Such is the much-vaunted "love-story" of Cupid and Psyche! Commentators have found all sorts of fanciful and absurd allegories in this legend. Its real significance I have already pointed out. But it may be looked at from still another point of view. Psyche means soul, and in the story of Apuleius Cupid does not fall in love with a soul, but with a beautiful body. This sums up Hellenic love in general. The Greek Cupid NEVER fell in love with a Psyche.
UTILITY AND FUTURE OF LOVE
The Greek view that love is a disease and a calamity still prevails extensively among persons who, like the Greeks, have never experienced real love and do not know what it is. In a book dated 1868 and entitled Modern Women I find the following passage (325):
"Already the great philosopher of the age has pronounced that the passion of love plays far too important a part in human existence, and that it is a terrible obstacle to human progress. The general temper of the times echoes the sentence of Mill."
It is significant that this opinion should have emanated from a man whose idea of femininity was as masculine as that of the Greeks—an ideal which, by eliminating or suppressing the secondary and tertiary (mental) sexual qualities, necessarily makes love synonymous with lust.
There is another large class of persons who likewise consider love a disease, but a harmless one, like the measles, or mumps, which it is well to have as early as possible, so as to be done with it, and which seldom does any harm. Others, still, regard it as a sort of juvenile holiday, like a trip to Italy or California, which is delightful while it lasts and leaves pleasant memories thoughout life, but is otherwise of no particular use.
It shows a most extraordinary ignorance of the ways of nature to suppose that it should have developed so powerful an instinct and sentiment for no useful purpose, or even as a detriment to the race. That is not the way nature operates. In reality love is the most useful thing in the world. The two most important objects of the human race are its own preservation and improvement, and in both of these directions love is the mightiest of all agencies. It makes the world go round. Take it away, and in a few years animal life will be as extinct on this planet as it is on the moon. And by preferring youth to age, health to disease, beauty to deformity, it improves the human type, slowly but steadily.
The first thinker who clearly recognized and emphatically asserted the superlative importance of love was Schopenhauer. Whereas Hegel (II., 184) parroted the popular opinion that love is peculiarly and exclusively the affair of the two individuals whom it directly involves, having no concern with the eternal interests of family and race, no universality (Allgemeinheit). Schopenhauer's keen mind on the contrary saw that love, though the most individualized of all passions, concerns the race even more than the individual. "Die Zusammensetzung der nächsten Generation, e qua iterum pendent innumerae generationes"—the very composition and essence of the next generation and of countless generations following it, depends, as he says, on the particular choice of a mate. If an ugly, vicious, diseased mate be chosen, his or her bad qualities are transmitted to the following generations, for "the gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children," as even the old sages knew, long before science had revealed the laws of heredity. Not only the husband's and the wife's personal qualities are thus transmitted to the children and children's children, but those also of four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on; and when we bear in mind the tremendous differences in the inheritable ancestral traits of families—virtues or infirmities—we see of what incalculable importance to the future of families is that individual preference which is so vital an ingredient of romantic love.
It is true that love is not infallible. It is still, as Browning puts it, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened." It may be said that marriage itself is not necessary for the maintenance of the species; but it is useful both for its maintenance and its improvement; hence natural selection has favored it—especially the monogamous form—in the interest of coming generations. Love is simply an extension of this process—-making it efficacious before marriage and thus quintupling its importance. It makes many mistakes, for it is a young instinct, and it has to do with a very complex problem, so that its development is slow; but it has a great future, especially now that intelligence is beginning to encourage and help it. But while admitting that love is fallible we must be careful not to decry it for mistakes with which it has no concern. It is absurd to suppose that every self-made match is a love-match: yet, whenever such a marriage is a failure, love is held responsible. We must remember, too, that there are two kinds of love and that the lower kind does not choose as wisely as the higher. Where animal passion alone is involved, parents cannot be blamed for trying to curb it. As a rule, love of all kinds can be checked or even cured, and an effort to do this should be made in all cases where it is found to be bestowed on a person likely to taint the offspring with vicious propensities or serious disease. But, with all its liability to error, romantic love is usually the safest guide to marriage, and even sensual love of the more refined, esthetic type is ordinarily preferable to what are called marriages of reason, because love (as distinguished from abnormal, unbridled lust) always is guided by youth and health, thus insuring a healthy, vigorous offspring.
If it be asked, "Are not the parents who arrange the marriages of reason also guided as a rule by considerations of health, moral and physical?" the answer is a most emphatic "No." Parental fondness, sufficing for the preservation and rearing of children, is a very old thing, but parental affection, which is altruistically concerned for the weal of children in after-life, is a comparatively modern invention. The foregoing chapters have taught us that an Australian father's object in giving his daughter in marriage was to get in exchange a new girl-wife for himself; what became of the daughter, or what sort of a man got her, did not concern him in the least. Among Africans and American Indians the object of bringing up daughters and giving them in marriage was to secure cows or ponies in return for them. In India the object of marriage was the rearing of sons or daughters' sons for the purpose of saving the souls of their parents from perdition; so they flung them into the arms of anyone who would take them. The Greeks and the Hebrews married to perpetuate their family name or to supply the state with soldiers. In Japan and China ancestral and family considerations have always been of infinitely more importance than the individual inclinations or happiness of the bridal couple. Wherever we look we find this topsy-turvy state of affairs—marriages made to suit the parents instead of the bride and groom; while the welfare of the grandchildren is of course never dreamt of.