How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

The commonly misused word love in whose name so many crimes are committed by the emotionally immature, the romantically idealistic, and the psychologically infantile, should have its connotations changed. It is usually believed that love belongs to a special category of human emotions and feelings, but, as a matter of fact, it is no more than a special form of the social feeling, the communal consciousness on which all human relations are based. Love is friendship plus the element of heterosexual cooperation. Love equals friendship plus sex. The romantically infantile may be mature physically and go through the motions of sexual intercourse, but it is as improbable that they will experience mature love, psycho¬ logically, as that a road-sweeper will appreciate the beauties of the original Greek text of the Odyssey. No one suffers so much from love as a romantic idealist. Although it is true that some of these romantic idealists have given us our best poetry, a few excellent plays, several stirring novels, and not a little splendid music, they might have lived a more complete love life and still written equally excellent poetry and music. Let no reader believe that one must be a romantic idealist to produce good literature or music. “ Artiness ” is just another form of romantic idealism. It requires no more “ artistic temperament ”, no more romantic idealism to write a symphony than to excise a gall-bladder or build a skyscraper. More has been written about the erotic antics of the emotionally immature than about any other single subject in the world’s literature. Every romantic idealist remains steadfast in the belief of his rightness. It is because he believes that his problem and his tragedy are unique, that his shredded modesty fails to prevent his airing, in some artistic form or other, the soiled linen of his erotic misadventures, that all may see, sympathize, and make excuses for him. It is hardly astonishing that the romantic tradition is so deeply ingrained in the lay mind. The epics of romantic