Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-06-25
MISCONCEPTION OF LOVE

Did you ever stopto think" inquired the
man with the fhterrogative eye. allowing
his newspaper to slip from his grasp and to
be blown all over the lawn, how much
trouble is being caused in the modern world
by distorted and twisted and exaggerated
conception Of the thing we call love?
And did you ever pause to reflect that
about nine hundred and ninety-nine one
thousandths of all of the people. high and
low, who get themselves into dismal messes
over and by and through the thing we call
love. derive their knowledge of the same
from fiction. and that the trashy kind of
literature dealing with the love motif Is re-
sponsible for pretty nigh as much of the
crime Of the world as drink?
observe In your daily paper how many
now nearly all-of the tragic occurrences of
the world have an alleged love basis. The
people who figure in these occurrences have
erected the thing they know as love into a
relish, which. In a rage. they destroy. or
which they permit themselves to be de-
stroyed by. A little schoolgirl of sixteen
swallows carbolic acid. Disappointed in
love Is the verdict Of the neighbors. She
was madly in love with an eighteen-year-
OLD boy down the street, 1t Is explained,
and when her parents refused to permit her
TO marry him out of hand she could see
mind was inf1amed over the love idea prob
ably by reading of 1t in fiction. An over
blown romantcism had taken possession Of
ner. and then, when disappointed or
thwarted in love, there was nothing but the
acid finish in sight.
lake up your paper again. young
man shoots or stabs or beats to death the
girl he loves, because he loves her. That 9
the reason given-because he loves her
Then he destroys himself. A high-flown
letter. filled with phrases that embody the
modern notion of love. Is found in his
room. The letter plainly shows that he
has not derived his conception Of love from
any inner, original, spontaneous conscious
ness. but from exterior sources that have
not only given him totally false idea Of
what love really Is, but that have actually
diseased him mind. He has imbibed his
ideas of love altogether from a study Of
the things that in these modern days are
laps never have known that ne was in
love had he not permitted his mind to
become infiamed from study Of other
instances. fctional and actual. that led
him to believe that he due to fall into
the same state of unrest.
1t strikes me that three-fourths of the
tragedy, and nearly all of the woe. of the
modern world are directly attributable to
this imaginary and inflated conception and
naturalization of the power OF love. We
hear the veriest children Of both sexes bah
bling and prating of love. The false con-
ceptfon grows upon and into their half
apprehending minds. and at their very first
opportunity they imagine that they. too.
are strutting the tragic PAGES Of lovers.
when in truth they are the merest ptiable
victims of what may be called inf1amma
ton of the imagination.
Put 1T in this way: Surprising. by some
impossible chance, all Of the worlds books.
in prose and verse. treating of the love
theme. were to be suddenly destroyed. and.
supposing, too, that the newspapers and
other current periodicals were to agree to
publish not line bearing upon the love
topic or upon occurrences in any way in
volved with the love problem. Do you inn
aglne that the next generation would have
anything like so much trouble in living to
die natural death as the present genera
ton is having?
There is no word for love in the. jap
anese language. Who shall say that that
fact doesn't account for great deal of the
calmness and sedateness of the Japanese
people?
Normal. uninstrueted love. the exalted
passion that binds men and women to-
gcther. is all right. but when you halt to
consider how much havoc and misery and
death are being wrought in the modern
world every day owing to the jumbled and
generally incoherent modern idea of love,
believe you'll be willing to acknowledge
that the love business is being overworked.
and that little Dan Cupid has been made
over into sort of horrible Frankenstein
or Bill Sykes"