Now, while it is true that practically everybody is aware of this feeling and has a need for affection and sympathy, not all people by any means have big enough hearts, or fine enough natures, to respond to the need very deeply. Cold, superficial, self-centered people may go through life giving a very small modicum of sympathy or affection to anybody and receiving very little in return. Many a man is incapable and unworthy of being a real true friend to anybody. He may have brains and breeding and plenty of animal desires, but in his heart there is no understanding of what it means to be devoted to a welfare not his own. The same is true no doubt of a great many women, those whose characters are too fickle and unstable to permit of any deep and lasting attachment. Fortunately, even in the case of such men and women, if they marry and have children, some of the joy and meaning of this heart-life is still vouchsafed them. They feel it for their sons and daughters. If they have no children and are unmarried, there are mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters to keep alive some measure of sympathy and endearment. A human being who is totally bereft of such attachments, without any feeling that comes from the heart for any one, is such a rare exception that he need not be considered. Such lives, if they do exist, would appear to normal beings as very pitiful. As a usual thing, for most of us, the affections are constantly in operation. Certain people who are near and dear to us are never really out of our lives at all. Consciously or subconsciously, we carry them with us wherever we go, tucked away in our hearts, ready to rise up at the slightest provocation and take a vital part in our innermost deliberations. A little boy or girl of the right sort, with the right kind of loving parents, grows up naturally with this feeling for them. In all sorts of new experiences and questions of conduct, the thought comes spontaneously: "What will mother think about this?" "She'll be terribly surprised when I tell her that." "Father will be pleased and proud when he knows what I've done." "I don't think she'd approve of that." "He'll laugh at me, when he hears this." And so forth and so on, countless times, in countless connections. Mothers and fathers carry around a similar feeling with regard to their children. Things that they see, things that they hear, things that they read, plans and projects of all kinds, are spontaneously colored by the consideration of their effect on the son or daughter--surprise, pleasure, disappointment, good or ill.