【英文文学】The Book of Love.docx

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1、【英文文学】The Book of LoveFOREWORDMantegazza is to Physiology what Flammarion is to Astronomy. The two great masters head a brilliant galaxy of modern writers on natural phenomena who draw their material from science and mould it in an esthetic form. After the most skilful analysis of the scientific ele

2、ments to their minutest components, they proceed to an ideal synthesis in which the various elements retain their substance, yet change their outward appearance. It seems as if these elect minds, having once satisfied their scientific curiosity as to physical and human phenomena, had been fascinated

3、 and inspired by an irresistible love of creation, and rising above the facts and laws of nature to the evanescent and melodious world of imagination, they offer us their work in a harmonious unity of two seemingly opposite and irreconcilable elementsthe real and the ideal, Science and Poetry.And th

4、us, I dare say, it is as if, by a generous law of reaction and equilibrium, while our generation seems to gravitate toward a life of facts and order, barren of idealism, Science would teach us that she herself does not benumb or kill sentiment, but, on the contrary, discloses to the minds of the ele

5、ct the flowery slopes of an unknown and infinite world of wonders and sentiment.So it must be that those who have attained a high place in intellectual life will gladly replace the old conception of physical and human phenomena with a new and more intense representation, which, measured in the finit

6、ude of our reason, is loved in the infinity of our sentiment. To the uninitiated mind most beautiful is the representation of the sun in the image of Ph?bus crossing the heavens in his flaming chariot drawn by fiery horses; but still more beautiful for the intellectual mind is it to think of the imm

7、ense body of fire, of thePg 6 energy darting from a star more than a hundred million miles distant from our planet, more than a hundred million times larger than the earth, and yet a star millions of times smaller than millions of other celestial bodies to our naked eye unknown, unknown to our most

8、powerful telescopes, and whose existence and fantastic speed in the space of the heavens are divined only by the abstraction of our faculties in an infinite representation of the laws of physics. Poetical is the vision of a goddess of Olympus descending to earth and carrying to a man asleep the mess

9、age or the image of a dear, distant person; but immensely more poetical is the conception of a telepathic force within us, made of us, consciously or unconsciously created by us, an integral part of our psychical organism, and by which we instantly communicate over hills and dales, mountains and val

10、leys, oceans and deserts, with another human being whose spirit is harmoniously attuned to ours.The impersonation of hatred and love by Fury and Cupid is much less poetical than the conception of an explosion of psychical forces, powerful and antagonistic, in millions of men at the same time.The tas

11、k of dealing with the natural history, the origin and the development of the sentiment which underlies the principal phenomena of human existence, which came into being with the first twilight of organic life, and which indissolubly binds together the individuals and the generations, seems to have b

12、een reserved to the genius of Paolo Mantegazza, and with this great subject he dealt in a masterly way, in a way unimitated and inimitable. He has snatched Love from the Olympus of the gods of old, from the clutches of classic literature, stripped him of all his tinsel and garments, and revealed him

13、 as partflesh and blood of man.By a new conception of love, more rational, more human and yet no less poetical than the classic representations to which we have been accustomed from times immemorial, Mantegazza gives us a work in which the scientific foundation and the poetical conceptions are unite

14、d in such wealthPg 7 of colors and harmonies that its reading, rich with true and romantic charm, is incomparably superior to our best fiction. It is a daring deed, both in the literary and the philosophical field, and it opens a new horizon to the idealization of human feelings, discoveries and eve

15、nts.Mantegazza, unlike countless love writers and poets, approaches his field not with a hoe or a plow to scratch the surface of the ground, but with a powerful drill that penetrates into the lowest strata of the earth and reveals its deepest terrestrial composition. In the pursuit of his aim, carri

16、ed by enthusiasm in the innermost research of facts and by admiration for the beauty of his subject, Mantegazza has used all the wealth of his literary training, skilfully and lavishly drawing upon all the resources of the Italian language. The task of the translator has thus been made doubly diffic

