The fact that the first choice of loved object other than the parent is associatively connected with the original object of love, is shown not only in the nature of the objects selected but also to some extent in the attitude of the child or adolescent towards the objects of his love. In the loves of the young towards persons of the opposite sex, there is usually a strong element of reverence and admiration, a deep feeling of gratitude for any favours that may be received, combined with a sense of the lover's own unworthiness and inferiority; a total attitude very similar to that not unreasonably adopted towards their own parents, to whom they are indebted for the very necessities of life throughout their childhood and to whom they naturally feel themselves to be inferior in knowledge, experience and moral worth. Thus in the early loves of the young boy, the objects of his affection are apt to be regarded as queen-like or semi-divine beings--models of beauty, virtue and wisdom--to whose perfections they themselves (the lovers) can never hope to attain and of whom they must remain for ever to some extent unworthy. Similar elements constitute the most important factors in that tendency to _Schwärmerei_ which so frequently distinguishes the early attachments of young girls[20]. The adoption of this attitude by the young in their early loves is of course often facilitated by the fact that the objects selected are older than the youthful lovers themselves. But this is not a necessary condition. Something of this attitude may indeed persist throughout the love life of the individual, since the exaggeration of the desirable qualities of the loved person, which forms a normal feature of sexual (and probably of all) love, easily brings with it a sense of the relative inferiority of the lover's own self. In the loves of a more mature age, however, this relatively childlike attitude towards the object of love is usually replaced by one in which the lover plays a more active, vigorous and self-reliant part, such as is suitable to a person of fully developed capacity and experience. [Sidenote: Emancipation from infantile love objects]