Consider Love. Here is a Force destructive and corrupting whereby many Men have been lost. Yet without Love Man were not Man. Therefore thine Uncle Richard Wagner made of our Doctrine a musical Fable, wherein we see Amfortas, who yielded himself to Seduction, wounded beyond Healing; Klingsor, who withdraw himself from a like Danger, cast out for ever from the Mountain of Salvation; and Parsifal, who yielded not, able to exercise the true Power of Love, and thereby to perform the Miracle of Redemption. Of this also have I myself written in my Poema called Adonis. It is the same with Food and Drink, with Exercise, with Learning itself; the Problem is ever to bring the Appetite into right Relation with the Will. Thus thou mayst fast or feast; there is no Rule, but that of Balance. And this Doctrine is of general Acceptation among the better Sort of Men; therefore on thee will I rather impress more carefully the other Part of my Wisdom, namely, the Necessity of extending constantly thy Nature to new Mates upon every Plane of Being, so that thou mayst become the perfect Microcosm, an Image without Flaw of all that is.
