But, although the world is full of sex discussion, the emphasis is generally laid upon sex-hygiene and upon the knowledge of the relations of the sex function to mental and physical development. Sex-hygiene is nowadays held to be a proper subject of pedagogy and is taught in many schools and colleges. But the emotion of Love is still very little studied, and it is still wrapped in complete darkness. A great deal of ignorance still prevails in regard to this important emotion. Few people understand under this much-abused word one and the same emotion. The same word is used to designate entirely different feelings. The ancient Greeks had three different words to express the different emotions that go under the name of love. One of the highest emotions is expressed by the word ἀγαπάω. It is the love man feels for God, parents or country. It is the love founded upon worship, adoration, gratitude and habit. The other kind of love was expressed by the word φιλέω. It designates the love founded on sympathy and liking, as the love of friends, of humanity, of wisdom. The last, amatory emotion, was expressed by the word ἐράω. It is the love founded upon sex-attraction. It is a purely instinctive emotion, found throughout the animal kingdom and even among some plants. Hence it is just the feeling which should not be treated with such besotted reverence. True enough sexual passion is the passion of creation, the most important function in the universe. Sympathy, affection, fidelity, sacrifice, indeed, all those noble traits, included under the term altruism, spring from the reproductive instinct. Still the two emotions, love, sung by poetry and exalted by art, and sex-attraction, found in animals and plants as well as in man, can not be identical. Still they are both generally confounded even by the best writers.
To spread more light upon this important subject is the aim of this treatise. It has been written for the elucidation of the normal amatory emotions, considering the pathological changes only by way of contrast, for the perusal of the profession of medicine and of students of medical jurisprudence.
[PART II.]
EVOLUTION OF SEX
[CHAPTER I]
ORGANIC EVOLUTION
The emotion of love, like any other psychic trait, is subject to the laws of evolution. Its history is written on the pages of Life’s book. The amatory emotions have followed step by step the evolution of plant and animal.
The fact of organic evolution is nowadays tacitly accepted even by those powers who in a not very remote period fought against the theory of the heliocentric system. What is still sub judice is the method of evolution. Here we have two main theories:
1. The mechanistic.
(a) Neo-Lamarckians.
(b) Neo-Darwinians.