Time & Perspective Quote by Margaret Fuller

Love, for Fuller, is less a verdict than a verb: an active collaboration in becoming. The line refuses the romantic fantasy of finding a finished person who completes you. Instead, it imagines two people as works-in-progress, drawn not only to who the other is now, but to a “future good” that’s still latent. That word choice matters. “Good” isn’t chemistry or compatibility; it’s moral and intellectual potential, the kind of excellence you can’t simply admire from afar. You have to “aid” it into existence.

The subtext is quietly radical: love is not possession, not rescue, not worship. It’s mutual cultivation. Fuller smuggles an ethic of equality into an emotion often used to justify hierarchy. “Two persons” signals symmetry, not the gendered script of her era where one partner (often the man) is presumed the agent and the other the project. Even the grammar insists on reciprocity: each sees the other’s future, each helps unfold it. That unfolding metaphor pushes against the era’s fixation on fixed “character” and social roles. People aren’t static; they open, like a book being read and written at the same time.

Context sharpens the intent. As a Transcendentalist critic and early feminist voice (Woman in the Nineteenth Century), Fuller was arguing for women’s self-culture and full personhood. Here, she offers a blueprint for intimacy that aligns with that broader fight: the best love doesn’t shrink you into someone’s ideal. It enlarges your range, makes the future feel actionable, and turns devotion into shared work.