Love. — Love,  which  in  Shelley's  view  is  an  almost  equi-
valent term  to  Liberty  and  ^N'ature,  is  the  great  power  through
which  the  world  may  be  regenerated.  This  Love  is  repre-
sented under  three  aspects,  between  which  it  is  difficult  to
draw  a  very  strict  distinction,  viz.,  the  ideal,  the  personal,
the  philanthropic.  The  ideal  Love  is  defined  in  the  essay
On  Love  as  the  "  soul  within  our  own  soul,"  the  "  something
within  us,  which,  from  the  instant  that  we  live,  more  and
more  thirsts  after  its  likeness."  It  is  the  yearning  after  that
divine  spirit  which  pervades  the  universe ;  the  recognition
of  outward  beauty  by  the  corresponding  inward  ideal ;  the
"Uranian  Venus"  towards  which  we  must  needs  struggle,
though  we  often  meet  her  counterfeit  the  "  Pandemian
Venus,"  and  in  our  quest  for  the  ideal  are  disappointed  by
contact  with  the  actual  (vide  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty,
Alastor,  Epipsychidion^  Essay  on  Love^  The  Coliseum,  &c.).
