We shall progress faster by diligent striving to fashion the feeling of the time and stir it from the intellectual apathy which is the chiefest curse of the State.—Alex. M. Thomson.
The danger that confronts the new century is the recrudescence of racial antipathies and national animosities.—Hermann Adler.
The passion of jealousy has a long and significant history, and a pedigree more ancient than the allied sentiment, love of property, which has just been considered. The passion was useful to the welfare of the tribe at an early period, but it survives as purely a vice in the midst of consolidated nations, for it is essentially anti-social, not necessary to general welfare, and impossible to be exercised sympathetically or for the good of others. If I am jealous it means that I have a source of personal delight that I would guard from others and monopolise if I could. The happiness may be self-produced or rest on a being whom I love. In both cases it causes within me fears of interference, suspicion of my fellows, and a general tendency to dislike, nay, even to hate them if they dare to meddle with my secret joy. The emotion is fundamentally selfish, and when an individual is sympathetic all round he becomes incapable of it. He has risen above the egoistic passion of jealousy.
Mr. Darwin tells us that amongst savages addicted to “intemperance, utter licentiousness and unnatural crimes, no sooner does marriage, whether polygamous or monogamous, become common than jealousy leads to the inculcation of female virtue.” This gives the clue to the problem of jealousy’s evolutional value. It has played a part in the destiny of woman, and tended to shape her emotional nature. Its history is inextricably intertwined with hers, in all the varying degrees of servitude that mark her slow advance from a condition of absolute chattelism to one of rational equality with man.
By virtue of superior strength man has acted on the theory that he was made for God, and woman for him! and in the process of establishing his dominancy jealousy appeared and aided powerfully the gradual development of a new emotion—constancy, a social grace and virtue as certain to wax and grow as jealousy is to wane and slowly disappear.
In literature one finds a reflection of the entire history of jealousy and all its consecutive changes from barbarous times through the ages, when frequent duels witnessed to the honourable place it held in public estimation down to the present day, when it is somewhat discredited, and duelling—in Great Britain at least—has ceased altogether. To track this history were impossible here; I can only point to one or two significant pictures.
The play of “Othello” depicts the barbarous social conditions in which jealousy flourishes. Shakespeare reveals both the anti-social nature of the passion and the intellectual weakness of the mind that harbours it. “Trifles light as air,” says Iago, “are to the jealous confirmation strong as proofs of holy writ.” And in effect Othello is incapable of sifting evidence. The poor device of the stolen handkerchief seals the fate of Desdemona! Woman’s subject position is plainly set forth, and the foundations of the passion in masculine master-hood and pride of power are fully exposed. Othello’s wife must be his slave and puppet. “Out of my sight,” he cries, and patiently she goes. “Mistress,” he calls, and she returns. “You did wish,” he says to Lodovico, “that I would make her turn.” Desdemona is the very type of patient, gentle, enslaved womanhood, the ideal woman of a rough, brutal age. Her father describes her as—
A maiden never bold;
Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion
Blush’d at herself.