Two intense desires rule and govern mankind and control all man's thoughts, his joys and sorrows. They are man's two appetites, hunger for food and craving for love. Curiously enough, while man takes great pains in the education of the young to prepare them for the gratification of hunger, the much tabooed question of sex has been excluded, in our present civilization, from every discussion.

Yet love lies at the foundation of society, it permeates unconsciously the thoughts, aspirations and hopes of mankind. Love is glorified as the source of the most admirable productions of art, of the sublime creations of poetry and music; it is accepted as the mightiest factor in human civilization, as the basis of the family and state. The egoism of passion and the power of love are absorbing all other considerations. Virgil calls love the greatest conqueror: "Love conquers all; let us yield to it." Solomon sings: "Love is strong as death."

The word love is, as a rule, employed very loosely and made to do duty for almost any attraction, whether purely physical or wholly sentimental. Even great philosophers and distinguished writers rarely differentiate between animal passion and human love or between pure sensuality or the physical part of sex, and mental attraction or the psychic phenomenon.

Plato says that love between a man and a woman is mere animal passion, far inferior in nobility and importance to love for boys, to friendship, or to filial, parental or brotherly love. According to Plato, Socrates understood nothing by love except its science. Eros Uranos (heavenly love) incites only youth, the more intelligent sex, to love and this only at a time when their good character and high culture are beyond doubt.

Plutarch says: The passion for women causes at the best the gain of sensual pleasure and the enjoyment of bodily beauty. The Greeks, therefore, applied the celestial kind of love only to friendship and boy-love, never to the love between men and women.

Guiseppe Sergi finds the cause of love in the stimuli of the reproductive organs, and in the senses of touch and temperature.

Ernst Haeckel says: The oldest source of sexual love is found in the chemical attraction which the male and female sexual cells exercise upon each other. This sexual affinity is found even in the lowest stage of plants as in the protophytes, where both cells swim toward each other to unite.

Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz finds in nature only an empire of love, of a love that penetrates all things and leads them to a common end. Gravitation is love dominating nature. Organic life is a continued phenomenon of love. Even in inorganic nature the combination of substances, one with the other, is a trait of love. The appearance of heat and the flash of light that accompany the chemical process are, in a manner, the heralds of lust felt by the substances while uniting. Love of the sexes is a love for things that is ignored and unknown and which is not yet even in existence. The lovers must perish that love may continually rise to new life; the individual dies that the species may live. Love is not the aim but the means, serving life and development.

Love is the joy at another's existence and is stronger than the delight at one's own existence. Love transforms the nuptials into a jubilee even where it is the eve of death. It is hence as strong as death. There exists not only a natural love, but also a spiritual love that is stronger than death. Natural love is not the true love, but only a stepping-stone. True love is no longer blind and necessary, but conscious and free.

Arthur Schopenhauer sees in amorousness an individualized sexual impulse. The growing affection of the two lovers is, in reality, the will for life of the new individual that they could and might beget. The species has a prior, nearer and greater claim upon the individual than the frail individuality itself. The exact destiny of the individuals of the future generation is a much higher and worthier end than the extravagant and transient bubbles of the enamored. The beauty or the ugliness of the mate has nothing to do with the gratification itself, so far as it is a sensual pleasure depending upon a pressing necessity of the individual. Yet beauty is a matter of great consideration, because it represents the will of the species. Every lover finds himself deceived after the accomplished great work. For the delusion has vanished by which the individual was deceived by the species.

In defining human love, Schopenhauer says that every individual exercises a sexual attraction proportionate to the moral and physical perfection it possesses which we attribute to the ideal of the human species. The attraction of two individuals will be the more energetic the more the deficiencies of the one will be counterbalanced by the virtues of the other, and the union of the two promises a child more conforming to the type of the species. Thus the greater the disparity the stronger will be the attraction.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau says: The physical desire is the one which drives one sex to unite with the other. The moral one is that which determines the desire and fixes it upon a single object exclusively, or at least gives a greater degree of energy for this preferred object. Now it is easily seen that the moral element in love is a factitious sentiment born of the usage of society and glorified with assiduity and care by women to establish their dominion.

