The life-tree of a human being is formed, no more than are the trees of the forest, according to a strict measure for the length of the branches or a pattern for the shape of the leaves. Like nature’s trees, its beauty depends upon the freedom of the boughs to take unexpected curves, upon the disposition of the leaves to exhibit an infinite diversity of shape. Only he who does not permit the tree to grow according to its own inner laws, but clips it according to those of gardening, can be sure of not preparing surprises for himself and others, when one branch unexpectedly shoots out and another equally unaccountably withers. No one can answer for the transformations to which life thus may subject his own nature; nor for the changes which the transformation of another’s nature may effect in his own feeling. He may possess the rarest disposition to fidelity, the most sincere desire to concentrate himself upon his love, to “let his personality grow around it, as about its core”—it nevertheless does not depend upon his will alone whether this core shall shrivel or be corrupted. Therefore the desire of fidelity can not, must not, and ought not to imply more than the will to be true to the deepest needs of one’s own personality. In other spheres than that of love, people admit this freely. Nobody considers it an unquestionable duty for a young man to find at once the view of life or the career in which he can continue for the rest of his life. What young people are rightly warned against is the wandering without method among different opinions or undertakings; for only that belief or that work which one seriously tries to live by and live for can really employ the powers of the personality and thus show its efficacy in enhancing them. But the most profound seriousness cannot prevent a continued development of the personality from one day compelling the man to abandon that belief or that work. It probably would not occur to a thoughtful clergyman to appeal to such a man’s promises at confirmation, or to a thoughtful father to bring forward his own choice of a career as an example to his son.