between duty and fervor, one that effected the miracle of an interchange
of soul, transferring the entity of the beloved into the heart of the
lover and completed at last by a union entered into with the pride of
those who recognize above their own will no higher power than that of God.
Admirable and emulative the beauty of it passed into a proverb:--"C'est
beau comme le Cid."
The Cid was a Spaniard. But of another age. Melancholy but very proud, the
Spaniard of the seventeenth century lived in a desert which the
Inquisition had made. The Holy Office that had sent Christ to the Aztecs
brought back Vizlipoutzli, a Mexican deity whose food was hearts. His
carnivorousness interested the priests at home. They put night around
them, a night in which there was flame, fireworks of flesh at which a
punctilious etiquette required that royalty should assist and which, while
inducing the hysteria that there entered into love, illuminated the path
of empire from immensity to nothingness.
At the close of the seventeenth century, Spain, bankrupt through the
expulsion of the Jews, barren through loss of the Moors, was a giant,
moribund and starving. Only the Holy Office, terribly alive, was terribly
fed. Every man was an object of suspicion and every man was suspicious.
The secret denunciation, the sudden arrest, the dungeon, the torture, the
stake, these things awaited any one. The nation, silent, sombre, morbid,
miserably poor, none the less was draped proudly enough in its tatters.
The famine, haughty itself, that stalks through the pages of Cervantes is
the phantom of that pride. Beside it should be placed the rigid ceremonial
of an automaton court where laughter was neither heard nor permitted,
where men had the dress and the gravity of mutes, where women counted
their beads at balls, where a minutious etiquette that inhibited a queen
from looking from a window and assumed that she had no legs, regulated
everything, attitudes, gifts, gestures, speech, the etiquette of the
horrible Escorial through which gusts of madness blew.
Other courts had fools. The court of Spain had Embevecidos, idiots who
were thought to be drunk with love and who, because of their condition,
were permitted, like grandees, to wear the hat in the presence. On
festivals there were other follies, processions semi-erotic, wholly
morbid, through cathedrals haunted by entremetteuses, through chapels in
which hung Madonnas that fascinated and shocked, Virgins that more nearly
resembled Infantas serenaded by caballeros than queens of the sky and
beneath whose indulgent eyes rendez-vous were made by lovers whom,
elsewhere, etiquette permitted only the language of signs.[69]
To journey then from Madrid to Paris was like passing from a picture by
Goya to a tale of Perrault. Paris at the time was marvelling at two
wonders, an earthly Olympus and real love. The first was Versailles, the
second La Valliere. Louis XIV created the one and destroyed the other.
Already married, attentive meanwhile to his brother's wife, he was
coincidentally epris with their various maids of honor. Among them was a
festival of beauty in the festival of life, a girl of eighteen who had
been made for caresses and who died of them, the only human being save
Louis XIV that ever loved the fourteenth Louis. Other women adulated the
king. It was the man that Louise de la Valliere adored. To other women his
sceptre was a fan. To her it was a regret. Could he have been some mere
lieutenant of the guards she would have preferred it inexpressibly. The
title of duchess which he gave her was a humiliation which she hid beneath
the name of Soeur Louise de la Misericorde. For her youth which was a
poem of love had the cloister for climax. That love, a pastime to him, was
death to her. At its inception she fled from it, from the sun, from the
Sun-King, and flinging at him a passionate farewell, flung herself as
passionately into a convent.
Louis stormed it. If necessary he would have burned it. He strode in
booted and spurred as already he had stalked into Parliament where he
shouted:--"L'Etat c'est moi." Mlle. de la Valliere c'etait lui aussi. The
girl, then prostrate before a crucifix, was clinging to the feet of a
Christ. But her god was the king. He knew it. When he appeared so did she.
For a moment, Louis, he to whom France knelt, knelt to her. For a moment
the monarch had vanished. A lover was there. From a chapel came an odor of
incense. Beyond, a knell was being tolled. For background were the scared
white faces of nuns, alarmed at this irruption of human passion in a
retreat where hearts were stirred but by the divine. A moment only. Louis,
with his prey, had gone.
Thereafter for a few brief years, this girl who, had she wished could have
ruled the world, wanted, not pomp, not power, not parade, love, merely
love, nothing else. It was very ambitious of her. Yet, precisely as
through fear of love she had flung herself into a cloister, at the loss of
it she returned there, hiding herself so effectually in prayer that the
king himself could hardly have found her--had he tried. He omitted to.
Louis then was occupied with the Marquise de Montespan. Of trying he never
thought. On the contrary. Mme. de Montespan was very fetching.
A year later, in the Church of the Carmelites, in the presence of the
patient queen, of the impatient marquise, of the restless court--complete,
save for Louis who was hunting--Mlle. de la Valliere, always semi-seraphic
but then wholly soul, saw the severe Bossuet slowly ascend the pulpit, saw
him bow there to the queen, make the sign of the cross and, before he
motioned the bride to take the black veil which was a white shroud, heard,
above the sobs of the assistants, his clear voice proclaim:--
'Et dixit qui sedebat in throno: Ecce nova facio omnia.'
Behind the bars, behind the veil, wrapped in that shroud, for thirty-six
years Louise de la Misericorde, dead to love and dead to life, expiated
her ambition.
The fate of Louis Quatorze was less noble. The Olympus in which he was
Jupiter with the Montespan for Venus became a prison. The jailer was Mme.
de Maintenon. Intermediately was the sun. That was his emblem. About him
the spheres revolved. To him incense ascended. A nobody by comparison to
Alexander, unworthy of a footnote where Caesar is concerned, through sheer
pomp, through really royal magnificence, through a self-infatuation at
once ridiculous and sublime, through the introduction of a studied
politeness, a ceremonial majestic and grave, through a belief naively
sincere and which he had the ability to instil, that from him everything
radiated and to him all, souls, hearts, lives, property, everything,
absolutely belonged, through these things, in a gilded balloon, this pigmy
rose to the level of heroes and hung there, before a wondering world, over
a starving land, until the wind-inflated silk, pierced by Marlborough,
collapsed.
In the first period Versailles was an opera splendidly given, the
partition by Lully, the libretto by Moliere, in which the monarch, as
tenor, strutted on red heels, ogling the prime donne, eyeing the house,
warbling airs solemn yet bouffe. In the second the theatre was closed.
Don Juan had turned monk. The kingdom of Louis XIV was no longer of this
world. It was then only that he was august. In the first period was the
apogee of absolutism, the incarnation of an entire nation in one man who
in pompous scandals, everywhere imitated, gave a ceremonious dignity to
sin. Over the second a biblical desolation spread.
IX
LOVE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
To the cradle of the eighteenth century came the customary gifts, in
themselves a trifle unusual. Queen Anne sent the dulness of perfect
gentility. Queen Maintenon gave bigotry. Louis XIV provided the spectacle
of a mythological monster. But Molinos, a Spanish fairy, uninvited at the
christening, malignantly sent his blessing. The latter, known as quietism,
was one of love's aberrations. It did not last for the reason that nothing
does. Besides the life of a century is long enough to outgrow many things,
curses as well as blessings. For the time being, however, throughout
Europe generally and in certain sections of America, quietism found
adherents.
The new evangel, originally published at Rome, had a woman, Mme. Guyon,
for St. Paul. Its purport Boileau summarized as the enjoyment in paradise
of the pleasures of hell. As is frequently the case with summaries, that
of Boileau was not profound. Diderot called it the true religion of the
tender-hearted. Diderot sometimes nodded. Quietism was not that. A little
before rose-water had been distilled from mud. Quietism reversed the
process. From the lilies of mysticity it extracted dirt. In itself an
etherealized creed of predeterminism, it put fatalism into love. The added
ingredient was demoralizing. Already Maria d'Agreda, a Spanish nun, had
written a tract that made Bossuet blush. The doctrine of Molinos made him
furious. Against it, against Mme. Guyon, against Fenelon who indorsed her,
against all adherents, he waged one of those memorable wars which the
world has entirely forgotten. It had though its justification. Morbid as
everything that came from Spain, quietism held that temptations are the
means that God employs to purge the soul of passion. It taught that they
should not be shunned but welcomed. The argument advanced was to the
effect that, in the omnisapience of the divine, man is saved not merely by
good works but by evil deeds, by sin as well as by virtue.
In the Roman circus, the Christian, once subtracted from life, was
subtracted also from evil. What then happened to his body was a matter of
indifference to him. In quietism that indifference was solicited before
subtraction came. It was disclosed as a means of grace to the living.
Through the exercise of will, or, more exactly through its extinction, the
Christian was told, to separate soul from body. The soul then, asleep in
God, lost to any connection between itself and the flesh, was indifferent,
as the martyr, to whatever happened.
The result is as obvious as it was commodious. The body, artificially
released from all restraint and absolved from any responsibility, was free
to act as it listed.
In discussing the doctrine, Fenelon declared that there are souls so
inflamed with the love of God and so resigned to His will that, if they
believed themselves damned, they would accept eternal punishment with
thanksgiving.
