Primitive Love and Love-Stories Part 1

Primitive Love and Love-Stories.

by Henry Theophilus Finck.

PREFACE

On page 654 of the present volume reference is made to a custom prevalent in northern India of employing the family barber to select the boys and girls to be married, it being considered too trivial and humiliating an act for the parents to attend to. In p.r.o.nouncing such a custom ludicrous and outrageous we must not forget that not much more than a century ago an English thinker, Samuel Johnson, expressed the opinion that marriages might as well be arranged by the Lord Chancellor without consulting the parties concerned. Schopenhauer had, indeed, reason to claim that it had remained for him to discover the significance and importance of love. His ideas on the relations between love, youth, health, and beauty opened up a new vista of thought; yet it was limited, because the question of heredity was only just beginning to be understood, and the theory of evolution, which has revolutionized all science, had not yet appeared on the horizon.

The new science of anthropology, with its various branches, including sociology, ethnology, and comparative psychology, has within the last two or three decades brought together and discussed an immense number of facts relating to man in his various stages of development--savagery, barbarism, semi-civilization, and civilization.

Monographs have appeared in great numbers on various customs and inst.i.tutions, including marriage, which has been discussed in several exhaustive volumes. Love alone has remained to be specially considered from an evolutionary point of view. My own book, _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_, which appeared in 1887, did indeed touch upon this question, but very briefly, inasmuch as its subject, as the t.i.tle indicates, was modern romantic love. A book on such a subject was naturally and easily written _virginibus puerisque_; whereas the present volume, being concerned chiefly with the love-affairs of savages and barbarians, could not possibly have been subjected to the same restrictions. Care has been taken, however, to exclude anything that might offend a healthy taste.

If it has been necessary in some chapters to multiply unpleasant facts, the reader must blame the sentimentalists who have so persistently whitewashed the savages that it has become necessary, in the interest of truth, to show them in their real colors. I have indeed been tempted to give my book the sub-t.i.tle "A Vindication of Civilization" against the misrepresentations of these sentimentalists who try to create the impression that savages owe all their depravity to contact with whites, having been originally spotless angels. If my pictures of the unadulterated savage may in some cases produce the same painful impression as the sights in a museum's "chamber of horrors," they serve, on the other hand, to show us that, bad as we may be, collectively, we are infinitely superior in love-affairs, as in everything else, to those primitive peoples; and thus we are encouraged to hope for further progress in the future in the direction of purity and altruism.

Although I have been obliged under the circ.u.mstances to indulge in a considerable amount of controversy, I have taken great pains to state the views of my opponents fairly, and to be strictly impartial in presenting facts with accuracy. Nothing could be more foolish than the ostrich policy, so often indulged in, of hiding facts in the hope that opponents will not see them. Had I found any data inconsistent with my theory I should have modified it in accordance with them. I have also been very careful in regard to my authorities. The chief cause of the great confusion reigning in anthropological literature is that, as a rule, evidence is piled up with a pitchfork. Anyone who has been anywhere and expressed a globe-trotter's opinion is cited as a witness, with deplorable results. I have not only taken most of my mult.i.tudinous facts from the original sources, but I have critically examined the witnesses to see what right they have to parade as experts; as in the cases, for instance, of Catlin, Schoolcraft, Chapman, and Stephens, who are responsible for many "false facts" that have misled philosophers.

In writing a book like this the author's function is comparable to that of an architect who gets his materials from various parts of the world and fashions them into a building of more or less artistic merit. The anthropologist has to gather his facts from a greater variety of sources than any other writer, and from the very nature of his subject he is obliged to quote incessantly. The following pages embody the results of more than twelve years' research in the libraries of America and Europe. In weaving my quotations into a continuous fabric I have adopted a plan which I believe to be ingenious, and which certainly saves s.p.a.ce and annoyance. Instead of citing the full t.i.tles of books every time they are referred to either in the text or in footnotes, I merely give the author's name and the page number, if only one of his books is referred to; and if there are several books, I give the initials--say Brinton, _M.N.W_., 130; which means Brinton's _Myths of the New World_, page 130. The key to the abbreviations will be found at the end of the volume in the bibliography, which also includes an author's index, separate from the index of subjects. This avoids the repet.i.tion of t.i.tles or of the customary useless "_loc. cit_.," and spares the reader the annoyance of constant interruption of his reading to glance at the bottom of the page.

