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I read Schopenhauer’s 12,000 word essay, The Metaphysics of Love, many years ago. In spite of rejecting his philosophical rationale, I found his analysis both intriguing and plausible. On re-reading it more recently I was surprised by how much light it sheds on this generalization-resistant subject. It’s odd that Schopenhauer should turn out to be a reliable guide to the affairs of the heart when he, himself, was unlucky in love (and bound to be unlucky because of his terrible relationship with his mother). However, he was a keen student of human nature and a meticulous observer of a phenomenon that poets and novelists and screen writers continually portray, but never explain. I think most people, after mulling it over for a while, decide that romantic love defies explanation. In the musical South Pacific the lyrics of the song “Some Enchanted Evening” promote this view:

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons
Wise men never try.

Well, I think that Schopenhauer not only tried to explain romantic love, but largely succeeded. Even though the associated metaphysics are entirely a product of his own imagination, I think it helps to be aware of the somewhat confused theory behind his otherwise perceptive observations. He posits something he variously calls, the will to live, the will of the species, the genius of the species, the spirit of the species, the interest of the species. Paraphrasing what he writes to make it more colloquial, he says:

What manifests itself in the individual consciousness as the sex drive, without being concentrated on any particular individual, is, in its generalised form, the will to live. On the other hand, sexual attraction that is directed to a certain individual, is the will to live of a definitely determined individual.

Furthermore:

That growing affection of two lovers for each other is in reality the will to live of the new being, of which they shall become the parents; indeed, in the meeting of their yearning glances the life of a new being is kindled, and will manifest itself as a well-organised future individual.

Presumably we don’t believe, as he did, that the will to live or the genius of the species is some kind of metaphysical principle that, unknown to us, controls our behaviour for its own ends. However, Schopenhauer’s erroneous metaphysics needn’t invalidate all of his observations and reasoning about the love of the sexes. And his reasoning is basically this: the love of the sexes is rooted in physical instinct, and this instinct is guided by the need to produce offspring that preserve the type of the species and keep it from degenerating. In general, therefore, two lovers are attracted to one another on the basis of youth, beauty and strength. But, in particular cases, they experience an even more powerful attraction if the defects and aberrations of each are corrected or neutralized by the characteristics of the other. According to Schopenhauer, the more perfectly the lovers complement each other in this respect, the more intense their passion. That strikes me as very plausible.

Let’s test this theory in the matter of stature. From the point of view of appearances only, we might think that a tall man might prefer a tall woman. And sometimes tall people do marry other tall people. But when we consider the dramatic differences in size and shape that mankind has produced in dogs simply by selective breeding, we quickly realize that if tall people were only attracted to tall people and short people to short people, it wouldn’t take very many generations before the human race split into a race of giants and a race of pygmies. The fact that this doesn’t happen means there must be some built in regulating principle at the level of instinct which governs sexual attraction. Thus we find an eight inch difference in height between Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, almost ten inches between Justin Trudeau and his wife, about ten inches between my wife and her first husband, etc., etc. As an unmarried female friend, who was about six feet, once said, “Short women rule the world.”

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