sometimes called, sentimental love, or platonic love, has nothing to
do with sexual desire, with sexual attraction. Indeed, people holding
this opinion consider love and sexual attraction--or lust as they like
to call the latter--as antithetical conceptions, as mutually
antagonistic and exclusive.
Both opinions, as is often the case with extreme and one-sided
opinions, are wrong. Both opinions have a reason for their existence,
because there is a grain of truth in both of them. But a grain of
truth is not the whole truth, and if an opinion contains ninety-nine
parts of untruth to one part of truth, then the effect of the opinion
is practically the same as if it were all false.
Here is the truth, or at least what I think is the truth, as it
appears to me after many years of thinking and many years of
observing.
=Foundation of Love.= The _foundation_, the _basis_ of all love is
sexual attraction. Without sexual attraction, in greater or lesser
degree, there can be no love. Where the former is entirely lacking the
latter can have no existence. This you may take as an axiom. Some may
call it love, but on analyzing it you will find that it is no such
thing. It may be friendship, it may be gratitude, it may be respect,
it may be pity, it may be habit, it may even be a _desire_ or a
_readiness_ to love or to be loved, but it is not love. Experience has
proved it in thousands and thousands of sad cases. And the girl who
marries a man who is physically repulsive to her, who possesses _no_
physical sexual attraction for her, though she may experience for him
all of the feelings mentioned above, namely, friendship, gratitude,
respect and pity, is preparing for herself a joyless couch to sleep
on. Unless, indeed, she happens to belong to the class of women whom
we call frigid, that is, if she is herself devoid of any sexual desire
and feels no need of any sexual relations. Such a woman may be fairly
or even quite happy with a husband who repels her physically, but whom
she likes or respects. And what I said about the wife applies with
still greater force to the husband. A man who marries a woman who is
physically antipathetic to him is a criminal fool.
I repeat, sexual, physical attraction is the _basis_, the foundation
of love. It is true we see certain cases of love which puzzle us. We
cannot understand what "he" has seen in "her" or what "she" has seen
in "him." But let us remember this paradox, which paradoxical though
it be, is true nevertheless: Love is blind, but Love also sees acutely
and penetratingly; it sees things which we who are indifferent cannot
see. The blindness of Love helps her not to see certain defects which
are clearly seen to everybody else; but, on the other hand, her
penetrating vision helps her to see good qualities which are invisible
to others. And a homely person may possess certain compensating
_physical_ qualities--such as passionate ardor or strong sexual
power--which, render him or her irresistible to a member of the
opposite sex.
But homeliness, ugliness or deformity have their limits, and I
challenge anybody to bring forth an authenticated case in which a man
fell in love with a woman--or vice versa--who had an enormous tumor on
one side of the face, which made her look like a monstrosity, or whose
nose was sunk in as a result of lupus or syphilis, or whose cheek was
eaten away by cancer. Love under such circumstances is an absolute
impossibility, because there is physical aversion here, and physical
aversion is fatal to the _genesis_ of love. A man who loved a woman
may continue to love her after she has become disfigured by disease,
but he cannot fall in love with such a woman.
I will repeat, then, and I trust you will agree with me on this point:
sexual attraction is the foundation of all love between the opposite
sexes. Where sexual attraction is lacking you can give the feeling any
other name you choose: it will not be love.
=Other Requisites.= But a foundation is not a whole structure. To
insure the stability of a high intricate building we must give it a
good solid foundation; but the foundation does not make the building.
That still remains to be built. So sexual attraction is the foundation
of all love, but it does _not_ constitute love. Many more factors,
many more wonderful stones are needed before the wonderful structure
called love is brought into existence. This wonderful structure
sometimes goes up in the twinkling of an eye, as if by the touch of a
magic wand--who has not seen or heard of instances of "love at first
sight!"--but the rapidity of the growth of the structure called Love
does not militate against our assertion that many stones, much
variegated material, and a strong cement are needed for its
completion. Fairies sometimes work very quickly.
