The Book of Love

by Paolo Mantegazza

In love, genius and character exercise very little influence if they do not assume a beautiful form, and esthetics dominate and govern all amorous phenomena. This is not enough: even those who believe that their judgment in making a selection soars to the loftiest spheres of the ideal world, and despise the beautiful as a vulgar fascination of dull and clouded minds, seek, involuntarily, unknowingly, some virtues that bear a deep sexual mark. There may be a philosopher who boasts of having loved a homely but intelligent and sensible woman; but let him search the depths of his heart, let him study the sources of his love, and he will find that he admires and loves in his companion those virtues which are essentially feminine: the flexuous grace of tenderness and the kind intelligence of the heart, or the insuperable cleverness of affection, or the coquettish forms of a refreshing and modest intellect. In other words, the proud despiser of form was seduced by the form, all beautiful and all feminine, of a character or of an intelligence. And woman, when she happens to love an ugly man, is conquered either by dominating intellect, by dazzling ambition, by heroic courage, or by the power of some virtues that bear a deeply virile mark. Sex is too great a portion of the economy of life to be eliminated from our calculations by our caprice, and love is a stream too large to be dammed and directed between the paper dikes of our sophisms and our reticences; and if some one should not be convinced yet that beauty is the supreme inciter of every amorous sympathy, let him remember that love is the passion of youth, and this is always a chosen form of beauty.

It rarely happens that two flashes from the eyes of a man and of a woman who meet for the first time should kindle one fire only. This is the ideal of the most ardent sympathies, the most fortunate combination in the great, hazardous game of life. To meet suddenly, to see, to admire, to desire each other at once and to embrace with such a look as if it came from above; to feel inundated by a gaze, equally warm and penetrating; to blush together and to feel all at once that two hearts beat louder and mutely make this sweet confession: "I love you, and you are mine!"—all this is a joy too rare, too beautiful, one which few mortals have known and few will know.

It happens more frequently that nascent sympathies proceed unequally, so that the one has already carried a man to the highest summits of desire and passion, while the other hardly begins to stir; the one already throbs, the other only faintly vibrates. Even when two loves are called to high and fortunate destinies, even when they will soon spread their robust wings together in the space of bliss, a task is reserved to woman in the vicissitudes of love, so different from ours that she cannot feel with us the same sudden and violent emotions. Man says everything with a look; unhesitatingly and proudly he acknowledges his defeats. Woman, even under the spell of the most ardent sympathy, lowers her eyelids, refuses the too intense light and protects her heart with all the refrigeratives and sedatives at her command. Man has already said to woman a hundred times with the flash of his eyes: "I love you!" The woman, trembling, hardly dares to say: "Perhaps I will love you!" And away run those two happy beings, fleeing from each other, until the sympathy of the one equals that of the other, until the supreme languor of a long battle is smothered in two notes which vibrate together with the sweetest harmony, while they say to each other, with a sigh, "I love you!" and to nature repeat with another sigh: "Thanks!"

The energies of amorous desire, which the longer they last the larger they grow, follow the laws of elementary physics governing the forces. The most instantaneous love is not the most durable, and if an unexpected satisfaction follows a sudden desire, love may sometimes resemble a glorious rape rather than a true and real passion. It is true that love is not a battle but a long war, and when the first victory is followed by a hundred, a thousand victories, the fulmineous sympathy also may take deep roots in our hearts, and rallying after nearly every struggle, may pervade us all and reach the ideal perfection of coupling intensity with extensiveness, of twinkling at the same time with the light of those stars that never set and that of the lightning flash that plows the skies. The most perfect love is a sun that never sets, but does cast forth now and then more scintillant flashes. In ordinary cases, however, loves that rise slowly, slowly die away; and those of the nature of lightning last as long as lightning. In all cases, a healthy love, well constituted and destined for a prolific existence, whether born suddenly or slowly, should begin with a violent shock that measures the depths from which the warm sympathy sprang forth. All other affectionate sentiments arise in a manner different from love, whose nature it is to be born amidst thunder and lightning, as gods or demons should be born. Princes cannot come into the world like the masses; and the Prince of Affections cannot come to light with the assistance of an intelligent and affectionate midwife and the domestic cares of relatives. Where a coruscation of the skies and a trembling of the earth do not attend the birth of the new love; where nature does not rend the air with a cry of voluptuousness or of pain, no one can deceive me: a friendship, an affection, some sort of a sentiment, may have come into existence; but I shall certainly not christen the new-born with the sacred baptism of love.

