One result of this tendency is that we have no simple, precise, natural word for the love of the sexes, and are compelled to fall back on the general term, which is so extensive in its range that in English and French and most of the other leading languages of Europe, it is equally correct to "love" God or to "love" eating.
Love, in the sexual sense, is, summarily considered, a synthesis of lust (in the primitive and uncolored sense of sexual emotion) and friendship.
It is incorrect to apply the term "love" in the sexual sense to elementary and uncomplicated sexual desire; it is equally incorrect to apply it to any variety or combination of varieties of friendship.

There can be no sexual love without lust; but, on the other hand, until the currents of lust in the organism have been so irradiated as to affect other parts of the psychic organism--at the least the affections and the social feelings--it is not yet sexual love.

Lust, the specific sexual impulse, is indeed the primary and essential element in this synthesis, for it alone is adequate to the end of reproduction, not only in animals but in men.
But it is not until lust is expanded and irradiated that it develops into the exquisite and enthralling flower of love.

We may call to mind what happens among plants: on the one hand we have the lower organisms in which sex is carried on summarily and cryptogamically, never shedding any shower of gorgeous blossoms on the world, and on the other hand the higher plants among whom sex has become phanersgamous and expanded enormously into form and color and fragrance.
While "lust" is, of course, known all over the world, and there are everywhere words to designate it, "love" is not universally known, and in many languages there are no words for "love." The failures to find love are often remarkable and unexpected.

We may find it where we least expect it.