Part 18 (1/2)
The theory which fits so well into Schopenhauer's metaphysics has, without it, neither sense nor support. There is no instinct of philoprogenitiveness, but rather a pairing-instinct, and in addition to this a conscious desire for offspring. The difference between these two instincts is great, for as a rule, the pairing-instinct is not accompanied by a wish for children (that it should be so unconsciously is a theory not worth considering seriously), and the longing for children very frequently exists without any s.e.xual desire; to manufacture an instinct out of those two inherently dissimilar impulses is fantastic metaphysics and not spiritual reality. The history of antiquity furnishes ample proof of my contention, for in the days of the remote past the s.e.xual impulse had its special domain, as well as the wish for progeny, which was often regarded in the light of a duty.
The legend of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness which is to-day so universally believed, is undoubtedly the result of the general feeling that s.e.xual intercourse as such is base and degrading. But because of the more or less clear consciousness that s.e.xual intercourse is really what is most desired in love, and because of the lack of courage openly to admit it, attempts are made to justify it from a social standpoint.
The task of establis.h.i.+ng the equilibrium between love and sensuousness has not yet been accomplished. What is so often realised as _the s.e.xual trouble_ has its origin in the fact that the higher stage has not yet been finally reached. There is an infinite number of unions, all of which have a flaw. Witness modern literature with its indefatigable treatment of eroticism. If a complete unity is ever to be established, then doubtless it will be the privilege of the Germanic race to achieve it, for the Neo-Latin nations mean by love either the individualised instinct, or the rare, purely spiritual love. But it is not likely that the third stage will become a universal condition; in all probability it will, for a long time to come, be limited to special individuals, and even then only to specific phases of their lives. The feeling of the great majority of men has not changed; it is primitively s.e.xual; in the state of mind which is called _to be in love_ it is centred on an individual woman, to be, after a time, gradually stifled by other interests. The emotional life of the majority of women, on the other hand, is still what it was in remotest antiquity. Love impels woman into the arms of a man to whom she remains faithful, until slowly her instincts are transformed into love for her children. But in the case even of the average woman, body and soul are equally affected; there is no more terrible moment in a woman's life than the one in which she discovers that the man to whom she has given herself has merely used her as a means for gratification. Harmoniously organised woman has given herself to a merely s.e.xual man who sought in her only the satisfaction of his senses. This also is the cause of the horror with which the normal woman regards the prost.i.tute, for the latter has made of herself a means for the gratification of male s.e.xuality, losing thereby her inherent harmony and individuality. And it is also the reason why, in spite of ethical convictions and logical conclusions, we should have different standards for the loyalty of the husband and the loyalty of the wife; in man s.e.xuality is a distinct element, an element, it is true, which we do not value, but which nevertheless exists and has, as we have seen, a historical root. When a man gives way to his instincts, his individuality is not only not destroyed, but it is hardly affected.
It is very different in the case of the woman; with her, emanc.i.p.ated s.e.xuality is synonymous with inward annihilation, for it has not the support of the past and cannot exist independently. A man's spiritual annihilation from the emotional sphere is unthinkable because his organisation is naturally heterogeneous. The mere s.e.xualist represents a past stage of male eroticism which has been largely overcome, but he is rarely so completely under the spell of s.e.xuality that he cannot highly develop other parts of his ent.i.ty. The _double morality_ has, therefore, an objective reason (though perhaps not a higher justification), and would only be unjustifiable if man had achieved a complete erotic unity.
The more complicated life becomes, the more numerous and complex are the relations between individuals and groups. A man is a member of a trades union; he has political, artistic, sporting and social relations; he may be a collector or interested in certain social phenomena, etc. In modern civilisation every component part of the human personality is separated from the entire personality and brought into a systematic connection with similar component parts of other ent.i.ties. Our social principle is division of labour, not only in the community but also in the individual. With one man one can talk only philosophy, with another music, with a third personal matters, and so on. But because in this way only one part of man, and never the whole being, can be satisfied at a time, the desire to expend one's whole personality in one great achievement, or in connection with another individual, is increasing exactly in proportion as specialisation is increasing in the community and in the individual. The more richly endowed and synthetic a man, the more inappeasable will be his yearning to find the talents scattered broadcast over humanity combined in one personality, and to give himself wholly and entirely to that personality. The splitting up of man caused by our social conditions is one of the princ.i.p.al causes of the longing for the great and strong love which we hear so much discussed. The yearning for the absolute, for perfection, no longer separating and selecting but embracing man as a whole, annihilating body and soul in a higher intuition, the longing for mutual self-surrender, for giving and receiving an undivided self, is growing stronger and stronger. The idea of modern love, a love embracing the whole breadth of human development, is unequalled in human history. A single person shall stand for all mankind. The lover has always been all the world to woman, but man has possessed many things in addition to the beloved. Our age claims (wherever it understands its own eroticism) that woman, on her part, shall give to man all things in existence in a higher and purer form; not only complete satisfaction of the senses, not only the lofty emotion of spiritual love, but also friends.h.i.+p as a fellow-man; she shall be to him the friend who meant so much to the Greek and the ancient Teuton. It is self-evident that the true erotic of our time has very little to spare for friends.h.i.+p, while on the other hand the man who is not erotic in the true sense of the word, but merely s.e.xual, has generally a poor idea of woman and a great appreciation of male friends.h.i.+p. But modern love does not only seek to combine all human relations.h.i.+ps; it would fain include work, recreation, art. The instinctive jealousy of every occupation which she does not share with her lover, is nothing more than a loving woman's fear that the things which belong to him exclusively may become a danger to the unity of love. Whether such an all-absorbing love is possible in richly-endowed natures, and whether it will not be the cause of new conflict, are questions which cannot here be entered upon. But one thing is certain: the great love cannot find its consummation on earth.
