Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

ON FALLING IN LOVE
III
IB-
ON FALLING IN LOVE
' Lord, what fools these mortals be ! *
There is only one event in life which really astonishes
a man and startles him out of his prepared opinions.
Everything else befalls him very much as he ex-
pected. Event succeeds to event, with an agreeable
variety indeed, but with Uttle that is either startling
or intense ; they form together no more than a sort
of background, or running accompaniment to the
man's own reflections ; 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 yesterday. 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 expecta-
tion. But it is a subject in which neither intuition
nor the behaviour of others will help the philosopher
to the truth. There is probably nothing rightly
thought or rightly written on this matter of love
that is 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. Whereupon he arose, left
the society, and made it a point not to return to it
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