be intimately connected or completely
separated in the same individual. In the same way that a cold woman
may be a good mother, a very sensual woman may be a bad one, but the
inverse may also be met with.

=Love.=--I speak here of the true love of a higher nature of one sex
for the other, or _sexual love_, which is not simple friendship, but
is combined with sexual appetite. To write on love is almost to pour
water into the ocean, for literature is three parts composed of
dissertations on love. There can be no doubt that the normal man feels
a great desire for love. The irradiations of love in the mind
constitute one of the fundamental conditions of human happiness and
one of the principal objects of life. Unfortunately, the question is
too often treated with exaggerated sentiment, or on the other hand,
with sensual cynicism; it is examined from one side only, or else it
is misunderstood.

First of all, love appears to be usually kindled by the sexual
appetite. This is the celebrated story of Cupid's arrow. One falls in
love with a face, a look, a smile, a white breast, a sweet and
melodious voice, etc. However, the relations between love and sexual
appetite are extremely delicate and complex. In man, the second may
exist without the first and love may often persist without appetite,
while in woman the two things are difficult to separate, and in any
case, in her, the original appetite without love is much more rare.
The two things are thus not identical; even the most materialistic and
libidinous egoist will agree to this, if he is not too narrow-minded.

It may also happen that love precedes appetite, and this often leads
to the most happy unions. Two characters may have extreme mutual
sympathy, and this purely intellectual and sentimental sympathy may at
first develop without a shadow of sensuality. This is nearly always
the case when it exists from infancy. In modern society an enormous
number of sexual unions, or marriages, are consummated without a trace
of love, and are based on pure speculation, conventionality or
fortune. Here it is tacitly assumed that the normal sexual appetite
combined with custom will cement the marriage and render it durable.
As the normal man has not, as a rule, extreme sentiments, such
prevision is usually realized on the whole, the conjoints becoming
gradually adapted to one another, more or less successfully according
to the discoveries which are made after marriage.

Even when th