Page:Crawford - Love in idleness.djvu/178

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166
LOVE IN IDLENESS

opinion of our merits or demerits. We make love to our own idea of what the woman is—and the depth of our disillusionment is the measure of our sincerity, when love is gasping between the death-blow and the death.

Moreover, what is called nowadays analysis of human nature, belongs in reality to transcendental thought. 'Transcendent' is defined as designating that which lies beyond the bounds of all possible experience. So far as we know, it is beyond those bounds to enter into the intelligence of our neighbour, subjectively, to identify ourselves with him and to see and understand the world with his eyes and mind. It follows that we are never sure of what we are doing when we attempt to set down exactly another man's train of thought, and it follows also that few are willing to recognize the result as at all resembling the process of which they are conscious within themselves. On certain bases, all men can appeal subjectively to all men, and all women to all women. But, as between the sexes, all observation is objective and tentative, whether it be that of the author, condemned to analyze