Regarding the frequent occurrence of several love-passions on the part of the same person, there can be two opinions; but is it possible that anyone can simultaneously be in love with several individuals? I answer this question with an unconditional “Yes,” and I agree fully with Max Nordau when he explains that it is possible to love at the same time several individuals with almost identical tenderness, and that it is not necessarily lying when ardent passion for each of them is expressed.[172]
It is precisely the extraordinarily manifold spiritual differentiation of modern civilized humanity that gives rise to the possibility of such a simultaneous love for two individuals. Our spiritual nature exhibits the most varied colouring. It is difficult always to find the corresponding complements in one single individual.
I ask those who are well acquainted with modern society if they have not met men, and women also, who had advanced so far in the adaptation of their love-needs to the anatomical analysis of their psychical life, that for the romantic, realistical, æsthetic traits of their nature, for the lyrical or dramatic moods of their heart, they demanded correspondingly different lovers; and if these several lovers should encounter each other, and be angry with one another, the one who loved them both (or all) would be inclined to cry out in naive astonishment, like the heroine in Gutzkow’s “Seraphine,” “Love one another! love one another! You are all one, one—in me!”
In the romance “Leonide,” by Emerentius Scävola, the heroine is at the same time the wife of two husbands. Reality also is familiar with double love of this kind—for example, in the relationship of the Princess Melanie Metternich to her husband, the celebrated statesman, and to her previous bridegroom, Baron Hügel.[173] Especially frequent is the gratification of higher ideal needs and of the simple natural impulse, by means of two different persons. A man can love at the same time a woman of genius and a simple child of Nature. In the novel “Double Love” (1901), Elisar von Kupffer describes the simultaneous love of a learned man for his extremely intelligent wife and for a buxom servant-girl. A well-known example is also the double love of Wieland—the ideal love for Sophie Laroche, the frankly sensual love for Christine Hagel. But not only do differences of culture, of position, of character, play a part in such multiple love; the simple difference also of bodily appearance may lead to such simultaneous attractions; for example, a man may love at the same time a brunette and a blonde, an elegant little sylph and a distinguished presence. This is, however, on the whole, much rarer than simultaneous attraction to two different spiritual varieties.
Such facts as these are not to be employed so much in advocacy of the multiplication of love-relationships as for the illustration of the enormous difficulty in obtaining complete harmony between human beings, between one man and one woman. There remains always a balance of yearning, which the other does not fulfil; always a balance of striving, which the other is unable to understand. This cannot, however, affect in the slightest degree the ideal of the single love; on the contrary, it makes it stand out all the more brilliantly before our spiritual vision. It is rare, like every ideal, and attainable only by few. This rarity of complete love between a man and a woman is dwelt on also by Henry Laube in his novel “Die Maske,” in which he describes love in all its manifoldness and modern distraction.
Schleiermacher described very strikingly the necessity that exists for the repetition and manifoldness of love-perceptions:
“Why,” says he, “should it be different with love from what it is in every other matter? Is it possible that that which is the highest in mankind should be brought at the first time, by the most elementary activity, to a perfect conclusion in a single deed? Should we expect it to be easier than the simple art of eating and drinking, which the child first attempts, and attempts again and again, with unsuitable objects and rude experimentation, and with results which, contrary to his deserts, are not always unfortunate? In love, also, there is need for preliminary experiments, leading to no permanent result, from which, however, every one carries away something, in order to make the feeling more definite and the prospect of love greater and grander.”[174]
Georg Hirth also shows that true mastery of love only becomes possible by means of repetition. There are ideal masculine and feminine Don Juan natures, which are always searching for the genuine, eternal, only love; as, for example, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, wandering perpetually from man to man; or a similar figure, the titular heroine of the romance “Faustine,” by the Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn. Many, most indeed, of such never learn to know true love, because they never find the proper object of love; and they die, as Rousseau, in his “Confessions,” says so strikingly, without ever having loved, eternally torn by the need for love, without ever having been able perfectly to satisfy that need. Happy indeed are those like Karoline, who in Schelling found at length the man whose powerful personality fully corresponded to her idea of love.
The need for such a great and true love remains fixed, notwithstanding all deceptions, bitternesses, and the sorrows of unsatisfied longing. Love is, in fact, the human being himself; like the human being, love has its development, its impulse towards higher things, towards that which is better. No painful experience can completely annihilate love, and the need for love. In a beautiful stanza a French poet of the eighteenth century, the Chevalier de Bonnard, has described this essential permanency of love:
“Hélas! pourquoi le souvenir
De ces erreurs de mon aurore
Me fait-il pousser un soupir!
Je dois peut-être aimer encore,
Ah! si j’aime encore, je sens bien
Que je serai toujours le même;
Le temps au cœur ne change rien:
Eh! n’est-ce pas ainsi qu’on aime?”