17、ult, as the original language of the book has more subtlety and artistic abandon than the English language would allow. Rather than run the risk of betraying either the substance or the representation of the authors idea, often it has been preferred to sacrifice the turn of the English phrase to tha

18、t of the corresponding Italian, and possibly incur the imputation of exoticism.Such is the translation of a beautiful Book of Love offered to the American public at a time when all the evil passions and degradations of hatred are unleashed over the world. In striking contrast with the trend of the h

19、uman mind today, what a meager chance is awaiting the contemplation of a sentiment whose mission is to tie all humanity with a bond of affection! And yet, while time and evolution relegate the memory of the most fearful cataclysms of the human race to the icy page of history, the fundamental element

20、s constituting human life cannot be changed or destroyed. Love will continue to exist as long as the laws of affinity and procreation seize the human being at his birth and by the evolution of matter dominate him even after his death. The struggle for life may become intensified or disappear from th

21、e world; hatred among classes, nations, races may deepen, expand or be altogether eliminated; passions may gain Pg 8further ascendancy over humanity, or humanity may learn to control them; and, in the words of Shelley,Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change, to theseAll things are subject but eterna

22、l Love.At the feet of him, procreator and prince of all affections, at once proud, generous, kind, fair, and weak, avaricious, cruel, deceitful, in all virtues rich and in all sins, a king and a miser, we shall always lay, proudly or in shame, the innermost throbs of our heart, our tears and our joy

23、s, the highest aspirations of our mind, the sweetest ecstasies of our soul, our convulsions, our despairs, our crimes, up to the very threshold of the great oblivion, when, in the words of the poet, of the extenuated race one lone man and one woman, among the ruins of the mountains and of the dead w

24、oods, in the wake of the departing warmth, clasped together in the supreme fate of creation, livid, with glassy eyes shall see the last sun descend forever.Er. Be.TO THE READERI have conceived love to be the most powerful and at the same time the least studied of human affections. Surrounded by a tr

25、iple forest of prejudice, mystery and hypocrisy, civilized men know it too often only through stealth and shame. Poets, artists, philosophers, legislators, snatch a morsel now and then from the flesh of the great god, and hurry away to conceal it as a precious booty of forbidden fruit. To study love

26、 as a phenomenon of life, as a gigantic power which moulds itself in a thousand ways among various races and in various epochs, and as an element of health for the individual and for the generations, has appealed to me as a great and worthy undertaking.The Author.INTRODUCTION GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY OF L

27、OVEMany years ago I wrote that to live means nutrition and generation, and the deeper I cast the sounding-line into the dark abysses of life, the more I am convinced that this definition faithfully depicts the most striking characteristics of all creatures which, from bacteria to man, come to life,

28、grow and die on the face of our planet. If, however, I wished still further to simplify my idea, reducing life to its simplest and most essential form, I would say without fear of betraying the truth, that to live means to generate.Every living body is perishable, but before dying it has the power o

29、f reproducing the form that has made it capable of living; and that whirlwind which absorbs and rejects, which assimilates new atoms and repels old ones, and which so clearly represents the eternal picture of life in all its manifestations, is also the most faithful representation of every form of g

30、eneration.Nutrition is a real genesis, and in the great chemical laboratory of living beings we have at all times before our eyes the reproduction of histological elements of organs and individuals. We lose hair, epithelia, white corpuscles every day; and yet every day we generate hair, epithelia an

31、d leucocytes: this is an every-day generation in the body of man. A nail falls off, a new one takes its place: this is the reproduction of an organ. We generate children similar to ourselves: this is the reproduction of an entire organism, the true generation. But in one of our offspring we see re-r

32、epeated a mole which is on our nose: this is the reproduction of an organ within an organism. On the other hand, onePg 14 race generates another race, one species another species; and here we see a broader genesis by which from the reproduction of a cell through another cell we gradually pass to the

33、 generating of an organ, of an individual, of a race, of a species.The world of living beings is a gigantic tree and from its trunk shoot forth the branches of classes, orders, species. On the branches leaves grow, which are the individuals; but each one of these small individuals generates within i

