideal in the Heart of Nature, as the flower of the 

 rose results from the working of the rose-ideal in the 

 heart of the rose-seed, we see in the love of man and 

 woman at the supreme moment of their union. 

 This is the very holiest thing in Nature. It is then 

 that both the man and the woman are to the fullest 

 extent themselves, both to be and to express all that 

 is in them to be. They love then to their extreme 

 capacity to love. They are gentle then to the 

 utmost limit of tenderness. And they are strong 

 then to the farthest stretch of their strength. 



And while they thus reach the very acme of 

 Nature's ideal so far as we men can discern it, they, 

 at the same time and in so doing, touch the very 

 foundations of Nature as well. Mathematicians 

 have discovered that there is no such thing as a per- 

 fectly straight line, and that curvature is a funda- 

 mental property of the physical world. So also is 

 it in the spiritual world. As we reach the topmost 



