LOVE
In the _Symposium of Plato_ Socrates is made to say that he can profess
knowledge of only a single subject, love, but that through acquaintance
with this he has a key to unlock all wisdom. And certainly if Socrates
understood love he deserves to be reckoned among the wise. Few have
looked into it soberly. To those who are not experiencing it, it is a
jest; to those who are, a blind passion. Novelists exploit it for cash;
poets, on the whole its most serious students, too often for graceful
fancies. Saint Paul’s compact sentences give more of its substance than
can be had in the same compass elsewhere. In undertaking an analysis
of it I believe I can best fix attention on its more important ethical
features if I ask a series of simple questions about it and then
develop their complicated answers.
(1) How does love differ from liking? Quantitatively. The degree of
emotion expressed by love is out of all proportion to that of liking.
I love my friends and like their surroundings; I like this gift and
love the giver. An exchange of terms in either of these sentences
would make moral nonsense. Liking touches only the surface; I like
strawberries. Loving goes all through; I love my old servant. Of
course, then, loving includes liking, though liking may or may not
be accompanied by loving; and equally, of course, loose talkers,
who do not know what they mean, will try to be impressive by using
the weightier word. I love automobiling, I love the opera, I love
ice-cream; these are all forms of silly exaggeration which no one will
seriously defend.
But there is a reason for this quantitative difference. An additional
factor enters into love and greatly increases its depth. Love always
implies the possibility of the loved one’s knowledge and his capacity
for response. It is applicable therefore primarily to persons and the
higher animals, and only in a metaphoric way suits things. No doubt the
response often fails, but it is always desired and sought. Love seeks
to establish a personal tie. No one ever loved without wishing to be
loved.
Furthermore, between love and liking there is a sharp contrast of
mental attitude. In liking, my thoughts are on myself; in loving, on
another. I like whatever brings me pleasure or profit. But Browning
rightly asks: “How can one love but what he yearns to help?” That is,
what we love always seems to us to have such worth as calls on us for
protection and the offering up of ourselves. To the lover it appears
august, superior, and supplemental to anything possessed by himself.
It fills him with awe and a spirit of sacrifice. Spenser addresses
his lady as “My dear dread.” There is nothing of this in liking. Our
thoughts are there fixed on ourselves, heedless of the condition of
whatever furnishes us profit. Oxen we like, because they supply our
tables and till our fields. What matter if in doing so they perish? We
tend the dog we love and do not let him be harmed in our service. In
short, loving is our forthgoing toward one possessing a worth preferred
above our own; liking, our feeling toward anything from which we derive
benefit, even though inferior in general worth to ourselves.
On account of this difference love cannot be confined to persons.
Seeing a little girl tending her rose-bush and asking her if she likes
it, I shall probably receive the indignant reply: “No, I love it.” She
means: “I think as much about giving to it as of getting from it.” It
would be improper to ask a painter, a scholar, if he likes his work. If
he follows it for gain he is untrue to it; he can really succeed only
when he loves it, _i.e._, gives himself heartily to it. In many cases,
therefore, where profit is abundant, it would be a kind of impiety to
speak of liking. I like my mother, I like God. Certainly! None gives
ampler ground for liking. But for that very reason my mind should be
set on the appropriate outgo in return. However much the patriot may
like his country, _i.e._, recognize the opportunities it affords for
life, he loves it more. Perhaps in all these cases where impersonal
beings are loved we inwardly attribute personality to them and feel
that we receive from them as much love as we give.
For that is an essential in love: it contemplates mutuality. The loved
one looks up to the lover as truly as the lover does to the loved.
Each counts himself inferior and only through the other capable of
possessing worth. “She is my essence and I leave to be, if I be not
through her fair influence,” says Shakespeare’s Valentine; and had
love reached its completion, Sylvia would have expressed no less.
This double action is characteristic of love, while liking has only a
single end. If we will speak accurately, then, we shall acknowledge
that the real object loved is neither member of the pair but just this
mutuality, the “togetherness,” which blots out regard for any separate
self and fills each with passion for the conjunct. “To the desire and
pursuit of the whole the name of love is given,” says Plato in the
_Symposium_. In his “Clasping of Hands” George Herbert charmingly
develops the puzzling reciprocity of love when he tries to comprehend
his relation to God:
“Lord, thou art mine, and I am thine
If mine I am; and thine much more
Than I or ought or can be mine.
