So many men, so many souls; so many souls, so many destinies. And to wish to apply to this whole, complex, manifold, incalculable erotic life, with its unfathomable depths, an immutable ethical standard, when judging the relationship between man and woman, and to make this standard decisive also for the ethical value of the personality in other respects--is quite as naive as the attempt of a child to draw up in his little bucket the wonderful depth of the vast storm-driven sea. Love, as life, will fortunately remain an eternal mystery which no science will be able to penetrate and which reason cannot rule. Our only hope for the future is that man, endowed with a more delicate sense, will listen to the secrets of his own life. A more highly developed and differentiated soul life will give him a surer instinct or a keener power of analysis which will prevent him from confounding a passing sentiment of sympathy, need of tenderness or satisfaction of vanity with a love which decides existence. Now, on the contrary, many believe that a wave of admiration, of gratitude, or of pity is the whole sea; that the reflection of the fire of another is the holy fire itself! No one can with certainty predict the final result of the profound revolution of the feeling and of the customs which is now taking place. But one thing appears certain: the danger to the future of mankind can scarcely be that the new ideal will result in general license. Rather it will lead to so individual, differentiated and refined love that erotic happiness will be increasingly difficult to find and the idealists of love will more frequently prefer celibacy to a compromise with their greater demands for sympathetic love. The occasional experience, often only the dream of such a love, sensible to the finest shades of the soul, to the most delicate vibrations of the senses--of a love which is an all comprehensive tenderness, an all embracing intimacy--has already raised the erotic demands and the erotic existence of thousands of men and women to a sphere of more infinite longing, more fervid chastity than that of their contemporaries. It is this experience or this dream which has already begun to assume form in the art and literature of the present time. It is true the extreme discord between the peculiar character of man and of woman has long been the favorite theme, especially in modern literature. But among the wild, discordant tones a new leitmotiv resounds which will swell and rise and fill the void with a harmony, still but faintly divined.