This is not fancy, not rhetoric; it is the language of cold and exact science, pronounced from the chair of history, from the bureau of the statistician, from the dissecting table of the anatomist. We shall gather up their well-weighed words, and present them, not as fancy sketches, but as facts.
This deep, all-absorbing, single, wondrous love of woman, is something that man cannot understand. This sea of unfathomed depth is to him a mystery. The shallow mind sees of it nothing but the rippling waves, the unstable foam-crests dashing hither and thither, the playful ripples of the surface, and, blind to the still and measureless waters beneath, calls woman capricious, uncertain,—varium et mutabile. But the thinker and seer, undeceived by such externals, knows that beneath this seeming change is stability unequaled in the stronger sex, a power of will to which man is a stranger, a devotion and purpose which strike him with undefined awe.
Therefore, in the myths and legends which the early races framed to express their notions of divine things,—the Fates, who spin and snip the thread of life; the Norns, who
Lay down laws,
And select life
For the children of time—
The destinies of men,—
are always females. The seeresses and interpreters of oracles—those who, like the witch of Endor, could summon from the grave the shades of the departed—were women.
Therefore, also, modern infidelity, going back, as it ever does, to the ignorance of the past, and holding it up as something new, makes woman the only deity. Comte and his disciples, having reasoned away all gods, angels, and spirits, and unable to still the craving for something to adore, agree to meet once a week to worship—woman. The French revolutionists, having shut up the churches and abolished God by a decree of the Convention, set up in His stead—a woman.
We could never exhaust this phase of world-history. Everywhere we see the unexpected hand of Love moulding, fashioning all things. The fortunes of the individual, the fate of nations, the destinies of races, are guided by this invisible thread. Let us push our inquiries as to the nature of this all-powerful agent.
WHAT IS LOVE?
It has a divided nature. As we have an immortal soul, but a body of clay; as the plant roots itself in decaying earth, but spreads its flowers in glorious sunlight,—so love has a physiological and a moral nature. It is rooted in that unconscious law of life which bids us perpetuate our kind; which guards over the conservation of life; which enforces, with ceaseless admonition, that first precept which God gave to man before the gates of Eden had been closed upon him: 'Be thou fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.' Nothing but a spurious delicacy, or an ignorance of facts, can prevent our full recognition that love looks to marriage, and marriage to offspring, as a natural sequence.
Do we ask proofs of this? We have them in abundance. Those unfortunate beings who are chosen by Oriental custom to guard the seraglios undergo a mutilation which disqualifies them from becoming parents. Soon all traces of passion, all regard for the other sex, all sentiments of love, totally disappear. The records of medicine contain not a few cases where disease had rendered it necessary to remove the ovaries from women. At once a change took place in voice, appearance, and mind. They spoke like men, a slender beard commenced on their faces, a masculine manner was conspicuous in all their motions, and every thought of sexual love passed away for ever. These are the results in every case. What do they signify? Undoubtedly that the passion of love is dependent upon the capacity of having offspring, and that such was the intention of Nature in implanting in our bosom this all-powerful sentiment.