But it is needless to continue this _reductio ad absurdum_ of pantheistic or panerotic vagaries. The method of the writers on Love here quoted—Empedokles, Leo, Burton, Büchner—has been to identify Love with cosmic force simply because they possess in common the one quality of attraction, by virtue of which the large earth hugs a small stone, and a large man a small maiden. Modern scientific psychology objects to this (_i.e._ not the hugging, but the method), because it does not in the least aid us in understanding the nature of Love; and because it is as irrational to call attraction Love as it would be to call a brick a house, a leaf a tree, or a green daub a rainbow. For Love embraces every colour in the spectrum of human emotion. Having failed to find a satisfactory solution of the mystery of Love in the inorganic world, let us now see if the vegetable kingdom offers no better analogies in its sexual phenomena. FLOWER LOVE AND BEAUTY Until a few decades ago, it was the universal belief that flowers had been specially created for man’s exclusive delight. This was such an easy way, you know, to overcome the difficulty of explaining the immense variety of forms and colours in the floral world; and it was, above all, so flattering to man’s egregious vanity. But one fine morning in May a German naturalist, Conrad Sprengel, published a remarkable book in which he pointed out that flowers owe their peculiar shape, colour, and fragrance to the visits of insects. Not that the insects visit the flowers in order to shape and paint and perfume them. On the contrary, they visit them for the unæsthetic purpose of eating their pollen and their honey; while the flowers’ scent and colour exist solely for the purpose of indicating to winged insects at a distance where they can find a savoury lunch.