A man may deceive himself, or be deceived by the object of his attraction, concerning the qualities that she possesses or fails to possess.

In first love, occurring in youth, such deception is perhaps entirely normal, and in certain suggestible and inflammable types of people it is peculiarly apt to occur.

This kind of deception, although far more frequent and conspicuous in matters of love--and more serious because of the tightness of the marriage bond--is liable to occur in any relation of life.

For most people, however, and those not the least sane or the least wise, the memory of the exaltation of love, even when the period of that exaltation is over, still remains as, at the least, the memory of one of the most real and essential facts of life.[66] Some writers seem to confuse the liability in matters of love to deception or disappointment with the larger question of a metaphysical illusion in Schopenhauer's sense.

To some extent this confusion perhaps exists in the discussion of love by Renouvier and Prat in _La Nouvelle Monadologie_ (pp.