Romantic love goes far beyond race requirements. From this point of view it is as useless as aesthetic emotion itself. And, like aesthetic emotion of… - Arthur Balfour

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Romantic love goes far beyond race requirements. From this point of view it is as useless as aesthetic emotion itself. And, like aesthetic emotion of the profounder sort, it is rarely satisfied with the definite, the limited, and the immediate. It ever reaches out towards an unrealised infinity. It cannot rest content with the prose of mere fact. It sees visions and dreams dreams which to an unsympathetic world seem no better than amiable follies. Is it from sources like these—the illusions of love and the enthusiasms of ignorance—that we propose to supplement the world-outlook provided for us by sober sense and scientific observation ? Yet why not ? Here we have values which by supposition we are reluctant to lose. Neither scientific observation nor sober sense can preserve them. It is surely permissible to ask what will.