Not a few of the critics of my first book, ignoring the difference between a romantic love-story and a story of romantic love, fancied they could refute me by simply referring to some ancient romantic story. To prevent a repet.i.tion of that procedure I have adorned these pages with a number of love-stories, adding critical comments wherever called for. These stories, I believe, augment, not only the interest but the scientific value of the monograph. In gathering them I have often wondered why no one antic.i.p.ated me, though, to be sure, it was not an easy task, as they are scattered in hundreds of books, and in scientific periodicals where few would look for them. At the same time I confess that to me the tracing of the plot of the evolution of love, with its diverse obstacles, is more fascinating than the plot of an individual love-story. At any rate, since we have thousands of such love-stories, I am perhaps not mistaken in a.s.suming that _the story of love itself_ will be welcomed as a pleasant change. H.T.F.

NEW YORK, October 27, 1899.

HISTORY OF AN IDEA

"Love is always the same. As Sappho loved, fifty years ago, so did people love ages before her; so will they love thousands of years hence."

These words, placed by Professor Ebers in the mouth of one of the characters in his historic novel, _An Egyptian Princess_, express the prevalent opinion on this subject, an opinion which I, too, shared fifteen years ago. Though an ardent champion of the theory of evolution, I believed that there was one thing in the world to which modern scientific ideas of gradual development did not apply--that love was too much part and parcel of human nature to have ever been different from what it is to-day.

ORIGIN OF A BOOK

It so happened that I began to collect notes for a paper on "How to Cure Love." It was at first intended merely as a personal experiment in emotional psychology. Afterward it occurred to me that such a sketch might be shaped into a readable magazine article. This, again, suggested a complementary article on "How to Win Love"--a sort of modern Ovid in prose; and then suddenly came the thought,

"Why not write a book on love? There is none in the English language--strange anomaly--though love is supposed to be the most fascinating and influential thing in the world. It will surely be received with delight, especially if I a.s.sociate with it some chapters on personal beauty, the chief inspirer of love. I shall begin by showing that the ancient Greeks and Romans and Hebrews loved precisely as we love."

Forthwith I took down from my shelves the cla.s.sical authors that I had not touched since leaving college, and eagerly searched for all references to women, marriage, and love. To my growing surprise and amazement I found that not only did those ancient authors look upon women as inferior beings while I worshipped them, but in their descriptions of the symptoms of love I looked in vain for mention of those supersensual emotions and self-sacrificing impulses which overcame me when I was in love. "Can it be," I whispered to myself, "that, notwithstanding the universal opinion to the contrary, love is, after all, subject to the laws of development?"

This hypothesis threw me into a fever of excitement, without the stimulus of which I do not believe I should have had the courage and patience to collect, cla.s.sify, and weave into one fabric the enormous number of facts and opinions contained within the covers of _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_. I believed that at last something new under the sun had been found, and I was so much afraid that the discovery might leak out prematurely, that for two years I kept the first half of my t.i.tle a secret, telling inquisitive friends merely that I was writing a book on Personal Beauty. And no one but an author who is in love with his theme and whose theme is love can quite realize what a supreme delight it was--with occasional moments of anxious suspense--to go through thousands of books in the libraries of America, England, France, and Germany and find that all discoverable facts, properly interpreted, bore out my seemingly paradoxical and reckless theory.

SKEPTICAL CRITICS

When the book appeared some of the critics accepted my conclusions, but a larger number pooh-poohed them. Here are a few specimen comments:

"His great theses are, first, that romantic love is an entirely modern invention; and, secondly, that romantic love and conjugal love are two things essentially different.... Now both these theses are luckily false."

"He is wrong when he says there was no such thing as pre-matrimonial love known to the ancients."

"I don't believe in his theory at all, and ... no one is likely to believe in it after candid examination."

"A ridiculous theory."

"It was a misfortune when Mr. Finck ran afoul of this theory."

"Mr. Finck will not need to live many years in order to be ashamed of it."

"His thesis is not worth writing about."

"It is true that he has uttered a profoundly original thought, but, unfortunately, the depth of its originality is surpa.s.sed by its fathomless stupidity."

"If in the light of these and a million other facts, we should undertake to explain why n.o.body had antic.i.p.ated Mr. Finck's theory that love is a modern sentiment, we should say it might be because n.o.body who felt inspired to write about it was ever so extensively unacquainted with the literature of the human pa.s.sions."

"Romantic love has always existed, in every clime and age, since man left simian society; and the records of travellers show that it is to be found even among the lowest savages."

