(β) Quite apart, however, from questions of honour we must add as a further example of collision that the eternal and substantive powers themselves, the interests of the State, love of country, family obligations, and the rest, come into conflict with love and preclude its realization. Particularly in modern representations, in which the objective conditions of life have been already elaborated in all their available stringency, this is a favourite type of collision. Love is in such cases, as itself an important right of the personal soul, either set forth in opposition to other rights and duties, or despite of its own recognition of such it enters upon a conflict with them reliant upon itself and with the power of its private passion. The "Maid of Orleans"[251] is an example of a drama which rests upon a collision of this kind.
(γ) And in the third case we may find in a general way that external condition and its impediments oppose obstacles in the path of love. Such are the ordinary course of events, the prose of ordinary existence, misfortunes, passion, prejudice, follies, the selfishness of others, occurrences of every conceivable complexity and kind. Much will here present itself that is hateful, terrible, and mean, for it is mainly the evil, ruthless, and savage aspects of other forms of human passion which work contrary to the tender spiritual beauty of love. More particularly in later times we frequently come across external collisions of this sort in dramas, narratives, and romances, works whose main interest centres in a sympathy for the sufferings, expectations, and ruined prospects of unhappy lovers and affect or satisfy us by means of their bad or happy endings, or merely provide entertainment. This type of conflict, however, on the ground that it merely depends upon accidental matters, is a subordinate one.
(c) No doubt love, from whatever of these points of view you choose to regard it, possesses a lofty quality, in so far as it does not merely remain an impulse of sex-attraction, but emphasizes the bounty of a really rich, beautiful, and noble soul, and is a living, active, courageous, and disinterested bond of union between one person and another. But romantic love is also not without its limitation. That which disappears from its content is the essentially realized universality.[252] It is merely the personal feeling of one particular individual, which does not attest itself as fulfilled with interest of eternal import and the actual content of organic human life, as made up of family, political aims, one's own country, obligations of profession, status, freedom, and religion, but merely with the personal consideration which is intent upon receiving again such private feeling as reflected back from some one else. Such a content of what is itself still but a formal mode of spiritual life does not correspond in full truth to the totality, which the essentially complete personality[253] ought to be. In the family, marriage, duty, and the State the personal feeling simply as such and the unity which issues from it with some particular person and no other is not the main point of interest. In the love of romance, however, all centres in the fact that this man or woman loves that woman or man and no one else. Yet it is precisely this fact that it is only this or that person, which is solely based upon personal idiosyncracy, in other words, the contingency of caprice. There is no lover who does not think his beloved, no maiden who does not fancy her lover, as the fairest and most supreme, to the exclusion of all others, although they may appear very ordinary mortals in the eyes of other folk. But in just this fact that all the world or, let us say, a large number, act thus exclusively, and will not make an exception in favour of the unique Aphrodite herself, but rather possess an Aphrodite of their own, and very easily somewhat more than Aphrodite, we can only very obviously conclude that there are many who pass for the same fairy Princess, as no doubt every one knows well enough, that there are a whole bevy of pretty or good and excellent girls in the world, all of whom, or let us hope the majority, will secure their own lovers, adorers, and husbands, to whom they doubtless appear as gifted in like manner with all the beauty and virtue of Christendom. To bestow in every case our preference on one, and only one, is obviously a wholly private affair of the heart and of the separate individuality of each person, and the incommensurable obstinacy in discovering as though by a law of necessity one's life and supremest sense of such in just that one individual is proof that it is a caprice no less infinite in its significance than it is inevitable. We have without question in this attitude the loftier freedom of the personal life and its absolute power of choice recognized, the power to be, not merely as we find in the "Phaedra" of Euripides, under the constraint of a pathos, a divinity; but in regard to the absolutely individual volition, from which such a liberty proceeds, such a choice appears at the same time to be a mere idiosyncrasy, an inflexibility of that which is wholly self-exclusive.
For this reason the collisions of love, more particularly when it is set in hostile opposition to substantive interests, retain an aspect of contingency and lack of authorization, because it is the personal life as such which confronts in opposition with a demand not independently justifiable that which for its own essential sake has a claim to recognition. The personalities in the lofty tragedy of the ancients such as Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Oedipus, Antigone, and Creon have, it is true, among other things a personal object; but the substantive thing, the pathos, which as the content of their action is the compelling force behind them, is of absolute authority, and for this very reason, is also itself essentially of universal interest. The destiny which affects them on account of their action does not therefore move us on the ground that it is a fate of misfortune, but because it is a misfortune which affects or redounds to their honour. In other words the pathos, which will not rest until it is satisfied, possesses an essentially necessary content. When the guilt of Clytemnestra, in this concrete case of it, receives no punishment, when the insult which Antigone receives as sister[254] is not removed, in both cases we have a substantial wrong. These sufferings of love, however, these shattered hopes, this being in love generally, these infinite pains experienced by lovers, this measureless happiness and bliss which such imagine, are no such essential interest but rather something that merely affects themselves. All men, it is true, should be sensitive to love and may claim satisfaction in this respect. But when a man fails to secure that object in some particular place, in precisely this or that association, under just these circumstances and in respect to one unique maiden we can admit no absolute wrong. There is nothing essentially inevitable in the fact that a man should capriciously select any particular young woman, and that we should interest ourselves consequently for that which is in the highest degree accidental, a caprice of his own conscious life, which carries with it no impersonal expansion or universal significance. We have here the source of that tendency to cool which we cannot help feeling in the representation of the passion of romantic love however that passion may be emphasized.
