Against this running out and disappearance it is part of the Art of Love to be able to guard. It has sometimes been argued that familiarity is of necessity fatal; and that it is useless to contend against this sinister tendency implanted in the very nature of love itself. But this contention contains only a very partial truth. It is true that in physical love there is a certain physical polarity which, like electric polarity, tends to equate itself by contact. The exchange of essences—which we saw as a chief phenomenon of conjugation, from the protozoa upwards—completes itself in any given case after a given time; and after that becomes comparatively quiescent. The same with the exchange of mental essences. Two people, after years, cease to exchange their views and opinions with the same vitality as at first; they lose their snap and crackle with regard to each other—and naturally, because they now know each other’s minds perfectly, and have perhaps modified them mutually to the point of likeness. But this only means, or should mean in a healthy case, that their interest in each other has passed into another plane, that the venue of Love has been removed to another court. If something has been lost in respect of the physical rush and torrent, and something in respect of the mental breeze and sparkle, great things have been gained in the ever-widening assurance and confidence of spiritual unity, and a kind of lake-like calm which indeed reflects the heavens. And under all, still in the depths, one may be conscious of a subtle flow and interchange, yet going on between the two personalities and relating itself to some deep and unseen movements far down in the heart of Nature.
Of course for this continuance and permanence of love there must be a certain amount of continence, not only physical, but on the emotional plane as well. Anything like nausea, created by excess on either of these planes, has to be avoided. New subjects of interest, and points of contact, must be sought; temporary absences rather encouraged than deprecated; and lesser loves, as we have already hinted, not turned into gages of battle. Few things, in fact, endear one to a partner so much as the sense that one can freely confide to him or her one’s affaires de cœur; and when a man and wife have reached this point of confidence in their relation to each other, it may fairly then be said (however shocking this may sound to the orthodox) that their union is permanent and assured.
Nothing can, in the longer enduring values of love, well take the place of some such chivalrous mutual consideration which reaches the finest fibres of the heart, and offers a perfect freedom even there. Ellen Key—to quote her Ueber Liebe und Ehe[[35]] again—says, “Fidelity [in love] can never be promised, but may be won afresh every day;” and she continues, “It is sad that this truth—which was clear enough to the chivalrous sentiment of the old courts of Love—must still to-day be insisted on. One of the reasons, in fact, which these courts gave, why love was not compatible with Marriage, was ‘that the wife could never expect from her husband the fine consideration that the Lover is bound to exhibit, because the latter only receives as a favor what the husband takes as his right.’” To preserve love through years and years with this halo of romance still about it, and this tenderness of devotion which means a daily renewed gift of freedom, is indeed a great Art. It is a great and difficult Art, but one which is assuredly “worth while.”
The passion altogether, and in all its aspects, is a wonderful thing; and perhaps, as remarked before, the less said about it, the better! When people—I would say—come (not without clatter) and offer you their hearts, do not pay too much attention. What they offer may be genuine, or it may not—they themselves probably do not know. Nor do you also fall into a like mistake, offering something which you have not the power to give—or to withhold. Silence and Time alone avail. These things lie on the knees of the gods; which place—though it may seem, as someone has said, ‘rather cold and uncomfortable’—is perhaps the best place for them.
CHAPTER V
THE ART OF DYING
We have suggested in the last paper that some day possibly we may arrive at an intelligent handling of love and its problems, by which at length the passion may cease to be the cause of endless shipwreck and despair to mortals, and become a favorable and friendly divinity obedient to our service. Somewhat thus has been man’s experience with all the great powers of Nature—with fire and flood on the earth, with the winds and lightning of heaven. With intelligent treatment they have become his very ready helpers and allies. And, as indicated in the outset of this book, we may fairly expect the same conclusion with regard to the great natural event and process termed Death. The time has come when we are really called upon to face up to the fact of our decease from the present conditions of life, physical and mental; when we are called upon to study and to understand this fact, and by understanding to become masters of the change which it represents—and able to convert it to our great use and advantage.
Hitherto—as I shall have occasion presently to point out—there has been singularly little study of this science, either from the clinical, the physiological, or the psychological points of view; and the art of dying, for example (which is the subject of this chapter), seems to have been entirely neglected.
No doubt it may be said that this is a difficult art—difficult to study, and more difficult still to practise; yet, after all, that seems only the more reason for approaching it. The art of avoiding death commands much attention, and there are hundreds and thousands of books on that subject; yet since none can really avoid the experience and all must sooner or later pass through it, it might be thought that the art of meeting one’s end with discretion and presence of mind would at least command as much attention.
There ought, one would say—and considering the continual presence of this great ocean waiting to receive us—to be lessons on the subject of its navigation free of charge, and available for all who wish, just as there are lessons in swimming for sailors. And though it may be true that since, as a rule, one cannot die more than once, it is difficult to obtain the needed practice, yet even so one may with perseverance get some approach to doing so. There are a good many recorded cases of people who have apparently died, and after an interval of a few minutes or a few hours have come to life again. I knew a married lady, some years back, who after a long period of illness was given up by the doctors, and gradually sank till to all appearances she passed away. The medical man pronounced life to be extinct, and the relatives began to make the usual arrangements for her funeral. However, being devoted to her children, and anxious to see them through a critical period, she had made up her mind not to die, and being a woman of strong will she clung to her resolution. Two or three hours elapsed, and then, to the surprise and joy of her friends she returned from ‘the other side’—after which she lived three or four years, sufficiently long to carry out what was needed for her family. And though in this case she had no very distinct experience to report of another state of existence, yet the fact of her ‘will to live’ having persevered through the sleep or apparent death of her body and upper mind, was sufficient to convince her of survival of some sort on a deeper plane, and to disarm all fear and hesitation when death finally came.