In the meaning of sexual affection there is only one kind of love, the natural attraction of one sex for them other; and the only difference in the highest for of this attraction and the lowest is this, that in the nobler nature a vast number of moral, aesthetic, and ethical sentiments are related to the passion, and that in lower natures those sentiments are absent.

Therefore we may say that even in the highest forms of the sentiment there is only one dominant feeling, complex though it be, the desire for possession.

What follows the possession we may call love if we please; but it might better be called perfect friendship and sympathy.
It is altogether a different thing.

The love that is the theme of poets in all countries is really love, not the friendship that grows out of it.
I suppose you know that the etymological meaning of "passion" is "a state of suffering." In regard to love, the word has particular significance to the Western mind, for it refers to the time of struggle and doubt and longing before the object is attained.

Now how much of this passion is a legitimate subject of literary art?
The difficulty may, I think, be met by remembering the extraordinary character of the mental phenomena which manifest themselves in the time of passion.