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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17699-8.txt b/17699-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e2f35e --- /dev/null +++ b/17699-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9913 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Love, by Emil Lucka + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Evolution of Love + +Author: Emil Lucka + +Translator: Ellie Schleussner + +Release Date: February 7, 2006 [EBook #17699] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE *** + + + + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE + + +BY +EMIL LUCKA + + +TRANSLATED BY +ELLIE SCHLEUSSNER + +[Illustration: Publisher's logo] + +LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. +RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1 + + +_First published in Great Britain 1922_ + + +(_All rights reserved_) + + +_Printed in Great Britain by_ +UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, LONDON AND WOKING + + + + +PREFACE + + +The object of this book, which is addressed to all cultured men and +women, is to set forth the primitive manifestations of love and to throw +light on those strange emotional climaxes which I have called +"Metaphysical Eroticism." I have taken no account of historical detail, +except where it served the purpose of proving, explaining and +illustrating my subject. Nor have I hesitated to intermingle +psychological motives and motives arising from the growth and spread of +civilisation. The inevitable result of a one-sided glimpse at historical +facts would have been a history of love, an undertaking for which I lack +both ability and inclination. On the other hand, had I written a merely +psychological treatise, disregarding the succession of periods, I should +have laid myself open to the just reproach of giving rein to my +imagination instead of dealing with reality. + +I have availed myself of historical facts to demonstrate that what +psychology has shown to be the necessary phases of the evolution of +love, have actually existed in historical time and characterised a whole +period of civilisation. The history of civilisation is an end in itself +only in the chapter entitled "The Birth of Europe." + +My work is intended to be first and foremost a monograph on the +emotional life of the human race. I am prepared to meet rather with +rejection than with approval. Neither the historian nor the psychologist +will be pleased. Moreover, I am well aware that my standpoint is +hopelessly "old-fashioned." To-day nearly all the world is content to +look upon the sexual impulse as the source of all erotic emotion and to +regard love as nothing more nor less than its most exquisite radiation. + +My book, on the contrary, endeavours to establish its complete +independence of sexuality. + +My contention that so powerful an emotion as love should have come into +existence in historical, not very remote times, will seem very strange; +for, all outward profession of faith in evolution notwithstanding, men +are still inclined to take the unchangeableness of human nature for +granted. + +The facts on which I have based my arguments are well known, but my +deductions are new; it is not for me to decide whether they are right or +wrong. In the first (introductory) part I have made use of works already +in existence, in addition to Plato and the poets, but the second and +third parts are founded almost entirely on original research. + + E.L. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +PREFACE 5 + +TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION 9 + +FIRST STAGE: THE SEXUAL INSTINCT 21 + +SECOND STAGE: LOVE + +CHAPTER + + I. THE BIRTH OF EUROPE 39 + + II. THE DEIFICATION OF WOMAN (FIRST FORM OF + METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM):--(_a_) The Love of the Troubadours; + (_b_) The Queen of Heaven; (_c_) Dante and Goethe; + (_d_) Michel Angelo 115 + +III. PERVERSIONS OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM:-- + (_a_) The Brides of Christ; (_b_) Sexual Mystics 217 + +THIRD STAGE: THE BLENDING OF SEXUALITY AND LOVE + + I. THE LONGING FOR THE SYNTHESIS 231 + + II. THE LOVE-DEATH (SECOND FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM) 251 + +III. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND LOVE.--THE SEEKER + OF LOVE AND THE SLAVE OF LOVE 266 + + IV. THE REVENGE OF SEXUALITY.--THE DEMONIACAL AND THE OBSCENE 275 + +CONCLUSION: THE PSYCHOGENETIC LAW.--THE INDIVIDUAL AS AN + EPITOME OF THE HUMAN RACE 284 + + + + +TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION + + +Since the triumphant days of the Mechanists some twenty-five years ago, +the wedge of Pragmatism--a useful tool to be used and discarded--has +been driven between materialism and idealism, and it appears that the +whole tendency of philosophy is now in the latter direction. Even in +England the influence of Bergson has led modern thought away from the +pure materialism of the monists, and it seems probable that Benedetto +Croce's _Philosophy of the Spirit_ will carry the movement a step nearer +towards the idealistic concept of reality. And among the latest signs of +the new tendency must be counted the brilliant work of Emil Lucka, the +young Austrian "poet-philosopher," whose conception of the development +of love must rank with the most daring speculations in recent +psychology. + +In the great reaction of the last century, love, that most cogent motive +of human thought and action, fell from its high estate and came to be +regarded as an instinct not differing in any essential from hunger and +thirst, and existing, like them, from the beginning, eternal and +immutable, manifesting itself with equal force in the heart of man and +woman, and impelling them towards each other. But Emil Lucka, in his +remarkable new book, _The Three Stages of Love_ (which was recently +published in Berlin, and has already created a sensation in literary +circles abroad), leads us on to speculative heights from which we may +look back upon the whole theory of evolution not as a bar but as a +bridge. "My book is intended as a monograph of the emotional life of the +human race," he says in the preface, and "I am prepared to meet with +rejection rather than with approval." There has been abundance of +criticism and controversy, but Lucka has stated his case and drawn his +conclusions with such admirable precision and logic, that his work has +aroused admiration and appreciation even in the ranks of his opponents. + +Love is a theme which at all times and in all countries has been of +primary interest to men and women, and therefore this book, which throws +an illuminating ray of light in many a dark place still wrapped in +mystery and silence, not only impresses the psychologist, but also +fascinates the general reader with its wealth of interesting detail and +charm of expression. + +The three vitally important points which the author develops are as +follows:-- + +Love is not a primary instinct, but has been gradually evolved in +historical time. + +Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law is expanded in a psychogenetic law. + +Only man's emotions have undergone evolution, and therefore have a +history, while those of woman have experienced no change. + +Lucka's book will probably not please the advanced feminists, but the +delicate, although perhaps involuntary homage to her sex which is +implied in his theories ought to rouse a feeling of gratification in the +heart of every right-feeling woman. The very limitations and +restrictions which he lays upon her raise and glorify her. For while man +has been the "Odysseus wandering through heaven and hell, passing from +the bestial to the divine to return again and become human, woman has +always been the same, unchangeable and without problems. That which he +has set up to-day as his highest erotic ideal, the blending of sexual +and spiritual love, has been her natural endowment from the beginning. +Never perfect, he falls into error and sin where she cannot err, for her +instinct is Nature herself, and she knows not the meaning of sin." + +Schopenhauer's "instinct of philoprogenitiveness" has to-day become an +article of faith with the learned and the unlearned. This _sub-conscious +instinct for the service of the species_ which, in love, is supposed to +rise to consciousness, and whose purpose is the will to produce the best +possible offspring, is conceded by scientists who reject not only +Schopenhauer's metaphysic, but metaphysic in general. Even Nietzsche, +that arch-individualist, has proved by many of his pronouncements, and +most strikingly by his well-known definition of marriage, that he has +not escaped its fascinations. "Schopenhauer ignores all phenomena which +are not in support of his myth," says Lucka, who denies this instinct of +philoprogenitiveness and would substitute for it a "pairing-instinct." +"The experience of others," he argues, "not our own instinct, has taught +us that children _may_, not necessarily _must_, be the result of the +union of the sexes. Into the mediaeval ideal which reached its climax in +metaphysical love, the idea of propagation did not enter. Moreover, the +desire for children is frequently unaccompanied by any sexual desire, +and therefore to manufacture an instinct of philoprogenitiveness is +fantastic metaphysic, and is entirely opposed to intellectual reality. +This was well understood in the long period of antiquity which strictly +separated the sexual impulse and the desire for children." + +Lucka distinguishes three great stages in the evolution of love. In +vivid and fascinating pictures he unfolds the erotic life of our +primitive ancestors, basing his statements on accepted authorities. The +sexual impulse in those remote days, unconscious of its nature and +far-reaching consequences, was entirely undifferentiated from any other +powerful instinct. Every woman of the tribe belonged to every male who +happened to desire her. As is still the case with the aborigines of +Central and Northern Australia, the phenomena of pregnancy and +childbirth were attributed to witchcraft.[1] The concept of _father_ had +not yet been formed; the family congregated round the mother and saw in +her its natural chief; gynecocracy was the prevailing form of +government. In early historical and pre-classical times, promiscuity was +systematised by religion in India and the countries round the +Mediterranean and survived in the Temple Prostitution and the Mysteries. +Man as yet felt himself only as a part of nature, and aspired to no more +than a life in harmony with her laws. The worship of fertility and the +endless renewal of life was the object of the orgiastic cults of Adonis +and Astarte in the East, and Dionysus and Aphrodite in Greece; unbridled +licentiousness and blind gratification of the senses their sacrament. + +With the growth of civilisation and the development of personality there +slowly crept into the minds of men a distaste for this irregular +sexuality and a desire for a less chaotic state of things. This longing +and the wish for legitimate heirs gradually overcame promiscuity and, in +Greece, led to the establishment of the monogamous system. It must not +be assumed, however, that the Greek ideal of marriage bore any +resemblance to our modern conception. True, the wife occupied an +honoured position as the guardian of hearth and children and was treated +by her husband with affection and respect, but she was not free. Nor was +her husband expected to be faithful to her. Marriage in no way +restricted his liberty, but left him free to seek intellectual +stimulation in the society of the hetaerae, and gratification of the +senses in the company of his slaves. Love in our sense was unknown to +the ancients, and although there is a modern note in the legends of the +faithful Penelope, and the love which united Orpheus and Eurydice, yet, +so Lucka tells us, these instances should be regarded rather as poetic +divinations of a future stage of feeling than actual facts then within +the scope of probability. Even Plato, in whom all wisdom and +ante-Christian culture culminated, was still, in this respect, a citizen +of the old world, for he, too, knew as yet nothing of the spiritual love +of a man for a woman. To him the love of an individual was but a +beginning, the road to the love of perfect beauty and the eternal ideas. + +On the threshold of the second stage of the erotic life stands +Christianity, which, in sharp contrast to antiquity and to the classical +period, sought the centre and climax of life in the soul. The founder of +the "religion of love" _discovered_ the individual, and by so doing laid +the foundation for that metaphysical love which found its most striking +expression in the deification of woman and the cult of the Virgin Mary. +How this change of mental attitude was brought about is worked out in a +brilliant chapter, entitled "The Birth of Europe." The revivifying +influence of Christ's preaching and personality was stifled after the +first centuries by the rigid dogma and formalism which had altered his +doctrine almost past recognition. The Church was building up its +political structure and tolerated no rival. Art, literature, music, all +the enthusiasm and profound thought of which the human mind is capable, +were pressed into her service. Independent thought was heresy, and the +death of every heretic became a new fetter which bound the intellect of +man. But about the year 1100, when the mighty edifice was complete, and +the pope and his bishops looked down upon kings and emperors and counted +them their vassals, when the barbaric peoples which made up the +population of Europe had been sufficiently schooled and educated in the +new direction, a longing for something new, a yearning for art, for +poetry, for beauty, began to stir the hearts of men and women. It found +expression in the ideal of chivalry, the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy +Grail, and suddenly love, bursting out in a brilliant flame, shed its +radiance on the sordid relationship which had hitherto existed between +the sexes, and transfigured it. Woman, the despised, to whom at the +Council of Macon a soul had been denied, all at once became a queen, a +goddess. The drudge, the patiently suffering wife, were things of the +past. A new ideal had been set up and men worshipped it with bended +knees. + + "She shines on us as God shines on his angels," + +sang Guinicelli. + +It was in a small country in the South of France, in Provence, that the +new spirit was born. The troubadours, wandering from castle to castle, +sang the praise of love, genuine love, the earlier ones without +admixture either of speculation or metaphysic. The dogma that pure love +was its own reward inasmuch as it made men perfect, was framed later on. + + "I cannot sin when I am in her mind," + +wrote Guirot Riquier, and Dante, in the "Vita Nuova," calls his beloved +mistress "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtues." The +monk Matfre Ermengau, who wrote a text-book on love, says: + + Love makes good men better, + And the worst man good. + +The later troubadours drew a much sharper distinction between spiritual +and sensual love. The latter was regarded as degrading and base (at +least in principle) and woe to the man who held, or rather, avowed, +another opinion. His reward was the contempt of every man and woman of +culture. "I ask no more of my mistress than that she should suffer me to +serve her," protested Bernart de Ventadour. + +It goes without saying that, in spite of this high ideal, sensuality +flourished undiminished, and a troubadour who loudly sang the praise of +chastity and blatantly professed his entire disinterestedness in the +service of his mistress, did not see the least inconsequence in carrying +on a dozen intrigues at the same time with other women. Sordello, one of +the best known poets of this period, was charged by a contemporary with +having changed his mistress over a hundred times, and he himself, +impudently bragging, proclaims that + + None can resist me; all the frowning husbands + Shall not prevent me to embrace their wives, + If I so wish.... + +Another poet, Count Rambaut III., of Orange, recommended to his +fellow-men as the surest way of winning a woman's favour, "to break her +nose with a blow of the fist." "I myself," he continued, "treat all +women with tenderness and courtesy, but then--I am considered a fool." + +As may be expected, sublimated, metaphysical love was not without its +caricatures and eccentricities. One of the most grotesque figures of the +period of the troubadours was Ulrich von Lichtenstein, a German knight. +As a page, we are told, he drank the water in which his mistress had +washed her hands. Later on he had his upper lip amputated because it +displeased his lady-love, and on another occasion he cut off one of his +fingers, had it set in gold and used as a clasp on a volume of his poems +which he sent as a present to his inamorata. + +At the famous Courts of Love, the most extraordinary questions were +seriously discussed and decided. A favourite subject for debate was the +relationship between love and marriage, and some of the decisions which +have been preserved for us prove without a doubt that those two great +factors in the emotional life were considered irreconcilable. At the +Court of the Viscountess Ermengarde of Narbonne, the question whether +the love between lovers was greater than the love between husband and +wife was settled as follows: "Nature and custom have erected an +insuperable barrier between conjugal affection and the love which +unites two lovers. It would be absurd to draw comparisons between two +things which have neither resemblance nor connection." + +The contrast between the new, spiritualised love and the older, sexual, +instinct created that dualism so characteristic of the whole mediaeval +period. Sexuality and love were felt as two inimical forces, the fusion +of which was beyond the range of possibility. While on the one hand +woman was worshipped as a divine being, before whom all desire must be +silenced, she was on the other hand stigmatised as the devil's tool, a +power which turned men away from his higher mission and jeopardised the +salvation of his soul. Wagner portrayed this dualism perfectly in +_Tannhauser_. "A man of the Middle Ages," says Lucka, "would have +recognised in this magnificent work the tragedy of his soul." + +It was but a small step from the worship of a beloved mistress to the +cult of the Virgin Mary. The Church, hostile at first, finally +acquiesced, and "through her official acknowledgment of a female deity, +open enmity between the religion of the Church and the religion of woman +was avoided." A woman, that is to say, the Virgin Mary, had stepped +between God and humanity as mediator, intercessor and saviour. + +Both Dante, the inspired woman-worshipper of the Middle Ages, and the +more modern Goethe, saw in metaphysical love the triumph over all things +earthly. And far above either of these intellectual heroes looms the +awe-inspiring figure of Michelangelo, the scoffer, to whom love came +late in life; in his ecstatic adoration of Vittoria Colonna, the +enthusiasm of Plato and the passion of Dante are blended in a more +transcendent flame. + +Sexual Mystics and the Brides of Christ present the darker aspect of +metaphysical love. All the latter, including even Catherine of Siena (a +clever politician who kept up a correspondence with the leading +statesmen of her time), Marie of Oignies, and St. Teresa, are +stigmatised as victims of hysteria and consigned to the domain of +pathology. + +While the first stage was characterised by the reign of unbridled sexual +instinct, the second by the conflict between spiritual and sensual love, +the third stage represents our modern conception, the blending of +spiritual and sensual love, which is "not the differentiated sexual +instinct, but a force embracing the psycho-physical entity of the +beloved being without any consciousness of sexual desire." It shares +with the purely metaphysical love the lover's longing to raise his +mistress above him and glorify her without any ulterior object and +desire. "In this stage there is no tyranny of man over woman, as in the +sexual stage; no subjection of man to woman, as in the woman-worship of +the Middle Ages; but complete equality of the sexes, a mutual give and +take. If sexuality is infinite as matter, spiritual love eternal as the +metaphysical ideal, then the synthesis is human and personal." The +apotheosis of this perfect love Lucka finds in the _Liebestod_ (the +death of the lovers in the ecstasy of love), in Wagner's _Tristan und +Isolde_. + +An interesting chapter on erotic aberrations, the demoniacal and the +obscene, completes the third part of the book. + +There may be much in Lucka's theories which will rouse the scepticism of +the monists; some of his deductions may appear to his readers a little +strained, but no thinking man or woman can read his brilliant +_Conclusion_ without denying him the tribute of sincere admiration. In +this last chapter he applies Haeckel's biogenetic law to the domain of +the spirit. As the human embryo passes through the principal stages of +the development of the individual from lower forms of life, so the +growing male must pass through the stages of psychical development +through which the race has passed. The gynecocratic government of +prehistoric time is revived in the nursery, where the mother rules +supreme and the sisters dominate. The normal, healthy school-boy, +preferring the company of his school-fellows to all others, shunning his +mother and sisters, ashamed of his female relatives, is the modern +individual representative of those early leagues and unions of young men +who opposed matriarchy and finally brought about its overthrow and the +establishment of male government. The promiscuous sexuality +characteristic of adolescence reproduces the first, merely sexual, stage +of the erotic life of the race in the life of the individual. As a rule +this phase is followed by a period of woman-worship; love has conquered +the sexual instinct and the latter is felt as base and degrading. +Atavism is not so much the persistence of the earlier, as the absence of +the later stages of psychical development. + +I need not emphasise the fact that the three stages are often +intermingled and not traceable with equal clearness in the life of every +individual. Many men never advance beyond the first stage and others are +fragmentary and undeveloped; but certain phases are more or less +distinguishable in every well-endowed male individual. Lucka finds a +perfect illustration of his theory in the life and works of Richard +Wagner, whose operas _The Fairies_ (based on Shakespeare's _Measure for +Measure_), _Tannhauser_, and _Tristan und Isolde_, successively +illustrate the three stages through which the great poet-composer and +impassioned lover passed, and reflect the principal halting-places in +the erotic evolution of the race. In _Parsifal_, Wagner's last and +maturest work, he conjectures a potential fourth stage, divined by the +genius of the great musician and thinker, a sublimation of our modern +ideal, a stage when love will be freed from all sexual feeling (a +conception not unlike Otto Weininger's), but to which we have not yet +attained and which we are even unable fully to grasp. + +I have not been able to do more than touch upon the principal features +of this book, the fame of whose brilliant author has long spread beyond +the boundaries of his own native country. Emil Lucka was born in Vienna +in 1877, and has already achieved a number of remarkably fine books, +most of which have been translated into Russian, French, and other +foreign languages. He is as yet unknown in England, this being the first +of his works to appear in English. + + ELLIE SCHLEUSSNER. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] _cf._ Hartland's "Primitive Paternity" and Frazer's "Golden Bough." + + + + +THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE + +THE FIRST STAGE: THE SEXUAL INSTINCT + + +To the generations slowly rising from the dark abyss of time to the +twilight of the Middle Ages, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct +offered fewer difficulties than the gratification of any other need or +desire. With every unpremeditated and cursory indulgence the craving +disappeared from consciousness and left the individual free to give his +mind to the acquisition of the necessities of life which were far more +difficult to obtain. Primitive, prehistoric man lived in the moment. +When there was plenty of food he gorged to repletion, heedless of the +starvation which might be his fate to-morrow or the day after. His +thought had neither breadth nor continuity. It never occurred to him +that there might be a connection between an abrupt and quickly forgotten +embrace and the birth of a child by a woman of the tribe after what +appeared to be an immeasurable lapse of time. He suspected witchcraft in +the phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth (to this day the aborigines of +Central and Northern Australia do not realise the connection between +generation and birth). As a rule it was remembered that a certain woman +had given birth to a certain child by the fact of her having carried it +about and fed it at her breast. Occasionally it was forgotten to which +mother a child belonged; perhaps the mother had died; perhaps the child +had strayed beyond the boundaries of the community and the mother had +failed to recognise it on its return. But it was clear beyond all doubt +that every child had a "mother." The conception of "father" had not yet +been formed. Experience had taught our primitive ancestors two +undeniable facts, namely "that women gave birth to children" and "that +every child had a mother." + +We must assume that sexual intercourse was irregular and haphazard up to +the dawn of history. Every woman--within the limits of her own tribe, +probably--belonged to every man. Whether this assumption is universally +applicable or not, must remain doubtful; later ethnologists, more +particularly _von Westermarck_, deny it because it does not apply to +every savage tribe of the present day. Herodotus tells us that +promiscuity existed in historical times in countries as far removed from +each other as Ethiopia and the borders of the Caspian Sea. There can be +no reasonable doubt that sexual intercourse took the form of +group-marriage, the exchange or lending of wives, and other similar +arrangements. + +The relationship between mother and child having been established by +Nature herself, the first human family congregated round the mother, +acknowledging her as its natural chief. This continued even after the +causal connection between generation and birth had ceased to be a +mystery. In all countries on the Mediterranean, more especially in +Lycia, Crete and Egypt, the predominance of the female element in State +and family is well attested; it is reflected in the natural religions of +the Eastern races--both Semitic and Aryan--and we find innumerable +traces of it in Greek mythology. The merit of discovering this important +stage in the relationship of the sexes is due to _Bachofen_. "Based on +life-giving motherhood," he says, "gynecocracy was completely dominated +by the natural principles and phenomena which rule its inner and outer +life; it vividly realised the unity of nature, the harmony of the +universe which it had not yet outgrown.... In every respect obedient to +the laws of physical existence, its gaze was fixed upon the earth, it +worshipped the chthonian powers rather than the gods of light." The +children of men who had sprung from their mother as the flowers spring +from the soil, raised altars to Gaea, Demeter and Isis, the deities of +inexhaustible fertility and abundance. These early races of men realised +themselves only as a part of nature; they had not yet conceived the idea +of rising above their condition and setting their intelligence to battle +with its blind laws. Incapable of realising their individuality, they +bowed in passive submission to nature's undisputed sway. They were +members of a tribe, and the fragmentary existence of the single +individual was of no importance when it clashed with the welfare of the +clan. The family--centred round the mother--and the tribe were the real +individuals, in the same way as the swarm of bees, and not the +individual bee, makes the whole. They lived in complete harmony with +nature; they had no spiritual life, no history, for civilisation and the +creation of intellectual values which are the foundation of history +depend on the rise of a community above primitive conditions. +Differentiation had hardly begun to exert its modifying influence; all +men (not unlike the Eastern Asiatics of our day) resembled each other in +looks, character and habits. + +In the countries on the Mediterranean (as well as in India and +Babylonia) the first stage of sexual intercourse, irresponsible and +promiscuous, was systematised by religion. The annual spring-festivals +in honour of Adonis, Dionysus, Mylitta, Astarte and Aphrodite, +celebrated unbridled licentiousness. The whole community greeted the +re-awakening vitality of the earth by an unrestrained abandonment to +passion. Man aspired to be no more than the flower which scatters its +seed to the winds. The incomprehensible lords of cupidity and rank +vegetation did not suffer the individualisation of desire. The complete +union of the male and female qualities, as manifested both in nature and +man, was solemnised in the Orgies, and not by any means the relationship +of an individual man to an individual woman, or sexuality connected with +individuals and dominated by them. Nor was this unfettering of instinct +a symbolical act; for it to be so, man must have stood over against +nature as an intellectual being, mirroring and transforming her acts by +his own deeds. He was as yet far from this. His ambition did not reach +beyond the desire to fulfil nature in himself. Before the majesty of +sex--worshipped in the vague, shadowy mothers of mankind, Rhea, Demeter, +Cybele, and their human offspring, the phallic Dionysus and the +hundred-breasted goddess of Ephesus--the individual with his piteous +limitations shrank into insignificance. Sex was immortal, sex and +primary matter, the [Greek: ulê] contrasted by Aristotle with the +[Greek: eisos], the form. "The female principle is the mother of the +body, but the mother of the spirit is the male." The substance of those +ancient cults was birth and death, meaningless, purposeless, apparently +without rhyme or reason; their sacrament the perpetual union of the +sexes. Between the succeeding generations there was but one bond, the +natural bond of motherhood. It was the first tie realised by mankind, a +tie not felt as a concrete relationship between two individuals, but as +a general, maternal, natural force. The presiding divinities were the +"mothers," the eternal, incorporeal deities, enthroned outside time and +space, and therefore immortal givers of life and preservers of mankind. +Before their silent greatness the desire of man to know his whence and +whither, to win shape and individuality, became blasphemy. They had +given immortality to sex, but upon the individual they had laid the +curse of death. + +Thus we have first a stage of fatherless, natural conception, +corresponding with the philosophical theories which maintained that all +created things had sprung from the elements. Later ages discovered a +spiritual principle, a becoming, or an eternal being, and finally a +conflict between spirit and matter. + +But the general attitude towards sexual intercourse underwent a change +as soon as here and there individuals appeared who were conscious of +their individuality. Natural selection could not come into play in a +community the members of which resembled one another so closely that all +personal characteristics were obliterated in a general monotony. One +woman was as good as another, although in all probability a healthy, +youthful and strong individual would be preferred to a sickly, puny +specimen. But apart from this, the wish to choose a partner instead of +being content with the first comer, must have coincided historically +with the outward, and later on with the inward differentiation of the +race. I cannot prove my theory by quoting chapter and verse from ancient +writers, but obviously a feeling of preference could not have arisen +until individuals had begun to show very noticeable traces of +difference. Therefore with growing differentiation a new factor--modest +at first and operating within narrow limits--the factor of choice, had +come into the sexual life. The slow development of personality gave +birth to the feeling which rebelled against universal sexual intercourse +and gynecocracy in general. The men desired to shape their own world; +they had no share in the immortality of maternal life. As (relatively +speaking) single individuals they stood over against the material bond +of the generations living in the chain of the mothers. Demigods, the +sons of the gods of light and mortal mothers, were credited with the +salvation of men from a confused, chaotic existence, and the +introduction of new conditions of life, no longer based on the dictates +of nature but on the moulding genius of man. "Hercules, Theseus and +Perseus overthrew the ancient powers of darkness. They laid the +foundations of man's great achievement, civilisation, and were the +first to worship the gods of light. They delivered humanity from the +gross materialism in which it had hitherto been steeped; they were the +awakeners of spiritual life, which is a higher life than the life of the +senses; they were as incorruptible as the sun from whence they came, the +heroes of a new civilisation distinguished by gentleness, a higher +endeavour and a new dispensation." (Bachofen.) + +Heinrich Schurtz has proved (though not in connection with matriarchy) +that side by side with the family, unions of unmarried men existed in +many countries at a very early time. The object of these unions, which +had nothing of the rigidity of blood-relationship, was fellowship. As +soon as the boys had outgrown the care of their mother they were +compelled to combine for the purpose of playing games and later on for +war and hunting; these men's unions therefore were the outcome of the +necessary conditions of life. It is obvious that innovations and +inventions of all sorts originated in these unions rather than with the +temperamentally conservative women, and that we have to look upon them +as the hotbed of all spiritual and social evolution. These +confederations and leagues not based on a natural or blood-relationship, +but on a feeling of brotherhood and friendliness, might well have been +an attack upon the natural ties of the family, an expression of a +feeling of hostility to and contempt for women, and probably stood in +close relationship to a striking characteristic of the past: a widely +spread homosexuality. + +Whether Schurtz gives us a correct picture of these men's unions or not, +there can be no doubt that the struggle against matriarchy originated in +them. This struggle led eventually to the victory of the male principle, +the acknowledgment of the authority of the father, the institution of +male government which deprived women of all legal rights, and the +dominion of the spiritual; the victory of the gods of light over the +dark lords of fertility. This revolution of principles was perhaps the +completest revolution humanity has ever known. + +A long road, marked by numerous compromises and limitations, led from +casual intercourse to the final establishment of the monogamous system. +Free intercourse had been sanctioned by the gods, who suffered no +restrictions and modifications, and sacrifices in the shape of a +temporary universal unfettering of instinct were required to pacify +their anger and reconcile them to the new system. The first and most +important of these compromises was the temple-prostitution practised by +many nations in Asia Minor, the Greek Archipelago, India and Babylonia. +Many a girl gained in this way the marriage portion which enabled her +later on to find a husband, to whom she invariably remained strictly +loyal. Thus all religious requirements were satisfied. At first this was +an annually recurring rite, but gradually it became an isolated ceremony +in the life of every female individual. "In the place of the annual +surrender," says Priester, "we now have a single act; the hetaerism of +the matrons is succeeded by the hetaerism of the maids; instead of being +practised during marriage, it is practised in spinsterhood; the blind +surrender has given way to a yielding to certain individuals."... + +With the growth of civilisation a few girls, the hierodules, were set +apart for the purpose of pacifying the offended deities and their act +ransomed the rest of the female citizens. + +It was not on erotic grounds, but for political and social reasons that +the Greek introduced monogamy. The reason which weighed in the scales +more heavily than all others was the necessity for legitimate offspring. +It was natural that a man of property should desire a legitimate heir +who would inherit it on his death. The right of succession from father +to son, incorporated later on in the Roman Right, originated during this +period. But this was not the only advantage connected with the +possession of a son: religion taught that after death the body required +sacrificial food which could only be provided by the legitimate male +descendants of the deceased. (The same belief was held by the Indians +and Eastern Asiatics.) In several Greek States marriage was compulsory +and bachelors were fined. At the same time the contraction of a marriage +did not interfere with the personal freedom of the man; he was at +liberty to go to the hetaerae for intellectual stimulation (unless he +happened to prefer the friends of his own sex) and to his slaves for the +pleasures of the senses. His wife, although she was not free, was +respected by him as the guardian of his hearth and children. There was +but one legal reason for divorce: sterility, which frustrated the object +of matrimony. Conjugal love as we understand it did not exist; it is a +feeling which was entirely unknown to the ancients. + +With the exception of the gradually weakening hold of religion on the +imagination of the people towards the decline of the Roman Empire, no +perceptible change occurred in the social life of the old world until +the dawn of the Middle Ages. To quote Otto Seeck: "A wife had no other +task than to produce legitimate offspring; and yet she gave herself airs +and graces, embittered her husband's life with her jealousy and bad +temper or, worse even, set all tongues wagging with her evil conduct. Is +it to be wondered at that marriage was merely regarded as a duty to the +State, and that a great number of men were not sufficiently patriotic to +take such a burden upon their shoulders?" + +Thus the victory of the male spiritual principle over universal sexual +intercourse ushered in the second stage which checked the sexual impulse +and directed it upon certain individuals, a distinction however, which +bears no relation to love. + +Monogamy had conquered, in principle at least and as an ideal. + +The profoundly mystical core of the most powerful Greek tragedy which +has come down to our time, the _Orestes_ of Aeschylus, represents the +victory of the new gods of light over the old maternal powers. Orestes +has sinned against the old law, for in order to avenge his father's +death, he has slain his mother. The sun-god Apollo and the sinister +Erinnys, the upholders of the old maternal right, are waging war over +the justifiableness of the deed. To the Erinnys, matricide is the +foulest of all crimes, for man is more nearly related to the mother than +to the father. But Apollo had commanded the deed, so that the father's +murder should not remain unavenged. + + Not to the mother is the child indebted + For life; she tends and guards the kindling spark + The father lighted; she but holds his pledge.---- + +he explains. And the answer is the lament of the Erinnys: + + Thus thou destroy'st the gods of ancient times! + +Athene, the virgin goddess, the motherless daughter of Zeus, appearing +as mediator between the opponents, decides in favour of the new +dispensation which places the father's claim above the mother's. Orestes +is free of guilt; his deed was justifiable according to the canons of +the new law. The tragedy is the symbolical commemoration of the victory +of the male principle in Greece. But Athene is the embodiment of the new +hermaphroditic ideal of the Greek which stood in close connexion to +their homosexuality, and with which I propose to deal later on. + +There is a psychical law ordaining that nothing which has ever quickened +the soul of man shall be entirely lost. Were it not so, the storehouses +of the soul would stand empty. New values are created, but the old +verities endure; as a rule they are relegated to a lower sphere, to +inferior social layers, but they persist and frequently merge into the +new. This law applies without exception to the relationship between the +sexes; we shall come upon it again and again. During the second stage, +characterised by the spiritual love foreign to the ancients, the purely +sexual impulse continued as an unimpaired force, but it had lost its +prestige and was not only regarded as ignoble and base, but also +stigmatised as sinful and demoniacal. The hearts of men were stirred by +new ideals. + +A similar attitude, perhaps not quite so uncompromising because the +contrast was less pronounced, existed in classical Greece. The more +highly developed, self-conscious Hellenic genius, shrinking from +promiscuous intercourse, had systematised the instinct and set up a new +ideal in Platonic love. But below the surface raged the unbridled +natural force, and in perfect harmony with the Greek spirit--it was not +hysterically hidden, but assigned a place in the new system. Wrapped in +the obscurity of the Mysteries, concealed from the gaze of the new gods +of light, it attempted to assuage its inextinguishable thirst. The +Mysteries were the annual tribute paid as a ransom by Apollo-worshipping +Hellas to chaotic Asia, so that she might be free to pursue her higher +psycho-spiritual aims. The brilliant civilisation of Athens was based on +the dark cult of the Mysteries. On the festivals of the hermaphroditic +Dionysus and Demeter, which are identical with the cults of Adonis and +Mylitta, the impersonal, generative elements were worshipped. Thus, +below the surface of the Greek State, founded on masculine values and +attempting to restrict intercourse for the benefit of a more +systematised progeniture, flourished the orgiastic cult of the ancient +Eastern deities, who had vouchsafed to mortals a glimpse of the great +secret of life in the ardour of procreation and conception. The women +upheld the religion of passion as an end in itself; bacchantes, men in +female attire, emasculated priests, sacrificed to the blindly bountiful +gods. We are told that Dionysus conquered even the Amazons and converted +them to his worship. Euripides described in the _Bacchantes_--the +subject of which is the war between the uncontrolled sexual impulse and +the new order of things--how Dionysus traversed all Asia and finally +arrived in Hellas accompanied by a crowd of abandoned women. But his +religion was more than a cult of wine and sensual pleasure, it embraced +a gentle worship of nature, throwing down the barrier between man and +beast--impassable by the spirit of civilisation--and lovingly including +every living creature. We read in the _Bacchantes_ that the women who +had fled from the town to follow the irresistible stranger, Dionysus, +dwelled in the mountains, binding their hair with tame adders, carrying +in their arms the cubs of wolves and the young deer, and feeding them +with the milk of their breasts; that milk and wine welled up when they +struck the earth with the thyrsus; and so on. Dionysus implores +Pentheus, the representative of the Hellenic masculine system, not to +venture undisguised among the maenads: "They'll murder you if they +divine your sex," and, knowing the secret of the male and female temper: + + . . . . . . . . . First let + His mind be clouded by a slight disorder + For, conscious of his manhood he will never + Wear women's garb; insane, he's sure to wear it. + +Pentheus, recognising in Dionysus the foe of a more spiritual conception +of the law, the _effeminate stranger_ who had driven the women to +madness, is torn to pieces by the frenzied bacchantes who fall upon him, +led by Agave, his mother, and sacrificed to the _bull-god_ Dionysus. At +the conclusion of this strange and profound epos, Agave recovers her +senses and curses the acts which she has committed in her madness ... +women submit to the new spiritual dispensation. We realise now why Hera, +the tutelary goddess of the newly introduced monogamous system, hated +Dionysus and attempted to kill him before he was born. + +The subject treated in the beautiful myth of Orpheus is the +relationship between the primitive sexual impulse and its +individualisation on a single personality. For seven months Orpheus +bewails the death of Eurydice and regards all other living creatures +with indifference. This loyalty offends and infuriates the women of +Thracia, who divine in it a spirit inimical to a life in harmony with +nature. One night, during the celebration of the Dionysian rites, they +attack the poet--the representative of the higher Hellenic poetical +ideals--and rend him limb from limb. But as the head of the murdered +singer floats down the river, the pale lips still frame the beloved +name: Eurydice! It is certain that in those remote legendary days such +love did not exist. But the prophetic Greek spirit contrasted +promiscuous intercourse with love for a single woman. + +So far we have encountered only a general, not an individualised, sexual +instinct and, in a limited measure at least, a struggling tendency +towards individualisation. But even so it was merely a question of +instinct, and did not bear the least resemblance to love as we +understand it to-day. _Love_ did not exist in the old world. I admit +that in the legend of Orpheus we are face to face with a sentiment which +is not unlike modern love, but, as far as I am aware, this is an +isolated case in Greek history, and may be regarded as a divination of +something new, just as we find unmistakable anticipations of +Christianity in Plato's writings. Such phenomena--the occasional +occurrence of which I do not altogether deny, although I regard them as +on the whole improbable as far as the sphere of my research is +concerned--are not infrequently met with in history, but their effect +upon civilisation was nil; they were presentiments, incomprehensible in +their day, and for this very reason probably preserved as curiosities. + +In spite of the fact, however, that in those far-off days spiritual love +of a man for a woman was unknown, we find Plato contrasting "a base and +degraded Eros with a divine Eros." Pausanias says in the "Symposium": + +"The man who loves with his senses only, loves women and boys equally +well. He loves the body more than the soul.... His only striving is to +obtain the object of his desire, and he cares not whether it be worthy +or unworthy. The Eros he worships is the ally of that younger goddess in +whom male and female attributes are blended. But the other Eros is the +companion of Aphrodite, Urania, the divine; unbegotten by a father, +unconceived by a mother, she is the offspring of the male element, the +elder one, unstained by passion.... The sensualist who loves the body +more than the soul is base. His love passes away like the object of his +passion. But the companion of the Olympic goddess is the Eros who fills +the hearts of the lovers with the longing for virtue. The other Eros is +the confederate of the debased Aphrodite." And Aristophanes, another of +the participators in the feast, says: "The yearning does not seem to be +a desire for the pleasures of the senses, the one taking delight in his +intercourse with the other; far from it, it is obvious that each soul is +craving for something which it cannot express in words, but can only +divine and conjecture." And the mysterious Diotima revealed to Socrates +an entirely novel principle in erotic life; the principle which guides +man beyond the pleasures of the senses and--through love--leads him to +the divine. "The slave of his senses runs after women; but he who loves +with his soul and strives to win immortality through virtue and wisdom, +seeks a great and beautiful soul that he may surrender himself to it +completely." But in the opinion of the classical ages, a beautiful soul +was only to be found in the body of a man; woman belonged to the lower, +animal spheres; she was destined for the pleasure of the senses and the +propagation of the race. Plato's theory of ideas is the philosophical +victory of the male-spiritual principle over nature, matter and their +warden: woman. (Perhaps it is even the revenge of the Greek genius for +man's original enslavement.) "Love between men," continues the seer, +"forms a stronger tie, a closer friendship, than love between parents +and children; it has a mutual share in children which are immortal and +far more beautiful than the children of men." She teaches Socrates that +this noble love is at the root of all the magnificent creations of the +spirit, as carnal love is the origin of human life. "Until he becomes +aware that the beauty of all bodies is closely related, a man must love +an individual with all his heart. If a man will follow after beauty, he +is foolish not to conceive the beauty of all bodies as one and the same. +As soon as he has learned this, he will become a lover of all beautiful +forms; his fervent passion for one will diminish, he will scorn the +individual and hold it cheap." + +With the Hellenic homosexuality an element foreign and even hostile to +the original and natural bi-sexual sensuality crept into the erotic life +of the human race; it found its classical representation in the Platonic +dialogues "Symposium" and "Phaedros." In conscious opposition to all +sexuality Platonic love (what is usually called Platonic love is based +on an obstinate misunderstanding) turns to the purely spiritual, that is +to say, the conceptions of truth, beauty and goodness; it is a yearning +for the supernatural, and it knows itself as the path to it. In the +mutual love of all noble souls lies the germ of all higher things; it is +the way to the gods of light which, in this connection, are conceived +philosophically as ideas, though in the true Hellenic spirit as +objective ideas, the prototypes and culminations of everything human. To +grasp the meaning of Platonic love it is essential to realise +that--unlike the spiritual woman-worship peculiar to the Middle +Ages--it is not a personal feeling of one individual for another; +platonically speaking, the love for an individual is only a first stage; +the path which leads to the love of beauty and the eternal ideas. The +characteristic of this metaphysical love which Plato was the first to +conceive, was therefore love for the universal, and not love for an +individual. The latter, as we shall find later on, is the characteristic +of the true or, more modestly speaking, specifically European conception +of love. Platonic love, finally, was the perception of perfection, the +Socratic knowledge; its alpha and omega was not, as the mystic and true +erotic would have it, its ardour and passion, the fulness of its own +being. It had an alien purpose: the knowledge of things divine, by a +later period Christianised and understood as the divine mysteries. To +Plato, the essence and climax of antique, ante-Christian culture, every +individual, even the beloved mistress, was but a preliminary, a +finger-post, pointing the way to the perception of perfect beauty. True +virtue is the outcome of profound knowledge; it transforms men into +gods. The purely spiritual woman-worship of the Middle Ages was only +another aspect of this yearning to attain to virtue and perfection +through the love of an individual. We must not lose sight of the fact +that it was already strongly emphasised and upheld in the Platonic ideal +of love. + +In the dark excesses of the Mysteries the beauty of the human form +counted for nothing; voluptuousness and intoxication ruled. In the +Asiatic cult of the sexes there was no room for beauty, no time for +selection. The Greeks were the discoverers of the beauty of the human +form. Beauty kindled the flame of love in their souls, beauty was the +gauge which determined their erotic values. Their ideal was a +_kalokagathos_, a youth beautiful in body and soul. + +In "Phaedros" Plato contrasts with far greater force than in the +"Symposium" him "who craves for sensual pleasure like the beasts in the +fields" with him "who strives after beauty and perfection." To the +latter "the face of the beloved is the reflection of the sublimely +beautiful." He would like to sacrifice to her, as to the immortal gods. +All beautiful bodies represent to him in an increasing measure the idea +of the beauty of form, which again is subordinate to the beauty of the +soul. It points the way to metaphysical beauty, the eternal and +imperishable idea of mankind. Socrates could scorn the beauty of the +individual because he saw in it merely an imperfect reflection of +perfect beauty. In its truest sense Platonic love is, therefore, +impersonal; it is not spiritual love for a human being, but a peculiar +characteristic of the Greek cult of beauty. We shall again meet this +principle of beauty-worship in metaphysical love, the adoration of +woman; thanks to Plato, it has for all time become the inalienable +property of the human mind. The striving to rise above all individualism +was another ideal which a later period revived. But the pivot round +which the emotions revolved was the love for a beloved individual, the +modern, European, fundamental motive, as opposed to the antique Platonic +cult of ideas. Thus Plato, too, was a citizen of the old world, at whose +threshold stood universal sexual intercourse, tolerating nothing +personal, knowing of no individuals, acknowledging only unchecked, +uncontrollable instinct, and whose decline was again characterised by +the extreme impersonality of ideas. It had traversed the path of human +existence in a huge cycle. Starting from an unconscious existence in +complete harmony with nature, it had passed through individualised man +to the loftiest spiritual conceptions in the impersonal world of ideas. + +The Hellenic ideal of beauty was almost invariably realised in the male +form. The Greeks of the classical period disdained woman; she was for +them inseparably connected with base sensuality, but their contempt had +its source partly in a feeling of horror. The days when matriarchy was +the form of government were not very remote; it survived in a great +number of myths and also, subconsciously perhaps, in the soul of man. To +the Greek mind woman was the embodiment of the dark side of love, and it +was merely the logical conclusion of this conception when, at a later +period, she was regarded as the devil's tool. It is certain that the +origin of the idea must be sought in Plato's time. + +In intercourse with women man dimly felt the vague elementary condition +from which he had struggled hard to emerge, and fled to the more +familiar companions of his own sex. Would not love between man and man +deliver him from the basely sensual, strengthen his spirituality and +lead him to the gods? In this connection Zeus is called in "Phaedros" +[Greek: philios], the maker of friendships. Plato, in propounding this +doctrine, drew thereby the most radical conclusion of the new, +apparently male, but at heart hermaphroditic ideal of civilisation, +conceived in the heroic epoch and elaborated and brought to perfection +by the Greek of classical times. This ideal was the victory of the +spiritual principle over promiscuous sexuality and irresponsible +propagation and, quite in the true Hellenic spirit, it was again +interpreted materially. + +Because individualised love was an unknown quantity to the ancients, +they ornamented their sarcophagi with symbols of ecstatic life, with +dancing and embracing fauns and maenads. Generations passed away, but +new ones arose, embracing and begetting life--for life was eternal. +Death was vanquished in the ecstasy of the nameless millions, for the +true meaning of life lay in the preservation of the species. The death +of the individual did not have a deep and poignant meaning until the +soul had become the centre and climax of life. An individual had passed +away for ever--nothing could recall him. Death had become the final +issue, the terror, because it destroyed the greatest of all things: +self-conscious man. But love, too, had changed; it was no longer sexual +impulse, depending on the body and perishing with it, but a craving of +the soul, conscious of itself and stretching out feelers far beyond the +earth. A new pang had come into the world, but also a new +reconciliation. + + + + +THE SECOND STAGE: LOVE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE BIRTH OF EUROPE + + +The memory of the figure and preaching of Christ had so powerfully +influenced the centuries that it had gradually permeated and transformed +not only the Platonic doctrine of ideas--that maturest fruit of Greek +wisdom--but also the Semitic mediaeval monotheism. Something new had +sprung into being, something which expressed a hitherto unknown feeling +for life and for humanity, vague and uncertain in the beginning, but +growing in clearness and uniformity. On the throne of the Roman emperors +sat a bishop, whose power was increasing with the development of the new +civilisation, and whom the final victory of the new transcendental +world-principle had made master of the world. The building up of this +new civilisation had absorbed the intellectual force of a thousand +years; it had monopolised thought and every form of energy. The reward +was great. For the first time in the annals of the world the +questionings of brooding intelligence were fully answered, the anguish +of the tortured soul was stilled. The purpose of the universe, the +destiny of man, were comprehended and interpreted, good and evil being +finally known. At the close of the first Christian millenary, all moral +and intellectual values were grouped round and dominated by one supreme +ideal; the loftiest value in this world and the next, side by side with +the greatest secular power, were in the hands of the Church; together +with the imperium she had succeeded to the spiritual and ethical +inheritance of the dead civilisations. Without her uncouth barbarism +reigned, and it was her task, while elaborating the system of the +universe for which she stood, to teach and convert the new nations, to +spread a uniform Christian civilisation. + +On the mere face of it it must seem strange that a religion which had +grown on foreign soil, out of foreign spiritual assumptions, should have +been accepted so readily and quickly by nations to whom it must have +been alien and unintelligible. The love of war and valour of the +Teutonic tribes and Christian asceticism were diametrically opposed +ideals, and very often their relationship was one of direct hostility. I +need only remind the reader of the contempt expressed for the chaplain +by Hagen (in the "Song of the Niebelungen"). On the other hand, the +ancient Celtic and Teutonic races shared one profound characteristic +with the Christian world, the consequences of which were sufficiently +far-reaching to raise the religion of Christ to the religion of Europe. +The characteristic common to the still uncultivated European spirit and +Christianity, and meaningless alike to the Asiatic barbarians, the Jews +of the Old Testament and the Greeks, was the importance which both +attached to the individual soul. Through the Christian religion this new +intuition which saw in the soul of man the highest of values, became the +centre and pivot of life and faith--a position to which even Plato, to +whom the objective, metaphysical idea was the essential, never attained. +It had been the most personal experience of Christ, and centuries after +his death the nations rediscovered it as their highest value. It +entitled Christianity to become the natural religion of Europe, and the +soul of its new system of civilisation. It formed the most complete +contrast to all Asiatic cults, Brahminism and Buddhism, a fact which, +since Schopenhauer, one is inclined to overlook. To the Indian, the soul +of man is not an entity; his consciousness is a republic, as it were, +composed of diverse spiritual principles and metaphysical forces which +are not centralised into an "I-centre," but exist impersonally, side by +side. This may be a great conception, but it is foreign to the feeling +of the citizen of Europe. To the latter the I, the soul, the +personality, is the pivot round which life turns. The evolution of the +European world-feeling is in the direction of the independent +development of all psychical forces and their fusion into a unity of +ever-increasing intimacy. New values will be created, but the fusing +power of the soul will strive with growing intensity to co-ordinate and +unify the internal and external life; personality will recreate the +world in conformity with its own purposes, that is to say, it will found +the system of objective civilisation. The incapacity of the Indian to +produce a civilisation perfect in every direction is explained by his +one-sided, morally-speculative thought. The world is to him nothing but +a moral phenomenon, he admits no other explanation; he seeks its true +meaning and the possibility of its salvation in the realisation of the +vanity of life, not in the liberating deed, and not in the inward +change. + +The kernel of matured and spiritualised Christianity, which reached its +apex in the German mystics, lies in the soul of man, eager to shed +everything which is subjective and accidental, and become spirit, +profound, divine reality. Eckhart, the great perfecter of this European +religion, deliberately and in direct contradiction to the dogma of his +time, placed man above the "highest angels," whom he considered subject +to limitations; "man," he argues, "thanks to his freedom, is able to +reach a goal to which no angel could aspire. For he is always new, +infinitely exalted above the limitations of the angels and all finite +reason." Of the relationship between the soul and God he says; "The soul +of the righteous man shall be with God, his equal and compeer, no more +and no less." The Upanishads, on the other hand, maintain that the core +of the world is not to be found in the soul of the individual but in +Brahma, the universal soul, outside whom there is no reality. "The +individual soul is but a phantasm of the universal soul, as the +reflection of the sun in the water is but a phantasm of the sun." The +sole purpose of the world is the extinction of individual consciousness, +its absorption in Brahma, the end of all suffering: "When feeling has +ceased, pain must cease, too, and the world be delivered." The Indian +lacks the central conception of love, for which he substitutes +knowledge. Primitive Christianity conceived the connection between body +and soul, the encumbering of the soul by the body, as it were, as a +temptation or a punishment; according to the Vedas, it is merely a +delusion to which the sage is not subject. Before his keen vision, the +deception falls to the ground, and by this very fact he is delivered. To +the feeling of Europe and Christianity, however, life and the universe +are genuine, deep realities, the touchstone of the soul. Love is the +soul's greatest treasure and the only true path to God; knowledge can +never take its place. "The divine stream of love flowing through the +soul," says Eckhart, "carries the soul along with it to its origin, to +the bourne of all knowledge, to God." + +The very general identification of the Christian and Indian mystics--a +fact which is accounted for by their common metaphysical tendency--is +based on an error; Indian mysticism and Christian mysticism originated +in different concepts; here the centre of all being is laid in love and +in the soul of man, there it is contained in knowledge and in Brahma. +But ultimately, at the termination of the world-process, they will meet, +although coming from different directions. "While the soul worships a +God, realises a God and knows of a God," says Eckhart, "it is separated +from God. This is God's purpose, to annihilate Himself in the soul, so +that the soul, too, shall lose itself. For God has been called God by +the creatures." The words "The soul creates God from within, is +connected with the divine and becomes divine itself," are highly +significant. To the Vedantist the soul of man is an emanation from the +world-soul: "Although God differs from the individual soul, the +individual soul does not differ from God." At this point it is no longer +an easy matter to distinguish the feeling of the Christian mystic from +the feeling of the Brahmin; though their valuations of man, life and the +world differ, nay, are even opposed to each other, they finally meet in +God. We read in the Vedanta: "The force which created and maintains the +universe, the eternal principle of all being, dwells entirely and +undividedly in every one of us. Our self is identical with the supreme +deity and only apparently differentiated from it. Whosoever has mastered +this truth has become at one with all creation; whosoever has not +mastered it, is a stranger and a foe to all creatures." + +I do not intend to depreciate Indian wisdom; I merely desire to point +out its inherent dissimilarity to Western thought; my task of laying +hold of the spirit of Europe in its crises and watching its growth is +bound to be advanced by this division. + +The religious experience of Christ, based on the realisation of the +divine nature of the soul, and the road of the soul to God, has +established the fundamental Western principle. A world-system was built +up which emanated from the innermost depth of the individual soul and, +very consistently, related all existing things, heaven and earth, the +creation and the destruction of the world, salvation and perdition, to +the soul of man. This was achieved with the aid of a naïve metaphysic, +created by the Greek genius and externalised by the crude intellect of +barbarians; this metaphysic drew its whole content from a unique +revelation, and the essential was frequently hidden by dialectic and +speculation. One may safely say that the first millenary strove, if not +exactly to set aside the original principle of Christianity, yet to bind +it by dogma in such a way that it often became completely obscured. A +long training was necessary before the immature nations of barbarians +were fit to become citizens of the spiritual world, before they could +fully assimilate the new traditions and grasp their innermost meaning, +which by this very fact became altered and modified. This process of +education came to a temporary conclusion about the year 1100. At last +the European nations had outgrown the guardianship of the Church with +its antiquated methods; a new, a creative epoch was dawning; the +civilisation of Europe, opposed to all barbarism and orientalism, rose +like a brilliant star on the horizon of the world. Spontaneous feeling +for the race, for nature and for the divine verities had again become +possible. + +I shall have to exceed the limits of my subject in this chapter, for I +propose showing the seeds from which, in the time of the Crusades, the +new soul of the European, throwing off the lethargy of the first +Christian millenary, began to grow with extraordinary vigour and +rapidity; that new soul which experienced a wider, if not deeper, +unfolding in the period of the Renascence, and to this day pervades and +fertilises our spiritual life. I might have been less digressive, but I +hope that two reasons will justify my prolixity; the first is the great +importance of the subject from the point of view of a history of +civilisation, and the second and more particular one is its close inner +relationship to my principal theme. For, in complete contrast with the +sexuality on which heretofore the relationship between husband and wife +had been based, a new feeling, that of spiritual love, had come into +existence and quickly reached its climax. Projected not only on the +other sex, but also on God and on nature, it permeated the age and +explains its great and unprecedented manifestations: the spiritual love +between man and woman (which deteriorated later on into the deification +of woman), the new religion of the German mystics, the awakening +appreciation of the beauty of nature, the sudden outburst of German +poetry--no sooner born than it reached perfection--the specifically +European Gothic architecture, so completely independent of the old art. +All these new creations had their origin in the strange craving of the +period for something novel and romantic, something hitherto unknown. +This longing begot the ideal of chivalry and a wealth of half human, +half preter-human conceptions, such as the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy +Grail. And all at once, something unprecedented, something of which the +race had as yet no experience, had come to pass: love, which had nothing +in common with sensuality, which was even deliberately hostile to it, +love which welled up in one soul and flowed into the other--presupposing +personality--love was there! If, therefore, I have gone into detail, I +hope that it has served to elucidate the principal theme of this part of +my book, namely, the spiritual part of man for woman aspiring to the +metaphysical, which is so alien to our modern feeling. + +It is necessary to begin by sketching a background which shall set off +the new phenomenon. The spiritual achievement of the first millenary was +the construction of the Christian system of the universe the Church had +complete knowledge of all things in heaven and earth--symbols merely of +the eternal verities; her wisdom almost equalled divine wisdom, for the +secrets of life and death had been revealed and surrendered to her; St. +Chrysostom's words uttered in the fourth century, "The Church is God," +had become a fact. The profoundest wisdom, the greatest power, were +hers; the loftiest ideal had been realised as it has never been realised +before or since. As the wisdom of the Church had been a direct gift of +God, so her power, too, had divine origin and reached beyond this +earthly life. The Church alone held the key to eternal bliss, her curse +meant everlasting damnation. To be excommunicated was to be bereaved of +temporal and eternal happiness. A man who had been excommunicated was +worse off than a wild beast; he was surrendered to the devils in hell, +and he knew it. There was but one road to salvation: to do penance and +humbly submit to the Church. This has been symbolised for all times by +the memorable submission of the Roman-German emperor, who stood for +three days, barefooted and fasting, in the snow in the courtyard of +Canossa, before he was received back into the kingdom of God. The +kingdom of God was synonymous with the Church; Jews and pagans were the +natural children of the devil, but the dissenter, the heretic who dared +to question a single proposition of the divine system, or was bold +enough to think on original lines--in other words in contradiction to +tradition--voluntarily turned his back on God, and with seeing eyes went +into the kingdom of the devil. He was wholly evil, and no earthly +punishment fitted his crime. The emperor Theodosius, as far back as A.D. +380, had called such heretics "insane and demented," and the burning of +their bodies at the stake which prevented their souls from falling into +the hands of the devil, was looked upon as a great and undeserved mercy. +But not only during their lifetime, but after their death, too, the hand +of the Church fell heavily on all those who had strayed beyond her pale; +their bodies were dragged from their graves and thrown into the +carrion-pit. A man whom the Church had excommunicated was buried in the +cemetery of a German convent. The Archbishop of Mayence ordered the +exhumation of the body, threatening to interdict divine service in the +convent if his command were disobeyed. But the abbess, Hildegarde of +Bingen (1098-1179), a woman of great mental power and an inspired seer, +opposed him. Having received a direct message from God, she wrote to the +bishop as follows: "Conforming to my custom, I looked up to the true +light, and God commanded me to withhold my consent to the exhumation of +the body, because He Himself took the dead man from the pale of the +Church, so that He might lead him to the beatitude of the blessed.... It +were better for me to fall into the hands of man than to disobey the +command of my Lord." The saint had interpreted the will of God, and the +archbishop, sanctioning a sudden rumour that the deceased had received +absolution at the eleventh hour, yielded. But the bishop's yielding by +no means countenanced the belief that God might, for once, tolerate the +body of an excommunicate in sacred ground, far from it--the vision of +the abbess Hildegarde had merely served to correct an error. + +All those who dared to oppose the clergy by word or deed were doomed to +everlasting perdition--this was a fact which it were futile to doubt; at +the most, a man shrugged his shoulders at certain damnation for the sake +of mundane pleasures--a rich legacy in the hour of death might save him. +Not infrequently the fear of the devil was transformed into +indifference, and sometimes even into demonolatry. A single ungodly +thought might involve eternal death, and as many a man, more +particularly many a priest, realised his inability to live continuously +in the presence of God, he surrendered his soul to the anti-god, not +from a longing for the pleasures of the senses, but from despair. The +worship of the devil, far from being an invention of fanatical monks, +actually existed, and was often the last consolation of those who held +themselves forsaken by God. The hierarchy did not hesitate a moment to +make the utmost use or the power conferred upon them by the mental +attitude of the people. The government of kings and princes, in addition +to the ecclesiastical government, could only be a transient, sinful +condition; the time was bound to come when the pope would be king of the +earth, and the great lords of the world his vassals, appointed by him to +keep the wicked world in check, and deposed by him if he found them +incapable, worshippers of the devil, or disobedient to the Church. The +whole world was a hierarchy whose apex reached heaven and bore, as the +representative of its invisible summit, the pope. He stood, to quote +Innocent III., "in the middle, between God and humanity." The same great +pope has left us a document entitled _On the Contempt of the World_, +which treats of the absolute futility of all things mundane. There is no +reason to look upon the union of this unquenchable thirst for power and +complete "other-worldiness" as a contradiction. The kingdom of God, +Augustine's _Civitas Dei_, must of necessity be established that the +destiny of the world may be fulfilled. Every pope must account to God +for his share in the advancement of the only work which mattered, and +the greater the power the ruler of this world had acquired over the +souls of men, the more he trembled before God, weighed down by the +burden of his enormous responsibility. "The renunciation of the world in +the service of the world-ruling Church, the mastery of the world in the +service of renunciation, this was the problem and ideal of the middle +ages" (Harnack). But not only the pope, every priest, as a direct member +of the kingdom of God, was superior to the secular rulers. This was +taught emphatically by the great St. Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, +and Gregory VII., the wildest fanatic of the kingdom of God, said, in +writing to a German bishop: "Who then who possesses even small knowledge +and reasoning power, could hesitate to place the priests above the +kings?" Even the emperor Constantine, though he was still largely under +the sway of the imperial idea, distinctly acknowledged the bishops as +his masters; according to the legend he handed to the Bishop of Rome +the insignia of his power, sceptre, crown and cloak, and humbly held the +bridle of the prelate's horse. + +The theoretic backbone of this mental attitude was the doctrine of the +Fathers of the Church and the older scholasticism, pronouncing the +illimitable power of human perception; the world's profoundest depths +had been fathomed, its riddle finally solved; there was consequently no +room for philosophy, the endless meditation on the meaning of the world +and the destiny of man. Science had but one task: to bring logical proof +of the revealed religious verities. The greatest champion of this view +was Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), who in his treatise, _Cur Deus +Homo_ proved that God was compelled to become man in order to complete +the work of salvation. Abélard preached a similar doctrine, but carried +away by the fervour of thought, arrived at conclusions which he was +forced to recant ignominiously; for at the end of his chain of evidence +he did not always find the foregone conclusion which should have been +there. This system of a final and infallible knowledge of the world is +the very foundation of ecclesiastical government. The priest alone has +all knowledge, for he has the doctrine of salvation. Had it occurred to +any man to defend his own opinions in contradiction to the system of the +Church, that man would speedily have come to the conclusion that the +devil had tempted him to false observations, or false deductions, and +his submission to the Church would have been the outward sign of his +victory over the evil which had blinded his spiritual vision. A man had +to choose between the worship of God and the worship of the devil, there +was no alternative. Nobody knew the limits of human knowledge; +everybody, the learned ecclesiastic as well as the unlearned, plain man, +believed others to be in possession of the key to profound secrets and +unlimited power. One thing only was needful: to possess one's self of +the philosopher's stone; therefore the belief in witchcraft and the +fear of certain men supposed to be endowed with supernatural power--the +priests--were but the obvious results of a world-system, founded on a +revealed and exact religion. + +The Latin poets, whose study would probably have counteracted the +universal barbarism, were regarded as dangerous, the gods of antiquity +being identified with the demons of the Scriptures. This view was +responsible for the loss of many a valuable manuscript. The favourite +haunts of the demons were the convents, originally designed as +battlefields on which the struggles with the demons were to be fought +out, but frequently perishing in superstition and ignorance. Every monk +had visions of devils; miracles occurred continually; the torturing +problem was as to whether they were worked by God or the devil. Nature +was merely a collection of mystic symbols, divine--or perhaps +diabolical--allegories, whose meaning could be discovered by a correct +interpretation of the Bible. Everything which could possibly happen was +recorded in the Scriptures; they contained the true explanation of all +things. It was only a matter of selecting the right word and +interpreting it correctly, for every word was ambiguous and allegorical. +Every natural occurrence--an eclipse of the sun, a comet, or even a +fire--stood for something else; it was the symbol of a spiritual event +concealed behind a phenomenon. The allegorical interpretation of the +Bible was carried to the point of abstruseness because every word was +considered of necessity to have an unfathomably profound meaning. The +following amazing interpretation is by the highly-gifted German poet and +mystic, Suso: "Among the great number of Solomon's wives was a black +woman whom the king loved above all others. Now what does the Holy Ghost +mean by this? The charming black woman in whom God delights more than in +any other, is a man patiently bearing the trials which God sends him." +Abélard's interpretation of the black woman is even worse; he maintained +that though she was black outside, her bones, that is her character, +were white. A really remarkable deed of bad taste was committed by the +monk, Matfre Ermengau, the author of the _Breviari d'Amor_, at a time +when civilisation had already made considerable strides. He sent his +sister a Christmas present, consisting of a honey-cake, mead, and a +roast capon, accompanied by the following letter: "The mead is the blood +of Christ, the honey-cake and the capon are His body, which for our +salvation was baked and pierced at the Cross. The Holy Ghost baked the +cake in the Virgin's womb, in which the sugar of His divinity +amalgamated with the dough of our humanity. In the Virgin's womb the +Holy Ghost also spiced the mead and prepared it from wine; the spice is +divine virtue, the wine is human blood. In addition He caused the holy +capon to issue from the egg; the yolk of the egg is the deity, the white +is humanity, the shell is the womb of the Virgin Mary ...," etc. + +The religion of Christ was lost, man had become a stranger to his own +soul--celestial warnings, signs of the Judgment Day, daemonic +temptations, surrounded him, as far as he paid heed to anything +super-sensuous on all sides. The French chronicler, Radulf Glaber (about +A.D. 1000), might have been writing a satire on antiquity when he warned +his contemporaries of the demons lurking everywhere, but more especially +dwelling in trees and fountains. Of a learned man who was studying the +classic poets, he said: "This man, confused by the magic of evil +spirits, had the impudence to propound doctrines contradictory to our +holy faith. In his opinion everything the ancient poets had maintained +was true. Peter, the bishop of the town, condemned him as a heretic. At +that time there were many men in Italy believing this false doctrine; +they perished by the sword or at the stake." We have a letter, written +at the same time by Gerbert, who later on became Pope Sylvester II., to +a friend, beseeching him to obtain for him manuscripts of the Latin +philosophers and poets. He wrote textbooks of astronomy, geometry and +medicine, and introduced the Arabic numbers and the decimal system into +Europe. In consequence he, too, was accused of magic and intercourse +with Arabian pagans. A chronicler relates that he sold his soul to the +devil and became pope through the devil's agency; and that, when he was +on the point of death, he ordered his body to be cut to pieces so that +the devil should not carry it away. + +To-day we find it difficult to realise such a state of mind. Every man +of our period who takes the smallest interest in things spiritual--be he +the most orthodox ecclesiastic--at least knows that there are capable +people in the world whose opinions differ from his, who seek fresh +knowledge; he knows it, even though he may pretend that they are people +who have gone astray and have been abandoned by God. No one can be +entirely blind to the new values created by human intellect. But the men +of the Middle Ages were swayed by a monstrous dualism, and despite their +belief in the illimitable power of human cognition, they unquestioningly +accepted the sacred tradition and rejected the naïve evidence of the +senses and intellect whenever it seemed to contradict the dogma. Thus +mediaeval science did not represent what it represented in antiquity, +and what it represents now, the study of the true relationship of +things, but rather the application of truths revealed once and for all. +There was nothing more to be discovered, and therefore scientists took a +delight in logical and dialectical speculations which to a man of our +day seem senseless and childish. Far into the Renascence, natural +history was a medley of ancient traditions, oriental fables and +superficial observations. The strangest qualities were attributed to +animals with which we come almost daily into contact. The following +quotations are culled from a Provençal book on zoology: "The cricket is +so pleased with its song that it forgets to feed and dies singing." +"When a snake catches sight of a nude man, it is so filled with fear +that it does not dare to look at him; but if the man is dressed, the +snake looks upon him as a weakling and springs upon him." "The adder +guards the balsam; if a man desires to steal the balsam, he must first +send the adder to sleep by playing on a musical instrument. But if the +adder discovers that it is being duped, it closes one of its ears with +its tail and rubs the other one against the ground until it is filled +with earth; then it cannot hear the music and remains awake." "Of all +animals there is none so dangerous as the unicorn; it attacks everybody +with the horn which grows on the top of its head. But it takes such +delight in virgins that the hunters place a maiden on its trail. As soon +as the unicorn sees the maiden, it lays its head into her lap and falls +asleep, when it may easily be caught." Of the magnet we learn among +other things that it restores peace between husband and wife, softens +the heart of all men and cures dropsy. "If a magnet is made into a +powder and burnt on charcoal in the four corners of the house, the +inhabitants imagine that they cannot keep on their legs and run away, +sorely affrighted; thieves frequently profit by this fact. If a magnet +is placed under the pillow of a sleeping woman, she is compelled, if she +is virtuous, to embrace her husband in her sleep; if she has betrayed +him, she will fall out of her bed with fear." + +All this information was the common property of the period; Richard of +Berbezilh, for instance, an "aesthetic" troubadour, tells us that--like +a still-born lion's cub which was only brought to life by the roaring of +its dam--he was awakened to life by his mistress. (He does not say +whether it was by her roaring.) Conrad of Würzburg compares the Holy +Virgin to a lioness who brings her dead cubs, _i.e._, mankind, to life +with loud roaring. Bartolomé Zorgi, another troubadour of the same +period, likens his lady to a snake, for--he explains--"she flees from +the nude poet and her courage only returns with his clothes." During the +whole mediaeval period the unicorn was a well-known symbol of virginity, +more especially of the virginity of Mary. The _Golden Smithy_ of the +German minnesinger, afterwards monk Conrad of Würzburg, contains a +rather abstruse poem which begins: + + The hunt began; + The heavenly unicorn + Was chased into the thicket + Of this alien world, + And sought, imperial maid, + Within thine arms a sanctuary.... etc. + +Natural history was in a parlous state, and geographical knowledge was +equally spurious. The Church was averse to natural research, for the +only problem in the world was the salvation of man from everlasting +damnation. Not only Tertullian, but several Fathers of the Church, +regarded physical research as superfluous and absurd, and even as +godless. "What happiness shall be mine if I know where the Nile has its +source, or what the physicists fable of heaven?" asked Lactantius. And, +"Should we not be regarded as insane if we pretended to have knowledge +of matters of which we can know nothing? How much more, then, are they +to be regarded as raving madmen who imagine that they know the secrets +of nature, which will never be revealed to human inquisitiveness?" Here +one is reminded of a remark made in "Phædros" by _the wisest of all +Greeks_, who refused to leave town because "what could Socrates learn +from trees and grass?" And Julius Cæsar wrote an account of his wars to +while away the time when he was crossing the Alps. + +Very likely the system of the Church would have been less rigid had it +not largely been occupied in dealing with ignorant barbarians. In the +case of Celts and Teutons, a complete and unassailable form of dogmatics +with its corollary of hieratical intolerance was the only possible +system. The traditions of these peoples were far too foreign to +Christianity to allow Christian germs to flourish in their soil. And the +new nations, accepting what Rome offered to them, were completely +unproductive in their adolescence. The achievement of this fatal first +millenary might be formulated as follows: "The civilised world of +Western Europe was united under the government of the Church of Rome; on +all nations it had been impressed in the same combination of words and +similes that they were living in a sinful world; they knew when this +world had been created and when its Saviour had appeared; they knew that +its end would come together with the bodily resurrection of the dead and +the terrible day of the Last Judgment; they knew that demons were +lurking everywhere, seeking to destroy man's soul, and that the Church +alone could save him. All these facts were as unalterable as the return +of the seasons." + +The fundamental sources of antiquity had been sensuality and asceticism, +the elements of the Middle Ages abstract thought and historical faith; +now emotion was to become the principal factor. It welled up in the soul +and soon dominated all life. The fountain which had been dried up since +the dawn of the Christian era, began to flow again in a small country in +the south of France. The civilising centre had again shifted westwards, +as in the past it had shifted from Asia to Greece, and from Greece to +Rome. In the course of the first thousand years Greece and Asia Minor +had separated themselves from Europe, and founded a distinct culture, +the Byzantine, which exerted no influence on the development of Europe. +But not even Italy, the scene of the older civilisation, was destined to +give birth to the new; maybe the memory of the antique, ante-Christian, +period was too powerful here. Its cradle stood on virgin ground, in +Provence, a country wrested from Celts and Teutons by the Roman eagles, +ploughed by the Roman spirit, preserving in some of its coast towns, +notably in Marsilia, the rich remains of Greek settlements, something of +Moorish influence in race and language, and fusing all these +heterogeneous elements into a splendid whole. But why this important +spiritual centre should have been formed just here it is difficult to +say. + +For the first time the system of ecclesiastical values was confronted by +something novel, which was not--like the old Teutonic ideal of the +perfect warrior--tainted by barbarism, but may be described as the +system of mundane court values. This new ideal was not founded on an +authority which had to be accepted in good faith; it had its direct +origin in the passionate yearning of the human soul. Man had +re-discovered himself and become conscious of his personal creative +force. A very great thing had been accomplished; the seed which, slowly +gathering strength, had lain in the soil for a thousand years, had at +last burst its husk, and was rapidly growing into the magnificent tree +of the European civilisation. In silent opposition to the system of the +accepted ecclesiastical values, the new ideal of _pretz e valor e +beutatz_ (worth and value and beauty), of _cavalaria_ and _cortezia_ +(chivalry and courtesy), was upheld in Provence. Four worldly virtues, +wisdom, courtly manners, honesty and self-restraint, were contrasted +with the ecclesiastical cardinal virtues. The courts of the princes +became centres of new life and art. The new spiritual-aesthetic concept +of feasting and enjoyment transformed the former orgies of eating and +drinking. Woman, who had heretofore been excluded from male society, was +all at once transferred to the very centre of being; for her sake men +controlled their brutal tempers and exerted themselves to please by +good manners, taste and art. She, whom the Church had done everything to +depreciate, who had been denied a soul at the Council of Macon (in the +sixth century), had become the very vessel of the soul; man looked up to +her and bent his knee before the newly-created goddess. + +The cultivation of the new courtly manner coincided with the nascent art +of the troubadours. There was no gradual growth and development in the +latter; at the very outset it had reached perfection. The first +troubadour whose name has come down to us was Guillem of Poitiers, Duke +of Aquitania (about 1100); great lords and barons gloried in the +exercise of this new art. Every court boasted its poets, hospitably +received and loaded with presents; the great ones of the earth were +beginning to exercise that patronage of art and letters which in the +Renascence reached such extravagant proportions. Every distinguished +poet employed salaried musicians, the joglars (jongleurs), who wandered +from court to court, singing their masters' new songs. Others again, the +comtaires, related romances of love and adventure, gathering round them +a rapt throng of lords and ladies. Courtly manners and lofty principles +quickly became the recognised ideal; the man who was satisfied with the +pleasures of the senses was held in contempt; the greatest reproach was +"vilania"; in the "Yvain" of the French epic poet Chrestien de Troyes, +this universal feeling is thus expressed: + + A courtier counts though he be dead, + More than a rustic stout and red. + +Dante and his circle, as well as the best of the troubadours, +substituted for the "cortois" of the superficial Chrestien the "cor +gentil," the noble heart, which they accounted more precious than rank +and wealth and power. "Wherever there is virtue there is nobility," says +Dante, "but where there is nobility there need not necessarily be +virtue." A time had come when personal distinction was in every man's +grasp, no matter whether he was learned or unlearned, a nobleman or a +commoner. Certainly the commoner was never on an equality with the +aristocrat, partly because he was dependent on the largess of the great. +Even Dante was compelled to seek princely patronage, and not until the +Renascence do we hear of writers whose sarcastic tongues were so dreaded +that they became independent of charity. + +In opposition to the monkish ideal of a contemplative life which had +hitherto obtained, a new ideal, the ideal of the courtier's life, was +upheld; ecclesiastical saintliness was contrasted with knightly honour. +Beauty, which at the dawn of the Christian era had fallen into ill +repute and had become associated with unholy, and even diabolical, +practices, had again come into its kingdom. Above everything it was the +beauty of woman which was re-discovered--or rather, in its new, +spiritual sense, newly discovered--and claimed the enthusiasm and love +of the best men of the period. After a thousand years of gloom and +brutality, joy and culture shed their radiance on a renewed world. The +ideal of chivalry bore very little resemblance to the old Teutonic ideal +of the hero; the older ideal had been based entirely on the appreciation +of physical strength; but chivalry was the disseminator of culture, +leaving ecclesiastical culture, which hitherto had been synonymous with +civilisation, a very long way behind. "Mezura," "masze" (the [Greek: +mphstoês] of the Platonic Greeks) was the new criterion, as compared +with the barbarian's want of restraint. + +I do not propose to give a description of the life at the courts of +Provence. The news of it travelled north, and everywhere roused a desire +to imitate it. The need of a renewed life was powerfully stirring all +hearts. Men yearned for beauty and spontaneity, for passionate life, +unprecedented and romantic. This was especially the case in the north, +in France and in Germany, and above all in Wales, the country of the +imaginative and highly-gifted Celts. Here life was harder, poorer, more +barbaric; the cultured mind suffered more from its brutal surroundings +than it did in the favoured south. It was here that the great legends of +the Middle Ages, so clearly expressive of the yearning of the period, +were first collected. The early Middle Ages had produced epic poems, +treating scriptural subjects (such as the Harmony of the Gospels of the +monk Otfrit, written in the ninth century), and celebrating the exploits +of popular heroes, as, for instance, the German Song of Hildebrand, and +the French "Chansons de Geste," which contain episodes from the lives of +Charlemagne and his nephew Roland. The true epic, arising from the rich +and poetical Celtic tradition, came into existence in the eleventh +century in the North of France and immediately burst into extraordinary +luxuriance. The legends of the heroes of the dreamy Celtic race--King +Arthur and his knights, Merlin the magician, the knights of the Holy +Grail--travelling across France, became the common property of the +civilised European nations, and filled all hearts with longing and +fantastic dreams. Chrestien de Troyes, in his romances, extolled +knightly exploits and the service of woman, thus producing by the +combination of the older and the newer ideals the novel of adventure +which has fascinated the world for centuries. It is a mistake to believe +that Don Quixote has struck at the root of it; to this day the masses +wax enthusiastic in reading of the doughty deeds of knights, the beauty +of ladies and their unswerving, undying love. + +In addition to the great and heroic subjects, there were lesser, more +intimate, and frequently sentimental, romances, especially enjoyed and +widely circulated by the ladies. The baron, riding forth, left his young +wife at home, shut up in her bower and surrounded by spies; sometimes +even physically branded as his property. A prisoner behind bars, her +imagination went out--not to the unloved husband who had married her for +the sake of her broad acres, and could send her back to her parents as +soon as he found a wealthier bride (he had but to maintain that she was +related to him in the fifth degree and the Church was ready to annul the +marriage), not to him, her lord and master, but to the unknown knight, +the passionate lover, who would gladly give his life to win her. A +jongleur arrived with stories of the courts where love was the only +ruler; where the knights willingly suffered grief and want, if by so +doing they could serve their lady; where the lover, in the shape of a +beautiful blue bird, nightly slipped through the barred windows into the +arms of his mistress. But the jealous husband had drawn barbed wire +across the window, and the lover, flying away at dawn, bled to death +before the eyes of his grief-stricken lady. The jongleur would tell of +the knight who had fallen passionately in love with a beautiful damsel +of whom he had but caught a passing glimpse; month after month he worked +at digging an underground passage; every night brought him a little +nearer to her bower--she could distinctly hear the dull sounds of his +burrowing--until at last he rose through the ground and took her into +his arms. These and similar tales, doubtless all of them of Celtic +origin--preserved for us in the charming "Lais" of Marie de +France--brought tears to the eyes of many a lonely wife and gave shape +to her vague longing. There was no reason why a man, and a lover to +boot, should not transform himself nightly into a blue bird. Those +simple stories in verse fulfilled every desire of the heart; imagination +supplied in the north what the south offered in abundant reality. But +Marie de France, the first woman novelist of Europe (about the end of +the twelfth century), deserves to be remembered for another reason; she +was the first poet voicing woman's longing for love and +romance--woman's adventure. The charming _Lai du Chevrefoile_ ("The +Story of the Honeysuckle") relates an episode from the loves of Tristan +and Isolde, the famous lovers, legendary even at that time. Tristan and +Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere, Fleur and Blanchefleur--these were the +admired and mythical lovers of whom the poets sang and dreamed. All the +world knew their adventures; all the world repeated them again and +again, reverently preserving the identical words and yet unconsciously +remoulding them. At the recital of their loves, hand clasped hand; "on +that day we read no more," confessed Dante's ill-fated lovers. + +The longing, so characteristic of the North of Europe, to see the world +and meet with adventures, was in Provence and Italy less pronounced. +These favoured climes possessed so many of the things dreamed of and +desired by other countries. Events, strange as fiction, actually +occurred. Count Raimond of Roussillon, for instance, imprisoned his wife +in a tower because the troubadour, Guillem of Cabestann, was in love +with and beloved by her. He waylaid the lover, killed him, cut his heart +out of his breast and sent it, roasted, to his countess. When she had +partaken of it, he showed her Guillem's head and asked her how she had +enjoyed the dish. "So much that no other food shall ever pass my lips," +she replied, casting herself out of the window. When the story spread +abroad, the great nobles rose up in arms against Raimond, and even the +King of Aragon made war on him. He was caught and imprisoned for life, +and his estates were confiscated. Guillem and the countess were buried +in the church, and for a long time after men and women travelled long +distances to kneel at their grave. The charming poems of Melusine and +the beautiful Magelone, which to this day delight the reader, were +composed during the same period. + +Before the eleventh century poetry in the true sense of the word did not +exist. There were only Latin Church hymns and legends, perverted +reminiscences of antiquity, and, in the vulgar tongue, legends of the +saints and simple dancing-songs for the amusement of the lower classes. +Thanks to the relentless war which the clergy waged against them, a few +only have been preserved. There can be no doubt that Provence was the +birthplace of European poetry. The "sweet language" of Provence was the +first to reach perfection and perfect maturity. It drove the language of +the German conquerors eastwards and prepared the ground for the French +tongue. + +The beginning of the twelfth century saw the birth of the poetry of the +troubadours, which possessed from the first in great perfection +everything that distinguishes modern lyric poetry from the antique. +Instead of the syllable-measuring quantity, we now have the emphasising +accent; the rhyme, one of the most important lyrical contrivances--and +in its near approach to music the most striking characteristic of modern +lyrical poetry as compared with the antique--reaches perfection together +with the complete, evenly-recurring verse which is still to-day peculiar +to lyrical art. The poems of many of the troubadours pulsate with +passionate life, and bear no trace of the traditional or the +conventional. The martial songs of Bertrand de Born stride along with a +rhythm reminiscent of the clanking of iron. I quote the first verse of +one of these: + + Le coms m'a mandat e mogut + Per N'Arramon Luc d'Esparro, + Qu'eu fassa per lui tal chanso, + On sian trenchat mil escut, + Elm e ausberc e alcoto + E perponh faussat e romput. + + The count he sent to me one day + Sir Arramon Luc d'Esparro; + A song I was to make him--so + That thousand shields with ring and stay + And mail and armour of the foe + To fragments shivered in dismay. + +The poetry of the Provençal troubadours had already passed its prime +when, in the other European countries, lyric art was still in its +infancy. The crusade against the Albigenses (1209), undertaken by +Gregory VII. with the object of killing the new spirit and the new +secular civilisation, drove many troubadours to Italy, among others the +famous Sordello, who is mentioned in Dante's _Divine Comedy_. Others +went to Sicily, to the court of the art-loving Emperor, Frederick II., +where a distinct, but not very original, poetic art arose. In Italy the +perfection of mediaeval poetry was reached in the "sweet, new style" +immortalised by Dante. But not only the great Italians, the trouveres +from the North of France also, and--to some extent--the German +minnesingers, were influenced by the art, and above all, the ideals +which had originated in Provence. The poetry of the earliest Rhenish and +Austrian minnesingers closely follows German folklore, and the songs of +Dietmar of Aist and others are still quite innocent of any trace of +neo-Latin characteristics. But very soon the technical perfection of the +Provençal poetry and the Provençal ideal of courtesy and love, famous +all over Europe, strongly influenced the German mind. + +The new poetry and the ideal of chivalry and the service of woman were +the first independent developments able to hold their own by the side of +ecclesiastical culture. The rigid Latin was superseded; the soul of man +sang in its own language of the return of spring, the beauty of woman, +knighthood and adventure. Poetry became the most important source of +secular education, and as each nation sang in its own tongue, national +characteristics shone out through the individuality of the singer. +Provençals, Frenchmen, Germans and Italians realised that they belonged +to different races. This was particularly the case during the Crusades +when, under the auspices of the Church, the nations of Europe had +apparently undertaken a common task. + +In Provence, in France and Germany, every poem was set to music, and +thus, simultaneously with the lyrical art, secular music was evolved. +J.B. Beck, the greatest authority on the music of the troubadours,--the +music of the minnesingers has been studied very little,--says, "The +poetry of the troubadours and trouveres represents in its totality a +collection of songs which in their frequently amazing naïveté and +melodiousness, their spontaneity and sound music, intimate congruity of +melody and text and extraordinary originality, have been unparalleled to +this day." All these songs are distinguished by graceful simplicity; but +the ear of the non-musician can hardly perceive the originality on which +Beck lays such stress. In any case, the music is inferior to the +frequently perfect text. This same period saw the inception of our +present system of musical notation. + +The new poetry created a desire for "literature," thus giving impetus to +the already existent art of illuminated manuscripts. Every prince kept a +salaried army of copyists and illuminators, producing the manuscripts +to-day preserved and studied in our museums. Studios where this work was +carried on existed at various art centres, especially--as far as we are +able to tell to-day--at the papal courts at Avignon--that meeting-ground +of French and Italian artists--in Paris and at Rheims. These workshops +were the birthplace of miniature painting, which reached perfection in +the famous Burgundian "Livres d'Heures." + +To-day the science of aesthetics is attempting to trace the influence +which emanated from the French and even from the earlier English +workshops, and spread over the whole continent. It is very probable that +the French art of miniature painting of the first half of the thirteenth +century was mother of the later North-European art of painting. It was +in Northern Europe that, independently of Hellenic and Byzantine +influence, a new art originated, of which Max Dvorak says: "It would +hardly be possible to find an external cause for the quick and complete +disappearance of the elements of the Neo-Latin art. The past was simply +done with, and an absolutely new period was beginning. Thus the new art +was almost without any tradition." Dvorak calls this complete change the +most important in the history of painting since antiquity. George, Count +Vitzthum, has proved that the famous Cologne school of painting modelled +itself on Northern-French, Belgian, and a quite independent English +school of illuminators. It is even suggested that the English style of +miniature painting influenced Europe as far as the Upper Rhine. It is +also very significant that the Dutch art of the brothers van Eyck, whose +sudden appearance seemed so inexplicable, is now proved to have had its +source in the North of France. On the other hand, we have drawings of +three ecstatic nuns showing decided originality; Hildegarde of Bingen, +already mentioned on a previous occasion, has herself ornamented her +book, _Scivias_, with miniatures which, according to Haseloff, in spite +of their primitive style, reveal a bizarre plastic talent, and are +therefore closely related to her intuitions. Alfred Peltzer speaks of +"fantastic figures surrounded by flames." The two other nuns were +Elizabeth of Schönau, and Herrad of Landsberg; these two were entirely +under the influence of the dawning mysticism. + +I will here quote a few more passages from Dvorak, who, in dealing with +the individual arts, does not lose sight of the whole. "Simultaneously +with a new literature," he says, "we have a new art of illustration, new +miniatures, no longer drawing inspiration from antiquity.... We meet the +new style in its full perfection wherever it is a matter of a new +technique (in the art of staining glass, for instance, or of +illustrating profane literature)...." He speaks of a new decoration of +manuscripts invented in Paris in the first half of the thirteenth +century. Thus the close and causal connection between the new poetry +and the illumination of books is clearly apparent, and it may be said +without exaggeration that the Provençal lyric poetry and the +North-French and Celtic cycles of romance led up to the new European +style of painting which did not come to perfection until two centuries +later. (Nothing positive can be said about the influence of France on +Italian art; the monumental character and the art of Cimabue, Giotto and +the Sienese does not, however, suggest that they were much influenced by +the art of miniature painting, but rather hints that they drew +inspiration from antique frescoes.) + +I must add a few words on the subject of those miniatures which are not +easily accessible to the layman, but reproductions of which are +frequently met with in books on the history of art. In addition to +religious subjects, the whole courtly company which lives and breathes +in the legends of the Round Table, kings and knights, poets, minstrels, +and fair damsels, hawking, jousting, banqueting and playing chess, +everything which stirred the poet's imagination, is depicted. The spirit +of the romances which in modern times enchanted the English +Pre-Raphaelites, six centuries ago provided food and stimulus to the +industrious illuminators whose names have long been forgotten. + +If the art of miniature painting never rose--excepting in its wider +consequences--to universal significance, mediaeval architecture stands +before our eyes magnificent as on the first day. Until the middle of the +twelfth century the monumental structures of Europe were directly +influenced by the later Hellenic civilisation. The Byzantine basilica +was slowly transformed into the Neo-Latin house, and thus, in this +important domain also, Europe drew her inspirations from antiquity. But +only the ground-plan of the Gothic cathedral, that is to say, the idea +of a nave with side-aisles, was traditional and borrowed from Neo-Latin +models. From this invisible ground-plan rose something absolutely +original and autochthonic. This new, specifically Central-European style +of architecture was developed on soil where there were no antique +buildings to stem the new life with their overwhelming domination, and +to bar the way of artistic inspiration with their ominous "I am +perfection!" In every branch of art antiquity had proved itself a foe, +until at last the Renascence was sufficiently mature to assimilate and +overcome the antique inheritance so completely that it became an +excellent fertiliser for the new art. The essence of the Gothic style is +the dissolution of all that is heavy and material--the victory of spirit +over matter. Walls were broken up into pillars and soaring arcades; +monotonous facework was tolerated less and less, and every available +inch was moulded into a living semblance. The result may be studied in +the incomparable façades of many of the cathedrals in the North of +France; and in tower-pieces almost vibrating with life and passion such +as that of St. Stephen's in Vienna. The conflict between matter and pure +form is settled--for the first and only time--in Gothic architecture. +The Greek temple with its correct proportions possessed no more than +perfection of form without spiritual admixture; it was perfect as marble +statues, which are an end in themselves, and do not point the way to +spiritual truths. Gothic architecture is probably unique in its blending +of æsthetic perfection of form and infinite spiritual wealth; in the +fusion of these two elements in a higher intuition. It is the balance of +the two characteristics of genius, inexhaustible wealth and the striving +for harmonious expression. It marked the first powerful working of the +Teutonic spirit on the world; its metaphysical yearning together with a +genuine love of nature, found in this art its own peculiar traditionless +expression, just as it found expression in the newly-evolved mysticism +which no longer re-echoed Aristotle and his commentators, but drew +inspiration from its own intuition. For this reason Gothic architecture +never became acclimatised in Italy. The soaring tower, more especially, +never appealed to the Italian architect. + +Ornamentation and capitals, previously a combination of geometrical +figures, which may have been architecturally great and imposing, but was +always more or less formal and rigid, disappeared; the new masters, +whose names have been forgotten, looked round them and drew inspiration +from nature. The forest trees of Central Europe became pillars; grouped +together, apparently haphazard, they reflected a mystical nature pulsing +with mysterious life. Spreading and ramifying, growing together in an +impenetrable network of foliage, they bore buds, leaves and fruits. +Every pinnacle became a sprig, even the pendant icicles reappeared in +the gable-boards. But the assimilation of natural objects did not cease +there; tiny animals, light as a feather, run over the tendrils, lizards, +birds, even the gnomes of German mythology, find their way into the +Gothic cathedral. Not the traditional Greek acanthus leaf, but the +foliage of the North-European oak grows under the hands of the sculptor. +Even the cross is twisted into a flower; the sacro-sanct symbol of the +Christian religion is newly conceived, newly interpreted and moulded so +that it may have a place. The Gothic cathedral with its soaring arches +free from all heaviness is the perfect expression of that cosmic feeling +that inspired Eckhart and reached its artistic perfection in Dante. + +But the soul of the mystic in stone contains the same elements as the +soul of Eckhart, who was also a schoolman. The confused and complex +scholastic world of ideas which corresponded so well with the mediaeval +temper and, together with the new art, had emanated from Paris, is +closely akin to Gothic architecture. For the Gothic style and +scholastic thought share the characteristics of the infinitely +constructive and infinitely cleft, the infinitely subtle and +ornamental--perhaps the last trace of the spirit of the north as +compared with the simplicity of the south. + +As if from fertile soil, a world of sculptured men and beasts sprang +from the façades of the new cathedrals. The figures on the cathedrals of +Naumburg, Strassburg, Rheims, Amiens and Chartres are far superior to +the artistic achievements of the dawning renascence in Italy. They are +real men, full of life and passion, no longer symbols of the +transcendental glory of the world beyond the grave. "All rigidity had +melted, everything which had been stiff and hard had become supple; the +emotion of the soul flows through every curve and line; the set faces of +the statues are illuminated by a smile which seems to come from within, +the afterglow of inward bliss" (Worringer). + +A longing went through the world, stimulating faith in miracles and a +desire for adventure, a longing which no soul could resist. Nothing +certain was known of countries fifty miles distant; the traveller must +be prepared for the most amazing events. No one knew what fate awaited +him behind yonder blue mountains. The existence of natural laws was +undreamt of; there was no improbability in dragons or lions possessing +power of speech. A period incapable of distinguishing between the +natural and supernatural will always indulge in those fancies which are +best suited to its temper. Be the native country never so poor, the long +darkness and cold of the winter never so hard to bear, far away in the +East, or in Camelot, the kingdom of King Arthur, life was full of beauty +and sunshine. The legends of King Arthur powerfully affected the +imagination; they were read, secretly and surreptitiously, in all +convents; on a sultry summer afternoon, during the learned discussion of +their preceptor, one after another of the pupils would fall asleep; the +preceptor, suddenly interrupting himself, would continue after a short +pause: "And now I will tell you of King Arthur," and all eyes would +sparkle as the pupils listened with rapt attention. Francis of Assisi +called one of his disciples "a knight of his Round Table," and three +hundred years later Don Quixote lost his reason over the study of those +legends; some of the finest works of art of the present time, Wagner's +"Lohengrin," "Tristan and Isolde," and "Parsifal," take their subject +from the inexhaustible treasure of the Celtic epic cycle. The longing +for experience and adventure had laid hold of the imagination to an +extraordinary degree. The recital of wondrous adventures no longer +satisfied the listener; he yearned to participate in them. The young +knight, trained in athletics and courtesy, and possessing a little +knowledge of biblical history, left his father's castle to face the +unknown world. There was a sanctuary, mysterious, almost supernal, +carefully guarded in the dense forest of an inaccessible mountain. A +knight whose heart was pure, and who had dedicated himself to the +lifelong service of the divine, could find it; but he would have to +wander for many years, through forests and glens and strange countries, +alone and solitary, before his eyes would behold the most sacred relic +in the world, the Holy Grail. + +The time was ripe for a great event, a universal and overwhelming +enterprise which could absorb the passionate longing. Maybe that the +wisdom of the great popes--half unconsciously, certainly, and under the +pressure of the age, but yet led by an unerring instinct--guided this +stream into the bed of the Church; the vague craving found a definite +object: the Crusades were organised. The Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred +spot on earth, was in the hands of the heathens; it was despised and +defiled--what greater thing could a man do than hasten to its rescue +and wrest it from the grasp of pagans, giants and sorcerers? In the +fantastic imagination of the men of that period the Lord's sepulchre was +nothing but the earthly realisation of their yearning for the Holy +Grail. + +As far back as A.D. 1000 Gerbert had sent messengers to all nations, +exhorting them to hoist their banners and march with him to the Holy +Land. It had been prophesied that he should be the first to read Mass in +Jerusalem; a few ships were actually equipped at Pisa--the first attempt +at a Crusade. But at that time Europe was not yet quite prepared for the +extraordinary, almost incomprehensible, enterprise--the conquest of a +country which hardly anybody had ever seen and in which nobody had any +practical interest. Before such an enterprise could be carried out all +hearts must be filled by that uncontrollable and yet vague longing, so +characteristic of the great period of fantasy. The suggestion that the +wealth of the East, exciting the greed of the western nations, led to +the Crusades, is an absolutely indefensible idea. Doubtless, rumours of +the fabulous treasure of the Orient had stirred the imagination of +Europe, appealing far less, however, to the cupidity of the individual +than to his desire for something strange, new and incredible. It was +impossible to foresee the result of the first Crusade; the crusader went +to a strange land in order to fight--the return was in God's hand. There +have been at all times men coveting wealth, but to make such men the +instigators and organisers of the Crusades is a deliberate attempt to +represent a characteristic and unique event in the history of the world +in the light of a commonplace and every-day occurrence. In the first +enchanted wood a man might chance upon a beautiful princess sitting +beside a fountain, nude and weeping; but it was equally possible that a +giant would rush upon the Christian knight, break his shield and exact +heavy penalties. It was possible to win the kingdom of a sultan or +emir--it could be achieved by bravery and in a duel--and become a great +king, for a king in those days was no more than a large landed +proprietor. Such dreams were actually fulfilled in the most +extraordinary way. Gottfried of Bouillon, a poor Alsatian knight, might +have become King of Jerusalem, had he not refused to wear a crown of +gold in a land where his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns, and +contented himself with the title of "Protector of the Holy Land." + +The embattled citadel of Jerusalem, like the Holy Grail, was pictured as +being situated outside the world. _There_ the longing which had become +so vast that it had outgrown the earth, would be stilled. A direct way +must lead from Jerusalem, the centre of the earth--it still takes this +position in Dante's _Divine Comedy_--to Paradise. Was it not the spot +where the Cross of the Saviour had been raised? Had not once before +heaven opened above the city to receive His risen body? Was it not the +scene of countless miracles in the past? Why should it be different now? +Men knew practically nothing of Palestine; they had in their minds a +fantastic picture tallying, in every respect, with Biblical accounts; +doubtless, the footprints of the Redeemer could easily be traced +everywhere; the possession of the country promised the fulfilment of +transcendental dreams. + +The impulse and the strength necessary for the organisation of the +Crusades were spiritual phenomena inherently foreign and even hostile to +the Church; but thanks to the mental superiority of the popes of that +period, and the overpowering conception of a divine kingdom, they became +the instruments of the greatest triumphs vouchsafed to the Church of +Rome. The hosts, driven across the sea by inner restlessness and +ill-defined longing, in reality fought for the aggrandisement of the +Church. The great Hildebrand resolved to lead all Christendom to +Jerusalem, to found on the site of the Holy Sepulchre the divine +kingdom preached by St. Augustine, and invest--a risen Christ--the +emperor and all the kings of the earth with their kingdoms. + +The crusader and the knight in quest of the Holy Grail present together +a paradoxical combination of the Christian-ecclesiastical and the +mundane-chivalric spirit, which is quite in harmony with the spirit of +the age. These two worlds, inward strangers, formed--in the Order of the +Knight-Templars, for instance--a union which, while possessing all the +external symbols of chivalry, attributed to it heterogeneous, +ecclesiastical motives; the glory of battle and victory, the caprice of +a beautiful damsel, were no longer to become the mainsprings of doughty +exploits; henceforth the knight fought solely for the glory of God and +the victory of Christianity. In addition to King Arthur's knights, the +classical Middle Ages worshipped the ideal of these priestly warriors +who waded through streams of blood to kneel humbly at the grave of the +Saviour, of those seekers of the Holy Grail who dedicated themselves to +a metaphysical task. King Arthur's Round Table served the actual orders +of knighthood as a model. Not only the Franciscans of Italy, but also +slow, German mystics, such as Suso and the profound Johannes Tauler, +delighted in borrowing their similes and metaphors from knighthood. +Tauler speaks of the "scarlet knightly robes" which Christ received for +His "knightly devotion": "And by His chivalric exploits he won those +knightly weapons which he wears before the Father and the angelic +knighthood. Therefore Christ exults when His knights elect also to put +on such knightly garments ...," etc. + +Not infrequently the Saracens behaved far more generously than the +Christian armies. A German chronicler, Albert von Stade, tells us that +A.D. 1221 "the Sultan of Egypt of his own free will restored the Lord's +Cross, permitted the Christians to leave Egypt with all their +belongings, and commanded all prisoners to be set free, so that at that +time 30,000 captives were released. He also commanded his subjects to +sell food to the rich and give alms to the poor and the sick." +Occasionally the pope entered into an alliance with the enemies of +Christendom against the emperor, if the latter proved troublesome. A.D. +1246 the Sultan of Egypt (Malek as Saleh Ejul) taught Innocent IV., the +speaker of all Christendom, the judge of the Christian peoples, the +following lesson: "It is not befitting to us," he wrote to him, "that we +should make a treaty with the Christians without the counsel and consent +of the emperor. And we have written to our ambassador at the court of +the emperor, informing him of what has been proposed to us by the Pope's +nuncio, including your message and suggestions." + +The most pathetic symptom of the restlessness of the age was the +Children's Crusade in 1212, which, even at its actual occurrence, caused +helpless amazement. The reports of two German chroniclers are +sufficiently interesting to be quoted verbally: "In the same year +happened a very strange thing, a thing which was all the more strange +because it was unheard of since the creation of the world. At Easter and +Whitsuntide many thousands of boys from Franconia and Teutonia, from six +years upwards, took the Cross without any external inducement or +preaching, and against the wish of their parents and relations, who +sought to restrain them. Some left the plough which they had been +guiding, others abandoned their flocks, or any other task which they had +been set to do, banded together, and with hoisted banner began to march +to Jerusalem, in batches of twenty, fifty and a hundred. Many people +enquired of them at whose counsel and admonishment they were undertaking +this journey, (for it was not many years ago that many kings, a great +number of princes and countless people had travelled to the Holy Land, +strongly armed, and had returned home without having accomplished their +desire,) telling them that in their tender years they had not yet +sufficient strength to achieve anything, and that therefore this thing +was foolish and undertaken without due consideration; the children +answered briefly that they were obeying God's will, and would willingly +and gladly suffer all the trials He would send them. And they went their +way, some turning back at Mayence, others at Piacenza, and others at +Rome; a small number arrived at Marseilles, but whether they crossed the +sea or not, and what happened to them, no one knows; only that much is +certain, that of all the thousands who went forth, only very few +returned." Another chronicler wrote: "And at this time boys without a +leader or guide, left the towns and villages of all countries, eagerly +journeying to the lands across the sea, and when asked whither they were +wending, they replied: 'To Jerusalem, to the Holy Land.' Many of them +were kept by their parents behind locked doors, but they burst open the +doors, broke through the walls and escaped. When the Pope heard of these +things he sighed heavily and said: 'These children shame us, for they +hasten to the recovery of the Holy Land while we sleep.' No one knows +how far they went and what became of them. But many returned, and when +they were asked the reason of their expedition, they said they knew not. +At the same time nude women were seen hurrying through towns and +villages, speaking no word." + +If it had not been for the Crusades, something else must have happened +to relieve the unbearable tension. The world was longing for a great +deed, a deed overstepping the border-line of metaphysics, and its +enthusiasm was sufficient guarantee of achievement. In the case of the +individual, vanity and boastfulness played no mean part. Thus the +Austrian minnesinger, Ulrich of Lichtenstein, proposed taking the Cross +"not to serve God but to please his mistress." It is quite probable, +though not historically proved, that this veritable Don Quixote dreamed +of decorating the Holy Sepulchre with his lady's handkerchief, but in +the end he remained at home. A journey to foreign lands, to return after +years of yearning for the beloved, her loyalty, or her treachery, +supplied the romantic imagination of the age with endless material. The +story of the Count von Gleichen and his two wives is famous to this day. +A charming Provençal song tells of a maid who, day after day, sat by a +fountain weeping for her lover. At this spot they had bidden farewell to +each other, and here she was awaiting his return. One day a pilgrim +arrived, and she at once asked for news of her knight. The pilgrim knew +him and had a message for her. After a short conversation he threw back +his cowl and drew the delighted maiden into his arms, for it was he +himself, her lover, who after many years of absence had returned and was +first visiting the spot where, years ago, he had said good-bye to her. + +But there was another motive, a religious one, which, joined to the +universal lust of adventure, dominated the whole mediaeval period to an +extraordinary degree; that motive was the idea of doing penance +and--after all the failures of life--returning to God. The Crusades +offered an opportunity for combining one's heart's desire with this +spiritual need. Of all good works there were none more pleasing to God, +and every participator was promised forgiveness of his sins. In the +troubadours' songs of the crusaders there is a strong yearning for +penance and sanctification, quite independent of the idea of the +delivery of the Holy Sepulchre from the rule of the infidels. + + All I held dear I now abhor, + My pride, my knightly rank and fame, + And seek the spot which all adore, + The pilgrim's goal--Jerusalem. + +sang Guillem of Poitiers, one of the gayest of the troubadours. + +Only very few of the more thoughtful minds realised that divine thoughts +have their source in the soul of man, and that these Crusades were +obviously a senseless undertaking (not to mention the fact that God does +not need human assistance). "It is a greater thing to worship God always +in humility and poverty," said the abbot, Peter of Cluny, "than to +journey to Jerusalem in great pomp and circumstance. If, therefore, it +is a good thing to visit Jerusalem and stand on the soil which our +Lord's feet have trod, it is a far better thing still to strive after +heaven where our Lord can be seen face to face." Both the great +scholastic, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux, were of the +same opinion. "They shall aspire not to the earthly, but to the heavenly +Jerusalem, and travel there not with their feet, but with the desire of +their hearts." And "They seek God in external objects, neglecting to +look into their hearts, in whose innermost depths dwells the divine." +And yet those same men, who even then seemed to have outgrown biblical +religiosity, were under the spell of the all-absorbing idea of the age. +Bernard solved the contradiction in the following way: "It is not +because His power has grown less that the Lord calls us feeble worms to +protect His own; His word is deed, and He could send more than twelve +legions of angels to do His bidding; but because it is the will of the +Lord your God to save you from perdition, He gives you an opportunity to +serve Him." In these words a significant change of the fundamental idea +can already be traced. Peter of Cluny worked for the Crusades, and +Bernard, one of the most influential and venerable personalities of the +Middle Ages, a man before whose word the popes bowed down, journeyed +through the whole of France, inciting all hearts to fanatical +enthusiasm. Whoever heard him preach forsook his worldly possessions and +took the cross, clamouring for Peter himself to lead all Christendom. +"Countless numbers flocked to his banner, towns and castles stood +forsaken and there was hardly one man to seven women. The wives were +made widows during the lifetime of their husbands." Thus Bernard wrote +to the Pope, travelling through Germany, healing the sick by his mere +presence, and preaching to the people in a tongue no one could +understand. But the personality of this physically delicate man, whose +body was only kept alive by his spirit, touched all hearts. The prudent +Emperor, Conrad, resisted for a long time, and would have nothing to do +with such an aimless enterprise. But Bernard's first sermon in the +cathedral at Speyer, on Christmas Day, moved him to tears. Bernard left +the pulpit and pinned the cross on the shoulder of the kneeling emperor. +By this symbolical act the metaphysical spirit of the time, of which the +Church had obtained control for her own purposes, visibly became master +of political common-sense. + +The Crusades were one of the great movements matured by the +newly-awakened metaphysical yearning. The same spirit in another, +profounder, way, manifested itself in the efforts of religious reform +which were being made here and there. "The appearance and spread of +heresy has always been the gauge by which the religious life of the +individual must be measured," says Büttner very pertinently in his +preface to his edition of Eckhart. For the first time since the days of +Christ true religious feeling was again quickening the hearts of men; +the ecclesiastical dogma, which until then had represented absolute +truth, no longer satisfied their need. Soon opposition, timidly at +first, made itself felt. Laymen ventured to interfere in the domain of +religion. All knowledge--and consequently all tradition and +religion--had been for a thousand years the exclusive possession of the +clergy; those laymen who had any culture at all knew a little Latin and +a few scholastic propositions. All this was changing. Despite reiterated +ecclesiastical prohibitions, parts of the Bible were translated into +the vulgar tongue and eagerly studied by ignorant folk; everywhere men +appeared to whom religion was a matter of vital importance, men who +strove to find God in their own souls, instead of blindly accepting the +God of foreign doctrine. + +The more obvious cause of the growing dislike to ecclesiastical +authority was the immorality of the priests. The contrast between the +professions of humility, and the greed, vice and tyranny of the clergy +was too pronounced. The ecclesiastical offices were publicly sold. +Divine forgiveness was cheaper than a new garment; every priest was +allowed to keep a mistress if he paid a tax to the bishop. Two poems of +the troubadour, Guillem Figueiras, express the state of affairs very +bluntly: "Our shepherds have become thievish wolves, plundering and +despoiling the fold under the guise of messengers of peace. They gently +console their sheep night and day, but once they have them in their +power, these false shepherds let their flock perish and die." In the +other poem he says of the priest: + + He lies in a woman's arms all night, + And wakes--defiled--in the morning light + To proffer the sacred host. + +Worse invectives even, no less forcible than those of later reformers, +he hurled against Rome. "In the flames and torments of hell is thy +place!... Thou hast the appearance of an innocent lamb, but inwardly +thou art a raging wolf, a crowned snake, begotten by a viper, the friend +of the devil!" Even the good-natured German minnesinger, Walter von der +Vogelweide, found bitter words against Rome: "They point our way to God +and go to hell themselves." Bernard of Clairvaux, the supporter of the +Church, sharply criticised the abuses of pope and clergy in his book, +_De Consideratione_: "The property of the poor is sown before the door +of the rich, the gold glitters in the gutter, the people come hurrying +up from all sides; but not to the neediest is it given, but to the +strongest and to him who is first on the spot." He accused the pope of +extravagance and luxury: "Was Peter clothed in robes of silk, covered +with gold and precious stones? Was he carried in a litter surrounded by +soldiers and vassals?" And he uttered a word which to this day is a +historical truth: "In all thy splendour thou art the successor of +Constantine rather than the successor of Peter." + +Dissatisfaction with the life of the clergy and the tyranny of Rome was +the more external reason which, although it vexed even those who were +indifferent to religion, did not question the sacred tradition; the +other reason was more a matter of principle; it was rooted in the desire +for a religious revival and openly attacked perverted truths. The +dreaded, hated, and cruelly persecuted heretics were fearless men, +sturdily fighting for their convictions. The fundamental ideal of these +reformers was the suppression of the outward pomp of the Church and the +return to the simplicity of the gospels. Their fates varied. The gentle +St. Francis of Assisi was canonised; the illumined Eckhart, on the other +hand, was tortured; most of them, like the ardent Arnold of Brescia, +were burnt at the stake. This conduct of the hierarchy towards the truly +religious men is easily explained. The Church was faced by a problem; on +the one hand, the genuine and profound piety of these men was +unmistakable, but on the other, the contrast of their teaching with +Church tradition was too obvious, and by many of them too strongly +emphasised to be silently ignored. + +The Provençal heretic, Peter of Bruis, seems to have been the first +reformer who preached against iconolatry and even objected to the images +of the Crucified. He ordered churches to be razed to the ground because +he acknowledged only the invisible community of the saints. He was burnt +at St. Giles' by an infuriated mob. More powerful, and far more +numerous than his followers, the Peterbrusians, were the Cathari and +the Waldenses (founded by Peter Valdez A.D. 1177) who soon spread to +Northern Italy and amalgamated with the sect of the Lombards. The +Cathari advocated a simple and ascetic life, in accordance with the +teaching of primitive Christianity, refrained from all ecclesiastical +ceremonies and despised the sacraments, particularly baptism. More +radical than later reformers, they rejected the doctrine of +transubstantiation, and saw in the eucharist only a symbol of the union +of God and the soul. This made their name synonymous with heresy. But by +far the most famous of heretical sects was the sect of the Waldenses or +Albigenses. It numbered amongst its adherents--if not publicly, at any +rate secretly--many of the great Provençal lords, and there can be no +doubt that this community was permeated by the spirit of a renewed +Christianity, the Christianity of St. Francis and the German mystics. +The Albigenses believed that not Christ, but His semblance only, had +been crucified; they rejected the God of the Old Testament and their +doctrine of the two creators,--the devil who created the objective +world, and the true God who created the spiritual world--is reminiscent +of the loftiest Parseeism and the profoundest gnosticism. They regarded +man as placed between good and evil; the choice lay in his own hand. An +extraordinary poem by Peire Cardinal--not by any means a +heretic--breathes this spirit. He confronts God not with the customary +humility, but as one power confronts the other. "I will write a new +poem, and on the day of the Last Judgment I will read it to Him who has +created me from nothing. If He should condemn me to everlasting +damnation, I will say to Him: Lord, have mercy on me, for I have always +striven against the wicked world," (the troubadour here alludes to his +many polemic poems) "and save me from the torments of hell. The heavenly +host will marvel at my speech. And I shall say to God that He sins +against His creatures if he delivers them into the hands of the devil. +Rather let Him drive away the devils, for then He will win more souls +and all the world will be blessed.... I will not despair of Thee and +therefore Thou must forgive my sins and save my soul and my heart. If I +had not been born I should not have sinned. It would be a great wrong +and a sin if Thou didst condemn me to burn in hell everlastingly, for +truly I may accuse Thee of having sent me a thousand evils for one +blessing." + +Most terrible was the punishment inflicted upon Provence by Innocent +III. That highly intellectual pope realised that he was faced by a +revival of the true religious instinct from which the authority of the +Church had far more to fear than from all sultans and emirs put +together. The system of absolute, immutable values was threatened with +destruction. In the year 1208 the Spanish nobleman Dominicus Guzman +founded the order of the Dominicans and the Inquisition, which invaded +Provence together with the papal army supported by France for political +reasons. Half a million men were butchered in order to crush the spirit +understood by a few hundreds at most; one stake was kindled by the +other; in the memory of man no greater sacrifice to tradition and dogma +had ever been made. Simon de Montfort, the head of the expedition, sent +the following laconic report to the pope: "We spared neither sex nor age +nor name, but slew all with the edge of the sword." + + +The troubadours bewailed the desolate country, the beauty that was no +more. Montanhagol, although greatly intimidated by the Inquisition, +wrote a long poem on the subject, and the otherwise unknown Bernard +Sicard de Marvajols laments: + + Oh! Toulouse and Provence, + And thou, land of Agence, + Carcassonne and Beziers! + As once I beheld you--as I behold you to-day! + +Jacob of Vitry, a cultured French prelate, took a different view. He +inveighed against the "foolish poems, the lies of the poets, the +sing-song of the women, the coarse innuendoes of the jesters." "Such +vermin flourishes on the stream of temporal abundance; it literally +crawls over all food, for, as a rule, the meal is followed by a deluge +of idle talk." A reconciliation of the two worlds was impossible. + +While the Waldenses flourished in Provence, various heretical sects +arose in the west of Germany and in the Netherlands; prominent among +them were the Apostolics, who took the Gospels literally, and introduced +communism and polygamy, and the communities of the Beghards and +Beguines, which roused little public attention, and did not aim at +reform, but advocated a life of contemplation. They found supporters in +all ranks of the community, and were connected with the later German +mystics. An indictment preserved for us proves the religious originality +of one of those sects, "The Brethren of the Free Spirit," who upheld the +heretical view that it were better that one man should attain to +spiritual perfection than that a hundred monasteries should be founded. +At the same time the inspired seer and hysterical nun, Hildegarde of +Bingen, wrote wild letters to the popes, denouncing the vice existing in +the Church and the degradation of religion. "But thou, oh Rome, who art +well-nigh at the point of death, thou wilt be shaken so that the +strength of thy feet shall forsake thee, because thou hast not loved the +royal maiden righteousness with an ardent love, but with the torpor of +sleep, and thou hast become a stranger to her. Therefore she will desert +thee if thou do not call her back." Pope Adrian IV. replied, almost +humbly: "We long to hear words of warning from you, because men say that +you are endowed with the spirit of the divine miracles." St. Bernard +craved Hildegarde's prayer, two emperors, popes, bishops and abbots +corresponded with her, requesting her prayer and advice, and the +interpretation of difficult passages of the Scriptures. Hildegarde +replied in an obscure, apocalyptical language: "In the mysteries of the +true wisdom have I seen and heard this." + +Prophets predicting the revival of the Gospel of Christ and the +regeneration of the world appeared in the north and south. The Italian +monk and fanatic, Joachim of Floris (about A.D. 1200), preached that +this regeneration was predestined to happen. A precursor of Hegel, he +taught three eras: the dominion of the Father, or the first era, +characterised by fear and the severity of the law; the dominion of the +Son, or the era of faith and compassion; and the dominion of the Holy +Ghost, or the era of love. This last era was beginning to dawn, and in +many places Joachim's words were regarded as the prophecies of a seer. +Thus the monk, Gerhard of Borgo San Domino, claimed for the dawning +third era the preaching of a new gospel of the Holy Ghost, an +unmistakable proof that the spirit of heresy was the outcome of +religious enthusiasm. + +The people despised the clergy, and were favourably disposed to every +reformer; at the same time they were entirely under the sway of a +superstitious awe of the administrators of mysterious magic which, by +appropriate practices, or by means of presents, could be turned to +advantage. The fetichism of relics flourished everywhere; a sufficient +number of pieces of the Cross of Christ were sold and worshipped to +furnish trees for a big forest--to say nothing of the bones of numerous +saints with which many monasteries, more especially French monasteries, +did a lucrative trade. Even at the time this traffic repelled the finer +intellects; in A.D. 1200, Guibert, the abbot of Novigentum, preached +against the cult of the saints and the worship of relics, adducing all +the well-known arguments which to this day, however, have proved +insufficient to overcome the evil. In Guibert's words, "It was an +abominable nuisance that certain limbs should be detached from the body, +thereby defying the law that all bodies must turn to dust. How can the +bones of any man be worth framing in gold and silver," he asked, "when +the body of the Son of God was laid beneath a miserable stone?" He +exhorted the people to turn from the visible and obvious to the +invisible. He maintained that the worship of relics was opposed to true +religion because "not until the disciples were bereaved of the bodily +presence of Christ could the Holy Ghost descend upon them." He even +rejected the prevalent, entirely materialistic, view of a life after +death, and dared to suggest that the torments of hell should be +interpreted spiritually. "The eternal contemplation of the Lord is the +supreme bliss of the righteous; who could dare to deny that the misery +of the damned consists in the eternal bereavement of the face of the +Lord?" + +Religion had been lost; what should have been a vital force had become +as far as the most learned were concerned a knowledge of historical +events. Many saw in a return to evangelical simplicity and love the only +remedy; but it was the life, not the preaching of a man, which once +again was vouchsafed to the world as a great example. "Nobody has shown +me what I should do; but the Most High Himself has commanded me to live +according to the Gospels." Francis of Assisi accepted the accounts of +the life of Christ with the utmost naïveté; he neither searched for an +allegorical meaning (as the theologians did), nor did he subordinate the +man Jesus to the divine principle of the _logos_ (in the manner of the +great mystics). To him the imitation of Christ meant a ministry of love; +he did not conceive religion as dogma and the political power of a +hierarchy, but as a state of the heart. This is a characteristic which +he shares with Eckhart, the great recreator of European religion, +although he was fundamentally alien to him. St. Francis never uttered a +single hostile word against tradition or the clergy; he never inveighed +against the corruption of morals and religious indifference, as other +reformers did; he exerted a reformatory influence solely by his life, +for he possessed the secret of the great love. During his whole life he +was averse to laying down rules for his followers, although continually +urged to do so by popes and bishops. His importance does not lie in the +foundation of an order with certain regulations and a specific object, +but in the fact that he was a vital force. He broke the norms of the +Church whenever it seemed right to him to do so, for he was absolutely +sure of himself; without being ordained he preached to the people in his +own tongue, probably the first man (after the Provençal Peter Valdez) +who did so; without possessing the slightest authority he consecrated +his friend Clara as a nun. Innocent III., who made the suppression of +heresy the task of his life, showed great intelligence and wisdom in +sanctioning St. Francis' sermons to the people and acknowledging his +unecclesiastical brotherhood. This probably transformed a dangerous +revolutionary into a faithful servant of the Church. Maybe the Church +was indebted to St. Francis for being saved from a great early +reformation; signs of it were not wanting, and another Arnold of Brescia +might have arisen and brought about her overthrow. It is doubtful +whether the Church would have come out of a Franciscan crusade as +victoriously as she came out of her struggle with Provence. + +St. Francis regarded science with indifference. "Every demon," he said, +"has more scientific knowledge than all men on earth put together. But +there is something a demon is incapable of, and in it lies the glory of +man. A man can be faithful to God." With those words he had inwardly +overcome tradition and theology, and direct knowledge of the divine had +dawned in his soul. He even forbade his brethren to own copies of the +Scriptures. God in the heart--that was the core of his doctrine. With +all his wonderful intuition he was absolutely innocent of the pride of +ignorance; he really felt himself smaller than the smallest of +men--unlike the bishops and popes who called themselves the servants of +the servants of