For propagating this insanity Fenelon was accorded the honors of a
bishopric which was exile. Mme. Guyon received the compliment of a _lettre
de cachet_ which was prison. The Roman Inquisition cloistered Molinos.
That was fame. The doctrine became notorious. Moreover, there was in it
something so old that it seemed quite new. Society, always avid of
novelties, adopted it. But presently fresher fashions supervened. In
France these were originated by the Regent, in England by Germany.
At the accession of Louis XIV, Germany, for nearly thirty years, had been
a battlefield. The war waged there was in the interests of religion. The
Holy Office was not unique in its pastimes. There was fiendishness
everywhere, cruelty married to mania, in which Germany joined. Germany
employed the serviceable rack, the thumbscrew, the wheel, vats of vitriol,
burning oil, drawing and quartering. Occasionally there were iron cages in
which the wicked were hung on church steeples with food suspended a little
higher, just out of reach. Occasionally also criminals were respited and
released when, through some miracle of love there were those that agreed
to marry them.[70]
That indulgence occurred after the Peace of Westphalia. Germany, then,
decimated and desolate, was so depopulated that the Franconian Estates
legalized bigamy. Every man was permitted two wives. Meanwhile barbarism
had returned. Domestic life had ceased. Respect for women had gone. Love
had died with religion. From the nervous strain recovery was slow. It was
a century before the pulse of the people was normal. Previously love,
better idealized by the Minnesaenger than by the minstrel, had been put on
a pedestal from which convulsive conditions shook it. Later, when it arose
again, it was in two forms which, while distinct, were not opposed. In one
was the influence of France, in the other the native Schwaermerei. The
former affected kings, the latter appealed to urbaner folk among whom it
induced an attitude that was maudlin when not anarchistic. The
anarchistic attitude was represented by artists generally. For these love
had no laws and its one approach was the swift current running from New
Friendship to Tenderness-on-Inclination. Similarly the conservatives
landed at a village that Clelie overlooked, Tenderness-on-Sympathy, a spot
where, through sheer contagion, everybody engaged in duels of emotion
during which principals and seconds fell on each other's neck, wept,
embraced, swore affection auf immerdar--beyond the tomb and, in the
process, discovered elective affinities, the Wahlverwandtschaften of which
Goethe later told, relationships of choice that were also anarchistic.
The influence of France brooded over courts. At Versailles love strolled
on red heels through a minuet. In the grosser atmosphere of the German
Residenzen it kicked a chahut in sabots. In all the world there was but
one Versailles. In Germany there were a hundred imitations, gaunt, gilded,
hideous barracks where Louis Quatorze was aped. In one of them, at
Karlsruhe, the Margrave Karl Wilhelm peopled a Teuton Trianon with
nameless nymphs. In another, at Dresden, the Elector Augustus of Saxony
became the father of three hundred and fifty children. At Mannheim,
Bayreuth, Stuttgart, Brunswick, Darmstadt, license was such that the Court
of Charles the Second would have seemed by comparison puritan. Beyond
them, outside their gates and garden vistas, the people starved or, more
humanely, were whipped off in herds to fight and die on the Rhine and
Danube. But within, at the various Wilhelmshoehe and Ludwigslust, kinglets
danced with their Frauen. At Versailles it was to the air of Amaryllis
that the minuet was walked. In the German Residenzen it was to the odor of
schnapps that women chahuted.
The women lacked beauty. They lacked the grace of the Latin, the charm of
the Slav, the overgrown angel look of the English, the prettiness that the
American has achieved. But in girlhood generally they were endearing,
almost cloying, naturally constant and, when otherwise, made so by man and
the spectacle of court corruption.
European courts have always supplied the neighborhood with standards of
morals and manners. Those of eighteenth-century Germany were coarse. The
tone of society was similar. "Berlin," an observer wrote, "is a town
where, if fortis may be construed honest, there is neither vir fortis nec
foemina casta. The example of neglect of all moral and social duties
raised before the eyes of the people by the king show them vice too
advantageously.[71] In other words and in another tongue, similar remarks
were made of Hanover.[72] From there came George the First. After him
trooped his horrible Herrenhausen harem.
Since the departure of Charles the Second, London life had been relatively
genteel. Throughout the Georgian period it was the reverse. The memoirs of
the period echo still with shouts and laughter, with loud, loose talk,
with toasts bawled over brimming cups, with the noise of feasting, of
gaming and of pleasure. The pages turn to the sound of fiddles. From them
arises the din of an immense Sir Roger de Coverley, in which the dancers
go up and down, interchanging hearts and then all hands round together. In
England at the time a king, however vulgar, was superterrestrial, a lord
was sacro-sanct, a gentleman holy and a lady divine.
The rest of the world was composed of insects, useful, obsequious,
parasitic that swarmed beneath a social order less coarse than that of
Germany, less amiably than that of France, but as dissolute and reckless
as either, a society of macaronis and rouged women, of wits and prodigals,
of dare-devils and fatted calves, a life of low scandals in high places,
of great fortunes thrown into the gutter, of leisurely suppers and sudden
elopements--runaways that had in their favor the poetry of the
post-chaise, pistol-shots through the windows and the dignity of danger--a
life mad but not maudlin, not sober but strong, free from hysteria and
sentimentality, and in which, apart from the bacchanalian London world,
there must have been room, as there always is, for real love and much
sweetness besides, yet which, in its less alluring aspect was very
faithfully followed by colonial New York. Meanwhile the world that made
the pace and kept it, saw it reflected back from boards and books, in
plays and novels, some of which are not now even mentionable. That pace,
set by a boozing sovereign is summarizable in a scene that occurred at the
death-bed of Queen Caroline, when the latter told old George II. to marry
again, while he blubbered: "Non, non, j'aurai des maitresses," and she
retorted, "Ah! mon Dieu! Cela n'empeche pas."[73]
These Germans talked French. It was the fashion, one adopted in servile
homage of the Grand Monarque. At the latter's departure the Regency came.
With the Restoration England turned a moral handspring. With the Regency,
France turned a double one. The Regency was the first act of the
Revolution. The second was Louis Quinze. The third was the Guillotine--a
climax for which great ladies rehearsed that they might die, as they had
lived, with grace.
Moscow, meanwhile, was a bloody sewer, Vienna a reconstruction of the
cities that overhung the Bitter Sea. In Paris were the beginnings of
humanitarianism, the commencements of to-day, preludes quavering and
uncertain, hummed over things intolerably base, but none the less audible,
none the less there. In them was the dawn of liberty, the rebirth of real
love, an explosion of evil but also of good.
Said Tartuffe:
Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l'offense
Et ce n'est pas pecher que pecher en silence.
Under the Maintenon regime the theory had been very fully exploited.
Multiple turpitudes were committed but in the dark. Under the Regency they
occurred openly, unhypocritically, in the daylight. The mud that was there
was dried by the sun. It ceased to be unwholesome. Though vile it was not
vicious. Moreover, in the air was a carnival gayety, put there by the
Regent, who, while not the best man in the world was not the worst, an
artistic Lovelace that gave the tone to a Neronian society, already in
dissolution, one that Law tossed into the Niagara of bankruptcy and
Cartouche held up, a society of which Beranger said:
Tous les hommes plaisantaient,
Et les femmes se pretaient
A la gaudriole.
Mme. de Longueville being in the country was asked, would she hunt. Mme.
de Longueville did not care for hunting. Would she fish, would she walk,
would she drive? No, she would not. Mme. de Longueville did not care for
innocent pleasures. Mme. de Longueville was a typical woman of the day.
Life to such as she was a perpetual bal d'opera and love, the image of
Fragonard's Cupid, who, in the picture of the Chemise enlevee, divested it
of modesty with a smirk.[74]
Modesty then was neither appreciated nor ingrained. The instinct of it was
lacking. It was a question of pins, a thing attachable or detachable at
will. Women of position received not necessarily in a drawing-room, or
even in a boudoir but in bed. In art and literature there was an equal
sans-gene. In affairs of the heart there was an equivalent indifference.
There was no romance, no dream, no beyond. Chivalric ideals were regarded
as mediaeval bric-a-brac and fine sentiments as rubbish. Even gallantry
with its mimic of being jealous and its pretended constancy was vieux jeu.
Love, or what passed for it, had become a fugitive caprice, lightly
assumed and as readily discarded, without prejudice to either party.
On s'enlace. Puis, un jour,
On s'en lasse. C'est l'amour.
It had, however, other descents, a fall to depths of which history
hitherto had been ignorant. Meanwhile the Regent had gone. Louis XV had
come. With him were the real sovereigns of the realm, Mme. de Chateauroux,
Petticoat I; the Pompadour, Petticoat II; the Du Barry, Petticoat
III--legitimatized queens of love, with courts of their own, with the
rights, prerogatives and immunities of princesses of the blood, the
privilege of dwelling with the king, of receiving foreign ambassadors and
of pillaging France.
