It cannot be said that these obstacles to Love have been as radically
removed as they ought to be. Oriental chaperonage is still rampant in
France, to the extinction of all true romantic sentiment. In other
countries Parental Tyranny has considerably abated, but the Goddess of
Love still has formidable rivals in Plutus, the god of wealth, and
Minerva, the goddess of “wisdom” or expediency. Thus it happens that
even in the case of persons who are refined enough to experience Love,
it is too often absent when they marry; and, as a German pessimist
sneeringly points out, no one has yet dared to tempt bride and
bridegroom to perjury, by asking when the knot is tied, “Do you _love_
this woman?” “Do you _love_ this man?”
Nevertheless public sentiment is continually making war on Plutus and
Minerva, and siding with Venus. Probably the mercantile element in
marriage will not die out till a few weeks before the millennium,
although Herbert Spencer is optimistic enough to believe it will sooner.
“After wife-stealing,” he says, “came wife-purchase; and then followed
the usages which made, and continue to make, considerations of property
predominate over considerations of personal preference. Clearly,
wife-purchase and husband-purchase (which exists in some semi-civilised
societies), though they have lost their original gross form, persist in
disguised forms. Already some disapproval of those who marry for money
or position is expressed; and this growing stronger may be expected to
purify the monogamic union, by making it in all cases real instead of
being in some cases nominal.”
It is indeed a most hopeful sign of progress, this strong and growing
modern sentiment in favour of Romantic Love as against rival motives
matrimonial. Novelists, when the wills of the lovers and the parents
clash, invariably and unconsciously side with the lovers; and should a
novelist make an exception, many of his readers would close the book,
and the others would finish it under protest and disappointedly. Even
when we read a newspaper reporter’s thrilling and dramatic narrative of
the elopement of a foolish young couple, fresh from the high-school, our
hearts throb with sympathetic anxiety lest the irate parent should
succeed in capturing the runaway couple.
No doubt this instinctive modern prejudice in favour of Romantic Love
will ultimately throw a halo of sacredness around it, which will raise
Cupid’s will to the dignity of an Eleventh Commandment—a consummation
devoutedly to be wished; for although the conjugal affection which grows
out of Romantic Love is not always deeper than that which results from
unions not based on Love, the physical and mental qualities of the
children commonly show at a glance whether or not the parents were
brought together by Sexual Selection.