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I have conceived love to be the most powerful and at the same time the least studied of human affections. Surrounded by a triple forest of prejudice, mystery and hypocrisy, civilized men know it too often only through stealth and shame. Poets, artists, philosophers, legislators, snatch a morsel now and then from the flesh of the great god, and hurry away to conceal it as a precious booty of forbidden fruit. To study love as a phenomenon of life, as a gigantic power which moulds itself in a thousand ways among various races and in various epochs, and as an element of health for the individual and for the generations, has appealed to me as a great and worthy undertaking.

The Author.

THE BOOK OF LOVE

" … this precious jewel

Upon the which is every virtue founded."

—Dante.