n love as a passion and love as a sentiment.... He is
the first of the Hellenic poets who interests us
_intellectually_ in the antagonism and affinity between the
sexes."

Theophile Gautier clearly realized one of the differences between
ancient passion and modern love. In _Mademoiselle de Maupin,_ he makes
this comment on the ancient love-poems:

"Through all the subtleties and veiled expressions one
hears the abrupt and harsh voice of the master who
endeavors to soften his manner in speaking to a slave.
It is not, as in the love-poems written since the
Christian era, a soul demanding love of another soul
because it loves.... 'Make haste, Cynthia; the smallest
wrinkle may prove the grave of the most violent
passion.' It is in this brutal formula that all ancient
elegy is summed up."

GOLDSMITH AND ROUSSEAU

In _Romantic Love and Personal Beauty_ I intimated (116) that Oliver
Goldsmith was the first author who had a suspicion of the fact that
love is not the same everywhere and at all times. My surmise was
apparently correct; it is not refuted by any of the references to love
by the several authors just quoted, since all of these were written
from about a half a century to a century later than Goldsmith's
_Citizen of the World_ (published in 1764), which contains his
dialogue on "Whether Love be a Natural or a Fictitious Passion." His
assertion therein that love existed only in early Rome, in chivalrous
mediaeval Europe, and in China, all the rest of the world being, and
having ever been, "utter strangers to its delights and advantages,"
is, of course a mere bubble of his poetic fancy, not intended to be
taken too seriously, and, is, moreover, at variance with facts. It is
odd that he overlooks the Greeks, whereas the other writers cited
confine themselves to the Greeks and their Roman imitators.

Ten years before Goldsmith thus launched the idea that most nations
were and had ever been strangers to the delights and advantages of
love, Jean Jacques Rousseau published a treatise, _Discours sur
l'inegalite_ (1754), in which he asserted that savages are strangers
to jealousy, know no domesticity, and evince no preferences, being as
well pleased with one woman as with another. Although, as we shall see
later, many savages do have a crude sort of jealousy, domesticity, and
individual preference, Rousseau, nevertheless, hints prophetically at
a great truth-