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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXcondition is (as Boyce Gibson again states) joy in its object,even though that condition of joy inevitably involvespain and the possibility of sorrow, these emotions beingindeed cooperative and interpenetrating;sorrow thusenters with joy to strengthen the passionthisof love. It isbycomplexity and inclusiveness that love may becomein a supreme and unique sense the master passion.We have not indeed, even at that point, reached the fullsignificance of love in the large sense. The "master passion"may still be merely an enlarged egoism, an "goismea deux," and, therefore, however still justifiable,notgreatly more enlarging and ennobling than simple egoism.Love thus understood may be a source for the generationof energy, but if the two generating partners expend itmerely on each other the energy is largely wasted. Loveis one of the supreme things that make life worth while,but, as Bertrand Russell well points out, the love of twopeople for each other is too circumscribed to be by itselfthe main purpose of a good life. There must be purposeswhich stretch out beyond the individual couple into thegreat world outside and into the future, purposes, maybe,which can never be achieved but are always growing."It isonly when love is linked to some infinite purpose ofthis kind that it can have the seriousness and depth ofwhich it is capable/'There remains a primary condition of love which, wesee, the moralists admit, even if somewhat slurring overthe details: joy in its object. There it is that we areto love as an art.broughtThere was a time, and not so long ago, when the considerationof love as an art found no place either in manualsof psychology or of morals. It was left to the poets,who were quite content that it should be regarded as arather illegitimate subject. That was so when Ovid wrote[330]