There are indeed, he says (III.,
46), plenty of old stories of self-sacrifice, but they are all of the
kind where a man risks comfort and life to secure possession of a
coveted body for his own enjoyment, or else where he takes his own
life because he feels lonely after having failed to secure the desired
union. These actions are no index of love, for they "may coexist with
the cruelest treatment" of the coveted woman. Very ambitious persons
or misers may commit suicide after losing honor or wealth, and
"a coarse negro, in face of the danger of losing his
sweetheart, is capable of casting himself into the ocean
with her, or of plunging his dagger into her breast and then
into his own."
All this is selfish. The only true index of love, Ramdohr continues,
lies in the sacrifice of one's own happiness _for another's sake_; in
resigning one's self to separation from the beloved, or even to death,
if that is necessary to secure her happiness or welfare. Of such
self-sacrifice he declares he cannot find a single instance in the
records and stories of the ancients; nor can I.
The suicide of Dido after her desertion by Aeneas is often cited as
proof of love, but Ramdohr insists (338) that, apart from the fact
that "a woman really in love would not have pursued Aeneas with
curses," such an act as hers was the outcome of purely selfish
despair, on a par with the suicide of a miser after the loss of his
money.
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