Part 6
First of all it is necessary to get rid of the prevalent illusion that Love is a single emotion. It is, on the contrary, a most complex and ever-varying _group_ of emotions. Love is not a diamond which drops from a celestial body, cut and polished, and ready to be set into the human soul. Rather is it the crown of life, composed of various jewels, some of which, mixed with much coarse ore, may be found in the animal kingdom, among primitive men and ancient civilised nations; but of which no complete specimens are to be found till we come to comparatively modern times. Each lover has his own crown, but no two of them are exactly alike. The component jewels vary in size and brilliancy. Some—as Coyness, Adoration, Gallantry, Jealousy—are occasionally missing or lacking in lustre; and in Ancient Love those are habitually absent which in Modern Love are most prominent and cherished.
Perhaps the composite nature of Love can be still better illustrated by a comparison with colours, and with “overtones” in music, between which and the elements of Love there exists a wonderfully close analogy.
Professor Helmholtz has proved that just as white is not a simple colour, but a combination of all the hues of the rainbow, so any single tone produced by the voice or a musical instrument is not simple, as it seems, but contains, besides the _fundamental_ tone which the ordinary listener alone hears, several partial or “overtones,” which blend so closely with the fundamental tone, that it takes a very delicate ear and close attention to distinguish them. Were it not for these overtones, all instruments would sound alike, and music would lose all its charms of “colour.” For the fundamental tones of instruments and voices are identical, and the only thing that enables a musician to tell at a distance whether a given note proceeds from a piano, voice, or violin, is the presence of these overtones, which vary in their number, relative loudness and pitch (or height), thus giving rise to the differences of quality or _timbre_ in instruments.
In Love the fundamental tone is the sexual relation—the fact that one of the lovers is male, the other female. This fundamental tone does not vary throughout Nature. It is the same among animals and savages as among civilised men; and what distinguishes the passion of one of these groups from that of the other is alone the overtones of love, which vary in number, relative prominence, and refinement (“high-toned”).
What are these overtones?
I.—INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCE
What first ennobles Love and raises it above mere passion, is the stubborn preference for a particular individual. A savage chief ignorant of Love would not hesitate a moment to exchange his bride for two or three other women equally young and tempting; whereas a man under the influence of Love would not give his beloved for the choice among all the beauties of the Caucasus and Andalusia. “If we pass in review the different degrees of love,” says Schopenhauer, “from the most transient attachment to the most violent passion, we shall find that the difference between them springs from their different degrees of _individualisation_.”
II.—MONOPOLY OR EXCLUSIVENESS
Closely connected with the first overtone is that of exclusiveness. True Love is a monopolist. As in a sun-glass all the solar rays are concentrated into one burning focus, so are the lover’s emotions on his beloved. Not only does he care for _her_ alone of all women, but he voluntarily offers her a monopoly of _his_ thoughts and feelings. In return for this, however, he expects and exacts of her a like monopoly of her affection and favours; and this leads to the next overtone.
III.—JEALOUSY
This is the salt and pepper of Love. A little of it is piquant, too much of it spoils the soup. The moral mission of Jealousy is, by means of watchfulness and the inspiring of fear, to ensure fidelity and chastity, and thus help to develop the romantic features of Love.
IV.—COYNESS
This is a specially feminine trait of Love, which, by retarding the eager lover’s conquest, augments and idealises his passion. In Modern Love, Coyness varies in two directions—towards prudery on one side, coquetry on the other.
V.—GALLANTRY
If Coyness is a peculiarly feminine ingredient of Love, Gallantry, on the other hand, is a specially masculine attribute. The eager desire to please, it is true, is also present in a woman’s Love; but it shows itself less as an active impulse to do something for the lover, than as a desire to please him by making herself as attractive as possible.
VI.—SELF-SACRIFICE
In the most violent cases of Love this overtone may reveal itself in two ways: either as a mere exaggeration of Gallantry—a desire to please even at the risk of life; or as a suicidal impulse in cases of hopeless passion—when the one object which seemed to make life worth living has been placed beyond reach.
VII.—SYMPATHY
“In order to feel with another’s pain it is enough to be a man; to feel with another’s pleasure it is needful to be an angel.” If this be true, then lovers are angels. For not only do they share one another’s pleasures, but it is impossible for the one to be really happy unless the other enjoys the same emotion. “Does that other see the same star, the same melting cloud; read the same book, feel the same emotion that now delights me?”—these are, in Emerson’s words, the questions which the lovers, when separated, ask incessantly.
