FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF CRYSTALLISATION
Why do we enjoy with delight each new beauty, discovered in that which
we love?
It is because each new beauty gives the full and entire satisfaction of
a desire. You wish your mistress gentle--she is gentle; and then you
wish her proud like Emilie in Corneille, and although these qualities
are probably incompatible, instantly she appears with the soul of a
Roman. That is the moral reason which makes love the strongest of the
passions. In all others, desires must accommodate themselves to cold
realities; here it is realities which model themselves spontaneously
upon desires. Of all the passions, therefore, it is in love that
violent desires find the greatest satisfaction.
There are certain general conditions of happiness, whose influence
extends over every fulfilment of particular desires:--
1. She seems to belong to you, for you only can make her happy.
2. She is the judge of your worth. This condition was very important
at the gallant and chivalrous Courts of Francis I and Henry II, and at
the elegant Court of Lewis XV. Under a constitutional and rationalist
government women lose this range of influence entirely.
3. For a romantic heart--The loftier her soul, the more sublime will be
the pleasures that await her in your arms, and the more purified of the
dross of all vulgar considerations.
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The majority of young Frenchmen are, at eighteen, disciples of
Rousseau; for them this condition of happiness is important.
In the midst of operations so apt to mislead our desire of happiness,
there is no keeping cool.
For, the moment he is in love, the steadiest man sees no object such
as it is. His own advantages he minimises, and magnifies the smallest
favours of the loved one. Fears and hopes take at once a tinge of the
romantic. (Wayward.) He no longer attributes anything to chance; he
loses the perception of probability; in its effect upon his happiness a
thing imagined is a thing existent.[1]
A terrible symptom that you are losing your head:--you think of some
little thing which is difficult to make out; you see it white, and
interpret that in favour of your love; a moment later you notice that
actually it is black, and still you find it conclusively favourable to
your love.
Then indeed the soul, a prey to mortal uncertainties, feels keenly the
need of a friend. But there is no friend for the lover. The Court knew
that; and it is the source of the only kind of indiscretion which a
woman of delicacy might forgive.
[1] There is a physical cause--a mad impulse, a rush of blood to the
brain, a disorder in the nerves and in the cerebral centre. Observe
the transitory courage of stags and the spiritual state of a soprano.
Physiology, in 1922, will give us a description of the physical side of
this phenomenon. I recommend this to the attention of Dr. Edwards(8).
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