Now it seems to me that the Believer must also be a Lover, that he will love as much as he can and as many people as he can, and in many moods and ways.  As I have said already, many of those who have taught religion and morality in the past have been neglectful or unduly jealous of the intenser personal loves.  They have been, to put it by a figure, urgent upon the road to the ocean.  To that they would lead us, though we come to it shivering, fearful and unprepared, and they grudge it that we should strip and plunge into the wayside stream.  But all streams, all rivers come from this ocean in the beginning, lead to it in the end.

It is the essential fact of love as I conceive it, that it breaks down the boundaries of self.  That love is most perfect which does most completely merge its lovers.  But no love is altogether perfect, and for most men and women love is no more than a partial and temporary lowering of the barriers that keep them apart.  With many, the attraction of love seems always to fall short of what I hold to be its end, it draws people together in the most momentary of self-forgetfulnesses, and for the rest seems rather to enhance their egotisms and their difference.  They are secret from one another even in their embraces.  There is a sort of love that is egotistical lust almost regardless of its partner, a sort of love that is mere fleshless pride and vanity at a white heat.  There is the love-making that springs from sheer boredom, like a man reading a story-book to fill an hour.  These inferior loves seek to accomplish an agreeable act, or they seek the pursuit or glory of a living possession, they aim at gratification or excitement or conquest.  True love seeks to be mutual and easy-minded, free of doubts, but these egotistical mockeries of love have always resentment in them and hatred in them and a watchful distrust.  Jealousy is the measure of self-love in love.

True love is a synthetic thing, an outcome of life, it is not a universal thing.  It is the individualized correlative of Salvation; like that it is a synthetic consequence of conflicts and confusions.  Many people do not desire or need Salvation, they cannot understand it, much less achieve it; for them chaotic life suffices.  So too, many never, save for some rare moment of illumination, desire or feel love.  Its happy abandonment, its careless self-giving, these things are mere foolishness to them.  But much has been said and sung of faith and love alike, and in their confused greed these things also they desire and parody.  So they act worship and make a fine fuss of their devotions.  And also they must have a few half-furtive, half-flaunting fallen love-triumphs prowling the secret backstreets of their lives, they know not why.

(In setting this down be it remembered I am doing my best to tell what is in me because I am trying to put my whole view of life before the reader without any vital omissions.  These are difficult matters to explain because they have no clear outlines; one lets in a hard light suddenly upon things that have lurked in warm intimate shadows, dim inner things engendering motives.  I am not only telling quasi-secret things but exploring them for myself.  They are none the less real and important because they are elusive.)