SHALL LOVE BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY?
This momentous question has been asked, and is daily answered, in a
Paris paper called _La Fronde_, on the staff of which all the writers
are women. This is a very delicate question to ask, and I am not sure
that it is particularly politic to do so on the part of women.
That women take love more seriously than men is a fact which, I believe,
is incontestable; but what would become of women if men were to decide
in the negative and answer that love should not be taken seriously?
Their only protection, their only weapon would be taken away from them.
See what happens in countries, not civilized, I must quickly add, where
men do not take love seriously.
In these countries there is practically no difference between a woman
and a slave, and even a beast of burden. The Arab, the Kaffir, the Zulu,
the Soudanese, can be seen on horseback, or walking majestically with a
blanket slung over his shoulder, while his womankind are following,
carrying a baby on their backs, a pail of water or a cask of beer on
their heads, and the rest of the burden in their hands.
These primitive creatures find all this quite natural, men as well as
women, and their greatest source of amusement is to see a white man
carry his wife's umbrella. How they pity and scorn that poor white man!
* * *
They look at him, and seem to say: 'Aren't you a man?' The more these
men treat their women as inferior beings, the more highly the women
think of the men, and the more respect they feel for them. And we would
probably do the same if love, which we men do take seriously, did not
subject, and even enslave, us to women.
Indeed, this would be our right--our Divine right--and women, I repeat,
are very impolitic to compel us to remind them of what happened at the
beginning.
We men have a Divine right to rule over women, and if we use that power
given to us only with the greatest moderation, it is because we love
women seriously.
This love for you, ladies, is your only safeguard. See how imprudent of
you it is to come and ask us if we take love seriously.
Not only do we take love seriously, but I believe that there is nothing
else in this world that is taken so seriously.
Love is the only universally serious thing in the world. Ask scientists
what they think of actors. They will tell you that there is no such
despicable profession in the world. Yet actors--and rightly, too--take
their art seriously.
Literature and music appear to those who cultivate them the most
absolutely serious things in existence, yet men of business, whose chief
object in life is money-making, shrug their shoulders, and feel ready to
say, like a London Lord Mayor to his son, who wanted to devote his life
to literature: 'I will be very much obliged to you if you will decide on
choosing an honest and respectable calling.'
What is serious to some is not to others. There is nothing in this world
which is universally serious--that is to say, recognised as serious by
all the civilized members of the human race, except bread and love.
The mission of man is to keep it alive with bread, and we perpetuate it
with love. When we have eaten and when we have loved, we have fulfilled
our mission. All the rest is accessory, and only more or less serious.
Poets and artists, who help make life beautiful, are not indispensable;
they are not serious. Scientists, who make great discoveries, help make
life more comfortable; they protect us against disease; they drug us;
they cure us, but they are not indispensable--the world would go on
without them; they are not serious.
* * *
Only as long as there is bread and there is love will the world go on
and the earth continue to be inhabited by the human race; bread and love
are serious.
I fear that I may have offended many people who think that they are
indispensable and that their vocation is serious. Well, I am very
sorry--very sorry indeed--but I cannot help it. The world was made thus,
and when it was made I was not consulted.
Put aside a few men and women, most of them to be found in the leisure
class or among the parasites of society, for whom love is a pastime, and
you will find that love is taken very seriously by men, if not quite in
the same way as it is taken by women, who are more delicate and refined
psychologists than men generally are.
But, my dear ladies, as long as we men are only too proud and happy to
fight the battle of life for you, to live for you, and, when occasion
arises, sometimes die for you, please thank the progress of
civilization, which has made us forget the origin of our relations
toward each other; do not give us reasons for reminding you of it, and,
for Heaven's sake! when we have spent years working twelve hours a day,
providing you with all the comforts, and often the luxuries, of life,
reared and settled in the world a large family of boys and girls, do not
come and ask us if we take love seriously. You are adding insult to
injury. Yes, indeed, we take love seriously, and matrimony too.