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.