out.
Art cries, "Beauty", and tries to depict it; Philosophy cries, "Truth,
and strives to define it; Religion cries, "Good", and does its best to
embody it; and numberless lesser voices in the wilderness cry, "Power",
or "Gold", or "Work",--which is a narcotic, or "Excitement",--which is
an intoxicant; and a many-toned changeful siren with sweetly-saddening
music cries, "Love". And one pursues a phantom, and another clasps a
shadow, and a third cloaks his eyes with a transparent veil, or steeps
his senses in floods that will not drown.--No, what the human heart
wants it does not know. And, what is more,

Pathetic problem amongst problems pathetic, often it puzzles this human
heart to distinguish between the things which it is right and proper to
seek wherewith to fill that void, and the things which are wrong and
improper. Furthermore:

How apt is the heart to seek in the illegitimate for the satisfaction
which the legitimate fails to give!--Problems ancient as Eden.

What does it want, this human heart, what does it so earnestly desire, so
strenuously seek? All about it and about are beauty, friendship, mirth,
and gladness; the sea and the earth and the sky; color and music and
song; and to each, if he wills it, wife, or husband, and children and
home.--Wanting is--what?--Ah!

One lesson this human heart has to learn, so easy to put into words, so
difficult to carry out by deed; is this:

To get, the human heart must give.

The heart eats out itself; causes its own emptiness; creates its own
void.

The selfish and egoistical life breeds always the vapid and vacuous
heart.

Would you appease your own hunger? Feed the hungry hearts around you.

Do you crave fullness of joy? Give joy to the joyless.

Would you fill your own cavity, satisfy your craving, attain your desire,
find what you seek? Give--give--give. The more the better, for

The greater the donation, the greater the repletion.

Nature gives, gives lavishly, wantonly, unquestioningly.

Every atom of soil, every drop of sap, goes to produce flowers and fruit
and seed: root and branch and leaf are but carefully constructed means by
which to transmute sunshine and soil and flower and fruit and seed. No
tree lives for itself.

Shall, then, this human heart live for itself; gather and store up for
its own delectation, for its own good?

There is no such thing as one's own good:

Goodness is mutual, is communal; is only guided by giving and r