The history of love is the story of civilization--the account of the most universal, most irresistible, and most expedient activity of men and women. Love between the sexes has been marked by irrationality, dissimulation, anxiety, shame, frustration, disgust, and suffering. Yet the search for fulfillment through love is not only the basis of our earthly happiness but the summit of our biological destiny. The union of man and woman in ecstasy enables us to realize our ultimate purposes--our immortality and the survival of the species. Although the sex drive is related to our most primitive character, love and the literature created around the subject of love is truly the flower of our civilized achievements.