This newly awakened reverence for woman—shall we call it a race characteristic? It was a golden gift to any race. Plato's deep doctrine that all learning is a reminiscence may avail us in questioning this. The human race does not carry the bulk of its knowledge in its hand. Busy with its tools and toys, it forgets its ancestral heirlooms, and leaves unexplored the legacy of the past. But in some mystical way, the treasures lost from remembrance turn up and come to sight again. In the far Caucasus, from which we came, there were glimpses of this ideal wife and mother.
This history, whether real or imaginary, or both, suggests to me the question whether the love which brings together and binds together men and women can in any way typify the supreme affections of the soul? That it was supposed to do so in mediæval times is certain. The sentimental agonies of troubadours and minstrels make it evident. Even the latest seedy sprout of chivalry, Don Quixote, shows us this. Wishing to start upon a noble errand, the succor of oppressed humanity, his almost first requisite is a "lady of his heart," who, in his case, is a mere lay figure upon which he drapes the fantastic weaving of his imagination.
Another question, like unto the first, is this,—whether the heroic mode of loving is or is not a lost art in our days.
That Plato and Socrates should busy themselves with it, that mystics and philosophers should find such a depth of interest in the attraction which one nature exerts upon another, and that, per contra, in our time, this mystical attraction should flatten, or, as singers say, flat out into a decorous observance of rules, assisting a mutual endurance—what does it mean? Is Pan dead, and are the other gods dead with him?
In an age widely, if not deeply, critical, we lose sight of the primitive affections and temperament of our race. Affection's self becomes merged in opinion. We contemplate, we compare, we are not able to covet any but surface distinctions, surface attractions. Even the poets who give us the expression of a lively participation in human instincts are disowned by us. Wordsworth is chosen, and Byron is discarded. We are not too rich with both of them. Inspired Browning—for the man who wrote "Pippa" and "Saul" was inspired—loses himself and his music in the dismal swamp of metaphysical speculation. Just at present, it seems to me that the world has lost one of its noblest leadings; viz., the desire for true companionship. Arid love of pleasure, more arid worship of wealth, paralyze those higher powers of the soul which take hold on friendship and on love. To know those only who can advance your personal objects, be these amusement or ambition; to marry at auction, going, going, for so much,—how can we who have but one human life to live so cheat ourselves out of its real rights and privileges?
Is this a pathological symptom in the body social, produced by a surfeit in the direction of inclination? One might think so, since asceticism has no joylessness comparable to that of the blasted roué or utter worldling. In France, where the bent of romantic literature has been the following of inclination,—from George Sand, who consecrates it, down to the latest scrofulous scribbler, who outrages it,—on the banks of this turbid stream of literature, one constantly meets with the apples of Sodom. "There is no other fruit," say the venders. "You cultivate none other," is the fitting reply.
The world of thought is ever full of problems as contradictory of each other as the antinomies of which I just now made a passing mention. The right interpretation of these riddles is of great moment in our spiritual and intellectual life. The ages and æons of human experience tend, on the whole, to a gradual unification of persuasion and conviction on the part of thinking beings, and much that a prophet breathes into a hopeless blank acquires meaning in the light of succeeding centuries.
This great problem of love continues to be full of contradictory aspects to those who would explore it. We distinguish between divine love and human love, but have yet to decide whether Love absolute is divine or human; for this deity is known to us from all time in two opposite shapes,—as a destructive and as a constructive god. He unmakes the man, he unmakes the woman, sucks up precious years of human life like a sponge, sets Troy ablaze, maddens harmless Io with a stinging gad-fly.
On the other hand, where Love is not, nothing is. Luxurious Solomon praises a dinner of herbs enriched by his presence. All poetry, all doctrine, is founded upon human affection assumed as essential to life, nay, as life itself; for when love of life and its objects exists not, the vital flame flickers feebly, and expires early. In ethics, social and religious, what contradictions do we encounter under this head! From all inordinate and sinful affections, good Lord, deliver us! is a good prayer. But how shall we treat the case when there are no affections at all? We might add a clause to our litany,—From lovelessness and all manner of indifference, good Lord, deliver us! What more direful sentence than to say that a person has no heart? What sin more severely punished than any extravagant action of this same heart?
These wonders of lofty sentiment and high imagination are precious subjects of study. The construction of a great poem, of which the interest is at once intense, various, and sustained, seems to us a work more appropriate to other days than to our own. I remember in my youth a fluent critic who was fond of saying that if Milton had lived in this day of the world, he would not have thought of writing an epic poem. To which another of the same stripe would reply: "If he did write such a poem in these days, nobody would read it." I wonder how long the frisky impatience of our youth will think it worth while to follow even Homer in his long narratives.