Franz Joseph Delboeuf looks for the basis of love in the chemical action by which the female sex cells, or ova, exercise an attraction, magnetic in nature, upon the spermatozoa, and vice versa.

Baruch Spinoza defines love as “a pleasure accompanied by the thought of its external cause.”

Alexander Bain finds the cause of love in the charm of dissimilarity.

Paolo Mantegazza defines love as a desire for a particular beauty.

Eduard von Hartmann says: Man is moved by instinct to look for an individual of the other sex to satisfy his physical necessity, imagining that in this way he will enjoy a pleasure he would look for in vain elsewhere. This pleasure, one lover dreams to find in the arms of the other, is only a delusion. Subconsciousness uses these deceiving means to oppose the egotistic reflection and to dispose the individual to sacrifice its own interest to the interest of the future generation.

Herbert Spencer says that the passions that unite the sexes are the most complex and the most powerful of all feelings. Admiration, respect, reverence, love of approbation, emotion of self-esteem, pleasure of possession, love of freedom, love of sympathy, they all unite in the one powerful feeling of love. They represent a variety of pleasurable ideas, not in themselves amatory, but have an organized relation to the amatory feelings. The complex sentiment, termed affection, can, therefore, exist between those of the same sex, but it is greatly exalted in love.

The poet, Philip Sidney declares love to be the most intense desire to enjoy beauty, and where it is reciprocal, the most entire and exact union of hearts. The instinct, on the other hand, is absolutely sensual; it makes the exterior its object and has no other end than sensual pleasure. Every individual, therefore, loves more or less spiritually or sensually in proportion as it approaches to the spiritual or bestial nature.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel says: Love is the complete surrender of the "ego" to another "ego" or to an ideal. Not the sacrifice of the possession or wealth of the ego, but the "I" itself must be given away.

Finally, Pierre Janet declares love to be complete madness in its origin as well as in its development and mechanism.

These philosophic definitions of love all have an interest for the reader, since they help to indicate the difficulty of classifying or of describing the emotion. However for a practical study of love it may be sufficient to show two distinct types of love; i.e. "sensual" love and "sentimental" love. Sensual love is the instinctive form of the emotion such as is found in all nature. Sentimental love, although grounded in the self-same instincts of self-preservation and racial perpetuation, has added to it the mental qualities found only in civilized human beings.

Gustav Teichmuller says: In sensual love, Nature makes use of the individual only incidentally by making the propagation of the species a personal concern of the individual. She gains her end by a mystification. The individuals, by virtue of the innate impulse, consider the external aim of nature as their own personal concern, for which they voluntarily hazard everything, even life itself. Teichmuller further claims that in physical love only the state of irritability and the sensibility of the nerves of the subject are important. The object is only concerned as a soliciting casualty. The natural impulse cannot aim at lust, for lust is not an end, but only expresses the coordinate state of the subject during the actions. Every desire aims at a specific action as its end. The musician does not long for lust but for music. The pleasure connected with it ensues coordinately with the success of the performance.

Of sentimental love, Teichimiller says, the individual loves an ideal that it has itself created in its thoughts and fancy and with which the actual need not harmonize at all. For that reason the "treasure" lies not without but within the lover. The beloved person outside is only the key that understands how to unlock the treasure. The key is not able to create the wealth. Whoever is poor and desolate within, for him no key can unlock the treasure of love.

When a man, for instance, is attached to a woman because of her outward harmonious appearance, i.e., beauty, it means that she pleases his sense of sight. If he is fascinated by her beautiful voice, then his sense of hearing has been appealed to. When he falls in love by the touch of her soft little hand, then his tactile sense has been excited. The meaning of all such attachments is the desire to satisfy the senses. Hence the love is sensual. For any of the five senses may be the starting point of sexual desire.

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Love has been exalted by the ancients in song and story and extolled by priest and philosopher. "To the Spirit, to Heaven, to the Sun, to the Moon, to Earth, to Night, to the Day, and to the Father of all that is and will be, to Eros." Such an invocation was possible only among the ancient civilized nations. They recognized the importance of sexuality in life. They could not see any moral turpitude in actions regarded by them as the design of nature and as the acme of felicity. They discovered in Love the focus of life. For this reason sexuality among the ancients was an object of pure reverence as the fundamental force of life. The divine adoration of sex was the practice of every tribe and nation of prehistoric antiquity. Even the organs of sex were considered beautiful and pleasurable objects, and were admired accordingly. The phallus, or the male sex-organ, and the yoni, the external female genitals, were symbols of the worship of the ancients and were objects of special religious rites.

