CHAPTER XL

Every kind of love and every kind of imagination, in the individual, takes its colour from one of these six temperaments:--

The sanguine, or French,--M. de Francueil (Memoirs of Madame d'Épinay);

The choleric, or Spanish,--Lauzun (the Peguilhen of Saint-Simon's Memoirs);

The melancholy, or German,--Schiller's Don Carlos;

The phlegmatic, or Dutch;

The nervous--Voltaire;

The athletic--Milo of Croton.[1]

If the influence of temperament makes itself felt in ambition, avarice, friendship, etc. etc., what must it be in the case of love, in which the physical also is perforce an ingredient? Let us suppose that all kinds of love can be referred to the four varieties, which we have noted:--

Passion-love--Julie d'Étanges;(23)

Gallant-love or gallantry;

Physical love;

Vanity-love--"a duchess is never more than thirty for a bourgeois."

We must submit these four kinds of love to the six different characters, with which habits, dependent upon the six kinds of temperament, stamp the imagination. Tiberius did not have the wild imagination of Henry VIII.

[Pg 156] Then let us submit all these combinations, thus obtained, to the differences of habit which depend upon government or national character:--

1. Asiatic despotism, such as may be seen at Constantinople;

2. Absolute monarchy _à la_ Louis XIV;

3. Aristocracy masked by a charter, or government of a nation for the profit of the rich, as in England--all according to the rules of a self-styled biblical morality;

4. A federal republic, or government for the profit of all, as in the United States of America;

5. Constitutional monarchy, or--

6. A State in revolution, as Spain, Portugal, France(24). This state of things in a country gives lively passions to everyone, makes manners more natural, destroys puerilities, the conventional virtues and senseless proprieties[2]--gives seriousness to youth and causes it to despise vanity-love and neglect gallantry.

This state can last a long time and form the habits of a generation. In France it began in 1788, was interrupted in 1802, and began again in 1818--to end God knows when!

After all these general ways of considering love, we have the differences of age, and come finally to individual peculiarities.

For example, we might say:--

I found at Dresden, in Count Woltstein, vanity-love, a melancholy temperament, monarchical habits, thirty years, and ... his individual peculiarities.

For anyone who is to form a judgment on love, this way of viewing things is conveniently short and cooling to the head--an essential, but difficult operation.

Now, as in physiology man has learnt scarcely anything about himself, except by means of comparative anatomy,

[Pg 157] so in the case of passions, through vanity and many other causes of illusion, we can only get enlightenment on what goes on in ourselves from the foibles we have observed in others. If by chance this essay has any useful effect, it will be by bringing the mind to make comparisons of this sort. To lead the way, I am going to attempt a sketch of some general traits in the character of love in different nations.

I beg for pardon if I often come back to Italy; in the present state of manners in Europe, it is the only country where the plant, which I describe, grows in all freedom. In France, vanity; in Germany, a pretentious and highly comical philosophy; in England, pride, timid, painful and rancorous, torture and stifle it, or force it into a crooked channel.[3]

[1] See Cabanis, influence of the physical, etc.

[2] The laces missing from Minister Roland's shoes: "Ah, Monsieur, all is lost," answers Dumouriez. At the royal sitting, the President of the Assembly crosses his legs.

[3] The reader will have perceived only too easily that this treatise is made up of Lisio's Visconti's fragmentary account of events, written in the order that they were presented to him on his travels. All these events may be found related at length in the journal of his life; perhaps I ought to have inserted them--but they might have been found scarcely suitable. The oldest notes bear the date, Berlin 1807, and the last are some days before his death, June 1819. Some dates have been altered expressly to avoid indiscretion; but the changes, which I have made, go no further than that. I have not thought myself authorised to recast the style. This book was written in a hundred different places--so may it be read!

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