The parental, and filial affections seem to be as ardent, their sensibility and attachment, as active and faithful, as those observed to be in human nature.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?
When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.
Romantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby.
If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
While my mother lived, I always felt to a certain degree as if I had somebody who was my superior and who exercised a mysterious protection over me. I belonged to something - I hung to something - there is nothing that has so much reverence and religion in it as affection to parents.
Isn't it strange that its easier to be gentle with the feelings of people we care less about than those of our children, whom we love so much?
The most special relationships, in my experience, are based on a combination of trust and mutual respect.
And not only my own brothers and sisters agreed so but my brothers and sisters in law; and their children, although but young, had the like agreeable natures and affectionate dispositions.
Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.