"I resigned myself to you, not as to a paramour, but as to a legitimate husband, and I have preserved my chast.i.ty with you, resisting your urgent solicitations because I always had in mind the lawful marriage to which we pledged ourselves,"
she uses the language of a shrewd hetaira, not of an innocent girl; nor could the author have made her say the following had his subject been romantic love: [Greek: _Hormaen gar, hos oistha, kratousaes epithumias machae men ant.i.tupos epipeinei, logos d" eikon kai pros to boulaema syntrechon taen protaen kai zeousan phoran esteile kai to katoxu taes orezeos to haedei taes epaggelias kateunase.]
The story of Heliodorus is full of such coa.r.s.e remarks, and his idea of love is plainly enough revealed when he moralizes that "a lover inclines to drink and one who is drunk is inclined to love."
It is not only on account of this coa.r.s.eness that the story of Theagenes and Chariclea fails to come up to the standard of romantic love. When Arsace (VIII., 9) imprisons the lovers together, with the idea that the sight of their chains will increase the sufferings of each, we have an intimation of crude sympathy; but apart from that the symptoms of love referred to in the course of the romance are the same that I have previously enumerated, as peculiar to Alexandrian literature. The maxims, "dread the revenge that follows neglected love;" "love soon finds its end in satiety;" and "the greatest happiness is to be free from love," take us back to the oldest Greek times. Peculiarly Greek, too, is the scene in which the women, unable to restrain their feelings, fling fruits and flowers at a young man because he is so beautiful; although on the same page we are surprised by the admission that woman"s beauty is even more alluring than man"s, which is not a Greek sentiment.
In this last respect, as in some others, the romance of Heliodorus differs favorably from that of Achilles Tatius, which relates the adventures of Leucippe and c.l.i.tophon; but I need not dwell on this amazingly obscene and licentious narrative, as its author"s whole philosophy of love, like that of Heliodorus, is summed up in this pa.s.sage:
"As the wine produced its effect I cast lawless glances at Leucippe: for Love and Bacchus are violent G.o.ds, they invade the soul and so inflame it that they forget modesty, and while one kindles the flame the other supplies the fuel; for wine is the food of love."
Nor need I dwell on the stories of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, or the epic _Dionysiaca_ of Nonnus, as they yield us no new points of view. The romance of Longus, however, calls for some remarks, as it is the best known of the Greek novels and has often been p.r.o.nounced a story of refined love worthy of a modern writer.
DAPHNIS AND CHLOE
Goethe found in _Daphnis and Chloe_ "a delicacy of feeling which cannot be excelled." Professor Murray backs up the morals of Longus: "It needs an unintelligent reader or a morbid translator," he writes (403), "to find harm in the _History of Daphnis and Chloe_;" and an editorial writer in the New York _Mail and Express_ accused me, as before intimated, of unexampled ignorance for not knowing that _Daphnis and Chloe_ is "as sweet and beautiful a love-story as ever skipped in prose." This, indeed, is the prevalent opinion. How it ever arose is a mystery to me. Fiction has always been the sphere of the most unrestrained license, yet Dunlop wrote in his _History of Fiction_ that there are in this story "particular pa.s.sages so extremely reprehensible that I know nothing like them in almost any work whatever." In collecting the material for the present volume I have been obliged to examine thousands of books referring to the relations of men and women, but I declare that of all the books I have seen only the Hindoo _K[=a]masutr[=a]m_, the literal version of the _Arabian Nights_, and the American Indian stories collected by Dr.
Boas, can compare with this "sweet and beautiful" romance of Longus in downright obscenity or deliberate laciviousness. I have been able, without going beyond the lat.i.tude permissible to anthropologists, to give a fairly accurate idea of the love-affairs of savages and barbarians; but I find it impossible, after several trials, to sum up the story of Daphnis and Chloe without going beyond the limits of propriety. Among all the deliberate pictures of _moral depravity_ painted by Greek and Roman authors not one is so objectionable as this "idyllic" picture of the _innocent_ shepherd boy and girl. Pastoral love is coa.r.s.e enough, in all truth: but this story is infinitely more immoral than, for instance, the frank and natural sensualism of the twenty-seventh Idyl of Theocritus. Professor Anthon (755) described the story of _Daphnis and Chloe_ as
"the romance, _par excellence_, of physical love. It is a history of the senses rather than of the mind, a picture of the development of the instincts rather than of the sentiments.... _Paul and Virginia_ is nothing more than _Daphnis and Chloe_ delineated by a refined and cultivated mind, and spiritualized and purified by the influence of Christianity."
