flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot
live without love. Would not the child's heart break in despair when
the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight
of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like
the soft reflection of divine light and love? The ardent yearning,
which then awakes in the child, is the purest and deepest love. It is
the love which embraces the whole world; which shines resplendent
wherever the eyes of men beam upon it, which exults wherever it hears
the human voice. It is the old, immeasurable love, a deep well which
no plummet has ever sounded; a fountain of perennial richness. Whoever
knows it also knows that in love there is no More and no Less; but that
he who loves can only love with the whole heart, and with the whole
soul; with all his strength and with all his will.

But, alas, how little remains of this love by the time we have finished
one-half of our life-journey! Soon the child learns that there are
strangers, and ceases to be a child. The spring of love becomes hidden
and soon filled up. Our eyes gleam no more, and heavy-hearted we pass
one another in the bustling streets. We scarcely greet each other, for
we know how sharply it cuts the soul when a greeting remains
unanswered, and how sad it is to be sundered from those whom we have
once greeted, and whose hands we have clasped. The wings of the soul
lose their plumes; the leaves of the flower fast fall off and wither;
and of this fountain of love there remain but a few drops. We still
call these few drops love, but it is no longer the clear, fresh,
all-abounding child-love. It is love with anxiety and trouble, a
consuming flame, a burning passion; love which wastes itself like
rain-drops upon the hot sand; love which is a longing, not a sacrifice;
love which says "Wilt thou be mine," not love which says, "I must be
thine." It is a most selfish, vacillating love. And this is the love
which poets sing and in which young men and maidens believe; a fire
which burns up and down, yet does not warm, and leaves nothing behind
but smoke and ashes. All of us at some period of life have believed
that these rockets of sunbeams were everlasting love, but the brighter
the glitter, the darker the night which follows.

And then when all around grows dark, when we feel utterly alone, when
all men right and left pass us by and know us not, a forgotten feeling
rises in the b