In normal love, it is especially by association of ideas in calling to mind the image of the person loved that the fetich plays the part of an exciting agent. It often, however, becomes itself the more special object of the sexual appetite, while the anti-fetich produces the opposite effect. But, in degenerates (vide Chap. VIII) it is sometimes exclusively to the fetich itself that an irresistible sexual appetite is addressed, the irradiation of which becomes a ridiculous caricature of love. We thus see that normal love is based on an extremely complex synthesis, on a symphony of harmonious sensations, sentiments and conceptions, combined in all kinds of tones and shades. The pathological aberrations of which we shall speak, demonstrate this by forcing one tone or another to the more or less marked exclusion of the rest. PSYCHOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF LOVE TO RELIGION Love and eroticism play a great part in religion, and many derivatives of religious sentiment are intimately associated with the sexual appetite. As Krafft-Ebing says, _religious ecstasy_ is closely related to _amorous ecstasy_, and very often appears in the guise of consolation and compensation for an unhappy or disappointed love, or even in the absence of sexual love. In the insane, religion and eroticism are combined in a very characteristic manner. Among a number of peoples certain cruel religious customs are the result of transformed erotic conceptions. As in religion, there is something mystical in love; the ineffable dream of eternal ecstasy. This is why the two kinds of mystic and erotic exaltation become blended in religions. Krafft-Ebing attributes the cruelty found in many religions to _sadism_ (sexual lust excited by the sufferings of others). (Vide Chap. VIII.) "The relationship so often established between religion, lust and cruelty can be reduced almost to the following formula: at the acme of their development, the religious and sexual passions show a concordance in quality and in quantity of excitation, and may consequently replace each other, under certain circumstances. Under special pathological influences, both may be transformed into cruelty."--(Krafft-Ebing.) We shall return to this subject in Chapters VIII and XII. FOOTNOTES: [3] This tendency of man has been analyzed with a very refined psychology by _Labiche_, in one of his most celebrated comedies: "_Le voyage de M. Perichon._" CHAPTER VI ETHNOLOGY AND HISTORY OF SEXUAL LIFE IN MAN AND IN MARRIAGE