This is true; but Anthon erred decidedly in saying that in the Greek story "vice is advocated by no sophistry." On the contrary, what makes this romance so peculiarly objectionable is that it is a master work of that kind of fiction which makes vice alluring under the sophistical veil of innocence. Longus knew very well that nothing is so tempting to libertines as purity and ignorant innocence; hence he made purity and ignorant innocence the pivot of his prurient story.
Professor Rohde (516) has rudely torn the veil from his sly sophistry:
"The way in which Longus excites the sensual desires of the lovers by means of licentious experiments going always only to the verge of gratification, betrays an abominably hypocritical _raffinement_[331] which reveals in the most disagreeable manner that the navete of this idyllist is a premeditated artifice and he himself nothing but a sophist. It is difficult to understand how anyone could have ever been deceived so far as to overlook the sophistical character of this pastoral romance of Longus, or could have discovered genuine navete in this most artificial of all rhetorical productions. No attentive reader who has some acquaintance with the ways of the Sophistic writers will have any difficulty in apprehending the true inwardness of the story... As this sophist, in those offensively licentious love-scenes, suddenly shows the cloven foot under the cloak of innocence, so, on the other hand, his eager desire to appear as simple and childlike as possible often enough makes him cold, finical, trifling, or utterly silly in his affectation."[332]
HERO AND LEANDER
Our survey of Greek erotic literature may be brought to a close with two famous stories which are closely allied to the Greek romances, although one of them--_Hero and Leander_--was written in verse, and the other--_Cupid and Psyche_--in Latin prose. While Apuleius was an African and wrote his story in Latin, he evidently derived it from a Greek source.[333] He lived in the second century of our era, and Musaeus, the author of _Hero and Leander_, in the fifth. It is more than probable that Musaeus did not invent the story, but found it as a local legend and simply adorned it with his pen.
On the sh.o.r.es of the h.e.l.lespont, near the narrowest part of the strait, lay the cities of Sestos and Abydos. It was at Sestos that Xerxes undertook to cross with his vast armies, while Abydos claimed to be the true burial place of Osiris; yet these circ.u.mstance were considered insignificant in comparison with the fact that it was from Abydos to Sestos and back that Leander was fabled to have swum on his nightly visits to his beloved Hero; for the coins of both the cities were adorned with the solitary tower in which Hero was supposed to live at the time. Why she lived there is not stated by any of the poets who elaborated the legend, but it may be surmised that she did so in order to give them a chance to invent a romantic story. To the present day the Turks point out what they claim to be her tower, and it is well-known that in 1810, Lord Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead, in order to test the possibility of Leander"s feat, swam from Europe to Asia at this place; it took them an hour and five and an hour and ten minutes respectively, and on account of the strong current the distance actually traversed was estimated at more than four miles, while in a straight line it was only a mile from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.
I have already pointed out (202, 204) that the action of Leander in swimming across this strait for the sake of enjoying the favor of Hero, and her suicide when she finds him dead on the rocks, have nothing so do with the altruistic self-sacrifice that indicates _soul_-love. Here I merely wish to remark that apart from that there is not a line or word in the whole poem to prove that this story "completely upsets" my theory, as one critic wrote. The story is not merely frivolous and cold, as W. von Humboldt called it; it is as unmitigatedly sensual as _Daphnis and Chloe_, though less offensively so because it does not add the vice of hypocrisy to its immodesty.
From beginning to end there is but one thought in Leanders mind, as there is in Hero"s, whose words and actions are even more indelicate than those of Leander; they are the words and actions of a priestess of Venus true to her function--a girl to whom the higher feminine virtues, which alone can inspire romantic love, are unknown. On the impulse of the moment, in response to coa.r.s.e flattery, she makes an a.s.signation in a lonely tower with a perfect stranger, regardless of her parents, her honor, her future. Details need not be cited, as the poem is accessible to everybody. It is a romantic story, in Ovid"s version even more so than in that of Musaeus; but of romantic love--soul-love--there is no trace in either version. There are touches of sentimentality in Ovid, but not of sentiment; a distinction on which I should have dwelt in my first book (91).
