Chapter 21

The word fondness is sometimes used in the sense of a tender, loving disposition; yet there is nearly always an implication of silly extravagance or unseemly demonstrativeness, and in the most accurate usage it means a foolish, doting indulgence, without discriminating intelligence, or even common-sense. As Crabb puts it in his _English Synonyms_, "A fond parent does not rise above a fool." Everybody knows fathers and mothers whose fondness induces them to indulge all the appetites, desires, and whims of their children, thereby ruining their health and temper, making them greedy and selfish, and laying the foundation for a wretched life for the children themselves and all who are unfortunate enough to come into contact with them. This irrational fondness is what travellers and anthropologists have so often mistaken for genuine affection in the cases of savages and barbarians who were found to be fondling their babes, doting upon them, playing with them, and refusing to punish them for any naughtiness. But it is far from being affection, because it is not only foolish, but _selfish_. To some of my readers this may seem a strange accusation, but it is a fact recognized in the best literary usage, for, as Crabb remarks, "a person is fond, who caresses an object or makes it a source of pleasure _to himself_." Savages fondle their children because in doing so they please and amuse themselves. Their pranks entertain the fathers, and as for the mothers, nature (natural selection) has implanted in them an unconscious instinct of race preservation which, recognizing the selfishness of primitive man, has brought it about that it gives the mother a special pleasure to suckle and fondle her infant. The essential selfishness of this fondness is revealed when there is a conflict between the mother's comfort and the child's welfare. The horrible prevalence among many of the lower races, of infanticide--merely to save trouble--of which many examples are given in various parts of this book (see index)--shows not only how selfish, but how shallow, fondness is. There are thousands of mothers in our modern cities who have not risen above this condition. An Italian, Ferriani, has written a book on degenerate mothers (_Madri Snaturate_), and I have in my note-books a statement of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children referring to a record of 2,141 cases of proved cruelty in the one month of August, 1898; which would make at least 25,000 cases a year, in one city alone, or possibly double that number, for many cases are never found out, or else consist of mental torture which is worse than bodily maltreatment. Yet there can be no doubt that all, or nearly all, of these mothers were fond of their babies--_i.e._, fondled them at first, till the animal instinct implanted in them was overcome by the desire for personal comfort. This animal instinct, given to them by nature, is no virtue, for it is unconscious. A tigress has it, but we do not call it a virtue in her any more than we call her cruelty to her prey a vice; she is acting unconsciously in either case, knowing no distinction between good and evil. Fondness, in a word, is not an ethical virtue. In addition to all its enumerated shortcomings, it is, moreover, transient. A dog mother will care for her young for a few months with the watchfulness and temporary ferocity implanted in her by natural selection, but after that she will abandon them and recognize them no more as her own. Sometimes this instinctive fondness ceases with startling rapidity. I remember once in a California yard, how a hen flew in my face angrily because I had frightened her chicks. A few days later she deserted them, before they were really quite old enough to take care of themselves, and all my efforts to make her return and let them sleep again under her warm feathers failed. She even pecked at them viciously. Some of the lower savages similarly abandon their young as soon as they are able to get along, while those who care for them longer, do so not from affection, but because sons are useful assistants in hunting and fighting, and daughters can be sold or traded off for new wives. That they do not keep them from affection is proved by the fact that in all cases where any selfish advantage can be gained they marry them off without reference to their wishes or chances of happiness.[39]

UNSELFISH AFFECTION

While the fondness of savages, which has been so often mistaken for affection, is thus seen to be foolish, unconscious, selfish, shallow, and transient, true affection is rational, conscious, unselfish, deep, and enduring. Being rational, it looks not to the enjoyment or comfort of the moment, but to future and enduring welfare, and therefore does not hesitate to punish folly or misdeeds in order to avert future illness or misfortune. Instead of being a mere instinctive impulse, liable to cease at any moment, like that of the California hen referred to, it is a conscious altruism, never faltering in its ethical sense of duty, utterly incapable of sacrificing another's comfort or well-being to its own. While fondness is found coexisting with cruelty and even with infanticide and cannibalism (as in those Australian mothers, who feed their children well and carry them when tired, but when a real test of altruism comes--during a famine--kill and eat them,[40] just as the men do their wives when they cease to be sensually attractive), affection is horrified at the mere suggestion of such a thing. No man into whose love affection enters as an ingredient would ever injure his beloved merely to gratify himself. Crabb is utterly wrong when he writes that

"love is more selfish in its nature than friendship; in indulging another it seeks its own, and when this is not to be obtained, it will change into the contrary passion of hatred."

