Romantic Love and Personal Beauty - Henry T. Finck

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get a slice. Would you infer from this that the mother has a deeper fund of affection than the lover, because she can love several at a time? Impossible. The amount of emotion human nerves can bear is limited. The more you widen it, the shallower does it become. The general love for all mankind is the weakest and shallowest of all, the lover’slover’s concentrated affection for one person the deepest and strongest. See what a terrible strain on his nerves this deep passion is: how he loses flesh, grows pale and feverish, and prone to self-destruction. Could a mother survive if she loved each one of five or ten children with the depth and intensity of a lover? No, we must take back what we said a few pages back. Maternal affection is after all a mere phantom compared with Romantic Love.

      And the ace of hearts is yet to be played—in favour of Romantic Love. The mother’s affection is bestowed on what after all is merely a severed portion of her own individuality; whereas the two lovers are individuals utterly unrelated. And herein lies the Miracle of Love: that it can in a few days, ay, a few minutes, ignite between two young persons who have perhaps never before seen each other, a passion more intense than that which in the mother is the growth of months and years.

      It follows as a corollary from this that Romantic Love is not only more intense, more concentrated, more immediate and irresistible than parental affection, but also more just, more in accordance with the highest precepts of morality, because more altruistic. For the mother loves only her own flesh and blood, while the lover adores a stranger; like Romeo, he may even adore the daughter of an enemy.

      Thousands of fathers and mothers, moreover, love their own ugly, vicious, and stupid children more than the beautiful, well-behaved, and clever children of their neighbours. Who, on the other hand, ever heard of a young man loving his ugly sister more than the beautiful and accomplished daughter of his neighbour?

      In consideration of the great importance of the family feelings as a social cement, the parental injustice in question is pardoned and even commended. But from the standpoint of progressive culture, under guidance of the law of Natural Selection, it must be condemned; for it favours demerit in preference to merit, and retards the advent of the time when family and national prejudices will be forgotten and replaced by a loverlike, cosmopolitan admiration of personal excellence wherever and in whomsoever found.

      This matter, though it has a semi-humorous aspect, is of the deepest philosophic import. If family affection, so important as the first step in the development of society, were the only form of personal love, close intermarriage between blood-relations would be unduly encouraged. Fortunately the all-powerful instinct of Romantic Love comes in as a corrective of family affection, basing its preferences not on relationship and resemblance, but on differences and complementary qualities, thus securing for the human race the advantages of “cross-fertilisation.” We have already seen that flowers owe their beauty to the cross-fertilisation brought about through the agency of bees and butterflies. In the same way the human race owes its supreme beauty to the cross-fertilisation—the union of complementary qualities—brought about through the agency of Love. Is it perhaps for this reason that Love is so much like a butterfly, and that Cupid has wings?

      Instead of being merely a transient malady of youth, as cynics aver, or only an epicurean episode in our emotional life, Love is thus seen to be one of the greatest (if not the greatest) moral, æsthetic, and hygienic forces that control human life. And in face of this fact the few pages, or lines, commonly devoted to this passion in psychologic text-books, seem wofully inadequate. No apology is therefore needed for our attempt to subject Romantic Love to a thorough chemical analysis, and to discover its ingredients. We shall first enumerate and briefly characterise these ingredients; then proceed to examine how many of them are to be found in the love of animals and savages, of the ancient nations and of our mediæval ancestors; and finally, we shall attempt to describe these various component parts of the passion, as fully developed in Modern Love.

      OVERTONES OF ROMANTIC LOVE

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      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?

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      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.”

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      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.

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