same passion that urges us to
the pursuit of such Goods as we really can attain. And if we want to
understand the nature of that passion, we must understand the nature
of its Good, whether it be attainable or no. Only it is for the sake
of life here that we need that comprehension, not for the sake of life
somewhere else."

"But do you reduce our passion for Good to this passion for Love?"

"I don't 'reduce' it; I interpret it so."

"And so we come back to the girl and the boy and the village green!"

"No! we come back to the whole of life, of which that is only an
episode. Let me try to explain how the thing presents itself to me."

"By all means! That is what I want."

"Very well; I will do my best. Let us look then at life just as it is.
Here we find ourselves involved with one another in the most complex
relations--economic, political, social, domestic, and the rest; and
about and in these relations centres the interest of our life,
whether it be pleasurable or painful, empty or full, or whatever its
character. Among these relations some few perhaps--or, it may be,
even none--realize for a longer or shorter time, with more or less
completeness, that ultimate identity in diversity, that 'me in thee'
which we call love; the rest comprise various degrees of attraction
and repulsion, hatred, contempt, indifference, toleration, respect,
sympathy, and so on; and all together, always changing, dissolving,
and combining anew, weave about us, as they cross and intertwine, the
shifting, restless web we call life. Now these relations are an effect
and result of the pursuit of Good; but they are never the final goal
of that pursuit. The goal, I think, would be a perfect union of all
with all; and is not attained by anything that falls short of this,
whether the defect be in depth or In extent. And that is how it is
that love itself, even in its richer phases, and still more in those
which are merely light and sensual, though, as I think, through it
alone can we form our truest conception of Good, yet, as we have it,
never is the Good, even if it appear to be so for the moment; for
those who seek Good, I believe, will never feel that they have found
it merely in union with one other person. For what love gains in
intension it is apt to lose in extension; so that in practice it may
even come to frustrate the very end it seeks, limiting instead of
expanding, narrowing just in proportion as it deepens, and, by causing
the d