To some individuals, true love for the opposite sex is an affection which is not simply a friendship, but has a sex basis. Thus, we realize that it may be a very noble emotion. There is no of doubt that the normal human being feels a great need for love. Sex and love and its manifestation in the life of the soul is one of the first conditions of human happiness, and a main aim of human existence.

A man falls in love with a face, a pair of eyes, the sound of a voice, and his affection is developed from this small beginning until it takes complete possession of him. This love is usually made up of two components: a sex instinct, and feelings of sympathy and interest which hark back to primal times. And this love, in its true sense, should stand for an affection purified from egoism.

When, among the lower animal forms we find individuals without a determined sex, egoism develops free from all restraint. Each individual creature devours as much as it can and feeding, together with propagation by division, "budding" or conjunction, makes up the total of its vital activities. It need do no more to accomplish the purpose of its existence. Even when propagation commences to take place by means of individual male and female parents, the same principle of egoism largely obtains.

Real and true love is lasting. The suddenly awakened storm of sex affection for a hitherto totally unknown person can never be accepted as a true measure for love. This sudden surge of the sex feeling warps the judgment, makes it possible to overlook most defects, colors all and everything with heavenly hues. It makes a man who is "in love," or two beings who are in love, mutually blind, and causes each to carefully conceal his or her real inward self from the other. This may be the case even when the feelings of both are absolutely honest, especially if the sex feeling is not paired with cool egoistic calculation.

Not until the first storm of the sex feeling has subsided, when honeymoon weeks are over, is a more normal point of view regained. And then love, indifference, or hatred, as the case may be develops. It is for this reason that love at first sight is always dangerous, and that only a longer and more intimate acquaintance with the object of one's affection is calculated to give a lasting union a relatively good chance of turning out happily. One thing is worth bearing in mind. Woman invariably represents the conservative element in the family.

Her emotional qualities, combined with wonderful endurance, always control her intellect more powerfully than is the case with man; and the feelings and emotions form the conservative element in the human soul.