The Philosophy of Love
[Sidenote: The Prevailing Theme]
A modern novelist has greatly lamented because the prevailing theme of fiction is love. Every story is a love story, every romance finds its inspiration in the heart, and even the musty tomes of history are beset by the little blind G.o.d.
One or two men have dared to write books from which women have been excluded as rigorously as from the Chinese stage, but the world of readers has not loudly clamoured for more of the same sort. A story of adventure loses none of its interest if there is some fair damsel to be rescued from various thrilling situations.
The realists contend that a single isolated fact should not be dwelt upon to the exclusion of all other interests, that love plays but a small part in the life of the average man or woman, and that it is unreasonable to expand it to the uttermost limits of art.
Strangely enough, the realists are all men. If a woman ventures to write a book which may fitly be cla.s.sed under the head of realism, the critics charitably unite upon insanity as the cause of it and lament the lost womanliness of a decadent generation.
If realism were actually real, we should have no time for books and pictures. Our days and nights would be spent in reclaiming the people in the slums. There would be a visible increase in the church fair--where we spend more than we can afford for things we do not want, in order to please people whom we do not like, and to help heathen who are happier than we are.
[Sidenote: The Root of all Good]
The love of money is said to be the root of all evil, but love itself is the root of all good, for it is the very foundation of the social structure. The universal race for the elusive shilling, which is commonly considered selfish, is based upon love.
Money will buy fine houses, but who would wish to live in a mansion alone! Fast horses, yachts, private cars, and the feasts of Lucullus, are not to be enjoyed in solitude; they must be shared. Buying jewels and costly raiment is the purest philanthropy, for it gives pleasure to others. Sapphires and real lace depreciate rapidly in the cloister or the desert.
The envy which luxury sometimes creates is also altruistic in character, for in its last a.n.a.lysis, it is the wish to give pleasure to others, in the same degree, as the envied fortunately may. Nothing is happiness which is not shared by at least one other, and nothing is truly sorrow unless it is borne absolutely alone.
[Sidenote: Love]
Love! The delight and the torment of the world! The despair of philosophers and sages, the rapture of poets, the confusion of cynics, and the warrior"s defeat!
Love! The bread and the wine of life, the hunger and the thirst, the hurt and the healing, the only wound which is cured by another! The guest who comes like a thief in the night! The eternal question which is its own answer, the thing which has no beginning and no end!
The very blindness of it is divine, for it sees no imperfections, takes no reck of faults, and concerns itself only with the hidden beauty of the soul.
It is unselfishness--yet it tolerates no rival and demands all for itself. It is belief--and yet it doubts. It is hope and it is also misgiving. It is trust and distrust, the strongest temptation and the power to withstand it; woman"s need and man"s dream. It is his enemy and his best friend, her weakness and her strength; the roses and the thorns.
Woman"s love affairs begin in her infancy, with some childish play at sweethearts, and a cavalier in dresses for her hero. It may be a matter of affinity in later years, or, as the more prosaic Buckle suggests, dependent upon the price of corn, but at first it is certainly a question of propinquity.
Through the kindergarten and the multiplication table, the pretty game goes on. Before she is thirteen, she decides to marry, and selects an awkward boy a little older for the happy man. She cherishes him in her secret heart, and it does not matter in the least if she does not know him well enough to speak to him, for the good fairies who preside over earthly destinies will undoubtedly lead The Prince to become formally acquainted at the proper time.
[Sidenote: The Self-Conscious Period]
Later, the self-conscious period approaches and Mademoiselle becomes solicitous as to ribbons and personal adornment. She pleads earnestly for long gowns, and the first one is never satisfying unless it drags.
If she can do her hair in a twist "just like mamma"s," and see the adored one pa.s.s the house, while she sits at the window with sewing or book, she feels actually "grown up."
When she begins to read novels, her schoolmates, for the time being, are cast aside, because none of them are in the least like the lovers who stalk through the highly-coloured pages of the books she likes best. The hero is usually "tall and dark, with a melancholy cast of countenance,"
and there are fascinating hints of some secret sorrow. The watchful maternal parent is apt to confiscate these interesting volumes, but there are always school desks and safe places in the neighbourhood of pillows, and a candle does not throw its beams too far.
The books in which the love scenes are most violent possess unfading charm. A hero who says "darling" every time he opens his finely-chiselled mouth is very near perfection. That fondness lasts well into the after-years, for "darling" is, above all others, the favourite term of endearment with a woman.
Were it not for the stern parents and wholesome laws as to age, girls might more often marry their first loves. It is difficult to conjecture what the state of civilisation might be, if it were common for people to marry their first loves, regardless of "age, colour, or previous condition of servitude."
