chivalrous spirit in Europe, so they must have been in turn influenced
by the developments of the troubadour spirit which culminated in such
maxims as Montagnogout's declaration that "a true lover desires a
thousand times more the happiness of his beloved than his own." As
Saadi lived in the time of the troubadours--the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries--it was easy for him to get a knowledge of the European
"ways and forms of courtship." In Persia itself there was no courtship
or legitimate lovemaking, for the "lover" hardly ever had met his
bride before the wedding-day. Nevertheless, if we may believe William
Franklin,[35] a Persian woman might command a suitor to spend all day
in front of her house reciting verses in praise of her beauty; and
H.C. Trumbull naïvely cites, as evidence that Orientals love just as
we do, the following story:

"Morier tells ... of a large painting in a
pleasure-house in Shiraz, illustrative of the treatment
of a loyal lover by a heartless coquette, which is one
of the popular legends of Persia. Sheik Chenan, a
Persian of the true faith, and a man of learning and
consequence, fell in love with an Armenian lady of
great beauty who would not marry him unless he changed
his religion. To this he agreed. Still she would not
marry him unless he would drink wine. This scruple also
he yielded. She resisted still, unless he consented to
eat pork. With this also he complied. Still she was
coy, and refused to fulfil her engagement, unless he
would be contented to drive swine before her. Even this
condition he accepted. She then told him that she would
not have him at all, and laughed at him for his pains.
The picture represents the coquette at her window,
laughing at Sheik Chenan as he is driving his pigs
before her."

This story suggests and may have been invented in imitation of the
foolish and capricious tests to which mediaeval dames in Europe put
their quixotic knights. Few of these knights, as I have said elsewhere
_(R.L.P.B._, 100), "were so manly as the one in Schiller's ballad,
who, after fetching his lady's glove from the lion's den, threw it in
her face," to show how his feelings toward her had changed. If the
Persian in Trumbull's story had been manly and refined enough to be
capable of genuine love, his feelings toward a woman who could
wantonly subject him to such persistent insults and degradation, would
have turned into contempt. Ordinary sensual infatuation, on the other
hand, would be quite strong enough and unprincipled enough to lead a
man to sacrifice religion, honor, and self-respect, for a capricious
woman. This kind of self-sacrifice is not a test of true love, for it
is not altruistic. The sheik did not make his sacrifice to benefit the
woman he coveted, but to benefit himself, as he saw no other way of
gratifying his own selfish desires.[36]


HERO AND LEANDER

Very great importance attaches to this distinction between selfish and
altruistic self-sacrifice. The failure to make this distinction is
perhaps more than anything else responsible for the current belief
that romantic love was known to the ancients. Did not Leander risk and
sacrifice his life _for Hero_, swimming to her at night across the
stormy Hellespont? Gentle reader, he did not. He risked his life for
the purpose of continuing his illicit amours with a priestess of Venus
in a lonely tower. As we shall see in the chapter devoted to Greek
romances, there is in the story told by Musaeus not a single trait
rising above frank sensuality. In his eagerness to gratify his
appetite, Leander risked Hero's life as well as his own. His swimming
across the strait was, moreover, no more than any animal would do to
meet its mate on the other side of a river. It was a romantic thing to
do, but it was no proof of romantic love. Bearing in mind what
Westermarck says (134)--

"With wild animals sexual desire is not less powerful as an
incentive to strenuous exertion than hunger and thirst. In
the rut-time, the males, even of the most cowardly species,
engage in mortal combats"



--we see that Hero's risking of death for the sake
of his intrigue was not even a mark of exceptional courage; and
regarding the quality and nature of his "love" it tells us nothing
whatever.


THE ELEPHANT AND THE LOTOS

In the Hindoo drama _Malavika and Agnimitra_, Kalidasa represents the
king as seeking an interview with a new flame of his. When his
companion warns him that the queen might surprise them, the king
answers:

When the elephant sees the lotos leaves
He fears no crocodile.

