Grant Allen - Falling in Love: With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science

Some people complain that science is dry. That is, of course, a matterof taste. For my own part, I like my science and my champagne as dry asI can get them. But the public thinks otherwise. So I have ventured tosweeten accompanying samples as far as possible to suit the demand, andtrust they will meet with the approbation of consumers.

Of the specimens here selected for exhibition, my title piece originallyappeared in the Fortnightly Review: 'Honey Dew' and 'The First Potter'were contributions to Longman's Magazine: and all the rest foundfriendly shelter between the familiar yellow covers of the good oldCornhill. My thanks are due to the proprietors and editors of thosevarious periodicals for kind permission to reproduce them here.

G.A.

THE NOOK, DORKING:

September, 1889.

An ancient and famous human institution is in pressing danger. SirGeorge Campbell has set his face against the time-honoured practice ofFalling in Love. Parents innumerable, it is true, have set their facesagainst it already from immemorial antiquity; but then they onlyattacked the particular instance, without venturing to impugn theinstitution itself on general principles. An old Indian administrator,however, goes to work in all things on a different pattern. He wouldalways like to regulate human life generally as a department of theIndia Office; and so Sir George Campbell would fain have husbands andwives selected for one another (perhaps on Dr. Johnson's principle, bythe Lord Chancellor) with a view to the future development of the race,in the process which he not very felicitously or elegantly describes as'man-breeding.' 'Probably,' he says, as reported in Nature, 'we haveenough physiological knowledge to effect a vast improvement in thepairing of individuals of the same or allied races if we could onlyapply that knowledge to make fitting marriages, instead of giving way tofoolish ideas about love and the tastes of young people, whom we canhardly trust to choose their own bonnets, much less to choose in agraver matter in which they are most likely to be influenced byfrivolous prejudices.' He wants us, in other words, to discard thedeep-seated inner physiological promptings of inherited instinct, and tosubstitute for them some calm and dispassionate but artificialselection of a fitting partner as the father or mother of futuregenerations.

Now this is of course a serious subject, and it ought to be treatedseriously and reverently. But, it seems to me, Sir George Campbell'sconclusion is exactly the opposite one from the conclusion now beingforced upon men of science by a study of the biological andpsychological elements in this very complex problem of heredity. So farfrom considering love as a 'foolish idea,' opposed to the best interestsof the race, I believe most competent physiologists and psychologists,especially those of the modern evolutionary school, would regard itrather as an essentially beneficent and conservative instinct developedand maintained in us by natural causes, for the very purpose of insuringjust those precise advantages and improvements which Sir George Campbellthinks he could himself effect by a conscious and deliberate process ofselection. More than that, I believe, for my own part (and I feel suremost evolutionists would cordially agree with me), that this beneficentinherited instinct of Falling in Love effects the object it has in viewfar more admirably, subtly, and satisfactorily, on the average ofinstances, than any clumsy human selective substitute could possiblyeffect it.

In short, my doctrine is simply the old-fashioned and confiding beliefthat marriages are made in heaven: with the further corollary thatheaven manages them, one time with another, a great deal better than SirGeorge Campbell.

Let us first look how Falling in Love affects the standard of humanefficiency; and then let us consider what would be the probable resultof any definite conscious attempt to substitute for it some moredeliberate external agency.

Falling in Love, as modern biology teaches us to believe, is nothingmore than the latest, highest, and most involved exemplification, in thehuman race, of that almost universal selective process which Mr. Darwinhas enabled us to recognise throughout the whole long series of theanimal kingdom. The butterfly that circles and eddies in his arialdance around his observant mate is endeavouring to charm her by thedelicacy of his colouring, and to overcome her coyness by the display ofhis skill. The peacock that struts about in imperial pride under theeyes of his attentive hens, is really contributing to the future beautyand strength of his race by collecting to himself a harem through whomhe hands down to posterity the valuable qualities which have gained theadmiration of his mates in his own person. Mr. Wallace has shown that tobe beautiful is to be efficient; and sexual selection is thus, as itwere, a mere lateral form of natural selectiona survival of thefittest in the guise of mutual attractiveness and mutual adaptability,producing on the average a maximum of the best properties of the race inthe resulting offspring. I need not dwell here upon this aspect of thecase, because it is one with which, since the publication of the'Descent of Man,' all the world has been sufficiently familiar.

In our own species, the selective process is marked by all the featurescommon to selection throughout the whole animal kingdom; but it is also,as might be expected, far more specialised, far more individualised, farmore cognisant of personal traits and minor peculiarities. It isfurthermore exerted to a far greater extent upon mental and moral aswell as physical peculiarities in the individual.

We cannot fall in love with everybody alike. Some of us fall in lovewith one person, some with another. This instinctive and deep-seateddifferential feeling we may regard as the outcome of complementaryfeatures, mental, moral, or physical, in the two persons concerned; andexperience shows us that, in nine cases out of ten, it is a reciprocalaffection, that is to say, in other words, an affection roused in unisonby varying qualities in the respective individuals.

Of its eminently conservative and even upward tendency very little doubtcan be reasonably entertained. We do fall in love, taking us in thelump, with the young, the beautiful, the strong, and the healthy; we donot fall in love, taking us in the lump, with the aged, the ugly, thefeeble, and the sickly. The prohibition of the Church is scarcely neededto prevent a man from marrying his grandmother. Moralists have alwaysborne a special grudge to pretty faces; but, as Mr. Herbert Spenceradmirably put it (long before the appearance of Darwin's selectivetheory), 'the saying that beauty is but skin-deep is itself but askin-deep saying.' In reality, beauty is one of the very best guides wecan possibly have to the desirability, so far as race-preservation isconcerned, of any man or any woman as a partner in marriage. A fineform, a good figure, a beautiful bust, a round arm and neck, a freshcomplexion, a lovely face, are all outward and visible signs of thephysical qualities that on the whole conspire to make up a healthy andvigorous wife and mother; they imply soundness, fertility, a goodcirculation, a good digestion. Conversely, sallowness and paleness areroughly indicative of dyspepsia and anmia; a flat chest is a symptom ofdeficient maternity; and what we call a bad figure is really, in one wayor another, an unhealthy departure from the central norma and standardof the race. Good teeth mean good deglutition; a clear eye means anactive liver; scrubbiness and undersizedness mean feeble virility. Norare indications of mental and moral efficiency by any means wanting asrecognised elements in personal beauty. A good-humoured face is initself almost pretty. A pleasant smile half redeems unattractivefeatures. Low, receding foreheads strike us unfavourably. Heavy, stolid,half-idiotic countenances can never be beautiful, however regular theirlines and contours. Intelligence and goodness are almost as necessary ashealth and vigour in order to make up our perfect ideal of a beautifulhuman face and figure. The Apollo Belvedere is no fool; the murderers inthe Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's are for the most part nobeauties.