Those men—for the rest often men of fine culture—of whom this is true, are generally verging on middle age. Among men comparatively young, on the other hand, the erotic longing is often as refined and craves as much for sympathy, as with women, although it is still rare for the man to possess that balance between soul and senses which his equal in the other sex has attained. That women now venture to acknowledge that they possess erotic senses, while men are beginning to discover erotically that they have souls; that woman demands feelings in a man and he ideas in her—this is the great and happy sign of the times. Sensitive young men of the present day suffer perhaps as much as their sisters when loved only for their sex, not personally and on account of their personality. They for their part love just that womanly individuality for which they provide freedom of movement, instead of—as their own fathers did—trying to assimilate it to their own.
On the highest plane—as on the lowest—the similarities between man’s love and woman’s are already greater than the dissimilarities; and there may be more danger to love in the growing likeness between the sexes than in continued unlikeness. Man becomes a human being—and woman likewise—at the cost of his secondary sexual characters. There are already some who think that the close of psychical development will present the same phenomenon as the beginning of physical development, namely, that the embryo at a certain stage is neither male nor female but includes both possibilities!
The romanticists, F. Schlegel in particular, lay stress upon the distinction that, while the ancients put greatness of heart, nobility of mind, and strength of soul above the purely sexual qualities, the moderns have made woman one-sidedly feminine and man one-sidedly masculine, and assert that this extreme view on both sides must be got rid of in order to arrive at morality, beauty, and harmony in sexual relations; a view which was also that of Schleiermacher. And if we will see a deeper meaning in the tale of Aristophanes of the cloven human being, it will be the same that an apocryphal tradition ascribes to Jesus, in the saying that “the kingdom of God is at hand when the two again become one.” That Plato already emphasises the sufferings imposed on both halves of the being by the “cleavage,” is evidence of the commencement of development of love; for this development has progressed through the increasing opposition of the sexes, with the passion and the pain it has caused. Now at last the moment has arrived when the divided sections again converge towards a higher unity.
In reality, this desirable conciliation of sexual opposition is proceeding with such rapidity that there might be a fear of its becoming a danger to love in a near future, if the psychical opposition of sex were not always dependent finally on the physical, and if the modern man and woman were not becoming simultaneously more and more individualised.
And it is in this circumstance that the future possibilities of great love lie. Individualisation is already so powerful that a thoughtful person is ever more inclined to check himself when the abstract expressions “man” and “woman” escape his lips. For already men and women respectively differ among themselves almost as much as the two sexes from each other. And as a compensation for the enfeebling through conciliation of universal erotic attraction, we have the charm of individual contrasts. Love’s spiritual longing—to be resolved together with another soul into a higher harmony—will not be enfeebled, but, on the contrary, will be enhanced in proportion as this contrast is more personal.
A. Rodin—who like every great Frenchman understands great love—has glorified it in his statue of a pair of lovers, who have through each other become more perfect beings than either could have been alone. Rodin makes the man thoroughly masculine, the woman thoroughly feminine, while each line in their two figures shows primitive force ennobled into spiritual power, and love as the consummation of the human man and the human woman.
When life from time to time shows us this proud and beautiful vision, then we are in the presence of a happiness which is overpoweringly great. For as an economical housewife shuts out the sunlight, so life often lets fall the curtain of death when happiness shines; or indeed men kill their own happiness through instincts surviving from a lower stage.
Chief of these is that instinct which makes the force of primitive animality still erotically attractive even to the spiritually sensitive. Men and women with this power of elementary passion, intoxicate because they are themselves intoxicated, because, without being checked by any consideration or held back by the soul, they give themselves up wholly and hotly to the moment. It is as superficial a psychology to say that Don Juan’s reputation makes him irresistible as that conquest of Cleopatra is tempting because it is also conquest over Cæsar. No, the power of these natures lies in their undivided, unscrupulous will to use all the resources of their being to attain their end. And only that by which one’s whole being is held at the moment has the power of holding others. Thus the question is answered
Comment fais-tu les grands amours,