Yet to be thine doth me restore,
So that again I now am mine,
And with advantage mine the more,
Since this being mine brings with it thine,
And thou with me dost thee restore.
If I without thee would be mine,
I neither should be mine nor thine.
Lord, I am thine, and thou art mine;
So mine thou art that something more
I may presume thee mine than thine.
For thou didst suffer to restore
Not thee, but me, and to be mine,
And with advantage mine the more;
Since thou in death wast none of thine,
Yet then as mine didst me restore.
Oh be mine still! Still make me thine!
Or rather make no thine and mine!”
Of course such a poem can have only two stanzas, and these must closely
parallel each other in every part. The resulting definition of love,
making it the completed form of mutuality, would run as follows: love
is the joint service of a common life.
(2) Is the lover, then, an unselfish person and does altruism, here
reaching its highest pitch, exclude all egoistic regard? On the
contrary, it includes and magnifies it. I have said that love always
involves liking, the knowledge that an object has brought me gain and
is capable of bringing more. In his loved one the lover knows a source
of incomparable joy. Were his lady once his, it would matter little
what else might happen. Never before has he conceived a good so great,
and he knows that hardships shared with her would be better than the
most favorable fortune alone. He is therefore an eager seeker. Such a
passion to possess is seen in no one else. Yet the opposite may be said
with equal truth. He has lost all selfishness. No one is so generous
as he, so ready for self-sacrifice. To please and benefit the loved
one is all his care. Let what he gives have cost him little, and he is
dissatisfied. He longs to suffer for her sake. These are not marks of
self-seeking. But they do indicate that the lover has reached a new
conception of self, for which he is even more ardent than ever he was
for the old. That old separate self he now despises, and knows that
only as he loses it in the loved one will he have any worth. Until he
has thoroughly cut himself off from his own detached interests he will
be unworthy of her. A scrap of Persian verse, translated by Bronson
Alcott, states the matter well: “One knocked at the beloved’s door, and
a voice asked from within, ‘Who is there?’ And he answered, ‘It is I.’
Then the voice said, ‘This room will not hold me and thee’; and the
door was not opened. Then went the lover into the desert, and fasted
and prayed in solitude. And after a year he returned and knocked again
at the door. And again the voice asked, ‘Who is there?’ And he said,
‘It is thyself.’ And the door was opened to him.” In the mutuality of
love egoism and altruism are reconciled. Each of the lovers acquires
a new apprehension of self, which conjunct being bears in the mind of
each the name of the beloved.
(3) Is the lover in his own estimate rich or poor? Incredibly rich in
what he has received, but in comparison with his lady how poor! She is
immeasurably his superior. How she stooped so low is his daily wonder.
But his own inferiority does not disturb him. “Love envieth not. Is not
easily puffed up.” On the contrary, he rejoices in emptying himself
and seeing how all that is worth while in him proceeds from her. Yet
the lover is a paradoxical fellow, full of contradictions and scorning
consistency. He prizes himself as he never did before and daily takes
on a new importance. Never till he loved was he so watchful of his
looks, speech, clothes, manners. What he brings to her must be of the
finest, and he is pleased to discover in himself excellences hitherto
unsuspected which she may well accept. Tennyson well paints the
aspiring lover in “Maud”:
“So dark a mind within me dwells,
And I make myself such evil cheer
That if I be dear to some one else
Then some one else may have much to fear.
But if I be dear to some one else,
Then I should be to myself more dear.
Shall I not care for all that I think,
Yea, even for wretched meat and drink,
If I be dear, if I be dear, to some one else?”
(4) When once established, is love permanent? Certainly not. Being
a personal affair it has no routine fixity, but must continually be
created afresh. Effort is in it, intention, readiness to put aside
temporary fancies and to practise a loyal patience. It is true that in
the wise these practices themselves become habitual and love therefore
a matter of happy course. No action is excellent which ceases when not
consciously pressed. From the quiet of assured love old lovers look
back on the anxious fervors of early days and acknowledge them meagre
and immature. Yet still within call they keep the resolute will and
guard against decay. For just as my readers find it difficult to hold
the thought of the conjunct self steadily in mind and are obliged to
resist its tendency to disintegrate into separate selves, so do lovers
also. By degrees the sense of mutuality may decline, independent
interests arise, and then one of the lower altruistic forms may take
the place of this its highest. A pair may feel themselves drawing apart
and, finding less and less in common, may gradually content themselves
with a kind of partnership in place of love. Or one, disturbed over
the breach of affection, may seek to repair it by acts of generosity.