A little thought will show clearly that Love is not merely sexual
love, not merely a desire to gratify the sexual instinct. If love were
merely sexual desire, then one member of the opposite sex, or at least
one attractive member, would be as good as any other. And indeed in
animals and in the lower races, where love as we understand it does
not exist, this is the case. To a male dog any female dog is as good
as another, and vice versa. Cats are not particular in the choice of
their mates, nor are cows, horses, etc. And the same is true of the
primitive savage races, and even among the lower uneducated classes of
so-called civilized races. To the Hottentot, to the Australian bushman
or to the Russian peasant one woman is as good as another. If the male
of a low race has some preference, it will be in favor of the woman
who happens to have a little property.
In fact I make the assertion that real love, true love, is a new
feeling, a comparatively modern feeling, absent in the lower races and
reaching its highest development only in people of high civilization,
culture and education.
The platitudinous objection might be raised that "human nature is
human nature," that all our feelings are born with us, and as such are
inherited, that they have been with us for millions of years and that
we cannot possibly _originate_ any entirely new feeling. True from a
certain viewpoint. We cannot originate intellect either. The germ of
intellect with all its potential possibilities was present in our most
primitive tree-climbing ancestors. But as much difference as there is
between the intellect of an Australian bushman and the intellect of a
Spinoza, a Shakespeare, a Darwin, a Victor Hugo, a Goethe or a Gauss,
so much difference is there between the love of a primitive savage and
the love of the highly cultured modern man. The love or so-called love
of the primitive or ignorant man (and woman) is a simple matter and is
practically equivalent to a desire for sexual gratification. The love
of the truly cultured and highly civilized man and woman, while still
_based_ on sexual attraction, is so complex and so dominating a
feeling that it completely defies all analysis, all attempts at
dissection, as it defies all attempts at synthesis, at artificial
building up.
As previously stated, some writers attempt to make a clear distinction
between sensual and sentimental love; many reams of paper have been
used up in an endeavor to differentiate between one and the other; the
first is called animal love or lust; the second pure love or ideal
love; the first variety of love is said to be selfish, egotistic, the
other--self-sacrificing, altruistic. These distinctions read very
nicely, but they mean very little. There is no distinct line of
demarkation between the two varieties of love, and one merges
imperceptibly into the other. Most, if not all, of our apparently
altruistic actions and feelings have an egotistic substratum; and the
quality of the love depends upon the lover. In other words, there are
not two separate, distinct varieties of love, but there are separate,
distinct varieties of men. A fine and noble man will love finely and
nobly; a coarse and brutal man will love coarsely and brutally. A man
who is fine and noble may not love at all, but he cannot love coarsely
and selfishly; and a coarse and brutal man can never love nobly and
unselfishly. Which once more means: the difference is not inherent in
the love, but in the lover.
But to say that a man may deeply love a woman and not have any sexual
desire for her is nonsense. A man who loves a woman and does not want
to possess her (to use the ugly ancient verb) does not love her--or
he is completely impotent. Whatever the feeling may be for her--it is
not love. He may abstain from having sex relations with her if the
circumstances are such that sex relations may lead to her unhappiness
and suffering, but to refrain from doing a thing, when reason and
judgment lead us to refrain, does not mean not to want the thing.
=Love at First Sight.= Nothing is more firmly established than the
fact that a person may fall passionately and incurably in love with a
person of the opposite sex at the very first sight, in the twinkling
of an eye, in the literal sense of the word. One glance may be
sufficient. And such a love may exist to the end of life, and may, if
reciprocated, lead to supreme happiness, or if unreciprocated to the
deepest unhappiness.
