How much sexual love tends to develop the quality of deception in the pursuit of its end, and even counteracts a naturally open and straightforward disposition, is evident to anyone who has observed its behaviour. Is there anywhere a story of true love struggling against opposition in which we do not read of parents being deceived by their children, and this either without any sense of wrong-doing on their part, or with at most the curious feeling that the action is at once both right and wrong, according as it is looked at from the point of view of the duty of children to their parents or from that of the duty of the girl to her lover. Hence the proverb that "All is fair in love and war." The true and gentle Desdemona deceives her father, as Iago reminds the simple Moor to make him doubt her fidelity to him. Finally we may touch on the qualities of justice and injustice, and the influences that are favourable or hostile to them. La Rochefoucauld observes: "Les passions ont une injustice et un propre intérêt, qui fait qu'il est dangereux de les suivre, et qu'on s'en doit défier, lors même qu'elles paroissent les plus raisonnables."1 And does not the love of individual persons tend always to make us unjust? For as our love concerns only them, when their claims and interests conflict with those of others whom we do not love, even where we have the same obligation to both, we tend to be partial to the one and unjust to the others. This is the chief source of injustice, that we love one more than others, or our self more than all. Stern men are more often just than lovinghearted women. For the face of Justice is severe, not tender; and in her hand she carries a sword. It is a defect of Love that it cannot acquire justice, unless it can first love all men equally or according to their deserts; hence justice attaches itself more often to a different order of sentiments, and inspires respect rather than love. We can then understand the meaning of the law, and adopt it as a working hypothesis, that every sentiment tends to have or to acquire the qualities of character which are necessary to its ends. And since among these qualities are many that we name 1 'Maximes,' ix. Virtues and Vices-and what is a virtue but a quality that has its place and function in some system, individual or social? -there is another and more particular law involved in the preceding one. (9) Every sentiment tends to acquire the virtues and vices that are required by its system. These virtues may either be peculiar to it, more or less, as kindness to affection, or like the courage of love, may be shared by it with many other sentiments. Then, too, every sentiment tends to acquire the vices that are serviceable to it, and to have as the French say "the defects of its qualities," and even sometimes to glory in them because of their manifest advantages. Of this one of the most striking examples is the injustice of our affections, in spite of the fact that they develop many of our noblest virtues. It is a significant fact that in Calvinistic theology this deep defect of human love is transferred to the Divine Love, which is not conceived as rewarding us according to our merits,-on which therefore we must not rely,-but according to His divine predestination, which has selected some for everlasting happiness by the preference and partiality of love and so deeply is this injustice ingrained in love that the one does not seem a vice, but a virtue, when we are absorbed in the other. It is, we think, a proof of the noble generosity of Love, which lavishes on us so much more than we deserve, and calls forth in response from the human heart the most passionate gratitude. For this is its glory that it can accomplish what our cold Respects cannot, which measure out equal treatment by rule, even unequal treatment by the rule of precedency or of varying merit. Hence this injustice of love is approved of not only in theology sometimes, but in the noblest poetry: "Wish no word unspoken, want no look away! What if words were but mistake, and looks-too sudden, say! Be unjust for once, Love! Bear it-well I may! Do me justice always? Bid my heart-their shrine— 1 Robert Browning, 'Ferishtah's Fancies,' 2. CHAPTER XI OF THE RELATIVE ETHICS OF THE SENTIMENTS 1. Of the Virtues of Sentiments WE have found that among the qualities which a sentiment tends to develop are included certain virtues and vices which are natural to it. These virtues and vices are accounted such from two different points of view: first, from the point of view of society which, observing these qualities in our conduct, names them virtues or vices according as it approves of them or condemns them; secondly, from the point of view of the sentiment itself according to a standard which itself furnishes. And a sentiment will be indisposed to acknowledge those qualities to be vices which seem indispensable to it, whatever they are called by popular opinion; of which one of the most striking examples is that injustice of our affections noticed in the last chapter. Similarly it will be indisposed to account those qualities as virtues which are of no use to