God, without attaching the least meaning to it. How +characteristic of his simple mind was his passionate insistence on the +respectful handling of the vessels used at holy Mass, because they were +destined to receive the body of the Lord. And yet he hardly knew +anything of the symbolic transmutation of bread and wine--he accepted +the miracle without a thought, like a child. + +In the year 1219, St. Francis took part in a Crusade. While the battle +of Damietta was raging, he went into the camp of the Saracens and +preached before the Sultan, who received him with respect and sent him +back unharmed. According to the legend, he then went to Bethlehem and +Jerusalem, where the Sultan, touched by his personality, gave him access +to the sacred shrines. To Francis this pilgrimage to the Holy Land had a +profound meaning, for to him Christianity meant the imitation of Christ. + +Although he lived on bread himself, and poverty was his chosen lady, he +regarded the asceticism of the early Middle Ages as futile and rejected +it. The fire of life burned in him so ardently that he gave no thought +to the morrow, and literally followed the admonition of the Gospels: "So +likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he +cannot be My disciple." We read in the _Fioretti_ (perhaps the oldest +popular collection of poems in existence) that he expressly prohibited +asceticism as a principle; an idea too foreign to the spirit of the age +to have been an invention. He also disapproved of the secluded monastic +life, then the universal ideal of the _vita contemplativa_, and +insisted on his followers living in the world, radiating love and +sustaining life by the charity of their fellow-men. + +There is an anecdote contained in the _Fioretti_, reflecting the great +superiority and lucidity of his mind. On a cold winter's day he and +Brother Leo were tramping through the deep snow. "Brother Leo," said St. +Francis, "if we could restore sight to all blind men, heal all cripples, +expel evil spirits and recall the dead to life--it would not be perfect +joy." And after a while: "And if we knew all the secrets of science, the +course of the stars, the ways of the beasts--it would not be perfect +joy--and if by our preaching we could convert all infidels to the true +faith--even that would not be perfect joy." "Tell me then, Father," said +Brother Leo, "what would be perfect joy?" "If we now knocked at the +convent gates, cold and wet and faint with hunger, and the porter sent +us away with harsh words, so that we should have to stand in the snow +until the evening; if we thus waited, bearing all things patiently +without murmuring--that would be perfect joy: the mercy of +self-control." + +"He met death singing," says his biographer, Thomas of Celano, the +author of the magnificent _Dies irae, dies illa_. On his deathbed St. +Francis composed and sang without interruption the Hymn to the Sun, that +lofty song of praise in which the sum total of his noble life, love for +all created things,--is comprised and transfigured. It expresses a new +form of devotion, composed of the ecstasy of love and perfect humility. +He embraced in his heart his brother Sun, his sister Moon, the dear +Stars; his brother Wind, his sister and mother Earth; and on the day of +his death this _brother seraphicus_ added to it a powerful and touching +song of praise of his "brother Death." The legend has it that a flock of +singing-birds descended on the roof of the cottage in which he lay +dying; the songs of his "little sisters" accompanied him to the world +beyond the grave. + +We are justified in comparing this death, which was sustained by the +fundamental forces of that era, soul and emotion, to that other, more +famous, death of antiquity. Socrates died without in the least +succumbing to any personal feeling, supported by the purely logical +consideration that it was expedient to obey the laws of the State. His +death was the application of a universal proposition to an individual +case, and because no one could accuse Socrates of a dialectical error, +the conclusion, his death, had to take place. + +Francis and some of his successors realised in their lives the simple, +religious, fundamental emotion of love in a way which the people could +clearly understand. "God's minstrels" was the name given to his +followers, because they spoke and sang of the love of God without +ecclesiastical ceremony. Jacopone da Todi (1236-1306), probably next to +Dante and Guinicelli the greatest poet which Italy has produced, praised +the transcendent love of God in ecstatic verses. He was the religious +counterpart of the troubadours; his passionate devotion to the child +Jesus, the Madonna and the Crucified, eclipses their most ardent lyrics. +These southerners could not forgo the visible emblems of their religion; +the infinitely simple principle that only he who calls nothing his own, +and desires no earthly goods, is perfectly free, and can never fall foul +of his neighbour, was, if not lived up to, at any rate understood and +respected. The grateful hearts of the people surrounded the name of St. +Francis with legends; the study of his life inspired Giotto, the father +of the new art, to the study of plant and animal life. The story of St. +Francis is written on the walls of the cathedral at Assisi, the first +monumental work of Italian art. + +St. Francis re-lived the terrestrial life of Jesus; in one direction he +excelled his model, for though the love of Christ embraced all mankind, +the heart of St. Francis went out to all things, beasts and plants and +stars. He applied the words, "Whatsoever ye do to the least of my +brethren, ye have done unto me," to _Brother Bear_ and _his sisters the +little birds_. He was one of the first men, since the Greek era, who saw +nature in its true aspect and not as a hieroglyphic of the divine word. +Men had realised with a feeling of helplessness the dangers of the +elements, without perceiving their magnificence; they had speculated on +and attempted to decipher the secret language of the terrestrial and +celestial phenomena. The discovery of the beauty of nature, and with it +the revival of aesthetics, was an essential part of the new-born +civilisation. This fact was accomplished--in an almost sentimental +way--by the troubadours and minnesingers. But the relationship of St. +Francis to nature was something very different. The co-ordination of man +and beast--in his sermon to the birds, for instance--cannot be called +anything but frankly pagan. St. Francis said to his disciples: "Tarry a +little while in the road while I go and preach to my little sisters, the +birds." And he went into the fields and began to preach to the birds +which sat on the ground; and straightway all the others flew down from +the trees and flocked round him, and did not fly away until he had +blessed them; and when he touched them, they did not move. And these +were the words which he spoke to them: "My brothers and sisters, little +birds, praise God and thank Him that He has given you wings with which +to fly and clothed you with a garment of feathers. That he admitted your +kind into Noah's ark so that your race should not disappear from the +earth. Be grateful to Him that He has given you the air for your +kingdom; you sow not, neither do you reap, but your Heavenly Father +gives you abundance of food. He gave you the rivers and fountains; He +gave you the mountains and valleys as a refuge, and the high trees so +that you may build your nests in safety. And because you can neither +spin nor cook, God clothed you and your little ones. Behold the +greatness of the love of your Creator! Beware of the sin of ingratitude +and diligently praise God all day!" And when he had thus spoken, the +birds opened their beaks, beat their wings and bowed to the ground. + +More than a hundred years later (1300-1365), a man was living in Swabia +whose soul was kindred to the soul of St. Francis: Suso, who is, as a +rule, classed with the mystics. He had a profound, typically German love +of meadow and forest, and expressed it more exquisitely than the best +among the minnesingers. "Look above you and around you and behold the +vastness of heaven and the speed of its revolutions. The Lord has +emblazoned it with seven planets, each of which--not only the sun--is +far larger than the earth; he has adorned it with myriads of radiant +stars. See how serenely the glorious sun is riding in the cloudless sky, +giving to the earth abundance of fruit! Behold the verdure of the +meadow! The trees are bursting into leaf and the grass is springing up; +behold the smiling flowers and listen to glen and dale re-echoing with +the sweet song of the nightingales and little singing birds; the beasts +which the bitter winter drove into nooks and crannies, and into the dark +ground, are emerging from their hiding-places to rejoice in the sun and +seek a mate. Young and old are glad with an exceeding joy. Oh! Thou +gentle God, how fair art Thou in Thy creatures! Oh! fields and meadows, +how surpassing is your beauty!" Or: "My dear brethren, what more shall I +say to you than that my eyes have seen many gladsome sights. I walked +across the flowering meadows and listened to the heavenly harps of the +little birds praising their gentle and loving Creator so that the woods +echoed with their songs." And, more compassionate even than St. Francis: +"I will say nothing of the children of man; but the misery and sorrow +of all the beasts and little birds, and all created things, is well-nigh +breaking my heart; and having no power to help them, I sighed, and +prayed to the Most High, Most Merciful Lord, that He would deliver +them." His description of a paradisean meadow sounds like the +description of a picture by Fra Angelico: "Now behold with your own eyes +the heavenly meadow! Lo! What summer joy! Behold the kingdom of sweet +May, the valley of all true joy! Glad eyes are gazing into glad eyes! +Hark to the harps and fiddles, the singing and laughter! Young men and +maidens are leading the dance! Love without sorrow shall reign for +ever...." etc. There is a picture, drawn by this same Suso, representing +the journey of man through life, his departure from God and his return. +In this picture the path of humanity is renunciation and asceticism; +death flourishes his scythe above the heads of a dancing couple, and +underneath is written: "This is earthly love; its end is sorrow"; to +such an extent was this sincere and sensitive man under the influence of +the traditional hatred of the world which Eckhart, his great master, had +completely overcome. + +Provençals and Italians sang the delight of spring, and the German +minnesingers greeted it as the deliverer from all the hardships of the +severe winter; with the latter it was more a childish delight in the +open-air life which had again become possible, after the long +imprisonment of winter, than pure joy in beauty. But some of the German +epic poems, "Tristan and Isolde," for instance, contain genuine, sincere +descriptions of sylvan beauty. The student of art, especially the German +art of the Renascence, cannot help being struck by the extraordinary +love with which quite insignificant objects of nature, such as a bird, +or a flower, are treated. The familiar things of every-day life were in +this way brought into connection with solemn biblico-historical +subjects. + +There is no doubt that at all times a certain keen perception of the +beauty of nature has been inherent in some favoured individuals; but the +universally accepted opinion that only the supernal was really +beautiful, and that terrestrial beauty was merely its reflected glory, +was too strong even for them. Thus we have seen Suso translating the +beauty of the earthly spring to the kingdom of heaven. + +At the same time men were beginning to travel to distant countries for +the sole purpose of seeing new scenes and acquiring fresh knowledge. The +famous Venetian, Marco Polo, was the first European who (in 1300) +visited Central Asia, crossed China and Thibet, and brought news to +Europe of the fairyland of Japan. Sight-seeing as an end in itself was +discovered. Long sea-voyages for commercial purposes were no novelty, +but no human foot had ever trod the summits of the Lower Alps, unless it +had been the foot of a peasant whose cattle had strayed. Petrarch was +the first man (in 1336) to climb a barren mountain, the Mont Ventoux in +Provence, voluntarily undergoing a certain amount of fatigue for sheer +delight in the beauty of nature. This was a great, an immortal deed, +greater than all his sonnets and treatises put together. In a long +letter which has been preserved to us, he describes with much spirit and +erudition this extraordinary ascent, before whose profound significance +all the Alpine exploits of our time shrink into paltry gymnastic +exercises. + +The beauty of nature discovered and appreciated, interest began to be +evinced in the relationship existing between the various phenomena and +there arose a desire to obtain ocular proof of what was written in the +venerable books--perhaps even make new discoveries. The first man of any +importance in this direction was the German Albrecht Bollstädt (Albertus +Magnus), who, although he contributed more than any other man to the +promulgation of Aristotelian philosophy, wrote a book on natural history +founded on personal observation; his great English contemporary, +however, Roger Bacon, is the true father of modern experimental science. +It was he who coined the expression "scientia experimentalis," and +framed the principle that all research must be based on the study of +nature. He maintained that experience was the "mistress of all +sciences," and said: "I respect Aristotle and account him the prince of +philosophers, but I do not always share his opinion. Aristotle and the +other philosophers have planted the tree of science, but the latter has +not by any means put forth all its branches or matured all its fruit." +This thought, though it seems to us self-evident, was of great moment in +the age of scholasticism. Bacon spent ten years in prison; but in spite +of everything, he was so much under the influence of scholasticism that +he considered it the task of philosophy to adduce evidence for the truth +of the Christian dogma. + +Here it is essential roughly to sketch the essence of the philosophical +thought of that period, and point out the way which led from the +Christianity of the Fathers of the Church and scholasticism to the +religion of unhistorical Christianity, the so-called mysticism. +Scholasticism had reached its climax in the thirteenth century; +universities were founded in Paris, Oxford and Padua, and he who aspired +to the full dignity of learning had to take his degrees there; even +Eckhart did not neglect to obtain his scholastic education in Paris. + +Scholasticism was an imposing and yet strangely grotesque system of the +world, built up--before a background of blazing stakes--of scriptural +passages and ecclesiastical tradition, lofty, pure thought and +antique-mediaeval superstition. Its fundamental problem, the +determination of the border line between faith and knowledge, was purely +philosophical. While the older scholasticism, based on Platonic +traditions, endeavoured to bring these into harmony with Christianity, +that is to say, prove the revelations by dialectics, Albertus Magnus +and, authoritatively, his pupil, Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274), strictly +distinguished, by the use of Aristotelian weapons, the rational or +perceptive truths from the supernatural verities or the subjects of +faith. This distinction, made in order to safeguard dogma, quickly +revealed its double-face. The handmaiden philosophy rebelled against her +mistress theology, and asked her for her credentials. According to the +classic and dogmatic doctrine of Thomas, the natural verities alone +could be grasped by human understanding; the supernatural or revealed +truths (the dogmas) were beyond proof and scientific cognition. To +submit them to research was not only an impossible task, but Thomas +stigmatised every effort in this direction as heresy, fondly believing +that he had once and for all safeguarded the position of faith. But more +resolute and profound thinkers, although not in so many words attacking +the authority of the Scriptures, and leaving Thomas' border-line +unquestioned, found the unfathomable truths not in ecclesiastical +tradition but in their own souls, thus investing "faith" with a new +meaning, unassailable by criticism. + +The idea of drawing a line between perceivable or rational truths and +imperceivable or divine truths, is fraught with the burning question as +to the limits of human knowledge, a question which to this day remains +unanswered. In the course of time the limits were extended in favour of +imperfect knowledge (but the character of the unknowable was +problematised and questioned). While Thomas was still convinced of the +possibility of proving the existence of a God by the power of the human +intellect, Duns Scotus removed the problem of the existence of a God and +the immortality of the soul from the domain of science, and made both +propositions a matter of faith. William of Occam, more uncompromising +than Duns Scotus, maintained the absolute impossibility of acquiring +knowledge of supernatural things, and taught--on this point, too, +anticipating Kant--that objective knowledge acquired through the senses +should precede abstract knowledge. The last conclusion of nominalism was +thus arrived at, the existence of universal conceptions, or universals, +supposed to exist outside material things--the curse of the Platonic +inheritance--declared to be impossible, and reality conceded to the +individual only. Roscellinus, the founder of this doctrine, had still +been content to deny the existence of the conception of "deity," leaving +the individual persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as real individuals, +untouched. + +We see from the foregoing that the universally derided scholasticism +travelled along the whole line of modern thought: from the "realism" of +Thomas, which leaves the universals as yet unassailed by doubt and +occupying the very heart of knowledge, past the first and, to our view, +very modest doubts of the nominalists, to the agnosticism of Bacon, Duns +and Occam. + +With the new position of decided nominalism the foundation was prepared +for the experimental sciences on the one hand, and mysticism on the +other. For the conclusion that things supernatural are a closed book to +us may have two results: on the one hand, the rejection of the +transcendental and the victory of science; on the other, the need to +descend into the profoundest depths of the universe and the soul, and +grasp by intuition what common sense does not see. + +The time was ripe and the consummators came: Dante in the south, Eckhart +in the countries north of the Alps. With regard to Dante, I will say one +thing only; he gathered together all the achievements of the new art and +transcended them in a work which has never been surpassed. The +profoundly symbolical words, "The new life is beginning," are written at +the commencement of his _Vita Nuova_, and with his _Divine Comedy_ the +art of Europe had attained perfection. + +It is necessary to give a more detailed account of Eckhart. He had been +almost forgotten in favour of his pupils, Tauler and Suso, and the +unknown author of the _Theologica Germanica_ (to which Luther wrote a +preface), but to-day a faint idea of the great importance of this man is +beginning to dawn upon the world. Eckhart was the greatest creative +religious genius since Jesus, and I believe that in time his writings +will be considered equal to the Gospel of St. John. He grasped the +spirit of religion with unparalleled depth; everything produced by the +highly religious later mediaeval era pales before his illumination. +Compared to him, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and even St. Francis +dwindle into insignificance; all the later reformers are small beside +the greatness of his soul. Every one of his sermons contains profound +passages, such as "God must become I and I must become God." "The soul +as a separate entity must be so completely annihilated that nothing +remains except God, yea, that it becomes more glorious than God, as the +sun is more glorious than the moon." "The Scriptures were written and +God created the world solely that He may be born in the soul and the +soul again in Him." "The essence of all grain is wheat, of all metal +gold, and of all creatures man. Thus spoke a great man: 'There is no +beast, but it is in some way a semblance of man.'" "The least faculty of +my soul is more infinite than the boundless heavens." "Again we +understand by the kingdom of God the soul; for the soul and the Deity +are one." "The soul is the universe and the kingdom of God." "God dwells +so much within the soul that all His divinity depends on it." "Man shall +be free and master of all his deeds, undestroyed and unsubdued." + +Eckhart was the first man who thought consecutively in the German +vernacular, and who made this philosophically still virginal language a +medium for expressing profound thought. In addition he wrote Latin +treatises which were discovered a short time ago; I have not read them, +but I have no doubt that his profoundest convictions were expressed in +the German tongue. The Latin language has at all times fettered the +spirit far more successfully than the still untainted and living German. + +The religious genius of a single individual had created Christianity. +But from the very beginning it was misunderstood; the salvation of the +world was linked to the person of a man who had aspired to be an example +to the whole race. The term, "Son of God," was understood in the sense +of the hero-cult of antiquity; possibly the Jewish faith in a Messiah, +the politico-national hope of the Children of Israel, was a good deal to +blame for this. A historical event was translated into metaphysic. The +only truly religious man was made the centre of a new mythology and +naïvely worshipped. It may sound like a paradox, but it is a fact that +the whole of the first millenary was inwardly irreligious; it concealed +its want of metaphysical intuition behind the falsification of +historical events. The entire mediaeval (and a large proportion of the +Protestant) theology laboured to obtain an intellectual grasp of the +doctrine of a unique historical salvation of humanity and frame it into +a dogma. And thus occurred that unparalleled misunderstanding (a +misunderstanding which never clouded the mind of India) which based +religion, the timeless metaphysical treasure of the soul, on the +historical record of an event which had happened in Asia Minor, and had +come down to us in a more or less garbled--some say entirely +falsified--version. This was the great sin of Christianity: It regarded +a historical event, revealing the very essence of religion, and +consequently capable of being formulated, as a divine intervention for +the purpose of bringing about the salvation of the world, instead of +recognising in the sublime figure of the founder of the Christian +religion a great, perhaps even perfect, incarnation of the eternally +new relationship between God and the soul. It promulgated the strange +thought that only the one soul, the soul of the founder, was divine, and +instead of teaching the divinity of humanity, it taught the divinity of +this one man only--Jesus became a God who could no longer be looked upon +as the perfect specimen and prototype of the race, but before whom it +behoved man to kneel and pray for salvation. Perhaps it was not possible +to understand the new doctrine in any other way; before men can conceive +the idea of their divinity, they must have become conscious of their +souls. + +This complete misunderstanding and externalising of religion which took +place in the first millenary, and which can never now be retrieved, is +fundamentally pagan, antique. The record of the salvation of the world, +achieved by a hero once and for all time, the historification of the +divine spark which is daily re-born in the soul, entirely corresponds to +the Greek myths of gods and demi-gods which before their new, symbolical +interpretation, were taken quite literally. I am not now concerned with +the problem of how far the antique heroes and Eastern mysteries directly +influenced the conception of the figure of Christ; I only wish to +emphasise the profound contrast between true religion which springs up +in the soul of the individual, and historical tradition. If there is +such a thing as religion, it must exist equally for all men, for those +who accidentally received a report of a certain historical event, as +well as for those who remained in ignorance of the fact. All heretical +demonstrations were rooted in a vague realisation of this contrast. But +Eckhart accomplished the unparalleled deed of once more building a +bridge between the soul and the deity; of relegating to the background +all the ineradicable historical misrepresentations or, if there was no +alternative, of unhesitatingly proclaiming them as erroneous, or +interpreting them symbolically. "St. Paul's words," he says, for +instance, "are nothing but the words of Paul; it is not true that he +spoke them in a state of grace." He did not regard the Scriptures as the +bourne of truth, but as subsequent proof of the directly experienced +truth of the divine event. With this conception Christianity had reached +its highest stage. Henceforth the origin of all truths and values was no +longer sought in doctrine and authority, but in the soul of man; God was +neither to be found in the heavens nor in history, but in the soul; the +soul must become divine and creative; it had found its task: the +recreation of the world. It was true, St. Augustine had said: "_Non +Christianised, Christi sumus_," but this saying had never been +understood, and very probably St. Augustine had not meant it in its +literal sense. At last the fundamental consciousness of Christianity had +triumphed: the principle of the "Son-of-Godship" inspired the soul of +the mystics; in future religion must emanate from the soul and find its +goal in God; written documents and--in the case of the profoundest +thinkers--examples were no longer needed. The heretical sects had been +content to reject post-evangelical tradition, in order to lay greater +stress on the words of Christ. They were genuine reformers, but they +were as much constrained by the historical facts as the Roman Catholic +Church, and their standpoint has to this day remained the standpoint of +the Protestant professions of faith. + +The fact of this new conception attaching no importance to the +historical Jesus of Nazareth (had he never lived it would have made no +difference) made of it a new religion. By putting aside this external +and accidental moment, it placed the metaphysical and purely spiritual +core of Christianity, the fundamental conviction of the divinity of the +soul, and the will to eternal life, within the centre of religious +consciousness, and by so doing put itself beyond the reach of historical +criticism and scepticism, Eckhart, more than any other teacher, was +profoundly convinced of the freedom and eternal value of the soul. "I, +as the Son, am the same as my Heavenly Father." He taught that Christ is +born in the soul, that the divine spark is continuously re-kindled in +the soul: "It is the quality of eternity that life and youth are one," +and that man must become more and more divine, more and more free from +all that is unessential and accidental until he no longer differs from +God. It is only a logical conclusion to say that a perfect man, +mystically speaking, is God; his being and his will are in nothing +differentiated from absolute, universal, divine will--German mysticism +agrees in this with the Upanishads. Kant would have said that the +principles of such a man would become cosmic laws; sin would be the +estrangement from God, the will to draw away from God. + +The profound and only mission of religion is the endowment of man in +this hurly-burly of life with the consciousness of eternity. Religion +places our transient life under the aspect of eternity, and therefore it +must, in its essence, remain a stranger to things temporal. Only that +moment in the life of a man can be called religious which lifts him +beyond himself, out of his petty, narrow existence, conditioned by and +subject to accidents, into timeless, universal life; which gives him the +certainty that historical events can never be regarded as definite and +ultimate--that moment which has the power to set free, to deliver, to +save. Thus it is irreligious to regard an event which occurred on the +temporal plane--and were it the greatest event which ever befell on +earth--as the pivot of metaphysical value for all men; to link the +salvation of the world to an occurrence which was relatively accidental, +to base the consciousness of eternity on the knowledge of a fact. This +would be a victory of time over eternity, a victory of irreligion over +religion. + +I regard it as the greatest achievement of that great time that +spontaneous religion again became possible. Eckhart rediscovered the +divine nature of man; never has the consciousness of timeless eternity +been expressed as he expressed it in his tract, _On Solitude_. Doubtless +there have been men before him who possessed direct religious +intuitions, and now and then gave timid utterance to them; but the +authority of tradition has always been too great, and they never did +more than compromise between the historical events on which the +Christian religion is based and the genuinely religious experience of +their own souls. Eckhart, too, was careful not to offend against the +letter, and his pupils, after suspicion had fallen on them, made many a +concession in terms, and perhaps even in thought. St. Augustine already +had steered a middle course between the historical and the religious +conception, in his phrase: _Per Christum hominem at Christum deum_, and +Suso (in his _Booklet of Eternal Wisdom_) followed his lead. "Thus +speaks the eternal wisdom: If ye will behold me in my eternal divinity +ye must know and love me in my suffering humanity. For this is the +quickest road to eternal salvation." The brutality of the tenet which +maintains that all those are eternally lost who, without their own +fault, have no knowledge of the salvation of the world (especially +therefore, those who died before the event), was a stumbling-block to +many thoughtful minds. The patriarchs of the Old Testament were looked +upon as saved--to some extent--by the fact of their being the ancestors +or prophets of Christ; but pagans and Greeks, including Aristotle, were +condemned even by the great Dante. At the conclusion of his _Divine +Comedy_ Dante proved himself a truly inspired mystic, for he gave to us +the profoundest vision of the divinity which has ever been vouchsafed to +man. But his genius was directed and restricted by the dogmas of the +Church; his religious standpoint was the standpoint of the early Middle +Ages and dogmatic Catholicism. As poet and lover he was the inaugurator +of a new world; here he represents the culmination and conclusion of the +condemned world-system. He was the iron landmark of the ages--Eckhart, +the creator of eternal values. + +The foremost of the precursors of Eckhart was Bernard of Clairvaux +(1091-1153). He was the exponent of the love of God which he placed +above knowledge; in one of his letters he calls love "the existence of +God Himself," basing his definition on the passage in the Gospel of St. +John, "God is Love." "Love is the eternal law which created and +preserves the universe; the whole world is governed by love; but +although love is the law to which all creation is subject, it is not +itself without law, but it is a law unto itself. Serfs and mercenaries +are ruled by laws which are not from God, but which they made +themselves; some because they do not love God, others because they love +the things of this world better than God.... They made their own laws +and subordinated the universal and eternal laws to their own will. But +those (who live righteously) are in the world as God is: neither serfs +nor mercenaries, but the children of God and, like God Himself, they +live only by the law of love." "His greatest happiness is complete +absorption in the vision of the divine and forgetfulness of self." "All +love is an emanation of that one love. It is the eternally creative and +governing law of the universe." "To be penetrated by such emotion is to +become deified. As a drop of water in a cup of wine is completely +dissolved and takes the taste and colour of the wine, so also, in an +indescribable manner, is the human will absorbed in the divine will, and +transformed into the will of God. For how could God become all in all if +anything human were left in man?" "They are completely immersed (the +martyrs) in the infinite ocean of eternal light, in radiant +eternity...." The entranced soul "shall lose all knowledge of itself +and become completely absorbed in God; it shall become unlike itself in +the measure as it has received the gift of becoming divine." Sensuous +metaphors from the Song of Songs and the Psalms are again and again +intermingled with these lofty thoughts. But in spite of his divine +emotion, in spite of his anticipations of the German mystics, Bernard +took the standpoint of ecclesiastical orthodoxy whenever he was not in +the ecstatic state; his contemplative mind was unable to grasp the +importance of independent thought, a fact amply proved by his inglorious +quarrel with Abélard, the greatest thinker of his time. This quarrel was +a typical illustration of the difference between the believer and the +thinker. Bernard forgot all about love, and did not hesitate to stir up +unpleasantness whenever he could do so. So he wrote to Pope Innocent +II.: "Peter Abélard is striving to destroy the Christian faith, and +imagines that his human intellect can penetrate the depths of the divine +mind.... Nothing is hidden from him, neither in the earth below, nor in +the heavens above; his intellectual pride exceeds all limits; he attacks +the doctrines of faith, and ponders problems far above his intellectual +capacity; he is an inventor of heresies ...," etc. Thanks to his +machinations, Abélard was compelled to recant at the Council of Sens, +and was condemned by the Pope to eternal silence. Berengar of Poitier +took Abélard's part, and in a satirical treatise ventured to criticise +St. Bernard's conduct: "Thus philosophise the old women at the looms. Of +course, when Bernard tells us that we must love God, he speaks a true +and venerable word; but he need not have opened his lips to do so, for +it is a self-evident truth." As a matter of fact, these words branded +and contradicted the merely subjective emotional mysticism; to the +emotional mystic salvation lies in the "absorption in God," in +shapeless, thoughtless contemplation. Richard of St. Victor, founding +his theories on St. Bernard, established six stages of meditation. The +Franciscan monk, Bonaventura, the famous author of the _Biblia +Pauperum_, added a seventh, a complete rest in God--"like the Sabbath +after the six days of labour." To Bonaventura, as later on to Dante, the +world was a ladder leading up to God. + +If we turn from these thinkers of the Neo-Latin race, who in spite of +their undeniable mysticism were completely under the dominion of the +Church--to German mysticism, we find above and beyond mysticism, we find +above and beyond love, a new principle: The soul of man is the +starting-point of religious consciousness and the content of the +religious consciousness is the soul's road to God. The nativity of +Christ ceased to be regarded as a historical event, and became the birth +of the divine principle in the soul of man. In passing I will mention a +German nun, Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212-1277), who anticipated some of +the great thoughts of Eckhart, although she was incapable of grasping +their mutual connection. "The Holy Trinity and everything in heaven and +earth must be subject to me" (the soul), were words in the true spirit +of Eckhart, leaving St. Bernard far behind. Mechthild found metaphors of +true poetical grandeur when she spoke of the union of the soul with God. +"The dominion of the fire has yet to come. That is Jesus Christ in Whose +hands the Heavenly Father has laid the salvation of the world and the +Last Judgment. On the Day of Judgment He shall fashion cups of wondrous +beauty out of the crackling sparks; therein the Father will drink on His +festival all the holiness which through His dear Son He has poured into +human souls." + +Emotional mysticism was the prevailing form of mysticism in those days; +even Eckhart's pupil, Suso, belonged to this class of mystics. This +vague sentimentalism saved many a mind from the rigid dogmas of the +Church, and as its vagueness could be interpreted in more than one way, +it caused very little offence; but these visions and ecstasies, which +are so often mistaken for true mysticism, have done much to bring the +latter into contempt with the seriously minded. Eckhart did not +acknowledge it as genuine mysticism and directly condemned it in many of +his writings; and as he rejected mystic sentimentalism, clearly divining +its pathological cause, so he also rejected asceticism and all religious +ceremonies. The evangelical poverty of the Franciscan monks was an +object of loathing to him. St. Francis (and thirty years before him +Peter Valdez) had naïvely interpreted the imitation of Christ as a life +of absolute poverty, and had been relentless in his denunciation of +worldly wealth, which every monk of his order had to renounce. He +himself never touched money, seeing in it the source of all evil. His +transcendent treasure was "Holy Poverty"; Jacopone wrote an ardent hymn +to "Queen Poverty," and even Thomas, the representative of Dominican +erudition, theoretically took up the cudgels on its behalf. But even in +the primitive Church the principle of worldly and spiritual poverty was +widely spread and encouraged. In the defence of poverty, which was +practically nearly always synonymous with idleness and begging, and +therefore roused much hostility among the people, Bonaventura pointed +out (in his treatise, _De Paupertate Christi_) that Jesus Himself had +never done any manual work. The universal preference for a contemplative +life encouraged the tendency, and the extreme charitableness of the +Middle Ages made its realisation possible. Work was frequently looked +upon as a punishment--a view which could easily be upheld by reference +to Adam's expulsion from Paradise--and inflicted upon the monks for +offences against the rules. Dante's friend, Guido Cavalcanti, expressed +the natural sentiment that poverty is a distressing condition, in a +canzone which bristles with insults hurled at the Queen of the +Franciscans: + + Yea, rightly art thou hated worse than death, + For he, at length, is longed for in the breast. + + But not with thee, wild beast, + Was ever aught found beautiful or good; + For life is all that man can lose by death, + Not fame and the fair summits of applause; + His glory shall not pause + But live in men's perpetual gratitude. + While he who on thy naked sill has stood + He shall be counted low, etc. + + D.G. ROSSETTI. + +The concept of the German mystics was infinitely more profound than the +concept of the merely external poverty of the Franciscans, which in the +case of St. Francis and Jacopone was an inherent characteristic and +pure, but in the case of the others more or less vicious. "Man cannot +live in this world without labour," says Eckhart, "but labour is man's +portion; therefore he must learn to have God in his heart, although +surrounded by the things of this world, and not let his business or his +surroundings be a barrier." There is a passage in the book of an unknown +author, entitled _The Imitation of Christ's Poverty_ (formerly ascribed +to Tauler), which reads as follows: "Poverty is equality with God, a +mind turned away from all creatures; poverty clings to nothing and +nothing clings to it; a man who is poor clings to nothing which is +beneath him, but to that alone which is greater than all things. And +that is the loftiest virtue of poverty that it clings only to that which +is sublime and takes no heed of the things which are base, so far as it +is possible." "The soul while it is burdened with temporal and transient +things is not free. Before it can aspire to freedom and nobility it must +cast away all the things of the world." "Nobody can be really poor +unless God make him so; but God makes no man poor unless he be in his +inmost heart; then all things will be taken from him which are not +God's. The more spiritual a man is, the poorer will he be, for +spirituality and poverty are one...." Pseudo-Tauler even affirms that a +man "can possess abundant wealth and yet be poor in spirit." The meaning +of this is clear: He whose heart is not wrapped up in the things of the +world, will find his way to God; a soul which is without desire is rich. + +But there was a still greater contrast between the naïve religion +represented by St. Francis of Assisi and the religion of Eckhart. The +former lived entirely in the obvious and visible; the love of all +creatures filled his heart and shaped his life. The heart of the mystic +too, was filled with love, but it was love transcending the love of the +individual, love of the primary cause. In the last sense Eckhart taught, +contrary to traditional Christianity, and in conformity with Indian +wisdom, that the soul must be absorbed into the absolute and that +everything transient and individual must cease to exist. "The highest +freedom is that the soul should rise above itself and flow into the +fathomless abyss of its archetype, of God Himself." + +Even St. Bernard was not quite free from this mystical heresy (_cf._ the +previously quoted passages). "When he has reached the highest degree of +perfection, man is in a state of complete forgetfulness of self, and +having entirely ceased to belong to himself, becomes one with God, +released from everything not divine." Even compassion must cease in this +state, for there is nothing left but justice and perfection. + +We recognise here a characteristic of all those who are greatest among +men: of Goethe, for instance, of Bach, or Kant: namely, the +correspondence of intense personality and the most highly developed +objectivity; for the greatest personality ceases in the end to +distinguish between itself and the world, has eradicated everything +paltry, selfish and subjective and has become entirely objective, +impersonal, divine. St. Francis knew nothing of this consciousness. "God +has chosen me because among all men He could find no one more lowly, and +because through my instrumentality He purposed to confound nobility, +greatness, strength, beauty and the wisdom of the world." He was the +disciple of the earthly Jesus, Who went through life the compassionate +consoler of all those who were sorrowful. But Eckhart aspired "to the +shapeless nature of God." "We will follow Him, but not in all things," +he said of the historical Jesus. "He did many things which He meant us +to understand spiritually, not literally ... we must always follow Him +in the profounder sense." Compared to the religion of Eckhart, the +religion of St. Francis is the faith of a little child, picturing God as +a benevolent old man. Such a religion is equally true and sincere, but +it represents an earlier stage on the road of humanity. If Christianity +were--as we are occasionally assured--the religion of Jesus, then the +great mystics cannot be called Christians. And yet St. Augustine's: "We +are not Christians, but Christs," was fulfilled in them. + +The profoundest depth of European religion, of which Eckhart was the +exponent, and which found artistic expression in Gothic art, was not +sounded by music until very much later. Bach, more emphatically in the +High Mass and the Magnificat, but also in his purely instrumental music, +brought the universal feeling of mysticism to absolute artistic +perfection. The deep religious sentiment which pervades the High Mass is +so far above all cults, that it has no real connection with any +historical faith--it is pure consciousness of the divine. + +The peculiar state of the soul, called mysticism, could never become +popular, or exert any very great influence. A few men, such as Tauler, +Suso, Merswin, and the unknown author of the _Theologica Germanica_ +handed on--not by any means always unadulterated--the doctrine they had +received from Eckhart--which at all times appealed to a few +thinkers--but the real influence on the world and on history was +reserved for the reformers. The reformer, in his inmost nature, is +related to the people; his soul is agitated by formulas and ceremonies, +to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his +faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. He has every +appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on +that against which he is fighting. He suffers under its inefficiency; +his deed is the final reaction against his environment; salvation seems +to him to lie in the improvement of existing conditions, and not until +he has succeeded in accomplishing his purpose can he hope for religious +peace. The mystic is possible in all states of civilisation. He is not +dependent on external circumstances; his whole consciousness is filled +with one problem only, before which everything else pales: the +relationship of the soul to God. But the reformer is possible only under +certain circumstances. He, too, starts from an inner religious +consciousness, but his problem is soon solved, and he devotes all his +energy to the world. The mystic is not even aware of the difference +between his own conception of God and traditional religion; he is under +the impression that he is still an orthodox believer, long after he has +broken fresh ground; for he has taken from the traditional doctrine +everything which he can re-animate. The remainder is dead as far as he +is concerned. To accuse him of heresy appears to him as a monstrous +misunderstanding. + +Thus mystic and reformer drink from the same well of direct religious +consciousness. But while in the case of the mystic the well is +fathomless, it is much more shallow in the case of the reformer. Certain +of himself, he directs his energy to the conversion and reformation of +the world. He resembles in some respects the public orator and +agitator; he has a grasp of social conditions, strives to influence his +surroundings by word and deed, and is ready to sacrifice his life to his +convictions. The mystic remains solitary and misunderstood. Luther, who +was to some extent influenced by German mysticism, fought, at his best, +against the dogma of historical salvation. + +It is the tragic fate of all religions that they must crystallise into a +system. A reflection of the enthusiasm which animated their founders +still falls on their disciples: Follow me! But the second generation +already demands proofs, tradition and clumsy miracles; reports are drawn +up and looked upon as sacred--religion has become a glimpse into the +past. Most people never have any direct religious experience, their +salvation lies in the dogmas, the universally accepted doctrines. The +founder of a new religion is always regarded by his contemporaries as +abnormal, and is persecuted accordingly; not in malice, but of +necessity. Arnold of Brescia died at the stake; St. Francis was no more +than a heretic tolerated by the Church, and Eckhart escaped the tribunal +of the Inquisition only through his death. + +I have attempted to show in diverse domains of the higher spiritual and +psychical life, how powerfully _the Christian principle of the +individual soul, the real fundamental value of the European +civilisation_, manifested itself at the time of the Crusades, and +everywhere became the germ of new things. The deepest thinkers teach the +deification of man as the culmination of existence, the ultimate purpose +of this earthly life, and claim immortality for the soul. This position, +which may roughly be conceived as the raising of the individual into the +ideal, has determined the European ideal of culture and differentiated +it from all Orientalism, including even the loftiest Indian philosophy. +Every attempt to substitute for this fundamental concept and its +emotional content something else--whether it be pantheism, Buddhism, or +naturalism--will always remain a failure. + +Side by side with the splendid achievement of the German mysticism, the +Teutonic race has always been apt to give practical proof of its +individualism by endless petty quarrels and by splittings into numerous +cliques. But even before this race began to play a part in history, at +the beginning of the third century, the principle of the individual soul +was outwardly carried to extremes. While it was the ideal of the man of +antiquity to serve the higher community of the State with body and soul, +nascent Christianity cared solely for the salvation of the individual +soul, and frequently proved this by quite external evidence, by living a +hermit's life in the desert, for instance. Children left their parents, +husband and wife separated, dignitaries forsook their office to seek +solitude and prepare their souls for the world beyond the grave. The +first convents--the outcome of Christian individualism and +asceticism--were founded; and the anti-social extreme of this +individualism acquired such ominous proportions that the Emperor Valens +in the year of grace 365, was forced to legislate against the monastic +life. + +This hatred of the world, which was quite in harmony with the spirit of +Christianity, was only overcome by the profounder concepts of German +mysticism, for in the primitive dualistic view of the first millenary +the renunciation of the world was the only possibility of avoiding sin. +The Emperor Justinian decreed that any man who induced a consecrated nun +to marry him should be punished by death. The thought that personal +greatness did not consist in renouncing the world but in living in it +and overcoming it, had not yet been conceived. + +The delight in the human form, characteristic of antiquity, was +extinguished, a crude dualism denied all antique values. The body must +be hated, so that the soul could flourish. But as the Hellenic period +was preceded by vague, unindividualised, material life, so the +impersonal, chaotic, spiritual life of the first thousand years of +Christianity matured the individual soul. It found its climax in Dante +and Eckhart, the greatest poet of the Neo-Latin race, and the most +illumined religious genius of Germany. These two men, who were +contemporaries (Dante died in 1321 and Eckhart in 1329), finally +revealed the character of two kindred nations, completing and +fructifying each other. In Dante the great artistic power of the +Neo-Latin race appeared for the first time in its full intensity; it +took possession of the whole visible universe, and poured new beauty +into the traditional myths of Christendom. Eckhart experienced and +recreated the shapeless depths of the soul, the regions of the blending +of the soul with God. With these two men Europe definitely severed +herself from antiquity and barbarism, henceforth to follow her own star. + +The new world had come into existence! Renascence, the lucky heir, +gathered the ripe fruit from the tree of art which had blossomed so +marvellously. God was no longer sought in the depth of the soul, all +emotion was projected into the world of sense. Churches were built, not +from an irresistible impulse, but as store-houses of the pictures which +were painted with amazing rapidity. The fundamental principle of +personality was externalised in the Renascence. Vanity and boasting, +traces of which frequently appeared in the age of chivalry, grew +exuberantly. No less manifest than the incomparable genius and _esprit_ +of the heyday of the Renascence--although far less frequently commented +on--was the desire to be conspicuous, to shine, to display wealth and +learning. The essence of personality, instead of being sought in the +soul, was sought in outward magnificence. As a matter of fact, the much +extolled Renascence only perfected the various branches of art and +poetry, which had sprung up in the period of the Crusades. The latter +was the time of the planting of the tree of European culture; all that +followed was merely its growth and ramification. Only exact science had +its origin in the Renascence, and this fact, in historical perspective, +must be regarded as the supreme glory of this period. However +paradoxical it may sound--the "impersonal" science is the perfection of +the European system of individualism, its most potent weapon for taking +spiritual possession of the world and all that the world contains. The +consciousness of personality had to permeate the whole soul before it +could recover its external function: organic existence justified by +itself. While art borrows from nature and mankind all that we ourselves +deem beautiful, perfect, valuable, and imposes on the world a man-made +law--science strives to understand all things and all creatures +according to the law which dominates them; it strives to comprehend +nature and humanity--even where they are foreign and hostile--not +according to human values, but according to their inherent nature--and +this is only possible when the individuality of all things is respected. +The method of science has slowly become the perfect weapon by whose aid +Europe has attained the mastery of the world; it rests on the +fundamental feeling for the material, and is capable of confronting the +"I" with the whole system of natural phenomena, the "not-I," and +expresses the final victory of comprehending spirit over matter. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE DEIFICATION OF WOMAN + +(THE FIRST FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM) + +_(a) The Love of the Troubadours_ + + +In the long chapter on the Birth of Europe, I have attempted to bring +corroborative evidence from all sides in support of my contention that +the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed the birth and gradual +development of a new value of the highest importance: the value of +individuality, impersonated by the citizen of Europe. We are now +prepared to realise the psychological importance and the importance for +progress of one of the greatest results of this new development--the +spiritual love of man for woman. From this subject, the specific subject +of my book, I shall not again digress. + +We are aware that the man of antiquity (and also the Eastern nations of +to-day) recognised between man and woman only the sexual bond, +uninfluenced by personal and psychological motives, and leading in +Greece to the institution of monogamy on purely economical and political +grounds. In addition to this bond there existed a very distinct +spiritual love, evolved by Plato and his circle and projected by one man +on another member of his own sex. In the true Hellenic spirit this love +aspired to guide the individual to the ideal of perfection, the beauty +and wisdom of the friend serving as stepping-stones in the upward climb. +In Christianity the spiritual love of the divine became the greatest +value and the pivot on which the emotions turned. The primitive +Christian scorned the body, his own as well as that of his fellow; he +despised beauty of form, and regarded only the divine as worthy of love. +Woman was disparaged and suspected; all thinkers, down to Thomas and +Anselm, looking upon her merely as a snare and a pitfall. The period +discussed in detail in the foregoing chapter ushered in a new and, until +then, unknown feeling. In crude and conscious contrast to sexuality, +deprecated alike by classical Greece and primitive Christianity, +spiritual love of man for woman came into existence. It was composed of +three clearly distinguishable elements: the Platonic thought, +maintaining that the greatest virtue lies in the striving for absolute +perfection; the entirely spiritual love of the divine, sufficient in +itself, and representing the final purpose of life, as developed by +Christianity; and the dawning knowledge of the value of personality. +From these three elements: the noblest inheritance of antiquity, the +central creation of Christianity, and the pivot of the new-born European +spirit, sprang the new value which is the subject of the second stage of +eroticism. The position of woman had changed; she was no longer the +medium for the satisfaction of the male impulse, or the rearing of +children, as in antiquity; no longer the silent drudge or devout sister +of the first Christian millenary; no longer the she-devil of monkish +conception; transcending humanity, she had been exalted to the heavens +and had become a goddess. She was loved and adored with a devotion not +of this earth, a devotion which was the sole source of all things lofty +and good; she had become the saviour of humanity and queen of the +universe. + +The rejection of sensuality is an inherent part of the Christian +religion; only he who had overcome his sinful desires was a hero. +Spiritual love was as yet unknown, only the sexual impulse was realised, +and that was looked upon as a sin; there was but one way of escape: +renunciation. This view is very clearly expressed in the legends of +Alexius, and in Barlaam and Josaphat (which although of Indian origin, +had found a German interpreter and were known all over Europe). The +latter legend tells how Prince Josaphat, a devout Christian, married a +beautiful princess. On his wedding night he had a vision of the +celestial paradise, the dominion of chastity, and the earthly pool of +sin. Recognising in his bride a devil who had come to tempt him, he left +her and fled into the desert. Many legends illustrate the incapacity of +the first millenary to realise the relationship between the sexes in any +other sense. Woman was evil; the struggle against her a laudable effort. + +Very probably the stigmatising of all eroticism during that long spell +of a thousand years was necessary. Only the unnatural condemnation of +love in its widest sense, a hatred of sex and woman such as was felt by +Tertullian and Origen, could result in the reverse of sexuality--purely +spiritual love with its logical climax, the deification and worship of +woman. There can be no doubt that the Christian ideal of chastity was +largely responsible for the evolution of the ideal of spiritual love. +The identity of love and chastity was propounded--in sharp contrast to +sexuality and--more particularly amongst the later troubadours, such as +Montanhagol, Sordello, and the poets of the "sweet new style" in +Italy--with a distinct leaning towards religious ecstasy. + +Infinite tenderness pervaded the nascent cult of woman. It seemed as if +man were eager to compensate her for the indignity which he had heaped +upon her for a thousand years. His instinctive need to worship had found +an incomparable being on earth before whom he prostrated himself. She +was the climax of earthly perfection; no word, no metaphor was +sufficiently ecstatic to express the full fervour of his adoration; a +new religion was created, and she was the presiding divinity. "What were +the world if beauteous woman were not?" sang Johannes Hadlaub, a German +poet. + +Once more I must revert to personality, the fundamental value of the +European. In antiquity, even in Greece and Rome, personality in its +higher sense did not exist. The hero was the epitome of all the energies +of the nation, a term for the striving of the community; the statesman +was the incarnate political will of the people; even the poet's ideal +was the representation of the Hellenic type in all its aspects. +Agamemnon was no more than the intelligent ruler, Achilles the +headstrong hero, Odysseus the cunning adventurer. The individual was a +member and servant of the tribe, the town, the state; each man knew that +his fellow did not essentially differ from him; and even at the period +when Hellas was at its meridian the individuals were, compared to modern +men, but slightly differentiated. But the Greek differed from the +Oriental, the barbarian, inasmuch as he felt himself no longer a +component part of nature, but realised his distinct individuality. + +We find the first germs of the new creative principle of personality in +the Platonic figure of Socrates who, first of all, conceived the idea of +a higher spiritual love, blended it with the love of ideas and separated +it sharply from base desire. Though his conception was not yet personal +love in the true sense, it was nevertheless a spiritual divine love. The +Greek State could not tolerate him, and sentenced him to death. But this +same Socrates also said (in "Crito") that man was indebted to the State +for his existence. "Did not thy father, in obedience to the law, take +thy mother to wife and beget thee?" This sentiment was as antique as it +could well be, and the death of Socrates--as related by Plato--was the +most magnificent confirmation of the Greek idea that the individual, +even the wisest, was entirely subordinate to the community. + +The civilisations of China and Japan are impersonal even to a greater +extent than the civilisation of ancient Greece. Percival Lowell +maintains that the diverse manifestations of the spirit of those +countries can only be understood if regarded from the standpoint of +absolute impersonality. He sees in a "pronounced impersonality the most +striking characteristic of the Far East", "the foundation on which the +Oriental character is built up." It is very instructive to observe how +it determines the individual's conception of birth and marriage, +thoughts and acts, life and death. It is carried to so great an extreme +that special terms for "I," "you," "he," do not even exist in the +Japanese language, and have to be replaced by objective circumlocutions. +Not content with the fact of having been born impersonal, it is the +ambition of the inhabitant of the Far East to become more and more so as +his life unfolds itself. Witness the heroic exploits of Japanese +soldiers during the last war: individual soldiers frequently went to +their death for the sake of a small advantage to their group. We +Europeans regard this in the light of heroism--and it would be heroism +in the case of a European. But with the sacrifice of his individual life +in the interest of the community, the Japanese instinctively yields the +smaller value. In the same way Greeks and Romans did not attach very +much importance to life; suicide was very common, and frequently +committed without any special motive. As true love is based on +personality, it is impossible for the modern East-Asiatic to know love +in our sense. Lowell agrees with this: "Love, as we understand it, is an +unknown feeling in the East." He reports that Japanese women will appear +before strangers entirely nude, without the least trace of +embarrassment--as would Greek women!--because they are innocent of that +other aspect of personality--the feeling of shame. To be ashamed implies +the desire of concealing something individual and intimate; where this +is not the case, there can be no feeling of shame. Finally, I should +like to point out that the perversity and sexual refinement peculiar to +China and Japan are attributable simply to the fact that the limits of +sexuality cannot be overstepped, and that sexuality is therefore +dependent on vice and perversity to satisfy its craving for variety. + +The first manifestation of overwhelming personality appears in Jesus, +and he created the religion of love. In him personality and love were +convertible forces, one might even say they were identical. He, first of +all, revealed their mysterious intimate connection, and clearly showed +that love can only be experienced by a distinct personality, because it +is an emanation of the soul and not a natural instinct. + +It was, again, personality which, in the twelfth century, produced a new +force: spiritual love projected not only on God and nature, but also on +woman. Now only had personality acquired its true significance; it no +longer meant--as it did in the mature Greek world--the individual +separated from his environment, the individual with a conscious +beginning and a conscious end, but the principle of the synthesis, a +higher entity above the mere individual, the source of all values and +virtue. + +Personality is the self-conscious, individual soul, producing out of its +own wealth the universal ideal values, and re-absorbing and assimilating +these ideal values in their higher form. It admits of the fusion of the +subjective with the universal and eternal, with the religious and +artistic, the moral and scientific values of civilisation. "Personality +is the blending of the universal and the individual," said Kierkegaard, +expressing, if not exactly my meaning, something very near it. + +I shall endeavour to depict the spiritual love of man for woman--the +position cannot be reversed--from its inception to its climax. I shall +submit abundant evidence to make the great unbroken stream of emotion +clearly apparent, and indicate all its tributaries. I do not pretend +that I have exhausted the subject--that would be impossible. The works +from which I have drawn may be safely regarded as the direct outpouring +of emotion; those purely lyric poets were entirely subjective and ever +intent upon their own feelings; there hardly exists one Provençal, +old-Italian, or mediæval love-song without the "I." + +Spiritual love first appeared as a naïve sentiment--unconscious of its +own peculiar characteristics--in the poems of the earlier troubadours of +Provence. There is a poem in which the Provençals claim the fathership +of the cult of woman; their opponents do not deny it, but add that it +was an invention which "could fill no man's stomach." These words +express the great and insurmountable barrier between pure spiritual love +and pleasure. The Christian dualism: soul-body, spirit-matter, had +invaded the domain of love. + +Spontaneous, genuine love, untainted by speculations and metaphysics, is +found in the songs of the earlier troubadours. The greatest among all of +them, Bernart of Ventadour, was the first to praise chaste love. If any +champion of civilisation deserves a monument, it is this poet. + + Dead is the man who knows not love, + A sweet tremor in the heart. + + Love's rapture fills my heart + With laughter and sighs. + Grief slays me a hundred times, + Joy bids me rise. + + Sweet is love's happiness, + Sweeter love's pain. + Joy brings back grief to me, + Grief, joy again. + +Guillem Augier Novella expressed the feeling of being "elated with +exaltation and grieved to death" as follows: + + Lady, often flow my tears, + Glad songs in my mem'ry ring, + For the love that makes my blood + Dance and sing. + I am yours with heart and soul, + If it please you, lady, slay me.... + +Aimeril de Peguilhan is of opinion that the pain of love is no less +sweet than the joy of love: + + For he who loves with all his heart would fain + Be sick with love, such rapture is his pain. + +And Bernart again: + + God keep my lady fair from grief and woe, + I'm close to her, however far I go; + If God will be her shelter and her shield, + Then all my heart's desire is fulfilled. + +And: + + My mind was erring in a maze, + That hour I was no longer I, + When in your eyes I met my gaze + As in a mirror strange and shy. + Oh, mirror sweet, reflecting me, + Sighing I fell beneath your spell; + I perished in you utterly + As did Narcissus in the well. + +In the same poem he goes on to say that he will ask for no reward, but +finally concludes: + + My fervent kisses her sweet lips should cover, + For weeks they'd show the traces of her lover. + +The German minnesinger, Heinrich of Morungen, called woman "a mirror of +all the delights of the world," and sang: + + Blessed be the tender hour, + Blest the time, the precious day, + When my brimming heart welled over, + When my secret open lay. + I was startled with great gladness, + And bewildered so with love, + I can hardly sing thereof. + +The sensuous element still dominated Bernart and his contemporaries to +some extent. In their poems, all of which are genuine and sincere, the +longing for kisses, sometimes for more, is frankly expressed, but the +tendency towards the not sensuous and super-sensuous is already +apparent. The lover loves one woman only, and would rather love in vain, +patiently enduring every pang she causes him, than receive favours from +another woman, were she beautiful as Venus her self. + +Bernart says: + + My sorrow is a sweet distress + To which no alien bliss compares, + And if my pain such sweetness bears, + How sweet would be my happiness! + +Elias of Barjols: + + Full of joy I am and sorrow + When I stand before her face. + +Bonifacio Calvo: + + There is no treasure-trove on earth + Which I would barter for my pain; + I love my grief, but spite and wrath + Run riot in my heart; my brain + Is reeling--and I laugh and cry. + Jubilant and desperate, + Exultant, I bewail my fate. + Quarter! Lady, ere I die. + +The earlier troubadours were still ignorant of the later dogma which +made chaste love the sole fountain of virtue and the road to +perfection--the beloved woman can make of her admirer what she wills--a +saint or a sinner. + +Thus Guillem of Poitiers says: + + Love heals the sick + And a grave does it delve + For the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself, + Makes a fool of the sage with its magic, + A clown of the courteous knight, + And a king of the lowliest wight. + +The equally early Cercamon: + + False can I be or true for her, + Sincere or full of lies, + A perfect knight or worthless cur, + Serene or grave, stupid or wise. + +Raimon of Toulouse: + + In the kingdom of love + Folly rules and not sense. + +It was typical of this enthusiastic love that the social rank of the +beloved, the mistress, was invariably above the rank of the lover. The +latter was fond of calling himself her vassal and serf, proclaiming that +she had invested him with all his goods; even kings and German emperors +composed love-songs, although in all probability they would have +achieved their purpose far more quickly by other means; but in all cases +we find the characteristic attitude of the humble lover, looking up to +his mistress. The underlying thought is obvious: Love, the loftiest +value in all the world, is the great leveller of all social differences, +a force before which wealth is as dust. "I would rather win a kind +glance from my lady's eyes than the royal crown of France," was a +favourite profession of the poets. Montanhagol, for instance, in a +rhymed meditation, stated that a lady was wise in choosing a lover of a +lower social rank, because not only could she always count on his +gratitude and devotion, but she would also have more influence over him, +a fact which in the case of a social equal or superior was, to say the +least, a little doubtful. This supreme reverence for love soon became an +accepted doctrine. We constantly meet the thought that chaste love alone +can make a man noble, good and wise. I will select a few illustrations +from a wealth of instances: + +Miraval: + + Noble is every deed whose root is love. + +Peire Rogier: + + Full well I know that right and good + Is all I do for love of her. + +Guirot Riquier: + + The man who loves not is not noble-minded, + For love is fruit and blossom of the highest. + +And: + + Thus love transfigures ev'ry deed we do, + And love gives everything a deeper sense. + Love is the teaching of all genuine worth. + So base is no man's heart on this wide earth, + Love could not guide it to great excellence. + +Giraut of Calenso said of the City of Love that no base or ignorant man +could enter it, and the Italian Lapo Gianni sang: + + The youthful maiden who appeared to me + So filled my soul with pure and lofty thoughts, + That henceforth all ignoble things I scorn. + +Dante in the _Vita Nuova_ calls Beatrice "the destroyer of all evil and +the queen of all virtues." + +The very thought of the beloved makes a good man of the lover: + + "I cannot sin when I am in her thoughts." + +asserts the sincere Guirot Riquier, and he prays Christ to teach him the +true love of woman. + +While it was a generally accepted theory that love was the source of +man's perfection, I know of only one passage (by Raimon of Miraval) +contending that woman, also, was perfected by love; everywhere else we +meet the universal and silently accepted opinion that the essence of +womanhood is something unearthly, unfathomable and divine. Perhaps the +most classical formulation of the new doctrine, to wit, that spiritual +love is the begetter of all virtue and the mother of chastity, outside +which there is nothing divine, is to be found in the poems of the +somewhat pedantic Montanhagol: + + The lover who loves not the highest love, + Is like a fool polluting precious wine. + Let loftiest love alone within thee move, + And purity and virtue will be thine. + +Guirot Riquier expressed a similar sentiment: + + For chaste and pure my love has always been, + From my "sweet bliss" I've never asked a boon; + If I may humbly serve her night and noon, + My life be her inalienable lien. + +Walter von der Vogelweide says: "Love is a treasure heaped up of all +virtues." + +As time went on the barrier erected between true spiritual love and +insidious sensuality became more and more clearly defined; the former +pervaded the erotic emotion of the whole period. Parallel with chaste +love, sensuality continued to exist as something contemptible, unworthy +of a noble mind; and it must be admitted that according to the +contemporary "Fabliaux," later German comedies and Italian and French +novels, the sexual manifestations of the period, were of incredible +coarseness. As against these, spiritual love was not merely an artistic +and theoretic concept, but the profound emotion of the cultured minds, +and remained a powerful and creative force even in later centuries. +Spiritual love and sexuality were irreconcilable contradistinctions; the +man who thought otherwise was looked upon as a libertine. The following +passages from the poems of the troubadours and their heirs, the Italian +poets of the _dolce stil nuovo_, will prove the historical reality of +this relationship, the ideal of the declining Middle Ages. We need take +no account of the German minnesingers, for although they shared the same +ideal, they did not influence principle in the same way as the neo-Latin +poets. + +Bernart of Ventadour: + + Lady, I ask no other meed + Than that you suffer me to serve; + My faith and love shall never swerve, + I'm yours whatever you decreed. + +Peire Rogier: + + Mine is her smile and mine her jest, + And foolish were I more to ask + And not to think me wholly blest. + 'Tis no deceit, + To gaze at her is all I need, + The sight of her is my reward. + +Gaucelm Faidit: + + Of all the ways of love I chose the best, + I love you, love, with ardour infinite, + Yours is my life, do as you will with it. + Nor kiss I ask, nor sweet embraces, lest + I were blaspheming.... + +The most enthusiastic champions of pure love were Montanhagol, Sordello +and Guirot Riqiuer. The former maintained that a lover who asked for +favours incompatible with his lady's honour, neither loved her nor +deserved to be loved.--"Love begets purity, and he who knows the meaning +of love can never forsake virtue." + +There is a controversy between Peire Guillem of Toulouse and Sordello, +which contains the following passages: + + Of all mankind I never saw + A man like you, Sordell', I wis, + For he who woman does adore + Will never flout her love and kiss. + And what to others is a prize + You surely don't mean to despise? + + Honour and joy I crave from her, + And if a little rose she bind + Into the wreath, Sir Guillem Peire, + From mercy, not from duty, mind, + That would be happiness indeed, + Oh! that such bliss should be my meed! + + A humble lover such as you, + Sordell', in faith, I never knew. + + Sir Peire, methinks what you express + Is lacking much in seemliness. + +In another poem the talented Sordello says: + + My love for her is so profound + I'd serve her, spurn and scorn despite + Ere with another I'd be found-- + Yet I'd not serve without requite, + +and in another, after stating that he loves his lady so much that he +would thank her even if she killed him, he continues: + + Thus, lady, I commend to thee + My fate and life, thy faithful squire + I'd rather die in misery + Than have thee stoop to my desire. + + The knight who truly loves his dame + Not only loves her comely face, + Dearer to him is her fair fame + Undimmed, unsullied by disgrace. + + How grievously I should offend + Thy virtue, if I spoke of passion; + But if I did--which God forfend! + Sweet lady, stoop not to compassion. + +Although Sordello appeared so extremely modest, yet he was grieved to +death because his lady did not return his love. There is a poem in which +he compares himself to a drowning man whom the beloved alone could save. + +This spiritual love (then as now) puzzled the commonplace, and was +misunderstood and regarded with scepticism. Bertran d'Alaman taunted +Sordello with his "hypocritical happiness" and "the whole deception of +his love," and Granet, in a satirical poem, cast doubt upon his +sincerity. + +It is very significant to find that Sordello, that typical champion of +chaste love, kept up a number of questionable liaisons with all sorts of +women. Bertran reproached him with having changed his lady at least a +hundred times, and he himself shamelessly confesses: + + The jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me, + For in the art of love I do excel, + And there's no wife, however chaste she may be + Who can resist me if I woo her well. + And if her husband hate me I'll not grumble, + Because his wife receives me in the night, + If mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight, + His pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble. + No husband e'er shall rob me of my pleasure, + None can resist me, what I wish I gain, + All do I love and never will refrain + Spite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure. + +It may seem strange at first sight that this enthusiastic exponent of +pure love should have led such a double life. But Sordello's conduct is +not in the least paradoxical; in accordance with the tendency of the +period, he carefully distinguished in his own heart between sexuality +and love; before the one he lay prostrate, unable to find words enough +in self-depreciation, so that he might the more exalt his mistress; but +with respect to all other women he was a mere sensualist. We read that +although he was "an expert in the treatment of women" in her presence +his voice forsook him and he lost all self-control. Petrarch, who--while +living with a very earthly woman--extolled all his life long a lofty +being whom he called Laura, was akin to Sordello, although he was a far +less brutal character. The latter approached the type of the seeker of +love, the Don Juan. + +In a tenzone between Peirol and the Dauphin of Auvergne, the former +maintains that love must die at the moment of its consummation. "I +cannot believe," he says, "that a true lover can continue to love after +he has received the last favour." (Otto Weininger agrees with this.) But +Peirol winds up with the subtle suggestion that though love be dead, a +man should always continue to behave as if he were still in love. + +The troubadours never weary of drawing a line between _drudaria_ and +_luxuria_, pure love and base desire. _Mezura_, seemliness, is +contrasted with _dezmezura_, licentiousness. Pure love is regarded as +the creator of all high values, luxuriousness as their destroyer. In the +same way the German minnesingers distinguished between "low" love and +"high" love. + +As both cultured minds and the upper classes, contemning sexuality, +acknowledged spiritual love only, it follows as a matter of course that +the avowal of such sentiments became good form; the motif that the +honour of the beloved must be carefully shielded, and that no desire +must dim her purity, occurs again and again. But it should not be +forgotten that a poet may love a sentiment for its own sake, without +being in the least influenced by it. Many a troubadour drew inspiration +from an emotion which all praised as the supreme value; even if he had +no earthly mistress, he adored the sublime sentiment. Not infrequently +it happened that a troubadour who had been loud in praise of high love +and denunciation of base desire--a trick of his trade--suddenly came to +himself and changed his mind. Folquet of Marseilles, for instance, after +more than ten years of vain sighing, came to the conclusion that he had +been a fool. + + Deceitful love beguiles the simple fool + And binds with magic thongs the hapless wight; + That like a moth lured by the candle-light, + He hovers, helpless, round the heartless ghoul. + + I cast thee out and follow other stars + Full evil was my meed and recompense-- + New courage steels my fainting heart, and hence + I kneel at shrines which passion never mars. + +In an interesting poem Garin the Red implores _Mezura_ to teach him the +way to love purely and nobly; but he is anything but pleased with his +instructress, and comes to the conclusion that her whole wisdom is "just +good form" and nothing else. + + But by my merry mood impelled + I kiss and dally night and morn + And do the things I feel compelled + To do--or else, with tonsure shorn, + I'd seek a cloister.... + +Elias of Barjols, finding that his love will never be returned, and +having no mind to sigh all his life in vain, renounces love altogether. +"I should be a fool if I served love any longer!" + +"All you lovers are fools!" exclaimed another. "Do you think you can +change the nature of women?" This is one of the very rare criticisms of +woman; as a rule we hear only of her angelic perfection, wisdom, beauty +and aloofness. + +The distinguished poet Marcabru was a woman-hater, and enemy of love +from the very beginning. He said of himself that he had never loved a +woman and that no woman had ever loved him. + + The love which is always a lie + And deceiver of men, I decry + And denounce; I had more than enough. + Can you count all the evil it wrought? + When I think of it I am distraught. + What a madman I was to believe, + To sigh, to rejoice and to grieve; + But no longer I'll squander my days, + We have come to the parting of the ways. Etc. + +He was indefatigable in abusing the tender passion, and had a great deal +to say about the immorality of women. But it is characteristic of the +strong public opinion of the time that even this misogynist (who, +perhaps, after all was only a disappointed man) praised "high love." + +The subject also found its theorists, prominent among whom was the +court-chaplain Andreas, who wrote a very learned book on love in Latin. +He expressed in propositions and conclusions what the contemporary poets +expressed in verse, proving thereby that spiritual love was not merely a +poetic fiction but the profoundest belief of the period, supported by +the full complement of its philosophical weapons. "In the whole world +there is no good and no courtliness outside the fountain of love. +Therefore love is the beginning and foundation of all good." He also +proved that a noble-minded man must be a lover, for if he were not, he +could not have attained virtue. "Love disregards all barriers, and makes +the man of low origin the equal and superior of the nobleman." + +This conception of spiritual nobility, which was later on perfected in +the theory of the _cor gentil_, only existed in Provence and in Italy; +it remained unknown in France and Germany. + +Andreas drew a distinction between base love, the _amor mixtus sive +communis_, and pure love, the _amor purus_. "Love," he maintained, fully +agreeing with the poets, "gives to a man the strength of chastity, for +he whose heart is brimming over with the love of a woman, cannot think +of dallying with another, however beautiful she may be." He proved from +substance and form that a man cannot love two women. In the _Leys +d'Amors_, a voluminous fourteenth-century Provençal treatise, largely a +text-book of grammar and prosody, we read: "And now lovers must be +taught how to love; passionate lovers must be restrained, so that they +may come to realise their evil and dishonourable desires. No good +troubadour, who is at the same time an honest lover, has ever abandoned +himself to base sensuality and ignoble desires." The same author opined +that a troubadour who asked his lady for a kiss, was committing an act +of indecency. On the other hand, Andreas was very broad-minded in +drawing the line between both kinds of love, allowing kisses, and even +more, in the case of true love. (The best troubadours disagree with him +in this respect.) + +A scholasticism of love, modelled on ecclesiastical scholasticism and +substituting the beloved woman for the Deity, was gradually evolved. +Love, veneration, humility, hope, etc., were the sacrifices offered at +her shrine. She was full of grace and compassion, and was believed in as +fervently as was God. Some of the poets were animated by a curious +ambition "to prove" their feelings with scholastic erudition, and more +especially by the later, Italian, school, _amore_, _cor gentil_, +_valore_, were conceived as substances, attributes, inherent qualities, +etc. The allegories of _amore_ played a prominent part, and spoiled many +a masterpiece. The German poets steered clear of these absurdities, +which even Dante did not escape. + +At the famous courts of love, presided over by princesses, the most +extraordinary questions relating to love were discussed and decided with +a ceremonial closely following the ceremonial of the petty courts of +law. Andreas preserved for us a number of these judgments, some of which +prove the really quite obvious fact that love and marriage are two very +different things, for if spiritual love be considered the supreme value, +matrimony can only be regarded as an inferior condition. And it was a +fact that in the higher ranks of society,--the only ones with which we +are concerned,--a marriage was nothing but a contract made for political +and economical reasons. The baron desired to enlarge his estate, obtain +a dowry, or marry into an influential family; no one dreamed of +consulting the future bride, whom marriage alone could bring into +contact with people outside her own family. To her marriage meant the +permission to shine and be adored by a man who was not her husband. "It +is an undeniable fact," propounded Andreas as _regula amoris_, "that +there is no room for love between husband and wife," and Fauriel +translated a passage as follows: "A husband who proposed to behave to +his wife as a knight would to his lady, would propose to do something +contrary to the canons of honour; such a proceeding could neither +increase his virtue nor the virtue of his lady, and nothing could come +of it but what already properly exists."--Another judgment maintained +"that a lady lost her admirer as soon as the latter became her husband; +and that she was therefore entitled to take a new lover." At the court +of love of the Viscountess Ermengarde, of Narbonne, the problem whether +the love between husband and wife or the love between lovers were the +greater, was decided as follows: "The affection between a married couple +and the tender love which unites two lovers are emotions which differ +fundamentally and according to custom. It would be folly to attempt a +comparison between two subjects which neither resemble each other, nor +have any connection." A husband declared: "It is true, I have a +beautiful wife, and I love her with conjugal love. But because true love +is impossible between husband and wife, and because everything good +which happens in this world has its origin in love, I am of opinion that +I should seek an alliance of love outside my married life." All this was +not frivolity, but the only logical conclusion of dualistic eroticism, +incapable of blending sensuality and love. It was equally logical that +love between divorced persons was not only regarded as not immoral, but +as perfectly right and justifiable; it was even decided that "a new +marriage could never become a drawback to old love." In the old novel, +_Gérard of Roussillon_, the princess, beloved by Gérard, is married to +the emperor Charles Martel, and compelled to part from her knight. At +their last meeting, before a number of witnesses, she called on the name +of Christ and said: "Know ye all that I give my love to Sir Gérard with +this ring and this flower from my chaplet. I love him more than father +and husband, and now I must weep tears of bitter sorrow." After this +they parted, but their love continued undiminished though there was +nothing between them but tender wishes and secret thoughts. + +Matrimony had no advantage over the love-alliance, not even the +sanction of the Church. A love-alliance was frequently accompanied by a +ceremony in which a priest officiated. Fauriel describes--without +mentioning his source--such a ceremony as follows: "Kneeling before his +lady, with his folded hands between hers, he dedicated himself to her +service, vowing to be faithful to her until death, and to shield her +from all harm and insults as far as lay within his power. The lady, on +her side, declared her willingness to accept his service, promised to +devote her loftiest feelings to him, and as a rule gave him a ring as a +symbol of their union. Then she raised and kissed him, always for the +first, usually for the last time." The parting of the lovers, too, was a +solemn act, resembling in many ways the dissolution of a marriage. + + So that our solemn plighted troth + When love is dead, we shall not break, + We'll to the priest ourselves betake. + You set me free, as I do you, + A perfect right then shall we both + Enjoy to choose a love anew, + +wrote Peire of Barjac. + +It was far more easy to dissolve a marriage than a true love-alliance; +the husband had only to state that his wife was a distant relation of +his, and the Church was ready to annul the contract. But the +love-alliance--so Sordello maintained, in a long poem--should be more +binding than any marriage. + + Only one love a woman can + Prefer. So let her choose her man + With care. To him she must be true, + For choosing once she ne'er may rue. + More binding than the wedding-tie + Is love; for a diversity + Of causes wedlock may divide, + By death alone be love untied. + +The idea that marriage and love cannot be combined is therefore only the +logical conclusion of the fundamental feeling that love and desire +cannot together be projected on one woman. + +If matrimonial love had not been questioned, the choice would have lain +between two alternatives: the canonisation of matrimony--an expedient +chosen by the Church--or a fusion of love and sexuality in our modern +sense. The first was a stage which humanity had left behind, for the +ideal of absolutely perfect and pure love had already been evolved, and +the world was not ripe for the second. The tendency of the rarest minds +was in the direction of a further idealisation of love, of freeing it +from all earthly shackles and bringing it nearer and nearer to heaven. +One of the early troubadours, Jaufre Rudel, Prince of Blaya, gave a +practical illustration to this feeling by falling in love with a lady +whom he had never seen. The story of his love was famous for centuries. +He loved a Countess of Tripoli, a Christian princess, and his whole soul +was filled with his imaginary picture of her. The _Provençal Biography_ +relates that "he worshipped her for all the good the pilgrims had +narrated of her." In order to see her, he took the cross and journeyed +across the sea; he fell ill on the ship and was carried ashore in a +dying condition. The countess, on hearing of his great love, hastened to +the inn where he lay. As she entered his room, Jaufre regained +consciousness; he knew her at once and died happily in her arms. She was +so touched by his love that she henceforth renounced the world.--This +story is no fairy tale; it is well attested and universally accounted +genuine to-day. Jaufre's love, expressed in touching poems, was no +_amour de tête_, as it is sometimes called, but a genuine _amour de +coeur_, a purely spiritual love which asked nothing of the beloved +woman but permission to love her. There are other instances, and even in +later times it is not an infrequent occurrence in the case of +imaginative people (I need only mention Bürger and Klopstock). + +We men of the present age look upon this eccentric woman-worship with +uncomprehending eyes. Perhaps we shall feel a little less bewildered +when we meet it, stripped of courtly theories and mediaeval fashions, in +some of the great men who are closely connected with our own period; in +Michelangelo, in Goethe, and in Beethoven. + +The Church, dualistic and ascetic from its inception, waged war against +sensuality as the evil of evils. "As fire and water will not mix," wrote +St. Bernard, "so spiritual and carnal delights cannot be experienced +together." The toleration of matrimony was never more than a compromise; +we require no proof that as far as the Church was concerned, chastity +was the only real value. Even Luther took up that position, and to this +day Christianity and sexuality remain unreconciled. But both the +Catholic and the Protestant professions of faith regarded matrimony as +the lesser evil, a concession made to the enemy, in order to render +existence possible. It is very interesting to observe the position taken +up by the Church in connection with the new woman-worship which, +although it sprang from the most genuine Christian dualism, had for its +object not God, but mortal woman. The logical attitude of the Church +would have been one of welcome, for the chaste worship of woman which +regarded matrimony as an inferior state, was her natural ally. Two +clerics, the court-chaplain Andreas, and the prolific rhymester Matfre +Ermengau, actually elaborated the theory of spiritual love contrary to +the spirit of the Church, but both men hastened to utter a timely +recantation and recommendation of orthodoxy as the only means of +salvation. After establishing all the desirable details of love +according to substance and accidents, Andreas deduced that every love +not dedicated to God was bound to offend Him, and advanced eighteen +points against the love of woman, starting with the well-known argument +that woman was naturally of a base disposition, covetous, envious, +greedy, fickle, garrulous, stubborn, proud, vain, sensual, deceitful, +etc. "He who serves love, cannot serve God," he declared, "and God will +punish every man who, apart from matrimony, serves Venus. What good +could come from acting against the will of God?" Here we are face to +face with a grotesque position: the official Church favouring sexuality, +that is matrimony, as against the newer and higher standard of ascetic, +spiritual love. This attitude was quite logical, if not in the spirit of +religion and in contradiction to the principle of asceticism, yet in the +spirit of orthodoxy; for "whatever was not for her, was against her." +The brave, Janus-headed abbé was spokesman for the whole clergy, which +branded love not projected on God as _fornicatio_. In his recantation +Andreas upheld the previously-despised matrimonial state at the expense +of love; "love," he maintained, "destroys matrimony." Matfre did exactly +the same thing; after recapitulating in his _Breviari d'Amor_ all the +splendid achievements rooted in the cult of woman, he suddenly veered +round (at the 27,445th verse): + + And Satan blows on their desire, + In monstrous flames leaps up the fire, + And maddened by the raging fiend, + From love of God and honour weaned, + They turn from their Creator's shrine + And call their mistresses divine. + With soul and body, mind and sense, + They worship woman's excellence. + Abandoned in her beauty revel, + And unawares adore the devil. + +Three hundred years later the fanatical Savanorola stormed: "You clothe +and adorn the Mother of God as you clothe and adorn your courtesans, and +you give her the features of your mistresses!" which, as we shall +presently see, was literally true. + +The clergy resisted all counsels of the _cortezia_ and _cavalaria_ with +the sure instinct desiring the continuance of existing conditions +rather than the victory of the higher conception. Some writers aver that +it was partly due to this fact that later on the cult of woman developed +into the cult of Mary. Again we are confronted by a process which in the +course of time has been repeated more than once: the spiritual-mystical +principle of Christianity entered upon a new stage, and took possession +of a new and important domain; but the Church, rigid and unyielding, +preferred clinging to a past lower stage rather than tolerating any +change. Had she been absolutely consistent, her greatest poet would be +on the index to-day, for, following his own intuition and ignoring her +rigid dogma, he introduced his beloved Beatrice into the Catholic +heaven. + +The new spiritual love was not without its caricatures. Famous in +Provence for many strange exploits, committed in order to please his +lady, was the talented Peire Vidal. On one occasion he caused himself to +be sewn into a wolfskin and ran about the fields; but he was set upon by +dogs and so badly mangled that he nearly succumbed to his wounds. He was +an insufferable braggart, but never had any success in love. The prince +of caricatures, however, was the German knight and minnesinger, Ulrich +of Lichtenstein. He is responsible for a novel in prose, entitled _The +Service of Woman_, which is faintly reminiscent of Goethe's _Werther_. +As a page he commenced his glorious career by drinking the water in +which his lady had washed her hands; later on he caused his upper lip to +be amputated because it displeased his mistress, for "whatever she +dislikes in me, I, too, hate." On another occasion he cut off one of his +fingers and used it, set in gold, as a clasp for a volume of his poems +which he sent to her. One of his most famous exploits was a journey +through nearly the whole of Austria, disguised as Venus, jousting, +dressed in women's clothes, with every knight he met. But in spite of +his eccentricities, the tendency of his mind was not at all +metaphysical; he craved very obvious favours, but as a rule contented +himself with a kind, or even an unkind word. Incidentally, we learn that +he was married; but he devoted his whole life to "deeds of heroism" in +honour of his lady. Not the great book of Cervantes, as is commonly +believed, held up mediaeval court life to ridicule and destroyed it as +an ideal, but the life and exploits of this knight and minnesinger. The +same spirit animated Guilhem of Balaun. At the command of his lady he +had a finger-nail extracted and sent to her, after which he was +re-admitted to her favour. + +Spiritual love was discovered by the Provençals, but the greater and +profounder Italian poets developed it and brought it to perfection. What +had been a naïve sentiment with the troubadours, became in Dante's +circle a system of the universe and a religion. The Italian poet, +Sordello, who wrote in Provençal, may be regarded as the connecting +link, and the forerunner of the great Italians. He died in the year of +grace 1270, and Dante, who was almost a contemporary, immortalised his +name in the _Divine Comedy_. The doctrine on which the _dolce stil +nuovo_ was based pointed to the love of a noble heart as the source of +all perfection in heaven and earth. Purely spiritual woman-worship was +regarded as an absolute virtue. The words of the last of the Provençal +troubadours, Guirot Riquier, "Love is the doctrine of all sublime +things"--was developed into a philosophy. I will quote a few +characteristic verses, omitting Dante for the present. One of the finest +lyric poems of all tongues and ages, written by Guido Guinicelli, begins +as follows: + + Within the gentle heart love shelters him, + As birds within the green shades of the grove; + Before the gentle heart in nature's scheme + Love was not, or the gentle heart ere love. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +Cino da Pistoia says in epigrammatic brevity: + + You want to know the inmost core of love? + 'Tis art and guerdon of a noble heart. + +A wonderful canzone by Guinicelli contains the following verses: + + A song she seems among the rest and these + Have all their beauties in her splendour drowned. + In her is ev'ry grace,-- + Simplicity of wisdom, noble speech, + Accomplished loveliness; + All earthly beauty is her diadem. + This truth my song must teach-- + My lady is of ladies chosen gem. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +And Cavalcanti sings: + + What's she whose coming rivets all men's eyes, + Who makes the air so tremble with delight, + And thrills so every heart that no man might + Find tongue for words but vents his soul in sighs? + + (_Transl. by_ SIR THEODORE MARTIN.) + +The sentiment which pervades these verses has lifted us into the higher +sphere which will henceforth be our main theme. The beloved was more and +more extolled; in her presence the lover became more and more convinced +of his insignificance; she was worshipped, deified. The overwhelming +emotion, the longing for metaphysical values which dominated the whole +epoch, had reached its highest characteristic, had reached perfection. +It proved the eternal quality of human emotion: the impossibility of +finding satisfaction, the striving towards the infinite; it soared above +its apparent object and sought its consummation in metaphysic. The love +of woman and the mystical love of God were blended in a profounder +devotion; love had become the sole giver of the eternal value and +consolation, yearned for by mortal man. Christianity had taught man to +look up; now his upward gaze lost its rigidity and beheld living +beauty--metaphysical eroticism had been evolved--the canonisation and +deification of woman. The ideal of the troubadours to love the adored +mistress chastely and devoutly from a distance in the hope of receiving +a word of greeting, no longer satisfied the lover; she must become a +divine being, must be enthroned above human joy and sorrow, queen of the +world. Traditional religion was transformed so that a place might be +found in it for a woman. + +The reason for the recognition of spiritual love from the moment of its +inception as something supernatural and divine, is obvious. The heart of +man was filled with an emotion hitherto unknown, an emotion which +pointed direct to heaven. The soul, the core of profound Christian +consciousness, had received a new, glad content, rousing a feeling of +such intensity that it could only be compared to the religious ecstasy +of the mystic; man divined that it was the mother of new and great +things--was it not fitting to regard it as divine and proclaim it the +supreme value? The troubadours had known it. Bernart of Ventadour had +sung: + + I stand in my lady's sight + In deep devotion; + Approach her with folded hands + In sweet emotion; + Dumbly adoring her, + Humbly imploring her. + +Peire Raimon of Toulouse: + + I would approach thee on my knees, + Lowly and meek, + I would fare far o'er lands and seas + Thy ruth to seek. + + And come to thee--a slave to his lord-- + I'd pay thee homage with eyes that mourn, + Until thy mercy I'd implored, + Heedless of laughter, heedless of scorn. + +Raimon of Miraval had said, "I am no lover, I am a worshipper," and +Cavalcanti: + + My lady's virtue has my blindness riven, + A secret sighing thrills my humbled heart: + When favoured with a sight of her thou art, + Thy soul will spread its wings and soar to heaven. + +Peire Vidal: + + God called the women close to Him, + Because he saw all good in them. + +And: + + The God of righteousness endowed + So well thy body and thy mind + That His own radiancy grew blind. + And many a soul that has not bowed + To Him for years in sin enmeshed, + Is by thy grace and charm refreshed. + +The beauty of the adored was divine. Bernart of Ventadour wrote: + + Her glorious beauty sheds a brilliant ray + On darkest night and dims the brightest day. + +Guilhem of Cabestaing: + + God has created her without a blemish + Of His own beauty. + +Gaucelm Faidit: + + The beauty which is God Himself + He poured into a single being. + +And Montanhagol, anticipating Dante: + + Wherefore I tell you, and my words are true, + From heaven came her beauty, rare and tender, + Her loveliness was wrought in Paradise, + Men's dazzled eyes can scarce support her splendour. + +Folquet of Romans: + + When I behold her beauty rare, + I'm so confused and startled by her worth, + I ween I am no longer on this earth. + +A canzone which has been attributed to Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia and +Dante, reads as follows: + + My lady comes and ev'ry lip is silent; + So perfect is her beauty's high estate + That mortal spirit swoons and falls prostrate + Before her glory. And she is so noble: + If I uplift to her my inward eye, + My soul is startled as if death were nigh. + +Cavalcanti says: + + Round you are flowers, is the tender green, + The sun is not as bright as your dear face, + All nature in her glorious summer-sheen + Has not so fair and beautiful a place, + It pales beside you. Earth has never seen + A thing so full of loveliness and grace. + +The perfection which the mere presence of the beloved was supposed to +bestow on the lover, is here conceived more broadly and freely; not only +the lover, but all men are touched and transfigured by her appearance. +The sentiment of the lover aspired to become objective truth. This was +an important stage on the road from the spiritual to the deifying love, +which I have called metaphysical eroticism. Another rung of the ladder +of evolution had been climbed--the mistress had become queen of the +world and goddess, a being enthroned by the side of God. I will again +quote Guinicelli: + + Ever as she walks she has a sober grace, + Making bold men abashed and good men glad, + If she delight thee not, thy heart must err, + No man dare look on her, his thoughts being base; + Nay, let me say even more than I have said, + No man could think base thoughts who looked on her. + + (D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +The same poet in his canzone, _Al Cor Gentil_ says: + + "She shines on us as God shines on His angels." + +When madonna dies the angels receive her, rejoicing that she has joined +them. The Provençal, Pons of Capduelh, anticipated Dante: + + And now we know that the celestial choir + Sings songs of jubilee at her release + From this dull earth; I heard and am at rest; + Who praise His hosts, praise the Eternal Sire. + I know she is in Heaven with the blest, + 'Midst flow'rs whose glory time can never dim + Singing God's praise, and blest by seraphim. + Nought but the truth from my glad lips shall fall, + In Heaven she is, enthroned above all. + +Folquet of Romans wrote a letter to his beloved, in which he said +amongst other things: + + Kneeling in church before God's face, + --A sinner to beseech His grace,-- + And for my sins to make amends,-- + 'Twas you to whom I raised my hands; + Your loveliness alone was there, + My soul knew only of one pray'r. + I fancied "Our Father" framed + My trembling lips, when they exclaimed + Exultant at His sacred shrine: + Oh! Lady! All my soul is thine! + + Lady, you have bewitched me with your beauty, + That God I have forgotten and myself. + +Cino da Pistoia wrote the following commendatory prayer: + + Into thy hands, sweet lady of my soul, + The spirit that is dying I commend; + And which departs so sorrowful that Love + Views it with pity, while dismissing it. + + By you to His dominion it was bound, + So firmly, that it since hath had no power + To call on Him but thus: Oh, mighty Lord, + Whate'er thou wilt of me, Thy will is mine. + + (_Transl. by_ C. LYELL.) + +Lancelot, one of the great mediaeval lovers, possessed a lock of +Guinevere's hair, which he prized above all the relics of the saints. +When he parted from his mistress (whom he had loved not only +spiritually) he fell on his knees before the door of her chamber and +prayed as if "he were kneeling before the altar." + +Spiritual love was obviously acquiring a religious tinge. The mistress +took the place of God; her grace was the source of all joy and +consolation; she led the souls of the dying to eternal life. God had +yielded His position to her, she had stepped to His side, nay, above +Him. With the curse of the Church still clinging to her, she had been +remoulded by man's emotion into a perfect, a celestial being. The God of +Christianity was in danger--would the new religion of cultured minds, +the religion of woman (unwilling to tolerate any other God beside her) +replace the religion of the masses? Was a reformation imminent? Would +the traditional religion be transformed into metaphysical eroticism, +dethroning God, enthroning a goddess? It is impossible to say in what +direction the spiritual history of Europe would have developed if Dante +had been merely a metaphysical lover, and not also an orthodox +theologian; if instead of penetrating to the vision of the divine +secret, he had fainted before the face of Beatrice.... + +The religion of woman and the dominant religion came to terms. This +compromise was possible because the Christian pantheon included a female +deity who, although she had not hitherto played a prominent part, held +an exceptional position: this was Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. From +A.D. 400 to A.D. 1200, her rank had been on a level with the rank of the +antique goddesses; now the new emotion enveloped and revivified her. The +rigid, soulless image with the golden circle round the head slowly +melted into sweet womanhood. In Italy this sentiment inspired wonderful +paintings of the Madonna, and was responsible for the development of +portraiture in general. The hold of the overwhelming tradition was +broken. Rejecting the universal conviction that the historical Mary had +resembled the Mary of Byzantine art, the artist, under the dominion of +his woman-worship--which surpassed and re-valued all things--drew his +inspiration from the fulness of life. I do not agree with Thode that we +are indebted to the legend of St. Francis for the modern soulful and +highly individualised art. Its source must have been the strongest +feeling of the most cultured minds, and that was undoubtedly spiritual +love. The Jesuit Beissel wrote with deep regret: "Every master almost +formed his own conception of Mary, but in such a way that the hieratic +severity of earlier times disappeared but slowly." And he continued: "It +is true, the artists' models were the noble ladies of their period; not +only on account of their kindly smiling faces, but also on account of +the charming coquetry with which their hands drew their cloaks across +the bosom." And the art-historian, Male, says: "It is a remarkable fact +that in the thirteenth century the legend, or the story, of the Virgin +Mary was depicted on the doors of all our (_i.e._, French) cathedrals." + +The difference between the Catholic and the Protestant world-principles +is strongly marked in this connection. Catholicism with its striving for +absolute uniformity, acknowledging no individual differences, but eager +to shape all life and all doctrines in harmony with one definite ideal, +very consistently pronounced one single, historical woman to be divine, +and made her the object of universal worship. This dogma had to be +rigid, immutable, and almost meaningless. Again, the historic and pagan +principle of Catholicism was maintained; a unique event in the history +of the world was immortalised and systematised and all new religious +conceptions were excluded. Catholicism invariably places all really +important events in the past, even in a quite definite period of the +past, a period unassailable by historical criticism. But with the +commencement of individual intellectual life the uniform, ecclesiastical +image of the Madonna gradually gained life and individuality. Just as +according to Protestant teaching every soul must establish its +individual relationship with God (which is subject to change because +individuality is not excluded as it is in Catholicism), so the +imaginative emotionalist created his own Queen of Heaven. Frequently he +was still under the impression--this was especially the case with +monks--that he was worshipping the ecclesiastical deity, when he had +long been praying to a metaphysical conception of his own. The great +Italian art since the fourteenth century, as well as the Neo-Latin and +German cults of the Virgin Mary were, though apparently still orthodox, +in their innermost essence the outcome of a personal desire for love, +and had therefore abandoned the teaching of the Church and become +Protestant. The fact that the so-called Protestant Church looked askance +at Mary, and that the rather coarse-minded Luther said, in his +annoyance: "Popery has made a goddess of Mary, and is therefore guilty +of idolatry," does not contradict my statement. The true Queen of Heaven +was a conception of the artist and lover, incomprehensible to those who +were only thinkers and moralists. + +Through the legitimation of a divine woman open enmity between the +religion of woman and the religion of the Church was avoided. A woman +had stepped between God and humanity as mediator, intercessor and +redeemer. Every metaphysically-loving soul could conceive her as it +pleased, could love her and pray to her without being a heretic and +worshipper of the devil. Matfre had complained that men + + Abandoned in her beauty revel + And unawares adore the devil.-- + +but now a means had been found to adore the beloved, and yet remain +faithful to God. Once in a way it was remembered that the adored, +strictly speaking, was the Mother of God--if for no other reason, for +fear of the Inquisition which the Dominicans had founded and placed +under the special patronage of Mary--her bodyguard as it were, defending +her from the onslaught of minds all too worldly. Very rarely the adored +earthly woman was identified with the official Queen of Heaven--(this +may have been done occasionally by monks); sometimes as in the case of +Michelangelo and Guinicelli, the beloved was the sole goddess; other +poets, among whom we may include Dante and Goethe, conceived her as +enthroned by the side of Mary. + +At this point I must interrupt my argument, and briefly sketch the +position occupied by Mary in the western world from the dawn of +Christianity. + + +_(b) The Queen of Heaven._ + +During the first two hundred years Mary did not occupy a prominent place +in the Christian communities; even in the fourth century she was still +regarded as a human woman and denied divinity by St. Chrysostom, who +reproached her with vainglory. But in proportion as Christ transcended +humanity, and was more dogmatically and formally interpreted by the +Church--more especially the Greek Church--the desire for a mediator +between the wrathful Deity and sinful humanity grew more pronounced, a +mediator who, although a human being, could be endowed after the manner +of the ancient demi-gods with super-human virtues. The Mother of the +Saviour gradually assumed this position. She had been an earthly woman, +born of earthly parents, and would be able to understand human needs and +wishes, and she had become the Mother of God. Would not her intercession +have weight with the Son of God? Simultaneously with the growing +recognition of asceticism, the doctrine of the immaculate conception +gained ground; in the course of time this moment was more and more +emphasised, and virginity was set up as an ideal. + +St. Athanasius (fourth century) had written: "What God did to Mary is +the glory of all virgins; for they are attached as virginal saplings to +her who is the root." At the close of the fourth century a long and +bitter controversy arose over the question as to whether Mary had +remained a virgin after the birth of Jesus. St. Ambrose, St. Jerome and +St. Augustine were in favour of this new doctrine. St. Ambrose, the +founder of Western music, was the first to praise her perfection in the +Latin tongue, and St. Augustine in his treatise _De Natura et Gratia_, +maintained that she was the only human being born without original sin. +This was the first important step towards the stripping of the Saviour's +mother of her humanity, and establishing her as a divine being. St. +Irenaeus contrasted Eve, the bringer of sin, with Mary, the second Eve, +the bringer of salvation, and St. Ambrose said: "From Eve we inherited +damnation through the fruit of the tree; but Mary has brought us +salvation through the gift of the tree, for Christ too, hung on the tree +like a fruit." + +Hitherto Mary had not been worshipped; all prayers had been addressed to +God and to Christ. The idea of approaching her in prayer appeared for +the first time in a pamphlet entitled "On the Death of Mary," written +about the end of the fourth century, and Gregory of Nazianz pictured +Mary in Heaven, caring for the welfare of humanity. The fourth and fifth +centuries produced the first hymns to the Virgin, written in Syriac; but +orthodox bishops objected to her deification; St. Epiphanus (end of +fourth century) said: "Let us honour Mary by all means, but let us +worship only the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." + +This was the position of the evangelical and historical Mary before the +famous and decisive Council of Ephesus. + +There is a very important fact which must not be overlooked. All the +nations dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean, Semites, and +Egyptians, as well as Greeks and Romans, had been accustomed to the +worship of female deities. In the minds of the ancient peoples, woman, +the symbol of sex, had always been endowed with qualities of magic and +mystery. There was something supernatural in her power of bringing forth +a living specimen of the race, and in all cults the maternal woman +occupied a very important position. Had Christianity suddenly destroyed +this ancient and natural need? We know that the Church had assimilated a +great number of antique superstitions; nor were the female deities +sacrificed. The great Asiatic Mothers had not been forgotten; the very +ancient Babylonian Istar (Astarte), Rhea Kybele of Asia Minor, and above +all the Egyptian Isis, still lived in the heart of man,--subconsciously, +probably--as lofty, sacred memories, but nevertheless influencing his +life. The Egyptian Isis with Horus in her lap is the direct model of the +Madonna with the Child. She represented earth, bringing forth fruit +without fertilisation. "This religious custom (the worship of Isis)," +says Flinders Petrie, "exerted a powerful influence on nascent +Christianity. It is not too much to say that without the Egyptians we +should have had no Madonna in our creed. The cult of Isis was widely +spread at the time of the first emperors, when it was fashionable all +over the Roman Empire; when later on it merged into that other great +religious movement, and fashion and conviction could be combined, its +triumph was assured." + +Advancing Christianity had depopulated the national pantheon. There must +have been a great sense of loss, especially among the lower classes, and +it does not require much psychological insight to realise that it was +the lack of female deities which more especially roused a feeling of +anxiety and distress. The masses were yearning for a goddess, and it was +at Ephesus, the classical seat of the hundred-breasted Diana, that the +stolen divinity was restored to them. The theologians were divided into +three camps. While some of them regarded Mary merely as "the mother of +man" others acknowledged her as the "Mother of God," and Nestorius +suggested as a compromise the title "Mother of Christ." At the synod of +Alexandria, in the year of grace 430, and at the council of Ephesus in +431, Nestorius was found guilty of blasphemy and deprived of his +bishopric. Henceforth Mary was [Greek: Theotochos], the "Mother of God," +and her worship was sanctioned by the Church. "Through Thee the Holy +Trinity has been glorified," exclaimed Cyril joyfully, "through Thee the +Cross of the Saviour has been raised! Through Thee the angels triumphed, +the devils were driven back; the tempter was beaten and human nature +uplifted to Heaven; through Thee all intelligent creatures who were +committing idolatry, have learned the truth!" Loud rejoicing filled the +streets of Ephesus. When the judgment passed on Nestorius was announced, +the people exclaimed: "The enemy of the Holy Virgin has been overcome; +glory be to the great, the divine Mother of God!" The highest authority +in the land had re-established the public worship of the great goddess, +who had for many years been worshipped in secrecy. The ancient paganism +had triumphed over the spiritual intuition of the loftier minds. +According to ancient custom sacrifices were offered at Mary's shrine; +the second epoch of her history had begun. + +In the East the worship of female divinities was older and more +spontaneous than in the Western world, and thus the cult of Mary existed +in the Orient long before it penetrated to Italy and thence into the +newly Christianised countries. The Virgin, who for the first few hundred +years had held a clearly defined position in evangelical history, had +become an independent object of worship. Festivals were held in her +honour; churches were dedicated to her; the will of the people triumphed +in the litany; art took possession of the grateful subject. The +tendency to make Mary the equal of Christ grew steadily. Metaphors +originally intended for Christ alone were used indifferently for either. +We constantly find her addressed as the "archetype, the light of the +world, the vine, the mediator, the source of eternal life, etc." Finally +she ceased being regarded as a passive participator in the work of +salvation, as the Mother of the Saviour, and was accredited with +independent saving power. John of Damascus (eighth century) first called +Mary [Greek: sôteira tou chosmou], and soon after she was styled +"Saviour of the World" in the Occident also. With this the cult of Mary +had reached its third stage, the stage which interests us; she had +become the object of metaphysical love. But before dealing with this +third stage, we must glance, in passing, at the ancient Teutonic tribes. +They, too, worshipped goddesses and sacred women; virginity, a virtue +not appreciated by the Orientals, here stood in high repute. According +to Tacitus and others, the Teutons looked upon the Virgin as a +mysterious being, approaching divinity more closely than all others. +Thus there was here, perhaps, more than on the shores of the +Mediterranean, a favourable soil for the cult of Mary. The +characteristics of Holda and Freya, as well as their perfect beauty, +were transferred to Mary, and Mary's name was substituted for the names +of the old auxiliary goddesses. In the oldest German evangelical poems +Mary does not yet rank as a divinity, she is merely extolled as the most +perfect of all earth-born women. In the "Heliand" (about A.D. 830) she +is called "the most beautiful of all women, the loveliest of all +maidens"; and the monk Otfried, of Weissenburg (860), calls her, "Of all +women to God the most pleasing, the white jewel, the radiant maid." + +Mary had now taken her place by the side of God, and was commonly +addressed as divine. Anselm of Canterbury explains: "God is the Father +of all created things, Mary the Mother of all things recreated.... God +begat the creator of the world, Mary gave birth to its Saviour." Peter +of Blois declared that the Virgin was the only mediatress between Christ +and humanity. "We were sinners and afraid of the wrath of the Father, +for He is terrible; but we have the Virgin, in whom there is nothing +terrible, for in her is the fulness of mercy and purity." The twelfth +century produced the _Ave Maria_, the angelic salutation, the principal +prayer to Mary, which was introduced into all churches. The Italian +Franciscan monk, Bonaventura, and Peter Damiani, were above all others +instrumental in spreading the worship of the Virgin, and Damiani said of +her: "To Thee has been given all power in heaven and on earth." The +fresco of the Camposanto at Pisa, ascribed to Orcagna, shows the +transfigured Virgin sitting by the side of Christ, not below Him. The +numerous legends in which Mary, often regardless of justice and +propriety, delivers her faithful worshippers from all manner of dangers, +were written during the same period. One of the most famous of these is +the legend of Theophilus, the forerunner of Faust. In a German version +(by Brun of Schönebeck) dating from the thirteenth century, Theophilus +abjures God and all things divine, with the sole exception of Mary, +wherefore she saves him from eternal damnation. This poem therefore +shows us Mary as absolutely opposed to God. + +We have now arrived at the third stage of the cult of Mary; the new, +spiritual love, translated into metaphysics, was projected on her; she +was approached by her worshippers with the ardent love which hitherto +had been the prerogative of earthly women. The two currents, the one +arising in ecclesiastical tradition, and the other in the soul of the +metaphysical lover, had met; the genuine spiritual cult of Mary was the +creation of the great metaphysical lovers, who existed not only in the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but are met not infrequently later +on; man's irresistible need to raise woman above him and worship her, +created the true Madonna, for whose sake romantic souls of all times +have "returned home" into the fold of the Church, the true Madonna who +at heart is alien to the principles of the Church, but is re-born daily +in the soul of the metaphysical lover. The hierarchy knew how to take +advantage of and control this adoring love; the metaphysical lover +raised his mistress above humanity and prayed before her shrine; +religion said: "The celestial woman whom you may lovingly adore is here, +with me. All you have to do is to call her by the name I have given her, +and the kingdom of Heaven will be yours." + +But on the other hand Mary represents to-day, and doubtless will do for +a long time to come, a dogmatically acknowledged deity, recognised by +the spirit of Protestantism as a remnant of Paganism, and duly detested; +the masses in Italy and Spain pray to-day to her image, as in bygone +days the masses prayed to the images in Greek and Roman temples. This +goddess is unchanging, and from the point of view of the psychologist +uninteresting. + +It is not difficult to understand why the two conceptions of Mary (more +especially in the souls of the monks) were so often inextricably +intermingled; circumstances frequently demanded a complete fusion. As +late as in the nineteenth century, a romantic poet, Zacharias Werner, +said: + + Oh, sov'reign lady, mistress of my fortune, + And thou, the Queen and ruler of the heavens, + (I cannot keep you sundered and apart.) + +I shall endeavour to keep them sundered and apart as far as possible, +for I am only concerned with man's metaphysical emotion of love and its +creation, womanhood deified, and not with Catholic dogmas. With this +object in view, I will return to the poets previously quoted, and +continue the unfolding of the process of deification. As a rule the +metaphysical lovers were content with immortalising their feelings in, +very often, excellent verses, raising the beloved mistress above the +earth and worshipping her as the culmination of beauty and perfection. +The quite unusual craving to give her a place in the eternal structure +of the cosmos animated only one poet, Dante, who, combining the Catholic +striving for unity with spontaneous, magnificent woman-worship, created +a masterpiece which is unique in literature. + +Typical among the later Provençals was Guirot Riquier. Several of his +poems which have been preserved to us make it impossible to say whether +they are addressed to an earthly woman or to the Queen of Heaven; these +poems mark, in a sense, a period of transition. They are exceedingly +vague, and it is not worth while to translate them; but as they are +dated it is interesting to watch the poet's love growing more and more +spiritual and religious, to see him gradually deserting his earthly love +for the Lady of Heaven. In one poem he prays to his lady "who is +worshipped by all true lovers," to teach him the right way of loving. In +the next he repents his all too earthly passion: + + I often thought I was of true love singing, + And knew not that to love my heart was blind, + And folly was as love itself enshrined. + But now such love in all my soul is ringing, + That though to love and praise her I aspire + As is her meed--in vain is my desire. + Henceforth her love alone shall be my guide + And my new hope in that great love abide. + + For her great love the uttermost shall proffer + Of honour, wealth, and earthly joy and bliss, + With her to love, my heart will never miss + Those who no gifts like her gifts have to offer. + She the fulfilment is of my desire, + Therefore I vow myself her true esquire; + She'll love me in return--my splendid meed-- + If I but love aright in word and deed. + +and one of his rather more religious songs ends as follows: + + Without true love there is on earth no peace, + Love gives us wisdom, faith which will not swerve, + A noble mind and willingness to serve. + How rare a thing on earth in perfect ease! + To Thee, oh Virgin! Mother of all love, + I dedicate this song; if thou deniest + Me not, thou shall be my "sweet bliss." With Christ + I pray Thee, intercede for me above. + +In this song, then, he calls Mary "his sweet bliss" (_bel deport_), a +name which he had previously given to a certain countess with whom he +had been in love. In the next poem, in which earthly love and love of +the Madonna are again brought into juxta-position, he commends himself +"to the Virgin, the sublime mother of love, on whom all my happiness +depends." One of his poems which begins in quite an earthly strain, ends +thus: + + I feel no jealousy; for he whose soul + Is filled with yearning for his heavenly love, + Has purest happiness; he is her serf, + And he has all things that his heart can crave. + +But long before this, in one of his very worldly poems there is a sudden +outburst, addressed to the Madonna: "He who does not serve the Mother of +God, knows not the meaning of love." Excellent proof of this intimate +connection between earthly and Madonna love is found in the poems of the +trouvere Ruteboeuf, who calls Mary his "very sweet lady." + +Lanfranc Cigala wrote genuine love-songs to the Virgin. The following +are two stanzas from one of his poems: + + I worship a celestial maid, + Serene and wondrously adorned; + And all she does is well; arrayed + In noble love and gentleness. + Her smile is bliss to all who mourn, + Her tender love is happiness, + And for her kiss the world I scorn. + Lady of Heaven, Thy heart incline + To me, and untold bliss is mine. + By day and night my only thought + Art, Mary, Thou. I am distraught + Say many men, for few can gauge + The ardour which consumes my soul. + I care not that they say bereft + I am of sense; the world I've left, + To worship Thee, love's spring and goal. + +But other poems written by Cigala are unmistakably addressed to the +celestial Madonna; some of them seem to be written in a penitential +mood; he almost seems to repent of his former passionate adoration. The +same poet, in his love-songs, uses all the metaphors which are commonly +used for Mary (or for Christ), "root and climax, flower, fruit and seed +of all goodness." + +A little older is an erotic hymn to Mary by Peire Guillem of Luserna; I +quote a few stanzas: + + Thy praise is happiness unmarred, + For he who praises Thee, proclaims the truth, + Thou art the flower of beauty, love and ruth, + Full of compassion, with all grace bedight, + From Thy white hands we gather all delight. + +The love of Mary had usurped the peculiar property of the love of woman: +it had become the source of poetic and artistic inspiration. + +The songs of Aimeric of Peguilhan resemble those of Cigala; the former +bewails the decline of the service of woman; he sings of the "root and +crown of all noble things," but it is not quite clear whether he is +addressing an earthly or a heavenly lady. "Suffer my love, which asks +for no reward!" The terms, "friends" and "lovers" (_amans_) of the +Virgin are with these poets convertible terms, and the Virgin is styled +"the true friend" (_i.e._, the beloved). + +Guilhem of Autpol wrote a fine poem to the Queen of Heaven, beginning: + + Thou hope of all sad hearts who yearn for love, + Thou stream of loveliness, thou well of grace, + Thou dove of peace in fret and restlessness, + Thou ray of light to those who, lightless, grope. + Thou house of God, thou garden of sweet shades, + Rest without ceasing, refuge of the sad, + Bliss without mourning, flow'r that never fades, + Alien to death, and shelter in the mad + Whirlpool of life, to all who seek thy port. + Lady of Heaven, in whom all hearts rejoice, + Thou roseate dawn and light of Paradise! + +Perdigon, among many worldly songs, wrote one to the _regina d'auteza e +de senhoria_, which might be translated thus: + + Supreme ruler of the world, + Thy grace sustains + And maintains + The world. + Thou fragrant rose, thou fruitful vine, + Thou wert the chosen vessel of + Mercy divine. + +Unsurpassed in the fusion of his earthly and his celestial lady was +Folquet de Lunel. Some of his poems cannot be classed with any +certainty. + +The first poem which obtained a prize at the Academy of Mastersingers of +Toulouse was a hymn to Mary. + +This very genuine sentimentalism appears strange to us; we cannot enter +into the feelings of that period. A modern philologist, Karl Appel, +regards Jaufre Rudel's pathetic songs, addressed by him to the Countess +of Tripoli: + + Oh, love in lands so far away, + My heart is yearning, yearning.... + +as songs to the Madonna; but it is a matter of indifference to the lover +whether his heart's impulse, translated into metaphysic, is projected on +an unknown Countess of Tripoli, or a still more unknown Lady of Heaven. +It is not the loved woman who is of importance--what do we know of the +ladies who inspired the exquisite mediaeval poetry? They have long been +dust, and we may be sure that their perfection was no greater than is +the perfection of their grand-daughters. But the love of the poets is +alive to-day, an eternal document of the human heart, representing one +of the great phases through which the relationship between man and woman +has passed. + +The following are a few stanzas by the German minnesinger, Steinmar, +which were later on adapted to the Holy Virgin: + + In summer-time how glad am I + When over lea or down + A country lass mine eyes espy, + Of maidens all the crown. + + Oh! Paradise! How glad am I + When o'er the heavenly down + God and God's Mother I espy, + Of women all the crown. + +The Italian poets, far more profound than the Provençals, saw a goddess +in the beloved (whom they always addressed as Madonna), and humbled +themselves before her. Social differences, which played such a prominent +part in the North, are here ignored. The impecunious poet no longer +extols the princess, the wife of his lord and master. There is no +question of such a relationship; the poet is a free citizen of the town, +subject only to the emotion of the heart, and his song carries its own +reward. It has ceased to be the married woman's privilege to be lauded +and extolled; the maiden of unaristocratic origin, who to the poets +represents more strongly the ideas of purity and perfection, has usurped +her place. We know that Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi, Guinicelli and +Dante worshipped a maiden untouched by as much as a sensuous thought, +and Frescobaldi decided the question whether it were better to love a +married woman or a maiden, in favour of the latter. The feeling of those +lovers was pure and lofty, and they had the power of giving it perfect +expression. + +In a canzone, the authorship of which is ascribed to both Cavalcanti and +Cino da Pistoia, it is said of the beloved dead that God needed her +presence to perfect Heaven, and that all the saints now worship her. +She was a miracle of perfection while she was yet on earth, but now: + + Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells + Thy lovely lady, who is in heaven crowned, + Who is herself thy hope in heaven, the while + To make thy mem'ry hallowed she prevails. + + Of thee she entertains the blessed throngs, + And says to them, while yet my body thrave + On earth, I gat much honour which he gave, + Commending me in his commended songs. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +At the conclusion of his finest poem, "Al Cor Gentil," Guinicelli, next +to Dante doubtless the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, says: "God will +ask me after my death: 'How could'st thou have loved aught but Me?' And +I will reply: 'She came from Thy realm and bore the semblance of an +angel. Therefore in loving her, I was not unfaithful to Thee!'" Here we +have the perfection of metaphysical eroticism: the beloved woman is God; +he who loves her, loves God in her. + +Cavalcanti maintained in a poem that an image of the Madonna actually +bore the features of his lady. + + Guido, an image of my lady dwells + At San Michele, in Orto, consecrate, + And daily worshipped. Fair, in holy state, + She listens to the tale each sinner tells. + And among them who come to her, who ails + The most, on him the most does blessing fall; + She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate; + Over the curse of blindness she prevails, + And heals sick languors in the public squares.... + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +And Guido Orlandi replies to him from the ecclesiastical standpoint, as +to a lost man: "Had'st thou been speaking of Mary, thou would'st have +spoken the truth. But now I must bewail thy errors." + +A complete blending of sensuality and Mary-worship was achieved in an +Italian poem of the fifteenth century. The author of this poem addressed +Mary as "queen of my heart," and "blossom of loveliness," and goes on to +say: "I can tell by your gestures and your face that you respond to my +love; when you look at me, you smile, and when you sigh, your eyes are +full of tenderness.... Sometimes, in the evening, I stand below your +balcony; you hear my sighs, but you make no reply.... When I gaze at +your beauty, I burn with love, but when I think of your cruelty, I call +on death to release me." In this poem we have a caricature of +metaphysical eroticism. + +In the sonnets of Petrarch, metaphysical love has become stereotyped. +Adoration has become a phrase (as Cupid has become a phrase with the +earlier poets). It is obvious that he loves Laura because the play on +the word Laura and _lauro_ (laurel) caught his fancy. I can find no +spontaneous feeling in the famous Canzoniero; all I see is erudition and +perfection of form. But among the few sincere specimens there is one +beautiful poem addressed to Mary: "_Vergine bella che di sol vestida!_" +which is not without erotic warmth. But the singer and humanist +expresses himself judiciously: + + Oh, Thou, the Queen of Heaven and our goddess + (If it be fitting such a phrase to use). + +So far we have observed the current which, emanating from the beloved +woman, lifted her into supernal regions and endowed her with +perfection--the mistress is stripped of everything earthly, the longing +which can never be stilled on earth, soars heavenward. Now we will +examine the opposite current; the current which emanates from the +Madonna of dogma, the Lady of Heaven who is the same to all men, in her +last stage, that is to say when she is finally enthroned by the side of +God. Many a monk--earthly love being denied to him--was driven to a +purely spiritual, metaphysical love by the fact of his being permitted +to love the Lady of Heaven without hesitation or remorse. She was the +fairest of women, and he was at liberty to interpret the meaning of "the +fairest" in any sense he chose. + +The climax of the emotional worship of the ecclesiastical Mary was +reached by St. Bernard, the _Doctor Marianus_ mentioned on a previous +occasion. He was the author of sermons and homilies in honour of Mary, +and has been instrumental in dogmatising her worship by placing her side +by side with the Saviour. "It was more fitting that both sexes should +take part in the renewal of mankind," he says, "because both were +instrumental in bringing about the fall...." "Man who fell through +woman, can be raised only by her." "Humanity kneels at Thy feet, for the +comfort of the wretched, the release of the prisoners, the delivery of +the condemned, the salvation of the countless sons of Adam depend on a +word from Thy lips. Oh! Virgin, hasten to reply! Speak the word for +which the earth, the nethermost hell, and the heavens even, are waiting; +yea, the King and Ruler of the universe, greatly as He desires Thy +loveliness, awaits Thy consent, in which He has laid the salvation of +the world." Basing his description on the Revelation of St. John the +Divine, he draws her picture as follows: "Brilliant and white and +dazzling are the garments of the Virgin. She is so full of light and +radiance that there is not the least darkness about her, and no part of +her may be described as less brilliant, or not glowing with intense +light." And with increasingly pronounced erotic emphasis, passing from +the Church dogma of salvation to passionate fervour, he goes on to say: +"A garden of sacred delight art Thou, oh, Mary! In it we gather flowers +of manifold joys as often as we reflect on the fulness of sweetness +which through Thee was poured out on the world.... Right lovely art +Thou, oh, perfect One! A bed of heavenly spices and precious flowers of +all virtues, filling the house of the Lord with sweet perfume! Oh! Mary, +Thou violet of humility! Thou lily of chastity! Thou rose of love!" etc. + +St. Bernard inaugurated that extraordinary blending of eroticism with +half-crazy, inconceivable allegories and fantasies, which lasted for +centuries. Here, again, we perceive the ideal of metaphysical eroticism, +which in the case of a loyal son of the Church could only refer to the +official Queen of Heaven, and consisted partly of the genuine emotion of +love, partly of allegorically constructed connections with the Church +dogma. + +St. Bernard's emotional outbursts were comprehended and admired. His +authority was sufficient to override all scruples that might have stood +in the way of this downright description of Mary's charms. He became the +model for all her later worshippers; Suso, for instance, often quotes +him, and Brother Hans called him _the harpist and fiddler of her +praise_. + +The great ecstatic poet, Jacopone da Todi, sang Mary's praise as +follows: + + Hail, purest of virgins, + Mother and maid, + Gentle as moonlight, + Lady of Aid! + + I greet thee, life's fountain, + Fruitladen vine! + Infinite mercy + Thou sheddest on thine! + + Hope's fairest sunshine, + Balm's well serene! + I claim a dance with thee, + All the world's Queen! + + Gate of beatitude! + --All sins forgiven,-- + Lead us to paradise, + Sweet breeze of heaven! + + Thou pointest us upward + Where angels adore, + White lily of gentleness + Thy grace I implore. + + Mirror of Cherubim! + Seraphim laud thy grace, + All things in heaven and earth + Ring with thy praise! + +The spiritual love of Mary especially appealed to the German temper. +Among the adoring monks Suso deserves particular mention. He laid great +stress on the difference between _high_ love and _low_ love. "Low love +begins with rapture and ends with pain, but high love begins with grief, +and is transformed into ecstasy, until finally the lovers are united in +eternity." He was keenly conscious of the older motive of the cult of +Mary, namely, the need of a gentle mediator between man and the +inaccessible Deity. "Oh, thou! God's chosen delight, thou dulcet, golden +song of the Eternal Wisdom, suffer me, a poor sinner, to tell thee a +little of my sufferings. My soul prostrates itself before thee with +timorous eyes, shamefaced. Oh! thou Mother of all mercies, I ween that +neither my soul nor the soul of any other poor sinner needs a mediator, +or permission to come to thy throne, for thou, thyself, art the +intercessor for all sinners." Compared to his forerunner, St. Bernard, +Suso exhibits a marked degree of intimacy in his relationship with Mary. +He describes heaven as a kind of flowered meadow, and Mary keeping +court, like any earthly princess. "Now go and behold the sweet Queen of +Heaven, whom you love so profoundly, leading the procession of the +celestial throng in great gladness and stateliness, inclining to her +lover with roses and lilies! Behold her wonderful beauty shedding light +and joy on the heavenly hosts! Eya! Look up to her who giveth gladness +to heart and mind; behold the Mother of Mercy resting her eyes, her +tender, pitiful eyes, on you and all sinners, powerfully protecting her +beloved child." The whole sixteenth chapter of the _Booklet of Eternal +Wisdom_ is an ardent hymn to the Madonna, almost comparable to St. +Bernard's prayer to Mary in Dante's _Divine Comedy_. It was written +about the time of Dante's death, not very long, therefore, after the +composition of the last chapters of the _Paradise_. + +_The Life of Suso_ (the first German biography ever written) evidences +his adoration for the Lady of Heaven: "It was customary in his country, +Swabia, for the young men to go to their sweethearts' houses on New +Year's Eve, singing songs until they received from the maidens a chaplet +in return. This custom so pleased his young and ardent heart that he, +too, went on the eve of the New Year to his eternal love, to beg her for +a gift. Before daybreak he repaired to the statue which represented the +Virginal Mother pressing her tender child, the beautiful Eternal Wisdom, +to her bosom, and kneeling down before her, with a sweet, low singing of +his soul, he chanted a sequence to her, imploring her to let him win a +chaplet from her Child...." "He then said to the Eternal Wisdom" (and it +is uncertain whether he is addressing the mother or the child): "Thou +art my love, my glad Easter day, the summer-joy of my heart, my sweet +hour; thou art the love which my young heart alone worships, and for the +sake of which it has scorned earthly love. Give me a guerdon, then, my +heart's delight, and let me not go away from thee empty-handed." + +_With a sweet, low singing of his soul_, this worshipper approached the +statue of the Queen of Heaven. This is love of woman undisguised, it +merely has a religious undertone. Other secular merry-makings were +adapted by Suso to his celestial mistress, as, for instance, the +planting of the may-tree, and he repeatedly makes use of similes and +metaphors borrowed from the chivalrous service of woman. He frequently +alludes to himself as "the servant of the Eternal Wisdom"; the meaning +of this expression is apparently intentionally obscured, but it has a +savour of the feminine. Suso pictured himself, after the manner of +lovers, with a chaplet of roses on his brow. In his _Life_ there is a +passage unsurpassed by the best of the minnesingers: "In the golden +summer-time when all the tender little flowers had opened their buds, he +gathered none until he had dedicated the first blossoms to his spiritual +love, the gentle, flower-like, rosy maiden and Mother of God; when it +seemed to him that the time had come, he culled the flowers with many +loving thoughts, carried them into his cell and wove them into a +garland; and after he had done so, he went into the choir, or into Our +Lady's Chapel, prostrated himself before his dear lady, and placed the +sweet garland on her head, hoping that she would not scorn her servant's +offering, as she was the most wondrous flower herself, and the +summer-joy of his heart." + +Doubtless we here have an analogy to the religious feeling of the +mystics. The metaphysical lover is still under the impression that he is +worshipping the Mary of the Catholic Church; but as in the case of the +mystic the Christ of dogma is transformed into the divine spark in his +own soul, so the love of Mary has become undogmatic and pure +woman-worship, the ideal of the great lovers of that age. + +Another prominent Madonna-worshipper was Conrad of Würzburg (died 1278). +He began his career as a minnesinger, but later on entered a monastery. +He was the author of a very extensive, and in part, poetical collection +of songs in praise of the Queen of Heaven. "The Golden Smithy" is an +interesting instance of the mingling of genuine metaphysical eroticism +and traditional Church doctrines. Conrad inextricably mingles all the +Biblical allegories more or less applicable to Mary, the stories of the +Gospels, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, etc., with his own +emotions, and thus creates a world of feeling which, though in many +respects exaggerated, still represents in its quaint unity something +entirely novel and unique: + + Thy glorious form, + Though by beauty all envested, + Never passion has suggested + Nor has lit unholy fire + In man's heart, that gross desire + From thy purity should spring. + +He, too, describes the celestial Paradise as a lovely garden, in which +Mary walks as queen, and he says of her celestial maidens, (perhaps a +reminiscence of the mythological German swan-maidens): + + Thy white hand with blossoms + Their chaplets enhances, + Thou show'st them the dances + Of God's Paradise. + 'Mid radiant skies + Thou gather'st heavenly roses. + +The Italian Franciscan monk Giacomo of Verona also wrote poems to the +"Queen of the Heavenly Meadows". "On the right hand of Christ sits Mary, +more lovely than the flowers in the meadows and the half-opened +rose-buds. Before her face stand the heavenly hosts singing jubilant +songs in her praise, but she adorns her knights with garlands and gives +them roses." Just as Pons of Capduelh describes the transfiguration of +his earthly mistress, Jacopone describes Mary's ascent into Heaven, +where she is received by the angels singing songs of jubilee, their +_sanctus, sanctus, sanctus_, replaced by a joyful _sancta, sancta, +sancta_--a goddess has been received in the place of God. + +Gottfried of Strassburg, the author of the sensuous and passionate epic +poem "Tristan and Isolde," composed a long poem in honour of Mary +couched in the well-known terms of the loving worshipper: + + Thou vale of roses,--violet-dell, + Thou joy that makest hearts to swell, + Eternal well + Of valour; Queen of Heaven! + Thou rosy dawn, thou morning-red, + Thou steadfast friend when hope has fled, + The living bread, + Oh! Lady, hast thou given. + + Thou sheen of flow'rs with love alight, + Thou bridal crown, all maids' delight, + Thou art bedight + With heaven's golden splendour! + + Thou of all sweetness sweetest shine, + Thou sweeter than the sweetest wine, + The sweetness thine, + Is my salvation ever. + Thou art a potion sweet of love, + Sweetly pervading heaven above, + To sailors rough + Sang syrens sweeter never. + + Thou enterest through eye and ear, + Senses and soul pervading, + Thou givest to the heart great cheer, + A guerdon dear, + A glory never fading. + +The poet who wrote of Isolde's love potion here calls the Queen of +Heaven a _potion sweet of love_, a strange metaphor to use in connection +with the Mary of dogma. Another characteristic frequently alluded to is +her _sweet perfume_, an attribute which we to-day do not look upon as +exclusively celestial. + +Quaintly delicate and tender are the love-songs of Brother Hans, an +otherwise unknown monk of the fourteenth century. He himself tells us +that he deserted his earthly mistress for the Queen of Heaven. Perhaps +the dualism between earthly and transcendent love has never been +expressed more clearly than by him; for in his case the worshipping love +did not gradually lead up to Mary, the essence of womanhood, but an +earthly love had to be killed so that the pure heavenly love could live. + + Mary! Gentle mistress mine! + I humbly kneel before you; + All my heart and soul are thine. + +And: + + Oh, Mary! Secret fountain, + Closed garden of delight, + The Prince of Heaven mirrors + Him in thy beauty bright. + +But after describing all the joys of heaven, Brother Hans comes to the +conclusion that a man knows about as much of celestial matters as an ox +knows of discant singing. + +His relationship to Mary is tender, intimate and familiar: + + Within my heart concealed + There is a secret cell; + At nightfall and at daybreak + My lady there does dwell. + The mistress of the house is she, + I feel her love and care about. + If she denies herself to me, + Methinks the mistress has gone out. + +In another poem he prays to Mary to allow him to tear off a small piece +of her robe, so that he may keep himself warm with it in the winter. + +Like Cino da Pistoia, who commended his dying soul not to God but to his +loved one, Brother Hans commends himself to Mary: + + Thus I commend my soul into thy hands, + When it must journey to those unknown lands, + Where roads and paths are new and strange to it. + +And: + + Oh, come to me, thou Bride of God, + When my faint soul departs from me! + +There remains one more motif to consider, a motif which in a way +completes the picture of the celestial lady: As men love and desire the +women of the earth, so God loves the Lady of Heaven. St. Bernard first +expressed this naïve idea, which makes God the Father resemble a little +the ancient Jupiter. "She attracted the eyes of the heavenly hosts, even +the heart of the King went out to her." "He Himself, the supreme King +and Ruler, so much desires thy beauty, that He is awaiting thy consent, +upon which He has decided to save the world. And Him Whom thou +delightest in thy silence, thou wilt delight even more by thy speech, +for He called to thee from Heaven: 'Oh! fairest among women! Let me hear +thy voice!'" etc. Here we have St. Bernard, the rock of orthodoxy, +representing God as Mary's languishing admirer! Suso is irreproachable +in this respect, but Conrad says that the colour of Mary's face was so +bright and made it so lovely, + + That even the Eternal Sire + Was filled with sacred fire, + And all the heavenly princes.... + +Thus, at the turn of the fourteenth century the great celestial change +was complete: By the side of God, nay, even in the place of God, a woman +was enthroned. "The Virgin became the God of the Universe," says +Michelet, a thorough, though rather imaginative expert on the Middle +Ages. The people primitively worshipped idols. The clergy, headed by the +Dominican and Franciscan monks, introduced Lady Days into the calendar +and invented the rosary to facilitate the recital of the _Aves_; secular +orders of knighthood placed themselves under the Virgin's protection (La +Chevalerie de Sainte Marie), but the rarest minds, sublimating the +beloved, raised her into Heaven and worshipped her as divine. The +established religion was compelled to enter into partnership with the +great emotion of the time, metaphysical love, lest it ran the risk of +losing its sway over humanity. + +And a feeling was born then which to this day constitutes one of the +striking differences between the Eastern and the Western worlds: the +respect for womanhood. It is based on the woman-worship of secular, and +the Madonna-worship of ecclesiastical circles. It is true that Jesus, +anticipating the intuition of Europe, had taught the divinity of the +human soul and recognised woman--in this respect--as on an equality with +man, but the instincts of Greece and the Eastern nations had proved to +be stronger than his teaching; for twelve hundred years woman was +despised, and more than once the question as to whether or no she had a +soul--in other words, as to whether or no she was a human being--had +come under discussion. The crude and primitively dualistic minds of the +period realised in her sex merely an embodiment of their own sensuality, +the enemy against whom they fought, and to whom they knew themselves +subject. The strongest argument in her favour which the first millenary +could adduce, was the fact that the Saviour of the world had been borne +by a woman, and that consequently her sex had a share in the work of +salvation; the idea that through the "other Eve" a part of the sin of +the first Eve was expiated. But genuine appreciation and respect were +only possible after base sensuality had been contrasted with spiritual +love, whose vehicle again was woman. Now the "eternal-feminine"-- +contrasted with the "earthly-feminine"--drew the lovers upwards, and +this new emotion threw such a glamour over the whole sex, that it never +entirely died away; if to-day women are respected and their efforts at +emancipation supported, they are not indebted, as they are sometimes +told, to Christian ethics, but rather to the mundane culture which had +its origin at the courts of the Provençal lords, whose ideals ultimately +became the controlling ideals of Europe, and whose inmost essence still +influences the world. + +The evolution of love had obviously arrived at a stage when respect was +considered due to women--though not perhaps to all women. I will not go +to the courts of the great for evidence, but merely relate an episode +from the life of the Dominican friar Suso: "In crossing a field, Suso +met on a narrow path a poor, respectable woman. When he was close to +her, he stepped off the dry path and stood in the mud, waiting for her +to pass. The woman, who knew him, was astonished. 