What it is that causes love at first sight is unknown. Some have
suggested that the beloved object sets in motion or fermentation
certain internal secretions (hormones) in the lover which cannot
become "satisfied" or "neutralized" except by that person; and the
possession of the beloved object becomes a physical necessity. This
explanation really means nothing. It is a hypothesis unsusceptible of
proof. But whatever the cause of love at first sight, it is so
mysterious a phenomenon that it gives the mystics and metaphysicians
some justification for their talk about "electric currents" and
"magnetic forces." These phrases also mean nothing, but are an attempt
at explaining the suddenness and irresistibleness of the attack. So
powerful is the attraction of love at first sight that people have
been known to cross continents and oceans merely to get a glimpse of
the beloved object; and people have been known to sacrifice
_everything_--their career, their material possessions, their social
standing, their honor, and even their wife and children, in order to
gain their object. And a mother may give up her children whom she
loves dearer than life, may risk ostracism and disgrace, only in order
to be with the object of her love. This shows that love, then, becomes
pathological, because any feeling which so completely masters an
individual that he is willing to sacrifice everything he has in the
world is pathological.
=Infatuation and Being in Love.= While, as said, the feeling of love
does not readily lend itself to dissection, to analysis, still we can
differentiate some phases of it. We can differentiate between "being
in love," "infatuation," and "love." Being in love is, as just
indicated, a pathological, morbid phenomenon. The person who is in
love is not in a normal condition. He can see nothing, he cannot be
argued with, as far as his love is concerned. She is the acme of
perfection, physical, mental, and spiritual; nobody can be compared
with her. And, of course, the man is anxiously eager to marry the
object of his love--unless insuperable obstacles are in the way; for
instance, if the man happens to be married.
Infatuation may be as strong as any "being in love" feeling. But with
this difference. In infatuation the man may know that the object of
infatuation is an unworthy one, he may despise her, he may hate her,
he may pray for her death, he may do his utmost to overcome the
infatuation. In short, infatuation is a feeling, chiefly physical,
which the man can analyze, the unworthiness and absurdity of which he
may acknowledge, but which he is unable to resist or overcome. He
feels himself bewitched; he feels himself caught in a net, he is
anxious to tear asunder the meshes of the net, but is not strong
enough to do it.
And this is a pretty good way to differentiate between being in love
and being infatuated. If in love the man does not want to be free from
his chains; he does not want to cease to love or to be in love. When
infatuated the man often uses his utmost will-power to break his
shackles. Sexual satisfaction is often sufficient to shatter an
infatuation; it is not sufficient to destroy love--it often
strengthens and eternalizes it.
Neither being in love nor infatuation can last "forever"; they are
acute maladies of high tension and relatively short duration.
Infatuation may change into indifference or disgust; "being in love"
may change into indifference, hatred, or into real love--a steady,
durable love.
This will answer the often asked question: How do marriages turn out
which are the result of a sudden, violent passion, or of love at first
sight? No ironclad rules suitable for all cases can be given. Some
turn out very unhappily, the couple gradually finding out that they
are altogether unsuited to each other, that their temperaments are
incompatible, that their views, ideas, likes and dislikes are
different. In some cases what was supposed to be a great love is soon
seen to have been merely an infatuation. And satiety and disgust
follow. But in other cases, as mentioned, the sudden consuming passion
turns into a warm, life-long love and the people live happily ever
after.
Dr. Nyström relates the case of a prominent physician of France, of
high social and scientific standing, who beheld a young girl
accidentally in the street. He did not have the slightest idea who she
was. He was irresistibly attracted to her. He followed her, boarded
the same omnibus and went to the house which she entered, rang the
bell, introduced himself, begging pardon for his intrusion, but was
dismissed. He returned and explained to her his ardent passion and
asked permission to visit her parents, well-to-do people in the
country, and the climax was a mutual love and a happy marriage.
Many of us know of similar cases. But as a rule the slow developing
love is more reliable than the suddenly bursting out flame.
* * * * *
Love is the most complex, the most mysterious, the most unanalyzable
of human emotions. It is based upon the difference in sex--upon the
attraction of one sex for another. It is fostered by physical beauty,
by daintiness, by a normal sexuality, by a fine character, by high
aspirations, by culture and education, by common interests, by
kindness and consideration, by pity, by habit and by a thousand other
subtle feelings, qualities and actions, which are difficult of
classification or enumeration.
