Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/542

 524 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

even the approach, desire, grows into the character of such a right, and the equivocal sense of the term "claim," namely, as simple desire and as rightfully founded desire, points to the fact that will is strongly inclined to attribute to the right of its might the might of a right. To be sure, jealousy often comes to the most pitiable tragedy on account of this assumption. To justify rights on the basis of feelings like love and friendship is an attempt with quite inappropriate means. The level on which one may reach out from the basis of a right in no way coincides with the plane in which these feelings lie. To imagine that one can conquer them with a bare right, however deep and well won this may be in other directions, is senseless. It is as though one would order back into its cage the flown bird that is long since beyond sight and hearing. This inconsequence of the right to love produces the phenomena which so characterize jealousy. It insists finally on the external evidences of the desired feeling. These may be constrained, to be sure, by appeal to the sense of duty. Such pitiful satisfaction and self-deception preserve the body of the relationship as though there still remained in it something of its spirit.

The claim which belongs with jealousy is as such often enough recognized from the other side. It signifies or it produces, like every right between persons, a sort of unity. It is the ideal or legal existence of an obligation, of a positive relationship of some sort or other, at least of the subjective anticipation of such relationship. Upon the so existing and further operating unity, there arises now at the same time its negation, which creates the situation for jealousy. In this case it is not the fact, as with many other reactions between unity and antagonism, that the two have their reference to different territories, and are only held together or in opposition by the total compass of the personalities. On the contrary, precisely that unity which consists in some real or ideal form, or which at least is on the one side thought of as so existing, is denied. The feeling of jealousy interposes its quite unique, blinding, uncompromising embitterment between the persons, because the separating factor between them has taken possession of precisely the point of their unification. Conse-