'How is it, Sir,' she +said, 'that you, a venerable priest, are humbly standing aside to allow +me, a poor woman, to pass, when it were far more meet that I should +stand aside and make room for you?' 'Why, my good woman,' replied Suso, +'I like to honour all women for the sake of the gentle Mother of God in +Heaven.'" + +It may seem extraordinary, but this absolutely unphilosophical, and +really paradoxical emotion, found an appreciator in the German +philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of Christianity. In his _Essence +of Christianity_, as well as in his treatise _On the Cult of Mary_, he +refers to it more than once. "The holy Virgin," he says, "the Mother of +God, is the only divine and positive, that is to say, the only lovable +and poetical figure of Christian mythology, and the only one worthy of +worship; for Mary is the goddess of beauty, the goddess of love, the +goddess of humanity, the goddess of nature, the goddess of freedom from +dogma." Feuerbach is right. The Lady of Heaven stands for the delivery +from dogma, because she had her origin in spontaneous emotion, clothed +with but a few rags of dogma. "The monks vowed the vow of chastity," he +continues in his great work; "they suppressed the sexual impulse, but in +exchange they had the personification of womanhood, of love, in the +Virgin in Heaven. The more their ideal, fictitious representative of her +sex became an object of spontaneous love, the more easily could they +dispense with the women of flesh and blood. The more they emphasised in +their lives the complete suppression of sexuality, the more prominent +became the part which the Virgin played in their emotions; she usurped +in many cases, the place of Christ, and even the place of God." +Feuerbach then explains the need of man to project his noblest +sentiments on Heaven, and lays much stress on the necessity of believing +in the Mother of God, because the love of a child for its mother is the +first strong feeling of man. "Where the faith in the Mother of God +declines, the faith in the Son of God, and in God the Father, declines +also." + + +I will now leave the region of the historical and examine the emotion +whose reality and influence I have substantiated, from a timeless +standpoint, for my principal point is the psychical, and more +particularly the metaphysical consummation of the emotion of love. The +sole object of the abundant evidence I have been compelled to adduce is +my desire to prove the existence and significance of all the emotions +which stir the soul, and in the later Middle Ages strove so powerfully +to express themselves. My thesis that sexuality and love are opposed +principles will no doubt be rejected, for, under the strong influence of +the theory of evolution, all the world is to-day agreed that love is +nothing but the refinement of the sexual impulse. I maintain that (as +far as man is concerned) they differ very essentially, and I have +attempted to prove their incommensurability by submitting historical +facts. That they may, and will, ultimately merge, is my unalterable +conviction. My assertion that something so fundamental as the personal +love of man and woman did not exist from the beginning, but came into +existence in the course of history, at a not very remote period, may +seem even more strange. My only reply is that instead of advancing +opinions I have brought forward facts and allowed them to speak for +themselves. Moreover, to my mind the realisation of the intimate +connection of love and evolving personality is a far more magnificent +proof of the soundness of the evolutionary theory than the reflection +that we have received all things ready-made from the hands of nature. +Has it not been proved to us that the religious consciousness of the +divinity of the human soul was also evolved in historical time, and has +never again disappeared? + +Every strong love which finds no response is fraught with the +possibility of an infinite unfolding; it may powerfully seize the whole +soul and make life a tragedy. But this tragedy is not of the very +essence of tragedy, inasmuch as here we have merely love confronted by +an unsurmountable obstacle, meeting and overwhelming it; the discord is +not inherent. Many a lover suffering from unrequited love, is born with +the tendency to become unhappy, with a secret will to the voluptuousness +of pain and melancholy; he will enjoy his unhappiness, perhaps become +productive through it. Thus, this deliberately unhappy love may be +regarded as an analogy to genuine metaphysical eroticism. For the +worship of woman is in its essence infinite striving; its object is +always unattainable, an illusion. Every earthly love, even if it finds +no response at all, may, in principle, be gratified, and is only unhappy +if external circumstances intervene. But the love of the Madonna is in +itself fraught with the tragic impossibility of requital; its foundation +is the recognition, or divination, of the fact that mortal women are too +insignificant for a passion which yearns for infinitude. A lover filled +with the longing to glorify a woman and worship her as a divine being, +has frequently experienced a certain disappointment. The beloved may +have died young--as did Beatrice--without his ever having come into +close contact with her; instinctively his soul turns heavenward--and +imagination has ample scope to transform and transfigure the dead. Or he +may have been disappointed in his mistress; it may have been that he, +attuned to pure, spiritual love, has found her all too human. He flees +from reality into the world of dreams, and envelops her with the veil of +mysteriousness and divinity. Purely spiritual love is an intense +emotion, and as men and women of flesh and blood cannot always live at +high pressure, hours of dejection and disappointment will necessarily +have to be experienced. The soul takes refuge in an illusion which +becomes more and more an end in itself, and gradually the lover creates +an inaccessibly lofty, celestial woman. For purely spiritual love +aspires to absolute transcendency; it cannot bear contact with every-day +life. The psychologists of the present day tell us that a feeling, in +becoming spiritualised, loses strength,--history teaches us that in the +case of great souls the opposite is the rule. + +These suggestions purpose to explain the inception of an ecstatic love; +but the true metaphysical erotic is born and needs no outside stimulus; +his heart yearns for the inaccessible from the very beginning. There are +certain elements of feeling which must be present in his soul +simultaneously: a religious elementary feeling tending to the +metaphysical; the need of a sacred--a divine--being, as the foundation +of all existing things; a powerful and purely spiritual craving for +love, hurt, perhaps unconsciously, in early youth, and finally an +imagination endowed with plastic force--artistic tendencies. In the case +of the mystic the soul, too, is filled with the consciousness of the +divine; he, too, has the capacity for a great love, but with him it is +not the love of woman, but of something universal, not individualised, +the world, the cosmos, God. + +While the mystic attempts to embody the inconceivable Deity in his soul, +the worshipper of the Madonna, like the artist, imaginatively creates a +being which he sets up for contemplation at the greatest possible +distance. The mystic is blind, as it were; he is yearning personified, +and he would force God into his soul. The metaphysical lover needs a +plastic figure which, in the extremest case, may represent the whole +world to him, and this figure must be a woman. It is a historical +accident that this woman is frequently connected with a woman of +ecclesiastical tradition, an accident strengthened by insufficient +creative power on the part of the lover, or lack of courage and +self-confidence. He is grateful for the support given to him by +tradition. The greatest metaphysical lovers, Dante, Goethe and +Michelangelo, freely created the objects of their love; the Protestant +Goethe--whom some people even accuse of paganism--clung more closely +than either of the others to the Mary of Catholicism (in the final scene +of _Faust_). The worship of the Madonna is the love of great solitary +souls, and--as is proved by Goethe--of the great souls in the hours of +their last solitude. + +While there was only unindividualised sexual instinct, the chastity of +woman was of no account; we have seen that neither the Eastern nations +nor the Greeks attached any value to it. The woman who had best +fulfilled her vocation as a mother, was the woman most highly respected. +In the East, as well as with Jews and Romans, a woman could be divorced +by her husband for sterility. The only women who were, to some extent, +appreciated for their own sakes, were the Greek hetaerae. But when +asceticism became a moral value, chastity, too, was regarded as a +virtue, and personal love between two individuals invested it with a +profound significance. Henceforth woman should no longer be regarded as +the vehicle for the gratification of male sensuality; it should be her +mission to lead the lover to spiritual perfection. The fusion of the +older ideal of womanhood, the mother (acknowledged and sanctioned by +religion in the mother of the Saviour), with the newer ideal, the +Virgin, created the ideal of the late Middle Ages: the virgin with the +Child. Here the natural vocation of woman and the fantastic mission laid +upon her by man were united in a paradoxical higher intuition, and it +is superfluous to point out that the most irreligious minds of the +Renascence, as well as those of all later eras, have to this day +worshipped this ideal, and never wearied of representing it under new +forms. + +But the worship of the Virginal Mother contains another element, an +element of which man in his contact with woman is deeply conscious: the +element of mystery. To a man a young girl, untouched by the faintest +breath of sensuality, has a quality of strangeness and mysteriousness +(this is probably a result of European sentiment), and at all times the +woman who has become a mother has been regarded with a slight feeling of +superstitious awe. In the Virginal Mother these two vaguely reverential +feelings are blended; she is a strange and awe-inspiring being, and man, +divining a mystery, bows down before her. + +Otto Weininger was the first to give us a psychology of the cult of the +Madonna, and he did it in a manner which proved his entire comprehension +of this peculiar sentimental disposition. He realised and pointed out +the contrast between sexuality and eroticism (his terms for sexual +impulse and love), but in accordance with his extreme mental disposition +he left these two principles in irreconcilable conflict, while I regard +their antithesis merely in the light of a transient phase which will be +followed by a reconciling synthesis. Weininger is, I believe, in +conflict with spiritual reality when (guided by ethical, not +psychological considerations) he proposes the theory that a man endows +the beloved woman with all the lofty values he desires for himself. "He +projects his ideal of an absolutely perfect being on another human +being, and this and nothing else is the meaning of his love." "To bestow +all the qualities one would like to possess, but never can quite +possess, on another individual, to make it the representative of all +values, that is to love." It is a commonplace experience that genuine +love will awaken in the soul new and transcendent emotions, compared to +which all previous experience appears petty and insignificant. The waves +of this emotion are able to carry the lover to the infinite, or at least +his emotion will help him to divine the infinite. He sees, unexpectedly, +his inmost soul revealed to him, he has exceeded the limits upon which +he has hitherto looked as a matter of course; the barrier between him +and the universe has fallen, the whole world belongs to him; the egoist +becomes less selfish, the cruel man gentle, the dullard clairvoyant; +every man feels that he has become greater and more human. This is +neither illusion nor projection, nor is it a subtle, psychical +deception--it is sober reality. Weininger's suspicion of a delusion is +nothing but the result of his ascetic solipsism, refusing to accept +another being's help in his striving for perfection, a consequence of +the one-sided, sterile cult of his individual soul, a noble but puerile +pride refusing to be indebted to the world and to his fellow-men, the +fanatical, metaphysical dualism which is so often met with in the second +stage of eroticism, and to which stage he belongs. + +Weininger shrank from the idea that an individual might be made the +means to an end, instead of being an end in itself. In my opinion his +justification for the translation of this formula--framed by Kant for +pure ethics--to empirical psychology, is doubtful. To use an individual +only as a means to an end which is alien to his inmost being, is +certainly immoral. But all social life is based on a mutual relationship +of means and ends; a man is an end in himself at the same time that he +is a means to other individuals and the community. The teacher is a +means as far as his pupils are concerned; the poet is a means in respect +to all who seek in his writings information or recreation. To carry the +stigmatisation of these facts to a logical conclusion, one would have to +call it immoral to accept anything from parents or teachers; one would +have to reject every good influence--which always comes from +outside--and become completely absorbed in the cult of one's own soul. +One would even have to object to being born, and would have to create +one's self out of nothing. It has always been regarded as the splendid +privilege of great men to exert an ennobling influence on others--why, +therefore, should the influence of a beloved woman on her lover be +objectionable? + +Weininger's error in the sphere of eroticism arises from the fact of his +imprisoning love in a formula which is by no means applicable to it. In +love the mutual relationship of means and ends does not exist, the lover +feels that the beloved is always an end in herself in the highest sense; +he would find it impossible inwardly to establish such a relationship +between himself and her; very frequently himself, his well-being and his +life, are of no account to him if he can serve her. Weininger's +assertion that at the consummation of love every woman is merely the +means of gratifying a man's passion, is simply not true. On the +contrary, it is a characteristic of genuine love that the physical +embrace is of no great importance, does not even rise to full +consciousness. The personality of the beloved is everything, physical +sensation nothing. Weininger identifies love with passion and his +argument is easily refutable by the experience of many. In love there is +neither means nor end; if, however, categoric formulas must be used, one +might speak of a reciprocal action. Equally erroneous is his +corresponding assertion that the artist loves a woman spiritually, that +is, in the sense of deifying her, for the purpose of drawing from her +inspiration for his work. If he loves her, then his love is the alpha +and omega of his striving, and if love inspires him to achieve a +masterpiece, the effect of love on him must be considered great and +good, because it is a creative effect. + +The extreme individualistic ideal would lead to an absolutely +unproductive view of life. Asceticism stands condemned because it is +unproductive. I may regard an Indian fakir who has become so godlike +that he can sustain life on six grains of rice a day, and draw breath +once every quarter of an hour--to say nothing of speech or +cleanliness--as a very strange individual; but I see nothing positive or +important in him. The road which leads from the individual to the +universal cannot be the rejection of the world; it must be its +perfection, resulting from productivity of mind, or soul, or deed. He +who on principle refuses to be productive, condemns himself to +annihilation in the higher sense. I admit that he who works at his own +perfection does good work, too; but it is the inexplicable secret of all +truly creative labour--in the highest as well as in the lowest +sense--that it must ultimately affect the world and eternity. The +strongest emotions, the inner illumination of the mystic and the love of +the great erotic, have been conceived in the _heart of hearts_; and have +ultimately grown beyond their creator, from the individual to the +universal. The more intimate and powerful the creative impulse has been, +the more retarded and abundant may, perhaps, be the effect. But the +chain which links the great soul to humanity cannot be broken, the work +will make itself manifest--the work of deed, the work of the mind, the +work of love--I do not say to "the public," but to life, to the world. +The creative personality alone is the father of the objective values of +civilisation. + +The great love which led Dante, Goethe and Wagner to the summits of +humanity is in the highest sense positive and creative. And he who +realises that love is not subject to sexual impulse, who knows it as +something purely personal, foreign and even hostile to the genus, must +admit that it is one of the very highest of values. A contrary ethic is +sterile, Indian, unproductive, not European. I am well aware that +Weininger did not explicitly draw this conclusion; but he rejects +spiritual love because it endows the lover with new capacities, the +capacities of growth and perfection, and he is therefore in the last +resort a representative of philosophic nihilism. + + +_(c) Dante and Goethe_ + +The worship of woman found its climax in Dante. Through the work of his +youth, the _Vita Nuova_ and his masterpiece, _The Divine Comedy_, we can +trace step by step the stages of the road, beginning with a glimpse of a +young girl in Florence, and ending with the incorporation of a woman +into the world-system. We are face to face with an extraordinary process +of evolution. The young girl he had seen a few times, and who died in +her youth, goes on growing and developing in his soul, until, at last, +in him the will to raise woman above time into eternity, the will to +make her a member of the divine system, reaches its full realisation. +What had been begun by the troubadours and fully comprehended by the +poets of the _sweet new style_, reached completion in Dante, and, was +henceforth an eternal value for all humanity. + +We see that the later troubadours were inclined to blend the lady of +their heart with the universal Lady of Heaven; the need of deifying the +loved woman was at the root of many dubious growths, and possibly these +early poets were also to some extent influenced by their dread of the +Inquisition (which never gained much importance in Italy). The new poets +deepened this feeling, stripped it of all externalities, and appeared +before the adored simply as lovers. They did not require the dogmatic +support of the Church, their own feeling was sufficient guarantee. +Dante, moreover, was possessed by a craving for an absolutely perfect +and consistent world-system, and had, besides, the power to build it up +and people it with sublime intelligences. And in this system, the crown +and perfection of the mediaeval-Catholic conception of the universe, he +assigned to the love of his youth a high and permanent place by the side +of the deities. Dante thus raised his individual feeling to a universal +dogma, and enriched the Catholic heaven by his personal love. What for +two hundred years had been a dream and a desire, had become a matter of +faith and truth. Now, and not until now, love and religion were one; the +love of a woman had been included in the system of eternal verities, and +had become identical with the love of immortality. "Love which moves the +sun and all the stars" was acknowledged as a fundamental feeling. The +anchoring of the subjective in the eternal was achieved in this +metaphysical setting: the deification of the beloved; and no greater +gift was ever vouchsafed to man than the creation of metaphysically true +beings and values. All that had been done before had merely prepared the +ground for this great deed: the enshrinement of the beloved in the heart +of the divine secrets. + +The _Vita Nuova_, which is at once a glorified historical record and the +greatest testimony of metaphysical love, emphasises from the outset the +inspiring, purifying influence emanating from the beloved; Beatrice is +"the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtue." "When I saw her +coming towards me and could hope for her salutation, the world held no +enemy for me, yea, I was filled with the fire of brotherly love to such +an extent, that I was ready to forgive anybody who had ever offended me. +And whoever had begged me for a gift, I should have replied: Love! and +my face would have been full of humility." Even before his love had been +translated to the world beyond, he portrayed spiritual love as hardly +any other poet before or after him. The women of Florence ask Dante: +"Why doest thou love this lady, seeing that thou canst not even bear her +presence? Tell us, for the end of such love must be incomprehensible to +men." And he replies: "Ladies, the end and aim of my love is but the +salutation of that lady; therein I find that beatitude which is the goal +of my desire. And now that it has pleased her to deny me her salutation, +my whole happiness is contained in that which can never perish." And the +women: "Tell us, then, wherein lies such happiness?" "In the words that +praise my lady" (that is to say in the emotion which is an end in itself +and in its artistic expression). The lover never exchanged a word with +her; had he done so, attempting to establish a reciprocal relationship, +Beatrice, bereft of his idealising love, would have had to descend from +her pedestal and show herself a girl like all the rest. Not until after +her deification has become an established fact, does Beatrice (in the +beginning of the _Divine Comedy_) remember her lover and come to save +him. In one of his poems Dante says that not every woman could inspire +such a love, but only a woman of peculiar nobility of character. It is +very apparent that Dante, at first, was not sure of himself, and that he +only gradually discovered the new consciousness which was stirring his +soul; with every chapter the beloved recedes to a greater distance and +becomes more sacred to him. + +It is quite in keeping with all this that our knowledge of this girl of +eighteen is very vague and uncertain. Some of Dante's commentators +believe her to have been a figment of his brain, a woman who never +lived, or an allegory of wisdom, virtue, the Church, theology, etc. But +at the death of her father Beatrice again behaves like any other earthly +maiden. There is a grain of truth in every one of these theories, for +Dante was a great scholastic as well as a great poet, and in more +advanced years he felt a need somehow to connect the love of his youth +with the system of the Church; this could be done in an allegorical way +without being inwardly untruthful. + +Vague forces, which the lover himself realises as mysterious, run high +in the _Vita Nuova_ and in the poems; the lover has hallucinations in +sleep and sickness. In the third canzone Dante speaks of the +impossibility of comprehending what gave him a glimpse of the nature of +his mistress. It was a foreboding of new and great things, struggling +slowly and gradually to take shape, for the creation of a world-system, +one of whose supporting pillars was personal love of an individual, was +an unprecedented achievement. "When she speaks a spirit inclines from +heaven." The angels implore God to call this "miracle" into their midst, +but God wills that they shall have patience until the "Hope of the +Blessed" appears. + + Love says of her can there be mortal thing + At once adorned so richly and so pure? + Then looks on her and silently affirms + That heaven designed in her a creature new. + + (_Transl. by_ C. LYELL.) + +Again and again recurs the motif of her beauty before which the world +must fall prostrate. In a sonnet not included in the _Vita Nuova_ he +says: + + In heaven itself that lady had her birth, + I think, and is with us for our behoof; + Blessed are they who meet her on the earth. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +The lover has a foreboding of the fate awaiting him: "I have set my feet +into that phase of life from whence there is no return." He divines the +sorrow to which love has predestined him. But others, too, divining that +this man "expects more, perhaps, of love than others," ask him to +explain to them the essence of love, and he answers them with the famous +sonnet: + + _Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa_ + (Love and the gentle heart are but one thing.) + +The death of Beatrice is accompanied by the same phenomena as was the +death of Christ: the sun lost its brilliance, stars appeared in the +sky, birds fell to the ground, dead, the earth trembled; God visibly +intervened in the course of nature. + + For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead + Such an exceeding glory went up hence, + That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire, + Until a sweet desire + Entered Him for that lovely excellence, + So that He bade her to Himself aspire; + Counting this weary and most evil place + Unworthy of a thing so full of grace. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +In the 29th chapter, which we, to-day, do not readily understand, Dante +established by a system of symbolical numbers a connection between +Beatrice and the Trinity; the deification of the beloved had been +achieved in thought and emotion, religion enriched by a new divinity. +"Love, weeping, has filled my heart with new knowledge," he says, at the +conclusion of the work of his youth. I repeat what I have already said +in another place, and supported by passages from the _Divine Comedy_: It +was never Dante's intention to write fictitious poems in our meaning of +the term, but at every hour of his life he was convinced that he was +proclaiming the pure truth; he knew himself to be the chosen vehicle for +the interpretation of the eternal system of the world. + +At the conclusion of the _Vita Nuova_, Beatrice is a divine being, +devoid of all emotion--enthroned in Heaven; in the _Comedy_ she becomes +her lover's saviour and redeemer, and through him a helper of all +humanity. The love of the youth had found no response in the heart of +the Florentine maiden, but the soul of the glorified woman was inspired +by love of him. She trembles for him, and when Mary's messenger +admonishes her: "Why doest thou not help him who has loved thee so +much?" she sends Virgil to him as a guide and finally herself leads her +redeemed lover to God. Now she responds to his love; she has even wept +for him. This ultimately fulfilled, but always chastely hidden longing +for love in return, gives the woman-worship of Dante a peculiarly noble +charm. At the end of his journey through life he prays to her, who has +again disappeared from his sight, and his last confession is: "Into a +free man thou transform'st a slave." + +Love's greatest miracle has been made manifest in him; it has +transfigured and purified him, and made of the slave of the world and +its desires, a personality--the fundamental motif of love. + +There is a close connection between the metaphysical love of Dante and +Goethe's confession in the last scene of _Faust_, which reveals the +poet's deepest conviction, his final judgment of life. The confessions +of both poets are identical to the smallest detail. The _Divine Comedy_ +represents the journey of humanity through the kingdoms of the world in +a manner unique and representative, applicable alike to all men, in the +sense of the Catholic Middle Ages. The fundamental idea of _Faust_ is +again the desire of man to find the right way through the world. Here +also the journey through life is intended to be typical; it is +undertaken five hundred years later; the scene is laid for the most part +on the surface of the earth, but the ultimate goal of the wayfarer is +Heaven. Hell, instead of being a subterraneous region, is embodied in a +presence, accompanying and tempting man; modern man has no faithful +guide; he must himself seek the way which to the man of the Middle Ages +was clearly indicated in the Bible. The love of his youth (which in the +case of Dante fills a book in itself) is merely an episode at the +beginning of the tragedy--the lover wanders through all the kingdoms of +the world, finally to return home to the beloved. + +The last scene of _Faust_ is an unfolding of metaphysical love into its +inherent multiplicity; its summit is the metaphysical love of woman. All +human striving is determined and crowned by the saving grace of love. +Faust has no longer a specific name; he has dropped everything +subjective, and is briefly styled _a lover_; like Dante, he has become +representative of humanity. The hour of death revives the memory of the +love of his youth, apparently forgotten in the storm and stress of a +crowded life, yet never quite extinguished in the heart of his heart. +Margaret is present and guides him (as Beatrice guided Dante) upward, to +the _Eternal-Feminine_, that is to say, to the metaphysical consummation +of all male yearning for love. "The love from on high" saves Faust as it +has saved Dante. _The blessed boys_ (who, as well as the angels, are +present in both poems) singing: + + Whom ye adore shall ye + See face to face.[2] + +are again referring to the transcendently loving lover. Like Beatrice, +Margaret intercedes for him (intercession for her lover has always been +woman's profoundest prayer) with the Queen of Heaven: + + Incline, oh incline, + All others excelling, + In glory aye dwelling, + Unto my bliss thy glance benign; + The loved one ascending, + His long trouble ending, + Comes back, he is mine! + +These words are more intimate and human than the words of Beatrice, but +fundamentally they mean the same thing. Dante, meeting Beatrice again, +says: + + And o'er my spirit that so long a time + Had from her presence felt no shuddering dread, + Albeit my eyes discovered her not, there moved + A hidden virtue from her, at whose touch + The power of ancient love was strong within me.[3] + +But when he who has said so much beholds her face to face, he is +stricken dumb. + +Beatrice receives Dante from his guide and herself unveils to him the +mysteries of life. Similarly Margaret beseeches the Virgin: + + To guide him, be it given to me + Still dazzles him the new-born day! + +and receives from on high the command which the symbolically burdened +Beatrice knows intuitively: + + Ascend, thine influence feeleth he, + He'll follow on thine upward way. + +As Beatrice approaches, the angels sing: + + Oh! Turn + Thy saintly eyes to this thy faithful one, + Who to behold thee many a wearisome pace + Hath measured. + +And with the fundamental feeling of Dante's _Divine Comedy_ Faust +concludes: + + The ever-womanly + Draws us above. + +The earthly love of his youth is fulfilled in the dream of metaphysical +love, in the dream of a divine woman. The genius creates, at the +conclusion of his life, the fulfilment of all longing. It may sound +paradoxical, but Faust--like Dante and Peer Gynt--unconsciously sought +Margaret in the hurly-burly of the world; not the young girl whom he had +seduced and deserted, but the _Eternal-Feminine_, the purely spiritual +love, which in his youth he divined, but destroyed, bound by the +shackles of desire. To Dante, to whom life and poem were one, as well as +to Goethe-Faust, the memory of first love remained typical of all +genuine, profound feeling; with Dante love and Beatrice are identical. +In the soul of these two men metaphysical love, the longing for the +eternal in woman, which they did not find on earth, gradually awoke to +life. Both place the glorified mistress by the side of another woman, +the Catholic Queen of Heaven. In Dante's, as well as in Goethe's +Paradise two women, a personal one and a universal one, are loved and +adored. The second woman, too, has her exclusive, ecstatic worshipper. +St. Bernard, the _Doctor Marianus_ of Dante, prostrating himself before +her, addresses to her the sublime prayer which begins: + + Oh, Virgin! Mother! Daughter of thy Son! + +and in _Faust_ we meet again the _Doctor Marianus_ burning--as the +representative of the totality of her worshippers--with the "sacred joy +of love" (Dante says + + The Queen of Heaven for whom my soul + Burns with love's rapture) + +and pronouncing the most beautiful prayer to the Madonna which the world +possesses, and which is almost identical with Dante's: + + Virgin, pure from taint of earth, + Mother, we adore thee, + With the Godhead one by birth, + Queen, we bow before thee! + +And, prostrated before her: + + Penitents, her saviour-glance + Gratefully beholding, + To beatitude advance, + Still new pow'rs unfolding! + Thine each better thought shall be, + To thy service given! + Holy Virgin, gracious be, + Mother, Queen of Heaven! + +In the Divine Comedy St. Bernard prays: + + So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great, + That he who grace desireth and comes not + To thee for aidence, fain would have desire + Fly without wings. + +The _Chorus mysticus_ could equally well form the conclusion of the +_Comedy_. The _inadequate_ which to _fulness groweth_, is what the +Provençals already, in their time, realised as _folly_, as a paradox: +the metaphysical love of woman, for ever remaining dream and longing, +always unfulfilled, the eternal-feminine. + +As the _Mater Gloriosa_ appears, Dante exclaims: + + Thenceforward what I saw + Was not for words to speak, nor memory's self + To stand against such outrage on her skill. + +And Goethe: + + In starry wreath is seen + Lofty and tender, + Midmost the heavenly queen, + Known by her splendour. + +Here the "sacred fire of love," metaphysical eroticism, has reached its +absolute climax. The universe is represented by a divine woman, and man, +abandoning himself to her, worships her. Goethe's _Faust_ concludes at +this point, but Dante went further, right into the heart of the eternal +glory of the Deity, there to lose himself. + +I have previously said that the last scene of _Faust_ was the final +unfolding of the manifold blossom of metaphysical eroticism, and I will +proceed to establish my point. Hitherto I have used the term +metaphysical eroticism always in its narrow sense of love of woman. +Henceforth I shall use it in its broader meaning of mystical love in +general, all love that is projected on the transcendental and the +divine. Emotion is the specific domain of humanity, its power, its +essence. And in the profoundest emotion, in love, a connection between +the temporal and the eternal may be divined. Hence the Christian mystery +of mysteries, God giving His Son to the world for love of humanity; God +unable to approach the world other than as a lover--sacrificing Himself +for the sake of love. We cannot conceive the Sublime with any other +principal function than that of love; for love is the deepest and +profoundest emotion of the human heart, and, in accordance with the +first postulate, must therefore be the soul of the universe. On this +point all mystics and all metaphysical ecstatics are agreed; "God is +love" is written in the Gospel of St. John. "Love which moves the sun +and all the stars," stands at the termination of Dante's masterpiece: +and in _Faust_ the _Pater Profundus_ confesses: + + So love, almighty, all-pervading, + Does all things mould, does all sustain. + +He is still wrestling for divine love; he still has to fight against the +temptations of doubt (of thought), + + Oh, God! My troubled thoughts composing, + My needy heart do thou illume! + +But the true enthusiastic lover of the divine, compelled to annihilate +himself so as to become absorbed in God, the lover who no longer knows +the difference between pain and delight, is represented by the _Pater +Ecstaticus_: The condition of rest is foreign to him, ceaselessly moving +up and down, he sings: + + Joy's everlasting fire, + Love's glow of pure desire, + Pang of the seething breast, + Rapture a hallowed guest! + Darts pierce me through and through, + Lances my flesh subdue, + Clubs me to atoms dash, + Lightnings athwart me flash, + That all the worthless may + Pass like a cloud away, + While shineth from afar, + Love's gem, a deathless star! + +These ejaculations completely exhaust the emotional life of the +self-destructive metaphysical erotic--he is conscious of nothing but his +passion of love which eclipses all else. With him the second form of +metaphysical love, the love-death, is reached. Goethe, in creating this +character, must have had in his mind the unique Jacopone da Todi. For +this rapturous love was the keynote of Jacopone's character, his whole +life was one great ecstasy: + + My heart was all to broken, + As prostrate I was lying, + With dear love's fiery token + Swift from the archer flying; + Wounded, with sweet pain soaken, + Peace became war--and dying, + My soul with pain was soaken, + Distraught with throes of love. + + In transports I am dying, + Oh! Love's astounding wonder!-- + For love, his fell spear plying, + Has cleft my heart asunder. + Around the blade are lying + Sharp teeth, my life to sunder, + In rapture I am dying, + Distraught with throes of love. + +And: + + Oh, Love! oh, Love! oh, Jesus, my desire, + Oh, Love! I hold thee clasped in sweet embrace! + Oh, Love! embracing thee, could I expire! + Oh, Love! I'd die to see thee face to face. + Oh, Love! oh, Love! I burn in rapture's fire, + I die, enravished in the soul's embrace. + +The legend has it that the heart of Jacopone broke with the intensity of +love. This would have been a love-death of cosmic grandeur. + +Before Jacopone St. Bernard, in whom all the radiations of metaphysical +eroticism are traceable, was consumed by similar emotions. Some of his +Latin poems very much resemble the poems of his successor: + + Oh, most sweet Jesu, Saviour blest, + My yearning spirit's hope and rest, + To thee mine inmost nature cries, + And seeks thy face with tears and sighs. + + Thou, my heart's joy where'er I rove, + Thou art the perfecting of love; + Thou art my boast--all praise be thine, + Jesu, the world's salvation, mine! + + + Then his embrace, his holy kiss, + The honeycomb were naught to this! + 'Twere bliss fast bound to Christ for aye, + But in these joys is little stay. + + This love with ceaseless ardour burns, + How wondrous sweet no stranger learns; + But tasted once, the enraptured wight, + Is filled with ever new delight. + + Now I behold what most I sought; + Fulfilled at last my longing thought; + Lovesick, my soul to Jesus turns, + And all my heart within me burns. + + (_Transl. by_ T.G. CRIPPEN.) + +We read in his writings: "Blessed and sacred is he to whom it has been +given to experience this in his earthly life; even if he have +experienced it only once, for the space of a fleeting minute. For to +melt away completely, as it were, as if one had ceased to exist, to be +emptied of self, dissolved in holy emotion, has not been given to mortal +life, but is the state of the blessed." + +I shall have to refer to both men in a future chapter, when I shall +examine the degenerate growths of metaphysical eroticism; for the ardour +of their souls was frequently kindled by sexual imaginings; in the case +of emotional mystics it is often difficult to distinguish between +sensual conceptions and the pure love of God (a fact which does not, +however, justify the superficial opinion that all mysticism is diverted +sexuality). + +It is obvious that this love of God is not the original creation of the +lover, as is the deifying love of woman, but the mystic love whose +self-evident object is God or eternity. Jacopone's (and later on +Zinzendorf's) love of Jesus, though projected on a historical +personality, was fundamentally the same thing. The love of God also--and +in this connection I might mention Jacob Boehme, Alphonso da Liguori, +Novalis--is metaphysical eroticism; but I have restricted my subject to +the metaphysical love of woman, and shall not overstep my limits. I will +merely elucidate a little more the last scene of _Faust_. + +_Pater seraphicus_, a title given both to St. Francis and to +Bonaventura--requires but a few words: he, too, praises metaphysical +love, the essence of the supreme spirits. + + Thus the spirits' nature stealing + Through the ether's depths profound; + Love eternal, self-revealing, + Sheds beatitude around. + +But even the _more perfect angels_ cannot free themselves from the +dualism of all things human (body and soul)--an unmistakable confession +of metaphysical dualism: + + Parts them God's love alone, + Their union ending. + +The identity of the last scene of _Faust_, Goethe's masterpiece, and the +conclusion of Dante's _Divine Comedy_, is so obvious that I do not think +any one could deny it. I have pointed out the thought underlying both +works, and could easily advance further proof of their similarity, but I +will keep within the limits of the last scene which contains the +totality of metaphysico-erotic yearning, and I contend that it is very +remarkable that a lifetime after the composition of Margaret, Faust (and +with him Goethe) very old, very wise, and a little cold, having had +love-affairs with demi-goddesses, and having finally renounced the love +of woman, found his mission and his happiness in uninterrupted, +productive activity. He has discovered the final value in work. But the +long-forgotten heaven opens and the love of his youth comes to meet him. +Stripped of everything earthly, a divine being, she still loves him and +shows him the way to salvation, presented under the aspect of the +_Eternal-Feminine_--exactly as in the _Divine Comedy_. There must be a +reason for the uniformity of feeling in the case of the two greatest +subjective poets of Europe (Shakespeare was greater than either, but he +was quite impersonal), for the logical possibility that Goethe imitated +Dante, and borrowed his supreme values from him, cannot be maintained +for a moment. Their mutual characteristic is the longing for +metaphysical love. When these great lovers experienced for the first +time the sensation of love, their hearts were thrown open to the +universe, they had the first powerful experience of eternity, and they +became poets. The first love and the cosmic consciousness of genius were +simultaneously present, they were one in their inmost soul. (With the +philosopher it is a different matter, for to him the love of woman is +not fraught with the same tremendous significance.) This experience of +first love, awakening the consciousness of eternity, remained to them +for all time interwoven with religion and metaphysics--interwoven, that +is to say, with all transcendent longing. And though the aged Faust had +believed it to be buried in the dark night of forgotten things, it was +still alive in his inmost heart, and the dying man's vision of the +Divine took colour and shape from it. + +The source of both great poems was the poet's will to assimilate the +world and recreate it, impregnated with his own soul; the secret motive +powers were the mystic love of eternity and the love of woman which had +outgrown this world and aspired to the next. To Goethe, thirsting to +give a concrete shape to his yearning, God and eternity were too +intangible, too remote and incomprehensible--but the woman he loved with +religio-erotic intensity was familiar to him. The Eternal-Feminine is +thus not fraught with incomprehensibility, but is rather, and this +necessarily, the final conclusion. For this conclusion is a profession +of metaphysical eroticism, that is to say, the _Eternal-Feminine_ in +contradistinction to the _Transitory-Feminine_. Both Dante, the devout +son of the Middle Ages, and Goethe, the champion of modern culture, +demand, in virtue of the inherent right of their genius, the +consummation of their mystic yearning for love in another life, and +achieve the creation of the divine woman. Precisely because Margaret was +nothing but a little provincial, Goethe could sublimate her into a new +being, for the greater the tension between reality and the vision of the +soul, the greater is the task and the more gigantic the creative power +which such a task may develop. It has been said that, in this scene, +Goethe revealed leanings towards Catholicism. I do not pretend to deny +it offhand, but I must insist on these leanings being understood in the +sense of my premises. Goethe took from tradition those elements which +were able to materialise his spiritual life and gave them a new +interpretation. We are justified in believing that he accepted nothing +but what was conformable to his nature; the Madonna represented his +profoundest feeling and, like Dante (I attribute the greatest importance +to this), he created a new deity, moulded in the shape of his first +love, and placed it by the side of the universal Queen of Heaven, the +Madonna of the Catholic Church, transformed by love. + +The emotional life of both poets agrees fundamentally. They differ not +so much in feeling as in thought and in faith. Dante possessed +unshakable faith in the reality of his visions; eternal love in the +shape of Beatrice was awaiting him; his vision was pure, eternal truth. +The vision of Goethe, on the other hand, was poetic longing, tragical, +because the vision of the transcendent came to the modern poet only in +rare hours. Where Dante possessed, Goethe must seek, strive and err. + +The deifying love of woman is, as we have seen, the extreme development +of the second stage, in which sexual impulse and spiritual love are +strictly separated, in which man despises and fights his natural +instinct, or abandons himself to it--which is the same in +principle--while his soul, worshipping love, soars heavenward. This +dualism of feeling corresponds to the persistent dualism of Christianity +and the whole mediaeval period. But as Goethe is frequently looked upon +as a _monist_, my proposition that he was a dualist _in eroticis_ will +possibly be rejected, in spite of the fact that his emotional life is +revealed to us with great lucidity. His first important work, his +_Werther_, which is also one of the most important monuments of +sentimental love, contains the germs of love as we understand it; the +love which is no longer content to look upon sexuality and soul as two +opposed principles, but strives to blend them in the person of the +beloved. I will revert to _Werther_ later on. This third stage, love in +the modern sense, is programmatically established (as it were) in +_Elective Affinities_, but all the rest of the very abundant evidence of +his emotional life exhibits the typically dualistic feeling. Many of his +early poems evidence sexuality pure and simple; in the _Venetian +Epigrams_ and in the _Roman Elegies_ it is even held up as a positive +value. In the third Elegy, for instance, the poet's sensuality is linked +directly to the famous lovers of antiquity, and everything which aspires +beyond it is rejected. In the same way his _West-Eastern Divan_ is +characterised by a gay sensuality with homo-sexual tendencies. + +The sensual quality of Goethe's eroticism was partly spent in his +relationship with Christiane Vulpius. The following passage, which forms +an interesting counterpart to Goethe's famous correspondence with +Charlotte von Stein, is taken from a letter written to Christiane +Vulpius during his absence from home. "The beds everywhere are very +wide, and you would have no reason for complaint, as you sometimes have +at home. Oh, my sweet heart! There is no such happiness on earth as +being together." + +If Christiane represented sensuality, unrelieved by any other feeling, +Frau von Stein represented the most important object of Goethe's craving +for spiritual love. These two liaisons were to some extent +contemporaneous; the _Roman Elegies_ and the famous letters to Charlotte +von Stein were written at the same period. When she reproached him with +his love-affair with Christiane, he replied with consistent dualism: +"And what sort of an affair is it? Whose interests are suffering by it?" +Frau von Stein, his senior by seven years, was thirty-four years old, +and mother of seven children when Goethe first met her. According to +Schiller she "can never have been beautiful," and in a letter to Koerner +the latter says: "They say that their relationship (Goethe's and +Charlotte von Stein's) is absolutely pure and irreproachable." It was a +great mistake ever to regard this relationship as anything but a purely +spiritual one; Goethe never felt any passion for Charlotte; he called +her "his sister," the "guide of his soul"; he told her of his little +love-affairs and was never jealous of her husband. The following are a +few typical passages culled from his letters, arranged chronologically: +"My only love whom I can love without torment!" Then, quite in the +spirit of the _dolce stil nuovo_: "Your soul, in which thousands believe +in order to win happiness," "The purest, truest and most beautiful +relationship which (with the exception of my sister) ever existed +between me and any woman." "The relationship between us is so strange +and sacred, that I strongly felt, on that occasion, that it cannot be +expressed in words, that men cannot realise it." The following passage +written by Goethe when he was thirty, might have been written by +Guinicelli or by Dante: "You appeared to me like the Madonna ascending +into heaven; in vain did the abandoned mourner stretch out his arms, in +vain did his tearful glance plead for a last return--she was absorbed in +the splendour surrounding her, longing only for the crown hovering +above her head." "I long to be purified in triple fire so as to be +worthy of you." He addresses a prayer to her and says: "On my knees I +implore you to complete your work and make a good man of me." "While +writing Tasso, I worshipped you." Charlotte knew intuitively what he +desired of her, and remained silent and passive like the Madonna. Not a +single sensual, or even passionate word, replied to all these +utterances. + +In the course of time the relationship between the lovers became one of +equality; the note of adoration disappeared, and the keynote of his +letters became friendship and familiarity. "Farewell, sweet friend and +beloved, whose love alone makes me happy." In another letter he said +that all the world held no further prize for him, since he had found +everything in her. And just as spiritual love approached more and more +the mean of a familiar friendship, so was his sexuality concentrated on +a single woman, on Christiane, in this connection, too, seeking a mean. +But it is an important point that the fundamental dualistic feeling +remained unchanged. There was no woman in Goethe's life in regard to +whom he arrived at, or even aspired to, the blending of both emotions in +a higher intuition. + +Even before his friendship with Frau von Stein, at the time of his +engagement to Lili Schoenemann, Goethe experienced a spiritual love for +a girl he had never seen. He calls Countess Auguste Stolberg "his +angel," "his only, only maiden," "his golden child," and says: "I have +an intuition that you will save me from great tribulation, and that no +other being on earth could do it." These letters also contain the +significant passage: "Miserable fate which has denied me a happy mean." +And touching the love of his youth, Lotte, Goethe wrote to Kestner: "I +really had no idea that all that was in her, for I always loved her far +too much to observe her." + +The Princess in "Tasso" and "Iphigenia" who delivers Orestes from unrest +and insanity, are modelled on Charlotte. Tasso is unmistakably a +fantastic woman-worshipper, a fact of which Leonore is fully aware: + + Now he exalts her to the starry heavens, + In radiant glory, and before that form + Bows down like angels in the realms above. + Then, stealing after her, through silent fields, + He garlands in his wreath each beauteous flower. + + He loves not us--forgive me what I say-- + His lov'd ideal from the spheres he brings + And does invest it with the name we bear. + He has relinquished passion's fickle sway, + He clings no longer with delusion sweet + To outward form and beauty to atone + For brief excitement by disgust and hate.[4] + +And Tasso says: + + My very knees + Trembled beneath me and my spirit's strength + Was all required to hold myself erect, + And curb the strong desire to throw myself + Prostrate before her. Scarcely could I quell + The giddy rapture. + +The significant avowal addressed by Dante to Beatrice: "Into a free man +thou transform'st a slave," the seal of all great spiritual love, was +repeated by Goethe in his letters to Charlotte, and is again repeated in +Tasso: + + Over my spirit's depths there comes a change; + Relieved from dark perplexity I feel, + Free as a god, and all I owe to you. + +Very interesting is also a remark which Goethe made to Eckermann: "Woman +is a silver vessel in which we men lay golden apples. I did not deduce +my idea of woman from reality, but I was born with it, or I conceived +it--God knows how." These notable words, deliberately pronounced, reveal +Goethe's feeling very clearly; he knows that there is a little +self-deception in his attitude towards woman, but he consciously and +lovingly clings to it. His pronouncements are not contradictions; it is +natural, almost essential, that in the soul of the highly-gifted and +highly-developed representative of a mature civilisation the whole +wealth of human emotions should be revivified. He possesses all +psychical qualities--at least potentially--and one element after the +other regains life and becomes productive. We shall see this with +startling clearness when we come to examine the emotional life of +Richard Wagner. The intimate connection between the individual and the +entire evolutionary process of the race will then become evident. + +It is remarkable that Dante, too, wrote a poem clearly expressive of the +fact that the beloved woman does not actually possess the qualities +ascribed to her, but that she has been endowed with them by the +imagination of her lover. + +I shall discuss the emotional life of only one other poet in detail, and +that one is Michelangelo. For the most part the poets whose emotions +were akin to that of Dante and Goethe were men who created their ideal +woman because reality left them unsatisfied. In passing I will mention +Beethoven, and his touching letter to his "immortal love" ("My angel, my +all, my I!"), whose name, in spite of all the strenuous attempts to +discover it, is to this day not known with any certainty; even if it +should ever be discovered, Beethoven's "immortal love" will yet remain a +figment of his brain, based on a human woman. + +Together with Beethoven, we may notice the other great "old bachelor" +Grillparzer, and his eternal fiancée Kathi Fröhlich, and the critical +Hebbel, who at the time of composing "Genovefa" wrote in his diary: +"All earthly love is merely the road to the heavenly love." + + +Before closing this chapter, I must draw attention to a strange fact in +connection with the psychology of races. All nations endowed with fair +mental gifts and a sympathetic understanding of nature, have in the +period of their youth and anthropomorphistic and animistic thought +worshipped light, and its source, the sun, as the supreme deity, the +giver of joy and abundance. All the benevolent deities of the Arians +were celestial beings, all the malevolent divinities spirits of +darkness: Olympian gods and the demons of the netherworld--Aesir and +Giants. To the naïve mind of the Indo-Germanic races it appeared a +matter of course that the sun, the conqueror of night and winter, the +fertilizing, life-giving deity, should be worshipped as the active male +principle, and represented as a god, while on the other hand the moon +was usually conceived as a female deity. In primitive Christianity +Christ, as the bringer of light, was worshipped under the symbol of the +sun. Thus we naturally find in the old and new Indo-Germanic languages +the designation of the sun--or the sun-god--of the masculine gender. In +the following words our word _sun_ is easily recognisable: + + Savar and svari (the oldest Indo-Germanic tongue). + svar and surya (Sanscrit; savitar--the sungod). + saval (the oldest European language). + savel (Gracco-Italian). + sol (Latin and related languages). + +In the Germanic languages and in the Prussian-Lithuanian both genders +occur. (Gothic sunnan and Old High-German sunno). _Sol_ in the Norse +Edda is a female deity, and the Anglo-Saxon _sol_ is also feminine. The +transition from the male to the female gender was achieved in the +Middle-High-German language of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and +the German language is the only one in which the word _sun_ is +feminine. As the old Teutonic deities of light were male (Baldur and +Sigurd), this change of gender must seem strange. The Germanic tribes at +all times observed natural phenomena with the greatest attention, +borrowed their ethical symbols from nature and used natural objects to +represent their highest values. The change of gender of the supreme +symbol of divinity, the sun, can only be explained by the fact that in +the period of woman-worship the highest value was no longer felt as male +but as female, that secretly a goddess had usurped the place of a god. +Very likely the minnesingers finally fixed the female gender when it had +become problematical, and worshipped the loved woman under the divine +symbol of "Lady Sun." + +The great erotic, Heinrich of Morungen, says in one of his poems that +his lady is radiant "as the sun at break of day." And also: + + My lady shines into the heart + As through the glass the sun does shine; + Thus the beloved lady mine + Is sweet as May, full of delight, + Unclouded sunshine, golden light. + +Mary, who had been called _Maris Stella_, the morning star, gradually +assumed the symbol of the all-conquering sun. Suso, in one of his poems, +still clinging to the older epithet, makes use of a metaphor +corresponding to the breaking of the sun through clouds. "When the +radiant morning star, Mary, broke through the suffering of thy darkened +heart, it was saluted with gladness and with these words: Greeting, +beautiful, rising morning star, from the fathomless depths of all loving +hearts!" But he also calls Mary: "Thou dazzling mirror of the Eternal +Sun!" And his Biography contains the following beautiful passage: "And +his eyes were opened and he fell on his knees, saluting the rising +morning star, the tender queen of the light of heaven; as the little +birds in the summer time salute the day, so he saluted the luminous +bringer of the eternal day, and he spoke his salutation not +mechanically, but with a sweet low singing of his soul." This is pure +and genuine nature-worship mingled with the worship of Mary. + +So much for Suso. In Goethe's _Faust_, Doctor Marianus prays: + + In thy tent of azure blue, + Queen supremely reigning, + Let me now thy secret view, + Vision high obtaining. + +It is obvious that here the Queen of Heaven and the sun are conceived as +one. Eichendorff makes use of the metaphor: + + The sun is smiling languidly + Like to a woman wondrous sweet. + +The typically un-Teutonic modern poet, Alfred Mombert, on the other +hand, conceives the sun as a youth, and contrary to all custom, calls a +poem: _Der_ Sonnengeist (the sun-spirit). + +The great Italians, also, were not unaware of this change of the sex of +the supreme value; at the conclusion of the _Paradise_ there is a +passage (in St. Bernard's prayer) which points to a connection in +Dante's mind between the sun and the Queen of Heaven: + + "The love that moves the sun in heaven!" + + +_(d) Michelangelo._ + +In Michelangelo we meet the spirit of Plato and the plastic genius of +Greece raised to a higher plane and lit by the peculiar glory of +Christianity--the conception of the soul as an absolute value. +Michelangelo was thrilled by a passionate love of beauty; beauty +absolute, eternal and immutable. He felt profoundly the need of +salvation, and he possessed an unprecedented power of spiritual vision. +In the end, added to all these things, came consuming love for a woman, +love raised to the pitch of self-destruction, an adoration which +entitles us to regard him, next to Dante, as the greatest metaphysical +lover of all times. + +At the court of the Medici at Florence, Ficinio had founded a Platonic +Academy, where Plato's works and the writings of Plotinus--his greatest +pupil--were after two thousand years translated and elucidated. Many +read and a few understood, but only in Michelangelo did the spirit of +Platonic Hellenism revive and become productive; the Platonic ideal of a +purely masculine culture, aesthetically and spiritually perfect, +illumined his soul; once again the unconditional cult of beauty and the +love of the perfect male form, which speaks to us from the _Dialogues_, +quickened an imagination, and boyhood and youth were portrayed in a +manner which has never since been equalled. + +Nearly all Michelangelo's youthful male figures--with the exception, +perhaps, of the gigantic David--deviate from the decidedly masculine and +approach the mean, the human in the abstract; thus they seem to us +imbued with a quality of femininity; they even exhibit decidedly female +characteristics. I have in mind first and foremost the youths depicted +on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (the most soulful adolescent +figures in the world), but also Bacchus, St. John, Adonis and the +figures in the background of the Holy Family at Florence. Cupid and +David Apollo (in the Bargello) are almost hermaphroditic, and even the +Adam, and the unfinished Slaves in the Bobili Gardens exhibit female +characteristics. Without going further into detail I would draw +attention to the breasts and thighs, which positively raise a doubt on +the question of sex. (I am referring to the two youths above the +Erythrean Sybil.) Seen from a distance they create the impression of +female figures, while the youth above Jeremiah is a perfect Hellenic +_ephebos_. On the other hand--with the exception of two of his early +Madonnas and, perhaps, Eve--he has not given us one glorified female +figure; all his women are characterised by something careworn and +unlovely; some of his old women--most strikingly the Cumaic Sybil--are +depicted with absolutely masculine features, masculine figures and +gigantic musculature. His ideal was the Hellenic ideal, was a human form +neither man nor woman; all extremes, but also all peculiarities and +everything personal, were, if not completely suppressed, at any rate +pushed into the background. We regard this ideal, which is alien to our +inherent nature, with a feeling akin to contempt, for the modern ideal +is male and female, but it nevertheless was of great moment in the +obliteration of sex and the accentuation of the purely human. The +Platonic (and also Michelangelo's) love of young men was in its essence +pure love of humanity, love of the perfect human body and the perfect +human soul, whose greatest harmony was achieved in the adolescent. +Moreover, the superior mental endowment of the boy made an intelligent +conversation--so highly appreciated by Platonists and neo-Platonists-- +possible, whereas with a girl a man could only jest. + +Civilisations and individuals inclining to erotic male friendships are +endowed with great plastic talent. Artists and poets whose genius lies +in the direction of the plastic arts rather than in music, frequently +have homo-sexual leanings. A musical talent, however, is as a rule +accompanied by the love of woman. I know of no great musician, or great +lyrical poet, inclined to erotic friendships with men. The simple song +suggests the love of woman, the artificial metre, let us say the Greek +rhythm, the love of man. I am, however, merely pointing out this +connection, without drawing any conclusions. + +The poems addressed by Michelangelo to Tommaso dei Cavalieri breathe a +deep longing for friendship and complete surrender, but above all things +for a return of affection; all barriers between the friends must be +thrown down, "for one soul is living in two bodies." + +These poems are calm and well-balanced, and differ greatly from the rest +of his poetry. + + If each the other love, himself foregoing, + With such delight, such savour and so well + That both to one sole end their wills combine. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +Michelangelo painted "Ganymede" for Tommaso, and even at a ripe old age +he addressed poems to Cechino Bracci, who died at the age of seventeen. + +His contempt of woman, without which the spirit of classical Greece, +too, is unthinkable, formed a parallel to his male friendships. + +In the prime of his life the Platonic element was superseded by the +other great element which stirred his soul so profoundly. Exceeding the +perfection of form of antique statuary, his later works throb with a +spiritual and passionate life quite peculiar to him; an inward fire +seems to consume his ardent figures. They are not creatures of this +earth, a breath of eternity has touched them; they are an embodiment of +the Platonic heritage which accounts all earthly things as symbols of +eternal beauty, fertilised and glorified by a deep mourning over human +destiny and a longing for deliverance. And when his years were already +beginning to decline, Vittoria Colonna came into his life, a semblance +and symbol of divine perfection. The love which took possession of him +transformed his whole life and lifted it into religion. In his +tempestuous soul this first love, coming so late in life, far exceeded +human limits; it became adoration and religious ecstasy. Michelangelo, +who could not tolerate in friendship any other relationship than that of +complete self-surrender and equality, threw himself into the very dust +before his love and debased himself almost to self-destruction. + +His book of poems is filled with an unspeakable longing for the +perfection of earthly beauty and for eternity; and his beloved mistress +is the sole symbol of this metaphysical climax. Earthly beauty is but an +imperfect semblance of the divine beauty, the embodiment of which is his +love. We meet all the familiar motives; he is nothing before her; he is +unworthy of existence; he is like the moon receiving her light from the +sun; love has raised him from his base condition and is teaching him the +futility of all he had hitherto valued. + + Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to think + That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven + Could ever be paid by work so frail as mine. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +And of love he says: + + From loftiest stars shoots down a radiance all their own, + Drawing the soul above, + And such, we say, is love. + + (_Transl. by_ HARFORD.) + +His poems, which would proclaim him a great poet if he were not an even +greater sculptor, breathe an emotion unsurpassed in its intensity. They +reveal to us in an almost unique manner the emotional process which +culminated in the deification of the beloved. If we did not know that +Vittoria Colonna was an historical individual, not much younger than +Michelangelo himself, and (if we are to credit her portrait) a very +plain woman with a large masculine nose, we might be tempted to believe +her to be a mythical personage like Beatrice Portinari, or Margaret in +_Faust_. But the conviction that all true perfection was centred only in +her, now faced his art and threw its terrible shadow over it. + +"Michelangelo conceived love in the Platonic sense," wrote his friend +and biographer, Condivi; but this is only a part of the truth. In the +heart of Michelangelo there took place the tremendous reconciliation +between the Greek cult of beauty and the religion of the beyond; he +blended the finest blossom of Hellenism with the profoundest spirit of +Christianity; he sublimated Plato and Dante into a higher intuition; the +_eroico furore_ of his contemporary, Giordano, had found an embodiment. +The two great rays which illuminated his life: the perfect earthly +beauty to which destiny had called him, and the boundless religious +longing, the last fundamental force of his soul, converged in the +glorified woman. Vittoria appeared to him as the solution of the +world-discord, a solution which he had no right to expect, a miracle. +She was the greatest experience of his great life, an experience which +almost broke him. More than once the thought of Vittoria filled him with +sudden dread. In her he had seen God and the world in one. The powerful +effect of this on so self-reliant a character, a man who had been unable +to find much sympathy with patrons and friends, to whom women had meant +nothing, may easily be imagined. All at once he had found a centre, and +more than that--a solution of all the discords of life, of the eternal +dualism of the earthly and the divine. His love was not the love of a +youth stretching out feelers to the world beyond, but the final creed of +a lonely life which had known nothing but beauty and divinity. With the +passion characteristic of him, he threw himself into this new experience +and made it his fate, flinging world and art aside. Before Vittoria he +ceased to be a sculptor and became a worshipper. + +We realise the great difference between this worship and the worship of +Dante. The latter formed the consciousness of eternity, and became a +poet, early in life. He never doubted the profoundest truth, the +metaphysical importance of his love; but in the case of Michelangelo, +the love of an old man was the last event in a life consumed by +restlessness. The adoration of this mysogynist was almost an act of +despair; not a sweet delivery from doubt, but a source of fresh shocks. +It problematised his whole previous existence and nullified the work of +his life. For before this new experience--perfection, met in the +flesh--art broke down. The greatest of sculptors never made an attempt +to imprison the beauty which had appeared to his soul in marble or in +canvas, deeply convinced that such an achievement was beyond the power +of earthly endeavour. + +Before Vittoria Michelangelo became deeply conscious of his inmost self; +she gave direction to his longing and was its symbol; she was the +perfection for which he had always striven--and he despaired of his art. + + Thy beauty it befell in yonder spheres: + A symbol of salvation, bright'ning heaven + Th' Eternal Artist sent it down to earth; + If it diminish, years succeeding years, + My love will lend it but a greater worth. + Age cannot fade the beauty God has given. + +And the conviction that only the idea of eternal beauty has any value, +and that all earthly things are as nothing before it, became stronger +and more tormenting. One instance from many: + + As heat from fire, from loveliness divine + The mind that worships what recalls the sun, + From whence she sprang, can be divided never. + + (_Transl._ by J.A. SYMONDS.) + +In the same way he realised the futility of earthly love compared to +metaphysical love: + + The one love soars, the other downward tends, + The soul lights this while that the senses stir. + +And: + + The highest beauty only I desire. + +It is extraordinary, however, that even this ecstatic adorer vaguely +suspected that he himself might be the creator of the beauty which he +saw in his mistress. In a sonnet he asks Cupid whether her beauty +really exists, or whether it is a delusion of his senses, and he +receives the reply: + + The beauty thou discernest all is hers; + But grows in radiance as it soars on high. + + (J.A. SYMONDS.) + +It is indescribably tragic to watch Michelangelo slowly despairing of +his own genius and art, and becoming more and more dominated by the +thought of the futility of all earthly things and all earthly beauty. +The religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, the _forma +universale_ became his last refuge. After Vittoria's death Michelangelo +said to Condivi: "I have only one regret and that is that I never kissed +Vittoria's brow or lips when she lay dying." More and more he brooded on +sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion. The beloved mistress had +become the sole herald of eternal truths. Melancholy and mourning took +possession of his soul with an iron grip; he could conceive of only one +happiness, death closely following on birth. But the thought of death +again was seized and symbolised with the old artistic passion: + + And cleansed by fire, I shall live for ever. + + And as the flames are soaring to the sky, + I, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven. + + Oh, blissful day! When in a single flash + Time slips away into eternity-- + The sun no longer rides across the skies.... + +Michelangelo was conscious of his near kinship with Dante; he +illustrated a copy of the _Divine Comedy_ which, unfortunately, is lost, +and wrote a poem on Dante in which the following lines occur: + + Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains, + Against his exile, coupled with his good, + I'd gladly change the world's inheritage. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +The paintings in the Sistine Chapel, with their materialised thoughts of +destiny, retribution and eternity, originated in a feeling akin to the +feeling underlying the _Divine Comedy_. Both here and there the creation +of celestial and infernal spirits was the outcome of the infinite +longing of the artistic imagination. Both men could spend the human and +creative passions with which their souls were thrilled only on the +supreme and universal. The eternal destiny of man, fate, sin, the +futility of all earthly things, the relationship of the world to God, +love surpassing all human limits and aspiring to the eternal--these are +the common objects over which they brooded. But while it was given to +Dante to create his picture of the world in harmony with his own soul, +and account it a true representation of the world-system; while his +world was a definite place with a beginning and an end, and his +life-work remained in harmony with his own soul, and the universe, +Michelangelo's lacerated soul could find peace only in the ultimate +truth, which filled his heart, and to which he yearned to give plastic +life, only to be unsatisfied after achieving it. George Simmel, in a +profound work, draws our attention to the infinite melancholy which +overshadows all Michelangelo's figures, because his genius aspired to +express the inexpressible. Even the supremest plastic representation of +the passion and longing for the transcendental which thrilled his soul +did not satisfy him. This tragedy is the tragedy of the metaphysical +erotic overflowing its own specific domain. Dante's faith in the +absolute value of his work and in the truth of the consummation of his +love in eternity--which was the sustaining power of his life--remained +unshaken, but Michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love +forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could +divine, but could not grasp. His faith was no blissful certainty; he +knew no more than the dark aspect of things; the imperfection of even +the sublimest, of his art and his love. + +Shakespeare's genius could breathe life into all things human, and he +found satisfaction in doing so. Michelangelo's creative, plastic power +seemed illimitable; he possessed all the gifts an artist could possibly +have, but from year to year his conviction of the futility of all +earthly things grew to a profounder certainty. He had knocked at the +iron gate of humanity with his hammer and his chisel; they had broken +into fragments and sorrow made him dumb. There is a stage in the life of +every genius when he comes to this gate, when he has to show his +credentials and reveal the inmost kernel of his being. Dante attempted +to grasp the transcendental in one gigantic vision, Goethe timidly +shrank back from it. + +In examining the prophets and youths in the Sistine Chapel, or the +chained men in the Louvre, who seem unable to bear existence, and are +therefore "slaves" of the earth; or in contemplating the half-finished +slaves in the Boboli Gardens, who seem almost to burst the stone in +their wild longing for a higher life; or in reading his last sonnets, we +can conceive a vague idea of the deep melancholy darkening the life of +this man, a gloom which was not the melancholy of the individual, but of +all humanity, unable and unwilling to deceive itself further. Can there +be a greater tragedy than the tragedy of this incomparable artist, +looking back at the work of his lifetime with despair? + + For art and wit and passion fade and vanish, + Countless achievements, ever new and great, + Are naught but dross within the sight of heaven. + +To Vasari he sent a sonnet denouncing the artistic passion which +abandons itself completely to art: + + Now know I well that that fond phantasy + Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall + Of earthly art is vain. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +Faith, is to him "the mercy of mercies," for he has never possessed its +deepest conviction. + +But the passion which burned in him remained unquelled to the last: his +soul is torn between love and the thought of death. + + Flames of love + And chill of death are battling in my heart. + +He longed to break away from love and find peace, and he called on death +for delivery, but in vain: + + Burdened with years and full of sinfulness + With evil customs grown inveterate, + Both deaths I dread that both before me wait, + Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +And later on he thanks love again for being his deliverer, and not +death. + +Michelangelo poured all his heart into these last sonnets. We see his +solitary and heroic age overshadowed by the thought of death. His whole +soul is wrapped in gloom; art is vanity, love is sorrow, the thought of +the futility of all things frames the portrait of his love with a wreath +of black laurel. He ponders on his life, and comes to the conclusion +that + + Among the many years not one was his. + +This man, the supremest creative genius the world has known, accused +himself of having wasted his life. + +No song of praise ever rose to the Deity from Michelangelo's heart, as +it did at least once or twice during his lifetime from the heart of +Beethoven. He never had one hour of true inward peace. He represents the +metaphysical world-feeling which (in addition to love) is the foundation +of the deification of woman, but it has grown into immensity, and has +been lifted to a higher plane; not only love, but all life is felt as +fragmentary and pointing to a world beyond. If at an earlier stage it +was the love of woman which could not find its consummation on earth, it +is now the whole of our earthly life and all our aspirations which can +only attain to their highest meaning and to final truth in a +metaphysical existence. The tragedy of metaphysical love has deepened +into the supreme tragedy of life. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] The quotations from _Faust_ are from the translation of Anna +Swanwick. + +[3] The quotations from the _Divine Comedy_ are from the translation of +Henry Francis Cary. + +[4] The quotations from Tasso are from the translation of Anna Swanwick. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +PERVERSIONS OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM + +_(a) The Brides of Christ_ + + +Hitherto I have confined myself to the analysis of the emotional life of +man, but there are two other points which must be taken into account. +The first is the question of woman's attitude towards the lofty position +assigned to her by man; the second and more important one is the +question as to whether the women of that period exhibit in their +emotional life any traces of a feeling akin to the deification of their +sex? The reply to the first question is simple enough. Naturally the +adoration and worship of their lovers could not have been anything but +pleasant to women. There is a poem by the talented Provençal Countess +Beatrix de Die, which betrays genuine sorrow at the infidelity of her +friend, and at the same time leaves no doubt that she--and probably a +great many others--took the eulogies showered upon them by the +enraptured poets, literally. Once again woman accepts the position +thrust upon her by man, not this time the position of a drudge, but that +of a perfect and godlike being. Countess Beatrix credits herself with +all the qualities with which the imagination of her worshipper had +endowed her, as if they were unquestionable facts. + + Hence all my songs will be with sadness fraught. + My lover fills my soul with bitter woe, + And yet is all the happiness I know. + My grace and favour all avail me naught. + My sparkling wit, my loveliness supreme, + They cannot hold his love and tender thought, + Of all my lofty worth bereft I seem. + +But far more interesting than this psychological misunderstanding on the +part of the much-lauded sex, is the question as to whether the emotional +life of woman matured anything that can be called a worship of man? The +answer to this is a decided "no." At no time in the history of woman do +we find even the smallest indication of a parallel phenomenon; the +profound and tragic dualism of the Middle Ages--one result of which was +the spiritual love of woman--passed her by without touching her. In the +feminine soul conflict apparently results not in tragedy and +productivity, but in morbidness and hysteria. + +It may be argued that the love of Jesus, which inspired both the nuns of +the Middle Ages and those of a later period, represents a type of +man-worship; but in examining all these more or less famous nuns and +ascetics we find, instead of genuine spirituality, a concealed and often +morbid condition, which in some cases degenerated into hysteria. The +dualistic period, the age of metaphysical love, made no impression upon +the female soul. There can be no doubt that the emotional life of woman, +in strict contrast to the emotional life of man, has had no evolution, +and can therefore have no history. It is unadulterated nature and, in +its way, it is perfect. + +In studying the female mystics, we find an imitation of metaphysical +eroticism sufficiently transparent to be easily recognised, even by the +layman, as belonging to the domain of pathology. These ecstatics were +animated not by a pure, but by an impure spirit. Perverted sensualists, +they believed their hearts to be filled with spiritual love. Contrary to +the striving of the greater number of the men, who raised their love +into heaven so as to keep it pure, and made it one with their religious +aspirations, all the figures and symbols of religion were used by these +women as an outlet and a foil to their sexuality. The loving soul +repairing to the nuptial chamber is the transparent veil of desire +half-concealed by religious conceptions. Women have described similar +situations in metaphors which--for sensuous passion--leave nothing to be +desired, even the famous love-potion of Tristan is not wanting. + +The material is abundant, and I have repeatedly touched upon it in +previous chapters. At the period of great mystical enthusiasm (the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries) this morbid love of God was a sinister +attendant phenomenon of true mysticism. Whole convents were seized by +epidemics of hysteria, the women writhed in convulsions, flogged each +other, sang hymns day and night and had hallucinations--for all of which +the love of God, or the temptation of the devil, were made responsible. + +Among the more notable of these pseudo-mystics are Christine Ebner (the +author of a book entitled, _On the Fullness of Mercy_), and Mary of +Oignies, a passionate worshipper of Christ who mutilated herself in her +ecstasies and who, on her deathbed, still sang: "How beautiful art Thou, +oh, my Lord God!" + +A shining exception among the German nuns of that time was Mechthild of +Magdeburg, a woman of rare gifts. She was a genuine mystic, but she, +too, revelled in fervent, sensuous metaphors, and it would be an +interesting task to separate the two elements in her case; but, having +admitted her genuine mysticism in a previous chapter, I will here +restrict myself to a few quotations which show her from her other side. +Her _Dialogue between Love and the Soul_ abounds in passages like the +following: "Tell my beloved that his chamber is prepared, and that I am +sick with love of him." "The closer the embrace, the sweeter the +kisses." "Then He took the soul into His divine arms, and placing His +fatherly hand on her bosom, He gazed into her face and kissed her right +well." Mechthild, too, was ready to die with love. + +Everyone of the most celebrated Brides of Christ belonged to the Latin +race; they were hysterics, and as such have long been claimed by the +psychopathist. + +The love of Jesus professed by Catherine of Siena (1347-1388), a clever +politician, who was in correspondence with the leading statesmen of her +time, found vent in passages like the following: + +"I desire, then, that you withdraw into the open side of the Son of God, +who is a bottle so full of perfume that even the things which are sinful +become fragrant. There the bride reclines on a bed of fire and blood. +There the secret of the heart of the Son of God is revealed and made +manifest. Oh! Thou overflowing cup, refreshing and intoxicating every +loving and yearning heart." "I long to behold the body of my Lord!" And +straightway the bridegroom appeared to her, opened his side and said to +her: "Now drink as much of my blood as thou desirest." + +But the saint who enjoyed the greatest fame--partly on account of her +frequent portrayal by the plastic arts--was doubtless St. Teresa +(Teresia de Jesus), a Spanish nun (1515-1582). During childhood and +early youth she suffered from serious illnesses, and on one occasion was +even believed to be dead. "Before I felt the presence of God," she says +in her biography, "I experienced for some time a very delightful +sensation, a sensation which I believe one is partly able to produce at +will (!), a pleasure which is neither quite sensuous, nor quite +spiritual, but which comes from God." She describes in her "Life" four +stages of prayer, which gradually lead the soul to God: "There is no joy +to be compared with the joy which the Lord giveth to the soul in its +exile. So great is this delight that frequently it seems that the least +thing would make it forsake the body for ever." "When the soul seeks God +in this way," the saint feels with supreme delight her strength ebbing +away and a trance stealing over her until, devoid of breath and all +physical strength she can only move her hand with great pain. The +delights experienced by her are described in great detail and very +sensuous language; hysterical conditions, such as painful convulsions, +and hallucinations, are represented as religious phenomena. "It is +dreadful what one has to suffer from confessors who do not understand +these things," she says in one of her writings with deep regret. + +St. Teresa relates her life with the well-known long-winded +self-complacency of the hysterical subject. She frequently had visions +of Jesus, and again and again she emphasised the beauty of his hands. +"Standing by my side, he said to me: 'I have come to thee, my daughter, +I am here; it is I; show me thy hands.' And it seemed to me that he took +my hands in his, and laid them in his side. 'Behold my wound,' he said, +'thou art not separated from me; bear this brief exile on earth....'" +etc. + +On one occasion she had a vision of an angel whom she describes as +follows: "He was not tall but small, very beautiful, his face so radiant +that he seemed to be one of the highest angels, who are, I believe, all +fire ... in his hand he held a golden spear, at the point of which was a +little flame; he appeared to thrust this spear into my heart again and +again; it penetrated my entrails, and as he drew it out he seemed to +draw them out also, and leave me on fire with a great love of God. The +pain was so intense that I could not but sigh deeply; yet so surpassing +was the sweetness of this pain that it made me wish never to be without +it. It is not physical, but spiritual pain, although the body often +suffers greatly from it. The caressing love between God and the soul is +so sweet that I implore Him of His mercy to let all those experience it +who believe that I am lying." + +The treatise _Thoughts of the Love of God on some Words of the Song of +Songs_ is crowded with purely sensuous passages. In accordance with the +general custom, she interprets this naïvely sensual Semitic poem +allegorically, becomes tremendously excited in meditating on the kiss of +the beloved and discusses the question of what the soul should do to +"satisfy so sweet a bridegroom." + +In the pamphlet _The Fortress of the Soul and its Seven Dwellings_, St. +Teresa describes similar states of mind: "The bridegroom commands the +doors of the dwellings to be closed and also the gates of the fortress +and its surrounding walls. In freeing the soul from the body, he stops +the body's breathing so that, even if the other senses are not quite +deadened, speech is impossible. At other times all sensuous perceptions +disappear simultaneously; body and hands grow rigid and it seems as if +the soul had left the body, which is scarcely breathing. This condition +is of short duration. The rigidity passes away to some extent, the body +slowly regains life, the breath comes and goes, only to die away again +and thus endow the soul with greater freedom. But this deep trance does +not endure long." She continues to describe her ecstasies and is careful +to point out the complete fusion of supreme delight and bodily pain. +Perhaps no hysterical subject has ever described her states of mind so +well. Her avowal (made in a letter to Father Rodrigue Alvarez) of her +complete unconsciousness of her body is quite in harmony with those +states of rapture. She wrote a number of spiritual love-songs which are +said to be conspicuous for their ardour and beauty; probably they have +never been translated from the original Spanish. + +Finally there is the famous Madame Guyon (1648-1717), who--in addition +to many other works--wrote a very detailed autobiography. She lived with +her husband, whom she treated with coldness, finding her sole joy in her +spiritual intercourse with God. "I desire only the divine love which +thrills the soul with inexpressible bliss, the love which seems to melt +my whole being." God burns her with His fire and still trembling with +delight, she says to Him: "Oh, Lord! The greatest libertine, if Thou +didst make him experience Thy love as Thou didst make me experience it, +would forswear carnal pleasure and strive only after Thy divine love." +"I was like a person intoxicated with wine or love, unable to think of +anything but my passion," etc. The fact that she sought in this love the +pleasure of the senses is very apparent. + +We are not concerned here with the problem of how far these women may be +regarded as pathological cases; all of them were filled with a vague +feminine desire for self-surrender, which they projected on a celestial +being, either because they did not come into contact with a suitable +terrestrial object, or because the impulse was abnormal from the +beginning. But their spiritual love never rose above empty +sentimentality and hysterical rapture. All of them, and some of them +were highly gifted, were thrilled with the love of Jesus, they had +visions of the "sweet wounds of the Saviour," and so on; but their +emotion did not kindle the smallest spark of creative power. The Queen +of Heaven, on the other hand, was a free creation of spiritually loving +poets and monks. + +The women imitated metaphysical love and distorted it; sexual impulse, +arrogantly attempting to reach beyond the earth, reigned in the place of +spiritual, deifying love. + +I have included these phenomena not for their own sakes, but to indicate +my boundary-line, for very frequently these women are cited as genuine +mystics. Even Schopenhauer mentions these "saints" in one breath with +German mystics and Indian philosophers; he calls Madame Guyon "a great +and beautiful soul whose memory I venerate." And yet there can be no +doubt that it is not the fictitious object of love which is conclusive, +but the emotion of the lover: the sensualist can approach God and the +Virgin with inflamed senses, but to the lover every woman is divine. + +The result of this chapter is as far as our investigation is concerned, +negative. The deifying love of man has no parallel phenomenon in the +emotional life of woman. + + +(_b_) SEXUAL MYSTICS. + +Sexual mysticism is a contradiction in itself, because true mysticism +has nothing whatever to do with sexuality. But frequently suppressed +sexuality, secretly luxuriating, takes possession of the whole soul, and +a religious construction is put on the results. The sexually excited +subject attributes religious motives to his ecstasy. I have no +hesitation in asserting that the majority of these ecstasies--especially +in the case of women--are rooted in sexuality, and that this so-called +mysticism is nothing but a deviation or wrong interpretation of the +sexual impulse. The same thing applies to the flagellants of the +declining Middle Ages, and some Protestant sects of modernity. The +raptures of St. Teresa and Madame Guyon, also, belong to this category, +however much the fact may be concealed by pseudo-religious conceptions. +I have no doubt that Eastern mysticism, too, grew up on a sexual +foundation, but (as I have done all along) I will limit my subject to +the civilisation of Europe. + +This counterfeit mysticism, fed from dubious sources and calling itself +love of God, taints the pure intuitions of some of the genuine mystics +and metaphysical erotics; they were not always able to steer clear of +spurious outgrowths. (Here, too, the psychological naïveté of mediaeval +times must to some extent be held responsible.) Conspicuous amongst +these is St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who in his _Sermones in Canticum_ +took the "Song of Songs" as a base for mystically-sexual imaginings. + +There is nothing really new in this direction. But I will cite a few +stanzas written by St. Bernard which might equally well have come from +one of the amorous nuns: + + TO THE SIDE-WOUND OF CHRIST. + + Lord, with my mouth I touch and worship Thee, + With all the strength I have I cling to Thee, + With all my love I plunge my heart in Thee, + My very life blood would I draw from Thee, + Oh, Jesus! Jesus! Draw me unto Thee! + + How sweet Thy savour is! Who tastes of Thee, + Oh, Jesus Christ, can relish naught but Thee! + Who tastes Thy living sweetness lives by Thee; + All else is void; the soul must die for Thee, + So faints my heart--so would I die for Thee! + + (_Transl. by_ EMILY MARY SHAPCOTE.) + +The greatest religious poet of all times after St. Bernard was Jacopone +da Todi, who also, though rarely, revelled in fervid utterances. The +Latin hymn, _Stabat Mater Speciosa_, ascribed to him, is spurious. I +quote a translation taken from the Rosary of the B.V.M. + + Other Virgins far transcending, + Virgin, be not thou unbending, + To thy humble suppliant's suit. + + Grant me then, to thee united, + By the love of Christ excited, + Here to sing my jubilee. + +But he is undoubtedly the author of the following stanzas: + + Soaring upwards love-enkindled, + Does the soul rejoice, afire + In her glad triumphant flight. + Earthly cares to naught have dwindled, + Love's sweet footfall's drawing nigh her + To espouse his heart's delight. + All transformed and naked quite, + Laughing low, with joy imbued, + Pure, and like a snake renewed, + Love divine will ever tend her. + +But poems like the following undoubtedly originated in a truly religious +and pure sentiment: + + Enwrapt in love thine arms Him fast enfolding, + So closely clasp Him that they loose Him never; + And in thy heart His sacred image holding, + Far from the path of sin thou'lt journey ever. + His death in twain shall blast thy callous heart + As once the solid rock He rent apart. + +The most distinguished among the fervid lovers of God of later times +were the saints Jean de la Croix, Alfonso da Liguori, and François de +Sales. The _Tract of the Love of God_, written by François de Sales, +surpasses everything ever achieved in this direction. + +I will not dilate further on this barren aspect of emotionalism so +easily traceable through the later centuries in many a Catholic and +Protestant sentimentalist, but will conclude this chapter with a brief +discussion of Novalis. If I mention this poet in this connexion it is +not because I desire to depreciate his genius, but because, possessing +as he did, in a rare degree, depth of feeling and power of expression, +he is an important witness of an unusual type. True, here and there his +poems are reminiscent of Jacopone, but he is not sufficiently ingenuous, +and is altogether too morbid to be classed with that ardent fanatic. He +shares with Jacopone and other poets the yearning to grasp +transcendental things with the senses, to approach the Deity with a love +which cannot be called anything but sensuous. Novalis' _Hymns to the +Night_ are the most magnificent example of this perfect interpenetration +of sensuous and transcendental love, and at the same time represent a +complete fusion of the love he bore to his fiancée, who died young, and +the worship of Mary. Night has opened _infinite eyes_ in us, and we +behold the secret of love unfolding itself in the heart of this poet, at +once unique and pathetic, lofty and morbid. The whole universe he +conceives as a female being for whose embrace he is longing. It is a new +emotion: neither the chaste worship of the Madonna, nor the +sexually-mystic striving to embrace with the soul. The night gives birth +to a foreboding which excites and soothes all vague desires. The lover +thus soliloquises of the night: + + In infinite space. + Thou'dst dissolve, + If it held thee not, + If it bound thee not, + And thrilled thee, + That afire + Thou begettest the world. + Verily before thou art I was, + With my sex + The mother sent me + To live in thy world, + And to hallow it + With love. + +Here the ancient, mystical longing to become one with God is conceived +under the symbol of the night. (A symbol which we shall meet again, +magnified, in Wagner's _Tristan_.) + + Lo! Love has burst its prison. + No parting now shall be, + And life's full tide has risen + Like to a boundless sea. + One night of love supernal, + Only one golden song, + And the face of the Eternal + To light our path along. + +In addition, Novalis was a perfect woman-worshipper. He loved the Middle +Ages and Catholicism. "The reformation killed Christianity; henceforth +Christianity has ceased to exist." "Catholicism preached nothing but +love for the holy, beautiful Lady of Christianity, who, endowed with +divine virtue, was able to deliver all loyal hearts from the most +terrible dangers." He wrote hymns to Mary in the style of the pietists, +emphasising more especially the principle of motherliness: + + Oh, Mary! At thy altar + A thousand hearts lie prone, + In this drear life of shadows + They yearn for thee alone. + All hoping to recover + From life's distress and smart, + If thou, oh holy Mother, + Wilt take them to thy heart. + +He idolised his fiancée, who died young. "Her memory shall be my better +self, a sacred image in my heart before which a sanctuary lamp is ever +burning, and which will save me from the temptations of the Evil One." +And through the mouth of Heinrich of Ofterdingen he proclaims: "My +beloved is the abbreviation of the universe; the universe is the +elongation of my beloved." "Heaven has given you to me to worship. I +adore you, you are a saint, you are divine glory, you are eternal life!" + +This sentimental worship of woman, combined with an all-transcending +insatiable sensuousness, produced the peculiar sexually-mystic +world-feeling which is so characteristic of him. Night deeply moves his +soul, longing, the memory of the beloved woman, adoration for the +Virgin, his fantastic conception of an incarnated universe are fused +into one great emotion: + + Praise to the Queen of the World! + The lofty herald + Of the sacred world. + The patroness + Of rapturous love! + Thou art coming, beloved-- + Night has descended-- + My soul is ravished-- + Over is this earthly journey + And thou art mine again. + I gaze into thy dark, deep eyes, + And see naught but love and happiness. + We sink down on the altar of the night, + The soft couch-- + The veil falls, + And kindled by the rapturous embrace, + Glows the pure fire + Of the sweet sacrifice. + +The climax and unique example of sensuousness, unsurpassed for its +symbols of the physical embrace, is the hymn: "Few know the Secret of +Love." It is too long to give in full. The following are a few stanzas: + + Would that the ocean + Blushed! + And in fragrant flesh + Melted the rock! + Infinite is the sweet repast, + Never satisfied is love; + Nor close, nor fast enough + Can it hold the beloved. + By ever more tender lips + Transformed, the past ecstasy + Grows closer, more intimate. + Rapturous love + Thrills the soul; + Hungrier and thirstier + Grows the heart. + And thus the transports of love + Endure for ever. + +Here the remotest limit has been reached--sensuousness seems to flow +into eternity, voluptuousness would shatter the world to pieces and +create a new relationship of things. Before this poem all ecstasies of +sensuousness masquerading as cosmic emotion are dull and timid. The +transcendent symbols of Catholicism are used to guide the insatiable +sensuous imagination to metaphysics. "Who can say that he understands +the nature of blood?" Novalis may ask this question. It is truly blood, +human blood, longing to gush forth and pulsate through the body of the +universe. + + In time to come all will be body + One body; + In celestial blood, + Float the enraptured twain. + +The human blood has become _celestial blood_; the voluptuousness of man, +the voluptuousness of the world, and because the whole world is one +body, it needs no duality; sexuality which has become a cosmic law rules +over humanity, God, Christ and the universe. This hymn is the +immortalisation of voluptuousness. If the love-death is the +immortalisation of love unable to find satisfaction on earth, so its +counterpart, cosmic sensuousness is, in the last sense, orientalism. +Only a genius could invent a new, symbolic language to express feelings +so alien to the European. Earthly sensuality did not satisfy Novalis, +voluptuousness detached from man, voluptuousness in itself, was his +dream and his religion--the supremest creation ever achieved by +sexuality intensified into a cosmic emotion. + +I think that I have now made clear the fact that the emotional life of +man is rooted in two elements, completely distinct from the beginning: +the sexual impulse and personal love. It is in studying the love of the +transcendental, that culminating point of so many feelings springing +from various sources, that the inherent contrast between the two +fundamental principles becomes most apparent; and that we realise why +they have always been intermingled both in theory and in reality. + +We have last examined the attempt of sexuality to possess itself of the +whole universe; we will now turn our attention to the true union of both +erotic elements. This union occurred at the time when Goethe and Novalis +were bringing spiritual love and cosmic sensuousness to their highest +summit. + + + + +THE THIRD STAGE + +(The Unity of Sexual Impulse and Love) + +CHAPTER I. + +THE LONGING FOR THE SYNTHESIS. + + +Humanity inherited the pairing-instinct from the animal-world; but as +differentiation progressed, this instinct tended to restrict itself to a +few individuals--sometimes even to a single representative only--of the +other sex. In the beginning of the twelfth century a new and +unprecedented emotion--spiritual love of man for woman based on +personality--made its appearance, and until modern times the two +fundamental erotic principles existed side by side without inner +relationship. Sexuality with its various manifestations has existed from +the beginning; the ultimate object of sexual intercourse is pleasure; +but here and there, and parallel with sexual pleasure, there have been, +in varying degrees of intensity, instances of spiritual love. In the +second half of the eighteenth century there appeared--timidly at first, +but gradually gaining in strength and determination--a tendency to find +the sole course of every erotic emotion in the personality of the +beloved, a longing no longer to dissociate sexual impulse and spiritual +love, but to blend them in a harmonious whole. Personality should knit +body and soul together in a higher synthesis. The first signs of this +longing became apparent in the period of the French revolution; (we find +traces of it in the works of Rousseau and in Goethe's _Werther_); it was +developed by the romanticists and represents the typical form of modern +love with all its incompleteness and inexhausted possibilities. The +achievement of this eagerly desired unity, which would be synonymous +with the victory of personality over the limitations of body and soul, +is the great problem of modern time in the domain of eroticism. The +characteristic of this third stage of eroticism is the complete triumph +of love over pleasure, the neutralisation of the sexual and the +generative by the spiritual and the personal. The physical and spiritual +unity of the lovers has become so much supreme erotic reality, that the +line of demarcation between soul and senses is completely obliterated. +In extreme cases--which are not at all rare--the bodily union is not +realised as anything distinct, specifically pleasurable; it does not +occupy a prominent position in the complex of love; sensuous pleasure, +the universal inheritance from the animal world, has been vanquished by +personality, the supreme treasure of man. The characteristic of the +first stage was the unquestioned sway of one of the elements of erotic +life, sensual gratification (this stage has, of course, never ceased to +exist), as well as the aesthetic pleasure in the beauty of the human +form. The second stage gave prominence to all those spiritual qualities +which were most appreciated, virtue, purity, kindness, wisdom, etc., +because love rouses and embraces everything in the human soul which is +perfect. In the third stage, sensuous pleasure and spiritual love no +longer exist as separate elements; the personality of the beloved in its +individuality is the only essential, regardless as to whether she be the +bringer of weal or woe, whether she be good or evil, beautiful or plain, +wise or foolish. Personality has--in principle--become the sole, supreme +source of eroticism. In this stage there is no tyranny of man over +woman--as in the sexual stage--no submission of man to woman--as in the +stage of woman-worship; it is the stage of the complete equality of the +sexes, a mutual giving and taking. If sexuality is infinite as matter, +spiritual love eternal as the metaphysical ideal, the synthesis is human +and personal. + +Before the eighteenth century, this new erotic union did not exist as a +phenomenon of civilisation, but occasionally we find it anticipated or +vaguely alluded to. Some of the early German minnesingers (such as +Dietmar von Aist and Kürnberg) sometimes betray, especially when +speaking through the medium of a woman, sentiments prophetic of our +modern sentimental ballads. The following verses by Albrecht of +Johansdorf, express the reciprocity characteristic of modern love: + + When two hearts are so united + That their love can never wane, + Then I ween no man should blight it, + Death alone should part the twain. + +Even more modern in sentiment are the following stanzas: + + This is love's measure: + Two hearts and one pleasure, + Two loves one love, nor more nor less, + And both right full of happiness. + In woe one woe, + And neither from the other go. + +Though Walter von der Vogelweide adopted the contemporaneous conception +of love as the source of everything good and noble ("Tell me what is +Love?") he never quite accepted it: + + Love is the ecstasy of two fond hearts, + If both share equally, then love is there. + +More ancient evidence even is the definition of marriage by the +scholastic Hugo of St. Victor, who had leanings towards mysticism: +"Marriage is the friendship between man and woman," he says. + +My knowledge of the subject cannot, of course, be unexceptional, but I +do not believe that personal love of the third stage, that is, the +blending of both erotic elements, was quite definitely expressed before +the second half of the eighteenth century. We may be justified in +maintaining that the tension between sexuality and spiritual love had +been slackening in the course of the centuries, that sexuality was +conceived as less diabolical, and love as less celestial than +heretofore; but the principle had remained unchanged. Only the female +portraits of Leonardo da Vinci are deserving of special mention; the +great artist was possibly the first who artistically divined, if he did +not achieve, the synthesis. The exceptional position always granted to +his women--particularly to his Mona Lisa--must doubtless be ascribed to +this premonition. We may be certain that Leonardo not only as artist, +but as lover also, was ahead of his time; but he must be regarded as an +isolated instance. The three stages apply to the eroticism of man only. +His emotion soared from brutality to divinity, and then gradually became +human; his feeling alone has a history. The force which seized, moulded +and transformed him, had no influence over woman. Compared to man, she +is to-day what she was at the beginning, pure nature. Her lover has +always been everything to her; never merely a means for the +gratification of the senses, nor, on the other hand, a higher being to +whom she looked up and whom she worshipped with a purely spiritual love; +but at all times he possessed her undivided love, unable in its naïve +simplicity to differentiate between body and soul. The higher intuition, +the object of the supreme erotic yearning of man, for the possession of +which he has struggled for centuries, and even to-day does not fully +possess, has always been a matter of course to her. She whose truest +vocation is love, received from nature that which the greatest of men +have striven hard to win and only half succeeded in winning. Man's +profound dualism is alien to her; her greatness--but also her +limitation--lies in the simplicity and infallibility of her instinct, +which has had no evolution and is consequently not liable to produce +atavisms and aberrations. She is hardly conscious of the chasm between +sexual instinct and personal love. Wherever this is not so, we _may_ +find intellectual greatness (as for instance in the case of the Empress +Catherine of Russia), but as a rule we find only morbidness, despondency +and callousness. To the normal woman the phenomena of dualistic +eroticism appear unintelligible, even unwholesome. The unity of love is +a matter of course to her, so that the third stage is practically male +acquiescence to female intuition. + +Even in our time, when so much is said and written about modern woman +and her claims, her feeling is still perfect in itself; compared to the +discord and heterogeneity of man, she represents simplicity and harmony. +Both purely spiritual worship and undifferentiated sexual desire are +exceptions as far as she is concerned and must still be regarded as +abnormal. + +This unbroken, determinative female eroticism may possibly be explained +(as Weininger explains it) by woman's sexuality, which is absolute, and +does not rise above the horizon of distinct consciousness, but +Weininger's dualism is in this direction attempting to value and +standardise something which in its essence is alien to his standard. + +Psycho-physical unity, then, is the basic characteristic of female +eroticism, but the state of affairs in the case of male eroticism is a +very different one. A study of the gradual origin of the erotic elements +will facilitate a better understanding of the relevant phenomena. + +In the case of woman, the primary sexual instinct pervades the whole +being; it has been refined and purified without any great fluctuations +or changes; in the case of man it has always been restricted to certain +regions of his physical and psychical life, and an entirely novel +experience was required before it could win to the final form of +personal love. This prize, in his case, is therefore enhanced by the +fact of being the outcome of a long conflict; the reward of a task still +showing the traces of the struggle and pain of centuries. The truth of +the words "Pleasure is degrading" had been established by experience. + +A few historical instances, illustrating female eroticism, will uphold +my contention. In the remote days of Greek antiquity, we find an example +of undivided wifely love in Alcestis, whose devotion to her husband sent +her to voluntary death in order to lengthen his life. Wifely devotion +accomplished what parental love could not achieve. The _Alcestis_ of +Euripides represents a feeling very familiar to us. Penelope, the +faithful martyr, is a similar instance. + +At the time when spiritual love, accompanied by eccentricities and Latin +treatises, gradually, and amidst heavy conflict, struggled into +existence, the soul of woman was already glowing with the emotion which +we, to-day, realise as love. I have three witnesses to prove this +statement. The _Lais_ of the French poetess Marie de France, based on +Breton and Celtic motifs, are permeated by a sweet sentimentality, very +nearly related to the sentiment of our popular ballads. They tell of +simple feelings, of love and longing and the grief of love. One of her +_lais_ treats the touching story of Lanval and Guinevere, and another an +episode of Tristan and Isolde. + + De Tristan et de la reine, + De leur amour qui tant fut fine, + Dont ils eurent mainte doulour + Puis en moururent en un jour. + +The naïve sentiment of these poems forms a delicious contrast to the +contemporaneous mature and subtile art of Provence, and the entire +erudite armoury of love. + +A great baron declared that only the man who could carry his daughter in +his arms to the summit of a certain mountain--an impossible +feat--should win her hand in marriage. No man possessed strength to +carry her farther than half way. But the knight whom she loved secretly +went out into the world, and after years of searching, discovered a +magic potion able to endow him who quaffed it with enormous strength. +Full of joy he returned home and, his beloved in his arms, began the +laborious ascent. Strong and jubilant, he laughed at the potion. But +after a while, feeling his strength ebbing away, the maiden implored +him: "Drink, I beseech thee, beloved!" "My heart is strong, to drink +were waste of time." And again she pleaded: "Drink now, beloved, thy +strength is diminishing fast." But he, eager to win her only by his own +effort, staggered on and reached the summit, only to sink to the ground +and expire. The maiden, throwing herself on his lifeless body, kissed +his eyes and lips and died with him. + +We recognise in this simple tale the new form of love, mutual devotion, +and the thought of the consummation of this love, the _Love-death_, +which was not definitely realised until six hundred years later. It +originated in the Celtic soul, as the worship of woman originated in the +Romanesque (the Teutonic soul shared in the development of both). It was +a dream of the suppressed Celtic race, spending its whole soul in dreams +and producing visions of such depth and beauty that even we of to-day +cannot read them without being profoundly moved. + +Next there are three love-letters written in Latin by a German woman of +the twelfth century. In very touching words she tells her lover that the +love of him can never be torn out of her heart. "I turn to you whom I +hold for ever enclosed in my inmost heart." She promises and claims +faithfulness until death: "Among thousands my heart has chosen you, you +alone can satisfy my longing, and you will never find my love wanting. I +trust myself to you, all my hope is centred in you. I could say a great +deal more," she concludes, "but there is no need of it." And then +follow the charming German stanzas: + + Thou to me and I to thee, + Knit for all eternity. + In my heart art thou imprisoned, + And I threw away the key. + Nevermore canst thou be free. + +In the third letter she drops the formal Latin and addresses him in +intimate, simple German. But the man's replies are clumsy and strange, +and plainly evidence his uncertainty of himself: "You have put a human +head on a horse's neck, and the beautiful female form ends in an ugly +fish's tail." It looks as if a parting were inevitable. + +But the most touching testimony from the Middle Ages is the famous love +story of Abélard and Héloïse. We probably possess no older document of +the passionate devotion of a woman, differing in nothing from the +sentiment of the present age, than the letters of Héloïse. Abélard +persuaded her to take the veil and repent in a convent the sin of +voluptuousness--but she knows nothing of God--her whole soul is wrapped +up in her lover: "I expect no reward from God, for what I did was not +done for love of Him.... I wanted nothing from you but yourself; I +desired only you, not that which belonged to you; I did not expect +marriage or gifts; I did not seek to gratify my desires and do my will, +but yours, and well you know that I am speaking the truth! The name of +wife may seem sacred and honourable to you, but I prefer to be called +your mistress or even your harlot. The more I degraded myself for your +sake, the more I hoped to find grace in your eyes.... I renounced all +the pleasures of the world to live only for you; I kept nothing for +myself but the desire to belong entirely to you." Abélard's replies are +pious sermons and theological treatises; he thinks of the love of the +past only as _the cursed desires of the flesh_, the snare in which the +devil had caught them, and urges Héloïse to thank God that henceforth +they are safe. "My love which entangled both of us in sin," he says in +one of his letters, "deserves not the name of love, for it was naught +but carnal lust. I sought in you the gratification of my sinful +desires," etc. He blessed the savage crime committed on him because it +saved him for ever from the sin of voluptuousness. What Héloïse loved +and treasured as her sweetest memory, was to him hell and devil's work. +He wrote to her almost as if in mockery: "What splendid interest does +the talent of your wisdom bear to the Lord day after day! How many +spiritual daughters you have borne to Him! What a terrible loss it would +have been if you had abandoned yourself to the lust of the flesh, had +borne, with travail, a few earthly children, while now, with joy, you +bear a great number of daughters for the kingdom of Heaven. You would +have remained a woman like all the rest, but now you are far exalted +even above men." This correspondence plainly reveals the tragedy of the +lacerated man of the Middle Ages, as compared to the never-varying +woman, emerging perfect from the hands of nature. A long and toilsome +road still stretches out before him; she had reached the goal, without a +struggle, at the outset. How strange is this cry of a mediaeval nun: "It +seems as if the world had grown old, as if all men and all living +creatures had lost their freshness, as if love had grown cold not in +many, but in all hearts." + +What was really the final cause of the hostility to sensuousness +displayed by dualistic mediaeval Christianity? Was it not contained in +eroticism itself? + +This hostility was based on the fact that the world knew as yet only +spiritual love and its antithesis, the sexuality which man shares with +the animals; the only salvation, not merely in the Christian sense, but +from the point of view of every lofty conception of civilisation, lay in +the victory over animalism. The contempt of and the struggle against +the lower form of eroticism animating the dualistic period was +absolutely consistent; asceticism represents the highest form of culture +attainable by that period. (The rejection of spiritual love was an +inconsistency on the part of the clergy.) The principle of personality +was the fundamental principle of Christianity; this is clearly expressed +by the fact that Christianity regarded the soul as the supreme value. +And what is the soul but the consciousness of human personality +conceived naïvely as substance? In the light of this higher intuition +sensuousness was bound to appear base and degrading. + +It is therefore historically correct, though essentially an error, to +regard Christianity as the religion of asceticism, for the asceticism of +the Middle Ages was nothing but the immature stage of the principle of +personality. Directly spiritual love was no longer in opposition to +sexuality, directly a synthesis had been effected, Christianity should +have drawn the obvious conclusion from its fundamental principle and +acknowledged love, which united the hostile elements. Protestantism did +so, half-heartedly. Luther's vacillating attitude towards sexuality is +typical of this indecision. At heart he could not justify sexuality; he +regarded it, in the same way as did the Fathers of the Church, as an +evil with which one had to make terms. His sanction of marriage was +nothing but a crooked and ill-founded compromise; and as he remained at +the old dualistic standpoint, it could not have been otherwise. But the +moment the new sensuous-supersensuous form of love had come into +existence, it behoved Christianity, as the religion of personality, to +acknowledge it. + +After this digression I return to the period of the inception of the +third stage of love. If I were writing a history of eroticism, I should +now have to describe the rococo period, a period essentially +rationalistic and devoted to pleasure, a period which believed in +nothing but the obvious and understood love only in the sense of sensual +pleasure. If sensuality had hitherto been evil--at least +theoretically--it now became obscene. Stripped of every grand and cosmic +feature, it degenerated into the principal form of amusement. The +eighteenth century, though instructive and interesting to the student of +eroticism, produced nothing new. Under the undisputed sway of France, a +period of sensuality set in, unparalleled by any other epoch in the +history of the race, except, perhaps, the early oriental epoch; even the +gynecocratic family of remote antiquity was openly revived by the ladies +of Paris. Casanova was the sexual hero of the age (as he is to some +extent the hero of our present impotent epoch). Indefatigable in the +pursuit of woman and successful until old age, he was a well-bred +sexualist without subtlety or depth. The Vicomte de Valmont, the hero of +Choderlos de Laclos' famous and realistic novel _Les Liaisons +Dangereuses_, an absolutely cold and cunning seducer, was its god. They +were seconded by the pleasure-loving Ninon de l'Enclos, who was still +desired at the age of eighty. + +This ultra-refinement was followed by the loathing of civilisation and +love of nature expressed by Rousseau, Werther and Hölderlin; closely +allied to these passions was sentimental love, the direct precursor of +our modern conception of love. Its peculiarity lay in the fact that +although spiritual in its source, it yearned for psycho-physical unity, +and was therefore always slightly discordant. Rousseau was the first +exponent of this romantic nature cult and sentimental love of woman. He +represents the sharp recoil from the frivolity of the _ancien régime_, +and the beginning of the third stage of love. His _Nouvelle Héloïse_ +(1759) was probably the first work in which sentimental love found +expression. In Goethe's _Werther_ (1774), which is a faithful portrayal +of the poet's personal feelings, it was represented more powerfully. +Werther's love was purely spiritual at its inception. "Lotte is sacred +to me. All desire is silent in her presence." But in the end he desires +her with unconquerable passion; a dream undeceives him about the nature +of his feelings, and as he clasps her in a passionate embrace he is +conscious of having reached the summit of his longing. This would seem +the goal of modern love, embodying all its previous stages. It is +interesting to find embodiments of the extreme poles in two incidental +characters; one has been driven mad by his adoring love for a woman and +wanders about the fields in November to gather flowers for his queen; +the other is a young peasant who kills his rival in jealous rage. But +Werther himself, steering a middle-course between these two extremes, +walks straight into modern love, which means death to him. + +Both the _New Héloïse_ and _Werther_ are, sentimentally, efforts to +reach the synthesis _via_ the soul. Friedrich Schlegel, in his famous +_Lucinda_ (1799), tried the opposite way. He has been savagely attacked +for it by one side and lauded to the skies by the other, and when "the +emancipation of the flesh" became the motto of the day, he was glorified +as a martyr. The philosopher and theologian Schleiermacher saw in +_Lucinda_ a delivery from the tyranny of centuries. "Love has become +whole again and of one piece," he exclaims, joyfully calling the poem "a +vision of a future world God knows how distant." "Love shall come again; +a new life shall unite and animate its broken limbs; it shall rule the +hearts and works of men in freedom and gladness, and supersede the +lifeless phantoms of fictitious virtues." Schleiermacher also voiced the +idea of the synthesis: "And why should we be arrested in this struggle +(_i.e._, between love as the flower of sensuousness and the intellectual +mystical component of love), when in all domains we are striving to +bring the ideas, born by the new development of humanity, into harmony +with the result of the work of past ages?" His _Confidential Letters on +Schlegel's Lucinda_ have made the Protestant pastor Schleiermacher the +philosopher of the third stage of eroticism, as the chaplain Andreas was +the theorist of the second. The third stage gained its first footing +amongst the German romanticists. Women were largely instrumental in +achieving its victory. I will not go into detail but will confine myself +to mentioning in passing the names of Jean Paul, Henrietta Herz, +Brentano, Sophy Mereau, Dorothy Vest, Schelling, Friedrich Gentz. W. von +Humboldt records a conversation which he had in the year of the +Revolution with Schiller. The latter unhesitatingly professed his faith +in the unity of love. "It (the blending of love and sensuality) is +always possible and always there." But Humboldt was diffident, unable +fully to grasp the new conception. "I said that it would sever the most +beautiful, most delicate relationships, that it was too heterogeneous to +admit of coherence; but my principal argument was that in the majority +of cases it was out of the question...." + +There is a document from the year 1779 which contains in its entirety +the modern conception of harmonious love, together with its ecstatic +apotheosis, the love-death, a document which puts the later theorising +romanticists and _Lucinda_ completely in the shade. I am referring to +the only one of Gottfried August Bürger's letters to Molly, which has +been preserved. It contains the following passages: "I cannot describe +to you in words how ardently I embrace you in the spirit. There is in me +such a tumult of life that frequently after an outburst my spirit and +soul are left in such weariness that I seem to be on the point of death. +Every brief calm begets more violent storms. Often in the black darkness +of a stormy, rainy midnight, I long to hasten to you, throw myself into +your arms, sink with you into the infinite ocean of delight and--die. Oh +Love! oh Love! what a strange and wonderful power art thou to hold body +and soul in such unbreakable bonds!... I let my imagination roam through +the whole world, yea, through all the heavens and the Heaven of heavens, +and examine every delight and compare it to you, but by the Eternal God! +there is nothing I desire so ardently as to hold you, sweetest and +heavenliest of all women, in my arms. If I could win you by walking +round the earth, naked and barefoot, through thorns and thistles, over +rocks and snow and ice, and, on the point of death, with the last spark +of life, sink into your arms and draw new life and happiness from your +loving bosom, I should consider that I bought you for a trifle." + +To adduce more historical evidence of modern love would serve no +purpose; in the next chapter I shall discuss its metaphysical +consummation, the love-death. But I will briefly point out the not quite +obvious difference between synthetic love and sexuality projected on a +specific individual. In several of the higher animals the sexual +instinct is to some extent individualised, but nevertheless it is no +more than instinct, seeking a suitable mate for its gratification. All +the well-known theories of "sexual attraction," from Schopenhauer to +Weininger, accounting love as nothing but a mutual supplementing of two +individuals for the purpose of the best possible reproduction of the +species, do not apply to love in the modern sense, but to the sexual +impulse; they completely disregard the individual, and are only aware of +the species; they apprehend individualisation as an instrument in the +service of the race. But genuine personal love is not kindled by +instinct; it is not differentiated sexual impulse; it embraces the +psycho-physical unity of the beloved without being conscious of sexual +desire. It shares with the purely spiritual love the eagerness of man to +raise and glorify the beloved woman, without ulterior motive or desire. +This distinction may be called hair-splitting, and I admit that it is +frequently impossible to make it in practice, but it is important in +principle because it goes back to origins and finds in the metaphysical +climax of the third stage, the love-death, its practical anti-generic +proof. But with all this it is of common occurrence that spiritual and +sensual love are at different times projected on one and the same woman. + +Schopenhauer's instinct of philoprogenitiveness has to-day become an +article of faith with the learned and unlearned. Schopenhauer was the +first, probably, to conceive the idea that love was the consciousness of +the unconscious instincts in the service of the species, and had no +other content or purpose than the will of the species to produce the +best possible offspring. In a chapter of his principal work, entitled +_The Metaphysics of Love_, he essayed to promulgate and prove his theory +in detail. "All love, however ethereal it may pretend to be, is rooted +solely in the sexual instinct; it is nothing more nor less than +specialised, strictly speaking individualised, sexual desire." +Schopenhauer's conception of love does not rise above this specialised +impulse. He calmly ignores all phenomena such as those I have described +because they do not fit his theory. With the exception of his cheap +observation that contrasts attract each other (which is the pith of all +his "truths") he does not adduce the smallest evidence for the truth of +his myth of "the genius of the species spreading his wings over the +coming generation." However much the results of breeders may be +applicable to the human species, they have nothing to do with love, and +the believers in the theory of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness are +silent on the subject of the best and most suitable subject for the +purpose; is it the law-abiding citizen? the restless reformer? or the +artist and thinker? Strange to say, the legend of the instinct of +philoprogenitiveness, intuitively conscious of the right way, is to-day +accepted even by scientists who are in sympathy neither with +Schopenhauer's nor with any other metaphysic. It is taken for granted +that love can only serve the purpose of the species; the fact that this +theory is both metaphysically and scientifically unsound is ignored. For +even leaving the genius of the species out of the question, his +intelligent comprehension of the "composition of the next generation" is +nevertheless devoutly believed in. Even Nietzsche, that +arch-individualist, was completely under the spell of this dogma, as is +proved by many of his utterances, for instance, by the well-known +socialistic definition of marriage as "the will of twain to create that +which is higher than its creators," and also by his theory that man is +not an end in himself but a bridge to something else. Nietzsche's +pronouncement that he has not yet found the woman whom he would like to +be the mother of his children, echoes the philosophy of Schopenhauer, +the superstition of the genius of philoprogenitiveness. The intrinsic +worth of love without any ulterior motive, without a view to pleasure or +to offspring, seems to have been unknown to Nietzsche. Schopenhauer's +hero puts the purport of love not in the actual individual, but in a +conception, and annihilates the value of the individual and the unique. +Every great emotion is an end in itself, and whatever we may read into +it of "purposes" and "expediencies," is an invention, and independent of +the emotion itself. The aim of the purely spiritual love of the second +stage was not propagation, and yet it was an emotion whose loftiness +cannot easily be surpassed. With the deification of woman love reached +far beyond the beloved into infinitude, and the phenomenon of the +love-death renders all the supposed generic purpose of love impossible. +But even if we ignored love altogether and admitted the existence of the +sexual instinct only, its mysterious endeavour in the interest of the +species would still remain pure imagination, and a conception far +inferior to that of the winged god of love. The instinct does not +possess a trace of "discretion," takes no interest in the weal and woe +of humanity, but is utterly selfish, seeking its own gratification and +nothing else. + +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 sexual 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 sexual 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 sexual intercourse as such is base and degrading. But because of +the more or less clear consciousness that sexual 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 establishing the equilibrium between love and sensuousness +has not yet been accomplished. What is so often realised as _the sexual +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 sexual; 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 sexual 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 prostitute, for the latter has made of herself +a means for the gratification of male sexuality, 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 sexuality 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, emancipated +sexuality 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 sexualist represents a +past stage of male eroticism which has been largely overcome, but he is +rarely so completely under the spell of sexuality that he cannot highly +develop other parts of his entity. 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 entities. 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 principal 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 friendship 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 friendship, while on the other hand the man who is not erotic +in the true sense of the word, but merely sexual, has generally a poor +idea of woman and a great appreciation of male friendship. But modern +love does not only seek to combine all human relationships; 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 +constitution, 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 principal erotic types. I have +devoted a special chapter to the seeker of love, or the Don Juan; the +woman-worshipper 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 substitution +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 passion. 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 impassable barrier +becomes apparent. The lovers are two beings and not one indivisible +entity. 