He may be liberal in granting his company, his friendly cheer, to the
slightly distant loved one. But that, too, is a slipping down. The two
are then no longer in equality. Perfect love knows no giving. What is
there to give? All mine is thine, all thine is mine. Together we share,
not give. But as we detach ourselves little by little, the old separate
self comes back and we hand something across the chasm. How sad when
exuberant love thus declines into intentional giving, altering “because
it alteration finds and bending with the remover to remove”! But
sadder still is it when to formerly abundant love the guarded altruism
of manners succeeds and each is satisfied to treat the other with
watchful politeness. This is the last stopping-place before confessed
bankruptcy.
(5) But is not love always open to repair through duty? Being the
highest embodiment of morality it would naturally seem peculiarly
alive to duty. But the very opposite is the case. It has, in fact, a
strange aversion to duty. Any suspicion that we are expected to love
a certain person alienates us from him. We cannot force ourselves to
love even when we see it to be desirable; nor can we expel love when
we find it unreturned or unworthy. Love insists on freedom, a certain
absence of constraint, either from a person, from circumstance, from
collateral advantages, or even from our own volition. Like giving,
it recognizes no claim. “Love is a present to a mighty king,” says
Herbert. It cannot be bought or sold. But though so little submissive
to obligation, it is highly sensitive to suggestion and unclamorous
appeal. Indeed, it soon perishes when fresh suggestion is withheld.
Indirectly, therefore, and accepting time for an ally, we can control
love. I have repeatedly spoken of intention, rational guidance,
resourceful care, as necessities if we would have a wise and lasting
love. Those who complain of its decay have generally themselves to
blame. They have imagined it constituted once for all and, while they
would be glad to have it continue, have taken little pains for that
fresh renewal on which its life is staked. “Keep on courting,” said a
sagacious mother to a young bridegroom on his wedding-day. And what has
here been said of marital love applies also, with adaptations, to the
love of God and the love of our fellow men. Nowhere will love submit
to the direct command of duty. But indirectly, gradually, through
suggestion and considerate modes of approach, it is well within our
control. The Golden Rule, bidding us love God and our neighbor, is not
a psychological blunder.
(6) How does friendship differ from love? Like love, it differs from
partnership through having an entirely personal basis. Within its
limits partnership is as genuinely mutual as love itself, but its
mutuality refers to ends outside the personal lives. These remain
detached and individual, merely co-operating for a time to accomplish
an external purpose. In both love and friendship the personalities
merge. Their interests become identified, so that one of the parties
without the other is but a fragmentary being.
But friendship differs from love in the degree of intensity of its
emotion and in the extent of the tract of life covered. In these
respects it more nearly resembles liking. We all know how slight a
friendly feeling may be, even when entirely genuine. This is because
of the well-recognized limits of friendship, limits sometimes narrow,
sometimes broad. I take John for my friend on account of his wit, James
for his scholarship, Henry for discussion of art, Charles for theology.
Outside these matters we have little in common. If I try to introduce
these friends to other sides of me, I know that our friendship would be
strained. Love knows no such limits. In it there is no holding back.
There the more we give the more we have. Not that in friendship we set
up such limits by our own volition, as is done in partnership. The
limits are ingrained in the persons, and beyond them we know it is
futile to press. When two natures have certain sides that fit, to the
advantage of each, a friendship springs up. But how embarrassing when
some friend whom we greatly value has limitations which oblige us to
pause and he, not perceiving them, attributes to our adverse will the
failure in full mutual accord! Because of its narrow bounds and because
it is sought for individual gain, friendship is of far wider currency
than love. We make and drop our friendships with comparative ease,
hardly from the first expecting them to be lasting. But a love to which
we contemplated an end, either in extent or duration, would be already
ended. The Greeks justly eulogized friendship as our best security
in an uncertain world. And, obviously, he is imprudent who does not
surround himself with a protecting band of friends.
