It may be that these little terrestrial human individuals which we call men and women are after all only tiny and temporary centers of conscious activity in an ocean of infinite consciousness; as atoms are but tiny and temporary centers of energy in an ocean of infinite ether.  Could we see the sum total of Supreme and Infinite Consciousness at a glance, perhaps individual men and women would dissolve into a mighty unity, could see and comprehend the whole of the luminiferous ether.  Well, perhaps

Love is the only known means by which the individual heart can make any expansion whatsoever beyond its own bounds.  Yet, alas!  Nothing seems to break down the barriers of sense.  The human heart beats its ineffectual wings in vain against the walls of its fleshly tabernacle.  Will nothing unite the Boy and the Girl?  Will nothing bring the Man and the Woman really together?  Yet the Boy thinks that, were the Girl wholly his, he and she would be happy; and the Man thinks that, were the Woman and he to share every thought and every emotion, he and she would want naught else.  Is the amalgamation impossible?  Is the coalescence of thought and feeling outside the bounds of human possibility?  What, then, impels mankind to crave it, to attempt it, to sacrifice so much for it?—­There is a cosmic puzzle here with which nor philosophy nor psychology nor religion has yet attempted to grapple.

After all, pitiful as it may be, lamentable as it may be, it is true, and it must be said, that this human heart of ours goes through life hungry, very hungry and unappeased.  For what it hungers, what it has missed, whereto it looks for sustenance, it itself does not know.  Thus,

This feminine heart sighs without ceasing for because that other masculine heart upon which it staked all its all, and an all that meant so much, proved callous and indifferent;

That masculine heart ceases not to curse itself for resorting to such hasty and violent methods by which to obtain for itself an ephemeral and passing pleasure;

This feminine heart eats out its life with remorse for because it gave itself so unthinkingly when asked; though of a survey it thought that asking was a thing prompted by impulses as noble as they seemed divine; and

That masculine heart, when the tidal wave of heated passion has subsided, wonders how it was led captive by lures so deceptive and untried.

M regrets, and regrets in vain, that he did not await a purer and more permanent passion; and

N chews for a life-time the cud of persistent remorse for an hour’s poignant pleasure.

Ach! this human heart knows nothing of itself nor anything of its fellow beating hearts.  If it follows its bent, it is cracked; if it holds itself in leash, it aches.  If it calls reason to aid, its soaring hopes are dashed, its romance spoiled, and it itself reduced to the level of a machine that calculates.  If it acts on impulse and, meeting a heart that beats, so it thinks, in unison, unites itself with it, often enough that other soon palpitates to a different rhythm, or itself cannot keep time, and all things go awry.