As long as love was supposed to be an uncompounded emotion and no
distinction was made between appetite and sentiment--that is between
the selfish desire of eroticism and the self-sacrificing ardor of
altruistic affection--it was natural enough that the opinion should
have prevailed that love has been always and everywhere the same,
inasmuch as several of the traits which characterize the modern
passion--stubborn preference for an individual, a desire for exclusive
possession, jealousy toward rivals, coy resistance and the resulting
mixed moods of doubt and hope--were apparently in existence in earlier
and lower stages of human development. We have now seen, however, that
these indications are deceptive, for the reason that lust as well as
love can be fastidious in choice, insistent on a monopoly, and jealous
of rivals; that coyness may spring from purely mercenary motives, and
that the mixed moods of hope and despair may disquiet or delight men
and women who know love only as a carnal appetite. We now take up our
sixth ingredient--Hyperbole--which has done more than any other to
confuse the minds of scholars as regards the antiquity of romantic
love, for the reason that it presents the passion of the ancients in
its most poetic and romantic aspects.