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_ II. MONOPOLISM
Whenever she speaks, my ravished ear
No other voice but hers can hear,
No other wit but hers approve:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?
---Lyttleton.
Every lover of nature must have noticed how the sun monopolizes the attention of flowers and leaves. Twist and turn them whichever way you please, on returning afterward you will find them all facing the beloved sun again with their bright corollas and glossy surface. Romantic love exacts a similar monopoly of its devotees. Be their feelings as various, their thoughts as numerous, as the flowers in a garden, the leaves in a forest, they will always be turned toward the beloved one.
JULIET AND NOTHING BUT JULIET
A man may have several intimate friends, and a mother may dote on a dozen or more children with equal affection; but romantic love is a monopolist, absolutely exclusive of all participation and rivalry. A genuine Romeo wants Juliet, the whole of Juliet, and nothing but Juliet. She monopolizes his thoughts by day, his dreams at night; her image blends with everything he sees, her voice with everything he hears. His imagination is a lens which gathers together all the light and heat of a giant world and focuses them on one brunette or blonde. He is a miser, who begrudges every smile, every look she bestows on others, and if he had his own way he would sail with her to-day to a desert island and change their names to Mr. and Mrs. Robinson Crusoe. This is not fanciful hyperbole, but a plain statement in prose of a psychological truth. The poets did not exaggerate when they penned such sentiments as these:
She was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all.
---Byron.
Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me,
And hast command of every part,
To live and die for thee.
---Herrick.
Give me but what that ribband bound,
Take all the rest the world goes round.
---Waller.
But I am tied to very thee
By every thought I have;
Thy face I only care to see
Thy heart I only crave.
---Sedley.
I see her in the dewy flowers,
Sae lovely sweet and fair:
I hear her voice in ilka bird,
Wi' music charm the air:
There's not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green;
There's not a bonny bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean.
---Burns.
For nothing this wide universe I call
Save thou, my rose: in it thou art my all.
---Shakspere.
Like Alexander I will reign,
And I will reign alone,
My thoughts shall evermore disdain
A rival on my throne.
---James Graham.
Love, well thou know'st no partnerships allows.
Cupid averse, rejects divided vows.
---Prior.
O that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race
And, hating no one, love but only her.
---Byron.
BUTTERFLY LOVE
The imperative desire for an absolute monopoly of one chosen girl, body and soul--_and one only_--is an essential, invariable ingredient of romantic love. Sensual love, on the contrary, aims rather at a monopoly of all attractive women--or at least as many as possible. Sensual love is not an exclusive passion for one; it is a fickle feeling which, like a giddy butterfly, flits from flower to flower, forgetting the fragrance of the lily it left a moment ago in the sweet honey of the clover it enjoys at this moment. The Persian poet Sadi, says (_Bustan_, 12), "Choose a fresh wife every spring or New Year's Day; for the almanack of last year is good for nothing." Anacreon interprets Greek love for us when he sings:
"Can'st count the leaves in a forest, the waves in the sea? Then tell me how oft I have loved. Twenty girls in Athens, and fifteen more besides; add to these whole bevies in Corinth, and from Lesbos to Ionia, from Caria and from Rhodos, two thousand sweethearts more.... Two thousand did I say? That includes not those from Syros, from Kanobus, from Creta's cities, where Eros rules alone, nor those from Gadeira, from Bactria, from India--girls for whom I burn."
