Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 35

214
§n Jfalling m f obc.
Lord, what fools tliese mortals he !
There is only one event in life which really astonishes a man and
startles him out of his ])repared opinions. Everything else befalls him
very much as he expected. Event succeeds to event, with an agreeable
variety indeed, but with little that is either startling or intense ; they
form together no more than a sort of background, or running accompani-
ment to the man's own i-eflections ; and he falls naturally into a cool,
curious, and smiling habit of mind, and builds himself up in a conception
of life which expects to-morrow to be after the pattern of to-day and yes-
terday. He may be accustomed to the vagaries of his friends and
acquaintances under the influence of love. He may sometimes look
forward to it for himself with an incomprehensible expectation. But it
is a subject in which neither intuition nor the behaviour of others will
help the philosopher to the trutli. There is probably nothing lightly
thought or rightly written on this matter of love that ls not a piece of
the person's experience. I remember an anecdote of a well-known
French theorist, who was debating a point eagerly in his cenacle. It
was objected against him that he had never experienced love. Where-
upon he arose, left the society, and made it a ^aoint not to return to it
until he considered that he had supplied the defect. " Now," he re-
marked, on entering, " now I am in a position to continue the dis-
cussion." Perhaps he had not penetrated very deeply into the subject
after all ; but the story indicates right thinking, and may serve as an
apologue to readers of this essay.
When at last the scales fall from his eyes, it is not without some-
thing of the nature of dismay that the man finds himself in such changed
conditions. He has to deal with commanding emotions instead of the
easy dislikes and preferences in which he has hitherto passed his days ;
and he recognises capabilities for pain and pleasure of which he had not
yet suspected the existence. Falling in love is the one illogical adven-
ture, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in
our trite and reasonable world. The eifect is out of all proportion with
the cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very amiable or
very beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other's
eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of
either with no great result. But on this occasion all is diffei-ent. They