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.