"A king of Arabia was told that Mujnun, maddened by
love, had turned his face toward the desert and assumed
the manners of a brute. The king ordered him to be
brought in his presence and he wept and said: 'Many of
my friends reproach me for my love of her, namely
Laila; alas! that they could one day see her, that my
excuse might be manifest for me.' The king sent for her
and beheld a person of tawny complexion, and feeble
frame of body. She appeared to him in a contemptible
light, inasmuch as the lowest menial in his harem, or
seraglio, surpassed her in beauty and excelled her in
elegance. Mujnun, in his sagacity, penetrated what was
passing in the king's mind and said: 'It would behove
you, O King, to contemplate the charms of Laila through
the wicket of a Mujnun's eye, in order that the miracle
of such a spectacle might be illustrated to you.'"
This story was referred to by several critics of my first book as
refuting my theory regarding the modernity of true love. They seemed
to think, with the Persian poet, that there must be something
particularly wonderful and elevated in the feelings of a lover who is
indifferent to the usual charms of femininity and prefers ugliness.
This, indeed, is the prevalent sentiment on the subject, though the
more I think of it, the more absurd and topsy turvy it seems to me. Do
we commend an Eskimo for preferring the flavor of rancid fish oil to
the delicate bouquet of the finest French wine? Does it evince a
particularly exalted artistic sense to prefer a hideous daub to a
Titian or Raphael? Does it betoken a laudable and elevated taste in
music to prefer a vulgar tune to one that has the charms of a romantic
or classical work of acknowledged beauty? Why, then, should we
specially extol Mujnun for admiring a woman who was devoid of all
feminine charms? The confusion probably arises from fancying that she
must have had mental charms to offset her ugliness, but nothing
whatever is said about such a notion, which, in fact, would have been
utterly foreign to the Oriental, purely sensual, way of regarding
women.
Fix the attention on the man in the story instead of on the woman and
the mystery vanishes. Mujnun becomes infatuated with an ugly woman
simply because he has no taste, no sense of beauty. There are millions
of such men the world over, just as there are millions who cannot
appreciate choice wines, good music, and fine pictures. Everywhere the
majority of men prefer vulgar tunes, glaring chromos, and coarse
women--luckily for the women, because most of them are coarse, too.
"Birds of a feather flock together"--there you have the philosophy of
preference so far as such love-affairs are concerned. How often do we
see a bright, lovely girl, with sweet voice and refined manners,
neglected by men who crowd around other women of their own rude and
vulgar caste! Most men still are savages so far as the ability to
appreciate the higher secondary sexual qualities in women is
concerned. But the exceptions are growing more numerous. Among savages
there are no exceptions. Romantic love does not exist among them, both
because the women have not the secondary sexual qualities, and
because, even if they had them, the men would not appreciate them or
be guided by them in their choice of mates.