144 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 241 



Dante, Goethe, and Heine are exceptional, and their works do not 

 represent the true feelings of mankind. It is the lot of very few to 

 love as did Romeo, and most of us poor mortals cannot understand 

 the feelings of Dante for Beatrice. Highly wrought loves are 

 mostly found in fiction and poetry, seldom in actual life. And yet 

 the average person of to-day is doubtless better able to appreciate 

 such feelings than the average Greek or Roman, both because he is 

 more capable of loving, and because women have been permitted 

 to become more lovable. Society to-day has, then, a much higher 

 development of this feeling than in past times. There has been an 

 increase in the quantity of romantic love, and doubtless in the depth 

 of it. But that romantic love of modern times is a new feeling, is 

 not so evident. 



There are many considerations which immediately suggest 

 themselves as enabling us to understand these facts, and they may 

 lead us to believe that romantic love can be traced back much 

 further than i,ooo years, and that it was even in ancient times 

 essentially the same in its nature as now. First, we must notice 

 the change which has come over the spirit of literature in modern 

 times : it is by no means fair to compare modern literature with 

 the ancient upon this subject. At the time when the classics were 

 written, books were great rarities, laboriously copied by hand, pos- 

 sessed only by the rich, and read only by scholars. In modern 

 times printing has thrown all literature open to every one in civil- 

 ized communities. The classical authors thus wrote to the few ; the 

 modern authors to the many. The former wrote from love of the 

 art simply, and were supported by the patronage of rich men : the 

 latter write for a living from the sale of their works. While the 

 former were, therefore, free to follow wherever art led them, the 

 majority of authors to-day must write that which will best please 

 their readers. In former times it was only the genius who could 

 hope to acquire any thing by writing : to-day many a writer of me- 

 diocre aUility makes his living by the use of his pen. It is clear 

 enough why such writers, wishing to obtain as many readers as 

 possible, should choose the most common and yet most delightful 

 experience of life as a theme. It is to these facts largely that we 

 owe the great development of the love-literature of modern times, 

 and partly at least the dearth of it in ancient times. If modern 

 writers thought that only scholars would read their works, and 

 common people know nothing about them, is it not certain that most 

 of our love-literature would disappear ? Now, it is, we believe, the 

 development of the modern love-story and poetry, and not the iso- 

 lated masterpieces of Dante and Shakspeare, which gives us the 

 impression of the great prevalence of romantic love to-day. Blot 

 out all our modern light fiction and other works inspired by money- 

 getting, and Romeo and Juliet would seem as strained and out of 

 place to-day as Mr. Finck thinks the works of Ovid were in the day 

 in which they were written. Indeed, there are few of us now who 

 do not regard this play of Shakspeare as much overdrawn. 



We cannot, then, expect love-stories in the literature of early 

 times, and what few references we may find to love here have for 

 this reason the more significance. Now, the very citations used by 

 Mr. Finck in support of his proposition seem to us to go far toward 

 showing that romantic love was by no means an unknown experi- 

 ence in the ancient nations. Ovid was certainly a love-poet, and, 

 even though he was ahead of his age, it is hardly credible that he 

 would give directions to lovers if lovers were unknown. Modern 

 literature gives few more romantic love-stories than that of Cleo- 

 patra. Virgil's account of the love of yEneus and Dido could not 

 have been written by one who lived before the time of the birth 

 of romantic love. Even Mr. Finck admits that the Hetsere in- 

 spired the Greeks with feelings akin to love. Was it not, indeed, 

 exactly the same feeUng as modern love applied to a different end .' 

 Modern love does not go beyond the extent to which the love of 

 Paris and Helen went to involve a whole nation in war. More sig- 

 nificant still, both Greeks and Romans recognized a goddess of 

 love, Venus ; and, though perhaps they did not rigidly distinguish 

 between romantic and conjugal love, nothing is plainer than that 

 Venus was not the goddess of conjugal love. The whole account 

 we ha\'e of her shows that romantic love was much more closely 

 the idea associated with her than conjugal love. Again, Solomon's 

 Songs, after all that is said about them, could not have been written 

 by one of a nation who knew nothing about love. Did not Jacob 



serve seven extra years for Rachel because he loved her more than 

 Leah .' This is a case which shows that in these early times ro- 

 mantic love existed, and manifested itself in spite of established 

 custom, which compelled the wedding of the elder daughter first. 