CUPID AND PSYCHE
To a student of comparative literature the story of Cupid and Psyche[334] is one of those tales which are current in many countries (and of which _Lohengrin_ is a familiar instance), that were originally intended as object lessons to enforce the moral that women must not be too inquisitive regarding their lovers or husbands, who may seem monsters, but in reality are G.o.ds and should be accepted as such. If most persons, nevertheless, fancy that _Cupid and Psyche_ is a story of "modern" romantic love, that is presumably due to the fact that most persons have never read it. It is not too much to say that had Apuleius really known such a thing as modern romantic love--or conjugal affection either--it would have required great ingenuity on his part to invent a plot from which those qualities are so rigorously excluded. Romantic love means pre-matrimonial infatuation, based not only on physical charms but on soul-beauty. The time when alone it flourishes with its mental purity, its minute sympathies, its gallant attentions and sacrifices, its hyperbolic adorations, and mixed moods of agonies and ecstasies, is during the period of courtship. Now from the story of Cupid and Psyche this period is absolutely eliminated.
Venus is jealous because divine honors are paid to the Princess Psyche on account of her beauty; so she sends her son Cupid to punish Psyche by making her fall in love violently (_amore flagrantissimo_) with the lowest, poorest, and most abject man on earth. Just at that time Psyche has been exposed by the king on a mountain top in obedience to an obscure oracle. Cupid sees her there, and, disobeying his mother"s orders, has her brought while asleep, by his servant Zephir, to a beautiful palace, where all the luxuries of life are provided for her by unseen hands; and at night, after she has retired, an unknown lover visits her, disappearing again before dawn (_jamque aderat ign.o.bilis maritus et torem inscenderat et uxorem sibi Psychen fecerat et ante lucis exortum propere discesserat_).
Now follow some months in which Psyche is neither maiden nor wife.
Even if they had been properly married there would have been no opportunity for the development or manifestation of supersensual conjugal attachment, for all this time Psyche is never allowed even to see her lover; and when an opportunity arises for her to show her devotion to him she fails utterly to rise to the occasion. One night he informs her that her two sisters, who are unhappily married, are trying to find her, and he warns her seriously not to heed them in any way, should they succeed in their efforts. She promises, but spends the whole of the next day weeping and wailing because she is locked up in a beautiful prison, unable to see her sisters--very unlike a loving modern girl on her honeymoon, whose one desire is to be alone with her beloved, giving him a monopoly of her affection and enjoying a monopoly of his, with no distractions or jealousies to mar their happiness. Cupid chides her for being sad and dissatisfied even amid his caresses and he again warns her against her scheming sisters; whereat she goes so far as to threaten to kill herself unless he allows her to receive her sisters. He consents at last, after making her promise not to let them persuade her to try to find out anything about his personal appearance, lest such forbidden curiosity make her lose him forever. Nevertheless, when, on their second visit, the sisters, filled with envy, try to persuade her that her unseen lover is a monster who intends to eat her after she has grown fat, and that to save herself she must cut off his head while he is asleep, she resolves to follow their advice. But when she enters the room at night, with a knife in one hand and a lamp in the other, and sees the beautiful G.o.d Cupid in her bed, she is so agitated that a drop of hot oil falls from her lamp on his face and wakes him; whereupon, after reproaching her, he rises on his wings and forsakes her.
Overcome with grief, Psyche tries to end her life by jumping into a river, but Zephir saves her. Then she takes revenge on her sisters by calling on them separately and telling each one that Cupid had deserted her because he had seen her with lamp and knife, and that he was now going to marry one of them. The sisters hasten one after the other to the rock, but Zephir fails to catch them, and they are dashed to pieces. Venus meanwhile had discovered the escapade of her boy and locked him up till his wound from the hot oil was healed. Her anger now vents itself on Psyche. She sets her several impossible tasks, but Psyche, with supernatural aid, accomplishes all of them safely. At last Cupid manages to escape through a window. He finds Psyche lying on the road like a corpse, wakes her and Mercury brings her to heaven, where at last she is properly married to Cupid--_sic rite Psyche convenit in manum Cupidinis et nascitur illis maturo partu filia, quam Voluptatem nominamus_.
Such is the much-vaunted "love-story" of Cupid and Psyche!
Commentators have found all sorts of fanciful and absurd allegories in this legend. Its real significance I have already pointed out. But it may be looked at from still another point of view. Psyche means soul, and in the story of Apuleius Cupid does not fall in love with a soul, but with a beautiful body. This sums up h.e.l.lenic love in general. _The Greek Cupid_ NEVER _fell in love with a Psyche_.
