ermanent and
preservative, inspires a love adequate and exhaustive of its conception,
casting out both hope and fear, the pangs of desire as well as the
satiety of fruition.

In one or other of these forms love has at all times been the burden of
religion: the glad tidings it has always borne have been "love on
earth." The Phoenix in Egyptian myth appeared yearly as newly risen,
but was ever the same bird, and bore the egg from which its _parent_ was
to have birth. So religions have assumed the guise in turn of self-love,
sex-love, love of country and love of humanity, cherishing in each the
germ of that highest love which alone is the parent of its last and only
perfect embodiment.

Favorite of these forms was sex-love. "We find," observes a recent
writer, "that all religions have engaged and concerned themselves with
the sexual passion. From the times of phallic worship through Romish
celibacy down to Mormonism, theology has linked itself with man's
reproductive instincts."[61-1] The remark is just, and is most
conspicuously correct in strongly emotional temperaments. "The
devotional feelings," writes the Rev. Frederick Robertson in one of his
essays, "are often singularly allied to the animal nature; they conduct
the unconscious victim of feelings that appear divine into a state of
life at which the world stands aghast." Fanaticism is always united with
either excessive lewdness or desperate asceticism. The physiological
performance of the generative function is sure to be attacked by
religious bigotry.

So prominent is this feature that attempts have been made to explain
nearly all symbolism and mythology as types of the generative procedure
and the reproductive faculty of organism. Not only the pyramids and
sacred mountains, the obelisks of the Nile and the myths of light have
received this interpretation, but even such general symbols as the
spires of churches, the cross of Christendom and the crescent of
Islam.[62-1]

Without falling into the error of supposing that any one meaning or
origin can be assigned such frequent symbols, we may acknowledge that
love, in its philosophical sense, is closely akin to the mystery of
every religion. That, on occasions, love of sex gained the mastery over
all other forms, is not to be doubted; but that at all times this was
so, is a narrow, erroneous view, not consistent with a knowledge of the
history of psychical development.

Sex-love, as a sentiment, is a cultivated