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 passionately +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 Japan, 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 God 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 "God 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. + +The thought of the love-death, the will that the world should be +governed by love, is the most unconditional postulate of feeling ever +laid down. For the love-death is the definite and irrevocable victory of +emotion; it is ecstasy as a solution of the world-problem and the +world-process. It is human to regard love and death as antitheses; to +consider them far removed from each other; marriage and funeral are the +poles of social life. The ecstasy of the love-death, however, owing to +its all-transcending claim, unites the two poles. The climax of life +shall also be its end. + +It is here, in the voluntary surrender of life in order to attain a +divined unity, and not in the union of begetting and destroying, that +the frequently assumed connection between love and death is to be found. +Voluptuousness and death are not interlinked, as is so frequently +asserted since Novalis (not on the higher plane of eroticism), but +voluptuousness has immolated itself, has been annihilated in the +love-death. The view that begetting and destroying are related +functions, is based on the supposition that love is bound up with +propagation. This is the fateful error of the modern theory of love, a +rationalistic, metaphysical abstraction, which touches no corresponding +chord in the human soul. To base the relationship of love and death on +an association of becoming and declining is a beautiful idea, but +nothing more. Modern synthetic love produces this relationship in its +metaphysical perfection out of itself; it is foreign alike to pure +sexuality and to spiritual love. (Wherever the desire to destroy is +found hand in hand with sensuality, morbid instincts are at play.) + +It frequently occurs that lovers commit suicide together because +external circumstances prevent their union. This is a step corresponding +to suicide from offended vanity or incurable disease; life has become +unbearable to the individual haunted by a fixed idea, and he throws it +away. But this has nothing whatever to do with the love-death; it is a +purely negative act of despair, whereas the love-death is an altogether +positive act, namely, the will to win to a higher (and to the intellect +inconceivable and paradoxical) metaphysical unity. The love-death +aspires to perform a miracle. It has, possibly, never been realised in +its full greatness; the evidence of the common death of Heinrich von +Kleist and Henrietta Vogel must be rejected. During the last days of his +life Kleist was wrapped up in the idea of their common death, and in a +letter to his cousin, Marie von Kleist, he says: "If you could only +realise how death and love strive to beautify these last moments of my +life with heavenly and earthly roses, you would be content to let me +die. I swear to you I am supremely happy." In the same letter he speaks +of "the most voluptuous of deaths." And yet it was no real love-death, +that is to say, death following as a necessary corollary in order that +love may be consummated. Kleist as well as Henrietta had separately +resolved to commit suicide, and when they--almost accidentally--heard of +this mutual intention, they conceived the idea of the new voluptuousness +of a common death. Love did not play a very great part in this. Kleist +further says in the same letter: "Her resolution to die with me drew me, +I cannot tell you with what unspeakable and irresistible power, into her +arms. Do you remember that I asked you more than once to die with me. +But you always said 'No.'" From this and other passages it is clear that +Kleist would have taken his life in any case, and that he only seized +this specific opportunity to plunge into the ecstasy of a common death. + +The thought of the love-death is often present in the hearts of +individuals who are genuinely in love. We read in Schlegel's _Lucinda_: +"There (in a transcendental life) our longings may perhaps be +satisfied." And in Lenau's letters to Sophy the same thought is more +than once apparent. + +The idea reached perfection and immortality in Wagner's "Tristan and +Isolde." It is Wagner's world-famous deed to have lived through and +embodied this complex of emotion for the first, and so far for the last +time; his lovers are in a superlative degree representative of human +love; they typify the climaxes of human emotion. Wagner has immortalised +the metaphysical form of synthetic love; his importance to synthetic +love surpasses Dante's importance to deification. + +Already in the first act the exchange of love-potion and death-draught +is profoundly significant: both Tristan and Isolde seek death because +they are alarmed by the external obstacles to their love. But the +thought of death and love, the foreboding that their love can find rest +only in the ultimate, in finality, has been in their hearts from the +outset. Together they receive new life from love, and together love +leads them, step by step, to death. In the profoundest sense no exchange +of potions has taken place, but the power of the love-potion has made +them conscious of what was latent in their souls, waiting to burst into +life. At the very moment when Isolde proffers Tristan the death-draught, +the conviction flashes into his soul that she is giving him death +through love: "When thy dear hand the goblet raised, I recognised that +death thou gav'st." And in the same way Isolde: "From golden day I +sought to flee, in darkest night draw thee with me, where my heart +divined the end of deceit, where illusion's haunting dream should fade, +to drink eternal love to thee, joined everlastingly, to death I doom'd +thee." + +The second act leads them further and further into the coils of their +love; they are more and more convinced that death alone is left to them, +step by step they discover the secret of the mystical union--and yet +they are still completely imprisoned within the limits of their +personalities and cannot quite understand the miracle: "How to grasp it, +how to grasp it, this great gladness, far from daylight, far from +sadness, far from parting?" For it is the profoundest secret of the +world which here must be guessed by love--the final unity of two souls +and through it unity with all life. Clearer and clearer and more and +more compelling looms the thought of a common death, until it is grasped +and comprehended; the lovers realise that to be completely one they must +surrender their lives, and that by losing life they can lose nothing +essential. "All death can destroy is that which divides us." Ultimately +Tristan pronounces the final decision, and Isolde repeats it word by +word, follows it step by step like a sleep-walker, so as to make it +quite her own. "Thus should we die no more to part, in endless joy, one +soul, one heart, never waking, never haunted by pale fear, in love +undaunted, each to each united aye, dream of love's eternity." The +grand, artistic symbol for this state of consciousness touches +metaphysic. Wagner introduces night as the visible emblem of an +existence in a world--inconceivable by our senses--beyond the grave, in +contrast to the earthly day, to "the day's deceptive glamour." +(Nietzsche later on adopted this symbol "midnight" as the emblem of +everything lofty.) The lovers who in their day-consciousness believed +that they hated each other, now that they are walking towards eternal +night divine that which is beyond the reach of their separated selves, +beyond all illusion and duality. The duality is outwardly expressed by +their different names, separated and united "by the little word _and_." +All at once the knowledge dawns upon them that great love cannot be +consummated in the day of the world, but that it points to a life +beyond. They have discovered the final meaning of life and the +world--the annihilation of individual life and death through +love--analogous to the last wisdom of the mystic: "To become God." "I +myself am the world." Death is the inevitable corollary of supreme love. +But as they tremblingly yearn for and await the inconceivable, earth +once more stretches out her arms to them, the dream of metaphysical +existence melts slowly away. In the orchestration _phantoms of the day, +dreams of morning_, suppress the new, the divined conception. + +At the opening of the third act the motif for horns and violas gradually +ascending and dying away, expresses the unspeakable dreariness and +senselessness of material life, after its profound meaning, the +re-creation of the world by love, has been lost. This feeling of +absolute senselessness dominates the awakening sleeper; Tristan, +interpreting it in the sense of Schopenhauer as the universal +aimlessness of the world and of life, is merely expressing the doom of +his own longing for the supreme: he has divined and has lost the +loftiest value. Wagner intuitively perceives that sin is a component +part of the supreme sublimation of love and personality; Tristan must +curse himself and the beloved woman because love, as the last +consequence of sin, demands the love-death, which can never find +completion; "The terrible draught myself I have brewed it! A curse on +thee, terrible draught! A curse on him who brewed it!" + +In the music at the end of the third act, which is known by the (not +quite relevant) title of "Isolde's Love-death," Wagner, after previously +expressing by Tristan's last words, "Do I near light?" the inadequacy of +the physical senses--attempts to describe the metaphysical condition of +the unity of love, which to our consciousness can only have the negative +characteristics of the unthinkable and intangible--the unconscious. This +he tried to accomplish artistically by making use of the senses, by +trying to convey in terms of sound, light, scent, what he understood by +this complete immersion in the swirling totality of cosmic life--"_in +des Weltatem's wehendem All_." The essence of this condition is that the +duality of the souls, and finally the multiplicity of the world, is +resolved in a higher unity. But as we are concerned with the emotional +life of the lovers and not with vague metaphysical propositions, we may +say that such a death is not a being dead, destroyed, annihilated, +dispersed, but a being transformed, perfected in love. The amazing +phenomenon of this complex of feeling is the fact that real life has +become unbearable, and that another life is created without the least +regard to possibility or truth; it is as if the emotion of the lovers +were endowed with divine, creative power. + +Those who realise the love-death as a necessity of their inmost being, +resemble the great ecstatic whom earthly life can no longer satisfy, +because he is conscious of a force compelling him to enter into a higher +cosmic existence. His inmost experience is the annihilation of the +individual soul in God; he aspires to a direct pouring of the soul into +the divine love. Those who die in love are directly seeking complete +unity with each other, and only indirectly, through this unity, the +divined annihilation in metaphysical being. The love-death is the +erotic, bi-human form of mystic ecstasy, and could not be evolved until +the highest form of love had been developed. + +Metaphysical eroticism is a product of the spirit of Europe, for it is +linked to personality whose will is the immortalisation of love. +Orientalism neither comprehends nor appreciates this emotion, for it +lacks the foundation of the culture of personality. The Semite, the +Indian and the Japanese experience only the rapture of the senses; and +gratification, restlessly revolving round itself between enjoyment and +exhaustion, is condemned to eternal sterility. All religio-sexual orgies +of which history tells us are so many attempts of sensuality to possess +itself of a higher intuition--vain attempts, because casual intercourse +and the annihilation of the individual can never produce new values. +According to Hegel the immanent sense of everything that happens in the +world is the destiny of the individual to grow from slavery into +freedom; but is it not rather the meaning of increased culture that man +should realise himself as an individual (which is by no means a +contradiction to the first proposition)? Metaphysical eroticism is the +completion of personality in love. Simultaneously with the birth of +personality originated the deification of woman; the destruction of the +most highly evolved personality, the last painful consequence of its +blessed-unblessed nature, gives birth to the conception of the +love-death. Like antique torch-bearing genii the two metaphysical forms +of love stand at the head and the feet of self-conscious man. Here and +there erotic emotion, transcending all limitations, becomes the pathway +leading to the ultimate secrets of life: deification creates a +supernatural female being as the erotic representative of everything +divine. This is a productive act, erotic, artistic and religious at the +same time. It produces out of its own fulness new forces for the service +of higher ideals; it creates a new world of emotion with new contents. + +Simultaneously with the projection of the love of woman into eternity +were sown the seeds of those great things on which the higher spiritual +life of to-day is based. Deification demands shape and individuality +beyond the earthly sphere, in eternity. But from one side it is love, +love without response (unless the lover finds response in and through +artistic expression), the eroticism of the solitary man, and it occurs +as such to this day in rare minds. Woman-worship is the natural and the +highest form of love for the man who does not seek his own perfection in +duality--a reciprocal relationship with another being--but solitarily, +and yet not, as the mystic, shapelessly, but rather in a love definitely +projected on another being. The dream of the perfect woman is the only +erotic dream which reality can never disappoint, for it makes no claim +on reality. Doubtless it is to some extent paradoxical that the +inherently social feeling, anchored in duality, should be experienced +and perfected solitarily, that it should waive all claim to response +and reciprocity, to all appearances the most important elements of love. + +The love-death corresponds more completely to the erotic ideal inasmuch +as it is founded on absolute equality in reciprocity. It finds its +climax not in solitude but in the company of the beloved. The idea of +complete abandonment is revolting to the solitarily loving individual; +the lover whose whole soul turns to the beloved cannot understand the +love of the solitary soul; it appears to him unnatural and cold, perhaps +meaningless and crazy. Woman does not know true solitude, the thought of +deification is foreign to her nature; she attains to the supreme only +with and through man; it is easier to her to give herself to her lover +entirely, and even to follow him into death. But in this connection I am +unable to suppress a doubt as to whether the fundamental emotion of the +mystical world-union is altogether present in woman, whether she really +divines behind her lover--eternity. + +While deification is universally creative, while it is fresh as the +spring and full of faith, the love-death with its gloomy pathos demands +the entire individual and destroys everything but itself. It has no +creative power, for there is nothing beyond it. One may justly maintain +that the love-death realises the mystico-ecstatic religious emotion, +while in the deification of woman the religious need to worship finds +satisfaction. Both are combinations of love and religion, both are +metaphysical eroticism, paradoxical and yet logical conclusions of human +emotion. + +The overwhelming longing which is connected at least with the first +stages of a great love, may be interpreted in another, in a social +sense. Love is the intensest and most direct relationship which can +exist between two beings, and the impossibility of realising its final +longing represents the most genuine tragedy of life among men and women +of the social world. The need which impels two beings to each other +lacks, in this union too, the possibility of complete consummation. And +if the most powerful of all social emotions (and as many believe the +root of all others) suffers from an inner duality, to how much greater +an extent must the less intense feelings which unite individuals share +the same lot! Humanity, wherever it is comprehended profoundly and +spiritually, not economically, carries within itself the germ of its +tragical imperfection. Whatever social relationship we may enter, we +find that it has a flaw, and the more genuine and profound the +relationship, the less dictated by utilitarian considerations (which in +this connection correspond to the element of sensuality in eroticism), +the more painfully does this flaw make itself felt,--whether it be in +friendship, in the relationship of master and man, or in free +companionship. Every relationship between individuals is stricken with +the curse of incompleteness--even love cannot escape this fate. Love +enforces in the deification of woman a transcending of earthly life--and +it throws itself into the last embrace of a common death--that is to +say, it shudderingly admits the impossibility of its consummation. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND LOVE + +_The Seeker of Love and The Slave of Love_ + + +It is obvious that even an equilibrium between sexuality and love cannot +always be established, while a genuine and complete unification is very +unusual and may, perhaps, be called utopian. In the previous chapters I +have dealt with the blending of both elements in the highest form of +eroticism; in the following I will attempt to throw light on some of the +principal phenomena resulting from a defective union of sexuality and +love, phenomena which I am convinced have never been correctly +interpreted. I allude to perversions which are not inherently +pathological, although they are as a rule only observed and described in +their pathological form. + +The fundamental form of so-called sadism may be discovered in an erotic +type which I will call the seeker of love. A lover of this type is +characterised by an unappeasable longing for pure, spiritual love; he +passes from woman to woman in the hope of realising this desire, but +owing to his own material disposition he is unable to do so. Time after +time he succumbs to sexual promptings. Thus groping, frequently quite +unconsciously--for a fictitious being, he hates every woman whose fate +it is to rouse his desire, for each one cheats him out of that which he +seeks. A genuine illusionist, he knows nothing of the woman of flesh and +blood, and continues seeking his ideal, only to be again and again +disappointed. He blames every woman he conquers for what is really his +own insufficiency; he despises her or revenges himself on her, punishes +and ill-treats her; we recognise the true Don Juan and his morbid +caricature, the sadist. But even the most brutal representative of this +type may still be psychologically described as "a man who seeks +spiritual love in woman after woman and, finding only sexuality, +revenges himself on her." Quite a number of men harbour sadistic +feelings for only one woman, and that the one to whom they owe their +great disillusionment. Doubtless many men have almost lost the psychical +roots of their perversions and are completely involved in physical acts. +There is nothing remarkable in this fact; it occurs in every sphere of +human life. The vague instinct of revenge on woman animates also, though +perhaps unconsciously, the pathological sadist. + +There is one thing which the seeker of love and the woman-worshipper +have in common: both seek a higher ideal far beyond the woman of +every-day life; but while the worshipper safeguards the purity of his +feeling by putting the greatest possible distance between him and the +object of his worship (and is therefore never disappointed), the seeker +of love, blinded by the illusion that he has at last found the object of +his quest, draws every woman towards him and again and again discovers +that he is nothing but a sensualist. Every fresh conquest destroys his +dream afresh, and he revenges himself, if he is a Don Juan, by despising +and disgracing the unfortunate victim, and if he is a sadist, by +maltreating her. And yet he never entirely loses his illusion; he craves +for complete satisfaction, and as he is incapable of self-knowledge, he +never abandons the hope of meeting the woman he seeks. He differs very +little from the type represented by Sordello, who loved one woman +spiritually, but regarded all the others from the standpoint of sex. It +is the tragedy of Don Juan to revolt from the low erotic sphere which is +his portion, and where he rules supreme, and for ever to aspire to a +realm from which he is shut out. He is convinced that with the help of a +woman he may redeem himself--and sinks deeper and deeper into the slough +of his own sensuality. He becomes malevolent, cruel and callous; the +pleasure whose slave he is repels him: + + From craving to enjoyment thus I reel, + And in enjoyment languish for desire. + +He is insatiable, but not as the primitive hedonist, whose natural +element is pleasure, but because he again and again mistakes pleasure +for love. He knows only "women," and thus he sins against personality +and the love which is the outcome of personality. + +The opinion that Don Juan is no more than a votary of pleasure is not +worthy of criticism; the famous Casanova, for instance, has nothing in +common with him. Casanova was a sensualist without psychical complexity +and without tragedy. His sole endeavour was to wring the utmost measure +of enjoyment out of life. He knew the woman of reality and did not waste +his time in running after phantoms. In his old age he revelled in the +after-taste and settled down to write his memoirs. Don Juan, on the +contrary, has such a loathing for all the women he betrays, that he +hardly remembers them, and certainly has the strongest disinclination to +evoke their memory. Casanova was an entirely unmetaphysical and +unproblematical nature. His philosophy is clearly expressed in the +preface to his Memoirs: "I always regarded the enjoyment of sensual +pleasures as my principal object; I never knew a more important one." +Casanova, who, strange to say, enjoys such high erotic honours, was +merely an ordinary, very successful man of the world, and is of no +importance to the subject in hand. But even the greater and wilder +Vicomte de Valmont (the hero of the famous novel of Choderlos de Laclos) +is in spite of all his art and _esprit_ and perverse principles no +seeker of love and no Don Juan, but a fop and a braggart, seducing women +in order to boast of his success. He is moreover only a representative +of the bored Upper Ten of the _ancien régime_, and not by any means +unique. + +Thoughtful critics contend that Don Juan was an autocrat, a destroyer, a +criminal nature with satanic tendencies, bent on the enslavement of +women, on their social and moral death; that conquest only, not +enjoyment, was his passion. I do not altogether reject this +interpretation, but it fastens too exclusively on the external and the +obvious, and overlooks the essential. What is the reason of his +preposterous procedure? Is he really actuated by the evil desire to +injure the women he woos? Such a motive may occur occasionally (the +Vicomte de Valmont was so constituted), but it cannot be regarded as the +guiding principle of a life--and above everything its pettiness is the +exact reverse of so great and demoniacal a character as Don Juan. Were +he conqueror in the highest sense, then--ascetic and proud--he would be +content with the mere consciousness of victory. But his whole attitude +belies the idea of a conqueror; he is not in the least interested in the +women to whom he makes love. They are as necessary to him as "the air he +breathes," but they are unable to give him what he seeks. At the moment +of disappointment he abandons them in disgust, innocent of any despotic +desires (which would pre-suppose interest). As far as he is concerned, +women exist only for the purpose of quickening something in his soul. +But his soul remains dead; divine love has no part in him, he cannot be +saved and is doomed to eternal damnation. + +But what is the reason why women cannot resist him? Let us first settle +the point as to why women are attracted to men. I will answer this +question briefly, and though my answer may appear dogmatical, it need +not therefore be wrong. Women know very little of man, but there is one +thing they feel with unfailing certainty, and that is whether their sex +is of great or of small significance to him. (I am only alluding to the +general effect of men on women, not to genuine personal love which is +always incommensurable.) The greater the importance a man attaches to +women, the more readily do they respond to his influence. They are +attracted by his erotic will, not by one or the other of his spiritual +or physical qualities. Women cannot resist a man to whom they mean much, +everything. It is as if they were compelled to throw themselves into the +chasm of his vacuity--every fresh victim with the fond hope of filling +it--but all of them perish. And yet, at the moment of their defeat they +are supremely happy, for they experience the full intensity of his +passion and the boundlessness of his longing. The erotic craving of a +man simply means that women are to him the most important thing in life. +Women instinctively yield to that man who most eagerly desires them. The +coarse sensualist, to whom all women are alike, attracts sensual women, +not exactly because they find in him the satisfaction of their craving, +but because they themselves act on him indiscriminately. But a woman +will adapt herself with the greatest ease to the needs of the +differentiated erotic (for instance, she will become really sentimental +to please the man who prefers sentimental women), for she loves to give +herself to the man who most desires her and as he desires her. + +Don Juan, animated by illimitable erotic yearning, is therefore the +undisputed master of the other sex. He has the power of bestowing +absolute happiness, even if only for a brief hour, because in his +boundless love (which is projected on anything but her) a woman receives +the supreme value. Maybe he would be saved if a woman denied herself to +him--maybe he would cease to be a seeker of love and become a +worshipper, for he could not refuse to believe in the woman who +rejected him; but it is his fate that no woman he woos can resist him, +that all throw themselves into his arms without an exception and without +a struggle. + +Thus the seeker of love, too, though in a restricted sense, may be +regarded as a metaphysical erotic, for he loathes sexuality--his +portion--and yearns for a higher form of love. He shares this attitude +with the slave of love, who is also a sensualist and a would-be lover. +The slave of love imitates the attitude of the worshipper, but he +infallibly sinks into the sexual sphere. What the psychopathist since +Kraft-Ebbing designates as masochism, is the pathological degeneration +of this particular emotion, which is very common and appears in various +forms, but does not seem to me to be at all morbid. Certainly it is +morbid when a man allows himself to be insulted, bound and flogged, but +it is fairly normal when his passionate admiration is roused by an +imperious woman, who passes him by like a queen without even noticing +his abject adoration; when he longs to kneel down before her and kiss +her feet, which in reward would spurn him. Quite normal, too, is the +boyish happiness in serving an admired and adored woman (Kraft-Ebbing +calls this pageism) described so beautifully in Dostoievsky's novel, _A +Young Hero_, and fairly common among troubadours and minnesingers. (I +need only mention Ulrich von Lichtenstein.) There are numerous degrees +of this feeling--we frequently come across it in the novels of +Dostoievsky, Jacobsen, Strindberg, D'Annunzio, and others--but the +essence of it is always contained in the fact that the man, although +yearning to worship the beloved woman, cannot maintain himself in the +sphere of spiritual love, and aspires to direct physical contact. His +attitude, which closely imitates purely spiritual love, cannot be other +than sexual. The blending of love and sexuality together with the +incapacity of effecting a real synthesis, the confusion of value and +pleasure is most clearly shown in the masochist--far more clearly than +in the case of the (rare) seeker of love. The outward modes preferred by +the individual are a matter of indifference; for the most part they are +symbolical acts, indicating the lover's inferiority and the loftiness +and power of his mistress. What is really of importance is the spiritual +attitude which induces him to commit these strange acts, and in these we +find the characteristic attitude of the woman-worshipper: that of the +slave before his queen. The slave of love is a sensualist incapable of +approaching woman in a normally manly, instinctive and natural way, but +requiring the pose of the spiritual worshipper. One might be tempted to +believe that he harboured the secret wish to atone for his incapacity of +feeling a pure love by being degraded and ill-treated. Thus from a human +point of view the slave of love is a higher type than the seeker of +love; all his transgressions, the fault of his morbid disposition, come +home to him; he takes the blame of his sin upon his own shoulders, while +the seeker of love revenges himself on his victims for his own +shortcomings. The seeker of love is by nature polygamous, while the +slave of love is, as a rule, monogamous (and consequently has little +success with the opposite sex). Both aspire to a union of sensual and +spiritual eroticism, but in both cases the union is a failure. All the +repulsive and terrible manifestations of these perversions which have +been recorded, can easily be shown to fit my theory. In psychological +research it is merely a question of selecting the great types from the +mass of phenomena and determining them correctly. + +The so-called _fetichist_, too, whose passion is roused by indifferent +objects which belonged, or might belong, to the beloved, or in fact to +any woman, is a variant of the slave of love. The classical +representative of fetichism is the mediaeval knight who carried a +handkerchief, a glove, or any other article of clothing belonging to his +lady, next to his heart, thus believing himself proof against evil +influences. There we see already spiritual love groping for material +objects in order to gain earthly support; not every man is a Dante, not +every man is capable of keeping his soul free from the taint of this +earthly sphere. But even the "plait-cutter," so well known to the reader +of newspapers, the collector of garters, and similar desperadoes, +require a relic, a fetich which they apparently worship. To the same +category belongs the idolatrous cult which some men, especially +artists--but also madmen--practise with female pictures and statues +(more especially with heads). In this case the fundamental feeling of +the love of beauty, which we know as an essential factor of purely +spiritual eroticism, is made to serve sensual purposes. The desired +illusion of spiritual worship is facilitated, and is protected from +self-revelation, owing to the fact that a painted head rouses in the +normal individual no passion, but inspires him with purely spiritual +sentiments. + +I have briefly touched on this subject because my theory of the two +roots of eroticism permits of a new, and in my opinion plausible, +explanation of erotic perversions; one might even go as far as to say +that the existence of perversions follows as a necessary consequence; +that they must exist because it obviously cannot _always_ be possible to +maintain a harmonious balance of sensuality and love. This chapter is +therefore a necessary supplement to the previous ones in which the +perfection of modern love is dealt with. The seeker of love and the +slave of love are phenomena of dualistic eroticism incapable of +attaining to unity. For this reason they neither existed in antiquity, +nor do we find genuine examples of them in the female sex. All female +perversions closely examined are hysteria--that is to say, want of inner +balance--in various forms; a woman's subjection to the will of a man is +in very many instances a natural symptom, and cannot be regarded as +perverse. And thus we again perceive that the eroticism of woman is more +harmonious and natural than that of the eternally groping and eternally +erring man. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE REVENGE OF SEXUALITY + +_The Demoniacal and the Obscene_ + + +In conclusion I will attempt to elucidate a group of phenomena which +play a part, important though often ignored, in the emotional life of +the present day. They are related to the subject under discussion, +inasmuch as they, too, are the result of a lack of harmony between +sensuousness and love. As long as sensuousness is felt and understood as +a natural element, and one which does not under normal circumstances +enter consciousness as a distinct principle, the emotional sphere which +may be designated as demoniacal-sexual and obscene, does not exist. Not +until sensuousness is confronted by a higher principle, a now solely +acknowledged spiritual-divine principle, will natural life, and +particularly normal sexuality, be stigmatised as low and ungodly, even +as demoniacal. In proportion as the conception of God became more +spiritual and divine, the conception of the devil became more horrible; +the higher the soul soared, the deeper sank the body. This philosophy of +pure spirituality was expressed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the +following words: "Oh, soul, stamped with the image of God, adorned with +His semblance, espoused to faith, endowed with His spirit, redeemed by +His blood, the compeer of angels, invested with reason--what hast thou +in common with the flesh, for which thou must suffer so much?... And yet +it is thy dearest companion! Behold, there will come a day when it shall +be a miserable, pallid corpse, food for worms! For however beautifully +it may be adorned, yet it is nothing but flesh!" The man of the later +Middle Ages, and especially the cleric, who was completely dominated by +the contrast of the ascetic and the sexual, feared the devil more than +he loved God, and regarded the sensual temptations which beset his +excited, superstitious and eternally unsatisfied imagination as sent by +the devil. The naïveté of sensuality had passed away for ever; as +goodness was looked upon as divine and supernatural, nature and natural +instincts were condemned. Man was torn asunder. + +But the devil was not only feared, he was also worshipped. A +devil-worship, the details of which have been little studied, existed +from the tenth to the fourteenth century (when it reached its climax), +side by side with the worship of God. The greater the dread of heresy +and witchcraft, the greater became the number of men who, despairing of +salvation, prostrated themselves before the devil, whom they seemed +unable to escape (a single evil thought was sufficient to doom their +souls to eternal damnation), in the hope that he would at least save +their bodies from the stake and vouchsafe them the pleasures of this +world. Satan promised his worshippers unlimited pleasure; he became the +redeemer of those whom the clergy persecuted. It is asserted that his +worship consisted in an obscene parody of the Mass; according to +Michelet, the body of a female worshipper served as the altar on which a +toad was consecrated and partaken of instead of the Host. The adept +solemnly renounced Jesus and did homage to Satan by kissing his image. + +Asceticism and libertinism always go hand in hand. They are convertible +principles rending their victim. _Temptation_ is the fundamental motif +of this condition. The devil was believed to send out his servants to +win new souls; monks were visited by demons in the shape of a voluptuous +woman, the _succubus_; Satan himself, or one of his emissaries, +disguised as a fashionable gentleman, the _incubus_, appeared to the +nuns. Undoubtedly the dreams of over-excited men and women played a very +important part in this connection; many hysterical women felt the +devil's kiss and embrace. All these women were themselves convinced of +the truth of their hallucinations and imaginings, and once the belief in +witchcraft was firmly established (in the thirteenth century) the +obvious atonement for their hysteria was the stake. + +The fear of witches, which existed parallel with the love of the +Madonna, was typical of the declining Middle Ages. The first Christian +centuries knew neither the Lady of Heaven in the later meaning of the +word, nor did they know anything of witches. In the reign of Charlemagne +the penalty for the belief in witchcraft was death. At all times man has +exhibited a tendency to see in woman either a celestial or an infernal +being, and nowhere was this tendency more strongly developed than in the +soul of the mediaeval dualist: he created the beloved and adored Queen +of Heaven, the mediator between God and humanity and, as her counterpart +the witch, the despised and dreaded seducer, a being between man and +devil. Powerless to effect a reconciliation between spiritual love and +sensuous pleasure, he required two distinct female types as +personifications of the two directions of his desire; love and the +pleasure of the senses could have nothing in common, and once the +highest value was realised in the spiritual love of woman, pleasure +could not appear otherwise than degraded, sinful and diabolical. In this +respect, also, woman submitted without a murmur to the dictates of male +will. + +Mary and the devil became more and more the real hostile powers of the +thirteenth century; the classical time of woman-worship was also the +climax of the fear of the devil and witchcraft. The Dominican monks +who, above all other orders, contributed to the spread of the cult of +Mary, proceeded, soon after the establishment of the Inquisition, +against the witches, the enemies of Mary. In the second half of the +thirteenth century the persecution of heresy gradually gave way to the +persecution of witchcraft. + +I will not go into these well-known details, for the psychical position +is clear enough: to the man whose heart is filled with the love of good +and the spiritual love of woman, sensuousness will appear as dangerous +and perilous, and will have at the same time the glamour of the +demoniacally-sexual. It is the diabolical element of dualistic +consciousness in the sphere of eroticism. Many people of the present day +will not be able to understand this feeling, for it pre-supposes a +completely inharmonious emotional life. + +The consciousness of the obscene is allied to the conception of the +demoniacal; it accompanies modern synthetic love as its temptation and +its shadow. In personal love sensuality and soul are no longer +independent, contrasted principles; personality, taking the spiritual as +its foundation, includes the sensuous. In this highest stage all +eroticism not hallowed by mutual affection is felt as unpardonable. The +purely sexual principle continues to exist, but whenever it appears in +its impersonal and brutal crudity as an element hostile to personality, +it creates the consciousness of the obscene. The obscene is, therefore, +the purely sexual, not in its naïve normality, but as a force inimical +to a value, as a rule to the value of personality. The obscene expresses +scorn and hatred for personal love. It is the seduction of the primitive +which is no longer something _earlier_, but something baser (for every +age must gauge all things by its own standard). The aesthetic +principle--in this connection the sense of the beauty of the human +form--so powerful an element in naïve sensuality as well as in every +other form of eroticism, is excluded, because in this particular +condition the beauty of the human body is not objectively realised, but +is looked upon with the eyes of the senses. The moment personality is +acknowledged as the only decisive factor in erotic life, chaotic +impersonal sensuality stands condemned. The obscene is the darker aspect +of modern love, and without modern love it could not exist. Its essence +is negative, is the tendency to caricature and mock the highest form of +love. The photograph of a nude woman is not obscene; but if the face is +hidden, and thus the personal moment intentionally eliminated in favour +of the generic element, it approaches the obscene. This accounts for the +widely felt pleasure in obscene pictures; the beholder is not personally +engaged, he can enjoy these pictures without taking upon his shoulders +any kind of responsibility. Even that minimum of respect which the very +dregs of humanity may claim is not required of him. The picture is +capable of affording pleasure without claiming a grain of human +kindness. Thus it would seem that sensual pleasure is possible without +any sacrifice of the inwardly professed higher eroticism, a sacrifice +which might be a bar to a primitive relationship with a woman of flesh +and blood. Actually, however, it is not possible, for with the surrender +to the base source of enjoyment, the spiritual position is abandoned, +and personally conceived humanity inwardly annihilated. + +It follows from the foregoing that the fascination of the obscene can +only be fully felt by one who has completely acknowledged the principle +of personality in eroticism, and who has also latent within him the +possibility of erotic dualism. The more highly evolved the emotional +life of a man (all these considerations apply only to a man in whom the +possibility of dualism is latent), the more will he realise the purely +sexual, the emphasis of the element of pleasure, as something unseemly +and disagreeable; something which he ought to deny himself, but which +attracts him with the irresistible fascination of the obscene. The man +who surrenders himself naïvely to sensuality does not realise it as +obscene, but the man who, conscious of his higher concept, strives +against it, experiences the reaction of sensuality with the full force +of its perverse seduction. Even if only for a brief space, he +annihilates the higher element and gives himself up to the pleasure of +the base and degraded. + +In this connection we are face to face with the strange but still +logical fact, that a man who has completely attained to the third stage +of love, feels even the purely spiritual love as odious in its +incompleteness. It strikes him as unnatural and forced, a feeling which +must, however, not be confused with the ordinary contempt of spiritual +love. + +Primitively constituted man knows only undifferentiated sexuality. He +enjoys the nude, and sees no difference between a Venus by Titian and an +ordinary photograph of a nude figure; the aesthete, and more especially +the artist, can never understand that a work of art may be sensually +stimulating. That it may be so will always be bluntly denied by an +individual capable of enjoying a beautiful form, but to the uncultivated +mind the picture of the female body will only evoke memories of +pleasure. This feeling, however, is quite distinct from the obscene; it +is neither hostile to the higher spiritual life, nor is it criminal; it +is natural and harmonious. But the same feeling may become obscene if a +man, aware of higher aesthetic values, ignores art and enjoys the +picture merely as a representation of a nude figure. Here, too, the +seduction lies in a demoniacal element, namely in the destruction of the +aesthetic value. The destructive characteristic of the obscene wars +against all higher conceptions; it is the revenge of chaotic sex +deposed by a higher principle, and has the special charm of secret +wrong-doing. + +I might go even further, and maintain that because modern love does not +admit pleasure as its foundation and content, and because the craving +for pleasure is deeply rooted in human nature, love favours to a high +degree the desire to reserve a sphere for pleasure distinct from +personal love. This region is the obscene, and one might prophesy that +it will grow in proportion as the principle of personal love acquires +dominion; for pleasure will always need an undisturbed retreat +untroubled by higher demands. This can only be found in the sphere of +the obscene in which the element of personality is entirely eliminated. + +Modern man is beset by another peculiar temptation. The beauty of woman, +which in the days of the past was regarded as sacred, can be made a +means of pleasure, and thus drawn from the realm of values into the +realm of sensuality. This is a breach with the principle of personal +love, for to the latter the beauty of a woman is so much part and parcel +of the whole personality that it cannot be enjoyed separately, that +indeed it can hardly be noticed as a distinct element. This cleavage has +become so nearly universal that we are hardly conscious of its profound +perversity. It is the arch-sin of all higher eroticism to realise beauty +not as the undetachable and self-evident outward form of a beloved soul, +but as a means of heightening pleasure. Although in its essence it is +the same thing as the examination of a work of art merely for the sake +of the pleasure it affords to the senses, the offence is here aggravated +because personality is involved. This degradation of the higher values, +whether of nature, art, beauty, knowledge, kindness, religion or the +human soul, to serve the ends of sensual pleasure is the expression of a +perversity which is possibly the most radical and characteristic of our +age. To-day the soul of a woman has frequently the same effect on man as +her physical beauty; he enjoys it as a subtile charm instead of +respecting it as a mystery. + +I can hardly expect to make my meaning quite clear to the multitude, but +the tendency to enjoy beauty of form or soul as a distinct element +represents a rupture with the principle of synthetic love, the love +which does not separate but realises the personality of the beloved as +an indivisible entity. The enjoyment of beauty as a separate element +pre-supposes a conscious, spiritual division, not only of the beloved, +but also of the lover, and is therefore the destruction of the principle +of unity. Aesthete and libertine alike sink to the lower level of +pleasure, and their emotions become obscene. There is no question of a +division when Tristan in his vision of Isolde exclaims, "How beautiful +thou art!" For great love can create the beauty of the beloved out of +its own soul. + +Prudery is based on a similar duality. It expresses a consciousness that +the nude can only be alluring, obscene, "indecent," and should therefore +be feared and avoided. It is the defensive weapon of sexually excited, +for the most part, slightly hysterical women, against the purely sexual, +whose sphere they often extend amazingly. Prudery conceives sexuality as +a distinct, restricted complex in consciousness. Such division is alien +to woman and, where it exists, a hysterical condition, a condition of +inner discord, is clearly indicated. We may take it that the obscene +which affects normal men, affects only hysterical, inwardly discordant +women who try to take shelter behind prudery. To the normal woman the +obscene does not exist as a spiritual principle; she turns with a +feeling of displeasure from all the lower sexual manifestations, and +even finds them absurd. The elimination of personality of eroticism, the +charm of which is felt by even the most highly differentiated man, has +always been foreign to woman--she lacks the duality of erotic emotion +which man is slowly and laboriously striving to overcome--a still +further proof of the unbroken, synthetic emotion of woman. + + + + +CONCLUSION + +THE PSYCHOGENETIC LAW + +_The Individual as an Epitome of the Human Race_ + + +The biogenetic law of Ernst Haeckel teaches us that the human embryo +passes through all the stages of development traversed by its ancestors +in their evolution from the lower forms of the animal world. Although +each successive stage completely replaces the preceding one, the latter +is there as its organic supposition. Man is not born as a human being +until he has travelled over the principal portions of the road to +evolution. This law, which establishes the natural connection of the +individual with the whole chain of organisms, is continued in a +psychogenetic law, not founded on the heredity of the blood but on the +heredity of culture (and therefore quite independent of the doctrine of +the origin of species). In the course of his development the individual +repeats the psycho-spiritual stages through which the species has +passed. But while the human body cannot sustain life until it is +perfectly developed, the degrees of psychic perfection vary very +considerably; not every individual reaches perfection; most men attain +to some degree, but there are others who do not even acquire the +rudiments. + +It would be an attractive and grateful task to point out the +halting-places of the human race in the life of the individual; to fix +the moment when for the first time in his life the child says "I"--a +moment which usually occurs in his second year, and represents the +humanisation of the race, the great intuition, when primitive man, +divining his spiritual nature, severed himself from the external world; +to perceive the child--like its primitive ancestors in their +day--treating all weaker creatures which fall into its hands with almost +bestial cruelty; to watch the boyish games reflecting the period when +the nations lived on war and the chase, their eagerness to draw up rules +and regulations and create gradations of rank and marks of distinction. +I am not able to carry out such a task in detail and, moreover, as I am +dealing with the erotic life only, such a proceeding would be out of +place here. + +The psychogenetic law, then, comes to this: Every well-developed male +individual of the present day successively passes through the three +stages of love through which the European races have passed. The three +stages are not traceable in all men with infallible certainty, there are +numerous individuals whose development in this respect has been +arrested, but in the emotional life of every highly differentiated +member of the human race they are clearly distinguishable, and the +greater the wealth and strength of a soul, the more perfectly will it +reflect the history of the race. The evolution of every well-endowed +individual presents a rough sketch of the history of civilisation; it +has its prehistoric, its classical, its mediaeval, and its modern +period. Many men remain imprisoned in the past; others are fragmentary, +or appear to be suspended in mid-air, rootless. The spirit of humanity +has lived through the past and overcome it, so as to be able to create +its future. + +The gynecocratic stage actually survives to this day in the nursery. +Here the mother rules supreme; the father is an intruder, the brothers +are dominated by their sisters, often their juniors. Women mature at an +earlier age than men; this assertion applies with equal force to +individual and sex in connection with the history of civilisation. After +he has left the nursery, there follows in the life of the boy a period +during which he associates only with his school-friends, shuns the +society of his mother and sisters, and is ashamed of his female +relatives. This represents the revival of the men's unions of remote +antiquity in the life of the individual of the present day. + +At the period of puberty the sexual instinct makes itself felt for the +first time; as a rule, if its nature is not recognised, it is +accompanied by restlessness and depression. I do not believe that the +instinct is, as soon as it appears, directed to the other sex, or +anything else outside the individual. This fact cannot be explained by +want of opportunity, shyness or bad example; there is a positive reason +for it; the longing for a member of the other sex is still unfelt. + +Between his twentieth and thirtieth year a man is often dominated by an +enthusiastic spiritual love quite unconnected with the sensuality which +has hitherto ruled his emotions. I will not elaborate the growth of this +love and the new feelings which arise in connection with it; just as in +the remote past the sense of personality was born as the centre of a new +consciousness, so the individual now undergoes a period of purification +and regeneration; through the love for his mistress he discovers his +inmost self, of which, until now, he had been practically ignorant. The +generative, undifferentiated impulse is supplanted by the love for an +individual and stigmatised as base and contemptible. Guincelli's words +characterising the second erotic stage of the race: _Amor e cor gentil +sono una cosa_, to-day apply to the second stage in the life of the +individual. It also occurs that in the heart of a man whom reality has +failed to satisfy an ideal woman gradually wins life and shape. +Sometimes it is the idealised counterpart of an actual woman, but not +infrequently it is a vague, unsubstantial shadow. Here we have the +deification of the woman reproduced in the heart of the individual. To +illustrate my point, I will quote the very pertinent conversation +between Foldal, the embittered old clerk, and John Gabriel Borkman +(Ibsen). + + _Borkman_: Indeed! Can you show me one who is any good? + + _Foldal_: That's just the point. The few women I've known are no + good at all. + + _Borkman_: (with a sneer) What's the good of them if you don't know + them? + + _Foldal_ (excitedly): Don't say that, John Gabriel! Isn't it a + magnificent, an ennobling thought, to know that somewhere, far + away, never mind where, the true woman lives? + + _Borkman_ (impatiently): Stop your high falutin' nonsense! + + _Foldal_ (hurt): High falutin' nonsense? You call my most sacred + belief high falutin' nonsense? + +In conclusion I should like to mention here that I look upon Otto +Weininger as a tragic victim of the second stage of love which--in our +days--is sick with an almost insurmountable inner insufficiency. + +There is no need to elaborate my subject further and point out that--the +first stage passed--the prime of life brings with it the fusion of +sexuality and love. This union is the inner meaning of marriage in the +modern sense--whether it is rarely or frequently realised is beside the +point. + +In previous chapters I have illustrated various phenomena of the +emotional life by showing their reflections on the lives of two or three +distinguished men. In conclusion I will endeavour to point out the +reproduction of all the erotic stages through which the race has passed, +in the psychical evolution of Richard Wagner, and their immortalisation +in his works. We shall recognise in him the erotic representative of +modern man, a personality in whom all that which as a rule is vague and +only half expressed, has become great and typical. Love has been the +_leitmotif_ of his life. The concluding phrase of the crude fairy tale +_Die Feen_ ("The Fairies"), composed by the youth of nineteen, is: _the +infinite power of love_, and the last words written down two days before +his death, were: _love--tragedy_. + +The opera _Das Liebesverbot_ ("The Prohibition to Love"), written in +1834, is eminently symptomatic of the first stage. It is a coarser +rendering of that bluntest of all Shakespearean plays, _Measure for +Measure_; its sole subject is the pursuit of sensual pleasure, in which +all indulge, and the ridiculing of those who appear to yearn for +something higher. To detail the contents of the text--it cannot be +called a poem--would serve no purpose; biographically, but not +artistically interesting, it exhibits with amazing candour the first, +purely sexual, stage of the young man of twenty-one. It was the period +when "young Germany's" device was the emancipation of sensuality. Wagner +himself says that his "conception was mainly directed against Puritan +cant, and led to the bold glorification of unrestrained sensuality. I +was determined to understand the grave Shakespearean subject only in +this sense." And in his "Autobiographical Sketch" he says: "I learned to +love matter." In addition to this Wagner gives us the following synopsis +of a (lost) libretto, "_Die Hochzeit_" ("The Wedding"), written at an +earlier period: "A youth, madly in love with his friend's fiancée, +climbs through the window into her bedroom, where the latter is awaiting +the arrival of her lover; the fiancée struggles with the frenzied youth +and throws him down into the yard, where he expires." + +The second, discordant, stage of love is embodied in _Tannhäuser_, +composed when Wagner was twenty-nine years of age. There is probably no +modern work of art in which the mediaeval feeling of dualism in the +scheme of the universe has been expressed with greater pathos. We see +man tossed between heaven and hell, between the worshipped saint and +seductive sensuality, impersonated by a she-devil. A man of the Middle +Ages would have recognised in this work the tragedy of his soul. Wagner +had planned the opera before he had really reached the second period, +under the title of _Der Venusberg_ ("The Mountain of Venus"), and in +this earlier version the purely sexual occupied a far more prominent +place, probably in closer conformity with the old legend. For here +Tannhäuser returns to Venus unsaved and defying the eternal values, +determined to renounce a higher life and give himself up to the pleasure +of the senses for all eternity. This idea was retained in a later +version up to the decisive final turn; the purely spiritual love for +Elizabeth eventually overcomes the unrestrained instinct. + +As the despairing monk of mediaeval times, apparently abandoned by the +love of God, turned to Satan and worshipped him, so Tannhäuser, cast out +of the Kingdom of Heaven by the words of the Pope, and renounced by +Elizabeth, again gives himself up to sensuality, which is here +contrasted with spiritual love, and represented as demoniacal. +Tannhäuser is not vacillating between the love of two women--a +spiritualised and a sensual love; he is wavering between the purely +spiritual love of Elizabeth and promiscuous sexuality represented by +Venus, not centring on her as an individual, but diffused, as it were, +through her whole kingdom. The dualism which rends the whole universe is +strongly and uncompromisingly emphasised in text and music, and Wagner +himself explained to the opera singer, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, that the +main characteristic of the principal part was "the intensest expression +of delight and remorse without any intermediate stage of feeling, +changing abruptly and decisively." The closing words of the first scene: +"My salvation lies in Mary!" are the real turning point of the drama. As +abrupt as his desertion of Venus for Mary, is his return to her in the +third act. By the side of Mary is placed the more human, the more +earthly but yet idealised form of Elizabeth, a figure closely resembling +Beatrice and Margaret. + +The music of _Tannhäuser_ (more especially the overture) expresses the +contrast between the two erotic world-elements with striking +abruptness. The harmonious and musically perfect motive of religious +yearning (the chorus of the pilgrims) which forms the beginning and the +end of the overture, is assailed by the briefer motives of sensuous +seduction and ecstasy of the middle; the quivering, tickling passages of +the violins play round the sacred music of the chorale like so many +seductive elves. The Venusberg music is probably the most perfect +expression of pure sensuality which has ever been reached in the world +of music; it is the complete translation of sensual craving and sensual +rapture into the language of music. In the Venusberg music composed for +the performance in Paris, this motive is still more richly elaborated, +and the recently published "sketches" for the scene in the Venusberg +contain a number of details which were eliminated from the later +version. Here bestial and demoniacal sensuality, not content with human +couples, nymphs, maenads, sirens and fauns, calls for beings half-brute, +half-human, represented by centaurs and sphinxes, for black goats, cats, +tigers, panthers, and so on, finally for obscene representations of +antique legends, such as Leda and the Swan, Europa and the Bull, symbols +and illustrations of the climax of perversion. It is a magnificent, +poetico-musical picture of untrammelled sexuality, whose queen is Woman, +the priestess of voluptuousness, represented by Venus. Tannhäuser's +yearning for humanity and divinely pure love gives to this world a tinge +of the demoniacal, for the latter is nothing but natural sensuality +regarded from a higher standpoint, in this case from the point of view +of spiritual love. Whenever it is opposed to the transcendental, the +natural is conceived as dangerous and diabolical. At the moment of the +abrupt inner change in Tannhäuser, Venus and her world must vanish like +a phantom of the night. "A consuming, voluptuous excitement kept my +blood and nerves tingling while I sketched and composed the music of +_Tannhäuser_...." says Wagner in one place, and in another he confesses +that sensual pleasure, while attracting and seducing him, filled him +with repugnance. He speaks of his longing to "satisfy my craving in a +higher, nobler element which, unpolluted by the sensuality so +characteristic of modern life and art, appears to me as something pure, +something chaste and virginal, unapproachable and intangible. What else +can this longing for love, the noblest feeling I am capable of, be, than +the yearning to leave this world of facts behind me and become absorbed +in an element of infinite, transcendental love, to which death would be +the gate...." + +The dualism in the music of _Tannhäuser_ is consistently maintained. The +two elements war against each other without ever merging into one. Those +parts of the music which characterise Elizabeth are full of noble pathos +and a little sentimental. At the beginning of the second act she is not +yet herself; she can still laugh like a light-hearted girl, but when she +again succumbs to Tannhäuser's unearthly (and to her fatal) charm, and +realises how irrevocably he has surrendered himself to Venus, she rises +to true greatness and resolutely faces the swords unsheathed to punish +the offender. Before our eyes she is transformed into the saint who +realises her mission and is ready to take her burden upon her; more +heroic than Beatrice or Margaret, she points to him "who laughingly +stabbed her heart," the road to salvation. Like her two predecessors +Elizabeth prays to Mary for the salvation of her lover--the prayer for +the beloved has ever been woman's truest and most fervent prayer. + +The thought of achieving a man's salvation through a great and steadfast +love, is the subject of the _Flying Dutchman_, and plays, as is well +known, an important part with Wagner. Strange to say he has for this +very reason frequently been scoffed at by those who call themselves +admirers of Goethe. Dante-Goethe's great problem of salvation is +represented in _Tannhäuser_ with the utmost lucidity. The essence of it +is that love can positively intervene in the life of a man whose soul is +turned towards it, but who is confused and beset by temptations. His +vacillating heart feels the love which is brooding over him and +ultimately abandons itself to it, to be saved by its unswerving loyalty. +Maybe this is as much a miracle as "grace," but it is also a psychical +fact, because the love which yearns for the sinner awakens and increases +not only his faith in its power to help, but also in his own strength; +darkness and evil dismay him and he turns towards the light. In +_Tannhäuser_ this spiritual condition, which is of such primary +importance in the last scene of _Faust_, is clearly expressed; his love +for Elizabeth has been strong enough to kill desire kindled in his heart +again and again by Venus; yet again he is on the point of succumbing to +his senses. The vision of Venus appears before his eyes, but at +Wolfram's exclamation, "Elizabeth!" he realises in a flash that +Elizabeth has been praying for him day and night, and has given her life +to save him. Before this sudden illumination the power of Venus sinks +into nothing; divine love falls into his darkness like a ray of +light--"Oh, sacred love's eternal power!"--it quickens his own love +which is striving upwards, and with the words: "Saint Elizabeth, pray +for me!" he sinks to the ground. His way, like Faust's, although +one-sidedly emotional, leads from chaos and sin to pure love and +salvation, not through his own strength but by the help vouchsafed to +him in the love of his glorified mistress. + +By the side of the struggling, suffering Tannhäuser, tossed hither and +thither between God and the devil, between Elizabeth and Venus, stands +Wolfram, the untempted woman-worshipper. The two extremes clash upon +each other in the contest of the minnesingers. Tannhäuser, at war with +himself, exasperated by the calm, matter-of-fact way in which Wolfram +sings the praise of spiritual love, rushes to the other extreme and +bursts into rapturous praise of the goddess of love and the pleasure of +the senses. I need not lay stress on the fact that at that time of his +life Wagner's own heart was the arena in which the conflict was fought +out; a work like _Tannhäuser_ is not _made_, it is conceived in the +innermost soul of its creator. Every one of Wagner's great works bears +the unmistakable stamp of sincerity and intensity, while with Goethe, on +the other hand, it is not difficult to distinguish the genuine ones, +that is to say, those which were written under the pressure of a +compelling impulse, from those which owed their existence to the +intellect rather than to the soul. + +_Tannhäuser_ immortalises the adolescence of the European races of +mankind; the third stage is not even anticipated. + +_Lohengrin_, the principal interest of which is other than erotic, +represents a transitional phase between the second and the third stage; +body and soul are no longer regarded as warring against each other; a +greater harmony beyond either is dimly divined. Lohengrin has set out +from a distant, transcendental kingdom to find earthly happiness in +Elsa's love--but he is doomed to disappointment. I will not analyse the +theme, but rather quote a few passages from Wagner: "Lohengrin is +seeking the woman who is ready to believe in him; who will not ask him +who he is and whence he comes, but love him as he is and because he is +so.... Lohengrin's only desire is for love, to be loved, to be +understood through love. In spite of the superior development of his +senses, in spite of his intense consciousness, he desires nothing more +than to live the life of an ordinary citizen of this earth, to love and +be loved--to be a perfect specimen of humanity." Wagner further speaks +of his longing to find "the woman"; the female principle, quite simply, +for ever appearing to him under new forms; the woman for whom the +Flying Dutchman longed in his unfathomable distress; the woman who, like +a radiant star, guided Tannhäuser from the voluptuous caverns of the +Venusberg to the pure regions of the spirit, and drew Lohengrin from his +dazzling heights to the warm bosom of the earth. We find here the new +form of love, not yet fully comprehended but desired and anticipated in +art. + +In _Tristan and Isolde_ it is attained completely and in its highest +perfection. We possess in Wagner's letters to Matilda Wesendonk, and in +the diary written for her, the documents of the personal experience out +of which Tristan grew, and which unfold one of the most touching +love-stories. As I have already discussed _Tristan and Isolde_ in a +previous chapter, I will here only quote a passage from a letter written +by Wagner and addressed to Liszt at the time of his first meeting with +Matilda; it fully expresses the harmony of the third stage. "Give me a +heart, a mind, a woman's love in which I can plunge my whole being--who +will fully understand me--how little else I should need in this world!" + +It is very significant that side by side with _Tristan_ we have _Die +Meistersinger_, composed a little later on. Here the third stage of love +is realised in its idyllic possibility; the synthesis has been given the +shape of middle-class matter-of-factness, that is to say, the fulfilment +of love in marriage: "I love a maid and claim her hand!" For this reason +the work, although the fundamental idea is not erotic, is entitled to be +placed by the side of _Tristan_ with its demand for the absolute +metaphysical consummation of love. + +It is an amazing fact that the same genius should have experienced and +portrayed both stages so perfectly. Doubtless Tannhäuser and Tristan are +the most personal self-revelations of the great lover, pulsating with +passion, and far remote from the colossal objective world of the +Niebelungs, the lofty serenity of Lohengrin and the wisdom of Parsifal. + +Wagner had finished the _Ring_ before he conceived the idea of _Tristan +and Isolde_. (It was printed in 1852.) In the former he intentionally +raised the value of love and its position in the universe to a problem, +embodying his knowledge of the world, and more especially of the modern +world, in supernatural, mythical figures. The greatest ambition of man +is power and wealth, the symbol of which is a golden ring. Gold in +itself is innocent--elementary--a bauble at the bottom of the river, a +toy for laughing children; but the insatiable thirst for power and +wealth has robbed it of its harmlessness and made it the tool and symbol +of tyranny. Only a being completely in the grip of the greed for riches +and dominion, a being who looks upon the world and all men as objects to +be bent to his will, and who has consequently renounced love, could have +thus enslaved the world. Love does not impair the worth of a +fellow-creature, but sets him above all things; a lover cannot be +entirely selfish; his feeling at least for his mistress, and through her +for the rest of the world, must be pure and unselfish. The struggle +between these two most powerful instincts, both in the race and in the +heart of the individual (Wotan), is the incomparable subject of this +tragedy. The whole world-process is represented as a struggle between +the apparently great, who are yet the slaves of gold and authority, and +the truly free man who serves love, and on whom ambition has no hold. + +The representatives of the petty, greedy, toiling human vermin, who +readily renounced love for the sake of wealth, because the latter will +always buy lust and pleasure, are the Niebelungs, the dwellers in the +Netherworld who never see the sun. They have but one standard: money; +one supreme value: power, the gift of wealth. Mime bewails his people +(the small tradesmen as it were), as follows; "Light-hearted smiths we +used to fashion gems and trinkets for our wives, gorgeous jewels, the +Niebelungs' pretty trifles--we laughed at the labour." But Alberich, the +capitalist, through the magic of the ring, has usurped the power and +enslaved his fellows. "Now the felon compels us to creep in the heart of +the mountains to labour for him. There we must delve and explore and +despoil, plunder and smelt and hammer the metal, restlessly toiling to +increase his treasure." The really daemonic property of the gold is that +everybody succumbs to its seduction and strives to possess it. The +former naïve joy of living, embodied in the Rhine-daughters, and their +not yet humanised song, which seems to come direct from the heart of +nature, is destroyed by the theft of the Rhine-gold. What till then had +been a serenely shining "star of the deep," has been transformed into a +means by which to win authority. The programme of the greedy and +tyrannous never varies; Alberich proclaims it; "The whole world will I +win," and it is his daemonic will to depreciate love and set up power as +the only value, so that nobody shall doubt his greatness and unique +genius. "As I renounce love, so all shall renounce it, with gold have I +bought you, for gold shall you crave." Love shall die and lust shall +take its place; he will force even the wives of the gods to do his will, +for his wealth has made him master of the whole world. Compared to his +restless activity, the giant "Fafner" is "stupid"; he is incapable of +transforming gold into power; he merely enjoys its possession, content +with the consciousness of his wealth. + +But the curse of Alberich, the first who transmuted the shining metal +into money, rests on gold and power. "It shall not bring gladness--who +has it be seared by sorrow, who lacks it devoured by envy...." The curse +of the eternal concatenation: tyranny--slavery, the care which +accompanies wealth and the envy of the have-nots, can only be lifted +from the world by a man who is inwardly free, who is neither master nor +slave. Siegfried understands the song of the birds and the elementary +beings, the Rhine-daughters; he is a stranger to human desires and +passions. "I inherited nothing but my body--and living it is consumed." +He is proof against the magic of the ring; the only value he knows is +love. Alberich, his opponent, says, in speaking of him: "My curse has no +sting for the mettlesome hero, for he knows not the worth of the ring; +he squanders his prodigal strength, laughing and glowing with love his +body is burning away." Half way between Alberich, the inwardly worthless +wielder of power, and Siegfried, the truly free man, the embodiment of +all virtue, who is murdered by the powers of darkness, stands Wotan, in +whose heart both motives, authority and love, are struggling for +supremacy, who will renounce neither love nor power. Artistically and +symbolically the salvation of the world from the curse of greed and +tyranny is brought about by the restitution of the ring, and its +dissolution in the pure waters of the river from whence it had been +taken; the gold is given back to the Rhine-daughters, to fulfil again +its original purpose, namely, to delight the heart of man with its +dazzling sheen. + +Thus Wagner, the greatest and most inspired exponent of love among +modern artists, declared that of all values love was the greatest. His +intuitive genius left all the doctrines formulated by Schopenhauer and +Buddha far behind and definitely rejected pessimism as a creed. There is +an interesting letter from him to Matilda Wesendonk, written while he +was composing the music of _Tristan_, and containing modifications of +Schopenhauer's philosophy which he considered requisite. "It is a +question of pointing out the road to salvation which no philosopher, not +even Schopenhauer, discovered, the road which leads to the perfect +pacification of the will through love; I do not mean abstract love for +all humanity, but true love, based on sexual love, that is to say love +between man and woman." + +In _Parsifal_, the last and most mature of all his works, Wagner is +breaking new ground. Here love between man and woman is deposed from the +exalted position it hitherto held, subordinated to the metaphysical +purpose of the world, that is to say, "the purpose of attaining to +perfection," and absorbed in a higher association of ideas. Sexual love +has undergone a change, it is no longer love in the true sense, but the +unconditional love of the mystic. The enigmatical figure of Kundry is +not the impersonation of one woman, she is woman herself. The +incarnation of everything female, she embodies the sensuous, seductive +and destructive element together with the contempt of the man who falls +under her spell, as well as the motherly, and finally the +humbly-administrative principle, which so far had not yet become a part +of the erotic ideal. She is both positive and negative, a blind tool of +the element of evil which prompts man to forget his higher mission +(reminiscent of the second mediaeval period), and passionately yearning +for salvation. She dies before the Holy Grail, the religious ideal made +visible. Beside Kundry there are the flower-maidens, naïvely sensuous +beings, who blossom like the flowers and fade again, unconscious and +irresponsible. I refrain from a discussion of this work, which would +lead too far, and only maintain that the music, corresponding to the +text, is entirely unerotic and unsentimental, absolutely pure and +religious. The love of a man for a woman has been superseded by love for +the absolute and supernatural. Thus, after Wagner had experienced all +the stages of love through which humanity has passed, and embodied them +in his works, he reached a new point of view, a stage to which we have +not yet attained and which, very likely, we are not even able fully to +understand. This fourth stage--not unlike Weininger's ideal--is the +overthrow of the female and earthly element in man by a voluntary +surrender to the metaphysical. + +Wagner's last position, taken up quite deliberately, permits of two +explanations which I will point out without pressing either of them. +Only a man possessing both the wisdom of the aged Wagner and a knowledge +of the evolution of the race, and the road which still stretches out in +front of it, would be entitled to speak a decisive word. The first +obviously is that Wagner divined a last stage in the emotional life of +man, a period which has outgrown sexual love and replaced it by +mysticism. In conjecturing a potential fourth stage, the three previous +ones must be regarded as one. The second explanation is that Wagner's +feeling in his last work is no longer representative of the feeling of +the race, but is, as it were, a personal matter, at least in so far as +love is concerned. For although the principal subject in _Parsifal_ is +not love, yet it plays a very prominent part in it. I am only touching +upon these two alternatives. But if the latter debatable point be +omitted, my analysis of Wagner's emotional life must have shown in which +sense the inspired man may be rightly regarded as typical of the race. +He leads the broadest and at the same time the most personal life, and +yet he manifests in it something which is far greater, far more +universal and representative. + +My argument proves that the evolution as well as the aberrations of love +have affected man alone and, roughly speaking, to this day affect only +him. He is the Odysseus, wandering through heaven and hell, ultimately +to return home, perhaps, to where woman, the unchangeable, is awaiting +him. That which has been woman's natural endowment from all beginning, +the blending of spiritual and sensual love, man looks upon and desires +to-day as his highest erotic ideal. His chaotic sexual impulse, the +inheritance of the past, appears to him low and base in the presence of +her in whom sexuality has always been blended with love; his worship, +intensified until it reached the metaphysical, seems to him unfounded +and eccentric before her who has ever been and ever will be entirely +human, and who is perfect in his eyes because she possesses what he is +striving after. This and nothing else is the meaning of the vague +statement that in all matters pertaining to love woman occupies a higher +position than man. She is always the same; he is always new and +problematical; never perfect, he falls into error and sin where she +cannot err, for her instinct is nature herself, and she knows not the +meaning of sin. Whatever burden man has laid upon her, she has borne it +patiently and silently; she has allowed him to worship her as a goddess +and stigmatise her as a fiend, while all the time she remained +problemless and natural, inwardly remote from the aberrations in which +her intellect believed so readily. The conclusion which we have to draw, +and which touches the foundation of the psychology of both sexes, is +that only man's emotions have a history, while those of the woman have +undergone no change. + +If there is a law by which the human race is reproduced in the +individual, then the so-called atavism in the shape of abnormality +cannot be the sudden, or apparently sudden reappearance of conditions +which once were normal and then disappeared; rather must it be the final +arrest of an individual on a previous and lower stage, preventing him +from reaching our standard in one or the other emotional sphere. The +more humanity a man has in him, the more perfectly will he repeat in his +life the stages through which the race has passed, or, in other words: +the oftener that which once quickened the heart of man is repeated and +surpassed, the greater is the possibility that new things may grow out +of it. Atavism therefore is not so much the persistence of the earlier +as the absence of the later stages. (This agrees with Freud's conception +of the neurotic subject.) + +It is obvious that the three stages of love are merely the expression of +a period in one definite direction. The emotions of antiquity were +entirely earthly, obvious and impersonal; the Middle Ages, on the other +hand, attached value only to the world beyond the grave and matters +pertaining to the soul. The beauty of spring was to them but a reflexion +of another beauty. + + "How glorious is life below! + What greater glories may the heavens hold!" + +sings Brother John characteristically. But our period is conscious of +the need of realising all our desires, and attaining to the highest +possible spiritual perfection in this earthly life, and this not by +destroying the transcendent ideals, but by stripping them of their +metaphysical character, and bringing them to bear on this life, so that +it may become a higher and holier one. The will of our intellectual +heroes is not the rejection of the doctrine of the survival of the soul, +but the comprehension of past transcendental values, so that they may +become a safe guide to us in this earthly life; a more perfect blending +of realism and idealism; the glorification of life under the aspect of +eternity. This applies to love as well: the thought of the infinite, +eternal love must transfigure and ennoble all that which is natural and +human. + +If my theories are correct, they prove the ontological character of +historical evolution and the value of the study of history for the +comprehension of the human soul. I have shown in a specific and highly +important domain that that which we are fond of regarding as the +characteristic quality of man was not present from the beginning, but +has gradually been evolved in historical time. In other words: history +can and must teach us the origin and evolution of the spirit and soul of +man, as anthropology teaches us the construction of the body. In +philosophically approaching history, it must not be our object to +discover "what has been," but "what has become, how we became and what +we are." The science of history which loses sight of its bearing on our +time, content with its knowledge of the past, is antiquarian and dead; +at the most it has aesthetic value, but it is worthless as far as the +history of civilisation is concerned. Only that which has been +productive in the past, which has had a quickening influence, producing +new values, is historical in the highest sense. It creates a new and +close relationship between psychology and history. The principal +purpose, or one of the principal purposes of psychology, that is the +knowledge of the construction of the normal human being, has received a +new possibility of solution: every essential quality which the human +race has evolved in the course of history must be present in every +normally developed individual of our time. The normal man of to-day is +not the normal man of the past; every successive century finds him +richer and more complex, but he can always be discovered intuitively in +history. In this sense history is an auxiliary science of psychology, or +rather, the psychology of the human race, for the evolution of the +psychology of the individual--which has been studied very little--is +merely an abbreviated history of the evolution of the psychology of the +species. A past period of civilisation can be traced in the life of +every fully developed man, and _vice versa_ the stages in the life of +the individual point the way in history. + +If it can be established that the fundamental emotions of the human +heart originated in historical time, the widely spread, but unproved, +theory that everything great and decisive existed from the beginning +will be contradicted. The other complementary assertion that nothing +which once existed ever quite disappears, must be admitted; nothing +perishes in the soul of man; its position with regard to the whole is +merely shifted by newly intervening motives and values; and even when +it does not change its fundamental character, it becomes a different +thing in the whole complex of the soul. Sexuality, which in the remote +past was a matter of course, unassailable by doubt, became problematical +and demoniacal as soon as it entered into relationship with the new +factors of erotic life. An existence in harmony with nature was possible +as long as the human race was still in evolution, and not yet conscious +of itself. But as soon as intellect and self-consciousness had been +evolved, civilisation became possible. Nature has no history in the +sense of the origin of values; in the case of still uncivilised tribes +every new generation is a faithful reproduction of the preceding one. +Certainly there is modification caused by adaptation to the environment, +but there are no moral values, and consequently there is no history. + +I have attempted to explain why tragedy is inseparable from love in its +highest intensity, to show the limits which check all deep emotion and +the yearning which would overstep them. The emotional life of man, which +is capable of infinite evolution, can only find satisfaction on its +lower, animal stages. Hunger, thirst, and sexual craving can be +satisfied without much difficulty, and therefore no tragic shadow falls +on the first stage. But the emotion which overwhelms the soul cannot be +appeased. Not only the great thinker's thirst for knowledge, the +mystic's religious yearning, the aesthetic will of the rare artist, but +also the love and longing of the passionate lover must reach beyond the +attainable to the infinite. This earth is the kingdom of "mean" actions, +"mean" emotions and "mean" men. And the lover, unable to bear its +limits, creates for himself a new world--the world of metaphysical love. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Love, by Emil Lucka + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE *** + +***** This file should be named 17699-8.txt or 17699-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/6/9/17699/ + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Evolution of Love + +Author: Emil Lucka + +Translator: Ellie Schleussner + +Release Date: February 7, 2006 [EBook #17699] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE *** + + + + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + +<h1>THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2>EMIL LUCKA</h2> + +<h3>TRANSLATED BY</h3> +<h2>ELLIE SCHLEUSSNER</h2> +<p class="center"><img src="images/004.png" width='200' height='197' alt="Publisher's logo" /></p> + +<p class='center'>LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.<br /> +RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1</p> + +<p class='center'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> +<i>First published in Great Britain 1922</i></p> + +<p class='center'>(<i>All rights reserved</i>)</p> + +<p class='center'><i>Printed in Great Britain by</i><br /> +UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, LONDON AND WOKING</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class="index"> +<ul> +<li><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE</a></li> +<li><a href="#TRANSLATORS_INTRODUCTION">TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION</a></li> +<li><a href="#THE_EVOLUTION_OF_LOVE">FIRST STAGE:</a> THE SEXUAL INSTINCT</li> +<li><a href="#THE_SECOND_STAGE_LOVE">THE SECOND STAGE:</a> LOVE</li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a> <span class="smcap">The Birth of Europe</span></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a> <span class="smcap">The Deification of Woman (First +Form of Metaphysical Eroticism)</span>:—(<i>a</i>) The Love of the Troubadours; +(<i>b</i>) The Queen of Heaven; (<i>c</i>) Dante and Goethe; (<i>d</i>) Michel Angelo</li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a> <span class="smcap">Perversions of Metaphysical +Eroticism</span>:—(<i>a</i>) The Brides of Christ; (<i>b</i>) Sexual Mystics</li> +<li><a href="#THE_THIRD_STAGE">THE THIRD STAGE:</a> THE BLENDING OF SEXUALITY AND LOVE</li> +<li><a href="#BCHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a> <span class="smcap">The Longing for the Synthesis</span></li> +<li><a href="#BCHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a> <span class="smcap">The Love-Death (Second Form of +Metaphysical Eroticism)</span></li> +<li><a href="#BCHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a> <span class="smcap">The Conflict between Sexuality +and Love.—The Seeker of Love and the Slave of Love</span></li> +<li><a href="#BCHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a> <span class="smcap">The Revenge of Sexuality.—The +Demoniacal and the Obscene</span></li> +<li><a href="#CONCLUSION">CONCLUSION:</a> <span class="smcap">The Psychogenetic Law.—The +Individual as an Epitome of the Human Race</span></li> +</ul> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2> + +<p>The object of this book, which is addressed to all cultured men and +women, is to set forth the primitive manifestations of love and to throw +light on those strange emotional climaxes which I have called +"Metaphysical Eroticism." I have taken no account of historical detail, +except where it served the purpose of proving, explaining and +illustrating my subject. Nor have I hesitated to intermingle +psychological motives and motives arising from the growth and spread of +civilisation. The inevitable result of a one-sided glimpse at historical +facts would have been a history of love, an undertaking for which I lack +both ability and inclination. On the other hand, had I written a merely +psychological treatise, disregarding the succession of periods, I should +have laid myself open to the just reproach of giving rein to my +imagination instead of dealing with reality.</p> + +<p>I have availed myself of historical facts to demonstrate that what +psychology has shown to be the necessary phases of the evolution of +love, have actually existed in historical time and characterised a whole +period of civilisation. The history of civilisation is an end in itself +only in the chapter entitled "The Birth of Europe."</p> + +<p>My work is intended to be first and foremost a monograph on the +emotional life of the human race. I am prepared to meet rather with +rejection than with approval. Neither the historian nor the psychologist +will be pleased. Moreover, I am well aware that my standpoint is +hopelessly "old-fashioned." To-day nearly all the world is content to +look upon the sexual impulse as the source of all erotic emotion and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> to +regard love as nothing more nor less than its most exquisite radiation.</p> + +<p>My book, on the contrary, endeavours to establish its complete +independence of sexuality.</p> + +<p>My contention that so powerful an emotion as love should have come into +existence in historical, not very remote times, will seem very strange; +for, all outward profession of faith in evolution notwithstanding, men +are still inclined to take the unchangeableness of human nature for +granted.</p> + +<p>The facts on which I have based my arguments are well known, but my +deductions are new; it is not for me to decide whether they are right or +wrong. In the first (introductory) part I have made use of works already +in existence, in addition to Plato and the poets, but the second and +third parts are founded almost entirely on original research.</p> + +<p class='right'>E.L.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="TRANSLATORS_INTRODUCTION" id="TRANSLATORS_INTRODUCTION"></a>TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION</h2> + +<p>Since the triumphant days of the Mechanists some twenty-five years ago, +the wedge of Pragmatism—a useful tool to be used and discarded—has +been driven between materialism and idealism, and it appears that the +whole tendency of philosophy is now in the latter direction. Even in +England the influence of Bergson has led modern thought away from the +pure materialism of the monists, and it seems probable that Benedetto +Croce's <i>Philosophy of the Spirit</i> will carry the movement a step nearer +towards the idealistic concept of reality. And among the latest signs of +the new tendency must be counted the brilliant work of Emil Lucka, the +young Austrian "poet-philosopher," whose conception of the development +of love must rank with the most daring speculations in recent +psychology.</p> + +<p>In the great reaction of the last century, love, that most cogent motive +of human thought and action, fell from its high estate and came to be +regarded as an instinct not differing in any essential from hunger and +thirst, and existing, like them, from the beginning, eternal and +immutable, manifesting itself with equal force in the heart of man and +woman, and impelling them towards each other. But Emil Lucka, in his +remarkable new book, <i>The Three Stages of Love</i> (which was recently +published in Berlin, and has already created a sensation in literary +circles abroad), leads us on to speculative heights from which we may +look back upon the whole theory of evolution not as a bar but as a +bridge. "My book is intended as a monograph of the emotional life of the +human race," he says in the preface, and "I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> prepared to meet with +rejection rather than with approval." There has been abundance of +criticism and controversy, but Lucka has stated his case and drawn his +conclusions with such admirable precision and logic, that his work has +aroused admiration and appreciation even in the ranks of his opponents.</p> + +<p>Love is a theme which at all times and in all countries has been of +primary interest to men and women, and therefore this book, which throws +an illuminating ray of light in many a dark place still wrapped in +mystery and silence, not only impresses the psychologist, but also +fascinates the general reader with its wealth of interesting detail and +charm of expression.</p> + +<p>The three vitally important points which the author develops are as +follows:—</p> + +<p>Love is not a primary instinct, but has been gradually evolved in +historical time.</p> + +<p>Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law is expanded in a psychogenetic law.</p> + +<p>Only man's emotions have undergone evolution, and therefore have a +history, while those of woman have experienced no change.</p> + +<p>Lucka's book will probably not please the advanced feminists, but the +delicate, although perhaps involuntary homage to her sex which is +implied in his theories ought to rouse a feeling of gratification in the +heart of every right-feeling woman. The very limitations and +restrictions which he lays upon her raise and glorify her. For while man +has been the "Odysseus wandering through heaven and hell, passing from +the bestial to the divine to return again and become human, woman has +always been the same, unchangeable and without problems. That which he +has set up to-day as his highest erotic ideal, the blending of sexual +and spiritual love, has been her natural endowment from the beginning. +Never perfect, he falls into error and sin where she cannot err, for her +instinct is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> Nature herself, and she knows not the meaning of sin."</p> + +<p>Schopenhauer's "instinct of philoprogenitiveness" has to-day become an +article of faith with the learned and the unlearned. This <i>sub-conscious +instinct for the service of the species</i> which, in love, is supposed to +rise to consciousness, and whose purpose is the will to produce the best +possible offspring, is conceded by scientists who reject not only +Schopenhauer's metaphysic, but metaphysic in general. Even Nietzsche, +that arch-individualist, has proved by many of his pronouncements, and +most strikingly by his well-known definition of marriage, that he has +not escaped its fascinations. "Schopenhauer ignores all phenomena which +are not in support of his myth," says Lucka, who denies this instinct of +philoprogenitiveness and would substitute for it a "pairing-instinct." +"The experience of others," he argues, "not our own instinct, has taught +us that children <i>may</i>, not necessarily <i>must</i>, be the result of the +union of the sexes. Into the mediaeval ideal which reached its climax in +metaphysical love, the idea of propagation did not enter. Moreover, the +desire for children is frequently unaccompanied by any sexual desire, +and therefore to manufacture an instinct of philoprogenitiveness is +fantastic metaphysic, and is entirely opposed to intellectual reality. +This was well understood in the long period of antiquity which strictly +separated the sexual impulse and the desire for children."</p> + +<p>Lucka distinguishes three great stages in the evolution of love. In +vivid and fascinating pictures he unfolds the erotic life of our +primitive ancestors, basing his statements on accepted authorities. The +sexual impulse in those remote days, unconscious of its nature and +far-reaching consequences, was entirely undifferentiated from any other +powerful instinct. Every woman of the tribe belonged to every male who +happened to desire her. As is still the case with the aborigines of +Central and Northern Australia, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> phenomena of pregnancy and +childbirth were attributed to witchcraft.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The concept of <i>father</i> had +not yet been formed; the family congregated round the mother and saw in +her its natural chief; gynecocracy was the prevailing form of +government. In early historical and pre-classical times, promiscuity was +systematised by religion in India and the countries round the +Mediterranean and survived in the Temple Prostitution and the Mysteries. +Man as yet felt himself only as a part of nature, and aspired to no more +than a life in harmony with her laws. The worship of fertility and the +endless renewal of life was the object of the orgiastic cults of Adonis +and Astarte in the East, and Dionysus and Aphrodite in Greece; unbridled +licentiousness and blind gratification of the senses their sacrament.</p> + +<p>With the growth of civilisation and the development of personality there +slowly crept into the minds of men a distaste for this irregular +sexuality and a desire for a less chaotic state of things. This longing +and the wish for legitimate heirs gradually overcame promiscuity and, in +Greece, led to the establishment of the monogamous system. It must not +be assumed, however, that the Greek ideal of marriage bore any +resemblance to our modern conception. True, the wife occupied an +honoured position as the guardian of hearth and children and was treated +by her husband with affection and respect, but she was not free. Nor was +her husband expected to be faithful to her. Marriage in no way +restricted his liberty, but left him free to seek intellectual +stimulation in the society of the hetaerae, and gratification of the +senses in the company of his slaves. Love in our sense was unknown to +the ancients, and although there is a modern note in the legends of the +faithful Penelope, and the love which united Orpheus and Eurydice, yet, +so Lucka tells us, these instances should be regarded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> rather as poetic +divinations of a future stage of feeling than actual facts then within +the scope of probability. Even Plato, in whom all wisdom and +ante-Christian culture culminated, was still, in this respect, a citizen +of the old world, for he, too, knew as yet nothing of the spiritual love +of a man for a woman. To him the love of an individual was but a +beginning, the road to the love of perfect beauty and the eternal ideas.</p> + +<p>On the threshold of the second stage of the erotic life stands +Christianity, which, in sharp contrast to antiquity and to the classical +period, sought the centre and climax of life in the soul. The founder of +the "religion of love" <i>discovered</i> the individual, and by so doing laid +the foundation for that metaphysical love which found its most striking +expression in the deification of woman and the cult of the Virgin Mary. +How this change of mental attitude was brought about is worked out in a +brilliant chapter, entitled "The Birth of Europe." The revivifying +influence of Christ's preaching and personality was stifled after the +first centuries by the rigid dogma and formalism which had altered his +doctrine almost past recognition. The Church was building up its +political structure and tolerated no rival. Art, literature, music, all +the enthusiasm and profound thought of which the human mind is capable, +were pressed into her service. Independent thought was heresy, and the +death of every heretic became a new fetter which bound the intellect of +man. But about the year 1100, when the mighty edifice was complete, and +the pope and his bishops looked down upon kings and emperors and counted +them their vassals, when the barbaric peoples which made up the +population of Europe had been sufficiently schooled and educated in the +new direction, a longing for something new, a yearning for art, for +poetry, for beauty, began to stir the hearts of men and women. It found +expression in the ideal of chivalry, the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy +Grail, and suddenly love, bursting out in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> brilliant flame, shed its +radiance on the sordid relationship which had hitherto existed between +the sexes, and transfigured it. Woman, the despised, to whom at the +Council of Macon a soul had been denied, all at once became a queen, a +goddess. The drudge, the patiently suffering wife, were things of the +past. A new ideal had been set up and men worshipped it with bended +knees.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>"She shines on us as God shines on his angels,"</div></div> +</div> + +<p>sang Guinicelli.</p> + +<p>It was in a small country in the South of France, in Provence, that the +new spirit was born. The troubadours, wandering from castle to castle, +sang the praise of love, genuine love, the earlier ones without +admixture either of speculation or metaphysic. The dogma that pure love +was its own reward inasmuch as it made men perfect, was framed later on.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>"I cannot sin when I am in her mind,"</div></div> +</div> + +<p>wrote Guirot Riquier, and Dante, in the "Vita Nuova," calls his beloved +mistress "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtues." The +monk Matfre Ermengau, who wrote a text-book on love, says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Love makes good men better,</div> +<div>And the worst man good.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The later troubadours drew a much sharper distinction between spiritual +and sensual love. The latter was regarded as degrading and base (at +least in principle) and woe to the man who held, or rather, avowed, +another opinion. His reward was the contempt of every man and woman of +culture. "I ask no more of my mistress than that she should suffer me to +serve her," protested Bernart de Ventadour.</p> + +<p>It goes without saying that, in spite of this high ideal, sensuality +flourished undiminished, and a troubadour who loudly sang the praise of +chastity and blatantly professed his entire disinterestedness in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> +service of his mistress, did not see the least inconsequence in carrying +on a dozen intrigues at the same time with other women. Sordello, one of +the best known poets of this period, was charged by a contemporary with +having changed his mistress over a hundred times, and he himself, +impudently bragging, proclaims that</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>None can resist me; all the frowning husbands</div> +<div>Shall not prevent me to embrace their wives,</div> +<div>If I so wish....</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Another poet, Count Rambaut III., of Orange, recommended to his +fellow-men as the surest way of winning a woman's favour, "to break her +nose with a blow of the fist." "I myself," he continued, "treat all +women with tenderness and courtesy, but then—I am considered a fool."</p> + +<p>As may be expected, sublimated, metaphysical love was not without its +caricatures and eccentricities. One of the most grotesque figures of the +period of the troubadours was Ulrich von Lichtenstein, a German knight. +As a page, we are told, he drank the water in which his mistress had +washed her hands. Later on he had his upper lip amputated because it +displeased his lady-love, and on another occasion he cut off one of his +fingers, had it set in gold and used as a clasp on a volume of his poems +which he sent as a present to his inamorata.</p> + +<p>At the famous Courts of Love, the most extraordinary questions were +seriously discussed and decided. A favourite subject for debate was the +relationship between love and marriage, and some of the decisions which +have been preserved for us prove without a doubt that those two great +factors in the emotional life were considered irreconcilable. At the +Court of the Viscountess Ermengarde of Narbonne, the question whether +the love between lovers was greater than the love between husband and +wife was settled as follows: "Nature and custom have erected an +insuperable barrier between conjugal affection and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> the love which +unites two lovers. It would be absurd to draw comparisons between two +things which have neither resemblance nor connection."</p> + +<p>The contrast between the new, spiritualised love and the older, sexual, +instinct created that dualism so characteristic of the whole mediaeval +period. Sexuality and love were felt as two inimical forces, the fusion +of which was beyond the range of possibility. While on the one hand +woman was worshipped as a divine being, before whom all desire must be +silenced, she was on the other hand stigmatised as the devil's tool, a +power which turned men away from his higher mission and jeopardised the +salvation of his soul. Wagner portrayed this dualism perfectly in +<i>Tannhauser</i>. "A man of the Middle Ages," says Lucka, "would have +recognised in this magnificent work the tragedy of his soul."</p> + +<p>It was but a small step from the worship of a beloved mistress to the +cult of the Virgin Mary. The Church, hostile at first, finally +acquiesced, and "through her official acknowledgment of a female deity, +open enmity between the religion of the Church and the religion of woman +was avoided." A woman, that is to say, the Virgin Mary, had stepped +between God and humanity as mediator, intercessor and saviour.</p> + +<p>Both Dante, the inspired woman-worshipper of the Middle Ages, and the +more modern Goethe, saw in metaphysical love the triumph over all things +earthly. And far above either of these intellectual heroes looms the +awe-inspiring figure of Michelangelo, the scoffer, to whom love came +late in life; in his ecstatic adoration of Vittoria Colonna, the +enthusiasm of Plato and the passion of Dante are blended in a more +transcendent flame.</p> + +<p>Sexual Mystics and the Brides of Christ present the darker aspect of +metaphysical love. All the latter, including even Catherine of Siena (a +clever politician who kept up a correspondence with the leading<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> +statesmen of her time), Marie of Oignies, and St. Teresa, are +stigmatised as victims of hysteria and consigned to the domain of +pathology.</p> + +<p>While the first stage was characterised by the reign of unbridled sexual +instinct, the second by the conflict between spiritual and sensual love, +the third stage represents our modern conception, the blending of +spiritual and sensual love, which is "not the differentiated sexual +instinct, but a force embracing the psycho-physical entity of the +beloved being without any consciousness of sexual desire." It shares +with the purely metaphysical love the lover's longing to raise his +mistress above him and glorify her without any ulterior object and +desire. "In this stage there is no tyranny of man over woman, as in the +sexual stage; no subjection of man to woman, as in the woman-worship of +the Middle Ages; but complete equality of the sexes, a mutual give and +take. If sexuality is infinite as matter, spiritual love eternal as the +metaphysical ideal, then the synthesis is human and personal." The +apotheosis of this perfect love Lucka finds in the <i>Liebestod</i> (the +death of the lovers in the ecstasy of love), in Wagner's <i>Tristan und +Isolde</i>.</p> + +<p>An interesting chapter on erotic aberrations, the demoniacal and the +obscene, completes the third part of the book.</p> + +<p>There may be much in Lucka's theories which will rouse the scepticism of +the monists; some of his deductions may appear to his readers a little +strained, but no thinking man or woman can read his brilliant +<i>Conclusion</i> without denying him the tribute of sincere admiration. In +this last chapter he applies Haeckel's biogenetic law to the domain of +the spirit. As the human embryo passes through the principal stages of +the development of the individual from lower forms of life, so the +growing male must pass through the stages of psychical development +through which the race has passed. The gynecocratic government of +pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>historic time is revived in the nursery, where the mother rules +supreme and the sisters dominate. The normal, healthy school-boy, +preferring the company of his school-fellows to all others, shunning his +mother and sisters, ashamed of his female relatives, is the modern +individual representative of those early leagues and unions of young men +who opposed matriarchy and finally brought about its overthrow and the +establishment of male government. The promiscuous sexuality +characteristic of adolescence reproduces the first, merely sexual, stage +of the erotic life of the race in the life of the individual. As a rule +this phase is followed by a period of woman-worship; love has conquered +the sexual instinct and the latter is felt as base and degrading. +Atavism is not so much the persistence of the earlier, as the absence of +the later stages of psychical development.</p> + +<p>I need not emphasise the fact that the three stages are often +intermingled and not traceable with equal clearness in the life of every +individual. Many men never advance beyond the first stage and others are +fragmentary and undeveloped; but certain phases are more or less +distinguishable in every well-endowed male individual. Lucka finds a +perfect illustration of his theory in the life and works of Richard +Wagner, whose operas <i>The Fairies</i> (based on Shakespeare's <i>Measure for +Measure</i>), <i>Tannhauser</i>, and <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>, successively +illustrate the three stages through which the great poet-composer and +impassioned lover passed, and reflect the principal halting-places in +the erotic evolution of the race. In <i>Parsifal</i>, Wagner's last and +maturest work, he conjectures a potential fourth stage, divined by the +genius of the great musician and thinker, a sublimation of our modern +ideal, a stage when love will be freed from all sexual feeling (a +conception not unlike Otto Weininger's), but to which we have not yet +attained and which we are even unable fully to grasp.</p> + +<p>I have not been able to do more than touch upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> the principal features +of this book, the fame of whose brilliant author has long spread beyond +the boundaries of his own native country. Emil Lucka was born in Vienna +in 1877, and has already achieved a number of remarkably fine books, +most of which have been translated into Russian, French, and other +foreign languages. He is as yet unknown in England, this being the first +of his works to appear in English.</p> + +<p class='right'><span class="smcap">Ellie Schleussner.</span></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>cf.</i> Hartland's "Primitive Paternity" and Frazer's "Golden +Bough."</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_EVOLUTION_OF_LOVE" id="THE_EVOLUTION_OF_LOVE"></a>THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE</h2> + +<h3>THE FIRST STAGE: THE SEXUAL INSTINCT</h3> + +<p>To the generations slowly rising from the dark abyss of time to the +twilight of the Middle Ages, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct +offered fewer difficulties than the gratification of any other need or +desire. With every unpremeditated and cursory indulgence the craving +disappeared from consciousness and left the individual free to give his +mind to the acquisition of the necessities of life which were far more +difficult to obtain. Primitive, prehistoric man lived in the moment. +When there was plenty of food he gorged to repletion, heedless of the +starvation which might be his fate to-morrow or the day after. His +thought had neither breadth nor continuity. It never occurred to him +that there might be a connection between an abrupt and quickly forgotten +embrace and the birth of a child by a woman of the tribe after what +appeared to be an immeasurable lapse of time. He suspected witchcraft in +the phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth (to this day the aborigines of +Central and Northern Australia do not realise the connection between +generation and birth). As a rule it was remembered that a certain woman +had given birth to a certain child by the fact of her having carried it +about and fed it at her breast. Occasionally it was forgotten to which +mother a child belonged; perhaps the mother had died; perhaps the child +had strayed beyond the boundaries of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> community and the mother had +failed to recognise it on its return. But it was clear beyond all doubt +that every child had a "mother." The conception of "father" had not yet +been formed. Experience had taught our primitive ancestors two +undeniable facts, namely "that women gave birth to children" and "that +every child had a mother."</p> + +<p>We must assume that sexual intercourse was irregular and haphazard up to +the dawn of history. Every woman—within the limits of her own tribe, +probably—belonged to every man. Whether this assumption is universally +applicable or not, must remain doubtful; later ethnologists, more +particularly <i>von Westermarck</i>, deny it because it does not apply to +every savage tribe of the present day. Herodotus tells us that +promiscuity existed in historical times in countries as far removed from +each other as Ethiopia and the borders of the Caspian Sea. There can be +no reasonable doubt that sexual intercourse took the form of +group-marriage, the exchange or lending of wives, and other similar +arrangements.</p> + +<p>The relationship between mother and child having been established by +Nature herself, the first human family congregated round the mother, +acknowledging her as its natural chief. This continued even after the +causal connection between generation and birth had ceased to be a +mystery. In all countries on the Mediterranean, more especially in +Lycia, Crete and Egypt, the predominance of the female element in State +and family is well attested; it is reflected in the natural religions of +the Eastern races—both Semitic and Aryan—and we find innumerable +traces of it in Greek mythology. The merit of discovering this important +stage in the relationship of the sexes is due to <i>Bachofen</i>. "Based on +life-giving motherhood," he says, "gynecocracy was completely dominated +by the natural principles and phenomena which rule its inner and outer +life; it vividly realised the unity of nature, the harmony of the +universe which it had not yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> outgrown.... In every respect obedient to +the laws of physical existence, its gaze was fixed upon the earth, it +worshipped the chthonian powers rather than the gods of light." The +children of men who had sprung from their mother as the flowers spring +from the soil, raised altars to Gaea, Demeter and Isis, the deities of +inexhaustible fertility and abundance. These early races of men realised +themselves only as a part of nature; they had not yet conceived the idea +of rising above their condition and setting their intelligence to battle +with its blind laws. Incapable of realising their individuality, they +bowed in passive submission to nature's undisputed sway. They were +members of a tribe, and the fragmentary existence of the single +individual was of no importance when it clashed with the welfare of the +clan. The family—centred round the mother—and the tribe were the real +individuals, in the same way as the swarm of bees, and not the +individual bee, makes the whole. They lived in complete harmony with +nature; they had no spiritual life, no history, for civilisation and the +creation of intellectual values which are the foundation of history +depend on the rise of a community above primitive conditions. +Differentiation had hardly begun to exert its modifying influence; all +men (not unlike the Eastern Asiatics of our day) resembled each other in +looks, character and habits.</p> + +<p>In the countries on the Mediterranean (as well as in India and +Babylonia) the first stage of sexual intercourse, irresponsible and +promiscuous, was systematised by religion. The annual spring-festivals +in honour of Adonis, Dionysus, Mylitta, Astarte and Aphrodite, +celebrated unbridled licentiousness. The whole community greeted the +re-awakening vitality of the earth by an unrestrained abandonment to +passion. Man aspired to be no more than the flower which scatters its +seed to the winds. The incomprehensible lords of cupidity and rank +vegetation did not suffer the individualisation of desire. The complete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> +union of the male and female qualities, as manifested both in nature and +man, was solemnised in the Orgies, and not by any means the relationship +of an individual man to an individual woman, or sexuality connected with +individuals and dominated by them. Nor was this unfettering of instinct +a symbolical act; for it to be so, man must have stood over against +nature as an intellectual being, mirroring and transforming her acts by +his own deeds. He was as yet far from this. His ambition did not reach +beyond the desire to fulfil nature in himself. Before the majesty of +sex—worshipped in the vague, shadowy mothers of mankind, Rhea, Demeter, +Cybele, and their human offspring, the phallic Dionysus and the +hundred-breasted goddess of Ephesus—the individual with his piteous +limitations shrank into insignificance. Sex was immortal, sex and +primary matter, the υλη contrasted by Aristotle with the +εἱσοϛ, the form. "The female principle is the mother of the +body, but the mother of the spirit is the male." The substance of those +ancient cults was birth and death, meaningless, purposeless, apparently +without rhyme or reason; their sacrament the perpetual union of the +sexes. Between the succeeding generations there was but one bond, the +natural bond of motherhood. It was the first tie realised by mankind, a +tie not felt as a concrete relationship between two individuals, but as +a general, maternal, natural force. The presiding divinities were the +"mothers," the eternal, incorporeal deities, enthroned outside time and +space, and therefore immortal givers of life and preservers of mankind. +Before their silent greatness the desire of man to know his whence and +whither, to win shape and individuality, became blasphemy. They had +given immortality to sex, but upon the individual they had laid the +curse of death.</p> + +<p>Thus we have first a stage of fatherless, natural conception, +corresponding with the philosophical theories which maintained that all +created things had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> sprung from the elements. Later ages discovered a +spiritual principle, a becoming, or an eternal being, and finally a +conflict between spirit and matter.</p> + +<p>But the general attitude towards sexual intercourse underwent a change +as soon as here and there individuals appeared who were conscious of +their individuality. Natural selection could not come into play in a +community the members of which resembled one another so closely that all +personal characteristics were obliterated in a general monotony. One +woman was as good as another, although in all probability a healthy, +youthful and strong individual would be preferred to a sickly, puny +specimen. But apart from this, the wish to choose a partner instead of +being content with the first comer, must have coincided historically +with the outward, and later on with the inward differentiation of the +race. I cannot prove my theory by quoting chapter and verse from ancient +writers, but obviously a feeling of preference could not have arisen +until individuals had begun to show very noticeable traces of +difference. Therefore with growing differentiation a new factor—modest +at first and operating within narrow limits—the factor of choice, had +come into the sexual life. The slow development of personality gave +birth to the feeling which rebelled against universal sexual intercourse +and gynecocracy in general. The men desired to shape their own world; +they had no share in the immortality of maternal life. As (relatively +speaking) single individuals they stood over against the material bond +of the generations living in the chain of the mothers. Demigods, the +sons of the gods of light and mortal mothers, were credited with the +salvation of men from a confused, chaotic existence, and the +introduction of new conditions of life, no longer based on the dictates +of nature but on the moulding genius of man. "Hercules, Theseus and +Perseus overthrew the ancient powers of darkness. They laid the +foundations of man's great achievement, civilisation, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> were the +first to worship the gods of light. They delivered humanity from the +gross materialism in which it had hitherto been steeped; they were the +awakeners of spiritual life, which is a higher life than the life of the +senses; they were as incorruptible as the sun from whence they came, the +heroes of a new civilisation distinguished by gentleness, a higher +endeavour and a new dispensation." (Bachofen.)</p> + +<p>Heinrich Schurtz has proved (though not in connection with matriarchy) +that side by side with the family, unions of unmarried men existed in +many countries at a very early time. The object of these unions, which +had nothing of the rigidity of blood-relationship, was fellowship. As +soon as the boys had outgrown the care of their mother they were +compelled to combine for the purpose of playing games and later on for +war and hunting; these men's unions therefore were the outcome of the +necessary conditions of life. It is obvious that innovations and +inventions of all sorts originated in these unions rather than with the +temperamentally conservative women, and that we have to look upon them +as the hotbed of all spiritual and social evolution. These +confederations and leagues not based on a natural or blood-relationship, +but on a feeling of brotherhood and friendliness, might well have been +an attack upon the natural ties of the family, an expression of a +feeling of hostility to and contempt for women, and probably stood in +close relationship to a striking characteristic of the past: a widely +spread homosexuality.</p> + +<p>Whether Schurtz gives us a correct picture of these men's unions or not, +there can be no doubt that the struggle against matriarchy originated in +them. This struggle led eventually to the victory of the male principle, +the acknowledgment of the authority of the father, the institution of +male government which deprived women of all legal rights, and the +dominion of the spiritual; the victory of the gods of light over the +dark lords of fertility. This revolution of princi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>ples was perhaps the +completest revolution humanity has ever known.</p> + +<p>A long road, marked by numerous compromises and limitations, led from +casual intercourse to the final establishment of the monogamous system. +Free intercourse had been sanctioned by the gods, who suffered no +restrictions and modifications, and sacrifices in the shape of a +temporary universal unfettering of instinct were required to pacify +their anger and reconcile them to the new system. The first and most +important of these compromises was the temple-prostitution practised by +many nations in Asia Minor, the Greek Archipelago, India and Babylonia. +Many a girl gained in this way the marriage portion which enabled her +later on to find a husband, to whom she invariably remained strictly +loyal. Thus all religious requirements were satisfied. At first this was +an annually recurring rite, but gradually it became an isolated ceremony +in the life of every female individual. "In the place of the annual +surrender," says Priester, "we now have a single act; the hetaerism of +the matrons is succeeded by the hetaerism of the maids; instead of being +practised during marriage, it is practised in spinsterhood; the blind +surrender has given way to a yielding to certain individuals." ...</p> + +<p>With the growth of civilisation a few girls, the hierodules, were set +apart for the purpose of pacifying the offended deities and their act +ransomed the rest of the female citizens.</p> + +<p>It was not on erotic grounds, but for political and social reasons that +the Greek introduced monogamy. The reason which weighed in the scales +more heavily than all others was the necessity for legitimate offspring. +It was natural that a man of property should desire a legitimate heir +who would inherit it on his death. The right of succession from father +to son, incorporated later on in the Roman Right, originated during this +period. But this was not the only advantage connected with the +possession of a son: religion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> taught that after death the body required +sacrificial food which could only be provided by the legitimate male +descendants of the deceased. (The same belief was held by the Indians +and Eastern Asiatics.) In several Greek States marriage was compulsory +and bachelors were fined. At the same time the contraction of a marriage +did not interfere with the personal freedom of the man; he was at +liberty to go to the hetaerae for intellectual stimulation (unless he +happened to prefer the friends of his own sex) and to his slaves for the +pleasures of the senses. His wife, although she was not free, was +respected by him as the guardian of his hearth and children. There was +but one legal reason for divorce: sterility, which frustrated the object +of matrimony. Conjugal love as we understand it did not exist; it is a +feeling which was entirely unknown to the ancients.</p> + +<p>With the exception of the gradually weakening hold of religion on the +imagination of the people towards the decline of the Roman Empire, no +perceptible change occurred in the social life of the old world until +the dawn of the Middle Ages. To quote Otto Seeck: "A wife had no other +task than to produce legitimate offspring; and yet she gave herself airs +and graces, embittered her husband's life with her jealousy and bad +temper or, worse even, set all tongues wagging with her evil conduct. Is +it to be wondered at that marriage was merely regarded as a duty to the +State, and that a great number of men were not sufficiently patriotic to +take such a burden upon their shoulders?"</p> + +<p>Thus the victory of the male spiritual principle over universal sexual +intercourse ushered in the second stage which checked the sexual impulse +and directed it upon certain individuals, a distinction however, which +bears no relation to love.</p> + +<p>Monogamy had conquered, in principle at least and as an ideal.</p> + +<p>The profoundly mystical core of the most powerful Greek tragedy which +has come down to our time, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> <i>Orestes</i> of Aeschylus, represents the +victory of the new gods of light over the old maternal powers. Orestes +has sinned against the old law, for in order to avenge his father's +death, he has slain his mother. The sun-god Apollo and the sinister +Erinnys, the upholders of the old maternal right, are waging war over +the justifiableness of the deed. To the Erinnys, matricide is the +foulest of all crimes, for man is more nearly related to the mother than +to the father. But Apollo had commanded the deed, so that the father's +murder should not remain unavenged.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Not to the mother is the child indebted</div> +<div>For life; she tends and guards the kindling spark</div> +<div>The father lighted; she but holds his pledge.——</div></div> +</div> + +<p>he explains. And the answer is the lament of the Erinnys:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thus thou destroy'st the gods of ancient times!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Athene, the virgin goddess, the motherless daughter of Zeus, appearing +as mediator between the opponents, decides in favour of the new +dispensation which places the father's claim above the mother's. Orestes +is free of guilt; his deed was justifiable according to the canons of +the new law. The tragedy is the symbolical commemoration of the victory +of the male principle in Greece. But Athene is the embodiment of the new +hermaphroditic ideal of the Greek which stood in close connexion to +their homosexuality, and with which I propose to deal later on.</p> + +<p>There is a psychical law ordaining that nothing which has ever quickened +the soul of man shall be entirely lost. Were it not so, the storehouses +of the soul would stand empty. New values are created, but the old +verities endure; as a rule they are relegated to a lower sphere, to +inferior social layers, but they persist and frequently merge into the +new. This law applies without exception to the relationship between the +sexes; we shall come upon it again and again. During the second stage, +characterised by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> the spiritual love foreign to the ancients, the purely +sexual impulse continued as an unimpaired force, but it had lost its +prestige and was not only regarded as ignoble and base, but also +stigmatised as sinful and demoniacal. The hearts of men were stirred by +new ideals.</p> + +<p>A similar attitude, perhaps not quite so uncompromising because the +contrast was less pronounced, existed in classical Greece. The more +highly developed, self-conscious Hellenic genius, shrinking from +promiscuous intercourse, had systematised the instinct and set up a new +ideal in Platonic love. But below the surface raged the unbridled +natural force, and in perfect harmony with the Greek spirit—it was not +hysterically hidden, but assigned a place in the new system. Wrapped in +the obscurity of the Mysteries, concealed from the gaze of the new gods +of light, it attempted to assuage its inextinguishable thirst. The +Mysteries were the annual tribute paid as a ransom by Apollo-worshipping +Hellas to chaotic Asia, so that she might be free to pursue her higher +psycho-spiritual aims. The brilliant civilisation of Athens was based on +the dark cult of the Mysteries. On the festivals of the hermaphroditic +Dionysus and Demeter, which are identical with the cults of Adonis and +Mylitta, the impersonal, generative elements were worshipped. Thus, +below the surface of the Greek State, founded on masculine values and +attempting to restrict intercourse for the benefit of a more +systematised progeniture, flourished the orgiastic cult of the ancient +Eastern deities, who had vouchsafed to mortals a glimpse of the great +secret of life in the ardour of procreation and conception. The women +upheld the religion of passion as an end in itself; bacchantes, men in +female attire, emasculated priests, sacrificed to the blindly bountiful +gods. We are told that Dionysus conquered even the Amazons and converted +them to his worship. Euripides described in the <i>Bacchantes</i>—the +sub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>ject of which is the war between the uncontrolled sexual impulse and +the new order of things—how Dionysus traversed all Asia and finally +arrived in Hellas accompanied by a crowd of abandoned women. But his +religion was more than a cult of wine and sensual pleasure, it embraced +a gentle worship of nature, throwing down the barrier between man and +beast—impassable by the spirit of civilisation—and lovingly including +every living creature. We read in the <i>Bacchantes</i> that the women who +had fled from the town to follow the irresistible stranger, Dionysus, +dwelled in the mountains, binding their hair with tame adders, carrying +in their arms the cubs of wolves and the young deer, and feeding them +with the milk of their breasts; that milk and wine welled up when they +struck the earth with the thyrsus; and so on. Dionysus implores +Pentheus, the representative of the Hellenic masculine system, not to +venture undisguised among the maenads: "They'll murder you if they +divine your sex," and, knowing the secret of the male and female temper:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>. . . . . . . . . First let</div> +<div>His mind be clouded by a slight disorder</div> +<div>For, conscious of his manhood he will never</div> +<div>Wear women's garb; insane, he's sure to wear it.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Pentheus, recognising in Dionysus the foe of a more spiritual conception +of the law, the <i>effeminate stranger</i> who had driven the women to +madness, is torn to pieces by the frenzied bacchantes who fall upon him, +led by Agave, his mother, and sacrificed to the <i>bull-god</i> Dionysus. At +the conclusion of this strange and profound epos, Agave recovers her +senses and curses the acts which she has committed in her madness ... +women submit to the new spiritual dispensation. We realise now why Hera, +the tutelary goddess of the newly introduced monogamous system, hated +Dionysus and attempted to kill him before he was born.</p> + +<p>The subject treated in the beautiful myth of Orpheus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> is the +relationship between the primitive sexual impulse and its +individualisation on a single personality. For seven months Orpheus +bewails the death of Eurydice and regards all other living creatures +with indifference. This loyalty offends and infuriates the women of +Thracia, who divine in it a spirit inimical to a life in harmony with +nature. One night, during the celebration of the Dionysian rites, they +attack the poet—the representative of the higher Hellenic poetical +ideals—and rend him limb from limb. But as the head of the murdered +singer floats down the river, the pale lips still frame the beloved +name: Eurydice! It is certain that in those remote legendary days such +love did not exist. But the prophetic Greek spirit contrasted +promiscuous intercourse with love for a single woman.</p> + +<p>So far we have encountered only a general, not an individualised, sexual +instinct and, in a limited measure at least, a struggling tendency +towards individualisation. But even so it was merely a question of +instinct, and did not bear the least resemblance to love as we +understand it to-day. <i>Love</i> did not exist in the old world. I admit +that in the legend of Orpheus we are face to face with a sentiment which +is not unlike modern love, but, as far as I am aware, this is an +isolated case in Greek history, and may be regarded as a divination of +something new, just as we find unmistakable anticipations of +Christianity in Plato's writings. Such phenomena—the occasional +occurrence of which I do not altogether deny, although I regard them as +on the whole improbable as far as the sphere of my research is +concerned—are not infrequently met with in history, but their effect +upon civilisation was nil; they were presentiments, incomprehensible in +their day, and for this very reason probably preserved as curiosities.</p> + +<p>In spite of the fact, however, that in those far-off days spiritual love +of a man for a woman was un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>known, we find Plato contrasting "a base and +degraded Eros with a divine Eros." Pausanias says in the "Symposium":</p> + +<p>"The man who loves with his senses only, loves women and boys equally +well. He loves the body more than the soul.... His only striving is to +obtain the object of his desire, and he cares not whether it be worthy +or unworthy. The Eros he worships is the ally of that younger goddess in +whom male and female attributes are blended. But the other Eros is the +companion of Aphrodite, Urania, the divine; unbegotten by a father, +unconceived by a mother, she is the offspring of the male element, the +elder one, unstained by passion.... The sensualist who loves the body +more than the soul is base. His love passes away like the object of his +passion. But the companion of the Olympic goddess is the Eros who fills +the hearts of the lovers with the longing for virtue. The other Eros is +the confederate of the debased Aphrodite." And Aristophanes, another of +the participators in the feast, says: "The yearning does not seem to be +a desire for the pleasures of the senses, the one taking delight in his +intercourse with the other; far from it, it is obvious that each soul is +craving for something which it cannot express in words, but can only +divine and conjecture." And the mysterious Diotima revealed to Socrates +an entirely novel principle in erotic life; the principle which guides +man beyond the pleasures of the senses and—through love—leads him to +the divine. "The slave of his senses runs after women; but he who loves +with his soul and strives to win immortality through virtue and wisdom, +seeks a great and beautiful soul that he may surrender himself to it +completely." But in the opinion of the classical ages, a beautiful soul +was only to be found in the body of a man; woman belonged to the lower, +animal spheres; she was destined for the pleasure of the senses and the +propagation of the race. Plato's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> theory of ideas is the philosophical +victory of the male-spiritual principle over nature, matter and their +warden: woman. (Perhaps it is even the revenge of the Greek genius for +man's original enslavement.) "Love between men," continues the seer, +"forms a stronger tie, a closer friendship, than love between parents +and children; it has a mutual share in children which are immortal and +far more beautiful than the children of men." She teaches Socrates that +this noble love is at the root of all the magnificent creations of the +spirit, as carnal love is the origin of human life. "Until he becomes +aware that the beauty of all bodies is closely related, a man must love +an individual with all his heart. If a man will follow after beauty, he +is foolish not to conceive the beauty of all bodies as one and the same. +As soon as he has learned this, he will become a lover of all beautiful +forms; his fervent passion for one will diminish, he will scorn the +individual and hold it cheap."</p> + +<p>With the Hellenic homosexuality an element foreign and even hostile to +the original and natural bi-sexual sensuality crept into the erotic life +of the human race; it found its classical representation in the Platonic +dialogues "Symposium" and "Phaedros." In conscious opposition to all +sexuality Platonic love (what is usually called Platonic love is based +on an obstinate misunderstanding) turns to the purely spiritual, that is +to say, the conceptions of truth, beauty and goodness; it is a yearning +for the supernatural, and it knows itself as the path to it. In the +mutual love of all noble souls lies the germ of all higher things; it is +the way to the gods of light which, in this connection, are conceived +philosophically as ideas, though in the true Hellenic spirit as +objective ideas, the prototypes and culminations of everything human. To +grasp the meaning of Platonic love it is essential to realise +that—unlike the spiritual woman-worship peculiar to the Middle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> +Ages—it is not a personal feeling of one individual for another; +platonically speaking, the love for an individual is only a first stage; +the path which leads to the love of beauty and the eternal ideas. The +characteristic of this metaphysical love which Plato was the first to +conceive, was therefore love for the universal, and not love for an +individual. The latter, as we shall find later on, is the characteristic +of the true or, more modestly speaking, specifically European conception +of love. Platonic love, finally, was the perception of perfection, the +Socratic knowledge; its alpha and omega was not, as the mystic and true +erotic would have it, its ardour and passion, the fulness of its own +being. It had an alien purpose: the knowledge of things divine, by a +later period Christianised and understood as the divine mysteries. To +Plato, the essence and climax of antique, ante-Christian culture, every +individual, even the beloved mistress, was but a preliminary, a +finger-post, pointing the way to the perception of perfect beauty. True +virtue is the outcome of profound knowledge; it transforms men into +gods. The purely spiritual woman-worship of the Middle Ages was only +another aspect of this yearning to attain to virtue and perfection +through the love of an individual. We must not lose sight of the fact +that it was already strongly emphasised and upheld in the Platonic ideal +of love.</p> + +<p>In the dark excesses of the Mysteries the beauty of the human form +counted for nothing; voluptuousness and intoxication ruled. In the +Asiatic cult of the sexes there was no room for beauty, no time for +selection. The Greeks were the discoverers of the beauty of the human +form. Beauty kindled the flame of love in their souls, beauty was the +gauge which determined their erotic values. Their ideal was a +<i>kalokagathos</i>, a youth beautiful in body and soul.</p> + +<p>In "Phaedros" Plato contrasts with far greater force than in the +"Symposium" him "who craves for sensual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> pleasure like the beasts in the +fields" with him "who strives after beauty and perfection." To the +latter "the face of the beloved is the reflection of the sublimely +beautiful." He would like to sacrifice to her, as to the immortal gods. +All beautiful bodies represent to him in an increasing measure the idea +of the beauty of form, which again is subordinate to the beauty of the +soul. It points the way to metaphysical beauty, the eternal and +imperishable idea of mankind. Socrates could scorn the beauty of the +individual because he saw in it merely an imperfect reflection of +perfect beauty. In its truest sense Platonic love is, therefore, +impersonal; it is not spiritual love for a human being, but a peculiar +characteristic of the Greek cult of beauty. We shall again meet this +principle of beauty-worship in metaphysical love, the adoration of +woman; thanks to Plato, it has for all time become the inalienable +property of the human mind. The striving to rise above all individualism +was another ideal which a later period revived. But the pivot round +which the emotions revolved was the love for a beloved individual, the +modern, European, fundamental motive, as opposed to the antique Platonic +cult of ideas. Thus Plato, too, was a citizen of the old world, at whose +threshold stood universal sexual intercourse, tolerating nothing +personal, knowing of no individuals, acknowledging only unchecked, +uncontrollable instinct, and whose decline was again characterised by +the extreme impersonality of ideas. It had traversed the path of human +existence in a huge cycle. Starting from an unconscious existence in +complete harmony with nature, it had passed through individualised man +to the loftiest spiritual conceptions in the impersonal world of ideas.</p> + +<p>The Hellenic ideal of beauty was almost invariably realised in the male +form. The Greeks of the classical period disdained woman; she was for +them inseparably connected with base sensuality, but their contempt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> had +its source partly in a feeling of horror. The days when matriarchy was +the form of government were not very remote; it survived in a great +number of myths and also, subconsciously perhaps, in the soul of man. To +the Greek mind woman was the embodiment of the dark side of love, and it +was merely the logical conclusion of this conception when, at a later +period, she was regarded as the devil's tool. It is certain that the +origin of the idea must be sought in Plato's time.</p> + +<p>In intercourse with women man dimly felt the vague elementary condition +from which he had struggled hard to emerge, and fled to the more +familiar companions of his own sex. Would not love between man and man +deliver him from the basely sensual, strengthen his spirituality and +lead him to the gods? In this connection Zeus is called in "Phaedros" +φἱλιοϛ, the maker of friendships. Plato, in propounding this +doctrine, drew thereby the most radical conclusion of the new, +apparently male, but at heart hermaphroditic ideal of civilisation, +conceived in the heroic epoch and elaborated and brought to perfection +by the Greek of classical times. This ideal was the victory of the +spiritual principle over promiscuous sexuality and irresponsible +propagation and, quite in the true Hellenic spirit, it was again +interpreted materially.</p> + +<p>Because individualised love was an unknown quantity to the ancients, +they ornamented their sarcophagi with symbols of ecstatic life, with +dancing and embracing fauns and maenads. Generations passed away, but +new ones arose, embracing and begetting life—for life was eternal. +Death was vanquished in the ecstasy of the nameless millions, for the +true meaning of life lay in the preservation of the species. The death +of the individual did not have a deep and poignant meaning until the +soul had become the centre and climax of life. An individual had passed +away for ever—nothing could recall him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> Death had become the final +issue, the terror, because it destroyed the greatest of all things: +self-conscious man. But love, too, had changed; it was no longer sexual +impulse, depending on the body and perishing with it, but a craving of +the soul, conscious of itself and stretching out feelers far beyond the +earth. A new pang had come into the world, but also a new +reconciliation.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="THE_SECOND_STAGE_LOVE" id="THE_SECOND_STAGE_LOVE"></a>THE SECOND STAGE: LOVE</h3> + +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<h3>THE BIRTH OF EUROPE</h3> + +<p>The memory of the figure and preaching of Christ had so powerfully +influenced the centuries that it had gradually permeated and transformed +not only the Platonic doctrine of ideas—that maturest fruit of Greek +wisdom—but also the Semitic mediaeval monotheism. Something new had +sprung into being, something which expressed a hitherto unknown feeling +for life and for humanity, vague and uncertain in the beginning, but +growing in clearness and uniformity. On the throne of the Roman emperors +sat a bishop, whose power was increasing with the development of the new +civilisation, and whom the final victory of the new transcendental +world-principle had made master of the world. The building up of this +new civilisation had absorbed the intellectual force of a thousand +years; it had monopolised thought and every form of energy. The reward +was great. For the first time in the annals of the world the +questionings of brooding intelligence were fully answered, the anguish +of the tortured soul was stilled. The purpose of the universe, the +destiny of man, were comprehended and interpreted, good and evil being +finally known. At the close of the first Christian millenary, all moral +and intellectual values were grouped round and dominated by one supreme +ideal; the loftiest value in this world and the next, side by side with +the greatest secular power, were in the hands of the Church; together +with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> imperium she had succeeded to the spiritual and ethical +inheritance of the dead civilisations. Without her uncouth barbarism +reigned, and it was her task, while elaborating the system of the +universe for which she stood, to teach and convert the new nations, to +spread a uniform Christian civilisation.</p> + +<p>On the mere face of it it must seem strange that a religion which had +grown on foreign soil, out of foreign spiritual assumptions, should have +been accepted so readily and quickly by nations to whom it must have +been alien and unintelligible. The love of war and valour of the +Teutonic tribes and Christian asceticism were diametrically opposed +ideals, and very often their relationship was one of direct hostility. I +need only remind the reader of the contempt expressed for the chaplain +by Hagen (in the "Song of the Niebelungen"). On the other hand, the +ancient Celtic and Teutonic races shared one profound characteristic +with the Christian world, the consequences of which were sufficiently +far-reaching to raise the religion of Christ to the religion of Europe. +The characteristic common to the still uncultivated European spirit and +Christianity, and meaningless alike to the Asiatic barbarians, the Jews +of the Old Testament and the Greeks, was the importance which both +attached to the individual soul. Through the Christian religion this new +intuition which saw in the soul of man the highest of values, became the +centre and pivot of life and faith—a position to which even Plato, to +whom the objective, metaphysical idea was the essential, never attained. +It had been the most personal experience of Christ, and centuries after +his death the nations rediscovered it as their highest value. It +entitled Christianity to become the natural religion of Europe, and the +soul of its new system of civilisation. It formed the most complete +contrast to all Asiatic cults, Brahminism and Buddhism, a fact which, +since Schopenhauer, one is inclined to overlook. To the Indian, the soul +of man is not an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> entity; his consciousness is a republic, as it were, +composed of diverse spiritual principles and metaphysical forces which +are not centralised into an "I-centre," but exist impersonally, side by +side. This may be a great conception, but it is foreign to the feeling +of the citizen of Europe. To the latter the I, the soul, the +personality, is the pivot round which life turns. The evolution of the +European world-feeling is in the direction of the independent +development of all psychical forces and their fusion into a unity of +ever-increasing intimacy. New values will be created, but the fusing +power of the soul will strive with growing intensity to co-ordinate and +unify the internal and external life; personality will recreate the +world in conformity with its own purposes, that is to say, it will found +the system of objective civilisation. The incapacity of the Indian to +produce a civilisation perfect in every direction is explained by his +one-sided, morally-speculative thought. The world is to him nothing but +a moral phenomenon, he admits no other explanation; he seeks its true +meaning and the possibility of its salvation in the realisation of the +vanity of life, not in the liberating deed, and not in the inward +change.</p> + +<p>The kernel of matured and spiritualised Christianity, which reached its +apex in the German mystics, lies in the soul of man, eager to shed +everything which is subjective and accidental, and become spirit, +profound, divine reality. Eckhart, the great perfecter of this European +religion, deliberately and in direct contradiction to the dogma of his +time, placed man above the "highest angels," whom he considered subject +to limitations; "man," he argues, "thanks to his freedom, is able to +reach a goal to which no angel could aspire. For he is always new, +infinitely exalted above the limitations of the angels and all finite +reason." Of the relationship between the soul and God he says; "The soul +of the righteous man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> shall be with God, his equal and compeer, no more +and no less." The Upanishads, on the other hand, maintain that the core +of the world is not to be found in the soul of the individual but in +Brahma, the universal soul, outside whom there is no reality. "The +individual soul is but a phantasm of the universal soul, as the +reflection of the sun in the water is but a phantasm of the sun." The +sole purpose of the world is the extinction of individual consciousness, +its absorption in Brahma, the end of all suffering: "When feeling has +ceased, pain must cease, too, and the world be delivered." The Indian +lacks the central conception of love, for which he substitutes +knowledge. Primitive Christianity conceived the connection between body +and soul, the encumbering of the soul by the body, as it were, as a +temptation or a punishment; according to the Vedas, it is merely a +delusion to which the sage is not subject. Before his keen vision, the +deception falls to the ground, and by this very fact he is delivered. To +the feeling of Europe and Christianity, however, life and the universe +are genuine, deep realities, the touchstone of the soul. Love is the +soul's greatest treasure and the only true path to God; knowledge can +never take its place. "The divine stream of love flowing through the +soul," says Eckhart, "carries the soul along with it to its origin, to +the bourne of all knowledge, to God."</p> + +<p>The very general identification of the Christian and Indian mystics—a +fact which is accounted for by their common metaphysical tendency—is +based on an error; Indian mysticism and Christian mysticism originated +in different concepts; here the centre of all being is laid in love and +in the soul of man, there it is contained in knowledge and in Brahma. +But ultimately, at the termination of the world-process, they will meet, +although coming from different directions. "While the soul worships a +God, realises a God and knows of a God," says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> Eckhart, "it is separated +from God. This is God's purpose, to annihilate Himself in the soul, so +that the soul, too, shall lose itself. For God has been called God by +the creatures." The words "The soul creates God from within, is +connected with the divine and becomes divine itself," are highly +significant. To the Vedantist the soul of man is an emanation from the +world-soul: "Although God differs from the individual soul, the +individual soul does not differ from God." At this point it is no longer +an easy matter to distinguish the feeling of the Christian mystic from +the feeling of the Brahmin; though their valuations of man, life and the +world differ, nay, are even opposed to each other, they finally meet in +God. We read in the Vedanta: "The force which created and maintains the +universe, the eternal principle of all being, dwells entirely and +undividedly in every one of us. Our self is identical with the supreme +deity and only apparently differentiated from it. Whosoever has mastered +this truth has become at one with all creation; whosoever has not +mastered it, is a stranger and a foe to all creatures."</p> + +<p>I do not intend to depreciate Indian wisdom; I merely desire to point +out its inherent dissimilarity to Western thought; my task of laying +hold of the spirit of Europe in its crises and watching its growth is +bound to be advanced by this division.