From the sexual life of plants we ought to pass on to that of animals;
but before doing so, it will be advisable to ascertain clearly what is
meant by Romantic Love, and how it differs from other forms of
affection, impersonal and personal; from the love for inanimate objects
and for plants and animals; from the family affections—maternal,
paternal, filial, brotherly, and sisterly love; from friendship; and
from conjugal love.
Love is the most attractive word in the language, as Heine and Oliver
Wendell Holmes have remarked. Out of every half-dozen novels one is
likely to have the word Love in its title, as a bait sure to catch
readers. But whereas novelists always use this word in the sense of
Romantic or pre-matrimonial Love, in common language it is vaguely used
as a synonym for any kind of attachment, from that of Romeo to the
schoolgirl who “just _loves_ caramels.” For the verb _to love_ there is
perhaps no satisfactory and equally comprehensive substitute; but in
place of the noun _love_ it is advisable, at least in a scientific work,
to use the word Affection, which comprehends every form of love
mentioned above. In the present work Love, with a capital L, always
means Romantic Love.
Professor Calderwood, in his _Handbook of Moral Philosophy_, says that
“Affection is inclination towards others, disposing us to give from our
own resources what may influence them either for good or ill. In
practical tendency, the Affections are the reverse of the Desires.
Desires absorb, Affections give out. Affections presuppose a recognition
of certain qualities in persons, and, in a modified degree, in lower
_sentient_ beings, but _not in things_, for the exercise of Affection
presupposes in the object of it the possibility either of harmony or
antagonism of feeling.”
In other words, the eminent Scotch moralist thinks we can entertain
affections only towards human beings, and, to some degree, towards
animals; but not towards plants or inanimate objects. Careful analysis
of our emotions, however, does not sustain this distinction, which is as
unpoetic as it is anthropocentric and unscientific. Dr. Calderwood
obviously confounds affection with sympathy. Sympathy means literally to
suffer with another, or to share his feelings; and this, indeed,
“presupposes in the object of it the possibility either of harmony or
antagonism of feeling.” But affection, in his own words, “gives out,”
and hence can be bestowed, and _is_ bestowed, by all emotional and
refined persons on a variety of “things,” that are neither sentient nor
even animate; and a poetic soul will even feel _sympathy_ with such a
non-sentient thing as a crushed flower, for his imagination
unconsciously endows it with the requisite feeling.
“Things” are of two kinds—those fashioned by man, and those produced by
Nature. A poem, a symphony, a violin, a novel come under the first head;
a tree, a precious metal, a mountain under the second. An author who has
passed through the whole gamut of emotion in writing his book, follows
its fate with a paternal pride and an affectionate anxiety as great as
if his bodily child had been sent into the world to seek its fortune.
Perhaps the story of the German soldier who was carried off his feet by
a cannon-ball, and who grasped first his pipe and then his severed leg,
is not a legend. For was not his pipe, like a good, friend, associated
with all the pleasant hours of his life? An artist certainly can
entertain for his favourite instrument an affection almost, if not
quite, human in quality. When Ole Bull suffered shipwreck on the
Mississippi, he swam ashore, holding his violin high above water, at the
risk of his life. And to an amateur who has often called upon his
pianoforte to feed his momentary mood with a nocturne or a scherzo, the
instrument soon assumes the functions of “a true friend, to whom,” as
Bacon would say, “you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions,
counsels, and whatever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of
civil shrift or confession.”
As for “things” not produced by man, who that has ever spent a summer in
Switzerland is not quite willing to believe the legend of the Swiss
Heimweh—the exiled mountaineer’s reminiscent longing and affection for
his native haunts, which causes him to die of a broken heart, even if
wife and children accompany him in his exile? His feelings are not
identical with the æsthetic admiration of a tourist; for these imply a
certain degree of novelty and artistic perception foreign to his mind.
They are true _impersonal affection_, for the snowy summits, sluggish
glaciers, azure lakes, chasing clouds coyly playing hide-and-seek with
the scenery below; the balmy breezes, and boisterous storm-winds; the
green slopes studded with cows, whose welcome chimes alone interrupt the
sublime silence of the Alpine summits. For these sounds and scenes are
so interwoven with all his experiences, thoughts, and associations, that
he cannot live and be happy without them in a foreign land.
The attitude of an æsthetically-refined visitor is thus expressed by
Byron: “I live not in myself, but I become portion of that around me;
and to me high mountains are a feeling”—a poetic anticipation of
Schopenhauer’s doctrine, that for true æsthetic enjoyment it is
necessary that the percipient subject be completely merged in the
perceived object,—the personal man and the impersonal mountain becoming
one and indistinguishable.
Like Romantic Love, the affection for the grander aspects of Nature
appears to be essentially a modern sentiment. The Greeks, as has often
been pointed out, had little regard for the impersonal beauties of
Nature; and to make the forests, brooks, and mountains attractive to the
popular mind the poets had to people them with personal beauties; with
nymphs and dryads and goddesses.
The latest phase of the modern passion for impersonal nature includes
even its most dismal and awe-inspiring aspects, with an ecstatic
predilection that would have seemed incomprehensible to an ancient
Greek. This phase has been thus beautifully described by Ruskin: “There
is a sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower
animals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, colour-depth, and
morbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it—with
other qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to be
analysed by extreme care—is found to the full only in five men that I
know of in modern times; namely, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and
myself, differing totally and in the entire group of us from the delight
in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecentisti, and separated,
much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer, Shakspere, and
Scott, by its unaccountable _affection_ for ‘Rokkes blok’ and other
forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans, which to
Shakspere were only Alpine rheum; and the Via Malas and Diabolic Bridges
which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to climb or
cross,—all this love of impending mountains, coiled thunderclouds, and
dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky, almost ferine, love of
retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulphs of Spezzia, ravines of Olympus,
low lodgings in Chelsea, and close brushwood at Coniston.”
