edlock and the
arrival of children, that those events seem to constitute life itself.
But this is indeed a dangerous illusion.

If parents merely live from day to day, begetting children, and have no
purpose in life, they are only putting off the question of the purpose
of life and that punishment which is allotted to people who live without
knowing why; they are only putting it off and not escaping it, because
they will have to bring up their children and guide their steps, but
they will have nothing to guide them by. And then the parents lose their
human qualities and the happiness which depends on the possession of
them, and turn into mere breeding cattle.

That is why I say that people who are proposing to marry because their
life SEEMS to them to be full must more than ever set themselves to
think and make clear to their own minds for the sake of what each of
them lives.

And in order to make this clear, you must consider the circumstances
in which you live, your past. Reckon up what you consider important and
what unimportant in life. Find out what you believe in; that is, what
you look on as eternal and immutable truth, and what you will take for
your guide in life. And not only find out, but make clear to your own
mind, and try to practise or to learn to practise in your daily life;
because until you practise what you believe you cannot tell whether you
believe it or not.

I know your faith, and that faith, or those sides of it which can be
expressed in deeds, you must now more than ever make clear to your own
mind, by putting them into practice.

Your faith is that your welfare consists in loving people and being
loved by them. For the attainment of this end I know of three lines of
action in which I perpetually exercise myself, in which one can never
exercise oneself enough and which are specially necessary to you now.

First, in order to be able to love people and to be loved by them, one
must accustom oneself to expect as little as possible from them, and
that is very hard work; for if I expect much, and am often disappointed,
I am inclined rather to reproach them than to love them.

Second, in order to love people not in words, but in deed, one must
train oneself to do what benefits them. That needs still harder
work, especially at your age, when it is one's natural business to be
studying.

Third, in order to love people and to b. l. b. t., [21] one must train
oneself to gentleness, humility, the