UTILITY AND FUTURE OF LOVE
The Greek view that love is a disease and a calamity still prevails extensively among persons who, like the Greeks, have never experienced real love and do not know what it is. In a book dated 1868 and ent.i.tled _Modern Women_ I find the following pa.s.sage (325):
"Already the great philosopher of the age has p.r.o.nounced that the pa.s.sion of love plays far too important a part in human existence, and that it is a terrible obstacle to human progress. The general temper of the times echoes the sentence of Mill."
It is significant that this opinion should have emanated from a man whose idea of femininity was as masculine as that of the Greeks--an ideal which, by eliminating or suppressing the secondary and tertiary (mental) s.e.xual qualities, necessarily makes love synonymous with l.u.s.t.
There is another large cla.s.s of persons who likewise consider love a disease, but a harmless one, like the measles, or mumps, which it is well to have as early as possible, so as to be done with it, and which seldom does any harm. Others, still, regard it as a sort of juvenile holiday, like a trip to Italy or California, which is delightful while it lasts and leaves pleasant memories thoughout life, but is otherwise of no particular use.
It shows a most extraordinary ignorance of the ways of nature to suppose that it should have developed so powerful an instinct and sentiment for no useful purpose, or even as a detriment to the race.
That is not the way nature operates. In reality love is the most useful thing in the world. The two most important objects of the human race are its own preservation and improvement, and in both of these directions love is the mightiest of all agencies. It makes the world go round. Take it away, and in a few years animal life will be as extinct on this planet as it is on the moon. And by preferring youth to age, health to disease, beauty to deformity, it improves the human type, slowly but steadily.
The first thinker who clearly recognized and emphatically a.s.serted the superlative importance of love was Schopenhauer. Whereas Hegel (II., 184) parroted the popular opinion that love is peculiarly and exclusively the affair of the two individuals whom it directly involves, having no concern with the eternal interests of family and race, no universality (Allgemeinheit). Schopenhauer"s keen mind on the contrary saw that love, though the most individualized of all pa.s.sions, concerns the race even more than the individual. "Die Zusammensetzung der nachsten Generation, e qua iterum pendent innumerae generationes"--the very composition and essence of the next generation and of countless generations following it, depends, as he says, on the particular choice of a mate. If an ugly, vicious, diseased mate be chosen, his or her bad qualities are transmitted to the following generations, for "the G.o.ds visit the sins of the fathers upon the children," as even the old sages knew, long before science had revealed the laws of heredity. Not only the husband"s and the wife"s personal qualities are thus transmitted to the children and children"s children, but those also of four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on; and when we bear in mind the tremendous differences in the inheritable ancestral traits of families--virtues or infirmities--we see of what incalculable importance to the future of families is that individual preference which is so vital an ingredient of romantic love.
It is true that love is not infallible. It is still, as Browning puts it, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened." It may be said that marriage itself is not necessary for the maintenance of the species; but it is useful both for its maintenance and its improvement; hence natural selection has favored it--especially the monogamous form--_in the interest of coming generations._ Love is simply an extension of this process---making it efficacious before marriage and thus quintupling its importance. It makes many mistakes, for it is a young instinct, and it has to do with a very complex problem, so that its development is slow; but it has a great future, especially now that intelligence is beginning to encourage and help it. But while admitting that love is fallible we must be careful not to decry it for mistakes with which it has no concern. It is absurd to suppose that every self-made match is a love-match: yet, whenever such a marriage is a failure, love is held responsible. We must remember, too, that there are two kinds of love and that the lower kind does not choose as wisely as the higher. Where animal pa.s.sion alone is involved, parents cannot be blamed for trying to curb it. As a rule, love of all kinds can be checked or even cured, and an effort to do this should be made in all cases where it is found to be bestowed on a person likely to taint the offspring with vicious propensities or serious disease. But, with all its liability to error, romantic love is usually the safest guide to marriage, and even sensual love of the more refined, esthetic type is ordinarily preferable to what are called marriages of reason, because love (as distinguished from abnormal, unbridled l.u.s.t) always is guided by youth and health, thus insuring a healthy, vigorous offspring.
