Windows of Love

FALLING IN LOVE WITH OTHER ESSAYS ON MORE EXACT BRANCHES OF SCIENCE

Some people complain that science is dry. That is, of course, a matterof taste. For my own part, I like my science and my champagne as dry asI can get them. But the public thinks otherwise. So I have ventured tosweeten accompanying samples as far as possible to suit the demand, andtrust they will meet with the approbation of consumers.

Of the specimens here selected for exhibition, my title piece originallyappeared in the _Fortnightly Review_: ‘Honey Dew’ and ‘The First Potter’were contributions to _Longman’s Magazine_: and all the rest foundfriendly shelter between the familiar yellow covers of the good old_Cornhill_. My thanks are due to the proprietors and editors of thosevarious periodicals for kind permission to reproduce them here.

FALLING IN LOVE

An ancient and famous human institution is in pressing danger. SirGeorge Campbell has set his face against the time-honoured practice ofFalling in Love. Parents innumerable, it is true, have set their facesagainst it already from immemorial antiquity; but then they onlyattacked the particular instance, without venturing to impugn theinstitution itself on general principles. An old Indian administrator,however, goes to work in all things on a different pattern. He wouldalways like to regulate human life generally as a department of theIndia Office; and so Sir George Campbell would fain have husbands andwives selected for one another (perhaps on Dr. Johnson’s principle, bythe Lord Chancellor) with a view to the future development of the race,in the process which he not very felicitously or elegantly describes as’man-breeding.’ ‘Probably,’ he says, as reported in _Nature_, ‘we haveenough physiological knowledge to effect a vast improvement in thepairing of individuals of the same or allied races if we could onlyapply that knowledge to make fitting marriages, instead of giving way tofoolish ideas about love and the tastes of young people, whom we canhardly trust to choose their own bonnets, much less to choose in agraver matter in which they are most likely to be influenced byfrivolous prejudices.’ He wants us, in other words, to discard thedeep-seated inner physiological promptings of inherited instinct, and tosubstitute for them some calm and dispassionate but artificialselection of a fitting partner as the father or mother of futuregenerations.

Now this is of course a serious subject, and it ought to be treatedseriously and reverently. But, it seems to me, Sir George Campbell’s

conclusion is exactly the opposite one from the conclusion now beingforced upon men of science by a study of the biological andpsychological elements in this very complex problem of heredity. So farfrom considering love as a ‘foolish idea,’ opposed to the best interestsof the race, I believe most competent physiologists and psychologists,especially those of the modern evolutionary school, would regard itrather as an essentially beneficent and conservative instinct developedand maintained in us by natural causes, for the very purpose of insuringjust those precise advantages and improvements which Sir George Campbellthinks he could himself effect by a conscious and deliberate process ofselection. More than that, I believe, for my own part (and I feel suremost evolutionists would cordially agree with me), that this beneficentinherited instinct of Falling in Love effects the object it has in viewfar more admirably, subtly, and satisfactorily, on the average ofinstances, than any clumsy human selective substitute could possiblyeffect it.

In short, my doctrine is simply the old-fashioned and confiding beliefthat marriages are made in heaven: with the further corollary thatheaven manages them, one time with another, a great deal better than SirGeorge Campbell.

Let us first look how Falling in Love affects the standard of humanefficiency; and then let us consider what would be the probable resultof any definite conscious attempt to substitute for it some moredeliberate external agency.

Falling in Love, as modern biology teaches us to believe, is nothingmore than the latest, highest, and most involved exemplification, in thehuman race, of that almost universal selective process which Mr. Darwinhas enabled us to recognise throughout the whole long series of theanimal kingdom. The butterfly that circles and eddies in his aerialdance around his observant mate is endeavouring to charm her by thedelicacy of his colouring, and to overcome her coyness by the display ofhis skill. The peacock that struts about in imperial pride under theeyes of his attentive hens, is really contributing to the future beautyand strength of his race by collecting to himself a harem through whomhe hands down to posterity the valuable qualities which have gained theadmiration of his mates in his own person. Mr. Wallace has shown that tobe beautiful is to be efficient; and sexual selection is thus, as itwere, a mere lateral form of natural selection–a survival of thefittest in the guise of mutual attractiveness and mutual adaptability,producing on the average a maximum of the best properties of the race inthe resulting offspring. I need not dwell here upon this aspect of thecase, because it is one with which, since the publication of the’Descent of Man,’ all the world has been sufficiently familiar.

In our own species, the selective process is marked by all the featurescommon to selection throughout the whole animal kingdom; but it is also,as might be expected, far more specialised, far more individualised, far

more cognisant of personal traits and minor peculiarities. It isfurthermore exerted to a far greater extent upon mental and moral aswell as physical peculiarities in the individual.

We cannot fall in love with everybody alike. Some of us fall in lovewith one person, some with another. This instinctive and deep-seateddifferential feeling we may regard as the outcome of complementaryfeatures, mental, moral, or physical, in the two persons concerned; andexperience shows us that, in nine cases out of ten, it is a reciprocalaffection, that is to say, in other words, an affection roused in unisonby varying qualities in the respective individuals.

