nalyzes
Sappho's conception of love. "In that famous poem of Sappho," he says,
"that has been so often declared a compendium of all the emotions that
make up love, I have not been able to find anything but a comic
catalogue of such feelings as might overwhelm a woman if she met a bear
in the woods--'deadly pallor,' 'a cold sweat,' 'a fluttering heart,'
'tongue paralyzed,' 'trembling all over,' 'a fainting fit.'"

Dante suffered similarly from the disorder of love, if you will
recollect. In this connection may be cited the following passage from
Diderot's "Paradox of Acting ":--

"Take two lovers, both of whom have their declarations to make. Who will
come out of it best? Not I, I promise you. I remember that I approached
the beloved object with fear and trembling; my heart beat, my ideas grew
confused, my voice failed me, I mangled all I said; I cried _yes_ for
_no_; I made a thousand blunders; I was illimitably inept; I was absurd
from top to toe, and the more I saw it the more absurd I became.
Meanwhile, under my very eyes, a gay rival, light hearted and agreeable,
master of himself, pleased with himself, losing no opportunity for the
finest flattery, made himself entertaining and agreeable, enjoyed
himself; he implored the touch of a hand which was at once given him, he
sometimes caught it without asking leave, he kissed it once and again.
I, the while, alone in a corner, avoided a sight which irritated me;
stifling my sighs, cracking my fingers with grasping my wrists, plunged
in melancholy, covered with a cold sweat, I could neither show nor
conceal my vexation."

Oh, the clamour of life to be born is a masterful thing, and so far as
the individual is concerned, a most irrational thing; and so far as the
world of beasts and emotional men and women is concerned, it is a most
necessary thing. That life may live and continue to live, a driving
force is needed that is greater than the puny will of life. And in the
disorder produced by the passion for perpetuation, whether or not
assisted by imagination, is found this driving force. As Ernest Haeckel,
that brave old hero of Jena, explains:--

"The irresistible passion that draws Edward to the sympathetic Otillia,
or Paris to Helen, and leaps all bounds of reason and morality, is the
same _powerful, unconscious_, attractive force which impels the living
spermatozoon to force an entrance into the ovum in the fertilisation of
the egg of the animal or plant--the same im