[1] Stanley Hall says that after sex gratification there is "taedium vitae," weariness of life. In unsanctioned sex gratification this is extreme and takes on either bitter self-reproach or else a hate of the partner. But this is due to the inner conflict rather than the sex act. Is all tender feeling, all love, sexual in its essential nature? The Freudians say yes to this, or what amounts to yes. All mother love arises from the sex sphere, and it cannot be denied that in the passionate desire to fondle, to kiss and even to bite there is something very like the excitement of sex. But there is something very different in the wish for self-sacrifice, the pity for the helpless state, the love of the littleness. Women, when they love men, often add maternal feeling to it, but mainly they love their strength, size and vigor; and there tenderness and passion differ. Certainly there seems little of the sexual in the love of a father for his baby,[1] though the Freudians do not hesitate in their use of the term homosexual. Apparently all children have incestuous desire for their parents, if we are to trust Freud. Without entering into detailed reasoning, I disavow any truly sexual element in tender feeling. It is part of the reception we give to objects having a favorable relation to ourselves. Indeed, we give it to our houses, our dogs, our cattle; our pipes are hallowed by friendly association, and so with our books, our clothes and our homes. We extend it in deep, full measure to the very rocks and rills of our native land or to some place where we spent happy or tender days. Tender feeling, love, is inclusive of much of the sex emotion, and the characteristic mistake of the Freudians of identifying somewhat similar things has here been made. [1] It's a very difficult world to live in, if we are to trust the Freudians. If your boy child loves his mother, that's heterosexual; if he loves his father, that's homosexual; and the love of a girl child for her parents simply reverses the above formula. If your wife says of the baby boy, "How I love him! He looks just like my father," be careful; that's a daughter-father complex of a dangerous kind and means the most unhallowed things, and may cause her to have a nervous breakdown some day!