An object of interest may then evoke further feeling. It may be
one's baby, or one's father or a kinsman or a female of the same
species. A type of feeling FAVORABLE to the object is aroused,
called "tender feeling," which is associated with deep-lying
instincts and has endless modifications and variations. Perhaps
its great example is the tender feeling of the mother for the
baby, a feeling so strong that it leads to conduct of self-
sacrifice; conduct that makes nothing of privation, suffering,
even death, if these will help the object of the tender feeling,
the child. Tender feeling of this type, which we call love, is a
theme one cannot discuss dryly, for it sweeps one into reveries;
it suggests softly glowing eyes, not far from tears, tenderly
curved lips, just barely smiling, and the soft humming of the
mother to the babe in her arms. It is the soft feeling which is
the unifying feeling, and when it reaches a group they become
gentle in tone and manners and feel as one. The dream of the
reformer has always been the extension of this tender feeling
from the baby, from the child and the helpless, to all men, thus
abolishing strife, conquering hate, unifying man. This type of
love is also paternal, though it is doubtful whether as such it
ever reaches the intensity it does in the mother. By a sort of
association it spreads to all children, to all little things, to
all helpless things, except where there exists a counter feeling
already well established.
Though typical in the mother, child relationship, tender feeling
or love, exists in many other relationships. The human family,
with its close association, its inculcated unity of interests, in
its highest form is based on the tender feeling. The noble ideal
of the brotherhood of man comes from an extension of the feeling
found in brothers. The brotherly feeling is emphasized, though
the sisterly feeling is fully as strong, merely because the male
member of genus homo has been the articulate member, he has
written and talked as if he, and not his sister, were the
important human personage. So fraternal feeling is tender
feeling, existing between members of the same family, or the love
that we conceive ought to be present. Is such love instinctive,
as is the maternal love? If it is, that instinct is very much
weaker, and hostile feeling, indifference, rivalry, may easily
replace it. We rarely conceive of a mortal world where so intense
a love as that of the mother will be the common feeling; all we
dare hope for is a world in which there will be a fine fraternal
feeling.
Fraternal feeling is born of association together, any task
undertaken en masse, any living together under one roof. Even
when men sit down to eat at the same table, it tends to appear.
So college life, the barracks, secret orders, awaken it, but
here, as always, while it links together the associated, it shuts
out as non-fraternal those not associated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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