love does so depend.  A woman without physical attractiveness, but with tenderness, loyalty, and devotion, may arrive at plenty of happy relationships; she may be trusted, confided in, adored by young and old; but of the redeeming and regenerating love that comes with marriage she may have no chance at all.  It is a terrible question to ask, but what chance has love against eczema?  And yet eczema may co-exist with every mental and spiritual grace in the world.  In this case it is evident that the modern transcendental theory of love crumbles away altogether, if it is at the mercy of a physical condition.

The truth is that, like all the joys of humanity, love is unequally distributed, and that it is a thing which no amount of desire or admiration or hope can bring about, unless it is bestowed.  Even in the case of the faint-hearted lover, so mercilessly lashed in Prisoners, who will pay a call to see the beloved, but will not take a railway journey for the same object, is it not the physical vitality that is deficient?  I do not quarrel with the transcendental treatment of love; I only say that if this is accompanied with a burning scorn and contempt for those who cannot pursue it, it becomes at once a pharisaical and bitter thing.  No religion was ever propagated by scolding backsliders or contemning the weak; no chivalry was ever worth the name that did not stand for a desire to do battle only with the strong.

The genius of Charlotte Bronte consists in the fact that she makes love so splendid and glorifying a thing, and that she does not waste her powder and shot upon the poor in spirit.  The loveless man or woman, after reading her book, may say, “What is this great thing that I have somehow missed?  Is it possible that it may be waiting somewhere even for me?” And then such as these may grow to scan the faces of their fellow-travellers in hope and wonder.  In such a mood as this does love grow, not under a brisk battery of slaps for being what, after all, God seems to have meant us to be.  There are many men and women nowadays who must face the fact that they are not likely to be brought into contact with transcendental passion.  It is for them to decide whether they will or can accept some lower form of love, some congenial companionship, some sort of easy commercial union.  If they cannot, the last thing that they should do is to repine; they ought rather to organise their lives upon the best basis possible.  All is not lost if love be missed.  They may prepare themselves to be worthy if the great experience comes; but the one thing in the world that cannot be done from a sense of duty is to fall in love; and if love be so mighty and transcendent a thing it cannot be captured like an insect with a butterfly-net.  The more transcendental it is held to be, the greater should be the compassion of its interpreters for those who have not seen it.  It is not those who fail to gain it that should be scorned, but only the strong man who deliberately, for prudence and comfort’s sake, refuses it and puts it aside.  It is our great moral failure nowadays that legislation, education, religion, social reform are all occupied in eradicating the faults of the weak rather than in attacking the faults of the strong; and the modern interpreters of love are following in the same poor groove.