Essays of Schopenhauer · Arthur Schopenhauer
METAPHYSICS OF LOVE.
This is probably the only way in which to make the inner or subjective process, from which spring all manifestations of instinct, intelligible to us. The outer or objective process, however, shows in animals strongly controlled by instinct, as insects for instance, a preponderance of the ganglion--_i.e., subjective_ nervous system over the _objective_ or cerebral system. From which it may be concluded that they are controlled not so much by objective and proper apprehension as by subjective ideas, which excite desire and arise through the influence of the ganglionic system upon the brain; accordingly they are moved by a certain illusion.... The great preponderance of brain in man accounts for his having fewer instincts than the lower order of animals, and for even these few easily being led astray. For instance, the sense of beauty which instinctively guides a man in his selection of a mate is misguided when it degenerates into the proneness to pederasty. Similarly, the blue-bottle (_Musca vomitoria_), which instinctively ought to place its eggs in putrified flesh, lays them in the blossom of the _Arum dracunculus_, because it is misled by the decaying odour of this plant. That an absolutely generic instinct is the foundation of all love of sex may be confirmed by a closer analysis of the subject--an analysis which can hardly be avoided.
Those that immediately concern the type of the species, _id est_, beauty; those that concern other physical qualities; and finally, those that are merely relative and spring from the necessary correction or neutralisation of the one-sided qualities and abnormities of the two individuals by each other. Let us look at these considerations separately. The first consideration that influences our choice and feelings is _age_.... The second consideration is that of _health_: a severe illness may alarm us for the time being, but an illness of a chronic nature or even cachexy frightens us away, because it would be transmitted. The third consideration is the _skeleton_, since it is the foundation of the type of the _species_. Next to old age and disease, nothing disgusts us so much as a deformed shape; even the most beautiful face cannot make amends for it--in fact, the ugliest face combined with a well-grown shape is infinitely preferable. Moreover, we are most keenly sensible of every malformation of the _skeleton_; as, for instance, a stunted, short-legged form, and the like, or a limping gait when it is not the result of some extraneous accident: while a conspicuously beautiful figure compensates for every defect. It delights us. Further, the great importance which is attached to small feet! This is because the size of the foot is an essential characteristic of the species, for no animal has the tarsus and metatarsus combined so small as man; hence the uprightness of his gait: he is a plantigrade. And Jesus Sirach has said[17] (according to the improved translation by Kraus), "A woman that is well grown and has beautiful feet is like pillars of gold in sockets of silver." The teeth, too, are important, because they are essential for nourishment, and quite peculiarly hereditary.
The fourth consideration is a certain _plumpness_, in other words, a superabundance of the vegetative function, plasticity.... Hence excessive thinness strikingly repels us.... The last consideration that influences us is a _beautiful face_. Here, too, the bone parts are taken into account before everything else. So that almost everything depends on a beautiful nose, while a short _retroussé_ one will mar all. A slight upward or downward turn of the nose has often determined the life's happiness of a great many maidens; and justly so, for the type of the species is at stake. A small mouth, by means of small maxillae, is very essential, as it is the specific characteristic of the human face as distinguished from the muzzle of the brutes. A receding, as it were, a cut-away chin is particularly repellent, because _mentum prominulum_ is a characteristic belonging exclusively to our species.
Finally, we come to the consideration of beautiful eyes and a beautiful forehead; they depend upon the psychical qualities, and in particular, the intellectual, which are inherited from the mother. The unconscious considerations which, on the other hand, influence women in their choice naturally cannot be so accurately specified. In general, we may say the following:--That the age they prefer is from thirty to thirty-five. For instance, they prefer men of this age to youths, who in reality possess the highest form of human beauty. The reason for this is that they are not guided by taste but by instinct, which recognises in this particular age the acme of generative power. In general, women pay little attention to beauty, that is, to beauty of face; they seem to take it upon themselves alone to endow the child with beauty. It is chiefly the strength of a man and the courage that goes with it that attract them, for both of these promise the generation of robust children and at the same time a brave protector for them. Every physical defect in a man, any deviation from the type, a woman may, with regard to the child, eradicate if she is faultless in these parts herself or excels in a contrary direction. The only exceptions are those qualities which are peculiar to the man, and which, in consequence, a mother cannot bestow on her child; these include the masculine build of the skeleton, breadth of shoulder, small hips, straight legs, strength of muscle, courage, beard, and so on. And so it happens that a woman frequently loves an ugly man, albeit she never loves an unmanly man, because she cannot neutralise his defects.
The second class of considerations that are the source of love are those depending on the psychical qualities. Here we shall find that a woman universally is attracted by the qualities of a man's heart or character, both of which are inherited from the father. It is mainly firmness of will, determination and courage, and may be honesty and goodness of heart too, that win a woman over; while intellectual qualifications exercise no direct or instinctive power over her, for the simple reason that these are not inherited from the father. A lack of intelligence carries no weight with her; in fact, a superabundance of mental power or even genius, as abnormities, might have an unfavourable effect. And so we frequently find a woman preferring a stupid, ugly, and ill-mannered man to one who is well-educated, intellectual, and agreeable. Hence, people of extremely different temperament frequently marry for love--that is to say, _he_ is coarse, strong, and narrow-minded, while _she_ is very sensitive, refined, cultured, and aesthetic, and so on; or _he_ is genial and clever, and _she_ is a goose. "Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares Formas atque animos sub juga aënea Saevo mittere cum joco."
