“The discipline or category of the philosophy of love has been precisely defined, its diverse traditions fully documented and compared, and its distinctive rhetorical medium—the dialogue—analyzed in detail. Another of love’s disciplines, the ‘science of love’, has not fared as well: the nature of this discipline has seldom, if ever, been defined, few of its particular traditions have been documented, let alone compared, and its distinctive rhetorical medium—the love-treatise—has never been fully analyzed. Two reasons for this neglect suggest themselves. First, love-science has often been perceived as being mere frivolous, eccentric, reductive, or immoral discipline. It was in these terms that, for example, two of the finest nineteenth century contributions to the discipline, Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften [Elective Affinities] and Stendhal’s De l’Amour [On Love], were critically received. Second, the discourse of love-science in general and of the love-treatise in particular has often been considered stylistically impure.”