Ruskin flatters himself if he still imagines he is the sole living
possessor of this feeling. Though there is much hypocrisy and
guide-book-star-admiration among tourists, there are yet unquestionably
hundreds who enjoy the Via Malas, the ice-oceans and solitary Swiss
valleys they visit; and though their dismal delight may not be so
intense as Ruskin’s, it is yet sufficient to indicate the growth of a
general affection for impersonal nature in all her moods, whether
smiling or frowning.
To a mind that can thus rise above human associations and utilities, the
sublimest thing in the world is the absolute solitude of an Alpine
summit. To the ignorant peasant the harsh cow-bell which interrupts this
silence is sweet music, because it suggests the abodes of mankind; and
on this primitive stage of æsthetic culture Jeffrey placed himself when
he wrote that, “It is man, and man alone, that we see in the beauties of
the earth which he inhabits.”
Inasmuch as mountain solitudes are accessible to only a very small
proportion of mankind, the existence of true impersonal affection on a
large scale can be more easily demonstrated by recurring for a moment to
the floral world. A city belle is apt to look upon flowers merely from a
social or military point of view; the more bouquets, the more evidence
of admiration and conquest. of male hearts. And the city belle can
hardly be blamed for this callousness of feeling; for bunched flowers
have lost as much of their natural charm and grace as butterflies stuck
up on rows of pins in a museum. But watch that fair gardener in a
suburban cottage or a country seat; how she recognises every individual
plant, every single flower, as a friend for whose comfort she provides
with all the affectionate care which as a child she lavished on her
doll. If, after a refreshing shower, the flowers hold up their heads and
look bright and happy, her face reflects the same feeling; if a drouth
has parched them and dimmed their lustre, she will neglect her own
pleasures to bring them water, and derive from this charitable action
the same sympathetic pleasure as if they had been so many suffering
human beings. And if an early frost kills all her floral friends, her
sorrow and despair will find vent in a flood of tears. What is all this
but affection—true affection—though flowers be but “things,” and not
“sentient beings.”
Obviously Professor Calderwood erred in his definition of affection;
for, as the above analysis shows, when the regard for an impersonal
object rises to the fervour of adoring interest, it does not
specifically differ from personal affections any more than, for example,
maternal love differs from friendship. Unemotional persons, who have had
no opportunities to cultivate their love of Nature, may feel inclined to
doubt this; but they should remember that just as there is an
intellectual eminence (Shakspere, Kant, Wagner) which the ignorant are
too lazy or too weak to climb, so there is an emotional horizon, beyond
which those only can see who have taken the trouble to ascend the summit
whence a wider scene is unfolded to the view.
From one point of view, impersonal affections are even higher and nobler
than personal attachments. The evolution of emotions has been but little
studied, but so much is apparent—that there has been a gradual
development from utilitarian attachments to those that are less
utilitarian, or less obviously so. Personal affections are too often
exclusively selfish and based on material interests, as the loss of
“friends,” which commonly follows the loss of wealth or position, shows.
Whereas impersonal attachments are less apt to be interested, selfish,
and fickle, since they presuppose more intellectual power, more
imagination, more refinement.
Again, although it must be admitted that man is the crown and compendium
of Nature, uniting in himself most of the excellences of the lower
kingdoms with others exclusively his own; yet it cannot be denied,
either, that the vast majority of these “crowns” of Nature are so full
of flaws in workmanship, and have lost so many of their jewels, that the
sight of them is anything but exhilarating. Indeed, it is obvious that
the average plant and the average animal are, _in their way_, far
superior to the average man, in beauty, health, vitality; natural
selection, which has been arrested in man, having made them so. No
wonder, then, that some of the greatest minds have turned away from
mankind, and devoted all their thoughts and energies to the world of
“things” and ideas.
Goethe and other men of genius have often been accused of being cold and
unsympathetic, because they refused to shape their conduct so as to
please the people with whom they chanced to come into contact. Had they
wasted their affections and sympathies on their commonplace admirers and
acquaintances, instead of bestowing them on art and science, on the
great ideas that teemed in their brains, we should now be without many
of those glorious works which could never have been created had not
their authors ignored personal relations for the time being, and
bestowed all their warmest impersonal affections on their ideas.
As compared with men of genius, women have achieved but little that can
lay claim to immortal fame; and the principal reason of this is that
their affections are apt to be too exclusively personal. A girl will
assiduously practice on the piano as long as that will assist her in
fascinating her suitors. But how many women, outside the ranks of
teachers, continue their practice after marriage, from the _impersonal_
love of music itself? Needless to say they have no time; for every hour
devoted to emotional refreshment strengthens the nerves for two hours of
extra labour.
As regards the love of Nature, woman is, indeed, artificially hampered.
She may botanise to some extent, but she cannot, as a rule, indulge in
those solitary walks in a virgin forest which alone can establish a deep
communion with Nature. If accompanied by friend, brother, husband, or
lover, her thought will inevitably retain a human tinge. No doubt there
is something comic in the ardent affection with which a German professor
hugs his pet theory regarding the Greek dative, or the origin of honey
in flowers, and in the ferocity with which he will defend it against his
best friends, if they happen to oppose it. But such complete devotion to
abstract crotchets is absolutely necessary to the discovery of original
ideas: and as women are rarely able or willing to emerge from the haunts
of personal emotion, this explains why they have achieved greatness in
hardly anything but novel-writing, which is chiefly concerned with
personal emotions.