WHAT IS LOVE?
The passion which unites the sexes ... is the most compound, and therefore the most powerful of all the feelings. Added to the purely physical elements of it are, first, those highly complex impressions produced by personal beauty.... With this there is united the complex sentiment which we term affection—a sentiment which, as it can exist between those of the same sex, must be regarded as an independent sentiment.... Then there is the sentiment of admiration, respect, or reverence.... There comes next the feeling called love of approbation. To be preferred above all the world, and that by one admired above all others, is to have the love of approbation gratified in a degree passing every previous experience.... Further, the allied emotion of self-esteem comes into play. To have succeeded in gaining such attachment from, and sway over, another is a proof of power which cannot fail agreeably to excite the amour propre. Yet again, the proprietary feeling has its share in the general activity: there is the pleasure of possession—the two belong to each other. Once more, the relation allows of an extended liberty of action. Towards other persons a restrained behaviour is requisite. Round each there is a subtle boundary that may not be crossed—an individuality on which none may trespass. But in this case the barriers are thrown down; and thus the love of unrestrained activity is gratified. Finally there is an exaltation of the sympathies. Egoistic pleasures of all kinds are doubled by another’s sympathetic participation; and the pleasures of another are added to the egoistic pleasures. Thus, round the physical feeling, forming the nucleus of the whole, are gathered the feelings produced by personal beauty, that constituting simple attachment, those of reverence, of love of approbation, of self-esteem, of property, of love of freedom, of sympathy. These, all greatly exalted, and severally tending to reflect their excitements on one another, unite to form the mental state we call Love.
Herbert Spencer (Principles of Psychology, 3rd Ed., Vol. I, 487).
The heading is, of course, mine—not Spencer’s.
WHAT AM I?
The aggregate of feelings and ideas, constituting the mental I, have not in themselves the principle of cohesion holding them together as a whole; but the I which continuously survives as the subject of these changing states is that portion of the Unknowable Power, which is statically conditioned in (my particular one of those) special nervous structures pervaded by a dynamically-conditioned portion of the Unknowable Power called energy.
Herbert Spencer (Principles of Psychology, 3rd Ed., Vol. II, 504).