Historia Amoris: A History of Love, Ancient and Modern

The character of the meditation, its durability or impermanence, is, Schopenhauer continued, in direct proportion to the presence of attributes that attract. These attributes are, primarily, physical. Attraction is induced by health, by beauty, particularly by youth, in which health and beauty are usually combined, and that because the Genius of the Species desires above all else the creation of beings that will live and who, in living, will conform to an integral type. After the physical come mental and temperamental attributes, all of which, in themselves, are insufficient to establish love except on condition of more or less perfect conformity between the parties. But as two people absolutely alike do not exist, each one is obliged to seek in another those qualities which conflict least with his or her own. In the difficulty of finding them is the rarity of real love. In connection with which Schopenhauer noted that frequently two people, apparently well adapted to one another, are, instead of being attracted, repelled, the reason being that any child they might have would be mentally or physically defective. The antipathy which they experience is induced by the Genius of the Species who has in view only the interests of the next generation.

To conserve these interests, nature, Schopenhauer explained, dupes the individual with an illusion of free will. In affairs of the heart the individual believes that he is acting in his own behalf, for his own personal benefit, whereas he is but acting in accordance with a predetermined purpose for the accomplishment of which nature has instilled in him an instinct that moves him to her ends, and so forcibly that rather than fail he is sometimes compelled to sacrifice what otherwise he would do his utmost to preserve – honor, health, wealth and reputation. It is illusion that sets before his eyes the deceiving image of felicity. It is illusion which convinces him that union with some one person will procure it. Whatever efforts or sacrifices he may consequently make he will believe are made to that end only yet he is but laboring for the creation of a predetermined being who has need of his assistance to arrive into life. But, once the work of nature accomplished, disenchantment ensues. The illusion that duped him has vanished.

According to Schopenhauer love is, therefore, but the manifestation of an instinct which, influenced by the spirit of things, irresistibly attracts two people who, through natural conformity, are better adapted to conjointly fulfil nature’s aims than they would be with other partners. Schopenhauer added that in such circumstances, when two individuals complete each other and common and exclusive affection possesses them both, their affection represents a special mission delegated by the Genius of the Species, one which consequently assumes a character of high elevation. In these cases, in addition to physical adaptation there is, he noted, a mental and temperamental concordance so adjusted that the parties alone could have achieved nature’s aims. In actuating them to that end the Genius of the Species desired, for reasons which Schopenhauer described as inaccessible, the materialization of a particular being that could not otherwise appear. In the series of existing beings that desire had no other sphere of action than the hearts of the future parents. The latter, seized by the impulsion, believe that they want for themselves that which as yet is but purely metaphysical, or, in other words, beyond the circle of actually existing things. In this manner, from the original source of whatever is, there then darts a new being’s aspiration for life which aspiration manifests itself in the actuality of things by the love of its potential parents, who, however, once the object of the Genius of the Species attained, find, to their entire astonishment, that that love is no more. But meanwhile, given that love, and the potential parents may become so obsessed by it that they will disregard anything which, ordinarily, would interfere.

This disregard, Schopenhauer further explained, is due to the Genius of the Species to whom the personal interests of the individual, laws, obstacles, differences of position, social barriers and human conventions are so many straws. Caring only for the generation to be lightly he dismisses them. It is his privilege, Schopenhauer declared. Our existence being rooted in him, he has over us a right anterior and more immediate than all things else. His interests are supreme.

“That point,” Schopenhauer concluded, “antiquity perfectly understood when it personified the Genius of the Species as Eros, a divinity who, in spite of his infantile air, is hostile, cruel, despotic, demoniac and none the less master of gods and of man.

‘Tu, deorum hominumque tyranne, Amor!’”

For a philosopher Schopenhauer is very graphic. It is his great charm and possibly his sole defect. In the superabundance of his imagination there was not always room for the matter of fact. Then too he had a theory. Everything had to yield to it. The trait, common to all metaphysicians, von Hartmann shared. In the latter’s Philosophie des Unbewussten the Genius of the Species becomes the Unconscious, the same force with a different name, a sort of anthropomorphic entity lurking on the back stairs of Spencer’s Unknowable and from there ruling omnipotently the lives and loves of man.

Both systems are ingenious. They are profound and they are admirable. They have been respectfully received by the doct. But in their metaphysics of the heart there is a common error. Each confounds instinct with sentiment. Moreover, assuming the validity of their hypothetical idol, there are phenomena left unexplained, the ordinary case for instance of an individual inspiring but not requiting another’s love. In one of the two parties to it the entity obviously has erred. According to Schopenhauer and von Hartmann the entity is the unique cause of love, which itself is an instinct that deludes into the furtherment of nature’s aims. But in an unrequited affection such furtherment is impossible. In which event if philosophy is not at fault the entity must be; the result being that it lacks the omnipotence claimed. Demonstrably it has some power, it is even clear that that power is great, but in the same sense that occultists deny that death is, so may true lovers deny that the entity exists. For them it is not. Without doubt it is the modern philosophic representative of Eros, but of Eros Pandemos, son and heir of the primitive Aphrodite whom Plato described.

