ultra-telescopic confines of vision.

What it makes the desires and cravings of this human heart more
important, more importunate, to its owner than the measuring of the
vastest space? Why is it that the longings, the hopes, the
disappointments, the desperate aspirations, and the passionate loves of
little human hearts should cause to their possessors such prepotent
commotions, such poignant qualms? Rigel and Betelgeuse and Algol rush
through space, and about them probably circle numerous planets inhabited
by countless and curious beings, each and all, perhaps, possessing hearts
as perturbable as our own. And yet, if our own little earthly Jack
cannot get our own little earthly Jill, what cares Jack what happens to
Vega or Capella or to the great nebula in Orion? Jack wants Jill; and
that want is to Jack the only thing in the sidereal heavens that matters.

The curious and perhaps semi-comical but wholly-pathetic thing about the
whole matter is this: that though undoubtedly our little planet is part
of and has a place in this great sidereal universe, and consequently all
our Jacks and Jills are related to all the Jacks and Jills everywhere
else, yet each little human heart behaves as it were the only heart in
the sum-total of created things: if it enjoys, it calls upon all that is,
to congratulate it; if it suffers, it cries aloud to high heaven to
avenge its wrongs: it comports itself as if it and it alone were the only
sensitive things in existence.--That is curious. That it wrongs may
have been wrought by itself; that is fate may have been determined in the
reign of Chaos and Old Night, or ere even cosmic nebulae were born, it
does not dream: if Jill is indifferent or Jack morose,--either is enough
to cause Jack or Jill to curse God and die. Is there some archetypal and
arcanal secret in this the extreme, the supernal egoism of the human
heart?