"Sire," said Choiseul, "the people are starving." Louis XV answered: "I am
bored."
The boredom came from precocious pleasures that had left him, without
energy or conviction, a cold, dreary brute, Asiatic and animal, a sort of
Oriental idol gloomy and gilded, who, while figuratively a spoke in the
wheel of monarchy then rolling down to '89, personally was a minotaur in a
feminine labyrinth which he filled, emptied, renewed, indifferent to the
inmates as he was to his wife,[75] wringing for the various Petticoats
prodigal sums from a desolate land, supplying incidentally to fermiers
generaux and grands seigneurs an example in Tiberianism which, assured of
immunity, they greedily followed and, generally, making himself so
loathed that when he died, delight was national.
It was in those days that Casanova promenaded through palace and cottage,
convent and inn, inveigling in the course of the promenade three thousand
women, princesses and soubrettes, abbesses and ballet girls, matrons and
maids. The promenade, which was a continuous sin, he recited at length in
his memoirs. During the recital you see a hideous old man, slippered and
slovenly, fumbling in a box in which are faded ribbons, rumpled notes,
souvenirs and gages d'amour.
Richelieu was another of that type which the example of the throne had
created and which de Sade alone eclipsed. It was then there appeared in
Petersburg, in Vienna, in London, wherever society was, a class of men,
who depraved women for the pleasure of it, and a class of women who
destroyed men for destruction's sake, men and women who were the hyenas of
love, monsters whose treachery was premeditated and malignant, and who,
their object attained, departed with a laugh, leaving behind but ruin.
Ruin was insufficient. Something acuter was required. That something was
found by de Sade.
In ways which Bluebeard had but outlined, the Marquis de Sade, lineal
descendant of Petrarch's Laura, mingled kisses with blood. Into affection
he put fright, into love he struck terror, he set the infernal in the
divine.
It was the logical climax to which decadence had groped and to it already
the austere guillotine was attending.
There love touched bottom. It could not go lower. But though it could and
did remount it did not afterward reach higher altitudes than those to
which it had previously ascended. In the eighteenth century the possible
situations of its infinite variety were, at least temporarily, exhausted.
Thereafter the frailties of great ladies, the obscurer liaisons of lesser
ones, attachments perfect and imperfect, loves immaculate and the reverse,
however amply set forth, disclose no new height. As the pages of
chronicles turn and faces emerge, lovers appear and vanish. In the various
annals of different lands their amours, pale or fervid as the case may be,
differ perhaps but only in atmosphere and accessories. On antecedent types
no advance is accomplished. Recitals of them cease to enlighten. Love had
become what it has since remained, a harper strumming familiar airs,
strains hackneyed if delicate, melodies very old but always new, so novel
even that they seem original. To the music of it history discloses fresher
mouths, further smiles, tears and kisses. History will always do that.
Wrongly is it said that it repeats itself. Except with love it never
does. In life as in death change is the one thing constant. Between them
love alone stands changeless. Since it first appeared it has had many
costumes, a wardrobe of tissues of every hue. But in character it has not
altered. Influences favorable or prejudicial might degrade it or exalt. In
abasements and assumptions love, like beauty, being one and indivisible,
remained unchangeably love. What varied was the costume.
X
THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
"To renounce your individuality, to see with another's eyes, to hear with
another's ears, to be two and yet but one, to so melt and mingle that you
no longer know are you you or another, to constantly absorb and constantly
radiate, to reduce earth, sea, and sky and all that in them is to a single
being, to give yourself to that being so wholly that nothing whatever is
withheld, to be prepared at any moment for any sacrifice, to double your
personality in bestowing it--that is love."
So Gautier wrote, very beautifully as was his beautiful custom. But in
this instance inexactly. That is not love. It is a description, in gold
ink, of one of love's many costumes. Every poet has provided one. All give
images and none the essence. Yet that essence is the sphinx's riddle. Its
only OEdipus is philosophy.
Philosophy teaches that the two fundamental principles of thought are
self-preservation and the preservation of the species. Every idea that has
existed or does exist in the human mind is the result of the permutations
and combinations of these two principles and their derivatives. Of the two
the second is the stronger. Its basis is a sentiment which antiquity
deified, primitive Christianity scorned, chivalry nimbused and the
Renaissance propelled over the paths easy or perilous which it has since
pursued. But into the precise nature of that sentiment metaphysics alone
has looked. Plato was the first that analyzed it. For the few thereafter
the rich courses of his Banquet sufficed. They regaled themselves on it.
But for humanity at large, to whom the feast was Greek, there was only the
descriptions of poets and the knowledge, agreeable or otherwise, which
personal experience supplied. In either case the noumenon, the Ding an
sich, the thing in itself, escaped. It was too tenuous perhaps for
detention or else too obvious. Plato himself did not grasp it.
The omission Schopenhauer discerned. Schopenhauer was an idealist. The
forms of matter and of man he arranged in two categories, which he called
Representation and Will. In his system of philosophy everything not
produced by the one is the result of the other. Among the effects of the
latter is love.[76]
This frivolity--the term is Schopenhauer's--is, he declared, a
manifestation of the Genius of the Species, who, behind a mask of
objective admiration, deludes the individual into mistaking for his own
happiness that which in reality concerns but the next generation. Love is
Will projecting itself into the creation of another being and the precise
instant in which that being emerges from the original source of whatever
is into the possibilities of potential existence, is the very moment in
which two young people begin to fancy each other. The seriousness with
which on first acquaintance they consider each other is due to an
unconscious meditation concerning the child that they might create. The
result of the meditation determines the degree of their reciprocal
inclinations. That degree established, the new being becomes comparable to
a new idea. As is the case with all ideas it makes an effort to manifest
itself. In the strength of the effort is the measure of the attraction.
Its degrees are infinite while its extremes are represented by Venus
Pandemos and Venus Urania--ordinary passion and exalted affection. But in
its essence love is always and everywhere the same, a meditation on the
composition of the next generation and the generations that thence
proceed--_Meditatio compositionis generationis futurae e qua iterum pendent
innumerae generationes_.
The character of the meditation, its durability or impermanence, is,
Schopenhauer continued, in direct proportion to the presence of
attributes that attract. These attributes are, primarily, physical.
Attraction is induced by health, by beauty, particularly by youth, in
which health and beauty are usually combined, and that because the Genius
of the Species desires above all else the creation of beings that will
live and who, in living, will conform to an integral type. After the
physical come mental and temperamental attributes, all of which, in
themselves, are insufficient to establish love except on condition of more
or less perfect conformity between the parties. But as two people
absolutely alike do not exist, each one is obliged to seek in another
those qualities which conflict least with his or her own. In the
difficulty of finding them is the rarity of real love. In connection with
which Schopenhauer noted that frequently two people, apparently well
adapted to one another, are, instead of being attracted, repelled, the
reason being that any child they might have would be mentally or
physically defective. The antipathy which they experience is induced by
the Genius of the Species who has in view only the interests of the next
generation.
To conserve these interests, nature, Schopenhauer explained, dupes the
individual with an illusion of free will. In affairs of the heart the
individual believes that he is acting in his own behalf, for his own
personal benefit, whereas he is but acting in accordance with a
predetermined purpose for the accomplishment of which nature has instilled
in him an instinct that moves him to her ends, and so forcibly that rather
than fail he is sometimes compelled to sacrifice what otherwise he would
do his utmost to preserve--honor, health, wealth and reputation. It is
illusion that sets before his eyes the deceiving image of felicity. It is
illusion which convinces him that union with some one person will procure
it. Whatever efforts or sacrifices he may consequently make he will
believe are made to that end only yet he is but laboring for the creation
of a predetermined being who has need of his assistance to arrive into
life. But, once the work of nature accomplished, disenchantment ensues.
The illusion that duped him has vanished.
According to Schopenhauer love is, therefore, but the manifestation of an
instinct which, influenced by the spirit of things, irresistibly attracts
two people who, through natural conformity, are better adapted to
conjointly fulfil nature's aims than they would be with other partners.
Schopenhauer added that in such circumstances, when two individuals
complete each other and common and exclusive affection possesses them
both, their affection represents a special mission delegated by the Genius
of the Species, one which consequently assumes a character of high
elevation. In these cases, in addition to physical adaptation there is, he
noted, a mental and temperamental concordance so adjusted that the parties
alone could have achieved nature's aims. In actuating them to that end the
Genius of the Species desired, for reasons which Schopenhauer described as
inaccessible, the materialization of a particular being that could not
otherwise appear. In the series of existing beings that desire had no
other sphere of action than the hearts of the future parents. The latter,
seized by the impulsion, believe that they want for themselves that which
as yet is but purely metaphysical, or, in other words, beyond the circle
of actually existing things. In this manner, from the original source of
whatever is, there then darts a new being's aspiration for life which
aspiration manifests itself in the actuality of things by the love of its
potential parents, who, however, once the object of the Genius of the
Species attained, find, to their entire astonishment, that that love is no
more. But meanwhile, given that love, and the potential parents may become
so obsessed by it that they will disregard anything which, ordinarily,
would interfere.
