And if we know that we are selfish in the matter,—what then? We cannot make ourselves unselfish by a wish; we cannot win love at will. But, though we cannot gain love, we can give it; we can learn to love so well, that we are satisfied by the happiness of those we love, even though we have nothing to do with that happiness.
"How hard a thing it is to look into happiness with another man's eyes!" but it can be done. People do sometimes live, "quenching their human thirst in others' joys."
Although our craving for sympathy is wrong if it be allowed to lame our energies, yet in itself we cannot say it is wrong. "To become saints," says F.W. Robertson, "we must not cease to be men and women. And if there be any part of our nature which is essentially human, it is the craving for sympathy. The Perfect One gave sympathy and wanted it. 'Could ye not watch with Me one hour?' 'Will ye also go away?' Found it, surely, even though His brethren believed not on Him; found it in St. John and Martha, and Mary and Lazarus:"—
"David had his Jonathan, and Christ His John."
Some people are quite conscious that they do not "get on" with others; and they are tempted to be morbidly irritable and exacting, or else to shut themselves up and say, "It's no use, no one wants me." If no one wants you, it is your fault; for if you were always ready to be unselfish and thoughtful for others in small ways, you would be wanted. You need not fret because you are not amusing to talk to, and think that therefore you cannot win affection. As a rule, people do not want you to talk; they want you to listen. Now, any one can be a good listener, for that requires moral, and not intellectual qualifications. Sympathy to guess somebody's favourite subject, and to be really interested in it, will always make that somebody think you pleasant; but the interest must be real: if you only give it for what you can get, you will get nothing.
The right person always is sent just when needed. I do not believe in people missing each other—though it may very well be that we are not fit to be trusted with the affection we should like, and that God knows we should rest in it if we had it, and never turn to Him, and so He keeps it from us till we are ready for it. The longer we live the more we are struck by the apparent chance which threw us with the right people.
There is a Turkish proverb which says, "Every only child has a sister somewhere," and F.D. Maurice, in his beautiful paper on the "Faëry Queen," declares his belief that all who are meant to be friends and to help each other will find each other at the right time, just as Spenser's knights, though wandering in trackless forests, always encountered each other when help was wanted.
And if all this is true of ordinary friendship—if it calls for so much high principle and self-denial and prayer—what of love, "the perfection of friendship"? It is usually either ignored or joked about. The jokes are edged tools always in bad taste and often dangerous, but it is a pity the subject should be ignored. When it becomes a personal question the girl is sure to be too excited or irritable to take advice, so that there is something to be said for that discussion of "love in the abstract," which Sydney Smith overheard at a Scotch ball. It is surely better, in forming her standard and opinion on this most important of all points, that a girl should have the help of her mother and older friends. Girls do not go to their mothers as they might, because they wait till they are sore and conscious and resentful. Most girls would rather be married, and quite right too,—in no other state of life will they find such thorough discipline and chastening!—it is the only life which makes a true and perfect woman. But if they wish it, let them not be so untidy, so fidgety, so domineering, that no man in his senses would put up with them! And if she be a "leisured girl" with no duty calling her from home (or very possibly many duties calling her to remain at home), let her think, not twice, but many times, before a wish for independence and Bohemianism (which she translates into "Art") leads her into grooves of life where she is very unlikely to meet the sort of man who can give her the home and the surroundings to which she is accustomed. Harriet Byron's despair and ecstasy about Sir Charles have passed away, but girls still dream of heroes (not always so heroic as Sir Charles). Their dreams cannot fail to be coloured by the novels they read and the poetry they dwell on; do they always realize the responsibility of keeping good company? Read love-stories, by all means, but let them be noble ones, such as show you, Molly Gibson, Mary Colet, Romola, Di Vernon, Margaret Hale, Shirley, Anne Elliot, The Angel in the House, The Gardener's Daughter, The Miller's Daughter, Sweet Susan Winstanley, and Beatrice. It is impossible to dwell on the mere passionate emotion of second-rate novels and sensuous poetry, without wiping some possibility of nobleness out of your own life. Every influence which you allow to pass through your mind colours it, but most of all, those which appeal to your feelings. You take pains to strengthen your minds, but you let your feelings come up as wheat or tares according to chance; and yet the unruly wills and affections of women need more discipline than their minds.
Perhaps the individual girl feels commonplace and of small account. Why should she restrain her love of fun, her Tomboyism, her tendency to flirtation? She is no heroine! But, let her be as commonplace as possible, she will represent Woman to the man who is in love with her, as surely as Beatrice represented it to Dante.
Every woman, married or single, alters the opinion of some man about women. Even a careless man judges a girl in a way that she, with her head full of nonsense, probably never dreams of;—he has a standard for her, though he has none for himself.