Essays of Schopenhauer
the Hindoo's complexion to ours. In love, therefore, nature strives to
return to dark hair and brown eyes, because they are the original type;
still, a white skin has become second nature, although not to such an
extent as to make the dark skin of the Hindoo repellent to us.
Finally, every man tries to find the corrective of his own defects and
aberrations in the particular parts of his body, and the more
conspicuous the defect is the greater is his determination to correct
it. This is why snub-nosed persons find an aquiline nose or a
parrot-like face so indescribably pleasing; and the same thing applies
to every other part of the body. Men of immoderately long and attenuated
build delight in a stunted and short figure. Considerations of
temperament also influence a man's choice. Each prefers a temperament
the reverse of his own; but only in so far as his is a decided one.
A man who is quite perfect in some respect himself does not, it is true,
desire and love imperfection in this particular respect, yet he can be
more easily reconciled to it than another man, because he himself saves
the children from being very imperfect in this particular. For instance,
a man who has a very white skin himself will not dislike a yellowish
complexion, while a man who has a yellowish complexion will consider a
dazzlingly white skin divinely beautiful. It is rare for a man to fall
in love with a positively ugly woman, but when he does, it is because
exact harmony in the degree of sex exists between them, and all her
abnormities are precisely the opposite to, that is to say, the
corrective of his. Love in these circumstances is wont to attain a high
degree.
The profoundly earnest way in which we criticise and narrowly consider
every part of a woman, while she on her part considers us; the
scrupulously careful way we scrutinise, a woman who is beginning to
please us; the fickleness of our choice; the strained attention with
which a man watches his _fiancée_; the care he takes not to be deceived
in any trait; and the great importance he attaches to every more or less
essential trait,--all this is quite in keeping with the importance of
the end. For the child that is to be born will have to bear a similar
trait through its whole life; for instance, if a woman stoops but a
little, it is possible for her son to be inflicted with a hunchback; and
so in every other respect. We are not conscious of all this, naturally.
On the contrary, each man imagines that his choice is made in the
interest of his own pleasure (which, in reality, cannot be interested in
it at all); his choice, which we must take for granted is in keeping
with his own individuality, is made precisely in the interest of the
species, to maintain the type of which as pure as possible is the secret
task. In this case the individual unconsciously acts in the interest of
something higher, that is, the species. This is why he attaches so much
importance to things to which he might, nay, would be otherwise
indifferent. There is something quite singular in the unconsciously
serious and critical way two young people of different sex look at each
other on meeting for the first time; in the scrutinising and penetrating
glances they exchange, in the careful inspection which their various
traits undergo. This scrutiny and analysis represent the _meditation of
the genius of the species_ on the individual which may be born and the
combination of its qualities; and the greatness of their delight in and
longing for each other is determined by this meditation. This longing,
although it may have become intense, may possibly disappear again if
something previously unobserved comes to light. And so the genius of the
species meditates concerning the coming race in all who are yet not too
old. It is Cupid's work to fashion this race, and he is always busy,
always speculating, always meditating. The affairs of the individual in
their whole ephemeral totality are very trivial compared with those of
this divinity, which concern the species and the coming race; therefore
he is always ready to sacrifice the individual regardlessly. He is
related to these ephemeral affairs as an immortal being is to a mortal,
and his interests to theirs as infinite to finite. Conscious, therefore,
of administering affairs of a higher order than those that concern
merely the weal and woe of the individual, he administers them with
sublime indifference amid the tumult of war, the bustle of business, or
the raging of a plague--indeed, he pursues them into the seclusion of
the cloisters.
It has been seen that the intensity of love grows with its
individuation; we have shown that two individuals may be so physically
constituted, that, in order to restore the best possible type of the
species, the one is the special and perfect complement of the other,
which, in consequence, exclusively desires it. In a case of this kind,
passionate love arises, and as it is bestowed on one object, and one
only--that is to say, because it appears in the _special_ service of the
species--it immediately assumes a nobler and sublimer nature. On the
other hand, mere sexual instinct is base, because, without
individuation, it is directed to all, and strives to preserve the
species merely as regards quantity with little regard for quality.