CHAPTER II
THE LOVE-DEATH
(THE SECOND FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM)
The craving for infinitude is latent in love; its essence is the longing to reach beyond the attainable, to find the meaning of the world in ecstasy. The great erotic is a man whose inward being rests on emotion, who must bring this emotion to its climax--and who is wrecked on the incompleteness of human feeling. We recognise in him one of the tragic figures at the confines of humanity. For it is the final tragedy of a soul impelled by the inexorable will to self-realisation, to be broken on the wheel of human limitations.
The tragedy of the great man of action is less conditioned by principle than the tragedy of other types of greatness, because he is not limited by the universal restrictions of humanity, but by individual and accidental ones. He recognises, partly because of his unmetaphysical const.i.tution, no limits to human activity, and in gaining his individual object, he reaches a relative end. It is otherwise with the thinker, the artist, the religious enthusiast and the lover. The thinker possesses the highest intellectual endowments; he represents cognisant humanity, and his portion is the anguish of realising that the essence of being cannot be grasped by the intellect. The great artist creates a masterpiece; his heart is aglow with the ideal of perfect beauty beheld by none but him, but his ideal eternally eludes him; the saint has achieved perfection as far as perfection is possible to humanity, and stands aghast at the burden of insufficiency which weighs down mankind; the great erotic is the hero in the world of feeling, his soul yearns for the consummation of his love--and already he has reached the confines of life.
There are various paths by which the erotic may travel towards perfection; they correspond to the princ.i.p.al erotic types. I have devoted a special chapter to the seeker of love, or the Don Juan; the woman-wors.h.i.+pper who cannot find satisfaction on earth has been dealt with already. The great and rare lover, however, the exponent of the final form of love, who loves a woman of flesh and blood with every fibre of his being, differs very essentially from either of these types.
The profounder the emotional depth of the soul, the greater is the difficulty of finding a complementary being. The erotically undifferentiated nature (whose intellectual level may, however, be a high one) finds, and in case of loss replaces, the complementary being comparatively easily. The difficulty both of finding and of subst.i.tution increases in proportion to the differentiation and the intensity of feeling. The true erotic, once he has found his complementary being, is overwhelmed by the will to the perfect realisation of his pa.s.sion. It appears with the unanswerable logic of the unique and final, carrying in its train supreme happiness and infinite sorrow. A love able to deliver a soul from its solitude is rare; once there, the whole world is as nothing to it. All life is embraced and brought under its spell. (In this connection I need only mention Michelangelo.) A lover of this type surrenders himself to love unconditionally--love shall completely annihilate, completely renew him.
But it is just in this overwhelming love that the impa.s.sable barrier becomes apparent. The lovers are two beings and not one indivisible ent.i.ty. The fundamental fact of individuality stands between them as the last obstacle to their complete union. The more intense the emotion, the more desperately it tilts against this barrier, against the impossibility of complete mutual absorption, and the more pa.s.sionately it demands another common form of existence. Individuality and the eternal duality of being is felt as a curse. The lovers cannot endure the thought of continuing life as distinct personalities.
