plex affair as to defy analysis. Rather am I speaking of that love
for a human being which, according to the spiritual strength of its
possessor, concentrates itself either upon a single individual, upon
a few, or upon many--of love for a mother, a father, a brother,
little children, a friend, a compatriot--of love, in short, for one's
neighbour.

Love of beauty consists in a love of the sense of beauty and of its
expression. People who thus love conceive the object of their affection
to be desirable only in so far as it arouses in them that pleasurable
sensation of which the consciousness and the expression soothes the
senses. They change the object of their love frequently, since their
principal aim consists in ensuring that the voluptuous feeling of their
adoration shall be constantly titillated. To preserve in themselves
this sensuous condition, they talk unceasingly, and in the most elegant
terms, on the subject of the love which they feel, not only for its
immediate object, but also for objects upon which it does not touch at
all. This country of ours contains many such individuals--individuals
of that well-known class who, cultivating "the beautiful," not only
discourse of their cult to all and sundry, but speak of it pre-eminently
in FRENCH. It may seem a strange and ridiculous thing to say, but I am
convinced that among us we have had in the past, and still have, a
large section of society--notably women--whose love for their friends,
husbands, or children would expire to-morrow if they were debarred from
dilating upon it in the tongue of France!

Love of the second kind--renunciatory love--consists in a yearning
to undergo self-sacrifice for the object beloved, regardless of any
consideration whether such self-sacrifice will benefit or injure the
object in question. "There is no evil which I would not endure to show
both the world and him or her whom I adore my devotion." There we have
the formula of this kind of love. People who thus love never look
for reciprocity of affection, since it is a finer thing to sacrifice
yourself for one who does not comprehend you. Also, they are always
painfully eager to exaggerate the merits of their sacrifice; usually
constant in their love, for the reason that they would find it hard to
forego the kudos of the deprivations which they endure for the object
beloved; always ready to die, to prove to him or to her the entirety of
their devotion; but sparing of such small daily