HERO AND LEANDER

Very great importance attaches to this distinction between selfish and altruistic self-sacrifice.  The failure to make this distinction is perhaps more than anything else responsible for the current belief that romantic love was known to the ancients.  Did not Leander risk and sacrifice his life for Hero, swimming to her at night across the stormy Hellespont?  Gentle reader, he did not.  He risked his life for the purpose of continuing his illicit amours with a priestess of Venus in a lonely tower.  As we shall see in the chapter devoted to Greek romances, there is in the story told by Musaeus not a single trait rising above frank sensuality.  In his eagerness to gratify his appetite, Leander risked Hero’s life as well as his own.  His swimming across the strait was, moreover, no more than any animal would do to meet its mate on the other side of a river.  It was a romantic thing to do, but it was no proof of romantic love.  Bearing in mind what Westermarck says (134)—­

“With wild animals sexual desire is not less powerful as an incentive to strenuous exertion than hunger and thirst.  In the rut-time, the males, even of the most cowardly species, engage in mortal combats”

—­we see that Hero’s risking of death for the sake of his intrigue was not even a mark of exceptional courage; and regarding the quality and nature of his “love” it tells us nothing whatever.

THE ELEPHANT AND THE LOTOS

In the Hindoo drama Malavika and Agnimitra, Kalidasa represents the king as seeking an interview with a new flame of his.  When his companion warns him that the queen might surprise them, the king answers: 

     When the elephant sees the lotos leaves
     He fears no crocodile.

Lotos leaves being the elephant’s favorite food, these lines admirably sum up the Hindoo idea of risking life for “love”—­cupboard love.  But would the elephant risk his life to save the beautiful lotos flowers from destruction?  Foolish question!  Was not the lotos created to gratify the elephant’s appetite just as beautiful women were created to subserve man’s desires?

Fighting crocodiles for the sake of the sweet lotos is a characteristic of primitive “love” in all its various strata.  “Nothing is more certain,” writes M’Lean (135), “than that the enamoured Esquimau will risk life and limb in the pursuit of his object.”  Women, he says, are the main cause of all quarrels among the Esquimaux; and the same is true of the lower races in general.  If an Australian wants to run away with another man’s wife, the thought of risking his life—­and hers too—­does not restrain him one moment.  Ascending to the Greeks, we may cite Robert Burton’s summing up of one of their legends: