Romantic Love and Personal Beauty - Henry T. Finck

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it, is one of the principal objects of this monograph.

      MODERN LOVE

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      Writers on evolution have a very simple and convenient way of verifying their inferences, by applying the rule—which seems to hold true universally—that the different stages through which an individual passes in his development—physical and mental—correspond to the periods of development through which the whole race has passed.

      This principle, applied to our present problem, fits exactly, and proves that the account given in the preceding pages of the development of Love is correct.

      Historically we have seen that of all affections Maternal Love is the earliest and (until after Romantic Love appears) the strongest. Then paternal, filial, and fraternal love are gradually developed, followed by friendship (Greek), and finally by Love proper.

      Just so with the individual. The baby’s first love is for its mother, whose tender expression and beaming eyes throw the first reflected smile on its face, and touch the first cord of sympathetic attachment. Then the father comes in for his share of attention, followed by sisters and brothers. At school begins the era of friendship, representing “classical” love, and often as ardent and Love-like as among the ancient Greeks. Finally Romantic Love appears on the scene, eclipsing every other emotion. And, like historic Love, it generally passes through a blind, silly, chivalric stage, known as “calf-love,” which at last is succeeded by real, intense romantic passion, that leads to monogamous marriage, the central pillar of modern civilisation.

      Not only have we seen that Romantic Love is the latest and the strongest of all affections, but the causes which retarded its development have been indicated. Chief among these were the negation of Individual Preference, and the absence of opportunities for Courtship, already deplored by Plato. As long as women were captured, or bought, or disposed of by father or mother without any reference to their own will, Sexual Selection on the female’s part was of course out of the question; and on the man’s part it was rendered impossible by the absence of Courtship. Wooing a woman was not winning her favour, but impressing her father with a display of wealth or social power. Thus there were no opportunities on her part for the display of personal charms or the cunning art of Coyness, or for inflaming and feeding his passion through Jealousy by bestowing an occasional mischief-making smile on his rivals; there were no lover’s quarrels followed by sweet reconciliations and an increase of Love; no short absences fanning Love with sighs; no alternate feelings of hope and despair, inspired by his or her fickle or uncertain actions; no chance for displays of Gallantry and mutual Self-sacrifice and assistance; no sympathetic exchange and consequent doubling of pleasures, real or anticipated; none, in fact, of the more subtle traits and emotions which make Romantic Love what it is.

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      It cannot be said that these obstacles to Love have been as radically removed as they ought to be. Oriental chaperonage is still rampant in France, to the extinction of all true romantic sentiment. In other countries Parental Tyranny has considerably abated, but the Goddess of Love still has formidable rivals in Plutus, the god of wealth, and Minerva, the goddess of “wisdom” or expediency. Thus it happens that even in the case of persons who are refined enough to experience Love, it is too often absent when they marry; and, as a German pessimist sneeringly points out, no one has yet dared to tempt bride and bridegroom to perjury, by asking when the knot is tied, “Do you love this woman?” “Do you love this man?”

      Nevertheless public sentiment is continually making war on Plutus and Minerva, and siding with Venus. Probably the mercantile element in marriage will not die out till a few weeks before the millennium, although Herbert Spencer is optimistic enough to believe it will sooner. “After wife-stealing,” he says, “came wife-purchase; and then followed the usages which made, and continue to make, considerations of property predominate over considerations of personal preference. Clearly, wife-purchase and husband-purchase (which exists in some semi-civilised societies), though they have lost their original gross form, persist in disguised forms. Already some disapproval of those who marry for money or position is expressed; and this growing stronger may be expected to purify the monogamic union, by making it in all cases real instead of being in some cases nominal.”

      It is indeed a most hopeful sign of progress, this strong and growing modern sentiment in favour of Romantic Love as against rival motives matrimonial. Novelists, when the wills of the lovers and the parents clash, invariably and unconsciously side with the lovers; and should a novelist make an exception, many of his readers would close the book, and the others would finish it under protest and disappointedly. Even when we read a newspaper reporter’s thrilling and dramatic narrative of the elopement of a foolish young couple, fresh from the high-school, our hearts throb with sympathetic anxiety lest the irate parent should succeed in capturing the runaway couple.

      No doubt this instinctive modern prejudice in favour of Romantic Love will ultimately throw a halo of sacredness around it, which will raise Cupid’s will to the dignity of an Eleventh Commandment—a consummation devoutedly to be wished; for although the conjugal affection which grows out of Romantic Love is not always deeper than that which results from unions not based on Love, the physical and mental qualities of the children commonly show at a glance whether or not the parents were brought together by Sexual Selection.

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      The psychic elements of Love which thus far have been compared to overtones, might also be regarded from a Wagnerian point of view as Leitmotive or leading motives in the Drama of Historic Love. In the first scenes, where the actors are animals and savages, followed by Egyptians, Hebrews, Hindoos, Greeks, and Romans, and mediæval clowns and fanatics, these leading motives are heard only as short melodic phrases, and at long intervals, pregnant, indeed, with future possibilities, but isolated and never combined into a symphony of Love. In the last act, however, which we have now reached, all these motives appear in various combinations, in the gorgeous and glowing instrumentation of modern poets, with all possible figurative, harmonic, and dynamic nuances; and at the same time so intertwined and interwoven that no one apparently has ever succeeded in unravelling the poetic woof and distinguishing the separate threads. For us, however, who have followed these motives from the moment when they first appeared in a primitive form, it will be easy to distinguish them and subject each one to a separate analysis. We shall first consider those which, like Coyness and Jealousy, are already familiar and need only be considered in their modern forms, and then pass on to those which are more and more exclusively modern.

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      At least five sources or causes of modern female Coyness may be suggested:—

      (1) An Echo of Capture.—Why are modern city-folks so fond of picnics? It was Mr. Spencer, I believe, who suggested somewhere that it is because picnics awaken in civilised men and women a vague and agreeable reminiscence of the time when their ancestors habitually took their meals on meadows in the shade of a tree. If it is possible for such experiences to re-echo, as it were, in our nervous system through so many generations, thanks to the conservatism of oft-repeated cerebral impressions, then it does not seem so very fantastic to suggest that one cause of female Coyness may be a

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