Such is the positivist theory as to all the higher pleasures of life, of which affection confessedly is one of the chief, and also the most obviously human.  Let us proceed now from generalities to special concrete facts, and see how far this theory is borne out by them.  And we can find none better than those which are now before us—­the special concrete facts of affection, and of sexual affection in particular.

The affection of man for woman—­or, as it will be best to call it, love—­has been ever since time was, one of the chief elements in the life of man.  But it was not till Christianity had very fully developed itself that it assumed the peculiar importance that is now claimed for it.  For the ancient world it was a passion sure to come to most men, and that would bring joy or sorrow to them as the case might be.  The worldly wisdom of some convinced them that it gave more joy than sorrow; so they took and used it as long as it chanced to please them.  The worldly wisdom of others convinced them that it gave more sorrow than joy, so they did all they could, like Lucretius, to school themselves into a contempt for it.  But for the modern world it is on quite a different footing, and its value does not depend on such a chance balance of pains and pleasures.  The latter are not of the same nature as the former, and so cannot be outweighed by them.  In the judgment of the modern world,

    ’Tis better to have loved and lost
    Than never to have loved at all.

To love, in fact, though not exactly said to be incumbent upon all men, is yet endowed with something that is almost of the nature of a duty.  If a man cannot love, it is looked on as a sort of moral misfortune, if not as a moral fault in him.  And when a man can love, and does love successfully, then it is held that his whole nature has burst out into blossom.  The imaginative literature of the modern world centres chiefly about this human crisis; and its importance in literature is but a reflection of its importance in life.  It is, as it were, the sun of the world of sentiment—­the source of its lights and colours, and also of its shadows.  It is the crown of man’s existence; it gives life its highest quality; and, if we can believe what those who have known it tell us, earth under its influence seems to be melting into, and to be almost joined with, heaven.

All this language, however, about love, no matter how true in a certain sense it may be, is emphatically true about it in a certain sense only, and is by no means to be taken without reserve.  It is emphatically not true about love in general, but only about love as modified in a certain special way.  The form of the affection, so to speak, is more important than the substance of it.  It will need but little consideration to show us that this is so.  Love is a thing that can take countless forms; and were not the form, for the modern world, the thing of the first importance,