So intense, at times, is this vitalizing force, and so ardent the need of it, that the whole body leaps and throbs in pain. Plato, in his poetic way, explains the scorching sensation in all the skin and tissues by feigning that it is caused by the wing-feathers of the soul sprouting everywhere (i.e. according to our view, in every little cell). Nevertheless, his words on the subject are singularly pregnant with meaning. For he says (in the Phædrus): “Whenever indeed by gazing on the beauty of the beloved object, and receiving from that beauty particles which fall and flow in upon it (and which are therefore called ‘desire’), the soul is watered and warmed, it is relieved from its pain, and is glad; but as soon as it is parted from its love, and for lack of that moisture is parched, the mouths of the outlets by which the feathers start become so closed up by drought, that they obstruct the shooting germs; and the germs being thus confined underneath, in company of the desire which has been infused, leap like throbbing arteries, and prick each at the outlet which is closed against it; so that the soul, being stung all over, is frantic with pain.”[[22]]
This fusion of complementaries, then, which is the characteristic of fertilization, takes place between the lovers—not only in respect of their sex-cells, but probably also to a considerable degree in respect of their body-cells. And though with any mortal lovers the complementary nature of the fusion can hardly be so complete as to restore the full glory of the race-life, yet very near to that point it sometimes comes, filling them with mad and immortal-seeming ecstasies, and excusing them indeed for seriously thinking that the wings of their souls have begun to grow! In lesser degree this complementary fusion and exchange is doubtless the explanation (or one explanation) of that very noticeable point—the strange way in which lovers after some years come to resemble each other—in form and feature, in facial expression, tone of voice, carriage of body, handwriting, and all sorts of minute points.
I suppose at this point it will be necessary to explain that the recognition of love (in all its aspects) as a general condition of human health, does not mean a recommendation of wild indulgence in any and every passion—necessary, because in these cases it seems to be generally assumed that the proposer of a very simple thesis means a very great deal more than he says! It is here that the necessity of education comes in; for hitherto public instruction and discussion in these matters have been so defective that folk have been unable to talk about them except in a hysterical way—hysterical on the one side or the other. The positive value of love, its positive cultivation as a gracious, superb, and necessary part of our lives has hardly (at least in the Anglo-Saxon world) entered into people’s minds. To teach young things to love, and how to love, to actually instruct and encourage them in the art, has seemed something wicked and unspeakable. Says Havelock Ellis:[[23]] “Whether or not Christianity is to be held responsible, it cannot be doubted that throughout Christendom there has been a lamentable failure to recognize the supreme importance, not only erotically but morally, of the art of love. Even in the great revival of sexual enlightenment now taking place around us there is rarely even the faintest recognition that in sexual enlightenment the one thing essentially necessary is a knowledge of the art of love. For the most part sexual instruction, as at present understood, is purely negative, a mere string of thou-shalt-nots. If that failure were due to the conscious and deliberate recognition that while the art of love must be based on physiological and psychological knowledge, it is far too subtle too complex, too personal, to be formulated in lectures and manuals, it would be reasonable and sound. But it seems to rest entirely on ignorance, indifference, or worse.”
It is, I think, not unfair to suppose that it is this indifference or vulgar Philistinism which is largely responsible for the sordid commercialism of the good people of the last century. Finding the lute and the lyre snatched from their hands they were fain to turn to a greater activity with the muck-rake.
Love is a complex of human relations—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and so forth—all more or less necessary. And though seldom realized complete, it is felt, and feels itself, to be imperfect without some representation of every side. To limit it to the expression of one particular aspect would be totally inadequate, if not absurd and impossible. A merely physical love, for instance, on the sexual plane, is an absurdity, a dead letter—the enjoyment and fruition of the physical depending so much on the feeling expressed, that without the latter there is next to no satisfaction. At best there is merely a negative pleasure, a relief, arising from the solution of a previous state of corporeal tension. And in such cases intercourse is easily followed by depression and disappointment. For if there is not enough of the more subtle and durable elements in love, to remain after the physical has been satisfied, and to hold the two parties close together, why, the last state may well be worse than the first!
But equally absurd is any attempt to limit, for instance, to the mental plane, and to make love a matter of affectionate letter-writing merely, or of concordant views on political economy; or again, to confine it to the emotional plane, and the region of more or less sloppy sentiment; or to the spiritual, with a somewhat lofty contempt of the material—in which case it tends, as hinted before, to become too like trying to paint a picture without the use of pigments. All the phases are necessary, or at least desirable—even if, as already said, a quite complete and all-round relation is seldom realized. The physical is desirable, for many very obvious reasons—including corporeal needs and health, and perhaps especially because it acts in the way of removal of barriers, and so opens the path to other intimacies. The mental is desirable, to give form and outline to the relation; the emotional, to provide the something to be expressed; and the spiritual to give permanence and absolute solidity to the whole structure.
It is probably on account of this complex nature that for any big and permanent relationship of this kind there has to be a rather slow and gradual culmination. All the various elements have to be hunted up and brought into line. Like all great ideas love has its two sides—its instantaneous inner side, and its complex outer side of innumerable detail. In consciousness it tends to appear in a flash—simple, unique, and unchangeable; but in experience it has to be worked out with much labor. All the elements have to come into operation, and to contribute their respective quota to the total result. If we remember what happens when the spermatozoon and the ovum coalesce (see ch. ii. p. 19)—the extraordinary changes and disturbances which are induced in the chromatin elements of both nuclei, the fusion of the nuclei, and the ultimate ranging of the chromosomes in a line (for the formation of the new being) in such a way that every element is represented and contributes its share to the process—we cannot but be struck by the strange similarity to our own inner experience: how love searches the heart, drags every element of the inner nature forward from its lurking-place, gives it definition and shape, and somehow insists on it being represented, and, so to speak, toeing the line. We shall return to this point later. Here I only wish to insist on the complexity of the process, in order to show that for any big relationship plenty of time has to be allowed. Whichever side of the nature—mental, emotional, physical, and so forth—may have happened to take the lead, it must not and cannot monopolize the affair. It must drag the other sides in and give them their place. And this means time, and temporary bewilderment and confusion. It is curious how ‘falling in love’ has this very effect—how it paralyzes for a time—inhibiting the mental part and even the physical; how the smart talker becomes a dumb ass, and the man about town a modest fool, and the person who always does the right thing seems compelled to do everything wrong—as if a confusion were being created in the mind, analogous to that which we have observed in the cells. When we add to these considerations the extraordinary differences between persons, and between the proportions in which the elements of their characters are mixed, it is obvious how extremely complex the conditions of any one decent love-relation must be, and what tact and patience in the handling it may require.
The ignorance, therefore, which causes a young man, husband or lover, to think that the hurried completion of the sexual act is at once the initiation and the fulfilment of love, is fatal enough. It marks more often the end than the beginning of the affair. For, contrariwise, time and plenty of time has to be given in order to allow the central radiation in each case to have its perfect work. Is it too fanciful to suppose that the centrosome, which makes its appearance in the protozoön on its approach to conjunction, and which seems to rule the rearrangement of the chromatin elements within it, is the analogue of the radiating force in human courtship which so strangely sifts out and remoulds the elements of the lover’s personality? Does the magic of the centrosome correspond in some sense to the glamour, so well known in human affairs? And do they both proceed from some deep-hidden, profoundly important manifestation of the life, the energy, the divinity if you will, of the Race?