"Love is always the same. As Sappho loved, fifty years ago, so did
people love ages before her; so will they love thousands of years
hence."
These words, placed by Professor Ebers in the mouth of one of the
characters in his historic novel, _An Egyptian Princess_, express the
prevalent opinion on this subject, an opinion which I, too, shared
fifteen years ago. Though an ardent champion of the theory of
evolution, I believed that there was one thing in the world to which
modern scientific ideas of gradual development did not apply--that
love was too much part and parcel of human nature to have ever been
different from what it is to-day.