Lotos leaves being the elephant's favorite food, these lines admirably
sum up the Hindoo idea of risking life for "love"--cupboard love. But
would the elephant risk his life to save the beautiful lotos flowers
from destruction? Foolish question! Was not the lotos created to
gratify the elephant's appetite just as beautiful women were created
to subserve man's desires?

Fighting crocodiles for the sake of the sweet lotos is a
characteristic of primitive "love" in all its various strata. "Nothing
is more certain," writes M'Lean (135), "than that the enamoured
Esquimau will risk life and limb in the pursuit of his object." Women,
he says, are the main cause of all quarrels among the Esquimaux; and
the same is true of the lower races in general. If an Australian wants
to run away with another man's wife, the thought of risking his
life--and hers too--does not restrain him one moment. Ascending to the
Greeks, we may cite Robert Burton's summing up of one of their
legends:

"Thirteen proper young men lost their lives for that
fair Hipodamia's sake, the daughter of Onomaus, King of
Elis: when that hard condition was proposed of death or
victory [in a race], they made no account of it, but
courageously for love died, till Pelops at last won her
by a sleight."

What is this but another version of the story of the lotos and the
elephant? The prize was great, and worth the risk. Men risk their
lives daily for gold, and for objects infinitely less attractive to
the senses and the selfish ambitions than a beautiful princess. In the
following, which Burton quotes from Hoedus, the sensual and selfish
basis of all such confronting of death for "love's" sake is laid bare
to the bone:

"What shall I say of the great dangers they undergo,
single combats they undertake, how they will venture
their lives, creep in at windows, gutters, climb over
walls to come to their sweethearts, and if they be
surprised, leap out at windows, cast themselves
headlong down, bruising or breaking their legs or arms,
and sometimes losing life itself, as Calisto did for
his lovely Meliboea?"

I have known rich young Americans and Europeans risk their lives over
and over again in such "gallant" adventures, but if I had asked them
if they loved these women, _i.e._, felt such a disinterested affection
for them (like a mother's for her child) that they would have risked
their lives to _benefit them_ when there was _nothing to gain for
themselves_--they would have laughed in my face. Whence we see how
foolish it is to infer from such instances of "gallantry" and
"self-sacrifice" that the ancients knew romantic love in our sense of
the word. It is useless to point to passages like this (again from
Burton):

"Polienus, when his mistress Circe did but frown upon
him, in Petronius, drew his sword, and bade her kill,
stab, or whip him to death, he would strip himself
naked and not resist."

Such fine talk occurs in Tibullus and other poets of the time; but
where are the _actions_ corresponding to it? Where do we read of these
Romans and Greeks ever braving the crocodile for the sake of
preserving the purity of the lotos herself? Or of sparing a lotos
belonging to another, but at their mercy? Perseus himself, much
vaunted for his chivalry, did not undertake to save the rock-chained
Andromeda from the sea monster until he had extorted a promise that
she should be his prize. Fine sort of chivalry, that!


SUICIDE IS SELFISH

One more species of pseudo-self-sacrifice remains to be considered.
When Hero finds Leander's dead body on the rocks she commits suicide.
Is not this self-sacrifice for love's sake? It is always so
considered, and Eckstein, in his eagerness to prove that the ancient
Greeks knew romantic love,[37] gives a list of six legendary suicides
from hopeless or foiled love. The question of suicide is an
interesting one and will be considered in detail in the chapter on the
American Indians, who, like other savages, were addicted to it, in
many cases for the most trivial reasons. In this place I will content
myself with noting that if Eckstein had taken the pains to peruse the
four volumes of Ramdohr's _Venus Urania_ (a formidable task, I admit),
he would have found an author who more than a hundred years ago knew
that suicide is no test of true love. There are indeed, he says (III.,
46), plenty of old stories of self-sacrifice, but they are all of the
kind where a man risks comfort and life to secure possession of a
coveted body for his own enjoyment, or else where he takes his own
life because he feels lonely after having failed to secure the desired
union. These actions are no index of love, for they "may coexist with
the cruelest treatment" of the coveted woman. Very ambitious persons
or misers may commit suicide after losing honor or wealth, and

"a coarse negro, in face of the danger of losing his
sweetheart, is capable of casting himself into the ocean
with her, or of plunging his dagger into her breast and then
into his own."

