Let us begin by distinguishing between what is moral and what is
physical in the passion called love. The physical part of it is that
general desire which prompts the sexes to unite with each other; the
moral part is that which determines that desire, and fixes it upon a
particular object to the exclusion of all others, or at least gives it
a greater degree of energy for this preferred object. Now it is easy
to perceive that the moral part of love is a factitious sentiment,
engendered by society, and cried up by the women with great care and
address in order to establish their empire, and secure command to that
sex which ought to obey. This sentiment, being founded on certain
notions of beauty and merit which a savage is not capable of having,
and upon comparisons which he is not capable of making, can scarcely
exist in him: for as his mind was never in a condition to form
abstract ideas of regularity and proportion, neither is his heart
susceptible of sentiments of admiration and love, which, even without
our perceiving it, are produced by our application of these ideas; he
listens solely to the dispositions implanted in him by nature, and not
to taste which he never was in a way of acquiring; and every woman
answers his purpose.

Confined entirely to what is physical in love, and happy enough not to
know these preferences which sharpen the appetite for it, at the same
time that they increase the difficulty of satisfying such appetite,
men, in a state of nature, must be subject to fewer and less violent
fits of that passion, and of course there must be fewer and less
violent disputes among them in consequence of it. The imagination
which causes so many ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of
savages, who peaceably wait for the impulses of nature, yield to these
impulses without choice and with more pleasure than fury; and whose