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We say the eye sees, the ear hears, the tongue
speaks, the understanding reasons, the memory
remembers, the will loves: but still we know well
that it is the man, to speak properly, who by divers
faculties and different organs works all this variety
of operations. Man also then it is who by the
affective faculty named the will tends to and pleases
himself in good, and who has for it that great
affinity which is the source and origin of love.
Now they have made a mistake who have believed
that resemblance is the only affinity which produces
love. For who knows not that the most sensible old
men tenderly and dearly love little children, and are
reciprocally loved by them; that the wise love the
ignorant, provided they are docile, and the sick
their physicians.
And if we may draw any argument from the image of
love which is found in things without sense, what
resemblance can draw the iron towards the loadstone ?
Has not one loadstone more resemblance with another
or with another stone, than with iron which is of a
totally different species? And though some, to reduce
all affinities to resemblance, assure us that iron
draws iron and the loadstone the loadstone, yet they
are unable to explain why the loadstone draws iron
more powerfully than iron does iron itself.
But I pray you what similitude is there between
lime and water? or between water and a sponge? and
yet both of them drink water with a quenchless
desire, testifying an excessive insensible love
towards it. Now it is the same in human love; for
sometimes it takes more strongly amongst persona of
contrary qualities, than among those who are very
like.
The affinity then which causes love does not
always consist in resemblance, but in the proportion,
relation or correspondence between the lover and the
thing loved. For thus it is not resemblance which
makes the doctor dear to the sick man, but a
correspondence of the one's necessity with the
other's sufficiency, in that the one can afford the
assistance which the other stands in need of: as
again the doctor loves the sick man, and the master
his apprentice because they can exercise their powers
on them.
The old man loves children, not by sympathy, but
because the great simplicity, feebleness and
tenderness of the one exalts and makes more apparent
the prudence and stability of the other, and this
dissimilitude is agreeable. On the other hand,
children love old men because they see them busy and
careful about them, and by secret instinct they
perceive they have need of their direction.
Musical concord consists in a kind of discord, in
which unlike voices correspond, making up altogether
one single multiplex proportion, as the unlikeness of
precious stones and flowers makes the agreeable
composition of enamel and diapry.
Thus love is not caused always by resemblance and
sympathy, but by correspondence and proportion, which
consists in this that by the union of one thing to
another they mutually receive one another's
perfection, and so become better.
The head certainly does not resemble the body, nor
the hand the arm, yet they have such a correspondence
and join so naturally together that by their
conjunction they excellently perfect one the other.
Wherefore, if these parts had each one a distinct
soul they would have a perfect mutual love, not by
resemblance, for they have none, but by their
correspondence towards a mutual perfection. For this
cause the melancholy and the joyous, the sour and the
sweet, have often a correspondence of affection, by
reason of the mutual impressions which they receive
one of another by which their humours are
reciprocally moderated.
But when this mutual correspondence is joined with
resemblance, love without doubt is engendered much
more efficaciously; for resemblance being the true
image of unity, when two like things are united by a
proportion to the same end it seems rather to be
unity than union. The affinity then of the lover and
the thing loved is the first source of love, and this
affinity consists in correspondence, which is nothing
else than a mutual relation, which makes things apt
to unite in order to communicate to one another some
perfection. But this will be understood better in the
progress of our discourse.
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