A great love, greatly reciprocated, is in itself capable of rendering
a human being supremely happy. _Nothing else is._ Other things, such
as wealth, power, fame, success, great discoveries, may give supreme
satisfaction, great contentment, but supreme, buoyant happiness is the
gift of a great love only. Such loves are rare, and the mortals that
achieve it are the envy of the gods. But a great love, unreciprocated,
especially when admixed to it is the feeling of jealousy, is the most
frightful of tortures; it will crush a man like nothing else will, and
the victims of this emotional catastrophe are pitied by the inmates of
the lowest inferno.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] To avoid confusion, I will state here that I am discussing love
between the opposite sexes, and not maternal love, homosexual love,
love for one's country, etc.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
JEALOUSY AND HOW TO COMBAT IT
Jealousy the Most Painful of Human Emotions--Impairment of
Health--Mental Havoc--Jealousy as a Primitive Emotion--Jealousy
in the Advanced Thinker and in the Savage--Jealousy in the
Child--Feelings and Environmental Factors--Essential Factors--
Vanity--Anger--Pain--Envy--The Impotent Husband's Jealousy--
Anti-social Qualities--The Jealous and the Unfaithful Husband--
Means of Eradicating the Evil--Iwan Bloch on the Question--Prof.
Robert Michels' Statement--Remark of Prof. Von Ehrenfels--Havelock
Ellis on Variation in Sexual Relationships--Advanced Ideas--Woman
as Man's Chattel--The Change and the Changer--Teaching the
Children--Casting Epithets at Jealousy--Free Unions and Jealousy--
Feelings, Actions and Public Opinion--The Adulterous Wife of the
Present Day--Jealousy Defeating Its Own Object--Jealousy of
Inanimate Objects.
He or she who has been so unfortunate as to experience the pangs--or
fangs--of jealousy will readily admit that it is one of the most
painful, if indeed _not_ the most painful, of all human emotions. The
suffering that it metes out to its victims is indescribable. No other
single human emotion so affects the body, so upsets the mind, so
deranges every function, as does jealousy. The torture that it causes
makes the sufferer a truly pitiable object: the complete loss of sleep
and complete loss of appetite may result in a serious impairment of
the sufferer's health, while the rage it often gives rise to may lead
to actual insanity, or at least to great mental disturbance. With good
reason has popular fancy pictured this cursed emotion as a green-eyed
monster.
Jealousy is a primitive emotion. It is present not only in the
primitive races, but even in animals. And being a primitive emotion,
we can hardly hope to succeed in eradicating it entirely. Not in the
immediate future, at any rate. But we can modify it.
The statement frequently heard that "human nature is human nature" is
only a platitudinous half-truth. The fundamental part of human
nature--the desire for happiness and the avoidance of suffering--cannot
be changed, nor would we want to change it if we could. It would mean
the disappearance of the human race. But that many of our primitive
emotions can be greatly modified by culture, by new standards, by new
ideals of morality, about this there can be no question.
Just as love in modern man is an entirely different feeling from what
it was in primitive man, so jealousy in the advanced thinker is a
different feeling from what it was in the savage; and by education and
true culture it can be modified still further. We hope that in time to
come--I will not venture to say how soon that time will be here--this
injurious, degrading, anti-social feeling may be entirely or almost
entirely eradicated from the human breast.
The primitive desire--and this primitive desire of the race is still
fully exhibited by children--is to take possession of everything nice
or useful that somebody else has and which we have not. But our
education and our cultural standards, including fear of punishment,
have so repressed this desire, have put it so deeply in the
background, that normal human beings hardly feel it at all.
It is only improperly brought up people, mental defectives and those
unable to adjust themselves to their environment who still have this
primitive feeling of taking or stealing. And so with many other
feelings and emotions; and so with jealousy.
