We have now reached the second psychological consideration. Does a like sympathetic effect proceed from the one influenced? We are not asking whether the influence is more or less intense, but whether the effect is sufficiently powerful to raise the other tower-high above everything in view of new aspects? Because a refined instinct of natural selection must be able to alight on an equally high temperature, must be as unconditionally selected as it itself selects. Everything depends on this--the affirmation or negation of life--a compromise is impossible! How often, as in _Memorable Words_, Paul Heyse has underlined those seemingly insignificant details like a tone of the voice, a smile, a difference of opinion or a trivial expression which suddenly, no one knows how, acts as a stop to the current of sympathy which had just begun. The one frees himself, but the other is no longer able to do so, and the impulse of his heart overflows into chaos. Therefore love is the Incommensurable. Love cannot be acquired, cannot be earned, cannot be obtained by artifice, and it cannot be dispensed with. Paul Heyse describes how some noble-minded men and women remain alone, not from obtuseness of the instinct of natural selection, but from refinement, because they could not find all they wanted. The third psychological consideration, and the sum of his entire philosophy of life, is his fatalism. That of itself would be sufficient to place Heyse apart, in these times when the ruling standard is that of the multitude. He has the proud submission of a profound insight which knows that, in the final instance and in the highest matters, we have nothing in our own power. That which we most earnestly desire comes, or it comes not, but we cannot do anything one way or the other. It is true that there is in us a mysterious impulse, as dark and unknown to ourselves as life itself, which drives us on to where our personal happiness is to be found, draws us into the Unknown and entices us until we are led towards that which is ours in life. But we know nothing of it at the time, and not in every one does it attain to development. IV