The great erotic who, against all expectation, finds the being to whom he can surrender himself unreservedly and with a sense of immortality, discovers within himself the supreme and only happiness, and by that very fact has himself become the source of his unhappiness. Personality, the greatest gift bestowed upon the children of man, has flashed its light upon the tragedy of life: solitude, eternal duality. The soul recognises with unspeakable dismay in its own fundamental principle the cause of its isolation and the impossibility of final union with the beloved. The supreme value of European civilisation, the value of complete personality, into whose gradual development and perfecting all human forces had been built, and in whose interest countless sacrifices had been made, knows itself as the cause of supreme suffering, as an element which ought on no account to exist. Not its completion, but its annihilation is what should really be desired. We have here arrived at the very confines of humanity. If the great thinker has found the boundaries of all knowledge in the limitations of the intellect, and is thus the representative of the human mind with its unattainable goal: knowledge of the secret of being, the erotic has gone a step further. He has found the boundary in the very perfection of his personality and, to him, the barrier is unendurable. In the rare love of the rare personality is discovered the eternal separateness of the ego; only the destruction of its origin, the annihilation of itself, might, perhaps, throw down the barrier which separates the lovers. Inevitably there arises in the soul the desire and the will to escape, together with the beloved, the insufferable solitude of existence; to achieve in death what life denies; to realise another, a higher condition, divined in dreams and seen in visions; to become one with the beloved, to transform all human existence into a new, divine universal existence: ”Then I myself am the world!” Everything individual, all life, is blotted out; the death of the lovers from love and through love is the mystic portal of a higher state of being. It is the last ecstasy of unity--the love-death--an ecstasy which life cannot give because it must always be wrecked on duality. It is the despairing attempt to escape from separateness, to effect a delivery which to human understanding seems final, and it is characteristic that Wagner, who made the problem of redemption peculiarly his own, should have expressed this attempt uniquely and with unparalleled grandeur.
It would be a mistake to read into the idea of the love-death a rejection of the European view of life, a denial of the world-feeling of personality, and a victory of the impotent philosophy of the East which exalts non-existence above existence (that is to say, individual existence). For the essence of the love-death is contained in the determination of personality to realise itself in a new and positive form of existence. It is felt as the final synthesis, exactly as (in other spheres) the union of the ideal with the personal is seen as the perfection of human life. How would it be possible at once to annihilate and to transcend the individual soul, the source of personal love, if this soul were not first presupposed as the essential and supreme value?
Where personal love does not exist, as in the Orient and j.a.pan, the thought of the love-death would be an absurdity. The burning of Indian widows is a phenomenon widely differing from the love-death. The Indian widow slavishly abandons a life which has become aimless through her master's death; she does not make a sacrifice in the true sense of the word, and is not actuated by love.
The complete unity of the lovers is possible on earth for a brief hour and it will, in most cases, satisfy erotic yearning. It can be realised in two ways: by the blissful rest of the lovers in each other, which silences all desires and apparently robs time of its tyranny.
The heart is still, and nothing can disturb The deepest thought, the thought to be her own.
says Goethe; and a newer poet:
Close around me, wondrous being, Wind thy magic veil oblivion, All my heart from unrest freeing, Let there be untroubled calm.
Give me peace; the helter skelter Of the wide world has gone by; And this narrow, silent shelter Holds the potent healing balm.
By the side of this idyllic consummation of the longing for love, there is the other, the ecstatic consummation of mutual rapture. It almost blots out individual consciousness in the singly (no longer doubly) felt, body and soul entrancing ecstasy; it is such sheer delight that pleasure is no longer perceived as a distinct element, but rather is there the consciousness of a complete transformation of life. Pleasure, which, a great psychologist maintains, ”craves eternity” is annihilated in its perfection, knows no more of itself, and is a part of the lovers'
sense of complete unity. It does not ”crave eternity”; such a craving is its last stage but one, the outer court (further than which Nietzsche as far as eroticism is concerned never penetrated); in the innermost sanctuary pleasure disappears; it has no longer any meaning, it becomes void before the new consciousness. The supreme ecstasy of great love proves that the summit of human emotion is beyond pleasure and pain, and does not acknowledge the limitations of bodily existence. Thus, of necessity, the rapture of love must engender the idea of its own eternity, the destruction of individual consciousness. I will quote in this connection a few verses by Erika Rheinsch:
To open now my lips were vain indeed, Nor word nor even kiss could e'er confess What sighs and joy and grief and happiness Would flash from me to you with lightning speed.
Nor hope nor pray'r can still the soul's desire, For G.o.d Himself can never join us twain; My bitter tears fall on my heart like rain And cannot quench its all-consuming fire.
Oh! Now to break the spell--the storm to breast With broken heart and life-blood ebbing fast, Bearing the pangs of death for you, at last, Dark troubled love--at last thou wert at rest!
We perceive that love can no longer content itself with the penultimate--it must dare the last heroic step which creates beyond body and soul something new and final, for ”G.o.d Himself can never join us twain.” The love-death is the last and inevitable conclusion of reciprocal love which knows of no value but itself, and is resolved to face eternity, so that no alien influence shall reach it. The two powers, love and death, tower above human life fatefully and mysteriously; an isolated experience cannot appease them, they involve the whole existence. To the individual who loves with an all-absorbing love, and to the individual on the point of death, everything dwindles into insignificance. Before the majesty of the love-death life breaks down, to be laid hold of and transcended in a new (divined) sphere.