to possess her (to use the ugly ancient verb) does not love her--or 

he is completely impotent. Whatever the feeling may be for her--it is 

not love. He may abstain from having sex relations with her if the 

circumstances are such that sex relations may lead to her unhappiness 

and suffering, but to refrain from doing a thing, when reason and 

judgment lead us to refrain, does not mean not to want the thing. 

=Love at First Sight.= Nothing is more firmly established than the 

fact that a person may fall passionately and incurably in love with a 

person of the opposite sex at the very first sight, in the twinkling 

of an eye, in the literal sense of the word. One glance may be 

sufficient. And such a love may exist to the end of life, and may, if 

reciprocated, lead to supreme happiness, or if unreciprocated to the 

deepest unhappiness. 

What it is that causes love at first sight is unknown. Some have 

suggested that the beloved object sets in motion or fermentation 

certain internal secretions (hormones) in the lover which cannot 

become "satisfied" or "neutralized" except by that person; and the 

possession of the beloved object becomes a physical necessity. This 

explanation really means nothing. It is a hypothesis unsusceptible of 

proof. But whatever the cause of love at first sight, it is so 

mysterious a phenomenon that it gives the mystics and metaphysicians 

some justification for their talk about "electric currents" and 

"magnetic forces." These phrases also mean nothing, but are an attempt 

at explaining the suddenness and irresistibleness of the attack. So 

powerful is the attraction of love at first sight that people have 

been known to cross continents and oceans merely to get a glimpse of 

the beloved object; and people have been known to sacrifice 

_everything_--their career, their material possessions, their social 

standing, their honor, and even their wife and children, in order to 

gain their object. And a mother may give up her children whom she 

loves dearer than life, may risk ostracism and disgrace, only in order 

to be with the object of her love. This shows that love, then, becomes 

pathological, because any feeling which so completely masters an 

individual that he is willing to sacrifice everything he has in the 

world is pathological. 

=Infatuation and Being in Love.= While, as said, the feeling of love 

does not readily lend itself to dissection, to analysis, still we can 

differentiate some phases of it. We can differentiate between "being 

in love," "infatuation," and "love." Being in love is, as just 

indicated, a pathological, morbid phenomenon. The person who is in 

love is not in a normal condition. He can see nothing, he cannot be 

argued with, as far as his love is concerned. She is the acme of