this is an ignorant calumny. He may love him because he has fed him, in one sense of the word ‘because,’ while in the other sense there is no because about it. The external conditions and psychical origin, in a word, the genesis of a matter, is one thing; its existing essence is another; and you can not, without throwing philosophy and facts both overboard, argue ‘this is how the thing came into the world, and therefore it is so.’ The fact is that in unselfish love the object that is dear is felt as one with ourselves; it is loved when the associations which first endeared it can not by any effort be brought before the mind. The man who talks about ‘illusion,’ and says the ideas of private pleasure are there, only we are unable to lay our hand on them, can not, unless he gives reasons, expect to be attended to. I maintain that, in the cases I have mentioned, the original psychical link has been absorbed, the communication is direct; the object is pleasant in itself, and those ideas are not a part of its content, or, if they are, they are not before the mind. Will any one have the assurance to say that, when you have gained a dog’s affection, he must remember the attentions which in one sense were the ‘because,’ and still connect them with you, and that they now are in this sense still the ‘because’? Everybody knows that an animal may be taught to do things by rewarding him with food, but afterwards will do the things partly because he now likes them, and mainly to please you, because he likes you; and he either does not think of the food at all, or conceals his thought with a strange, purposeless, and altogether impossible effort. The association now may have no existence; and, even if the idea does exist, it need not be separated from, but is identified with, the performance.
In these simple attachments there is no more ‘because’ or ‘why’ in the sense of ‘motive,’ than there is a because for the love of ourself. We love ourselves, and we love what we feel one with us. The ideas of the pleasant feelings, which did once enter into the content of the object and were objectified in it, fade away and disappear altogether, or at least (and that is the important point) from the conscious self. They may cease to be included in the content of the object, but the object, with the rest of its content, gives pleasure directly; we feel ourselves one with it, and in its affirmation our will is affirmed.