Lucian vies with Anacreon when he makes Theomestus (_Dial. Amor._) exclaim: "Sooner can'st thou number the waves of the sea and the snowflakes falling from the sky than my loves. One succeeds another, and the new one comes on before the old is off." We call such a thing libertinism, not love. The Greeks had not the name of Don Juan, yet Don Juan was their ideal both for men and for the gods they made in the image of man. Homer makes the king of gods tell his own spouse (who listens without offence) of his diverse love-affairs (_Iliad_, xiv., 317-327). Thirteen centuries after Homer the Greek poet Nonnus gives ([Greek: Dionusiaka], vii.) a catalogue of twelve of Zeus's amours; and we know from other sources (_e.g., Hygin, fab._, 155) that these accounts are far from exhaustive. A complete list would match that yard-long document made for Don Juan by Leporello in Mozart's opera. A French writer has aptly called Jupiter the "Olympian Don Juan;" yet Apollo and most of the other gods might lay claim to the same title, for they are represented as equally amorous, sensual, and fickle; seeing no more wrong in deserting a woman they have made love to, than a bee sees in leaving a flower whose honey it has stolen.
Temporarily, of course, both men and gods focus their interest on one woman--maybe quite ardently--and fiercely resent interference, as an angry bee is apt to sting when kept from the flower it has accidentally chosen; but that is a different thing from the monopolism of true love.
ROMANTIC STORIES OF NON-ROMANTIC LOVE
The romantic lover's dream is to marry one particular woman and her alone; the sensual lover's dream embraces several women, or many. The unromantic ideal of the ancient Hindoo is romantically illustrated in a story told in the _Hitopadesa_ of a Brahman named Wedasarman. One evening someone made him a present of a dish of barley-meal. He carried it to the market hall and lay down in a corner near where a potter had stored his wares. Before going to sleep, the Brahman indulged in these pleasant reveries:
"If I sell this dish of meal I shall probably get ten
farthings for it. For that I can buy some of these
pots, which I can sell again at a profit; thus my money
will increase. Then I shall begin to trade in
betel-nuts, dress-goods and other things, and thus I
may bring my wealth up to a hundred thousand. With that
I shall be able to marry _four wives_, and to the
youngest and prettiest of them I shall give my
tenderest love. How the others will be tortured by
jealousy! But just let them dare to quarrel. They shall
know my wrath and feel my club!"
With these words he laid about him with his club, and of course broke his own dish besides many of the potter's wares. The potter hearing the crash, ran to see what was the matter, and the Brahman was ignominiously thrown out of the hall.
The polygamous imagination of the Hindoos runs riot in many of their stories. To give another instance: _The Kathakoca, or Treasury of Stories_ (translated by C.H. Tawney, 34), includes an account of the adventures of King Kanchanapura, who had five hundred wives; and of Sanatkumara who beheld eight daughters of Manavega and married them. Shortly afterward he married a beautiful lady and her sister. Then he conquered Vajravega and married one hundred maidens.
Hindoo books assure us that women, unless restrained, are no better than men. We read in the same _Hitopadesa_ that they are like cows--always searching for new herbs in the meadows to graze on. In polyandrous communities the women make good use of their opportunities. Dalton, in his book on the wild tribes of Bengal, tells this quaint story:
"A very pretty Dophla girl once came into the station
of Luckimpur, threw herself at my feet and in most
poetical language asked me to give her protection. She
was the daughter of a chief and was sought in marriage
and promised to a peer of her father who had many other
wives. She would not submit to be one of many, and
besides she loved and she eloped with her beloved. This
was interesting and romantic. She was at the time in a
very coarse travelling dress, but assured of protection
she took fresh apparel and ornament from her basket and
proceeded to array herself, and very pretty she looked
as she combed and plaited her long hair and completed
her toilette. In the meantime I had sent for the
'beloved,' who had kept in the background, and alas!
how the romance was dispelled when a _dual_ appeared!
_She had eloped with two men!_"
Every reader will laugh at this denouement, and that laugh is eloquent proof that in saying there can be no real love without absolute monopolism of one heart by another I simply formulated and emphasized a truth which we all feel instinctively. Dalton's tale also brings out very clearly the world-wide difference between a romantic love-story and a story of romantic love.