Of its eminently conservative and even upward tendency very little doubtcan be reasonably entertained. We _do_ fall in love, taking us in thelump, with the young, the beautiful, the strong, and the healthy; we do_not_ fall in love, taking us in the lump, with the aged, the ugly, thefeeble, and the sickly. The prohibition of the Church is scarcely neededto prevent a man from marrying his grandmother. Moralists have alwaysborne a special grudge to pretty faces; but, as Mr. Herbert Spenceradmirably put it (long before the appearance of Darwin’s selectivetheory), ‘the saying that beauty is but skin-deep is itself but askin-deep saying.’ In reality, beauty is one of the very best guides wecan possibly have to the desirability, so far as race-preservation isconcerned, of any man or any woman as a partner in marriage. A fineform, a good figure, a beautiful bust, a round arm and neck, a freshcomplexion, a lovely face, are all outward and visible signs of thephysical qualities that on the whole conspire to make up a healthy andvigorous wife and mother; they imply soundness, fertility, a goodcirculation, a good digestion. Conversely, sallowness and paleness areroughly indicative of dyspepsia and anaemia; a flat chest is a symptom ofdeficient maternity; and what we call a bad figure is really, in one wayor another, an unhealthy departure from the central norma and standardof the race. Good teeth mean good deglutition; a clear eye means anactive liver; scrubbiness and undersizedness mean feeble virility. Norare indications of mental and moral efficiency by any means wanting asrecognised elements in personal beauty. A good-humoured face is initself almost pretty. A pleasant smile half redeems unattractivefeatures. Low, receding foreheads strike us unfavourably. Heavy, stolid,half-idiotic countenances can never be beautiful, however regular theirlines and contours. Intelligence and goodness are almost as necessary ashealth and vigour in order to make up our perfect ideal of a beautifulhuman face and figure. The Apollo Belvedere is no fool; the murderers inthe Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s are for the most part nobeauties.

What we all fall in love with, then, as a race, is in most casesefficiency and ability. What we each fall in love with individually is,I believe, our moral, mental, and physical complement. Not our like, notour counterpart; quite the contrary; within healthy limits, our unlikeand our opposite. That this is so has long been more or less a

commonplace of ordinary conversation; that it is scientifically true,one time with another, when we take an extended range of cases, may, Ithink, be almost demonstrated by sure and certain warranty of humannature.

Brothers and sisters have more in common, mentally and physically, thanany other members of the same race can possibly have with one another.But nobody falls in love with his sister. A profound instinct has taughteven the lower races of men (for the most part) to avoid such union ofthe all-but-identical. In the higher races the idea never so much asoccurs to us. Even cousins seldom fall in love–seldom, that is to say,in comparison with the frequent opportunities of intercourse they enjoy,relatively to the remainder of general society. When they do, and whenthey carry out their perilous choice effectively by marriage, naturalselection soon avenges Nature upon the offspring by cutting off theidiots, the consumptives, the weaklings, and the cripples, who oftenresult from such consanguineous marriages. In narrow communities, wherebreeding in-and-in becomes almost inevitable, natural selection hassimilarly to exert itself upon a crowd of _cretins_ and other haplessincapables. But in wide and open champaign countries, where individualchoice has free room for exercise, men and women as a rule (if notconstrained by parents and moralists) marry for love, and marry on thewhole their natural complements. They prefer outsiders, fresh blood,somebody who comes from beyond the community, to the people of their ownimmediate surroundings. In many men the dislike to marrying among thefolk with whom they have been brought up amounts almost to a positiveinstinct; they feel it as impossible to fall in love with afellow-townswoman as to fall in love with their own first cousins. Amongexogamous tribes such an instinct (aided, of course, by other extraneouscauses) has hardened into custom; and there is reason to believe (fromthe universal traces among the higher civilisations of marriage bycapture) that all the leading races of the world are ultimately derivedfrom exogamous ancestors, possessing this healthy and excellentsentiment.

In minor matters, it is of course universally admitted that short men,as a rule, prefer tall women, while tall men admire little women. Darkpairs by preference with fair; the commonplace often runs after theoriginal. People have long noticed that this attraction towards one’sopposite tends to keep true the standard of the race; they have not,perhaps, so generally observed that it also indicates roughly theexistence in either individual of a desire for its own naturalcomplement. It is difficult here to give definite examples, buteverybody knows how, in the subtle psychology of Falling in Love, thereare involved innumerable minor elements, physical and mental, whichstrike us exactly because of their absolute adaptation to form withourselves an adequate union. Of course we do not definitely seek outand discover such qualities; instinct works far more intuitively thanthat; but we find at last, by subsequent observation, how true and howtrustworthy were its immediate indications. That is to say, those men do

so who were wise enough or fortunate enough to follow the earliestpromptings of their own hearts, and not to be ashamed of that divinestand deepest of human intuitions, love at first sight.

