Percy Bysshe Shelley to Elizabeth Hitchener - Percy Bysshe Shelley
Never, with my consent, shall that intercourse cease which has been the day-dawn of my existence, the sun which has shed warmth on the cold drear length of the anticipated prospect of life. Prejudice might demand the sacrifice, but she is an idol to whom we bow not. The world might demand it; its opinion might require; but the cloud which flees over yon mountain were as important to our happiness, to our usefulness. This must never be, never whilst this existence continues; and when Time has enrolled us in the list of the departed, surely this friendship will survive to bear our identity to heaven. What is love, or friendship? Is itsomething material—a ball, an apple, a plaything—which must be taken from one to be given to another? Is it capable of no extension, no communication? Lord Kaimes defines love to a particularization of the general passion. But this is the love of sensation, of sentiment—the absurdest of absurd vanities: it is the love of pleasure, not the love of happiness. The one is a love which is self-centered, self-devoted, self-interested: it desires its own interest; it is the parent of jealousy. Its object is the plaything which it desires to monopolize.Selfishness, monopoly, is its very soul, and to communicate to others part of this love were to destroy its essence, to annihilate this chain of straw. But love, the love which we worship, —virtue,heaven, disinterestedness—in a word, Friendship—which has as much to do with the senses as with yonder mountains;that which seeks the good of all—the good of its object first, not because that object is a minister to its pleasures, not merely because it even contributes to its happiness, but because it is really worthy, because it has powers, sensibilities, is capable of abstracting itself, and loving virtue for virtue's own loveliness—desiring the happiness of others not from the obligation of fearing hell or desiring heaven: but for pure, simple, unsophisticated virtue. You will soon hear again. Adieu, my dearest friend. Continue to believe that when I am insensible to your excellence, I shall cease to exist.