How shall we love?
is the great question for us.
It comes long before, How much shall we love?
Let us imagine a bride and bridegroom of the type that would now be most highly reverenced, and try to understand something of what their affection is.

It is, of course, impossible here to treat such a subject adequately; for, as Mr.Carlyle says, '_except musically, and in the language of poetry, it can hardly be so much as spoken about_.' But enough for the present purpose can perhaps be said.

In the first place, then, the affection in question will be seen to rest mainly upon two things--firstly, on the consciousness of their own respective characters on the part of each; and, secondly, on the idea formed by each of the character of the other.

Each must have a faith, for instance, in his or her own purity, and each must have a like faith, also in the purity of the other.

Thus, to begin with the first requisites, a man can only love a woman in the highest sense when he does so with a perfectly clear conscience.