The Greek view that love is a disease and a calamity still prevails
extensively among persons who, like the Greeks, have never experienced
real love and do not know what it is. In a book dated 1868 and
entitled _Modern Women_ I find the following passage (325):
"Already the great philosopher of the age has
pronounced that the passion of love plays far too
important a part in human existence, and that it is a
terrible obstacle to human progress. The general temper
of the times echoes the sentence of Mill."
It is significant that this opinion should have emanated from a man
whose idea of femininity was as masculine as that of the Greeks--an
ideal which, by eliminating or suppressing the secondary and tertiary
(mental) sexual qualities, necessarily makes love synonymous with
lust.
There is another large class of persons who likewise consider love a
disease, but a harmless one, like the measles, or mumps, which it is
well to have as early as possible, so as to be done with it, and which
seldom does any harm. Others, still, regard it as a sort of juvenile
holiday, like a trip to Italy or California, which is delightful while
it lasts and leaves pleasant memories thoughout life, but is otherwise
of no particular use.
It shows a most extraordinary ignorance of the ways of nature to
suppose that it should have developed so powerful an instinct and
sentiment for no useful purpose, or even as a detriment to the race.
That is not the way nature operates. In reality love is the most
useful thing in the world. The two most important objects of the human
race are its own preservation and improvement, and in both of these
directions love is the mightiest of all agencies. It makes the world
go round. Take it away, and in a few years animal life will be as
extinct on this planet as it is on the moon. And by preferring youth
to age, health to disease, beauty to deformity, it improves the human
type, slowly but steadily.
The first thinker who clearly recognized and emphatically asserted the
superlative importance of love was Schopenhauer. Whereas Hegel (II.,
184) parroted the popular opinion that love is peculiarly and
exclusively the affair of the two individuals whom it directly
involves, having no concern with the eternal interests of family and
race, no universality (Allgemeinheit). Schopenhauer's keen mind on the
contrary saw that love, though the most individualized of all
passions, concerns the race even more than the individual. "Die
Zusammensetzung der nächsten Generation, e qua iterum pendent
innumerae generationes"--the very composition and essence of the next
generation and of countless generations following it, depends, as he
says, on the particular choice of a mate. If an ugly, vicious,
diseased mate be chosen, his or her bad qualities are transmitted to
the following generations, for "the gods visit the sins of the fathers
upon the children," as even the old sages knew, long before science
had revealed the laws of heredity. Not only the husband's and the
wife's personal qualities are thus transmitted to the children and
children's children, but those also of four grandparents, eight
great-grandparents, and so on; and when we bear in mind the tremendous
differences in the inheritable ancestral traits of families--virtues
or infirmities--we see of what incalculable importance to the future
of families is that individual preference which is so vital an
ingredient of romantic love.
It is true that love is not infallible. It is still, as Browning puts
it, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened." It may be said that
marriage itself is not necessary for the maintenance of the species;
but it is useful both for its maintenance and its improvement; hence
natural selection has favored it--especially the monogamous form--_in
the interest of coming generations._ Love is simply an extension of
this process---making it efficacious before marriage and thus
quintupling its importance. It makes many mistakes, for it is a young
instinct, and it has to do with a very complex problem, so that its
development is slow; but it has a great future, especially now that
intelligence is beginning to encourage and help it. But while
admitting that love is fallible we must be careful not to decry it for
mistakes with which it has no concern. It is absurd to suppose that
every self-made match is a love-match: yet, whenever such a marriage
is a failure, love is held responsible. We must remember, too, that
there are two kinds of love and that the lower kind does not choose as
wisely as the higher. Where animal passion alone is involved, parents
cannot be blamed for trying to curb it. As a rule, love of all kinds
can be checked or even cured, and an effort to do this should be made
in all cases where it is found to be bestowed on a person likely to
taint the offspring with vicious propensities or serious disease. But,
with all its liability to error, romantic love is usually the safest
guide to marriage, and even sensual love of the more refined, esthetic
type is ordinarily preferable to what are called marriages of reason,
because love (as distinguished from abnormal, unbridled lust) always
is guided by youth and health, thus insuring a healthy, vigorous
offspring.
If it be asked, "Are not the parents who arrange the marriages of
reason also guided as a rule by considerations of health, moral and
physical?" the answer is a most emphatic "No." Parental fondness,
sufficing for the preservation and rearing of children, is a very old
thing, but parental affection, which is altruistically concerned for
the weal of children in after-life, is a comparatively modern
invention. The foregoing chapters have taught us that an Australian
father's object in giving his daughter in marriage was to get in
exchange a new girl-wife for himself; what became of the daughter, or
what sort of a man got her, did not concern him in the least. Among
Africans and American Indians the object of bringing up daughters and
giving them in marriage was to secure cows or ponies in return for
them. In India the object of marriage was the rearing of sons or
daughters' sons for the purpose of saving the souls of their parents
from perdition; so they flung them into the arms of anyone who would
take them. The Greeks and the Hebrews married to perpetuate their
family name or to supply the state with soldiers. In Japan and China
ancestral and family considerations have always been of infinitely
more importance than the individual inclinations or happiness of the
bridal couple. Wherever we look we find this topsy-turvy state of
affairs--marriages made to suit the parents instead of the bride and
groom; while the welfare of the grandchildren is of course never
dreamt of.
This outrageous parental selfishness and tyranny, so detrimental to
the interests of the human race, was gradually mitigated as
civilization progressed in Europe. Marriages were no longer made for
the benefit of the parents alone, but with a view to the comfort and
worldly advantages of the couple to be wedded. But rank, money, dowry,
continued--and continue in Europe to this day--to be the chief
matchmakers, few parents rising to the consideration of the welfare of
the grandchildren. The grandest task of the morality of the future
will be to _make parental altruism extend to these grandchildren_;
that is, to make parents and everyone else abhor and discountenance
all marriages that do not insure the health and happiness of future
generations. Love will show the way. Far from being useless or
detrimental to the human race, it is an instinct evolved by nature as
a defence of the race against parental selfishness and criminal myopia
regarding future generations.