34、tself many cells, true organisms within greater ones. The world of living beings is but a great laboratory of prolific, incessant generation. Cells generate cells; organs, organs; species, species. An intimate brotherhood makes us members of one great organismthe placenta of living beings; and among

35、 ourselves we exchange the same matter which each of us in turn contributes to the work of apparent destruction, called nutrition, and to that of reproduction, designated as generation. To feed themselves and to generate, living beings are continually exchanging with each other a part of their own m

36、atter which, passing from one organism to another, seems to acquire new energy and new life. On the one hand, seaweeds live on mushrooms, carnivorous animals devour herbivorous, herbivorous feed on herbs, and man, the highest branch of the tree of living beings, partakes of all. On the other hand, m

37、ales and females in continuous succession interchange part of their matter, remoulding their primitive forms.The most elementary form of life is not, however, the cell, since at a lower stage we find the protoplasm, the true primum vivens which, by scission, generates the individual; and, by nourish

38、ing itself, nobody can tell what mysterious genesis of atoms it induces within its own most simple organism. The protoplasm cannot live without a continual exchange of matter, so that the live molecules of yesterday are dead today; and those which are alive today will be dead tomorrow; therefore nut

39、rition also, in the last analysis, is an intimate and very mysterious generation.Evanescence of forms is one of the most essential characteristics of living beings, and we give the name of death toPg 15 the falling of every leaf from the tree of life. Man, also, drops some of these leaves every dayh

40、air, epithelia, cells, which often produce a secretive substance and fall with it. Before dying, a part of the pre?xisting form remains to re-animate the dead form and follows in its turn the parabolical cycle through which the mother form has passed. This is the most general principle and includes

41、all possible kinds of generation, from that of scission to the highest form of sexual genesis. One would say that the life of an individual is only a moment of the great life of the species, of the classes, of the kingdoms of living beings; it is a spark which shoots off intermittently, passing from

42、 one organism to another.Powerful and irresistible is the tendency to generate; in a great many cases the individual sacrifices himself consciously, or is unwittingly sacrificed by the laws of nature, provided that before death he transmit life to others. Let the individual perish, if this preserve

43、the species! Such is the eternal cry of nature, which men and infusoria, oaks and mushrooms alike must obey. If the individual is protected and possesses preservative instincts and defensive organs, the species has a hundred bulwarks, a thousand manners of safeguard, more means of protection than ar

44、e needed. In fact, living beings generate so profusely that one species alone would pervade the earth if the various circles of expansion, falling in with each other, did not struggle among themselves, like the circles caused on the smooth surface of a lake by a handful of sand thrown upon it by a c

45、hild. Apart from the manner in which life is transmitted, there is an amount of life which passes away, there is a certain amount of fecundity, and this may seem, at first glance, most whimsical, while it is governed by the laws of preservation.To be born and to diefecundity and mortalityare so clos

46、ely connected with each other that we can consider them as different aspects of the same phenomenon, as the action and reaction of life. When reproduction increases beyond measure, the dangers for the individuals generated increase at the same time, and destruction mows down the excessivePg 16 numbe

47、r of those which are born. Now it is food that is no longer proportionate to the new-born; then parasites and enemies of the over-expanded species, which, increasing in turn, re?stablish the equilibrium. The destructive forces and the protective balance mutually, as happens with many other forces, s

48、impler and better known.The Malthusian problem, however, is much more intricate. If all species were equally prolific and had a life of equal length, the problem would, in fact, be reduced to a question of space and food; but, on the contrary, the duration of life and the various degrees of fecundit

49、y serve in turn to re?stablish the equilibrium by other ways. If the reproduction of mice were as slow as that of man, they would all be destroyed before another generation could be born; and even if they could live fifteen or sixteen years, not one of them, perhaps, would ever attain that age, surviving all dangers. And on the other hand, should oxen multiply in the same proportion as infusoria, the entire species would die of hunger in a week.In order that an organic form