It is a favourite device of poets to invest plants and even inanimate
objects with human thoughts and feelings. The parched, withering flower,
tormented by the pangs of thirst, implores the passing cloud for a few
drops of the vital fluid; and the cloud, moved to pity at sight of the
suffering beauty, sheds its welcome, soothing tears.
“And ’tis my faith, that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.”—WORDSWORTH.
“The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise.”
. . . . . . . .
“Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them.”—SHAKSPERE.
One of the first authors who thus endowed non-human objects with human
feelings was the Greek philosopher Empedokles, who flourished about
twenty-three centuries ago. Just as the last of the great German
metaphysicians, Schopenhauer, believed that all the forces of
Nature—astronomic, chemical, biological, etc.—are identical with the
human Will, of which they represent different stages of development or
“objectivation,” so Empedokles insisted that the two ruling passions of
the human soul, Love and Hate, are the two principles which pervade and
rule the whole universe. In the primitive condition of things, he
taught, the four elements, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire are mingled
harmoniously, and Love rules supreme. Then Hate intervenes and produces
individual, separate forms. Plants are developed, and after them
animals, or rather, at first, only single organs—detached eyes, arms,
hands, etc. Then Love reasserts its force and unites these separate
organs into complete animals. Strange monstrosities are the result of
some of these unions—animals of double sex, human heads on the bodies of
oxen, or horned heads on the bodies of men. These, however, perish,
while others, which are congruous and adapted to their surroundings,
survive and multiply.
Thus Empedokles, “the Greek Darwin,” was the originator of a theory of
evolution based on the alternate predominance of cosmic Love and Hate;
Love being the attractive, Hate the repulsive force.
In the preface to the first volume of _Don Quixote_, Cervantes refers
those who wish to acquire some information concerning Love to an Italian
treatise by Judah Leo. The full title of the book, which appeared in
Rome in the sixteenth century, is _Dialoghi di amore, Composti da Leone
Medico, di nazione Ebreo, e di poi fatto cristiano_. There are said to
be three French translations of it, but it was only after long searching
that I succeeded in finding a copy, at the Bibliothèque Nationale in
Paris. It proved to be a strange medley of astrology, metaphysics,
theology, classical erudition, mythology, and mediæval science. Burton,
in the chapter on Love, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, quotes freely
from this work of Leo, whom he names as one of about twenty-five authors
who wrote treatises on Love in ancient and mediæval times.
Like Empedokles, Leo identifies cosmic attraction with Love. But he
points out three degrees of Love—Natural, Sensible, and Rational.
By Natural Love he means those “sympathies” which attract a stone to the
earth, make rivers flow to the sea, keep the sun, moon, and stars in
their courses, etc. Burton (1652) agrees with Leo, and asks quaintly,
“How comes a loadstone to draw iron to it ... the ground to covet
showers, but for love? ... no stock, no stone, that has not some feeling
of love. ’Tis more eminent in Plants, Hearbs, and is especially observed
in vegetals; as betwixt the Vine and Elm a great sympathy,” etc.
“Sensible” Love is that which prevails among animals. In it Leo
recognises the higher elements of delight in one another’s company, and
of attachment to a master.
“Rational” Love, the third and highest class, is peculiar to God,
angels, and men.
But the inclination to confound gravitation and other natural forces
with Love is not to be found among ancient and mediæval authors alone.
Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the “gross materialist,” Dr. Ludwig
Büchner, who exclaims rapturously: “For it is love, in the form of
_attraction_, which chains stone to stone, earth to earth, star to star,
and which holds together the mighty edifice on which we stand, and on
the surface of which, like parasites, we carry on our existence, barely
noticeable in the infinite universe; and on which we shall continue to
exist till that distant period when its component parts will again be
resolved into that primal chaos from which it laboriously severed itself
millions of years ago, and became a separate planet.”
Büchner carries on this anthropopathic process a step farther, by
including all the chemical affinities of atoms and molecules as
manifestations of love: “Just as man and woman attract one another, so
oxygen attracts hydrogen, and, in loving union with it, forms water,
that mighty omnipresent element, without which no life nor thought would
be possible.” And again: “Potassium and phosphorus entertain such a
violent passion for oxygen that even under water they burn—_i.e._ unite
themselves with the beloved object.”