If it be asked, "Are not the parents who arrange the marriages of reason also guided as a rule by considerations of health, moral and physical?" the answer is a most emphatic "No." Parental fondness, sufficing for the preservation and rearing of children, is a very old thing, but parental affection, which is altruistically concerned for the weal of children in after-life, is a comparatively modern invention. The foregoing chapters have taught us that an Australian father"s object in giving his daughter in marriage was to get in exchange a new girl-wife for himself; what became of the daughter, or what sort of a man got her, did not concern him in the least. Among Africans and American Indians the object of bringing up daughters and giving them in marriage was to secure cows or ponies in return for them. In India the object of marriage was the rearing of sons or daughters" sons for the purpose of saving the souls of their parents from perdition; so they flung them into the arms of anyone who would take them. The Greeks and the Hebrews married to perpetuate their family name or to supply the state with soldiers. In j.a.pan and China ancestral and family considerations have always been of infinitely more importance than the individual inclinations or happiness of the bridal couple. Wherever we look we find this topsy-turvy state of affairs--marriages made to suit the parents instead of the bride and groom; while the welfare of the grandchildren is of course never dreamt of.
This outrageous parental selfishness and tyranny, so detrimental to the interests of the human race, was gradually mitigated as civilization progressed in Europe. Marriages were no longer made for the benefit of the parents alone, but with a view to the comfort and worldly advantages of the couple to be wedded. But rank, money, dowry, continued--and continue in Europe to this day--to be the chief matchmakers, few parents rising to the consideration of the welfare of the grandchildren. The grandest task of the morality of the future will be to _make parental altruism extend to these grandchildren_; that is, to make parents and everyone else abhor and discountenance all marriages that do not insure the health and happiness of future generations. Love will show the way. Far from being useless or detrimental to the human race, it is an instinct evolved by nature as a defence of the race against parental selfishness and criminal myopia regarding future generations.
Plato observed in his _Statesman_ (310) that
"most persons form marriage connections without due regard to what is best for procreation of children."
"They seek after wealth and power, which in matrimony are objects not worthy even of serious censure."
But his remedy for this evil was, as we have seen (775), quite as bad as the evil itself, since it involved promiscuity and the elimination of chast.i.ty and family life. Love accomplishes the results that Plato and Lycurgus aimed at, so far as healthy offspring is concerned, without making the same sacrifices and reducing human marriage to the level of the cattle-breeder. It accomplishes, moreover, the same result that natural selection secures, and without its cruelty, by simply excluding from marriage the criminal, vicious, crippled, imbecile, incurably diseased and all who do not come up to its standard of health, vigor, and beauty.
While claiming that love is an instinct developed by nature as a defence against the short-sighted selfishness of parents who would sacrifice the future of the race to their own advantage or that of their children, I do not forget that in the past it has often secured its results in an illegitimate way. That, however, was no fault of its own, being due to the artificial and foolish obstacles placed in its way. Laws of nature cannot be altered by man, and if the safety valve is tied down the boiler is bound to explode. In countries where marriages are habitually arranged by the parents with reference to rank or money alone, in defiance of love, the only "love-children" are necessarily illegitimate. This has given rise to the notion that illegitimate children are apt to be more beautiful, healthy, and vigorous than the issue of regular marriages: and, under the circ.u.mstances, it was true. But for this topsy-turvyness, this folly, this immorality, we must not blame love, but those who persistently thwarted love--or tried to thwart it. As soon as love was allowed a voice in the arrangement of marriages illegitimacy decreased rapidly.
Had the rights of love been recognized sooner, it would have proved a useful ally of morality instead its craftiest enemy.[335]
The utility of love from a moral point of view can be shown in other ways. Many tendencies--such as club life, the greater ease of securing divorces, the growing independence of women and their disinclination to domesticity--are undermining that family life which civilization has so slowly and laboriously built up, and fostering celibacy. Now celibacy is not only unnatural and detrimental to health and longevity, but it is the main root of immorality. Its antidote is love, the most persuasive champion and promoter of marriage. No reader of the present volume can fail to see that man has generally managed to have a good time at the expense of woman and it is she who benefits particularly by the modern phases of love and marriage. Yet in recent years the notion that family life is not good enough for women, and that they should be brought up in a spirit of manly independence, has come over society like a noxious epidemic. It is quite proper that there should be avenues of employment for women who have no one to support them; but it is a grievous error to extend this to women in general, to give them the education, tastes, habits, sports, and politics of the men. It antagonizes that s.e.xual differentiation of the more refined sort on which romantic love depends and tempts men to seek amus.e.m.e.nt in ephemeral, shallow amours. In plain English, while there are many charming exceptions, the growing masculinity of girls is the main reason why so many of them remain unmarried; thus fulfilling the prediction: "Could we make her as the man, sweet love were slain." Let girls return to their domestic sphere, make themselves as delightfully feminine as possible, not trying to be gnarled oaks but lovely vines clinging around them, and the st.u.r.dy oaks will joyously extend their love and protection to them amid all the storms of life. In love lies the remedy for many of the economic problems of the day.
