What does it want, this human heart, what does it so earnestly desire, so strenuously seek?  All about it and about are beauty, friendship, mirth, and gladness; the sea and the earth and the sky; color and music and song; and to each, if he wills it, wife, or husband, and children and home.—­Wanting is—­what?—­Ah!

One lesson this human heart has to learn, so easy to put into words, so difficult to carry out by deed; is this: 

To get, the human heart must give.

The heart eats out itself; causes its own emptiness; creates its own void.

The selfish and egoistical life breeds always the vapid and vacuous heart.

Would you appease your own hunger?  Feed the hungry hearts around you.

Do you crave fullness of joy?  Give joy to the joyless.

Would you fill your own cavity, satisfy your craving, attain your desire, find what you seek?  Give—­give—­give.  The more the better, for

The greater the donation, the greater the repletion.

Nature gives, gives lavishly, wantonly, unquestioningly.

Every atom of soil, every drop of sap, goes to produce flowers and fruit and seed:  root and branch and leaf are but carefully constructed means by which to transmute sunshine and soil and flower and fruit and seed.  No tree lives for itself.

Shall, then, this human heart live for itself; gather and store up for its own delectation, for its own good?

There is no such thing as one’s own good: 

Goodness is mutual, is communal; is only guided by giving and receiving. 
Wherefore

O frail, weak, human heart, seek thou out carefully constructed means by which to transmute sunshine and soil and showers into flowers and fruit.

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