Part 3

Only a few months ago one of the leading German writers of the period, Ernst Eckstein, wrote an essay in which he endeavoured to prove that not only was Love as felt by the ancient Romans the same as modern Love, but that it was identical with the modern sentiment even in its minutest details and manifestations. He based this bold inference on the fact that in Ovid’s _Ars Amoris_ directions are given to the men regarding certain tricks of gallantry—such as dusting the adored one’s seat at the circus, fanning her, applauding her favourites, and drinking from the cup where it was touched by her lips.

Curious and interesting these hints are, no doubt. But a closer examination of Roman literature and manners shows that Dr. Eckstein has been guilty of the common blunder of generalising from a single instance. Gallantry is one of the essential traits of modern Love; and far from having been a common practice in ancient Rome, the interest of Ovid’s remarks lies in the fact that they give us the _first_ instance on record of an attempt at gallant behaviour on the part of the men; as will be shown in detail in the chapter on Roman Love.

And as with Gallantry, so with the other traits which make up the group of emotions known to us as Love. We look for them in vain among modern savages, in vain among the ancient civilised nations. Romantic Love is a modern sentiment, less than a thousand years old.

Conjugal Love is, indeed, often celebrated by Greek, Hebrew, and other ancient writers, but regarding Romantic—or pre-matrimonial—Love (which alone forms the theme of our novelists), they are silent. The Bible takes no account of it, and although Greek literature and mythology seem at first sight to abound in allusions to it, critical analysis shows that the reference never is to Love as we understand it. Greek Love, as will be shown hereafter, was a peculiar mixture of friendship and passion, differing widely from the modern sentiment of Love.

It is because among the Romans the position of woman was somewhat more elevated and modern than among the Greeks, that we find in Roman literature a vague foreshadowing of _some_ of the elements of modern Love.

In the Dark Ages there is a relapse. The germs of Love could not flourish in a period when women were kept in brutal subjection by the men, and their minds refused all nourishment and refinement. The Troubadours of Italy and France proved useful champions of woman, as did the German Minnesingers, by teaching the mediæval military man to look upon her with sentiments of respect and adoration. Yet their conduct rarely harmonised with their preaching; and the cause of Romantic Love gained little by their poetic effusions, which were almost invariably addressed to married women.

Not till Dante’s _Vita Nuova_ appeared was the gospel of modern Love—the romantic adoration of a maiden by a youth—revealed for the first time in definite language. Genius, however, is always in advance of its age, _in emotions as well as in thoughts_; and the feelings experienced by Dante were obviously not shared by his contemporaries, who found them too subtle and sublimated for their comprehension. And, in fact, they _were_ too ethereal to quite correspond with reality. The strings of Dante’s lyre were strung too high, and touched by his magic hand, gave forth harmonic overtones too celestial for mundane ears to hear.

It remained for Shakspere to combine the idealism with the realism of Love in proper proportions. The colours with which he painted the passion and sentiment of modern Love are as fresh and as true to life as on the day when they were first put on his canvas. Like Dante, however, he was emotionally ahead of his time, as an examination of contemporary literature in England and elsewhere shows. But within the last two centuries Love has gradually, if slowly, assumed among all educated people characteristics which formerly it possessed only in the minds of a few isolated men of genius.

Before we proceed to prove all these assertions in detail, it will be well to cast a brief glance at the analogies to human Love presented by cosmic, chemical, and vegetal phenomena; as well as to distinguish Romantic Love from other forms of human and animal affection. This will enable us to comprehend more clearly what modern Love is, by making apparent what it is not.

COSMIC ATTRACTION AND CHEMICAL AFFINITIES

It is a favourite device of poets to invest plants and even inanimate objects with human thoughts and feelings. The parched, withering flower, tormented by the pangs of thirst, implores the passing cloud for a few drops of the vital fluid; and the cloud, moved to pity at sight of the suffering beauty, sheds its welcome, soothing tears.

“And ’tis my faith, that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.”—WORDSWORTH.

“The moon shines bright: in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise.” . . . . . . . . “Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them.”—SHAKSPERE.

One of the first authors who thus endowed non-human objects with human feelings was the Greek philosopher Empedokles, who flourished about twenty-three centuries ago. Just as the last of the great German metaphysicians, Schopenhauer, believed that all the forces of Nature—astronomic, chemical, biological, etc.—are identical with the human Will, of which they represent different stages of development or “objectivation,” so Empedokles insisted that the two ruling passions of the human soul, Love and Hate, are the two principles which pervade and rule the whole universe. In the primitive condition of things, he taught, the four elements, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire are mingled harmoniously, and Love rules supreme. Then Hate intervenes and produces individual, separate forms. Plants are developed, and after them animals, or rather, at first, only single organs—detached eyes, arms, hands, etc. Then Love reasserts its force and unites these separate organs into complete animals. Strange monstrosities are the result of some of these unions—animals of double sex, human heads on the bodies of oxen, or horned heads on the bodies of men. These, however, perish, while others, which are congruous and adapted to their surroundings, survive and multiply.