[Sidenote: Age and Colour]
Age and colour are all-important factors with Mademoiselle. She could not possibly love a boy three weeks younger than herself, and if her eyes are blue and her hair light, no blondes need apply.
There is a curious delusion, fostered by phrenologists and other amiable students of "temperament," to the effect that a brunette must infallibly fall in love with a blonde and vice versa. What dire misfortune may result if this rule is not followed can be only surmised, for the phrenologists do not know. Still, the majority of men are dark and it is said they do not marry as readily as of yore--is this the secret of the widespread havoc made by peroxide of hydrogen?
The lurid fiction fever soon runs its course with Mademoiselle, if she is let alone, and she turns her attention once more to her schoolmates.
She has at least a dozen serious attacks before she is twenty, and at that ripe age, is often a little _blase_.
[Sidenote: The Pastime and the Dream]
But the day soon comes when the pretty play is over and the soft eyes widen with fear. She pa.s.ses the dividing line between childhood and womanhood when she first realises that her pastime and her dream have forged chains around her inmost soul. This, then, is what life holds for her; it is ecstasy or torture, and for this very thing she was made.
Some man exists whom she will follow to the end of the world, right royally if she may, but on her knees if she must. The burning sands of the desert will be as soft gra.s.s if he walks beside her, his voice will make her forget her thirst, and his touch upon her arm will change her weariness into peace.
When he beckons she must answer. When he says "come," she must not stay.
She must be all things to him--friend, comrade, sweetheart, wife. When the infinite meaning of her dream slowly dawns upon her, is it strange that she trembles and grows pale?
Soon or late it comes to all. Sometimes there is terror at the sudden meeting and Love often comes in the guise of a friend. But always, it brings joy which is sorrow, and pain which is happiness--gladness which is never content.
A woman wants a man to love her in the way she loves him; a man wants a woman to love him in the way he loves her, and because the thing is impossible, neither is satisfied.
[Sidenote: The Strongest Pa.s.sion]
Man"s emotion is far stronger than woman"s. His feeling, when it is deep, is a force which a woman may but dimly understand. The strongest pa.s.sion of a man"s life is his love for his sweetheart; woman"s greatest love is lavished upon her child.
"One is the lover and one is the loved." Sometimes the positions are reversed, to the misery of all concerned, but normally, man is the lover. He wins love by pleading for it, and there is no way by which a woman may more surely lose it, for while woman"s pity is closely akin to Love, man"s pity is a poor relation who wears Love"s cast-off clothes.
There are two other ways in which a woman loses her lover. One is by marrying him and the other by retaining him as her friend. If she can keep him as her friend, she never believes in his love, and husbands and lovers are often two very different possessions.
A man"s heart is an office desk, wherein tender episodes are pigeon-holed for future reference. If he is too busy to look them over, they are carried off later in Father Time"s junk-wagon, like other and more profane history.
All the isolated loves of a woman"s life are woven into a single continuous fabric. Love itself is the thing she needs and the man who offers it seldom matters much. Man loves and worships woman, but woman loves love. Were it not so, there would be no actor"s photograph upon the matinee girl"s dressing-table, and no bit of tender verse would be fastened to her cushion with a hat pin, while she herself was fancy free.
[Sidenote: Gift and Giver]
All her life long she confuses the gift with the giver, and loving with the pride of being loved, because her love is responsive rather than original.
[Sidenote: The Forgotten Harp]
She demands that the lover"s devotion shall continue after marriage; that every look shall be tender and every word adoring. Failing this, she knows that love is dead. She is inevitably disappointed in marriage, because she is no longer his fear, intoxication, and pain, but rather his comrade and friend. The vibrant strings, struck from silence and dreams to a sounding chord, are trembling still--whispering lingering music to him who has forgotten the harp.
When a woman once tells a man she loves him, he regards it as some chemical process which has taken place in her heart and he never considers the possibility of change. He is little concerned as to its expression, for he knows it is there. On the contrary, it is only by expression that a woman ever feels certain of a man"s love.
Doubt is the essential and constant quality of her nature, when once she loves. She continually demands new proof and new devotion, consoling herself sometimes with the thought that three days ago he said he loved her and there has been no discord since.
As for him, if his comfort is a.s.sured, he never thinks to question her, for men are as blind as Love. If she seems glad to see him and is not distinctly unpleasant, she may even be a little preoccupied without arousing suspicion. A man likes to feel that he is loved and a woman likes to be told.
The use of any faculty exhausts it. The ear, deafened by a cannon, is incapable for the moment of hearing the human voice. The eyes, momentarily blinded by the full glare of the sun, miss the delicate shades of violet and sapphire in the smoke from a wood fire. We soon become accustomed to condiments and perfume, and the same law applies to sentiment and emotion.