Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXground the emotional tone of the husband's love for hiswife, and still more that of the wife for her husband,becomes easily that of love for a child. Every analysis oflove serves to show that, as Crawley remarked, "love isdifficult to define as life itself, and probably for the samereasons. In all itsforms love plays a part in society onlyless important than that of the instinct to live. It bringstogether the primal elements of the family, it keeps thefamily together, and it unites in a certain fellow-feelingall members of a race or nation."Even so brief a discussion of love may serve to indicatethat it is foolish for even the most superficial thinker toimagine that we are here concerned with a romantic illusionthat may be dismissed, or, as some would-be analystslike to imagine,a mere transformation of hate. It is true,asthat, as Ibsen said, "no word is so full of falsehood andfraud as the little word 'love* has become today." Yet thething the word stands for remains, and the extent of theabuse of "love" is the measure of its inestimable values,for it isonly gold and diamonds and the most preciousthings that lend themselves to the abuse of imitation inpaint and paste and cheap alloys and substitutes of everysort. There can be no self without others and the cravingfor others, and we cannot put aside others and the emotionswhich others excite without first puttingaside theself. So that, properly speaking, love is involved in life,and if love is an illusion then life itself is an illusion.When, indeed, we consider further, how love is boundup with the race as well as the individual, and with endsnot only natural but such as we term spiritual,it seems,as Boyce Gibson puts it, "the great transforming and inclusiveagency, the ultimate virtue of all life." So that,as it has been said, "Love is the supreme virtue/' and[3*8]