Thus Empedokles, “the Greek Darwin,” was the originator of a theory of evolution based on the alternate predominance of cosmic Love and Hate; Love being the attractive, Hate the repulsive force.

In the preface to the first volume of _Don Quixote_, Cervantes refers those who wish to acquire some information concerning Love to an Italian treatise by Judah Leo. The full title of the book, which appeared in Rome in the sixteenth century, is _Dialoghi di amore, Composti da Leone Medico, di nazione Ebreo, e di poi fatto cristiano_. There are said to be three French translations of it, but it was only after long searching that I succeeded in finding a copy, at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It proved to be a strange medley of astrology, metaphysics, theology, classical erudition, mythology, and mediæval science. Burton, in the chapter on Love, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, quotes freely from this work of Leo, whom he names as one of about twenty-five authors who wrote treatises on Love in ancient and mediæval times.

Like Empedokles, Leo identifies cosmic attraction with Love. But he points out three degrees of Love—Natural, Sensible, and Rational.

By Natural Love he means those “sympathies” which attract a stone to the earth, make rivers flow to the sea, keep the sun, moon, and stars in their courses, etc. Burton (1652) agrees with Leo, and asks quaintly, “How comes a loadstone to draw iron to it ... the ground to covet showers, but for love? ... no stock, no stone, that has not some feeling of love. ’Tis more eminent in Plants, Hearbs, and is especially observed in vegetals; as betwixt the Vine and Elm a great sympathy,” etc.

“Sensible” Love is that which prevails among animals. In it Leo recognises the higher elements of delight in one another’s company, and of attachment to a master.

“Rational” Love, the third and highest class, is peculiar to God, angels, and men.

But the inclination to confound gravitation and other natural forces with Love is not to be found among ancient and mediæval authors alone. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the “gross materialist,” Dr. Ludwig Büchner, who exclaims rapturously: “For it is love, in the form of _attraction_, which chains stone to stone, earth to earth, star to star, and which holds together the mighty edifice on which we stand, and on the surface of which, like parasites, we carry on our existence, barely noticeable in the infinite universe; and on which we shall continue to exist till that distant period when its component parts will again be resolved into that primal chaos from which it laboriously severed itself millions of years ago, and became a separate planet.”

Büchner carries on this anthropopathic process a step farther, by including all the chemical affinities of atoms and molecules as manifestations of love: “Just as man and woman attract one another, so oxygen attracts hydrogen, and, in loving union with it, forms water, that mighty omnipresent element, without which no life nor thought would be possible.” And again: “Potassium and phosphorus entertain such a violent passion for oxygen that even under water they burn—_i.e._ unite themselves with the beloved object.”

Goethe’s novel, _Elective Affinities_, which was inspired by a late and hopeless passion of its author, is based on this chemical notion that no physical obstacle can separate two souls that are united by an amorous affinity. But the practical outcome of his theory—that the psychic affinity of two persons suffices to impress the characteristics of both on the offspring of one of them—has nothing to support it in medical experience; while the chemical analogy, with all due deference to Goethe’s reputation as a man of science, is against his view. His notion was that the children of two souls loving one another will inherit their characteristics. But what distinguishes a chemical compound (based on “affinity”) from a mere physical mixture, is precisely the contrary fact that the compound does not in any respect resemble the parental elements! Read what a specialist says in Watts’s _Dictionary of Chemistry_:—

“Definite chemical compounds generally differ altogether in physical properties from their components. Thus, with regard to _colour_, yellow sulphur and gray mercury produce red cinnabar; purple iodine and gray potassium yield colourless iodide of potassium.... The _density_ of a compound is very rarely an exact mean between that of its constituents, being generally higher, and in a few cases lower; and the _taste_, _smell_, _refracting power_, _fusibility_, _volatility_, _conducting power for heat and electricity_, and other physical properties, are not for the most part such as would result from mere mixture of their constituents.”

Chemical affinities, accordingly, cannot be used as analogies of Love. Not even on account of the violent _individual preference_ shown by two elements for one another, for this apparently _individual_ preference is really only _generic_. A piece of phosphorus will as readily unite with one cubic foot of oxygen as with another; whereas it is the very essence of Love that it demands a union with one particular _individual_, and no other.

Equally unsatisfactory are all similar attempts to identify Love with gravitation or other forms of cosmic attraction. Here is what a great expert in Love has to say on this subject: “The attraction of love, I find,” writes Burns, “is in inverse proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian philosophy. In the system of Sir Isaac, the nearer objects are to one another, the stronger is the attractive force. In my system, every milestone that marked my progress from Clarinda awakened a keener pang of attachment to her.”