There is not one of the fourteen ingredients of romantic love which cannot be shown to be useful in some way. Of individual preference and its importance in securing a happy blend of qualities for the next generation I have just spoken, and I have devoted nearly a page (131) to the utility of coyness. Jealousy has helped to develop chast.i.ty, woman"s cardinal virtue and the condition of all refinement in love and society. Monopolism has been the most powerful enemy of those two colossal evils of savagery and barbarism--promiscuity and polygamy; and it will in future prove as fatal an enemy to all attempts to bring back promiscuity under the absurd name of "free love," which would reduce all women to the level of prost.i.tutes and make men desert them after their charms have faded. Two other ingredients of love--purity and the admiration of personal beauty--are of great value to the cause of morality as conquerors of l.u.s.t, which they antagonize and suppress by favoring the higher (mental) s.e.xual qualities; while the sense of beauty also co-operates with the instinct which makes for the health of future generations; beauty being simply the flower of health, and inheritable.
At first sight it may seem difficult to a.s.sign any use to the pride, the hyperbole, and the mixed moods which are component elements of love; but they are of value inasmuch as they exalt the mind, and give to the beloved such prominence and importance that the way is paved for the altruistic ingredients of romantic love, the utility of which is so obvious that it hardly needs to be hinted at. If love were nothing more than a lesson in altruism--with many the first and only lesson in their lives--it would be second in importance to no other factor of civilization. Sympathy lifts the lover out of the deep groove of selfishness, teaching him the miracle of feeling another"s pains and pleasures more keenly than his own. Man"s adoration of woman as a superior being--which she really is, as the distinctively feminine virtues are more truly Christian and have a higher ethical value than the masculine virtues--creates an ideal which has improved women by making them ambitious to live up to it. No one, again, who has read the preceding pages relating to the treatment of women before romantic love existed, and compares it with their treatment at present, can fail to recognize the wonderful transformation brought about by gallantry and self-sacrifice--altruistic habits which have changed men from ruffians to gentlemen. I do not say that love alone is responsible for this improvement, but it has been one of the most potent factors. Finally, there is affection, which, in conjunction with the other altruistic ingredients of love, has changed it from an appet.i.te like that of a fly for sugar to a self-oblivious devotion like a mother"s for her child, thus raising it to the highest ethical rank as an agency of culture.
We are still very far from the final stage in the evolution of love.
There is no reason to doubt that it will continue to develop, as in the past, in the direction of the esthetic, supersensual, and altruistic. As a physician"s eye becomes trained for the subtle diagnosis of disease, a clergyman"s for the diagnosis of moral evil, so will the love-instinct become more and more expert, critical, and refined, rejecting those who are vicious or diseased. Compare the l.u.s.trous eyes of a consumptive girl with the sparkling eyes of a healthy maiden in buoyant spirits. Both are beautiful, but to a doctor, or to anyone else who knows the deadliness and horrors of tuberculosis, the beauty of the consumptive girl"s eyes will seem uncanny, like the charm of a snake, and it will inspire pity, which in this case is not akin to love, but fatal to it. Thus may superior knowledge influence our sense of beauty and liability to fall in love.
I know a man who was in love with a girl and had made up his mind to propose. He went to call on her, and as he approached the door he heard her abusing her mother in the most heartless manner. He did not ring the bell, and never called again. His love was of the highest type, but he suppressed his feelings.
More important than the further improvement of romantic love is the task of increasing the proportion of men and women who will be capable of experiencing it as now known to us. The vast majority are still strangers to anything beyond primitive love. The a.n.a.lysis made in the present volume will enable all persons who fancy themselves in love to see whether their pa.s.sion is merely self-love in a roundabout way or true romantic affection for another. They can see whether it is mere selfish liking, attachment, or fondness, or else unselfish affection.
If adoration, purity, sympathy, and the altruistic impulses of gallantry and self-sacrifice are lacking, they can be cultivated by deliberate exercise:
a.s.sume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.
The affections can be trained as well as the muscles; and thus the lesson taught in this book may help to bring about a new era of unselfish devotion and true love. No man, surely, can read the foregoing disclosures regarding man"s primitive coa.r.s.eness and heartlessness without feeling ashamed for his s.e.x and resolving to be an unselfish lover and husband to the end of his life.