But this mighty emotion—which arouses one’s whole being through another’s and gives one’s whole being rest in another’s—this emotion seizes a man without asking whether he is bound or free. He who feels strongly and wholly enough need never wonder what it is he feels: it is the feeble emotion that is doubtful to itself. Nor does he who feels strongly enough ever ask himself whether he has a right to his feeling. He is so exalted by his love, that he knows he is thus exalting the life of mankind. It is the minor, partial passions that a person already bound feels with good reason to be “criminal.” For him, on the other hand, who would call his great emotion a sinful infatuation, a shameless egoism, a bestial instinct, one who loves thus has nothing but a smile of pity. He knows that he would commit a sin in killing his love, just as he would in murdering his child. He knows that his love has once more made him good as in his childhood’s prayers to God, and rich as one for whom the gates of paradise are opened anew. Art is interpreting a universal experience when it always depicts Adam and Eve as young when they are driven out of Eden. One wonders that no artist has shown them—at a maturer age—outside the walls of paradise, tormented by the sense of now possessing wisdom enough to preserve the happiness for which in youth they only possessed the means. For there not unfrequently arrives a time in human life when enlightenment enters before coldness has set in; when the blossoms are still rich although the fruits have already begun to mature. It is then that great happiness is often seen for an instant and then disappears. Sometimes she is never seen, for she comes softly and—like a playmate—lays a hand over one’s eyes, asking: Who am I? One guesses wrongly and happiness is gone before one can bid her stay. To her favourites only does she come with her hands full and open. To the majority the words of the dying Hebbel are true: _We human beings lack either the cup or the wine_. Love’s deepest tragedy is that a number of people have first to learn through their mistakes before their souls and senses are ready for the great love which of two beings makes one more perfect. In poetry as in life it is sometimes the first love, sometimes the last, that is extolled as the strongest. Neither need be, and either may be, this. The strongest love is that which—at whatever age it comes—most takes up all the forces of personality. It also sometimes happens that not until a person ought to have done with love, is he really ready for it. The fewer are then the chances of finding the love he wishes to give and receive. And fewer still the chances that he can give himself up to them, with the concurrence of his whole being. For it is one thing to have the right to one’s great emotion; another to have the right or the possibility of one’s full happiness.