Quelle est la convenance qui excite l'amour
Beyond Mere Resemblance
The author challenges the notion that love is based solely on resemblance, using natural examples to show that affinity often arises from different sources.
We say that the eye sees, the ear hears, the tongue speaks, the understanding reasons, the memory remembers, and the will loves; yet we know well that it is the human being, properly speaking, who performs all these varied operations through different faculties and organs. So it is also the human being who, through the affective faculty we call the will, reaches toward and takes delight in the good, and who possesses that great affinity with it which is the source and origin of love.1 Those who believed that resemblance was the only affinity that produces love have missed the mark; for who doesn't know that the wisest old people love little children tenderly and dearly, and are loved by them in return; that the learned love the ignorant, provided they are teachable; and that the sick love their physicians? And if we can draw any argument from the image of love that appears in things without sense, what resemblance can make iron lean toward the magnet? Doesn't a magnet have more resemblance to another magnet, or to another stone, than to iron, which is of an entirely different kind? Although some people, in order to reduce every affinity to resemblance, insist that iron draws iron and the magnet draws the magnet, they still couldn't explain why the magnet draws iron more powerfully than iron draws iron itself.2 But I ask you: what likeness is there between lime and water, or between water and a sponge? And yet lime and the sponge take in water with an unmatched eagerness, and show toward it an extraordinary, insensible love.3 The same is true of human love, because it sometimes takes hold more strongly between people of opposite qualities than between those who are very much alike.
The Harmony of Correspondence
Love is defined by the proportion and correspondence between the lover and the beloved, allowing for mutual perfection even among dissimilar things.
So the fitness that causes love does not always consist in resemblance, but in the proportion, relation, or correspondence of the lover to the thing loved. For it is not resemblance that makes the physician lovable to the sick person, but the correspondence of the one's need with the other's sufficiency, since the one needs the help the other can give. In the same way the physician loves the sick person, and the learned man his apprentice, because they can exercise their faculties on them. The elderly love children not by natural affinity, but because the extreme simplicity, weakness, and tenderness of the one heighten and make more evident the prudence and assurance of the other—and this unlikeness is pleasing. Conversely, little children love the elderly because they see them occupied and busied with them, and because, by a secret instinct, they know they need their guidance. Musical harmonies are formed through discordance, by which dissimilar voices answer one another so that all together make a single proportional chord—just as the unlikeness of precious stones and of flowers makes the pleasing composition of enamel work and of patterned fabric.4 Thus, love isn't always formed by resemblance and affinity, but by correspondence and proportion, which consists in this: that through the union of one thing with another, they may mutually receive perfection and become better. The head, to be sure, does not resemble the body, nor the hand the arm; yet these things have so great a correspondence and join so properly one to the other that by their mutual conjunction they perfect each other excellently. That is why, if those parts each had a distinct soul, they would love one another perfectly—not by resemblance, for they have none between them, but because of the correspondence they have toward their mutual perfection. In this way the melancholy and the cheerful, the sharp and the mild sometimes love one another mutually, through the mutual impressions they receive from one another, by means of which their humors are mutually moderated.5
The Perfection of Unity
When correspondence is combined with resemblance, love reaches its highest intensity, approaching a state of true unity.
But when this mutual correspondence is joined with resemblance, love is without a doubt generated far more powerfully; for since likeness is the true image of unity, when two similar things unite by correspondence toward the same end, it seems rather to be unity than union. The fitness of the lover for the beloved is the primary source of love, and this fitness consists of correspondence—which is simply the mutual relationship that makes things suited to unite so they can share some perfection with each other.6 But this will become clearer and clearer as the discussion progresses.
Read the original Latin
Nous disons que l'oeil void, l'oreille entend, la langue parle, l'entendement discourt, la memoyre se resouvient et la volonté ayme; mais nous sçavons bien toutefois que c'est l'homme, a proprement parler, qui,par diverses facultés et differens organes, fait toute cette variété d'operations. C'est donq aussi l'homme qui par la faculté affective que nous appellons volonté, tend et se complait au bien, et qui a cette grande convenance avec iceluy, laquelle est la source et origine de l'amour. Or, ceux la n'ont pas bien rencontré qui ont creu que la ressemblance estoit la seule convenance qui produisoit l'amour; car qui ne sçait que les viellars les plus sensés ayment tendrement et cherement les petitz enfans, et sont reciproquement aymés d'eux;que les sçavans ayment les ignorans, pourveu qu'ilz soyent dociles, et les malades, leurs medecins? Que si nous pouvons tirer quelqu'argument de l'image d'amour qui se void es choses insensibles; quelle ressemblance peut faire tendre le fer a l'aymant? un aymant n'a-il pas plus de ressemblance avec un autre aymant ou avec une autre pierre, qu'avec le fer qui est d'un genre tout different? Et bien que quelques uns, pour reduire toutes les convenances a la ressemblance, asseurent que le fer tire le fer, et l'aymant tire l'aymant, si es ce qu'ilz ne sçauroyent rendre rayson pourquoy l'aymant tire plus puyssamment le fer, que le fer ne tire le fer mesme. Mais, je vous prie, quelle similitude y a-il entre la chaux et l'eau, ou bien entre l'eau et l'esponge? et neanmoins, la chaux et l'esponge prennent l'eau avec une avidité non pareille, et tesmoignent envers elle un amour insensible extraordinaire.
