I have got an anonymous letter to-day which begins: “To give up one’s self at the feet of another, is the truest of all gifts.” The writer has never seen me, but knows me from my writings, and goes on to say: “However petty or distant, the Sun-worshipper gets a share of the Sun’s rays. You are the world’s poet, yet to me it seems you are my own poet!” and more in the same strain.
Man is so anxious to bestow his love on some object, that he ends by falling in love with his own Ideal. But why should we suppose the idea to be less true than the reality? We can never know for certain the truth of the substance underlying what we get through the senses. Why should the doubt be greater in the case of the entity behind the ideas which are the creation of mind?
The mother realises in her child the great Idea, which is in every child, the ineffableness of which, however, is not revealed to any one else. Are we to say that what draws forth the mother’s very life and soul is illusory, but what fails to draw the rest of us to the same extent is the real truth? Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love—the beauty of his soul knows no limit.
But I am departing into generalities. What I wanted to express is, that in one sense I have no right to accept this offering of my admirer’s heart; that is to say, for me, seen within my everyday covering, such a person could not possibly have had these feelings. But there is another sense in which I am worthy of all this, or of even greater adoration.