Let me, in closing this section, call attention to these varieties of
personal contact, all of which are desirable. We all need a multitude
of acquaintances, can, indeed, hardly have too many. These are persons
whose faces and names we know, with something of their occupations
and history. While we know them only on the outside our impressions
of them are favorable, and their nod, smile, or passing greeting
brightens the moment and makes us feel at one with our species. These
do not attain the rank of friends, to whom we expose sections of our
lives, in whose characters we see admirable traits which are less
developed in ourselves, and on whom we lean in times of doubt, trouble,
and ignorance. Such steadying friends will not be a large company
and should be chosen deliberately, not through juxtaposition, but
on grounds of merit and adaptation to our needs. Closer than these,
however, should come our intimates, one or two, those to whom we give
whole-hearted love. From such an intimate we hide nothing, not even
our faults. To him we express our half-thoughts, make up our minds in
company with his, find excellence easy in his presence and yet, to our
daily astonishment, see that he obtains as much from us as we from him.
Him we love. He is another self, and all that is ours is his also.
Such, then, is love and such its varieties and shadings. Parted
from mutuality, altruism has little worth. Only where love is,
where the conjunct self has taken the place of the separate self, is
altruism completely realized. In such love morality attains its goal.
Accordingly, in every age those most impassioned for the formation of
character have exalted love as its central principle. The first to
perceive its importance and to begin an exploitation of its labyrinths
was Plato. To love he has dedicated three of his Dialogues. In the
first of them, the delightful little piece called _Lysis_, he busies
himself with the contradictions of love. He does not seek to establish
a positive doctrine. No conclusion is reached, but the enigmatic
character of love is brought out with extraordinary vividness. The
greatest of his love dialogues, and one which has profoundly influenced
all subsequent ages, is the _Symposium_, beautifully translated by
the poet Shelley under the name of _The Banquet_. Socrates and his
friends assembling one evening, it is proposed that instead of general
conversation they shall talk on some specific subject, and love is
selected. One speaker after another reports what he has seen in
love--its dignity, its heavenly and earthly types, its universality
as an underlying principle of physical nature, the supposed origin of
the separate self and its subsequent desire for completion, love as
the organizer of human life. Then Socrates points out how the true
significance of love lies in its passion for perfection and how it
continually supersedes its lower forms in the interest of what is
larger. The most obscuring of these lower forms, the least regardful
of anything beyond itself, is that instinctive passion between the
sexes which tries to monopolize the name of love. Friendship is more
intelligent. Unities of a still wider and firmer kind are disclosed
in the social, artistic, and scientific impulses. These are all
prompted by love and follow increasing grades of beauty. Religion,
however, alone reveals the full significance of these struggles toward
conjunction; for God is the only complete wholeness, and every endeavor
to unite with other things or persons is but a blind seeking after him.
Love appears once more in the _Phædrus_, where its deeper implications
are traced in connection with rhetoric and general philosophy.
At the time of the Renaissance Marcilius Ficinus translated the
_Symposium of Plato_ and carried its influence into all the literatures
of western Europe. Edmund Spenser reflects that influence in his two
superb hymns in _Honor of Love_ and in _Honor of Beauty_. A vivacious
modern statement of the ancient doctrine is that of R. W. Emerson in
his _Essay on Love_; and an amusing disparagement of love, as that
which interferes with the comforts and conveniences of the separate
self, appears in Bacon’s _Essay on Love_. It has been well said that
any one who imagines Shakespeare’s plays were written by Bacon should
read this essay and follow it with _Romeo and Juliet_. Of course, all
the poets linger in the neighborhood of love and declare it to be that
which makes the world go round. One of them, the mid-Victorian Coventry
Patmore, made himself its expositor and devoted his entire product to
the systematic analysis of its every phase. Perhaps to heighten the
impression of veracity, he has made the verse of his early volumes,
entitled _The Angel in the House_, approach as nearly as possible to
prose, while his later volume, _The Unknown Eros_, treats the same
matter in a series of rapturous odes. Admiring them both as I do in
an age when they are both out of fashion, I take up _The Angel in the
House_ when in a psychological mood I am not disturbed by absurdity,
and turn to _The Unknown Eros_ when my ear craves music and I welcome
the Platonic madness.