This disregard, Schopenhauer further explained, is due to the Genius of
the Species to whom the personal interests of the individual, laws,
obstacles, differences of position, social barriers and human conventions
are so many straws. Caring only for the generation to be lightly he
dismisses them. It is his privilege, Schopenhauer declared. Our existence
being rooted in him, he has over us a right anterior and more immediate
than all things else. His interests are supreme.
"That point," Schopenhauer concluded, "antiquity perfectly understood when
it personified the Genius of the Species as Eros, a divinity who, in spite
of his infantile air, is hostile, cruel, despotic, demoniac and none the
less master of gods and of man.
'Tu, deorum hominumque tyranne, Amor!'"
For a philosopher Schopenhauer is very graphic. It is his great charm and
possibly his sole defect. In the superabundance of his imagination there
was not always room for the matter of fact. Then too he had a theory.
Everything had to yield to it. The trait, common to all metaphysicians,
von Hartmann shared. In the latter's _Philosophie des Unbewussten_ the
Genius of the Species becomes the Unconscious, the same force with a
different name, a sort of anthropomorphic entity lurking on the back
stairs of Spencer's Unknowable and from there ruling omnipotently the
lives and loves of man.
Both systems are ingenious. They are profound and they are admirable.
They have been respectfully received by the doct. But in their metaphysics
of the heart there is a common error. Each confounds instinct with
sentiment. Moreover, assuming the validity of their hypothetical idol,
there are phenomena left unexplained, the ordinary case for instance of an
individual inspiring but not requiting another's love. In one of the two
parties to it the entity obviously has erred. According to Schopenhauer
and von Hartmann the entity is the unique cause of love, which itself is
an instinct that deludes into the furtherment of nature's aims. But in an
unrequited affection such furtherment is impossible. In which event if
philosophy is not at fault the entity must be; the result being that it
lacks the omnipotence claimed. Demonstrably it has some power, it is even
clear that that power is great, but in the same sense that occultists deny
that death is, so may true lovers deny that the entity exists. For them it
is not. Without doubt it is the modern philosophic representative of Eros,
but of Eros Pandemos, son and heir of the primitive Aphrodite whom Plato
described.
Love does not proceed from that source. The instinct of it certainly does
but not sentiment which is its basis. Commonly instinct and sentiment are
confused. But, if a distinction be effected between their manifestations,
it will be recognized that though desire is elemental in both, in
instinct desire is paramount while in sentiment it is secondary and
frequently, particularly in the case of young women, it is dormant when
not absent, even though they may be what is termed "wildly in love."
Instinct is a primitive and general instigation, coeval and conterminous
with life. Love is a specific emotion, exclusive in selection, more or
less permanent in duration and due to a mental fermentation in itself
caused by a law of attraction, which Plato called imeros and Voltaire the
myth of happiness invented by Satan for man's despair.
Imeros is the longing for love. The meditation which Schopenhauer
described may enter there, and usually does, whether or not the parties
interested are aware of it. But it need not necessarily do so. When
Heloise was in her convent there could have been no such meditation, yet,
she loved Abailard as fervently as before. Moreover, when the work of
nature is accomplished, disenchantment does not, as Schopenhauer insisted,
invariably ensue. Disenchantment results when the accomplishing is due to
instinct but not when sentiment is the cause. Had instinct alone prevailed
humanity would hardly have arisen from its primitive state. But the
evolution of the sentiment of love, in developing the law of attraction,
lifted men from animality, angels from the shames of Ishtar, and
heightened the stature of the soul.
The advance effected is as notable as it is obvious, but its final term is
probably still remote. Ages ago the sphinx was disinterred from beneath
masses of sand under which it had brooded interminably. In its simian
paws, its avian wings, in its body which is that of an animal, in its face
which is that of a sage, before Darwin, before history, in traits great
and grave, the descent of man was told.
There remains his ascent. Future monuments may tell it. Meanwhile
evolution has not halted. Undiscernibly but indefatigably its advance
proceeds. Its culmination is not in existing types. If humanity descends
from apes, from humanity gods may emerge. The story of Olympus is but a
tale of what might have been and what might have been may yet come to
pass. Even now, if the story were true and the old gods could return, it
is permissible to assume that they would evaporate to ghostland eclipsed.
The inextinguishable laughter which was theirs is absent from the prose of
life. Commerce has alarmed their afflatus away. But the telegraph is a
better messenger than they had, the motor is surer than their chariots of
dream. In contemporary homes they could have better fare than ambrosia and
behold faces beside which some of their own might seem less divine. The
prodigies of electricity might appear to them more potent than the
thunderbolts of Zeus and, at the sight of modern engines, possibly they
would recall the titans with whom once they warred and sink back to their
sacred seas outfaced.
In the same manner that we have exceeded them it is also permissible to
assume that posterity will exceed what we have done. From its parturitions
gods may really come, beings that is, who, could contemporaneous man
remain to behold them, would regard him as he regards the ape.
That advance, if effected, love will achieve. In its history, already
long, yet relatively brief, it has changed the face of the earth. It has
transformed laws and religions. It has reversed and reconstructed every
institution human and divine. As yet its evolution is incomplete. But when
the final term is reached, then, doubtless, the words of the Apocalypse
shall be realized, for all things will have been made anew.
FINIS HISTORIAE AMORIS
INDEX
ABAILARD and Heloise, story of, 136-137
ACADEME of Athens, 46;
of Mitylene, 46, 47;
its teaching to women, 58-59
ACTIUM, 93
ADAM and EVE, married before mated, 1;
their union a Persian conceit, 1
ADULTERY, as represented by the Restoration Dramatists, 223
ALARIC, 120
ALCHEMY, 193
ALCIBIADES, 43
AEMILIUS PAULUS, 83
AESCULAPIUS, created to heal the body, 65
AFFINITIES, Elective, 241
AGREDA, 238
ALEXANDER, his bad influence on Greek worship of beauty, 59;
his _decensus Averni_, 63-64;
the prototype of the Roman Caesars, 64
ALBIGENSES, the, 175
ANACREON, his treatment of love, 54;
compared with Sappho's singing, 54
ANAITIS, 5
ANDRE, Maitre, 152
ANDROMEDA, the Friend of Sappho, 47
ANNE, Queen, 237
ANTONINUS PIUS, 108
ANTONINUS, MARCUS, 108
ANTONY, 90;
his treatment of Cleopatra, 91;
his conquest by Cleopatra, 91-92;
his marriage with Cleopatra, 92;
his divorce of Octavia, 93;
war with Octavius, 93-94;
deserted by Cleopatra, 93;
his ruin by Cleopatra, 94-95
APELLES, 61
APHRODITE, worship of, in Greece, 31, 32;
De Musset on, 31;
Homer's idea of, different from Hesiod's, 31;
Hesiod's, 34;
death of, in Greece, 64;
inspired sculpture in her death, 64;
Urania, 28-40;
Pandemos, 55;
Pandemos, love inspired by, 67;
Urania, love inspired by, 67;
degraded by Rome, 104
APIS, 104
APOLLONIUS of Tyana, his view of Helen of Troy, 36
AQUINAS, Thomas, 193
"ARABIAN Nights, The," 139-140
ARABS, in Spain, 163-167
ARAGON, the source of the _gaya cienca_, 172
ARISTOPHANES, 29; Athenian women in, 42;
his explanation of the duality of love, 69-70
ARISTOTLE, 61
ARMENIA, its contribution to Babylon, 3
