Among peoples sufficiently advanced to have dogmas, religion has
always proved a strong barrier in the way of the free bestowal of
affection. Not only have Mohammedans and Christians hated and shunned
each other, but the different Christian sects for a long time detested
and tabooed one another as cordially as they did the heathen and the
Jews. Tertullian denounced the marriage of a Christian with a heathen
as fornication, and Westermarck cites Jacobs's remark that
"the folk-lore of Europe regarded the Jews as something
infra-human, and it would require an almost impossible
amount of large toleration for a Christian maiden of
the Middle Ages to regard union with a Jew as anything
other than unnatural."
There are various minor obstacles that might be dwelt on, but enough
has been said to make it clear why romantic love was the last of the
sentiments to be developed.
Having considered the divers ingredients and different kinds of love
and distinguished romantic love from sensual passion and
sentimentality, as well as from conjugal affection, we are now in a
position to examine intelligently and in some detail a number of races
in all parts of the world, by way of further corroborating and
emphasizing the conclusions reached.