No one who has ever been truly in love will deny that this
description, however romantic it may seem in its apparent
exaggeration, is a realistic reflection of his feelings and impulses.
As this brief review shows, Individual Preference, Monopolism,
Coyness, Jealousy, Mixed Moods of Hope and Despair, Hyperbole,
Adoration, Purity, Pride, Admiration of Personal Beauty, Gallantry,
Self-sacrifice, Sympathy, and Affection, are the essential ingredients
in that very composite mental state, which we call romantic love.
Coyness, of course, occurs only in feminine love, and there are other
sexual differences which will be noted later on. Here I wish to point
out that the fourteen ingredients named may be divided into two groups
of seven each--the egoistic and the altruistic. The prevailing notion
that love is a species of selfishness--a "double selfishness," some
wiseacre has called it--is deplorably untrue and shows how little the
psychology of love has heretofore been understood.
It has indeed an egoistic side, including the ingredients I have
called Individual Preference, Monopolism, Jealousy, Coyness,
Hyperbole, Mixed Moods, and Pride; and it is not a mere accident that
these are also the seven features which may be found in sensual love
too; for sensuality and selfishness are twins. But the later and more
essential characteristics of romantic love are the altruistic and
supersensual traits--Sympathy, Affection, Gallantry, Self-sacrifice,
Adoration, Purity, and Admiration of Personal Beauty. The two
divisions overlap in some places, but in the main they are accurate.
It is certain that the first group precedes the second, but the order
in which the ingredients in each group first made their appearance
cannot be indicated, as we know too little of the early history of
man. The arrangement here adopted is therefore more or less arbitrary.
I shall try in this long chapter to answer the question "What is
Romantic Love?" by discussing each of its fourteen ingredients and
tracing its evolution separately.