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they were ever conquered. But before considering those obstacles it will be advisable to explain definitely just what romantic love is and how it differs from the sensual "love or lust which, of course, has always existed among men as among other animals.

WHAT IS ROMANTIC LOVE?

How does it feel to be in love?

When a man loves a girl, he feels such an overwhelming individual preference for her that though she were a beggarmaid he would scorn the offer to exchange her for an heiress, a princess, or the goddess of beauty herself. To him she seems to have a monopoly of all the feminine charms, and she therefore monopolizes his thoughts and feelings to the exclusion of all other interests, and he longs not only for her reciprocal affection but for a monopoly of it. "Does she love me?" he asks himself a hundred times a day. "Sometimes she seems to treat me with cold indifference-is that merely the instinctive assertion of feminine coyness, or does she prefer another man?" The pangs, the agony of jealousy overcome him at this thought. He hopes one moment, despairs the next, till his moods become so mired that he hardly knows whether he is happy or miserable. He, who is usually so bold and self-confident, is humbled; feels utterly unworthy of her. In his fancy she soars so far above all other women that calling her an angel seems not a hyperbole, but a compliment to the angel. Toward such a superior being the only proper attitude is adoration. is spotless as an angel, and his feelings toward her are as pure, as free from coarse cravings, as if she were a goddess. How royally proud a man must feel at the thought of being preferred above all mortals by this divine being! In personal beauty had she ever a peer? Since Venus left this planet, has such grace been seen? In face of her, the strongest of all impulses-selfishness-is annihilated. The lover is no longer "number one" to himself; his own pleasures and comforts are ignored in the eager desire to please her, to show her gallant attentions. To save her from disaster or

She

His cordial sympathy

grief he is ready to sacrifice his life. makes him share all her joys and sorrows, and his affection for her, though he may have known her only a few daysnay, a few minutes-is as strong and devoted as that of a mother for the child that is her own flesh and blood.

INGREDIENTS OF LOVE

No one who has ever been truly in love will deny that this description, however romantic it may seem in its apparent exaggeration, is a realistic reflection of his feelings and impulses. As this brief review shows, Individual Preference, Monopolism, Coyness, Jealousy, Mixed Moods of Hope and Despair, Hyperbole, Adoration, Purity, Pride, Admiration of Personal Beauty, Gallantry, Self-sacrifice, Sympathy, and Affection, are the essential ingredients in that very composite mental state which we call romantic love. Coyness, of course, occurs only in feminine love, and there are other sexual differences which will be noted later on. Here I wish to point out that the fourteen ingredients named may be divided into two groups of seven each-the egoistic and the altruistic. The prevailing notion that love is a species of selfishness-a "double selfishness," some wiseacre has called it is deplorably untrue and shows how little the psychology of love has heretofore been understood.

It has indeed an egoistic side, including the ingredients I have called Individual Preference, Monopolism, Jealousy, Coyness, Hyperbole, Mixed Moods, and Pride; and it is not a mere accident that these are also the seven features which may be found in sensual love too; for sensuality and selfishness are twins. But the later and more essential characteristics of romantic love are the altruistic and supersensual traits-Sympathy, Affection, Gallantry, Self-sacrifice, Adoration, Purity, and Admiration of Personal Beauty. The two divisions overlap in some places, but in the main they are accurate. It is certain that the first group precedes the second, but the order in which the ingredients in each group first made their appearance cannot be indicated, as we know

too little of the early history of man. The arrangement here adopted is therefore more or less arbitrary. I shall try in this long chapter to answer the question "What is Romantic Love?" by discussing each of its fourteen ingredients and tracing its evolution separately.

I. INDIVIDUAL PREFERENCE

If a man pretended to be in love with a girl while confessing that he liked other girls equally well and would as soon marry one as another, everybody would laugh at him; for however ignorant many persons may be as to the subtler traits of sentimental love, it is known universally that a decided and obstinate preference for one particular individual is an absolute condition of true love.

ALL GIRLS EQUALLY ATTRACTIVE

As I have just intimated, a modern romantic lover would not exchange a beloved beggar-maid for an heiress or princess; nor would he give her for a dozen other girls, however charming, and with permission to marry them all. Now if romantic love had always existed, the lower races would have the same violent and exclusive preference for individuals. But what are the facts? I assert, without fear of contradiction from any one familiar with anthropological literature, that a savage or barbarian, be he Australian, African, American, or Asiatic, would laugh at the idea of refusing to exchange one woman for a dozen others equally young and attractive. It is not necessary to descend to the lowest savages to find corroboration of this view. Dr. Zöller, an unusually intelligent and trustworthy observer, says, in one of his volumes on German Africa (III., 70-71), that "on the whole no distinction whatever is made between woman and woman, between the good-looking and the ugly, the intelligent and the stupid ones. In all my African experiences I have never heard of a single young man or woman who conceived a violent passion for a particular individual of the

opposite sex." So in other parts of Africa. The natives of Borgou, we are told by R. and J. Lander, marry with perfect indifference. "A man takes no more thought about choosing a wife than he does in picking a head of wheat." Among the Kaffirs, says Fritsch (112) it may occur that a man has an inclination toward a particular girl; but he adds that "in such cases the suitor is obliged to pay several oxen more than is customary, and as he usually takes cattle more to heart than women, such cases are rare; and though, when he has several wives, he may have a favorite, the attachment to her is shallow and transient, for she is at any moment liable to displacement by a new-comer. Among the Hottentots at Angra Pequena, when a man covets a girl he goes to her hut, prepares a cup of coffee and hands it to her without saying a word. If she drinks half of it, he knows the answer is Yes. "If she refuses to touch the coffee, the suitor is not specially grieved, but proceeds to another hut to try his luck again in the same way." (Ploss, I., 454.)

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Of the Fijians Williams (148) says: "Too commonly there is no express feeling of connubial bliss, men speak of our women' and women of our men' without any distinctive preference being apparent." Catlin, speaking (70-71) of the matrimonial arrangements of the Pawnee Indians, says that daughters are held as legitimate merchandise, and, as a rule, accept the situation "with the apathy of the race." A man who advertised for a wife would hardly be accused of individual preference or anything else indicating love. From a remark made by George Gibbs (197) we may infer that the Indians of Oregon and Washington used to advertise for wives, in their own fashion: "It is not unusual to find on the small prairies human figures rudely carved upon trees. These I have understood to have been cut by young men who were in want of wives, as a sort of practical intimation that they were in the market as purchasers." It might be suggested that such a crude love-letter to the sex in general, as compared with one of our own love-letters to a particular girl, gives a fair idea of what Indian love is, compared with the love of civilized men and women.

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