And thus, naturally, we have arrived at those frontiers which separate the only legitimate way by which we may enter the temple from those ways that lead to it through oblique and unused paths. Friendship can be a source of love, and a very good one, but it is always a pathological, unnatural origin, which leads step by step to the worst of the sources of love, such as gratitude, compassion, vanity, lust, revenge.

When one has been able to see a woman during a long time, talk to her and perhaps live with her without calling her by any other name but that of sister or friend, if he feels some day that he loves her, such love resembles those tropical fruits grown in our climate by means of manure and hothouse. Whether friendship is possible between man and woman is an old problem which will never be solved, because many give that name to true, real loves, which, approaching the threshold of desire, held back, perhaps, by the rigid hand of duty, oscillate suavely and lingeringly in front of the temple without ever entering it. It is by a conventional politeness that to these loves we give the name of friendship, and I will certainly not condemn such innocent falsification; but a true and real friendship, with all the specific characteristics that distinguish this serene affection between man and woman, is not possible except on one condition: to obliterate every sexual mark in the two beings that have shaken hands. And the elimination of the sex in an individual is such a cruel mutilation, both physical and moral, that it destroys more than half of man. If friendship unites two eunuchs of this kind, I shall say that their affection is no longer that which exists between man and woman, but that of two neutral beings. However, as long as a single desire of the other's person is possible in them, as long as the most chaste, the most innocent of desires may arise in them, friendship becomes love. How many are these moral eunuchs? How many men and women can love without desire? Count them and then I shall be able to tell you how many are the cases, well ascertained, of friendship without love between man and woman.

I wish, nevertheless, to be more explicit, so that I may not seem to go on beating about the bushes without attacking and solving the question because I find it difficult. Are there in this sublunary world a man and a woman glad to see each other, who love each other and who have never desired even a kiss from each other? Yes; those two angels, then, are friends and I admit the possibility of the psychological phenomenon of friendship between two persons of different sex.

From any form of mild affection one can pass to love, and therefore much more easily from that friendship between man and woman knowingly admitted by us as possible. Long-lasting and healthy loves may arise in this way, but they always have a cold skin and a somewhat lymphatic hue. They require restoratives, a hydropathic cure, and, sometimes, cod-liver oil as well, because from the lymphatic they may also pass to the scrofulous stage. A common variety of this kind of loves is that which originates from gratitude.

"Love who to none beloved to love remits" sang the poet, and he told the truth; but this goes on one condition, that between the two who love each other there shall be no other difference but in the length of the step; that is to say, that one should arrive first and the other join him afterward; otherwise they would never meet on the main road of sympathy. You, O tutors, who believe in the love of a pupil; you, gentlemen, who believe in the love of the orphan girl whom you have helped out of her poverty; you, old bachelors, who believe in the love of the grateful chambermaid, remember that gratitude alone did never generate a legitimate love. If gratitude takes you by the hand and leads you on the road of sympathy, it may be a good guide, but nothing more. There are men and women who very much resemble cold-blooded animals, which have the same temperature as the ambient that surrounds them, but can generate little or no heat. They know not how to love of themselves, and it is necessary that another love descend upon them to soak them, to saturate them, like cake dipped in wine. Their sympathies are cold and equal for all; they often ask of books and men what is love, and compare the descriptions by others to what they feel in their hearts, like the naturalist who turns and turns an insect in his hands, compares it to the pictures before him, and finally exclaims: "It really seems to me that this insect is the Amor verus of the entomologists. I, too, do love, really love." For all these gentlemen, whose number is much greater than supposed, the verse of the poet is most true, and they always love out of gratitude or compassion, which is almost the same.

That mild and sweet affection which is love out of gratitude must not be confused with that commiseration which women especially feel for those who love them desperately, and to whom they often concede not love, but love out of pity. Woman is easily moved; she cannot look on apathetically when a man suffers, and frequently yields, not out of lewdness but of pity, which is also coupled with the legitimate pride of being able to transform a wretched being into a happy man. And man often takes advantage of this weakness of Eve and wickedly abuses it, and is ready, later, to calumniate her who has made him happy. Man, too, can love out of compassion, but more frequently concedes himself without affection and through pride, as we shall see further on in the course of our studies.