It happens occasionally, in the Western regions of the United States,
that an Indian brave casts his eyes on a buxom pale-face girl and
desires her in marriage. He offers her parents two ponies for her; he
offers three, five, and even seven ponies; and when still refused he is
the most mystified man in the world: cannot understand how any man can
be so egregiously stupid or avaricious as to refuse his daughter for
_seven_ ponies! Ugh!!
It is needless to recapitulate the numerous instances cited in preceding
pages, showing that throughout the world, until within a few centuries,
Romantic Love could not exist because the girl’s choice, on the one
hand, was utterly ignored, while the man, on the other, was equally
prevented, by the lack of opportunities for courtship, from basing his
choice on a real knowledge of the selected bride. The parents who did
the selecting, always for the bride, and sometimes even for the
bridegroom, were guided in their choice by money and rank and not by
Health and Beauty, which inspire Love and follow as its fruits. The
history of Love, till within three or four centuries ago, might, in
short, be summed up in six words: No Choice, no Love, no Beauty—except
in those rare cases where special hygienic advantages prevailed, or
where lucky chance brought together a youth and a maiden who in the
ordinary course of events would have fallen in Love with one another.
There is reason to believe, however, that even if in the early ages of
the world the young had been allowed greater freedom in choosing a
lover, Romantic Love, in its more ardent phases, would not have
flourished to any great extent among primitive, ancient, and mediæval
nations: for the reason that Love depends on Individualisation, and our
remote ancestors were not so diversely individualised as we are.
_Sexual Divergence._—Comparative ethnology, psychology, and biology show
that specialisation is a product of higher evolution, _i.e._ that
individual traits are developed in proportion as we proceed higher in
the scale of life, physical and intellectual. It is true there are no
two flowers in the fields, no two leaves in a forest, exactly alike in
every detail: but the differences are infinitesimal, and almost require
a microscope to see them. It is also true that the sheep in a flock,
which appear almost alike to a casual observer, are individually known
to the shepherd. _Possibly_ a sharp-sighted and patient naturalist might
live to distinguish himself by distinguishing the individuals in a swarm
of bees, or a caravan of ants: but this would be counted little short of
a miracle.
Furthermore, ordinary observers find it almost as difficult to
distinguish individuals in a crowd of Chinese, Negroes, or Indians, as
in a bee-hive. Closer acquaintance does reveal differences: but they are
rarely so great as those between individuals in civilised communities.
And in these civilised communities themselves we find greater
differences, sexual differences pre-eminently, the higher we ascend.
Between a peasant and his wife the difference, both physical and mental,
is surely not half so great as that between a lawyer and his wife, a
physician or professor and his wife. “The lower the state of culture,”
says Professor Carl Vogt, “the more similar are the occupations of the
two sexes;” and similarity of occupation entails similarity of attitude,
expression, and mental habits. Mr. Higginson’s notion that civilisation
tends to make the sexes more and more alike is true only as regards
legal rights and social privileges; regarding their mental traits and
physical appearance exactly the reverse is true. The peasant’s wife may
have a tender heart for him and her children, but her domestic drudgery
and hard labour in the fields make her features, her voice, and manners
harsh and masculine. And who has not read a hundred times that the
Indian squaws look quite as stern, stolid, unemotional, and masculine as
their husbands?
That the ancient Greeks, though they may have possessed it, had but
little regard for Individuality is shown especially in their sculpture,
and in the fact that with them even marriage was considered less a
private than a social matter. Lycurgus, Solon, and Plato agreed in
viewing marriage as “a matter in which the state had a right to
interfere;” and for the purpose of providing the state with legitimate
citizens, it was therefore regarded as obligatory. The absence of
emotional expression in Greek statues equally shows their indifference
to Individualisation and their ignorance of Love: for Love is inspired
not so much by regularity of features as by fascinating variety of
emotional expression.
Thus the absence or disregard of individual traits among ancient nations
helps, like the absence of individual Choice, to account for the absence
of Romantic Love, the very essence of which—as distinguished from mere
sexual passion—is the insistance on individual traits and the mutual
adaptation of the lovers.
What sublime—or ridiculous—extremes, this absorption in individual
traits reaches in Modern Love, no one need be told. Not only does the
lover consider his maiden’s frowns more beautiful than other maidens’
smiles, but he longs to kiss the floor on which she has walked; and
every ribbon that has clasped her waist, every jewel that has touched
her ear or neck, becomes charged with a subtle and mysterious electric
current that would shock him with a thrill of recognition should his
fingers come in contact with them on a table, even in a dark room.
_Making Women Masculine._—Nothing proves so irrefutably the hopelessness
of the task undertaken by a few “strong-minded” women—namely, to
equalise the sexes by making women more masculine—than the fact thus
revealed by anthropology and history: that the tendency of civilisation
has been to make men and women more and more unlike, physically and
emotionally. Whatever approximation there may have been has been
entirely on the part of the men, who have become less coarse or “manly,”
in the old acceptation of that term, and more femininely refined; while
women have endeavoured to maintain the old distance by a corresponding
increase of refinement on their part. Should the Woman’s Rights viragoes
ever succeed in establishing their social ideal, when women will share
all the men’s privileges, make stump speeches, and—of course—go back to
the harvest fields and to war with them—then good-bye, Romantic Love!
But there is no danger that these Amazons will ever carry their point.
They might as well try to convince women to wear beards; or men,
crinolines.
Were any further proof needed that the sexes have been continually
diverging instead of converging, it would be found in the fact that the
young of both sexes are more alike than adults: in accordance with the
law that the individual goes through the same stages of development as
the race. And there are embryological facts which indicate even that
there is some truth in the Platonic myth that the sexes at first were
not separated; but that such separation took place probably for three
reasons: to secure a division of labour; to prevent the full hereditary
transmission of injurious qualities; and, thirdly, to secure the
benefits of cross-fertilisation,—a result which in the higher spheres of
human life is attained through Love, which is based on opposite or
complementary qualities, and scorns near relationship.
_Love and Culture._—The dependence of Love on Individualisation, and the
dependence of Individualisation, in turn, on Culture, help us also to
explain an apparent difficulty regarding the non-existence of Love among
the lower classes in ancient Greece and elsewhere. For these classes
were not subjected to the same chaperonage as the higher circles: and it
might be inferred therefore that the possibility of free Choice must
have led to real love-matches. Perhaps it did in those rare cases where
culture had sent a rootlet down into a lower social stratum. But as a
rule one would have looked in vain among the lower classes—as one does
to-day, despite poetic fiction—for minds sufficiently refined to
comprehend and feel the highly-complex and idealised group of emotions
which constitute Romantic Love. Of course it would be absurd to include
in this statement people of refinement who through misfortune have been
plunged into abject poverty. They do not belong to the “Great
Unwashed”—ὁἱ πολλοί.
When Stendhal asserts that in France Love exists only in the lower
classes, while Max Nordau states that in Germany it is to be found in
the higher classes only, they are probably both right—allowance being
made for rare exceptions. What Love _does_ exist in France—and it is
preciously scarce—cannot possibly prevail except among the working
people; and in Germany among the corresponding class it must be equally
scarce, whereas in the middle and higher classes, where chaperonage is
not nearly so strict and idiotic as in France, Cupid does contrive to
find an occasional target for his arrows.