VIII.—PRIDE OF CONQUEST AND POSSESSION
In his suggestive but incomplete analysis of Love, in his _Principles of Psychology_, Mr. Herbert Spencer names as two of the emotions which enter into it, the Love of Approbation and Self-Esteem, which he thus defines: “To be preferred above all the world, and that by one admired beyond all others, is to have the love of approbation gratified in a degree passing every previous experience: especially as, to this direct gratification of it, there must be added that reflex gratification of it, which results from the preference being witnessed by unconcerned persons. Further, there is the allied emotion of self-esteem. To have succeeded in gaining such attachment from, and sway over, another, is a practical proof of power, of superiority, which cannot fail agreeably to excite the _amour propre_.”
This is well expressed, but the names are obviously not well chosen. It is hardly correct to intimate that the “love of approbation” and “self-esteem” constitute two of the group of emotions which we call Love. What the lover _feels_ is not a “love of approbation,” etc., but the emotion of _Pride_ at having conquered and gained possession of so desirable a prize.
IX.—EMOTIONAL HYPERBOLE
The lover sees, thinks, and feels only in superlatives. His eyes are no longer mere “_windows_ of the soul,” but _microscopes_ which magnify all the beloved’s merits on the scale of seven square miles to the inch. And the hyberbolic imagery which constitutes the essence of love-poetry is his everyday food—with a special _menu_ on Sundays.
X.—MIXED MOODS—MAJOR AND MINOR
It is in Love that “confusion makes his masterpiece.” The lover is so incessantly tossed on the ocean of turbulent emotion that he soon ceases to know or care which is up and which down, and all that remains is an all-engrossing sense of love-sickness.
“Angels call it heavenly joy, Infernal torture the devils say; And men? They call it—Love.”—HEINE.
XI.—ADMIRATION OF PERSONAL BEAUTY
This is the æsthetic overtone of Love; and so prominent is it that it is commonly heard before and above all the others. “Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold,” says Shakspere; and if you tell twenty of your male acquaintances that you have been introduced to a young lady, nineteen of them will ask immediately, “Is she pretty?” No reporter ever writes about a girl murdered by a tramp or burnt in a house, without describing her as a model of beauty, in order to double the reader’s interest and quintuple his pity. Madame de Staël confessed that she would have gladly exchanged her literary genius for beauty. With the Greeks already the words Love and Beauty were inseparably associated; and even the Chinese, who are not embarrassed by an excess of beauty, have a proverb, “With one smile she overthrew a city, with another a kingdom.”
This completes the preliminary analysis of Love. I regret exceedingly that I have been able to discover only eleven “overtones” in Modern Love: but inasmuch as at least six of these—Nos. V. to X.—are only about a thousand years old, there is reason to hope that some fine morning in May a new one will be born to make up the round dozen. If so, it is to be hoped it will assume in men the form of an absolute insistance on feminine health, and an instinctive detestation of the hideous and love-killing fashions with which women still persist in ruining their beauty.
HERBERT SPENCER ON LOVE
For the sake of comparison I may cite Mr. Spencer’s summary of the elements which he thinks compose Love: “Round the physical feeling forming the nucleus of the whole there are gathered the feelings produced by personal beauty, that constituting simple attachment, those of reverence, of love of approbation, of self-esteem, of property, of love of freedom, of sympathy. All these, each excited in the highest degree, and severally tending to reflect their excitement on each other, form the composite psychical state which we call Love. And as each of these feelings is in itself highly complicated, uniting a wide range of states of consciousness, we may say that this passion fuses into an immense aggregation, nearly all the elementary excitations of which we are capable; and that from this results its irresistible power.”
Let us now see how many of the characters of true Romantic Love are to be found in the courtship of animals and savages.
LOVE AMONG ANIMALS
As comparative psychology is the youngest branch of philosophy, there are still among us thousands of excellent but ignorant folks who cling to the old mythologic notion that animals are animated machines or things “which” are devoid of intellect and feeling, and guided by a metaphysical fetish called “instinct.” To such the undertaking of a search for Love—real Romantic Love—among animals, will seem not only absurd, but a sort of high treason against human conceit. To mitigate any possible indignation on the reader’s part, it may be advisable, therefore, to begin by giving a few illustrations demonstrating the existence of various family affections and friendship in the animal world; after which, the possibility of finding traces of Love proper will appear less remote.
_Paternal, filial, brotherly, and sisterly_ love, comparatively weak and undeveloped in man, are indeed almost absent in the lower animals. Birds of the same brood do not recognise each other after they have left their nest; and a dog will not hesitate to attack his own brother as a stranger after a year’s separation. The part which a male bird takes in feeding and protecting the young is, as Horwicz suggests, an element of his conjugal rather than his paternal feeling; and a young animal that would risk its own life in defence of its mother or father is yet to be heard from.
_Friendship_, however, does exist between animals, as we have already seen; and not only among animals of the same species, but of different species. “Happy families” of animals commonly hostile to each other have been known outside of the showman’s cage. Büchner cites instances of friendship between a robin and a cat; a fox and duck; dog and deer; cat and mouse; and even such absurdly incongruous cases of attachment as between a crow and a bull; a dog and an elephant; a cat and a rattlesnake. But the deepest feeling of friendship which any animal is capable of feeling is undoubtedly the dog’s love of his master. “Professor Braubach,” says Darwin, “goes so far as to maintain that a dog looks on his master as on a god.” “It is said,” he adds in a footnote, “that Bacon long ago, and the poet Burns, held the same notion.”
_Maternal and conjugal_ affection, however, are, as in man, so in animals, the two strongest forms of family attachment. A French author, M. Menault, has written a special treatise on _L’Amour Maternel chez les Animaux_, and Dr. Büchner exclaims, _à propos_: “If a human mother, with certain destruction staring in her face, dashes into a burning house to save her imperilled child, and thus finds her own death, this sacrifice is no greater, no more heroic, than that of a stork-mother who, after vain efforts to save her brood, is voluntarily burnt up with them in her nest; or of those elephant-mothers who, as Schweinfurth narrates, in the African hunting expeditions, when the bushes along the shore are ignited in order to drive out the elephants, seek to save their young ones by filling their trunks with water and sprinkling it over them, while they themselves are roasting.”
How low down in the scale of animal life traces of _conjugal_ attachment are to be found is shown by the following case cited by Darwin: “An accurate observer, Mr. Lonsdale, informs me that he placed a pair of landsnails, one of which was weakly, into a small and ill-provided garden. After a short time the strong and healthy individual disappeared, and was traced by its track of slime over a wall into an adjoining well-stocked garden. Mr. Lonsdale concluded that it had deserted its sickly mate, but after an absence of twenty-four hours it returned, and apparently communicated the result of its successful exploration, for both then started along the same track and disappeared over the wall.” Again, the naturalist, Mr. Bate, experimented on the conjugal feelings of _Gammarus marinus_, or the sandskipper common on English shores, by separating a male from its female, and imprisoning both in the same vessel with many individuals of the same species. “The female, when thus divorced, soon joined the others. After a time the male was put again into the same vessel; and he then, after swimming about for a time, dashed into the crowd, and without any fighting at once took away his wife. This fact shows that in the Amphipoda, an order low in the scale, the males and females recognise each other, and are mutually attached.”
Concerning birds, Darwin remarks: “It has often been said that parrots become so deeply attached to each other that when one dies the other pines for a long time; but Mr. Jenner Weir thinks that with most birds the strength of their affection has been much exaggerated. Nevertheless, when one of a pair in a state of nature has been shot, the survivor has been heard for days afterwards uttering a plaintive call; and Mr. St. John gives various facts proving the attachment of mated birds. Mr. Bennett relates that in China after a drake of the beautiful mandarin Teal had been stolen, the duck remained disconsolate, though sedulously courted by another mandarin drake, who displayed before her all his charms. After an interval of three weeks the stolen drake was recovered, and instantly the pair recognised each other with extreme joy.” “Dr. Buller says (_Birds of New Zealand_) that a male king lory was killed, and the female ‘fretted and moped, refused her food, and died of a broken heart.’”
But there are exceptions to this rule of conjugal attachment and fidelity, as is shown in the following quotation, which completes the curious analogy between human and bird love connubial: “Mr. Harrison Weir has himself observed, and has heard from several breeders, that a female pigeon will occasionally take a strong fancy for a particular male, and will desert her own mate for him. Some females, according to another experienced observer, Riedel, are of a profligate disposition, and prefer almost any stranger to their own mate. Some amorous males, called by our English fanciers ‘gay birds,’ are so successful in their gallantries that, as Mr. H. Weir informs me, they must be shut up on account of the mischief which they cause.”
So there are Don Juans even among pigeons!
_Intermarriages_ or mixed unions also occur among birds. Says Darwin: “It is certain that distinct species of birds occasionally pair in a state of nature and produce hybrids. Many instances could be given: thus Macgillivray relates how a male blackbird and female thrush ‘fell in love with each other,’ and produced offspring. Several years ago eighteen cases had been recorded of the occurrence in Great Britain of hybrids between the black grouse and pheasant.... A male widgeon, living with females of the same species, has been known to pair with a pintail duck. Lloyd describes the remarkable attachment between a shield-drake and a common duck. Many additional instances could be given; and the Rev. E. S. Dixon remarks that ‘those who have kept many different species of geese together, well know what unaccountable attachments they are frequently forming, and that they are quite as likely to pair and rear young with individuals of a race (species) apparently the most alien to themselves, as with their own stock.’”
In their _marriages_ animals have anticipated man in every possible arrangement—promiscuity, polygamy, monogamy, polyandry. According to Darwin, “Many mammals and some few birds are polygamous, but with other animals belonging to the lower classes I have found no evidence of this habit.” He has not “heard of any species in the Orders of Cheiroptera, Edentata, Insectivora, and Rodents being polygamous, excepting that among the Rodents the common rat, according to some rat-catchers, lives with several females.” Among the terrestrial carnivora the lion seems to be the only polygamist, while the marine carnivora are “eminently polygamous.”
