To a mind that can thus rise above human associations and utilities, the sublimest thing in the world is the absolute solitude of an Alpine summit. To the ignorant peasant the harsh cow-bell which interrupts this silence is sweet music, because it suggests the abodes of mankind; and on this primitive stage of æsthetic culture Jeffrey placed himself when he wrote that, “It is man, and man alone, that we see in the beauties of the earth which he inhabits.”
Inasmuch as mountain solitudes are accessible to only a very small proportion of mankind, the existence of true impersonal affection on a large scale can be more easily demonstrated by recurring for a moment to the floral world. A city belle is apt to look upon flowers merely from a social or military point of view; the more bouquets, the more evidence of admiration and conquest. of male hearts. And the city belle can hardly be blamed for this callousness of feeling; for bunched flowers have lost as much of their natural charm and grace as butterflies stuck up on rows of pins in a museum. But watch that fair gardener in a suburban cottage or a country seat; how she recognises every individual plant, every single flower, as a friend for whose comfort she provides with all the affectionate care which as a child she lavished on her doll. If, after a refreshing shower, the flowers hold up their heads and look bright and happy, her face reflects the same feeling; if a drouth has parched them and dimmed their lustre, she will neglect her own pleasures to bring them water, and derive from this charitable action the same sympathetic pleasure as if they had been so many suffering human beings. And if an early frost kills all her floral friends, her sorrow and despair will find vent in a flood of tears. What is all this but affection—true affection—though flowers be but “things,” and not “sentient beings.”
Obviously Professor Calderwood erred in his definition of affection; for, as the above analysis shows, when the regard for an impersonal object rises to the fervour of adoring interest, it does not specifically differ from personal affections any more than, for example, maternal love differs from friendship. Unemotional persons, who have had no opportunities to cultivate their love of Nature, may feel inclined to doubt this; but they should remember that just as there is an intellectual eminence (Shakspere, Kant, Wagner) which the ignorant are too lazy or too weak to climb, so there is an emotional horizon, beyond which those only can see who have taken the trouble to ascend the summit whence a wider scene is unfolded to the view.
From one point of view, impersonal affections are even higher and nobler than personal attachments. The evolution of emotions has been but little studied, but so much is apparent—that there has been a gradual development from utilitarian attachments to those that are less utilitarian, or less obviously so. Personal affections are too often exclusively selfish and based on material interests, as the loss of “friends,” which commonly follows the loss of wealth or position, shows. Whereas impersonal attachments are less apt to be interested, selfish, and fickle, since they presuppose more intellectual power, more imagination, more refinement.
Again, although it must be admitted that man is the crown and compendium of Nature, uniting in himself most of the excellences of the lower kingdoms with others exclusively his own; yet it cannot be denied, either, that the vast majority of these “crowns” of Nature are so full of flaws in workmanship, and have lost so many of their jewels, that the sight of them is anything but exhilarating. Indeed, it is obvious that the average plant and the average animal are, in their way, far superior to the average man, in beauty, health, vitality; natural selection, which has been arrested in man, having made them so. No wonder, then, that some of the greatest minds have turned away from mankind, and devoted all their thoughts and energies to the world of “things” and ideas.
Goethe and other men of genius have often been accused of being cold and unsympathetic, because they refused to shape their conduct so as to please the people with whom they chanced to come into contact. Had they wasted their affections and sympathies on their commonplace admirers and acquaintances, instead of bestowing them on art and science, on the great ideas that teemed in their brains, we should now be without many of those glorious works which could never have been created had not their authors ignored personal relations for the time being, and bestowed all their warmest impersonal affections on their ideas.
As compared with men of genius, women have achieved but little that can lay claim to immortal fame; and the principal reason of this is that their affections are apt to be too exclusively personal. A girl will assiduously practice on the piano as long as that will assist her in fascinating her suitors. But how many women, outside the ranks of teachers, continue their practice after marriage, from the impersonal love of music itself? Needless to say they have no time; for every hour devoted to emotional refreshment strengthens the nerves for two hours of extra labour.
As regards the love of Nature, woman is, indeed, artificially hampered. She may botanise to some extent, but she cannot, as a rule, indulge in those solitary walks in a virgin forest which alone can establish a deep communion with Nature. If accompanied by friend, brother, husband, or lover, her thought will inevitably retain a human tinge. No doubt there is something comic in the ardent affection with which a German professor hugs his pet theory regarding the Greek dative, or the origin of honey in flowers, and in the ferocity with which he will defend it against his best friends, if they happen to oppose it. But such complete devotion to abstract crotchets is absolutely necessary to the discovery of original ideas: and as women are rarely able or willing to emerge from the haunts of personal emotion, this explains why they have achieved greatness in hardly anything but novel-writing, which is chiefly concerned with personal emotions.
PERSONAL AFFECTIONS
I.—LOVE FOR ANIMALS
Over inanimate objects and plants we have this great emotional advantage that we can love them, whereas they cannot love us, nor even one another, though related by marriage, like flowers.
Animals, however, can love both us and one another and be loved; and this establishes a distinction between them and lower beings, and a relationship with us, that warrants us in placing their attachments under the head of Personal Affections.
Calderwood is sufficiently liberal to admit that, to a degree animals may be included in our affections. But Adolf Horwicz who has written the most complete, and, on the whole, most satisfactory analysis of the human feelings in existence, denies this. “Love is and remains a personal feeling,” he asserts; it “can only be referred to persons, not to things. The tenderness of American ladies towards dogs and cats is simply a gross emotional caricature.”
So it is, very often, especially in the case of ladies who neglect their children and make fashionable pets of animals, changing and exchanging them with the fashion. But it is simply absurd to mention this case as a fair instance of human love towards animals. How many of the greatest geniuses the world has produced have become famous for their affectionate devotion to their dogs! “A dog!” says an old English writer, “is the only thing on this earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” And should we be morally inferior to the dog—unable to love him in return? especially when we remember that “histories,” as Pope remarks, “are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”
Vischer, the well-known German writer on æsthetics, goes so far as to admit that whenever he is in society his only wish is, “Oh, if there was only a dog here!”
There is something much nobler and deeper than sarcasm on humanity in Byron’s famous epitaph on his dog:—
“Near this spot
Are deposited the remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And