Page:Love and its hidden history.djvu/153

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the master passion.
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forth to some extent herein, and far more fully in "Love and its Hidden History."

Says Warren Chase, a distinguished author, writing of love: —

"We have long believed, without the power to demonstrate to others, that love is a subtle, imponderable element, with absolute material existence, like electricity, and somehow mysteriously connected with the vital elements of life, motion, and sensation in animal, human, and spiritual organizations. In these organisms its manifestations are ever in accordance with the fineness of texture and nerve in the bodies ; most strongly manifested through the sexual passion in the lower and coarser races, and in the coarser and grosser of each race and species; remarkably expressed through the maternal organs of some animals and some human beings, but in this expression not governed by any law or rule of coarseness or fineness of texture, but by some unknown law of their organizations, often strongly expressed in the paternal relation, in other individuals of the same species entirely wanting in paternal expression, even where the sexual expression is strong. In the highest human and in the spiritual organizations it spreads out to kindred, to friends, to strangers, to the race, and to God, and becomes more and more a source of happiness and enjoyment as it is extended and intensified to God and man; its quantity, quality, and intensity increasing as the soul advances and improves in its condition and relations to God and the race.

"We have ever been too much disgusted with the silly nonsense and ridiculous absurdities of most writers on the free-love relations of the sexes to take any notice of them, but have waited calmly, as an old man should, while the vulgar and sensual rabble have babbled of 'free-love,' and lust, in which many of them were burning, while for selfish purposes they accused others of the crimes they would commit if they could. A drunken man is not fit to lecture on temperance, nor a lustful man on purity; and yet these latter are the most noisy accusers of others we have in community. They are often full of love which burns its way out in the basest manner, and does them more mischief than good, like fire in the wrong part of the house that needs warming, — good in itself, but badly expressed. Such persons are to be pitied, because partially belonging to a higher class, and sinking to