All this is selfish. The only true index of love, Ramdohr continues,
lies in the sacrifice of one's own happiness _for another's sake_; in
resigning one's self to separation from the beloved, or even to death,
if that is necessary to secure her happiness or welfare. Of such
self-sacrifice he declares he cannot find a single instance in the
records and stories of the ancients; nor can I.

The suicide of Dido after her desertion by Aeneas is often cited as
proof of love, but Ramdohr insists (338) that, apart from the fact
that "a woman really in love would not have pursued Aeneas with
curses," such an act as hers was the outcome of purely selfish
despair, on a par with the suicide of a miser after the loss of his
money. It is needless to add to this that Hero's suicide was likewise
selfish; for of what possible benefit was it to the dead Leander that
she took her own life in a cowardly fit of despondency at having lost
her chief source of delight? Had she lost her life in an effort to
save his, the case would have been different.

Instances of women sacrificing themselves for men's sake abound in
ancient literature, though I am not so sure that they abounded in
life, except under compulsion, as in the Hindoo suttee.[38] As we
shall see in the chapter on India, tales of feminine self-sacrifice
were among the means craftily employed by men to fortify and gratify
their selfishness. Still, in the long run, just as man's fierce
"jealousy" helped to make women chaster than men, so the inculcation
in women of self-sacrifice as a duty, gradually made them naturally
inclined to that virtue--an inclination which was strengthened by
inveterate, deep-rooted, maternal love. Thus it happened that
self-sacrifice assumed rank in course of time as a specifically
feminine virtue; so much so that the German metaphysician Fichte could
declare that "the woman's life should disappear in the man's without a
remnant," and that this process is love. No doubt it is love, but love
demands at the same time that the man's life should disappear in the
woman's.

It is interesting to note the sexual aspects of gallantry and
self-sacrifice. Women are prevented by custom, etiquette, and inbred
coyness from showing gallant attentions to men before marriage,
whereas the impulse to sacrifice happiness or life for love's sake is
at least as strong in them as in men, and of longer standing. If a
girl of affectionate impulses on hearing that the man she
loved--though he might not have proposed to her--lay wounded, or ill
of yellow fever, in a hospital, threw away all reserve, coyness, and
fear of violating decorum, and went to nurse him day and night, at
imminent risk of her own life, all the world would applaud her,
convinced that she had done a more feminine thing than if she had
allowed coyness to suppress her sympathetic and self-sacrificing
impulses.


XII. AFFECTION

A German poem printed in the _Wunderhorn_ relates how a young man,
after a long absence from home, returns and eagerly hastens to see his
former sweetheart. He finds her standing in the doorway and informs
her that her beauty pleases his heart as much as ever:

Gott grüss dich, du Hübsche, du Feine,
Von Herzen gefallst du mir.

To which she retorts: "What need is there of my pleasing you? I got a
husband long ago--a handsome man, well able to take care of me."
Whereupon the disappointed lover draws his knife and stabs her through
the heart.

In his _History of German Song_ (chap, v.), Edward Schuré comments on
this poem in the following amazing fashion:

"How necessary yet how tragic is this answer with the
knife to the heartless challenge of the former
sweetheart! How fatal and terrible is this sudden
change of a passionate soul from ardent love to the
wildest hatred! We see him taking one step back, we see
how he trembles, how the flush of rage suffuses his
face, and how his love, offended, injured, and dragged
in the dust, slakes its thirst with the blood of the
faithless woman."


EROTIC ASSASSINS

It seems almost incredible that such a villanous sentiment should have
been allowed to appear in a book without sending its author to prison.
"Necessary" to _murder_ a sweetheart because she has changed her mind
during a man's long absence! The wildest anarchist plot never included
a more diabolical idea. Brainless, selfish, impulsive young idiots are
only too apt to act on that principle if their proposals are not
accepted; the papers contain cases nearly every week of poor girls
murdered for refusing an unwelcome suitor; but the world is beginning
to understand that it is illogical and monstrous to apply the sacred
word of love to the feeling which animates these cowardly assassins,
whose only motives are selfish lust and a dog-in-the-manger jealousy.
_Love_ never "slakes its thirst" with the blood of a woman. Had that
man really loved that woman, he would have been no more capable of
murdering her than of murdering his father for disinheriting him.

