These matters are not so simple but that history, in dealing with them, shows sharp discord where it does not uncover sheer confusion. The love that sets its heart on _one_ has been held the highest; it has also been put the lowest of all loves. Loyalty that lives on sacrifice has been prized as an enduring condition of all worth; it has not escaped disparagement as a human makeshift. Above all, “love” and “loyalty” are so mixed in men’s minds that, although any pair of lovers could tell a service of love from a servitude to loyalty, philosophers cannot always. The brief discussion that follows seemed to the writer to illustrate a difficulty it may not have removed. He considered that it could not lack point for those who in foregoing passages on love and loyalty have found themselves more involved than enlightened. For the rest, it has seemed best to leave this “footnote” in the form and wording its original occasion inspired.[17]] * * * * * One who like me has gone to Royce for wisdom now this long time and never come away empty, may yet live to know that some of his receivings are more his belongings than others. Thus, if it ever happen to me that I find my hold on the ‘Absolute’ slackening and the thing slipping from me, I cannot think that even in that day I shall have forgotten two words I have heard. Love and loyalty, loyalty and love: this pair I expect will still be singing its burden in my soul after other things have left off singing there. But I hope that when this day comes I shall know better than I do now whether love and loyalty are two names for the same thing; or whether they are not the same, yet brothers and friends; or whether in the end they are not rather enemies, of which one can survive only if the other doesn’t. Nor do I know, though I should very much like to, how Royce himself would answer these questions. Sometimes the words fall in such close juxtaposition in his writings that I wonder whether they do not express a single idea whose peculiar quality is just unselfishness. But again I bethink me that to be just unselfish is not enough for an absolutist, if for anyone; that giving up can only be justified when it is a means of acquiring; and I wonder what loyalty can have to say for itself half as convincing as the things love could point to. Until at last I find myself speculating whether if love had its perfect way with us there would be any place left for loyalty in our lives, and whether we could not look back on it then as on a virtue happily outlived.