The writer who discovered that love idealizes the object might have pushed his discovery a little further; for it is no less true that love idealizes the subject. None knows better than the poets how to take advantage of this self-idealization: one has only to read their love poems to find out how much more is said about the poet's beautiful feelings than about the object which presumably evoked them. Heine, particularly, was a shameless offender in this way. A woman was to him simply an excuse for seeing himself in imagination in a romantic attitude. But even with the others who appear less obtrusive and more disinterested the implication is the same. How elevated and even divine we must be, they seem to say, when we can feel in this manner; and how happy, when we are privileged to love an object of such loveliness! Yes! love has such power that it idealizes everything--even the subject! 157 _Love and Becoming_ The great Heraclitus propounded the doctrine of Becoming. Everything changes, is built up and dissolved; "stability" is only a little sluggishness in the flux of things. Zeus, the great child, the divine artist, constructs and destroys at his pleasure and for his amusement: all the worlds are his playthings. This conception of the Universe is innocent and beautiful, an artist's conception; but it is at the same time terrifying. And that because all meaning is left out of it; for all things without meaning, no matter how beautiful they may be, are in the end terrifying. Nietzsche, the modern counterpart of Heraclitus, re-affirmed this doctrine; but he coupled with it the idea of creative Love: that is his chief distinction. Certainly, those who do not comprehend Nietzsche's Love do not comprehend Nietzsche. It is the key to his religion of Becoming. Becoming without Love is meaningless; Love without Becoming is meaningless. But, united, each gives its meaning to the other, each redeems the other. But have things a meaning in themselves? Is it not Man that forever interprets and interprets? Very well. But is not a thing incomplete without its interpretation? Is not its interpretation a part of it? 158 _Static Values_