Human Traits and their Social SignificanceEdman, Irwin
Philosophy
Human Traits and their Social Significance
Edman, Irwin
Social psychology
LOVE. Love, used in this broad sense, varies in intensity.
It may be nothing more--it certainly frequently starts as
nothing more--than the feeling, so native as to be fairly
called instinctive, of common sympathy, fellow feeling,
immediate affinity with another. The psychological origins of
this disposition have already been noted in connection with
man's tendency to experience sympathetically immediately
the emotions of others. Every business man, lawyer, teacher,
any one who comes much into contact with a wide variety
of people, knows how, antecedent to any experience with an
individual's capacities or talents, or even before one had a
chance to draw any inferences from a person's walk, his bearing,
or his clothing, one may register an immediate like or dislike.
Every one has had the experience in crossing a college
campus or riding in a train or street car of noting, in passing
some one whom one has never seen before, an immediate
reaction of good-will and affection. This has been charmingly
expressed by a well-known English poet:
"The street sounds to the soldiers' tread,
And out we troop to see;
A single redcoat turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.
"My man, from sky to sky's so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world's ends are,
We're like to meet no more.
"What thoughts at heart have you and I,
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well."[1]
[Footnote 1: A. E. Housman: _The Shropshire Lad_ (John Lane edition), p. 32.]
All affection for individuals probably starts in this immediate
instinctive liking. "The first note that gives sociability a
personal quality and raises the comrade into an incipient
friend is doubtless sensuous affinity. Whatever reaction we
may eventually make on an impression, after it has had time
to soak in and to merge in some practical or intellectual
habit, its first assault is always on the senses; and no sense is
an indifferent organ. Each has, so to speak, its congenial
rate of vibration, and gives its stimuli a varying welcome.
Little as we may attend to these instinctive hospitalities of
sense, they betray themselves in unjustified likes and dislikes
felt for casual persons and things, in the _je ne sais quai_
that makes instinctive sympathy."[2] From this immediate
instinctive liking it may rise to deep personal attachments,
strikingly manifested in friendship and love between the
sexes, both immemorially celebrated by poets and novelists.
Love is aroused chiefly by persons, and among persons,
especially in the case of sexual love, most frequently by more or
less physical beauty and attractiveness. But affection may
be aroused and is certainly sustained by other than merely
physical qualities.
[Footnote 2: Santayana: _Reason in Society_, p. 151.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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