SUBSECTION 2 Pleasant objects of love

Pleasant objects are innumerable, whether living or lifeless. Lifeless ones include countries, provinces, towers, towns and cities. As the writer said, “We see a most beautiful island even when we do not see it”: we see a beautiful island through a description, without seeing it ourselves. “The sun never saw a fairer city”; the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly, orchards, gardens, pleasant walks, groves, fountains and so on. The sky itself is called fair or foul. Fine buildings, fine pictures, all skilful, elaborate and finely wrought works, and clothes have an admirable splendour. We admire and gaze at them “as children do at Juno’s bird,” as children gaze at a peacock; a fine dog, a fine horse or hawk, and so on.

“The Thessalian loves a young horse, the Egyptian a young bull, the Spartan a puppy,” and so on. Such things as we love are most pleasing to our eyes and welcome to us; and whatever else we love may cause this passion if it is unnecessary or loved immoderately, as Guaineri observes.

These things are pleasing and good in themselves: excellent ornaments, necessary, attractive and suitable to possess. But when we gaze on them without restraint and dote on them too much, this pleasure may turn to pain, bring us much sorrow and discontent, cause our eventual ruin and end in melancholy.

Many are carried away by the bewitching sports of gambling, hawking, hunting and such empty pleasures, as I have said; others by an excessive desire for fame, to be crowned at the Olympic games, knighted on the battlefield and so on. In these ways they ruin themselves.

The lustful man dotes on his beautiful mistress; the glutton on his dishes, endlessly varied to please his palate; the pleasure-seeker on his different delights; the superstitious man on his idol, fattening himself on joys to come, as Turks feed themselves with an imagined belief in a sensual paradise. Thus different pleasant objects affect different people in different ways.

But the most beautiful and enticing objects come from human beings themselves, who most often captivate and allure people, making them dote on one another beyond all measure, for many reasons. First, as some suppose, through the secret power of the stars—“what star brings me into harmony with you?” People are especially devoted to one person and hate another, yet can give no reason for it: “I do not love you, Sabidius,” and so on.

Alexander admired Hephaestion, Hadrian Antinous, Nero Sporus, and so on. Physicians attribute this to people’s temperaments; astrologers to trine, sextile or opposing aspects of their respective ascendants, the ruling planets of their birth charts, and the love and hatred of planets; Cicogna to harmony and discord between spirits. Most, however, attribute it to outward charms.

A cheerful companion is welcome and agreeable to everyone. Hence, says Gomesius, princes and great men commonly maintain jesters and actors at their courts.

But “like most readily gathers with like.” It is similarity of character that binds most people inseparably: if they are devoted to the same studies or recreations, they delight in one another’s company; birds of a feather will gather together. If their inclinations differ or their characters are opposed, they can seldom agree.

Second, friendliness, habit and familiarity can often change nature, despite differences of character. People may be fellow countrymen, fellow students, colleagues, former comrades in arms or brothers in adversity—“the bitter fellowship of misfortune unites even people of different temperaments”—or connected by marriage or some such circumstance. Though they cannot agree among themselves, they will stick together like burrs and stand united against a third party.

So enmity ceases after some time apart, or after death; or when people meet in a foreign place.

Envy feeds on the living; after death it rests. Hatred has fallen away, and death has buried bitter anger.

A third cause of love and hatred may be services exchanged, “a kindness received.” Praise him, treat him kindly, take his side in a quarrel, relieve his distress, and you win him for ever. Do the opposite, and be sure of a lifelong enemy.

Praising or disparaging one another has the same effect, even among people who do not know each other, as with Schoppius towards Scaliger and Casaubon: “one mule scratches another.” Who could compare with Scaliger in his eyes? What eulogies, epithets and praises! “High priest of wisdom,” “perpetual dictator,” “ornament of letters,” “wonder of Europe”; noble Scaliger, “of astonishing intellectual excellence,” and so on; “in every respect to be compared with gods rather than men”; “we bow our knees before his writings as golden sacred shields fallen from heaven,” and so on.

But when they began to disagree, no one was so absurd, vile and base as Scaliger, as his books On the Family of the Burdons and other satirical attacks can testify. Ovid in his Ibis, and Archilochus himself, were not so bitter.

Another great bond or cause of love is blood relationship. Parents are dear to their children, children to their parents; brothers, sisters and relatives of every kind are like a hen and her chicks, all in one cluster. Every crow thinks her own chick the fairest. There are many memorable examples, and it is “like a monstrous portent” when such love is absent. “A mother cannot forget her child”: in this way Solomon discovered the true mother. Parental love cannot be hidden; it is natural and passes downwards. Those who are inhuman in this respect are unworthy of the air they breathe and of the four elements.

Yet we have many unnatural examples of this kind: hard-hearted parents, disobedient children, quarrelling brothers—nothing is more common. The love of relatives has grown cold: “many relatives, few friends,” as the saying goes. If your circumstances are good and you can “return like for like,” repaying their kindness, there will be mutual goodwill; otherwise you are a burden, more hateful to them than anyone else.

The last object that binds one person to another is physical attractiveness, beauty alone, as when men look on women with lustful love. This, above all, is called heroic melancholy, or love melancholy. Other kinds of love, says Piccolomini, are called love in a restricted sense, such as the love of wine, gold and so on; but love of women predominates in a higher degree, and the affected part is the liver. This love deserves a fuller explanation and will be discussed separately in the next section.