At the time of the Renaissance Marcilius Ficinus translated the Symposium of Plato and carried its influence into all the literatures of western Europe. Edmund Spenser reflects that influence in his two superb hymns in Honor of Love and in Honor of Beauty. A vivacious modern statement of the ancient doctrine is that of R. W. Emerson in his Essay on Love; and an amusing disparagement of love, as that which interferes with the comforts and conveniences of the separate self, appears in Bacon’s Essay on Love. It has been well said that any one who imagines Shakespeare’s plays were written by Bacon should read this essay and follow it with Romeo and Juliet. Of course, all the poets linger in the neighborhood of love and declare it to be that which makes the world go round. One of them, the mid-Victorian Coventry Patmore, made himself its expositor and devoted his entire product to the systematic analysis of its every phase. Perhaps to heighten the impression of veracity, he has made the verse of his early volumes, entitled The Angel in the House, approach as nearly as possible to prose, while his later volume, The Unknown Eros, treats the same matter in a series of rapturous odes. Admiring them both as I do in an age when they are both out of fashion, I take up The Angel in the House when in a psychological mood I am not disturbed by absurdity, and turn to The Unknown Eros when my ear craves music and I welcome the Platonic madness.
CHAPTER VII
JUSTICE
Before advancing further it may be well to survey the tangled ground already traversed; for in mutuality, the third great section of Altruism, I have not been able to employ the simple treatment which Manners and Giving received. The principle throughout is precise and uniform. Within a specified field the interests of two or more persons are to be accounted identical, so that a double gain becomes possible, altruism transforming itself into egoism and egoism into altruism. This is the common principle which shapes every form of mutuality. But the extent of the fields specified differs so widely as to give rise to forms of very unlike moral value, which deserve separate examination.
In the field of partnership, for example, it is understood that the union will not continue indefinitely and that it has been brought about for attaining some external end. Partnership, bargaining, voluntary association would not come into existence were it not for the prospect of mutual gain. If one party alone gains, we see that some unfairness has occurred. Yet because in these unions mutuality is restricted to a small group and to the accomplishment of external purposes, they often become engines for a selfishness more intense than their separate members would approve. A popular proverb exaggerates but little in saying that corporations have no souls.
But such perilous restrictions are unnecessary. There can be mutuality without them. Instead of referring to an external end, unions can be formed for an internal purpose. The very lives and aspirations of two persons may be joined. That is unnecessary in business relations. I may dislike my partner personally, yet judge it wise to identify my commercial interests with his. When I make a purchase at a shop I do not inquire about the character of the dealer. With that I have no concern. His life is his, mine mine. Our mutual relation touches only the value of the article purchased. And something similar is true of our voluntary associations. I join my political club in the hope of furthering public interests; but, to tell the truth, I am often ashamed of my associates there. We have a common aim, but personally I will keep myself as clear from my fellow workers as possible. Under none of the conditions which I have called partnership do lives merge. To these unions for definable ends a termination is sometimes set, sometimes indefinitely anticipated.
Now, in the case of love, these restrictions are done away. Accordingly the whole principle of mutuality comes out there with a lucidity, power, and moving appeal which it cannot possibly have in the briefly planned arrangements of trade. For though love often passes away, no such cessation is contemplated. The eternal vows of lovers have always been a subject of jest. No doubt limited marriages have been proposed. But I suspect if they ever come about, what we mean by love will be omitted. It would strike most of us as absurd for me to ask Mary to join me in identifying our lives for a single year, sharing during that time our home, our aims, our inmost thoughts, but always intending at the end of that time to go our separate ways, unable to say “we.” External relations can be formed, dropped, and resumed, the persons involved remaining unaffected. That is not true of interior relations. These fashion a new personality to which old forms of morals, even old forms of language, no longer apply. Before advancing to explain as my final topic the special modifications of mutuality which fit it for a world principle, let me sum up the whole doctrine of love in some majestic lines attributed to Shakespeare. In 1601 a curious book appeared called Chester’s Love’s Martyr, containing a poem to which Shakespeare’s name was affixed. This single fact, and the unlikelihood that any one else had such compulsive power over words, are our only grounds for thinking Shakespeare wrote the piece. It is entitled “The Phœnix and the Turtle,” and allegorically describes the funeral of a pair of married lovers, the man denoted by the turtle, the woman by the phœnix. I quote only the funeral chant, omitting the picturesque introduction and the solemn ending:
“Here the anthem doth commence;
Love and constancy is dead,
Phœnix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from thence.
So they loved as love in twain
Had the essence but in one.
Two distincts, division none,
Number there in love was slain.
Hearts remote, yet not asunder,
Distance, and no space was seen
’Twixt the turtle and his queen;
But in them it were a wonder.