Schuré is by no means the only author who has thus confounded love
with murderous, jealous lust. A most astounding instance occurs in
Goethe's _Werther_--the story of a common servant who conceived a
passion for a well-to-do widow.

He lost his appetite, his sleep, forgot his errands; an evil spirit
pursued him. One day, finding her alone in the garret, he made an
improper proposal to her, and on her refusing he attempted violence,
from which she was saved only through the timely arrival of her
brother. In defending his conduct the servant, in a most ungallant,
unmanly, and cowardly way, tried to fasten the guilt on the widow by
saying that she had previously allowed him to take some liberties with
her. He was of course promptly ejected from the house, and when
subsequently another man was engaged to take his place, and began to
pay his addresses to the widow, the discharged servant fell upon him
and assassinated him. And this disgusting exhibition of murderous lust
and jealousy leads Goethe to exclaim, rapturously:

"This love, this fidelity(!), this passion, is thus
seen to be no invention of the poets(!). It lives, it
is to be found in its greatest purity(!) among that
class of people whom we call uneducated and coarse."

In view of the sensual and selfish attitude which Goethe held toward
women all his life, it is perhaps not strange that he should have
written the silly words just quoted. It was probably a guilty
conscience, a desire to extenuate selfish indulgence at the expense of
a poor girl's virtue and happiness, that led him to represent his
hero, Werther, as using every possible effort in court to secure the
pardon of that erotomaniac who had first attempted rape and then
finished up by assassinating his rival.

If Werther's friend had murdered the widow herself, Goethe would have
been logically bound to see in his act still stronger evidence of the
"reality," "fidelity," and "purity" of love among "people whom we call
uneducated and coarse." And if Goethe had lived to read the Rev. W.W.
Gill's _Savage Life in Polynesia_, he might have found therein (118) a
story of cannibal "love" still more calculated to arouse his rapturous
enthusiasm--

"An ill-looking but brave warrior of the cannibal tribe
of Ruanae, named Vete, fell violently in love with a
pretty girl named Tanuau, who repelled his advances and
foolishly reviled him for his ugliness. His only
thought now was how to be revenged for this
unpardonable insult. He could not kill her, as she
wisely kept to the encampment of Mantara. After some
months Tanuau sickened and died. The corpse was
conveyed across the island to be let down the chasm of
Raupa, the usual burial-place of her tribe."

Vete chose this as the time for revenge. Arrangements were made to
intercept the corpse secretly, and he had it carried away. It was too
decomposed to be eaten, so they cut it in pieces and burned
it--burning anything belonging to a person being the greatest injury
one can inflict on a native.


THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

But what have all these disgusting stories to do with affection, the
subject of this chapter? Nothing whatever--and that is why I have put
them here--to show in a glaring light that what Goethe and Schuré, and
doubtless thousands of their readers accepted as love is not love,
since there is no affection in it. A true patriot, a man who feels an
affection for his country, lays down his life for it without a thought
of personal advantage; and if his country treats him ungratefully he
does not turn traitor and assassin--like the German and Polynesian
"lovers" we have just read about. A real lover is indeed overjoyed to
have his affection returned; but if it is not reciprocated he is none
the less affectionate, none the less ready to lay down his life for
the other, and, above all, he is utterly incapable of taking hers.
What creates this difference between lust and love is affection, and,
so far at least as maternal love is concerned, the nature of affection
was known thousands of years ago. When two mothers came before King
Solomon, each claiming the same child as her own, the king sent for a
sword and said, "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the
one and half to the other." To this the false claimant agreed, but the
real mother exclaimed, "O my lord, give her the living child and in no
wise slay it." Then the king knew that she was the child's mother and
gave him to her. "And all Israel saw that the wisdom of God was in
Solomon, to do judgment."

