ases, is by no means a matter of
affection and companionship."

PLAN OF THIS VOLUME

These are casual adumbrations of a great truth that applies not only
to the lowest races (savages) but to the more advanced barbarians as
well as to ancient civilized nations, as the present volume will
attempt to demonstrate. To make my argument more impressive and
conclusive, I present it in a twofold form. First I take the fourteen
ingredients of love separately, showing how they developed gradually,
whence it follows necessarily that love as a whole developed
gradually. Then I take the Africans, Australians, American Indians,
etc., separately, describing their diverse amorous customs and
pointing out everywhere the absence of the altruistic, supersensual
traits which constitute the essence of romantic love as distinguished
from sensual passion. All this will be preceded by a chapter on "How
Sentiments Change and Grow," which will weaken the bias against the
notion that so elemental a feeling as sexual love should have
undergone so great a change, by pointing out that other seemingly
instinctive and unalterable feelings have changed and developed.

GREEK SENTIMENTALITY

The inclusion of the civilized Greeks in a treatise on Primitive Love
will naturally cause surprise; but I cannot attribute a capacity for
anything more than primitive sensual love to a nation which, in its
prematrimonial customs, manifested none of the essential _altruistic_
traits of Romantic Love--sympathy, gallantry, self-sacrifice,
affection, adoration, and purity. As a matter of course, the
sensualism of a Greek or Roman is a much less coarse thing than an
Australian's, which does not even include kisses or other caresses.
While Greek love is not a sentiment, it may be sentimental, that is,
an _affectation of sentiment_, differing from real sentiment as
adulation does from adoration, as gallantry or the risking of life to
secure favors do from genuine gallantry of the heart and
self-sacrifice for the benefit of another. This important point which
I here superadd to my theory, was overlooked by Benecke when he
attributed a capacity for real love to the later Greeks of the
Alexandrian period.

IMPORTANCE OF LOVE

One of the most important theses advanced in _Romantic Love and
Personal Beauty_ (323, 424, etc.), was that love, far from being
merely a passing episode in human life, is one of the most powerful
agencies working for the improvement of the