What audacity of word and precision of thought! With what accuracy the paradoxes of love are stated! “To themselves, yet either--neither.” In the first stanza the sacred word “mutual” is introduced. Where else in our language is the conjunct self so completely set forth? Yet we cannot pause even here. To make love a principle capable of universal application, it will need to be reconstituted and, while retaining its mutuality, to be stripped of sundry restrictions. For love is ever selective. It chooses one and leaves another. It is exercised only toward definite persons, a little group, preferably two. The smaller the number the warmer the love. But what we are trying to discover is how altruism may penetrate the whole of life, organizing society and the state. That was our ambitious ideal, and love is not comprehensive enough for it. When we give ourselves up to the single person or small group fitted to receive our love, will there not be the same danger as appeared in the discussion of partnership, that the rest of the world will be shut out? A pair of lovers is notoriously unpleasing to everybody except themselves. In that little world of theirs they are so engrossed with the joint service of a common life that what happens in the needy world beyond is hardly noticed. Love of this sort is pretty far removed from universal altruism. Nor is this danger confined to the passion of man for woman. Broader types of love show the same exclusive absorption. Each member of a household may be devoted to the rest and find his own gain through devotion to theirs. Here love attains a peculiarly beautiful mutuality. But it is still circumscribed. The family becomes sufficient for itself. Other families do not count. Love has been selective and, fixing its ardor on certain persons, shuts out the rest. Even the love of God and his children may narrow itself to interest in those only who approach him in the same way as ourselves. Our religious sympathy may not extend beyond our sect. Similar perils beset national love or patriotism.