Chemical affinities, accordingly, cannot be used as analogies of Love. Not even on account of the violent individual preference shown by two elements for one another, for this apparently individual preference is really only generic. A piece of phosphorus will as readily unite with one cubic foot of oxygen as with another; whereas it is the very essence of Love that it demands a union with one particular individual, and no other.
Equally unsatisfactory are all similar attempts to identify Love with gravitation or other forms of cosmic attraction. Here is what a great expert in Love has to say on this subject: “The attraction of love, I find,” writes Burns, “is in inverse proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian philosophy. In the system of Sir Isaac, the nearer objects are to one another, the stronger is the attractive force. In my system, every milestone that marked my progress from Clarinda awakened a keener pang of attachment to her.”
How beautifully, in other respects, does the law of gravitation simulate the methods of Love! Does not the meteor which passionately falls on this planet and digs a deep hole into it, show its love in this manner, even as that affectionate bear who smashed his master’s forehead in order to kill the fly on it? Does not the avalanche which thunders down the mountain-side and buries a whole forest and several villages, afford another touching illustration of the love of attraction, or cosmic Love?—a crushing argument in its favour? Or the frigid glacier, in its slower course, does it not lacerate the sides of the valley, and strew about its precious boulders, merely by way of illustrating the amorous effect of gravitation? And millions of years hence, will not this same law of attraction enable the sun to prove his ecstatic love for our earth by swallowing her up and reducing her to her primitive chaotic state? Imagine a man and a woman whose love consists in this, that they must be kept widely separated by a hostile force to prevent them from dashing together, and reducing each other to atoms and molecules! That is the “love” of the stars and planets.
But it is needless to continue this reductio ad absurdum of pantheistic or panerotic vagaries. The method of the writers on Love here quoted—Empedokles, Leo, Burton, Büchner—has been to identify Love with cosmic force simply because they possess in common the one quality of attraction, by virtue of which the large earth hugs a small stone, and a large man a small maiden. Modern scientific psychology objects to this (i.e. not the hugging, but the method), because it does not in the least aid us in understanding the nature of Love; and because it is as irrational to call attraction Love as it would be to call a brick a house, a leaf a tree, or a green daub a rainbow. For Love embraces every colour in the spectrum of human emotion.
Having failed to find a satisfactory solution of the mystery of Love in the inorganic world, let us now see if the vegetable kingdom offers no better analogies in its sexual phenomena.
FLOWER LOVE AND BEAUTY
Until a few decades ago, it was the universal belief that flowers had been specially created for man’s exclusive delight. This was such an easy way, you know, to overcome the difficulty of explaining the immense variety of forms and colours in the floral world; and it was, above all, so flattering to man’s egregious vanity. But one fine morning in May a German naturalist, Conrad Sprengel, published a remarkable book in which he pointed out that flowers owe their peculiar shape, colour, and fragrance to the visits of insects. Not that the insects visit the flowers in order to shape and paint and perfume them. On the contrary, they visit them for the unæsthetic purpose of eating their pollen and their honey; while the flowers’ scent and colour exist solely for the purpose of indicating to winged insects at a distance where they can find a savoury lunch.
But why should flowers take such pains to attract insects by serving them with a breakfast of honey, and by hanging out big petals to serve as coloured and perfumed signal-flags? Nature is economical in the expenditure of energy; and as the production of honey and large flowers costs the plant some of its vital energies, we may be sure that this expenditure secures the plant some superior advantage. Sprengel noticed that the insects, while pillaging flowers of their honey, unwittingly brushed off with their wings and feet some of the fertilising dust or pollen, and carried it to the pistil or female part of a flower. But it remained for Darwin to point out what advantage this transference of the pollen secured to the flower. Darwin, says Sir John Lubbock, “was the first clearly to perceive that the essential service which insects perform to flowers consists not only in transferring the pollen from the stamens to the pistil, but in transferring it from the stamens of one flower to the pistil of another. Sprengel had indeed observed in more than one instance that this was the case, but he did not altogether appreciate the importance of the fact. Mr. Darwin however, has not only made it clear from theoretical considerations, but has also proved it, in a variety of cases, by actual experiment. More recently Fritz Müller has even shown that in some cases pollen, if placed on the stigma of the same flower, has no more effect than so much inorganic dust; while, and this is perhaps even more extraordinary, in others, the pollen placed on the stigma of the same flower acted on it like poison”—a curious analogy to the current belief that close intermarriage is injurious to mankind.
What Darwin and others have proved by their experiments is that cross-fertilised flowers are more vigorous than those fertilised with their own pollen, and have a more healthy and numerous offspring. With this fact before us we need only apply the usual evolutionary formula to account for the beauty of flowers. It is well known that Nature rarely, if ever, produces two leaves or plants that are exactly alike. There is also a natural tendency in all parts of a plant except the leaves to develop other colours besides green. Now any plant which, owing to chemical causes, favourable position, etc., developed an unusually brilliant colour, would be likely to attract the attention of a winged insect in search of pollen-food. The insect, by alighting on a second flower soon after, would fertilise it with the pollen of the first flower that adhered to its limbs, thus securing to the plant the advantages of cross-fertilisation. Thanks to the laws of heredity, this advantage would be transmitted to the young plants, among which again those most favoured would gain an advantage and a more numerous offspring. And thus the gradual development not only of coloured petals, but of scents and honey, can be accounted for.
What makes this argument irresistible is the additional fact, first pointed out by Darwin, that plants which are not visited by insects, but are fertilised by the agency of the wind, are neither adorned with beautifully-coloured flowers, nor provided with honey or fragrance. And another most important fact: Darwin found that flowers which depend on the wind for their fertilisation follow the natural tendency of objects to a symmetrical form; whereas the irregular flowers are always those fertilised by insects or birds. This points to the conclusion that insects and birds are responsible not only for the colours and fragrance of flowers, but also for the shape of those that are most unique and fantastic. And this a priori inference is borne out by thousands of curious and most fascinating observations described in the works of Darwin, Lubbock, Müller, and many others. The briefest and clearest presentation of the subject is in Lubbock’s Flowers, Fruits, and Leaves, which no one interested in natural æsthetics should fail to read. There is indeed no more interesting study in biology than the mutual adaptation of flowers, bees, butterflies, humming-birds, etc.; for just as these animals have modified the forms of flowers, so the flowers have altered the shape of these animals.