First of all it is necessary to get rid of the prevalent illusion that
Love is a single emotion. It is, on the contrary, a most complex and
ever-varying _group_ of emotions. Love is not a diamond which drops from
a celestial body, cut and polished, and ready to be set into the human
soul. Rather is it the crown of life, composed of various jewels, some
of which, mixed with much coarse ore, may be found in the animal
kingdom, among primitive men and ancient civilised nations; but of which
no complete specimens are to be found till we come to comparatively
modern times. Each lover has his own crown, but no two of them are
exactly alike. The component jewels vary in size and brilliancy. Some—as
Coyness, Adoration, Gallantry, Jealousy—are occasionally missing or
lacking in lustre; and in Ancient Love those are habitually absent which
in Modern Love are most prominent and cherished.
Perhaps the composite nature of Love can be still better illustrated by
a comparison with colours, and with “overtones” in music, between which
and the elements of Love there exists a wonderfully close analogy.
Professor Helmholtz has proved that just as white is not a simple
colour, but a combination of all the hues of the rainbow, so any single
tone produced by the voice or a musical instrument is not simple, as it
seems, but contains, besides the _fundamental_ tone which the ordinary
listener alone hears, several partial or “overtones,” which blend so
closely with the fundamental tone, that it takes a very delicate ear and
close attention to distinguish them. Were it not for these overtones,
all instruments would sound alike, and music would lose all its charms
of “colour.” For the fundamental tones of instruments and voices are
identical, and the only thing that enables a musician to tell at a
distance whether a given note proceeds from a piano, voice, or violin,
is the presence of these overtones, which vary in their number, relative
loudness and pitch (or height), thus giving rise to the differences of
quality or _timbre_ in instruments.
In Love the fundamental tone is the sexual relation—the fact that one of
the lovers is male, the other female. This fundamental tone does not
vary throughout Nature. It is the same among animals and savages as
among civilised men; and what distinguishes the passion of one of these
groups from that of the other is alone the overtones of love, which vary
in number, relative prominence, and refinement (“high-toned”).
What are these overtones?