This is a definition of lust, not of love--a definition of the passion as known to the Greek Euripides, of whose lovers Benecke says (53):

"If, or as soon as, they fail in achieving the gratification of their sensual desires, their 'love' immediately turns to hate. The idea of devotion or self-sacrifice for the good of the beloved person, as distinct from one's own, is absolutely unknown. 'Love is irresistible,' they say, and, in obedience to its commands, they set down to reckon how they can satisfy themselves, at no matter what cost to the objects of their passion."

How different this unaffectionate "love" from the love of which our poets sing! Shakspere knew that absorbing affection is an ingredient of love: Beatrice loves Benedick "with an enraged affection," which is "past the infinite of the night." Rosalind does not know how many fathom deep she is in love: "It cannot he sounded; my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal." Dr. Abel has truly said that

"affection is love tested and purified in the fire of the intellect. It appears when, after the veil of fancy has dropped, a beloved one is seen in the natural beauty with various human limitations, and is still found worthy of the warmest regards. It comes slowly, but it endures; gives more than it takes and has a tinge of tender gratitude for a thousand kind actions and for the bestowal of enduring happiness. According to English ideas, a deep affection, through whose clear mirror the gold of the old love shimmers visibly, should be the fulfilment of marriage."

Of romantic love affection obviously could not become an ingredient till minds were cultured, women esteemed, men made altruistic, and opportunities were given for youths and maidens to become acquainted with each other's minds and characters before marriage; as Dr. Abel says, affection "comes slowly--but it endures." The love of which affection forms an ingredient can never change to hatred, can never have any murderous impulses, as Schuré and Goethe believed. It survives time and sensual charms, as Shakspere knew:

Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds.

* * * * *

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom:--

If this be error, and upon me proved; I never writ nor no man ever loved.

XIII. MENTAL PURITY

Romantic love has worked two astounding miracles. We have seen how, with the aid of five of its ingredients--sympathy, adoration, gallantry, self-sacrifice, and affection--it has overthrown the Goliath of selfishness. We shall now see how it has overcome another formidable foe of civilization--sensualism--by means of two other modern ingredients, one of which I will call mental purity (to distinguish it from bodily purity or chastity) and the other _esthetic_ admiration of personal beauty.

GERMAN TESTIMONY

Modern German literature contains many sincere tributes, in prose and verse, to the purity and nobility of true love and its refining influence. The psychologist Horwicz refers briefly (38) to the way in which

"love, growing up as a mighty passion from the substratum of sexual life, has, under the repressing influence of centuries of habits and customs, taken on an entirely new, _supersensual, ethereal_ character, so that to a lover every thought of _naturalia_ seems indelicate and improper." "I feel it deeply that love must ennoble, not crush me,"

wrote the poet Korner; and again,

"Your sweet name was my talisman, which led me undefiled through youth's wild storms, amid the corruption of the times, and protected my inner sanctum." "O God!" wrote Beethoven, "let me at last find her who is destined to be mine, and who shall strengthen me in virtue."

According to Dr. Abel, while love longs ardently to possess the beloved, to enjoy her presence and sympathy, it has also a more or less prominent mental trait which ennobles the passion and places it at the service of the ideal of its fancy. It is accompanied by an enthusiasm for the good and the beautiful in general, which comes to most people only during the brief period of love. "It is a temporary self-exaltation, _purifying the desires_ and urging the lover to generous deeds."

Des höchste Glück hat keine Lieder, Der Liebe Lust ist still und mild; Ein Kuss, ein Blicken hin und wieder, Und alle Sehnsucht ist gestillt. --_Geibel_.

Schiller defined love as an eager "desire for another's happiness." "Love," he adds, "is the most beautiful phenomenon in all animated nature, the mightiest magnet in the spiritual world, the source of veneration and the sublimest virtues." Even Goethe had moments when he appreciated the purity of love, and he confutes his own coarse conception that was referred to in the last section when he makes Werther write: "She is sacred to me. _All desire is silent in her presence."_[41]

The French Edward Schuré exclaims, in his _History of German Song_:

"What surprises us foreigners in the poems of this people is the unbounded faith in love, as the supreme power in the world, as the most beautiful and _divine thing_ on earth, ... the first and last word of creation, its only principle of life, because it alone can urge us to complete self-surrender."

Schuré's intimation that this respect for love is peculiar to the Germans is, of course, absurd, for it is found in the modern literature of all civilized countries of Europe and America; as for instance in Michael Angelo's

The might of one fair face sublimes my love, For it _hath weaned my heart from low desires_.

