clearly what this involves. All amorous feeling immediately and
essentially concentrates itself on health, strength, and beauty, and
consequently on youth; because the will above all wishes to exhibit the
specific character of the human species as the basis of all
individuality. The same applies pretty well to everyday courtship
([Greek: Aphroditae pandaemos]). With this are bound up more special
requirements, which we will consider individually later on, and with
which, if there is any prospect of gratification, there is an increase
of passion. Intense love, however, springs from a fitness of both
individualities for each other; so that the will, that is to say the
father's character and the mother's intellect combined, exactly complete
that individual for which the will to live in general (which exhibits
itself in the whole species) has a longing--a longing proportionate to
this its greatness, and therefore surpassing the measure of a mortal
heart; its motives being in a like manner beyond the sphere of the
individual intellect. This, then, is the soul of a really great passion.
The more perfectly two individuals are fitted for each other in the
various respects which we shall consider further on, the stronger will
be their passion for each other. As there are not two individuals
exactly alike, a particular kind of woman must perfectly correspond with
a particular kind of man--always in view of the child that is to be
born. Real, passionate love is as rare as the meeting of two people
exactly fitted for each other. By the way, it is because there is a
possibility of real passionate love in us all that we understand why
poets have depicted it in their works.

Because the kernel of passionate love turns on the anticipation of the
child to be born and its nature, it is quite possible for friendship,
without any admixture of sexual love, to exist between two young,
good-looking people of different sex, if there is perfect fitness of
temperament and intellectual capacity. In fact, a certain aversion for
each other may exist also. The reason of this is that a child begotten
by them would physically or mentally have discordant qualities. In
short, the child's existence and nature would not be in harmony with the
purposes of the will to live as it presents itself in the species.

In an opposite case, where there is no fitness of disposition,
character, and mental capacity, whereby aversion, nay, even enmity for
each other e