The reason for this is, that she is not influenced by intellectual considerations, but by something entirely different, namely, instinct. Marriage is not regarded as a means for intellectual entertainment, but for the generation of children; it is a union of hearts and not of minds. When a woman says that she has fallen in love with a man's mind, it is either a vain and ridiculous pretence on her part or the exaggeration of a degenerate being. A man, on the other hand, is not controlled in instinctive love by the _qualities_ of the woman's _character_; this is why so many a Socrates has found his Xantippe, as for instance, Shakespeare, Albrecht Dürer, Byron, and others. But here we have the influence of intellectual qualities, because they are inherited from the mother; nevertheless their influence is easily overpowered by physical beauty, which concerns more essential points, and therefore has a more direct effect. By the way, it is for this reason that mothers who have either felt or experienced the former influence have their daughters taught the fine arts, languages, etc., so that they may prove more attractive. In this way they hope by artificial means to pad the intellect, just as they do their bust and hips if it is necessary to do so. Let it be understood that here we are simply speaking of that attraction which is absolutely direct and instinctive, and from which springs real love. That an intelligent and educated woman esteems intelligence and brains in a man, and that a man after deliberate reasoning criticises and considers the character of his _fianceé_, are matters which do not concern our present subject. Such things influence a rational selection in marriage, but they do not control passionate love, which is our matter.
Up to the present I have taken into consideration merely the _absolute_ considerations--_id est_, such considerations as apply to every one. I now come to the _relative_ considerations, which are individual, because they aim at rectifying the type of the species which is defectively presented and at correcting any deviation from it existing in the person of the chooser himself, and in this way lead back to a pure presentation of the type. Hence each man loves what he himself is deficient in. The choice that is based on relative considerations--that is, has in view the constitution of the individual--is much more certain, decided, and exclusive than the choice that is made after merely absolute considerations; consequently real passionate love will have its origin, as a rule, in these relative considerations, and it will only be the ordinary phases of love that spring from the absolute. So that it is not stereotyped, perfectly beautiful women who are wont to kindle great passions. Before a truly passionate feeling can exist, something is necessary that is perhaps best expressed by a metaphor in chemistry--namely, the two persons must neutralise each other, like acid and alkali to a neutral salt. Before this can be done the following conditions are essential. In the first place, all sexuality is one-sided. This one-sidedness is more definitely expressed and exists in a higher degree in one person than in another; so that it may be better supplemented and neutralised in each individual by one person than by another of the opposite sex, because the individual requires a one-sidedness opposite to his own in order to complete the type of humanity in the new individual to be generated, to the constitution of which everything tends....
The following is necessary for this neutralisation of which we are speaking. The particular degree of _his_ manhood must exactly correspond to the particular degree of _her_ womanhood in order to exactly balance the one-sidedness of each. Hence the most manly man will desire the most womanly woman, and _vice versâ_, and so each will want the individual that exactly corresponds to him in degree of sex. Inasmuch as two persons fulfil this necessary relation towards each other, it is instinctively felt by them and is the origin, together with the other _relative_ considerations, of the higher degrees of love. While, therefore, two lovers are pathetically talking about the harmony of their souls, the kernel of the conversation is for the most part the harmony concerning the individual and its perfection, which obviously is of much more importance than the harmony of their souls--which frequently turns out to be a violent discord shortly after marriage. We now come to those other relative considerations which depend on each individual trying to eradicate, through the medium of another, his weaknesses, deficiencies, and deviations from the type, in order that they may not be perpetuated in the child that is to be born or develop into absolute abnormities. The weaker a man is in muscular power, the more will he desire a woman who is muscular; and the same thing applies to a woman....
Nevertheless, if a big woman choose a big husband, in order, perhaps, to present a better appearance in society, the children, as a rule, suffer for her folly. Again, another very decided consideration is complexion. Blonde people fancy either absolutely dark complexions or brown; but it is rarely the case _vice versâ_. The reason for it is this: that fair hair and blue eyes are a deviation from the type and almost constitute an abnormity, analogous to white mice, or at any rate white horses. They are not indigenous to any other part of the world but Europe,--not even to the polar regions,--and are obviously of Scandinavian origin. _En passant_, it is my conviction that a white skin is not natural to man, and that by nature he has either a black or brown skin like our forefathers, the Hindoos, and that the white man was never originally created by nature; and that, therefore, there is no _race_ of white people, much as it is talked about, but every white man is a bleached one. Driven up into the north, where he was a stranger, and where he existed only like an exotic plant, in need of a hothouse in winter, man in the course of centuries became white. The gipsies, an Indian tribe which emigrated only about four centuries ago, show the transition of 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.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.