Or look at the matter in a different way : romantic love at all 

 ages refuses to be trammelled by custom. The French, as Mr. 

 Finck tells us, being unable to find love in courtship, owing to the 

 influences which surround French girls, find it in the greater free- 

 dom of women after marriage. This gives us the numerous illicit 

 loves of the French novel. Love leaps beyond the bounds of cus- 

 tom and law. Now, have we not abundant evidence that the same 

 has been true at all times .' As our author shows, the customs of 

 ancient nations have been such as almost to preclude romantic love 

 before marriage ; but that the feeling has shown itself in other ways 

 seems evident from the universal existence of laws against adultery, 

 the numerous instances of conjugal unfaithfulness, and the care with 

 which husbands have always considered it necessar)- to guard their 

 wives from contact with other men. And it is suggestive that this 

 care is the greatest where pre-nuptial love is the most strictly prohib- 

 ited. Such extra-marital loves, which are implied by these facts, 

 though sometimes nothing more than sexual passion, are in many 

 cases the same feeling which Mr. Finck calls romantic love, only 

 applied in a different direction. If the various ' overtones ' of ro- 

 mantic love, which Mr. Finck has drawn up, be considered, it will 

 be found that they all apply to this species of love, except perhaps 

 the ' pride of conquest,' which is impossible owing to the necessary 

 secrecy of the matter. 



I suspect, therefore, that Mr. Finck has been tracing not so much 

 the birth of a new sentiment as the growth of the institution of 

 courtship ; not so much the development of love as the gradual im- 

 provement of the condition of woman. In all cases he has drawn 

 a parallel between the stage of development of romantic love and 

 the freedom of woman. His argument has shown the impossibility 

 of courtship in ancient times, rather than the impossibility of 

 love. Where wives were stolen, or bought and sold, or where 

 marriages are merely a matter of hnsm^ss, mar iages de convenance, 

 it is plain enough that romantic love could seldom exist in con- 

 nection with marriage. But even under these circumstances the 

 feeling existed, as is shown by the conception of the goddess of ro- 

 mantic love among the Greeks and Romans, the few love snatches 

 of ancient literature, and as is shown by the numerous extra-mari- 

 tal loves of all times. But when in modern times and among civi- 

 lized nations women have been gradually acquiring freedom and 

 independence, and a right to appear in public before marriage, this 

 feeling of love between the sexes, which had hitherto been usually 

 an unlawful feeling, gradually became directed toward its legiti- 

 mate end, as a precursor to wedlock. Courtship is therefore a 

 modern institution, which has resulted from the improvement in the 

 condition of woman. But it is more than doubtful whether the 

 love which accompanies it is any thing more than the same feeling 

 between the sexes which has always existed, but applied to a differ- 

 ent condition of society. 



It may seem that the above is a distinction without a difference, 

 and indeed these suggestions are not given in criticism of Mr. 

 Finck's work, which is certainly to be regarded as one of the valu- 

 able contributions to the history of mankind ; but there is certainly 

 room to doubt whether Mr. Finck has put the right interpretation 

 on his facts. That Dante was the first love-poet, and that Romeo 

 was the first love-hero of literature, may be true in a sense ; and that 

 romantic love has come to fill a place in courtship which it did not 

 formerly hold, may be also true; but we can hardly accept the con- 

 clusion that romantic love is of strictly modern birth. The fact of 

 the undoubted existence of extra-marital, though perhaps not pre- 

 nuptial loves at all times, the fact that the literature and mythology 

 of the ancients did contain references to romantic loves, the fact that 

 such loves could not have been then regarded as ennobling owing 

 to the marriage customs, — these, taken with the fact that literature 

 had a different purpose then and now, seem to the present writer 

 rather to indicate that romantic love is nothing new, but that its 

 application to courtship as a preliminary to wedlock is a new phase 

 of life, found only in the customs of a few of the most advanced of 

 modern civilized races. H. W. CONN. 



Middletown, Conn., Sept. 6. 



