The whole edifice of life topples down, for as the idealist Schiller long since said, it is entirely built up on hunger and on love.

To look upon love as in any special sense a delusion is merely to fall into the trap of a shallow cynicism.

Love is only a delusion in so far as the whole of life is a delusion, and if we accept the fact of life it is unphilosophical to refuse to accept the fact of love.
It is unnecessary here to magnify the functions of love in the world; it is sufficient to investigate its workings in its own proper sphere.

It may, however, be worth while to quote a few expressions of thinkers, belonging to various schools, who have pointed out what seemed to them the far-ranging significance of the sexual emotions for the moral life.

"The passions are the heavenly fire which gives life to the moral world," wrote Helvetius long since in _De l'Esprit_.