Love does not proceed from that source. The instinct of it certainly does but not sentiment which is its basis. Commonly instinct and sentiment are confused. But, if a distinction be effected between their manifestations, it will be recognized that though desire is elemental in both, in instinct desire is paramount while in sentiment it is secondary and frequently, particularly in the case of young women, it is dormant when not absent, even though they may be what is termed “wildly in love.” Instinct is a primitive and general instigation, coeval and conterminous with life. Love is a specific emotion, exclusive in selection, more or less permanent in duration and due to a mental fermentation in itself caused by a law of attraction, which Plato called imeros and Voltaire the myth of happiness invented by Satan for man’s despair.

Imeros is the longing for love. The meditation which Schopenhauer described may enter there, and usually does, whether or not the parties interested are aware of it. But it need not necessarily do so. When Héloïse was in her convent there could have been no such meditation, yet, she loved Abailard as fervently as before. Moreover, when the work of nature is accomplished, disenchantment does not, as Schopenhauer insisted, invariably ensue. Disenchantment results when the accomplishing is due to instinct but not when sentiment is the cause. Had instinct alone prevailed humanity would hardly have arisen from its primitive state. But the evolution of the sentiment of love, in developing the law of attraction, lifted men from animality, angels from the shames of Ishtar, and heightened the stature of the soul.

The advance effected is as notable as it is obvious, but its final term is probably still remote. Ages ago the sphinx was disinterred from beneath masses of sand under which it had brooded interminably. In its simian paws, its avian wings, in its body which is that of an animal, in its face which is that of a sage, before Darwin, before history, in traits great and grave, the descent of man was told.

There remains his ascent. Future monuments may tell it. Meanwhile evolution has not halted. Undiscernibly but indefatigably its advance proceeds. Its culmination is not in existing types. If humanity descends from apes, from humanity gods may emerge. The story of Olympus is but a tale of what might have been and what might have been may yet come to pass. Even now, if the story were true and the old gods could return, it is permissible to assume that they would evaporate to ghostland eclipsed. The inextinguishable laughter which was theirs is absent from the prose of life. Commerce has alarmed their afflatus away. But the telegraph is a better messenger than they had, the motor is surer than their chariots of dream. In contemporary homes they could have better fare than ambrosia and behold faces beside which some of their own might seem less divine. The prodigies of electricity might appear to them more potent than the thunderbolts of Zeus and, at the sight of modern engines, possibly they would recall the titans with whom once they warred and sink back to their sacred seas outfaced.

In the same manner that we have exceeded them it is also permissible to assume that posterity will exceed what we have done. From its parturitions gods may really come, beings that is, who, could contemporaneous man remain to behold them, would regard him as he regards the ape.

That advance, if effected, love will achieve. In its history, already long, yet relatively brief, it has changed the face of the earth. It has transformed laws and religions. It has reversed and reconstructed every institution human and divine. As yet its evolution is incomplete. But when the final term is reached, then, doubtless, the words of the Apocalypse shall be realized, for all things will have been made anew.

FINIS HISTORIÆ AMORIS

1

Herodotus, I., 199.

2

Strabo, XVI., xi., 532. Baruch, VI. Justinus, XVIII. St. Augustin: Civit. Dei, IV., 10. Eusebius: Vita Constantini, III., 53-56. Cf. Juvenal, Satir. 9: Nam quo non prostat femina templo?

3

Renan: Le Cantique des Cantiques.

4

Paraleipomena, XIII.

5

Philostratus: Apollonius Tyanensis, IV., 16.

6

Ethica S. Basilii.

7

Bérard: Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée.

8

Opera et Dies, 70.

9

Xenophon: de Republica Lacedæmoniorum.

10

Rossetti, D. G.

11

Epistolæ Heroïdum, XV.

12

Athenæus, XIII. Musonius: de Luxu. Becker: Charikles.

13

Saturnalia, III., 9.

14

Leg. XII Tabularum, Tab. quinta. “Veteres voluerunt fœminas etiam perfectæ ætatis, propter animi lævitatem, in tutela esse. Itaque, si quis filio filiæve testamento tutorem dederit, et ambo ad pubertatem pervenerint, filius quidem desinit habere tutorem, filia vero nihilominus in tutela permanet.”

15

Valerius Maximus, II., i. Pliny, XIV., 13.