Or il en est de mesme de l'amour humain, car il se prend quelquefois plus fortement entre des personnes de contraires qualités, qu'entre celles qui sont fort semblables.
La convenance donq qui cause l'amour ne consiste pas tous-jours en la ressemblance, mais en la proportion, rapport ou correspondance de l'amant a la chose aymee;car ainsy ce n'est pas la ressemblance qui rend aymable le medecin au malade, ains la correspondance de la necessité de l'un avec la suffisance de l'autre, d'autant que l'un a besoin du secours que l'autre peut donner;comme aussi le medecin ayme le malade, et le sçavant son apprentif, parce qu'ilz peuvent exercer leurs facultés sur eux. Les viellars ayment les enfans, non point par simpathie, mais d'autant que l'extreme simplicité,foiblesse et tendreté des uns rehausse et fait mieux paroistre la prudence et asseurance des autres; et cette dissemblance est aggreable: au contraire, les petitz enfans ayment les viellars parce qu'ilz les voyent amusés et embesoignés d'eux, et que, par un sentiment secret;ilz connoissent qu'ilz ont besoin de leur conduite Les accors de musique se font en la discordance, par laquelle les voix dissemblables se correspondent, pour toutes ensemble faire un seul rencontre de proportion; comme la dissemblance des pierres precieuses et des fleurs fait l'aggreable composition de l'esmail et de la diapreure. Ainsy l'amour ne se fait pas tous-jours par la ressemblance et simpathie, ains par la correspondance et proportion, qui consiste en ce que par l'union d'une chose a une autre elles puissent recevoir mutuellement de la perfection et devenir meilleures. La teste,certes,ne ressemble pas au cors, ni la main au bras, mais neanmoins, ces choses ont une si grande correspondace et joignent si proprement l'une a l'autre, que par leur mutuelle conjonction elles s'entreprefectionnent excellemment: c'est pourquoy, si ces parties-la avoyent chacune une ame distincte, elles s'entraymeroyent parfaitement, non point par ressemblance,car elles n'en ont point ensemble, mays pour la correspondance qu'elles ont a leur mutuelle perfection. En cette sorte, les melancholiques et les joyeux,les aigres et les doux s'entr'ayment quelquefois reciproquement, par leurs mutuelles impressions qu'ilz reçoivent les uns des autres, au moyen desquelles leurs humeurs sont mutuellement moderees.
Mais quand cette mutuelle correspondance est conjointe avec la ressemblance, l'amour sans doute s'engendre bien plus puissamment;car la similitude estant la vraye image de l'unité, quand deux choses semblables s'unissent par correspondance a mesme fin, il semble que ce soit plutost unité qu'union.
La convenance donq de l'amant a la chose aymee est la premiere source de l'amour, et cette convenance consiste en la correspondance, qui n'est autre chose que le mutuel rapport qui rend les choses propres a s'unir pour s'entrecommuniquer quelque perfection. Mais cecy s'entendra de mieux en mieux par le progres du discours.
Notes
- 1 ↩French convenance is Sales’s technical term for the fitness/affinity that draws the will to a good; rendered here as “affinity,” not mere social “suitability.”
- 2 ↩si es ce que = modern French si est-ce que / c’est néanmoins que: adversative “still / yet,” not conditional “if.”
- 3 ↩amour insensible = love without sensation/awareness (in non-living things), not “insensitive” in the moral sense.
- 4 ↩simpathie is rendered as natural affinity (likeness of nature), not modern pity; amusés keeps older sense occupied/engaged with, not amused; esmail/diapreure = decorative enamel work and damask/variegated patterning.
- 5 ↩humeurs kept as humors for early-modern temperament psychology; could also be read as temperaments.
- 6 ↩French convenance is rendered as fitness (aptness/suitability that kindles love), matching the chapter title's sense; not modern social 'propriety'.
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