Windows of Love

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