There is another very curious aspect of Self-Sacrifice which will be fully discussed in the chapter on Schopenhauer’s Theory of Love, but which may be stated here, without comment, that the reader may reflect on the pessimist’s paradox. Schopenhauer held that Love is based on the possession by the lovers of traits which mutually complement each other. In the children these incongruous traits will so neutralise each other as to produce a harmonious result; but in the life of the parents they will produce only discords. True love, therefore, as he claims, rarely results in a happy conjugal life: Love causes the parents to sacrifice their mutual happiness to the welfare of their offspring. Meanwhile it may be stated that France offers a curious confirmation of Schopenhauer’s theory, not noted by himself. Romantic Love, it is well known, hardly exists in France _as a motive to marriage_, being systematically suppressed and craftily annihilated. Nevertheless, as many observers attest, the French commonly lead a happy family life. But look at the offspring, at the birth-rate, the lowest in Europe; look at the puny men, at the women, among whom there is hardly a single beauty in all the land. In a word, whereas Love sacrifices, according to Schopenhauer, the parents to the children, the French sacrifice the offspring, and Love itself, to the happiness of the individuals, married according to motives of personal expediency. EMOTIONAL HYPERBOLE “I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.” “It is a strange thing,” says Bacon, “to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature and value of things by this, that the _speaking in a perpetual hyperbole_ is comely in nothing but in love.” It is the nature of all passions to exaggerate: and Love, being of all passions the most violent, exaggerates the most—more even than Hate, which alone competes with Love in the power to tinge every object with the colour of its own spectacles. The lover’s constant sigh is for something stronger than a superlative; and to the limit between the sublime and the ridiculous he is absolutely blind. Like Schumann, every lover calls his Clara “Clarissima,” and of two superlative facts he is quite certain: That _she_ is the most wonderful being ever created; and that _his_ passion is the deepest ever felt by mortal. “Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars! One fairer than my love! The all-seeing sun Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.” SHAKSPERE. If you try to convince him that others have loved as ardently—and ceased to love, he will smile a cynical smile and then close his eyes and declaim melodramatically—