Turning from the Old World to the New we find stories illustrating the same amusing disregard of amorous monopolism. Rink, in his book of Eskimo tales and traditions, cites a song which voices the reveries of a Greenland bachelor:
"I am going to leave the country--in a large ship--for
that sweet little woman. I'll try to get some beads--of
those that look like boiled ones. Then when I've gone
abroad--I shall return again. My nasty little
relatives--I'll call them all to me--and give them a
good thrashing--with a big rope's end. Then I'll go to
marry--_taking two at once_. That darling little
creature--shall only wear clothes of the spotted
seal-skins, and the other little pet shall have
clothes of the young hooded seals."
Powers tells a tragic tale of the California Indians, which in some respects reminds one of the man who jumped into a bramble-bush and scratched out both his eyes.
"There was once a man who loved two women and
wished to marry them. Now these two women were
magpies, but they loved him not, and laughed
his wooing to scorn. Then he fell into a rage
and cursed these two women, and went far away
to the North. There he set the world on fire,
then made for himself a tule boat, wherein he
escaped to sea, and was never seen more."
Belden, who spent twelve years among the Sioux and other Indians, writes:
"I once knew a young man who had about a dozen horses
he had captured at different times from the enemy, and
who fell desperately in love with a girl of nineteen.
_She loved him in return_, but said she could not bear
to leave her tribe, and go to a Santee village, unless
her two sisters, aged respectively fifteen and
seventeen, went with her. Determined to have his
sweetheart, the next time the warrior visited the
Yankton village he took several ponies with him, and
bought all three of the girls from their parents,
giving five ponies for them."
OBSTACLES TO MONOPOLISM
Heriot, during his sojourn among Canadian Indians, became convinced from what he saw that love does not admit of divided affections, and can hardly coexist with polygamy (324). Schoolcraft notes the "curious fact" concerning the Indian that after a war "one of the first things he thought of as a proper reward for his bravery was to take another wife." In the chapter entitled "Honorable Polygamy" we saw how, in polygamous communities the world over, monogamy was despised as the "poor man's marriage," and was practised, not from choice, but from necessity. Every man who was able to do so bought or stole several women, and joined the honorable guild of polygamists. Such a custom, enforced by a strong public opinion, created a sentiment which greatly retarded the development of monopolism in sexual love. A young Indian might dream of marrying a certain girl, not, however, with a view to giving her his whole heart, but only as a beginning. The woman, it is true, was expected to give herself to one husband, but he seldom hesitated to lend her to a friend as an act of hospitality, and in many cases, would hire her out to a stranger in return for gifts.
In not a few communities of Asia, Melanesia, Polynesia, Australia, Africa, and America polyandry prevailed; that is, the woman was expected to bestow her caresses in turn on two or more men, to the destruction of the desire for exclusive possession which is an imperative trait of love. Rowney describes (154) what we might call syndicate marriage which has prevailed among the Meeris of India:
"All the girls have their prices, the largest
price for the best-looking girl varying from
twenty to thirty pigs, and, if one man cannot
give so many, he has no objection to take
partners to make up the number."
According to Julius Caesar, it was customary among the ancient Britons for brothers, and sometimes for father and sons, to have their wives in common, and Tacitus found evidence of a similar custom among the ancient Germans; while in some parts of Media it was the ambition of the women to have two or more husbands, and Strabo relates that those who succeeded looked down with pride on their less fortunate sisters. When the Spaniards first arrived at Lanzarote, in South America, they found the women married to several husbands, who lived with their common spouse in turn each a month. The Tibetans, according to Samuel Turner, look on marriage as a disagreeable duty which the members of a family must try to alleviate by sharing its burdens. The Nair woman in India may have up to ten or twelve husbands, with each of whom she lives ten days at a time. Among some Himalayan tribes, when the oldest brother marries, he generally shares his wife with his younger brothers.
WIVES AND GIRLS IN COMMON
Of the Port Lincoln Tribe in Australia, Schuermann says that the brothers practically have their wives in common.
