Constellations.—From all this results the immense complication of the peculiarities of the human mind which are connected with love. Individual variations of the disposition to sexual appetite are combined with individual dispositions to the higher qualities of mind—general sentiments, intelligence and will—to form the most diverse individual combinations, which we may call constellations. Moreover, inherited individual dispositions are combined in man with a great number of experiences and remembrances, acquired in all domains in the course of his life, accumulating them in his brain by what is called education or adaptation to environment. From the immense complexity of energies resulting from hereditary dispositions combined with acquired factors, the resolutions and acts of man are derived, without his being able to account for the infinite multiplicity of causes which determine them.
It is thus that a man may be a model of conduct or morality, simply from the fact that his sexual appetite is almost nil. Another, on the contrary, suffers from an exaggerated sexual appetite, but is devoted, conscientious, and even scrupulous; this results in violent internal struggles, from which he does not always emerge victorious. A third is moderate in his appetites; if his sentiment of duty is strong and he possesses a strong will, he will resist his desires, while if his will is weak or his moral sense defective, he will succumb to the first temptation.
Love and sexual appetite may be intimately connected or completely separated in the same individual. In the same way that a cold woman may be a good mother, a very sensual woman may be a bad one, but the inverse may also be met with.
Love.—I speak here of the true love of a higher nature of one sex for the other, or sexual love, which is not simple friendship, but is combined with sexual appetite. To write on love is almost to pour water into the ocean, for literature is three parts composed of dissertations on love. There can be no doubt that the normal man feels a great desire for love. The irradiations of love in the mind constitute one of the fundamental conditions of human happiness and one of the principal objects of life. Unfortunately, the question is too often treated with exaggerated sentiment, or on the other hand, with sensual cynicism; it is examined from one side only, or else it is misunderstood.
First of all, love appears to be usually kindled by the sexual appetite. This is the celebrated story of Cupid's arrow. One falls in love with a face, a look, a smile, a white breast, a sweet and melodious voice, etc. However, the relations between love and sexual appetite are extremely delicate and complex. In man, the second may exist without the first and love may often persist without appetite, while in woman the two things are difficult to separate, and in any case, in her, the original appetite without love is much more rare. The two things are thus not identical; even the most materialistic and libidinous egoist will agree to this, if he is not too narrow-minded.
It may also happen that love precedes appetite, and this often leads to the most happy unions. Two characters may have extreme mutual sympathy, and this purely intellectual and sentimental sympathy may at first develop without a shadow of sensuality. This is nearly always the case when it exists from infancy. In modern society an enormous number of sexual unions, or marriages, are consummated without a trace of love, and are based on pure speculation, conventionality or fortune. Here it is tacitly assumed that the normal sexual appetite combined with custom will cement the marriage and render it durable. As the normal man has not, as a rule, extreme sentiments, such prevision is usually realized on the whole, the conjoints becoming gradually adapted to one another, more or less successfully according to the discoveries which are made after marriage.
Even when they are relatively true, love stories generally deal with exceptional cases, often even pathological; for the average marriage does not appear to the novelist sufficiently piquant or interesting to captivate his readers. We are not concerned here with extremes, or with the tragic situations met with in novels, but with normal and ordinary love, as it most often occurs in reality.
After what we have just said, it is clear that love is derived from two factors: (1) momentary sexual passion; (2) the hereditary and instinctive sentiments of sympathy which are derived from the primordial sexual appetite of our animal ancestors, but which have become completely independent of this appetite. Between these two terms are placed the sentiments of sympathy experienced by the individual in his former life, which have most often been provoked by sexual desire for an individual of the opposite sex, and which may be evoked by the aid of remembrance, kindled afresh, and contribute strongly to maintain constancy of love. These different sentiments pass into each other in all possible shades, and continually react on each other. Sexual appetite, for example, awakens sympathy, and is awakened by the latter in its turn; on the contrary, it is cooled or extinguished under the influence of bad conduct on the part of the person loved.
Let us here recall a law of the sentiments of sympathy, a law which is well known, but generally forgotten in human calculations. Man loves best those to whom he devotes himself, and not those from whom he receives benefits.[3] It is easy to be convinced of the reality of this fact in the relations of parents to their children, as well as in marriage. When one of the conjoints in marriage adulates the other, the latter may easily find this adulation quite natural, and may love the other conjoint much less than a spoilt child, to which is devoted all the transports of an unreasonable affection. The spoilt child, the object of such blind affection, more often responds to it by indifference, or even by ingratitude, disdain and impertinence. We find everywhere this play of sentiments, which considerably impedes mutuality in love. It may even concern inanimate objects. We like a garden, a house or a book over which we have taken much pains, and we remain indifferent to the most beautiful and precious gifts which come by themselves without our making any effort to obtain them. In the same way, the child becomes attached to some toy which he has made himself, and disdains the costly presents given by his parents. As a poet has said: "Man only enjoys for long and without remorse the goods dearly paid for by his efforts." (Sully-Prudhomme: "Le Bonheur.")
There is, therefore, a profound psychology in the old and wise saying that true love expresses itself as often by refusal as by compliance, and should always associate itself with reason. No doubt this is not primitive love; it is a love elevated and purified by its combination with the elements of intelligence.