thing. One observes this and that, one is interested and stirred;
suddenly the metal fuses, the dry bones live! One loves.

Almost every interest in one's being may be a factor in the love
synthesis. But apart from the overflowing of the parental instinct
that makes all that is fine and delicate and young dear to us and to be
cherished, there are two main factors that bring us into love with our
fellows. There is first the emotional elements in our nature that arise
out of the tribal necessity, out of a fellowship in battle and hunting,
drinking and feasting, out of the needs and excitements and delights of
those occupations; and there is next the intenser narrower desirings
and gratitudes, satisfactions and expectations that come from sexual
intercourse. Now both these factors originate in physical needs and
consummate in material acts, and it is well to remember that this great
growth of love in life roots there, and, it may be, dies when its roots
are altogether cut away.

At its lowest, love is the mere sharing of, or rather the desire to
share, pleasure and excitement, the excitements of conflict or lust or
what not. I think that the desire to partake, the desire to merge one's
individual identity with another's, remains a necessary element in all
personal loves. It is a way out of ourselves, a breaking down of our
individual separation, just as hate is an intensification of that.
Personal love is the narrow and intense form of that breaking down, just
as what I call Salvation is its widest, most extensive form. We cast
aside our reserves, our secrecies, our defences; we open ourselves;
touches that would be intolerable from common people become a mystery
of delight, acts of self-abasement and self-sacrifice are charged with
symbolical pleasure. We cannot tell which of us is me, which you. Our
imprisoned egoism looks out through this window, forgets its walls, and
is for those brief moments released and universal.

For most of us the strain of primordial sexual emotion in our loves is
very strong. Many men can love only women, many women only men, and
some can scarcely love at all without bodily desire. But the love of
fellowship is a strong one also, and for many, love is most possible and
easy when the thought of physical lovemaking has been banished. Then
the lovers will pursue interests together, will work together or journey
together. So we have the warm fellowships of men for men and women for
women. But