. I might end either by
striving to reconcile the rivals or by discovering that what I loved was
not the man at all, but only an office exercised by him in my regard
which any one else might also exercise.

These inner lucubrations, however, while they lengthen the moment's
vista and deepen present intent, give no indication whatever about the
order or distribution of actual feelings. They are out of place in a
psychology that means to be an account of what happens in the world. For
these dialectical implications do not actually work themselves out. They
have no historical or dynamic value. The man that by mistake or courtesy
I call a father may really have no son, any more than Herodotus for
being the father of history; or having had a son, he may have lost him;
or the creature sprung from his loins may be a misshapen idiot, having
nothing ideal in common with his parent. Similarly my affection for a
friend, having causes much deeper than discourse, may cling to him
through all transformations in his qualities and in his attitude toward
me; and it may never pass to others for resembling him, nor take, in all
its days, a Platonic direction. The impulse on which that dialectic was
based may exhaust its physical energy, and all its implications may be
nipped in the bud and be condemned for ever to the limbo of things
unborn.

[Sidenote: Spinoza on the passions.]

Spinoza's account of the passions is a beautiful example of dialectical
psychology, beautiful because it shows so clearly the possibilities and
impossibilities in such a method. Spinoza began with self-preservation,
which was to be the principle of life and the root of all feelings. The
violence done to physics appears in this beginning. Self-preservation,
taken strictly, is a principle not illustrated in nature, where
everything is in flux, and where habits destructive or dangerous to the
body are as conspicuous as protective instincts. Physical mechanism
requires reproduction, which implies death, and it admits suicide.
Spinoza himself, far too noble a mind to be fixed solely on preserving
its own existence, was compelled to give self-preservation an
extravagant meaning in order to identify it with "intellectual love of
God" or the happy contemplation of that natural law which destroyed all
individuals. To find the self-preserving man you must take him after he
has ceased to grow and before he has begun to love. Self-preservation,
being thus no principle of