In a review of my book which appeared in the now defunct New York
_Star_, the late George Parsons Lathrop wrote that the author
"says that romantic love is a modern sentiment, less than a
thousand years old. This idea, I rather think, he derived
from Hegel, although he does not credit that philosopher
with it."
I read this criticism with mingled emotions. If it was true that Hegel
had anticipated me, my claims to priority of discovery would vanish,
even though the idea had come to me spontaneously; but, on the other
hand, the disappointment at this thought was neutralized by the
reflection that I should gain the support of one of the most famous
philosophers, and share with him the sneers and the ridicule bestowed
upon my theory. I wrote to Mr. Lathrop, begging him to refer me to the
volume and page of Hegel's numerous works where I could find the
passage in question. He promptly replied that I should find it in the
second volume of the _Aesthetik_ (178-182). No doubt I ought to have
known that Hegel had written on this subject; but the fact that of
more than two hundred American, English, and German reviewers of my
book whose notices I have seen, only one knew what had thus escaped my
research, consoled me somewhat. Hegel, indeed, might well have copied
Burton's epitaph. His _Aesthetik_ is an abstruse, unindexed,
three-volume work of 1,575 pages, which has not been reprinted since
1843, and is practically forgotten. Few know it, though all know of
it.
After perusing Hegel's pages on this topic I found, however, that Mr.
Lathrop had imputed to him a theory--my theory--which that philosopher
would have doubtless repudiated emphatically. What Hegel does is
simply to call attention to the fact that in the literature of the
ancient Greeks and Romans love is depicted only as a transient
gratification of the senses, or a consuming heat of the blood, and not
as a romantic, sentimental affection of the soul. He does not
generalize, says nothing about other ancient nations,[1] and certainly
never dreamt of such a thing as asserting that love had been gradually
and slowly developed from the coarse and selfish passions of our
savage ancestors to the refined and altruistic feelings of modern
civilized men and women. He lived long before the days of scientific
anthropology and Darwinism, and never thought of such a thing as
looking upon the emotions and morals of primitive men as the raw
material out of which our own superior minds have been fashioned. Nay,
Hegel does not even say that sentimental love did not exist in the
life of the Greeks and Romans; he simply asserts that it is not to be
found in their literature. The two things are by no means identical.
Professor Rohde, an authority on the erotic writings of the Greeks,
expresses the opinion repeatedly that, whatever their literature may
indicate, they themselves were capable of feeling strong and pure
love; and the eminent American psychologist, Professor William James,
put forth the same opinion in a review of my book.[2] Indeed, this
view was broached more than a hundred years ago by a German author,
Basil von Ramdohr, who wrote four volumes on love and its history,
entitled _Venus Urania_. His first two volumes are almost unreadably
garrulous and dull, but the third and fourth contain an interesting
account of various phases through which love has passed in literature.
Yet he declares (Preface, vol. iii.) that "the nature [_Wesen_] of
love is unchangeable, but the ideas we entertain in regard to it and
the effects we ascribe to it, are subject to alteration."