ART, Greek, bad influence of, on the worship of Aphrodite, 32
ARTHUR, King, story of, 152
ASCETICISM, its persistence, 118-119
ASHTAROTH, 5;
ruled in Judaea, 11;
reviled by the Hebrew Prophets, 11, 12
ASPASIA, the age of, 53-64;
her relation with Pericles, 56;
her story, 56-57;
the ruler of Pericles, 62;
her power over Pericles, 63;
what she did for woman, 62;
her revelation of womanly power, 63
ASTARTE, 5;
came to Rome from Syria, 104
ASTRONOMY, relation to love, 68
ATHENS, in the age of Pericles, 59-60;
and Sparta, duel between, 60-61
ATTHIS, lover of Sappho, 49
ATTILA, 121;
his death, 121
ATTRACTION, the law of, 259
AUGUSTUS, age of, 101-106;
his turpitude, 102
BAAL, 10, 11
BACON, Friar, 193
BABYLON, influence of Semiramis on, 3;
influence of Nineveh on, 3, 4;
contribution of Armenia to, 3;
the daughters of, 4;
the inspirer of Solomon, 13
BACCHUS, Antony's tutelary god, 91
BEATRICE and Dante, 98;
Dante's love for, 177-180
BEAUTY, the religion of Greece, 28, 29;
its worship by the Greeks, 58-59;
its stimulating force, 70-71;
the secret of life, 87;
the secret of death, 87;
at the beginning of the Reformation, 201;
as advanced by Ficino and expounded by Bembo, 204, 205;
may be degraded but never vulgarized, 211
BEMBO, 204
BERANGER, on Society, 249
BERTHEFLEDE, story of, 125
BLUEBEARD, 191-197;
an example of haematomania, 194-196
BOCCACCIO, 177, 178;
the Decameron of, 188-190;
his work the signal for the Renaissance, 189-190
BOEOTIA, the scene of Lesbian rites, 46
BORGIAS, the, 200
BOSSUET, 135;
and Quietism, 238
BRAHMANISM, its evil influence on the poetry of the Vedas, 9
BROCELIANDE, 152
BRANTOME, 215, 216, 217, 219
BUDDHA, his teachings the same as Christ's, 113
BYZANCE, in the Middle Ages, 139;
the teacher of English civilization, 141
CAESAR, JULIUS, his treatment of women, 85;
his temperament, 89;
Cato's opinion of, 89;
his treatment of Cleopatra, 89
CAESARS, the palace of, abandoned to orgies, 106
CALIGULA, his vileness, 102
CALLICRATES, 57
CALPURNIA, 85
CALYPSO, 38, 39;
added coquetry to love, 53
CARTHAGE, worship of Venus in, 6, 7
CASANOVA, Jacques, 248
CATHERINE of Siena, 132
CATILINE, his evil influence on Rome, 84-85
CATO, his expression on woman's position in Rome, 79;
his opinion of Caesar, 89
CATULLUS, his passing away with the republic, 97-98;
his songs, 97-98
CELIBACY, penalized by the Greeks, 116;
taxed by the Romans, 116;
inculcated by the Church, 116;
how viewed variously, 116-117;
the ideal of the early Christians, 120
CELLINI, BENVENUTO, 202
CERVANTES, 231
CHALDAEA, the ideas of, with regard to Nature, 3;
originated picture of Pandora, 40
CHAMPAGNE, Countess of, 160
CHARAXUS, story of his love for Rhodopis, 45-46
CHARLES II of England, his influence on England, 221-224;
his court, 223;
his mistresses, 224
CHASTITY, the pride of Spartan women, 44
CHATEAUROUX, Mme. de, 247
CHIVALRY, origin of, 138;
Muslim, 141;
adopted by the Church, 142;
Age of, how it regarded love, 145-146;
ridiculed out of existence, 149;
killed by the invention of gunpowder, 149;
code of love in, 153-155;
its merits, 158;
Courts of Love, 155;
subtle case in, 156;
other cases, 158-160;
wrongly derived from Germany, 167;
rightly originated in the Moors, 167-168
CHRIST, the new messenger of love, 111;
the bringer of good news, 111-112;
his teaching, 112-113;
preceded by Buddha, 113;
his opinion of woman, 113;
his treatment of woman, 115;
women the brides of, 133
CHRISTIANITY, unable to better Homeric faith, 30;
Roman hatred of, 120;
misinterpreted by the early Church, 135;
conquered by Muhammadanism, 138
CHRISTIANS, Roman persecution of, 118-119
CHRYSOSTOM, on woman, 128
CHURCH, Early Christian, corner-stone of, 112
CHURCH, the, adopts the code of Chivalry, 142
CHURCH, the Early, its struggles, 119
CHURCH, the later, its restrictions on marriage, 147, 148;
its divorce laws, 148
CICERO, his exposition of stoicism, 108
CINDERELLA, story of, in the story of Rhodopis, 45-46
CIRCE, 38, 39
CLEMENT, 118
CLEMENT of Alexandria, 113
CLEOPATRA, Isis unveiled, 86;
her beauty, 88;
her headiness, 89;
how treated by Caesar, 89;
how treated by Antony, 91;
her conquest of Antony, 91-92;
her ambitious dreams, 92;
her desertion of Antony, 93;
her schemes for Octavius, 94;
her evil influence on Antony, 94-95;
her death, 96
CLOISTER, the, 128-129
CONSTANTINOPLE, the Fall of, 198;
its consequences, 199-200
CONVENTS, of Corinth and Miletus, 58
COPERNICUS, 200
COQUETRY, the kingdom of, by the Abbe d'Aubignac, 229
CORDOVA, Caliphs of, 164-165
CORINNA, 100
CORINTH, the hetairae of, 56;
convents of, 58
CORNEILLE, his _Rodrigue and Chimene_, 230;
his _Cid_, 230-231
CORREGGIO, 132
COURTS of Love, 155-157
CRASSUS, 84
CRUSADES, the, 138
CYNTHIA and Propertius, 98
DANTE, and Beatrice, 98;
his idea of Fortune, 33;
his poetry founded in Provencal verse, 172;
his early life and career, 177-184;
Voltaire's opinion of, 181;
Tennyson's opinion of, 181;
his influence, 182;
and Petrarch, compared, 186-187
D'AUBIGNAC, Abbe, his Kingdom of Coquetry, 229
D'AUVERGNE, Martial, 159
DECAMERONE, Il, its scope and influence, 188-90
DEMOSTHENES, 61
DE MUSSET, on Aphrodite, 31
DIANE DE POYTIERS, 216-217
DIVANS, the, of the Moors, 171
DIVORCE, in Greece in Sappho's time, 43;
not obligatory under the Caesars, 103;
how obtained under the Caesars, 103;
under the later Church, 148;
in England under Henry VIII, 204;
in Italy, 205
DON QUIXOTE, 148-149
DU BARRY, Duchesse de, 244, 247
DUPLEIX, his account of Margot of France, 219
D'URFE, HONORE, his pastoral, 227
ECCLESIASTICUS, his view of woman, 10
EGYPT, position of women in, 45;
influence of women of, 46;
its acceptance of beauty, 87-88;
the gods of, 87-88
ELEANOR of England, 141
ELEUSINIAN mysteries, 57;
Epiphanies, 72-73
ENGLAND, born of Shakespeare, 182;
divorce in, 204-205;
Puritan, 221;
Elizabethan, 221-222;
Early Stuart, 221;
Cromwellian, 222;
under the Georges, 243
ENNIUS, 105
EPICURUS, 29, 61
ERATO, finds freedom in Lesbos, 46
ERINNA, 47
ERMENGARDE of Narbonne, 160
EROS, degraded by Rome, 104
EURIPIDES, 29
EUROPE, after the fall of Rome, 126;
how influenced by Islam, 141-142;
before the Renaissance, 198-199;
in the eighteenth century, 244-245
EURYDICE and Orpheus, 30
EVE, suggested by Hesiod's Pandora, 40
EVOLUTION, 260
EWALD, on "The Song of Songs," 15
EZ ZAHARA, 164-165
FABIOLA, 147
FAMILY, the, the outcome of a better treatment of, 2
FENELON, and Quietism, 239
FEUDALISM, its origin, 125;
its bad influence on woman, 146;
marriage under, 146-147
FICINO, 203-204
FLORENCE, in the time of Dante, 177
FRAGONARD, 246
FRANCESCA and Paolo, 182
FRANCOIS I, the king of Gallantry, 213, 214;
the Court of, 214
FRIGHT, early man's first sensations, 2
GABRIELLE d'Estrees, 219-220
GALLANTRY, as defined by Montesquieu, 213;
the parody of love, 213;
embellishes vice, 213;
the direct cause of the French Revolution, 213;
adopted by Francois I, 214
GAUTIER, THEOPHILE, his definition of love, 251
GAY Science, the, 164-176;
founded in Aragon, 172
GENIUS, ascetic, 117
GEORGE II of England, 244
GERMANY, at the time of Louis XIV, 239-240;
love in, in the eighteenth century, 240-244;
aping of Louis XIV, 241
GERSON, his catalogue of ravishment, 133
GLYCERA, 57, 58
GORGO, lover of Sappho, 49
GOSPELS, the, 113;
the lost gospels, 113
GRANADA, palaces of, 165
GREECE, worship of Ishtar in, 6;
a gay nation, 28;
and Judaea, contrasted, 28;
had many creeds, but one religion, 28;
amours of, a part of its worship of beauty, 29;
its gods real to it, 29-30;
women in, in Sappho's time, 41-42;
beautiful women deified in, 58;
sale of beauty in, 59;
its decadence, 64
GREEK poetry, its splendors, 61
GREEKS, the, their appreciation of this world's gifts, 57
GREGOIRE DE TOURS, 119, 129
GREGOROVIUS, his description of Rome, 200-201
GUYON, Mme., and Quietism, 237-239
GWYNNE, NELL, 224
HADRIAN, 108
HAEMATOMANIA, 194
HALLAM, his opinion of knight-errantry, 161-162
HARLOTS, in Rome, 80-81
HECATE, 28
HELEN of Troy, her place in poetry, 34-35;
her influence on the Greek people, 35;
her degradation an evil influence, 35;
her idealization a source of inspiration, 35-36;