Domestication sometimes has the bad effect of converting wild birds to Mormonism. Thus “the wild duck is strictly monogamous, the domestic duck highly polygamous.”
It is among wild birds in general that the most remarkable cases of conjugal attachment in the animal world are found. And since most birds are monogamous, pairing sometimes even for life, we may hence draw the important conclusion that among animals, as among men, monogamy seems to favour the development of conjugal love. Polygamy, on the other hand, everywhere introduces jealousies, rivalries, discords. Among Oriental nations where polygamy prevails, each wife must have her own apartments, and no one would dare to taste food prepared by another, for fear of poison. On some animals polygamy seems to have a similar effect, for we read that “Mr. Bartlett believes that the Lophophorus, like many other gallinaceous birds, is naturally polygamous, but two females cannot be placed in the same cage with a male, as they fight so much together.”
COURTSHIP
The foregoing illustrations, many of which show the gross injustice lurking in our expression “animal passion,” will have prepared the reader’s mind for the search after the elements of _romantic_ or pre-nuptial Love in animals.
The development of romantic, as distinguished from conjugal love, depends on the existence of _a more or less prolonged period of courtship_. Where this is absent Love is absent, as among the ancient nations and those of the moderns who lock up their women until they are ready to be sold to a husband, at sight.
Among animals the young females are not locked up or chaperoned. They are free to meet the young males and fall in love with the one that pleases them most.
As a rule the preliminaries to animal marriages are doubtless brief. If a healthy, vigorous male comes across a mature, healthy female, it is usually a case of mutual _veni, vidi, vici_.
In other cases, however, courtship is a more prolonged affair, owing partly to the coyness of the female, partly to the rivalries among the male suitors.
Animal courtship is carried on either by single pairs in the romantic shades of the forests, or else at special _nuptial mass meetings_, resembling those held by some primitive tribes whose unmarried young people assemble on certain days in the year to select partners. Of the common magpie, for instance, Darwin relates that “Some years ago these birds abounded in extraordinary numbers, so that a gamekeeper killed in one morning nineteen males, and another killed by a single shot seven birds roosting together. They then had the habit of assembling very early in the spring at particular spots, where they could be seen in flocks, chattering, sometimes fighting, bustling, and flying about the trees. The whole affair was evidently considered by the birds as one of the highest importance. Shortly after the meeting they all separated, and were then observed by Mr. Fox and others to be paired for the season.”
This was known as the “great magpie marriage.” In Germany and Scandinavia similar assemblages of black game are so common that special names have been given to them. “The bowers of the bower-birds are the resort of both sexes during the breeding season; and here the males meet and contend with each other for the favours of the females, and here the latter assemble and coquet with the males.”
Two more cases may be cited: “With one of the vultures (_Cathartes aura_) of the United States parties of eight, ten, or more males and females assemble on fallen logs, ‘exhibiting the strongest _desire to please_ mutually,’ and after many caresses each male leads off his partner on the wing. Audubon likewise carefully observed the wild flocks of Canada geese, and gives a graphic description of their love-antics; he says that the birds which had been previously mated ‘renewed their courtship as early as the month of January, while the others would be contending or coquetting for hours every day, until all seemed satisfied with the choice they had made, after which, although they remained together, any person could easily perceive that they were careful to keep in pairs. I have observed also that the older the birds the shorter were the preliminaries of their courtship. The bachelors and old maids, whether in regret or not caring to be disturbed by the bustle, quietly moved aside and lay down at some distance from the rest.’”
_Separate courtship_ may be illustrated by the following cases, the first of which is also interesting as showing that it is not among men alone that the female occasionally becomes the wooer; and the second as showing how early in the scale of animal life a primitive sort of courtship may be found. Concerning a wild duck brought up in captivity Mr. Hewitt says that “After breeding a couple of seasons with her own mallard, it at once shook him off on my placing a male pintail on the water. It was evidently a case of _love at first sight_, for she swam about the newcomer caressingly, though he appeared evidently alarmed and averse to her overtures of affection. From that hour she forgot her old partner. Winter passed by, and the next spring the pintail seemed to have become a convert to her blandishments, for they nested and produced seven or eight young ones.”
The second case relates to the landsnail, concerning which Agassiz says: “Quiconque a eu l’occasion d’observer les amours des limaçons ne saurait mettre en doute la séduction déployée dans les mouvements et les allures qui préparent et accomplissent le double embrassement de ces hermaphrodites.”
The opportunities for prolonged Courtship being thus given, the question arises, “Do animals, while a-wooing, experience the same feelings as a human lover?” In other words, Are any of the overtones of Romantic Love present in the amorous passion of animals?