Can love be defined in one sentence? The _Century Dictionary's_
definition, which is as good as any, is: "Intimate personal affection
between individuals of opposite sex capable of intermarriage; the
emotional incentive to and normal basis of conjugal union." This is
correct enough as far as it goes; but how little it tells us of the
nature of love! I have tried repeatedly to condense the essential
traits of romantic love into one brief definition, but have not
succeeded. Perhaps the following will serve as an approximation. Love
is an intense longing for the reciprocal affection and jealously
exclusive possession of a particular individual of the opposite sex; a
chaste, proud, ecstatic adoration of one who appears a paragon of
personal beauty and otherwise immeasurably superior to all other
persons; an emotional state constantly hovering between doubt and
hope, aggravated in the female heart by the fear of revealing her
feelings too soon; a self-forgetful impulse to share the tastes and
feelings of the beloved, and to go so far in affectionate and gallant
devotion as to eagerly sacrifice, for the other's good, all comfort
and life itself if necessary.
These are the essential traits. But romantic love is altogether too
complex and variable to be defined in one sentence; and it is this
complexity and variability that I wish to emphasize particularly.
Eckermann once suggested to Goethe that no two cases of love are quite
alike, and the poet agreed with him. They did not, however, explain
their seeming paradox, so diametrically opposed to the current notion
that love is everywhere and always the same, in individuals as in
nations; nor could they have explained it unless they had analyzed
love into its component elements as I have done in this volume. With
the aid of this analysis it is easy to show how and why love has
changed and grown, like other sentiments; to explain how and why the
love of a civilized white man must differ from that of an Australian
or African savage, just as their faces differ. Since no two races look
alike, and no two individuals in the same race, why should their loves
be alike? Is not love the heart of the soul and the face merely its
mirror? Love is varied through a thousand climatic, racial, family,
and cultural peculiarities. It is varied through individual tastes and
proclivities. In one case of love admiration of personal beauty may be
the strongest ingredient, in another jealous monopoly, in a third
self-sacrificing affection, and so on. The permutations and
combinations are countless, and hence it is that love-stories are
always fresh, since they can be endlessly varied. A lover's varied
feelings in relation to the beloved become gradually blended into a
sentiment which is a composite photograph of all the emotions she has
ever aroused in him. This has given rise to the delusion that love is
a simple feeling.[117]