as viewed by Apollonius of Tyana, 36;
and Menelaus, 36-37;
and Paris, 37;
as a man's property, 37
HENRY IV, of France, 218;
and Gabrielle d'Estrees, 219-220
HEPHAESTOS, 28
HERODOTUS, on Ishtar, 5, 6
HESIOD, his idea of Aphrodite, 31;
Eve suggested by his Pandora, 40
HETAIRA, the, 55
HETAIRAE, the girls of the, 56-57
HELOISE and Abelard, story of, 136-137
HEPTAMERON, the, 209-210
HERMAS, 118
HERMITS, the outcome of Christianity, 116
HOME, the outcome of a better treatment of woman, 2
HOMER, 28;
his influence on Greek thought, 29;
his faith in beauty, 29;
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ of, 30;
his idea of Aphrodite, 31;
_Odyssey_ and _Iliad_, morality of, 38;
the sirens of, 39-40
HONOR, the chivalrous meaning of, 143
HORACE, his view of the _Iliad_, 38;
compared with Sappho, 47;
"the little fat man," 98-99;
his art as sung by Ponsard, 99-100
HORUS, 87
HUGO, VICTOR, 213
HUNS, their invasion of Rome, 121
_Iliad_, the, its view of woman, 62-63
IMMORTALITY, love of, 70
INFANTICIDE, in Rome, 118
INQUISITION, founded, 176
ISHTAR, her influence in the world, 4;
history of, 5, 6;
worship of, identical with the Hindu Kama-dasi, 6;
in Greece, 6;
rites of, 6, 7
ISIS, 87, 88
ISLAM, its influence on Europe, 141-142
ISLAMISM, treatment of women under, 169-170
JEHOVAH, the evolution of, among the Jews, 11, 12
JEWS, their view of woman, 10;
their prophets reviled the worship of Ashtaroth, 11, 12;
evolution of Jehovah among the, 11, 12;
their message for Rome, 110-11
JOY, the Parliaments of, 150-163
JUDAEA, did not honor women, 10;
the position of the patriarch in, 10;
and Greece, contrasted, 28
JULIUS II, 202
JUVENAL, 103
KAMA-DASI, the Hindu, identical with worship of Ishtar, 6
KNIGHTHOOD, its meaning, 144
KNIGHT-ERRANTRY, 161-162
KORAN, a precept in, 168-169
LACEDAEMON, 63;
its effect on Sparta and Greece, 63
LAIS, her epitaph, 58;
wealth of, 59
LAURA and Petrarch, 183-188;
the quality of her love, 187-188;
her position between Dante and Boccaccio, 188
LA VALLIERE, 232-233
LEONORA D'ESTE, 208;
her character, 210
LEO X, 201;
his expression of the Papacy, 202
LEPIDUS, 90
LESBOS, the women of, 44-45;
women of, influenced by Egypt, 46
L'ESTOILE, PIERRE DE, 219, 220
LIFE, Definition of, 70
LONDON, in the Georgian period, 243
LONGINUS, his reverence for Sappho, 47
LONGUEVILLE, Mme. de, 245-246
LORENZO, the Magnificent, 200
LOUIS XIV, of France, 232-234;
his mistresses, 232-236;
his kingdom, 236
LOUIS XV, of France, 247
LOVE, absent from Eden, 1;
evolution of, in history, 7, 8;
evil influence of theology on, 8;
the Gospel of, "The Song of Songs" viewed as, 13, 14;
its change in Sappho's time, 54;
Plato's view of, 65-66;
in the _Phaedrus_ of Plato, 66;
in the _Symposium_ of Plato, 66;
argument on, by Plato, 66-67;
not every love divine, 67;
two loves in the human body, 67;
in relation to astronomy, 68;
religion, intermediary of, 68;
duality of, explained by Aristophanes, 68;
Socrates's statement of the essence of, 69-70;
exerted in happiness in immortality, 70;
higher mysteries of, 71;
its value to life, 71-72;
how regarded by Plato, 74;
the new ideal of, through Christ, 111;
dispersed the darkness of the Middle Ages, 138;
how regarded in the Age of Chivalry, 145-146;
exalted under Feudalism, 148;
joy of, its humanizing influence, 150;
Courts of, 155-157;
code of, in chivalry, 153-155;
its merits, 158;
cases of, in chivalry, 158-160;
a picture of, in mediaeval times, 162-163;
the religion of the troubadours, 175;
to Petrarch, 188;
to Dante, 189;
as viewed by Boccaccio, 188-190;
as viewed by Plato, 203;
Platonic, 205-206;
as influenced by Platonism, 205-207;
as influenced by Venice, 207;
as shown by Marguerite of France, 209-210;
a high summit reached in Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, 212;
_non inferiora secutus_, 212;
in the seventeenth century, 213-236;
its modern history opens with laughter, 213;
its melody in Platonism, its parody in gallantry, 213;
always educational, 213;
in Spain, Germany, France, and England in the seventeenth century, 214;
under Francois I, 215;
under Henry IV, of France, 218-222;
its degradation under the Restoration, 224;
the Scudery map of, 228-230;
in the eighteenth century, 237-250;
in Germany in the eighteenth century, 241;
the dawn of its rebirth in the eighteenth century, 245;
the lowest depths of, 249;
changes in form but never in character, 250;
as defined by Gautier, 251;
the subject for philosophy, 251;
its basis, 252;
first analyzed by Plato, 252;
its nature elaborated by Schopenhauer, 252-257;
a manifestation of the Genius of Species, 253;
its nature is will for the purpose of creation, 253;
used by Nature as a means to an end, 254-255;
Nature's veil of illusion, 255;
the manifestation of an instinct, 255;
its purpose, the materialization of a particular being, 256;
wrongly diagnosed by Schopenhauer, 259-260;
its advance in evolution, 260;
modern, 260-261
LOVERS, Socrates's ideal, 171
LUCRETIA, 82
LUCREZIA BORGIA, 204
LUCULLUS, 84
LUTHER, the true founder of modern society, 201
LYCURGUS, his laws on marriage, 44
MACAULAY, 222, 223
MACON, second council of, on woman, 127
MACROBIUS, his description of Roman Saturnalia, 75-76
MACAENAS, lackey of Augustus, 102
MAHABHARATA, the, The Vedic history of love, 7, 8
MAN, early, his attitude toward Nature, 2, 3;
pleasure not known to him, 2
MANU, laws of, on marriage, 8
MARGOT, wife of Henry IV of France, 218-219
MARGUERITE of France, 208;
208-210;
the Heptameron of, 209-210
MARIUS, 120
MARRIAGE, laws of Manu on, 8;
position of women in Greece in, 42;
in Sparta, 44;
in Rome, 79-80;
under the Caesars, 103;
Lex Pappea Poppoea, 103;
as viewed by the Early Christian Church, 114;
St. Sebastian on, 114;
St. Augustine on, 114;
made incumbent by Hebrew law, 116;
St. Paul on the dignity of, 119-120;
under the feudal system, 146-147;
how restricted by the later Church, 147-148;
in days of chivalry, 157
MARY MAGDALEN, 115
MATRIMONY, as interpreted by later Platonism, 205
MEDLIAEVALISM, the prelude to the Renaissance, 198
MEDICI, CATHERINE DE, 217
MENANDER, 57
MENELAUS, and Helen of Troy, 36-37
MICHAEL ANGELO, 202;
his love for Vittoria Colonna, 211-212
MIGNET, 213
MILETUS, convents of, 58
MINSTRELS, the, 164
MITHRA, 104
MODESTY, in the eighteenth century, 246
MOLIERE, his ridicule of the _Precieuses_, 227
MOLINOS, 135;
his Quietism, 237
MOLOCH, 10, 11
MONASTERIES, 128-129
MONTESPAN, Marquise de, 234-235
MONTESQUIEU, his definition of gallantry, 213
MOORS, in Spain, 163-167;
their learning and poetry, 166;
originated chivalry, 167-168;
their power in Europe, 168;
their treatment of women, 169-170
MORBIHAN, the paintings in, 196
MOSES, his view of woman, 10, 11
MOSLEMS, chivalry of, 141
MUHAMMAD, conquers Persia, 139;
the two things he really cared for, 168
NATURE, early man, attitude toward, 2
NAUSICAA, 38
NEBUCHADNEZZAR, 41
NEPENTHE, an Egyptian drug, 36
NINEVEH, its influence on Babylon, 3, 4
NOSTRADAMUS, 153, 155
NUNS, 131
OCTAVIUS, 90;
a model citizen, 93;
his opinion of Cleopatra, 93;
war with Antony, 93-94;
his design against Cleopatra, 95;
defeated by Cleopatra's death, 95-96
ODYSSEUS, 38;
Homer's service to, 38
_Odyssey_, the, its view of woman, 63
OLYMPUS, kindly to its worshippers, 30;
influence of the gods of, on Greek mind, 33
OMPHALE, 56
ORPHEUS, and Eurydice, 30
OSIRIS, 87, 88
OVID, his picture of Sappho, 51;
his "Art of Love," 100;
poet of pleasure, 100-101;
his banishment, 101
PALLAS, 59
PALMER, BARBARA, 224
PANDORA, 40;
picture of, of Chaldaean origin, 40
PANTHEON, Roman, a lupanar, 105
PAPACY, the, its war against the troubadours, 176;
as expressed by Leo X, 202
PARIS, and Helen, 37
PARIS, love in, under Francois I, 215
PATRIARCH, the, his position in Judaea, 10
PAUL III, 202
PAUL, St., his humiliation of woman, 114;
on the dignity of marriage, 119-120;
his view of Christianity, 134-135
PERICLES, his relation with Aspasia, 56;
his deification, 61;
Age of, the period of Greek decline, 61
PERSEUS, on Roman thought and life, 104
PETRARCH, his poetry, 172;
and Laura, 183-188;
and Dante compared, 186-187;