16

“Juris humani et divini communicatio.” – Modestin.

17

Leg. XII. Tabularum. Valerius Maximus, VI., i. Livy, X., 31; XXV., 2. Tacitus: Annal., II., 85. Ulpianus: de Ritu Nuptiarum.

18

Cicero: de Arusp. Quod in agro Latiniensi auditus est strepitus cum fremitu. Ibid: Providete ne reipublica status commutetur.

19

Michelet: Histoire Romaine. Saltus: Imperial Purple.

20

Plutarch: Antonii vita. Cf. Michelet, op. cit.

21

Suetonius: Augustus, XVIII. Velleius Paterculus, II. lxxxiii. Vergil: Æneid, VIII. Horace: Epod., 9.

22

Cod. 2, de inutil. Stipulat.

23

Matthew xvi. 21.

24

Stromata, III., 6-9.

25

Timothy ii. 11-12. 1 Corinthians ix. 9. 1 Corinthians vii. 38.

26

Concil. Trident., sess. XXIV., canon 10.

27

Augustin: De bono conjugio.

28

Matthew xix. 12. Revelations xiv.

29

St. Justin: Apolog., I., 14, 35.

30

Clement: Strom., III., 6. Hermas: Similit., IX., ii. “Nobiscum dormi non ut maritus, sed ut frater.” Hermas: Visio, I., 2. “Conjugi tuæ quæ futura est (incipit esse) soror tua.”

31

Boetius, Lib. XVII. Quidam dominus quem vidi, primam sponsarum carnalem cognitionem ut suam petebat. Du Cange: Marchetum. Marcheto mulieris dicitur virginalis pudicitiæ violatio et delibatio.

32

Récits des Temps Mérovingiens.

33

Acta Sanctorum.

34

Michelet: Histoire de France.

35

I Corinthians xii. 7-9.

36

Michaud: Histoire des Croisades.

37

Eginhard: Vita Karoli IX.

38

Summa Hostiensis, IV. De Sponsalibus.

39

Beaumanoir, LVII. “Tout mari peut battre sa femme, pourvu que ce soit modérément et sans que mort s’ensuivre.”

40

St. Jerome: Vita S. Fabiolæ.

41

Juris Pontificii Analecta.

42

Ste. Palaye: L’ancienne Chevalerie.

43

Maître André, chapelain de la cour royale de France. Manuscrit de la Bibliothèque nationale, No. 8758.

44

“Des personnages de grands renoms estant venus visiter le pape Innocent III à Avignon, furent ouïr les definitions et sentences d’amour prononcées par les dames.” – Nostradamus.

45

Martial d’Auvergne: Les Arrêts d’Amour.

46

Assises de Jérusalem.

47

Conde: Historia de la dominacion de los Arabes en España.

48

“Ex Arabibus versum simili sono concluendorum artem accepimus.” Huet.

49

“De orden del cardenal Cisneros se abrazaron mas de ochenta mil volùmenes como si no tuvieran mas libros que su Alcoran.” – Aledrès; Descripcion de España.

50

“… Fue muy buen caballero, y se decia de él que tenia las diez prendas que distinguen à los nobles y generosos, que consisten en bondad, valentia, caballeria, gentileza, poesia, bien hablar, fuerza, destreza en la lanza, en la espada y en el tirar del arco.” Conde, II., 63.

51

“Dans les pays soumis à l’Islam on ne voit aucune femme publique.” – Viardot: Hist. des Arabes.

52

Conde, II., 93.

53

Escolano: Historia de Valencia. “La lengua maestria de la España es la lemosina.”

54

“Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate.”

55

Epistolæ sine titulo.

56

Lobineau: Histoire de Bretagne.

57

Manuscrit de la Bibl. nationale, No. 493, F.

58

Saltus: The Pomps of Satan.

59

Michelet: Hist. de France.

60

Luther: Tisch-Reden.

61

Castiglione: Il Cortegiano. Ficino: Il comento sopra il convito.

62

Firenzuola: Ragionamenti.

63

Sauval: Mémoires Historiques concernant les amours des rois de France.

64

Guiffrey: “Lettres inédites.”

65

Tallemant des Reaux: Historiettes.

66

Dupleix: Histoire de Louis XIII.

67

Pierre de l’Estoile: Mémoires et journaux.

68

Macaulay: “History of England.”

69

Saint-Victor: L’Espagne sous Charles II.

70

Menzel: Germany.

71

Earl Malmesbury’s Diaries and Correspondence.

72

Scherr: Deutsche Kulturgeschichte.

73

Hervey: Memoirs.

74

Goncourt: La Femme au dix-huitième siècle.

75

“Il lui fit sept enfants sans lui dire un mot.” – d’Argenson.

76

Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.