ENGLISH TESTIMONY

English literature, particularly, has been saturated with this sentiment for several centuries. Love is "all purity," according to Shakspere's Silvius. Schlegel remarked that by the manner in which Shakspere handled the story of _Romeo and Juliet_, it has become

"a glorious song of praise on that inexpressible feeling which _ennobles the soul_ and gives to it its highest sublimity, and which _elevates even the senses_ themselves into soul;"

--which reminds one of Emerson's expression that the body is "ensouled" through love. Steele declared that "Love is a passion of the mind (_perhaps the noblest_), which was planted in it by the same hand that created it;" and of Lady Elizabeth Hastings he wrote that "to love her was a liberal education." In Steel's _Lover_ (No. 5) we read:

"During this emotion I am highly elated in my Being, and my every sentiment improved by the effects of that Passion.... I am more and more convinced that this Passion is in lowest minds the strongest Incentive that can move the Soul of Man to laudable Accomplishments."

And in No. 29: "Nothing can _mend the Heart_ better than an honorable Love, except Religion." Thomas Otway sang:

O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee To temper man: we had been brutes without you. There's in you all that we believe of heaven, Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

"Love taught him shame," said Dryden, and Spenser wrote a Hymn in Honor of Love, in which he declared that

Such is the power of that sweet passion That it _all sordid baseness doth expel_, And the refined mind doth newly fashion Unto a fairer form, which now doth dwell In his high thought, that would itself excel.

Leigh Hunt wrote: "My love has made me better and more desirous of improvement than I have been."

Love, indeed, is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire, With angels shared, by Allah given, To _lift from earth our low desire_. Devotion wafts the mind above, But heaven itself descends in love. --_Byron_.

Why should we kill the _best of passions_, love? It aids the hero, bids ambition rise To nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds, Ev'n _softens brutes_, and adds a grace to virtue. --_Thomson_.

Dr. Beddoe, author of the _Browning Cyclopaedia_, declares that "the passion of love, throughout Mr. Browning's works, is treated as the most _sacred_ thing in the human soul." How Browning himself loved we know from one of his wife's letters, in which she relates how she tried to discourage his advances:

"I showed him how he was throwing away into the ashes his best affections--how the common gifts of youth and cheerfulness were behind me--how I had not strength, even of heart, for the ordinary duties of life--everything I told him and showed him. 'Look at this--and this--and this,' throwing down all my disadvantages. To which he did not answer by a single compliment, but simply that he had not then to choose, and that I might be right or he might be right, he was not there to decide; but that he loved me and should to his last hour. He said that the freshness of youth had passed with him also, and that he had studied the world out of books and seen many women, yet had never loved one until he had seen me. That he knew himself, and knew that, if ever so repulsed, he should love me to his last hour--it should be first and last."

No poet understood better than Tennyson that purity is an ingredient of love:

For indeed I know Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid, Not only _to keep down the base in man_, But teach high thoughts and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

MAIDEN FANCIES

Bryan Waller Proctor fell in love when he was only five years old: "My love," he wrote afterward, "had the fire of passion, but not the clay which drags it downward; it partook of the innocence of my years, while it etherealized me."

Such ethereal love too is the prerogative of a young maiden, whose imagination is immaculate, ignorant of impurity.

Her feelings have the fragrancy, The freshness of young flowers.

No, no, the utmost share Of my desire shall be, Only to kiss that air That lately kissed thee.

In high school, when sentimental impulses first manifest themselves in a girl, she is more likely than not to transfer them to a girl. Her feelings, in these cases, are not merely those of a warm friendship, but they resemble the passionate, self-sacrificing attitude of romantic love. New York schoolgirls have a special slang phrase for this kind of love--they call it a "crush," to distinguish it from a "mash," which refers to an impression made on a man. A girl of seventeen told me one day how madly she was in love with another girl whose seat was near hers; how she brought her flowers, wiped her pens, took care of her desk; "but I don't believe she cares for me at all," she added, sadly.

PATHOLOGIC LOVE

Such love is usually as innocent as a butterfly's flirtation with a flower.[42] It has a pathologic phase, in some cases, which need not be discussed here. But I wish to call attention to the fact that even in abnormal states modern love preserves its purity. The most eminent authority on mental pathology, Professor Krafft-Ebing, says, concerning erotomania:

"The kernel of the whole matter is the delusion of being singled out and loved by a person of the other sex, who regularly belongs to a higher social class. And it should be noted that the love felt by the patient toward this person is a romantic, ecstatic, but entirely 'Platonic' affection."

I have among my notes a remarkable case, relating to that most awful of diseases that can befall a woman--nymphomania.[43] The patient relates:

"I have also noticed that when my affections are aroused, they counteract animal passion. I could never love a man because he was a man. My tendency is to worship the good I find in friends. I feel just the same toward those of my own sex. If they show any regard for me, the touch of a hand has power to take away all morbid feelings."