If we ask why this infallible test of love was not applied to the
sexual passion, the answer is that it would have failed, because
ancient love between the sexes was, as all the testimony collected in
this book shows, too sensual and selfish to stand such a test. Yet it
is obvious that if we to-day are to apply the word love to the sexual
relations, we must use the same test of disinterested affection that
we use in the case of maternal love or love of country; and that love
is not love before affection is added to all the other ingredients
heretofore considered. In that servant's "love" which so excited the
wonder of Goethe, only three of the fourteen ingredients of love were
present--individual preference, monopoly, and jealousy--and those
three, as we have seen, occur also in plain lust. Of the tender,
altruistic, loving traits of love--sympathy, adoration, gallantry,
self-sacrifice, affection--there is not a trace.


STUFF AND NONSENSE

When a great poet can blunder so flagrantly in his diagnosis of love,
we cannot wonder that minor writers should often be erratic. For
instance, in _The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona_ (45-46),
Captain J.D. Bourke exclaims:

"So much stuff and nonsense has been written about the
entire absence of affection from the Indian character,
especially in the relations between the sexes, that it
affords me great pleasure to note this little incident"

--namely, a scene between an Indian and a young squaw:

"They had evidently only lately had a quarrel, for
which each was heartily sorry. He approached, and was
received with a disdain tempered with so much sweetness
and affection that he wilted at once, and, instead of
boldly asserting himself, dared do nothing but timidly
touch her hand. The touch, I imagine, was not
disagreeable, because the girl's hand was soon firmly
held in his, and he, with earnest warmth, was pouring
into her ear words whose purport it was not difficult
to conjecture."

That the simplest kind of a sensual caress--squeezing a young woman's
hand and whispering in her ear--should be accepted as evidence of
_affection_ is naïve, to say the least, and need not be commented on
after what has just been said about the true nature of affection and
its altruistic test. Unfortunately many travellers who came in contact
with the lower races shared Bourke's crude conception of the nature of
affection, and this has done much to mislead even expert
anthropologists; Westermarck, for instance, who is induced by such
testimony to remark (358) that conjugal affection has among certain
uncivilized peoples "reached a remarkably high degree of development."
Among those whom he relies on as witnesses is Schweinfurth, who says
of the man-eating African Niam-Niam that "they display an affection
for their wives which is unparalleled among natives of so low a grade.
... A husband will spare no sacrifice to redeem an imprisoned wife"
(I., 472).


SACRIFICES OF CANNIBAL HUSBANDS

This looks like strong evidence, but when we examine the facts the
illusion vanishes. The Nubians, it appears, are given to stealing the
wives of these Niam-Niam, to induce them to ransom them with ivory. A
case occurred within Dr. Schweinfurth's own experience (II., 180-187).
Two married women were stolen, and during the night

"it was touching, through the moaning of the wind, to catch
the lamentations of the Niam-Niam men bewailing the loss of
their captured wives; cannibals though they were, they were
evidently capable of true conjugal affection. The Nubians
remained quite unaffected by any of their cries, and never
for a moment swerved from their purpose of recovering the
ivory before they surrendered the women."

Here we see what the expression that the Niam-Niam "spare no sacrifice
to redeem their imprisoned women" amounts to: the Nubians counted on
it that they would rather part with their ivory than with their wives!
This, surely, involved no "sacrifice"; it was simply a question of
which the husbands preferred, the useless ivory or the useful
women--desirable as drudges and concubines. Why should buying back a
wife be evidence of affection any more than the buying of a bride,
which is a general custom of Africans? As for their howling over their
lost wives, that was natural enough; they would have howled over lost
cows too--as our children cry if their milk is taken away when they
are hungry. Actions which can be interpreted in such sensual and
selfish terms can never be accepted as proof of true affection. That
the captured wives, on their part, were not troubled by conjugal
affection is evident from Schweinfurth's remark that they "were
perfectly composed and apparently quite indifferent."