his love for Laura, 187-188
PHAEDRUS, 73-74;
its theory of Beauty, 73-74
PHAON, his relation with Sappho, 49-51
PHEIDIAS, influence of his Zeus on AEmilius Paulus, 31-32
PHILIP of Macedon, 63
PHILIPPUS, 57
PHOENICIA, furnished girls for Greek harems, 6
PHRYNE, 57;
as Aphrodite, 57;
her acquital before the Areiopagus, 57-58;
Praxiteles's statue of, 58;
her wealth, 59
PINDAR, 61
PLATO, his opinion of Sappho, 47;
healer of the mind, 65;
his teaching, 65;
his view of love, 65-66;
his _Phaedrus_ and _Symposion_, 65-66;
his _Phaedrus_, 73-74;
his theory of beauty in the _Phaedrus_, 73-74;
his _Republic_, 202;
his _Symposion_, 203
PLATONISM, its view of matrimony interpreted, 205;
its influence on love, 206-207;
its three saints, 201;
the melody of love, 213;
beautifies virtue, 213
PLEASURE, a later growth in man, 2
POMPADOUR, Mme. de, 247
POMPEIA, 85
PONSARD, his poem on Horace, 99-100
PRAXITELES, his Aphrodite, 32-33;
his statue of Phryne, 58
PROPERTIUS and Cynthia, 98
PROVENCAL, poetry, 171-172;
the foundation of Dante and Petrarch, 172
PROVENCE, its troubadourian dogmas, 175-176
PSYCHE, story of, 30
PUBLIUS CLAUDIUS, 85
QUEROUAILLE, LOUISE DE LA, 224
QUIETISM, the teaching of, 237-289
RADEGONDE, Story of, 130-131
RAMBOUILLET, Hotel de, 225
RAMBOUILLET, Madame de, 225-226;
her influence, 227
RAPHAEL, 202
RAVAILLAC, 221
RAYMOND, Lord, of Castel-Roussillon, 162-163
REFORMATION, the, its influence on love, 201
RELIGION, love's intermediary, 68
RENAISSANCE, the, due to Greek thought, 60;
woman under, 151-152;
198-212;
the three Graces of, 208
RENAN, on "The Song of Songs," 15
RESTORATION, the time of, 222-223
RETZ, GILLES DE, 191-197
REVOLUTION, the French, the effect of Gallantry, 213
RHODOPIS, story of her relation with Charaxus, 45-46;
the original of Cinderella, 45
RICHELIEU, 248
ROLAND, the story of, 142-143
ROMANS, their primal characteristics, 75-76;
the Saturnalia of, 75-76
ROME, mission of, 75;
love secondary in, 75;
its treatment of the strange gods, 76-77;
its attitude to slaves and children, 77;
its treatment of women, 77-78;
St. Augustine's view of, 82;
puritan in poverty, 82-83;
Sylla's immoral influence on, 83-84;
Catiline's bad influence on, 84-85;
the Triumvirate of, 90;
in the Augustan age, 101-106;
amusements of, 101;
under the Emperors, 101-109;
degraded Eros into Cupid, 104;
degraded Aphrodite into Venus, 104;
later gods of, 104-105;
degraded under Imperialistic sway, 105;
its Pantheon a lupanar, 105;
its delight in sensuality, 106-107;
its palaces abandoned to orgies, 106-107;
more abandoned than Nineveh or Babylon, 108;
Imperialistic, compared with age of Pericles, 109;
first barbarian who invaded, 110;
the message of the Jews for, 110-111;
persecution of early Christians, 118-119;
its fall, 120;
its hatred of Christianity, 120;
invaded by the Huns, 121;
its antiquity dead, 121;
the elements that went to make its greatness, 125;
its dissolution, 125;
European darkness after fall of, 126-127;
as described by Gregorovius, 200-201;
under the Papacy, 201
ROUND Table, Knights of, 152
ROUSSILLON, GERARD DE, 159
RUY BLAS, 157-158
SADE, Marquis de, 248-249
SALAMIS, battle of, 60;
its influence on Greece, 60
SALVATION, in weakness, 134
SAPPHO, 41-45;
how appreciated by the ancients, 47;
the girl Plato, 47;
poems of, 48;
sources of Odes of, 48;
portraits of, 48-49;
lover of Atthis, 49;
lover of Gorgo, 49;
contemporary knowledge of, 49;
her relation with Phaon, 49-50;
as told by Swinburne, 50;
as pictured by Ovid, 51;
emancipated love, 53;
her singing of love, 54;
her influence on the relation of women, 55
SAUVAL, 215
SCHEHERAZADE, 140
SCHOPENHAUER, his exposition of love, 252-257;
his error, 259-260
SCIENCE, the Gay, 150-151;
164-176;
founded in Aragon, 172
SCUDERY, Mlle. de, 227;
her map of love, 228-230
SEMIRAMIS, her influence on Babylon, 3
SENECA, 103;
his condemnation of vice, 108-109
SEVILLE, palaces of, 165
SHAKESPEARE, his influence, 182
SIRENS, the Homeric, 39-40
SLAVES in Rome, 77
SOCIETY, after the fall of Rome, 126-127
SOCRATES, his statement of the essence of love, 69-70;
his ideal lovers, 71-72;
his discourse on love, 70-72;
117
SOLOMON, his view of woman, 11;
wholly Babylonic, 13
SOLON, his opinion of Sappho, 47
"SONG OF SONGS," The, the Gospel of love, 13, 14;
exposition of, as a drama of love, 14, 15;
reset as a love drama, 15-27
SOPHOCLES, 61
SORROW, a sin, 150
SPAIN, the home of Moorish chivalry, 170-171;
at the close of the seventeenth century, 231-233;
Court of, at end of seventeenth century, 232
SPARTA, condition of women in, 43-44;
and Athens, rivalry between, 60-61
ST. AUGUSTINE, his view of Rome, 82;
on marriage, 114
ST. BASILIUS, his praise of Homer, 38
STOICISM, in Rome, 108
STRABO, on Ishtar, 5, 6;
his view of Sappho, 47, 49
ST. SEBASTIAN, on marriage, 114
SUETONIUS, his character of Caligula, 102;
his Prince and Beast, 107
SWINBURNE, compared with Sappho, 47;
his "Ode to Aphrodite," 50
SYLLA, his moral destruction of Rome, 83-84
TACITUS, on women, 81
TANIT, 5
TASSO, 210;
his love for Leonora d'Este, 210-211
TENDERNESS-on-Sympathy, in Germany, 241
TENNYSON, his opinion of Dante, 181
TERTULLIAN, 103
THAIS, monument to, 58
THEBES, 63;
its fall, 61
THEMISTOCLES, son of, 61-62
THEOLOGY, its base influence on love, 8
THERESA, St., story of, 132-133
TIBERIUS, his laws on women, 81
TOURNAMENTS, 144-145
TRISTRAM and Isaud, 144
TROUBADOURS, the, 172-174;
their religion, 175;
opposed by the Papacy, 176
VEDAS, the, on love, 7, 8;
the poetry of, deformed by Brahmanism, 9
VENICE, its evil influence on love, 207
VENTADOUR, BERNARD DE, 173
VENUS, worship of, 6;
name of Hebrew origin, 7;
her indifference to mortal aspirations, 33-34
VERONESE, 132
VERSAILLES, 232, 235
VESPASIAN, 108
VIRGIN, the, aspirations to, 133;
the _Regina angelorum_, 133;
reflected in art, 134
VIRGINIA, 82
VITTORIA COLONNA, 208;
her character, 211
VOLTAIRE, his opinion of the _Divina Commedia_, 181
WALTERS, LUCY, 224
WESTPHALIA, Peace of, 240
WIDOWS, under code of chivalry, 161
WIVES, treatment of, in Sappho's time, 53-54
WOMAN, early treatment of, 1, 2;
family life, the outcome of better treatment of, 2;
common property once, 2;
man's early treatment of, 2;
not honored in Judaea, 10;
incarnated sin to the Jews, 10;
as viewed by Ecclesiasticus, 10;
as viewed by Moses, 10, 11;
as viewed by Solomon, 11;
worshipped in the Renaissance, 15;
a man's chattel, 37;
as viewed by Homer, 39-40;
beginning of her emancipation, 40;
what she represented in Greece, 58;
her development through Aspasia, 62;
how viewed by the _Iliad_, 62-63;
how viewed by the _Odyssey_, 62-63;
treatment of, by Rome, 77-78;
her legal and actual position in Rome, 78;
her supremacy in Rome, 78-79;
her position stated by Cato, 79;
position of, in Rome compared with her position in Greece, 79;
hampered by Roman laws, 80-81;
Christ's opinion of, 113;
little thought of by St. Paul, 114;
her treatment of Christ, 115;
condition of, in dark ages, 127;
how regarded by the second council of Macon, 127;
St. Chrysostom on, 128;
retreat to cloister, 129;
legend of a, 131-132;
her enfranchisement in the Middle Ages, 135-136;
her condition in the Crusade times, 141;
the arbiter of knightly honor, 143-144;
badly influenced by Feudalism, 146;
Courts of Love for, 155-157;
Code of Love for, 153-155;
marriage of, in days of chivalry, 157;
her position in days of chivalry, 158;
knightly homage for, 158-159;
widows under code of chivalry, 161;
position of, in Italy, 161;
beloved by Muhammad, 168;
the Koran on, 168-169;
Moorish treatment of, 169-170;
seclusion under Islamism, 169-170;
her position in Italy in Bembo's time, 204-205
WOMEN, lost in the deluge, 10;
in Greece in Sappho's time, 41-42;
of Lesbos, 44-45;
Sappho's influence on, 55;
deification of, in Greece, 58;
Tacitus on, 81;
laws of Tiberius on, 81;
married, reverenced in Rome, 81-82;
Caesar's treatment of, 85;
as brides of Christ, 133;
in Germany in eighteenth century, 242;
morals of, in Germany, 242;
in the eighteenth century, 246
XANTIPPE, 117
ZEND AVESTA, the decalogue of the, 150
Footnotes:
[1] Herodotus, I., 199.
