read: "During this emotion I am highly elated in my Being, and my every sentiment improved by the effects of that Passion. I am more and more convinced that this Passion is in lowest minds the strongest Incentive that can move the Soul of Man to laudable Accomplishments." And in No. 29: "Nothing can mend the Heart better than an honorable Love, except Religion." Thomas Otway sang: O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee "Love taught him shame," said Dryden, and Spenser wrote a Hymn in Honor of Love, in which he declared that Such is the power of that sweet passion Unto a fairer form, which now doth dwell Leigh Hunt wrote: "My love has made me better and more desirous of improvement than I have been." Love, indeed, is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire, But heaven itself descends in love.-Byron. Why should we kill the best of passions, love? It aids the hero, bids ambition rise To nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds, Ev'n softens brutes, and adds a grace to virtue. - Thomson. Dr. Beddoe, author of the Browning Cyclopædia, declares that "the passion of love, throughout Mr. Browning's works, is treated as the most sacred thing in the human soul." How Browning himself loved we know from one of his wife's letters, in which she relates how she tried to discourage his advances: "I showed him how he was throwing away into the ashes his best affections-how the common gifts of youth and cheerfulness were behind me-how I had not strength, even of heart, for the ordinary duties of life-everything I told him and showed him. Look at this-and this-and this,' throwing down all my disadvantages. To which he did not answer by a single compliment, but simply that he had not then to choose, and that I might be right or he might be right, he was not there to decide; but that he loved me and should to his last hour. He said that the freshness of youth had passed with him also, and that he had studied the world. out of books and seen many women, yet had never loved one until he had seen me. That he knew himself, and knew that, if ever so repulsed, he should love me to his last hour— it should be first and last." No poet understood better than Tennyson that purity is an ingredient of love : For indeed I know Of no more subtle master under heaven Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thoughts and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame And love of truth, and all that makes a man. MAIDEN FANCIES Bryan Waller Proctor fell in love when he was only five years old: "My love," he wrote afterward, "had the fire of passion, but not the clay which drags it downward; it partook of the innocence of my years, while it etherealized me." Such ethereal love too is the prerogative of a young maiden, whose imagination is immaculate, ignorant of impurity. Her feelings have the fragrancy, No, no, the utmost share Of my desire shall be, Only to kiss that air That lately kisséd thee. In high school, when sentimental impulses first manifest themselves in a girl, she is more likely than not to transfer them to a girl. Her feelings, in these cases, are not merely those of a warm friendship, but they resemble the passionate, self-sacrificing attitude of romantic love. New York schoolgirls have a special slang phrase for this kind of love-they call it a "crush," to distinguish it from a "mash," which refers to an impression made on a man. A girl of seventeen told me one day how madly she was in love with another girl whose seat was near hers; how she brought her flowers, wiped her pens, took care of her desk; "but I don't believe she cares for me at all," she added, sadly. PATHOLOGIC LOVE Such love is usually as innocent as a butterfly's flirtation with a flower. It has a pathologic phase, in some cases, which need not be discussed here.. But I wish to call attention to the fact that even in abnormal states modern love preserves its purity. The most eminent authority on mental pathology, Professor Krafft-Ebing, says, concerning erotomania: "The kernel of the whole matter is the delusion of being singled out and loved by a person of the other sex, who regularly belongs to a higher social class. And it should be noted that the love felt by the patient toward this person is a romantic, ecstatic, but entirely Platonic' affection." I have among my notes a remarkable case, relating to that most awful of diseases that can befall a woman-nymphomania.2 The patient relates: "I have also noticed that when my affections are aroused, they counteract animal passion. I could 6 1 Renan, in one of his short stories, describes a girl, Emma Kosilis, whose love, at sixteen, is as innocent as it is unconscious, and who is unable to distinguish it from piety. Regarding the unconscious purity of woman's love see Moll, 3, and Paget, Clinical Lectures, which discuss the loss in women of instinctive sexual knowledge. Cf. Ribot, 251, and Morean, Psychologie Morbide, 264-278. Ribot is sceptical, because the ultimate goal is the possession of the beloved. But that has nothing to do with the question, for what he refers to is unconscious and instinctive. Here we are considering love as a conscious feeling and ideal, and as such it is as spotless and sinless as the most confirmed asc tic could wish it. The case is described in the Medical Times, April 18, 1885. My tendency is to never love a man because he was a man. worship the good I find in friends. I feel just the same toward those of my own sex. If they show any regard for me, the touch of a hand has power to take away all morbid feeling." A MODERN SENTIMENT There are all sorts and conditions of love. To those who have known only the primitive (sensual) sort, the conditions described in the foregoing pages will seem strange and fantastic if not fictitious-that is, the products of the writers' imaginations. Fantastic they are, no doubt, and romantic, but that they are real I can vouch for by my own experience whenever I was in love, which happened several times. When I was a youth of seventeen I fell in love with a beautiful, black-eyed young woman, a Spanish-American of Californian stock. She was married, and I am afraid she was amused at my mad infatuation. Did I try to flirt with her? A smile, a glance of her eyes, was to me the seventh heaven beyond which there could be no other. I would not have dared to touch her hand, and the thought of kissing her was as much beyond my wildest flights of fancy as if she had been a real goddess. To me she was divine, utterly unapproachable by mortal. Every day I used to sit in a lonely spot of the forest and weep; and when she went away I felt as if the sun had gone out and all the world were plunged into eternal darkness. Such is romantic love-a supersensual feeling of crystalline purity from which all gross matter has been distilled. But the love that includes this ingredient is a modern sentiment, less than a thousand years old, and not to be found among savages, barbarians, or Orientals. To them, as the perusal of past and later chapters must convince the reader, it is inconceivable that a woman should serve any other than sensual and utilitarian purposes. The whole story is told in what Dodge says of the Indians, who, "animal-like, approach a woman only to make love to her"; and of the squaws who do not dare even go with a beau to a dance, or go a short dis tance from camp, without taking precautions against rape— precautions without which they "would not be safe for an instant" (210, 213). PERSIANS, TURKS, AND HINDOOS We shall read later on of the obscene talk and sights that poison the minds of boys and girls among Indians, Polynesians, etc., from their infancy; in which respect Orientals are not much better than Hurons and Botocudos. "The Persian child," writes Mrs. Bishop (I., 218), “from infancy is altogether interested in the topics of adults; and as the conversation of both sexes is said by those who know them best to be without reticence or modesty, the purity which is one of the greatest charms of childhood is absolutely unknown." Of the Turks (at Bagdad) Ida Pfeiffer writes (L. J. R. W., 202-203) that she found it. "very painful to notice the tone of the conversation that goes on in these harems and in the baths. Nothing can exceed the demureness of the women in public; but when they come together in these places, they indemnify themselves thoroughly for the restraint. While they were busy with their pipes and coffee, I took the opportunity to take a glance into the neighboring apartments, and in a few minutes I saw enough to fill me at once with disgust and compassion for these poor creatures, whom idleness and ignorance have degraded almost below the level of humanity. A visit to the women's baths left a no less melancholy impression. There were children of both sexes-girls, women, and elderly matrons. The poor children! how should they in after life understand what is meant by modesty and purity, when they are accustomed from their infancy to witness such scenes, and listen to such conversation?" These Orientals are too coarse-fibred to appreciate the spotless, peach-down purity which in our ideal is a maiden's supreme charm. They do not care to prolong, even for a year what to us seems the sweetest, loveliest period of life, the time of artless, innocent maidenhood. They cannot admire a rose for its fragrant beauty, but must needs regard it as a thing |