I wrote to Mr. Lathrop, begging him to refer me to the
volume and page of Hegel's numerous works where I could find the
passage in question. He promptly replied that I should find it in the
second volume of the _Aesthetik_ (178-182). No doubt I ought to have
known that Hegel had written on this subject; but the fact that of
more than two hundred American, English, and German reviewers of my
book whose notices I have seen, only one knew what had thus escaped my
research, consoled me somewhat. Hegel, indeed, might well have copied
Burton's epitaph. His _Aesthetik_ is an abstruse, unindexed,
three-volume work of 1,575 pages, which has not been reprinted since
1843, and is practically forgotten. Few know it, though all know of
it.
After perusing Hegel's pages on this topic I found, however, that Mr.
Lathrop had imputed to him a theory--my theory--which that philosopher
would have doubtless repudiated emphatically. What Hegel does is
simply to call attention to the fact that in the literature of the
ancient Greeks and Romans love is depicted only as a transient
gratification of the senses, or a consuming heat of the blood, and not
as a romantic, sentimental affection of the soul. He does not
generalize, says nothing about other ancient nations,[1] and certainly
never dreamt of such a thing as asserting that love had been gradually
and slowly developed from the coarse and selfish passions of our
savage ancestors to the refined and altruistic feelings of modern
civilized men and women.
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