</p> + +<p>The religious experience of Christ, based on the realisation of the +divine nature of the soul, and the road of the soul to God, has +established the fundamental Western principle. A world-system was built +up which emanated from the innermost depth of the individual soul and, +very consistently, related all existing things, heaven and earth, the +creation and the destruction of the world, salvation and perdition, to +the soul of man. This was achieved with the aid of a naïve metaphysic, +created by the Greek genius and externalised by the crude intellect of +barbarians; this metaphysic drew its whole content from a unique<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> +revelation, and the essential was frequently hidden by dialectic and +speculation. One may safely say that the first millenary strove, if not +exactly to set aside the original principle of Christianity, yet to bind +it by dogma in such a way that it often became completely obscured. A +long training was necessary before the immature nations of barbarians +were fit to become citizens of the spiritual world, before they could +fully assimilate the new traditions and grasp their innermost meaning, +which by this very fact became altered and modified. This process of +education came to a temporary conclusion about the year 1100. At last +the European nations had outgrown the guardianship of the Church with +its antiquated methods; a new, a creative epoch was dawning; the +civilisation of Europe, opposed to all barbarism and orientalism, rose +like a brilliant star on the horizon of the world. Spontaneous feeling +for the race, for nature and for the divine verities had again become +possible.</p> + +<p>I shall have to exceed the limits of my subject in this chapter, for I +propose showing the seeds from which, in the time of the Crusades, the +new soul of the European, throwing off the lethargy of the first +Christian millenary, began to grow with extraordinary vigour and +rapidity; that new soul which experienced a wider, if not deeper, +unfolding in the period of the Renascence, and to this day pervades and +fertilises our spiritual life. I might have been less digressive, but I +hope that two reasons will justify my prolixity; the first is the great +importance of the subject from the point of view of a history of +civilisation, and the second and more particular one is its close inner +relationship to my principal theme. For, in complete contrast with the +sexuality on which heretofore the relationship between husband and wife +had been based, a new feeling, that of spiritual love, had come into +existence and quickly reached its climax. Projected not only on the +other sex,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> but also on God and on nature, it permeated the age and +explains its great and unprecedented manifestations: the spiritual love +between man and woman (which deteriorated later on into the deification +of woman), the new religion of the German mystics, the awakening +appreciation of the beauty of nature, the sudden outburst of German +poetry—no sooner born than it reached perfection—the specifically +European Gothic architecture, so completely independent of the old art. +All these new creations had their origin in the strange craving of the +period for something novel and romantic, something hitherto unknown. +This longing begot the ideal of chivalry and a wealth of half human, +half preter-human conceptions, such as the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy +Grail. And all at once, something unprecedented, something of which the +race had as yet no experience, had come to pass: love, which had nothing +in common with sensuality, which was even deliberately hostile to it, +love which welled up in one soul and flowed into the other—presupposing +personality—love was there! If, therefore, I have gone into detail, I +hope that it has served to elucidate the principal theme of this part of +my book, namely, the spiritual part of man for woman aspiring to the +metaphysical, which is so alien to our modern feeling.</p> + +<p>It is necessary to begin by sketching a background which shall set off +the new phenomenon. The spiritual achievement of the first millenary was +the construction of the Christian system of the universe the Church had +complete knowledge of all things in heaven and earth—symbols merely of +the eternal verities; her wisdom almost equalled divine wisdom, for the +secrets of life and death had been revealed and surrendered to her; St. +Chrysostom's words uttered in the fourth century, "The Church is God," +had become a fact. The profoundest wisdom, the greatest power, were +hers; the loftiest ideal had been realised as it has never been realised +before or since. As the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> wisdom of the Church had been a direct gift of +God, so her power, too, had divine origin and reached beyond this +earthly life. The Church alone held the key to eternal bliss, her curse +meant everlasting damnation. To be excommunicated was to be bereaved of +temporal and eternal happiness. A man who had been excommunicated was +worse off than a wild beast; he was surrendered to the devils in hell, +and he knew it. There was but one road to salvation: to do penance and +humbly submit to the Church. This has been symbolised for all times by +the memorable submission of the Roman-German emperor, who stood for +three days, barefooted and fasting, in the snow in the courtyard of +Canossa, before he was received back into the kingdom of God. The +kingdom of God was synonymous with the Church; Jews and pagans were the +natural children of the devil, but the dissenter, the heretic who dared +to question a single proposition of the divine system, or was bold +enough to think on original lines—in other words in contradiction to +tradition—voluntarily turned his back on God, and with seeing eyes went +into the kingdom of the devil. He was wholly evil, and no earthly +punishment fitted his crime. The emperor Theodosius, as far back as +<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 380, had called such heretics "insane and demented," and +the burning of their bodies at the stake which prevented their souls +from falling into the hands of the devil, was looked upon as a great and +undeserved mercy. But not only during their lifetime, but after their +death, too, the hand of the Church fell heavily on all those who had +strayed beyond her pale; their bodies were dragged from their graves and +thrown into the carrion-pit. A man whom the Church had excommunicated +was buried in the cemetery of a German convent. The Archbishop of +Mayence ordered the exhumation of the body, threatening to interdict +divine service in the convent if his command were disobeyed. But the +abbess, Hildegarde of Bingen (1098-1179),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> a woman of great mental power +and an inspired seer, opposed him. Having received a direct message from +God, she wrote to the bishop as follows: "Conforming to my custom, I +looked up to the true light, and God commanded me to withhold my consent +to the exhumation of the body, because He Himself took the dead man from +the pale of the Church, so that He might lead him to the beatitude of +the blessed.... It were better for me to fall into the hands of man than +to disobey the command of my Lord." The saint had interpreted the will +of God, and the archbishop, sanctioning a sudden rumour that the +deceased had received absolution at the eleventh hour, yielded. But the +bishop's yielding by no means countenanced the belief that God might, +for once, tolerate the body of an excommunicate in sacred ground, far +from it—the vision of the abbess Hildegarde had merely served to +correct an error.</p> + +<p>All those who dared to oppose the clergy by word or deed were doomed to +everlasting perdition—this was a fact which it were futile to doubt; at +the most, a man shrugged his shoulders at certain damnation for the sake +of mundane pleasures—a rich legacy in the hour of death might save him. +Not infrequently the fear of the devil was transformed into +indifference, and sometimes even into demonolatry. A single ungodly +thought might involve eternal death, and as many a man, more +particularly many a priest, realised his inability to live continuously +in the presence of God, he surrendered his soul to the anti-god, not +from a longing for the pleasures of the senses, but from despair. The +worship of the devil, far from being an invention of fanatical monks, +actually existed, and was often the last consolation of those who held +themselves forsaken by God. The hierarchy did not hesitate a moment to +make the utmost use or the power conferred upon them by the mental +attitude of the people. The government of kings and princes, in addition +to the ecclesiastical government,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> could only be a transient, sinful +condition; the time was bound to come when the pope would be king of the +earth, and the great lords of the world his vassals, appointed by him to +keep the wicked world in check, and deposed by him if he found them +incapable, worshippers of the devil, or disobedient to the Church. The +whole world was a hierarchy whose apex reached heaven and bore, as the +representative of its invisible summit, the pope. He stood, to quote +Innocent III., "in the middle, between God and humanity." The same great +pope has left us a document entitled <i>On the Contempt of the World</i>, +which treats of the absolute futility of all things mundane. There is no +reason to look upon the union of this unquenchable thirst for power and +complete "other-worldiness" as a contradiction. The kingdom of God, +Augustine's <i>Civitas Dei</i>, must of necessity be established that the +destiny of the world may be fulfilled. Every pope must account to God +for his share in the advancement of the only work which mattered, and +the greater the power the ruler of this world had acquired over the +souls of men, the more he trembled before God, weighed down by the +burden of his enormous responsibility. "The renunciation of the world in +the service of the world-ruling Church, the mastery of the world in the +service of renunciation, this was the problem and ideal of the middle +ages" (Harnack). But not only the pope, every priest, as a direct member +of the kingdom of God, was superior to the secular rulers. This was +taught emphatically by the great St. Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, +and Gregory VII., the wildest fanatic of the kingdom of God, said, in +writing to a German bishop: "Who then who possesses even small knowledge +and reasoning power, could hesitate to place the priests above the +kings?" Even the emperor Constantine, though he was still largely under +the sway of the imperial idea, distinctly acknowledged the bishops as +his masters; according to the legend he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> handed to the Bishop of Rome +the insignia of his power, sceptre, crown and cloak, and humbly held the +bridle of the prelate's horse.</p> + +<p>The theoretic backbone of this mental attitude was the doctrine of the +Fathers of the Church and the older scholasticism, pronouncing the +illimitable power of human perception; the world's profoundest depths +had been fathomed, its riddle finally solved; there was consequently no +room for philosophy, the endless meditation on the meaning of the world +and the destiny of man. Science had but one task: to bring logical proof +of the revealed religious verities. The greatest champion of this view +was Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), who in his treatise, <i>Cur Deus +Homo</i> proved that God was compelled to become man in order to complete +the work of salvation. Abélard preached a similar doctrine, but carried +away by the fervour of thought, arrived at conclusions which he was +forced to recant ignominiously; for at the end of his chain of evidence +he did not always find the foregone conclusion which should have been +there. This system of a final and infallible knowledge of the world is +the very foundation of ecclesiastical government. The priest alone has +all knowledge, for he has the doctrine of salvation. Had it occurred to +any man to defend his own opinions in contradiction to the system of the +Church, that man would speedily have come to the conclusion that the +devil had tempted him to false observations, or false deductions, and +his submission to the Church would have been the outward sign of his +victory over the evil which had blinded his spiritual vision. A man had +to choose between the worship of God and the worship of the devil, there +was no alternative. Nobody knew the limits of human knowledge; +everybody, the learned ecclesiastic as well as the unlearned, plain man, +believed others to be in possession of the key to profound secrets and +unlimited power. One thing only was needful: to possess one's self of +the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> philosopher's stone; therefore the belief in witchcraft and the +fear of certain men supposed to be endowed with supernatural power—the +priests—were but the obvious results of a world-system, founded on a +revealed and exact religion.</p> + +<p>The Latin poets, whose study would probably have counteracted the +universal barbarism, were regarded as dangerous, the gods of antiquity +being identified with the demons of the Scriptures. This view was +responsible for the loss of many a valuable manuscript. The favourite +haunts of the demons were the convents, originally designed as +battlefields on which the struggles with the demons were to be fought +out, but frequently perishing in superstition and ignorance. Every monk +had visions of devils; miracles occurred continually; the torturing +problem was as to whether they were worked by God or the devil. Nature +was merely a collection of mystic symbols, divine—or perhaps +diabolical—allegories, whose meaning could be discovered by a correct +interpretation of the Bible. Everything which could possibly happen was +recorded in the Scriptures; they contained the true explanation of all +things. It was only a matter of selecting the right word and +interpreting it correctly, for every word was ambiguous and allegorical. +Every natural occurrence—an eclipse of the sun, a comet, or even a +fire—stood for something else; it was the symbol of a spiritual event +concealed behind a phenomenon. The allegorical interpretation of the +Bible was carried to the point of abstruseness because every word was +considered of necessity to have an unfathomably profound meaning. The +following amazing interpretation is by the highly-gifted German poet and +mystic, Suso: "Among the great number of Solomon's wives was a black +woman whom the king loved above all others. Now what does the Holy Ghost +mean by this? The charming black woman in whom God delights more than in +any other, is a man patiently bearing the trials which God sends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> him." +Abélard's interpretation of the black woman is even worse; he maintained +that though she was black outside, her bones, that is her character, +were white. A really remarkable deed of bad taste was committed by the +monk, Matfre Ermengau, the author of the <i>Breviari d'Amor</i>, at a time +when civilisation had already made considerable strides. He sent his +sister a Christmas present, consisting of a honey-cake, mead, and a +roast capon, accompanied by the following letter: "The mead is the blood +of Christ, the honey-cake and the capon are His body, which for our +salvation was baked and pierced at the Cross. The Holy Ghost baked the +cake in the Virgin's womb, in which the sugar of His divinity +amalgamated with the dough of our humanity. In the Virgin's womb the +Holy Ghost also spiced the mead and prepared it from wine; the spice is +divine virtue, the wine is human blood. In addition He caused the holy +capon to issue from the egg; the yolk of the egg is the deity, the white +is humanity, the shell is the womb of the Virgin Mary ...," etc.</p> + +<p>The religion of Christ was lost, man had become a stranger to his own +soul—celestial warnings, signs of the Judgment Day, daemonic +temptations, surrounded him, as far as he paid heed to anything +super-sensuous on all sides. The French chronicler, Radulf Glaber (about +<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1000), might have been writing a satire on antiquity when +he warned his contemporaries of the demons lurking everywhere, but more +especially dwelling in trees and fountains. Of a learned man who was +studying the classic poets, he said: "This man, confused by the magic of +evil spirits, had the impudence to propound doctrines contradictory to +our holy faith. In his opinion everything the ancient poets had +maintained was true. Peter, the bishop of the town, condemned him as a +heretic. At that time there were many men in Italy believing this false +doctrine; they perished by the sword or at the stake." We have a +letter,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> written at the same time by Gerbert, who later on became Pope +Sylvester II., to a friend, beseeching him to obtain for him manuscripts +of the Latin philosophers and poets. He wrote textbooks of astronomy, +geometry and medicine, and introduced the Arabic numbers and the decimal +system into Europe. In consequence he, too, was accused of magic and +intercourse with Arabian pagans. A chronicler relates that he sold his +soul to the devil and became pope through the devil's agency; and that, +when he was on the point of death, he ordered his body to be cut to +pieces so that the devil should not carry it away.</p> + +<p>To-day we find it difficult to realise such a state of mind. Every man +of our period who takes the smallest interest in things spiritual—be he +the most orthodox ecclesiastic—at least knows that there are capable +people in the world whose opinions differ from his, who seek fresh +knowledge; he knows it, even though he may pretend that they are people +who have gone astray and have been abandoned by God. No one can be +entirely blind to the new values created by human intellect. But the men +of the Middle Ages were swayed by a monstrous dualism, and despite their +belief in the illimitable power of human cognition, they unquestioningly +accepted the sacred tradition and rejected the naïve evidence of the +senses and intellect whenever it seemed to contradict the dogma. Thus +mediaeval science did not represent what it represented in antiquity, +and what it represents now, the study of the true relationship of +things, but rather the application of truths revealed once and for all. +There was nothing more to be discovered, and therefore scientists took a +delight in logical and dialectical speculations which to a man of our +day seem senseless and childish. Far into the Renascence, natural +history was a medley of ancient traditions, oriental fables and +superficial observations. The strangest qualities were attributed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> to +animals with which we come almost daily into contact. The following +quotations are culled from a Provençal book on zoology: "The cricket is +so pleased with its song that it forgets to feed and dies singing." +"When a snake catches sight of a nude man, it is so filled with fear +that it does not dare to look at him; but if the man is dressed, the +snake looks upon him as a weakling and springs upon him." "The adder +guards the balsam; if a man desires to steal the balsam, he must first +send the adder to sleep by playing on a musical instrument. But if the +adder discovers that it is being duped, it closes one of its ears with +its tail and rubs the other one against the ground until it is filled +with earth; then it cannot hear the music and remains awake." "Of all +animals there is none so dangerous as the unicorn; it attacks everybody +with the horn which grows on the top of its head. But it takes such +delight in virgins that the hunters place a maiden on its trail. As soon +as the unicorn sees the maiden, it lays its head into her lap and falls +asleep, when it may easily be caught." Of the magnet we learn among +other things that it restores peace between husband and wife, softens +the heart of all men and cures dropsy. "If a magnet is made into a +powder and burnt on charcoal in the four corners of the house, the +inhabitants imagine that they cannot keep on their legs and run away, +sorely affrighted; thieves frequently profit by this fact. If a magnet +is placed under the pillow of a sleeping woman, she is compelled, if she +is virtuous, to embrace her husband in her sleep; if she has betrayed +him, she will fall out of her bed with fear."</p> + +<p>All this information was the common property of the period; Richard of +Berbezilh, for instance, an "aesthetic" troubadour, tells us that—like +a still-born lion's cub which was only brought to life by the roaring of +its dam—he was awakened to life by his mistress. (He does not say +whether it was by her roaring.) Conrad of Würzburg compares the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> Holy +Virgin to a lioness who brings her dead cubs, <i>i.e.</i>, mankind, to life +with loud roaring. Bartolomé Zorgi, another troubadour of the same +period, likens his lady to a snake, for—he explains—"she flees from +the nude poet and her courage only returns with his clothes." During the +whole mediaeval period the unicorn was a well-known symbol of virginity, +more especially of the virginity of Mary. The <i>Golden Smithy</i> of the +German minnesinger, afterwards monk Conrad of Würzburg, contains a +rather abstruse poem which begins:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The hunt began;</div> +<div>The heavenly unicorn</div> +<div>Was chased into the thicket</div> +<div>Of this alien world,</div> +<div>And sought, imperial maid,</div> +<div>Within thine arms a sanctuary. . . . etc.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Natural history was in a parlous state, and geographical knowledge was +equally spurious. The Church was averse to natural research, for the +only problem in the world was the salvation of man from everlasting +damnation. Not only Tertullian, but several Fathers of the Church, +regarded physical research as superfluous and absurd, and even as +godless. "What happiness shall be mine if I know where the Nile has its +source, or what the physicists fable of heaven?" asked Lactantius. And, +"Should we not be regarded as insane if we pretended to have knowledge +of matters of which we can know nothing? How much more, then, are they +to be regarded as raving madmen who imagine that they know the secrets +of nature, which will never be revealed to human inquisitiveness?" Here +one is reminded of a remark made in "Phædros" by <i>the wisest of all +Greeks</i>, who refused to leave town because "what could Socrates learn +from trees and grass?" And Julius Cæsar wrote an account of his wars to +while away the time when he was crossing the Alps.</p> + +<p>Very likely the system of the Church would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> been less rigid had it +not largely been occupied in dealing with ignorant barbarians. In the +case of Celts and Teutons, a complete and unassailable form of dogmatics +with its corollary of hieratical intolerance was the only possible +system. The traditions of these peoples were far too foreign to +Christianity to allow Christian germs to flourish in their soil. And the +new nations, accepting what Rome offered to them, were completely +unproductive in their adolescence. The achievement of this fatal first +millenary might be formulated as follows: "The civilised world of +Western Europe was united under the government of the Church of Rome; on +all nations it had been impressed in the same combination of words and +similes that they were living in a sinful world; they knew when this +world had been created and when its Saviour had appeared; they knew that +its end would come together with the bodily resurrection of the dead and +the terrible day of the Last Judgment; they knew that demons were +lurking everywhere, seeking to destroy man's soul, and that the Church +alone could save him. All these facts were as unalterable as the return +of the seasons."</p> + +<p>The fundamental sources of antiquity had been sensuality and asceticism, +the elements of the Middle Ages abstract thought and historical faith; +now emotion was to become the principal factor. It welled up in the soul +and soon dominated all life. The fountain which had been dried up since +the dawn of the Christian era, began to flow again in a small country in +the south of France. The civilising centre had again shifted westwards, +as in the past it had shifted from Asia to Greece, and from Greece to +Rome. In the course of the first thousand years Greece and Asia Minor +had separated themselves from Europe, and founded a distinct culture, +the Byzantine, which exerted no influence on the development of Europe. +But not even Italy, the scene of the older civilisation, was destined to +give birth to the new;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> maybe the memory of the antique, ante-Christian, +period was too powerful here. Its cradle stood on virgin ground, in +Provence, a country wrested from Celts and Teutons by the Roman eagles, +ploughed by the Roman spirit, preserving in some of its coast towns, +notably in Marsilia, the rich remains of Greek settlements, something of +Moorish influence in race and language, and fusing all these +heterogeneous elements into a splendid whole. But why this important +spiritual centre should have been formed just here it is difficult to +say.</p> + +<p>For the first time the system of ecclesiastical values was confronted by +something novel, which was not—like the old Teutonic ideal of the +perfect warrior—tainted by barbarism, but may be described as the +system of mundane court values. This new ideal was not founded on an +authority which had to be accepted in good faith; it had its direct +origin in the passionate yearning of the human soul. Man had +re-discovered himself and become conscious of his personal creative +force. A very great thing had been accomplished; the seed which, slowly +gathering strength, had lain in the soil for a thousand years, had at +last burst its husk, and was rapidly growing into the magnificent tree +of the European civilisation. In silent opposition to the system of the +accepted ecclesiastical values, the new ideal of <i>pretz e valor e +beutatz</i> (worth and value and beauty), of <i>cavalaria</i> and <i>cortezia</i> +(chivalry and courtesy), was upheld in Provence. Four worldly virtues, +wisdom, courtly manners, honesty and self-restraint, were contrasted +with the ecclesiastical cardinal virtues. The courts of the princes +became centres of new life and art. The new spiritual-aesthetic concept +of feasting and enjoyment transformed the former orgies of eating and +drinking. Woman, who had heretofore been excluded from male society, was +all at once transferred to the very centre of being; for her sake men +controlled their brutal tempers and exerted themselves to please<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> by +good manners, taste and art. She, whom the Church had done everything to +depreciate, who had been denied a soul at the Council of Macon (in the +sixth century), had become the very vessel of the soul; man looked up to +her and bent his knee before the newly-created goddess.</p> + +<p>The cultivation of the new courtly manner coincided with the nascent art +of the troubadours. There was no gradual growth and development in the +latter; at the very outset it had reached perfection. The first +troubadour whose name has come down to us was Guillem of Poitiers, Duke +of Aquitania (about 1100); great lords and barons gloried in the +exercise of this new art. Every court boasted its poets, hospitably +received and loaded with presents; the great ones of the earth were +beginning to exercise that patronage of art and letters which in the +Renascence reached such extravagant proportions. Every distinguished +poet employed salaried musicians, the joglars (jongleurs), who wandered +from court to court, singing their masters' new songs. Others again, the +comtaires, related romances of love and adventure, gathering round them +a rapt throng of lords and ladies. Courtly manners and lofty principles +quickly became the recognised ideal; the man who was satisfied with the +pleasures of the senses was held in contempt; the greatest reproach was +"vilania"; in the "Yvain" of the French epic poet Chrestien de Troyes, +this universal feeling is thus expressed:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>A courtier counts though he be dead,</div> +<div>More than a rustic stout and red.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Dante and his circle, as well as the best of the troubadours, +substituted for the "cortois" of the superficial Chrestien the "cor +gentil," the noble heart, which they accounted more precious than rank +and wealth and power. "Wherever there is virtue there is nobility," says +Dante, "but where there is nobility there need not necessarily be +virtue."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> A time had come when personal distinction was in every man's +grasp, no matter whether he was learned or unlearned, a nobleman or a +commoner. Certainly the commoner was never on an equality with the +aristocrat, partly because he was dependent on the largess of the great. +Even Dante was compelled to seek princely patronage, and not until the +Renascence do we hear of writers whose sarcastic tongues were so dreaded +that they became independent of charity.</p> + +<p>In opposition to the monkish ideal of a contemplative life which had +hitherto obtained, a new ideal, the ideal of the courtier's life, was +upheld; ecclesiastical saintliness was contrasted with knightly honour. +Beauty, which at the dawn of the Christian era had fallen into ill +repute and had become associated with unholy, and even diabolical, +practices, had again come into its kingdom. Above everything it was the +beauty of woman which was re-discovered—or rather, in its new, +spiritual sense, newly discovered—and claimed the enthusiasm and love +of the best men of the period. After a thousand years of gloom and +brutality, joy and culture shed their radiance on a renewed world. The +ideal of chivalry bore very little resemblance to the old Teutonic ideal +of the hero; the older ideal had been based entirely on the appreciation +of physical strength; but chivalry was the disseminator of culture, +leaving ecclesiastical culture, which hitherto had been synonymous with +civilisation, a very long way behind. "Mezura," "masze" (the μφστὁηϛ +of the Platonic Greeks) was the new criterion, as compared +with the barbarian's want of restraint.</p> + +<p>I do not propose to give a description of the life at the courts of +Provence. The news of it travelled north, and everywhere roused a desire +to imitate it. The need of a renewed life was powerfully stirring all +hearts. Men yearned for beauty and spontaneity, for passionate life, +unprecedented and romantic. This was especially the case in the north, +in France<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> and in Germany, and above all in Wales, the country of the +imaginative and highly-gifted Celts. Here life was harder, poorer, more +barbaric; the cultured mind suffered more from its brutal surroundings +than it did in the favoured south. It was here that the great legends of +the Middle Ages, so clearly expressive of the yearning of the period, +were first collected. The early Middle Ages had produced epic poems, +treating scriptural subjects (such as the Harmony of the Gospels of the +monk Otfrit, written in the ninth century), and celebrating the exploits +of popular heroes, as, for instance, the German Song of Hildebrand, and +the French "Chansons de Geste," which contain episodes from the lives of +Charlemagne and his nephew Roland. The true epic, arising from the rich +and poetical Celtic tradition, came into existence in the eleventh +century in the North of France and immediately burst into extraordinary +luxuriance. The legends of the heroes of the dreamy Celtic race—King +Arthur and his knights, Merlin the magician, the knights of the Holy +Grail—travelling across France, became the common property of the +civilised European nations, and filled all hearts with longing and +fantastic dreams. Chrestien de Troyes, in his romances, extolled +knightly exploits and the service of woman, thus producing by the +combination of the older and the newer ideals the novel of adventure +which has fascinated the world for centuries. It is a mistake to believe +that Don Quixote has struck at the root of it; to this day the masses +wax enthusiastic in reading of the doughty deeds of knights, the beauty +of ladies and their unswerving, undying love.</p> + +<p>In addition to the great and heroic subjects, there were lesser, more +intimate, and frequently sentimental, romances, especially enjoyed and +widely circulated by the ladies. The baron, riding forth, left his young +wife at home, shut up in her bower and surrounded by spies; sometimes +even physically branded as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> his property. A prisoner behind bars, her +imagination went out—not to the unloved husband who had married her for +the sake of her broad acres, and could send her back to her parents as +soon as he found a wealthier bride (he had but to maintain that she was +related to him in the fifth degree and the Church was ready to annul the +marriage), not to him, her lord and master, but to the unknown knight, +the passionate lover, who would gladly give his life to win her. A +jongleur arrived with stories of the courts where love was the only +ruler; where the knights willingly suffered grief and want, if by so +doing they could serve their lady; where the lover, in the shape of a +beautiful blue bird, nightly slipped through the barred windows into the +arms of his mistress. But the jealous husband had drawn barbed wire +across the window, and the lover, flying away at dawn, bled to death +before the eyes of his grief-stricken lady. The jongleur would tell of +the knight who had fallen passionately in love with a beautiful damsel +of whom he had but caught a passing glimpse; month after month he worked +at digging an underground passage; every night brought him a little +nearer to her bower—she could distinctly hear the dull sounds of his +burrowing—until at last he rose through the ground and took her into +his arms. These and similar tales, doubtless all of them of Celtic +origin—preserved for us in the charming "Lais" of Marie de +France—brought tears to the eyes of many a lonely wife and gave shape +to her vague longing. There was no reason why a man, and a lover to +boot, should not transform himself nightly into a blue bird. Those +simple stories in verse fulfilled every desire of the heart; imagination +supplied in the north what the south offered in abundant reality. But +Marie de France, the first woman novelist of Europe (about the end of +the twelfth century), deserves to be remembered for another reason; she +was the first poet voicing woman's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> longing for love and +romance—woman's adventure. The charming <i>Lai du Chevrefoile</i> ("The +Story of the Honeysuckle") relates an episode from the loves of Tristan +and Isolde, the famous lovers, legendary even at that time. Tristan and +Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere, Fleur and Blanchefleur—these were the +admired and mythical lovers of whom the poets sang and dreamed. All the +world knew their adventures; all the world repeated them again and +again, reverently preserving the identical words and yet unconsciously +remoulding them. At the recital of their loves, hand clasped hand; "on +that day we read no more," confessed Dante's ill-fated lovers.</p> + +<p>The longing, so characteristic of the North of Europe, to see the world +and meet with adventures, was in Provence and Italy less pronounced. +These favoured climes possessed so many of the things dreamed of and +desired by other countries. Events, strange as fiction, actually +occurred. Count Raimond of Roussillon, for instance, imprisoned his wife +in a tower because the troubadour, Guillem of Cabestann, was in love +with and beloved by her. He waylaid the lover, killed him, cut his heart +out of his breast and sent it, roasted, to his countess. When she had +partaken of it, he showed her Guillem's head and asked her how she had +enjoyed the dish. "So much that no other food shall ever pass my lips," +she replied, casting herself out of the window. When the story spread +abroad, the great nobles rose up in arms against Raimond, and even the +King of Aragon made war on him. He was caught and imprisoned for life, +and his estates were confiscated. Guillem and the countess were buried +in the church, and for a long time after men and women travelled long +distances to kneel at their grave. The charming poems of Melusine and +the beautiful Magelone, which to this day delight the reader, were +composed during the same period.</p> + +<p>Before the eleventh century poetry in the true sense of the word did not +exist. There were only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> Latin Church hymns and legends, perverted +reminiscences of antiquity, and, in the vulgar tongue, legends of the +saints and simple dancing-songs for the amusement of the lower classes. +Thanks to the relentless war which the clergy waged against them, a few +only have been preserved. There can be no doubt that Provence was the +birthplace of European poetry. The "sweet language" of Provence was the +first to reach perfection and perfect maturity. It drove the language of +the German conquerors eastwards and prepared the ground for the French +tongue.</p> + +<p>The beginning of the twelfth century saw the birth of the poetry of the +troubadours, which possessed from the first in great perfection +everything that distinguishes modern lyric poetry from the antique. +Instead of the syllable-measuring quantity, we now have the emphasising +accent; the rhyme, one of the most important lyrical contrivances—and +in its near approach to music the most striking characteristic of modern +lyrical poetry as compared with the antique—reaches perfection together +with the complete, evenly-recurring verse which is still to-day peculiar +to lyrical art. The poems of many of the troubadours pulsate with +passionate life, and bear no trace of the traditional or the +conventional. The martial songs of Bertrand de Born stride along with a +rhythm reminiscent of the clanking of iron. I quote the first verse of +one of these:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Le coms m'a mandat e mogut</div> +<div>Per N'Arramon Luc d'Esparro,</div> +<div>Qu'eu fassa per lui tal chanso,</div> +<div>On sian trenchat mil escut,</div> +<div>Elm e ausberc e alcoto</div> +<div>E perponh faussat e romput.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>The count he sent to me one day</div> +<div>Sir Arramon Luc d'Esparro;</div> +<div>A song I was to make him—so</div> +<div>That thousand shields with ring and stay</div> +<div>And mail and armour of the foe</div> +<div>To fragments shivered in dismay.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>The poetry of the Provençal troubadours had already passed its prime +when, in the other European countries, lyric art was still in its +infancy. The crusade against the Albigenses (1209), undertaken by +Gregory VII. with the object of killing the new spirit and the new +secular civilisation, drove many troubadours to Italy, among others the +famous Sordello, who is mentioned in Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i>. Others +went to Sicily, to the court of the art-loving Emperor, Frederick II., +where a distinct, but not very original, poetic art arose. In Italy the +perfection of mediaeval poetry was reached in the "sweet, new style" +immortalised by Dante. But not only the great Italians, the trouveres +from the North of France also, and—to some extent—the German +minnesingers, were influenced by the art, and above all, the ideals +which had originated in Provence. The poetry of the earliest Rhenish and +Austrian minnesingers closely follows German folklore, and the songs of +Dietmar of Aist and others are still quite innocent of any trace of +neo-Latin characteristics. But very soon the technical perfection of the +Provençal poetry and the Provençal ideal of courtesy and love, famous +all over Europe, strongly influenced the German mind.</p> + +<p>The new poetry and the ideal of chivalry and the service of woman were +the first independent developments able to hold their own by the side of +ecclesiastical culture. The rigid Latin was superseded; the soul of man +sang in its own language of the return of spring, the beauty of woman, +knighthood and adventure. Poetry became the most important source of +secular education, and as each nation sang in its own tongue, national +characteristics shone out through the individuality of the singer. +Provençals, Frenchmen, Germans and Italians realised that they belonged +to different races. This was particularly the case during the Crusades +when, under the auspices of the Church, the nations of Europe had +apparently undertaken a common task.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p> + +<p>In Provence, in France and Germany, every poem was set to music, and +thus, simultaneously with the lyrical art, secular music was evolved. +J.B. Beck, the greatest authority on the music of the troubadours,—the +music of the minnesingers has been studied very little,—says, "The +poetry of the troubadours and trouveres represents in its totality a +collection of songs which in their frequently amazing naïveté and +melodiousness, their spontaneity and sound music, intimate congruity of +melody and text and extraordinary originality, have been unparalleled to +this day." All these songs are distinguished by graceful simplicity; but +the ear of the non-musician can hardly perceive the originality on which +Beck lays such stress. In any case, the music is inferior to the +frequently perfect text. This same period saw the inception of our +present system of musical notation.</p> + +<p>The new poetry created a desire for "literature," thus giving impetus to +the already existent art of illuminated manuscripts. Every prince kept a +salaried army of copyists and illuminators, producing the manuscripts +to-day preserved and studied in our museums. Studios where this work was +carried on existed at various art centres, especially—as far as we are +able to tell to-day—at the papal courts at Avignon—that meeting-ground +of French and Italian artists—in Paris and at Rheims. These workshops +were the birthplace of miniature painting, which reached perfection in +the famous Burgundian "Livres d'Heures."</p> + +<p>To-day the science of aesthetics is attempting to trace the influence +which emanated from the French and even from the earlier English +workshops, and spread over the whole continent. It is very probable that +the French art of miniature painting of the first half of the thirteenth +century was mother of the later North-European art of painting. It was +in Northern Europe that, independently of Hellenic and Byzantine +influence, a new art originated, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> which Max Dvorak says: "It would +hardly be possible to find an external cause for the quick and complete +disappearance of the elements of the Neo-Latin art. The past was simply +done with, and an absolutely new period was beginning. Thus the new art +was almost without any tradition." Dvorak calls this complete change the +most important in the history of painting since antiquity. George, Count +Vitzthum, has proved that the famous Cologne school of painting modelled +itself on Northern-French, Belgian, and a quite independent English +school of illuminators. It is even suggested that the English style of +miniature painting influenced Europe as far as the Upper Rhine. It is +also very significant that the Dutch art of the brothers van Eyck, whose +sudden appearance seemed so inexplicable, is now proved to have had its +source in the North of France. On the other hand, we have drawings of +three ecstatic nuns showing decided originality; Hildegarde of Bingen, +already mentioned on a previous occasion, has herself ornamented her +book, <i>Scivias</i>, with miniatures which, according to Haseloff, in spite +of their primitive style, reveal a bizarre plastic talent, and are +therefore closely related to her intuitions. Alfred Peltzer speaks of +"fantastic figures surrounded by flames." The two other nuns were +Elizabeth of Schönau, and Herrad of Landsberg; these two were entirely +under the influence of the dawning mysticism.</p> + +<p>I will here quote a few more passages from Dvorak, who, in dealing with +the individual arts, does not lose sight of the whole. "Simultaneously +with a new literature," he says, "we have a new art of illustration, new +miniatures, no longer drawing inspiration from antiquity.... We meet the +new style in its full perfection wherever it is a matter of a new +technique (in the art of staining glass, for instance, or of +illustrating profane literature)...." He speaks of a new decoration of +manuscripts invented in Paris in the first half of the thirteenth +century.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> Thus the close and causal connection between the new poetry +and the illumination of books is clearly apparent, and it may be said +without exaggeration that the Provençal lyric poetry and the +North-French and Celtic cycles of romance led up to the new European +style of painting which did not come to perfection until two centuries +later. (Nothing positive can be said about the influence of France on +Italian art; the monumental character and the art of Cimabue, Giotto and +the Sienese does not, however, suggest that they were much influenced by +the art of miniature painting, but rather hints that they drew +inspiration from antique frescoes.)</p> + +<p>I must add a few words on the subject of those miniatures which are not +easily accessible to the layman, but reproductions of which are +frequently met with in books on the history of art. In addition to +religious subjects, the whole courtly company which lives and breathes +in the legends of the Round Table, kings and knights, poets, minstrels, +and fair damsels, hawking, jousting, banqueting and playing chess, +everything which stirred the poet's imagination, is depicted. The spirit +of the romances which in modern times enchanted the English +Pre-Raphaelites, six centuries ago provided food and stimulus to the +industrious illuminators whose names have long been forgotten.</p> + +<p>If the art of miniature painting never rose—excepting in its wider +consequences—to universal significance, mediaeval architecture stands +before our eyes magnificent as on the first day. Until the middle of the +twelfth century the monumental structures of Europe were directly +influenced by the later Hellenic civilisation. The Byzantine basilica +was slowly transformed into the Neo-Latin house, and thus, in this +important domain also, Europe drew her inspirations from antiquity. But +only the ground-plan of the Gothic cathedral, that is to say, the idea +of a nave with side-aisles, was traditional and borrowed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> from Neo-Latin +models. From this invisible ground-plan rose something absolutely +original and autochthonic. This new, specifically Central-European style +of architecture was developed on soil where there were no antique +buildings to stem the new life with their overwhelming domination, and +to bar the way of artistic inspiration with their ominous "I am +perfection!" In every branch of art antiquity had proved itself a foe, +until at last the Renascence was sufficiently mature to assimilate and +overcome the antique inheritance so completely that it became an +excellent fertiliser for the new art. The essence of the Gothic style is +the dissolution of all that is heavy and material—the victory of spirit +over matter. Walls were broken up into pillars and soaring arcades; +monotonous facework was tolerated less and less, and every available +inch was moulded into a living semblance. The result may be studied in +the incomparable façades of many of the cathedrals in the North of +France; and in tower-pieces almost vibrating with life and passion such +as that of St. Stephen's in Vienna. The conflict between matter and pure +form is settled—for the first and only time—in Gothic architecture. +The Greek temple with its correct proportions possessed no more than +perfection of form without spiritual admixture; it was perfect as marble +statues, which are an end in themselves, and do not point the way to +spiritual truths. Gothic architecture is probably unique in its blending +of æsthetic perfection of form and infinite spiritual wealth; in the +fusion of these two elements in a higher intuition. It is the balance of +the two characteristics of genius, inexhaustible wealth and the striving +for harmonious expression. It marked the first powerful working of the +Teutonic spirit on the world; its metaphysical yearning together with a +genuine love of nature, found in this art its own peculiar traditionless +expression, just as it found expression in the newly-evolved mysticism +which no longer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> re-echoed Aristotle and his commentators, but drew +inspiration from its own intuition. For this reason Gothic architecture +never became acclimatised in Italy. The soaring tower, more especially, +never appealed to the Italian architect.</p> + +<p>Ornamentation and capitals, previously a combination of geometrical +figures, which may have been architecturally great and imposing, but was +always more or less formal and rigid, disappeared; the new masters, +whose names have been forgotten, looked round them and drew inspiration +from nature. The forest trees of Central Europe became pillars; grouped +together, apparently haphazard, they reflected a mystical nature pulsing +with mysterious life. Spreading and ramifying, growing together in an +impenetrable network of foliage, they bore buds, leaves and fruits. +Every pinnacle became a sprig, even the pendant icicles reappeared in +the gable-boards. But the assimilation of natural objects did not cease +there; tiny animals, light as a feather, run over the tendrils, lizards, +birds, even the gnomes of German mythology, find their way into the +Gothic cathedral. Not the traditional Greek acanthus leaf, but the +foliage of the North-European oak grows under the hands of the sculptor. +Even the cross is twisted into a flower; the sacro-sanct symbol of the +Christian religion is newly conceived, newly interpreted and moulded so +that it may have a place. The Gothic cathedral with its soaring arches +free from all heaviness is the perfect expression of that cosmic feeling +that inspired Eckhart and reached its artistic perfection in Dante.</p> + +<p>But the soul of the mystic in stone contains the same elements as the +soul of Eckhart, who was also a schoolman. The confused and complex +scholastic world of ideas which corresponded so well with the mediaeval +temper and, together with the new art, had emanated from Paris, is +closely akin to Gothic architecture. For the Gothic style and +scholastic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> thought share the characteristics of the infinitely +constructive and infinitely cleft, the infinitely subtle and +ornamental—perhaps the last trace of the spirit of the north as +compared with the simplicity of the south.</p> + +<p>As if from fertile soil, a world of sculptured men and beasts sprang +from the façades of the new cathedrals. The figures on the cathedrals of +Naumburg, Strassburg, Rheims, Amiens and Chartres are far superior to +the artistic achievements of the dawning renascence in Italy. They are +real men, full of life and passion, no longer symbols of the +transcendental glory of the world beyond the grave. "All rigidity had +melted, everything which had been stiff and hard had become supple; the +emotion of the soul flows through every curve and line; the set faces of +the statues are illuminated by a smile which seems to come from within, +the afterglow of inward bliss" (Worringer).</p> + +<p>A longing went through the world, stimulating faith in miracles and a +desire for adventure, a longing which no soul could resist. Nothing +certain was known of countries fifty miles distant; the traveller must +be prepared for the most amazing events. No one knew what fate awaited +him behind yonder blue mountains. The existence of natural laws was +undreamt of; there was no improbability in dragons or lions possessing +power of speech. A period incapable of distinguishing between the +natural and supernatural will always indulge in those fancies which are +best suited to its temper. Be the native country never so poor, the long +darkness and cold of the winter never so hard to bear, far away in the +East, or in Camelot, the kingdom of King Arthur, life was full of beauty +and sunshine. The legends of King Arthur powerfully affected the +imagination; they were read, secretly and surreptitiously, in all +convents; on a sultry summer afternoon, during the learned discussion of +their preceptor, one after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> another of the pupils would fall asleep; the +preceptor, suddenly interrupting himself, would continue after a short +pause: "And now I will tell you of King Arthur," and all eyes would +sparkle as the pupils listened with rapt attention. Francis of Assisi +called one of his disciples "a knight of his Round Table," and three +hundred years later Don Quixote lost his reason over the study of those +legends; some of the finest works of art of the present time, Wagner's +"Lohengrin," "Tristan and Isolde," and "Parsifal," take their subject +from the inexhaustible treasure of the Celtic epic cycle. The longing +for experience and adventure had laid hold of the imagination to an +extraordinary degree. The recital of wondrous adventures no longer +satisfied the listener; he yearned to participate in them. The young +knight, trained in athletics and courtesy, and possessing a little +knowledge of biblical history, left his father's castle to face the +unknown world. There was a sanctuary, mysterious, almost supernal, +carefully guarded in the dense forest of an inaccessible mountain. A +knight whose heart was pure, and who had dedicated himself to the +lifelong service of the divine, could find it; but he would have to +wander for many years, through forests and glens and strange countries, +alone and solitary, before his eyes would behold the most sacred relic +in the world, the Holy Grail.</p> + +<p>The time was ripe for a great event, a universal and overwhelming +enterprise which could absorb the passionate longing. Maybe that the +wisdom of the great popes—half unconsciously, certainly, and under the +pressure of the age, but yet led by an unerring instinct—guided this +stream into the bed of the Church; the vague craving found a definite +object: the Crusades were organised. The Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred +spot on earth, was in the hands of the heathens; it was despised and +defiled—what greater thing could a man do than hasten to its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> rescue +and wrest it from the grasp of pagans, giants and sorcerers? In the +fantastic imagination of the men of that period the Lord's sepulchre was +nothing but the earthly realisation of their yearning for the Holy +Grail.</p> + +<p>As far back as <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1000 Gerbert had sent messengers to all +nations, exhorting them to hoist their banners and march with him to the +Holy Land. It had been prophesied that he should be the first to read +Mass in Jerusalem; a few ships were actually equipped at Pisa—the first +attempt at a Crusade. But at that time Europe was not yet quite prepared +for the extraordinary, almost incomprehensible, enterprise—the conquest +of a country which hardly anybody had ever seen and in which nobody had +any practical interest. Before such an enterprise could be carried out +all hearts must be filled by that uncontrollable and yet vague longing, +so characteristic of the great period of fantasy. The suggestion that +the wealth of the East, exciting the greed of the western nations, led +to the Crusades, is an absolutely indefensible idea. Doubtless, rumours +of the fabulous treasure of the Orient had stirred the imagination of +Europe, appealing far less, however, to the cupidity of the individual +than to his desire for something strange, new and incredible. It was +impossible to foresee the result of the first Crusade; the crusader went +to a strange land in order to fight—the return was in God's hand. There +have been at all times men coveting wealth, but to make such men the +instigators and organisers of the Crusades is a deliberate attempt to +represent a characteristic and unique event in the history of the world +in the light of a commonplace and every-day occurrence. In the first +enchanted wood a man might chance upon a beautiful princess sitting +beside a fountain, nude and weeping; but it was equally possible that a +giant would rush upon the Christian knight, break his shield and exact +heavy penalties. It was possible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> to win the kingdom of a sultan or +emir—it could be achieved by bravery and in a duel—and become a great +king, for a king in those days was no more than a large landed +proprietor. Such dreams were actually fulfilled in the most +extraordinary way. Gottfried of Bouillon, a poor Alsatian knight, might +have become King of Jerusalem, had he not refused to wear a crown of +gold in a land where his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns, and +contented himself with the title of "Protector of the Holy Land."</p> + +<p>The embattled citadel of Jerusalem, like the Holy Grail, was pictured as +being situated outside the world. <i>There</i> the longing which had become +so vast that it had outgrown the earth, would be stilled. A direct way +must lead from Jerusalem, the centre of the earth—it still takes this +position in Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i>—to Paradise. Was it not the spot +where the Cross of the Saviour had been raised? Had not once before +heaven opened above the city to receive His risen body? Was it not the +scene of countless miracles in the past? Why should it be different now? +Men knew practically nothing of Palestine; they had in their minds a +fantastic picture tallying, in every respect, with Biblical accounts; +doubtless, the footprints of the Redeemer could easily be traced +everywhere; the possession of the country promised the fulfilment of +transcendental dreams.</p> + +<p>The impulse and the strength necessary for the organisation of the +Crusades were spiritual phenomena inherently foreign and even hostile to +the Church; but thanks to the mental superiority of the popes of that +period, and the overpowering conception of a divine kingdom, they became +the instruments of the greatest triumphs vouchsafed to the Church of +Rome. The hosts, driven across the sea by inner restlessness and +ill-defined longing, in reality fought for the aggrandisement of the +Church. The great Hildebrand resolved to lead all Christendom to +Jerusalem, to found on the site of the Holy Sepulchre the divine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> +kingdom preached by St. Augustine, and invest—a risen Christ—the +emperor and all the kings of the earth with their kingdoms.</p> + +<p>The crusader and the knight in quest of the Holy Grail present together +a paradoxical combination of the Christian-ecclesiastical and the +mundane-chivalric spirit, which is quite in harmony with the spirit of +the age. These two worlds, inward strangers, formed—in the Order of the +Knight-Templars, for instance—a union which, while possessing all the +external symbols of chivalry, attributed to it heterogeneous, +ecclesiastical motives; the glory of battle and victory, the caprice of +a beautiful damsel, were no longer to become the mainsprings of doughty +exploits; henceforth the knight fought solely for the glory of God and +the victory of Christianity. In addition to King Arthur's knights, the +classical Middle Ages worshipped the ideal of these priestly warriors +who waded through streams of blood to kneel humbly at the grave of the +Saviour, of those seekers of the Holy Grail who dedicated themselves to +a metaphysical task. King Arthur's Round Table served the actual orders +of knighthood as a model. Not only the Franciscans of Italy, but also +slow, German mystics, such as Suso and the profound Johannes Tauler, +delighted in borrowing their similes and metaphors from knighthood. +Tauler speaks of the "scarlet knightly robes" which Christ received for +His "knightly devotion": "And by His chivalric exploits he won those +knightly weapons which he wears before the Father and the angelic +knighthood. Therefore Christ exults when His knights elect also to put +on such knightly garments ...," etc.</p> + +<p>Not infrequently the Saracens behaved far more generously than the +Christian armies. A German chronicler, Albert von Stade, tells us that +<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1221 "the Sultan of Egypt of his own free will restored +the Lord's Cross, permitted the Christians to leave Egypt with all their +belongings, and commanded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> all prisoners to be set free, so that at that +time 30,000 captives were released. He also commanded his subjects to +sell food to the rich and give alms to the poor and the sick." +Occasionally the pope entered into an alliance with the enemies of +Christendom against the emperor, if the latter proved troublesome. +<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1246 the Sultan of Egypt (Malek as Saleh Ejul) taught +Innocent IV., the speaker of all Christendom, the judge of the Christian +peoples, the following lesson: "It is not befitting to us," he wrote to +him, "that we should make a treaty with the Christians without the +counsel and consent of the emperor. And we have written to our +ambassador at the court of the emperor, informing him of what has been +proposed to us by the Pope's nuncio, including your message and +suggestions."</p> + +<p>The most pathetic symptom of the restlessness of the age was the +Children's Crusade in 1212, which, even at its actual occurrence, caused +helpless amazement. The reports of two German chroniclers are +sufficiently interesting to be quoted verbally: "In the same year +happened a very strange thing, a thing which was all the more strange +because it was unheard of since the creation of the world. At Easter and +Whitsuntide many thousands of boys from Franconia and Teutonia, from six +years upwards, took the Cross without any external inducement or +preaching, and against the wish of their parents and relations, who +sought to restrain them. Some left the plough which they had been +guiding, others abandoned their flocks, or any other task which they had +been set to do, banded together, and with hoisted banner began to march +to Jerusalem, in batches of twenty, fifty and a hundred. Many people +enquired of them at whose counsel and admonishment they were undertaking +this journey, (for it was not many years ago that many kings, a great +number of princes and countless people had travelled to the Holy Land, +strongly armed, and had returned home without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> having accomplished their +desire,) telling them that in their tender years they had not yet +sufficient strength to achieve anything, and that therefore this thing +was foolish and undertaken without due consideration; the children +answered briefly that they were obeying God's will, and would willingly +and gladly suffer all the trials He would send them. And they went their +way, some turning back at Mayence, others at Piacenza, and others at +Rome; a small number arrived at Marseilles, but whether they crossed the +sea or not, and what happened to them, no one knows; only that much is +certain, that of all the thousands who went forth, only very few +returned." Another chronicler wrote: "And at this time boys without a +leader or guide, left the towns and villages of all countries, eagerly +journeying to the lands across the sea, and when asked whither they were +wending, they replied: 'To Jerusalem, to the Holy Land.' Many of them +were kept by their parents behind locked doors, but they burst open the +doors, broke through the walls and escaped. When the Pope heard of these +things he sighed heavily and said: 'These children shame us, for they +hasten to the recovery of the Holy Land while we sleep.' No one knows +how far they went and what became of them. But many returned, and when +they were asked the reason of their expedition, they said they knew not. +At the same time nude women were seen hurrying through towns and +villages, speaking no word."</p> + +<p>If it had not been for the Crusades, something else must have happened +to relieve the unbearable tension. The world was longing for a great +deed, a deed overstepping the border-line of metaphysics, and its +enthusiasm was sufficient guarantee of achievement. In the case of the +individual, vanity and boastfulness played no mean part. Thus the +Austrian minnesinger, Ulrich of Lichtenstein, proposed taking the Cross +"not to serve God but to please his mistress." It is quite probable, +though not historically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> proved, that this veritable Don Quixote dreamed +of decorating the Holy Sepulchre with his lady's handkerchief, but in +the end he remained at home. A journey to foreign lands, to return after +years of yearning for the beloved, her loyalty, or her treachery, +supplied the romantic imagination of the age with endless material. The +story of the Count von Gleichen and his two wives is famous to this day. +A charming Provençal song tells of a maid who, day after day, sat by a +fountain weeping for her lover. At this spot they had bidden farewell to +each other, and here she was awaiting his return. One day a pilgrim +arrived, and she at once asked for news of her knight. The pilgrim knew +him and had a message for her. After a short conversation he threw back +his cowl and drew the delighted maiden into his arms, for it was he +himself, her lover, who after many years of absence had returned and was +first visiting the spot where, years ago, he had said good-bye to her.</p> + +<p>But there was another motive, a religious one, which, joined to the +universal lust of adventure, dominated the whole mediaeval period to an +extraordinary degree; that motive was the idea of doing penance +and—after all the failures of life—returning to God. The Crusades +offered an opportunity for combining one's heart's desire with this +spiritual need. Of all good works there were none more pleasing to God, +and every participator was promised forgiveness of his sins. In the +troubadours' songs of the crusaders there is a strong yearning for +penance and sanctification, quite independent of the idea of the +delivery of the Holy Sepulchre from the rule of the infidels.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>All I held dear I now abhor,</div> +<div>My pride, my knightly rank and fame,</div> +<div>And seek the spot which all adore,</div> +<div>The pilgrim's goal—Jerusalem.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>sang Guillem of Poitiers, one of the gayest of the troubadours.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>Only very few of the more thoughtful minds realised that divine thoughts +have their source in the soul of man, and that these Crusades were +obviously a senseless undertaking (not to mention the fact that God does +not need human assistance). "It is a greater thing to worship God always +in humility and poverty," said the abbot, Peter of Cluny, "than to +journey to Jerusalem in great pomp and circumstance. If, therefore, it +is a good thing to visit Jerusalem and stand on the soil which our +Lord's feet have trod, it is a far better thing still to strive after +heaven where our Lord can be seen face to face." Both the great +scholastic, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux, were of the +same opinion. "They shall aspire not to the earthly, but to the heavenly +Jerusalem, and travel there not with their feet, but with the desire of +their hearts." And "They seek God in external objects, neglecting to +look into their hearts, in whose innermost depths dwells the divine." +And yet those same men, who even then seemed to have outgrown biblical +religiosity, were under the spell of the all-absorbing idea of the age. +Bernard solved the contradiction in the following way: "It is not +because His power has grown less that the Lord calls us feeble worms to +protect His own; His word is deed, and He could send more than twelve +legions of angels to do His bidding; but because it is the will of the +Lord your God to save you from perdition, He gives you an opportunity to +serve Him." In these words a significant change of the fundamental idea +can already be traced. Peter of Cluny worked for the Crusades, and +Bernard, one of the most influential and venerable personalities of the +Middle Ages, a man before whose word the popes bowed down, journeyed +through the whole of France, inciting all hearts to fanatical +enthusiasm. Whoever heard him preach forsook his worldly possessions and +took the cross, clamouring for Peter himself to lead all Christendom. +"Countless numbers flocked to his banner,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> towns and castles stood +forsaken and there was hardly one man to seven women. The wives were +made widows during the lifetime of their husbands." Thus Bernard wrote +to the Pope, travelling through Germany, healing the sick by his mere +presence, and preaching to the people in a tongue no one could +understand. But the personality of this physically delicate man, whose +body was only kept alive by his spirit, touched all hearts. The prudent +Emperor, Conrad, resisted for a long time, and would have nothing to do +with such an aimless enterprise. But Bernard's first sermon in the +cathedral at Speyer, on Christmas Day, moved him to tears. Bernard left +the pulpit and pinned the cross on the shoulder of the kneeling emperor. +By this symbolical act the metaphysical spirit of the time, of which the +Church had obtained control for her own purposes, visibly became master +of political common-sense.</p> + +<p>The Crusades were one of the great movements matured by the +newly-awakened metaphysical yearning. The same spirit in another, +profounder, way, manifested itself in the efforts of religious reform +which were being made here and there. "The appearance and spread of +heresy has always been the gauge by which the religious life of the +individual must be measured," says Büttner very pertinently in his +preface to his edition of Eckhart. For the first time since the days of +Christ true religious feeling was again quickening the hearts of men; +the ecclesiastical dogma, which until then had represented absolute +truth, no longer satisfied their need. Soon opposition, timidly at +first, made itself felt. Laymen ventured to interfere in the domain of +religion. All knowledge—and consequently all tradition and +religion—had been for a thousand years the exclusive possession of the +clergy; those laymen who had any culture at all knew a little Latin and +a few scholastic propositions. All this was changing. Despite reiterated +ecclesiastical prohibitions, parts of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> the Bible were translated into +the vulgar tongue and eagerly studied by ignorant folk; everywhere men +appeared to whom religion was a matter of vital importance, men who +strove to find God in their own souls, instead of blindly accepting the +God of foreign doctrine.</p> + +<p>The more obvious cause of the growing dislike to ecclesiastical +authority was the immorality of the priests. The contrast between the +professions of humility, and the greed, vice and tyranny of the clergy +was too pronounced. The ecclesiastical offices were publicly sold. +Divine forgiveness was cheaper than a new garment; every priest was +allowed to keep a mistress if he paid a tax to the bishop. Two poems of +the troubadour, Guillem Figueiras, express the state of affairs very +bluntly: "Our shepherds have become thievish wolves, plundering and +despoiling the fold under the guise of messengers of peace. They gently +console their sheep night and day, but once they have them in their +power, these false shepherds let their flock perish and die." In the +other poem he says of the priest:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>He lies in a woman's arms all night,</div> +<div>And wakes—defiled—in the morning light</div> +<div>To proffer the sacred host.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Worse invectives even, no less forcible than those of later reformers, +he hurled against Rome. "In the flames and torments of hell is thy +place!... Thou hast the appearance of an innocent lamb, but inwardly +thou art a raging wolf, a crowned snake, begotten by a viper, the friend +of the devil!" Even the good-natured German minnesinger, Walter von der +Vogelweide, found bitter words against Rome: "They point our way to God +and go to hell themselves." Bernard of Clairvaux, the supporter of the +Church, sharply criticised the abuses of pope and clergy in his book, +<i>De Consideratione</i>: "The property of the poor is sown before the door +of the rich, the gold glitters in the gutter, the people come hurrying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> +up from all sides; but not to the neediest is it given, but to the +strongest and to him who is first on the spot." He accused the pope of +extravagance and luxury: "Was Peter clothed in robes of silk, covered +with gold and precious stones? Was he carried in a litter surrounded by +soldiers and vassals?" And he uttered a word which to this day is a +historical truth: "In all thy splendour thou art the successor of +Constantine rather than the successor of Peter."</p> + +<p>Dissatisfaction with the life of the clergy and the tyranny of Rome was +the more external reason which, although it vexed even those who were +indifferent to religion, did not question the sacred tradition; the +other reason was more a matter of principle; it was rooted in the desire +for a religious revival and openly attacked perverted truths. The +dreaded, hated, and cruelly persecuted heretics were fearless men, +sturdily fighting for their convictions. The fundamental ideal of these +reformers was the suppression of the outward pomp of the Church and the +return to the simplicity of the gospels. Their fates varied. The gentle +St. Francis of Assisi was canonised; the illumined Eckhart, on the other +hand, was tortured; most of them, like the ardent Arnold of Brescia, +were burnt at the stake. This conduct of the hierarchy towards the truly +religious men is easily explained. The Church was faced by a problem; on +the one hand, the genuine and profound piety of these men was +unmistakable, but on the other, the contrast of their teaching with +Church tradition was too obvious, and by many of them too strongly +emphasised to be silently ignored.</p> + +<p>The Provençal heretic, Peter of Bruis, seems to have been the first +reformer who preached against iconolatry and even objected to the images +of the Crucified. He ordered churches to be razed to the ground because +he acknowledged only the invisible community of the saints. He was burnt +at St. Giles' by an infuriated mob. More powerful, and far more +numerous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> than his followers, the Peterbrusians, were the Cathari and +the Waldenses (founded by Peter Valdez <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1177) who soon +spread to Northern Italy and amalgamated with the sect of the Lombards. +The Cathari advocated a simple and ascetic life, in accordance with the +teaching of primitive Christianity, refrained from all ecclesiastical +ceremonies and despised the sacraments, particularly baptism. More +radical than later reformers, they rejected the doctrine of +transubstantiation, and saw in the eucharist only a symbol of the union +of God and the soul. This made their name synonymous with heresy. But by +far the most famous of heretical sects was the sect of the Waldenses or +Albigenses. It numbered amongst its adherents—if not publicly, at any +rate secretly—many of the great Provençal lords, and there can be no +doubt that this community was permeated by the spirit of a renewed +Christianity, the Christianity of St. Francis and the German mystics. +The Albigenses believed that not Christ, but His semblance only, had +been crucified; they rejected the God of the Old Testament and their +doctrine of the two creators,—the devil who created the objective +world, and the true God who created the spiritual world—is reminiscent +of the loftiest Parseeism and the profoundest gnosticism. They regarded +man as placed between good and evil; the choice lay in his own hand. An +extraordinary poem by Peire Cardinal—not by any means a +heretic—breathes this spirit. He confronts God not with the customary +humility, but as one power confronts the other. "I will write a new +poem, and on the day of the Last Judgment I will read it to Him who has +created me from nothing. If He should condemn me to everlasting +damnation, I will say to Him: Lord, have mercy on me, for I have always +striven against the wicked world," (the troubadour here alludes to his +many polemic poems) "and save me from the torments of hell. The heavenly +host will marvel at my speech. And I shall say to God that He sins<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> +against His creatures if he delivers them into the hands of the devil. +Rather let Him drive away the devils, for then He will win more souls +and all the world will be blessed.... I will not despair of Thee and +therefore Thou must forgive my sins and save my soul and my heart. If I +had not been born I should not have sinned. It would be a great wrong +and a sin if Thou didst condemn me to burn in hell everlastingly, for +truly I may accuse Thee of having sent me a thousand evils for one +blessing."</p> + +<p>Most terrible was the punishment inflicted upon Provence by Innocent +III. That highly intellectual pope realised that he was faced by a +revival of the true religious instinct from which the authority of the +Church had far more to fear than from all sultans and emirs put +together. The system of absolute, immutable values was threatened with +destruction. In the year 1208 the Spanish nobleman Dominicus Guzman +founded the order of the Dominicans and the Inquisition, which invaded +Provence together with the papal army supported by France for political +reasons. Half a million men were butchered in order to crush the spirit +understood by a few hundreds at most; one stake was kindled by the +other; in the memory of man no greater sacrifice to tradition and dogma +had ever been made. Simon de Montfort, the head of the expedition, sent +the following laconic report to the pope: "We spared neither sex nor age +nor name, but slew all with the edge of the sword."</p> + +<p class='tbrk'>The troubadours bewailed the desolate country, the beauty that was no +more. Montanhagol, although greatly intimidated by the Inquisition, +wrote a long poem on the subject, and the otherwise unknown Bernard +Sicard de Marvajols laments:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh! Toulouse and Provence,</div> +<div>And thou, land of Agence,</div> +<div>Carcassonne and Beziers!</div> +<div>As once I beheld you—as I behold you to-day!</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>Jacob of Vitry, a cultured French prelate, took a different view. He +inveighed against the "foolish poems, the lies of the poets, the +sing-song of the women, the coarse innuendoes of the jesters." "Such +vermin flourishes on the stream of temporal abundance; it literally +crawls over all food, for, as a rule, the meal is followed by a deluge +of idle talk." A reconciliation of the two worlds was impossible.</p> + +<p>While the Waldenses flourished in Provence, various heretical sects +arose in the west of Germany and in the Netherlands; prominent among +them were the Apostolics, who took the Gospels literally, and introduced +communism and polygamy, and the communities of the Beghards and +Beguines, which roused little public attention, and did not aim at +reform, but advocated a life of contemplation. They found supporters in +all ranks of the community, and were connected with the later German +mystics. An indictment preserved for us proves the religious originality +of one of those sects, "The Brethren of the Free Spirit," who upheld the +heretical view that it were better that one man should attain to +spiritual perfection than that a hundred monasteries should be founded. +At the same time the inspired seer and hysterical nun, Hildegarde of +Bingen, wrote wild letters to the popes, denouncing the vice existing in +the Church and the degradation of religion. "But thou, oh Rome, who art +well-nigh at the point of death, thou wilt be shaken so that the +strength of thy feet shall forsake thee, because thou hast not loved the +royal maiden righteousness with an ardent love, but with the torpor of +sleep, and thou hast become a stranger to her. Therefore she will desert +thee if thou do not call her back." Pope Adrian IV. replied, almost +humbly: "We long to hear words of warning from you, because men say that +you are endowed with the spirit of the divine miracles." St. Bernard +craved Hildegarde's prayer, two emperors, popes, bishops and abbots +corresponded with her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> requesting her prayer and advice, and the +interpretation of difficult passages of the Scriptures. Hildegarde +replied in an obscure, apocalyptical language: "In the mysteries of the +true wisdom have I seen and heard this."</p> + +<p>Prophets predicting the revival of the Gospel of Christ and the +regeneration of the world appeared in the north and south. The Italian +monk and fanatic, Joachim of Floris (about <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1200), preached +that this regeneration was predestined to happen. A precursor of Hegel, +he taught three eras: the dominion of the Father, or the first era, +characterised by fear and the severity of the law; the dominion of the +Son, or the era of faith and compassion; and the dominion of the Holy +Ghost, or the era of love. This last era was beginning to dawn, and in +many places Joachim's words were regarded as the prophecies of a seer. +Thus the monk, Gerhard of Borgo San Domino, claimed for the dawning +third era the preaching of a new gospel of the Holy Ghost, an +unmistakable proof that the spirit of heresy was the outcome of +religious enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>The people despised the clergy, and were favourably disposed to every +reformer; at the same time they were entirely under the sway of a +superstitious awe of the administrators of mysterious magic which, by +appropriate practices, or by means of presents, could be turned to +advantage. The fetichism of relics flourished everywhere; a sufficient +number of pieces of the Cross of Christ were sold and worshipped to +furnish trees for a big forest—to say nothing of the bones of numerous +saints with which many monasteries, more especially French monasteries, +did a lucrative trade. Even at the time this traffic repelled the finer +intellects; in <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1200, Guibert, the abbot of Novigentum, +preached against the cult of the saints and the worship of relics, +adducing all the well-known arguments which to this day, however, have +proved insufficient to overcome the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> evil. In Guibert's words, "It was +an abominable nuisance that certain limbs should be detached from the +body, thereby defying the law that all bodies must turn to dust. How can +the bones of any man be worth framing in gold and silver," he asked, +"when the body of the Son of God was laid beneath a miserable stone?" He +exhorted the people to turn from the visible and obvious to the +invisible. He maintained that the worship of relics was opposed to true +religion because "not until the disciples were bereaved of the bodily +presence of Christ could the Holy Ghost descend upon them." He even +rejected the prevalent, entirely materialistic, view of a life after +death, and dared to suggest that the torments of hell should be +interpreted spiritually. "The eternal contemplation of the Lord is the +supreme bliss of the righteous; who could dare to deny that the misery +of the damned consists in the eternal bereavement of the face of the +Lord?"</p> + +<p>Religion had been lost; what should have been a vital force had become +as far as the most learned were concerned a knowledge of historical +events. Many saw in a return to evangelical simplicity and love the only +remedy; but it was the life, not the preaching of a man, which once +again was vouchsafed to the world as a great example. "Nobody has shown +me what I should do; but the Most High Himself has commanded me to live +according to the Gospels." Francis of Assisi accepted the accounts of +the life of Christ with the utmost naïveté; he neither searched for an +allegorical meaning (as the theologians did), nor did he subordinate the +man Jesus to the divine principle of the <i>logos</i> (in the manner of the +great mystics). To him the imitation of Christ meant a ministry of love; +he did not conceive religion as dogma and the political power of a +hierarchy, but as a state of the heart. This is a characteristic which +he shares with Eckhart, the great recreator of European religion, +although he was funda<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>mentally alien to him. St. Francis never uttered a +single hostile word against tradition or the clergy; he never inveighed +against the corruption of morals and religious indifference, as other +reformers did; he exerted a reformatory influence solely by his life, +for he possessed the secret of the great love. During his whole life he +was averse to laying down rules for his followers, although continually +urged to do so by popes and bishops. His importance does not lie in the +foundation of an order with certain regulations and a specific object, +but in the fact that he was a vital force. He broke the norms of the +Church whenever it seemed right to him to do so, for he was absolutely +sure of himself; without being ordained he preached to the people in his +own tongue, probably the first man (after the Provençal Peter Valdez) +who did so; without possessing the slightest authority he consecrated +his friend Clara as a nun. Innocent III., who made the suppression of +heresy the task of his life, showed great intelligence and wisdom in +sanctioning St. Francis' sermons to the people and acknowledging his +unecclesiastical brotherhood. This probably transformed a dangerous +revolutionary into a faithful servant of the Church. Maybe the Church +was indebted to St. Francis for being saved from a great early +reformation; signs of it were not wanting, and another Arnold of Brescia +might have arisen and brought about her overthrow. It is doubtful +whether the Church would have come out of a Franciscan crusade as +victoriously as she came out of her struggle with Provence.</p> + +<p>St. Francis regarded science with indifference. "Every demon," he said, +"has more scientific knowledge than all men on earth put together. But +there is something a demon is incapable of, and in it lies the glory of +man. A man can be faithful to God." With those words he had inwardly +overcome tradition and theology, and direct knowledge of the divine had +dawned in his soul. He even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> forbade his brethren to own copies of the +Scriptures. God in the heart—that was the core of his doctrine. With +all his wonderful intuition he was absolutely innocent of the pride of +ignorance; he really felt himself smaller than the smallest of +men—unlike the bishops and popes who called themselves the servants of +the servants of God, without attaching the least meaning to it. How +characteristic of his simple mind was his passionate insistence on the +respectful handling of the vessels used at holy Mass, because they were +destined to receive the body of the Lord. And yet he hardly knew +anything of the symbolic transmutation of bread and wine—he accepted +the miracle without a thought, like a child.</p> + +<p>In the year 1219, St. Francis took part in a Crusade. While the battle +of Damietta was raging, he went into the camp of the Saracens and +preached before the Sultan, who received him with respect and sent him +back unharmed. According to the legend, he then went to Bethlehem and +Jerusalem, where the Sultan, touched by his personality, gave him access +to the sacred shrines. To Francis this pilgrimage to the Holy Land had a +profound meaning, for to him Christianity meant the imitation of Christ.</p> + +<p>Although he lived on bread himself, and poverty was his chosen lady, he +regarded the asceticism of the early Middle Ages as futile and rejected +it. The fire of life burned in him so ardently that he gave no thought +to the morrow, and literally followed the admonition of the Gospels: "So +likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he +cannot be My disciple." We read in the <i>Fioretti</i> (perhaps the oldest +popular collection of poems in existence) that he expressly prohibited +asceticism as a principle; an idea too foreign to the spirit of the age +to have been an invention. He also disapproved of the secluded monastic +life, then the universal ideal of the <i>vita contemplativa</i>, and +insisted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> on his followers living in the world, radiating love and +sustaining life by the charity of their fellow-men.</p> + +<p>There is an anecdote contained in the <i>Fioretti</i>, reflecting the great +superiority and lucidity of his mind. On a cold winter's day he and +Brother Leo were tramping through the deep snow. "Brother Leo," said St. +Francis, "if we could restore sight to all blind men, heal all cripples, +expel evil spirits and recall the dead to life—it would not be perfect +joy." And after a while: "And if we knew all the secrets of science, the +course of the stars, the ways of the beasts—it would not be perfect +joy—and if by our preaching we could convert all infidels to the true +faith—even that would not be perfect joy." "Tell me then, Father," said +Brother Leo, "what would be perfect joy?" "If we now knocked at the +convent gates, cold and wet and faint with hunger, and the porter sent +us away with harsh words, so that we should have to stand in the snow +until the evening; if we thus waited, bearing all things patiently +without murmuring—that would be perfect joy: the mercy of +self-control."</p> + +<p>"He met death singing," says his biographer, Thomas of Celano, the +author of the magnificent <i>Dies irae, dies illa</i>. On his deathbed St. +Francis composed and sang without interruption the Hymn to the Sun, that +lofty song of praise in which the sum total of his noble life, love for +all created things,—is comprised and transfigured. It expresses a new +form of devotion, composed of the ecstasy of love and perfect humility. +He embraced in his heart his brother Sun, his sister Moon, the dear +Stars; his brother Wind, his sister and mother Earth; and on the day of +his death this <i>brother seraphicus</i> added to it a powerful and touching +song of praise of his "brother Death." The legend has it that a flock of +singing-birds descended on the roof of the cottage in which he lay +dying; the songs of his "little sisters" accompanied him to the world +beyond the grave.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> + +<p>We are justified in comparing this death, which was sustained by the +fundamental forces of that era, soul and emotion, to that other, more +famous, death of antiquity. Socrates died without in the least +succumbing to any personal feeling, supported by the purely logical +consideration that it was expedient to obey the laws of the State. His +death was the application of a universal proposition to an individual +case, and because no one could accuse Socrates of a dialectical error, +the conclusion, his death, had to take place.</p> + +<p>Francis and some of his successors realised in their lives the simple, +religious, fundamental emotion of love in a way which the people could +clearly understand. "God's minstrels" was the name given to his +followers, because they spoke and sang of the love of God without +ecclesiastical ceremony. Jacopone da Todi (1236-1306), probably next to +Dante and Guinicelli the greatest poet which Italy has produced, praised +the transcendent love of God in ecstatic verses. He was the religious +counterpart of the troubadours; his passionate devotion to the child +Jesus, the Madonna and the Crucified, eclipses their most ardent lyrics. +These southerners could not forgo the visible emblems of their religion; +the infinitely simple principle that only he who calls nothing his own, +and desires no earthly goods, is perfectly free, and can never fall foul +of his neighbour, was, if not lived up to, at any rate understood and +respected. The grateful hearts of the people surrounded the name of St. +Francis with legends; the study of his life inspired Giotto, the father +of the new art, to the study of plant and animal life. The story of St. +Francis is written on the walls of the cathedral at Assisi, the first +monumental work of Italian art.</p> + +<p>St. Francis re-lived the terrestrial life of Jesus; in one direction he +excelled his model, for though the love of Christ embraced all mankind, +the heart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> of St. Francis went out to all things, beasts and plants and +stars. He applied the words, "Whatsoever ye do to the least of my +brethren, ye have done unto me," to <i>Brother Bear</i> and <i>his sisters the +little birds</i>. He was one of the first men, since the Greek era, who saw +nature in its true aspect and not as a hieroglyphic of the divine word. +Men had realised with a feeling of helplessness the dangers of the +elements, without perceiving their magnificence; they had speculated on +and attempted to decipher the secret language of the terrestrial and +celestial phenomena. The discovery of the beauty of nature, and with it +the revival of aesthetics, was an essential part of the new-born +civilisation. This fact was accomplished—in an almost sentimental +way—by the troubadours and minnesingers. But the relationship of St. +Francis to nature was something very different. The co-ordination of man +and beast—in his sermon to the birds, for instance—cannot be called +anything but frankly pagan. St. Francis said to his disciples: "Tarry a +little while in the road while I go and preach to my little sisters, the +birds." And he went into the fields and began to preach to the birds +which sat on the ground; and straightway all the others flew down from +the trees and flocked round him, and did not fly away until he had +blessed them; and when he touched them, they did not move. And these +were the words which he spoke to them: "My brothers and sisters, little +birds, praise God and thank Him that He has given you wings with which +to fly and clothed you with a garment of feathers. That he admitted your +kind into Noah's ark so that your race should not disappear from the +earth. Be grateful to Him that He has given you the air for your +kingdom; you sow not, neither do you reap, but your Heavenly Father +gives you abundance of food. He gave you the rivers and fountains; He +gave you the mountains and valleys as a refuge, and the high trees so +that you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> may build your nests in safety. And because you can neither +spin nor cook, God clothed you and your little ones. Behold the +greatness of the love of your Creator! Beware of the sin of ingratitude +and diligently praise God all day!" And when he had thus spoken, the +birds opened their beaks, beat their wings and bowed to the ground.</p> + +<p>More than a hundred years later (1300-1365), a man was living in Swabia +whose soul was kindred to the soul of St. Francis: Suso, who is, as a +rule, classed with the mystics. He had a profound, typically German love +of meadow and forest, and expressed it more exquisitely than the best +among the minnesingers. "Look above you and around you and behold the +vastness of heaven and the speed of its revolutions. The Lord has +emblazoned it with seven planets, each of which—not only the sun—is +far larger than the earth; he has adorned it with myriads of radiant +stars. See how serenely the glorious sun is riding in the cloudless sky, +giving to the earth abundance of fruit! Behold the verdure of the +meadow! The trees are bursting into leaf and the grass is springing up; +behold the smiling flowers and listen to glen and dale re-echoing with +the sweet song of the nightingales and little singing birds; the beasts +which the bitter winter drove into nooks and crannies, and into the dark +ground, are emerging from their hiding-places to rejoice in the sun and +seek a mate. Young and old are glad with an exceeding joy. Oh! Thou +gentle God, how fair art Thou in Thy creatures! Oh! fields and meadows, +how surpassing is your beauty!" Or: "My dear brethren, what more shall I +say to you than that my eyes have seen many gladsome sights. I walked +across the flowering meadows and listened to the heavenly harps of the +little birds praising their gentle and loving Creator so that the woods +echoed with their songs." And, more compassionate even than St. Francis: +"I will say nothing of the children of man; but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> misery and sorrow +of all the beasts and little birds, and all created things, is well-nigh +breaking my heart; and having no power to help them, I sighed, and +prayed to the Most High, Most Merciful Lord, that He would deliver +them." His description of a paradisean meadow sounds like the +description of a picture by Fra Angelico: "Now behold with your own eyes +the heavenly meadow! Lo! What summer joy! Behold the kingdom of sweet +May, the valley of all true joy! Glad eyes are gazing into glad eyes! +Hark to the harps and fiddles, the singing and laughter! Young men and +maidens are leading the dance! Love without sorrow shall reign for +ever...." etc. There is a picture, drawn by this same Suso, representing +the journey of man through life, his departure from God and his return. +In this picture the path of humanity is renunciation and asceticism; +death flourishes his scythe above the heads of a dancing couple, and +underneath is written: "This is earthly love; its end is sorrow"; to +such an extent was this sincere and sensitive man under the influence of +the traditional hatred of the world which Eckhart, his great master, had +completely overcome.</p> + +<p>Provençals and Italians sang the delight of spring, and the German +minnesingers greeted it as the deliverer from all the hardships of the +severe winter; with the latter it was more a childish delight in the +open-air life which had again become possible, after the long +imprisonment of winter, than pure joy in beauty. But some of the German +epic poems, "Tristan and Isolde," for instance, contain genuine, sincere +descriptions of sylvan beauty. The student of art, especially the German +art of the Renascence, cannot help being struck by the extraordinary +love with which quite insignificant objects of nature, such as a bird, +or a flower, are treated. The familiar things of every-day life were in +this way brought into connection with solemn biblico-historical +subjects.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> + +<p>There is no doubt that at all times a certain keen perception of the +beauty of nature has been inherent in some favoured individuals; but the +universally accepted opinion that only the supernal was really +beautiful, and that terrestrial beauty was merely its reflected glory, +was too strong even for them. Thus we have seen Suso translating the +beauty of the earthly spring to the kingdom of heaven.</p> + +<p>At the same time men were beginning to travel to distant countries for +the sole purpose of seeing new scenes and acquiring fresh knowledge. The +famous Venetian, Marco Polo, was the first European who (in 1300) +visited Central Asia, crossed China and Thibet, and brought news to +Europe of the fairyland of Japan. Sight-seeing as an end in itself was +discovered. Long sea-voyages for commercial purposes were no novelty, +but no human foot had ever trod the summits of the Lower Alps, unless it +had been the foot of a peasant whose cattle had strayed. Petrarch was +the first man (in 1336) to climb a barren mountain, the Mont Ventoux in +Provence, voluntarily undergoing a certain amount of fatigue for sheer +delight in the beauty of nature. This was a great, an immortal deed, +greater than all his sonnets and treatises put together. In a long +letter which has been preserved to us, he describes with much spirit and +erudition this extraordinary ascent, before whose profound significance +all the Alpine exploits of our time shrink into paltry gymnastic +exercises.</p> + +<p>The beauty of nature discovered and appreciated, interest began to be +evinced in the relationship existing between the various phenomena and +there arose a desire to obtain ocular proof of what was written in the +venerable books—perhaps even make new discoveries. The first man of any +importance in this direction was the German Albrecht Bollstädt (Albertus +Magnus), who, although he contributed more than any other man to the +promulgation of Aristotelian philosophy, wrote a book on natural history +founded on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> personal observation; his great English contemporary, +however, Roger Bacon, is the true father of modern experimental science. +It was he who coined the expression "scientia experimentalis," and +framed the principle that all research must be based on the study of +nature. He maintained that experience was the "mistress of all +sciences," and said: "I respect Aristotle and account him the prince of +philosophers, but I do not always share his opinion. Aristotle and the +other philosophers have planted the tree of science, but the latter has +not by any means put forth all its branches or matured all its fruit." +This thought, though it seems to us self-evident, was of great moment in +the age of scholasticism. Bacon spent ten years in prison; but in spite +of everything, he was so much under the influence of scholasticism that +he considered it the task of philosophy to adduce evidence for the truth +of the Christian dogma.</p> + +<p>Here it is essential roughly to sketch the essence of the philosophical +thought of that period, and point out the way which led from the +Christianity of the Fathers of the Church and scholasticism to the +religion of unhistorical Christianity, the so-called mysticism. +Scholasticism had reached its climax in the thirteenth century; +universities were founded in Paris, Oxford and Padua, and he who aspired +to the full dignity of learning had to take his degrees there; even +Eckhart did not neglect to obtain his scholastic education in Paris.</p> + +<p>Scholasticism was an imposing and yet strangely grotesque system of the +world, built up—before a background of blazing stakes—of scriptural +passages and ecclesiastical tradition, lofty, pure thought and +antique-mediaeval superstition. Its fundamental problem, the +determination of the border line between faith and knowledge, was purely +philosophical. While the older scholasticism, based on Platonic +traditions, endeavoured to bring these into harmony with Christianity, +that is to say, prove the revelations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> by dialectics, Albertus Magnus +and, authoritatively, his pupil, Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274), strictly +distinguished, by the use of Aristotelian weapons, the rational or +perceptive truths from the supernatural verities or the subjects of +faith. This distinction, made in order to safeguard dogma, quickly +revealed its double-face. The handmaiden philosophy rebelled against her +mistress theology, and asked her for her credentials. According to the +classic and dogmatic doctrine of Thomas, the natural verities alone +could be grasped by human understanding; the supernatural or revealed +truths (the dogmas) were beyond proof and scientific cognition. To +submit them to research was not only an impossible task, but Thomas +stigmatised every effort in this direction as heresy, fondly believing +that he had once and for all safeguarded the position of faith. But more +resolute and profound thinkers, although not in so many words attacking +the authority of the Scriptures, and leaving Thomas' border-line +unquestioned, found the unfathomable truths not in ecclesiastical +tradition but in their own souls, thus investing "faith" with a new +meaning, unassailable by criticism.</p> + +<p>The idea of drawing a line between perceivable or rational truths and +imperceivable or divine truths, is fraught with the burning question as +to the limits of human knowledge, a question which to this day remains +unanswered. In the course of time the limits were extended in favour of +imperfect knowledge (but the character of the unknowable was +problematised and questioned). While Thomas was still convinced of the +possibility of proving the existence of a God by the power of the human +intellect, Duns Scotus removed the problem of the existence of a God and +the immortality of the soul from the domain of science, and made both +propositions a matter of faith. William of Occam, more uncompromising +than Duns Scotus, maintained the absolute impossibility of acquiring +knowledge of supernatural things,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> and taught—on this point, too, +anticipating Kant—that objective knowledge acquired through the senses +should precede abstract knowledge. The last conclusion of nominalism was +thus arrived at, the existence of universal conceptions, or universals, +supposed to exist outside material things—the curse of the Platonic +inheritance—declared to be impossible, and reality conceded to the +individual only. Roscellinus, the founder of this doctrine, had still +been content to deny the existence of the conception of "deity," leaving +the individual persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as real individuals, +untouched.</p> + +<p>We see from the foregoing that the universally derided scholasticism +travelled along the whole line of modern thought: from the "realism" of +Thomas, which leaves the universals as yet unassailed by doubt and +occupying the very heart of knowledge, past the first and, to our view, +very modest doubts of the nominalists, to the agnosticism of Bacon, Duns +and Occam.</p> + +<p>With the new position of decided nominalism the foundation was prepared +for the experimental sciences on the one hand, and mysticism on the +other. For the conclusion that things supernatural are a closed book to +us may have two results: on the one hand, the rejection of the +transcendental and the victory of science; on the other, the need to +descend into the profoundest depths of the universe and the soul, and +grasp by intuition what common sense does not see.</p> + +<p>The time was ripe and the consummators came: Dante in the south, Eckhart +in the countries north of the Alps. With regard to Dante, I will say one +thing only; he gathered together all the achievements of the new art and +transcended them in a work which has never been surpassed. The +profoundly symbolical words, "The new life is beginning," are written at +the commencement of his <i>Vita Nuova</i>, and with his <i>Divine Comedy</i> the +art of Europe had attained perfection.</p> + +<p>It is necessary to give a more detailed account of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> Eckhart. He had been +almost forgotten in favour of his pupils, Tauler and Suso, and the +unknown author of the <i>Theologica Germanica</i> (to which Luther wrote a +preface), but to-day a faint idea of the great importance of this man is +beginning to dawn upon the world. Eckhart was the greatest creative +religious genius since Jesus, and I believe that in time his writings +will be considered equal to the Gospel of St. John. He grasped the +spirit of religion with unparalleled depth; everything produced by the +highly religious later mediaeval era pales before his illumination. +Compared to him, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and even St. Francis +dwindle into insignificance; all the later reformers are small beside +the greatness of his soul. Every one of his sermons contains profound +passages, such as "God must become I and I must become God." "The soul +as a separate entity must be so completely annihilated that nothing +remains except God, yea, that it becomes more glorious than God, as the +sun is more glorious than the moon." "The Scriptures were written and +God created the world solely that He may be born in the soul and the +soul again in Him." "The essence of all grain is wheat, of all metal +gold, and of all creatures man. Thus spoke a great man: 'There is no +beast, but it is in some way a semblance of man.'" "The least faculty of +my soul is more infinite than the boundless heavens." "Again we +understand by the kingdom of God the soul; for the soul and the Deity +are one." "The soul is the universe and the kingdom of God." "God dwells +so much within the soul that all His divinity depends on it." "Man shall +be free and master of all his deeds, undestroyed and unsubdued."</p> + +<p>Eckhart was the first man who thought consecutively in the German +vernacular, and who made this philosophically still virginal language a +medium for expressing profound thought. In addition he wrote Latin +treatises which were discovered a short time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> ago; I have not read them, +but I have no doubt that his profoundest convictions were expressed in +the German tongue. The Latin language has at all times fettered the +spirit far more successfully than the still untainted and living German.</p> + +<p>The religious genius of a single individual had created Christianity. +But from the very beginning it was misunderstood; the salvation of the +world was linked to the person of a man who had aspired to be an example +to the whole race. The term, "Son of God," was understood in the sense +of the hero-cult of antiquity; possibly the Jewish faith in a Messiah, +the politico-national hope of the Children of Israel, was a good deal to +blame for this. A historical event was translated into metaphysic. The +only truly religious man was made the centre of a new mythology and +naïvely worshipped. It may sound like a paradox, but it is a fact that +the whole of the first millenary was inwardly irreligious; it concealed +its want of metaphysical intuition behind the falsification of +historical events. The entire mediaeval (and a large proportion of the +Protestant) theology laboured to obtain an intellectual grasp of the +doctrine of a unique historical salvation of humanity and frame it into +a dogma. And thus occurred that unparalleled misunderstanding (a +misunderstanding which never clouded the mind of India) which based +religion, the timeless metaphysical treasure of the soul, on the +historical record of an event which had happened in Asia Minor, and had +come down to us in a more or less garbled—some say entirely +falsified—version. This was the great sin of Christianity: It regarded +a historical event, revealing the very essence of religion, and +consequently capable of being formulated, as a divine intervention for +the purpose of bringing about the salvation of the world, instead of +recognising in the sublime figure of the founder of the Christian +religion a great, perhaps even perfect, incarnation of the eternally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> +new relationship between God and the soul. It promulgated the strange +thought that only the one soul, the soul of the founder, was divine, and +instead of teaching the divinity of humanity, it taught the divinity of +this one man only—Jesus became a God who could no longer be looked upon +as the perfect specimen and prototype of the race, but before whom it +behoved man to kneel and pray for salvation. Perhaps it was not possible +to understand the new doctrine in any other way; before men can conceive +the idea of their divinity, they must have become conscious of their +souls.</p> + +<p>This complete misunderstanding and externalising of religion which took +place in the first millenary, and which can never now be retrieved, is +fundamentally pagan, antique. The record of the salvation of the world, +achieved by a hero once and for all time, the historification of the +divine spark which is daily re-born in the soul, entirely corresponds to +the Greek myths of gods and demi-gods which before their new, symbolical +interpretation, were taken quite literally. I am not now concerned with +the problem of how far the antique heroes and Eastern mysteries directly +influenced the conception of the figure of Christ; I only wish to +emphasise the profound contrast between true religion which springs up +in the soul of the individual, and historical tradition. If there is +such a thing as religion, it must exist equally for all men, for those +who accidentally received a report of a certain historical event, as +well as for those who remained in ignorance of the fact. All heretical +demonstrations were rooted in a vague realisation of this contrast. But +Eckhart accomplished the unparalleled deed of once more building a +bridge between the soul and the deity; of relegating to the background +all the ineradicable historical misrepresentations or, if there was no +alternative, of unhesitatingly proclaiming them as erroneous, or +interpreting them symbolically. "St. Paul's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> words," he says, for +instance, "are nothing but the words of Paul; it is not true that he +spoke them in a state of grace." He did not regard the Scriptures as the +bourne of truth, but as subsequent proof of the directly experienced +truth of the divine event. With this conception Christianity had reached +its highest stage. Henceforth the origin of all truths and values was no +longer sought in doctrine and authority, but in the soul of man; God was +neither to be found in the heavens nor in history, but in the soul; the +soul must become divine and creative; it had found its task: the +recreation of the world. It was true, St. Augustine had said: "<i>Non +Christianised, Christi sumus</i>," but this saying had never been +understood, and very probably St. Augustine had not meant it in its +literal sense. At last the fundamental consciousness of Christianity had +triumphed: the principle of the "Son-of-Godship" inspired the soul of +the mystics; in future religion must emanate from the soul and find its +goal in God; written documents and—in the case of the profoundest +thinkers—examples were no longer needed. The heretical sects had been +content to reject post-evangelical tradition, in order to lay greater +stress on the words of Christ. They were genuine reformers, but they +were as much constrained by the historical facts as the Roman Catholic +Church, and their standpoint has to this day remained the standpoint of +the Protestant professions of faith.</p> + +<p>The fact of this new conception attaching no importance to the +historical Jesus of Nazareth (had he never lived it would have made no +difference) made of it a new religion. By putting aside this external +and accidental moment, it placed the metaphysical and purely spiritual +core of Christianity, the fundamental conviction of the divinity of the +soul, and the will to eternal life, within the centre of religious +consciousness, and by so doing put itself beyond the reach of historical +criticism and scepticism,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> Eckhart, more than any other teacher, was +profoundly convinced of the freedom and eternal value of the soul. "I, +as the Son, am the same as my Heavenly Father." He taught that Christ is +born in the soul, that the divine spark is continuously re-kindled in +the soul: "It is the quality of eternity that life and youth are one," +and that man must become more and more divine, more and more free from +all that is unessential and accidental until he no longer differs from +God. It is only a logical conclusion to say that a perfect man, +mystically speaking, is God; his being and his will are in nothing +differentiated from absolute, universal, divine will—German mysticism +agrees in this with the Upanishads. Kant would have said that the +principles of such a man would become cosmic laws; sin would be the +estrangement from God, the will to draw away from God.</p> + +<p>The profound and only mission of religion is the endowment of man in +this hurly-burly of life with the consciousness of eternity. Religion +places our transient life under the aspect of eternity, and therefore it +must, in its essence, remain a stranger to things temporal. Only that +moment in the life of a man can be called religious which lifts him +beyond himself, out of his petty, narrow existence, conditioned by and +subject to accidents, into timeless, universal life; which gives him the +certainty that historical events can never be regarded as definite and +ultimate—that moment which has the power to set free, to deliver, to +save. Thus it is irreligious to regard an event which occurred on the +temporal plane—and were it the greatest event which ever befell on +earth—as the pivot of metaphysical value for all men; to link the +salvation of the world to an occurrence which was relatively accidental, +to base the consciousness of eternity on the knowledge of a fact. This +would be a victory of time over eternity, a victory of irreligion over +religion.</p> + +<p>I regard it as the greatest achievement of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> great time that +spontaneous religion again became possible. Eckhart rediscovered the +divine nature of man; never has the consciousness of timeless eternity +been expressed as he expressed it in his tract, <i>On Solitude</i>. Doubtless +there have been men before him who possessed direct religious +intuitions, and now and then gave timid utterance to them; but the +authority of tradition has always been too great, and they never did +more than compromise between the historical events on which the +Christian religion is based and the genuinely religious experience of +their own souls. Eckhart, too, was careful not to offend against the +letter, and his pupils, after suspicion had fallen on them, made many a +concession in terms, and perhaps even in thought. St. Augustine already +had steered a middle course between the historical and the religious +conception, in his phrase: <i>Per Christum hominem at Christum deum</i>, and +Suso (in his <i>Booklet of Eternal Wisdom</i>) followed his lead. "Thus +speaks the eternal wisdom: If ye will behold me in my eternal divinity +ye must know and love me in my suffering humanity. For this is the +quickest road to eternal salvation." The brutality of the tenet which +maintains that all those are eternally lost who, without their own +fault, have no knowledge of the salvation of the world (especially +therefore, those who died before the event), was a stumbling-block to +many thoughtful minds. The patriarchs of the Old Testament were looked +upon as saved—to some extent—by the fact of their being the ancestors +or prophets of Christ; but pagans and Greeks, including Aristotle, were +condemned even by the great Dante. At the conclusion of his <i>Divine +Comedy</i> Dante proved himself a truly inspired mystic, for he gave to us +the profoundest vision of the divinity which has ever been vouchsafed to +man. But his genius was directed and restricted by the dogmas of the +Church; his religious standpoint was the standpoint of the early Middle +Ages and dogmatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> Catholicism. As poet and lover he was the inaugurator +of a new world; here he represents the culmination and conclusion of the +condemned world-system. He was the iron landmark of the ages—Eckhart, +the creator of eternal values.</p> + +<p>The foremost of the precursors of Eckhart was Bernard of Clairvaux +(1091-1153). He was the exponent of the love of God which he placed +above knowledge; in one of his letters he calls love "the existence of +God Himself," basing his definition on the passage in the Gospel of St. +John, "God is Love." "Love is the eternal law which created and +preserves the universe; the whole world is governed by love; but +although love is the law to which all creation is subject, it is not +itself without law, but it is a law unto itself. Serfs and mercenaries +are ruled by laws which are not from God, but which they made +themselves; some because they do not love God, others because they love +the things of this world better than God.... They made their own laws +and subordinated the universal and eternal laws to their own will. But +those (who live righteously) are in the world as God is: neither serfs +nor mercenaries, but the children of God and, like God Himself, they +live only by the law of love." "His greatest happiness is complete +absorption in the vision of the divine and forgetfulness of self." "All +love is an emanation of that one love. It is the eternally creative and +governing law of the universe." "To be penetrated by such emotion is to +become deified. As a drop of water in a cup of wine is completely +dissolved and takes the taste and colour of the wine, so also, in an +indescribable manner, is the human will absorbed in the divine will, and +transformed into the will of God. For how could God become all in all if +anything human were left in man?" "They are completely immersed (the +martyrs) in the infinite ocean of eternal light, in radiant +eternity...." The entranced soul "shall lose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> all knowledge of itself +and become completely absorbed in God; it shall become unlike itself in +the measure as it has received the gift of becoming divine." Sensuous +metaphors from the Song of Songs and the Psalms are again and again +intermingled with these lofty thoughts. But in spite of his divine +emotion, in spite of his anticipations of the German mystics, Bernard +took the standpoint of ecclesiastical orthodoxy whenever he was not in +the ecstatic state; his contemplative mind was unable to grasp the +importance of independent thought, a fact amply proved by his inglorious +quarrel with Abélard, the greatest thinker of his time. This quarrel was +a typical illustration of the difference between the believer and the +thinker. Bernard forgot all about love, and did not hesitate to stir up +unpleasantness whenever he could do so. So he wrote to Pope Innocent +II.: "Peter Abélard is striving to destroy the Christian faith, and +imagines that his human intellect can penetrate the depths of the divine +mind.... Nothing is hidden from him, neither in the earth below, nor in +the heavens above; his intellectual pride exceeds all limits; he attacks +the doctrines of faith, and ponders problems far above his intellectual +capacity; he is an inventor of heresies ...," etc. Thanks to his +machinations, Abélard was compelled to recant at the Council of Sens, +and was condemned by the Pope to eternal silence. Berengar of Poitier +took Abélard's part, and in a satirical treatise ventured to criticise +St. Bernard's conduct: "Thus philosophise the old women at the looms. Of +course, when Bernard tells us that we must love God, he speaks a true +and venerable word; but he need not have opened his lips to do so, for +it is a self-evident truth." As a matter of fact, these words branded +and contradicted the merely subjective emotional mysticism; to the +emotional mystic salvation lies in the "absorption in God," in +shapeless, thoughtless contemplation. Richard of St. Victor,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> founding +his theories on St. Bernard, established six stages of meditation. The +Franciscan monk, Bonaventura, the famous author of the <i>Biblia +Pauperum</i>, added a seventh, a complete rest in God—"like the Sabbath +after the six days of labour." To Bonaventura, as later on to Dante, the +world was a ladder leading up to God.</p> + +<p>If we turn from these thinkers of the Neo-Latin race, who in spite of +their undeniable mysticism were completely under the dominion of the +Church—to German mysticism, we find above and beyond mysticism, we find +above and beyond love, a new principle: The soul of man is the +starting-point of religious consciousness and the content of the +religious consciousness is the soul's road to God. The nativity of +Christ ceased to be regarded as a historical event, and became the birth +of the divine principle in the soul of man. In passing I will mention a +German nun, Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212-1277), who anticipated some of +the great thoughts of Eckhart, although she was incapable of grasping +their mutual connection. "The Holy Trinity and everything in heaven and +earth must be subject to me" (the soul), were words in the true spirit +of Eckhart, leaving St. Bernard far behind. Mechthild found metaphors of +true poetical grandeur when she spoke of the union of the soul with God. +"The dominion of the fire has yet to come. That is Jesus Christ in Whose +hands the Heavenly Father has laid the salvation of the world and the +Last Judgment. On the Day of Judgment He shall fashion cups of wondrous +beauty out of the crackling sparks; therein the Father will drink on His +festival all the holiness which through His dear Son He has poured into +human souls."</p> + +<p>Emotional mysticism was the prevailing form of mysticism in those days; +even Eckhart's pupil, Suso, belonged to this class of mystics. This +vague sentimentalism saved many a mind from the rigid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> dogmas of the +Church, and as its vagueness could be interpreted in more than one way, +it caused very little offence; but these visions and ecstasies, which +are so often mistaken for true mysticism, have done much to bring the +latter into contempt with the seriously minded. Eckhart did not +acknowledge it as genuine mysticism and directly condemned it in many of +his writings; and as he rejected mystic sentimentalism, clearly divining +its pathological cause, so he also rejected asceticism and all religious +ceremonies. The evangelical poverty of the Franciscan monks was an +object of loathing to him. St. Francis (and thirty years before him +Peter Valdez) had naïvely interpreted the imitation of Christ as a life +of absolute poverty, and had been relentless in his denunciation of +worldly wealth, which every monk of his order had to renounce. He +himself never touched money, seeing in it the source of all evil. His +transcendent treasure was "Holy Poverty"; Jacopone wrote an ardent hymn +to "Queen Poverty," and even Thomas, the representative of Dominican +erudition, theoretically took up the cudgels on its behalf. But even in +the primitive Church the principle of worldly and spiritual poverty was +widely spread and encouraged. In the defence of poverty, which was +practically nearly always synonymous with idleness and begging, and +therefore roused much hostility among the people, Bonaventura pointed +out (in his treatise, <i>De Paupertate Christi</i>) that Jesus Himself had +never done any manual work. The universal preference for a contemplative +life encouraged the tendency, and the extreme charitableness of the +Middle Ages made its realisation possible. Work was frequently looked +upon as a punishment—a view which could easily be upheld by reference +to Adam's expulsion from Paradise—and inflicted upon the monks for +offences against the rules. Dante's friend, Guido Cavalcanti, expressed +the natural sentiment that poverty is a distressing condition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> in a +canzone which bristles with insults hurled at the Queen of the +Franciscans:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Yea, rightly art thou hated worse than death,</div> +<div>For he, at length, is longed for in the breast.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='i2'>But not with thee, wild beast,</div> +<div class='i2'>Was ever aught found beautiful or good;</div> +<div class='i2'>For life is all that man can lose by death,</div> +<div class='i2'>Not fame and the fair summits of applause;</div> +<div class='i2'>His glory shall not pause</div> +<div class='i2'>But live in men's perpetual gratitude.</div> +<div class='i2'>While he who on thy naked sill has stood</div> +<div class='i2'>He shall be counted low, etc.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'><span class="smcap">D.G. Rossetti.</span></div></div> +</div> + +<p>The concept of the German mystics was infinitely more profound than the +concept of the merely external poverty of the Franciscans, which in the +case of St. Francis and Jacopone was an inherent characteristic and +pure, but in the case of the others more or less vicious. "Man cannot +live in this world without labour," says Eckhart, "but labour is man's +portion; therefore he must learn to have God in his heart, although +surrounded by the things of this world, and not let his business or his +surroundings be a barrier." There is a passage in the book of an unknown +author, entitled <i>The Imitation of Christ's Poverty</i> (formerly ascribed +to Tauler), which reads as follows: "Poverty is equality with God, a +mind turned away from all creatures; poverty clings to nothing and +nothing clings to it; a man who is poor clings to nothing which is +beneath him, but to that alone which is greater than all things. And +that is the loftiest virtue of poverty that it clings only to that which +is sublime and takes no heed of the things which are base, so far as it +is possible." "The soul while it is burdened with temporal and transient +things is not free. Before it can aspire to freedom and nobility it must +cast away all the things of the world." "Nobody can be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> really poor +unless God make him so; but God makes no man poor unless he be in his +inmost heart; then all things will be taken from him which are not +God's. The more spiritual a man is, the poorer will he be, for +spirituality and poverty are one...." Pseudo-Tauler even affirms that a +man "can possess abundant wealth and yet be poor in spirit." The meaning +of this is clear: He whose heart is not wrapped up in the things of the +world, will find his way to God; a soul which is without desire is rich.</p> + +<p>But there was a still greater contrast between the naïve religion +represented by St. Francis of Assisi and the religion of Eckhart. The +former lived entirely in the obvious and visible; the love of all +creatures filled his heart and shaped his life. The heart of the mystic +too, was filled with love, but it was love transcending the love of the +individual, love of the primary cause. In the last sense Eckhart taught, +contrary to traditional Christianity, and in conformity with Indian +wisdom, that the soul must be absorbed into the absolute and that +everything transient and individual must cease to exist. "The highest +freedom is that the soul should rise above itself and flow into the +fathomless abyss of its archetype, of God Himself."</p> + +<p>Even St. Bernard was not quite free from this mystical heresy (<i>cf.</i> the +previously quoted passages). "When he has reached the highest degree of +perfection, man is in a state of complete forgetfulness of self, and +having entirely ceased to belong to himself, becomes one with God, +released from everything not divine." Even compassion must cease in this +state, for there is nothing left but justice and perfection.</p> + +<p>We recognise here a characteristic of all those who are greatest among +men: of Goethe, for instance, of Bach, or Kant: namely, the +correspondence of intense personality and the most highly developed +objectivity; for the greatest personality ceases in the end to +distinguish between itself and the world,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> has eradicated everything +paltry, selfish and subjective and has become entirely objective, +impersonal, divine. St. Francis knew nothing of this consciousness. "God +has chosen me because among all men He could find no one more lowly, and +because through my instrumentality He purposed to confound nobility, +greatness, strength, beauty and the wisdom of the world." He was the +disciple of the earthly Jesus, Who went through life the compassionate +consoler of all those who were sorrowful. But Eckhart aspired "to the +shapeless nature of God." "We will follow Him, but not in all things," +he said of the historical Jesus. "He did many things which He meant us +to understand spiritually, not literally ... we must always follow Him +in the profounder sense." Compared to the religion of Eckhart, the +religion of St. Francis is the faith of a little child, picturing God as +a benevolent old man. Such a religion is equally true and sincere, but +it represents an earlier stage on the road of humanity. If Christianity +were—as we are occasionally assured—the religion of Jesus, then the +great mystics cannot be called Christians. And yet St. Augustine's: "We +are not Christians, but Christs," was fulfilled in them.</p> + +<p>The profoundest depth of European religion, of which Eckhart was the +exponent, and which found artistic expression in Gothic art, was not +sounded by music until very much later. Bach, more emphatically in the +High Mass and the Magnificat, but also in his purely instrumental music, +brought the universal feeling of mysticism to absolute artistic +perfection. The deep religious sentiment which pervades the High Mass is +so far above all cults, that it has no real connection with any +historical faith—it is pure consciousness of the divine.</p> + +<p>The peculiar state of the soul, called mysticism, could never become +popular, or exert any very great influence. A few men, such as Tauler, +Suso, Merswin, and the unknown author of the <i>Theologica Germanica</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> +handed on—not by any means always unadulterated—the doctrine they had +received from Eckhart—which at all times appealed to a few +thinkers—but the real influence on the world and on history was +reserved for the reformers. The reformer, in his inmost nature, is +related to the people; his soul is agitated by formulas and ceremonies, +to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his +faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. He has every +appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on +that against which he is fighting. He suffers under its inefficiency; +his deed is the final reaction against his environment; salvation seems +to him to lie in the improvement of existing conditions, and not until +he has succeeded in accomplishing his purpose can he hope for religious +peace. The mystic is possible in all states of civilisation. He is not +dependent on external circumstances; his whole consciousness is filled +with one problem only, before which everything else pales: the +relationship of the soul to God. But the reformer is possible only under +certain circumstances. He, too, starts from an inner religious +consciousness, but his problem is soon solved, and he devotes all his +energy to the world. The mystic is not even aware of the difference +between his own conception of God and traditional religion; he is under +the impression that he is still an orthodox believer, long after he has +broken fresh ground; for he has taken from the traditional doctrine +everything which he can re-animate. The remainder is dead as far as he +is concerned. To accuse him of heresy appears to him as a monstrous +misunderstanding.</p> + +<p>Thus mystic and reformer drink from the same well of direct religious +consciousness. But while in the case of the mystic the well is +fathomless, it is much more shallow in the case of the reformer. Certain +of himself, he directs his energy to the conversion and reformation of +the world. He resembles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> in some respects the public orator and +agitator; he has a grasp of social conditions, strives to influence his +surroundings by word and deed, and is ready to sacrifice his life to his +convictions. The mystic remains solitary and misunderstood. Luther, who +was to some extent influenced by German mysticism, fought, at his best, +against the dogma of historical salvation.</p> + +<p>It is the tragic fate of all religions that they must crystallise into a +system. A reflection of the enthusiasm which animated their founders +still falls on their disciples: Follow me! But the second generation +already demands proofs, tradition and clumsy miracles; reports are drawn +up and looked upon as sacred—religion has become a glimpse into the +past. Most people never have any direct religious experience, their +salvation lies in the dogmas, the universally accepted doctrines. The +founder of a new religion is always regarded by his contemporaries as +abnormal, and is persecuted accordingly; not in malice, but of +necessity. Arnold of Brescia died at the stake; St. Francis was no more +than a heretic tolerated by the Church, and Eckhart escaped the tribunal +of the Inquisition only through his death.</p> + +<p>I have attempted to show in diverse domains of the higher spiritual and +psychical life, how powerfully <i>the Christian principle of the +individual soul, the real fundamental value of the European +civilisation</i>, manifested itself at the time of the Crusades, and +everywhere became the germ of new things. The deepest thinkers teach the +deification of man as the culmination of existence, the ultimate purpose +of this earthly life, and claim immortality for the soul. This position, +which may roughly be conceived as the raising of the individual into the +ideal, has determined the European ideal of culture and differentiated +it from all Orientalism, including even the loftiest Indian philosophy. +Every attempt to substitute for this fundamental concept and its +emotional content something else<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>—whether it be pantheism, Buddhism, or +naturalism—will always remain a failure.</p> + +<p>Side by side with the splendid achievement of the German mysticism, the +Teutonic race has always been apt to give practical proof of its +individualism by endless petty quarrels and by splittings into numerous +cliques. But even before this race began to play a part in history, at +the beginning of the third century, the principle of the individual soul +was outwardly carried to extremes. While it was the ideal of the man of +antiquity to serve the higher community of the State with body and soul, +nascent Christianity cared solely for the salvation of the individual +soul, and frequently proved this by quite external evidence, by living a +hermit's life in the desert, for instance. Children left their parents, +husband and wife separated, dignitaries forsook their office to seek +solitude and prepare their souls for the world beyond the grave. The +first convents—the outcome of Christian individualism and +asceticism—were founded; and the anti-social extreme of this +individualism acquired such ominous proportions that the Emperor Valens +in the year of grace 365, was forced to legislate against the monastic +life.</p> + +<p>This hatred of the world, which was quite in harmony with the spirit of +Christianity, was only overcome by the profounder concepts of German +mysticism, for in the primitive dualistic view of the first millenary +the renunciation of the world was the only possibility of avoiding sin. +The Emperor Justinian decreed that any man who induced a consecrated nun +to marry him should be punished by death. The thought that personal +greatness did not consist in renouncing the world but in living in it +and overcoming it, had not yet been conceived.</p> + +<p>The delight in the human form, characteristic of antiquity, was +extinguished, a crude dualism denied all antique values. The body must +be hated, so that the soul could flourish. But as the Hellenic period<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> +was preceded by vague, unindividualised, material life, so the +impersonal, chaotic, spiritual life of the first thousand years of +Christianity matured the individual soul. It found its climax in Dante +and Eckhart, the greatest poet of the Neo-Latin race, and the most +illumined religious genius of Germany. These two men, who were +contemporaries (Dante died in 1321 and Eckhart in 1329), finally +revealed the character of two kindred nations, completing and +fructifying each other. In Dante the great artistic power of the +Neo-Latin race appeared for the first time in its full intensity; it +took possession of the whole visible universe, and poured new beauty +into the traditional myths of Christendom. Eckhart experienced and +recreated the shapeless depths of the soul, the regions of the blending +of the soul with God. With these two men Europe definitely severed +herself from antiquity and barbarism, henceforth to follow her own star.</p> + +<p>The new world had come into existence! Renascence, the lucky heir, +gathered the ripe fruit from the tree of art which had blossomed so +marvellously. God was no longer sought in the depth of the soul, all +emotion was projected into the world of sense. Churches were built, not +from an irresistible impulse, but as store-houses of the pictures which +were painted with amazing rapidity. The fundamental principle of +personality was externalised in the Renascence. Vanity and boasting, +traces of which frequently appeared in the age of chivalry, grew +exuberantly. No less manifest than the incomparable genius and <i>esprit</i> +of the heyday of the Renascence—although far less frequently commented +on—was the desire to be conspicuous, to shine, to display wealth and +learning. The essence of personality, instead of being sought in the +soul, was sought in outward magnificence. As a matter of fact, the much +extolled Renascence only perfected the various branches of art and +poetry, which had sprung up in the period of the Crusades.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> The latter +was the time of the planting of the tree of European culture; all that +followed was merely its growth and ramification. Only exact science had +its origin in the Renascence, and this fact, in historical perspective, +must be regarded as the supreme glory of this period. However +paradoxical it may sound—the "impersonal" science is the perfection of +the European system of individualism, its most potent weapon for taking +spiritual possession of the world and all that the world contains. The +consciousness of personality had to permeate the whole soul before it +could recover its external function: organic existence justified by +itself. While art borrows from nature and mankind all that we ourselves +deem beautiful, perfect, valuable, and imposes on the world a man-made +law—science strives to understand all things and all creatures +according to the law which dominates them; it strives to comprehend +nature and humanity—even where they are foreign and hostile—not +according to human values, but according to their inherent nature—and +this is only possible when the individuality of all things is respected. +The method of science has slowly become the perfect weapon by whose aid +Europe has attained the mastery of the world; it rests on the +fundamental feeling for the material, and is capable of confronting the +"I" with the whole system of natural phenomena, the "not-I," and +expresses the final victory of comprehending spirit over matter.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<h3>THE DEIFICATION OF WOMAN</h3> + +<h3>(THE FIRST FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM)</h3> + +<p class='center'><i>(a) The Love of the Troubadours</i></p> + +<p>In the long chapter on the Birth of Europe, I have attempted to bring +corroborative evidence from all sides in support of my contention that +the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed the birth and gradual +development of a new value of the highest importance: the value of +individuality, impersonated by the citizen of Europe. We are now +prepared to realise the psychological importance and the importance for +progress of one of the greatest results of this new development—the +spiritual love of man for woman. From this subject, the specific subject +of my book, I shall not again digress.</p> + +<p>We are aware that the man of antiquity (and also the Eastern nations of +to-day) recognised between man and woman only the sexual bond, +uninfluenced by personal and psychological motives, and leading in +Greece to the institution of monogamy on purely economical and political +grounds. In addition to this bond there existed a very distinct +spiritual love, evolved by Plato and his circle and projected by one man +on another member of his own sex. In the true Hellenic spirit this love +aspired to guide the individual to the ideal of perfection, the beauty +and wisdom of the friend serving as stepping-stones in the upward climb. +In Christianity the spiritual love of the divine became the greatest +value and the pivot on which the emotions turned. The primitive +Christian scorned the body, his own as well as that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> of his fellow; he +despised beauty of form, and regarded only the divine as worthy of love. +Woman was disparaged and suspected; all thinkers, down to Thomas and +Anselm, looking upon her merely as a snare and a pitfall. The period +discussed in detail in the foregoing chapter ushered in a new and, until +then, unknown feeling. In crude and conscious contrast to sexuality, +deprecated alike by classical Greece and primitive Christianity, +spiritual love of man for woman came into existence. It was composed of +three clearly distinguishable elements: the Platonic thought, +maintaining that the greatest virtue lies in the striving for absolute +perfection; the entirely spiritual love of the divine, sufficient in +itself, and representing the final purpose of life, as developed by +Christianity; and the dawning knowledge of the value of personality. +From these three elements: the noblest inheritance of antiquity, the +central creation of Christianity, and the pivot of the new-born European +spirit, sprang the new value which is the subject of the second stage of +eroticism. The position of woman had changed; she was no longer the +medium for the satisfaction of the male impulse, or the rearing of +children, as in antiquity; no longer the silent drudge or devout sister +of the first Christian millenary; no longer the she-devil of monkish +conception; transcending humanity, she had been exalted to the heavens +and had become a goddess. She was loved and adored with a devotion not +of this earth, a devotion which was the sole source of all things lofty +and good; she had become the saviour of humanity and queen of the +universe.</p> + +<p>The rejection of sensuality is an inherent part of the Christian +religion; only he who had overcome his sinful desires was a hero. +Spiritual love was as yet unknown, only the sexual impulse was realised, +and that was looked upon as a sin; there was but one way of escape: +renunciation. This view is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> very clearly expressed in the legends of +Alexius, and in Barlaam and Josaphat (which although of Indian origin, +had found a German interpreter and were known all over Europe). The +latter legend tells how Prince Josaphat, a devout Christian, married a +beautiful princess. On his wedding night he had a vision of the +celestial paradise, the dominion of chastity, and the earthly pool of +sin. Recognising in his bride a devil who had come to tempt him, he left +her and fled into the desert. Many legends illustrate the incapacity of +the first millenary to realise the relationship between the sexes in any +other sense. Woman was evil; the struggle against her a laudable effort.</p> + +<p>Very probably the stigmatising of all eroticism during that long spell +of a thousand years was necessary. Only the unnatural condemnation of +love in its widest sense, a hatred of sex and woman such as was felt by +Tertullian and Origen, could result in the reverse of sexuality—purely +spiritual love with its logical climax, the deification and worship of +woman. There can be no doubt that the Christian ideal of chastity was +largely responsible for the evolution of the ideal of spiritual love. +The identity of love and chastity was propounded—in sharp contrast to +sexuality and—more particularly amongst the later troubadours, such as +Montanhagol, Sordello, and the poets of the "sweet new style" in +Italy—with a distinct leaning towards religious ecstasy.</p> + +<p>Infinite tenderness pervaded the nascent cult of woman. It seemed as if +man were eager to compensate her for the indignity which he had heaped +upon her for a thousand years. His instinctive need to worship had found +an incomparable being on earth before whom he prostrated himself. She +was the climax of earthly perfection; no word, no metaphor was +sufficiently ecstatic to express the full fervour of his adoration; a +new religion was created, and she was the presiding divinity. "What were +the world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> if beauteous woman were not?" sang Johannes Hadlaub, a German +poet.</p> + +<p>Once more I must revert to personality, the fundamental value of the +European. In antiquity, even in Greece and Rome, personality in its +higher sense did not exist. The hero was the epitome of all the energies +of the nation, a term for the striving of the community; the statesman +was the incarnate political will of the people; even the poet's ideal +was the representation of the Hellenic type in all its aspects. +Agamemnon was no more than the intelligent ruler, Achilles the +headstrong hero, Odysseus the cunning adventurer. The individual was a +member and servant of the tribe, the town, the state; each man knew that +his fellow did not essentially differ from him; and even at the period +when Hellas was at its meridian the individuals were, compared to modern +men, but slightly differentiated. But the Greek differed from the +Oriental, the barbarian, inasmuch as he felt himself no longer a +component part of nature, but realised his distinct individuality.