"A peculiar nomenclature has arisen from these
singular connections; a woman honors the brothers
of the man to whom she is married by the
indiscriminate name of husbands; but the men
make a distinction, calling their own individual
spouses yungaras, and those to whom they have
a secondary claim, by right of brotherhood,
kartetis."
R.H. Codrington, a scientifically educated missionary who had twenty-four years' experience on the islands of the Pacific, wrote a valuable book on the Melanesians in which occur the following luminous remarks:
"All women who may become wives in marriage, and are not yet appropriated, are to a certain extent looked upon by those who may be their husbands as open to a more or less legitimate intercourse. In fact, appropriation of particular women to their own husbands, though established by every sanction of native custom, has by no means so strong a hold in native society, nor in all probability anything like so deep a foundation in the history of the native people, as the severance of either sex by divisions which most strictly limit the intercourse of men and women to those of the section or sections to which they themselves do not belong. Two proofs or exemplifications of this are conspicuous. (1) There is probably no place in which the common opinion of Melanesians approves the intercourse of the unmarried youths and girls as a thing good in itself, though it allows it as a thing to be expected and excused; but intercourse within the limit which restrains from marriage, where two members of the same division are concerned, is a crime, is incest.... (2) The feeling, on the other hand, that the intercourse of the sexes was natural where the man and woman belonged to different divisions, was shown by that feature of native hospitality which provided a guest with a temporary wife." Though now denied in some places, "there can be no doubt that it was common everywhere."
Nor can there be any doubt that what Codrington here says of the Melanesians applies also to Polynesians, Australians, and to uncivilized peoples in general. It shows that even where monogamy prevails--as it does quite extensively among the lower races[12]--we must not look for monopolism as a matter of course. The two are very far from being identical. Primitive marriage is not a matter of sentiment but of utility and sensual greed. Monogamy, in its lower phases, does not exclude promiscuous intercourse before marriage and (with the husband's permission) after marriage. A man appropriates a particular woman, not because he is solicitous for a monopoly of her chaste affections, but because he needs a drudge to cook and toil for him. Primitive marriage, in short, has little in common with civilized marriage except the name--an important fact the disregard of which has led to no end of confusion in anthropological and sociological literature.[13]
[FOOTNOTE 12: See Westermarck, Chap. XX., for a list of monogamous peoples.]
[FOOTNOTE 13: The vexed question of promiscuity hinges on this distinction. As a matter of _form_ promiscuity may not have been the earliest phase of human marriage, but as a matter of _fact_ it was. Westermarck's ingeniously and elaborately built up argument against the theory of promiscuity is a leaning tower which crashes to the ground when weighted by this one consideration. See the chapter on Australia.]
TRIAL MARRIAGES
At a somewhat higher stage, marriage becomes primarily an institution for raising soldiers for the state or sons to perform ancestor worship. This is still very far from the modern ideal which makes marriage a lasting union of two loving souls, children or no children. Particularly instructive, from our point of view, is the custom of trial marriage, which has prevailed among many peoples differing otherwise as widely as ancient Egyptians and modern Borneans.[14] A modern lover would loathe the idea of such a trial marriage, because he feels sure that his love will be eternal and unalterable. He may be mistaken, but that at any rate is his ideal: it includes lasting monopolism. If a modern sweetheart offered her lover a temporary marriage, he would either firmly and anxiously decline it, fearing that she might take advantage of the contract and leave him at the end of the year; or, what is much more probable, his love, if genuine, would die a sudden death, because no respectable girl could make such an offer, and genuine love cannot exist without respect for the beloved, whatever may be said to the contrary by those who know not the difference between sensual and sentimental love.
[FOOTNOTE 14: For a partial list of peoples who practised trial marriage and frequent divorce see Westermarck, 518-521, and C. Fischer, Ueber die Probennaechte der deutschen Bauernmaedchen_. Leipzig, 1780.]
