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_ The Greeks, instead of confuting my theory that romantic love is the last product of civilization, afford the most striking confirmation of it. While considering the love-affairs of Africans, Australians, and other uncivilized peoples, we were dealing with races whose lack of intelligence and delicacy in general made it natural to expect that their love, too, must be wanting in psychic qualities and refinement. But the Greeks were of a different calibre. Not only their men of affairs--generals and statesmen--but their men of thought and feeling--philosophers and poets--were among the greatest the world has ever seen; yet these philosophers and poets--who, as everywhere, _must have been far above the emotional level of their countrymen in general_--knew nothing of romantic love. What makes this the more remarkable is that, so far as their minds were concerned, they were quite capable of experiencing such a feeling. Indeed, they were actually familiar with the psychic and altruistic ingredients of love; sympathy, devotion, self-sacrifice, affection, are sometimes manifested in their dramas and stories when dealing with the love between parents and children, brothers and sisters, or pairs of friends like Orestes and Pylades. And strangest of all, they actually had a kind of romantic love, which, except for one circumstance, is much like modern romantic love.
Euripides knew this kind of romantic love. Among the fragments that remain to us of his lost tragedies is one from _Dictys_, in which occurs this sentiment:
"He was my friend, and never did love lead me to folly or to Cypris. Yes, there is another kind of love, love for the soul, honorable, continent, and good. Surely men should have passed a law that only the chaste and self-contained should love, and Cypris [Venus] should have been banished."
Now it is very interesting to note that Euripides was a friend of Socrates, who often declared that his philosophy was the science of love, and whose two pupils, Xenophon and Plato, elucidated this science in several of their works. In Xenophon's _Symposium_ Critobulus declares that he would rather be blind to everything else in the world than not to see his beloved; that he would rather _give_ all he had to the beloved than _receive_ twice the amount from another; rather be the beloved's slave than free alone; rather work and dare for the beloved than live alone in ease and security. For, he continues, the enthusiasm which beauty inspires in lovers
"makes them more generous, more eager to exert themselves, and more ambitious to overcome dangers, nay, it makes them purer and more continent, causing them to avoid even that to which the strongest appetite urges them."
Several of Plato's dialogues, especially the _Symposium_ and _Phaedrus_, also bear witness to the fact that the Socratic conception of love resembled modern romantic love in its ideal of purity and its altruistic impulses. Especially notable in this respect are the speeches of Phaedrus and Pausanius in the _Symposium_ (175-78), in which love is declared to be the source of the greatest benefits to us. There can be no greater blessing to a young person, we read, than a virtuous lover. Such a lover would rather die a thousand deaths than do a cowardly or dishonorable deed; and love would make an inspired hero out of the veriest coward. "Love will make men dare to die for the beloved--love alone." "The actions of a lover have a grace which ennobles them." "From this point of view a man fairly argues that in Athens to love and be loved is a very honorable thing." "There is a dishonor in being overcome by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power." "For when the lover and beloved come together ... the lover thinks that he is right in doing any service which he can to his gracious loving one." And in the _Republic_ (VI., 485): "He whose nature is amorous of anything cannot help loving all that belongs or is akin to the object of his affections."[305]
[FOOTNOTE 305: In Mueller's book on the Doric race we read (310) that the love of the Corinthian Philolaus and Diocles "lasted until death," and even their graves were turned toward one another, in token of their affection. Lovers in Athens carved the beloved's names on walls, and innumerable poems were addressed by the leading bards to their favorites.]
All this, as I have said, suggests romantic love, except for one circumstance--a fatal one, however. Modern romantic love is an ecstatic adoration of a woman by a man or of a man by a woman, whereas the romantic love described by Xenophon and Plato--so-called "Platonic love"--has nothing whatever to do with women. It is a passionate, romantic friendship between men and boys, which (whether it really existed or not) the pupils of Socrates dilate upon as the only noble, exalted form of the passion that is presided over by Eros. On this point they are absolutely explicit. Of course it would not do for a Greek philosopher to deny that a woman may perform the noble act of sacrificing her life for her husband--_that_ is her ideal function, as we have seen--so Alcestis is praised and rewarded for giving up her life; yet Plato tells us distinctly (_Symp_., 180) that this phase of feminine love is, after all, inferior to that which led Achilles to give his life for the purpose of avenging the death of his friend Patroclus.[306] What chiefly distinguishes the higher love from the lower is, in the opinion of the pupils of Socrates, purity; and this kind of love does not exist, in their opinion, between men and women. In discussing this higher kind of love both Plato and Xenophon consistently and persistently ignore women, and not only do they ignore them, but they deliberately distinguish between two goddesses of love, one of whom, the celestial, presides--not over refined love between men and women, as we would say--but over the friendships between men only, while the feelings toward women are always inspired by the common goddess of sensual love. In Plato's _Symposium_ (181) this point is made clear by Pausanias:
"The Love who is the offspring of the common Aphrodite is essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as the meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul.... But the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother in whose birth the female has no part,--she is from the male only; this is that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there is nothing of wantonness in her."
[FOOTNOTE 306: Compare Ramdohr, III., 191 and 124.] _
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