</p> + +<p>We find the first germs of the new creative principle of personality in +the Platonic figure of Socrates who, first of all, conceived the idea of +a higher spiritual love, blended it with the love of ideas and separated +it sharply from base desire. Though his conception was not yet personal +love in the true sense, it was nevertheless a spiritual divine love. The +Greek State could not tolerate him, and sentenced him to death. But this +same Socrates also said (in "Crito") that man was indebted to the State +for his existence. "Did not thy father, in obedience to the law, take +thy mother to wife and beget thee?" This sentiment was as antique as it +could well be, and the death of Socrates—as related by Plato—was the +most magnificent confirmation of the Greek idea that the individual, +even the wisest, was entirely subordinate to the community.</p> + +<p>The civilisations of China and Japan are impersonal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> even to a greater +extent than the civilisation of ancient Greece. Percival Lowell +maintains that the diverse manifestations of the spirit of those +countries can only be understood if regarded from the standpoint of +absolute impersonality. He sees in a "pronounced impersonality the most +striking characteristic of the Far East", "the foundation on which the +Oriental character is built up." It is very instructive to observe how +it determines the individual's conception of birth and marriage, +thoughts and acts, life and death. It is carried to so great an extreme +that special terms for "I," "you," "he," do not even exist in the +Japanese language, and have to be replaced by objective circumlocutions. +Not content with the fact of having been born impersonal, it is the +ambition of the inhabitant of the Far East to become more and more so as +his life unfolds itself. Witness the heroic exploits of Japanese +soldiers during the last war: individual soldiers frequently went to +their death for the sake of a small advantage to their group. We +Europeans regard this in the light of heroism—and it would be heroism +in the case of a European. But with the sacrifice of his individual life +in the interest of the community, the Japanese instinctively yields the +smaller value. In the same way Greeks and Romans did not attach very +much importance to life; suicide was very common, and frequently +committed without any special motive. As true love is based on +personality, it is impossible for the modern East-Asiatic to know love +in our sense. Lowell agrees with this: "Love, as we understand it, is an +unknown feeling in the East." He reports that Japanese women will appear +before strangers entirely nude, without the least trace of +embarrassment—as would Greek women!—because they are innocent of that +other aspect of personality—the feeling of shame. To be ashamed implies +the desire of concealing something individual and intimate; where this +is not the case, there can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> be no feeling of shame. Finally, I should +like to point out that the perversity and sexual refinement peculiar to +China and Japan are attributable simply to the fact that the limits of +sexuality cannot be overstepped, and that sexuality is therefore +dependent on vice and perversity to satisfy its craving for variety.</p> + +<p>The first manifestation of overwhelming personality appears in Jesus, +and he created the religion of love. In him personality and love were +convertible forces, one might even say they were identical. He, first of +all, revealed their mysterious intimate connection, and clearly showed +that love can only be experienced by a distinct personality, because it +is an emanation of the soul and not a natural instinct.</p> + +<p>It was, again, personality which, in the twelfth century, produced a new +force: spiritual love projected not only on God and nature, but also on +woman. Now only had personality acquired its true significance; it no +longer meant—as it did in the mature Greek world—the individual +separated from his environment, the individual with a conscious +beginning and a conscious end, but the principle of the synthesis, a +higher entity above the mere individual, the source of all values and +virtue.</p> + +<p>Personality is the self-conscious, individual soul, producing out of its +own wealth the universal ideal values, and re-absorbing and assimilating +these ideal values in their higher form. It admits of the fusion of the +subjective with the universal and eternal, with the religious and +artistic, the moral and scientific values of civilisation. "Personality +is the blending of the universal and the individual," said Kierkegaard, +expressing, if not exactly my meaning, something very near it.</p> + +<p>I shall endeavour to depict the spiritual love of man for woman—the +position cannot be reversed—from its inception to its climax. I shall +submit abundant evidence to make the great unbroken stream of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> emotion +clearly apparent, and indicate all its tributaries. I do not pretend +that I have exhausted the subject—that would be impossible. The works +from which I have drawn may be safely regarded as the direct outpouring +of emotion; those purely lyric poets were entirely subjective and ever +intent upon their own feelings; there hardly exists one Provençal, +old-Italian, or mediæval love-song without the "I."</p> + +<p>Spiritual love first appeared as a naïve sentiment—unconscious of its +own peculiar characteristics—in the poems of the earlier troubadours of +Provence. There is a poem in which the Provençals claim the fathership +of the cult of woman; their opponents do not deny it, but add that it +was an invention which "could fill no man's stomach." These words +express the great and insurmountable barrier between pure spiritual love +and pleasure. The Christian dualism: soul-body, spirit-matter, had +invaded the domain of love.</p> + +<p>Spontaneous, genuine love, untainted by speculations and metaphysics, is +found in the songs of the earlier troubadours. The greatest among all of +them, Bernart of Ventadour, was the first to praise chaste love. If any +champion of civilisation deserves a monument, it is this poet.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Dead is the man who knows not love,</div> +<div>A sweet tremor in the heart.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Love's rapture fills my heart</div> +<div>With laughter and sighs.</div> +<div>Grief slays me a hundred times,</div> +<div>Joy bids me rise.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Sweet is love's happiness,</div> +<div>Sweeter love's pain.</div> +<div>Joy brings back grief to me,</div> +<div>Grief, joy again.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Guillem Augier Novella expressed the feeling of being "elated with +exaltation and grieved to death" as follows:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Lady, often flow my tears,</div> +<div>Glad songs in my mem'ry ring,</div> +<div>For the love that makes my blood</div> +<div>Dance and sing.</div> +<div>I am yours with heart and soul,</div> +<div>If it please you, lady, slay me....</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Aimeril de Peguilhan is of opinion that the pain of love is no less +sweet than the joy of love:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>For he who loves with all his heart would fain</div> +<div>Be sick with love, such rapture is his pain.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And Bernart again:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>God keep my lady fair from grief and woe,</div> +<div>I'm close to her, however far I go;</div> +<div>If God will be her shelter and her shield,</div> +<div>Then all my heart's desire is fulfilled.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>My mind was erring in a maze,</div> +<div>That hour I was no longer I,</div> +<div>When in your eyes I met my gaze</div> +<div>As in a mirror strange and shy.</div> +<div>Oh, mirror sweet, reflecting me,</div> +<div>Sighing I fell beneath your spell;</div> +<div>I perished in you utterly</div> +<div>As did Narcissus in the well.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In the same poem he goes on to say that he will ask for no reward, but +finally concludes:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>My fervent kisses her sweet lips should cover,</div> +<div>For weeks they'd show the traces of her lover.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The German minnesinger, Heinrich of Morungen, called woman "a mirror of +all the delights of the world," and sang:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Blessed be the tender hour,</div> +<div>Blest the time, the precious day,</div> +<div>When my brimming heart welled over,</div> +<div>When my secret open lay.</div> +<div>I was startled with great gladness,</div> +<div>And bewildered so with love,</div> +<div>I can hardly sing thereof.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>The sensuous element still dominated Bernart and his contemporaries to +some extent. In their poems, all of which are genuine and sincere, the +longing for kisses, sometimes for more, is frankly expressed, but the +tendency towards the not sensuous and super-sensuous is already +apparent. The lover loves one woman only, and would rather love in vain, +patiently enduring every pang she causes him, than receive favours from +another woman, were she beautiful as Venus her self.</p> + +<p>Bernart says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>My sorrow is a sweet distress</div> +<div>To which no alien bliss compares,</div> +<div>And if my pain such sweetness bears,</div> +<div>How sweet would be my happiness!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Elias of Barjols:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Full of joy I am and sorrow</div> +<div>When I stand before her face.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Bonifacio Calvo:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>There is no treasure-trove on earth</div> +<div>Which I would barter for my pain;</div> +<div>I love my grief, but spite and wrath</div> +<div>Run riot in my heart; my brain</div> +<div>Is reeling—and I laugh and cry.</div> +<div>Jubilant and desperate,</div> +<div>Exultant, I bewail my fate.</div> +<div>Quarter! Lady, ere I die.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The earlier troubadours were still ignorant of the later dogma which +made chaste love the sole fountain of virtue and the road to +perfection—the beloved woman can make of her admirer what she wills—a +saint or a sinner.</p> + +<p>Thus Guillem of Poitiers says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Love heals the sick</div> +<div>And a grave does it delve</div> +<div>For the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself,</div> +<div>Makes a fool of the sage with its magic,</div> +<div>A clown of the courteous knight,</div> +<div>And a king of the lowliest wight.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>The equally early Cercamon:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>False can I be or true for her,</div> +<div>Sincere or full of lies,</div> +<div>A perfect knight or worthless cur,</div> +<div>Serene or grave, stupid or wise.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Raimon of Toulouse:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>In the kingdom of love</div> +<div>Folly rules and not sense.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>It was typical of this enthusiastic love that the social rank of the +beloved, the mistress, was invariably above the rank of the lover. The +latter was fond of calling himself her vassal and serf, proclaiming that +she had invested him with all his goods; even kings and German emperors +composed love-songs, although in all probability they would have +achieved their purpose far more quickly by other means; but in all cases +we find the characteristic attitude of the humble lover, looking up to +his mistress. The underlying thought is obvious: Love, the loftiest +value in all the world, is the great leveller of all social differences, +a force before which wealth is as dust. "I would rather win a kind +glance from my lady's eyes than the royal crown of France," was a +favourite profession of the poets. Montanhagol, for instance, in a +rhymed meditation, stated that a lady was wise in choosing a lover of a +lower social rank, because not only could she always count on his +gratitude and devotion, but she would also have more influence over him, +a fact which in the case of a social equal or superior was, to say the +least, a little doubtful. This supreme reverence for love soon became an +accepted doctrine. We constantly meet the thought that chaste love alone +can make a man noble, good and wise. I will select a few illustrations +from a wealth of instances:</p> + +<p>Miraval:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Noble is every deed whose root is love.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>Peire Rogier:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Full well I know that right and good</div> +<div>Is all I do for love of her.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Guirot Riquier:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The man who loves not is not noble-minded,</div> +<div>For love is fruit and blossom of the highest.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thus love transfigures ev'ry deed we do,</div> +<div>And love gives everything a deeper sense.</div> +<div>Love is the teaching of all genuine worth.</div> +<div>So base is no man's heart on this wide earth,</div> +<div>Love could not guide it to great excellence.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Giraut of Calenso said of the City of Love that no base or ignorant man +could enter it, and the Italian Lapo Gianni sang:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The youthful maiden who appeared to me</div> +<div>So filled my soul with pure and lofty thoughts,</div> +<div>That henceforth all ignoble things I scorn.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Dante in the <i>Vita Nuova</i> calls Beatrice "the destroyer of all evil and +the queen of all virtues."</p> + +<p>The very thought of the beloved makes a good man of the lover:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>"I cannot sin when I am in her thoughts."</div></div> +</div> + +<p>asserts the sincere Guirot Riquier, and he prays Christ to teach him the +true love of woman.</p> + +<p>While it was a generally accepted theory that love was the source of +man's perfection, I know of only one passage (by Raimon of Miraval) +contending that woman, also, was perfected by love; everywhere else we +meet the universal and silently accepted opinion that the essence of +womanhood is something unearthly, unfathomable and divine. Perhaps the +most classical formulation of the new doctrine, to wit, that spiritual +love is the begetter of all virtue and the mother of chastity, outside +which there is nothing divine, is to be found in the poems of the +somewhat pedantic Montanhagol:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The lover who loves not the highest love,</div> +<div>Is like a fool polluting precious wine.</div> +<div>Let loftiest love alone within thee move,</div> +<div>And purity and virtue will be thine.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Guirot Riquier expressed a similar sentiment:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>For chaste and pure my love has always been,</div> +<div>From my "sweet bliss" I've never asked a boon;</div> +<div>If I may humbly serve her night and noon,</div> +<div>My life be her inalienable lien.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Walter von der Vogelweide says: "Love is a treasure heaped up of all +virtues."</p> + +<p>As time went on the barrier erected between true spiritual love and +insidious sensuality became more and more clearly defined; the former +pervaded the erotic emotion of the whole period. Parallel with chaste +love, sensuality continued to exist as something contemptible, unworthy +of a noble mind; and it must be admitted that according to the +contemporary "Fabliaux," later German comedies and Italian and French +novels, the sexual manifestations of the period, were of incredible +coarseness. As against these, spiritual love was not merely an artistic +and theoretic concept, but the profound emotion of the cultured minds, +and remained a powerful and creative force even in later centuries. +Spiritual love and sexuality were irreconcilable contradistinctions; the +man who thought otherwise was looked upon as a libertine. The following +passages from the poems of the troubadours and their heirs, the Italian +poets of the <i>dolce stil nuovo</i>, will prove the historical reality of +this relationship, the ideal of the declining Middle Ages. We need take +no account of the German minnesingers, for although they shared the same +ideal, they did not influence principle in the same way as the neo-Latin +poets.</p> + +<p>Bernart of Ventadour:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div class='i2'>Lady, I ask no other meed</div> +<div>Than that you suffer me to serve;</div> +<div>My faith and love shall never swerve,</div> +<div class='i2'>I'm yours whatever you decreed.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>Peire Rogier:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Mine is her smile and mine her jest,</div> +<div>And foolish were I more to ask</div> +<div>And not to think me wholly blest.</div> +<div>'Tis no deceit,</div> +<div>To gaze at her is all I need,</div> +<div>The sight of her is my reward.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Gaucelm Faidit:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Of all the ways of love I chose the best,</div> +<div>I love you, love, with ardour infinite,</div> +<div>Yours is my life, do as you will with it.</div> +<div>Nor kiss I ask, nor sweet embraces, lest</div> +<div>I were blaspheming....</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The most enthusiastic champions of pure love were Montanhagol, Sordello +and Guirot Riqiuer. The former maintained that a lover who asked for +favours incompatible with his lady's honour, neither loved her nor +deserved to be loved.—"Love begets purity, and he who knows the meaning +of love can never forsake virtue."</p> + +<p>There is a controversy between Peire Guillem of Toulouse and Sordello, +which contains the following passages:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Of all mankind I never saw</div> +<div>A man like you, Sordell', I wis,</div> +<div>For he who woman does adore</div> +<div>Will never flout her love and kiss.</div> +<div>And what to others is a prize</div> +<div>You surely don't mean to despise?</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Honour and joy I crave from her,</div> +<div>And if a little rose she bind</div> +<div>Into the wreath, Sir Guillem Peire,</div> +<div>From mercy, not from duty, mind,</div> +<div>That would be happiness indeed,</div> +<div>Oh! that such bliss should be my meed!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>A humble lover such as you,</div> +<div>Sordell', in faith, I never knew.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Sir Peire, methinks what you express</div> +<div>Is lacking much in seemliness.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>In another poem the talented Sordello says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>My love for her is so profound</div> +<div>I'd serve her, spurn and scorn despite</div> +<div>Ere with another I'd be found—</div> +<div>Yet I'd not serve without requite,</div></div> +</div> + +<p>and in another, after stating that he loves his lady so much that he +would thank her even if she killed him, he continues:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thus, lady, I commend to thee</div> +<div>My fate and life, thy faithful squire</div> +<div>I'd rather die in misery</div> +<div>Than have thee stoop to my desire.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>The knight who truly loves his dame</div> +<div>Not only loves her comely face,</div> +<div>Dearer to him is her fair fame</div> +<div>Undimmed, unsullied by disgrace.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>How grievously I should offend</div> +<div>Thy virtue, if I spoke of passion;</div> +<div>But if I did—which God forfend!</div> +<div>Sweet lady, stoop not to compassion.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Although Sordello appeared so extremely modest, yet he was grieved to +death because his lady did not return his love. There is a poem in which +he compares himself to a drowning man whom the beloved alone could save.</p> + +<p>This spiritual love (then as now) puzzled the commonplace, and was +misunderstood and regarded with scepticism. Bertran d'Alaman taunted +Sordello with his "hypocritical happiness" and "the whole deception of +his love," and Granet, in a satirical poem, cast doubt upon his +sincerity.</p> + +<p>It is very significant to find that Sordello, that typical champion of +chaste love, kept up a number of questionable liaisons with all sorts of +women. Bertran reproached him with having changed his lady at least a +hundred times, and he himself shamelessly confesses:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me,</div> +<div>For in the art of love I do excel,</div> +<div>And there's no wife, however chaste she may be</div> +<div>Who can resist me if I woo her well.</div> +<div class='i2'>And if her husband hate me I'll not grumble,</div> +<div>Because his wife receives me in the night,</div> +<div>If mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight,</div> +<div class='i2'>His pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble.</div> +<div>No husband e'er shall rob me of my pleasure,</div> +<div>None can resist me, what I wish I gain,</div> +<div>All do I love and never will refrain</div> +<div>Spite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>It may seem strange at first sight that this enthusiastic exponent of +pure love should have led such a double life. But Sordello's conduct is +not in the least paradoxical; in accordance with the tendency of the +period, he carefully distinguished in his own heart between sexuality +and love; before the one he lay prostrate, unable to find words enough +in self-depreciation, so that he might the more exalt his mistress; but +with respect to all other women he was a mere sensualist. We read that +although he was "an expert in the treatment of women" in her presence +his voice forsook him and he lost all self-control. Petrarch, who—while +living with a very earthly woman—extolled all his life long a lofty +being whom he called Laura, was akin to Sordello, although he was a far +less brutal character. The latter approached the type of the seeker of +love, the Don Juan.</p> + +<p>In a tenzone between Peirol and the Dauphin of Auvergne, the former +maintains that love must die at the moment of its consummation. "I +cannot believe," he says, "that a true lover can continue to love after +he has received the last favour." (Otto Weininger agrees with this.) But +Peirol winds up with the subtle suggestion that though love be dead, a +man should always continue to behave as if he were still in love.</p> + +<p>The troubadours never weary of drawing a line<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> between <i>drudaria</i> and +<i>luxuria</i>, pure love and base desire. <i>Mezura</i>, seemliness, is +contrasted with <i>dezmezura</i>, licentiousness. Pure love is regarded as +the creator of all high values, luxuriousness as their destroyer. In the +same way the German minnesingers distinguished between "low" love and +"high" love.</p> + +<p>As both cultured minds and the upper classes, contemning sexuality, +acknowledged spiritual love only, it follows as a matter of course that +the avowal of such sentiments became good form; the motif that the +honour of the beloved must be carefully shielded, and that no desire +must dim her purity, occurs again and again. But it should not be +forgotten that a poet may love a sentiment for its own sake, without +being in the least influenced by it. Many a troubadour drew inspiration +from an emotion which all praised as the supreme value; even if he had +no earthly mistress, he adored the sublime sentiment. Not infrequently +it happened that a troubadour who had been loud in praise of high love +and denunciation of base desire—a trick of his trade—suddenly came to +himself and changed his mind. Folquet of Marseilles, for instance, after +more than ten years of vain sighing, came to the conclusion that he had +been a fool.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Deceitful love beguiles the simple fool</div> +<div>And binds with magic thongs the hapless wight;</div> +<div>That like a moth lured by the candle-light,</div> +<div>He hovers, helpless, round the heartless ghoul.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>I cast thee out and follow other stars</div> +<div>Full evil was my meed and recompense—</div> +<div>New courage steels my fainting heart, and hence</div> +<div>I kneel at shrines which passion never mars.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In an interesting poem Garin the Red implores <i>Mezura</i> to teach him the +way to love purely and nobly; but he is anything but pleased with his +instructress, and comes to the conclusion that her whole wisdom is "just +good form" and nothing else.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>But by my merry mood impelled</div> +<div>I kiss and dally night and morn</div> +<div>And do the things I feel compelled</div> +<div>To do—or else, with tonsure shorn,</div> +<div>I'd seek a cloister. . . .</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Elias of Barjols, finding that his love will never be returned, and +having no mind to sigh all his life in vain, renounces love altogether. +"I should be a fool if I served love any longer!"</p> + +<p>"All you lovers are fools!" exclaimed another. "Do you think you can +change the nature of women?" This is one of the very rare criticisms of +woman; as a rule we hear only of her angelic perfection, wisdom, beauty +and aloofness.</p> + +<p>The distinguished poet Marcabru was a woman-hater, and enemy of love +from the very beginning. He said of himself that he had never loved a +woman and that no woman had ever loved him.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The love which is always a lie</div> +<div>And deceiver of men, I decry</div> +<div>And denounce; I had more than enough.</div> +<div>Can you count all the evil it wrought?</div> +<div>When I think of it I am distraught.</div> +<div>What a madman I was to believe,</div> +<div>To sigh, to rejoice and to grieve;</div> +<div>But no longer I'll squander my days,</div> +<div>We have come to the parting of the ways. Etc.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>He was indefatigable in abusing the tender passion, and had a great deal +to say about the immorality of women. But it is characteristic of the +strong public opinion of the time that even this misogynist (who, +perhaps, after all was only a disappointed man) praised "high love."</p> + +<p>The subject also found its theorists, prominent among whom was the +court-chaplain Andreas, who wrote a very learned book on love in Latin. +He expressed in propositions and conclusions what the contemporary poets +expressed in verse, proving thereby that spiritual love was not merely a +poetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> fiction but the profoundest belief of the period, supported by +the full complement of its philosophical weapons. "In the whole world +there is no good and no courtliness outside the fountain of love. +Therefore love is the beginning and foundation of all good." He also +proved that a noble-minded man must be a lover, for if he were not, he +could not have attained virtue. "Love disregards all barriers, and makes +the man of low origin the equal and superior of the nobleman."</p> + +<p>This conception of spiritual nobility, which was later on perfected in +the theory of the <i>cor gentil</i>, only existed in Provence and in Italy; +it remained unknown in France and Germany.</p> + +<p>Andreas drew a distinction between base love, the <i>amor mixtus sive +communis</i>, and pure love, the <i>amor purus</i>. "Love," he maintained, fully +agreeing with the poets, "gives to a man the strength of chastity, for +he whose heart is brimming over with the love of a woman, cannot think +of dallying with another, however beautiful she may be." He proved from +substance and form that a man cannot love two women. In the <i>Leys +d'Amors</i>, a voluminous fourteenth-century Provençal treatise, largely a +text-book of grammar and prosody, we read: "And now lovers must be +taught how to love; passionate lovers must be restrained, so that they +may come to realise their evil and dishonourable desires. No good +troubadour, who is at the same time an honest lover, has ever abandoned +himself to base sensuality and ignoble desires." The same author opined +that a troubadour who asked his lady for a kiss, was committing an act +of indecency. On the other hand, Andreas was very broad-minded in +drawing the line between both kinds of love, allowing kisses, and even +more, in the case of true love. (The best troubadours disagree with him +in this respect.)</p> + +<p>A scholasticism of love, modelled on ecclesiastical scholasticism and +substituting the beloved woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> for the Deity, was gradually evolved. +Love, veneration, humility, hope, etc., were the sacrifices offered at +her shrine. She was full of grace and compassion, and was believed in as +fervently as was God. Some of the poets were animated by a curious +ambition "to prove" their feelings with scholastic erudition, and more +especially by the later, Italian, school, <i>amore</i>, <i>cor gentil</i>, +<i>valore</i>, were conceived as substances, attributes, inherent qualities, +etc. The allegories of <i>amore</i> played a prominent part, and spoiled many +a masterpiece. The German poets steered clear of these absurdities, +which even Dante did not escape.</p> + +<p>At the famous courts of love, presided over by princesses, the most +extraordinary questions relating to love were discussed and decided with +a ceremonial closely following the ceremonial of the petty courts of +law. Andreas preserved for us a number of these judgments, some of which +prove the really quite obvious fact that love and marriage are two very +different things, for if spiritual love be considered the supreme value, +matrimony can only be regarded as an inferior condition. And it was a +fact that in the higher ranks of society,—the only ones with which we +are concerned,—a marriage was nothing but a contract made for political +and economical reasons. The baron desired to enlarge his estate, obtain +a dowry, or marry into an influential family; no one dreamed of +consulting the future bride, whom marriage alone could bring into +contact with people outside her own family. To her marriage meant the +permission to shine and be adored by a man who was not her husband. "It +is an undeniable fact," propounded Andreas as <i>regula amoris</i>, "that +there is no room for love between husband and wife," and Fauriel +translated a passage as follows: "A husband who proposed to behave to +his wife as a knight would to his lady, would propose to do something +contrary to the canons of honour; such a proceeding could neither +increase his virtue nor the virtue of his lady, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> nothing could come +of it but what already properly exists."—Another judgment maintained +"that a lady lost her admirer as soon as the latter became her husband; +and that she was therefore entitled to take a new lover." At the court +of love of the Viscountess Ermengarde, of Narbonne, the problem whether +the love between husband and wife or the love between lovers were the +greater, was decided as follows: "The affection between a married couple +and the tender love which unites two lovers are emotions which differ +fundamentally and according to custom. It would be folly to attempt a +comparison between two subjects which neither resemble each other, nor +have any connection." A husband declared: "It is true, I have a +beautiful wife, and I love her with conjugal love. But because true love +is impossible between husband and wife, and because everything good +which happens in this world has its origin in love, I am of opinion that +I should seek an alliance of love outside my married life." All this was +not frivolity, but the only logical conclusion of dualistic eroticism, +incapable of blending sensuality and love. It was equally logical that +love between divorced persons was not only regarded as not immoral, but +as perfectly right and justifiable; it was even decided that "a new +marriage could never become a drawback to old love." In the old novel, +<i>Gérard of Roussillon</i>, the princess, beloved by Gérard, is married to +the emperor Charles Martel, and compelled to part from her knight. At +their last meeting, before a number of witnesses, she called on the name +of Christ and said: "Know ye all that I give my love to Sir Gérard with +this ring and this flower from my chaplet. I love him more than father +and husband, and now I must weep tears of bitter sorrow." After this +they parted, but their love continued undiminished though there was +nothing between them but tender wishes and secret thoughts.</p> + +<p>Matrimony had no advantage over the love-alliance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> not even the +sanction of the Church. A love-alliance was frequently accompanied by a +ceremony in which a priest officiated. Fauriel describes—without +mentioning his source—such a ceremony as follows: "Kneeling before his +lady, with his folded hands between hers, he dedicated himself to her +service, vowing to be faithful to her until death, and to shield her +from all harm and insults as far as lay within his power. The lady, on +her side, declared her willingness to accept his service, promised to +devote her loftiest feelings to him, and as a rule gave him a ring as a +symbol of their union. Then she raised and kissed him, always for the +first, usually for the last time." The parting of the lovers, too, was a +solemn act, resembling in many ways the dissolution of a marriage.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div class='i2'>So that our solemn plighted troth</div> +<div>When love is dead, we shall not break,</div> +<div>We'll to the priest ourselves betake.</div> +<div>You set me free, as I do you,</div> +<div>A perfect right then shall we both</div> +<div>Enjoy to choose a love anew,</div></div> +</div> + +<p>wrote Peire of Barjac.</p> + +<p>It was far more easy to dissolve a marriage than a true love-alliance; +the husband had only to state that his wife was a distant relation of +his, and the Church was ready to annul the contract. But the +love-alliance—so Sordello maintained, in a long poem—should be more +binding than any marriage.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Only one love a woman can</div> +<div>Prefer. So let her choose her man</div> +<div>With care. To him she must be true,</div> +<div>For choosing once she ne'er may rue.</div> +<div>More binding than the wedding-tie</div> +<div>Is love; for a diversity</div> +<div>Of causes wedlock may divide,</div> +<div>By death alone be love untied.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The idea that marriage and love cannot be combined is therefore only the +logical conclusion of the funda<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>mental feeling that love and desire +cannot together be projected on one woman.</p> + +<p>If matrimonial love had not been questioned, the choice would have lain +between two alternatives: the canonisation of matrimony—an expedient +chosen by the Church—or a fusion of love and sexuality in our modern +sense. The first was a stage which humanity had left behind, for the +ideal of absolutely perfect and pure love had already been evolved, and +the world was not ripe for the second. The tendency of the rarest minds +was in the direction of a further idealisation of love, of freeing it +from all earthly shackles and bringing it nearer and nearer to heaven. +One of the early troubadours, Jaufre Rudel, Prince of Blaya, gave a +practical illustration to this feeling by falling in love with a lady +whom he had never seen. The story of his love was famous for centuries. +He loved a Countess of Tripoli, a Christian princess, and his whole soul +was filled with his imaginary picture of her. The <i>Provençal Biography</i> +relates that "he worshipped her for all the good the pilgrims had +narrated of her." In order to see her, he took the cross and journeyed +across the sea; he fell ill on the ship and was carried ashore in a +dying condition. The countess, on hearing of his great love, hastened to +the inn where he lay. As she entered his room, Jaufre regained +consciousness; he knew her at once and died happily in her arms. She was +so touched by his love that she henceforth renounced the world.—This +story is no fairy tale; it is well attested and universally accounted +genuine to-day. Jaufre's love, expressed in touching poems, was no +<i>amour de tête</i>, as it is sometimes called, but a genuine <i>amour de +cœur</i>, a purely spiritual love which asked nothing of the beloved +woman but permission to love her. There are other instances, and even in +later times it is not an infrequent occurrence in the case of +imaginative people (I need only mention Bürger and Klopstock).</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>We men of the present age look upon this eccentric woman-worship with +uncomprehending eyes. Perhaps we shall feel a little less bewildered +when we meet it, stripped of courtly theories and mediaeval fashions, in +some of the great men who are closely connected with our own period; in +Michelangelo, in Goethe, and in Beethoven.</p> + +<p>The Church, dualistic and ascetic from its inception, waged war against +sensuality as the evil of evils. "As fire and water will not mix," wrote +St. Bernard, "so spiritual and carnal delights cannot be experienced +together." The toleration of matrimony was never more than a compromise; +we require no proof that as far as the Church was concerned, chastity +was the only real value. Even Luther took up that position, and to this +day Christianity and sexuality remain unreconciled. But both the +Catholic and the Protestant professions of faith regarded matrimony as +the lesser evil, a concession made to the enemy, in order to render +existence possible. It is very interesting to observe the position taken +up by the Church in connection with the new woman-worship which, +although it sprang from the most genuine Christian dualism, had for its +object not God, but mortal woman. The logical attitude of the Church +would have been one of welcome, for the chaste worship of woman which +regarded matrimony as an inferior state, was her natural ally. Two +clerics, the court-chaplain Andreas, and the prolific rhymester Matfre +Ermengau, actually elaborated the theory of spiritual love contrary to +the spirit of the Church, but both men hastened to utter a timely +recantation and recommendation of orthodoxy as the only means of +salvation. After establishing all the desirable details of love +according to substance and accidents, Andreas deduced that every love +not dedicated to God was bound to offend Him, and advanced eighteen +points against the love of woman, starting with the well-known argument +that woman was naturally of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> base disposition, covetous, envious, +greedy, fickle, garrulous, stubborn, proud, vain, sensual, deceitful, +etc. "He who serves love, cannot serve God," he declared, "and God will +punish every man who, apart from matrimony, serves Venus. What good +could come from acting against the will of God?" Here we are face to +face with a grotesque position: the official Church favouring sexuality, +that is matrimony, as against the newer and higher standard of ascetic, +spiritual love. This attitude was quite logical, if not in the spirit of +religion and in contradiction to the principle of asceticism, yet in the +spirit of orthodoxy; for "whatever was not for her, was against her." +The brave, Janus-headed abbé was spokesman for the whole clergy, which +branded love not projected on God as <i>fornicatio</i>. In his recantation +Andreas upheld the previously-despised matrimonial state at the expense +of love; "love," he maintained, "destroys matrimony." Matfre did exactly +the same thing; after recapitulating in his <i>Breviari d'Amor</i> all the +splendid achievements rooted in the cult of woman, he suddenly veered +round (at the 27,445th verse):</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>And Satan blows on their desire,</div> +<div>In monstrous flames leaps up the fire,</div> +<div>And maddened by the raging fiend,</div> +<div>From love of God and honour weaned,</div> +<div>They turn from their Creator's shrine</div> +<div>And call their mistresses divine.</div> +<div>With soul and body, mind and sense,</div> +<div>They worship woman's excellence.</div> +<div>Abandoned in her beauty revel,</div> +<div>And unawares adore the devil.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Three hundred years later the fanatical Savanorola stormed: "You clothe +and adorn the Mother of God as you clothe and adorn your courtesans, and +you give her the features of your mistresses!" which, as we shall +presently see, was literally true.</p> + +<p>The clergy resisted all counsels of the <i>cortezia</i> and <i>cavalaria</i> with +the sure instinct desiring the con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>tinuance of existing conditions +rather than the victory of the higher conception. Some writers aver that +it was partly due to this fact that later on the cult of woman developed +into the cult of Mary. Again we are confronted by a process which in the +course of time has been repeated more than once: the spiritual-mystical +principle of Christianity entered upon a new stage, and took possession +of a new and important domain; but the Church, rigid and unyielding, +preferred clinging to a past lower stage rather than tolerating any +change. Had she been absolutely consistent, her greatest poet would be +on the index to-day, for, following his own intuition and ignoring her +rigid dogma, he introduced his beloved Beatrice into the Catholic +heaven.</p> + +<p>The new spiritual love was not without its caricatures. Famous in +Provence for many strange exploits, committed in order to please his +lady, was the talented Peire Vidal. On one occasion he caused himself to +be sewn into a wolfskin and ran about the fields; but he was set upon by +dogs and so badly mangled that he nearly succumbed to his wounds. He was +an insufferable braggart, but never had any success in love. The prince +of caricatures, however, was the German knight and minnesinger, Ulrich +of Lichtenstein. He is responsible for a novel in prose, entitled <i>The +Service of Woman</i>, which is faintly reminiscent of Goethe's <i>Werther</i>. +As a page he commenced his glorious career by drinking the water in +which his lady had washed her hands; later on he caused his upper lip to +be amputated because it displeased his mistress, for "whatever she +dislikes in me, I, too, hate." On another occasion he cut off one of his +fingers and used it, set in gold, as a clasp for a volume of his poems +which he sent to her. One of his most famous exploits was a journey +through nearly the whole of Austria, disguised as Venus, jousting, +dressed in women's clothes, with every knight he met. But in spite of +his eccentricities,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> the tendency of his mind was not at all +metaphysical; he craved very obvious favours, but as a rule contented +himself with a kind, or even an unkind word. Incidentally, we learn that +he was married; but he devoted his whole life to "deeds of heroism" in +honour of his lady. Not the great book of Cervantes, as is commonly +believed, held up mediaeval court life to ridicule and destroyed it as +an ideal, but the life and exploits of this knight and minnesinger. The +same spirit animated Guilhem of Balaun. At the command of his lady he +had a finger-nail extracted and sent to her, after which he was +re-admitted to her favour.</p> + +<p>Spiritual love was discovered by the Provençals, but the greater and +profounder Italian poets developed it and brought it to perfection. What +had been a naïve sentiment with the troubadours, became in Dante's +circle a system of the universe and a religion. The Italian poet, +Sordello, who wrote in Provençal, may be regarded as the connecting +link, and the forerunner of the great Italians. He died in the year of +grace 1270, and Dante, who was almost a contemporary, immortalised his +name in the <i>Divine Comedy</i>. The doctrine on which the <i>dolce stil +nuovo</i> was based pointed to the love of a noble heart as the source of +all perfection in heaven and earth. Purely spiritual woman-worship was +regarded as an absolute virtue. The words of the last of the Provençal +troubadours, Guirot Riquier, "Love is the doctrine of all sublime +things"—was developed into a philosophy. I will quote a few +characteristic verses, omitting Dante for the present. One of the finest +lyric poems of all tongues and ages, written by Guido Guinicelli, begins +as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Within the gentle heart love shelters him,</div> +<div>As birds within the green shades of the grove;</div> +<div>Before the gentle heart in nature's scheme</div> +<div>Love was not, or the gentle heart ere love.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">D.G. Rossetti</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>Cino da Pistoia says in epigrammatic brevity:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>You want to know the inmost core of love?</div> +<div>'Tis art and guerdon of a noble heart.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>A wonderful canzone by Guinicelli contains the following verses:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>A song she seems among the rest and these</div> +<div>Have all their beauties in her splendour drowned.</div> +<div>In her is ev'ry grace,—</div> +<div>Simplicity of wisdom, noble speech,</div> +<div>Accomplished loveliness;</div> +<div>All earthly beauty is her diadem.</div> +<div>This truth my song must teach—</div> +<div>My lady is of ladies chosen gem.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">D.G. Rossetti</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And Cavalcanti sings:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>What's she whose coming rivets all men's eyes,</div> +<div>Who makes the air so tremble with delight,</div> +<div>And thrills so every heart that no man might</div> +<div>Find tongue for words but vents his soul in sighs?</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">Sir Theodore Martin</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The sentiment which pervades these verses has lifted us into the higher +sphere which will henceforth be our main theme. The beloved was more and +more extolled; in her presence the lover became more and more convinced +of his insignificance; she was worshipped, deified. The overwhelming +emotion, the longing for metaphysical values which dominated the whole +epoch, had reached its highest characteristic, had reached perfection. +It proved the eternal quality of human emotion: the impossibility of +finding satisfaction, the striving towards the infinite; it soared above +its apparent object and sought its consummation in metaphysic. The love +of woman and the mystical love of God were blended in a profounder +devotion; love had become the sole giver of the eternal value and +consolation, yearned for by mortal man. Christianity had taught man to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +look up; now his upward gaze lost its rigidity and beheld living +beauty—metaphysical eroticism had been evolved—the canonisation and +deification of woman. The ideal of the troubadours to love the adored +mistress chastely and devoutly from a distance in the hope of receiving +a word of greeting, no longer satisfied the lover; she must become a +divine being, must be enthroned above human joy and sorrow, queen of the +world. Traditional religion was transformed so that a place might be +found in it for a woman.</p> + +<p>The reason for the recognition of spiritual love from the moment of its +inception as something supernatural and divine, is obvious. The heart of +man was filled with an emotion hitherto unknown, an emotion which +pointed direct to heaven. The soul, the core of profound Christian +consciousness, had received a new, glad content, rousing a feeling of +such intensity that it could only be compared to the religious ecstasy +of the mystic; man divined that it was the mother of new and great +things—was it not fitting to regard it as divine and proclaim it the +supreme value? The troubadours had known it. Bernart of Ventadour had +sung:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>I stand in my lady's sight</div> +<div>In deep devotion;</div> +<div>Approach her with folded hands</div> +<div>In sweet emotion;</div> +<div>Dumbly adoring her,</div> +<div>Humbly imploring her.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Peire Raimon of Toulouse:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>I would approach thee on my knees,</div> +<div>Lowly and meek,</div> +<div>I would fare far o'er lands and seas</div> +<div>Thy ruth to seek.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>And come to thee—a slave to his lord—</div> +<div>I'd pay thee homage with eyes that mourn,</div> +<div>Until thy mercy I'd implored,</div> +<div>Heedless of laughter, heedless of scorn.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>Raimon of Miraval had said, "I am no lover, I am a worshipper," and +Cavalcanti:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>My lady's virtue has my blindness riven,</div> +<div>A secret sighing thrills my humbled heart:</div> +<div>When favoured with a sight of her thou art,</div> +<div>Thy soul will spread its wings and soar to heaven.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Peire Vidal:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>God called the women close to Him,</div> +<div>Because he saw all good in them.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The God of righteousness endowed</div> +<div>So well thy body and thy mind</div> +<div>That His own radiancy grew blind.</div> +<div>And many a soul that has not bowed</div> +<div>To Him for years in sin enmeshed,</div> +<div>Is by thy grace and charm refreshed.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The beauty of the adored was divine. Bernart of Ventadour wrote:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Her glorious beauty sheds a brilliant ray</div> +<div>On darkest night and dims the brightest day.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Guilhem of Cabestaing:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>God has created her without a blemish</div> +<div>Of His own beauty.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Gaucelm Faidit:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The beauty which is God Himself</div> +<div>He poured into a single being.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And Montanhagol, anticipating Dante:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Wherefore I tell you, and my words are true,</div> +<div>From heaven came her beauty, rare and tender,</div> +<div>Her loveliness was wrought in Paradise,</div> +<div>Men's dazzled eyes can scarce support her splendour.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Folquet of Romans:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>When I behold her beauty rare,</div> +<div>I'm so confused and startled by her worth,</div> +<div>I ween I am no longer on this earth.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>A canzone which has been attributed to Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia and +Dante, reads as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>My lady comes and ev'ry lip is silent;</div> +<div>So perfect is her beauty's high estate</div> +<div>That mortal spirit swoons and falls prostrate</div> +<div>Before her glory. And she is so noble:</div> +<div>If I uplift to her my inward eye,</div> +<div>My soul is startled as if death were nigh.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Cavalcanti says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Round you are flowers, is the tender green,</div> +<div>The sun is not as bright as your dear face,</div> +<div>All nature in her glorious summer-sheen</div> +<div>Has not so fair and beautiful a place,</div> +<div>It pales beside you. Earth has never seen</div> +<div>A thing so full of loveliness and grace.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The perfection which the mere presence of the beloved was supposed to +bestow on the lover, is here conceived more broadly and freely; not only +the lover, but all men are touched and transfigured by her appearance. +The sentiment of the lover aspired to become objective truth. This was +an important stage on the road from the spiritual to the deifying love, +which I have called metaphysical eroticism. Another rung of the ladder +of evolution had been climbed—the mistress had become queen of the +world and goddess, a being enthroned by the side of God. I will again +quote Guinicelli:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Ever as she walks she has a sober grace,</div> +<div>Making bold men abashed and good men glad,</div> +<div>If she delight thee not, thy heart must err,</div> +<div>No man dare look on her, his thoughts being base;</div> +<div>Nay, let me say even more than I have said,</div> +<div>No man could think base thoughts who looked on her.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<span class="smcap">D.G. Rossetti</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The same poet in his canzone, <i>Al Cor Gentil</i> says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>"She shines on us as God shines on His angels."</div></div> +</div> + +<p>When madonna dies the angels receive her, rejoicing that she has joined +them. The Provençal, Pons of Capduelh, anticipated Dante:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>And now we know that the celestial choir</div> +<div>Sings songs of jubilee at her release</div> +<div>From this dull earth; I heard and am at rest;</div> +<div>Who praise His hosts, praise the Eternal Sire.</div> +<div>I know she is in Heaven with the blest,</div> +<div>'Midst flow'rs whose glory time can never dim</div> +<div>Singing God's praise, and blest by seraphim.</div> +<div>Nought but the truth from my glad lips shall fall,</div> +<div>In Heaven she is, enthroned above all.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Folquet of Romans wrote a letter to his beloved, in which he said +amongst other things:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div class='i2'>Kneeling in church before God's face,</div> +<div class='i2'>—A sinner to beseech His grace,—</div> +<div class='i2'>And for my sins to make amends,—</div> +<div class='i2'>'Twas you to whom I raised my hands;</div> +<div class='i2'>Your loveliness alone was there,</div> +<div class='i2'>My soul knew only of one pray'r.</div> +<div class='i2'>I fancied "Our Father" framed</div> +<div class='i2'>My trembling lips, when they exclaimed</div> +<div class='i2'>Exultant at His sacred shrine:</div> +<div class='i2'>Oh! Lady! All my soul is thine!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Lady, you have bewitched me with your beauty,</div> +<div>That God I have forgotten and myself.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Cino da Pistoia wrote the following commendatory prayer:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Into thy hands, sweet lady of my soul,</div> +<div>The spirit that is dying I commend;</div> +<div>And which departs so sorrowful that Love</div> +<div>Views it with pity, while dismissing it.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>By you to His dominion it was bound,</div> +<div>So firmly, that it since hath had no power</div> +<div>To call on Him but thus: Oh, mighty Lord,</div> +<div>Whate'er thou wilt of me, Thy will is mine.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">C. Lyell</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Lancelot, one of the great mediaeval lovers, possessed a lock of +Guinevere's hair, which he prized above all the relics of the saints. +When he parted from his mistress (whom he had loved not only +spiritually) he fell on his knees before the door of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> chamber and +prayed as if "he were kneeling before the altar."</p> + +<p>Spiritual love was obviously acquiring a religious tinge. The mistress +took the place of God; her grace was the source of all joy and +consolation; she led the souls of the dying to eternal life. God had +yielded His position to her, she had stepped to His side, nay, above +Him. With the curse of the Church still clinging to her, she had been +remoulded by man's emotion into a perfect, a celestial being. The God of +Christianity was in danger—would the new religion of cultured minds, +the religion of woman (unwilling to tolerate any other God beside her) +replace the religion of the masses? Was a reformation imminent? Would +the traditional religion be transformed into metaphysical eroticism, +dethroning God, enthroning a goddess? It is impossible to say in what +direction the spiritual history of Europe would have developed if Dante +had been merely a metaphysical lover, and not also an orthodox +theologian; if instead of penetrating to the vision of the divine +secret, he had fainted before the face of Beatrice....</p> + +<p>The religion of woman and the dominant religion came to terms. This +compromise was possible because the Christian pantheon included a female +deity who, although she had not hitherto played a prominent part, held +an exceptional position: this was Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. From +<span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 400 to <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1200, her rank had been on a level +with the rank of the antique goddesses; now the new emotion enveloped +and revivified her. The rigid, soulless image with the golden circle +round the head slowly melted into sweet womanhood. In Italy this +sentiment inspired wonderful paintings of the Madonna, and was +responsible for the development of portraiture in general. The hold of +the overwhelming tradition was broken. Rejecting the universal +conviction that the historical Mary had resembled the Mary of Byzantine +art, the artist, under the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> dominion of his woman-worship—which +surpassed and re-valued all things—drew his inspiration from the +fulness of life. I do not agree with Thode that we are indebted to the +legend of St. Francis for the modern soulful and highly individualised +art. Its source must have been the strongest feeling of the most +cultured minds, and that was undoubtedly spiritual love. The Jesuit +Beissel wrote with deep regret: "Every master almost formed his own +conception of Mary, but in such a way that the hieratic severity of +earlier times disappeared but slowly." And he continued: "It is true, +the artists' models were the noble ladies of their period; not only on +account of their kindly smiling faces, but also on account of the +charming coquetry with which their hands drew their cloaks across the +bosom." And the art-historian, Male, says: "It is a remarkable fact that +in the thirteenth century the legend, or the story, of the Virgin Mary +was depicted on the doors of all our (<i>i.e.</i>, French) cathedrals."</p> + +<p>The difference between the Catholic and the Protestant world-principles +is strongly marked in this connection. Catholicism with its striving for +absolute uniformity, acknowledging no individual differences, but eager +to shape all life and all doctrines in harmony with one definite ideal, +very consistently pronounced one single, historical woman to be divine, +and made her the object of universal worship. This dogma had to be +rigid, immutable, and almost meaningless. Again, the historic and pagan +principle of Catholicism was maintained; a unique event in the history +of the world was immortalised and systematised and all new religious +conceptions were excluded. Catholicism invariably places all really +important events in the past, even in a quite definite period of the +past, a period unassailable by historical criticism. But with the +commencement of individual intellectual life the uniform, ecclesiastical +image of the Madonna gradually gained life and individuality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Just as +according to Protestant teaching every soul must establish its +individual relationship with God (which is subject to change because +individuality is not excluded as it is in Catholicism), so the +imaginative emotionalist created his own Queen of Heaven. Frequently he +was still under the impression—this was especially the case with +monks—that he was worshipping the ecclesiastical deity, when he had +long been praying to a metaphysical conception of his own. The great +Italian art since the fourteenth century, as well as the Neo-Latin and +German cults of the Virgin Mary were, though apparently still orthodox, +in their innermost essence the outcome of a personal desire for love, +and had therefore abandoned the teaching of the Church and become +Protestant. The fact that the so-called Protestant Church looked askance +at Mary, and that the rather coarse-minded Luther said, in his +annoyance: "Popery has made a goddess of Mary, and is therefore guilty +of idolatry," does not contradict my statement. The true Queen of Heaven +was a conception of the artist and lover, incomprehensible to those who +were only thinkers and moralists.</p> + +<p>Through the legitimation of a divine woman open enmity between the +religion of woman and the religion of the Church was avoided. A woman +had stepped between God and humanity as mediator, intercessor and +redeemer. Every metaphysically-loving soul could conceive her as it +pleased, could love her and pray to her without being a heretic and +worshipper of the devil. Matfre had complained that men</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Abandoned in her beauty revel</div> +<div>And unawares adore the devil.—</div></div> +</div> + +<p>but now a means had been found to adore the beloved, and yet remain +faithful to God. Once in a way it was remembered that the adored, +strictly speaking, was the Mother of God—if for no other reason, for +fear of the Inquisition which the Dominicans had founded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> and placed +under the special patronage of Mary—her bodyguard as it were, defending +her from the onslaught of minds all too worldly. Very rarely the adored +earthly woman was identified with the official Queen of Heaven—(this +may have been done occasionally by monks); sometimes as in the case of +Michelangelo and Guinicelli, the beloved was the sole goddess; other +poets, among whom we may include Dante and Goethe, conceived her as +enthroned by the side of Mary.</p> + +<p>At this point I must interrupt my argument, and briefly sketch the +position occupied by Mary in the western world from the dawn of +Christianity.</p> + +<p><br /></p> + +<p class='center'><i>(b) The Queen of Heaven</i>.</p> + +<p>During the first two hundred years Mary did not occupy a prominent place +in the Christian communities; even in the fourth century she was still +regarded as a human woman and denied divinity by St. Chrysostom, who +reproached her with vainglory. But in proportion as Christ transcended +humanity, and was more dogmatically and formally interpreted by the +Church—more especially the Greek Church—the desire for a mediator +between the wrathful Deity and sinful humanity grew more pronounced, a +mediator who, although a human being, could be endowed after the manner +of the ancient demi-gods with super-human virtues. The Mother of the +Saviour gradually assumed this position. She had been an earthly woman, +born of earthly parents, and would be able to understand human needs and +wishes, and she had become the Mother of God. Would not her intercession +have weight with the Son of God? Simultaneously with the growing +recognition of asceticism, the doctrine of the immaculate conception +gained ground; in the course of time this moment was more and more +emphasised, and virginity was set up as an ideal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p> + +<p>St. Athanasius (fourth century) had written: "What God did to Mary is +the glory of all virgins; for they are attached as virginal saplings to +her who is the root." At the close of the fourth century a long and +bitter controversy arose over the question as to whether Mary had +remained a virgin after the birth of Jesus. St. Ambrose, St. Jerome and +St. Augustine were in favour of this new doctrine. St. Ambrose, the +founder of Western music, was the first to praise her perfection in the +Latin tongue, and St. Augustine in his treatise <i>De Natura et Gratia</i>, +maintained that she was the only human being born without original sin. +This was the first important step towards the stripping of the Saviour's +mother of her humanity, and establishing her as a divine being. St. +Irenaeus contrasted Eve, the bringer of sin, with Mary, the second Eve, +the bringer of salvation, and St. Ambrose said: "From Eve we inherited +damnation through the fruit of the tree; but Mary has brought us +salvation through the gift of the tree, for Christ too, hung on the tree +like a fruit."</p> + +<p>Hitherto Mary had not been worshipped; all prayers had been addressed to +God and to Christ. The idea of approaching her in prayer appeared for +the first time in a pamphlet entitled "On the Death of Mary," written +about the end of the fourth century, and Gregory of Nazianz pictured +Mary in Heaven, caring for the welfare of humanity. The fourth and fifth +centuries produced the first hymns to the Virgin, written in Syriac; but +orthodox bishops objected to her deification; St. Epiphanus (end of +fourth century) said: "Let us honour Mary by all means, but let us +worship only the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."</p> + +<p>This was the position of the evangelical and historical Mary before the +famous and decisive Council of Ephesus.</p> + +<p>There is a very important fact which must not be overlooked. All the +nations dwelling on the shores of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> the Mediterranean, Semites, and +Egyptians, as well as Greeks and Romans, had been accustomed to the +worship of female deities. In the minds of the ancient peoples, woman, +the symbol of sex, had always been endowed with qualities of magic and +mystery. There was something supernatural in her power of bringing forth +a living specimen of the race, and in all cults the maternal woman +occupied a very important position. Had Christianity suddenly destroyed +this ancient and natural need? We know that the Church had assimilated a +great number of antique superstitions; nor were the female deities +sacrificed. The great Asiatic Mothers had not been forgotten; the very +ancient Babylonian Istar (Astarte), Rhea Kybele of Asia Minor, and above +all the Egyptian Isis, still lived in the heart of man,—subconsciously, +probably—as lofty, sacred memories, but nevertheless influencing his +life. The Egyptian Isis with Horus in her lap is the direct model of the +Madonna with the Child. She represented earth, bringing forth fruit +without fertilisation. "This religious custom (the worship of Isis)," +says Flinders Petrie, "exerted a powerful influence on nascent +Christianity. It is not too much to say that without the Egyptians we +should have had no Madonna in our creed. The cult of Isis was widely +spread at the time of the first emperors, when it was fashionable all +over the Roman Empire; when later on it merged into that other great +religious movement, and fashion and conviction could be combined, its +triumph was assured."</p> + +<p>Advancing Christianity had depopulated the national pantheon. There must +have been a great sense of loss, especially among the lower classes, and +it does not require much psychological insight to realise that it was +the lack of female deities which more especially roused a feeling of +anxiety and distress. The masses were yearning for a goddess, and it was +at Ephesus, the classical seat of the hundred-breasted Diana, that the +stolen divinity was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> restored to them. The theologians were divided into +three camps. While some of them regarded Mary merely as "the mother of +man" others acknowledged her as the "Mother of God," and Nestorius +suggested as a compromise the title "Mother of Christ." At the synod of +Alexandria, in the year of grace 430, and at the council of Ephesus in +431, Nestorius was found guilty of blasphemy and deprived of his +bishopric. Henceforth Mary was Θεοτὁχοϛ, the "Mother of God," +and her worship was sanctioned by the Church. "Through Thee the Holy +Trinity has been glorified," exclaimed Cyril joyfully, "through Thee the +Cross of the Saviour has been raised! Through Thee the angels triumphed, +the devils were driven back; the tempter was beaten and human nature +uplifted to Heaven; through Thee all intelligent creatures who were +committing idolatry, have learned the truth!" Loud rejoicing filled the +streets of Ephesus. When the judgment passed on Nestorius was announced, +the people exclaimed: "The enemy of the Holy Virgin has been overcome; +glory be to the great, the divine Mother of God!" The highest authority +in the land had re-established the public worship of the great goddess, +who had for many years been worshipped in secrecy. The ancient paganism +had triumphed over the spiritual intuition of the loftier minds. +According to ancient custom sacrifices were offered at Mary's shrine; +the second epoch of her history had begun.</p> + +<p>In the East the worship of female divinities was older and more +spontaneous than in the Western world, and thus the cult of Mary existed +in the Orient long before it penetrated to Italy and thence into the +newly Christianised countries. The Virgin, who for the first few hundred +years had held a clearly defined position in evangelical history, had +become an independent object of worship. Festivals were held in her +honour; churches were dedicated to her; the will of the people triumphed +in the litany; art took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> possession of the grateful subject. The +tendency to make Mary the equal of Christ grew steadily. Metaphors +originally intended for Christ alone were used indifferently for either. +We constantly find her addressed as the "archetype, the light of the +world, the vine, the mediator, the source of eternal life, etc." Finally +she ceased being regarded as a passive participator in the work of +salvation, as the Mother of the Saviour, and was accredited with +independent saving power. John of Damascus (eighth century) first called +Mary σὡτειρα του χὁσμου, and soon after she was styled +"Saviour of the World" in the Occident also. With this the cult of Mary +had reached its third stage, the stage which interests us; she had +become the object of metaphysical love. But before dealing with this +third stage, we must glance, in passing, at the ancient Teutonic tribes. +They, too, worshipped goddesses and sacred women; virginity, a virtue +not appreciated by the Orientals, here stood in high repute. According +to Tacitus and others, the Teutons looked upon the Virgin as a +mysterious being, approaching divinity more closely than all others. +Thus there was here, perhaps, more than on the shores of the +Mediterranean, a favourable soil for the cult of Mary. The +characteristics of Holda and Freya, as well as their perfect beauty, +were transferred to Mary, and Mary's name was substituted for the names +of the old auxiliary goddesses. In the oldest German evangelical poems +Mary does not yet rank as a divinity, she is merely extolled as the most +perfect of all earth-born women. In the "Heliand" (about <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> +830) she is called "the most beautiful of all women, the loveliest of +all maidens"; and the monk Otfried, of Weissenburg (860), calls her, "Of +all women to God the most pleasing, the white jewel, the radiant maid."</p> + +<p>Mary had now taken her place by the side of God, and was commonly +addressed as divine. Anselm of Canterbury explains: "God is the Father +of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> created things, Mary the Mother of all things recreated.... God +begat the creator of the world, Mary gave birth to its Saviour." Peter +of Blois declared that the Virgin was the only mediatress between Christ +and humanity. "We were sinners and afraid of the wrath of the Father, +for He is terrible; but we have the Virgin, in whom there is nothing +terrible, for in her is the fulness of mercy and purity." The twelfth +century produced the <i>Ave Maria</i>, the angelic salutation, the principal +prayer to Mary, which was introduced into all churches. The Italian +Franciscan monk, Bonaventura, and Peter Damiani, were above all others +instrumental in spreading the worship of the Virgin, and Damiani said of +her: "To Thee has been given all power in heaven and on earth." The +fresco of the Camposanto at Pisa, ascribed to Orcagna, shows the +transfigured Virgin sitting by the side of Christ, not below Him. The +numerous legends in which Mary, often regardless of justice and +propriety, delivers her faithful worshippers from all manner of dangers, +were written during the same period. One of the most famous of these is +the legend of Theophilus, the forerunner of Faust. In a German version +(by Brun of Schönebeck) dating from the thirteenth century, Theophilus +abjures God and all things divine, with the sole exception of Mary, +wherefore she saves him from eternal damnation. This poem therefore +shows us Mary as absolutely opposed to God.</p> + +<p>We have now arrived at the third stage of the cult of Mary; the new, +spiritual love, translated into metaphysics, was projected on her; she +was approached by her worshippers with the ardent love which hitherto +had been the prerogative of earthly women. The two currents, the one +arising in ecclesiastical tradition, and the other in the soul of the +metaphysical lover, had met; the genuine spiritual cult of Mary was the +creation of the great metaphysical lovers, who existed not only in the +twelfth and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> thirteenth centuries, but are met not infrequently later +on; man's irresistible need to raise woman above him and worship her, +created the true Madonna, for whose sake romantic souls of all times +have "returned home" into the fold of the Church, the true Madonna who +at heart is alien to the principles of the Church, but is re-born daily +in the soul of the metaphysical lover. The hierarchy knew how to take +advantage of and control this adoring love; the metaphysical lover +raised his mistress above humanity and prayed before her shrine; +religion said: "The celestial woman whom you may lovingly adore is here, +with me. All you have to do is to call her by the name I have given her, +and the kingdom of Heaven will be yours."</p> + +<p>But on the other hand Mary represents to-day, and doubtless will do for +a long time to come, a dogmatically acknowledged deity, recognised by +the spirit of Protestantism as a remnant of Paganism, and duly detested; +the masses in Italy and Spain pray to-day to her image, as in bygone +days the masses prayed to the images in Greek and Roman temples. This +goddess is unchanging, and from the point of view of the psychologist +uninteresting.</p> + +<p>It is not difficult to understand why the two conceptions of Mary (more +especially in the souls of the monks) were so often inextricably +intermingled; circumstances frequently demanded a complete fusion. As +late as in the nineteenth century, a romantic poet, Zacharias Werner, +said:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, sov'reign lady, mistress of my fortune,</div> +<div>And thou, the Queen and ruler of the heavens,</div> +<div>(I cannot keep you sundered and apart.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>I shall endeavour to keep them sundered and apart as far as possible, +for I am only concerned with man's metaphysical emotion of love and its +creation, womanhood deified, and not with Catholic dogmas. With this +object in view, I will return to the poets previously quoted, and +continue the unfolding of the process of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> deification. As a rule the +metaphysical lovers were content with immortalising their feelings in, +very often, excellent verses, raising the beloved mistress above the +earth and worshipping her as the culmination of beauty and perfection. +The quite unusual craving to give her a place in the eternal structure +of the cosmos animated only one poet, Dante, who, combining the Catholic +striving for unity with spontaneous, magnificent woman-worship, created +a masterpiece which is unique in literature.</p> + +<p>Typical among the later Provençals was Guirot Riquier. Several of his +poems which have been preserved to us make it impossible to say whether +they are addressed to an earthly woman or to the Queen of Heaven; these +poems mark, in a sense, a period of transition. They are exceedingly +vague, and it is not worth while to translate them; but as they are +dated it is interesting to watch the poet's love growing more and more +spiritual and religious, to see him gradually deserting his earthly love +for the Lady of Heaven. In one poem he prays to his lady "who is +worshipped by all true lovers," to teach him the right way of loving. In +the next he repents his all too earthly passion:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>I often thought I was of true love singing,</div> +<div>And knew not that to love my heart was blind,</div> +<div>And folly was as love itself enshrined.</div> +<div>But now such love in all my soul is ringing,</div> +<div>That though to love and praise her I aspire</div> +<div>As is her meed—in vain is my desire.</div> +<div>Henceforth her love alone shall be my guide</div> +<div>And my new hope in that great love abide.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>For her great love the uttermost shall proffer</div> +<div>Of honour, wealth, and earthly joy and bliss,</div> +<div>With her to love, my heart will never miss</div> +<div>Those who no gifts like her gifts have to offer.</div> +<div>She the fulfilment is of my desire,</div> +<div>Therefore I vow myself her true esquire;</div> +<div>She'll love me in return—my splendid meed—</div> +<div>If I but love aright in word and deed.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>and one of his rather more religious songs ends as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Without true love there is on earth no peace,</div> +<div>Love gives us wisdom, faith which will not swerve,</div> +<div>A noble mind and willingness to serve.</div> +<div>How rare a thing on earth in perfect ease!</div> +<div>To Thee, oh Virgin! Mother of all love,</div> +<div>I dedicate this song; if thou deniest</div> +<div>Me not, thou shall be my "sweet bliss." With Christ</div> +<div>I pray Thee, intercede for me above.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In this song, then, he calls Mary "his sweet bliss" (<i>bel deport</i>), a +name which he had previously given to a certain countess with whom he +had been in love. In the next poem, in which earthly love and love of +the Madonna are again brought into juxta-position, he commends himself +"to the Virgin, the sublime mother of love, on whom all my happiness +depends." One of his poems which begins in quite an earthly strain, ends +thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>I feel no jealousy; for he whose soul</div> +<div>Is filled with yearning for his heavenly love,</div> +<div>Has purest happiness; he is her serf,</div> +<div>And he has all things that his heart can crave.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>But long before this, in one of his very worldly poems there is a sudden +outburst, addressed to the Madonna: "He who does not serve the Mother of +God, knows not the meaning of love." Excellent proof of this intimate +connection between earthly and Madonna love is found in the poems of the +trouvere Ruteboeuf, who calls Mary his "very sweet lady."</p> + +<p>Lanfranc Cigala wrote genuine love-songs to the Virgin. The following +are two stanzas from one of his poems:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>I worship a celestial maid,</div> +<div>Serene and wondrously adorned;</div> +<div>And all she does is well; arrayed</div> +<div>In noble love and gentleness.</div> +<div>Her smile is bliss to all who mourn,</div> +<div>Her tender love is happiness,</div> +<div>And for her kiss the world I scorn.</div> +<div>Lady of Heaven, Thy heart incline</div> +<div>To me, and untold bliss is mine.</div></div> +</div> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>By day and night my only thought</div> +<div>Art, Mary, Thou. I am distraught</div> +<div>Say many men, for few can gauge</div> +<div>The ardour which consumes my soul.</div> +<div>I care not that they say bereft</div> +<div>I am of sense; the world I've left,</div> +<div>To worship Thee, love's spring and goal.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>But other poems written by Cigala are unmistakably addressed to the +celestial Madonna; some of them seem to be written in a penitential +mood; he almost seems to repent of his former passionate adoration. The +same poet, in his love-songs, uses all the metaphors which are commonly +used for Mary (or for Christ), "root and climax, flower, fruit and seed +of all goodness."</p> + +<p>A little older is an erotic hymn to Mary by Peire Guillem of Luserna; I +quote a few stanzas:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thy praise is happiness unmarred,</div> +<div>For he who praises Thee, proclaims the truth,</div> +<div>Thou art the flower of beauty, love and ruth,</div> +<div>Full of compassion, with all grace bedight,</div> +<div>From Thy white hands we gather all delight.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The love of Mary had usurped the peculiar property of the love of woman: +it had become the source of poetic and artistic inspiration.</p> + +<p>The songs of Aimeric of Peguilhan resemble those of Cigala; the former +bewails the decline of the service of woman; he sings of the "root and +crown of all noble things," but it is not quite clear whether he is +addressing an earthly or a heavenly lady. "Suffer my love, which asks +for no reward!" The terms, "friends" and "lovers" (<i>amans</i>) of the +Virgin are with these poets convertible terms, and the Virgin is styled +"the true friend" (<i>i.e.</i>, the beloved).</p> + +<p>Guilhem of Autpol wrote a fine poem to the Queen of Heaven, beginning:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thou hope of all sad hearts who yearn for love,</div> +<div>Thou stream of loveliness, thou well of grace,</div> +<div>Thou dove of peace in fret and restlessness,</div> +<div>Thou ray of light to those who, lightless, grope.</div> +<div><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>Thou house of God, thou garden of sweet shades,</div> +<div>Rest without ceasing, refuge of the sad,</div> +<div>Bliss without mourning, flow'r that never fades,</div> +<div>Alien to death, and shelter in the mad</div> +<div>Whirlpool of life, to all who seek thy port.</div> +<div>Lady of Heaven, in whom all hearts rejoice,</div> +<div>Thou roseate dawn and light of Paradise!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Perdigon, among many worldly songs, wrote one to the <i>regina d'auteza e +de senhoria</i>, which might be translated thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Supreme ruler of the world,</div> +<div>Thy grace sustains</div> +<div>And maintains</div> +<div>The world.</div> +<div>Thou fragrant rose, thou fruitful vine,</div> +<div>Thou wert the chosen vessel of</div> +<div>Mercy divine.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Unsurpassed in the fusion of his earthly and his celestial lady was +Folquet de Lunel. Some of his poems cannot be classed with any +certainty.</p> + +<p>The first poem which obtained a prize at the Academy of Mastersingers of +Toulouse was a hymn to Mary.</p> + +<p>This very genuine sentimentalism appears strange to us; we cannot enter +into the feelings of that period. A modern philologist, Karl Appel, +regards Jaufre Rudel's pathetic songs, addressed by him to the Countess +of Tripoli:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, love in lands so far away,</div> +<div>My heart is yearning, yearning. . . .</div></div> +</div> + +<p>as songs to the Madonna; but it is a matter of indifference to the lover +whether his heart's impulse, translated into metaphysic, is projected on +an unknown Countess of Tripoli, or a still more unknown Lady of Heaven. +It is not the loved woman who is of importance—what do we know of the +ladies who inspired the exquisite mediaeval poetry? They have long been +dust, and we may be sure that their perfection was no greater than is +the perfection of their grand-daughters. But the love of the poets is +alive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> to-day, an eternal document of the human heart, representing one +of the great phases through which the relationship between man and woman +has passed.</p> + +<p>The following are a few stanzas by the German minnesinger, Steinmar, +which were later on adapted to the Holy Virgin:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>In summer-time how glad am I</div> +<div>When over lea or down</div> +<div>A country lass mine eyes espy,</div> +<div>Of maidens all the crown.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh! Paradise! How glad am I</div> +<div>When o'er the heavenly down</div> +<div>God and God's Mother I espy,</div> +<div>Of women all the crown.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The Italian poets, far more profound than the Provençals, saw a goddess +in the beloved (whom they always addressed as Madonna), and humbled +themselves before her. Social differences, which played such a prominent +part in the North, are here ignored. The impecunious poet no longer +extols the princess, the wife of his lord and master. There is no +question of such a relationship; the poet is a free citizen of the town, +subject only to the emotion of the heart, and his song carries its own +reward. It has ceased to be the married woman's privilege to be lauded +and extolled; the maiden of unaristocratic origin, who to the poets +represents more strongly the ideas of purity and perfection, has usurped +her place. We know that Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi, Guinicelli and +Dante worshipped a maiden untouched by as much as a sensuous thought, +and Frescobaldi decided the question whether it were better to love a +married woman or a maiden, in favour of the latter. The feeling of those +lovers was pure and lofty, and they had the power of giving it perfect +expression.</p> + +<p>In a canzone, the authorship of which is ascribed to both Cavalcanti and +Cino da Pistoia, it is said of the beloved dead that God needed her +presence to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> perfect Heaven, and that all the saints now worship her. +She was a miracle of perfection while she was yet on earth, but now:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells</div> +<div>Thy lovely lady, who is in heaven crowned,</div> +<div>Who is herself thy hope in heaven, the while</div> +<div>To make thy mem'ry hallowed she prevails.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Of thee she entertains the blessed throngs,</div> +<div>And says to them, while yet my body thrave</div> +<div>On earth, I gat much honour which he gave,</div> +<div>Commending me in his commended songs.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">D.G. Rossetti</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>At the conclusion of his finest poem, "Al Cor Gentil," Guinicelli, next +to Dante doubtless the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, says: "God will +ask me after my death: 'How could'st thou have loved aught but Me?' And +I will reply: 'She came from Thy realm and bore the semblance of an +angel. Therefore in loving her, I was not unfaithful to Thee!'" Here we +have the perfection of metaphysical eroticism: the beloved woman is God; +he who loves her, loves God in her.</p> + +<p>Cavalcanti maintained in a poem that an image of the Madonna actually +bore the features of his lady.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Guido, an image of my lady dwells</div> +<div>At San Michele, in Orto, consecrate,</div> +<div>And daily worshipped. Fair, in holy state,</div> +<div>She listens to the tale each sinner tells.</div> +<div>And among them who come to her, who ails</div> +<div>The most, on him the most does blessing fall;</div> +<div>She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate;</div> +<div>Over the curse of blindness she prevails,</div> +<div>And heals sick languors in the public squares. . . .</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">D.G. Rossetti</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And Guido Orlandi replies to him from the ecclesiastical standpoint, as +to a lost man: "Had'st thou been speaking of Mary, thou would'st have +spoken the truth. But now I must bewail thy errors."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p> + +<p>A complete blending of sensuality and Mary-worship was achieved in an +Italian poem of the fifteenth century. The author of this poem addressed +Mary as "queen of my heart," and "blossom of loveliness," and goes on to +say: "I can tell by your gestures and your face that you respond to my +love; when you look at me, you smile, and when you sigh, your eyes are +full of tenderness.... Sometimes, in the evening, I stand below your +balcony; you hear my sighs, but you make no reply.... When I gaze at +your beauty, I burn with love, but when I think of your cruelty, I call +on death to release me." In this poem we have a caricature of +metaphysical eroticism.</p> + +<p>In the sonnets of Petrarch, metaphysical love has become stereotyped. +Adoration has become a phrase (as Cupid has become a phrase with the +earlier poets). It is obvious that he loves Laura because the play on +the word Laura and <i>lauro</i> (laurel) caught his fancy. I can find no +spontaneous feeling in the famous Canzoniero; all I see is erudition and +perfection of form. But among the few sincere specimens there is one +beautiful poem addressed to Mary: "<i>Vergine bella che di sol vestida!</i>" +which is not without erotic warmth. But the singer and humanist +expresses himself judiciously:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, Thou, the Queen of Heaven and our goddess</div> +<div>(If it be fitting such a phrase to use).</div></div> +</div> + +<p>So far we have observed the current which, emanating from the beloved +woman, lifted her into supernal regions and endowed her with +perfection—the mistress is stripped of everything earthly, the longing +which can never be stilled on earth, soars heavenward. Now we will +examine the opposite current; the current which emanates from the +Madonna of dogma, the Lady of Heaven who is the same to all men, in her +last stage, that is to say when she is finally enthroned by the side of +God. Many a monk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>—earthly love being denied to him—was driven to a +purely spiritual, metaphysical love by the fact of his being permitted +to love the Lady of Heaven without hesitation or remorse. She was the +fairest of women, and he was at liberty to interpret the meaning of "the +fairest" in any sense he chose.</p> + +<p>The climax of the emotional worship of the ecclesiastical Mary was +reached by St. Bernard, the <i>Doctor Marianus</i> mentioned on a previous +occasion. He was the author of sermons and homilies in honour of Mary, +and has been instrumental in dogmatising her worship by placing her side +by side with the Saviour. "It was more fitting that both sexes should +take part in the renewal of mankind," he says, "because both were +instrumental in bringing about the fall...." "Man who fell through +woman, can be raised only by her." "Humanity kneels at Thy feet, for the +comfort of the wretched, the release of the prisoners, the delivery of +the condemned, the salvation of the countless sons of Adam depend on a +word from Thy lips. Oh! Virgin, hasten to reply! Speak the word for +which the earth, the nethermost hell, and the heavens even, are waiting; +yea, the King and Ruler of the universe, greatly as He desires Thy +loveliness, awaits Thy consent, in which He has laid the salvation of +the world." Basing his description on the Revelation of St. John the +Divine, he draws her picture as follows: "Brilliant and white and +dazzling are the garments of the Virgin. She is so full of light and +radiance that there is not the least darkness about her, and no part of +her may be described as less brilliant, or not glowing with intense +light." And with increasingly pronounced erotic emphasis, passing from +the Church dogma of salvation to passionate fervour, he goes on to say: +"A garden of sacred delight art Thou, oh, Mary! In it we gather flowers +of manifold joys as often as we reflect on the fulness of sweetness +which through Thee was poured out on the world....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> Right lovely art +Thou, oh, perfect One! A bed of heavenly spices and precious flowers of +all virtues, filling the house of the Lord with sweet perfume! Oh! Mary, +Thou violet of humility! Thou lily of chastity! Thou rose of love!" etc.</p> + +<p>St. Bernard inaugurated that extraordinary blending of eroticism with +half-crazy, inconceivable allegories and fantasies, which lasted for +centuries. Here, again, we perceive the ideal of metaphysical eroticism, +which in the case of a loyal son of the Church could only refer to the +official Queen of Heaven, and consisted partly of the genuine emotion of +love, partly of allegorically constructed connections with the Church +dogma.</p> + +<p>St. Bernard's emotional outbursts were comprehended and admired. His +authority was sufficient to override all scruples that might have stood +in the way of this downright description of Mary's charms. He became the +model for all her later worshippers; Suso, for instance, often quotes +him, and Brother Hans called him <i>the harpist and fiddler of her +praise</i>.</p> + +<p>The great ecstatic poet, Jacopone da Todi, sang Mary's praise as +follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Hail, purest of virgins,</div> +<div>Mother and maid,</div> +<div>Gentle as moonlight,</div> +<div>Lady of Aid!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>I greet thee, life's fountain,</div> +<div>Fruitladen vine!</div> +<div>Infinite mercy</div> +<div>Thou sheddest on thine!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Hope's fairest sunshine,</div> +<div>Balm's well serene!</div> +<div>I claim a dance with thee,</div> +<div>All the world's Queen!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Gate of beatitude!</div> +<div>—All sins forgiven,—</div> +<div>Lead us to paradise,</div> +<div>Sweet breeze of heaven!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>Thou pointest us upward</div> +<div>Where angels adore,</div> +<div>White lily of gentleness</div> +<div>Thy grace I implore.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Mirror of Cherubim!</div> +<div>Seraphim laud thy grace,</div> +<div>All things in heaven and earth</div> +<div>Ring with thy praise!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The spiritual love of Mary especially appealed to the German temper. +Among the adoring monks Suso deserves particular mention. He laid great +stress on the difference between <i>high</i> love and <i>low</i> love. "Low love +begins with rapture and ends with pain, but high love begins with grief, +and is transformed into ecstasy, until finally the lovers are united in +eternity." He was keenly conscious of the older motive of the cult of +Mary, namely, the need of a gentle mediator between man and the +inaccessible Deity. "Oh, thou! God's chosen delight, thou dulcet, golden +song of the Eternal Wisdom, suffer me, a poor sinner, to tell thee a +little of my sufferings. My soul prostrates itself before thee with +timorous eyes, shamefaced. Oh! thou Mother of all mercies, I ween that +neither my soul nor the soul of any other poor sinner needs a mediator, +or permission to come to thy throne, for thou, thyself, art the +intercessor for all sinners." Compared to his forerunner, St. Bernard, +Suso exhibits a marked degree of intimacy in his relationship with Mary. +He describes heaven as a kind of flowered meadow, and Mary keeping +court, like any earthly princess. "Now go and behold the sweet Queen of +Heaven, whom you love so profoundly, leading the procession of the +celestial throng in great gladness and stateliness, inclining to her +lover with roses and lilies! Behold her wonderful beauty shedding light +and joy on the heavenly hosts! Eya! Look up to her who giveth gladness +to heart and mind; behold the Mother of Mercy resting her eyes, her +tender, pitiful eyes, on you and all sinners,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> powerfully protecting her +beloved child." The whole sixteenth chapter of the <i>Booklet of Eternal +Wisdom</i> is an ardent hymn to the Madonna, almost comparable to St. +Bernard's prayer to Mary in Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i>. It was written +about the time of Dante's death, not very long, therefore, after the +composition of the last chapters of the <i>Paradise</i>.</p> + +<p><i>The Life of Suso</i> (the first German biography ever written) evidences +his adoration for the Lady of Heaven: "It was customary in his country, +Swabia, for the young men to go to their sweethearts' houses on New +Year's Eve, singing songs until they received from the maidens a chaplet +in return. This custom so pleased his young and ardent heart that he, +too, went on the eve of the New Year to his eternal love, to beg her for +a gift. Before daybreak he repaired to the statue which represented the +Virginal Mother pressing her tender child, the beautiful Eternal Wisdom, +to her bosom, and kneeling down before her, with a sweet, low singing of +his soul, he chanted a sequence to her, imploring her to let him win a +chaplet from her Child...." "He then said to the Eternal Wisdom" (and it +is uncertain whether he is addressing the mother or the child): "Thou +art my love, my glad Easter day, the summer-joy of my heart, my sweet +hour; thou art the love which my young heart alone worships, and for the +sake of which it has scorned earthly love. Give me a guerdon, then, my +heart's delight, and let me not go away from thee empty-handed."</p> + +<p><i>With a sweet, low singing of his soul</i>, this worshipper approached the +statue of the Queen of Heaven. This is love of woman undisguised, it +merely has a religious undertone. Other secular merry-makings were +adapted by Suso to his celestial mistress, as, for instance, the +planting of the may-tree, and he repeatedly makes use of similes and +metaphors borrowed from the chivalrous service of woman. He frequently +alludes to himself as "the servant of the Eternal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> Wisdom"; the meaning +of this expression is apparently intentionally obscured, but it has a +savour of the feminine. Suso pictured himself, after the manner of +lovers, with a chaplet of roses on his brow. In his <i>Life</i> there is a +passage unsurpassed by the best of the minnesingers: "In the golden +summer-time when all the tender little flowers had opened their buds, he +gathered none until he had dedicated the first blossoms to his spiritual +love, the gentle, flower-like, rosy maiden and Mother of God; when it +seemed to him that the time had come, he culled the flowers with many +loving thoughts, carried them into his cell and wove them into a +garland; and after he had done so, he went into the choir, or into Our +Lady's Chapel, prostrated himself before his dear lady, and placed the +sweet garland on her head, hoping that she would not scorn her servant's +offering, as she was the most wondrous flower herself, and the +summer-joy of his heart."</p> + +<p>Doubtless we here have an analogy to the religious feeling of the +mystics. The metaphysical lover is still under the impression that he is +worshipping the Mary of the Catholic Church; but as in the case of the +mystic the Christ of dogma is transformed into the divine spark in his +own soul, so the love of Mary has become undogmatic and pure +woman-worship, the ideal of the great lovers of that age.</p> + +<p>Another prominent Madonna-worshipper was Conrad of Würzburg (died 1278). +He began his career as a minnesinger, but later on entered a monastery. +He was the author of a very extensive, and in part, poetical collection +of songs in praise of the Queen of Heaven. "The Golden Smithy" is an +interesting instance of the mingling of genuine metaphysical eroticism +and traditional Church doctrines. Conrad inextricably mingles all the +Biblical allegories more or less applicable to Mary, the stories of the +Gospels, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, etc., with his own +emotions, and thus creates a world of feeling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> which, though in many +respects exaggerated, still represents in its quaint unity something +entirely novel and unique:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thy glorious form,</div> +<div>Though by beauty all envested,</div> +<div>Never passion has suggested</div> +<div>Nor has lit unholy fire</div> +<div>In man's heart, that gross desire</div> +<div>From thy purity should spring.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>He, too, describes the celestial Paradise as a lovely garden, in which +Mary walks as queen, and he says of her celestial maidens, (perhaps a +reminiscence of the mythological German swan-maidens):</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thy white hand with blossoms</div> +<div>Their chaplets enhances,</div> +<div>Thou show'st them the dances</div> +<div>Of God's Paradise.</div> +<div>'Mid radiant skies</div> +<div>Thou gather'st heavenly roses.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The Italian Franciscan monk Giacomo of Verona also wrote poems to the +"Queen of the Heavenly Meadows". "On the right hand of Christ sits Mary, +more lovely than the flowers in the meadows and the half-opened +rose-buds. Before her face stand the heavenly hosts singing jubilant +songs in her praise, but she adorns her knights with garlands and gives +them roses." Just as Pons of Capduelh describes the transfiguration of +his earthly mistress, Jacopone describes Mary's ascent into Heaven, +where she is received by the angels singing songs of jubilee, their +<i>sanctus, sanctus, sanctus</i>, replaced by a joyful <i>sancta, sancta, +sancta</i>—a goddess has been received in the place of God.</p> + +<p>Gottfried of Strassburg, the author of the sensuous and passionate epic +poem "Tristan and Isolde," composed a long poem in honour of Mary +couched in the well-known terms of the loving worshipper:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thou vale of roses,—violet-dell,</div> +<div>Thou joy that makest hearts to swell,</div> +<div>Eternal well</div> +<div>Of valour; Queen of Heaven!</div> +<div>Thou rosy dawn, thou morning-red,</div> +<div>Thou steadfast friend when hope has fled,</div> +<div>The living bread,</div> +<div>Oh! Lady, hast thou given.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Thou sheen of flow'rs with love alight,</div> +<div>Thou bridal crown, all maids' delight,</div> +<div>Thou art bedight</div> +<div>With heaven's golden splendour!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Thou of all sweetness sweetest shine,</div> +<div>Thou sweeter than the sweetest wine,</div> +<div>The sweetness thine,</div> +<div>Is my salvation ever.</div> +<div>Thou art a potion sweet of love,</div> +<div>Sweetly pervading heaven above,</div> +<div>To sailors rough</div> +<div>Sang syrens sweeter never.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Thou enterest through eye and ear,</div> +<div>Senses and soul pervading,</div> +<div>Thou givest to the heart great cheer,</div> +<div>A guerdon dear,</div> +<div>A glory never fading.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The poet who wrote of Isolde's love potion here calls the Queen of +Heaven a <i>potion sweet of love</i>, a strange metaphor to use in connection +with the Mary of dogma. Another characteristic frequently alluded to is +her <i>sweet perfume</i>, an attribute which we to-day do not look upon as +exclusively celestial.</p> + +<p>Quaintly delicate and tender are the love-songs of Brother Hans, an +otherwise unknown monk of the fourteenth century. He himself tells us +that he deserted his earthly mistress for the Queen of Heaven. Perhaps +the dualism between earthly and transcendent love has never been +expressed more clearly than by him; for in his case the worshipping love +did not gradually lead up to Mary, the essence of womanhood, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> an +earthly love had to be killed so that the pure heavenly love could live.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Mary! Gentle mistress mine!</div> +<div>I humbly kneel before you;</div> +<div>All my heart and soul are thine.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, Mary! Secret fountain,</div> +<div>Closed garden of delight,</div> +<div>The Prince of Heaven mirrors</div> +<div>Him in thy beauty bright.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>But after describing all the joys of heaven, Brother Hans comes to the +conclusion that a man knows about as much of celestial matters as an ox +knows of discant singing.</p> + +<p>His relationship to Mary is tender, intimate and familiar:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Within my heart concealed</div> +<div>There is a secret cell;</div> +<div>At nightfall and at daybreak</div> +<div>My lady there does dwell.</div> +<div>The mistress of the house is she,</div> +<div>I feel her love and care about.</div> +<div>If she denies herself to me,</div> +<div>Methinks the mistress has gone out.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In another poem he prays to Mary to allow him to tear off a small piece +of her robe, so that he may keep himself warm with it in the winter.</p> + +<p>Like Cino da Pistoia, who commended his dying soul not to God but to his +loved one, Brother Hans commends himself to Mary:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thus I commend my soul into thy hands,</div> +<div>When it must journey to those unknown lands,</div> +<div>Where roads and paths are new and strange to it.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, come to me, thou Bride of God,</div> +<div>When my faint soul departs from me!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>There remains one more motif to consider, a motif which in a way +completes the picture of the celestial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> lady: As men love and desire the +women of the earth, so God loves the Lady of Heaven. St. Bernard first +expressed this naïve idea, which makes God the Father resemble a little +the ancient Jupiter. "She attracted the eyes of the heavenly hosts, even +the heart of the King went out to her." "He Himself, the supreme King +and Ruler, so much desires thy beauty, that He is awaiting thy consent, +upon which He has decided to save the world. And Him Whom thou +delightest in thy silence, thou wilt delight even more by thy speech, +for He called to thee from Heaven: 'Oh! fairest among women! Let me hear +thy voice!'" etc. Here we have St. Bernard, the rock of orthodoxy, +representing God as Mary's languishing admirer! Suso is irreproachable +in this respect, but Conrad says that the colour of Mary's face was so +bright and made it so lovely,</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>That even the Eternal Sire</div> +<div>Was filled with sacred fire,</div> +<div>And all the heavenly princes. . . .</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Thus, at the turn of the fourteenth century the great celestial change +was complete: By the side of God, nay, even in the place of God, a woman +was enthroned. "The Virgin became the God of the Universe," says +Michelet, a thorough, though rather imaginative expert on the Middle +Ages. The people primitively worshipped idols. The clergy, headed by the +Dominican and Franciscan monks, introduced Lady Days into the calendar +and invented the rosary to facilitate the recital of the <i>Aves</i>; secular +orders of knighthood placed themselves under the Virgin's protection (La +Chevalerie de Sainte Marie), but the rarest minds, sublimating the +beloved, raised her into Heaven and worshipped her as divine. The +established religion was compelled to enter into partnership with the +great emotion of the time, metaphysical love, lest it ran the risk of +losing its sway over humanity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> + +<p>And a feeling was born then which to this day constitutes one of the +striking differences between the Eastern and the Western worlds: the +respect for womanhood. It is based on the woman-worship of secular, and +the Madonna-worship of ecclesiastical circles. It is true that Jesus, +anticipating the intuition of Europe, had taught the divinity of the +human soul and recognised woman—in this respect—as on an equality with +man, but the instincts of Greece and the Eastern nations had proved to +be stronger than his teaching; for twelve hundred years woman was +despised, and more than once the question as to whether or no she had a +soul—in other words, as to whether or no she was a human being—had +come under discussion. The crude and primitively dualistic minds of the +period realised in her sex merely an embodiment of their own sensuality, +the enemy against whom they fought, and to whom they knew themselves +subject. The strongest argument in her favour which the first millenary +could adduce, was the fact that the Saviour of the world had been borne +by a woman, and that consequently her sex had a share in the work of +salvation; the idea that through the "other Eve" a part of the sin of +the first Eve was expiated. But genuine appreciation and respect were +only possible after base sensuality had been contrasted with spiritual +love, whose vehicle again was woman. Now the +"eternal-feminine"—contrasted with the "earthly-feminine"—drew the +lovers upwards, and this new emotion threw such a glamour over the whole +sex, that it never entirely died away; if to-day women are respected and +their efforts at emancipation supported, they are not indebted, as they +are sometimes told, to Christian ethics, but rather to the mundane +culture which had its origin at the courts of the Provençal lords, whose +ideals ultimately became the controlling ideals of Europe, and whose +inmost essence still influences the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p> + +<p>The evolution of love had obviously arrived at a stage when respect was +considered due to women—though not perhaps to all women. I will not go +to the courts of the great for evidence, but merely relate an episode +from the life of the Dominican friar Suso: "In crossing a field, Suso +met on a narrow path a poor, respectable woman. When he was close to +her, he stepped off the dry path and stood in the mud, waiting for her +to pass. The woman, who knew him, was astonished. 'How is it, Sir,' she +said, 'that you, a venerable priest, are humbly standing aside to allow +me, a poor woman, to pass, when it were far more meet that I should +stand aside and make room for you?' 'Why, my good woman,' replied Suso, +'I like to honour all women for the sake of the gentle Mother of God in +Heaven.'"</p> + +<p>It may seem extraordinary, but this absolutely unphilosophical, and +really paradoxical emotion, found an appreciator in the German +philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of Christianity. In his <i>Essence +of Christianity</i>, as well as in his treatise <i>On the Cult of Mary</i>, he +refers to it more than once. "The holy Virgin," he says, "the Mother of +God, is the only divine and positive, that is to say, the only lovable +and poetical figure of Christian mythology, and the only one worthy of +worship; for Mary is the goddess of beauty, the goddess of love, the +goddess of humanity, the goddess of nature, the goddess of freedom from +dogma." Feuerbach is right. The Lady of Heaven stands for the delivery +from dogma, because she had her origin in spontaneous emotion, clothed +with but a few rags of dogma. "The monks vowed the vow of chastity," he +continues in his great work; "they suppressed the sexual impulse, but in +exchange they had the personification of womanhood, of love, in the +Virgin in Heaven. The more their ideal, fictitious representative of her +sex became an object of spontaneous love, the more easily could they +dispense with the women of flesh and blood. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> more they emphasised in +their lives the complete suppression of sexuality, the more prominent +became the part which the Virgin played in their emotions; she usurped +in many cases, the place of Christ, and even the place of God." +Feuerbach then explains the need of man to project his noblest +sentiments on Heaven, and lays much stress on the necessity of believing +in the Mother of God, because the love of a child for its mother is the +first strong feeling of man. "Where the faith in the Mother of God +declines, the faith in the Son of God, and in God the Father, declines +also."</p> + +<p class='tbrk'>I will now leave the region of the historical and examine the emotion +whose reality and influence I have substantiated, from a timeless +standpoint, for my principal point is the psychical, and more +particularly the metaphysical consummation of the emotion of love. The +sole object of the abundant evidence I have been compelled to adduce is +my desire to prove the existence and significance of all the emotions +which stir the soul, and in the later Middle Ages strove so powerfully +to express themselves. My thesis that sexuality and love are opposed +principles will no doubt be rejected, for, under the strong influence of +the theory of evolution, all the world is to-day agreed that love is +nothing but the refinement of the sexual impulse. I maintain that (as +far as man is concerned) they differ very essentially, and I have +attempted to prove their incommensurability by submitting historical +facts. That they may, and will, ultimately merge, is my unalterable +conviction. My assertion that something so fundamental as the personal +love of man and woman did not exist from the beginning, but came into +existence in the course of history, at a not very remote period, may +seem even more strange. My only reply is that instead of advancing +opinions I have brought forward facts and allowed them to speak for +themselves. Moreover, to my mind the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> realisation of the intimate +connection of love and evolving personality is a far more magnificent +proof of the soundness of the evolutionary theory than the reflection +that we have received all things ready-made from the hands of nature. +Has it not been proved to us that the religious consciousness of the +divinity of the human soul was also evolved in historical time, and has +never again disappeared?</p> + +<p>Every strong love which finds no response is fraught with the +possibility of an infinite unfolding; it may powerfully seize the whole +soul and make life a tragedy. But this tragedy is not of the very +essence of tragedy, inasmuch as here we have merely love confronted by +an unsurmountable obstacle, meeting and overwhelming it; the discord is +not inherent. Many a lover suffering from unrequited love, is born with +the tendency to become unhappy, with a secret will to the voluptuousness +of pain and melancholy; he will enjoy his unhappiness, perhaps become +productive through it. Thus, this deliberately unhappy love may be +regarded as an analogy to genuine metaphysical eroticism. For the +worship of woman is in its essence infinite striving; its object is +always unattainable, an illusion. Every earthly love, even if it finds +no response at all, may, in principle, be gratified, and is only unhappy +if external circumstances intervene. But the love of the Madonna is in +itself fraught with the tragic impossibility of requital; its foundation +is the recognition, or divination, of the fact that mortal women are too +insignificant for a passion which yearns for infinitude. A lover filled +with the longing to glorify a woman and worship her as a divine being, +has frequently experienced a certain disappointment. The beloved may +have died young—as did Beatrice—without his ever having come into +close contact with her; instinctively his soul turns heavenward—and +imagination has ample scope to transform and transfigure the dead. Or he +may have been disappointed in his mistress; it may have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> been that he, +attuned to pure, spiritual love, has found her all too human. He flees +from reality into the world of dreams, and envelops her with the veil of +mysteriousness and divinity. Purely spiritual love is an intense +emotion, and as men and women of flesh and blood cannot always live at +high pressure, hours of dejection and disappointment will necessarily +have to be experienced. The soul takes refuge in an illusion which +becomes more and more an end in itself, and gradually the lover creates +an inaccessibly lofty, celestial woman. For purely spiritual love +aspires to absolute transcendency; it cannot bear contact with every-day +life. The psychologists of the present day tell us that a feeling, in +becoming spiritualised, loses strength,—history teaches us that in the +case of great souls the opposite is the rule.</p> + +<p>These suggestions purpose to explain the inception of an ecstatic love; +but the true metaphysical erotic is born and needs no outside stimulus; +his heart yearns for the inaccessible from the very beginning. There are +certain elements of feeling which must be present in his soul +simultaneously: a religious elementary feeling tending to the +metaphysical; the need of a sacred—a divine—being, as the foundation +of all existing things; a powerful and purely spiritual craving for +love, hurt, perhaps unconsciously, in early youth, and finally an +imagination endowed with plastic force—artistic tendencies. In the case +of the mystic the soul, too, is filled with the consciousness of the +divine; he, too, has the capacity for a great love, but with him it is +not the love of woman, but of something universal, not individualised, +the world, the cosmos, God.</p> + +<p>While the mystic attempts to embody the inconceivable Deity in his soul, +the worshipper of the Madonna, like the artist, imaginatively creates a +being which he sets up for contemplation at the greatest possible +distance. The mystic is blind, as it were; he is yearning personified, +and he would force God<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> into his soul. The metaphysical lover needs a +plastic figure which, in the extremest case, may represent the whole +world to him, and this figure must be a woman. It is a historical +accident that this woman is frequently connected with a woman of +ecclesiastical tradition, an accident strengthened by insufficient +creative power on the part of the lover, or lack of courage and +self-confidence. He is grateful for the support given to him by +tradition. The greatest metaphysical lovers, Dante, Goethe and +Michelangelo, freely created the objects of their love; the Protestant +Goethe—whom some people even accuse of paganism—clung more closely +than either of the others to the Mary of Catholicism (in the final scene +of <i>Faust</i>). The worship of the Madonna is the love of great solitary +souls, and—as is proved by Goethe—of the great souls in the hours of +their last solitude.</p> + +<p>While there was only unindividualised sexual instinct, the chastity of +woman was of no account; we have seen that neither the Eastern nations +nor the Greeks attached any value to it. The woman who had best +fulfilled her vocation as a mother, was the woman most highly respected. +In the East, as well as with Jews and Romans, a woman could be divorced +by her husband for sterility. The only women who were, to some extent, +appreciated for their own sakes, were the Greek hetaerae. But when +asceticism became a moral value, chastity, too, was regarded as a +virtue, and personal love between two individuals invested it with a +profound significance. Henceforth woman should no longer be regarded as +the vehicle for the gratification of male sensuality; it should be her +mission to lead the lover to spiritual perfection. The fusion of the +older ideal of womanhood, the mother (acknowledged and sanctioned by +religion in the mother of the Saviour), with the newer ideal, the +Virgin, created the ideal of the late Middle Ages: the virgin with the +Child. Here the natural vocation of woman and the fantastic mission laid +upon her by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> man were united in a paradoxical higher intuition, and it +is superfluous to point out that the most irreligious minds of the +Renascence, as well as those of all later eras, have to this day +worshipped this ideal, and never wearied of representing it under new +forms.</p> + +<p>But the worship of the Virginal Mother contains another element, an +element of which man in his contact with woman is deeply conscious: the +element of mystery. To a man a young girl, untouched by the faintest +breath of sensuality, has a quality of strangeness and mysteriousness +(this is probably a result of European sentiment), and at all times the +woman who has become a mother has been regarded with a slight feeling of +superstitious awe. In the Virginal Mother these two vaguely reverential +feelings are blended; she is a strange and awe-inspiring being, and man, +divining a mystery, bows down before her.</p> + +<p>Otto Weininger was the first to give us a psychology of the cult of the +Madonna, and he did it in a manner which proved his entire comprehension +of this peculiar sentimental disposition. He realised and pointed out +the contrast between sexuality and eroticism (his terms for sexual +impulse and love), but in accordance with his extreme mental disposition +he left these two principles in irreconcilable conflict, while I regard +their antithesis merely in the light of a transient phase which will be +followed by a reconciling synthesis. Weininger is, I believe, in +conflict with spiritual reality when (guided by ethical, not +psychological considerations) he proposes the theory that a man endows +the beloved woman with all the lofty values he desires for himself. "He +projects his ideal of an absolutely perfect being on another human +being, and this and nothing else is the meaning of his love." "To bestow +all the qualities one would like to possess, but never can quite +possess, on another individual, to make it the representative of all +values,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> that is to love." It is a commonplace experience that genuine +love will awaken in the soul new and transcendent emotions, compared to +which all previous experience appears petty and insignificant. The waves +of this emotion are able to carry the lover to the infinite, or at least +his emotion will help him to divine the infinite. He sees, unexpectedly, +his inmost soul revealed to him, he has exceeded the limits upon which +he has hitherto looked as a matter of course; the barrier between him +and the universe has fallen, the whole world belongs to him; the egoist +becomes less selfish, the cruel man gentle, the dullard clairvoyant; +every man feels that he has become greater and more human. This is +neither illusion nor projection, nor is it a subtle, psychical +deception—it is sober reality. Weininger's suspicion of a delusion is +nothing but the result of his ascetic solipsism, refusing to accept +another being's help in his striving for perfection, a consequence of +the one-sided, sterile cult of his individual soul, a noble but puerile +pride refusing to be indebted to the world and to his fellow-men, the +fanatical, metaphysical dualism which is so often met with in the second +stage of eroticism, and to which stage he belongs.</p> + +<p>Weininger shrank from the idea that an individual might be made the +means to an end, instead of being an end in itself. In my opinion his +justification for the translation of this formula—framed by Kant for +pure ethics—to empirical psychology, is doubtful. To use an individual +only as a means to an end which is alien to his inmost being, is +certainly immoral. But all social life is based on a mutual relationship +of means and ends; a man is an end in himself at the same time that he +is a means to other individuals and the community. The teacher is a +means as far as his pupils are concerned; the poet is a means in respect +to all who seek in his writings information or recreation. To carry the +stigmatisation of these facts to a logical conclusion, one would have to +call<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> it immoral to accept anything from parents or teachers; one would +have to reject every good influence—which always comes from +outside—and become completely absorbed in the cult of one's own soul. +One would even have to object to being born, and would have to create +one's self out of nothing. It has always been regarded as the splendid +privilege of great men to exert an ennobling influence on others—why, +therefore, should the influence of a beloved woman on her lover be +objectionable?</p> + +<p>Weininger's error in the sphere of eroticism arises from the fact of his +imprisoning love in a formula which is by no means applicable to it. In +love the mutual relationship of means and ends does not exist, the lover +feels that the beloved is always an end in herself in the highest sense; +he would find it impossible inwardly to establish such a relationship +between himself and her; very frequently himself, his well-being and his +life, are of no account to him if he can serve her. Weininger's +assertion that at the consummation of love every woman is merely the +means of gratifying a man's passion, is simply not true. On the +contrary, it is a characteristic of genuine love that the physical +embrace is of no great importance, does not even rise to full +consciousness. The personality of the beloved is everything, physical +sensation nothing. Weininger identifies love with passion and his +argument is easily refutable by the experience of many. In love there is +neither means nor end; if, however, categoric formulas must be used, one +might speak of a reciprocal action. Equally erroneous is his +corresponding assertion that the artist loves a woman spiritually, that +is, in the sense of deifying her, for the purpose of drawing from her +inspiration for his work. If he loves her, then his love is the alpha +and omega of his striving, and if love inspires him to achieve a +masterpiece, the effect of love on him must be considered great and +good, because it is a creative effect.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> + +<p>The extreme individualistic ideal would lead to an absolutely +unproductive view of life. Asceticism stands condemned because it is +unproductive. I may regard an Indian fakir who has become so godlike +that he can sustain life on six grains of rice a day, and draw breath +once every quarter of an hour—to say nothing of speech or +cleanliness—as a very strange individual; but I see nothing positive or +important in him. The road which leads from the individual to the +universal cannot be the rejection of the world; it must be its +perfection, resulting from productivity of mind, or soul, or deed. He +who on principle refuses to be productive, condemns himself to +annihilation in the higher sense. I admit that he who works at his own +perfection does good work, too; but it is the inexplicable secret of all +truly creative labour—in the highest as well as in the lowest +sense—that it must ultimately affect the world and eternity. The +strongest emotions, the inner illumination of the mystic and the love of +the great erotic, have been conceived in the <i>heart of hearts</i>; and have +ultimately grown beyond their creator, from the individual to the +universal. The more intimate and powerful the creative impulse has been, +the more retarded and abundant may, perhaps, be the effect. But the +chain which links the great soul to humanity cannot be broken, the work +will make itself manifest—the work of deed, the work of the mind, the +work of love—I do not say to "the public," but to life, to the world. +The creative personality alone is the father of the objective values of +civilisation.</p> + +<p>The great love which led Dante, Goethe and Wagner to the summits of +humanity is in the highest sense positive and creative. And he who +realises that love is not subject to sexual impulse, who knows it as +something purely personal, foreign and even hostile to the genus, must +admit that it is one of the very highest of values. A contrary ethic is +sterile, Indian, unproductive, not European. I am well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> aware that +Weininger did not explicitly draw this conclusion; but he rejects +spiritual love because it endows the lover with new capacities, the +capacities of growth and perfection, and he is therefore in the last +resort a representative of philosophic nihilism.</p> + + +<p><br /></p> +<p class='center'><i>(c) Dante and Goethe</i></p> + +<p>The worship of woman found its climax in Dante. Through the work of his +youth, the <i>Vita Nuova</i> and his masterpiece, <i>The Divine Comedy</i>, we can +trace step by step the stages of the road, beginning with a glimpse of a +young girl in Florence, and ending with the incorporation of a woman +into the world-system. We are face to face with an extraordinary process +of evolution. The young girl he had seen a few times, and who died in +her youth, goes on growing and developing in his soul, until, at last, +in him the will to raise woman above time into eternity, the will to +make her a member of the divine system, reaches its full realisation. +What had been begun by the troubadours and fully comprehended by the +poets of the <i>sweet new style</i>, reached completion in Dante, and, was +henceforth an eternal value for all humanity.</p> + +<p>We see that the later troubadours were inclined to blend the lady of +their heart with the universal Lady of Heaven; the need of deifying the +loved woman was at the root of many dubious growths, and possibly these +early poets were also to some extent influenced by their dread of the +Inquisition (which never gained much importance in Italy). The new poets +deepened this feeling, stripped it of all externalities, and appeared +before the adored simply as lovers. They did not require the dogmatic +support of the Church, their own feeling was sufficient guarantee. +Dante, moreover, was possessed by a craving for an absolutely perfect +and consistent world-system, and had, besides, the power to build it up +and people it with sublime intelligences. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> in this system, the crown +and perfection of the mediaeval-Catholic conception of the universe, he +assigned to the love of his youth a high and permanent place by the side +of the deities. Dante thus raised his individual feeling to a universal +dogma, and enriched the Catholic heaven by his personal love. What for +two hundred years had been a dream and a desire, had become a matter of +faith and truth. Now, and not until now, love and religion were one; the +love of a woman had been included in the system of eternal verities, and +had become identical with the love of immortality. "Love which moves the +sun and all the stars" was acknowledged as a fundamental feeling. The +anchoring of the subjective in the eternal was achieved in this +metaphysical setting: the deification of the beloved; and no greater +gift was ever vouchsafed to man than the creation of metaphysically true +beings and values. All that had been done before had merely prepared the +ground for this great deed: the enshrinement of the beloved in the heart +of the divine secrets.</p> + +<p>The <i>Vita Nuova</i>, which is at once a glorified historical record and the +greatest testimony of metaphysical love, emphasises from the outset the +inspiring, purifying influence emanating from the beloved; Beatrice is +"the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtue." "When I saw her +coming towards me and could hope for her salutation, the world held no +enemy for me, yea, I was filled with the fire of brotherly love to such +an extent, that I was ready to forgive anybody who had ever offended me. +And whoever had begged me for a gift, I should have replied: Love! and +my face would have been full of humility." Even before his love had been +translated to the world beyond, he portrayed spiritual love as hardly +any other poet before or after him. The women of Florence ask Dante: +"Why doest thou love this lady, seeing that thou canst not even bear her +presence? Tell us, for the end of such love must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> be incomprehensible to +men." And he replies: "Ladies, the end and aim of my love is but the +salutation of that lady; therein I find that beatitude which is the goal +of my desire. And now that it has pleased her to deny me her salutation, +my whole happiness is contained in that which can never perish." And the +women: "Tell us, then, wherein lies such happiness?" "In the words that +praise my lady" (that is to say in the emotion which is an end in itself +and in its artistic expression). The lover never exchanged a word with +her; had he done so, attempting to establish a reciprocal relationship, +Beatrice, bereft of his idealising love, would have had to descend from +her pedestal and show herself a girl like all the rest. Not until after +her deification has become an established fact, does Beatrice (in the +beginning of the <i>Divine Comedy</i>) remember her lover and come to save +him. In one of his poems Dante says that not every woman could inspire +such a love, but only a woman of peculiar nobility of character. It is +very apparent that Dante, at first, was not sure of himself, and that he +only gradually discovered the new consciousness which was stirring his +soul; with every chapter the beloved recedes to a greater distance and +becomes more sacred to him.</p> + +<p>It is quite in keeping with all this that our knowledge of this girl of +eighteen is very vague and uncertain. Some of Dante's commentators +believe her to have been a figment of his brain, a woman who never +lived, or an allegory of wisdom, virtue, the Church, theology, etc. But +at the death of her father Beatrice again behaves like any other earthly +maiden. There is a grain of truth in every one of these theories, for +Dante was a great scholastic as well as a great poet, and in more +advanced years he felt a need somehow to connect the love of his youth +with the system of the Church; this could be done in an allegorical way +without being inwardly untruthful.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p> + +<p>Vague forces, which the lover himself realises as mysterious, run high +in the <i>Vita Nuova</i> and in the poems; the lover has hallucinations in +sleep and sickness. In the third canzone Dante speaks of the +impossibility of comprehending what gave him a glimpse of the nature of +his mistress. It was a foreboding of new and great things, struggling +slowly and gradually to take shape, for the creation of a world-system, +one of whose supporting pillars was personal love of an individual, was +an unprecedented achievement. "When she speaks a spirit inclines from +heaven." The angels implore God to call this "miracle" into their midst, +but God wills that they shall have patience until the "Hope of the +Blessed" appears.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Love says of her can there be mortal thing</div> +<div>At once adorned so richly and so pure?</div> +<div>Then looks on her and silently affirms</div> +<div>That heaven designed in her a creature new.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">C. Lyell</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Again and again recurs the motif of her beauty before which the world +must fall prostrate. In a sonnet not included in the <i>Vita Nuova</i> he +says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>In heaven itself that lady had her birth,</div> +<div>I think, and is with us for our behoof;</div> +<div>Blessed are they who meet her on the earth.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">D.G. Rossetti</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The lover has a foreboding of the fate awaiting him: "I have set my feet +into that phase of life from whence there is no return." He divines the +sorrow to which love has predestined him. But others, too, divining that +this man "expects more, perhaps, of love than others," ask him to +explain to them the essence of love, and he answers them with the famous +sonnet:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div><i>Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa</i></div> +<div>(Love and the gentle heart are but one thing.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The death of Beatrice is accompanied by the same phenomena as was the +death of Christ: the sun lost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> its brilliance, stars appeared in the +sky, birds fell to the ground, dead, the earth trembled; God visibly +intervened in the course of nature.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead</div> +<div>Such an exceeding glory went up hence,</div> +<div>That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire,</div> +<div>Until a sweet desire</div> +<div>Entered Him for that lovely excellence,</div> +<div>So that He bade her to Himself aspire;</div> +<div>Counting this weary and most evil place</div> +<div>Unworthy of a thing so full of grace.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">D.G. Rossetti</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In the 29th chapter, which we, to-day, do not readily understand, Dante +established by a system of symbolical numbers a connection between +Beatrice and the Trinity; the deification of the beloved had been +achieved in thought and emotion, religion enriched by a new divinity. +"Love, weeping, has filled my heart with new knowledge," he says, at the +conclusion of the work of his youth. I repeat what I have already said +in another place, and supported by passages from the <i>Divine Comedy</i>: It +was never Dante's intention to write fictitious poems in our meaning of +the term, but at every hour of his life he was convinced that he was +proclaiming the pure truth; he knew himself to be the chosen vehicle for +the interpretation of the eternal system of the world.</p> + +<p>At the conclusion of the <i>Vita Nuova</i>, Beatrice is a divine being, +devoid of all emotion—enthroned in Heaven; in the <i>Comedy</i> she becomes +her lover's saviour and redeemer, and through him a helper of all +humanity. The love of the youth had found no response in the heart of +the Florentine maiden, but the soul of the glorified woman was inspired +by love of him. She trembles for him, and when Mary's messenger +admonishes her: "Why doest thou not help him who has loved thee so +much?" she sends Virgil to him as a guide and finally herself leads her +redeemed lover to God. Now she responds to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> love; she has even wept +for him. This ultimately fulfilled, but always chastely hidden longing +for love in return, gives the woman-worship of Dante a peculiarly noble +charm. At the end of his journey through life he prays to her, who has +again disappeared from his sight, and his last confession is: "Into a +free man thou transform'st a slave."</p> + +<p>Love's greatest miracle has been made manifest in him; it has +transfigured and purified him, and made of the slave of the world and +its desires, a personality—the fundamental motif of love.</p> + +<p>There is a close connection between the metaphysical love of Dante and +Goethe's confession in the last scene of <i>Faust</i>, which reveals the +poet's deepest conviction, his final judgment of life. The confessions +of both poets are identical to the smallest detail. The <i>Divine Comedy</i> +represents the journey of humanity through the kingdoms of the world in +a manner unique and representative, applicable alike to all men, in the +sense of the Catholic Middle Ages. The fundamental idea of <i>Faust</i> is +again the desire of man to find the right way through the world. Here +also the journey through life is intended to be typical; it is +undertaken five hundred years later; the scene is laid for the most part +on the surface of the earth, but the ultimate goal of the wayfarer is +Heaven. Hell, instead of being a subterraneous region, is embodied in a +presence, accompanying and tempting man; modern man has no faithful +guide; he must himself seek the way which to the man of the Middle Ages +was clearly indicated in the Bible. The love of his youth (which in the +case of Dante fills a book in itself) is merely an episode at the +beginning of the tragedy—the lover wanders through all the kingdoms of +the world, finally to return home to the beloved.</p> + +<p>The last scene of <i>Faust</i> is an unfolding of metaphysical love into its +inherent multiplicity; its summit is the metaphysical love of woman. All +human striving is determined and crowned by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> saving grace of love. +Faust has no longer a specific name; he has dropped everything +subjective, and is briefly styled <i>a lover</i>; like Dante, he has become +representative of humanity. The hour of death revives the memory of the +love of his youth, apparently forgotten in the storm and stress of a +crowded life, yet never quite extinguished in the heart of his heart. +Margaret is present and guides him (as Beatrice guided Dante) upward, to +the <i>Eternal-Feminine</i>, that is to say, to the metaphysical consummation +of all male yearning for love. "The love from on high" saves Faust as it +has saved Dante. <i>The blessed boys</i> (who, as well as the angels, are +present in both poems) singing:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Whom ye adore shall ye</div> +<div>See face to face.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></div></div> +</div> + +<p>are again referring to the transcendently loving lover. Like Beatrice, +Margaret intercedes for him (intercession for her lover has always been +woman's profoundest prayer) with the Queen of Heaven:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Incline, oh incline,</div> +<div>All others excelling,</div> +<div>In glory aye dwelling,</div> +<div>Unto my bliss thy glance benign;</div> +<div>The loved one ascending,</div> +<div>His long trouble ending,</div> +<div>Comes back, he is mine!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>These words are more intimate and human than the words of Beatrice, but +fundamentally they mean the same thing. Dante, meeting Beatrice again, +says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>And o'er my spirit that so long a time</div> +<div>Had from her presence felt no shuddering dread,</div> +<div>Albeit my eyes discovered her not, there moved</div> +<div>A hidden virtue from her, at whose touch</div> +<div>The power of ancient love was strong within me.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>But when he who has said so much beholds her face to face, he is +stricken dumb.</p> + +<p>Beatrice receives Dante from his guide and herself unveils to him the +mysteries of life. Similarly Margaret beseeches the Virgin:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>To guide him, be it given to me</div> +<div>Still dazzles him the new-born day!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>and receives from on high the command which the symbolically burdened +Beatrice knows intuitively:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Ascend, thine influence feeleth he,</div> +<div>He'll follow on thine upward way.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>As Beatrice approaches, the angels sing:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh! Turn</div> +<div>Thy saintly eyes to this thy faithful one,</div> +<div>Who to behold thee many a wearisome pace</div> +<div>Hath measured.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And with the fundamental feeling of Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i> Faust +concludes:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The ever-womanly</div> +<div>Draws us above.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The earthly love of his youth is fulfilled in the dream of metaphysical +love, in the dream of a divine woman. The genius creates, at the +conclusion of his life, the fulfilment of all longing. It may sound +paradoxical, but Faust—like Dante and Peer Gynt—unconsciously sought +Margaret in the hurly-burly of the world; not the young girl whom he had +seduced and deserted, but the <i>Eternal-Feminine</i>, the purely spiritual +love, which in his youth he divined, but destroyed, bound by the +shackles of desire. To Dante, to whom life and poem were one, as well as +to Goethe-Faust, the memory of first love remained typical of all +genuine, profound feeling; with Dante love and Beatrice are identical. +In the soul of these two men metaphysical love, the longing for the +eternal in woman, which they did not find on earth, gradually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> awoke to +life. Both place the glorified mistress by the side of another woman, +the Catholic Queen of Heaven. In Dante's, as well as in Goethe's +Paradise two women, a personal one and a universal one, are loved and +adored. The second woman, too, has her exclusive, ecstatic worshipper. +St. Bernard, the <i>Doctor Marianus</i> of Dante, prostrating himself before +her, addresses to her the sublime prayer which begins:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, Virgin! Mother! Daughter of thy Son!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>and in <i>Faust</i> we meet again the <i>Doctor Marianus</i> burning—as the +representative of the totality of her worshippers—with the "sacred joy +of love" (Dante says</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The Queen of Heaven for whom my soul</div> +<div>Burns with love's rapture)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>and pronouncing the most beautiful prayer to the Madonna which the world +possesses, and which is almost identical with Dante's:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Virgin, pure from taint of earth,</div> +<div>Mother, we adore thee,</div> +<div>With the Godhead one by birth,</div> +<div>Queen, we bow before thee!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And, prostrated before her:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Penitents, her saviour-glance</div> +<div>Gratefully beholding,</div> +<div>To beatitude advance,</div> +<div>Still new pow'rs unfolding!</div> +<div>Thine each better thought shall be,</div> +<div>To thy service given!</div> +<div>Holy Virgin, gracious be,</div> +<div>Mother, Queen of Heaven!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In the Divine Comedy St. Bernard prays:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great,</div> +<div>That he who grace desireth and comes not</div> +<div>To thee for aidence, fain would have desire</div> +<div>Fly without wings.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The <i>Chorus mysticus</i> could equally well form the conclusion of the +<i>Comedy</i>. The <i>inadequate</i> which to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> <i>fulness groweth</i>, is what the +Provençals already, in their time, realised as <i>folly</i>, as a paradox: +the metaphysical love of woman, for ever remaining dream and longing, +always unfulfilled, the eternal-feminine.</p> + +<p>As the <i>Mater Gloriosa</i> appears, Dante exclaims:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thenceforward what I saw</div> +<div>Was not for words to speak, nor memory's self</div> +<div>To stand against such outrage on her skill.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And Goethe:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>In starry wreath is seen</div> +<div>Lofty and tender,</div> +<div>Midmost the heavenly queen,</div> +<div>Known by her splendour.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Here the "sacred fire of love," metaphysical eroticism, has reached its +absolute climax. The universe is represented by a divine woman, and man, +abandoning himself to her, worships her. Goethe's <i>Faust</i> concludes at +this point, but Dante went further, right into the heart of the eternal +glory of the Deity, there to lose himself.