I LOVE contains no complete and lasting happiness save in the transparent atmosphere of perfect sincerity. But sincerity is not possible except between lofty and trained consciences. And thus it is that the lives glide away of so many men who never meet the soul with which they could have been sincere. But it is impossible to be sincere with others before learning to be sincere with one's self.
Sincerity is only the consciousness and analysis of the motives of all life's actions.
It is the expression of this consciousness that one is able, later to lay before the eyes of the being with whom one is seeking the happiness of sincerity. Thus understood, sincerity's aim is not to lead to moral perfection. The perfection of a character, as we generally understand it, is too often but an unproductive abstention, a sort of ataraxy, an abatement of instinctive life which is, when all is said, the one source of all the other lives that we succeed in organizing within us. If we stifle within ourselves all the manifestations of life, to substitute for them merely the contemplation of their defeat, soon we shall have nothing left to contemplate. But it is of importance to recognize, in their details and in their secrets, those which we possess and to watch them at work from a standpoint so high that we may look upon them without fearing lest they should overthrow us or escape from our control to go and heedlessly to harm us or those around us.