“Sensible” Love is that which prevails among animals. In it Leo recognises the higher elements of delight in one another’s company, and of attachment to a master. “Rational” Love, the third and highest class, is peculiar to God, angels, and men. But the inclination to confound gravitation and other natural forces with Love is not to be found among ancient and mediæval authors alone. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the “gross materialist,” Dr. Ludwig Büchner, who exclaims rapturously: “For it is love, in the form of _attraction_, which chains stone to stone, earth to earth, star to star, and which holds together the mighty edifice on which we stand, and on the surface of which, like parasites, we carry on our existence, barely noticeable in the infinite universe; and on which we shall continue to exist till that distant period when its component parts will again be resolved into that primal chaos from which it laboriously severed itself millions of years ago, and became a separate planet.” Büchner carries on this anthropopathic process a step farther, by including all the chemical affinities of atoms and molecules as manifestations of love: “Just as man and woman attract one another, so oxygen attracts hydrogen, and, in loving union with it, forms water, that mighty omnipresent element, without which no life nor thought would be possible.” And again: “Potassium and phosphorus entertain such a violent passion for oxygen that even under water they burn—_i.e._ unite themselves with the beloved object.” Goethe’s novel, _Elective Affinities_, which was inspired by a late and hopeless passion of its author, is based on this chemical notion that no physical obstacle can separate two souls that are united by an amorous affinity. But the practical outcome of his theory—that the psychic affinity of two persons suffices to impress the characteristics of both on the offspring of one of them—has nothing to support it in medical experience; while the chemical analogy, with all due deference to Goethe’s reputation as a man of science, is against his view. His notion was that the children of two souls loving one another will inherit their characteristics. But what distinguishes a chemical compound (based on “affinity”) from a mere physical mixture, is precisely the contrary fact that the compound does not in any respect resemble the parental elements! Read what a specialist says in Watts’s _Dictionary of Chemistry_:—