loving which mean so much in human life; the love of man for man and
woman for woman, as well as mutual love of man and woman. A force like
this, once planted, especially in the higher types of life, does not
spend all its energies in its main trunk. It sends out branches in
many directions, bearing by-products which are rich in value for all
of life.

Many of our richest relationships, our best impulses, and our most
firmly fixed social habits spring from the family instincts of
reproduction and parental care. The social life of our young people,
so well calculated to bring young men and women together; all the
beauty of family life and, as we shall later see, all the broader
benevolent activities for society in general, are energized by the
same love-instincts which form so large a part of human nature.


LEARNING TO LOVE

=A Four-Grade School.= It is impossible to watch the growth of the
love-life of a human being, to trace its development from babyhood up
to its culmination in mating and parenthood, without a sense of wonder
at the steady purpose behind it all. We used to believe that the love
for the young girl that suddenly blooms forth in the callow youth was
an entirely new affair, something suddenly planted in him as he
developed into manhood; but now we know, thanks to the uncovering of
human nature by the painstaking investigations of the psycho-analytic
school of psychologists, that the seeds of the love-life are planted,
not in puberty, but with the beginning of life itself. Looked at in
one way, all infancy and childhood are a preparation, a training of
the love-instinct which is to be ready at the proper time to find its