THE NATURAL 

 PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



CHAPTER I 



THE SUBJECT OF AN IDEA 



Love's general psychology. Love according to natural 

 laws. Sexual selection. Man's place in Nature. 

 Identity of human and animal psychology. The 

 animal nature oj love. 



THIS book, which is only an essay, because its subject 

 matter is so immense, represents, nevertheless, an ambi- 

 tion: one wanted to enlarge the general psychology of 

 love, starting it in the very beginning of male and female 

 activity, and giving man's sexual life its place in the 

 one plan of universal sexuality. 



Certain moralists have, undeniably, pretended to talk 

 about "love in relation to natural causes," but they were 

 profoundly ignorant of these natural causes: thus Senan- 

 cour, whose book, blotted though it be with ideology, 

 remains the boldest work on a subject so essential that 

 nothing can drag it to triviality. If Senancour had been 

 acquainted with the science of his time, if he had only 

 read Reaumur and Bonnet, Buff on and Lamarck; if he 

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