The imperative desire for an absolute monopoly of one chosen girl,
body and soul--_and one only_--is an essential, invariable ingredient
of romantic love. Sensual love, on the contrary, aims rather at a
monopoly of all attractive women--or at least as many as possible.
Sensual love is not an exclusive passion for one; it is a fickle
feeling which, like a giddy butterfly, flits from flower to flower,
forgetting the fragrance of the lily it left a moment ago in the sweet
honey of the clover it enjoys at this moment. The Persian poet Sadi,
says (_Bustan_, 12), "Choose a fresh wife every spring or New Year's
Day; for the almanack of last year is good for nothing." Anacreon
interprets Greek love for us when he sings:
"Can'st count the leaves in a forest, the waves in the sea?
Then tell me how oft I have loved. Twenty girls in Athens,
and fifteen more besides; add to these whole bevies in
Corinth, and from Lesbos to Ionia, from Caria and from
Rhodos, two thousand sweethearts more.... Two thousand did I
say? That includes not those from Syros, from Kanobus, from
Creta's cities, where Eros rules alone, nor those from
Gadeira, from Bactria, from India--girls for whom I burn."
Lucian vies with Anacreon when he makes Theomestus (_Dial. Amor._)
exclaim: "Sooner can'st thou number the waves of the sea and the
snowflakes falling from the sky than my loves. One succeeds another,
and the new one comes on before the old is off." We call such a thing
libertinism, not love. The Greeks had not the name of Don Juan, yet
Don Juan was their ideal both for men and for the gods they made in
the image of man. Homer makes the king of gods tell his own spouse
(who listens without offence) of his diverse love-affairs (_Iliad_,
xiv., 317-327). Thirteen centuries after Homer the Greek poet Nonnus
gives ([Greek: Dionusiaka], vii.) a catalogue of twelve of Zeus's
amours; and we know from other sources (_e.g., Hygin, fab._, 155) that
these accounts are far from exhaustive. A complete list would match
that yard-long document made for Don Juan by Leporello in Mozart's
opera. A French writer has aptly called Jupiter the "Olympian Don
Juan;" yet Apollo and most of the other gods might lay claim to the
same title, for they are represented as equally amorous, sensual, and
fickle; seeing no more wrong in deserting a woman they have made love
to, than a bee sees in leaving a flower whose honey it has stolen.
Temporarily, of course, both men and gods focus their interest on one
woman--maybe quite ardently--and fiercely resent interference, as an
angry bee is apt to sting when kept from the flower it has
accidentally chosen; but that is a different thing from the monopolism
of true love.