Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/385

Rh therefore Plato has compared it to the love of the wolf for the sheep. This case appears when a passionate lover, in spite of all efforts and entreaties, cannot obtain a favourable hearing on any condition: –

"I love and hate her." Shakspeare, Cymb., iii. 5.

The hatred of the loved one which then is kindled sometimes goes so far that the lover murders her, and then himself. One or two examples of this generally happen every year; they will be found in the newspapers. Therefore Goethe's lines are quite correct: –

"By all despised love! By hellish element! Would that I knew a worse, that I might swear by!"

It is really no hyperbole if a lover describes the coldness of his beloved and the delight of her vanity, which feeds on his sufferings, as cruelty; for he is under the influence of an impulse which, akin to the instinct of insects, compels him, in spite of all grounds of reason, to pursue his end unconditionally, and to undervalue everything else: he cannot give it up. Not one but many a Petrarch has there been who was compelled to drag through life the unsatisfied ardour of love, like a fetter, an iron weight at his foot, and breathe his sighs in lonely woods; but only in the one Petrarch dwelt also the gift of poetry; so that Goethe's beautiful lines hold good of him: –

"And when in misery the man was dumb A god gave me the power to tell my sorrow."

In fact, the genius of the species wages war throughout with the guardian geniuses of individuals, is their pursuer and enemy, always ready relentlessly to destroy personal happiness in order to carry out its ends; nay, the welfare of whole nations has sometimes been sacrificed to its humours. An example of this is given us by Shakspeare in "Henry VI.," pt. iii., act 3, sc. 2 and 3. All this depends upon