</p> + +<p>I have previously said that the last scene of <i>Faust</i> was the final +unfolding of the manifold blossom of metaphysical eroticism, and I will +proceed to establish my point. Hitherto I have used the term +metaphysical eroticism always in its narrow sense of love of woman. +Henceforth I shall use it in its broader meaning of mystical love in +general, all love that is projected on the transcendental and the +divine. Emotion is the specific domain of humanity, its power, its +essence. And in the profoundest emotion, in love, a connection between +the temporal and the eternal may be divined. Hence the Christian mystery +of mysteries, God giving His Son to the world for love of humanity; God +unable to approach the world other than as a lover—sacrificing Himself +for the sake of love. We cannot conceive the Sublime with any other +principal function than that of love; for love is the deepest and +profoundest emotion of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> human heart, and, in accordance with the +first postulate, must therefore be the soul of the universe. On this +point all mystics and all metaphysical ecstatics are agreed; "God is +love" is written in the Gospel of St. John. "Love which moves the sun +and all the stars," stands at the termination of Dante's masterpiece: +and in <i>Faust</i> the <i>Pater Profundus</i> confesses:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>So love, almighty, all-pervading,</div> +<div>Does all things mould, does all sustain.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>He is still wrestling for divine love; he still has to fight against the +temptations of doubt (of thought),</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, God! My troubled thoughts composing,</div> +<div>My needy heart do thou illume!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>But the true enthusiastic lover of the divine, compelled to annihilate +himself so as to become absorbed in God, the lover who no longer knows +the difference between pain and delight, is represented by the <i>Pater +Ecstaticus</i>: The condition of rest is foreign to him, ceaselessly moving +up and down, he sings:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Joy's everlasting fire,</div> +<div>Love's glow of pure desire,</div> +<div>Pang of the seething breast,</div> +<div>Rapture a hallowed guest!</div> +<div>vDarts pierce me through and through,</div> +<div>Lances my flesh subdue,</div> +<div>Clubs me to atoms dash,</div> +<div>Lightnings athwart me flash,</div> +<div>That all the worthless may</div> +<div>Pass like a cloud away,</div> +<div>While shineth from afar,</div> +<div>Love's gem, a deathless star!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>These ejaculations completely exhaust the emotional life of the +self-destructive metaphysical erotic—he is conscious of nothing but his +passion of love which eclipses all else. With him the second form of +metaphysical love, the love-death, is reached. Goethe, in creating this +character, must have had in his mind the unique Jacopone da Todi. For +this rapturous love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> was the keynote of Jacopone's character, his whole +life was one great ecstasy:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>My heart was all to broken,</div> +<div>As prostrate I was lying,</div> +<div>With dear love's fiery token</div> +<div>Swift from the archer flying;</div> +<div>Wounded, with sweet pain soaken,</div> +<div>Peace became war—and dying,</div> +<div>My soul with pain was soaken,</div> +<div>Distraught with throes of love.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>In transports I am dying,</div> +<div>Oh! Love's astounding wonder!—</div> +<div>For love, his fell spear plying,</div> +<div>Has cleft my heart asunder.</div> +<div>Around the blade are lying</div> +<div>Sharp teeth, my life to sunder,</div> +<div>In rapture I am dying,</div> +<div>Distraught with throes of love.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, Love! oh, Love! oh, Jesus, my desire,</div> +<div>Oh, Love! I hold thee clasped in sweet embrace!</div> +<div>Oh, Love! embracing thee, could I expire!</div> +<div>Oh, Love! I'd die to see thee face to face.</div> +<div>Oh, Love! oh, Love! I burn in rapture's fire,</div> +<div>I die, enravished in the soul's embrace.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The legend has it that the heart of Jacopone broke with the intensity of +love. This would have been a love-death of cosmic grandeur.</p> + +<p>Before Jacopone St. Bernard, in whom all the radiations of metaphysical +eroticism are traceable, was consumed by similar emotions. Some of his +Latin poems very much resemble the poems of his successor:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, most sweet Jesu, Saviour blest,</div> +<div>My yearning spirit's hope and rest,</div> +<div>To thee mine inmost nature cries,</div> +<div>And seeks thy face with tears and sighs.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Thou, my heart's joy where'er I rove,</div> +<div>Thou art the perfecting of love;</div> +<div>Thou art my boast—all praise be thine,</div> +<div>Jesu, the world's salvation, mine!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> </div> +<div>Then his embrace, his holy kiss,</div> +<div>The honeycomb were naught to this!</div> +<div>'Twere bliss fast bound to Christ for aye,</div> +<div>But in these joys is little stay.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>This love with ceaseless ardour burns,</div> +<div>How wondrous sweet no stranger learns;</div> +<div>But tasted once, the enraptured wight,</div> +<div>Is filled with ever new delight.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Now I behold what most I sought;</div> +<div>Fulfilled at last my longing thought;</div> +<div>Lovesick, my soul to Jesus turns,</div> +<div>And all my heart within me burns.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">T.G. Crippen</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>We read in his writings: "Blessed and sacred is he to whom it has been +given to experience this in his earthly life; even if he have +experienced it only once, for the space of a fleeting minute. For to +melt away completely, as it were, as if one had ceased to exist, to be +emptied of self, dissolved in holy emotion, has not been given to mortal +life, but is the state of the blessed."</p> + +<p>I shall have to refer to both men in a future chapter, when I shall +examine the degenerate growths of metaphysical eroticism; for the ardour +of their souls was frequently kindled by sexual imaginings; in the case +of emotional mystics it is often difficult to distinguish between +sensual conceptions and the pure love of God (a fact which does not, +however, justify the superficial opinion that all mysticism is diverted +sexuality).</p> + +<p>It is obvious that this love of God is not the original creation of the +lover, as is the deifying love of woman, but the mystic love whose +self-evident object is God or eternity. Jacopone's (and later on +Zinzendorf's) love of Jesus, though projected on a historical +personality, was fundamentally the same thing. The love of God also—and +in this connection I might mention Jacob Boehme, Alphonso da Liguori, +Novalis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>—is metaphysical eroticism; but I have restricted my subject to +the metaphysical love of woman, and shall not overstep my limits. I will +merely elucidate a little more the last scene of <i>Faust</i>.</p> + +<p><i>Pater seraphicus</i>, a title given both to St. Francis and to +Bonaventura—requires but a few words: he, too, praises metaphysical +love, the essence of the supreme spirits.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thus the spirits' nature stealing</div> +<div>Through the ether's depths profound;</div> +<div>Love eternal, self-revealing,</div> +<div>Sheds beatitude around.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>But even the <i>more perfect angels</i> cannot free themselves from the +dualism of all things human (body and soul)—an unmistakable confession +of metaphysical dualism:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Parts them God's love alone,</div> +<div class='i2'>Their union ending.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The identity of the last scene of <i>Faust</i>, Goethe's masterpiece, and the +conclusion of Dante's <i>Divine Comedy</i>, is so obvious that I do not think +any one could deny it. I have pointed out the thought underlying both +works, and could easily advance further proof of their similarity, but I +will keep within the limits of the last scene which contains the +totality of metaphysico-erotic yearning, and I contend that it is very +remarkable that a lifetime after the composition of Margaret, Faust (and +with him Goethe) very old, very wise, and a little cold, having had +love-affairs with demi-goddesses, and having finally renounced the love +of woman, found his mission and his happiness in uninterrupted, +productive activity. He has discovered the final value in work. But the +long-forgotten heaven opens and the love of his youth comes to meet him. +Stripped of everything earthly, a divine being, she still loves him and +shows him the way to salvation, presented under the aspect of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> +<i>Eternal-Feminine</i>—exactly as in the <i>Divine Comedy</i>. There must be a +reason for the uniformity of feeling in the case of the two greatest +subjective poets of Europe (Shakespeare was greater than either, but he +was quite impersonal), for the logical possibility that Goethe imitated +Dante, and borrowed his supreme values from him, cannot be maintained +for a moment. Their mutual characteristic is the longing for +metaphysical love. When these great lovers experienced for the first +time the sensation of love, their hearts were thrown open to the +universe, they had the first powerful experience of eternity, and they +became poets. The first love and the cosmic consciousness of genius were +simultaneously present, they were one in their inmost soul. (With the +philosopher it is a different matter, for to him the love of woman is +not fraught with the same tremendous significance.) This experience of +first love, awakening the consciousness of eternity, remained to them +for all time interwoven with religion and metaphysics—interwoven, that +is to say, with all transcendent longing. And though the aged Faust had +believed it to be buried in the dark night of forgotten things, it was +still alive in his inmost heart, and the dying man's vision of the +Divine took colour and shape from it.</p> + +<p>The source of both great poems was the poet's will to assimilate the +world and recreate it, impregnated with his own soul; the secret motive +powers were the mystic love of eternity and the love of woman which had +outgrown this world and aspired to the next. To Goethe, thirsting to +give a concrete shape to his yearning, God and eternity were too +intangible, too remote and incomprehensible—but the woman he loved with +religio-erotic intensity was familiar to him. The Eternal-Feminine is +thus not fraught with incomprehensibility, but is rather, and this +necessarily, the final conclusion. For this conclusion is a profession +of metaphysical eroticism, that is to say, the <i>Eternal-Feminine</i> in +contradistinction to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> <i>Transitory-Feminine</i>. Both Dante, the devout +son of the Middle Ages, and Goethe, the champion of modern culture, +demand, in virtue of the inherent right of their genius, the +consummation of their mystic yearning for love in another life, and +achieve the creation of the divine woman. Precisely because Margaret was +nothing but a little provincial, Goethe could sublimate her into a new +being, for the greater the tension between reality and the vision of the +soul, the greater is the task and the more gigantic the creative power +which such a task may develop. It has been said that, in this scene, +Goethe revealed leanings towards Catholicism. I do not pretend to deny +it offhand, but I must insist on these leanings being understood in the +sense of my premises. Goethe took from tradition those elements which +were able to materialise his spiritual life and gave them a new +interpretation. We are justified in believing that he accepted nothing +but what was conformable to his nature; the Madonna represented his +profoundest feeling and, like Dante (I attribute the greatest importance +to this), he created a new deity, moulded in the shape of his first +love, and placed it by the side of the universal Queen of Heaven, the +Madonna of the Catholic Church, transformed by love.</p> + +<p>The emotional life of both poets agrees fundamentally. They differ not +so much in feeling as in thought and in faith. Dante possessed +unshakable faith in the reality of his visions; eternal love in the +shape of Beatrice was awaiting him; his vision was pure, eternal truth. +The vision of Goethe, on the other hand, was poetic longing, tragical, +because the vision of the transcendent came to the modern poet only in +rare hours. Where Dante possessed, Goethe must seek, strive and err.</p> + +<p>The deifying love of woman is, as we have seen, the extreme development +of the second stage, in which sexual impulse and spiritual love are +strictly separated, in which man despises and fights his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> natural +instinct, or abandons himself to it—which is the same in +principle—while his soul, worshipping love, soars heavenward. This +dualism of feeling corresponds to the persistent dualism of Christianity +and the whole mediaeval period. But as Goethe is frequently looked upon +as a <i>monist</i>, my proposition that he was a dualist <i>in eroticis</i> will +possibly be rejected, in spite of the fact that his emotional life is +revealed to us with great lucidity. His first important work, his +<i>Werther</i>, which is also one of the most important monuments of +sentimental love, contains the germs of love as we understand it; the +love which is no longer content to look upon sexuality and soul as two +opposed principles, but strives to blend them in the person of the +beloved. I will revert to <i>Werther</i> later on. This third stage, love in +the modern sense, is programmatically established (as it were) in +<i>Elective Affinities</i>, but all the rest of the very abundant evidence of +his emotional life exhibits the typically dualistic feeling. Many of his +early poems evidence sexuality pure and simple; in the <i>Venetian +Epigrams</i> and in the <i>Roman Elegies</i> it is even held up as a positive +value. In the third Elegy, for instance, the poet's sensuality is linked +directly to the famous lovers of antiquity, and everything which aspires +beyond it is rejected. In the same way his <i>West-Eastern Divan</i> is +characterised by a gay sensuality with homo-sexual tendencies.</p> + +<p>The sensual quality of Goethe's eroticism was partly spent in his +relationship with Christiane Vulpius. The following passage, which forms +an interesting counterpart to Goethe's famous correspondence with +Charlotte von Stein, is taken from a letter written to Christiane +Vulpius during his absence from home. "The beds everywhere are very +wide, and you would have no reason for complaint, as you sometimes have +at home. Oh, my sweet heart! There is no such happiness on earth as +being together."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p> + +<p>If Christiane represented sensuality, unrelieved by any other feeling, +Frau von Stein represented the most important object of Goethe's craving +for spiritual love. These two liaisons were to some extent +contemporaneous; the <i>Roman Elegies</i> and the famous letters to Charlotte +von Stein were written at the same period. When she reproached him with +his love-affair with Christiane, he replied with consistent dualism: +"And what sort of an affair is it? Whose interests are suffering by it?" +Frau von Stein, his senior by seven years, was thirty-four years old, +and mother of seven children when Goethe first met her. According to +Schiller she "can never have been beautiful," and in a letter to Koerner +the latter says: "They say that their relationship (Goethe's and +Charlotte von Stein's) is absolutely pure and irreproachable." It was a +great mistake ever to regard this relationship as anything but a purely +spiritual one; Goethe never felt any passion for Charlotte; he called +her "his sister," the "guide of his soul"; he told her of his little +love-affairs and was never jealous of her husband. The following are a +few typical passages culled from his letters, arranged chronologically: +"My only love whom I can love without torment!" Then, quite in the +spirit of the <i>dolce stil nuovo</i>: "Your soul, in which thousands believe +in order to win happiness," "The purest, truest and most beautiful +relationship which (with the exception of my sister) ever existed +between me and any woman." "The relationship between us is so strange +and sacred, that I strongly felt, on that occasion, that it cannot be +expressed in words, that men cannot realise it." The following passage +written by Goethe when he was thirty, might have been written by +Guinicelli or by Dante: "You appeared to me like the Madonna ascending +into heaven; in vain did the abandoned mourner stretch out his arms, in +vain did his tearful glance plead for a last return—she was absorbed in +the splendour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> surrounding her, longing only for the crown hovering +above her head." "I long to be purified in triple fire so as to be +worthy of you." He addresses a prayer to her and says: "On my knees I +implore you to complete your work and make a good man of me." "While +writing Tasso, I worshipped you." Charlotte knew intuitively what he +desired of her, and remained silent and passive like the Madonna. Not a +single sensual, or even passionate word, replied to all these +utterances.</p> + +<p>In the course of time the relationship between the lovers became one of +equality; the note of adoration disappeared, and the keynote of his +letters became friendship and familiarity. "Farewell, sweet friend and +beloved, whose love alone makes me happy." In another letter he said +that all the world held no further prize for him, since he had found +everything in her. And just as spiritual love approached more and more +the mean of a familiar friendship, so was his sexuality concentrated on +a single woman, on Christiane, in this connection, too, seeking a mean. +But it is an important point that the fundamental dualistic feeling +remained unchanged. There was no woman in Goethe's life in regard to +whom he arrived at, or even aspired to, the blending of both emotions in +a higher intuition.</p> + +<p>Even before his friendship with Frau von Stein, at the time of his +engagement to Lili Schoenemann, Goethe experienced a spiritual love for +a girl he had never seen. He calls Countess Auguste Stolberg "his +angel," "his only, only maiden," "his golden child," and says: "I have +an intuition that you will save me from great tribulation, and that no +other being on earth could do it." These letters also contain the +significant passage: "Miserable fate which has denied me a happy mean." +And touching the love of his youth, Lotte, Goethe wrote to Kestner: "I +really had no idea that all that was in her, for I always loved her far +too much to observe her."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Princess in "Tasso" and "Iphigenia" who delivers Orestes from unrest +and insanity, are modelled on Charlotte. Tasso is unmistakably a +fantastic woman-worshipper, a fact of which Leonore is fully aware:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Now he exalts her to the starry heavens,</div> +<div>In radiant glory, and before that form</div> +<div>Bows down like angels in the realms above.</div> +<div>Then, stealing after her, through silent fields,</div> +<div>He garlands in his wreath each beauteous flower.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>He loves not us—forgive me what I say—</div> +<div>His lov'd ideal from the spheres he brings</div> +<div>And does invest it with the name we bear.</div> +<div>He has relinquished passion's fickle sway,</div> +<div>He clings no longer with delusion sweet</div> +<div>To outward form and beauty to atone</div> +<div>For brief excitement by disgust and hate.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></div></div> +</div> + +<p>And Tasso says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div class='i12'>My very knees</div> +<div>Trembled beneath me and my spirit's strength</div> +<div>Was all required to hold myself erect,</div> +<div>And curb the strong desire to throw myself</div> +<div>Prostrate before her. Scarcely could I quell</div> +<div>The giddy rapture.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The significant avowal addressed by Dante to Beatrice: "Into a free man +thou transform'st a slave," the seal of all great spiritual love, was +repeated by Goethe in his letters to Charlotte, and is again repeated in +Tasso:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Over my spirit's depths there comes a change;</div> +<div>Relieved from dark perplexity I feel,</div> +<div>Free as a god, and all I owe to you.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Very interesting is also a remark which Goethe made to Eckermann: "Woman +is a silver vessel in which we men lay golden apples. I did not deduce +my idea of woman from reality, but I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> born with it, or I conceived +it—God knows how." These notable words, deliberately pronounced, reveal +Goethe's feeling very clearly; he knows that there is a little +self-deception in his attitude towards woman, but he consciously and +lovingly clings to it. His pronouncements are not contradictions; it is +natural, almost essential, that in the soul of the highly-gifted and +highly-developed representative of a mature civilisation the whole +wealth of human emotions should be revivified. He possesses all +psychical qualities—at least potentially—and one element after the +other regains life and becomes productive. We shall see this with +startling clearness when we come to examine the emotional life of +Richard Wagner. The intimate connection between the individual and the +entire evolutionary process of the race will then become evident.</p> + +<p>It is remarkable that Dante, too, wrote a poem clearly expressive of the +fact that the beloved woman does not actually possess the qualities +ascribed to her, but that she has been endowed with them by the +imagination of her lover.</p> + +<p>I shall discuss the emotional life of only one other poet in detail, and +that one is Michelangelo. For the most part the poets whose emotions +were akin to that of Dante and Goethe were men who created their ideal +woman because reality left them unsatisfied. In passing I will mention +Beethoven, and his touching letter to his "immortal love" ("My angel, my +all, my I!"), whose name, in spite of all the strenuous attempts to +discover it, is to this day not known with any certainty; even if it +should ever be discovered, Beethoven's "immortal love" will yet remain a +figment of his brain, based on a human woman.</p> + +<p>Together with Beethoven, we may notice the other great "old bachelor" +Grillparzer, and his eternal fiancée Kathi Fröhlich, and the critical +Hebbel, who at the time of composing "Genovefa" wrote in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> his diary: +"All earthly love is merely the road to the heavenly love."</p> + +<p class='tbrk'>Before closing this chapter, I must draw attention to a strange fact in +connection with the psychology of races. All nations endowed with fair +mental gifts and a sympathetic understanding of nature, have in the +period of their youth and anthropomorphistic and animistic thought +worshipped light, and its source, the sun, as the supreme deity, the +giver of joy and abundance. All the benevolent deities of the Arians +were celestial beings, all the malevolent divinities spirits of +darkness: Olympian gods and the demons of the netherworld—Aesir and +Giants. To the naïve mind of the Indo-Germanic races it appeared a +matter of course that the sun, the conqueror of night and winter, the +fertilizing, life-giving deity, should be worshipped as the active male +principle, and represented as a god, while on the other hand the moon +was usually conceived as a female deity. In primitive Christianity +Christ, as the bringer of light, was worshipped under the symbol of the +sun. Thus we naturally find in the old and new Indo-Germanic languages +the designation of the sun—or the sun-god—of the masculine gender. In +the following words our word <i>sun</i> is easily recognisable:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Savar and svari (the oldest Indo-Germanic tongue).</div> +<div>svar and surya (Sanscrit; savitar—the sungod).</div> +<div>saval (the oldest European language).</div> +<div>savel (Gracco-Italian).</div> +<div>sol (Latin and related languages).</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In the Germanic languages and in the Prussian-Lithuanian both genders +occur. (Gothic sunnan and Old High-German sunno). <i>Sol</i> in the Norse +Edda is a female deity, and the Anglo-Saxon <i>sol</i> is also feminine. The +transition from the male to the female gender was achieved in the +Middle-High-German language of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and +the German language is the only one in which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> word <i>sun</i> is +feminine. As the old Teutonic deities of light were male (Baldur and +Sigurd), this change of gender must seem strange. The Germanic tribes at +all times observed natural phenomena with the greatest attention, +borrowed their ethical symbols from nature and used natural objects to +represent their highest values. The change of gender of the supreme +symbol of divinity, the sun, can only be explained by the fact that in +the period of woman-worship the highest value was no longer felt as male +but as female, that secretly a goddess had usurped the place of a god. +Very likely the minnesingers finally fixed the female gender when it had +become problematical, and worshipped the loved woman under the divine +symbol of "Lady Sun."</p> + +<p>The great erotic, Heinrich of Morungen, says in one of his poems that +his lady is radiant "as the sun at break of day." And also:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>My lady shines into the heart</div> +<div>As through the glass the sun does shine;</div> +<div>Thus the beloved lady mine</div> +<div>Is sweet as May, full of delight,</div> +<div>Unclouded sunshine, golden light.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Mary, who had been called <i>Maris Stella</i>, the morning star, gradually +assumed the symbol of the all-conquering sun. Suso, in one of his poems, +still clinging to the older epithet, makes use of a metaphor +corresponding to the breaking of the sun through clouds. "When the +radiant morning star, Mary, broke through the suffering of thy darkened +heart, it was saluted with gladness and with these words: Greeting, +beautiful, rising morning star, from the fathomless depths of all loving +hearts!" But he also calls Mary: "Thou dazzling mirror of the Eternal +Sun!" And his Biography contains the following beautiful passage: "And +his eyes were opened and he fell on his knees, saluting the rising +morning star, the tender queen of the light of heaven;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> as the little +birds in the summer time salute the day, so he saluted the luminous +bringer of the eternal day, and he spoke his salutation not +mechanically, but with a sweet low singing of his soul." This is pure +and genuine nature-worship mingled with the worship of Mary.</p> + +<p>So much for Suso. In Goethe's <i>Faust</i>, Doctor Marianus prays:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>In thy tent of azure blue,</div> +<div>Queen supremely reigning,</div> +<div>Let me now thy secret view,</div> +<div>Vision high obtaining.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>It is obvious that here the Queen of Heaven and the sun are conceived as +one. Eichendorff makes use of the metaphor:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The sun is smiling languidly</div> +<div>Like to a woman wondrous sweet.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The typically un-Teutonic modern poet, Alfred Mombert, on the other +hand, conceives the sun as a youth, and contrary to all custom, calls a +poem: <i>Der</i> Sonnengeist (the sun-spirit).</p> + +<p>The great Italians, also, were not unaware of this change of the sex of +the supreme value; at the conclusion of the <i>Paradise</i> there is a +passage (in St. Bernard's prayer) which points to a connection in +Dante's mind between the sun and the Queen of Heaven:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>"The love that moves the sun in heaven!"</div></div> +</div> + +<p><br /></p> +<p class='center'><i>(d) Michelangelo.</i></p> + +<p>In Michelangelo we meet the spirit of Plato and the plastic genius of +Greece raised to a higher plane and lit by the peculiar glory of +Christianity—the conception of the soul as an absolute value. +Michelangelo was thrilled by a passionate love of beauty; beauty +absolute, eternal and immutable. He felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> profoundly the need of +salvation, and he possessed an unprecedented power of spiritual vision. +In the end, added to all these things, came consuming love for a woman, +love raised to the pitch of self-destruction, an adoration which +entitles us to regard him, next to Dante, as the greatest metaphysical +lover of all times.</p> + +<p>At the court of the Medici at Florence, Ficinio had founded a Platonic +Academy, where Plato's works and the writings of Plotinus—his greatest +pupil—were after two thousand years translated and elucidated. Many +read and a few understood, but only in Michelangelo did the spirit of +Platonic Hellenism revive and become productive; the Platonic ideal of a +purely masculine culture, aesthetically and spiritually perfect, +illumined his soul; once again the unconditional cult of beauty and the +love of the perfect male form, which speaks to us from the <i>Dialogues</i>, +quickened an imagination, and boyhood and youth were portrayed in a +manner which has never since been equalled.</p> + +<p>Nearly all Michelangelo's youthful male figures—with the exception, +perhaps, of the gigantic David—deviate from the decidedly masculine and +approach the mean, the human in the abstract; thus they seem to us +imbued with a quality of femininity; they even exhibit decidedly female +characteristics. I have in mind first and foremost the youths depicted +on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (the most soulful adolescent +figures in the world), but also Bacchus, St. John, Adonis and the +figures in the background of the Holy Family at Florence. Cupid and +David Apollo (in the Bargello) are almost hermaphroditic, and even the +Adam, and the unfinished Slaves in the Bobili Gardens exhibit female +characteristics. Without going further into detail I would draw +attention to the breasts and thighs, which positively raise a doubt on +the question of sex. (I am referring to the two youths above the +Erythrean Sybil.) Seen from a distance they create the impression of +female figures, while the youth above Jeremiah is a perfect Hellenic +<i>ephebos</i>. On the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> other hand—with the exception of two of his early +Madonnas and, perhaps, Eve—he has not given us one glorified female +figure; all his women are characterised by something careworn and +unlovely; some of his old women—most strikingly the Cumaic Sybil—are +depicted with absolutely masculine features, masculine figures and +gigantic musculature. His ideal was the Hellenic ideal, was a human form +neither man nor woman; all extremes, but also all peculiarities and +everything personal, were, if not completely suppressed, at any rate +pushed into the background. We regard this ideal, which is alien to our +inherent nature, with a feeling akin to contempt, for the modern ideal +is male and female, but it nevertheless was of great moment in the +obliteration of sex and the accentuation of the purely human. The +Platonic (and also Michelangelo's) love of young men was in its essence +pure love of humanity, love of the perfect human body and the perfect +human soul, whose greatest harmony was achieved in the adolescent. +Moreover, the superior mental endowment of the boy made an intelligent +conversation—so highly appreciated by Platonists and +neo-Platonists—possible, whereas with a girl a man could only jest.</p> + +<p>Civilisations and individuals inclining to erotic male friendships are +endowed with great plastic talent. Artists and poets whose genius lies +in the direction of the plastic arts rather than in music, frequently +have homo-sexual leanings. A musical talent, however, is as a rule +accompanied by the love of woman. I know of no great musician, or great +lyrical poet, inclined to erotic friendships with men. The simple song +suggests the love of woman, the artificial metre, let us say the Greek +rhythm, the love of man. I am, however, merely pointing out this +connection, without drawing any conclusions.</p> + +<p>The poems addressed by Michelangelo to Tommaso dei Cavalieri breathe a +deep longing for friendship and complete surrender, but above all things +for a return<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> of affection; all barriers between the friends must be +thrown down, "for one soul is living in two bodies."</p> + +<p>These poems are calm and well-balanced, and differ greatly from the rest +of his poetry.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>If each the other love, himself foregoing,</div> +<div>With such delight, such savour and so well</div> +<div>That both to one sole end their wills combine.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">J.A. Symonds</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Michelangelo painted "Ganymede" for Tommaso, and even at a ripe old age +he addressed poems to Cechino Bracci, who died at the age of seventeen.</p> + +<p>His contempt of woman, without which the spirit of classical Greece, +too, is unthinkable, formed a parallel to his male friendships.</p> + +<p>In the prime of his life the Platonic element was superseded by the +other great element which stirred his soul so profoundly. Exceeding the +perfection of form of antique statuary, his later works throb with a +spiritual and passionate life quite peculiar to him; an inward fire +seems to consume his ardent figures. They are not creatures of this +earth, a breath of eternity has touched them; they are an embodiment of +the Platonic heritage which accounts all earthly things as symbols of +eternal beauty, fertilised and glorified by a deep mourning over human +destiny and a longing for deliverance. And when his years were already +beginning to decline, Vittoria Colonna came into his life, a semblance +and symbol of divine perfection. The love which took possession of him +transformed his whole life and lifted it into religion. In his +tempestuous soul this first love, coming so late in life, far exceeded +human limits; it became adoration and religious ecstasy. Michelangelo, +who could not tolerate in friendship any other relationship than that of +complete self-surrender and equality, threw himself into the very dust +before his love and debased himself almost to self-destruction.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p> + +<p>His book of poems is filled with an unspeakable longing for the +perfection of earthly beauty and for eternity; and his beloved mistress +is the sole symbol of this metaphysical climax. Earthly beauty is but an +imperfect semblance of the divine beauty, the embodiment of which is his +love. We meet all the familiar motives; he is nothing before her; he is +unworthy of existence; he is like the moon receiving her light from the +sun; love has raised him from his base condition and is teaching him the +futility of all he had hitherto valued.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to think</div> +<div>That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven</div> +<div>Could ever be paid by work so frail as mine.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">J.A. Symonds</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And of love he says:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>From loftiest stars shoots down a radiance all their own,</div> +<div>Drawing the soul above,</div> +<div>And such, we say, is love.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">Harford</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>His poems, which would proclaim him a great poet if he were not an even +greater sculptor, breathe an emotion unsurpassed in its intensity. They +reveal to us in an almost unique manner the emotional process which +culminated in the deification of the beloved. If we did not know that +Vittoria Colonna was an historical individual, not much younger than +Michelangelo himself, and (if we are to credit her portrait) a very +plain woman with a large masculine nose, we might be tempted to believe +her to be a mythical personage like Beatrice Portinari, or Margaret in +<i>Faust</i>. But the conviction that all true perfection was centred only in +her, now faced his art and threw its terrible shadow over it.</p> + +<p>"Michelangelo conceived love in the Platonic sense," wrote his friend +and biographer, Condivi; but this is only a part of the truth. In the +heart of Michelangelo there took place the tremendous recon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>ciliation +between the Greek cult of beauty and the religion of the beyond; he +blended the finest blossom of Hellenism with the profoundest spirit of +Christianity; he sublimated Plato and Dante into a higher intuition; the +<i>eroico furore</i> of his contemporary, Giordano, had found an embodiment. +The two great rays which illuminated his life: the perfect earthly +beauty to which destiny had called him, and the boundless religious +longing, the last fundamental force of his soul, converged in the +glorified woman. Vittoria appeared to him as the solution of the +world-discord, a solution which he had no right to expect, a miracle. +She was the greatest experience of his great life, an experience which +almost broke him. More than once the thought of Vittoria filled him with +sudden dread. In her he had seen God and the world in one. The powerful +effect of this on so self-reliant a character, a man who had been unable +to find much sympathy with patrons and friends, to whom women had meant +nothing, may easily be imagined. All at once he had found a centre, and +more than that—a solution of all the discords of life, of the eternal +dualism of the earthly and the divine. His love was not the love of a +youth stretching out feelers to the world beyond, but the final creed of +a lonely life which had known nothing but beauty and divinity. With the +passion characteristic of him, he threw himself into this new experience +and made it his fate, flinging world and art aside. Before Vittoria he +ceased to be a sculptor and became a worshipper.</p> + +<p>We realise the great difference between this worship and the worship of +Dante. The latter formed the consciousness of eternity, and became a +poet, early in life. He never doubted the profoundest truth, the +metaphysical importance of his love; but in the case of Michelangelo, +the love of an old man was the last event in a life consumed by +restlessness. The adoration of this mysogynist was almost an act of +despair; not a sweet delivery from doubt, but a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> source of fresh shocks. +It problematised his whole previous existence and nullified the work of +his life. For before this new experience—perfection, met in the +flesh—art broke down. The greatest of sculptors never made an attempt +to imprison the beauty which had appeared to his soul in marble or in +canvas, deeply convinced that such an achievement was beyond the power +of earthly endeavour.</p> + +<p>Before Vittoria Michelangelo became deeply conscious of his inmost self; +she gave direction to his longing and was its symbol; she was the +perfection for which he had always striven—and he despaired of his art.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thy beauty it befell in yonder spheres:</div> +<div>A symbol of salvation, bright'ning heaven</div> +<div>Th' Eternal Artist sent it down to earth;</div> +<div>If it diminish, years succeeding years,</div> +<div>My love will lend it but a greater worth.</div> +<div>Age cannot fade the beauty God has given.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And the conviction that only the idea of eternal beauty has any value, +and that all earthly things are as nothing before it, became stronger +and more tormenting. One instance from many:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>As heat from fire, from loveliness divine</div> +<div>The mind that worships what recalls the sun,</div> +<div>From whence she sprang, can be divided never.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl.</i> by <span class="smcap">J.A. Symonds</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In the same way he realised the futility of earthly love compared to +metaphysical love:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The one love soars, the other downward tends,</div> +<div>The soul lights this while that the senses stir.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The highest beauty only I desire.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>It is extraordinary, however, that even this ecstatic adorer vaguely +suspected that he himself might be the creator of the beauty which he +saw in his mistress. In a sonnet he asks Cupid whether her beauty +really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> exists, or whether it is a delusion of his senses, and he +receives the reply:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The beauty thou discernest all is hers;</div> +<div>But grows in radiance as it soars on high.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<span class="smcap">J.A. Symonds.</span>)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>It is indescribably tragic to watch Michelangelo slowly despairing of +his own genius and art, and becoming more and more dominated by the +thought of the futility of all earthly things and all earthly beauty. +The religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, the <i>forma +universale</i> became his last refuge. After Vittoria's death Michelangelo +said to Condivi: "I have only one regret and that is that I never kissed +Vittoria's brow or lips when she lay dying." More and more he brooded on +sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion. The beloved mistress had +become the sole herald of eternal truths. Melancholy and mourning took +possession of his soul with an iron grip; he could conceive of only one +happiness, death closely following on birth. But the thought of death +again was seized and symbolised with the old artistic passion:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>And cleansed by fire, I shall live for ever.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>And as the flames are soaring to the sky,</div> +<div>I, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, blissful day! When in a single flash</div> +<div>Time slips away into eternity—</div> +<div>The sun no longer rides across the skies. . . .</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Michelangelo was conscious of his near kinship with Dante; he +illustrated a copy of the <i>Divine Comedy</i> which, unfortunately, is lost, +and wrote a poem on Dante in which the following lines occur:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,</div> +<div>Against his exile, coupled with his good,</div> +<div>I'd gladly change the world's inheritage.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">J.A. Symonds</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>The paintings in the Sistine Chapel, with their materialised thoughts of +destiny, retribution and eternity, originated in a feeling akin to the +feeling underlying the <i>Divine Comedy</i>. Both here and there the creation +of celestial and infernal spirits was the outcome of the infinite +longing of the artistic imagination. Both men could spend the human and +creative passions with which their souls were thrilled only on the +supreme and universal. The eternal destiny of man, fate, sin, the +futility of all earthly things, the relationship of the world to God, +love surpassing all human limits and aspiring to the eternal—these are +the common objects over which they brooded. But while it was given to +Dante to create his picture of the world in harmony with his own soul, +and account it a true representation of the world-system; while his +world was a definite place with a beginning and an end, and his +life-work remained in harmony with his own soul, and the universe, +Michelangelo's lacerated soul could find peace only in the ultimate +truth, which filled his heart, and to which he yearned to give plastic +life, only to be unsatisfied after achieving it. George Simmel, in a +profound work, draws our attention to the infinite melancholy which +overshadows all Michelangelo's figures, because his genius aspired to +express the inexpressible. Even the supremest plastic representation of +the passion and longing for the transcendental which thrilled his soul +did not satisfy him. This tragedy is the tragedy of the metaphysical +erotic overflowing its own specific domain. Dante's faith in the +absolute value of his work and in the truth of the consummation of his +love in eternity—which was the sustaining power of his life—remained +unshaken, but Michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love +forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could +divine, but could not grasp. His faith was no blissful certainty; he +knew no more than the dark aspect of things; the imper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>fection of even +the sublimest, of his art and his love.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare's genius could breathe life into all things human, and he +found satisfaction in doing so. Michelangelo's creative, plastic power +seemed illimitable; he possessed all the gifts an artist could possibly +have, but from year to year his conviction of the futility of all +earthly things grew to a profounder certainty. He had knocked at the +iron gate of humanity with his hammer and his chisel; they had broken +into fragments and sorrow made him dumb. There is a stage in the life of +every genius when he comes to this gate, when he has to show his +credentials and reveal the inmost kernel of his being. Dante attempted +to grasp the transcendental in one gigantic vision, Goethe timidly +shrank back from it.</p> + +<p>In examining the prophets and youths in the Sistine Chapel, or the +chained men in the Louvre, who seem unable to bear existence, and are +therefore "slaves" of the earth; or in contemplating the half-finished +slaves in the Boboli Gardens, who seem almost to burst the stone in +their wild longing for a higher life; or in reading his last sonnets, we +can conceive a vague idea of the deep melancholy darkening the life of +this man, a gloom which was not the melancholy of the individual, but of +all humanity, unable and unwilling to deceive itself further. Can there +be a greater tragedy than the tragedy of this incomparable artist, +looking back at the work of his lifetime with despair?</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>For art and wit and passion fade and vanish,</div> +<div>Countless achievements, ever new and great,</div> +<div>Are naught but dross within the sight of heaven.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>To Vasari he sent a sonnet denouncing the artistic passion which +abandons itself completely to art:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Now know I well that that fond phantasy</div> +<div>Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall</div> +<div>Of earthly art is vain.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">J.A. Symonds</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>Faith, is to him "the mercy of mercies," for he has never possessed its +deepest conviction.</p> + +<p>But the passion which burned in him remained unquelled to the last: his +soul is torn between love and the thought of death.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Flames of love</div> +<div>And chill of death are battling in my heart.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>He longed to break away from love and find peace, and he called on death +for delivery, but in vain:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Burdened with years and full of sinfulness</div> +<div>With evil customs grown inveterate,</div> +<div>Both deaths I dread that both before me wait,</div> +<div>Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">J.A. Symonds</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>And later on he thanks love again for being his deliverer, and not +death.</p> + +<p>Michelangelo poured all his heart into these last sonnets. We see his +solitary and heroic age overshadowed by the thought of death. His whole +soul is wrapped in gloom; art is vanity, love is sorrow, the thought of +the futility of all things frames the portrait of his love with a wreath +of black laurel. He ponders on his life, and comes to the conclusion +that</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Among the many years not one was his.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>This man, the supremest creative genius the world has known, accused +himself of having wasted his life.</p> + +<p>No song of praise ever rose to the Deity from Michelangelo's heart, as +it did at least once or twice during his lifetime from the heart of +Beethoven. He never had one hour of true inward peace. He represents the +metaphysical world-feeling which (in addition to love) is the foundation +of the deification of woman, but it has grown into immensity, and has +been lifted to a higher plane; not only love, but all life is felt as +fragmentary and pointing to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> world beyond. If at an earlier stage it +was the love of woman which could not find its consummation on earth, it +is now the whole of our earthly life and all our aspirations which can +only attain to their highest meaning and to final truth in a +metaphysical existence. The tragedy of metaphysical love has deepened +into the supreme tragedy of life.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The quotations from <i>Faust</i> are from the translation of +Anna Swanwick.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The quotations from the <i>Divine Comedy</i> are from the +translation of Henry Francis Cary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The quotations from Tasso are from the translation of Anna +Swanwick.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<h3>PERVERSIONS OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM</h3> + +<p class='center'><i>(a) The Brides of Christ</i></p> + +<p>Hitherto I have confined myself to the analysis of the emotional life of +man, but there are two other points which must be taken into account. +The first is the question of woman's attitude towards the lofty position +assigned to her by man; the second and more important one is the +question as to whether the women of that period exhibit in their +emotional life any traces of a feeling akin to the deification of their +sex? The reply to the first question is simple enough. Naturally the +adoration and worship of their lovers could not have been anything but +pleasant to women. There is a poem by the talented Provençal Countess +Beatrix de Die, which betrays genuine sorrow at the infidelity of her +friend, and at the same time leaves no doubt that she—and probably a +great many others—took the eulogies showered upon them by the +enraptured poets, literally. Once again woman accepts the position +thrust upon her by man, not this time the position of a drudge, but that +of a perfect and godlike being. Countess Beatrix credits herself with +all the qualities with which the imagination of her worshipper had +endowed her, as if they were unquestionable facts.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Hence all my songs will be with sadness fraught.</div> +<div>My lover fills my soul with bitter woe,</div> +<div>And yet is all the happiness I know.</div> +<div>My grace and favour all avail me naught.</div> +<div>My sparkling wit, my loveliness supreme,</div> +<div>They cannot hold his love and tender thought,</div> +<div>Of all my lofty worth bereft I seem.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>But far more interesting than this psychological misunderstanding on the +part of the much-lauded sex, is the question as to whether the emotional +life of woman matured anything that can be called a worship of man? The +answer to this is a decided "no." At no time in the history of woman do +we find even the smallest indication of a parallel phenomenon; the +profound and tragic dualism of the Middle Ages—one result of which was +the spiritual love of woman—passed her by without touching her. In the +feminine soul conflict apparently results not in tragedy and +productivity, but in morbidness and hysteria.</p> + +<p>It may be argued that the love of Jesus, which inspired both the nuns of +the Middle Ages and those of a later period, represents a type of +man-worship; but in examining all these more or less famous nuns and +ascetics we find, instead of genuine spirituality, a concealed and often +morbid condition, which in some cases degenerated into hysteria. The +dualistic period, the age of metaphysical love, made no impression upon +the female soul. There can be no doubt that the emotional life of woman, +in strict contrast to the emotional life of man, has had no evolution, +and can therefore have no history. It is unadulterated nature and, in +its way, it is perfect.</p> + +<p>In studying the female mystics, we find an imitation of metaphysical +eroticism sufficiently transparent to be easily recognised, even by the +layman, as belonging to the domain of pathology. These ecstatics were +animated not by a pure, but by an impure spirit. Perverted sensualists, +they believed their hearts to be filled with spiritual love. Contrary to +the striving of the greater number of the men, who raised their love +into heaven so as to keep it pure, and made it one with their religious +aspirations, all the figures and symbols of religion were used by these +women as an outlet and a foil to their sexuality. The loving soul +repairing to the nuptial chamber<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> is the transparent veil of desire +half-concealed by religious conceptions. Women have described similar +situations in metaphors which—for sensuous passion—leave nothing to be +desired, even the famous love-potion of Tristan is not wanting.</p> + +<p>The material is abundant, and I have repeatedly touched upon it in +previous chapters. At the period of great mystical enthusiasm (the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries) this morbid love of God was a sinister +attendant phenomenon of true mysticism. Whole convents were seized by +epidemics of hysteria, the women writhed in convulsions, flogged each +other, sang hymns day and night and had hallucinations—for all of which +the love of God, or the temptation of the devil, were made responsible.</p> + +<p>Among the more notable of these pseudo-mystics are Christine Ebner (the +author of a book entitled, <i>On the Fullness of Mercy</i>), and Mary of +Oignies, a passionate worshipper of Christ who mutilated herself in her +ecstasies and who, on her deathbed, still sang: "How beautiful art Thou, +oh, my Lord God!"</p> + +<p>A shining exception among the German nuns of that time was Mechthild of +Magdeburg, a woman of rare gifts. She was a genuine mystic, but she, +too, revelled in fervent, sensuous metaphors, and it would be an +interesting task to separate the two elements in her case; but, having +admitted her genuine mysticism in a previous chapter, I will here +restrict myself to a few quotations which show her from her other side. +Her <i>Dialogue between Love and the Soul</i> abounds in passages like the +following: "Tell my beloved that his chamber is prepared, and that I am +sick with love of him." "The closer the embrace, the sweeter the +kisses." "Then He took the soul into His divine arms, and placing His +fatherly hand on her bosom, He gazed into her face and kissed her right +well." Mechthild, too, was ready to die with love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> + +<p>Everyone of the most celebrated Brides of Christ belonged to the Latin +race; they were hysterics, and as such have long been claimed by the +psychopathist.</p> + +<p>The love of Jesus professed by Catherine of Siena (1347-1388), a clever +politician, who was in correspondence with the leading statesmen of her +time, found vent in passages like the following:</p> + +<p>"I desire, then, that you withdraw into the open side of the Son of God, +who is a bottle so full of perfume that even the things which are sinful +become fragrant. There the bride reclines on a bed of fire and blood. +There the secret of the heart of the Son of God is revealed and made +manifest. Oh! Thou overflowing cup, refreshing and intoxicating every +loving and yearning heart." "I long to behold the body of my Lord!" And +straightway the bridegroom appeared to her, opened his side and said to +her: "Now drink as much of my blood as thou desirest."</p> + +<p>But the saint who enjoyed the greatest fame—partly on account of her +frequent portrayal by the plastic arts—was doubtless St. Teresa +(Teresia de Jesus), a Spanish nun (1515-1582). During childhood and +early youth she suffered from serious illnesses, and on one occasion was +even believed to be dead. "Before I felt the presence of God," she says +in her biography, "I experienced for some time a very delightful +sensation, a sensation which I believe one is partly able to produce at +will (!), a pleasure which is neither quite sensuous, nor quite +spiritual, but which comes from God." She describes in her "Life" four +stages of prayer, which gradually lead the soul to God: "There is no joy +to be compared with the joy which the Lord giveth to the soul in its +exile. So great is this delight that frequently it seems that the least +thing would make it forsake the body for ever." "When the soul seeks God +in this way," the saint feels with supreme delight her strength ebbing +away and a trance stealing over her until,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> devoid of breath and all +physical strength she can only move her hand with great pain. The +delights experienced by her are described in great detail and very +sensuous language; hysterical conditions, such as painful convulsions, +and hallucinations, are represented as religious phenomena. "It is +dreadful what one has to suffer from confessors who do not understand +these things," she says in one of her writings with deep regret.</p> + +<p>St. Teresa relates her life with the well-known long-winded +self-complacency of the hysterical subject. She frequently had visions +of Jesus, and again and again she emphasised the beauty of his hands. +"Standing by my side, he said to me: 'I have come to thee, my daughter, +I am here; it is I; show me thy hands.' And it seemed to me that he took +my hands in his, and laid them in his side. 'Behold my wound,' he said, +'thou art not separated from me; bear this brief exile on earth....'" +etc.</p> + +<p>On one occasion she had a vision of an angel whom she describes as +follows: "He was not tall but small, very beautiful, his face so radiant +that he seemed to be one of the highest angels, who are, I believe, all +fire ... in his hand he held a golden spear, at the point of which was a +little flame; he appeared to thrust this spear into my heart again and +again; it penetrated my entrails, and as he drew it out he seemed to +draw them out also, and leave me on fire with a great love of God. The +pain was so intense that I could not but sigh deeply; yet so surpassing +was the sweetness of this pain that it made me wish never to be without +it. It is not physical, but spiritual pain, although the body often +suffers greatly from it. The caressing love between God and the soul is +so sweet that I implore Him of His mercy to let all those experience it +who believe that I am lying."</p> + +<p>The treatise <i>Thoughts of the Love of God on some Words of the Song of +Songs</i> is crowded with purely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> sensuous passages. In accordance with the +general custom, she interprets this naïvely sensual Semitic poem +allegorically, becomes tremendously excited in meditating on the kiss of +the beloved and discusses the question of what the soul should do to +"satisfy so sweet a bridegroom."</p> + +<p>In the pamphlet <i>The Fortress of the Soul and its Seven Dwellings</i>, St. +Teresa describes similar states of mind: "The bridegroom commands the +doors of the dwellings to be closed and also the gates of the fortress +and its surrounding walls. In freeing the soul from the body, he stops +the body's breathing so that, even if the other senses are not quite +deadened, speech is impossible. At other times all sensuous perceptions +disappear simultaneously; body and hands grow rigid and it seems as if +the soul had left the body, which is scarcely breathing. This condition +is of short duration. The rigidity passes away to some extent, the body +slowly regains life, the breath comes and goes, only to die away again +and thus endow the soul with greater freedom. But this deep trance does +not endure long." She continues to describe her ecstasies and is careful +to point out the complete fusion of supreme delight and bodily pain. +Perhaps no hysterical subject has ever described her states of mind so +well. Her avowal (made in a letter to Father Rodrigue Alvarez) of her +complete unconsciousness of her body is quite in harmony with those +states of rapture. She wrote a number of spiritual love-songs which are +said to be conspicuous for their ardour and beauty; probably they have +never been translated from the original Spanish.</p> + +<p>Finally there is the famous Madame Guyon (1648-1717), who—in addition +to many other works—wrote a very detailed autobiography. She lived with +her husband, whom she treated with coldness, finding her sole joy in her +spiritual intercourse with God. "I desire only the divine love which +thrills the soul with inexpressible bliss, the love which seems to melt +my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> whole being." God burns her with His fire and still trembling with +delight, she says to Him: "Oh, Lord! The greatest libertine, if Thou +didst make him experience Thy love as Thou didst make me experience it, +would forswear carnal pleasure and strive only after Thy divine love." +"I was like a person intoxicated with wine or love, unable to think of +anything but my passion," etc. The fact that she sought in this love the +pleasure of the senses is very apparent.</p> + +<p>We are not concerned here with the problem of how far these women may be +regarded as pathological cases; all of them were filled with a vague +feminine desire for self-surrender, which they projected on a celestial +being, either because they did not come into contact with a suitable +terrestrial object, or because the impulse was abnormal from the +beginning. But their spiritual love never rose above empty +sentimentality and hysterical rapture. All of them, and some of them +were highly gifted, were thrilled with the love of Jesus, they had +visions of the "sweet wounds of the Saviour," and so on; but their +emotion did not kindle the smallest spark of creative power. The Queen +of Heaven, on the other hand, was a free creation of spiritually loving +poets and monks.</p> + +<p>The women imitated metaphysical love and distorted it; sexual impulse, +arrogantly attempting to reach beyond the earth, reigned in the place of +spiritual, deifying love.</p> + +<p>I have included these phenomena not for their own sakes, but to indicate +my boundary-line, for very frequently these women are cited as genuine +mystics. Even Schopenhauer mentions these "saints" in one breath with +German mystics and Indian philosophers; he calls Madame Guyon "a great +and beautiful soul whose memory I venerate." And yet there can be no +doubt that it is not the fictitious object of love which is conclusive, +but the emotion of the lover: the sensualist can approach God and the +Virgin with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> inflamed senses, but to the lover every woman is divine.</p> + +<p>The result of this chapter is as far as our investigation is concerned, +negative. The deifying love of man has no parallel phenomenon in the +emotional life of woman.</p> + +<p><br /></p> +<p class='center'>(<i>b</i>) <span class="smcap">Sexual Mystics.</span></p> + +<p>Sexual mysticism is a contradiction in itself, because true mysticism +has nothing whatever to do with sexuality. But frequently suppressed +sexuality, secretly luxuriating, takes possession of the whole soul, and +a religious construction is put on the results. The sexually excited +subject attributes religious motives to his ecstasy. I have no +hesitation in asserting that the majority of these ecstasies—especially +in the case of women—are rooted in sexuality, and that this so-called +mysticism is nothing but a deviation or wrong interpretation of the +sexual impulse. The same thing applies to the flagellants of the +declining Middle Ages, and some Protestant sects of modernity. The +raptures of St. Teresa and Madame Guyon, also, belong to this category, +however much the fact may be concealed by pseudo-religious conceptions. +I have no doubt that Eastern mysticism, too, grew up on a sexual +foundation, but (as I have done all along) I will limit my subject to +the civilisation of Europe.</p> + +<p>This counterfeit mysticism, fed from dubious sources and calling itself +love of God, taints the pure intuitions of some of the genuine mystics +and metaphysical erotics; they were not always able to steer clear of +spurious outgrowths. (Here, too, the psychological naïveté of mediaeval +times must to some extent be held responsible.) Conspicuous amongst +these is St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who in his <i>Sermones in Canticum</i> +took the "Song of Songs" as a base for mystically-sexual imaginings.</p> + +<p>There is nothing really new in this direction. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> I will cite a few +stanzas written by St. Bernard which might equally well have come from +one of the amorous nuns:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div class='i2'><span class="smcap">To the Side-wound of Christ.</span></div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Lord, with my mouth I touch and worship Thee,</div> +<div>With all the strength I have I cling to Thee,</div> +<div>With all my love I plunge my heart in Thee,</div> +<div>My very life blood would I draw from Thee,</div> +<div>Oh, Jesus! Jesus! Draw me unto Thee!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>How sweet Thy savour is! Who tastes of Thee,</div> +<div>Oh, Jesus Christ, can relish naught but Thee!</div> +<div>Who tastes Thy living sweetness lives by Thee;</div> +<div>All else is void; the soul must die for Thee,</div> +<div>So faints my heart—so would I die for Thee!</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div class='right'>(<i>Transl. by</i> <span class="smcap">Emily Mary Shapcote</span>.)</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The greatest religious poet of all times after St. Bernard was Jacopone +da Todi, who also, though rarely, revelled in fervid utterances. The +Latin hymn, <i>Stabat Mater Speciosa</i>, ascribed to him, is spurious. I +quote a translation taken from the Rosary of the B.V.M.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Other Virgins far transcending,</div> +<div>Virgin, be not thou unbending,</div> +<div>To thy humble suppliant's suit.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Grant me then, to thee united,</div> +<div>By the love of Christ excited,</div> +<div>Here to sing my jubilee.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>But he is undoubtedly the author of the following stanzas:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Soaring upwards love-enkindled,</div> +<div>Does the soul rejoice, afire</div> +<div>In her glad triumphant flight.</div> +<div>Earthly cares to naught have dwindled,</div> +<div>Love's sweet footfall's drawing nigh her</div> +<div>To espouse his heart's delight.</div> +<div>All transformed and naked quite,</div> +<div>Laughing low, with joy imbued,</div> +<div>Pure, and like a snake renewed,</div> +<div>Love divine will ever tend her.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>But poems like the following undoubtedly originated in a truly religious +and pure sentiment:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Enwrapt in love thine arms Him fast enfolding,</div> +<div>So closely clasp Him that they loose Him never;</div> +<div>And in thy heart His sacred image holding,</div> +<div>Far from the path of sin thou'lt journey ever.</div> +<div>His death in twain shall blast thy callous heart</div> +<div>As once the solid rock He rent apart.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The most distinguished among the fervid lovers of God of later times +were the saints Jean de la Croix, Alfonso da Liguori, and François de +Sales. The <i>Tract of the Love of God</i>, written by François de Sales, +surpasses everything ever achieved in this direction.</p> + +<p>I will not dilate further on this barren aspect of emotionalism so +easily traceable through the later centuries in many a Catholic and +Protestant sentimentalist, but will conclude this chapter with a brief +discussion of Novalis. If I mention this poet in this connexion it is +not because I desire to depreciate his genius, but because, possessing +as he did, in a rare degree, depth of feeling and power of expression, +he is an important witness of an unusual type. True, here and there his +poems are reminiscent of Jacopone, but he is not sufficiently ingenuous, +and is altogether too morbid to be classed with that ardent fanatic. He +shares with Jacopone and other poets the yearning to grasp +transcendental things with the senses, to approach the Deity with a love +which cannot be called anything but sensuous. Novalis' <i>Hymns to the +Night</i> are the most magnificent example of this perfect interpenetration +of sensuous and transcendental love, and at the same time represent a +complete fusion of the love he bore to his fiancée, who died young, and +the worship of Mary. Night has opened <i>infinite eyes</i> in us, and we +behold the secret of love unfolding itself in the heart of this poet, at +once unique and pathetic, lofty and morbid. The whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> universe he +conceives as a female being for whose embrace he is longing. It is a new +emotion: neither the chaste worship of the Madonna, nor the +sexually-mystic striving to embrace with the soul. The night gives birth +to a foreboding which excites and soothes all vague desires. The lover +thus soliloquises of the night:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>In infinite space.</div> +<div>Thou'dst dissolve,</div> +<div>If it held thee not,</div> +<div>If it bound thee not,</div> +<div>And thrilled thee,</div> +<div>That afire</div> +<div>Thou begettest the world.</div> +<div>Verily before thou art I was,</div> +<div>With my sex</div> +<div>The mother sent me</div> +<div>To live in thy world,</div> +<div>And to hallow it</div> +<div>With love.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Here the ancient, mystical longing to become one with God is conceived +under the symbol of the night. (A symbol which we shall meet again, +magnified, in Wagner's <i>Tristan</i>.)</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Lo! Love has burst its prison.</div> +<div>No parting now shall be,</div> +<div>And life's full tide has risen</div> +<div>Like to a boundless sea.</div> +<div>One night of love supernal,</div> +<div>Only one golden song,</div> +<div>And the face of the Eternal</div> +<div>To light our path along.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In addition, Novalis was a perfect woman-worshipper. He loved the Middle +Ages and Catholicism. "The reformation killed Christianity; henceforth +Christianity has ceased to exist." "Catholicism preached nothing but +love for the holy, beautiful Lady of Christianity, who, endowed with +divine virtue, was able to deliver all loyal hearts from the most +terrible dangers." He wrote hymns to Mary in the style of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> the pietists, +emphasising more especially the principle of motherliness:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh, Mary! At thy altar</div> +<div>A thousand hearts lie prone,</div> +<div>In this drear life of shadows</div> +<div>They yearn for thee alone.</div> +<div>All hoping to recover</div> +<div>From life's distress and smart,</div> +<div>If thou, oh holy Mother,</div> +<div>Wilt take them to thy heart.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>He idolised his fiancée, who died young. "Her memory shall be my better +self, a sacred image in my heart before which a sanctuary lamp is ever +burning, and which will save me from the temptations of the Evil One." +And through the mouth of Heinrich of Ofterdingen he proclaims: "My +beloved is the abbreviation of the universe; the universe is the +elongation of my beloved." "Heaven has given you to me to worship. I +adore you, you are a saint, you are divine glory, you are eternal life!"</p> + +<p>This sentimental worship of woman, combined with an all-transcending +insatiable sensuousness, produced the peculiar sexually-mystic +world-feeling which is so characteristic of him. Night deeply moves his +soul, longing, the memory of the beloved woman, adoration for the +Virgin, his fantastic conception of an incarnated universe are fused +into one great emotion:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Praise to the Queen of the World!</div> +<div>The lofty herald</div> +<div>Of the sacred world.</div> +<div>The patroness</div> +<div>Of rapturous love!</div> +<div>Thou art coming, beloved—</div> +<div>Night has descended—</div> +<div>My soul is ravished—</div> +<div>Over is this earthly journey</div> +<div>And thou art mine again.</div> +<div>I gaze into thy dark, deep eyes,</div> +<div>And see naught but love and happiness.</div> +<div>We sink down on the altar of the night,</div> +<div>The soft couch—</div> +<div><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>The veil falls,</div> +<div>And kindled by the rapturous embrace,</div> +<div>Glows the pure fire</div> +<div>Of the sweet sacrifice.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The climax and unique example of sensuousness, unsurpassed for its +symbols of the physical embrace, is the hymn: "Few know the Secret of +Love." It is too long to give in full. The following are a few stanzas:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Would that the ocean</div> +<div>Blushed!</div> +<div>And in fragrant flesh</div> +<div>Melted the rock!</div> +<div>Infinite is the sweet repast,</div> +<div>Never satisfied is love;</div> +<div>Nor close, nor fast enough</div> +<div>Can it hold the beloved.</div> +<div>By ever more tender lips</div> +<div>Transformed, the past ecstasy</div> +<div>Grows closer, more intimate.</div> +<div>Rapturous love</div> +<div>Thrills the soul;</div> +<div>Hungrier and thirstier</div> +<div>Grows the heart.</div> +<div>And thus the transports of love</div> +<div>Endure for ever.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Here the remotest limit has been reached—sensuousness seems to flow +into eternity, voluptuousness would shatter the world to pieces and +create a new relationship of things. Before this poem all ecstasies of +sensuousness masquerading as cosmic emotion are dull and timid. The +transcendent symbols of Catholicism are used to guide the insatiable +sensuous imagination to metaphysics. "Who can say that he understands +the nature of blood?" Novalis may ask this question. It is truly blood, +human blood, longing to gush forth and pulsate through the body of the +universe.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>In time to come all will be body</div> +<div>One body;</div> +<div>In celestial blood,</div> +<div>Float the enraptured twain.</div></div> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>The human blood has become <i>celestial blood</i>; the voluptuousness of man, +the voluptuousness of the world, and because the whole world is one +body, it needs no duality; sexuality which has become a cosmic law rules +over humanity, God, Christ and the universe. This hymn is the +immortalisation of voluptuousness. If the love-death is the +immortalisation of love unable to find satisfaction on earth, so its +counterpart, cosmic sensuousness is, in the last sense, orientalism. +Only a genius could invent a new, symbolic language to express feelings +so alien to the European. Earthly sensuality did not satisfy Novalis, +voluptuousness detached from man, voluptuousness in itself, was his +dream and his religion—the supremest creation ever achieved by +sexuality intensified into a cosmic emotion.</p> + +<p>I think that I have now made clear the fact that the emotional life of +man is rooted in two elements, completely distinct from the beginning: +the sexual impulse and personal love. It is in studying the love of the +transcendental, that culminating point of so many feelings springing +from various sources, that the inherent contrast between the two +fundamental principles becomes most apparent; and that we realise why +they have always been intermingled both in theory and in reality.</p> + +<p>We have last examined the attempt of sexuality to possess itself of the +whole universe; we will now turn our attention to the true union of both +erotic elements. This union occurred at the time when Goethe and Novalis +were bringing spiritual love and cosmic sensuousness to their highest +summit.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="THE_THIRD_STAGE" id="THE_THIRD_STAGE"></a>THE THIRD STAGE</h3> + +<h3>(The Unity of Sexual Impulse and Love)</h3> + +<h3><a name="BCHAPTER_I" id="BCHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h3> + +<h3>THE LONGING FOR THE SYNTHESIS.</h3> + +<p>Humanity inherited the pairing-instinct from the animal-world; but as +differentiation progressed, this instinct tended to restrict itself to a +few individuals—sometimes even to a single representative only—of the +other sex. In the beginning of the twelfth century a new and +unprecedented emotion—spiritual love of man for woman based on +personality—made its appearance, and until modern times the two +fundamental erotic principles existed side by side without inner +relationship. Sexuality with its various manifestations has existed from +the beginning; the ultimate object of sexual intercourse is pleasure; +but here and there, and parallel with sexual pleasure, there have been, +in varying degrees of intensity, instances of spiritual love. In the +second half of the eighteenth century there appeared—timidly at first, +but gradually gaining in strength and determination—a tendency to find +the sole course of every erotic emotion in the personality of the +beloved, a longing no longer to dissociate sexual impulse and spiritual +love, but to blend them in a harmonious whole. Personality should knit +body and soul together in a higher synthesis. The first signs of this +longing became apparent in the period of the French revolution; (we find +traces of it in the works of Rousseau and in Goethe's <i>Werther</i>); it was +developed by the romanticists and represents the typical form of modern +love<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> with all its incompleteness and inexhausted possibilities. The +achievement of this eagerly desired unity, which would be synonymous +with the victory of personality over the limitations of body and soul, +is the great problem of modern time in the domain of eroticism. The +characteristic of this third stage of eroticism is the complete triumph +of love over pleasure, the neutralisation of the sexual and the +generative by the spiritual and the personal. The physical and spiritual +unity of the lovers has become so much supreme erotic reality, that the +line of demarcation between soul and senses is completely obliterated. +In extreme cases—which are not at all rare—the bodily union is not +realised as anything distinct, specifically pleasurable; it does not +occupy a prominent position in the complex of love; sensuous pleasure, +the universal inheritance from the animal world, has been vanquished by +personality, the supreme treasure of man. The characteristic of the +first stage was the unquestioned sway of one of the elements of erotic +life, sensual gratification (this stage has, of course, never ceased to +exist), as well as the aesthetic pleasure in the beauty of the human +form. The second stage gave prominence to all those spiritual qualities +which were most appreciated, virtue, purity, kindness, wisdom, etc., +because love rouses and embraces everything in the human soul which is +perfect. In the third stage, sensuous pleasure and spiritual love no +longer exist as separate elements; the personality of the beloved in its +individuality is the only essential, regardless as to whether she be the +bringer of weal or woe, whether she be good or evil, beautiful or plain, +wise or foolish. Personality has—in principle—become the sole, supreme +source of eroticism. In this stage there is no tyranny of man over +woman—as in the sexual stage—no submission of man to woman—as in the +stage of woman-worship; it is the stage of the complete equality of the +sexes, a mutual giving and taking. If sexuality is infinite as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> matter, +spiritual love eternal as the metaphysical ideal, the synthesis is human +and personal.</p> + +<p>Before the eighteenth century, this new erotic union did not exist as a +phenomenon of civilisation, but occasionally we find it anticipated or +vaguely alluded to. Some of the early German minnesingers (such as +Dietmar von Aist and Kürnberg) sometimes betray, especially when +speaking through the medium of a woman, sentiments prophetic of our +modern sentimental ballads. The following verses by Albrecht of +Johansdorf, express the reciprocity characteristic of modern love:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>When two hearts are so united</div> +<div>That their love can never wane,</div> +<div>Then I ween no man should blight it,</div> +<div>Death alone should part the twain.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Even more modern in sentiment are the following stanzas:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>This is love's measure:</div> +<div>Two hearts and one pleasure,</div> +<div>Two loves one love, nor more nor less,</div> +<div>And both right full of happiness.</div> +<div>In woe one woe,</div> +<div>And neither from the other go.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>Though Walter von der Vogelweide adopted the contemporaneous conception +of love as the source of everything good and noble ("Tell me what is +Love?") he never quite accepted it:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Love is the ecstasy of two fond hearts,</div> +<div>If both share equally, then love is there.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>More ancient evidence even is the definition of marriage by the +scholastic Hugo of St. Victor, who had leanings towards mysticism: +"Marriage is the friendship between man and woman," he says.</p> + +<p>My knowledge of the subject cannot, of course, be unexceptional, but I +do not believe that personal love of the third stage, that is, the +blending of both erotic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> elements, was quite definitely expressed before +the second half of the eighteenth century. We may be justified in +maintaining that the tension between sexuality and spiritual love had +been slackening in the course of the centuries, that sexuality was +conceived as less diabolical, and love as less celestial than +heretofore; but the principle had remained unchanged. Only the female +portraits of Leonardo da Vinci are deserving of special mention; the +great artist was possibly the first who artistically divined, if he did +not achieve, the synthesis. The exceptional position always granted to +his women—particularly to his Mona Lisa—must doubtless be ascribed to +this premonition. We may be certain that Leonardo not only as artist, +but as lover also, was ahead of his time; but he must be regarded as an +isolated instance. The three stages apply to the eroticism of man only. +His emotion soared from brutality to divinity, and then gradually became +human; his feeling alone has a history. The force which seized, moulded +and transformed him, had no influence over woman. Compared to man, she +is to-day what she was at the beginning, pure nature. Her lover has +always been everything to her; never merely a means for the +gratification of the senses, nor, on the other hand, a higher being to +whom she looked up and whom she worshipped with a purely spiritual love; +but at all times he possessed her undivided love, unable in its naïve +simplicity to differentiate between body and soul. The higher intuition, +the object of the supreme erotic yearning of man, for the possession of +which he has struggled for centuries, and even to-day does not fully +possess, has always been a matter of course to her. She whose truest +vocation is love, received from nature that which the greatest of men +have striven hard to win and only half succeeded in winning. Man's +profound dualism is alien to her; her greatness—but also her +limitation—lies in the simplicity and infallibility of her instinct, +which has had no evolution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> and is consequently not liable to produce +atavisms and aberrations. She is hardly conscious of the chasm between +sexual instinct and personal love. Wherever this is not so, we <i>may</i> +find intellectual greatness (as for instance in the case of the Empress +Catherine of Russia), but as a rule we find only morbidness, despondency +and callousness. To the normal woman the phenomena of dualistic +eroticism appear unintelligible, even unwholesome. The unity of love is +a matter of course to her, so that the third stage is practically male +acquiescence to female intuition.</p> + +<p>Even in our time, when so much is said and written about modern woman +and her claims, her feeling is still perfect in itself; compared to the +discord and heterogeneity of man, she represents simplicity and harmony. +Both purely spiritual worship and undifferentiated sexual desire are +exceptions as far as she is concerned and must still be regarded as +abnormal.</p> + +<p>This unbroken, determinative female eroticism may possibly be explained +(as Weininger explains it) by woman's sexuality, which is absolute, and +does not rise above the horizon of distinct consciousness, but +Weininger's dualism is in this direction attempting to value and +standardise something which in its essence is alien to his standard.</p> + +<p>Psycho-physical unity, then, is the basic characteristic of female +eroticism, but the state of affairs in the case of male eroticism is a +very different one. A study of the gradual origin of the erotic elements +will facilitate a better understanding of the relevant phenomena.</p> + +<p>In the case of woman, the primary sexual instinct pervades the whole +being; it has been refined and purified without any great fluctuations +or changes; in the case of man it has always been restricted to certain +regions of his physical and psychical life, and an entirely novel +experience was required before it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> could win to the final form of +personal love. This prize, in his case, is therefore enhanced by the +fact of being the outcome of a long conflict; the reward of a task still +showing the traces of the struggle and pain of centuries. The truth of +the words "Pleasure is degrading" had been established by experience.</p> + +<p>A few historical instances, illustrating female eroticism, will uphold +my contention. In the remote days of Greek antiquity, we find an example +of undivided wifely love in Alcestis, whose devotion to her husband sent +her to voluntary death in order to lengthen his life. Wifely devotion +accomplished what parental love could not achieve. The <i>Alcestis</i> of +Euripides represents a feeling very familiar to us. Penelope, the +faithful martyr, is a similar instance.</p> + +<p>At the time when spiritual love, accompanied by eccentricities and Latin +treatises, gradually, and amidst heavy conflict, struggled into +existence, the soul of woman was already glowing with the emotion which +we, to-day, realise as love. I have three witnesses to prove this +statement. The <i>Lais</i> of the French poetess Marie de France, based on +Breton and Celtic motifs, are permeated by a sweet sentimentality, very +nearly related to the sentiment of our popular ballads. They tell of +simple feelings, of love and longing and the grief of love. One of her +<i>lais</i> treats the touching story of Lanval and Guinevere, and another an +episode of Tristan and Isolde.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>De Tristan et de la reine,</div> +<div>De leur amour qui tant fut fine,</div> +<div>Dont ils eurent mainte doulour</div> +<div>Puis en moururent en un jour.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>The naïve sentiment of these poems forms a delicious contrast to the +contemporaneous mature and subtile art of Provence, and the entire +erudite armoury of love.</p> + +<p>A great baron declared that only the man who could carry his daughter in +his arms to the summit of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> a certain mountain—an impossible +feat—should win her hand in marriage. No man possessed strength to +carry her farther than half way. But the knight whom she loved secretly +went out into the world, and after years of searching, discovered a +magic potion able to endow him who quaffed it with enormous strength. +Full of joy he returned home and, his beloved in his arms, began the +laborious ascent. Strong and jubilant, he laughed at the potion. But +after a while, feeling his strength ebbing away, the maiden implored +him: "Drink, I beseech thee, beloved!" "My heart is strong, to drink +were waste of time." And again she pleaded: "Drink now, beloved, thy +strength is diminishing fast." But he, eager to win her only by his own +effort, staggered on and reached the summit, only to sink to the ground +and expire. The maiden, throwing herself on his lifeless body, kissed +his eyes and lips and died with him.</p> + +<p>We recognise in this simple tale the new form of love, mutual devotion, +and the thought of the consummation of this love, the <i>Love-death</i>, +which was not definitely realised until six hundred years later. It +originated in the Celtic soul, as the worship of woman originated in the +Romanesque (the Teutonic soul shared in the development of both). It was +a dream of the suppressed Celtic race, spending its whole soul in dreams +and producing visions of such depth and beauty that even we of to-day +cannot read them without being profoundly moved.</p> + +<p>Next there are three love-letters written in Latin by a German woman of +the twelfth century. In very touching words she tells her lover that the +love of him can never be torn out of her heart. "I turn to you whom I +hold for ever enclosed in my inmost heart." She promises and claims +faithfulness until death: "Among thousands my heart has chosen you, you +alone can satisfy my longing, and you will never find my love wanting. I +trust myself to you, all my hope is centred in you. I could say a great +deal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> more," she concludes, "but there is no need of it." And then +follow the charming German stanzas:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Thou to me and I to thee,</div> +<div>Knit for all eternity.</div> +<div>In my heart art thou imprisoned,</div> +<div>And I threw away the key.</div> +<div>Nevermore canst thou be free.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>In the third letter she drops the formal Latin and addresses him in +intimate, simple German. But the man's replies are clumsy and strange, +and plainly evidence his uncertainty of himself: "You have put a human +head on a horse's neck, and the beautiful female form ends in an ugly +fish's tail." It looks as if a parting were inevitable.</p> + +<p>But the most touching testimony from the Middle Ages is the famous love +story of Abélard and Héloïse. We probably possess no older document of +the passionate devotion of a woman, differing in nothing from the +sentiment of the present age, than the letters of Héloïse. Abélard +persuaded her to take the veil and repent in a convent the sin of +voluptuousness—but she knows nothing of God—her whole soul is wrapped +up in her lover: "I expect no reward from God, for what I did was not +done for love of Him.... I wanted nothing from you but yourself; I +desired only you, not that which belonged to you; I did not expect +marriage or gifts; I did not seek to gratify my desires and do my will, +but yours, and well you know that I am speaking the truth! The name of +wife may seem sacred and honourable to you, but I prefer to be called +your mistress or even your harlot. The more I degraded myself for your +sake, the more I hoped to find grace in your eyes.... I renounced all +the pleasures of the world to live only for you; I kept nothing for +myself but the desire to belong entirely to you." Abélard's replies are +pious sermons and theological treatises; he thinks of the love of the +past only as <i>the cursed desires of the flesh</i>, the snare in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> the +devil had caught them, and urges Héloïse to thank God that henceforth +they are safe. "My love which entangled both of us in sin," he says in +one of his letters, "deserves not the name of love, for it was naught +but carnal lust. I sought in you the gratification of my sinful +desires," etc. He blessed the savage crime committed on him because it +saved him for ever from the sin of voluptuousness. What Héloïse loved +and treasured as her sweetest memory, was to him hell and devil's work. +He wrote to her almost as if in mockery: "What splendid interest does +the talent of your wisdom bear to the Lord day after day! How many +spiritual daughters you have borne to Him! What a terrible loss it would +have been if you had abandoned yourself to the lust of the flesh, had +borne, with travail, a few earthly children, while now, with joy, you +bear a great number of daughters for the kingdom of Heaven. You would +have remained a woman like all the rest, but now you are far exalted +even above men." This correspondence plainly reveals the tragedy of the +lacerated man of the Middle Ages, as compared to the never-varying +woman, emerging perfect from the hands of nature. A long and toilsome +road still stretches out before him; she had reached the goal, without a +struggle, at the outset. How strange is this cry of a mediaeval nun: "It +seems as if the world had grown old, as if all men and all living +creatures had lost their freshness, as if love had grown cold not in +many, but in all hearts."</p> + +<p>What was really the final cause of the hostility to sensuousness +displayed by dualistic mediaeval Christianity? Was it not contained in +eroticism itself?</p> + +<p>This hostility was based on the fact that the world knew as yet only +spiritual love and its antithesis, the sexuality which man shares with +the animals; the only salvation, not merely in the Christian sense, but +from the point of view of every lofty conception of civilisation, lay in +the victory over animalism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> The contempt of and the struggle against +the lower form of eroticism animating the dualistic period was +absolutely consistent; asceticism represents the highest form of culture +attainable by that period. (The rejection of spiritual love was an +inconsistency on the part of the clergy.) The principle of personality +was the fundamental principle of Christianity; this is clearly expressed +by the fact that Christianity regarded the soul as the supreme value. +And what is the soul but the consciousness of human personality +conceived naïvely as substance? In the light of this higher intuition +sensuousness was bound to appear base and degrading.</p> + +<p>It is therefore historically correct, though essentially an error, to +regard Christianity as the religion of asceticism, for the asceticism of +the Middle Ages was nothing but the immature stage of the principle of +personality. Directly spiritual love was no longer in opposition to +sexuality, directly a synthesis had been effected, Christianity should +have drawn the obvious conclusion from its fundamental principle and +acknowledged love, which united the hostile elements. Protestantism did +so, half-heartedly. Luther's vacillating attitude towards sexuality is +typical of this indecision. At heart he could not justify sexuality; he +regarded it, in the same way as did the Fathers of the Church, as an +evil with which one had to make terms. His sanction of marriage was +nothing but a crooked and ill-founded compromise; and as he remained at +the old dualistic standpoint, it could not have been otherwise. But the +moment the new sensuous-supersensuous form of love had come into +existence, it behoved Christianity, as the religion of personality, to +acknowledge it.</p> + +<p>After this digression I return to the period of the inception of the +third stage of love. If I were writing a history of eroticism, I should +now have to describe the rococo period, a period essentially +rationalistic and devoted to pleasure, a period which believed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> +nothing but the obvious and understood love only in the sense of sensual +pleasure. If sensuality had hitherto been evil—at least +theoretically—it now became obscene. Stripped of every grand and cosmic +feature, it degenerated into the principal form of amusement. The +eighteenth century, though instructive and interesting to the student of +eroticism, produced nothing new. Under the undisputed sway of France, a +period of sensuality set in, unparalleled by any other epoch in the +history of the race, except, perhaps, the early oriental epoch; even the +gynecocratic family of remote antiquity was openly revived by the ladies +of Paris. Casanova was the sexual hero of the age (as he is to some +extent the hero of our present impotent epoch). Indefatigable in the +pursuit of woman and successful until old age, he was a well-bred +sexualist without subtlety or depth. The Vicomte de Valmont, the hero of +Choderlos de Laclos' famous and realistic novel <i>Les Liaisons +Dangereuses</i>, an absolutely cold and cunning seducer, was its god. They +were seconded by the pleasure-loving Ninon de l'Enclos, who was still +desired at the age of eighty.</p> + +<p>This ultra-refinement was followed by the loathing of civilisation and +love of nature expressed by Rousseau, Werther and Hölderlin; closely +allied to these passions was sentimental love, the direct precursor of +our modern conception of love. Its peculiarity lay in the fact that +although spiritual in its source, it yearned for psycho-physical unity, +and was therefore always slightly discordant. Rousseau was the first +exponent of this romantic nature cult and sentimental love of woman. He +represents the sharp recoil from the frivolity of the <i>ancien régime</i>, +and the beginning of the third stage of love. His <i>Nouvelle Héloïse</i> +(1759) was probably the first work in which sentimental love found +expression. In Goethe's <i>Werther</i> (1774), which is a faithful portrayal +of the poet's personal feelings, it was represented more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> powerfully. +Werther's love was purely spiritual at its inception. "Lotte is sacred +to me. All desire is silent in her presence." But in the end he desires +her with unconquerable passion; a dream undeceives him about the nature +of his feelings, and as he clasps her in a passionate embrace he is +conscious of having reached the summit of his longing. This would seem +the goal of modern love, embodying all its previous stages. It is +interesting to find embodiments of the extreme poles in two incidental +characters; one has been driven mad by his adoring love for a woman and +wanders about the fields in November to gather flowers for his queen; +the other is a young peasant who kills his rival in jealous rage. But +Werther himself, steering a middle-course between these two extremes, +walks straight into modern love, which means death to him.</p> + +<p>Both the <i>New Héloïse</i> and <i>Werther</i> are, sentimentally, efforts to +reach the synthesis <i>via</i> the soul. Friedrich Schlegel, in his famous +<i>Lucinda</i> (1799), tried the opposite way. He has been savagely attacked +for it by one side and lauded to the skies by the other, and when "the +emancipation of the flesh" became the motto of the day, he was glorified +as a martyr. The philosopher and theologian Schleiermacher saw in +<i>Lucinda</i> a delivery from the tyranny of centuries. "Love has become +whole again and of one piece," he exclaims, joyfully calling the poem "a +vision of a future world God knows how distant." "Love shall come again; +a new life shall unite and animate its broken limbs; it shall rule the +hearts and works of men in freedom and gladness, and supersede the +lifeless phantoms of fictitious virtues." Schleiermacher also voiced the +idea of the synthesis: "And why should we be arrested in this struggle +(<i>i.e.</i>, between love as the flower of sensuousness and the intellectual +mystical component of love), when in all domains we are striving to +bring the ideas, born by the new development of humanity, into harmony<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> +with the result of the work of past ages?" His <i>Confidential Letters on +Schlegel's Lucinda</i> have made the Protestant pastor Schleiermacher the +philosopher of the third stage of eroticism, as the chaplain Andreas was +the theorist of the second. The third stage gained its first footing +amongst the German romanticists. Women were largely instrumental in +achieving its victory. I will not go into detail but will confine myself +to mentioning in passing the names of Jean Paul, Henrietta Herz, +Brentano, Sophy Mereau, Dorothy Vest, Schelling, Friedrich Gentz. W. von +Humboldt records a conversation which he had in the year of the +Revolution with Schiller. The latter unhesitatingly professed his faith +in the unity of love. "It (the blending of love and sensuality) is +always possible and always there." But Humboldt was diffident, unable +fully to grasp the new conception. "I said that it would sever the most +beautiful, most delicate relationships, that it was too heterogeneous to +admit of coherence; but my principal argument was that in the majority +of cases it was out of the question...."</p> + +<p>There is a document from the year 1779 which contains in its entirety +the modern conception of harmonious love, together with its ecstatic +apotheosis, the love-death, a document which puts the later theorising +romanticists and <i>Lucinda</i> completely in the shade. I am referring to +the only one of Gottfried August Bürger's letters to Molly, which has +been preserved. It contains the following passages: "I cannot describe +to you in words how ardently I embrace you in the spirit. There is in me +such a tumult of life that frequently after an outburst my spirit and +soul are left in such weariness that I seem to be on the point of death. +Every brief calm begets more violent storms. Often in the black darkness +of a stormy, rainy midnight, I long to hasten to you, throw myself into +your arms, sink with you into the infinite ocean of delight and—die. Oh +Love! oh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> Love! what a strange and wonderful power art thou to hold body +and soul in such unbreakable bonds!... I let my imagination roam through +the whole world, yea, through all the heavens and the Heaven of heavens, +and examine every delight and compare it to you, but by the Eternal God! +there is nothing I desire so ardently as to hold you, sweetest and +heavenliest of all women, in my arms. If I could win you by walking +round the earth, naked and barefoot, through thorns and thistles, over +rocks and snow and ice, and, on the point of death, with the last spark +of life, sink into your arms and draw new life and happiness from your +loving bosom, I should consider that I bought you for a trifle."</p> + +<p>To adduce more historical evidence of modern love would serve no +purpose; in the next chapter I shall discuss its metaphysical +consummation, the love-death. But I will briefly point out the not quite +obvious difference between synthetic love and sexuality projected on a +specific individual. In several of the higher animals the sexual +instinct is to some extent individualised, but nevertheless it is no +more than instinct, seeking a suitable mate for its gratification. All +the well-known theories of "sexual attraction," from Schopenhauer to +Weininger, accounting love as nothing but a mutual supplementing of two +individuals for the purpose of the best possible reproduction of the +species, do not apply to love in the modern sense, but to the sexual +impulse; they completely disregard the individual, and are only aware of +the species; they apprehend individualisation as an instrument in the +service of the race. But genuine personal love is not kindled by +instinct; it is not differentiated sexual impulse; it embraces the +psycho-physical unity of the beloved without being conscious of sexual +desire. It shares with the purely spiritual love the eagerness of man to +raise and glorify the beloved woman, without ulterior motive or desire. +This distinction may be called hair-splitting, and I admit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> that it is +frequently impossible to make it in practice, but it is important in +principle because it goes back to origins and finds in the metaphysical +climax of the third stage, the love-death, its practical anti-generic +proof. But with all this it is of common occurrence that spiritual and +sensual love are at different times projected on one and the same woman.</p> + +<p>Schopenhauer's instinct of philoprogenitiveness has to-day become an +article of faith with the learned and unlearned. Schopenhauer was the +first, probably, to conceive the idea that love was the consciousness of +the unconscious instincts in the service of the species, and had no +other content or purpose than the will of the species to produce the +best possible offspring. In a chapter of his principal work, entitled +<i>The Metaphysics of Love</i>, he essayed to promulgate and prove his theory +in detail. "All love, however ethereal it may pretend to be, is rooted +solely in the sexual instinct; it is nothing more nor less than +specialised, strictly speaking individualised, sexual desire." +Schopenhauer's conception of love does not rise above this specialised +impulse. He calmly ignores all phenomena such as those I have described +because they do not fit his theory. With the exception of his cheap +observation that contrasts attract each other (which is the pith of all +his "truths") he does not adduce the smallest evidence for the truth of +his myth of "the genius of the species spreading his wings over the +coming generation." However much the results of breeders may be +applicable to the human species, they have nothing to do with love, and +the believers in the theory of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness are +silent on the subject of the best and most suitable subject for the +purpose; is it the law-abiding citizen? the restless reformer? or the +artist and thinker? Strange to say, the legend of the instinct of +philoprogenitiveness, intuitively conscious of the right way, is to-day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> +accepted even by scientists who are in sympathy neither with +Schopenhauer's nor with any other metaphysic. It is taken for granted +that love can only serve the purpose of the species; the fact that this +theory is both metaphysically and scientifically unsound is ignored. For +even leaving the genius of the species out of the question, his +intelligent comprehension of the "composition of the next generation" is +nevertheless devoutly believed in. Even Nietzsche, that +arch-individualist, was completely under the spell of this dogma, as is +proved by many of his utterances, for instance, by the well-known +socialistic definition of marriage as "the will of twain to create that +which is higher than its creators," and also by his theory that man is +not an end in himself but a bridge to something else. Nietzsche's +pronouncement that he has not yet found the woman whom he would like to +be the mother of his children, echoes the philosophy of Schopenhauer, +the superstition of the genius of philoprogenitiveness. The intrinsic +worth of love without any ulterior motive, without a view to pleasure or +to offspring, seems to have been unknown to Nietzsche. Schopenhauer's +hero puts the purport of love not in the actual individual, but in a +conception, and annihilates the value of the individual and the unique. +Every great emotion is an end in itself, and whatever we may read into +it of "purposes" and "expediencies," is an invention, and independent of +the emotion itself. The aim of the purely spiritual love of the second +stage was not propagation, and yet it was an emotion whose loftiness +cannot easily be surpassed. With the deification of woman love reached +far beyond the beloved into infinitude, and the phenomenon of the +love-death renders all the supposed generic purpose of love impossible. +But even if we ignored love altogether and admitted the existence of the +sexual instinct only, its mysterious endeavour in the interest of the +species would still remain pure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> imagination, and a conception far +inferior to that of the winged god of love. The instinct does not +possess a trace of "discretion," takes no interest in the weal and woe +of humanity, but is utterly selfish, seeking its own gratification and +nothing else.</p> + +<p>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 sexual 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 sexual impulse had its special domain, as well as the +wish for progeny, which was often regarded in the light of a duty.</p> + +<p>The legend of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness which is to-day so +universally believed, is undoubtedly the result of the general feeling +that sexual intercourse as such is base and degrading. But because of +the more or less clear consciousness that sexual 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.</p> + +<p>The task of establishing the equilibrium between love and sensuousness +has not yet been accomplished. What is so often realised as <i>the sexual +trouble</i> 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> 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 sexual; in the +state of mind which is called <i>to be in love</i> 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 sexual 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 prostitute, for the latter has made of herself +a means for the gratification of male sexuality, 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 sexuality 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, emancipated +sexuality is synonymous with inward annihila<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>tion, 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 sexualist represents a +past stage of male eroticism which has been largely overcome, but he is +rarely so completely under the spell of sexuality that he cannot highly +develop other parts of his entity. The <i>double morality</i> has, therefore, +an objective reason (though perhaps not a higher justification), and +would only be unjustifiable if man had achieved a complete erotic unity.</p> + +<p>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 entities. 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 principal causes of the longing +for the great and strong love which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> 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 friendship 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 friendship, while on the other hand the man who is not erotic +in the true sense of the word, but merely sexual, has generally a poor +idea of woman and a great appreciation of male friendship. But modern +love does not only seek to combine all human relationships; 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.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="BCHAPTER_II" id="BCHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<h3>THE LOVE-DEATH</h3> + +<h3>(THE SECOND FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM)</h3> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +constitution, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> 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.</p> + +<p>There are various paths by which the erotic may travel towards +perfection; they correspond to the principal erotic types. I have +devoted a special chapter to the seeker of love, or the Don Juan; the +woman-worshipper 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 substitution +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 passion. 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.</p> + +<p>But it is just in this overwhelming love that the impassable barrier +becomes apparent. The lovers are two beings and not one indivisible +entity. The fundamental fact of individuality stands between them as the +last obstacle to their complete union. The more intense the emotion, the +more desperately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> it tilts against this barrier, against the +impossibility of complete mutual absorption, and the more passionately +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.</p> + +<p>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 insuffer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>able 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.</p> + +<p>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 Japan, 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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>The heart is still, and nothing can disturb</div> +<div>The deepest thought, the thought to be her own.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>says Goethe; and a newer poet:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>Close around me, wondrous being,</div> +<div>Wind thy magic veil oblivion,</div> +<div>All my heart from unrest freeing,</div> +<div>Let there be untroubled calm.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Give me peace; the helter skelter</div> +<div>Of the wide world has gone by;</div> +<div>And this narrow, silent shelter</div> +<div>Holds the potent healing balm.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> 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:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>To open now my lips were vain indeed,</div> +<div>Nor word nor even kiss could e'er confess</div> +<div>What sighs and joy and grief and happiness</div> +<div>Would flash from me to you with lightning speed.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Nor hope nor pray'r can still the soul's desire,</div> +<div>For God Himself can never join us twain;</div> +<div>My bitter tears fall on my heart like rain</div> +<div>And cannot quench its all-consuming fire.</div></div> + +<div class='stanza'><div>Oh! Now to break the spell—the storm to breast</div> +<div>With broken heart and life-blood ebbing fast,</div> +<div>Bearing the pangs of death for you, at last,</div> +<div>Dark troubled love—at last thou wert at rest!</div></div> +</div> + +<p>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 "God 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.</p> + +<p>The thought of the love-death, the will that the world should be +governed by love, is the most unconditional postulate of feeling ever +laid down. For the love-death is the definite and irrevocable victory of +emotion; it is ecstasy as a solution of the world-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>problem and the +world-process. It is human to regard love and death as antitheses; to +consider them far removed from each other; marriage and funeral are the +poles of social life. The ecstasy of the love-death, however, owing to +its all-transcending claim, unites the two poles. The climax of life +shall also be its end.</p> + +<p>It is here, in the voluntary surrender of life in order to attain a +divined unity, and not in the union of begetting and destroying, that +the frequently assumed connection between love and death is to be found. +Voluptuousness and death are not interlinked, as is so frequently +asserted since Novalis (not on the higher plane of eroticism), but +voluptuousness has immolated itself, has been annihilated in the +love-death. The view that begetting and destroying are related +functions, is based on the supposition that love is bound up with +propagation. This is the fateful error of the modern theory of love, a +rationalistic, metaphysical abstraction, which touches no corresponding +chord in the human soul. To base the relationship of love and death on +an association of becoming and declining is a beautiful idea, but +nothing more. Modern synthetic love produces this relationship in its +metaphysical perfection out of itself; it is foreign alike to pure +sexuality and to spiritual love. (Wherever the desire to destroy is +found hand in hand with sensuality, morbid instincts are at play.)</p> + +<p>It frequently occurs that lovers commit suicide together because +external circumstances prevent their union. This is a step corresponding +to suicide from offended vanity or incurable disease; life has become +unbearable to the individual haunted by a fixed idea, and he throws it +away. But this has nothing whatever to do with the love-death; it is a +purely negative act of despair, whereas the love-death is an altogether +positive act, namely, the will to win to a higher (and to the intellect +inconceivable and paradoxical) meta<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>physical unity. The love-death +aspires to perform a miracle. It has, possibly, never been realised in +its full greatness; the evidence of the common death of Heinrich von +Kleist and Henrietta Vogel must be rejected. During the last days of his +life Kleist was wrapped up in the idea of their common death, and in a +letter to his cousin, Marie von Kleist, he says: "If you could only +realise how death and love strive to beautify these last moments of my +life with heavenly and earthly roses, you would be content to let me +die. I swear to you I am supremely happy." In the same letter he speaks +of "the most voluptuous of deaths." And yet it was no real love-death, +that is to say, death following as a necessary corollary in order that +love may be consummated. Kleist as well as Henrietta had separately +resolved to commit suicide, and when they—almost accidentally—heard of +this mutual intention, they conceived the idea of the new voluptuousness +of a common death. Love did not play a very great part in this. Kleist +further says in the same letter: "Her resolution to die with me drew me, +I cannot tell you with what unspeakable and irresistible power, into her +arms. Do you remember that I asked you more than once to die with me. +But you always said 'No.'" From this and other passages it is clear that +Kleist would have taken his life in any case, and that he only seized +this specific opportunity to plunge into the ecstasy of a common death.</p> + +<p>The thought of the love-death is often present in the hearts of +individuals who are genuinely in love. We read in Schlegel's <i>Lucinda</i>: +"There (in a transcendental life) our longings may perhaps be +satisfied." And in Lenau's letters to Sophy the same thought is more +than once apparent.</p> + +<p>The idea reached perfection and immortality in Wagner's "Tristan and +Isolde." It is Wagner's world-famous deed to have lived through and +embodied this complex of emotion for the first, and so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> far for the last +time; his lovers are in a superlative degree representative of human +love; they typify the climaxes of human emotion. Wagner has immortalised +the metaphysical form of synthetic love; his importance to synthetic +love surpasses Dante's importance to deification.</p> + +<p>Already in the first act the exchange of love-potion and death-draught +is profoundly significant: both Tristan and Isolde seek death because +they are alarmed by the external obstacles to their love. But the +thought of death and love, the foreboding that their love can find rest +only in the ultimate, in finality, has been in their hearts from the +outset. Together they receive new life from love, and together love +leads them, step by step, to death. In the profoundest sense no exchange +of potions has taken place, but the power of the love-potion has made +them conscious of what was latent in their souls, waiting to burst into +life. At the very moment when Isolde proffers Tristan the death-draught, +the conviction flashes into his soul that she is giving him death +through love: "When thy dear hand the goblet raised, I recognised that +death thou gav'st." And in the same way Isolde: "From golden day I +sought to flee, in darkest night draw thee with me, where my heart +divined the end of deceit, where illusion's haunting dream should fade, +to drink eternal love to thee, joined everlastingly, to death I doom'd +thee."</p> + +<p>The second act leads them further and further into the coils of their +love; they are more and more convinced that death alone is left to them, +step by step they discover the secret of the mystical union—and yet +they are still completely imprisoned within the limits of their +personalities and cannot quite understand the miracle: "How to grasp it, +how to grasp it, this great gladness, far from daylight, far from +sadness, far from parting?" For it is the profoundest secret of the +world which here must be guessed by love—the final unity of two souls +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> through it unity with all life. Clearer and clearer and more and +more compelling looms the thought of a common death, until it is grasped +and comprehended; the lovers realise that to be completely one they must +surrender their lives, and that by losing life they can lose nothing +essential. "All death can destroy is that which divides us." Ultimately +Tristan pronounces the final decision, and Isolde repeats it word by +word, follows it step by step like a sleep-walker, so as to make it +quite her own. "Thus should we die no more to part, in endless joy, one +soul, one heart, never waking, never haunted by pale fear, in love +undaunted, each to each united aye, dream of love's eternity." The +grand, artistic symbol for this state of consciousness touches +metaphysic. Wagner introduces night as the visible emblem of an +existence in a world—inconceivable by our senses—beyond the grave, in +contrast to the earthly day, to "the day's deceptive glamour." +(Nietzsche later on adopted this symbol "midnight" as the emblem of +everything lofty.) The lovers who in their day-consciousness believed +that they hated each other, now that they are walking towards eternal +night divine that which is beyond the reach of their separated selves, +beyond all illusion and duality. The duality is outwardly expressed by +their different names, separated and united "by the little word <i>and</i>." +All at once the knowledge dawns upon them that great love cannot be +consummated in the day of the world, but that it points to a life +beyond. They have discovered the final meaning of life and the +world—the annihilation of individual life and death through +love—analogous to the last wisdom of the mystic: "To become God." "I +myself am the world." Death is the inevitable corollary of supreme love. +But as they tremblingly yearn for and await the inconceivable, earth +once more stretches out her arms to them, the dream of metaphysical +existence melts slowly away. In the orchestration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> <i>phantoms of the day, +dreams of morning</i>, suppress the new, the divined conception.</p> + +<p>At the opening of the third act the motif for horns and violas gradually +ascending and dying away, expresses the unspeakable dreariness and +senselessness of material life, after its profound meaning, the +re-creation of the world by love, has been lost. This feeling of +absolute senselessness dominates the awakening sleeper; Tristan, +interpreting it in the sense of Schopenhauer as the universal +aimlessness of the world and of life, is merely expressing the doom of +his own longing for the supreme: he has divined and has lost the +loftiest value. Wagner intuitively perceives that sin is a component +part of the supreme sublimation of love and personality; Tristan must +curse himself and the beloved woman because love, as the last +consequence of sin, demands the love-death, which can never find +completion; "The terrible draught myself I have brewed it! A curse on +thee, terrible draught! A curse on him who brewed it!"</p> + +<p>In the music at the end of the third act, which is known by the (not +quite relevant) title of "Isolde's Love-death," Wagner, after previously +expressing by Tristan's last words, "Do I near light?" the inadequacy of +the physical senses—attempts to describe the metaphysical condition of +the unity of love, which to our consciousness can only have the negative +characteristics of the unthinkable and intangible—the unconscious. This +he tried to accomplish artistically by making use of the senses, by +trying to convey in terms of sound, light, scent, what he understood by +this complete immersion in the swirling totality of cosmic life—"<i>in +des Weltatem's wehendem All</i>." The essence of this condition is that the +duality of the souls, and finally the multiplicity of the world, is +resolved in a higher unity. But as we are concerned with the emotional +life of the lovers and not with vague metaphysical propositions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> we may +say that such a death is not a being dead, destroyed, annihilated, +dispersed, but a being transformed, perfected in love. The amazing +phenomenon of this complex of feeling is the fact that real life has +become unbearable, and that another life is created without the least +regard to possibility or truth; it is as if the emotion of the lovers +were endowed with divine, creative power.</p> + +<p>Those who realise the love-death as a necessity of their inmost being, +resemble the great ecstatic whom earthly life can no longer satisfy, +because he is conscious of a force compelling him to enter into a higher +cosmic existence. His inmost experience is the annihilation of the +individual soul in God; he aspires to a direct pouring of the soul into +the divine love. Those who die in love are directly seeking complete +unity with each other, and only indirectly, through this unity, the +divined annihilation in metaphysical being. The love-death is the +erotic, bi-human form of mystic ecstasy, and could not be evolved until +the highest form of love had been developed.</p> + +<p>Metaphysical eroticism is a product of the spirit of Europe, for it is +linked to personality whose will is the immortalisation of love. +Orientalism neither comprehends nor appreciates this emotion, for it +lacks the foundation of the culture of personality. The Semite, the +Indian and the Japanese experience only the rapture of the senses; and +gratification, restlessly revolving round itself between enjoyment and +exhaustion, is condemned to eternal sterility. All religio-sexual orgies +of which history tells us are so many attempts of sensuality to possess +itself of a higher intuition—vain attempts, because casual intercourse +and the annihilation of the individual can never produce new values. +According to Hegel the immanent sense of everything that happens in the +world is the destiny of the individual to grow from slavery into +freedom; but is it not rather the meaning of increased culture that man +should realise himself as an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> individual (which is by no means a +contradiction to the first proposition)? Metaphysical eroticism is the +completion of personality in love. Simultaneously with the birth of +personality originated the deification of woman; the destruction of the +most highly evolved personality, the last painful consequence of its +blessed-unblessed nature, gives birth to the conception of the +love-death. Like antique torch-bearing genii the two metaphysical forms +of love stand at the head and the feet of self-conscious man. Here and +there erotic emotion, transcending all limitations, becomes the pathway +leading to the ultimate secrets of life: deification creates a +supernatural female being as the erotic representative of everything +divine. This is a productive act, erotic, artistic and religious at the +same time. It produces out of its own fulness new forces for the service +of higher ideals; it creates a new world of emotion with new contents.</p> + +<p>Simultaneously with the projection of the love of woman into eternity +were sown the seeds of those great things on which the higher spiritual +life of to-day is based. Deification demands shape and individuality +beyond the earthly sphere, in eternity. But from one side it is love, +love without response (unless the lover finds response in and through +artistic expression), the eroticism of the solitary man, and it occurs +as such to this day in rare minds. Woman-worship is the natural and the +highest form of love for the man who does not seek his own perfection in +duality—a reciprocal relationship with another being—but solitarily, +and yet not, as the mystic, shapelessly, but rather in a love definitely +projected on another being. The dream of the perfect woman is the only +erotic dream which reality can never disappoint, for it makes no claim +on reality. Doubtless it is to some extent paradoxical that the +inherently social feeling, anchored in duality, should be experienced +and perfected solitarily, that it should waive all claim to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> response +and reciprocity, to all appearances the most important elements of love.</p> + +<p>The love-death corresponds more completely to the erotic ideal inasmuch +as it is founded on absolute equality in reciprocity. It finds its +climax not in solitude but in the company of the beloved. The idea of +complete abandonment is revolting to the solitarily loving individual; +the lover whose whole soul turns to the beloved cannot understand the +love of the solitary soul; it appears to him unnatural and cold, perhaps +meaningless and crazy. Woman does not know true solitude, the thought of +deification is foreign to her nature; she attains to the supreme only +with and through man; it is easier to her to give herself to her lover +entirely, and even to follow him into death. But in this connection I am +unable to suppress a doubt as to whether the fundamental emotion of the +mystical world-union is altogether present in woman, whether she really +divines behind her lover—eternity.</p> + +<p>While deification is universally creative, while it is fresh as the +spring and full of faith, the love-death with its gloomy pathos demands +the entire individual and destroys everything but itself. It has no +creative power, for there is nothing beyond it. One may justly maintain +that the love-death realises the mystico-ecstatic religious emotion, +while in the deification of woman the religious need to worship finds +satisfaction. Both are combinations of love and religion, both are +metaphysical eroticism, paradoxical and yet logical conclusions of human +emotion.</p> + +<p>The overwhelming longing which is connected at least with the first +stages of a great love, may be interpreted in another, in a social +sense. Love is the intensest and most direct relationship which can +exist between two beings, and the impossibility of realising its final +longing represents the most genuine tragedy of life among men and women +of the social world. The need which impels two beings to each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> other +lacks, in this union too, the possibility of complete consummation. And +if the most powerful of all social emotions (and as many believe the +root of all others) suffers from an inner duality, to how much greater +an extent must the less intense feelings which unite individuals share +the same lot! Humanity, wherever it is comprehended profoundly and +spiritually, not economically, carries within itself the germ of its +tragical imperfection. Whatever social relationship we may enter, we +find that it has a flaw, and the more genuine and profound the +relationship, the less dictated by utilitarian considerations (which in +this connection correspond to the element of sensuality in eroticism), +the more painfully does this flaw make itself felt,—whether it be in +friendship, in the relationship of master and man, or in free +companionship. Every relationship between individuals is stricken with +the curse of incompleteness—even love cannot escape this fate. Love +enforces in the deification of woman a transcending of earthly life—and +it throws itself into the last embrace of a common death—that is to +say, it shudderingly admits the impossibility of its consummation.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="BCHAPTER_III" id="BCHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<h3>THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND LOVE</h3> + +<h3><i>The Seeker of Love and The Slave of Love</i></h3> + +<p>It is obvious that even an equilibrium between sexuality and love cannot +always be established, while a genuine and complete unification is very +unusual and may, perhaps, be called utopian. In the previous chapters I +have dealt with the blending of both elements in the highest form of +eroticism; in the following I will attempt to throw light on some of the +principal phenomena resulting from a defective union of sexuality and +love, phenomena which I am convinced have never been correctly +interpreted. I allude to perversions which are not inherently +pathological, although they are as a rule only observed and described in +their pathological form.</p> + +<p>The fundamental form of so-called sadism may be discovered in an erotic +type which I will call the seeker of love. A lover of this type is +characterised by an unappeasable longing for pure, spiritual love; he +passes from woman to woman in the hope of realising this desire, but +owing to his own material disposition he is unable to do so. Time after +time he succumbs to sexual promptings. Thus groping, frequently quite +unconsciously—for a fictitious being, he hates every woman whose fate +it is to rouse his desire, for each one cheats him out of that which he +seeks. A genuine illusionist, he knows nothing of the woman of flesh and +blood, and continues seeking his ideal, only to be again and again +disappointed. He blames every woman he conquers for what is really his +own insufficiency; he despises her or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> revenges himself on her, punishes +and ill-treats her; we recognise the true Don Juan and his morbid +caricature, the sadist. But even the most brutal representative of this +type may still be psychologically described as "a man who seeks +spiritual love in woman after woman and, finding only sexuality, +revenges himself on her." Quite a number of men harbour sadistic +feelings for only one woman, and that the one to whom they owe their +great disillusionment. Doubtless many men have almost lost the psychical +roots of their perversions and are completely involved in physical acts. +There is nothing remarkable in this fact; it occurs in every sphere of +human life. The vague instinct of revenge on woman animates also, though +perhaps unconsciously, the pathological sadist.</p> + +<p>There is one thing which the seeker of love and the woman-worshipper +have in common: both seek a higher ideal far beyond the woman of +every-day life; but while the worshipper safeguards the purity of his +feeling by putting the greatest possible distance between him and the +object of his worship (and is therefore never disappointed), the seeker +of love, blinded by the illusion that he has at last found the object of +his quest, draws every woman towards him and again and again discovers +that he is nothing but a sensualist. Every fresh conquest destroys his +dream afresh, and he revenges himself, if he is a Don Juan, by despising +and disgracing the unfortunate victim, and if he is a sadist, by +maltreating her. And yet he never entirely loses his illusion; he craves +for complete satisfaction, and as he is incapable of self-knowledge, he +never abandons the hope of meeting the woman he seeks. He differs very +little from the type represented by Sordello, who loved one woman +spiritually, but regarded all the others from the standpoint of sex. It +is the tragedy of Don Juan to revolt from the low erotic sphere which is +his portion, and where he rules supreme, and for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> ever to aspire to a +realm from which he is shut out. He is convinced that with the help of a +woman he may redeem himself—and sinks deeper and deeper into the slough +of his own sensuality. He becomes malevolent, cruel and callous; the +pleasure whose slave he is repels him:</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>From craving to enjoyment thus I reel,</div> +<div>And in enjoyment languish for desire.</div></div> +</div> + +<p>He is insatiable, but not as the primitive hedonist, whose natural +element is pleasure, but because he again and again mistakes pleasure +for love. He knows only "women," and thus he sins against personality +and the love which is the outcome of personality.</p> + +<p>The opinion that Don Juan is no more than a votary of pleasure is not +worthy of criticism; the famous Casanova, for instance, has nothing in +common with him. Casanova was a sensualist without psychical complexity +and without tragedy. His sole endeavour was to wring the utmost measure +of enjoyment out of life. He knew the woman of reality and did not waste +his time in running after phantoms. In his old age he revelled in the +after-taste and settled down to write his memoirs. Don Juan, on the +contrary, has such a loathing for all the women he betrays, that he +hardly remembers them, and certainly has the strongest disinclination to +evoke their memory. Casanova was an entirely unmetaphysical and +unproblematical nature. His philosophy is clearly expressed in the +preface to his Memoirs: "I always regarded the enjoyment of sensual +pleasures as my principal object; I never knew a more important one." +Casanova, who, strange to say, enjoys such high erotic honours, was +merely an ordinary, very successful man of the world, and is of no +importance to the subject in hand. But even the greater and wilder +Vicomte de Valmont (the hero of the famous novel of Choderlos de Laclos) +is in spite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> of all his art and <i>esprit</i> and perverse principles no +seeker of love and no Don Juan, but a fop and a braggart, seducing women +in order to boast of his success. He is moreover only a representative +of the bored Upper Ten of the <i>ancien régime</i>, and not by any means +unique.</p> + +<p>Thoughtful critics contend that Don Juan was an autocrat, a destroyer, a +criminal nature with satanic tendencies, bent on the enslavement of +women, on their social and moral death; that conquest only, not +enjoyment, was his passion. I do not altogether reject this +interpretation, but it fastens too exclusively on the external and the +obvious, and overlooks the essential. What is the reason of his +preposterous procedure? Is he really actuated by the evil desire to +injure the women he woos? Such a motive may occur occasionally (the +Vicomte de Valmont was so constituted), but it cannot be regarded as the +guiding principle of a life—and above everything its pettiness is the +exact reverse of so great and demoniacal a character as Don Juan. Were +he conqueror in the highest sense, then—ascetic and proud—he would be +content with the mere consciousness of victory. But his whole attitude +belies the idea of a conqueror; he is not in the least interested in the +women to whom he makes love. They are as necessary to him as "the air he +breathes," but they are unable to give him what he seeks. At the moment +of disappointment he abandons them in disgust, innocent of any despotic +desires (which would pre-suppose interest). As far as he is concerned, +women exist only for the purpose of quickening something in his soul. +But his soul remains dead; divine love has no part in him, he cannot be +saved and is doomed to eternal damnation.</p> + +<p>But what is the reason why women cannot resist him? Let us first settle +the point as to why women are attracted to men. I will answer this +question briefly, and though my answer may appear dogmatical, it need +not therefore be wrong. Women know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> very little of man, but there is one +thing they feel with unfailing certainty, and that is whether their sex +is of great or of small significance to him. (I am only alluding to the +general effect of men on women, not to genuine personal love which is +always incommensurable.) The greater the importance a man attaches to +women, the more readily do they respond to his influence. They are +attracted by his erotic will, not by one or the other of his spiritual +or physical qualities. Women cannot resist a man to whom they mean much, +everything. It is as if they were compelled to throw themselves into the +chasm of his vacuity—every fresh victim with the fond hope of filling +it—but all of them perish. And yet, at the moment of their defeat they +are supremely happy, for they experience the full intensity of his +passion and the boundlessness of his longing. The erotic craving of a +man simply means that women are to him the most important thing in life. +Women instinctively yield to that man who most eagerly desires them. The +coarse sensualist, to whom all women are alike, attracts sensual women, +not exactly because they find in him the satisfaction of their craving, +but because they themselves act on him indiscriminately. But a woman +will adapt herself with the greatest ease to the needs of the +differentiated erotic (for instance, she will become really sentimental +to please the man who prefers sentimental women), for she loves to give +herself to the man who most desires her and as he desires her.</p> + +<p>Don Juan, animated by illimitable erotic yearning, is therefore the +undisputed master of the other sex. He has the power of bestowing +absolute happiness, even if only for a brief hour, because in his +boundless love (which is projected on anything but her) a woman receives +the supreme value. Maybe he would be saved if a woman denied herself to +him—maybe he would cease to be a seeker of love and become a +worshipper, for he could not refuse to believe in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> woman who +rejected him; but it is his fate that no woman he woos can resist him, +that all throw themselves into his arms without an exception and without +a struggle.</p> + +<p>Thus the seeker of love, too, though in a restricted sense, may be +regarded as a metaphysical erotic, for he loathes sexuality—his +portion—and yearns for a higher form of love. He shares this attitude +with the slave of love, who is also a sensualist and a would-be lover. +The slave of love imitates the attitude of the worshipper, but he +infallibly sinks into the sexual sphere. What the psychopathist since +Kraft-Ebbing designates as masochism, is the pathological degeneration +of this particular emotion, which is very common and appears in various +forms, but does not seem to me to be at all morbid. Certainly it is +morbid when a man allows himself to be insulted, bound and flogged, but +it is fairly normal when his passionate admiration is roused by an +imperious woman, who passes him by like a queen without even noticing +his abject adoration; when he longs to kneel down before her and kiss +her feet, which in reward would spurn him. Quite normal, too, is the +boyish happiness in serving an admired and adored woman (Kraft-Ebbing +calls this pageism) described so beautifully in Dostoievsky's novel, <i>A +Young Hero</i>, and fairly common among troubadours and minnesingers. (I +need only mention Ulrich von Lichtenstein.) There are numerous degrees +of this feeling—we frequently come across it in the novels of +Dostoievsky, Jacobsen, Strindberg, D'Annunzio, and others—but the +essence of it is always contained in the fact that the man, although +yearning to worship the beloved woman, cannot maintain himself in the +sphere of spiritual love, and aspires to direct physical contact. His +attitude, which closely imitates purely spiritual love, cannot be other +than sexual. The blending of love and sexuality together with the +incapacity of effecting a real syn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>thesis, the confusion of value and +pleasure is most clearly shown in the masochist—far more clearly than +in the case of the (rare) seeker of love. The outward modes preferred by +the individual are a matter of indifference; for the most part they are +symbolical acts, indicating the lover's inferiority and the loftiness +and power of his mistress. What is really of importance is the spiritual +attitude which induces him to commit these strange acts, and in these we +find the characteristic attitude of the woman-worshipper: that of the +slave before his queen. The slave of love is a sensualist incapable of +approaching woman in a normally manly, instinctive and natural way, but +requiring the pose of the spiritual worshipper. One might be tempted to +believe that he harboured the secret wish to atone for his incapacity of +feeling a pure love by being degraded and ill-treated. Thus from a human +point of view the slave of love is a higher type than the seeker of +love; all his transgressions, the fault of his morbid disposition, come +home to him; he takes the blame of his sin upon his own shoulders, while +the seeker of love revenges himself on his victims for his own +shortcomings. The seeker of love is by nature polygamous, while the +slave of love is, as a rule, monogamous (and consequently has little +success with the opposite sex). Both aspire to a union of sensual and +spiritual eroticism, but in both cases the union is a failure. All the +repulsive and terrible manifestations of these perversions which have +been recorded, can easily be shown to fit my theory. In psychological +research it is merely a question of selecting the great types from the +mass of phenomena and determining them correctly.</p> + +<p>The so-called <i>fetichist</i>, too, whose passion is roused by indifferent +objects which belonged, or might belong, to the beloved, or in fact to +any woman, is a variant of the slave of love. The classical +representative of fetichism is the mediaeval knight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> who carried a +handkerchief, a glove, or any other article of clothing belonging to his +lady, next to his heart, thus believing himself proof against evil +influences. There we see already spiritual love groping for material +objects in order to gain earthly support; not every man is a Dante, not +every man is capable of keeping his soul free from the taint of this +earthly sphere. But even the "plait-cutter," so well known to the reader +of newspapers, the collector of garters, and similar desperadoes, +require a relic, a fetich which they apparently worship. To the same +category belongs the idolatrous cult which some men, especially +artists—but also madmen—practise with female pictures and statues +(more especially with heads). In this case the fundamental feeling of +the love of beauty, which we know as an essential factor of purely +spiritual eroticism, is made to serve sensual purposes. The desired +illusion of spiritual worship is facilitated, and is protected from +self-revelation, owing to the fact that a painted head rouses in the +normal individual no passion, but inspires him with purely spiritual +sentiments.</p> + +<p>I have briefly touched on this subject because my theory of the two +roots of eroticism permits of a new, and in my opinion plausible, +explanation of erotic perversions; one might even go as far as to say +that the existence of perversions follows as a necessary consequence; +that they must exist because it obviously cannot <i>always</i> be possible to +maintain a harmonious balance of sensuality and love. This chapter is +therefore a necessary supplement to the previous ones in which the +perfection of modern love is dealt with. The seeker of love and the +slave of love are phenomena of dualistic eroticism incapable of +attaining to unity. For this reason they neither existed in antiquity, +nor do we find genuine examples of them in the female sex. All female +perversions closely examined are hysteria—that is to say, want of inner +balance—in various forms; a woman's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> subjection to the will of a man is +in very many instances a natural symptom, and cannot be regarded as +perverse. And thus we again perceive that the eroticism of woman is more +harmonious and natural than that of the eternally groping and eternally +erring man.