[2] Strabo, XVI., xi., 532. Baruch, VI. Justinus, XVIII. St. Augustin:
Civit. Dei, IV., 10. Eusebius: Vita Constantini, III., 53-56. _Cf._
Juvenal, Satir. 9: Nam quo non prostat femina templo?
[3] Renan: Le Cantique des Cantiques.
[4] Paraleipomena, XIII.
[5] Philostratus: Apollonius Tyanensis, IV., 16.
[6] Ethica S. Basilii.
[7] Berard: Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee.
[8] Opera et Dies, 70.
[9] Xenophon: de Republica Lacedaemoniorum.
[10] Rossetti, D. G.
[11] Epistolae Heroidum, XV.
[12] Athenaeus, XIII. Musonius: de Luxu. Becker: Charikles.
[13] Saturnalia, III., 9.
[14] Leg. XII Tabularum, Tab. quinta. "Veteres voluerunt foeminas etiam
perfectae aetatis, propter animi laevitatem, in tutela esse. Itaque, si quis
filio filiaeve testamento tutorem dederit, et ambo ad pubertatem
pervenerint, filius quidem desinit habere tutorem, filia vero nihilominus
in tutela permanet."
[15] Valerius Maximus, II., i. Pliny, XIV., 13.
[16] "Juris humani et divini communicatio."--Modestin.
[17] Leg. XII. Tabularum. Valerius Maximus, VI., i. Livy, X., 31; XXV., 2.
Tacitus: Annal., II., 85. Ulpianus: de Ritu Nuptiarum.
[18] Cicero: de Arusp. Quod in agro Latiniensi auditus est strepitus cum
fremitu. _Ibid_: Providete ne reipublica status commutetur.
[19] Michelet: Histoire Romaine. Saltus: Imperial Purple.
[20] Plutarch: Antonii vita. _Cf._ Michelet, _op. cit._
[21] Suetonius: Augustus, XVIII. Velleius Paterculus, II. lxxxiii. Vergil:
AEneid, VIII. Horace: Epod., 9.
[22] Cod. 2, de inutil. Stipulat.
[23] Matthew xvi. 21.
[24] Stromata, III., 6-9.
[25] Timothy ii. 11-12. 1 Corinthians ix. 9. 1 Corinthians vii. 38.
[26] Concil. Trident., sess. XXIV., canon 10.
[27] Augustin: De bono conjugio.
[28] Matthew xix. 12. Revelations xiv.
[29] St. Justin: Apolog., I., 14, 35.
[30] Clement: Strom., III., 6. Hermas: Similit., IX., ii. "Nobiscum dormi
non ut maritus, sed ut frater." Hermas: Visio, I., 2. "Conjugi tuae quae
futura est (incipit esse) soror tua."
[31] Boetius, Lib. XVII. Quidam dominus quem vidi, primam sponsarum
carnalem cognitionem ut suam petebat. Du Cange: _Marchetum_. Marcheto
mulieris dicitur virginalis pudicitiae violatio et delibatio.
[32] Recits des Temps Merovingiens.
[33] Acta Sanctorum.
[34] Michelet: Histoire de France.
[35] I Corinthians xii. 7-9.
[36] Michaud: Histoire des Croisades.
[37] Eginhard: Vita Karoli IX.
[38] Summa Hostiensis, IV. De Sponsalibus.
[39] Beaumanoir, LVII. "Tout mari peut battre sa femme, pourvu que ce soit
moderement et sans que mort s'ensuivre."
[40] St. Jerome: Vita S. Fabiolae.
[41] Juris Pontificii Analecta.
[42] Ste. Palaye: L'ancienne Chevalerie.
[43] Maitre Andre, chapelain de la cour royale de France. Manuscrit de la
Bibliotheque nationale, No. 8758.
[44] "Des personnages de grands renoms estant venus visiter le pape
Innocent III a Avignon, furent ouir les definitions et sentences d'amour
prononcees par les dames."--Nostradamus.
[45] Martial d'Auvergne: Les Arrets d'Amour.
[46] Assises de Jerusalem.
[47] Conde: Historia de la dominacion de los Arabes en Espana.
[48] "Ex Arabibus versum simili sono concluendorum artem accepimus." Huet.
[49] "De orden del cardenal Cisneros se abrazaron mas de ochenta mil
volumenes como si no tuvieran mas libros que su Alcoran."--Aledres;
Descripcion de Espana.
[50] "... Fue muy buen caballero, y se decia de el que tenia las diez
prendas que distinguen a los nobles y generosos, que consisten en bondad,
valentia, caballeria, gentileza, poesia, bien hablar, fuerza, destreza en
la lanza, en la espada y en el tirar del arco." Conde, II., 63.
[51] "Dans les pays soumis a l'Islam on ne voit aucune femme
publique."--Viardot: Hist. des Arabes.
[52] Conde, II., 93.
[53] Escolano: Historia de Valencia. "La lengua maestria de la Espana es
la lemosina."
[54] "Con l'altre donne mia vista gabbate."
[55] Epistolae sine titulo.
[56] Lobineau: Histoire de Bretagne.
[57] Manuscrit de la Bibl. nationale, No. 493, F.
[58] Saltus: The Pomps of Satan.
[59] Michelet: Hist. de France.
[60] Luther: Tisch-Reden.
[61] Castiglione: Il Cortegiano. Ficino: Il comento sopra il convito.
[62] Firenzuola: Ragionamenti.
[63] Sauval: Memoires Historiques concernant les amours des rois de
France.
[64] Guiffrey: "Lettres inedites."
[65] Tallemant des Reaux: Historiettes.
[66] Dupleix: Histoire de Louis XIII.
[67] Pierre de l'Estoile: Memoires et journaux.
[68] Macaulay: "History of England."
[69] Saint-Victor: L'Espagne sous Charles II.
[70] Menzel: Germany.
[71] Earl Malmesbury's Diaries and Correspondence.
[72] Scherr: Deutsche Kulturgeschichte.
[73] Hervey: Memoirs.
[74] Goncourt: La Femme au dix-huitieme siecle.
[75] "Il lui fit sept enfants sans lui dire un mot."--d'Argenson.
[76] Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
Superscripted letters are shown in {brackets}.
Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors
have been silently closed, while those requiring interpretation have
been left open.
The following misprints have been corrected:
"at" corrected to "as" (page 131)
"hubsands" corrected to "husbands" (page 169)
"Wmen" corrected to "Women" (page 215)
"it" corrected to "is" (page 260)
"Sapho" corrected to "Sappho" (index)
"at" corrected to "as" (index)
"teh" corrected to "the" (index)
The following spellings have been standardized in the index:
"Heloise" standardized to "Heloise"
"Muhammedanism" standardized to "Muhammadanism"
"Islam" standardized to "Islam"
"HEPTAMERON" standardized to "HEPTAMERON"
"MUHAMMED" standardized to "MUHAMMAD"
"GERARD" standardized to "GERARD"
"SCUDERY" standardized to "SCUDERY"
"Mohammed" standardized to "Muhammad"