proof of this rule; in the vegetable world the plants which
take the longest time to grow are those which promise to have the
longest life; in the moral order of things the works produced yesterday
die to-morrow; in the physical world the womb which infringes the laws
of gestation bears dead fruit. In everything, a work which is permanent
has been brooded over by time for a long period. A long future requires
a long past. If love is a child, passion is a man. This general law,
which all men obey, to which all beings and all sentiments must submit,
is precisely that which every marriage infringes, as we have plainly
shown. This principle has given rise to the love tales of the Middle
Ages; the Amadises, the Lancelots, the Tristans of ballad literature,
whose constancy may justly be called fabulous, are allegories of the
national mythology which our imitation of Greek literature nipped in the
bud. These fascinating characters, outlined by the imagination of the
troubadours, set their seal and sanction upon this truth.

LVIII.
We do not attach ourselves permanently to any possessions, excepting
in proportion to the trouble, toil and longing which they have cost us.

All our meditations have revealed to us about the basis of the
primordial law of love is comprised in the following axiom, which is at
the same time the principle and the result of the law.

LIX.
In every case we receive only in proportion to what we give.

This last principle is so self-evident that we will not attempt to
demonstrate it. We merely add a single observation which appears to
us of some importance. The writer who said: "Everything is true, and
everything is false," announced a fact which the human intellect,
naturally prone to sophism, interprets as it chooses, but it really
seems as though human affairs have as many facets as there are minds
that contemplate them. This fact may be detailed as follows:

There cannot be found, in all creation, a single law which is not
counterbalanced by a law exactly contrary to it; life in everything is
maintained by the equilibrium of two opposing forces. So in the present
subject, as regards love, if you give too much, you will not receive
enough. The mother who shows her children her whole tenderness calls
forth their ingratitude, and ingratitude is occasioned, perhaps, by
the impossibility of reciprocation. The wife who l