gredients named may be divided into two groups
of seven each--the egoistic and the altruistic. The prevailing notion
that love is a species of selfishness--a "double selfishness," some
wiseacre has called it--is deplorably untrue and shows how little the
psychology of love has heretofore been understood.

It has indeed an egoistic side, including the ingredients I have
called Individual Preference, Monopolism, Jealousy, Coyness,
Hyperbole, Mixed Moods, and Pride; and it is not a mere accident that
these are also the seven features which may be found in sensual love
too; for sensuality and selfishness are twins. But the later and more
essential characteristics of romantic love are the altruistic and
supersensual traits--Sympathy, Affection, Gallantry, Self-sacrifice,
Adoration, Purity, and Admiration of Personal Beauty. The two
divisions overlap in some places, but in the main they are accurate.
It is certain that the first group precedes the second, but the order
in which the ingredients in each group first made their appearance
cannot be indicated, as we know too little of the early history of
man. The arrangement here adopted is therefore more or less arbitrary.
I shall try in this long chapter to answer the question "What is
Romantic Love?" by discussing each of its fourteen ingredients and
tracing its evolution separately.

I. INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCE

If a man pretended to be in love with a girl while confessing that he
liked other girls equally well and would as soon marry one as another,
everybody would laugh at him; for however ignorant many persons may be
as to the subtler traits of sentimental love, it is known universally
that a decided and obstinate preference for one particular individual
is an absolute condition of true love.

ALL GIRLS EQUALLY ATTRACTIVE

As I have just intimated, a modern romantic lover would not exchange a
beloved beggar-maid for an heiress or princess; nor would he give her
for a dozen other girls, however charming, and with permission to
marry them all. Now if romantic love had always existed, the lower
races would have the same violent and exclusive preference for
individuals. But what are the facts? I assert, without fear of
contradiction from any one familiar with anthropological literature,
that a savage or barbarian, be he Australian, African, American, or
Asiatic, would laugh at the idea of refusing to exchange one woman for
a dozen others equally young and attractive. It