The second class of the considerations which lie at the foundation of
sexual love are those which regard psychical qualities. Here we shall find
that the woman is throughout attracted by the qualities of the heart or
character in the man, as those which are inherited from the father. The
woman is won especially by firmness of will, decision, and courage, and
perhaps also by honesty and good‐heartedness. On the other hand,
intellectual gifts exercise no direct and instinctive power over her, just
because they are not inherited from the father. Want of understanding does
a man no harm with women; indeed extraordinary mental endowment, or even
genius, might sooner influence them unfavourably as an abnormity. Hence
one often sees an ugly, stupid, and coarse fellow get the better of a
cultured, able, and amiable man with women. Also marriages from love are
sometimes consummated between natures which are mentally very different:
for example, the man is rough, powerful, and stupid; the woman tenderly
sensitive, delicately thoughtful, cultured, æsthetic, &c.; or the man is a
genius and learned, the woman a goose:
“_Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares_
_Formas atque animos sub juga aënea_
_Sævo mittere cum joco._”
The reason is, that here quite other considerations than the intellectual
predominate,—those of instinct. In marriage what is looked to is not
intellectual entertainment, but the production of children: it is a bond
of the heart, not of the head. It is a vain and absurd pretence when women
assert that they have fallen in love with the mind of a man, or else it is
the over‐straining of a degenerate nature. Men, on the other hand, are not
determined in their instinctive love by the qualities of character of the
woman; hence so many Socrateses have found their Xantippes; for example,
Shakspeare, Albrecht Dürer, Byron, &c. The intellectual qualities,
however, certainly influence here, because they are inherited from the
mother. Yet their influence is easily outweighed by that of physical
beauty, which acts directly, as concerning a more essential point.
However, it happens, either from the feeling or the experience of that
influence, that mothers have their daughters taught the fine arts,
languages, and so forth in order to make them attractive to men, whereby
they wish to assist the intellect by artificial means, just as, in case of
need, they assist the hips and the bosom. Observe that here we are
speaking throughout only of that entirely immediate instinctive attraction
from which alone love properly so called grows. That a woman of culture
and understanding prizes understanding and intellect in a man, that a man
from rational reflection should test and have regard to the character of
his bride, has nothing to do with the matter with which we are dealing
here. Such things lie at the bottom of a rational choice in marriage, but
not of the passionate love, which is our theme.