Goethe’s novel, _Elective Affinities_, which was inspired by a late and
hopeless passion of its author, is based on this chemical notion that no
physical obstacle can separate two souls that are united by an amorous
affinity. But the practical outcome of his theory—that the psychic
affinity of two persons suffices to impress the characteristics of both
on the offspring of one of them—has nothing to support it in medical
experience; while the chemical analogy, with all due deference to
Goethe’s reputation as a man of science, is against his view. His notion
was that the children of two souls loving one another will inherit their
characteristics. But what distinguishes a chemical compound (based on
“affinity”) from a mere physical mixture, is precisely the contrary fact
that the compound does not in any respect resemble the parental
elements! Read what a specialist says in Watts’s _Dictionary of
Chemistry_:—
“Definite chemical compounds generally differ altogether in physical
properties from their components. Thus, with regard to _colour_, yellow
sulphur and gray mercury produce red cinnabar; purple iodine and gray
potassium yield colourless iodide of potassium.... The _density_ of a
compound is very rarely an exact mean between that of its constituents,
being generally higher, and in a few cases lower; and the _taste_,
_smell_, _refracting power_, _fusibility_, _volatility_, _conducting
power for heat and electricity_, and other physical properties, are not
for the most part such as would result from mere mixture of their
constituents.”
Chemical affinities, accordingly, cannot be used as analogies of Love.
Not even on account of the violent _individual preference_ shown by two
elements for one another, for this apparently _individual_ preference is
really only _generic_. A piece of phosphorus will as readily unite with
one cubic foot of oxygen as with another; whereas it is the very essence
of Love that it demands a union with one particular _individual_, and no
other.
Equally unsatisfactory are all similar attempts to identify Love with
gravitation or other forms of cosmic attraction. Here is what a great
expert in Love has to say on this subject: “The attraction of love, I
find,” writes Burns, “is in inverse proportion to the attraction of the
Newtonian philosophy. In the system of Sir Isaac, the nearer objects are
to one another, the stronger is the attractive force. In my system,
every milestone that marked my progress from Clarinda awakened a keener
pang of attachment to her.”
How beautifully, in other respects, does the law of gravitation simulate
the methods of Love! Does not the meteor which passionately falls on
this planet and digs a deep hole into it, show its love in this manner,
even as that affectionate bear who smashed his master’s forehead in
order to kill the fly on it? Does not the avalanche which thunders down
the mountain-side and buries a whole forest and several villages, afford
another touching illustration of the love of attraction, or cosmic
Love?—a crushing argument in its favour? Or the frigid glacier, in its
slower course, does it not lacerate the sides of the valley, and strew
about its precious boulders, merely by way of illustrating the amorous
effect of gravitation? And millions of years hence, will not this same
law of attraction enable the sun to prove his ecstatic love for our
earth by swallowing her up and reducing her to her primitive chaotic
state? Imagine a man and a woman whose love consists in this, that they
must be kept widely separated by a hostile force to prevent them from
dashing together, and reducing each other to atoms and molecules! _That_
is the “love” of the stars and planets.
But it is needless to continue this _reductio ad absurdum_ of
pantheistic or panerotic vagaries. The method of the writers on Love
here quoted—Empedokles, Leo, Burton, Büchner—has been to identify Love
with cosmic force simply because they possess in common the one quality
of attraction, by virtue of which the large earth hugs a small stone,
and a large man a small maiden. Modern scientific psychology objects to
this (_i.e._ not the hugging, but the method), because it does not in
the least aid us in understanding the nature of Love; and because it is
as irrational to call attraction Love as it would be to call a brick a
house, a leaf a tree, or a green daub a rainbow. For Love embraces every
colour in the spectrum of human emotion.
Having failed to find a satisfactory solution of the mystery of Love in
the inorganic world, let us now see if the vegetable kingdom offers no
better analogies in its sexual phenomena.