ROBERT BURTON

While not a few of the commentators thus rejected or ridiculed my thesis, others hinted that I had been antic.i.p.ated. Several suggested that Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ had been my model. As a matter of fact, although one of the critics referred to my book as "a marvel of epitomized research," I must confess, to my shame, that I was not aware that Burton had devoted two hundred pages to what he calls Love-Melancholy, until I had finished the first sketch of my ma.n.u.script and commenced to rewrite it. My experience thus furnished a striking verification of the witty epitaph which Burton wrote for himself and his book: "Known to few, unknown to fewer still." However, after reading Burton, I was surprised that any reader of Burton should have found anything in common between his book and mine, for he treated love as an appet.i.te, I as a sentiment; my subject was pure, supersensual affection, while his subject is frankly indicated in the following sentences:

"I come at last to that heroical love, which is proper to men and women ... and deserves much rather to be called burning l.u.s.t than by such an honorable t.i.tle."

"This burning l.u.s.t ... begets rapes, incests, murders."

"It rages with all sorts and conditions of men, yet is most evident among such as are young and l.u.s.ty, in the flower of their years, n.o.bly descended, high fed, such as live idly, at ease, and for that cause (which our divines call burning l.u.s.t) this mad and beastly pa.s.sion ... is named by our physicians heroical love, and a more honorable t.i.tle put upon it, _Amor n.o.bilis_, as Savonarola styles it, because n.o.ble men and women make a common practice of it, and are so ordinarily affected with it." "Carolus a Lorme ... makes a doubt whether this heroical love be a disease.... Tully ... defines it a furious disease of the mind; Plato madness itself."

"Gordonius calls this disease the proper pa.s.sion of n.o.bility."

"This heroical pa.s.sion or rather brutish burning l.u.s.t of which we treat."

The only honorable love Burton knows is that between husband and wife, while of such a thing as the evolution of love he had, of course, not the remotest conception, as his book appeared in 1621, or two hundred and thirty-eight years before Darwin's _Origin of Species_.

HEGEL ON GREEK LOVE

In a review of my book which appeared in the now defunct New York _Star_, the late George Parsons Lathrop wrote that the author

"says that romantic love is a modern sentiment, less than a thousand years old. This idea, I rather think, he derived from Hegel, although he does not credit that philosopher with it."

I read this criticism with mingled emotions. If it was true that Hegel had antic.i.p.ated me, my claims to priority of discovery would vanish, even though the idea had come to me spontaneously; but, on the other hand, the disappointment at this thought was neutralized by the reflection that I should gain the support of one of the most famous philosophers, and share with him the sneers and the ridicule bestowed upon my theory. I wrote to Mr. Lathrop, begging him to refer me to the volume and page of Hegel's numerous works where I could find the pa.s.sage in question. He promptly replied that I should find it in the second volume of the _Aesthetik_ (178-182). No doubt I ought to have known that Hegel had written on this subject; but the fact that of more than two hundred American, English, and German reviewers of my book whose notices I have seen, only one knew what had thus escaped my research, consoled me somewhat. Hegel, indeed, might well have copied Burton's epitaph. His _Aesthetik_ is an abstruse, unindexed, three-volume work of 1,575 pages, which has not been reprinted since 1843, and is practically forgotten. Few know it, though all know of it.

After perusing Hegel's pages on this topic I found, however, that Mr.

Lathrop had imputed to him a theory--my theory--which that philosopher would have doubtless repudiated emphatically. What Hegel does is simply to call attention to the fact that in the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans love is depicted only as a transient gratification of the senses, or a consuming heat of the blood, and not as a romantic, sentimental affection of the soul. He does not generalize, says nothing about other ancient nations,[1] and certainly never dreamt of such a thing as a.s.serting that love had been gradually and slowly developed from the coa.r.s.e and selfish pa.s.sions of our savage ancestors to the refined and altruistic feelings of modern civilized men and women. He lived long before the days of scientific anthropology and Darwinism, and never thought of such a thing as looking upon the emotions and morals of primitive men as the raw material out of which our own superior minds have been fashioned. Nay, Hegel does not even say that sentimental love did not exist in the life of the Greeks and Romans; he simply a.s.serts that it is not to be found in their literature. The two things are by no means identical.

Professor Rohde, an authority on the erotic writings of the Greeks, expresses the opinion repeatedly that, whatever their literature may indicate, they themselves were capable of feeling strong and pure love; and the eminent American psychologist, Professor William James, put forth the same opinion in a review of my book.[2] Indeed, this view was broached more than a hundred years ago by a German author, Basil von Ramdohr, who wrote four volumes on love and its history, ent.i.tled _Venus Urania_. His first two volumes are almost unreadably garrulous and dull, but the third and fourth contain an interesting account of various phases through which love has pa.s.sed in literature.

Yet he declares (Preface, vol. iii.) that "the nature [_Wesen_] of love is unchangeable, but the ideas we entertain in regard to it and the effects we ascribe to it, are subject to alteration."

Sh.e.l.lEY ON GREEK LOVE