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AMATIVENESS OR CONNUBIAL LOVE.


1. MULTIPLYING THE RACE.--Some means for multiplying our race is
necessary to prevent its extinction by death. Propagation and death
appertain to man's earthly existence. If the Deity had seen fit to
bring every member of the human family into being by a direct act of
creative power, without the agency of parents, the present wise and
benevolent arrangements of husbands and wives, parents and
children, friends and neighbors, would have been superseded, and all
opportunities for exercising parental and connubial love, in which
so much enjoyment is taken, cut off. But the domestic feelings and
relations, as now arranged, must strike every philosophical observer
as inimitably beautiful and perfect--as the offspring of infinite
Wisdom and Goodness combined.

2. AMATIVENESS AND ITS COMBINATIONS constitute their origin,
counterpart, and main medium of manifestation. Its primary function
is connubial love. From it, mainly, spring those feelings which
exist between the sexes as such and result in marriage and offspring.
Combined with the higher sentiments, it gives rise to all those
reciprocal kind feelings and nameless courtesies which each sex
manifests towards the other; refining and elevating both, promoting
gentility and politeness, and greatly increasing social and general
happiness.