A MODERN SENTIMENT

There are all sorts and conditions of love. To those who have known only the primitive (sensual) sort, the conditions described in the foregoing pages will seem strange and fantastic if not fictitious--that is, the products of the writers' imaginations. Fantastic they are, no doubt, and romantic, but that they are real I can vouch for by my own experience whenever I was in love, which happened several times. When I was a youth of seventeen I fell in love with a beautiful, black-eyed young woman, a Spanish-American of Californian stock. She was married, and I am afraid she was amused at my mad infatuation. Did I try to flirt with her? A smile, a glance of her eyes, was to me the seventh heaven beyond which there could be no other. I would not have dared to touch her hand, and the thought of kissing her was as much beyond my wildest flights of fancy as if she had been a real goddess. To me she was divine, utterly unapproachable by mortal. Every day I used to sit in a lonely spot of the forest and weep; and when she went away I felt as if the son had gone out and all the world were plunged into eternal darkness.

Such is romantic love--a supersensual feeling of crystalline purity from which all gross matter has been distilled. But the love that includes this ingredient is a modern sentiment, less than a thousand years old, and not to be found among savages, barbarians, or Orientals. To them, as the perusal of past and later chapters must convince the reader, it is inconceivable that a woman should serve any other than sensual and utilitarian purposes. The whole story is told in what Dodge says of the Indians, who, "animal-like, approach a woman only to make love to her"; and of the squaws who do not dare even go with a beau to a dance, or go a short distance from camp, without taking precautions against rape--precautions without which they "would not be safe for an instant" (210, 213).

PERSIANS, TURKS, AND HINDOOS

We shall read later on of the obscene talk and sights that poison the minds of boys and girls among Indians, Polynesians, etc., from their infancy; in which respect Orientals are not much better than Hurons and Botocudos. "The Persian child," writes Mrs. Bishop (I., 218),

"from infancy is altogether interested in the topics of adults; and as the conversation of both sexes is said by those who know them best to be without reticence or modesty, the purity which is one of the greatest charms of childhood is absolutely unknown."

Of the Turks (at Bagdad) Ida Pfeiffer writes _(L.J.R.W._, 202-203) that she found it

"very painful to notice the tone of the conversation that goes on in these harems and in the baths. Nothing can exceed the demureness of the women in public; but when they come together in these places, they indemnify themselves thoroughly for the restraint. While they were busy with their pipes and coffee, I took the opportunity to take a glance into the neighboring apartments, and in a few minutes I saw enough to fill me at once with disgust and compassion for these poor creatures, whom idleness and ignorance have degraded almost below the level of humanity. A visit to the women's baths left a no less melancholy impression. There were children of both sexes, girls, women, and elderly matrons. The poor children! how should they in after life understand what is meant by modesty and purity, when they are accustomed from their infancy to witness such scenes, and listen to such conversation?"

These Orientals are too coarse-fibred to appreciate the spotless, peach-down purity which in our ideal is a maiden's supreme charm. They do not care to prolong, even for a year what to us seems the sweetest, loveliest period of life, the time of artless, innocent maidenhood. They cannot admire a rose for its fragrant beauty, but must needs regard it as a thing to be picked at once and used to gratify their appetite. Nay, they cannot even wait till it is a full-blown rose, but must destroy the lovely bud. The "civilized" Hindoos, who are allowed legally to sacrifice girls to their lusts before the poor victims have reached the age of puberty, are really on a level with the African savages who indulge in the same practice. An unsophisticated reader of _Kalidasa_ might find in the King's comparison of Sakuntala to "a flower that no one has smelt, a sprig that no one has plucked, a pearl that has not yet been pierced," a recognition of the charm of maiden purity. But there is a world-wide difference between this and the modern sentiment. The King's attitude, as the context shows, is simply that of an epicure who prefers his oysters fresh. The modern sentiment is embodied in Heine's exquisite lines:

DU BIST WIE EINE BLUME.

E'en as a lovely flower So fair, so pure, thou art; I gaze on thee and sadness Comes stealing o'er my heart.

My hands I fain had folded Upon thy soft brown hair, Praying that God may keep thee So lovely, pure, and fair. --_Trans, of Kate Freiligrath Kroeker_.

It is not surprising that this intensely modern poem should have been set to music--the most modern of all the arts--more frequently than any other verses ever written. To Orientals, to savages, to Greeks, it would be incomprehensible--as incomprehensible as Ruskin's "there is no true conqueror of lust but love," or Tennyson's

'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.