“The lips,” says Sir Charles Bell, “are of all the features the most
susceptible of action, and the most direct index of the feelings.” No
wonder that Cupid selected them as his private seal, without which no
passion can be stamped as genuine.
For the expression of all other emotions, by words or signs, one pair of
lips suffices. Love alone requires for its expression two pairs of lips.
Could anything more eloquently demonstrate the superiority of the
romantic passion over all others?
Steele said of kissing that “Nature was its author, and it began with
the first courtship.” Steele evidently evolved this theory out of his
“inner consciousness,” for the facts do not agree with it. The art of
Kissing has, like Love itself, been gradually developed in connection
with the higher stages of culture. Traces of it are found among animals
and savages; the ancients often misunderstood its purport and object, as
did our mediæval ancestors; and it is only in recent times that Kissing
has tended to become what it should be—the special and exclusive
language of romantic and conjugal love.