Books and Habits | Page 9

Englishman speaks of "true love," he
usually means something that has no passion at all; he means a perfect
friendship which grows up between man and wife and which has
nothing to do with the passion which brought the pair together. But
when the English poet speaks of love, he generally means passion, not
friendship. I am only stating very general rules. You see how confusing
the subject is, how difficult to define the matter. Let us leave the
definition alone for a moment, and consider the matter philosophically.

Some very foolish persons have attempted even within recent years to
make a classification of different kinds of love--love between the sexes.
They talk about romantic love, and other such things. All that is utter
nonsense. In the meaning of sexual affection there is only one kind of
love, the natural attraction of one sex for them other; and the only
difference in the highest for of this attraction and the lowest is this, that
in the nobler nature a vast number of moral, aesthetic, and ethical
sentiments are related to the passion, and that in lower natures those
sentiments are absent. Therefore we may say that even in the highest
forms of the sentiment there is only one dominant feeling, complex
though it be, the desire for possession. What follows the possession we
may call love if we please; but it might better be called perfect
friendship and sympathy. It is altogether a different thing. The love that
is the theme of poets in all countries is really love, not the friendship
that grows out of it.
I suppose you know that the etymological meaning of "passion" is "a
state of suffering." In regard to love, the word has particular
significance to the Western mind, for it refers to the time of struggle
and doubt and longing before the object is attained. Now how much of
this passion is a legitimate subject of literary art?
The difficulty may, I think, be met by remembering the extraordinary
character of the mental phenomena which manifest themselves in the
time of passion. There is during that time a strange illusion, an illusion
so wonderful that it has engaged the attention of great philosophers for
thousands of years; Plato, you know, tried to explain it in a very
famous theory. I mean the illusion that seems to charm, or rather,
actually does charm the senses of a man at a certain time. To his eye a
certain face has suddenly become the most beautiful object in the world.
To his ears the accents of one voice become the sweetest of all music.
Reason has nothing to do with this, and reason has no power against the
enchantment. Out of Nature's mystery, somehow or other, this strange
magic suddenly illuminates the senses of a man; then vanishes again, as
noiselessly as it came. It is a very ghostly thing, and can not be
explained by any theory not of a very ghostly kind. Even Herbert
Spencer has devoted his reasoning to a new theory about it. I need not

go further in this particular than to tell you that in a certain way passion
is now thought to have something to do with other lives than the
present; in short, it is a kind of organic memory of relations that existed
in thousands and tens of thousands of former states of being. Right or
wrong though the theories may be, this mysterious moment of love, the
period of this illusion, is properly the subject of high poetry, simply
because it is the most beautiful and the most wonderful experience of a
human life. And why?
Because in the brief time of such passion the very highest and finest
emotions of which human nature is capable are brought into play. In
that time more than at any other hour in life do men become unselfish,
unselfish at least toward one human being. Not only unselfishness but
self-sacrifice is a desire peculiar to the period. The young man in love
is not merely willing to give away everything that he possesses to the
person beloved; he wishes to suffer pain, to meet danger, to risk his life
for her sake. Therefore Tennyson, in speaking of that time, beautifully
said:
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might,
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
Unselfishness is, of course, a very noble feeling, independently of the
cause. But this is only one of the emotions of a higher class when
powerfully aroused. There is pity, tenderness--the same kind of
tenderness that one feels toward a child--the love of the helpless, the
desire to protect. And a third sentiment felt at such a time more
strongly than at