rfect friendship which grows up
between man and wife and which has nothing to do with the passion which
brought the pair together. But when the English poet speaks of love, he
generally means passion, not friendship. I am only stating very general
rules. You see how confusing the subject is, how difficult to define the
matter. Let us leave the definition alone for a moment, and consider the
matter philosophically.

Some very foolish persons have attempted even within recent years to make
a classification of different kinds of love--love between the sexes. They
talk about romantic love, and other such things. All that is utter
nonsense. In the meaning of sexual affection there is only one kind of
love, the natural attraction of one sex for them other; and the only
difference in the highest for of this attraction and the lowest is this,
that in the nobler nature a vast number of moral, aesthetic, and ethical
sentiments are related to the passion, and that in lower natures those
sentiments are absent. Therefore we may say that even in the highest forms
of the sentiment there is only one dominant feeling, complex though it be,
the desire for possession. What follows the possession we may call love if
we please; but it might better be called perfect friendship and sympathy.
It is altogether a different thing. The love that is the theme of poets in
all countries is really love, not the friendship that grows out of it.

I suppose you know that the etymological meaning of "passion" is "a state
of suffering." In regard to love, the word has particular significance to
the Western mind, for it refers to the time of struggle and doubt and
longing before the object is attained. Now how much of this passion is a
legitimate subject of literary art?

The difficulty may, I think, be met by remembering the extraordinary
character of the mental phenomena which manifest themselves in the time of
passion. There is during that time a strange illusion, an illusion so
wonderful that it has engaged the attention of great philosophers for
thousands of years; Plato, you know, tried to explain it in a very famous
theory. I mean the illusion that seems to charm, or rather, actually does
charm the senses of a man at a certain time. To his eye a certain face has
suddenly become the most beautiful object in the world. To his ears the
accents of one voice become the sweetest of all music. Reason has nothing
to do with this, and reason has no power aga