Although nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs of love, it might at all events be possible to implant in young minds such views of Character as should enable them to discriminate between the true and the false, and to accustom them to hold in esteem those qualities of moral purity and integrity, without which life is but a scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its name. "Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term, is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness, is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence. The sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration engendered by it, all prove its claim to a high moral influence. It is the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish part of our nature."It is by means of this divine passion that the world is kept ever fresh and young. It is the perpetual melody of humanity. It sheds an effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo round age. It glorifies the present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by the beams it casts forward. The love which is the outcome of esteem and admiration, has an elevating and purifying effect on the character. It tends to emancipate one from the slavery of self. It is altogether unsordid; itself is its only price. It inspires gentleness, sympathy, mutual faith, and confidence. True love also in a measure elevates the intellect. "All love renders wise in a degree," says the poet Browning, and the most gifted minds have been the sincerest lovers. Great souls make all affections great; they elevate and consecrate all true delights. The sentiment even brings to light qualities before lying dormant and unsuspected. It elevates the aspirations, expands the soul, and stimulates the mental powers.
One of the finest compliments ever paid to a woman was that of Steele, when he said of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, "that to have loved her was a liberal education." Viewed in this light, woman is an educator in the highest sense, because, above all other educators, she educates humanly and lovingly.
It has been said that no man and no woman can be regarded as complete in their experience of life, until they have been subdued into union with the world through their affections. As woman is not woman until she has known love, neither is man man. Both are requisite to each other's completeness. Plato entertained the idea that lovers each sought a likeness in the other, and that love was only the divorced half of the original human being entering into union with its counterpart. But philosophy would here seem to be at fault, for affection quite as often springs from unlikeness as from likeness in its object.
The true union must needs be one of mind as well as of heart, and based on mutual esteem as well as mutual affection. "No true and enduring love," says Fichte, "can exist without esteem ; every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any noble human soul." One cannot really love the bad, but always something that we esteem and respect as well as admire. In short, true union must rest on qualities of character, which rule in domestic as in public life.
But there is something far more than mere respect and esteem in the union between man and wife. The feeling on which it rests is far deeper and tenderer--such, indeed, as never exists between men or between women. "In matters of affection," says Nathaniel Hawthorne, "there is always an impassable gulf between man and man. They can never quite grasp each other's hands, and therefore man never derives any intimate help, any heart-sustenance, from his brother man, but from woman--his mother, his sister, or his wife." (2)Man enters a new world of joy, and sympathy, and human interest, through the porch of love. He enters a new world in his home--the home of his own making--altogether different from the home of his boyhood, where each day brings with it a succession of new joys and experiences. He enters also, it may be, a new world of trials and sorrows, in which he often gathers his best culture and discipline. "Family life," says Sainte-Beuve, "may be full of thorns and cares; but they are fruitful: all others are dry thorns." And again: "If a man's home, at a certain period of life, does not contain children, it will probably be found filled with follies or with vices." (3)A life exclusively occupied in affairs of business insensibly tends to narrow and harden the character. It is mainly occupied with self-watching for advantages, and guarding against sharp practice on the part of others. Thus the character unconsciously tends to grow suspicious and ungenerous. The best corrective of such influences is always the domestic; by withdrawing the mind from thoughts that are wholly gainful, by taking it out of its daily rut, and bringing it back to the sanctuary of home for refreshment and rest:
