Love is the strongest of our passions, but also that which we hide the deepest: whereas we exhibit our ambitions, our pride, our greed, our frenzies, openly. Yet when love does take possession of us it sharpens and exalts our dullest, remotest faculties to the height: but it is a moot point whether we are right to believe it exclusively our work, a sentiment evoked by our own means. There is a disturbing possibility that it may be imposed on us regardless of our will. We are not able to extinguish it, nor to fan it: for its potent causes lie deep beyond our sight, and are fleeting. We often see men carried away by a passion for some one who is not in the least their ideal, and see this passion grow greater or smaller without valid cause. Insignificant trifles, and impressions of the apparent slightest sometimes have enormous consequences in our lives. Love is called up or frightened away by the faintest ghost of a memory, by the waking impression of a forgotten dream, by some homely detail. The faculty of love has been transmitted through our generations for thousands of years, unchanged: for the tremor which excited our forbears in their caves was, in its kind, of the intensity of the embrace of the sexes to-day. The truth would seem to be that in love we obey an eternal, general and boundless law. In our conceit we think that no emotion is comparable to the fever of passionate mankind. Yet what can we know of the particular sensations possessing inhuman couples? such as the fervour of a plant in seed, or that colossal attraction which drags planets into the orbits of their suns. Our love-dramas and kisses and excitements are mere examples of the universal spasm.