ey are relatively true, love stories generally deal with
exceptional cases, often even pathological; for the average marriage
does not appear to the novelist sufficiently piquant or interesting to
captivate his readers. We are not concerned here with extremes, or
with the tragic situations met with in novels, but with normal and
ordinary love, as it most often occurs in reality.

After what we have just said, it is clear that love is derived from
two factors: (1) _momentary sexual passion_; (2) _the hereditary and
instinctive sentiments of sympathy which are derived from the
primordial sexual appetite of our animal ancestors, but which have
become completely independent of this appetite_. Between these two
terms are placed the sentiments of sympathy experienced by the
individual in his former life, which have most often been provoked by
sexual desire for an individual of the opposite sex, and which may be
evoked by the aid of remembrance, kindled afresh, and contribute
strongly to maintain constancy of love. These different sentiments
pass into each other in all possible shades, and continually react on
each other. Sexual appetite, for example, awakens sympathy, and is
awakened by the latter in its turn; on the contrary, it is cooled or
extinguished under the influence of bad conduct on the part of the
person loved.

Let us here recall a law of the sentiments of sympathy, a law which is
well known, but generally forgotten in human calculations. Man loves
best those to whom he devotes himself, and not those from whom he
receives benefits.[3] It is easy to be convinced of the reality of
this fact in the relations of parents to their children, as well as in
marriage. When one of the conjoints in marriage adulates the other,
the latter may easily find this adulation quite natural, and may love
the other conjoint much less than a spoilt child, to which is devoted
all the transports of an unreasonable affection. The spoilt child, the
object of such blind affection, more often responds to it by
indifference, or even by ingratitude, disdain and impertinence. We
find everywhere this play of sentiments, which considerably impedes
mutuality in love. It may even concern inanimate objects. We like a
garden, a house or a book over which we have taken much pains, and we
remain indifferent to the most beautiful and precious gifts which come
by themselves without our making any effort to obtain them. In the
same way, the child becomes