SELFISH LIKING AND ATTACHMENT

Liking is the weakest kind of inclination toward another.  It “never has the intensity of love.”  To say that I like a man is to indicate merely that he pleases me, gives me selfish pleasure—­in some way or other.  A man may say of a girl who pleases him by her looks, wit, vivacity, or sympathy, “I like her,” though he may have known her only a few minutes; while a girl who will rather die than give any sign of affection, may be quite willing to confess that she likes him, knowing that the latter means infinitely less and does not betray her; that is, it merely indicates that he pleases her and not that she is particularly anxious to please him, as she would be if she loved him.  Girls “like” candy, too, because it gives them pleasure, and cannibals may like missionaries without having the least affection for them.

Attachment is stranger than liking, but it also springs from selfish interests and habits.  It is apt to be similar to that gratitude which is “a lively sense of favors to come.”  Mrs. Bishop (Isabella Bird) eloquently describes (II, 135-136) the attachment to her of a Persian horse, and incidentally suggests the philosophy of the matter in one sentence:  “To him I am an embodiment of melons, cucumbers, grapes, pears, peaches, biscuits, and sugar, with a good deal of petting and ear-rubbing thrown in.”  Cases of attachment between husband and wife no doubt abound among savages, even when the man is usually contemptuous and rude in his treatment of the wife.  The Niam-Niam husbands of Schweinfurth did not, as we saw, give any evidence of unselfish affection, but they were doubtless attached to their wives, for obvious reasons.  As for the women among the lower races, they are apt, like dogs, to cling to their master, no matter how much he may kick them about.  They get from him food and shelter, and blind habit does the rest to attach them to his hearth.  What habit and association can do is shown in the ease with which “happy families” of hostile animals can be reared.  But the beasts of prey must be well fed; a day or two of fasting would result in the lamb lying down inside the lion.  The essential selfishness of attachment is shown also in the way a man becomes attached to his pipe or his home, etc.  At the same time, personal attachment may prove the entering wedge of something higher.  “The passing attachments of young people are seldom entitled to serious notice; although sometimes they may ripen by long intercourse into a laudable and steady affection” (Crabb).

FOOLISH FONDNESS