In the remotest antiquity the worship of the generative principle was the only religion known to men. Sex-worship was not confined to any one race. It was the form of worship common to all primeval nations of the globe. The Hindus, Chaldeans, Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Gauls, Celts, Teutons, Britons and Scandinavians, all shared in phallicism and yonism.

The study of sexual activities and of generation was the basis of ancient Hindu theology. Siva had on his left arm a ring on which was portrayed the sex organs in the act of procreation. The Greek bacchanalia, and the Roman saturnalian mysteries, the free love that prevailed during the festivities in honor of Mylitta, Anaitis, and Aphrodite were still relics of sex-worship. Herodotus' statement that in Babylon women offered themselves, once at least in their lives, in the Temple of Venus, and that only after so doing were they considered free to marry, and his further report that the women on the vessels sailing for Bubastis to the festivals of Isis uncovered themselves in the presence of the men, show that sex-worship was not unknown among Assyrians and Egyptians.

In the historic time sex worship was almost replaced by other forms of religion. Yet there are traces of the cult of the phallus to be found everywhere in ancient profane and sacred history. The temple in which the emperor Heliogabalus was brought up was represented on a bronze coin of his reign; an ionic peristyle with a peek into the Cella; but instead of the statue of a god was a gigantic phallus. Even the Hebrews worshipped in the phallus the principle of the production of life before the adoption of the cult of Jehovah. Records of phallicism can still be found in the Old Testament. Instead of invoking the Deity in taking a solemn oath, Abraham orders his servant to place his hand upon his phallus, because the phallus was still kept in its former high veneration. The slain enemy was, for this reason, deprived of his phallus. David bought Saul's daughter with a trophy of two hundred phalli, taken from the slain Philistines. Circumcision also shows the incorporation of phallic ritual with religion.

In the same light and with the same veneration as the phallus was the yoni worshipped. In the yoni was worshipped the receptacle of life, the divine ark, within the hidden enclosure of which was contained the mystery of life. Its interior was considered the holy of holies. The yoni was for that reason often represented by an ark, which was the holiest of all symbols in the worship of the Ancients. The worship of Osiris took place before an ark; the sanctum sanctorum of Jehovah's temple harbored an ark 

Yonism was the adoration of the vulva, as the organ through which the sexual powers are manifested. It is through the woman that the divine sexual emotions are aroused; it is the sight or thought of her that calls into activity the man's generative nature and powers.

The female principle in nature was hence not considered simply as a passive medium, but was exalted and worshipped as a potent factor in the mystery of creation and reproduction. The earth itself was considered feminine, and all natural orifices have been regarded as typical of the part that characterizes woman. The vulva, therefore, was the sacred symbol of the female principle in nature.

The Ashereh, so often mentioned in the Bible, was nothing but the image of the yoni. It was a symbol of Ashtoreth, or of the union of Baal and Ashtoreth. The Ashereh was made of wood and had in its centre an opening or fissure as the door of life. Above the fissure was a small elevation as an emblematic representation of the clitoris.

The most common forms of the feminine symbol were those made,in representation of the mons veneris. The mountain of Venus was represented by mounds, columns and pyramids. Mounds and hills were considered holy. The graves of Egyptian kings were erected in form of huge pyramids in honor of the feminine creative deity. The yoni worshippers of the Old Testament had the temples of their feminine deity on high hills. The obelisk, pillar, column, altar, mount and cave, all have their origin in the pristine symbolism of yonic worship.

Even the present belief in the lucky horseshoe is connected with the ancient emblems of the female genitals, the yoni. In Ireland the yoni seem to have been the symbol of sex-worship most in use. Even in the arches over the doorways of Christian churches a female figure, with the person fully exposed, was so placed that the external organs of generation at once caught the eye. In olden times, the people were in the habit of making charcoal drawings of the female genitals over the doors of their houses to ward off ill luck. Now, the horseshoe has a great resemblance to the form of the vulva. Hence the drawings over the doors resembled a horseshoe. From this symbol originates the horseshoe's alleged power to ward off evil and to bring luck. Father Dubois found that the lingam that the devout Hindus attach either to their hair or arms or is suspended from the neck is a small amulet representing the organs of both sexes in activity. Even the symbol of the cross has been identified with the earliest records of sex-worship.

Thus with the ancients the passion of sex and the fervor of religion were closely interwoven. Accordingly every ancient temple had within its confines a number of consecrated women whose office it was to submit to the embraces of any man upon the payment of a specified sum. The money was used for religious purposes. To the mind of the ancients no more appropriate nor holy means could be devised for raising money for the maintenance of the temple than a sanctified indulgence in the divine act. It was the most sacred and sublime of all human functions. Hence the temple-courtesan was held in high honor and was considered as sacred as the priest. The Old Testament calls the temple-courtesan "Hakdeshoh," the consecrated, the holy; and it was not in the least degrading to associate with her in the early history of the Hebrews, as the story of Judah and Tamar shows. Later on, Amos complains that the Hebrew maidens received the embraces of men at every altar. Hosea distinguishes between the common prostitute and the temple-courtesan.

The lapse of Israel into the former sex-worship, at the time of these prophets, caused a reaction against any sex-manifestations. This reaction is especially noticeable among the faithful adherents of the religion of Jehovah in the latter days of the second temple. The pious men sought the greatest virtue in chastity and celibacy and looked with contempt upon sexuality. In the beginning only individual persons took to celibacy, as did Elijah and Elisha. Later on these celibates became more numerous and formed different orders, of which the order of the Essenes was the most important, because Christianity took its origin within the folds of this order.

In accordance with its origin, Christianity never looked with favor upon sexuality of any kind. The immaculate virgin is the ideal. Even holy matrimony was only tolerated. "It is good for a man not to touch a woman," writes Paul to the Corinthians. Christianity, therefore, always surrounded with a halo those who vowed chastity. To overcome the passion of sex was always praised as the highest virtue, and asceticism was held in high veneration. Justinus says that total sexual abstinence is a high virtue, and that sexual activity is unnecessary to life. Hieronymus claims that God and the Church requested singleness and only permitted marriage. Christianity entirely overlooked the tremendous strain upon the physical, mental and moral forces such an unnatural life must carry with it. For though complete abstinence is possible and feasible during the period of adolescence, men and women, when mature in years, suffer under such enforced abstinence, and although the final act, or the culmination of the sex-attraction, may be suppressed by the will, yet its emotions are irresistible. The neurotic nun who imagines herself being embraced by a saint thinks that she has subjugated the instinct of sex, but in reality her emotions have a sexual origin.

Actions caused by great sexual excitement may be found in the life of many a saint. St. Augustine, in his confessions, says: "My heart was burning, boiling and foaming with unchastity; it was poured out, it overflowed, it went up in licentiousness." Origen found sexual abstinence too difficult and castrated himself. For that reason he never was canonized. For the spirit should kill the flesh. Parkman's report about Marie de l'Incarnation is highly interesting in this respect. While in a trance she heard a miraculous voice, Christ promising to become her spouse. Months and years passed, when again the voice sounded in her ear, this time with the assurance that the promise was fulfilled, that she was indeed his bride. Now ensued phenomena that are not infrequent among female devotees, when unmarried or married unhappily. In her excited imagination, the divine spouse became a living presence, and her language to him, as recorded by herself, is of intense passion. Her prayer is, "O! my Love! when shall I embrace you? Have you no pity on the torments that I suffer? Alas, alas, my Love, my Beauty, my Life! Instead of healing my pain you take pleasure in it. Come, let me embrace you and die in your sacred arms."

A curious instance of perversion in religio-sexual feeling, bordering on zooerastia, is the case of St. Veronica. According to Friedrich she was so enamored of the divine lion symbolizing St. Mark, that she took a lion whelp to her bed, fondled it, kissed it "and suckled it at her breasts."

