The Egotism of Love

— Emerson says that all the world loves a lover, which fact may be taken to account for the toleration accorded that somewhat uncomfortable individual who, in novels and poems, if not in actual life, has ridden roughshod over the average common-sense judgments of mankind. Even in these later days of realism one would hardly dare to call in question the moral sanity of so interesting a social figure, did not the cause of truth demand the sacrifice.

As yet we have not advanced beyond the mythological idea of love, which looks upon it as a spell, — a wholly unreasoning impulse, which is never to be closely examined, lest something of its delicate potency be lost, but which is always to be implicitly trusted and obeyed. The legend of a blind Cupid is sufficient authority for putting the whole matter into the hands of that beneficent Chance which is supposed to watch over the fortunes of the human heart. In any unguarded moment the young man is taught that he may be liable to one of those sudden attacks of fancy or passion which alone entitle him to think of marriage. This may come early or late, but can be neither hastened nor delayed. It is a sort of fatalism, discredited elsewhere, but here in the sphere of the affections accepted without a doubt.

Take as a concrete example the hero of George MacDonald’s novel, Robert Falconer. He never marries, because in his youth he had nursed a sentiment — the feeling was not near and robust enough to merit a stronger term — for one whom he had not known at all as it would seem necessary to know in order to love, and whom he only worshiped afar, as young men and boys in their teens worship a woman who is ten years older than themselves. A nobler figure than Falconer makes in the story cannot anywhere be found. He is manly and unselfish. And yet his notion of love and marriage is no higher than that of the average novelist, which makes it consist of a blissful dream, a perfect self-gratification or nothing. It is common enough to forget that men have a duty here, and that the higher side of the marriage relation is the opportunity it offers for serving another; but that a man like Falconer should have forgotten it seems incredible. Because a man has been disappointed in love, and no longer expects absolute felicity, does that absolve him from any further duties and obligations in the matter ? Nature seems to have intended something when she gave man the larger share of strength, endurance, and practical talent. And although woman is every day demonstrating that she can in a measure supply these under pressure of necessity, she does so at a distinct loss in womanly function, which is a loss equally to herself and to the world. Nor does her partial success in this direction in the least excuse man from attempting that part which Nature evidently meant him to play. Smarting under the memory of his thwarted hopes, he may lay out a career of independence for himself, but every struggling woman is a rebuke to his selfishness. The least that he can do as a man is to see that the means of subsistence are provided for some one of these women by his coarser strength and readier contact with the world. And then if he will look at marriage, not merely as a pleasure to seek, but as a duty to perform, he will come to see that the chances of ultimate happiness are fully as great with him who deliberates and acts under an enlightened sense of human responsibility as with him who, in the language of the Spanish proverb touching those about to marry, closes his eyes and commits his soul to God.

Instead of bringing up a boy to dwell upon the remote possibility of his one day being startled out of his selfish indifferentism by some vision of feminine loveliness, he should be made to feel the partialness of old-bachelorhood, not necessarily because it is less pleasant, but because it is less manly, brave, and true. Nor would the need of love between husband and wife become any the less apparent by demonstrating to his mind that such a sentiment is as much the effect of an approximating cause as gravitation or electricity. Mere passion aside, if there is to be any dignity in the nobler word, it must mean that he who loves does so because of the discovery of actual qualities adequate to produce the feeling. The question would then be simply as to the method of the discovery, whether it should depend upon blind impulse or respectful observation and study. A man would then be unwilling to stake his hopes of happiness upon superficial acquaintance and all that world of imaginary claims to admiration known only to the subtle workings of a young lover’s brain, while thoughtful women would be first to deplore such a false, misleading basis for a possible union between the sexes.

Singularly enough, however, it is precisely here that the first obstacle to improvement is encountered. Women do object, even women otherwise sensible and intelligent, to anything like a deliberate approach to their charms, and demand that a man shall have no choice when he confesses an attachment. Women seem to be constitutionally fond of a victim, and the man who addresses himself to their understanding of what constitutes a groundwork for happy marriage does not in the least appeal to their imagination. When women welcome frankness in men, and appreciate that they can receive no greater compliment than the offer of a life based on a reverent study of their character and tendencies, then alone will there be likelihood of progress in this direction.