Man yearns to be loved, or, what is the same thing, to be pitied. Man
wishes others to feel and share his hardships and his sorrows. The
roadside beggar's exhibition of his sores and gangrened mutilations is
something more than a device to extort alms from the passer-by. True
alms is pity rather than the pittance that alleviates the material
hardships of life. The beggar shows little gratitude for alms thrown to
him by one who hurries past with averted face; he is more grateful to
him who pities him but does not help than to him who helps but does not
pity, although from another point of view he may prefer the latter.
Observe with what satisfaction he relates his woes to one who is moved
by the story of them. He desires to be pitied, to be loved.
Woman's love, above all, as I have remarked, is always compassionate in
its essence--maternal. Woman yields herself to the lover because she
feels that his desire makes him suffer. Isabel had compassion upon
Lorenzo, Juliet upon Romeo, Francesca upon Paolo. Woman seems to say:
"Come, poor one, thou shalt not suffer so for my sake!" And therefore is
her love more loving and purer than that of man, braver and more
enduring.
Pity, then, is the essence of human spiritual love, of the love that is
conscious of being love, of the love that is not purely animal, of the
love, in a word, of a rational person. Love pities, and pities most when
it loves most.
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