Intense love concentrated on one individual may develop to such a
degree, that unless it is gratified all the good things of this world,
and even life itself, lose their importance. It then becomes a desire,
the intensity of which is like none other; consequently it will make any
kind of sacrifice, and should it happen that it cannot be gratified, it
may lead to madness or even suicide. Besides these unconscious
considerations which are the source of passionate love, there must be
still others, which we have not so directly before us. Therefore, we
must take it for granted that here there is not only a fitness of
constitution but also a special fitness between the man's _will_ and the
woman's _intellect_, in consequence of which a perfectly definite
individual can be born to them alone, whose existence is contemplated by
the genius of the species for reasons to us impenetrable, since they are
the very essence of the thing-in-itself. Or more strictly speaking, the
will to live desires to objectivise itself in an individual which is
precisely determined, and can only be begotten by this particular father
and this particular mother. This metaphysical yearning of the will in
itself has immediately, as its sphere of action in the circle of human
beings, the hearts of the future parents, who accordingly are seized
with this desire. They now fancy that it is for their own sakes they are
longing for what at present has purely a metaphysical end, that is to
say, for what does not come within the range of things that exist in
reality. In other words, it is the desire of the future individual to
enter existence, which has first become possible here, a longing which
proceeds from the primary source of all being and exhibits itself in the
phenomenal world as the intense love of the future parents for each
other, and has little regard for anything outside itself. In fact, love
is an illusion like no other; it will induce a man to sacrifice
everything he possesses in the world, in order to obtain this woman, who
in reality will satisfy him no more than any other. It also ceases to
exist when the end, which was in reality metaphysical, has been
frustrated perhaps by the woman's barrenness (which, according to
Hufeland, is the result of nineteen accidental defects in the
constitution), just as it is frustrated daily in millions of crushed
germs in which the same metaphysical life-principle struggles to exist;
there is no other consolation in this than that there is an infinity of
space, time, and matter, and consequently inexhaustible opportunity, at
the service of the will to live.
Although this subject has not been treated by Theophrastus Paracelsus,
and my entire train of thought is foreign to him, yet it must have
presented itself to him, if even in a cursory way, when he gave
utterance to the following remarkable words, written in quite a
different context and in his usual desultory style: _Hi sunt, quos Deus
copulavit, ut eam, quae fuit Uriae et David; quamvis ex diametro (sic
enim sibi humana mens persuadebat) cum justo et legitimo matrimonio
pugnaret hoc ... sed propter Salomonem, qui aliunde nasci non potuit,
nisi ex Bathseba, conjuncto David semine, quamvis meretrice, conjunxit
eos Deus._[18]
The yearning of love, the ἱμερος, which has been expressed in countless
ways and forms by the poets of all ages, without their exhausting the
subject or even doing it justice; this longing which makes us imagine
that the possession of a certain woman will bring interminable
happiness, and the loss of her, unspeakable pain; this longing and this
pain do not arise from the needs of an ephemeral individual, but are, on
the contrary, the sigh of the spirit of the species, discerning
irreparable means of either gaining or losing its ends. It is the
species alone that has an interminable existence: hence it is capable of
endless desire, endless gratification, and endless pain. These, however,
are imprisoned in the heart of a mortal; no wonder, therefore, if it
seems like to burst, and can find no expression for the announcements of
endless joy or endless pain. This it is that forms the substance of all
erotic poetry that is sublime in character, which, consequently, soars
into transcendent metaphors, surpassing everything earthly. This is the
theme of Petrarch, the material for the St. Preuxs, Werthers, and Jacopo
Ortis, who otherwise could be neither understood nor explained. This
infinite regard is not based on any kind of intellectual, nor, in
general, upon any real merits of the beloved one; because the lover
frequently does not know her well enough; as was the case with Petrarch.
It is the spirit of the species alone that can see at a glance of what
_value_ the beloved one is to _it_ for its purposes. Moreover, great
passions, as a rule, originate at first sight:
"Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight."
--SHAKESPEARE, _As You Like It,_ iii. 5.
Curiously enough, there is a passage touching upon this in _Guzmann de
Alfarache_, a well-known romance written two hundred and fifty years ago
by Mateo Aleman: _No es necessario para que uno ame, que pase distancia
de tiempo, que siga discurso, in haga eleccion, sino que con aquella
primera y sola vista, concurran juntamente cierta correspondencia ó
consonancia, ó lo que acá solemos vulgarmente decir, una confrontacion
de sangre, à que por particular influxo suelen mover las estrellas_.
(For a man to love there is no need for any length of time to pass for
him to weigh considerations or make his choice, but only that a certain
correspondence and consonance is encountered on both sides at the first
and only glance, or that which is ordinarily called _a sympathy of
blood_, to which a peculiar influence of the stars generally impels.)
Accordingly, the loss of the beloved one through a rival, or through
death, is the greatest pain of all to those passionately in love; just
because it is of a transcendental nature, since it affects him not
merely as an individual, but also assails him in his _essentia aeterna_,
in the life of the species, in whose special will and service he was
here called. This is why jealousy is so tormenting and bitter, and the
giving up of the loved one the greatest of all sacrifices. A hero is
ashamed of showing any kind of emotion but that which may be the outcome
of love; the reason for this is, that when he is in love it is not he,
but the species which is grieving. In Calderon's _Zenobia the Great_