of Love and the Penetrating Vision of
Love--Limits of Homeliness--Physical Aversion and Genesis of
Love--Mating in the Animal Kingdom--Mating in Low Races--Love in
People of High Culture--Difference in Love of Savage and Man of
Culture--Distinctions Between Loves--Varieties of Love and
Varieties of Men--"Love" Without Sexual Desire--Refraining and
Wanting--Cause of Love at First Sight--"Magnetic Forces" and Love
at First Sight--The Pathological Side--Differentiation of Phases
of Love--Infatuation--Difference Between "Infatuation" and "Being
in Love"--Sexual Satisfaction and Infatuation--Sexual
Satisfaction and Love--Infatuation Mistaken for Love--Love the
Most Mysterious of Human Emotions--Great Love and Supreme
Happiness.

I shall not attempt to give a definition, either brief or extensive,
of Love. Many have tried and failed, and I shall not attempt the
impossible. Nor shall I attempt to discuss Love in all its innumerable
details.[9] To do so would alone require a book many times more
voluminous than the one you have before you. I shall, however,
endeavor to raise a corner of the veil which surrounds this most
mysterious, most baffling and most complex of all human emotions, so
that you may get a glimpse into its intricate mechanism and perhaps
understand what Love is in its essence at least.

=Sexual and Platonic Love.= There are two widely different, in fact
diametrically opposite, opinions as to what constitutes Love. One
opinion is that Love is sexual love, sexual attraction, sexual desire.
To people holding this opinion love and sexual desire or "lust" are
synonymous. And they laugh and sneer at any attempt to idealize love,
to present it as something finer and subtler, let alone nobler, than
mere sex attraction. The writer has heard one cynical woman--and more
than one man--say: Love? There is no such a thing. Sexual intercourse
is love, and that's all there is to it.

The other opinion is that Love, true love, ideal love, or, as it is
sometimes called, sentimental love, or platonic love, has nothing to
do with sexual desire, with sexual attraction. Indeed, people holding
this opinion consider love and sexual attraction--or lust as they like
to call the latter--as antithetical conceptions, as mutually
antagonistic and exclusive.

Both opinions, as is often the case with extreme and one-sided
opinions, are wrong. Both opinions have a reason for their existence,
because there is a