n among the lower uneducated classes of
so-called civilized races. To the Hottentot, to the Australian bushman
or to the Russian peasant one woman is as good as another. If the male
of a low race has some preference, it will be in favor of the woman
who happens to have a little property.

In fact I make the assertion that real love, true love, is a new
feeling, a comparatively modern feeling, absent in the lower races and
reaching its highest development only in people of high civilization,
culture and education.

The platitudinous objection might be raised that "human nature is
human nature," that all our feelings are born with us, and as such are
inherited, that they have been with us for millions of years and that
we cannot possibly _originate_ any entirely new feeling. True from a
certain viewpoint. We cannot originate intellect either. The germ of
intellect with all its potential possibilities was present in our most
primitive tree-climbing ancestors. But as much difference as there is
between the intellect of an Australian bushman and the intellect of a
Spinoza, a Shakespeare, a Darwin, a Victor Hugo, a Goethe or a Gauss,
so much difference is there between the love of a primitive savage and
the love of the highly cultured modern man. The love or so-called love
of the primitive or ignorant man (and woman) is a simple matter and is
practically equivalent to a desire for sexual gratification. The love
of the truly cultured and highly civilized man and woman, while still
_based_ on sexual attraction, is so complex and so dominating a
feeling that it completely defies all analysis, all attempts at
dissection, as it defies all attempts at synthesis, at artificial
building up.

As previously stated, some writers attempt to make a clear distinction
between sensual and sentimental love; many reams of paper have been
used up in an endeavor to differentiate between one and the other; the
first is called animal love or lust; the second pure love or ideal
love; the first variety of love is said to be selfish, egotistic, the
other--self-sacrificing, altruistic. These distinctions read very
nicely, but they mean very little. There is no distinct line of
demarkation between the two varieties of love, and one merges
imperceptibly into the other. Most, if not all, of our apparently
altruistic actions and feelings have an egotistic substratum; and the
quality of the love depends upon the lover. In other words, there are
not two