Imatges de pàgina
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must on reflection attach a value to the state of sorrow itself. St. Augustine, describing his grief in youth at the loss of a loved friend, wonders in his profound way at this value set upon the painful emotion, asking whether the tears of love are pleasant or painful: "Thus was I wretched, and that wretched life I held dearer than my friend." 1 Coventry Patmore, in his description of the inconsolable sorrow of lost spirits, conceives it as preferred to enjoyment :—

'Retaining still such weal

As spurned lovers feel,

Preferring far to all the world's delight
Their loss so infinite . . .'
"2

"3 and

And Tennyson, who calls Sorrow "cruel fellowship,' "sweet and bitter in a breath," yet invokes her to dwell with him, and be "no casual mistress but a wife." 5

There is thus ample evidence that, in this type, sorrow is attracted to the object, and does not avoid it on account of its painfulness, whether the sorrow be caused by absence, alienation, or death. Remembrance of the object, resistance to consolation, pursuit of solitude, renewal or augmentation of suffering, valuation of sorrow, and the ideal of its constancy, are but diverse manifestations of this attraction, different means which it adopts in different situations to attain its end.

Let us now attempt to express this tendency which has such various manifestations, as a universal law of the sorrow of love: (59) The sorrow of love is ever attracted to the beloved object, and, in divers ways, strives to maintain all that remains of the former union.

3. The Law of Restoration.

There is a second tendency belonging to this same type of sorrow, and so much involved with the first that the two are often confused together. This is the tendency of sorrow to restore the former state of the object, or the former relation in which it stood to the subject. Thus the attraction of 1 'Confessions,' B. iv., ii. (Ed. Pusey).

2 The Unknown Eros''Tristitia.'
* ' In Memoriam,' iii.

♦ Ibid. iii.

Ibid. lix.

sorrow to its object during prolonged absence is shown not only in absorbing recollection of it, but also in the desire to restore the former conditions of sense-perception. When the object is present, and sorrow arises on account of its illness, misfortune, or death, the force of attraction is still shown by maintaining this presence; but there also arises the desire to restore the former state of the object before it was overtaken by misfortune or death. Thus the two tendencies, though so much involved with one another, remain distinguishable. Even in our 'regrets,' to which we may refuse the name of sorrow' on account of their insufficient intensity, how clearly this tendency is shown. If we break anything which has been a joy to us, our first thought is how it can be mended, and when it is simply lost we desire to find it-to restore it to the former relation to ourselves. And so when the same emotional system is excited in the higher degree that we call sorrow, this tendency is often revealed in the first spontaneous cries to which it gives rise. Thus Juliet's mother exclaims when she first sees her daughter lying in appearance dead :

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Here we see expressed not only the desire for restoration, but with it sorrow's universal appeal for help. But even where death is certain, and the futility of the appeal induces its repression, still it is present in the thought, because the tendencies themselves are working in the emotion. In grief for the loss of his friend, another poet, while recognising the impossibility of restoring him to life, is constrained to cry :

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And we have the reiterated appeal for the restoration not only of life, but of the former union; which, like so

1 'Romeo and Juliet,' A. iv., Sc. v.
2 Tennyson, 'In Memoriam,' xviii.

many other wishes for the impossible, survives in the imagination :

'Deep folly! yet that this could be-
That I could wing my will with might
To leap the grades of life and light,
And flash at once my friend to thee." 1

Sometimes the impulse for restoration, recognising its end to be impossible in this life, looks to another, and with sorrow's cry for help, appeals to the pity of the Eternal to reunite those who have here been separated. And even Death seems to afford an imperfect bond of union, but

"Dark is that last stage of sorrow

Which from death alone can borrow
Comfort." "

And the lover calls to the spirit of his beloved to restore their union :

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And sometimes it seems to be the dead that calls to the living:

"I wish I were where Helen lies;
Night and day on me she cries,
Out of my bed she bids me rise,
Says 'Haste and come to me.'"'4

Hence from the impossibility of the end being accomplished in this life, and the possibility of union in or through death, arises so often the suicidal impulse, and the resolution in which it may culminate: "Il delibère de mourir en cette

1 Tennyson, 'In Memoriam,' xli.

* G. Meredith, 'The Shaving of Shagpat,' 'The History of Bhanavar the Beautiful.' 3 Ibid.

'Fair Helen,' Anon., 'Palgrave's Golden Treasury.'

tristesse, n'ayant autre plaisir que de suivre son enfant au sepulchre." Sorrow, at this stage, often becomes calm and ' unemotional'; for any check to its impulse, which so much increases the emotional intensity, is no longer felt, since it has found a way in which it can discharge itself, has formed a resolution on which it is prepared to act. The emotion may be said to have almost ceased; but the system is the more efficiently active. Thus Romeo, on being informed of the death of Juliet, shows no weakness, yields to no outburst of emotion, invokes no help from men, but, calm and restrained, the inherent force of sorrow quickly forms into a resolution :

"

get me ink and paper

And hire post horses; I will hence to-night."

And is followed by the reflection :—

"O mischief! thou art swift

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary-—.” 2

We have furnished sufficient evidence of this second impulse of sorrow and of its various manifestations, according to the outlet which the impulse discovers, and shall now attempt to express the law of its tendency: (60) The sorrow of love tends to restore that state of the beloved object, or that relation to it, the loss or destruction of which is the cause of sorrow.

Thus the former law reveals the tendency of sorrow to preserve what we still have, and this, to get back what we have lost.

4. Of the Source of the Tendencies of Attraction
and Restoration in Sorrow.

To what source can we trace these secondary tendencies of Sorrow? Are they inherent in it at the stage at which it becomes a constituent of a sentiment; or are they derived from some other emotion of the same system? When we speak of this higher stage of sorrow, we imply that the love of which it is now a part is an essential condition of it, so 1 Calv. 'Instit.' 332 (quoted by Littré, Dict., Art. Tristesse). 'Romeo and Juliet,' a. v. sc i

that, apart from love, the loss or destruction of a certain object would not be a cause of sorrow; but this does not hold of the primitive varieties of sorrow which do not depend on any love of their objects, but on the frustration of some fundamental impulse.1

We can hardly overlook the resemblance between the law of Attraction of sorrow and the fundamental law of Joy. For Joy, we found, tends to maintain the present situation,— that state of the object and relation of the subject to it which for the time exist. Now what is the normal relation of joy to sorrow in love? That joy precedes sorrow. In some cases joy is present from the beginning; in others it grows with acquaintance. In sex love it strikes us suddenly, and in most cases at first sight It is the same with places in some we feel a delight at first sight; in others we gradually come to feel enjoyment as we know them better. After this joy, and with the loss of its object, comes sorrow, if the force of joy is sufficiently strong, if the attraction of other things does not counterbalance the loss. Now joy tends to maintain the object and our relation to it. But when sorrow comes, this object or this relation has been injured or destroyed. What remains becomes the object of sorrow; and as joy holds to what it has, sorrow clings to what remains, to memories and keepsakes, to the body in spite of disease or death, to the character fallen from our ideal.

Now we have become familiar with the fact that instincts, and acquired as well as innate tendencies, originally belonging to one emotional system, may also become organised in others to which they are of advantage. It seems probable that the tendency of sorrow which attracts it to the object is derived from the joy that preceded it; for both make union with the object a principal end. But, if so, the kind of sorrow which we call pity seems to be exceptional. In pity we sorrow at the injury or suffering even of strangers, in whose presence we have felt no joy. We feel pity and horror at the great calamities that overtake numbers of persons whom we have never seen. But how much stronger is ordinarily our pity for those we love!

1 See ch. ix. 2.

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