Thus the preaching of the Church on the subjugation of the flesh was no great success even among the saints. If the ascetics are not frigid they remain subject to the emotions of sex. Mankind at large is surely ruled by the dictates of the sex-urge in our day no less than at the time of sex-worship.

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Spirit Babies. Reviews the book, Spirit Babies: How to Communicate with the Child You're Meant to Have by Walter Makichen (2005). When do babies become conscious? Is it at conception, at some time in the mother's womb, when they take their first breath? Ancient wisdom from various peoples around the world offers differing answers. The author of this book states that it all starts before conception. And, he says, there is not a one-directional conversation. There is a contract, made by all participants, although sometimes broken. What sets this book apart from many on soul, spirit, out-of-body experiences, near death tales and the like, is that it will likely be understood and acceptable to both those who are devoutly religious and to agnostics. It offers additional insights for those who already believe that human beings come into a body having made a plan for this lifetime. Makichen's perspective is indeed convincing, illustrated with numerous stories of the author's work with clients who have come to him over the years for a variety of reasons. The topics Makichen covers include ones that many pregnancy and birth books leave out – prematurity, miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth – and he seems particularly wise on these subjects yet offers no platitudes nor cookbook remedies. Makichen does offer a wide array of simple yet profound processes for parents-to-be that he calls "meditations." Each of these processes is a combination of inward focusing and quieting down, with visualization and prayer or chants of different kinds, which places the woman or man in a state of calm readiness. He reminds the reader that each prospective parent has a natural connection with their spirit baby. What he offers just enhances that connection, helping the baby to be born healthy.[1]

Emotional architecture of the mind. In recent years, through our research and that of others, we have found unexpected common origins for the mind's highest capacities: intelligence, morality, and sense of self. We have charted critical stages in the mind's early growth, most of which occur even before our first thoughts are registered. At each stage certain critical experiences are necessary. Contrary to traditional notions, however, these experiences are not intellectual, but rather, subtle emotional exchanges. In fact emotional rather than intellectual interaction serves as the mind's primary architect. Our research points towards a new understanding of how the mind develops in the earliest stages of life, one that integrates the child's experience of emotional interactions with the growth of intellectual capacities and, indeed, the very sense of self.[2]

Boot camps for babies. The essence of the advice books is that they treat the baby as an enemy. It is a hostile invader. The mother must arm herself against her baby in order to train it effectively. They inculcate highly anxious parenting. To rock, cuddle a baby to sleep, or slip in an extra feed when no one is looking, makes a woman feel very guilty. If she does not obey the rules to the letter she is failing as a mother. Failure to interact with a baby in an intimate, loving way and offer generous pleasant sensory experiences, such as comforting touch, may have long-term consequences in the development of personality and the ability to form social bonds. There is evidence that the vasopressin and oxytocin neuropeptide systems, important for the establishment of social bonds and the regulation of emotional behavior, are profoundly affected by early social experience. The evidence from history, and from cultures all over the world, is that, by and large, ordinary, spontaneous, loving mothers who are alert to their babies' needs, and who are supported by other women, do better than all the experts put together. Our babies are not our enemies. You don't need an MBA in baby management to be a good mother.[3]

How much do babies see? The visual apparatus in humans is used from birth as an important part of the infant's interaction with the environment. It is a developing sensory modality that at birth is ready to function without prior experience. Eliciting visual behavior in the neonate appears to be positive evidence of central nervous system function. It is difficult to study visual perception in human infants. Direct methods do not work-one cannot ask a neonate what he/she sees since they do not talk. They do, however, initiate limited motor actions and behaviorally and physiologically react to visual stimuli. Indirect assessment methods, such as recording visually evoked potentials (VEP), can become extremely complicated with the data often difficult to interpret. The goal of most of the published literature on infant visual behavior has been to determine infant visual competence as a function of age and/or to describe precisely the corresponding visual behaviors. Gestalt psychology has demonstrated that the individual parts of objects, visual features such as oriented line segments, or incomplete parts of objects, can be organized into coherent wholes. New theories by researchers are moving in a direction that are inspired by and consistent with the tenets of ecological psychology.[4]

