VI.—SELF-SACRIFICE
In the most violent cases of Love this overtone may reveal itself in two ways: either as a mere exaggeration of Gallantry—a desire to please even at the risk of life; or as a suicidal impulse in cases of hopeless passion—when the one object which seemed to make life worth living has been placed beyond reach.
VII.—SYMPATHY
“In order to feel with another’s pain it is enough to be a man; to feel with another’s pleasure it is needful to be an angel.” If this be true, then lovers are angels. For not only do they share one another’s pleasures, but it is impossible for the one to be really happy unless the other enjoys the same emotion. “Does that other see the same star, the same melting cloud; read the same book, feel the same emotion that now delights me?”—these are, in Emerson’s words, the questions which the lovers, when separated, ask incessantly.
VIII.—PRIDE OF CONQUEST AND POSSESSION
In his suggestive but incomplete analysis of Love, in his Principles of Psychology, Mr. Herbert Spencer names as two of the emotions which enter into it, the Love of Approbation and Self-Esteem, which he thus defines: “To be preferred above all the world, and that by one admired beyond all others, is to have the love of approbation gratified in a degree passing every previous experience: especially as, to this direct gratification of it, there must be added that reflex gratification of it, which results from the preference being witnessed by unconcerned persons. Further, there is the allied emotion of self-esteem. To have succeeded in gaining such attachment from, and sway over, another, is a practical proof of power, of superiority, which cannot fail agreeably to excite the amour propre.”
This is well expressed, but the names are obviously not well chosen. It is hardly correct to intimate that the “love of approbation” and “self-esteem” constitute two of the group of emotions which we call Love. What the lover feels is not a “love of approbation,” etc., but the emotion of Pride at having conquered and gained possession of so desirable a prize.
IX.—EMOTIONAL HYPERBOLE
The lover sees, thinks, and feels only in superlatives. His eyes are no longer mere “windows of the soul,” but microscopes which magnify all the beloved’s merits on the scale of seven square miles to the inch. And the hyberbolic imagery which constitutes the essence of love-poetry is his everyday food—with a special menu on Sundays.