How beautifully, in other respects, does the law of gravitation simulate the methods of Love! Does not the meteor which passionately falls on this planet and digs a deep hole into it, show its love in this manner, even as that affectionate bear who smashed his master’s forehead in order to kill the fly on it? Does not the avalanche which thunders down the mountain-side and buries a whole forest and several villages, afford another touching illustration of the love of attraction, or cosmic Love?—a crushing argument in its favour? Or the frigid glacier, in its slower course, does it not lacerate the sides of the valley, and strew about its precious boulders, merely by way of illustrating the amorous effect of gravitation? And millions of years hence, will not this same law of attraction enable the sun to prove his ecstatic love for our earth by swallowing her up and reducing her to her primitive chaotic state? Imagine a man and a woman whose love consists in this, that they must be kept widely separated by a hostile force to prevent them from dashing together, and reducing each other to atoms and molecules! _That_ is the “love” of the stars and planets.

But it is needless to continue this _reductio ad absurdum_ of pantheistic or panerotic vagaries. The method of the writers on Love here quoted—Empedokles, Leo, Burton, Büchner—has been to identify Love with cosmic force simply because they possess in common the one quality of attraction, by virtue of which the large earth hugs a small stone, and a large man a small maiden. Modern scientific psychology objects to this (_i.e._ not the hugging, but the method), because it does not in the least aid us in understanding the nature of Love; and because it is as irrational to call attraction Love as it would be to call a brick a house, a leaf a tree, or a green daub a rainbow. For Love embraces every colour in the spectrum of human emotion.

Having failed to find a satisfactory solution of the mystery of Love in the inorganic world, let us now see if the vegetable kingdom offers no better analogies in its sexual phenomena.

FLOWER LOVE AND BEAUTY

Until a few decades ago, it was the universal belief that flowers had been specially created for man’s exclusive delight. This was such an easy way, you know, to overcome the difficulty of explaining the immense variety of forms and colours in the floral world; and it was, above all, so flattering to man’s egregious vanity. But one fine morning in May a German naturalist, Conrad Sprengel, published a remarkable book in which he pointed out that flowers owe their peculiar shape, colour, and fragrance to the visits of insects. Not that the insects visit the flowers in order to shape and paint and perfume them. On the contrary, they visit them for the unæsthetic purpose of eating their pollen and their honey; while the flowers’ scent and colour exist solely for the purpose of indicating to winged insects at a distance where they can find a savoury lunch.

But why should flowers take such pains to attract insects by serving them with a breakfast of honey, and by hanging out big petals to serve as coloured and perfumed signal-flags? Nature is economical in the expenditure of energy; and as the production of honey and large flowers costs the plant some of its vital energies, we may be sure that this expenditure secures the plant some superior advantage. Sprengel noticed that the insects, while pillaging flowers of their honey, unwittingly brushed off with their wings and feet some of the fertilising dust or pollen, and carried it to the pistil or female part of a flower. But it remained for Darwin to point out what advantage this transference of the pollen secured to the flower. Darwin, says Sir John Lubbock, “was the first clearly to perceive that the essential service which insects perform to flowers consists not only in transferring the pollen from the stamens to the pistil, but in transferring it from the stamens of one flower to the pistil of another. Sprengel had indeed observed in more than one instance that this was the case, but he did not altogether appreciate the importance of the fact. Mr. Darwin however, has not only made it clear from theoretical considerations, but has also proved it, in a variety of cases, by actual experiment. More recently Fritz Müller has even shown that in some cases pollen, if placed on the stigma of the same flower, has no more effect than so much inorganic dust; while, and this is perhaps even more extraordinary, in others, the pollen placed on the stigma of the same flower acted on it like poison”—a curious analogy to the current belief that close intermarriage is injurious to mankind.

What Darwin and others have proved by their experiments is that cross-fertilised flowers are more vigorous than those fertilised with their own pollen, and have a more healthy and numerous offspring. With this fact before us we need only apply the usual evolutionary formula to account for the beauty of flowers. It is well known that Nature rarely, if ever, produces two leaves or plants that are exactly alike. There is also a natural tendency in all parts of a plant except the leaves to develop other colours besides green. Now any plant which, owing to chemical causes, favourable position, etc., developed an unusually brilliant colour, would be likely to attract the attention of a winged insect in search of pollen-food. The insect, by alighting on a second flower soon after, would fertilise it with the pollen of the first flower that adhered to its limbs, thus securing to the plant the advantages of cross-fertilisation. Thanks to the laws of heredity, this advantage would be transmitted to the young plants, among which again those most favoured would gain an advantage and a more numerous offspring. And thus the gradual development not only of coloured petals, but of scents and honey, can be accounted for.

