I must deliberate well and speak carefully if we would more deeply
penetrate the meaning of these things.

When these feelings overtake us as a child, we think it is the
personality, that it is Alice or Bertha who interests us so intensely,
and that only Alice or only Bertha can inspire such strange and
powerful emotions of bliss and desire. And above all that it is just
Alice or just Bertha whose more intimate acquaintance is so eminently
desirable.

But how is it possible that we retain this illusion, and even live and
die in it - pleasant and enviable though it may be - when we know that
each feels this same interest in some other and ofttimes even see it
transferred from one to another?

Being in love is the desire to fathom a most interesting secret,
indispensable to us all. The beloved maiden attracts us, as a ray of
light attracts the wanderer in the dark. Yet we know that every
creature of her kind can shed this radiance about her, and that it is
simply our own accidental receptivity that, among so many thousands,
gives to this one creature in particular her attractive power.

Thus I think I can positively say that it was not herself I sought in
my beloved, but the reflection of one common light that also shines
through other windows as well as through the eyes in which I discovered
it. But though my reason must affirm it, my heart comprehends little of
this. When I think of her whom I loved last, longest and most
devotedly, then she herself, her own personality, is a certainty to me
that I would not willingly relinquish for any higher certainty, many
years though I have spent in anxious pondering on this subject.