INCLINATIONS MISTAKEN FOR AFFECTION

Let us take one more case. There are plenty of men who would like to
kiss every pretty girl they see, and no one would be so foolish as to
regard a kiss as proof of _affection_. Yet Lyon (another of the
witnesses on whom Westermarck relies) accepts, with a naïveté
equalling Captain Bourke's, the rubbing together of noses, which among
the Eskimos is an equivalent of our kissing, as a mark of "affection."
In the case of unscientific travellers, such a loose use of words may
perhaps be pardonable, but a specialist who writes a history of
marriage should not put the label of "affection" on everything that
comes into his drag-net, as Westermarck does (pp. 358-59); a
proceeding the less excusable because he himself admits, a few pages
later (362), that affection is chiefly provoked by "intellectual,
emotional, and moral qualities" which certainly could not be found
among some of the races he refers to. I have investigated a number of
the alleged cases of conjugal "affection" in books of travel, and
found invariably that some manifestation of sensual attachment was
recklessly accepted as an indication of "affection."

In part, it is true, the English language is to be blamed for this
state of affairs. The word affection has been used to mean almost any
disposition of the mind, including passion, lust, animosity, and a
morbid state. But in good modern usage it means or implies an
altruistic feeling of devotion which urges us to seek the welfare of
another even at the expense of our own. We call a mother affectionate
because she willingly and eagerly sacrifices herself for her child,
toils for it, loses sleep and food and health for its sake. If she
merely cared for it [note the subtle double sense of "caring for"]
because it is pretty and amusing, we might concede that she "liked"
it, was "attached" to it, or "fond" of it; but it would be incorrect
to speak of affection. Liking, attachment, and fondness differ from
affection not only in degree but in kind; they are selfish, while
affection is unselfish; they occur among savages, while affection is
peculiar to civilized persons and perhaps some animals.


SELFISH LIKING AND ATTACHMENT

Liking is the weakest kind of inclination toward another. It "never
has the intensity of love." To say that I like a man is to indicate
merely that he pleases me, gives me selfish pleasure--in some way or
other. A man may say of a girl who pleases him by her looks, wit,
vivacity, or sympathy, "I like her," though he may have known her only
a few minutes; while a girl who will rather die than give any sign of
affection, may be quite willing to confess that she likes him, knowing
that the latter means infinitely less and does not betray her; that
is, it merely indicates that he pleases her and not that she is
particularly anxious to please him, as she would be if she loved him.
Girls "like" candy, too, because it gives them pleasure, and cannibals
may like missionaries without having the least affection for them.

Attachment is stranger than liking, but it also springs from selfish
interests and habits. It is apt to be similar to that gratitude which
is "a lively sense of favors to come." Mrs. Bishop (Isabella Bird)
eloquently describes (II, 135-136) the attachment to her of a Persian
horse, and incidentally suggests the philosophy of the matter in one
sentence: "To him I am an embodiment of melons, cucumbers, grapes,
pears, peaches, biscuits, and sugar, with a good deal of petting and
ear-rubbing thrown in." Cases of attachment between husband and wife
no doubt abound among savages, even when the man is usually
contemptuous and rude in his treatment of the wife. The Niam-Niam
husbands of Schweinfurth did not, as we saw, give any evidence of
unselfish affection, but they were doubtless attached to their wives,
for obvious reasons. As for the women among the lower races, they are
apt, like dogs, to cling to their master, no matter how much he may
kick them about. They get from him food and shelter, and blind habit
does the rest to attach them to his hearth. What habit and association
can do is shown in the ease with which "happy families" of hostile
animals can be reared. But the beasts of prey must be well fed; a day
or two of fasting would result in the lamb lying down inside the lion.
The essential selfishness of attachment is shown also in the way a man
becomes attached to his pipe or his home, etc. At the same time,
personal attachment may prove the entering wedge of something higher.
"The passing attachments of young people are seldom entitled to
serious notice; although sometimes they may ripen by long intercourse
into a laudable and steady affection" (Crabb).


FOOLISH FONDNESS

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