TWO ROMAN LOVERS
While I am convinced that all these things are as stated, I do not wish to deny that monopolism of a violent kind may and does occur in love which is merely sensual. In fact, I have expressly classed monopolism among those seven ingredients of love which occur in its sensual as well as its sentimental phases. For a correct diagnosis of love it is indeed of great importance to bear this in mind, as we might otherwise be led astray by specious passages, especially in Greek and Roman literature, in which sensual love sometimes reaches a degree of subtility, delicacy, and refinement, which approximate it to sentimental love, though a critical analysis always reveals the difference. The two best instances I know of occur in Tibullus and Terence. Tibullus, in one of his finest poems (IV., 13), expresses the monopolistic wish that his favorite might seem beautiful to him only, displeasing all others, for then he would be safe from all rivalry; then he might live happy in forest solitudes, and she alone would be to him a multitude:
Atque utinam posses uni mihi bella videri;
Displiceas aliis: sic ego tutus ero.
Sic ego secretis possum bene vivere silvis
Qua nulla humano sit via trita pede.
Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atra
Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.
Unfortunately, the opening line of this poem:
Nulla tuum nobis subducet femina lectum,
and what is known otherwise of the dissolute character of the poet and of all the women to whom he addressed his verses, make it only too obvious that there is here no question of purity, of respect, of adoration, of any of the qualities which distinguish supersensual love from lust.
More interesting still is a passage in the _Eunuchus_ of Terence (I., 2) which has doubtless misled many careless readers into accepting it as evidence of genuine romantic love, existing two thousand years ago:
"What more do I wish?" asks Phaedria of his girl
Thais: "That while at the soldier's side you
are not his, that you love me day and night,
desire me, dream of me, expect me, think of me,
hope for me, take delight in me, finally, be
my soul as I am yours."
Here, too, there is no trace of supersensual, self-sacrificing affection (the only sure test of love); but it might be argued that the monopolism, at any rate, is absolute. But when we read the whole play, even that is seen to be mere verbiage and affectation--sentimentality,[15] not sentiment. The girl in question is a common harlot "never satisfied with one lover," as Parmeno tells her, and she answers: "Quite true, but do not bother me"--and her Phaedria, though he talks monopolism, does not _feel_ it, for in the first act she easily persuades him to retire to the country for a few days, while she offers herself to a soldier. And again, at the end of the play, when he seems at last to have ousted his military rival, the latter's parasite Gnatho persuades him, without the slightest difficulty, to continue sharing the girl with the soldier, because the latter is old and harmless, but has plenty of money, while Phaedria is poor.
[FOOTNOTE 15: For the distinction between sentiment and sentimentality see the chapter on Sensuality, Sentimentality, and Sentiment.]
Thus a passage which at first sight seemed sentimental and romantic, resolves itself into flabby sensualism, with no more moral fibre than the "love" of the typical Turk, as revealed, for instance, in a love song, communicated by Eugene Schuyler (I., 135):
"Nightingale! I am sad! As passionately as thou
lovest the rose, so loudly sing that my loved
one awake. Let me die in the embrace of my dear
one, for I envy no one. I know that thou hast
many lovers; but what affair of mine is that?"
One of the most characteristic literary curiosities relating to monopolism that I have found occurs in the Hindoo drama, _Malavika and Agnimitra_ (Act V.). While intended very seriously, to us it reads for all the world like a polygamous parody by Artemus Ward of Byron's lines just cited ("She was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all"). An Indian queen having generously bestowed on her husband a rival to be his second wife, Kausiki, a Buddhist nun, commends her action in these words:
"I am not surprised at your magnanimity. If wives
are kind and devoted to their husbands they even
serve them by bringing them new wives, like the
streams which become channels for conveying the
water of the rivers to the ocean."
Monopolism has a watch-dog, a savage Cerberus, whose duty it is to ward off intruders. He goes by the name of Jealousy, and claims our attention next. _
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