The School of Love, February 8

The School of Love

CRAVINGS

THERE is one characteristic common to all great souls, whether they be good or evil, in whatever sphere they may be found. It is seen in a Byron, or a Shelley, or a Goethe, in an Alexander, a Caesar, a Napoleon, in a Luther, a Calvin, a Wesley, in a Paul, a Xavier, a Teresa.

In some it attains to some issue, though never to a complete satisfac­tion; in others it seems only to add to the tragedy of life, rendering it broken-winged and desperate.

This common characteristic is a certain craving to be something more than merely ordinary, to do something more than it is given to everyone to do, to attain to some end above the common; this alone seems to them to justify life.

As Browning has put it­:

A man's reach should be beyond his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for?"

One man will endeavour to satisfy this craving in words. He will dive through life itself and fathom its depths; he will disclose its pearls or its weeds as the case may be; such a man we call either a poet or a philoso­pher, or both. Another will express it in action....
[Continued tomorrow]
___________
From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918