If we, at the very first notice of a manifestation of jealousy by a
child, should frown upon it, if we should explain to the child or
adolescent that jealousy is a mean, degrading feeling, that it is a
feeling to be ashamed of, a feeling to hide and not to show off or
even be proud of--as some are now--then jealousy would manifest itself
in a much smaller number of individuals, and those unfortunate enough
to be attacked by it would try to repress it, to hide it, to overcome
it, so that it would eventually become paler and less acute and its
consequences would be less significant, less disastrous for both the
victim and for the persons concerned. Feelings, let us bear in mind,
are not spontaneous things uninfluenced by any environmental factors.
Feelings are like plants; under one environment you may foster their
growth and make them develop luxuriantly; under another environment
you may dwarf their growth and strangle them.
In order to enable us to inhibit the growth of the demon of jealousy,
we must learn what its essence is and what factors are favorable to
its development.
=Causes of Jealousy=
The essential factor in jealousy is _fear_. Fear of losing the beloved
object, fear of losing the person who provides you with sexual
satisfaction, or the mere economic fear of losing a material provider.
The latter kind of fear is, of course, more often manifested--even
though unconsciously--in women. Women who have no love for their
husbands are nevertheless often fiercely jealous, because consciously
or unconsciously they are afraid that their husbands may desert them
for other women, and that they may thus find themselves in a
precarious economic condition.
Another factor in jealousy is wounded _vanity_. We do not like to feel
that somebody is considered superior to us. This feeling of wounded
vanity is present in other varieties of envy or rivalry. A person who
loses in a race or gets a lower mark in his examination than his rival
may be filled with a feeling of envy and hatred almost equal in
intensity to, though never as painful as, sexual jealousy.
Another factor in jealousy is _anger_ over loss of what we consider
our property. In our present social order the man considers his wife
his absolute property, and so does the wife consider her husband. And
there is anger that a stranger should dare to rob us or make use of
our property, just as there would be anger if a thief came and robbed
us of a valuable material possession. This anger or rage part of
jealousy is not a sign of love. It is very far from being so. Because
it manifests itself also in men and women who have not a particle of
love for their spouses; it manifests itself in spouses who have
nothing but hatred and loathing for their partners.
Another important factor is _pain_, pain that the person we love has
ceased to love us. When we love a person and our love is not
reciprocated, we feel pain which may rise to the degree of agony, even
when there is no rival in the field. But when a person who loved us
has ceased to love us--or we imagine so--and has transferred the love
to another person that pain is so much the greater.
I will digress here for a moment to state that the fear that a person
has ceased to love us because he loves somebody else is often
groundless. It is based upon the erroneous and vicious idea that a man
cannot possibly love two women at the same time, or that a woman
cannot love two men at the same time. Psychologists, particularly
those who have made a special study of sexual psychology, know that
this idea is false. They know that love may be directed at the same
time towards two or three individuals. They know that a second love
not only does not necessarily destroy or diminish a first love, but
may deepen and strengthen the latter.
Another element is pure _envy_. Just mean envy that somebody should
have what we haven't, or what we have but are in danger of losing.
Just as we envy others an automobile, a fine house, a high social
position, etc., when we have not got them or have been deprived of
them.
A point that I would like to mention is, that if husbands who have
become impotent--having lost either the desire or the power, but
particularly the latter--become jealous, their jealousy knows no
bounds. No strongly potent man ever reaches the same intensity in
jealousy as is reached by a sexually weak or impotent man. The
knowledge that another man has displaced him and that he himself could
not replace that other man _even if he were permitted to_ fills him
with impotent rage; and, as is well known, impotent rage is always
more intense than rage that is potent. Women are free from this kind
of rage, because women are never impotent in this sense. (They may be
frigid, but they are never devoid of the _potentia coeundi_, except in
extremely rare cases of _atresia vaginae_ or the absence of the
external genitals.)
There are a number of other components which go to make up this "queen
of torments" or "king of torturers" jealousy, but those I have
enumerated are the essential ones.