ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the naturalistic theory of love. The primary role assigned to maternal love seems to be corroborated by the fact, particularly stressed by Johann Jakob Bachofen, and confirmed in many societies, that all such societies have passed through a phase of law, custom and culture to which Bachofen gives the name of 'matriarchy'. The 'naturalistic' theory has acquired three mutually-supporting components: the early British theories of fellow-feeling; the phylogenetic theories of Darwin and Spencer; the historico-philosophical theory. The keystone of this 'naturalistic' theory, which first gave it a completely self-contained unity, came by addition of a still very recent ontogenetic theory of the varieties of love. All cultivation of social habits, knowledge, art and civilization depends on the 'sublimation' of repressed libido, insofar as it is the mental flywheel which propels all these activities.
