The most important distinction between Spencer's analysis of love and
mine is that he treats it merely as a composite feeling, or a group of
emotions, whereas I treat it as a complex state of mind including not
only diverse feelings or sentiments--sympathy, admiration of beauty,
jealousy, affection--but the _active, altruistic impulses_ of
gallantry and self-sacrifice, which are really more essential to an
understanding of the essence of love, and a better test of it, than
the sentiments named by Spencer. He ignores also the absolutely
essential traits of individual preference and monopolism, besides
coyness, hyperbole, the mixed moods of hope and despair, and purity,
with the diverse emotions accompanying them. An effort to trace the
evolution of the ingredients of love was first made in my book, though
in a fragmentary way, in which respect the present volume will be
found a great improvement. Apart from the completion of the analysis
of love, my most important contribution to the study of this subject
lies in the recognition of the fact that, "love" being so vague and
comprehensive a term, the only satisfactory way of studying its
evolution is to trace the evolution of each of its ingredients
separately, as I do in the present volume in the long chapter entitled
"What Is Romantic Love?"
In _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_ (180) I wrote that perhaps the
main reason why no one had anticipated me in the theory that love is
an exclusively modern sentiment was that no distinction had commonly
been made between romantic love and conjugal affection, noble examples
of the latter being recorded in countries where romantic love was not
possible owing to the absence of opportunities for courtship. I still
hold that conjugal love antedated the romantic variety, but further
study has convinced me that (as will be shown in the chapters on
Conjugal Love and on India, and Greece) much of what has been taken as
evidence of wifely devotion is really only a proof of man's tyrannic
selfishness which compelled the woman always to subordinate herself to
her cruel master. The idea on which I placed so much emphasis, that
opportunity for prolonged courtship is essential to the growth of
romantic love, was some years later set forth by Dr. Drummond in his
_Ascent of Man_ where he comments eloquently on the fact that
"affection needs time to grow."