3. FIDELITY
The third type of soul-life which is of importance to the romantic consciousness on the field of its activity in the world is fidelity. By fidelity in the sense we are now using it we do not mean either the permanent adherence to the avowal of love once given, nor yet the stability of friendship in the beautiful image of the same such as we have left us by the ancients in that of Achilles and Patroclus, or with yet more intimacy, that of Orestes and Pylades. Youth is pre-eminently both the soil and the occasion from which friendship of this latter type originates. Every man has to construct his path of life independently, to work out and sustain a given mode of realization. The time of youth, when individuals still live in an undefined atmosphere of external relations which they share, is the one in which they associate closely, and are bound together so nearly in one mode of thought, volition, and activity, that everything that any one of them undertakes becomes at the same time the undertaking of another. When men attain maturity this is no longer the case. The circumstantial life of the grown man pursues its independent course and will not admit of so close an affiliation with that of another that we can affirm of it that one cannot accomplish it without the other. Men make acquaintances and then separate; their interests and business are at one time disjoined, at another they coalesce; friendship, intimacy of mutual opinions, of principles, and the general trend of their life may remain; but this is not the friendship of youth, in which no individual unit either makes a decision or carries it into effect without inevitably making it a matter in which another is concerned. It is an essential principle at the very root of our life that in general every man must look after himself, must, in other words, prove by himself his capacity to confront the reality which affects him.
(a) Fidelity in friendship and love, then, subsists solely between equals. The fidelity which we have now to consider is relative to a superior, one more highly placed, a master. A fidelity of this type is to be found even among the ancients in that of servants to the family, the house of their lord. The most beautiful example of such a relation is supplied us by the swine-herd of Odysseus, who sweats by night and through tempest in order that he may look after his swine; who is full of anxiety on his master's account, to whom he finally gives loyal assistance against the suitors. Shakespeare offers us a picture of fidelity no less moving, though it is here shown entirely on the side of the feelings, in his "King Lear."[255] Lear asks Kent, "Dost thou know me, fellow?" And Kent replies: "No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master." This borders as close as possible on that which we would make clear as romantic fidelity. Fidelity at this stage is not the loyalty of slaves and churls, however true and pathetic such unquestionably may be, which is none the less devoid of the free independence of individuality and its unrestricted aims and actions, and is consequently of subordinate rank. What we, in short, have before us is the liege-service of chivalry, in which each vassal preserves intact his own free self-dependence as an essential element in the attitude of subordination to one of higher rank, whether lord, king, or emperor. This type of fidelity, however, is a principle of supreme importance in chivalry for the reason that it forms the fundamental bond of union in a common society and its social co-ordination at least in the original form of its appearance.
(b) The object which thus receives a fuller content and is made apparent in this new type of association between individuals is not, however, by any means patriotism regarding that as an objective and universal interest, but a bond merely with one person, the lord, and for this reason conditioned by private honour, personal advantage and opinion. In its fullest brilliancy we find fidelity of this kind in a surrounding world that is unregulated and uncouth, beyond the control of right and law. Within a lawless reality of this kind the most powerful and commanding spirits stand out as fixed points of attraction, as leaders and nobles, and the rest rally round them of their own free will. Such a condition is later on elaborated into a legalized co-ordination of fealty, in which every vassal has his own claim to rights and privilege. The fundamental principle, however, upon which the entire system reposes is in its primary origins free choice, no less in relation to the dependent vassal than to the conditions under which he remains faithful to his vassalage. For this reason the fidelity of chivalry is quite prepared to maintain property, right, and personal independence and honour, and is on this account not simply recognized as an obligation which may be enforced to the entire disregard of the private inclinations of the vassal however they may arise. Quite the contrary. Every subordinate unit only continues there and helps to establish the general social order so long as the same falls in with his own wishes, inclinations, and opinions.
(c) On this account fidelity and obedience to the feudal lord can very readily clash with private feelings, an exasperated sense of honour, sensitiveness to insult, love, and many other chance incidents of the personal or external life. It is consequently of a highly precarious character. A knight, for example, is loyal to his lord, but a friend of his happens to quarrel with him. He has now to choose between the two objects of his fidelity, and, chief of all, he has to consider himself, the claims of his personal honour and advantage. The most beautiful example of such a conflict we have in the "Cid." He remains as true to himself as he is to his king. If the king acts wisely he assists him with his arm's strength; if his feudal lord acts wrongly or the Cid feels touched on the point of honour this powerful support is withdrawn. The paladins of Charles the Great exhibit much the same attitude. It is a tie of chieftainship and obedience not unlike that which we have already observed between Zeus and the other gods. The superior lord commands, blusters, and scolds, but the independent and powerful individualities resist him precisely when and as they please. We find the most consistent and charming picture of the conditional and easy terms under which this bond is maintained in the "Reinecke Fuchs." Just as the magnates in this kingdom are most really true to their own aims and independence, we find that the German barons and knights in the Middle Ages were not at home when called upon to act for the sake of the general weal and their emperor; and it really looks as though our chief praise of the Middle Ages must consist in this that no man is in such a period justified in his own eyes or a man of honour, except in so far as he runs after his own inclinations, in other words, does precisely that which he is not suffered to do in a State which is organized on a rational basis.