This perpetual splitting up of love into two species, one of which is
condemned, but admitted to be useful--is it not degrading? There is in
Emerson's theory of the relation between the sexes neither good sense,
nor manly feeling, nor sound psychology. It is founded on none of these
things. It is a pure piece of dogmatism, and reminds us that he was bred
to the priesthood. We are not to imagine that there was in this doctrine
anything peculiar to Emerson. But we are surprised to find the pessimism
inherent in the doctrine overcome Emerson, to whom pessimism is foreign.
Both doctrine and pessimism are a part of the Puritanism of the times.
They show a society in which the intellect had long been used to analyze
the affections, in which the head had become dislocated from the body.
To this disintegration of the simple passion of love may be traced the
lack of maternal tenderness characteristic of the New England nature.
The relation between the blood and the brain was not quite normal in
this civilization, nor in Emerson, who is its most remarkable
representative.

If we take two steps backward from the canvas of this mortal life and
glance at it impartially, we shall see that these matters of love and
marriage pass like a pivot through the lives of almost every individual,
and are, sociologically speaking, the _primum mobile_ of the world. The
books of any philosopher who slurs them or distorts them will hold up a
false mirror to life. If an inhabitant of another planet should visit
the earth, he would receive, on the whole, a truer notion of human life
by attending an Italian opera than he would by reading Emerson's
volumes. He would learn from the Italian opera that there were two
sexes; and this, after all, is probably the fact with which the
education of such a stranger ought to begin.