Yet I am assailed for asserting that the Greeks and
the lower races, whose ideas regarding women, love, polygamy,
chastity, and marriage were so different from ours, also differed from
us in their feelings--the quality of their love. There were numerous
obstacles to overcome before romantic love was able to
emerge--obstacles so serious and diverse that it is a wonder they were
ever conquered. But before considering those obstacles it will be
advisable to explain definitely just what romantic love is and how it
differs from the sensual "love" or lust which, of course, has always
existed among men as among other animals.
WHAT IS ROMANTIC LOVE?
How does it feel to be in love?
When a man loves a girl, he feels such an overwhelming _individual
preference_ for her that though she were a beggar-maid he would scorn
the offer to exchange her for an heiress, a princess, or the goddess
of beauty herself. To him she seems to have a monopoly of all the
feminine charms, and she therefore monopolizes his thoughts and
feelings to the exclusion of all other interests, and he longs not
only for her reciprocal affection but for a monopoly of it. "Does she
love me?" he asks himself a hundred times a day. "Sometimes she seems
to treat me with cold indifference--is that merely the instinctive
assertion of feminine _coyness_, or does she prefer another man?" The
pangs, the agony of _jealousy_ overcome him at this thought.
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