How very subtle this intuition is, we can only guess in part by theapparent capriciousness and incomprehensibility of its occasionalaction. We know that some men and women fall in love easily, whileothers are only moved to love by some very special and singularcombination of peculiarities. We know that one man is readily stirred byevery pretty face he sees, while another man can only be roused byintellectual qualities or by moral beauty. We know that sometimes wemeet people possessing every virtue and grace under heaven, and yet forsome unknown and incomprehensible reason we could no more fall in lovewith them than we could fall in love with the Ten Commandments. I don’t,of course, for a moment accept the silly romantic notion that men andwomen fall in love only once in their lives, or that each one of us hassomewhere on earth his or her exact affinity, whom we must sooner orlater meet or else die unsatisfied. Almost every healthy normal man orwoman has probably fallen in love over and over again in the course of alifetime (except in case of very early marriage), and could easily finddozens of persons with whom they would be capable of falling in loveagain if due occasion offered. We are not all created in pairs, like theExchequer tallies, exactly intended to fit into one another’s minoridiosyncrasies. Men and women as a rule very sensibly fall in love withone another in the particular places and the particular societies theyhappen to be cast among. A man at Ashby-de-la-Zouch does not hunt theworld over to find his pre-established harmony at Paray-le-Monial or atDenver, Colorado. But among the women he actually meets, a vast numberare purely indifferent to him; only one or two, here and there, strikehim in the light of possible wives, and only one in the last resort(outside Salt Lake City) approves herself to his inmost nature as theactual wife of his final selection.

Now this very indifference to the vast mass of our fellow-countrymen orfellow-countrywomen, this extreme pitch of selective preference in thehuman species, is just one mark of our extraordinary specialisation, onestamp and token of our high supremacy. The brutes do not so pick andchoose, though even there, as Darwin has shown, selection plays a largepart (for the very butterflies are coy, and must be wooed and won). Itis only in the human race itself that selection descends into suchminute, such subtle, such indefinable discriminations. Why should auniversal and common impulse have in our case these special limits? Whyshould we be by nature so fastidious and so diversely affected? Surelyfor some good and sufficient purpose. No deep-seated want of our complexlife would be so narrowly restricted without a law and a meaning.Sometimes we can in part explain its conditions. Here, we see thatbeauty plays a great _role_; there, we recognise the importance ofstrength, of manner, of grace, of moral qualities. Vivacity, as Mr.Galton justly remarks, is one of the most powerful among humanattractions, and often accounts for what might otherwise seem

unaccountable preferences. But after all is said and done, there remainsa vast mass of instinctive and inexplicable elements: a power deeper andmore marvellous in its inscrutable ramifications than humanconsciousness. ‘What on earth,’ we say, ‘could So-and-so see inSo-and-so to fall in love with?’ This very inexplicability I take to bethe sign and seal of a profound importance. An instinct so conditioned,so curious, so vague, so unfathomable, as we may guess by analogy withall other instincts, must be Nature’s guiding voice within us, speakingfor the good of the human race in all future generations.

On the other hand, let us suppose for a moment (impossible supposition!)that mankind could conceivably divest itself of ‘these foolish ideasabout love and the tastes of young people,’ and could hand over thechoice of partners for life to a committee of anthropologists, presidedover by Sir George Campbell. Would the committee manage things, Iwonder, very much better than the Creator has managed them? Where wouldthey obtain that intimate knowledge of individual structures andfunctions and differences which would enable them to join together inholy matrimony fitting and complementary idiosyncrasies? Is a livingman, with all his organs, and powers, and faculties, and dispositions,so simple and easy a problem to read that anybody else can readilyundertake to pick out off-hand a help meet for him? I trow not! A man isnot a horse or a terrier. You cannot discern his ‘points’ by simpleinspection. You cannot see _a priori_ why a Hanoverian bandsman and hisheavy, ignorant, uncultured wife, should conspire to produce a SirWilliam Herschel. If you tried to improve the breed artificially, eitherby choice from outside, or by the creation of an independent moralsentiment, irrespective of that instinctive preference which we callFalling in Love, I believe that so far from improving man, you wouldonly do one of two things–either spoil his constitution, or produce atame stereotyped pattern of amiable imbecility. You would crush out allinitiative, all spontaneity, all diversity, all originality; you wouldget an animated moral code instead of living men and women.

Look at the analogy of domestic animals. That is the analogy to whichbreeding reformers always point with special pride: but what does itreally teach us? That you can’t improve the efficiency of animals in anyone point to any high degree, without upsetting the general balance oftheir constitution. The race-horse can run a mile on a particular day ata particular place, bar accidents, with wonderful speed: but that isabout all he is good for. His health as a whole is so surprisinglyfeeble that he has to be treated with as much care as a delicate exotic.’In regard to animals and plants,’ says Sir George Campbell, ‘we havevery largely mastered the principles of heredity and culture, and themodes by which good qualities may be maximised, bad qualitiesminimised.’ True, so far as concerns a few points prized by ourselvesfor our own purposes. But in doing this, we have so lowered the generalconstitutional vigour of the plants or animals that our vines fall aneasy prey to oidium and phylloxera, our potatoes to the potato diseaseand the Colorado beetle; our sheep are stupid, our rabbits idiotic, our