Nor did he overestimate the bearing which each and every act of our life has upon our ability to either love or to be loved, since it is only when we are capable of returning affection as pure and unsullied as is given us, that we achieve the acme of delight. It is on account of the necessity of the possession of these qualities which we have found to constitute the only possible basis for really lasting love, that we are so much interested in those of great affection. Emerson truly said that "all mankind loves a lover," and equally valid is his observation that "Love is not for levity, but for the total worth of man." It is the affection of any human being which constitutes his life and his friendships, both as living and when coming into his companionship, and when dead, as forming the memories upon which the imagination will fondly dwell, and that bring into his life whatever real satisfaction he may have. As a means of æsthetic development, nothing is of higher value than the affections, and, as a stimulant for action along this line, they are without an equal. We have only to remember the story of Damon and Pythias, to see that the ancients fully realized the power of affection; or to read what Plato puts into the mouth of Phoedrus, when he has him say, "Love will make men dare to die for their beloved, and women as well as men." What we have noted, heretofore, refers to all affections. Now we come to the culmination of all affairs of friendship,--that relationship which is known as marriage. Upon the immensity of the importance of this ceremony have almost all of the religious ideas of man been built, and in many cases, if not in all, to the utter profanation of the thing itself.