Baboons, brains, babies and bonding. On the basis of the extant literature, and inspired by theoretical considerations, we believe that unconscious mimicry serves two important purposes. First, it is an indispensable tool for binding individuals to their social group. Second, and related to that, mimicry may provide a very effective way for the transmission of cultural ways and habits and for the continuous adaptation of individuals to changing social conditions.[5]

The role of familiar names in speech recognition. How do infants find the words in the tangle of speech that confronts them? The present study shows that by as early as 6 months of age, infants can already exploit highly familiar words--including, but not limited to, their own names--to segment and recognize adjoining, previously unfamiliar words from fluent speech. The head-turn preference procedure was used to familiarize babies with short passages in which a novel word was preceded by a familiar or a novel name. At test, babies recognized the word that followed the familiar name, but not the word that followed the novel name. This is the youngest age at which infants have been shown capable of segmenting fluent speech. Young infants have a powerful aid available to them for cracking the speech code. Their emerging familiarity with particular words, such as their own and other people's names, can provide initial anchors in the speech stream.[6]

Intimate contact with your baby. Reviews the book The Vital Touch: How Intimate Contact With Your Baby Leads to Happier, Healthier Development by Sharon Heller (1997). This book is the best, most comprehensive guide to good, early parenting on the market today. This book synthesizes all of the current research on attachment parenting issues, such as baby-wearing, breastfeeding and the family bed. These issues and the corresponding research are vitally important to our babies, who aren't allowed a second chance at childhood. The first third of the book heralds "the power of touch" as "the first connection" and "the rock of love." Touch, or lack of it, profoundly affects birthing practices, newborn stability, the quality of mother-infant attachment, and how much developmentally important sensory stimulation our babies receive. Part two discusses the cultural habits that put us out of touch with our infants: all the containers in which we nest our babies; our prudish sense of our body, which leads to a withholding of affection, unsuccessful nursing, and a distortion of normal sexual development; our lack of support for the nursing mother; and our taboos against co-sleeping. Part three discusses how modern parents can compromise, between nature's call for closeness to their babies and our culture's "plea for distance."[7]

Mothers, Babies and their body language. This book describes, through an eighteen-month research and observational study from pregnancy to the earliest months of life, the complex interactions between mother and baby. Learning to interpret babies' language is a useful basis for getting in touch with his or her needs. This capacity to understand the baby's sign language and needs enhances our communication skills and attunement in other relationships. This book is intended for parents to read through while thinking back to their experience. It is a guide for discovering the space of their body self image, a space to sense, to feel, and to think about, in order to be able to have their needs met. I believe that it is only by acknowledging their own needs that parents can meet the baby's needs and become attuned to her or him.[8]

Mothers’ emotional investment in their babies. In sufficiently mature women, pregnancy and the birth of a baby bring about an adaptive transient increased flexibility in otherwise stable psychic structures, with, specifically, an increased flexibility in ego functions engendered by the anticipatory need to be ready to accommodate to the coming infant, an organism only vaguely known prior to its birth. Once born, the increasingly experienced infant compels accommodations in the mother to which many a mother is surprisingly fluidly responsive. The infant too accommodates to the exigencies imposed by the mother's reality-based needs, expectations, and wishes. The reciprocity and the accommodations both parties make to this childcaring/mothering process require of both much give and take and evolving compromise.[9]

A century of denial in medicine. During the 20th century when medicine rose to dominate childbirth in the United States, it brought with it a denial of infant pain based on ancient prejudices and scientific dogmas no longer supportable. The painful collision of babies with doctors is seen in neonatal intensive care, infant surgery without anesthesia, painful obstetric routines, and genital mutilation of newborn males. This presentation includes a historical review of experiments on infant reactions to pain, the persistence of medical practices causing pain, and speculation about the reasons for professional indifference.[10]

Infant rearing practices in Egypt. Discusses the choice of close contact and low contact child rearing styles among Egyptian mothers, and considers the effects of mothering style on infant personality and behavior. Uneducated mothers living in extended families and educated mothers living in nuclear families in the same village were observed. While uneducated mothers chose the close contact style, educated mothers chose the low contact style. It is suggested that close contact style is selected by mothers who desire an obedient child with strong family attachments, while a low contact style is selected by mothers who desire a more independent, achievement oriented child.[11]