What makes this argument irresistible is the additional fact, first pointed out by Darwin, that plants which are not visited by insects, but are fertilised by the agency of the wind, are neither adorned with beautifully-coloured flowers, nor provided with honey or fragrance. And another most important fact: Darwin found that flowers which depend on the wind for their fertilisation follow the natural tendency of objects to a symmetrical form; whereas the irregular flowers are always those fertilised by insects or birds. This points to the conclusion that insects and birds are responsible not only for the colours and fragrance of flowers, but also for the shape of those that are most unique and fantastic. And this _a priori_ inference is borne out by thousands of curious and most fascinating observations described in the works of Darwin, Lubbock, Müller, and many others. The briefest and clearest presentation of the subject is in Lubbock’s _Flowers, Fruits, and Leaves_, which no one interested in natural æsthetics should fail to read. There is indeed no more interesting study in biology than the mutual adaptation of flowers, bees, butterflies, humming-birds, etc.; for just as these animals have modified the forms of flowers, so the flowers have altered the shape of these animals.

Many of the changes in the shapes of flowers are made not only with a view to facilitate the visits of winged insects, but also for keeping out creeping intruders, such as ants, which are very fond of honey, but which, as they do not fly, would not aid the cause of cross-fertilisation. Of these contrivances, “the most frequent are the interposition of _chevaux de frise_, which ants cannot penetrate, glutinous surfaces which they cannot traverse, slippery slopes which they cannot climb, or barriers which close the way.”

How obtuse are those who, with Ruskin and Emerson, accuse science of destroying the poetry of nature! What poetry is there in the thought that flowers were made for unæsthetic man, when not one man in a thousand ever takes the trouble to examine one, while for every single flower on which a human eye ever rests, a million are born to blush unseen?

But if we abandon the narrow anthropocentric point of view, and admit that insects too have a right to live, how the scope of Nature’s poetry widens! How easy it then becomes to share not only Wordsworth’s belief that “every flower enjoys the air it breathes,” but to endow it with a thousand thoughts and emotions like our own—delight in a gaily-coloured floral envelope; hope that yonder gaudy butterfly will be attracted by it; anxiety lest that “horrid” ant may steal some of its honey; determination to breathe the sweetest perfume on this darling honey bee, so as to induce it to speedily call again.

Love dramas, too, tragic and comic, are enacted in this world of flowers and insects. Thus the Arum plant resorts to the following stratagem to secure a messenger of love for carrying its pollen to a distant female flower:—

“The stigmas come to maturity first, and have lost the possibility of fertilisation before the pollen is ripe. The pollen must therefore be brought by insects, and this is effected by small flies, which enter the leaf, either for the sake of honey or of shelter, and which, moreover, when they have once entered the tube, are imprisoned by the fringe of hairs. When the anthers ripen, the pollen falls on to the flies, which, in their efforts to escape, get thoroughly dusted with it. Then the fringe of hairs withers, and the flies, thus set free, soon come out, and ere long carry the pollen to another plant” (Lubbock).

Then there are male flowers which go a-courting like any amorous swain of a Sunday night. One of these belongs to the Valisneria plant, concerning which the same writer observes that “the female flowers are borne on long stalks, which reach to the surface of the water, on which the flowers float. The male flowers, on the contrary, have short, straight stalks, from which, when mature, the pollen detaches itself, rises to the surface, and, floating freely on it, is wafted about, so that it comes in contact with the female flowers.”

But alas for the poor flowers! Few of them are thus privileged to roam about and seek their own bride. Most flowers have no more free choice in the selection of their spouse than an Oriental or a French girl. There is no previous acquaintance, no courtship before marriage, hence no Romantic Love, even if the undifferentiated germs of nervous protoplasm in the plant were capable of feeling such an emotion.

Poor flowers! Their honeymoon is without pleasure, unconscious. The wind may woo, the butterfly caress them—but the wind has no thought of the flower, and the insect’s attachment is mere “cupboard love.” The beauty of one flower cannot exist for another which has no eyes to see it; its honey and its fragrance are not for a floral lover’s delight, but for a gastronomic insect’s epicurean use. No modest coyness, no harmless flirtation, no gallant devotion and self-sacrifice, enter into the flower’s sexual life; not even the bitter-sweet pangs of jealousy, for, as Heine has ascertained, “the butterfly stops not to ask the flower, ‘Has any one kissed thee before?’ nor does the flower ask, ‘Hast thou already flitted about another?’”

Thus “flower-love,” with all its poetic analogies, has none of the elements of Romantic Love. Even attraction fails, for plants are commonly sessile, and cannot go forth to seek a mate.

“I prayed the flowers, Oh, tell me, what is love? Only _a fragrant sigh_ was wafted Thro’ the night.”—_German Song._

Two important lessons of this chapter should, however, be carefully borne in mind; for though our search for Love has so far yielded only negative results, some light has been thrown on the general laws of Beauty in Nature. The lessons are:—