it. But its own virtues it will naturally tend to develop, because its system requires them; and when they arise spontaneously and without reflection, it will even be unaware of their existence. Hence the common reflection that we know when we do wrong, but that when we do right we are often unaware of it. While in the first freshness of a sentiment its virtues often develop in this spontaneous way,-as, for instance, the qualities of generosity, gentleness, kindliness, and sincerity, in love and friendship; and in the sentiments for truth and art, the qualities of industry and perseverance,-yet a little later these qualities are often checked; and effort and reflection succeed to the first stage of spontaneous growth. For from the earliest times virtue has been associated in our thought with what is difficult of attainment, vice, on the contrary, with a rapid decline, as something into which we 'fall' or 'slide.' Now the difficulty of persevering in virtue is sometimes due to the fact that although when we love anything we desire the ends which love pursues in relation to it, yet the means thereto are often disagreeable and repugnant to us; as in the sentiments for art and knowledge, the kind of work which we call 'drudgery,' and in our affections, numberless little annoyances. But in the second place this difficulty is due to the competition of other sentiments and their emotions. Consider, for instance, how easy it would be for love to acquire and preserve generosity, were there neither avarice nor other forms of selflove; or gentleness were there no anger; or courage were there no fear; or constancy were there no new loves forming to displace the old; or intellectual impartiality in the love of knowledge, were we not indisposed to acknowledge the defects of our own theories. Hence in all sentiments that continue to grow or even to maintain themselves, a second stage tends to occur in which we become conscious of their qualities, and reflect on them, and strive after them with effort; because we recognise that these qualities are in danger of not advancing with the growth and needs of the sentiment, or of even falling away. From this cause arise the Ideals of a sentiment. 2. Of the Ideals of Sentiments When we have a great love of anything, it seems as if we could never do enough for it; and what we actually do seems to us too little. And thus from 'devotion,' which is the quality of love in general, as shown in its behaviour, we form the ideal of perfect devotion. And this ideal is not only or principally fostered by sex-love, which has such a strong, egoistic desire of possession, but conspicuously by the mother's love, and also by the way men 'devote' themselves to some science or art until their life seems absorbed in it, and other sentiments decay from insufficient exercise. And all the other qualities of sentiments tend to generate ideals of themselves, and thus we have ideals of constancy, courage, sincerity, perseverance, patience, and loyalty. And we, who are engrossed in these sentiments, are induced to form these ideals for our own use, not only through experience of the defects of such qualities in ourselves, but also by observing the superior degree in which other men manifest them. For when we are not intent on distinguishing the vices of men, and are well-disposed toward them, we notice the qualities in which they excel ourselves. For the pursuit of its ideals the sentiment requires certain special and secondary emotions, and which it therefore tends, to develop or acquire. These special emotions which, in addition to the primary emotions, it tends to include in its system, are Aspiration, Admiration, and Remorse, Self-reproach or Shame. Thus the hero reads of the great deeds of the heroes of old, and thirsting for glory admires their indomit able courage, their perseverance and resourcefulness, and aspires after these virtues himself; the lover reads poems of love "faithful unto death," and thrilled with admiration aspires after inviolable constancy, truth, and purity; the friend reads stories of true friendship, and aspires after fidelity and companionship; the father, after wisdom, patience, and self-control; the lover of knowledge, after intellectual conscientiousness, impartiality, and exactitude; some pursuing a virtue common to the rest, others one peculiar to themselves; but all, where the love is great, urged to the pursuit of some Ideal. And as these emotions excite them to the pursuit, so for their neglect and backsliding are they punished by remorse, self-reproach, or shame. 3. Of the Duties of Sentiments Besides the special emotions to which we have referred, there is another stimulus to the pursuit of their ideals by the different varieties of Love. The sentiment has its duties; and its duties are created by its ideals, as are its ideals by the imperfect degree in which it possesses the qualities which it regards as its virtues. It is clear that the sentiment requires for the steadfast pursuit of its ideals something steadier than its emotions; and this it naturally tends to develop. Everyone of those qualities which, possessed, are |