ns usually
bear examination. We have to define what we mean by "lust" and what we
mean by "love," and this is not easy if they are regarded as mutually
exclusive. It is sometimes said that "lust" must be understood as meaning
a reckless indulgence of the sexual impulse without regard to other
considerations. So understood, we are quite safe in rejecting it. But that
is an entirely arbitrary definition of the word. "Lust" is really a very
ambiguous term; it is a good word that has changed its moral values, and
therefore we need to define it very carefully before we venture to use it.
Properly speaking, "lust" is an entirely colorless word[62] and merely
means desire in general and sexual desire in particular; it corresponds to
"hunger" or "thirst"; to use it in an offensive sense is much the same as
though we should always assume that the word "hungry" had the offensive
meaning of "greedy." The result has been that sensitive minds indignantly
reject the term "lust" in connection with love.[63] In the early use of
our language, "lust," "lusty," and "lustful" conveyed the sense of
wholesome and normal sexual vigor; now, with the partial exception of
"lusty," they have been so completely degraded to a lower sense that
although it would be very convenient to restore them to their original
and proper place, which still remains vacant, the attempt at such a
restoration scarcely seems a hopeful task. We have so deeply poisoned the
springs of feeling in these matters with mediaeval ascetic crudities that
all our words of sex tend soon to become bespattered with filth; we may
pick them up from the mud into which they have fallen and seek to purify
them, but to many eyes they will still seem dirty. One result of this
tendency is that we have no simple, precise, natural word for the love of
the sexes, and are compelled to fall back on the general term, which is so
extensive in its range that in English and French and most of the other
leading languages of Europe, it is equally correct to "love" God or to
"love" eating.

Love, in the sexual sense, is, summarily considered, a synthesis of lust
(in the primitive and uncolored sense of sexual emotion) and friendship.
It is incorrect to apply the term "love" in the sexual sense to elementary
and uncomplicated sexual desire; it is equally incorrect to apply it to
any variety or combination of varieties of friendship. There can be no
sexual love without lust; but, on the other hand, until