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="BCHAPTER_IV" id="BCHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<h3>THE REVENGE OF SEXUALITY</h3> + +<h3><i>The Demoniacal and the Obscene</i></h3> + +<p>In conclusion I will attempt to elucidate a group of phenomena which +play a part, important though often ignored, in the emotional life of +the present day. They are related to the subject under discussion, +inasmuch as they, too, are the result of a lack of harmony between +sensuousness and love. As long as sensuousness is felt and understood as +a natural element, and one which does not under normal circumstances +enter consciousness as a distinct principle, the emotional sphere which +may be designated as demoniacal-sexual and obscene, does not exist. Not +until sensuousness is confronted by a higher principle, a now solely +acknowledged spiritual-divine principle, will natural life, and +particularly normal sexuality, be stigmatised as low and ungodly, even +as demoniacal. In proportion as the conception of God became more +spiritual and divine, the conception of the devil became more horrible; +the higher the soul soared, the deeper sank the body. This philosophy of +pure spirituality was expressed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the +following words: "Oh, soul, stamped with the image of God, adorned with +His semblance, espoused to faith, endowed with His spirit, redeemed by +His blood, the compeer of angels, invested with reason—what hast thou +in common with the flesh, for which thou must suffer so much?... And yet +it is thy dearest companion! Behold, there will come a day when it shall +be a miserable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> pallid corpse, food for worms! For however beautifully +it may be adorned, yet it is nothing but flesh!" The man of the later +Middle Ages, and especially the cleric, who was completely dominated by +the contrast of the ascetic and the sexual, feared the devil more than +he loved God, and regarded the sensual temptations which beset his +excited, superstitious and eternally unsatisfied imagination as sent by +the devil. The naïveté of sensuality had passed away for ever; as +goodness was looked upon as divine and supernatural, nature and natural +instincts were condemned. Man was torn asunder.</p> + +<p>But the devil was not only feared, he was also worshipped. A +devil-worship, the details of which have been little studied, existed +from the tenth to the fourteenth century (when it reached its climax), +side by side with the worship of God. The greater the dread of heresy +and witchcraft, the greater became the number of men who, despairing of +salvation, prostrated themselves before the devil, whom they seemed +unable to escape (a single evil thought was sufficient to doom their +souls to eternal damnation), in the hope that he would at least save +their bodies from the stake and vouchsafe them the pleasures of this +world. Satan promised his worshippers unlimited pleasure; he became the +redeemer of those whom the clergy persecuted. It is asserted that his +worship consisted in an obscene parody of the Mass; according to +Michelet, the body of a female worshipper served as the altar on which a +toad was consecrated and partaken of instead of the Host. The adept +solemnly renounced Jesus and did homage to Satan by kissing his image.</p> + +<p>Asceticism and libertinism always go hand in hand. They are convertible +principles rending their victim. <i>Temptation</i> is the fundamental motif +of this condition. The devil was believed to send out his servants to +win new souls; monks were visited by demons in the shape of a voluptuous +woman, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> <i>succubus</i>; Satan himself, or one of his emissaries, +disguised as a fashionable gentleman, the <i>incubus</i>, appeared to the +nuns. Undoubtedly the dreams of over-excited men and women played a very +important part in this connection; many hysterical women felt the +devil's kiss and embrace. All these women were themselves convinced of +the truth of their hallucinations and imaginings, and once the belief in +witchcraft was firmly established (in the thirteenth century) the +obvious atonement for their hysteria was the stake.</p> + +<p>The fear of witches, which existed parallel with the love of the +Madonna, was typical of the declining Middle Ages. The first Christian +centuries knew neither the Lady of Heaven in the later meaning of the +word, nor did they know anything of witches. In the reign of Charlemagne +the penalty for the belief in witchcraft was death. At all times man has +exhibited a tendency to see in woman either a celestial or an infernal +being, and nowhere was this tendency more strongly developed than in the +soul of the mediaeval dualist: he created the beloved and adored Queen +of Heaven, the mediator between God and humanity and, as her counterpart +the witch, the despised and dreaded seducer, a being between man and +devil. Powerless to effect a reconciliation between spiritual love and +sensuous pleasure, he required two distinct female types as +personifications of the two directions of his desire; love and the +pleasure of the senses could have nothing in common, and once the +highest value was realised in the spiritual love of woman, pleasure +could not appear otherwise than degraded, sinful and diabolical. In this +respect, also, woman submitted without a murmur to the dictates of male +will.</p> + +<p>Mary and the devil became more and more the real hostile powers of the +thirteenth century; the classical time of woman-worship was also the +climax of the fear of the devil and witchcraft. The Dominican<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> monks +who, above all other orders, contributed to the spread of the cult of +Mary, proceeded, soon after the establishment of the Inquisition, +against the witches, the enemies of Mary. In the second half of the +thirteenth century the persecution of heresy gradually gave way to the +persecution of witchcraft.</p> + +<p>I will not go into these well-known details, for the psychical position +is clear enough: to the man whose heart is filled with the love of good +and the spiritual love of woman, sensuousness will appear as dangerous +and perilous, and will have at the same time the glamour of the +demoniacally-sexual. It is the diabolical element of dualistic +consciousness in the sphere of eroticism. Many people of the present day +will not be able to understand this feeling, for it pre-supposes a +completely inharmonious emotional life.</p> + +<p>The consciousness of the obscene is allied to the conception of the +demoniacal; it accompanies modern synthetic love as its temptation and +its shadow. In personal love sensuality and soul are no longer +independent, contrasted principles; personality, taking the spiritual as +its foundation, includes the sensuous. In this highest stage all +eroticism not hallowed by mutual affection is felt as unpardonable. The +purely sexual principle continues to exist, but whenever it appears in +its impersonal and brutal crudity as an element hostile to personality, +it creates the consciousness of the obscene. The obscene is, therefore, +the purely sexual, not in its naïve normality, but as a force inimical +to a value, as a rule to the value of personality. The obscene expresses +scorn and hatred for personal love. It is the seduction of the primitive +which is no longer something <i>earlier</i>, but something baser (for every +age must gauge all things by its own standard). The aesthetic +principle—in this connection the sense of the beauty of the human +form—so powerful an element in naïve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> sensuality as well as in every +other form of eroticism, is excluded, because in this particular +condition the beauty of the human body is not objectively realised, but +is looked upon with the eyes of the senses. The moment personality is +acknowledged as the only decisive factor in erotic life, chaotic +impersonal sensuality stands condemned. The obscene is the darker aspect +of modern love, and without modern love it could not exist. Its essence +is negative, is the tendency to caricature and mock the highest form of +love. The photograph of a nude woman is not obscene; but if the face is +hidden, and thus the personal moment intentionally eliminated in favour +of the generic element, it approaches the obscene. This accounts for the +widely felt pleasure in obscene pictures; the beholder is not personally +engaged, he can enjoy these pictures without taking upon his shoulders +any kind of responsibility. Even that minimum of respect which the very +dregs of humanity may claim is not required of him. The picture is +capable of affording pleasure without claiming a grain of human +kindness. Thus it would seem that sensual pleasure is possible without +any sacrifice of the inwardly professed higher eroticism, a sacrifice +which might be a bar to a primitive relationship with a woman of flesh +and blood. Actually, however, it is not possible, for with the surrender +to the base source of enjoyment, the spiritual position is abandoned, +and personally conceived humanity inwardly annihilated.</p> + +<p>It follows from the foregoing that the fascination of the obscene can +only be fully felt by one who has completely acknowledged the principle +of personality in eroticism, and who has also latent within him the +possibility of erotic dualism. The more highly evolved the emotional +life of a man (all these considerations apply only to a man in whom the +possibility of dualism is latent), the more will he realise the purely +sexual, the emphasis of the element of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> pleasure, as something unseemly +and disagreeable; something which he ought to deny himself, but which +attracts him with the irresistible fascination of the obscene. The man +who surrenders himself naïvely to sensuality does not realise it as +obscene, but the man who, conscious of his higher concept, strives +against it, experiences the reaction of sensuality with the full force +of its perverse seduction. Even if only for a brief space, he +annihilates the higher element and gives himself up to the pleasure of +the base and degraded.</p> + +<p>In this connection we are face to face with the strange but still +logical fact, that a man who has completely attained to the third stage +of love, feels even the purely spiritual love as odious in its +incompleteness. It strikes him as unnatural and forced, a feeling which +must, however, not be confused with the ordinary contempt of spiritual +love.</p> + +<p>Primitively constituted man knows only undifferentiated sexuality. He +enjoys the nude, and sees no difference between a Venus by Titian and an +ordinary photograph of a nude figure; the aesthete, and more especially +the artist, can never understand that a work of art may be sensually +stimulating. That it may be so will always be bluntly denied by an +individual capable of enjoying a beautiful form, but to the uncultivated +mind the picture of the female body will only evoke memories of +pleasure. This feeling, however, is quite distinct from the obscene; it +is neither hostile to the higher spiritual life, nor is it criminal; it +is natural and harmonious. But the same feeling may become obscene if a +man, aware of higher aesthetic values, ignores art and enjoys the +picture merely as a representation of a nude figure. Here, too, the +seduction lies in a demoniacal element, namely in the destruction of the +aesthetic value. The destructive characteristic of the obscene wars +against all higher conceptions; it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> the revenge of chaotic sex +deposed by a higher principle, and has the special charm of secret +wrong-doing.</p> + +<p>I might go even further, and maintain that because modern love does not +admit pleasure as its foundation and content, and because the craving +for pleasure is deeply rooted in human nature, love favours to a high +degree the desire to reserve a sphere for pleasure distinct from +personal love. This region is the obscene, and one might prophesy that +it will grow in proportion as the principle of personal love acquires +dominion; for pleasure will always need an undisturbed retreat +untroubled by higher demands. This can only be found in the sphere of +the obscene in which the element of personality is entirely eliminated.</p> + +<p>Modern man is beset by another peculiar temptation. The beauty of woman, +which in the days of the past was regarded as sacred, can be made a +means of pleasure, and thus drawn from the realm of values into the +realm of sensuality. This is a breach with the principle of personal +love, for to the latter the beauty of a woman is so much part and parcel +of the whole personality that it cannot be enjoyed separately, that +indeed it can hardly be noticed as a distinct element. This cleavage has +become so nearly universal that we are hardly conscious of its profound +perversity. It is the arch-sin of all higher eroticism to realise beauty +not as the undetachable and self-evident outward form of a beloved soul, +but as a means of heightening pleasure. Although in its essence it is +the same thing as the examination of a work of art merely for the sake +of the pleasure it affords to the senses, the offence is here aggravated +because personality is involved. This degradation of the higher values, +whether of nature, art, beauty, knowledge, kindness, religion or the +human soul, to serve the ends of sensual pleasure is the expression of a +perversity which is possibly the most radical and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> characteristic of our +age. To-day the soul of a woman has frequently the same effect on man as +her physical beauty; he enjoys it as a subtile charm instead of +respecting it as a mystery.</p> + +<p>I can hardly expect to make my meaning quite clear to the multitude, but +the tendency to enjoy beauty of form or soul as a distinct element +represents a rupture with the principle of synthetic love, the love +which does not separate but realises the personality of the beloved as +an indivisible entity. The enjoyment of beauty as a separate element +pre-supposes a conscious, spiritual division, not only of the beloved, +but also of the lover, and is therefore the destruction of the principle +of unity. Aesthete and libertine alike sink to the lower level of +pleasure, and their emotions become obscene. There is no question of a +division when Tristan in his vision of Isolde exclaims, "How beautiful +thou art!" For great love can create the beauty of the beloved out of +its own soul.</p> + +<p>Prudery is based on a similar duality. It expresses a consciousness that +the nude can only be alluring, obscene, "indecent," and should therefore +be feared and avoided. It is the defensive weapon of sexually excited, +for the most part, slightly hysterical women, against the purely sexual, +whose sphere they often extend amazingly. Prudery conceives sexuality as +a distinct, restricted complex in consciousness. Such division is alien +to woman and, where it exists, a hysterical condition, a condition of +inner discord, is clearly indicated. We may take it that the obscene +which affects normal men, affects only hysterical, inwardly discordant +women who try to take shelter behind prudery. To the normal woman the +obscene does not exist as a spiritual principle; she turns with a +feeling of displeasure from all the lower sexual manifestations, and +even finds them absurd. The elimination of personality of eroticism, the +charm of which is felt by even the most highly differentiated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> man, has +always been foreign to woman—she lacks the duality of erotic emotion +which man is slowly and laboriously striving to overcome—a still +further proof of the unbroken, synthetic emotion of woman.</p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p> +<h3><a name="CONCLUSION" id="CONCLUSION"></a>CONCLUSION</h3> + +<h3>THE PSYCHOGENETIC LAW</h3> + +<h3><i>The Individual as an Epitome of the Human Race</i></h3> + +<p>The biogenetic law of Ernst Haeckel teaches us that the human embryo +passes through all the stages of development traversed by its ancestors +in their evolution from the lower forms of the animal world. Although +each successive stage completely replaces the preceding one, the latter +is there as its organic supposition. Man is not born as a human being +until he has travelled over the principal portions of the road to +evolution. This law, which establishes the natural connection of the +individual with the whole chain of organisms, is continued in a +psychogenetic law, not founded on the heredity of the blood but on the +heredity of culture (and therefore quite independent of the doctrine of +the origin of species). In the course of his development the individual +repeats the psycho-spiritual stages through which the species has +passed. But while the human body cannot sustain life until it is +perfectly developed, the degrees of psychic perfection vary very +considerably; not every individual reaches perfection; most men attain +to some degree, but there are others who do not even acquire the +rudiments.</p> + +<p>It would be an attractive and grateful task to point out the +halting-places of the human race in the life of the individual; to fix +the moment when for the first time in his life the child says "I"—a +moment which usually occurs in his second year, and represents the +humanisation of the race, the great intuition, when primitive man, +divining his spiritual nature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> severed himself from the external world; +to perceive the child—like its primitive ancestors in their +day—treating all weaker creatures which fall into its hands with almost +bestial cruelty; to watch the boyish games reflecting the period when +the nations lived on war and the chase, their eagerness to draw up rules +and regulations and create gradations of rank and marks of distinction. +I am not able to carry out such a task in detail and, moreover, as I am +dealing with the erotic life only, such a proceeding would be out of +place here.</p> + +<p>The psychogenetic law, then, comes to this: Every well-developed male +individual of the present day successively passes through the three +stages of love through which the European races have passed. The three +stages are not traceable in all men with infallible certainty, there are +numerous individuals whose development in this respect has been +arrested, but in the emotional life of every highly differentiated +member of the human race they are clearly distinguishable, and the +greater the wealth and strength of a soul, the more perfectly will it +reflect the history of the race. The evolution of every well-endowed +individual presents a rough sketch of the history of civilisation; it +has its prehistoric, its classical, its mediaeval, and its modern +period. Many men remain imprisoned in the past; others are fragmentary, +or appear to be suspended in mid-air, rootless. The spirit of humanity +has lived through the past and overcome it, so as to be able to create +its future.</p> + +<p>The gynecocratic stage actually survives to this day in the nursery. +Here the mother rules supreme; the father is an intruder, the brothers +are dominated by their sisters, often their juniors. Women mature at an +earlier age than men; this assertion applies with equal force to +individual and sex in connection with the history of civilisation. After +he has left the nursery, there follows in the life of the boy a period +during which he associates only with his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> school-friends, shuns the +society of his mother and sisters, and is ashamed of his female +relatives. This represents the revival of the men's unions of remote +antiquity in the life of the individual of the present day.</p> + +<p>At the period of puberty the sexual instinct makes itself felt for the +first time; as a rule, if its nature is not recognised, it is +accompanied by restlessness and depression. I do not believe that the +instinct is, as soon as it appears, directed to the other sex, or +anything else outside the individual. This fact cannot be explained by +want of opportunity, shyness or bad example; there is a positive reason +for it; the longing for a member of the other sex is still unfelt.</p> + +<p>Between his twentieth and thirtieth year a man is often dominated by an +enthusiastic spiritual love quite unconnected with the sensuality which +has hitherto ruled his emotions. I will not elaborate the growth of this +love and the new feelings which arise in connection with it; just as in +the remote past the sense of personality was born as the centre of a new +consciousness, so the individual now undergoes a period of purification +and regeneration; through the love for his mistress he discovers his +inmost self, of which, until now, he had been practically ignorant. The +generative, undifferentiated impulse is supplanted by the love for an +individual and stigmatised as base and contemptible. Guincelli's words +characterising the second erotic stage of the race: <i>Amor e cor gentil +sono una cosa</i>, to-day apply to the second stage in the life of the +individual. It also occurs that in the heart of a man whom reality has +failed to satisfy an ideal woman gradually wins life and shape. +Sometimes it is the idealised counterpart of an actual woman, but not +infrequently it is a vague, unsubstantial shadow. Here we have the +deification of the woman reproduced in the heart of the individual. To +illustrate my point, I will quote the very pertinent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> conversation +between Foldal, the embittered old clerk, and John Gabriel Borkman +(Ibsen).</p> + +<blockquote><p><i>Borkman</i>: Indeed! Can you show me one who is any good?</p> + +<p><i>Foldal</i>: That's just the point. The few women I've known are no +good at all.</p> + +<p><i>Borkman</i>: (with a sneer) What's the good of them if you don't know +them?</p> + +<p><i>Foldal</i> (excitedly): Don't say that, John Gabriel! Isn't it a +magnificent, an ennobling thought, to know that somewhere, far +away, never mind where, the true woman lives?</p> + +<p><i>Borkman</i> (impatiently): Stop your high falutin' nonsense!</p> + +<p><i>Foldal</i> (hurt): High falutin' nonsense? You call my most sacred +belief high falutin' nonsense?</p></blockquote> + +<p>In conclusion I should like to mention here that I look upon Otto +Weininger as a tragic victim of the second stage of love which—in our +days—is sick with an almost insurmountable inner insufficiency.</p> + +<p>There is no need to elaborate my subject further and point out that—the +first stage passed—the prime of life brings with it the fusion of +sexuality and love. This union is the inner meaning of marriage in the +modern sense—whether it is rarely or frequently realised is beside the +point.</p> + +<p>In previous chapters I have illustrated various phenomena of the +emotional life by showing their reflections on the lives of two or three +distinguished men. In conclusion I will endeavour to point out the +reproduction of all the erotic stages through which the race has passed, +in the psychical evolution of Richard Wagner, and their immortalisation +in his works. We shall recognise in him the erotic representative of +modern man, a personality in whom all that which as a rule is vague and +only half expressed, has become great and typical. Love has been the +<i>leitmotif</i> of his life. The concluding phrase of the crude fairy tale +<i>Die Feen</i> ("The Fairies"), composed by the youth of nineteen, is: <i>the +infinite power of love</i>, and the last words written down two days before +his death, were: <i>love—tragedy</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> + +<p>The opera <i>Das Liebesverbot</i> ("The Prohibition to Love"), written in +1834, is eminently symptomatic of the first stage. It is a coarser +rendering of that bluntest of all Shakespearean plays, <i>Measure for +Measure</i>; its sole subject is the pursuit of sensual pleasure, in which +all indulge, and the ridiculing of those who appear to yearn for +something higher. To detail the contents of the text—it cannot be +called a poem—would serve no purpose; biographically, but not +artistically interesting, it exhibits with amazing candour the first, +purely sexual, stage of the young man of twenty-one. It was the period +when "young Germany's" device was the emancipation of sensuality. Wagner +himself says that his "conception was mainly directed against Puritan +cant, and led to the bold glorification of unrestrained sensuality. I +was determined to understand the grave Shakespearean subject only in +this sense." And in his "Autobiographical Sketch" he says: "I learned to +love matter." In addition to this Wagner gives us the following synopsis +of a (lost) libretto, "<i>Die Hochzeit</i>" ("The Wedding"), written at an +earlier period: "A youth, madly in love with his friend's fiancée, +climbs through the window into her bedroom, where the latter is awaiting +the arrival of her lover; the fiancée struggles with the frenzied youth +and throws him down into the yard, where he expires."</p> + +<p>The second, discordant, stage of love is embodied in <i>Tannhäuser</i>, +composed when Wagner was twenty-nine years of age. There is probably no +modern work of art in which the mediaeval feeling of dualism in the +scheme of the universe has been expressed with greater pathos. We see +man tossed between heaven and hell, between the worshipped saint and +seductive sensuality, impersonated by a she-devil. A man of the Middle +Ages would have recognised in this work the tragedy of his soul. Wagner +had planned the opera before he had really reached the second period, +under the title of <i>Der Venusberg</i> ("The Mountain of Venus"),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> and in +this earlier version the purely sexual occupied a far more prominent +place, probably in closer conformity with the old legend. For here +Tannhäuser returns to Venus unsaved and defying the eternal values, +determined to renounce a higher life and give himself up to the pleasure +of the senses for all eternity. This idea was retained in a later +version up to the decisive final turn; the purely spiritual love for +Elizabeth eventually overcomes the unrestrained instinct.</p> + +<p>As the despairing monk of mediaeval times, apparently abandoned by the +love of God, turned to Satan and worshipped him, so Tannhäuser, cast out +of the Kingdom of Heaven by the words of the Pope, and renounced by +Elizabeth, again gives himself up to sensuality, which is here +contrasted with spiritual love, and represented as demoniacal. +Tannhäuser is not vacillating between the love of two women—a +spiritualised and a sensual love; he is wavering between the purely +spiritual love of Elizabeth and promiscuous sexuality represented by +Venus, not centring on her as an individual, but diffused, as it were, +through her whole kingdom. The dualism which rends the whole universe is +strongly and uncompromisingly emphasised in text and music, and Wagner +himself explained to the opera singer, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, that the +main characteristic of the principal part was "the intensest expression +of delight and remorse without any intermediate stage of feeling, +changing abruptly and decisively." The closing words of the first scene: +"My salvation lies in Mary!" are the real turning point of the drama. As +abrupt as his desertion of Venus for Mary, is his return to her in the +third act. By the side of Mary is placed the more human, the more +earthly but yet idealised form of Elizabeth, a figure closely resembling +Beatrice and Margaret.</p> + +<p>The music of <i>Tannhäuser</i> (more especially the overture) expresses the +contrast between the two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> erotic world-elements with striking +abruptness. The harmonious and musically perfect motive of religious +yearning (the chorus of the pilgrims) which forms the beginning and the +end of the overture, is assailed by the briefer motives of sensuous +seduction and ecstasy of the middle; the quivering, tickling passages of +the violins play round the sacred music of the chorale like so many +seductive elves. The Venusberg music is probably the most perfect +expression of pure sensuality which has ever been reached in the world +of music; it is the complete translation of sensual craving and sensual +rapture into the language of music. In the Venusberg music composed for +the performance in Paris, this motive is still more richly elaborated, +and the recently published "sketches" for the scene in the Venusberg +contain a number of details which were eliminated from the later +version. Here bestial and demoniacal sensuality, not content with human +couples, nymphs, maenads, sirens and fauns, calls for beings half-brute, +half-human, represented by centaurs and sphinxes, for black goats, cats, +tigers, panthers, and so on, finally for obscene representations of +antique legends, such as Leda and the Swan, Europa and the Bull, symbols +and illustrations of the climax of perversion. It is a magnificent, +poetico-musical picture of untrammelled sexuality, whose queen is Woman, +the priestess of voluptuousness, represented by Venus. Tannhäuser's +yearning for humanity and divinely pure love gives to this world a tinge +of the demoniacal, for the latter is nothing but natural sensuality +regarded from a higher standpoint, in this case from the point of view +of spiritual love. Whenever it is opposed to the transcendental, the +natural is conceived as dangerous and diabolical. At the moment of the +abrupt inner change in Tannhäuser, Venus and her world must vanish like +a phantom of the night. "A consuming, voluptuous excitement kept my +blood and nerves tingling while I sketched and composed the music of +<i>Tannhäuser</i>...."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> says Wagner in one place, and in another he confesses +that sensual pleasure, while attracting and seducing him, filled him +with repugnance. He speaks of his longing to "satisfy my craving in a +higher, nobler element which, unpolluted by the sensuality so +characteristic of modern life and art, appears to me as something pure, +something chaste and virginal, unapproachable and intangible. What else +can this longing for love, the noblest feeling I am capable of, be, than +the yearning to leave this world of facts behind me and become absorbed +in an element of infinite, transcendental love, to which death would be +the gate...."</p> + +<p>The dualism in the music of <i>Tannhäuser</i> is consistently maintained. The +two elements war against each other without ever merging into one. Those +parts of the music which characterise Elizabeth are full of noble pathos +and a little sentimental. At the beginning of the second act she is not +yet herself; she can still laugh like a light-hearted girl, but when she +again succumbs to Tannhäuser's unearthly (and to her fatal) charm, and +realises how irrevocably he has surrendered himself to Venus, she rises +to true greatness and resolutely faces the swords unsheathed to punish +the offender. Before our eyes she is transformed into the saint who +realises her mission and is ready to take her burden upon her; more +heroic than Beatrice or Margaret, she points to him "who laughingly +stabbed her heart," the road to salvation. Like her two predecessors +Elizabeth prays to Mary for the salvation of her lover—the prayer for +the beloved has ever been woman's truest and most fervent prayer.</p> + +<p>The thought of achieving a man's salvation through a great and steadfast +love, is the subject of the <i>Flying Dutchman</i>, and plays, as is well +known, an important part with Wagner. Strange to say he has for this +very reason frequently been scoffed at by those who call themselves +admirers of Goethe. Dante-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>Goethe's great problem of salvation is +represented in <i>Tannhäuser</i> with the utmost lucidity. The essence of it +is that love can positively intervene in the life of a man whose soul is +turned towards it, but who is confused and beset by temptations. His +vacillating heart feels the love which is brooding over him and +ultimately abandons itself to it, to be saved by its unswerving loyalty. +Maybe this is as much a miracle as "grace," but it is also a psychical +fact, because the love which yearns for the sinner awakens and increases +not only his faith in its power to help, but also in his own strength; +darkness and evil dismay him and he turns towards the light. In +<i>Tannhäuser</i> this spiritual condition, which is of such primary +importance in the last scene of <i>Faust</i>, is clearly expressed; his love +for Elizabeth has been strong enough to kill desire kindled in his heart +again and again by Venus; yet again he is on the point of succumbing to +his senses. The vision of Venus appears before his eyes, but at +Wolfram's exclamation, "Elizabeth!" he realises in a flash that +Elizabeth has been praying for him day and night, and has given her life +to save him. Before this sudden illumination the power of Venus sinks +into nothing; divine love falls into his darkness like a ray of +light—"Oh, sacred love's eternal power!"—it quickens his own love +which is striving upwards, and with the words: "Saint Elizabeth, pray +for me!" he sinks to the ground. His way, like Faust's, although +one-sidedly emotional, leads from chaos and sin to pure love and +salvation, not through his own strength but by the help vouchsafed to +him in the love of his glorified mistress.</p> + +<p>By the side of the struggling, suffering Tannhäuser, tossed hither and +thither between God and the devil, between Elizabeth and Venus, stands +Wolfram, the untempted woman-worshipper. The two extremes clash upon +each other in the contest of the minnesingers. Tannhäuser, at war with +himself, exasperated by the calm, matter-of-fact way in which Wolfram<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> +sings the praise of spiritual love, rushes to the other extreme and +bursts into rapturous praise of the goddess of love and the pleasure of +the senses. I need not lay stress on the fact that at that time of his +life Wagner's own heart was the arena in which the conflict was fought +out; a work like <i>Tannhäuser</i> is not <i>made</i>, it is conceived in the +innermost soul of its creator. Every one of Wagner's great works bears +the unmistakable stamp of sincerity and intensity, while with Goethe, on +the other hand, it is not difficult to distinguish the genuine ones, +that is to say, those which were written under the pressure of a +compelling impulse, from those which owed their existence to the +intellect rather than to the soul.</p> + +<p><i>Tannhäuser</i> immortalises the adolescence of the European races of +mankind; the third stage is not even anticipated.</p> + +<p><i>Lohengrin</i>, the principal interest of which is other than erotic, +represents a transitional phase between the second and the third stage; +body and soul are no longer regarded as warring against each other; a +greater harmony beyond either is dimly divined. Lohengrin has set out +from a distant, transcendental kingdom to find earthly happiness in +Elsa's love—but he is doomed to disappointment. I will not analyse the +theme, but rather quote a few passages from Wagner: "Lohengrin is +seeking the woman who is ready to believe in him; who will not ask him +who he is and whence he comes, but love him as he is and because he is +so.... Lohengrin's only desire is for love, to be loved, to be +understood through love. In spite of the superior development of his +senses, in spite of his intense consciousness, he desires nothing more +than to live the life of an ordinary citizen of this earth, to love and +be loved—to be a perfect specimen of humanity." Wagner further speaks +of his longing to find "the woman"; the female principle, quite simply, +for ever appearing to him under new forms; the woman for whom the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> +Flying Dutchman longed in his unfathomable distress; the woman who, like +a radiant star, guided Tannhäuser from the voluptuous caverns of the +Venusberg to the pure regions of the spirit, and drew Lohengrin from his +dazzling heights to the warm bosom of the earth. We find here the new +form of love, not yet fully comprehended but desired and anticipated in +art.</p> + +<p>In <i>Tristan and Isolde</i> it is attained completely and in its highest +perfection. We possess in Wagner's letters to Matilda Wesendonk, and in +the diary written for her, the documents of the personal experience out +of which Tristan grew, and which unfold one of the most touching +love-stories. As I have already discussed <i>Tristan and Isolde</i> in a +previous chapter, I will here only quote a passage from a letter written +by Wagner and addressed to Liszt at the time of his first meeting with +Matilda; it fully expresses the harmony of the third stage. "Give me a +heart, a mind, a woman's love in which I can plunge my whole being—who +will fully understand me—how little else I should need in this world!"</p> + +<p>It is very significant that side by side with <i>Tristan</i> we have <i>Die +Meistersinger</i>, composed a little later on. Here the third stage of love +is realised in its idyllic possibility; the synthesis has been given the +shape of middle-class matter-of-factness, that is to say, the fulfilment +of love in marriage: "I love a maid and claim her hand!" For this reason +the work, although the fundamental idea is not erotic, is entitled to be +placed by the side of <i>Tristan</i> with its demand for the absolute +metaphysical consummation of love.</p> + +<p>It is an amazing fact that the same genius should have experienced and +portrayed both stages so perfectly. Doubtless Tannhäuser and Tristan are +the most personal self-revelations of the great lover, pulsating with +passion, and far remote from the colossal objective world of the +Niebelungs, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> lofty serenity of Lohengrin and the wisdom of Parsifal.</p> + +<p>Wagner had finished the <i>Ring</i> before he conceived the idea of <i>Tristan +and Isolde</i>. (It was printed in 1852.) In the former he intentionally +raised the value of love and its position in the universe to a problem, +embodying his knowledge of the world, and more especially of the modern +world, in supernatural, mythical figures. The greatest ambition of man +is power and wealth, the symbol of which is a golden ring. Gold in +itself is innocent—elementary—a bauble at the bottom of the river, a +toy for laughing children; but the insatiable thirst for power and +wealth has robbed it of its harmlessness and made it the tool and symbol +of tyranny. Only a being completely in the grip of the greed for riches +and dominion, a being who looks upon the world and all men as objects to +be bent to his will, and who has consequently renounced love, could have +thus enslaved the world. Love does not impair the worth of a +fellow-creature, but sets him above all things; a lover cannot be +entirely selfish; his feeling at least for his mistress, and through her +for the rest of the world, must be pure and unselfish. The struggle +between these two most powerful instincts, both in the race and in the +heart of the individual (Wotan), is the incomparable subject of this +tragedy. The whole world-process is represented as a struggle between +the apparently great, who are yet the slaves of gold and authority, and +the truly free man who serves love, and on whom ambition has no hold.</p> + +<p>The representatives of the petty, greedy, toiling human vermin, who +readily renounced love for the sake of wealth, because the latter will +always buy lust and pleasure, are the Niebelungs, the dwellers in the +Netherworld who never see the sun. They have but one standard: money; +one supreme value: power, the gift of wealth. Mime bewails his people +(the small tradesmen as it were), as follows; "Light-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>hearted smiths we +used to fashion gems and trinkets for our wives, gorgeous jewels, the +Niebelungs' pretty trifles—we laughed at the labour." But Alberich, the +capitalist, through the magic of the ring, has usurped the power and +enslaved his fellows. "Now the felon compels us to creep in the heart of +the mountains to labour for him. There we must delve and explore and +despoil, plunder and smelt and hammer the metal, restlessly toiling to +increase his treasure." The really daemonic property of the gold is that +everybody succumbs to its seduction and strives to possess it. The +former naïve joy of living, embodied in the Rhine-daughters, and their +not yet humanised song, which seems to come direct from the heart of +nature, is destroyed by the theft of the Rhine-gold. What till then had +been a serenely shining "star of the deep," has been transformed into a +means by which to win authority. The programme of the greedy and +tyrannous never varies; Alberich proclaims it; "The whole world will I +win," and it is his daemonic will to depreciate love and set up power as +the only value, so that nobody shall doubt his greatness and unique +genius. "As I renounce love, so all shall renounce it, with gold have I +bought you, for gold shall you crave." Love shall die and lust shall +take its place; he will force even the wives of the gods to do his will, +for his wealth has made him master of the whole world. Compared to his +restless activity, the giant "Fafner" is "stupid"; he is incapable of +transforming gold into power; he merely enjoys its possession, content +with the consciousness of his wealth.</p> + +<p>But the curse of Alberich, the first who transmuted the shining metal +into money, rests on gold and power. "It shall not bring gladness—who +has it be seared by sorrow, who lacks it devoured by envy...." The curse +of the eternal concatenation: tyranny—slavery, the care which +accompanies wealth and the envy of the have-nots, can only be lifted +from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> world by a man who is inwardly free, who is neither master nor +slave. Siegfried understands the song of the birds and the elementary +beings, the Rhine-daughters; he is a stranger to human desires and +passions. "I inherited nothing but my body—and living it is consumed." +He is proof against the magic of the ring; the only value he knows is +love. Alberich, his opponent, says, in speaking of him: "My curse has no +sting for the mettlesome hero, for he knows not the worth of the ring; +he squanders his prodigal strength, laughing and glowing with love his +body is burning away." Half way between Alberich, the inwardly worthless +wielder of power, and Siegfried, the truly free man, the embodiment of +all virtue, who is murdered by the powers of darkness, stands Wotan, in +whose heart both motives, authority and love, are struggling for +supremacy, who will renounce neither love nor power. Artistically and +symbolically the salvation of the world from the curse of greed and +tyranny is brought about by the restitution of the ring, and its +dissolution in the pure waters of the river from whence it had been +taken; the gold is given back to the Rhine-daughters, to fulfil again +its original purpose, namely, to delight the heart of man with its +dazzling sheen.</p> + +<p>Thus Wagner, the greatest and most inspired exponent of love among +modern artists, declared that of all values love was the greatest. His +intuitive genius left all the doctrines formulated by Schopenhauer and +Buddha far behind and definitely rejected pessimism as a creed. There is +an interesting letter from him to Matilda Wesendonk, written while he +was composing the music of <i>Tristan</i>, and containing modifications of +Schopenhauer's philosophy which he considered requisite. "It is a +question of pointing out the road to salvation which no philosopher, not +even Schopenhauer, discovered, the road which leads to the perfect +pacification of the will through love; I do not mean abstract love for +all humanity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> but true love, based on sexual love, that is to say love +between man and woman."</p> + +<p>In <i>Parsifal</i>, the last and most mature of all his works, Wagner is +breaking new ground. Here love between man and woman is deposed from the +exalted position it hitherto held, subordinated to the metaphysical +purpose of the world, that is to say, "the purpose of attaining to +perfection," and absorbed in a higher association of ideas. Sexual love +has undergone a change, it is no longer love in the true sense, but the +unconditional love of the mystic. The enigmatical figure of Kundry is +not the impersonation of one woman, she is woman herself. The +incarnation of everything female, she embodies the sensuous, seductive +and destructive element together with the contempt of the man who falls +under her spell, as well as the motherly, and finally the +humbly-administrative principle, which so far had not yet become a part +of the erotic ideal. She is both positive and negative, a blind tool of +the element of evil which prompts man to forget his higher mission +(reminiscent of the second mediaeval period), and passionately yearning +for salvation. She dies before the Holy Grail, the religious ideal made +visible. Beside Kundry there are the flower-maidens, naïvely sensuous +beings, who blossom like the flowers and fade again, unconscious and +irresponsible. I refrain from a discussion of this work, which would +lead too far, and only maintain that the music, corresponding to the +text, is entirely unerotic and unsentimental, absolutely pure and +religious. The love of a man for a woman has been superseded by love for +the absolute and supernatural. Thus, after Wagner had experienced all +the stages of love through which humanity has passed, and embodied them +in his works, he reached a new point of view, a stage to which we have +not yet attained and which, very likely, we are not even able fully to +understand. This fourth stage—not unlike Weininger's ideal—is the +overthrow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> of the female and earthly element in man by a voluntary +surrender to the metaphysical.</p> + +<p>Wagner's last position, taken up quite deliberately, permits of two +explanations which I will point out without pressing either of them. +Only a man possessing both the wisdom of the aged Wagner and a knowledge +of the evolution of the race, and the road which still stretches out in +front of it, would be entitled to speak a decisive word. The first +obviously is that Wagner divined a last stage in the emotional life of +man, a period which has outgrown sexual love and replaced it by +mysticism. In conjecturing a potential fourth stage, the three previous +ones must be regarded as one. The second explanation is that Wagner's +feeling in his last work is no longer representative of the feeling of +the race, but is, as it were, a personal matter, at least in so far as +love is concerned. For although the principal subject in <i>Parsifal</i> is +not love, yet it plays a very prominent part in it. I am only touching +upon these two alternatives. But if the latter debatable point be +omitted, my analysis of Wagner's emotional life must have shown in which +sense the inspired man may be rightly regarded as typical of the race. +He leads the broadest and at the same time the most personal life, and +yet he manifests in it something which is far greater, far more +universal and representative.</p> + +<p>My argument proves that the evolution as well as the aberrations of love +have affected man alone and, roughly speaking, to this day affect only +him. He is the Odysseus, wandering through heaven and hell, ultimately +to return home, perhaps, to where woman, the unchangeable, is awaiting +him. That which has been woman's natural endowment from all beginning, +the blending of spiritual and sensual love, man looks upon and desires +to-day as his highest erotic ideal. His chaotic sexual impulse, the +inheritance of the past, appears to him low and base in the presence of +her in whom sexuality has always been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> blended with love; his worship, +intensified until it reached the metaphysical, seems to him unfounded +and eccentric before her who has ever been and ever will be entirely +human, and who is perfect in his eyes because she possesses what he is +striving after. This and nothing else is the meaning of the vague +statement that in all matters pertaining to love woman occupies a higher +position than man. She is always the same; he is always new and +problematical; never perfect, he falls into error and sin where she +cannot err, for her instinct is nature herself, and she knows not the +meaning of sin. Whatever burden man has laid upon her, she has borne it +patiently and silently; she has allowed him to worship her as a goddess +and stigmatise her as a fiend, while all the time she remained +problemless and natural, inwardly remote from the aberrations in which +her intellect believed so readily. The conclusion which we have to draw, +and which touches the foundation of the psychology of both sexes, is +that only man's emotions have a history, while those of the woman have +undergone no change.</p> + +<p>If there is a law by which the human race is reproduced in the +individual, then the so-called atavism in the shape of abnormality +cannot be the sudden, or apparently sudden reappearance of conditions +which once were normal and then disappeared; rather must it be the final +arrest of an individual on a previous and lower stage, preventing him +from reaching our standard in one or the other emotional sphere. The +more humanity a man has in him, the more perfectly will he repeat in his +life the stages through which the race has passed, or, in other words: +the oftener that which once quickened the heart of man is repeated and +surpassed, the greater is the possibility that new things may grow out +of it. Atavism therefore is not so much the persistence of the earlier +as the absence of the later stages. (This agrees with Freud's conception +of the neurotic subject.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p> + +<p>It is obvious that the three stages of love are merely the expression of +a period in one definite direction. The emotions of antiquity were +entirely earthly, obvious and impersonal; the Middle Ages, on the other +hand, attached value only to the world beyond the grave and matters +pertaining to the soul. The beauty of spring was to them but a reflexion +of another beauty.</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<div class='stanza'><div>"How glorious is life below!</div> +<div>What greater glories may the heavens hold!"</div></div> +</div> + +<p>sings Brother John characteristically. But our period is conscious of +the need of realising all our desires, and attaining to the highest +possible spiritual perfection in this earthly life, and this not by +destroying the transcendent ideals, but by stripping them of their +metaphysical character, and bringing them to bear on this life, so that +it may become a higher and holier one. The will of our intellectual +heroes is not the rejection of the doctrine of the survival of the soul, +but the comprehension of past transcendental values, so that they may +become a safe guide to us in this earthly life; a more perfect blending +of realism and idealism; the glorification of life under the aspect of +eternity. This applies to love as well: the thought of the infinite, +eternal love must transfigure and ennoble all that which is natural and +human.</p> + +<p>If my theories are correct, they prove the ontological character of +historical evolution and the value of the study of history for the +comprehension of the human soul. I have shown in a specific and highly +important domain that that which we are fond of regarding as the +characteristic quality of man was not present from the beginning, but +has gradually been evolved in historical time. In other words: history +can and must teach us the origin and evolution of the spirit and soul of +man, as anthropology teaches us the construction of the body. In +philosophically approaching history, it must not be our object to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> +discover "what has been," but "what has become, how we became and what +we are." The science of history which loses sight of its bearing on our +time, content with its knowledge of the past, is antiquarian and dead; +at the most it has aesthetic value, but it is worthless as far as the +history of civilisation is concerned. Only that which has been +productive in the past, which has had a quickening influence, producing +new values, is historical in the highest sense. It creates a new and +close relationship between psychology and history. The principal +purpose, or one of the principal purposes of psychology, that is the +knowledge of the construction of the normal human being, has received a +new possibility of solution: every essential quality which the human +race has evolved in the course of history must be present in every +normally developed individual of our time. The normal man of to-day is +not the normal man of the past; every successive century finds him +richer and more complex, but he can always be discovered intuitively in +history. In this sense history is an auxiliary science of psychology, or +rather, the psychology of the human race, for the evolution of the +psychology of the individual—which has been studied very little—is +merely an abbreviated history of the evolution of the psychology of the +species. A past period of civilisation can be traced in the life of +every fully developed man, and <i>vice versa</i> the stages in the life of +the individual point the way in history.</p> + +<p>If it can be established that the fundamental emotions of the human +heart originated in historical time, the widely spread, but unproved, +theory that everything great and decisive existed from the beginning +will be contradicted. The other complementary assertion that nothing +which once existed ever quite disappears, must be admitted; nothing +perishes in the soul of man; its position with regard to the whole is +merely shifted by newly intervening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> motives and values; and even when +it does not change its fundamental character, it becomes a different +thing in the whole complex of the soul. Sexuality, which in the remote +past was a matter of course, unassailable by doubt, became problematical +and demoniacal as soon as it entered into relationship with the new +factors of erotic life. An existence in harmony with nature was possible +as long as the human race was still in evolution, and not yet conscious +of itself. But as soon as intellect and self-consciousness had been +evolved, civilisation became possible. Nature has no history in the +sense of the origin of values; in the case of still uncivilised tribes +every new generation is a faithful reproduction of the preceding one. +Certainly there is modification caused by adaptation to the environment, +but there are no moral values, and consequently there is no history.</p> + +<p>I have attempted to explain why tragedy is inseparable from love in its +highest intensity, to show the limits which check all deep emotion and +the yearning which would overstep them. The emotional life of man, which +is capable of infinite evolution, can only find satisfaction on its +lower, animal stages. Hunger, thirst, and sexual craving can be +satisfied without much difficulty, and therefore no tragic shadow falls +on the first stage. But the emotion which overwhelms the soul cannot be +appeased. Not only the great thinker's thirst for knowledge, the +mystic's religious yearning, the aesthetic will of the rare artist, but +also the love and longing of the passionate lover must reach beyond the +attainable to the infinite. This earth is the kingdom of "mean" actions, +"mean" emotions and "mean" men. And the lover, unable to bear its +limits, creates for himself a new world—the world of metaphysical love.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Love, by Emil Lucka + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE *** + +***** This file should be named 17699-h.htm or 17699-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/6/9/17699/ + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Evolution of Love + +Author: Emil Lucka + +Translator: Ellie Schleussner + +Release Date: February 7, 2006 [EBook #17699] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE *** + + + + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE + + +BY +EMIL LUCKA + + +TRANSLATED BY +ELLIE SCHLEUSSNER + +[Illustration: Publisher's logo] + +LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. +RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.1 + + +_First published in Great Britain 1922_ + + +(_All rights reserved_) + + +_Printed in Great Britain by_ +UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, LONDON AND WOKING + + + + +PREFACE + + +The object of this book, which is addressed to all cultured men and +women, is to set forth the primitive manifestations of love and to throw +light on those strange emotional climaxes which I have called +"Metaphysical Eroticism." I have taken no account of historical detail, +except where it served the purpose of proving, explaining and +illustrating my subject. Nor have I hesitated to intermingle +psychological motives and motives arising from the growth and spread of +civilisation. The inevitable result of a one-sided glimpse at historical +facts would have been a history of love, an undertaking for which I lack +both ability and inclination. On the other hand, had I written a merely +psychological treatise, disregarding the succession of periods, I should +have laid myself open to the just reproach of giving rein to my +imagination instead of dealing with reality. + +I have availed myself of historical facts to demonstrate that what +psychology has shown to be the necessary phases of the evolution of +love, have actually existed in historical time and characterised a whole +period of civilisation. The history of civilisation is an end in itself +only in the chapter entitled "The Birth of Europe." + +My work is intended to be first and foremost a monograph on the +emotional life of the human race. I am prepared to meet rather with +rejection than with approval. Neither the historian nor the psychologist +will be pleased. Moreover, I am well aware that my standpoint is +hopelessly "old-fashioned." To-day nearly all the world is content to +look upon the sexual impulse as the source of all erotic emotion and to +regard love as nothing more nor less than its most exquisite radiation. + +My book, on the contrary, endeavours to establish its complete +independence of sexuality. + +My contention that so powerful an emotion as love should have come into +existence in historical, not very remote times, will seem very strange; +for, all outward profession of faith in evolution notwithstanding, men +are still inclined to take the unchangeableness of human nature for +granted. + +The facts on which I have based my arguments are well known, but my +deductions are new; it is not for me to decide whether they are right or +wrong. In the first (introductory) part I have made use of works already +in existence, in addition to Plato and the poets, but the second and +third parts are founded almost entirely on original research. + + E.L. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +PREFACE 5 + +TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION 9 + +FIRST STAGE: THE SEXUAL INSTINCT 21 + +SECOND STAGE: LOVE + +CHAPTER + + I. THE BIRTH OF EUROPE 39 + + II. THE DEIFICATION OF WOMAN (FIRST FORM OF + METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM):--(_a_) The Love of the Troubadours; + (_b_) The Queen of Heaven; (_c_) Dante and Goethe; + (_d_) Michel Angelo 115 + +III. PERVERSIONS OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM:-- + (_a_) The Brides of Christ; (_b_) Sexual Mystics 217 + +THIRD STAGE: THE BLENDING OF SEXUALITY AND LOVE + + I. THE LONGING FOR THE SYNTHESIS 231 + + II. THE LOVE-DEATH (SECOND FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM) 251 + +III. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND LOVE.--THE SEEKER + OF LOVE AND THE SLAVE OF LOVE 266 + + IV. THE REVENGE OF SEXUALITY.--THE DEMONIACAL AND THE OBSCENE 275 + +CONCLUSION: THE PSYCHOGENETIC LAW.--THE INDIVIDUAL AS AN + EPITOME OF THE HUMAN RACE 284 + + + + +TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION + + +Since the triumphant days of the Mechanists some twenty-five years ago, +the wedge of Pragmatism--a useful tool to be used and discarded--has +been driven between materialism and idealism, and it appears that the +whole tendency of philosophy is now in the latter direction. Even in +England the influence of Bergson has led modern thought away from the +pure materialism of the monists, and it seems probable that Benedetto +Croce's _Philosophy of the Spirit_ will carry the movement a step nearer +towards the idealistic concept of reality. And among the latest signs of +the new tendency must be counted the brilliant work of Emil Lucka, the +young Austrian "poet-philosopher," whose conception of the development +of love must rank with the most daring speculations in recent +psychology. + +In the great reaction of the last century, love, that most cogent motive +of human thought and action, fell from its high estate and came to be +regarded as an instinct not differing in any essential from hunger and +thirst, and existing, like them, from the beginning, eternal and +immutable, manifesting itself with equal force in the heart of man and +woman, and impelling them towards each other. But Emil Lucka, in his +remarkable new book, _The Three Stages of Love_ (which was recently +published in Berlin, and has already created a sensation in literary +circles abroad), leads us on to speculative heights from which we may +look back upon the whole theory of evolution not as a bar but as a +bridge. "My book is intended as a monograph of the emotional life of the +human race," he says in the preface, and "I am prepared to meet with +rejection rather than with approval." There has been abundance of +criticism and controversy, but Lucka has stated his case and drawn his +conclusions with such admirable precision and logic, that his work has +aroused admiration and appreciation even in the ranks of his opponents. + +Love is a theme which at all times and in all countries has been of +primary interest to men and women, and therefore this book, which throws +an illuminating ray of light in many a dark place still wrapped in +mystery and silence, not only impresses the psychologist, but also +fascinates the general reader with its wealth of interesting detail and +charm of expression. + +The three vitally important points which the author develops are as +follows:-- + +Love is not a primary instinct, but has been gradually evolved in +historical time. + +Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law is expanded in a psychogenetic law. + +Only man's emotions have undergone evolution, and therefore have a +history, while those of woman have experienced no change. + +Lucka's book will probably not please the advanced feminists, but the +delicate, although perhaps involuntary homage to her sex which is +implied in his theories ought to rouse a feeling of gratification in the +heart of every right-feeling woman. The very limitations and +restrictions which he lays upon her raise and glorify her. For while man +has been the "Odysseus wandering through heaven and hell, passing from +the bestial to the divine to return again and become human, woman has +always been the same, unchangeable and without problems. That which he +has set up to-day as his highest erotic ideal, the blending of sexual +and spiritual love, has been her natural endowment from the beginning. +Never perfect, he falls into error and sin where she cannot err, for her +instinct is Nature herself, and she knows not the meaning of sin." + +Schopenhauer's "instinct of philoprogenitiveness" has to-day become an +article of faith with the learned and the unlearned. This _sub-conscious +instinct for the service of the species_ which, in love, is supposed to +rise to consciousness, and whose purpose is the will to produce the best +possible offspring, is conceded by scientists who reject not only +Schopenhauer's metaphysic, but metaphysic in general. Even Nietzsche, +that arch-individualist, has proved by many of his pronouncements, and +most strikingly by his well-known definition of marriage, that he has +not escaped its fascinations. "Schopenhauer ignores all phenomena which +are not in support of his myth," says Lucka, who denies this instinct of +philoprogenitiveness and would substitute for it a "pairing-instinct." +"The experience of others," he argues, "not our own instinct, has taught +us that children _may_, not necessarily _must_, be the result of the +union of the sexes. Into the mediaeval ideal which reached its climax in +metaphysical love, the idea of propagation did not enter. Moreover, the +desire for children is frequently unaccompanied by any sexual desire, +and therefore to manufacture an instinct of philoprogenitiveness is +fantastic metaphysic, and is entirely opposed to intellectual reality. +This was well understood in the long period of antiquity which strictly +separated the sexual impulse and the desire for children." + +Lucka distinguishes three great stages in the evolution of love. In +vivid and fascinating pictures he unfolds the erotic life of our +primitive ancestors, basing his statements on accepted authorities. The +sexual impulse in those remote days, unconscious of its nature and +far-reaching consequences, was entirely undifferentiated from any other +powerful instinct. Every woman of the tribe belonged to every male who +happened to desire her. As is still the case with the aborigines of +Central and Northern Australia, the phenomena of pregnancy and +childbirth were attributed to witchcraft.[1] The concept of _father_ had +not yet been formed; the family congregated round the mother and saw in +her its natural chief; gynecocracy was the prevailing form of +government. In early historical and pre-classical times, promiscuity was +systematised by religion in India and the countries round the +Mediterranean and survived in the Temple Prostitution and the Mysteries. +Man as yet felt himself only as a part of nature, and aspired to no more +than a life in harmony with her laws. The worship of fertility and the +endless renewal of life was the object of the orgiastic cults of Adonis +and Astarte in the East, and Dionysus and Aphrodite in Greece; unbridled +licentiousness and blind gratification of the senses their sacrament. + +With the growth of civilisation and the development of personality there +slowly crept into the minds of men a distaste for this irregular +sexuality and a desire for a less chaotic state of things. This longing +and the wish for legitimate heirs gradually overcame promiscuity and, in +Greece, led to the establishment of the monogamous system. It must not +be assumed, however, that the Greek ideal of marriage bore any +resemblance to our modern conception. True, the wife occupied an +honoured position as the guardian of hearth and children and was treated +by her husband with affection and respect, but she was not free. Nor was +her husband expected to be faithful to her. Marriage in no way +restricted his liberty, but left him free to seek intellectual +stimulation in the society of the hetaerae, and gratification of the +senses in the company of his slaves. Love in our sense was unknown to +the ancients, and although there is a modern note in the legends of the +faithful Penelope, and the love which united Orpheus and Eurydice, yet, +so Lucka tells us, these instances should be regarded rather as poetic +divinations of a future stage of feeling than actual facts then within +the scope of probability. Even Plato, in whom all wisdom and +ante-Christian culture culminated, was still, in this respect, a citizen +of the old world, for he, too, knew as yet nothing of the spiritual love +of a man for a woman. To him the love of an individual was but a +beginning, the road to the love of perfect beauty and the eternal ideas. + +On the threshold of the second stage of the erotic life stands +Christianity, which, in sharp contrast to antiquity and to the classical +period, sought the centre and climax of life in the soul. The founder of +the "religion of love" _discovered_ the individual, and by so doing laid +the foundation for that metaphysical love which found its most striking +expression in the deification of woman and the cult of the Virgin Mary. +How this change of mental attitude was brought about is worked out in a +brilliant chapter, entitled "The Birth of Europe." The revivifying +influence of Christ's preaching and personality was stifled after the +first centuries by the rigid dogma and formalism which had altered his +doctrine almost past recognition. The Church was building up its +political structure and tolerated no rival. Art, literature, music, all +the enthusiasm and profound thought of which the human mind is capable, +were pressed into her service. Independent thought was heresy, and the +death of every heretic became a new fetter which bound the intellect of +man. But about the year 1100, when the mighty edifice was complete, and +the pope and his bishops looked down upon kings and emperors and counted +them their vassals, when the barbaric peoples which made up the +population of Europe had been sufficiently schooled and educated in the +new direction, a longing for something new, a yearning for art, for +poetry, for beauty, began to stir the hearts of men and women. It found +expression in the ideal of chivalry, the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy +Grail, and suddenly love, bursting out in a brilliant flame, shed its +radiance on the sordid relationship which had hitherto existed between +the sexes, and transfigured it. Woman, the despised, to whom at the +Council of Macon a soul had been denied, all at once became a queen, a +goddess. The drudge, the patiently suffering wife, were things of the +past. A new ideal had been set up and men worshipped it with bended +knees. + + "She shines on us as God shines on his angels," + +sang Guinicelli. + +It was in a small country in the South of France, in Provence, that the +new spirit was born. The troubadours, wandering from castle to castle, +sang the praise of love, genuine love, the earlier ones without +admixture either of speculation or metaphysic. The dogma that pure love +was its own reward inasmuch as it made men perfect, was framed later on. + + "I cannot sin when I am in her mind," + +wrote Guirot Riquier, and Dante, in the "Vita Nuova," calls his beloved +mistress "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtues." The +monk Matfre Ermengau, who wrote a text-book on love, says: + + Love makes good men better, + And the worst man good. + +The later troubadours drew a much sharper distinction between spiritual +and sensual love. The latter was regarded as degrading and base (at +least in principle) and woe to the man who held, or rather, avowed, +another opinion. His reward was the contempt of every man and woman of +culture. "I ask no more of my mistress than that she should suffer me to +serve her," protested Bernart de Ventadour. + +It goes without saying that, in spite of this high ideal, sensuality +flourished undiminished, and a troubadour who loudly sang the praise of +chastity and blatantly professed his entire disinterestedness in the +service of his mistress, did not see the least inconsequence in carrying +on a dozen intrigues at the same time with other women. Sordello, one of +the best known poets of this period, was charged by a contemporary with +having changed his mistress over a hundred times, and he himself, +impudently bragging, proclaims that + + None can resist me; all the frowning husbands + Shall not prevent me to embrace their wives, + If I so wish.... + +Another poet, Count Rambaut III., of Orange, recommended to his +fellow-men as the surest way of winning a woman's favour, "to break her +nose with a blow of the fist." "I myself," he continued, "treat all +women with tenderness and courtesy, but then--I am considered a fool." + +As may be expected, sublimated, metaphysical love was not without its +caricatures and eccentricities. One of the most grotesque figures of the +period of the troubadours was Ulrich von Lichtenstein, a German knight. +As a page, we are told, he drank the water in which his mistress had +washed her hands. Later on he had his upper lip amputated because it +displeased his lady-love, and on another occasion he cut off one of his +fingers, had it set in gold and used as a clasp on a volume of his poems +which he sent as a present to his inamorata. + +At the famous Courts of Love, the most extraordinary questions were +seriously discussed and decided. A favourite subject for debate was the +relationship between love and marriage, and some of the decisions which +have been preserved for us prove without a doubt that those two great +factors in the emotional life were considered irreconcilable. At the +Court of the Viscountess Ermengarde of Narbonne, the question whether +the love between lovers was greater than the love between husband and +wife was settled as follows: "Nature and custom have erected an +insuperable barrier between conjugal affection and the love which +unites two lovers. It would be absurd to draw comparisons between two +things which have neither resemblance nor connection." + +The contrast between the new, spiritualised love and the older, sexual, +instinct created that dualism so characteristic of the whole mediaeval +period. Sexuality and love were felt as two inimical forces, the fusion +of which was beyond the range of possibility. While on the one hand +woman was worshipped as a divine being, before whom all desire must be +silenced, she was on the other hand stigmatised as the devil's tool, a +power which turned men away from his higher mission and jeopardised the +salvation of his soul. Wagner portrayed this dualism perfectly in +_Tannhauser_. "A man of the Middle Ages," says Lucka, "would have +recognised in this magnificent work the tragedy of his soul." + +It was but a small step from the worship of a beloved mistress to the +cult of the Virgin Mary. The Church, hostile at first, finally +acquiesced, and "through her official acknowledgment of a female deity, +open enmity between the religion of the Church and the religion of woman +was avoided." A woman, that is to say, the Virgin Mary, had stepped +between God and humanity as mediator, intercessor and saviour. + +Both Dante, the inspired woman-worshipper of the Middle Ages, and the +more modern Goethe, saw in metaphysical love the triumph over all things +earthly. And far above either of these intellectual heroes looms the +awe-inspiring figure of Michelangelo, the scoffer, to whom love came +late in life; in his ecstatic adoration of Vittoria Colonna, the +enthusiasm of Plato and the passion of Dante are blended in a more +transcendent flame. + +Sexual Mystics and the Brides of Christ present the darker aspect of +metaphysical love. All the latter, including even Catherine of Siena (a +clever politician who kept up a correspondence with the leading +statesmen of her time), Marie of Oignies, and St. Teresa, are +stigmatised as victims of hysteria and consigned to the domain of +pathology. + +While the first stage was characterised by the reign of unbridled sexual +instinct, the second by the conflict between spiritual and sensual love, +the third stage represents our modern conception, the blending of +spiritual and sensual love, which is "not the differentiated sexual +instinct, but a force embracing the psycho-physical entity of the +beloved being without any consciousness of sexual desire." It shares +with the purely metaphysical love the lover's longing to raise his +mistress above him and glorify her without any ulterior object and +desire. "In this stage there is no tyranny of man over woman, as in the +sexual stage; no subjection of man to woman, as in the woman-worship of +the Middle Ages; but complete equality of the sexes, a mutual give and +take. If sexuality is infinite as matter, spiritual love eternal as the +metaphysical ideal, then the synthesis is human and personal." The +apotheosis of this perfect love Lucka finds in the _Liebestod_ (the +death of the lovers in the ecstasy of love), in Wagner's _Tristan und +Isolde_. + +An interesting chapter on erotic aberrations, the demoniacal and the +obscene, completes the third part of the book. + +There may be much in Lucka's theories which will rouse the scepticism of +the monists; some of his deductions may appear to his readers a little +strained, but no thinking man or woman can read his brilliant +_Conclusion_ without denying him the tribute of sincere admiration. In +this last chapter he applies Haeckel's biogenetic law to the domain of +the spirit. As the human embryo passes through the principal stages of +the development of the individual from lower forms of life, so the +growing male must pass through the stages of psychical development +through which the race has passed. The gynecocratic government of +prehistoric time is revived in the nursery, where the mother rules +supreme and the sisters dominate. The normal, healthy school-boy, +preferring the company of his school-fellows to all others, shunning his +mother and sisters, ashamed of his female relatives, is the modern +individual representative of those early leagues and unions of young men +who opposed matriarchy and finally brought about its overthrow and the +establishment of male government. The promiscuous sexuality +characteristic of adolescence reproduces the first, merely sexual, stage +of the erotic life of the race in the life of the individual. As a rule +this phase is followed by a period of woman-worship; love has conquered +the sexual instinct and the latter is felt as base and degrading. +Atavism is not so much the persistence of the earlier, as the absence of +the later stages of psychical development. + +I need not emphasise the fact that the three stages are often +intermingled and not traceable with equal clearness in the life of every +individual. Many men never advance beyond the first stage and others are +fragmentary and undeveloped; but certain phases are more or less +distinguishable in every well-endowed male individual. Lucka finds a +perfect illustration of his theory in the life and works of Richard +Wagner, whose operas _The Fairies_ (based on Shakespeare's _Measure for +Measure_), _Tannhauser_, and _Tristan und Isolde_, successively +illustrate the three stages through which the great poet-composer and +impassioned lover passed, and reflect the principal halting-places in +the erotic evolution of the race. In _Parsifal_, Wagner's last and +maturest work, he conjectures a potential fourth stage, divined by the +genius of the great musician and thinker, a sublimation of our modern +ideal, a stage when love will be freed from all sexual feeling (a +conception not unlike Otto Weininger's), but to which we have not yet +attained and which we are even unable fully to grasp. + +I have not been able to do more than touch upon the principal features +of this book, the fame of whose brilliant author has long spread beyond +the boundaries of his own native country. Emil Lucka was born in Vienna +in 1877, and has already achieved a number of remarkably fine books, +most of which have been translated into Russian, French, and other +foreign languages. He is as yet unknown in England, this being the first +of his works to appear in English. + + ELLIE SCHLEUSSNER. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] _cf._ Hartland's "Primitive Paternity" and Frazer's "Golden Bough." + + + + +THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE + +THE FIRST STAGE: THE SEXUAL INSTINCT + + +To the generations slowly rising from the dark abyss of time to the +twilight of the Middle Ages, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct +offered fewer difficulties than the gratification of any other need or +desire. With every unpremeditated and cursory indulgence the craving +disappeared from consciousness and left the individual free to give his +mind to the acquisition of the necessities of life which were far more +difficult to obtain. Primitive, prehistoric man lived in the moment. +When there was plenty of food he gorged to repletion, heedless of the +starvation which might be his fate to-morrow or the day after. His +thought had neither breadth nor continuity. It never occurred to him +that there might be a connection between an abrupt and quickly forgotten +embrace and the birth of a child by a woman of the tribe after what +appeared to be an immeasurable lapse of time. He suspected witchcraft in +the phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth (to this day the aborigines of +Central and Northern Australia do not realise the connection between +generation and birth). As a rule it was remembered that a certain woman +had given birth to a certain child by the fact of her having carried it +about and fed it at her breast. Occasionally it was forgotten to which +mother a child belonged; perhaps the mother had died; perhaps the child +had strayed beyond the boundaries of the community and the mother had +failed to recognise it on its return. But it was clear beyond all doubt +that every child had a "mother." The conception of "father" had not yet +been formed. Experience had taught our primitive ancestors two +undeniable facts, namely "that women gave birth to children" and "that +every child had a mother." + +We must assume that sexual intercourse was irregular and haphazard up to +the dawn of history. Every woman--within the limits of her own tribe, +probably--belonged to every man. Whether this assumption is universally +applicable or not, must remain doubtful; later ethnologists, more +particularly _von Westermarck_, deny it because it does not apply to +every savage tribe of the present day. Herodotus tells us that +promiscuity existed in historical times in countries as far removed from +each other as Ethiopia and the borders of the Caspian Sea. There can be +no reasonable doubt that sexual intercourse took the form of +group-marriage, the exchange or lending of wives, and other similar +arrangements. + +The relationship between mother and child having been established by +Nature herself, the first human family congregated round the mother, +acknowledging her as its natural chief. This continued even after the +causal connection between generation and birth had ceased to be a +mystery. In all countries on the Mediterranean, more especially in +Lycia, Crete and Egypt, the predominance of the female element in State +and family is well attested; it is reflected in the natural religions of +the Eastern races--both Semitic and Aryan--and we find innumerable +traces of it in Greek mythology. The merit of discovering this important +stage in the relationship of the sexes is due to _Bachofen_. "Based on +life-giving motherhood," he says, "gynecocracy was completely dominated +by the natural principles and phenomena which rule its inner and outer +life; it vividly realised the unity of nature, the harmony of the +universe which it had not yet outgrown.... In every respect obedient to +the laws of physical existence, its gaze was fixed upon the earth, it +worshipped the chthonian powers rather than the gods of light." The +children of men who had sprung from their mother as the flowers spring +from the soil, raised altars to Gaea, Demeter and Isis, the deities of +inexhaustible fertility and abundance. These early races of men realised +themselves only as a part of nature; they had not yet conceived the idea +of rising above their condition and setting their intelligence to battle +with its blind laws. Incapable of realising their individuality, they +bowed in passive submission to nature's undisputed sway. They were +members of a tribe, and the fragmentary existence of the single +individual was of no importance when it clashed with the welfare of the +clan. The family--centred round the mother--and the tribe were the real +individuals, in the same way as the swarm of bees, and not the +individual bee, makes the whole. They lived in complete harmony with +nature; they had no spiritual life, no history, for civilisation and the +creation of intellectual values which are the foundation of history +depend on the rise of a community above primitive conditions. +Differentiation had hardly begun to exert its modifying influence; all +men (not unlike the Eastern Asiatics of our day) resembled each other in +looks, character and habits. + +In the countries on the Mediterranean (as well as in India and +Babylonia) the first stage of sexual intercourse, irresponsible and +promiscuous, was systematised by religion. The annual spring-festivals +in honour of Adonis, Dionysus, Mylitta, Astarte and Aphrodite, +celebrated unbridled licentiousness. The whole community greeted the +re-awakening vitality of the earth by an unrestrained abandonment to +passion. Man aspired to be no more than the flower which scatters its +seed to the winds. The incomprehensible lords of cupidity and rank +vegetation did not suffer the individualisation of desire. The complete +union of the male and female qualities, as manifested both in nature and +man, was solemnised in the Orgies, and not by any means the relationship +of an individual man to an individual woman, or sexuality connected with +individuals and dominated by them. Nor was this unfettering of instinct +a symbolical act; for it to be so, man must have stood over against +nature as an intellectual being, mirroring and transforming her acts by +his own deeds. He was as yet far from this. His ambition did not reach +beyond the desire to fulfil nature in himself. Before the majesty of +sex--worshipped in the vague, shadowy mothers of mankind, Rhea, Demeter, +Cybele, and their human offspring, the phallic Dionysus and the +hundred-breasted goddess of Ephesus--the individual with his piteous +limitations shrank into insignificance. Sex was immortal, sex and +primary matter, the [Greek: ule] contrasted by Aristotle with the +[Greek: eisos], the form. "The female principle is the mother of the +body, but the mother of the spirit is the male." The substance of those +ancient cults was birth and death, meaningless, purposeless, apparently +without rhyme or reason; their sacrament the perpetual union of the +sexes. Between the succeeding generations there was but one bond, the +natural bond of motherhood. It was the first tie realised by mankind, a +tie not felt as a concrete relationship between two individuals, but as +a general, maternal, natural force. The presiding divinities were the +"mothers," the eternal, incorporeal deities, enthroned outside time and +space, and therefore immortal givers of life and preservers of mankind. +Before their silent greatness the desire of man to know his whence and +whither, to win shape and individuality, became blasphemy. They had +given immortality to sex, but upon the individual they had laid the +curse of death. + +Thus we have first a stage of fatherless, natural conception, +corresponding with the philosophical theories which maintained that all +created things had sprung from the elements. Later ages discovered a +spiritual principle, a becoming, or an eternal being, and finally a +conflict between spirit and matter. + +But the general attitude towards sexual intercourse underwent a change +as soon as here and there individuals appeared who were conscious of +their individuality. Natural selection could not come into play in a +community the members of which resembled one another so closely that all +personal characteristics were obliterated in a general monotony. One +woman was as good as another, although in all probability a healthy, +youthful and strong individual would be preferred to a sickly, puny +specimen. But apart from this, the wish to choose a partner instead of +being content with the first comer, must have coincided historically +with the outward, and later on with the inward differentiation of the +race. I cannot prove my theory by quoting chapter and verse from ancient +writers, but obviously a feeling of preference could not have arisen +until individuals had begun to show very noticeable traces of +difference. Therefore with growing differentiation a new factor--modest +at first and operating within narrow limits--the factor of choice, had +come into the sexual life. The slow development of personality gave +birth to the feeling which rebelled against universal sexual intercourse +and gynecocracy in general. The men desired to shape their own world; +they had no share in the immortality of maternal life. As (relatively +speaking) single individuals they stood over against the material bond +of the generations living in the chain of the mothers. Demigods, the +sons of the gods of light and mortal mothers, were credited with the +salvation of men from a confused, chaotic existence, and the +introduction of new conditions of life, no longer based on the dictates +of nature but on the moulding genius of man. "Hercules, Theseus and +Perseus overthrew the ancient powers of darkness. They laid the +foundations of man's great achievement, civilisation, and were the +first to worship the gods of light. They delivered humanity from the +gross materialism in which it had hitherto been steeped; they were the +awakeners of spiritual life, which is a higher life than the life of the +senses; they were as incorruptible as the sun from whence they came, the +heroes of a new civilisation distinguished by gentleness, a higher +endeavour and a new dispensation." (Bachofen.) + +Heinrich Schurtz has proved (though not in connection with matriarchy) +that side by side with the family, unions of unmarried men existed in +many countries at a very early time. The object of these unions, which +had nothing of the rigidity of blood-relationship, was fellowship. As +soon as the boys had outgrown the care of their mother they were +compelled to combine for the purpose of playing games and later on for +war and hunting; these men's unions therefore were the outcome of the +necessary conditions of life. It is obvious that innovations and +inventions of all sorts originated in these unions rather than with the +temperamentally conservative women, and that we have to look upon them +as the hotbed of all spiritual and social evolution. These +confederations and leagues not based on a natural or blood-relationship, +but on a feeling of brotherhood and friendliness, might well have been +an attack upon the natural ties of the family, an expression of a +feeling of hostility to and contempt for women, and probably stood in +close relationship to a striking characteristic of the past: a widely +spread homosexuality. + +Whether Schurtz gives us a correct picture of these men's unions or not, +there can be no doubt that the struggle against matriarchy originated in +them. This struggle led eventually to the victory of the male principle, +the acknowledgment of the authority of the father, the institution of +male government which deprived women of all legal rights, and the +dominion of the spiritual; the victory of the gods of light over the +dark lords of fertility. This revolution of principles was perhaps the +completest revolution humanity has ever known. + +A long road, marked by numerous compromises and limitations, led from +casual intercourse to the final establishment of the monogamous system. +Free intercourse had been sanctioned by the gods, who suffered no +restrictions and modifications, and sacrifices in the shape of a +temporary universal unfettering of instinct were required to pacify +their anger and reconcile them to the new system. The first and most +important of these compromises was the temple-prostitution practised by +many nations in Asia Minor, the Greek Archipelago, India and Babylonia. +Many a girl gained in this way the marriage portion which enabled her +later on to find a husband, to whom she invariably remained strictly +loyal. Thus all religious requirements were satisfied. At first this was +an annually recurring rite, but gradually it became an isolated ceremony +in the life of every female individual. "In the place of the annual +surrender," says Priester, "we now have a single act; the hetaerism of +the matrons is succeeded by the hetaerism of the maids; instead of being +practised during marriage, it is practised in spinsterhood; the blind +surrender has given way to a yielding to certain individuals."... + +With the growth of civilisation a few girls, the hierodules, were set +apart for the purpose of pacifying the offended deities and their act +ransomed the rest of the female citizens. + +It was not on erotic grounds, but for political and social reasons that +the Greek introduced monogamy. The reason which weighed in the scales +more heavily than all others was the necessity for legitimate offspring. +It was natural that a man of property should desire a legitimate heir +who would inherit it on his death. The right of succession from father +to son, incorporated later on in the Roman Right, originated during this +period. But this was not the only advantage connected with the +possession of a son: religion taught that after death the body required +sacrificial food which could only be provided by the legitimate male +descendants of the deceased. (The same belief was held by the Indians +and Eastern Asiatics.) In several Greek States marriage was compulsory +and bachelors were fined. At the same time the contraction of a marriage +did not interfere with the personal freedom of the man; he was at +liberty to go to the hetaerae for intellectual stimulation (unless he +happened to prefer the friends of his own sex) and to his slaves for the +pleasures of the senses. His wife, although she was not free, was +respected by him as the guardian of his hearth and children. There was +but one legal reason for divorce: sterility, which frustrated the object +of matrimony. Conjugal love as we understand it did not exist; it is a +feeling which was entirely unknown to the ancients. + +With the exception of the gradually weakening hold of religion on the +imagination of the people towards the decline of the Roman Empire, no +perceptible change occurred in the social life of the old world until +the dawn of the Middle Ages. To quote Otto Seeck: "A wife had no other +task than to produce legitimate offspring; and yet she gave herself airs +and graces, embittered her husband's life with her jealousy and bad +temper or, worse even, set all tongues wagging with her evil conduct. Is +it to be wondered at that marriage was merely regarded as a duty to the +State, and that a great number of men were not sufficiently patriotic to +take such a burden upon their shoulders?" + +Thus the victory of the male spiritual principle over universal sexual +intercourse ushered in the second stage which checked the sexual impulse +and directed it upon certain individuals, a distinction however, which +bears no relation to love. + +Monogamy had conquered, in principle at least and as an ideal. + +The profoundly mystical core of the most powerful Greek tragedy which +has come down to our time, the _Orestes_ of Aeschylus, represents the +victory of the new gods of light over the old maternal powers. Orestes +has sinned against the old law, for in order to avenge his father's +death, he has slain his mother. The sun-god Apollo and the sinister +Erinnys, the upholders of the old maternal right, are waging war over +the justifiableness of the deed. To the Erinnys, matricide is the +foulest of all crimes, for man is more nearly related to the mother than +to the father. But Apollo had commanded the deed, so that the father's +murder should not remain unavenged. + + Not to the mother is the child indebted + For life; she tends and guards the kindling spark + The father lighted; she but holds his pledge.---- + +he explains. And the answer is the lament of the Erinnys: + + Thus thou destroy'st the gods of ancient times! + +Athene, the virgin goddess, the motherless daughter of Zeus, appearing +as mediator between the opponents, decides in favour of the new +dispensation which places the father's claim above the mother's. Orestes +is free of guilt; his deed was justifiable according to the canons of +the new law. The tragedy is the symbolical commemoration of the victory +of the male principle in Greece. But Athene is the embodiment of the new +hermaphroditic ideal of the Greek which stood in close connexion to +their homosexuality, and with which I propose to deal later on. + +There is a psychical law ordaining that nothing which has ever quickened +the soul of man shall be entirely lost. Were it not so, the storehouses +of the soul would stand empty. New values are created, but the old +verities endure; as a rule they are relegated to a lower sphere, to +inferior social layers, but they persist and frequently merge into the +new. This law applies without exception to the relationship between the +sexes; we shall come upon it again and again. During the second stage, +characterised by the spiritual love foreign to the ancients, the purely +sexual impulse continued as an unimpaired force, but it had lost its +prestige and was not only regarded as ignoble and base, but also +stigmatised as sinful and demoniacal. The hearts of men were stirred by +new ideals. + +A similar attitude, perhaps not quite so uncompromising because the +contrast was less pronounced, existed in classical Greece. The more +highly developed, self-conscious Hellenic genius, shrinking from +promiscuous intercourse, had systematised the instinct and set up a new +ideal in Platonic love. But below the surface raged the unbridled +natural force, and in perfect harmony with the Greek spirit--it was not +hysterically hidden, but assigned a place in the new system. Wrapped in +the obscurity of the Mysteries, concealed from the gaze of the new gods +of light, it attempted to assuage its inextinguishable thirst. The +Mysteries were the annual tribute paid as a ransom by Apollo-worshipping +Hellas to chaotic Asia, so that she might be free to pursue her higher +psycho-spiritual aims. The brilliant civilisation of Athens was based on +the dark cult of the Mysteries. On the festivals of the hermaphroditic +Dionysus and Demeter, which are identical with the cults of Adonis and +Mylitta, the impersonal, generative elements were worshipped. Thus, +below the surface of the Greek State, founded on masculine values and +attempting to restrict intercourse for the benefit of a more +systematised progeniture, flourished the orgiastic cult of the ancient +Eastern deities, who had vouchsafed to mortals a glimpse of the great +secret of life in the ardour of procreation and conception. The women +upheld the religion of passion as an end in itself; bacchantes, men in +female attire, emasculated priests, sacrificed to the blindly bountiful +gods. We are told that Dionysus conquered even the Amazons and converted +them to his worship. Euripides described in the _Bacchantes_--the +subject of which is the war between the uncontrolled sexual impulse and +the new order of things--how Dionysus traversed all Asia and finally +arrived in Hellas accompanied by a crowd of abandoned women. But his +religion was more than a cult of wine and sensual pleasure, it embraced +a gentle worship of nature, throwing down the barrier between man and +beast--impassable by the spirit of civilisation--and lovingly including +every living creature. We read in the _Bacchantes_ that the women who +had fled from the town to follow the irresistible stranger, Dionysus, +dwelled in the mountains, binding their hair with tame adders, carrying +in their arms the cubs of wolves and the young deer, and feeding them +with the milk of their breasts; that milk and wine welled up when they +struck the earth with the thyrsus; and so on. Dionysus implores +Pentheus, the representative of the Hellenic masculine system, not to +venture undisguised among the maenads: "They'll murder you if they +divine your sex," and, knowing the secret of the male and female temper: + + . . . . . . . . . First let + His mind be clouded by a slight disorder + For, conscious of his manhood he will never + Wear women's garb; insane, he's sure to wear it. + +Pentheus, recognising in Dionysus the foe of a more spiritual conception +of the law, the _effeminate stranger_ who had driven the women to +madness, is torn to pieces by the frenzied bacchantes who fall upon him, +led by Agave, his mother, and sacrificed to the _bull-god_ Dionysus. At +the conclusion of this strange and profound epos, Agave recovers her +senses and curses the acts which she has committed in her madness ... +women submit to the new spiritual dispensation. We realise now why Hera, +the tutelary goddess of the newly introduced monogamous system, hated +Dionysus and attempted to kill him before he was born. + +The subject treated in the beautiful myth of Orpheus is the +relationship between the primitive sexual impulse and its +individualisation on a single personality. For seven months Orpheus +bewails the death of Eurydice and regards all other living creatures +with indifference. This loyalty offends and infuriates the women of +Thracia, who divine in it a spirit inimical to a life in harmony with +nature. One night, during the celebration of the Dionysian rites, they +attack the poet--the representative of the higher Hellenic poetical +ideals--and rend him limb from limb. But as the head of the murdered +singer floats down the river, the pale lips still frame the beloved +name: Eurydice! It is certain that in those remote legendary days such +love did not exist. But the prophetic Greek spirit contrasted +promiscuous intercourse with love for a single woman. + +So far we have encountered only a general, not an individualised, sexual +instinct and, in a limited measure at least, a struggling tendency +towards individualisation. But even so it was merely a question of +instinct, and did not bear the least resemblance to love as we +understand it to-day. _Love_ did not exist in the old world. I admit +that in the legend of Orpheus we are face to face with a sentiment which +is not unlike modern love, but, as far as I am aware, this is an +isolated case in Greek history, and may be regarded as a divination of +something new, just as we find unmistakable anticipations of +Christianity in Plato's writings. Such phenomena--the occasional +occurrence of which I do not altogether deny, although I regard them as +on the whole improbable as far as the sphere of my research is +concerned--are not infrequently met with in history, but their effect +upon civilisation was nil; they were presentiments, incomprehensible in +their day, and for this very reason probably preserved as curiosities. + +In spite of the fact, however, that in those far-off days spiritual love +of a man for a woman was unknown, we find Plato contrasting "a base and +degraded Eros with a divine Eros." Pausanias says in the "Symposium": + +"The man who loves with his senses only, loves women and boys equally +well. He loves the body more than the soul.... His only striving is to +obtain the object of his desire, and he cares not whether it be worthy +or unworthy. The Eros he worships is the ally of that younger goddess in +whom male and female attributes are blended. But the other Eros is the +companion of Aphrodite, Urania, the divine; unbegotten by a father, +unconceived by a mother, she is the offspring of the male element, the +elder one, unstained by passion.... The sensualist who loves the body +more than the soul is base. His love passes away like the object of his +passion. But the companion of the Olympic goddess is the Eros who fills +the hearts of the lovers with the longing for virtue. The other Eros is +the confederate of the debased Aphrodite." And Aristophanes, another of +the participators in the feast, says: "The yearning does not seem to be +a desire for the pleasures of the senses, the one taking delight in his +intercourse with the other; far from it, it is obvious that each soul is +craving for something which it cannot express in words, but can only +divine and conjecture." And the mysterious Diotima revealed to Socrates +an entirely novel principle in erotic life; the principle which guides +man beyond the pleasures of the senses and--through love--leads him to +the divine. "The slave of his senses runs after women; but he who loves +with his soul and strives to win immortality through virtue and wisdom, +seeks a great and beautiful soul that he may surrender himself to it +completely." But in the opinion of the classical ages, a beautiful soul +was only to be found in the body of a man; woman belonged to the lower, +animal spheres; she was destined for the pleasure of the senses and the +propagation of the race. Plato's theory of ideas is the philosophical +victory of the male-spiritual principle over nature, matter and their +warden: woman. (Perhaps it is even the revenge of the Greek genius for +man's original enslavement.) "Love between men," continues the seer, +"forms a stronger tie, a closer friendship, than love between parents +and children; it has a mutual share in children which are immortal and +far more beautiful than the children of men." She teaches Socrates that +this noble love is at the root of all the magnificent creations of the +spirit, as carnal love is the origin of human life. "Until he becomes +aware that the beauty of all bodies is closely related, a man must love +an individual with all his heart. If a man will follow after beauty, he +is foolish not to conceive the beauty of all bodies as one and the same. +As soon as he has learned this, he will become a lover of all beautiful +forms; his fervent passion for one will diminish, he will scorn the +individual and hold it cheap." + +With the Hellenic homosexuality an element foreign and even hostile to +the original and natural bi-sexual sensuality crept into the erotic life +of the human race; it found its classical representation in the Platonic +dialogues "Symposium" and "Phaedros." In conscious opposition to all +sexuality Platonic love (what is usually called Platonic love is based +on an obstinate misunderstanding) turns to the purely spiritual, that is +to say, the conceptions of truth, beauty and goodness; it is a yearning +for the supernatural, and it knows itself as the path to it. In the +mutual love of all noble souls lies the germ of all higher things; it is +the way to the gods of light which, in this connection, are conceived +philosophically as ideas, though in the true Hellenic spirit as +objective ideas, the prototypes and culminations of everything human. To +grasp the meaning of Platonic love it is essential to realise +that--unlike the spiritual woman-worship peculiar to the Middle +Ages--it is not a personal feeling of one individual for another; +platonically speaking, the love for an individual is only a first stage; +the path which leads to the love of beauty and the eternal ideas. The +characteristic of this metaphysical love which Plato was the first to +conceive, was therefore love for the universal, and not love for an +individual. The latter, as we shall find later on, is the characteristic +of the true or, more modestly speaking, specifically European conception +of love. Platonic love, finally, was the perception of perfection, the +Socratic knowledge; its alpha and omega was not, as the mystic and true +erotic would have it, its ardour and passion, the fulness of its own +being. It had an alien purpose: the knowledge of things divine, by a +later period Christianised and understood as the divine mysteries. To +Plato, the essence and climax of antique, ante-Christian culture, every +individual, even the beloved mistress, was but a preliminary, a +finger-post, pointing the way to the perception of perfect beauty. True +virtue is the outcome of profound knowledge; it transforms men into +gods. The purely spiritual woman-worship of the Middle Ages was only +another aspect of this yearning to attain to virtue and perfection +through the love of an individual. We must not lose sight of the fact +that it was already strongly emphasised and upheld in the Platonic ideal +of love. + +In the dark excesses of the Mysteries the beauty of the human form +counted for nothing; voluptuousness and intoxication ruled. In the +Asiatic cult of the sexes there was no room for beauty, no time for +selection. The Greeks were the discoverers of the beauty of the human +form. Beauty kindled the flame of love in their souls, beauty was the +gauge which determined their erotic values. Their ideal was a +_kalokagathos_, a youth beautiful in body and soul. + +In "Phaedros" Plato contrasts with far greater force than in the +"Symposium" him "who craves for sensual pleasure like the beasts in the +fields" with him "who strives after beauty and perfection." To the +latter "the face of the beloved is the reflection of the sublimely +beautiful." He would like to sacrifice to her, as to the immortal gods. +All beautiful bodies represent to him in an increasing measure the idea +of the beauty of form, which again is subordinate to the beauty of the +soul. It points the way to metaphysical beauty, the eternal and +imperishable idea of mankind. Socrates could scorn the beauty of the +individual because he saw in it merely an imperfect reflection of +perfect beauty. In its truest sense Platonic love is, therefore, +impersonal; it is not spiritual love for a human being, but a peculiar +characteristic of the Greek cult of beauty. We shall again meet this +principle of beauty-worship in metaphysical love, the adoration of +woman; thanks to Plato, it has for all time become the inalienable +property of the human mind. The striving to rise above all individualism +was another ideal which a later period revived. But the pivot round +which the emotions revolved was the love for a beloved individual, the +modern, European, fundamental motive, as opposed to the antique Platonic +cult of ideas. Thus Plato, too, was a citizen of the old world, at whose +threshold stood universal sexual intercourse, tolerating nothing +personal, knowing of no individuals, acknowledging only unchecked, +uncontrollable instinct, and whose decline was again characterised by +the extreme impersonality of ideas. It had traversed the path of human +existence in a huge cycle. Starting from an unconscious existence in +complete harmony with nature, it had passed through individualised man +to the loftiest spiritual conceptions in the impersonal world of ideas. + +The Hellenic ideal of beauty was almost invariably realised in the male +form. The Greeks of the classical period disdained woman; she was for +them inseparably connected with base sensuality, but their contempt had +its source partly in a feeling of horror. The days when matriarchy was +the form of government were not very remote; it survived in a great +number of myths and also, subconsciously perhaps, in the soul of man. To +the Greek mind woman was the embodiment of the dark side of love, and it +was merely the logical conclusion of this conception when, at a later +period, she was regarded as the devil's tool. It is certain that the +origin of the idea must be sought in Plato's time. + +In intercourse with women man dimly felt the vague elementary condition +from which he had struggled hard to emerge, and fled to the more +familiar companions of his own sex. Would not love between man and man +deliver him from the basely sensual, strengthen his spirituality and +lead him to the gods? In this connection Zeus is called in "Phaedros" +[Greek: philios], the maker of friendships. Plato, in propounding this +doctrine, drew thereby the most radical conclusion of the new, +apparently male, but at heart hermaphroditic ideal of civilisation, +conceived in the heroic epoch and elaborated and brought to perfection +by the Greek of classical times. This ideal was the victory of the +spiritual principle over promiscuous sexuality and irresponsible +propagation and, quite in the true Hellenic spirit, it was again +interpreted materially. + +Because individualised love was an unknown quantity to the ancients, +they ornamented their sarcophagi with symbols of ecstatic life, with +dancing and embracing fauns and maenads. Generations passed away, but +new ones arose, embracing and begetting life--for life was eternal. +Death was vanquished in the ecstasy of the nameless millions, for the +true meaning of life lay in the preservation of the species. The death +of the individual did not have a deep and poignant meaning until the +soul had become the centre and climax of life. An individual had passed +away for ever--nothing could recall him. Death had become the final +issue, the terror, because it destroyed the greatest of all things: +self-conscious man. But love, too, had changed; it was no longer sexual +impulse, depending on the body and perishing with it, but a craving of +the soul, conscious of itself and stretching out feelers far beyond the +earth. A new pang had come into the world, but also a new +reconciliation. + + + + +THE SECOND STAGE: LOVE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE BIRTH OF EUROPE + + +The memory of the figure and preaching of Christ had so powerfully +influenced the centuries that it had gradually permeated and transformed +not only the Platonic doctrine of ideas--that maturest fruit of Greek +wisdom--but also the Semitic mediaeval monotheism. Something new had +sprung into being, something which expressed a hitherto unknown feeling +for life and for humanity, vague and uncertain in the beginning, but +growing in clearness and uniformity. On the throne of the Roman emperors +sat a bishop, whose power was increasing with the development of the new +civilisation, and whom the final victory of the new transcendental +world-principle had made master of the world. The building up of this +new civilisation had absorbed the intellectual force of a thousand +years; it had monopolised thought and every form of energy. The reward +was great. For the first time in the annals of the world the +questionings of brooding intelligence were fully answered, the anguish +of the tortured soul was stilled. The purpose of the universe, the +destiny of man, were comprehended and interpreted, good and evil being +finally known. At the close of the first Christian millenary, all moral +and intellectual values were grouped round and dominated by one supreme +ideal; the loftiest value in this world and the next, side by side with +the greatest secular power, were in the hands of the Church; together +with the imperium she had succeeded to the spiritual and ethical +inheritance of the dead civilisations. Without her uncouth barbarism +reigned, and it was her task, while elaborating the system of the +universe for which she stood, to teach and convert the new nations, to +spread a uniform Christian civilisation. + +On the mere face of it it must seem strange that a religion which had +grown on foreign soil, out of foreign spiritual assumptions, should have +been accepted so readily and quickly by nations to whom it must have +been alien and unintelligible. The love of war and valour of the +Teutonic tribes and Christian asceticism were diametrically opposed +ideals, and very often their relationship was one of direct hostility. I +need only remind the reader of the contempt expressed for the chaplain +by Hagen (in the "Song of the Niebelungen"). On the other hand, the +ancient Celtic and Teutonic races shared one profound characteristic +with the Christian world, the consequences of which were sufficiently +far-reaching to raise the religion of Christ to the religion of Europe. +The characteristic common to the still uncultivated European spirit and +Christianity, and meaningless alike to the Asiatic barbarians, the Jews +of the Old Testament and the Greeks, was the importance which both +attached to the individual soul. Through the Christian religion this new +intuition which saw in the soul of man the highest of values, became the +centre and pivot of life and faith--a position to which even Plato, to +whom the objective, metaphysical idea was the essential, never attained. +It had been the most personal experience of Christ, and centuries after +his death the nations rediscovered it as their highest value. It +entitled Christianity to become the natural religion of Europe, and the +soul of its new system of civilisation. It formed the most complete +contrast to all Asiatic cults, Brahminism and Buddhism, a fact which, +since Schopenhauer, one is inclined to overlook. To the Indian, the soul +of man is not an entity; his consciousness is a republic, as it were, +composed of diverse spiritual principles and metaphysical forces which +are not centralised into an "I-centre," but exist impersonally, side by +side. This may be a great conception, but it is foreign to the feeling +of the citizen of Europe. To the latter the I, the soul, the +personality, is the pivot round which life turns. The evolution of the +European world-feeling is in the direction of the independent +development of all psychical forces and their fusion into a unity of +ever-increasing intimacy. New values will be created, but the fusing +power of the soul will strive with growing intensity to co-ordinate and +unify the internal and external life; personality will recreate the +world in conformity with its own purposes, that is to say, it will found +the system of objective civilisation. The incapacity of the Indian to +produce a civilisation perfect in every direction is explained by his +one-sided, morally-speculative thought. The world is to him nothing but +a moral phenomenon, he admits no other explanation; he seeks its true +meaning and the possibility of its salvation in the realisation of the +vanity of life, not in the liberating deed, and not in the inward +change. + +The kernel of matured and spiritualised Christianity, which reached its +apex in the German mystics, lies in the soul of man, eager to shed +everything which is subjective and accidental, and become spirit, +profound, divine reality. Eckhart, the great perfecter of this European +religion, deliberately and in direct contradiction to the dogma of his +time, placed man above the "highest angels," whom he considered subject +to limitations; "man," he argues, "thanks to his freedom, is able to +reach a goal to which no angel could aspire. For he is always new, +infinitely exalted above the limitations of the angels and all finite +reason." Of the relationship between the soul and God he says; "The soul +of the righteous man shall be with God, his equal and compeer, no more +and no less." The Upanishads, on the other hand, maintain that the core +of the world is not to be found in the soul of the individual but in +Brahma, the universal soul, outside whom there is no reality. "The +individual soul is but a phantasm of the universal soul, as the +reflection of the sun in the water is but a phantasm of the sun." The +sole purpose of the world is the extinction of individual consciousness, +its absorption in Brahma, the end of all suffering: "When feeling has +ceased, pain must cease, too, and the world be delivered." The Indian +lacks the central conception of love, for which he substitutes +knowledge. Primitive Christianity conceived the connection between body +and soul, the encumbering of the soul by the body, as it were, as a +temptation or a punishment; according to the Vedas, it is merely a +delusion to which the sage is not subject. Before his keen vision, the +deception falls to the ground, and by this very fact he is delivered. To +the feeling of Europe and Christianity, however, life and the universe +are genuine, deep realities, the touchstone of the soul. Love is the +soul's greatest treasure and the only true path to God; knowledge can +never take its place. "The divine stream of love flowing through the +soul," says Eckhart, "carries the soul along with it to its origin, to +the bourne of all knowledge, to God." + +The very general identification of the Christian and Indian mystics--a +fact which is accounted for by their common metaphysical tendency--is +based on an error; Indian mysticism and Christian mysticism originated +in different concepts; here the centre of all being is laid in love and +in the soul of man, there it is contained in knowledge and in Brahma. +But ultimately, at the termination of the world-process, they will meet, +although coming from different directions. "While the soul worships a +God, realises a God and knows of a God," says Eckhart, "it is separated +from God. This is God's purpose, to annihilate Himself in the soul, so +that the soul, too, shall lose itself. For God has been called God by +the creatures." The words "The soul creates God from within, is +connected with the divine and becomes divine itself," are highly +significant. To the Vedantist the soul of man is an emanation from the +world-soul: "Although God differs from the individual soul, the +individual soul does not differ from God." At this point it is no longer +an easy matter to distinguish the feeling of the Christian mystic from +the feeling of the Brahmin; though their valuations of man, life and the +world differ, nay, are even opposed to each other, they finally meet in +God. We read in the Vedanta: "The force which created and maintains the +universe, the eternal principle of all being, dwells entirely and +undividedly in every one of us. Our self is identical with the supreme +deity and only apparently differentiated from it. Whosoever has mastered +this truth has become at one with all creation; whosoever has not +mastered it, is a stranger and a foe to all creatures." + +I do not intend to depreciate Indian wisdom; I merely desire to point +out its inherent dissimilarity to Western thought; my task of laying +hold of the spirit of Europe in its crises and watching its growth is +bound to be advanced by this division. + +The religious experience of Christ, based on the realisation of the +divine nature of the soul, and the road of the soul to God, has +established the fundamental Western principle. A world-system was built +up which emanated from the innermost depth of the individual soul and, +very consistently, related all existing things, heaven and earth, the +creation and the destruction of the world, salvation and perdition, to +the soul of man. This was achieved with the aid of a naive metaphysic, +created by the Greek genius and externalised by the crude intellect of +barbarians; this metaphysic drew its whole content from a unique +revelation, and the essential was frequently hidden by dialectic and +speculation. One may safely say that the first millenary strove, if not +exactly to set aside the original principle of Christianity, yet to bind +it by dogma in such a way that it often became completely obscured. A +long training was necessary before the immature nations of barbarians +were fit to become citizens of the spiritual world, before they could +fully assimilate the new traditions and grasp their innermost meaning, +which by this very fact became altered and modified. This process of +education came to a temporary conclusion about the year 1100. At last +the European nations had outgrown the guardianship of the Church with +its antiquated methods; a new, a creative epoch was dawning; the +civilisation of Europe, opposed to all barbarism and orientalism, rose +like a brilliant star on the horizon of the world. Spontaneous feeling +for the race, for nature and for the divine verities had again become +possible. + +I shall have to exceed the limits of my subject in this chapter, for I +propose showing the seeds from which, in the time of the Crusades, the +new soul of the European, throwing off the lethargy of the first +Christian millenary, began to grow with extraordinary vigour and +rapidity; that new soul which experienced a wider, if not deeper, +unfolding in the period of the Renascence, and to this day pervades and +fertilises our spiritual life. I might have been less digressive, but I +hope that two reasons will justify my prolixity; the first is the great +importance of the subject from the point of view of a history of +civilisation, and the second and more particular one is its close inner +relationship to my principal theme. For, in complete contrast with the +sexuality on which heretofore the relationship between husband and wife +had been based, a new feeling, that of spiritual love, had come into +existence and quickly reached its climax. Projected not only on the +other sex, but also on God and on nature, it permeated the age and +explains its great and unprecedented manifestations: the spiritual love +between man and woman (which deteriorated later on into the deification +of woman), the new religion of the German mystics, the awakening +appreciation of the beauty of nature, the sudden outburst of German +poetry--no sooner born than it reached perfection--the specifically +European Gothic architecture, so completely independent of the old art. +All these new creations had their origin in the strange craving of the +period for something novel and romantic, something hitherto unknown. +This longing begot the ideal of chivalry and a wealth of half human, +half preter-human conceptions, such as the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy +Grail. And all at once, something unprecedented, something of which the +race had as yet no experience, had come to pass: love, which had nothing +in common with sensuality, which was even deliberately hostile to it, +love which welled up in one soul and flowed into the other--presupposing +personality--love was there! If, therefore, I have gone into detail, I +hope that it has served to elucidate the principal theme of this part of +my book, namely, the spiritual part of man for woman aspiring to the +metaphysical, which is so alien to our modern feeling. + +It is necessary to begin by sketching a background which shall set off +the new phenomenon. The spiritual achievement of the first millenary was +the construction of the Christian system of the universe the Church had +complete knowledge of all things in heaven and earth--symbols merely of +the eternal verities; her wisdom almost equalled divine wisdom, for the +secrets of life and death had been revealed and surrendered to her; St. +Chrysostom's words uttered in the fourth century, "The Church is God," +had become a fact. The profoundest wisdom, the greatest power, were +hers; the loftiest ideal had been realised as it has never been realised +before or since. As the wisdom of the Church had been a direct gift of +God, so her power, too, had divine origin and reached beyond this +earthly life. The Church alone held the key to eternal bliss, her curse +meant everlasting damnation. To be excommunicated was to be bereaved of +temporal and eternal happiness. A man who had been excommunicated was +worse off than a wild beast; he was surrendered to the devils in hell, +and he knew it. There was but one road to salvation: to do penance and +humbly submit to the Church. This has been symbolised for all times by +the memorable submission of the Roman-German emperor, who stood for +three days, barefooted and fasting, in the snow in the courtyard of +Canossa, before he was received back into the kingdom of God. The +kingdom of God was synonymous with the Church; Jews and pagans were the +natural children of the devil, but the dissenter, the heretic who dared +to question a single proposition of the divine system, or was bold +enough to think on original lines--in other words in contradiction to +tradition--voluntarily turned his back on God, and with seeing eyes went +into the kingdom of the devil. He was wholly evil, and no earthly +punishment fitted his crime. The emperor Theodosius, as far back as A.D. +380, had called such heretics "insane and demented," and the burning of +their bodies at the stake which prevented their souls from falling into +the hands of the devil, was looked upon as a great and undeserved mercy. +But not only during their lifetime, but after their death, too, the hand +of the Church fell heavily on all those who had strayed beyond her pale; +their bodies were dragged from their graves and thrown into the +carrion-pit. A man whom the Church had excommunicated was buried in the +cemetery of a German convent. The Archbishop of Mayence ordered the +exhumation of the body, threatening to interdict divine service in the +convent if his command were disobeyed. But the abbess, Hildegarde of +Bingen (1098-1179), a woman of great mental power and an inspired seer, +opposed him. Having received a direct message from God, she wrote to the +bishop as follows: "Conforming to my custom, I looked up to the true +light, and God commanded me to withhold my consent to the exhumation of +the body, because He Himself took the dead man from the pale of the +Church, so that He might lead him to the beatitude of the blessed.... It +were better for me to fall into the hands of man than to disobey the +command of my Lord." The saint had interpreted the will of God, and the +archbishop, sanctioning a sudden rumour that the deceased had received +absolution at the eleventh hour, yielded. But the bishop's yielding by +no means countenanced the belief that God might, for once, tolerate the +body of an excommunicate in sacred ground, far from it--the vision of +the abbess Hildegarde had merely served to correct an error. + +All those who dared to oppose the clergy by word or deed were doomed to +everlasting perdition--this was a fact which it were futile to doubt; at +the most, a man shrugged his shoulders at certain damnation for the sake +of mundane pleasures--a rich legacy in the hour of death might save him. +Not infrequently the fear of the devil was transformed into +indifference, and sometimes even into demonolatry. A single ungodly +thought might involve eternal death, and as many a man, more +particularly many a priest, realised his inability to live continuously +in the presence of God, he surrendered his soul to the anti-god, not +from a longing for the pleasures of the senses, but from despair. The +worship of the devil, far from being an invention of fanatical monks, +actually existed, and was often the last consolation of those who held +themselves forsaken by God. The hierarchy did not hesitate a moment to +make the utmost use or the power conferred upon them by the mental +attitude of the people. The government of kings and princes, in addition +to the ecclesiastical government, could only be a transient, sinful +condition; the time was bound to come when the pope would be king of the +earth, and the great lords of the world his vassals, appointed by him to +keep the wicked world in check, and deposed by him if he found them +incapable, worshippers of the devil, or disobedient to the Church. The +whole world was a hierarchy whose apex reached heaven and bore, as the +representative of its invisible summit, the pope. He stood, to quote +Innocent III., "in the middle, between God and humanity." The same great +pope has left us a document entitled _On the Contempt of the World_, +which treats of the absolute futility of all things mundane. There is no +reason to look upon the union of this unquenchable thirst for power and +complete "other-worldiness" as a contradiction. The kingdom of God, +Augustine's _Civitas Dei_, must of necessity be established that the +destiny of the world may be fulfilled. Every pope must account to God +for his share in the advancement of the only work which mattered, and +the greater the power the ruler of this world had acquired over the +souls of men, the more he trembled before God, weighed down by the +burden of his enormous responsibility. "The renunciation of the world in +the service of the world-ruling Church, the mastery of the world in the +service of renunciation, this was the problem and ideal of the middle +ages" (Harnack). But not only the pope, every priest, as a direct member +of the kingdom of God, was superior to the secular rulers. This was +taught emphatically by the great St. Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, +and Gregory VII., the wildest fanatic of the kingdom of God, said, in +writing to a German bishop: "Who then who possesses even small knowledge +and reasoning power, could hesitate to place the priests above the +kings?" Even the emperor Constantine, though he was still largely under +the sway of the imperial idea, distinctly acknowledged the bishops as +his masters; according to the legend he handed to the Bishop of Rome +the insignia of his power, sceptre, crown and cloak, and humbly held the +bridle of the prelate's horse. + +The theoretic backbone of this mental attitude was the doctrine of the +Fathers of the Church and the older scholasticism, pronouncing the +illimitable power of human perception; the world's profoundest depths +had been fathomed, its riddle finally solved; there was consequently no +room for philosophy, the endless meditation on the meaning of the world +and the destiny of man. Science had but one task: to bring logical proof +of the revealed religious verities. The greatest champion of this view +was Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), who in his treatise, _Cur Deus +Homo_ proved that God was compelled to become man in order to complete +the work of salvation. Abelard preached a similar doctrine, but carried +away by the fervour of thought, arrived at conclusions which he was +forced to recant ignominiously; for at the end of his chain of evidence +he did not always find the foregone conclusion which should have been +there. This system of a final and infallible knowledge of the world is +the very foundation of ecclesiastical government. The priest alone has +all knowledge, for he has the doctrine of salvation. Had it occurred to +any man to defend his own opinions in contradiction to the system of the +Church, that man would speedily have come to the conclusion that the +devil had tempted him to false observations, or false deductions, and +his submission to the Church would have been the outward sign of his +victory over the evil which had blinded his spiritual vision. A man had +to choose between the worship of God and the worship of the devil, there +was no alternative. Nobody knew the limits of human knowledge; +everybody, the learned ecclesiastic as well as the unlearned, plain man, +believed others to be in possession of the key to profound secrets and +unlimited power. One thing only was needful: to possess one's self of +the philosopher's stone; therefore the belief in witchcraft and the +fear of certain men supposed to be endowed with supernatural power--the +priests--were but the obvious results of a world-system, founded on a +revealed and exact religion. + +The Latin poets, whose study would probably have counteracted the +universal barbarism, were regarded as dangerous, the gods of antiquity +being identified with the demons of the Scriptures. This view was +responsible for the loss of many a valuable manuscript. The favourite +haunts of the demons were the convents, originally designed as +battlefields on which the struggles with the demons were to be fought +out, but frequently perishing in superstition and ignorance. Every monk +had visions of devils; miracles occurred continually; the torturing +problem was as to whether they were worked by God or the devil. Nature +was merely a collection of mystic symbols, divine--or perhaps +diabolical--allegories, whose meaning could be discovered by a correct +interpretation of the Bible. Everything which could possibly happen was +recorded in the Scriptures; they contained the true explanation of all +things. It was only a matter of selecting the right word and +interpreting it correctly, for every word was ambiguous and allegorical. +Every natural occurrence--an eclipse of the sun, a comet, or even a +fire--stood for something else; it was the symbol of a spiritual event +concealed behind a phenomenon. The allegorical interpretation of the +Bible was carried to the point of abstruseness because every word was +considered of necessity to have an unfathomably profound meaning. The +following amazing interpretation is by the highly-gifted German poet and +mystic, Suso: "Among the great number of Solomon's wives was a black +woman whom the king loved above all others. Now what does the Holy Ghost +mean by this? The charming black woman in whom God delights more than in +any other, is a man patiently bearing the trials which God sends him." +Abelard's interpretation of the black woman is even worse; he maintained +that though she was black outside, her bones, that is her character, +were white. A really remarkable deed of bad taste was committed by the +monk, Matfre Ermengau, the author of the _Breviari d'Amor_, at a time +when civilisation had already made considerable strides. He sent his +sister a Christmas present, consisting of a honey-cake, mead, and a +roast capon, accompanied by the following letter: "The mead is the blood +of Christ, the honey-cake and the capon are His body, which for our +salvation was baked and pierced at the Cross. The Holy Ghost baked the +cake in the Virgin's womb, in which the sugar of His divinity +amalgamated with the dough of our humanity. In the Virgin's womb the +Holy Ghost also spiced the mead and prepared it from wine; the spice is +divine virtue, the wine is human blood. In addition He caused the holy +capon to issue from the egg; the yolk of the egg is the deity, the white +is humanity, the shell is the womb of the Virgin Mary ...," etc. + +The religion of Christ was lost, man had become a stranger to his own +soul--celestial warnings, signs of the Judgment Day, daemonic +temptations, surrounded him, as far as he paid heed to anything +super-sensuous on all sides. The French chronicler, Radulf Glaber (about +A.D. 1000), might have been writing a satire on antiquity when he warned +his contemporaries of the demons lurking everywhere, but more especially +dwelling in trees and fountains. Of a learned man who was studying the +classic poets, he said: "This man, confused by the magic of evil +spirits, had the impudence to propound doctrines contradictory to our +holy faith. In his opinion everything the ancient poets had maintained +was true. Peter, the bishop of the town, condemned him as a heretic. At +that time there were many men in Italy believing this false doctrine; +they perished by the sword or at the stake." We have a letter, written +at the same time by Gerbert, who later on became Pope Sylvester II., to +a friend, beseeching him to obtain for him manuscripts of the Latin +philosophers and poets. He wrote textbooks of astronomy, geometry and +medicine, and introduced the Arabic numbers and the decimal system into +Europe. In consequence he, too, was accused of magic and intercourse +with Arabian pagans. A chronicler relates that he sold his soul to the +devil and became pope through the devil's agency; and that, when he was +on the point of death, he ordered his body to be cut to pieces so that +the devil should not carry it away. + +To-day we find it difficult to realise such a state of mind. Every man +of our period who takes the smallest interest in things spiritual--be he +the most orthodox ecclesiastic--at least knows that there are capable +people in the world whose opinions differ from his, who seek fresh +knowledge; he knows it, even though he may pretend that they are people +who have gone astray and have been abandoned by God. No one can be +entirely blind to the new values created by human intellect. But the men +of the Middle Ages were swayed by a monstrous dualism, and despite their +belief in the illimitable power of human cognition, they unquestioningly +accepted the sacred tradition and rejected the naive evidence of the +senses and intellect whenever it seemed to contradict the dogma. Thus +mediaeval science did not represent what it represented in antiquity, +and what it represents now, the study of the true relationship of +things, but rather the application of truths revealed once and for all. +There was nothing more to be discovered, and therefore scientists took a +delight in logical and dialectical speculations which to a man of our +day seem senseless and childish. Far into the Renascence, natural +history was a medley of ancient traditions, oriental fables and +superficial observations. The strangest qualities were attributed to +animals with which we come almost daily into contact. The following +quotations are culled from a Provencal book on zoology: "The cricket is +so pleased with its song that it forgets to feed and dies singing." +"When a snake catches sight of a nude man, it is so filled with fear +that it does not dare to look at him; but if the man is dressed, the +snake looks upon him as a weakling and springs upon him." "The adder +guards the balsam; if a man desires to steal the balsam, he must first +send the adder to sleep by playing on a musical instrument. But if the +adder discovers that it is being duped, it closes one of its ears with +its tail and rubs the other one against the ground until it is filled +with earth; then it cannot hear the music and remains awake." "Of all +animals there is none so dangerous as the unicorn; it attacks everybody +with the horn which grows on the top of its head. But it takes such +delight in virgins that the hunters place a maiden on its trail. As soon +as the unicorn sees the maiden, it lays its head into her lap and falls +asleep, when it may easily be caught." Of the magnet we learn among +other things that it restores peace between husband and wife, softens +the heart of all men and cures dropsy. "If a magnet is made into a +powder and burnt on charcoal in the four corners of the house, the +inhabitants imagine that they cannot keep on their legs and run away, +sorely affrighted; thieves frequently profit by this fact. If a magnet +is placed under the pillow of a sleeping woman, she is compelled, if she +is virtuous, to embrace her husband in her sleep; if she has betrayed +him, she will fall out of her bed with fear." + +All this information was the common property of the period; Richard of +Berbezilh, for instance, an "aesthetic" troubadour, tells us that--like +a still-born lion's cub which was only brought to life by the roaring of +its dam--he was awakened to life by his mistress. (He does not say +whether it was by her roaring.) Conrad of Wuerzburg compares the Holy +Virgin to a lioness who brings her dead cubs, _i.e._, mankind, to life +with loud roaring. Bartolome Zorgi, another troubadour of the same +period, likens his lady to a snake, for--he explains--"she flees from +the nude poet and her courage only returns with his clothes." During the +whole mediaeval period the unicorn was a well-known symbol of virginity, +more especially of the virginity of Mary. The _Golden Smithy_ of the +German minnesinger, afterwards monk Conrad of Wuerzburg, contains a +rather abstruse poem which begins: + + The hunt began; + The heavenly unicorn + Was chased into the thicket + Of this alien world, + And sought, imperial maid, + Within thine arms a sanctuary.... etc. + +Natural history was in a parlous state, and geographical knowledge was +equally spurious. The Church was averse to natural research, for the +only problem in the world was the salvation of man from everlasting +damnation. Not only Tertullian, but several Fathers of the Church, +regarded physical research as superfluous and absurd, and even as +godless. "What happiness shall be mine if I know where the Nile has its +source, or what the physicists fable of heaven?" asked Lactantius. And, +"Should we not be regarded as insane if we pretended to have knowledge +of matters of which we can know nothing? How much more, then, are they +to be regarded as raving madmen who imagine that they know the secrets +of nature, which will never be revealed to human inquisitiveness?" Here +one is reminded of a remark made in "Phaedros" by _the wisest of all +Greeks_, who refused to leave town because "what could Socrates learn +from trees and grass?" And Julius Caesar wrote an account of his wars to +while away the time when he was crossing the Alps. + +Very likely the system of the Church would have been less rigid had it +not largely been occupied in dealing with ignorant barbarians. In the +case of Celts and Teutons, a complete and unassailable form of dogmatics +with its corollary of hieratical intolerance was the only possible +system. The traditions of these peoples were far too foreign to +Christianity to allow Christian germs to flourish in their soil. And the +new nations, accepting what Rome offered to them, were completely +unproductive in their adolescence. The achievement of this fatal first +millenary might be formulated as follows: "The civilised world of +Western Europe was united under the government of the Church of Rome; on +all nations it had been impressed in the same combination of words and +similes that they were living in a sinful world; they knew when this +world had been created and when its Saviour had appeared; they knew that +its end would come together with the bodily resurrection of the dead and +the terrible day of the Last Judgment; they knew that demons were +lurking everywhere, seeking to destroy man's soul, and that the Church +alone could save him. All these facts were as unalterable as the return +of the seasons." + +The fundamental sources of antiquity had been sensuality and asceticism, +the elements of the Middle Ages abstract thought and historical faith; +now emotion was to become the principal factor. It welled up in the soul +and soon dominated all life. The fountain which had been dried up since +the dawn of the Christian era, began to flow again in a small country in +the south of France. The civilising centre had again shifted westwards, +as in the past it had shifted from Asia to Greece, and from Greece to +Rome. In the course of the first thousand years Greece and Asia Minor +had separated themselves from Europe, and founded a distinct culture, +the Byzantine, which exerted no influence on the development of Europe. +But not even Italy, the scene of the older civilisation, was destined to +give birth to the new; maybe the memory of the antique, ante-Christian, +period was too powerful here. Its cradle stood on virgin ground, in +Provence, a country wrested from Celts and Teutons by the Roman eagles, +ploughed by the Roman spirit, preserving in some of its coast towns, +notably in Marsilia, the rich remains of Greek settlements, something of +Moorish influence in race and language, and fusing all these +heterogeneous elements into a splendid whole. But why this important +spiritual centre should have been formed just here it is difficult to +say. + +For the first time the system of ecclesiastical values was confronted by +something novel, which was not--like the old Teutonic ideal of the +perfect warrior--tainted by barbarism, but may be described as the +system of mundane court values. This new ideal was not founded on an +authority which had to be accepted in good faith; it had its direct +origin in the passionate yearning of the human soul. Man had +re-discovered himself and become conscious of his personal creative +force. A very great thing had been accomplished; the seed which, slowly +gathering strength, had lain in the soil for a thousand years, had at +last burst its husk, and was rapidly growing into the magnificent tree +of the European civilisation. In silent opposition to the system of the +accepted ecclesiastical values, the new ideal of _pretz e valor e +beutatz_ (worth and value and beauty), of _cavalaria_ and _cortezia_ +(chivalry and courtesy), was upheld in Provence. Four worldly virtues, +wisdom, courtly manners, honesty and self-restraint, were contrasted +with the ecclesiastical cardinal virtues. The courts of the princes +became centres of new life and art. The new spiritual-aesthetic concept +of feasting and enjoyment transformed the former orgies of eating and +drinking. Woman, who had heretofore been excluded from male society, was +all at once transferred to the very centre of being; for her sake men +controlled their brutal tempers and exerted themselves to please by +good manners, taste and art. She, whom the Church had done everything to +depreciate, who had been denied a soul at the Council of Macon (in the +sixth century), had become the very vessel of the soul; man looked up to +her and bent his knee before the newly-created goddess. + +The cultivation of the new courtly manner coincided with the nascent art +of the troubadours. There was no gradual growth and development in the +latter; at the very outset it had reached perfection. The first +troubadour whose name has come down to us was Guillem of Poitiers, Duke +of Aquitania (about 1100); great lords and barons gloried in the +exercise of this new art. Every court boasted its poets, hospitably +received and loaded with presents; the great ones of the earth were +beginning to exercise that patronage of art and letters which in the +Renascence reached such extravagant proportions. Every distinguished +poet employed salaried musicians, the joglars (jongleurs), who wandered +from court to court, singing their masters' new songs. Others again, the +comtaires, related romances of love and adventure, gathering round them +a rapt throng of lords and ladies. Courtly manners and lofty principles +quickly became the recognised ideal; the man who was satisfied with the +pleasures of the senses was held in contempt; the greatest reproach was +"vilania"; in the "Yvain" of the French epic poet Chrestien de Troyes, +this universal feeling is thus expressed: + + A courtier counts though he be dead, + More than a rustic stout and red. + +Dante and his circle, as well as the best of the troubadours, +substituted for the "cortois" of the superficial Chrestien the "cor +gentil," the noble heart, which they accounted more precious than rank +and wealth and power. "Wherever there is virtue there is nobility," says +Dante, "but where there is nobility there need not necessarily be +virtue." A time had come when personal distinction was in every man's +grasp, no matter whether he was learned or unlearned, a nobleman or a +commoner. Certainly the commoner was never on an equality with the +aristocrat, partly because he was dependent on the largess of the great. +Even Dante was compelled to seek princely patronage, and not until the +Renascence do we hear of writers whose sarcastic tongues were so dreaded +that they became independent of charity. + +In opposition to the monkish ideal of a contemplative life which had +hitherto obtained, a new ideal, the ideal of the courtier's life, was +upheld; ecclesiastical saintliness was contrasted with knightly honour. +Beauty, which at the dawn of the Christian era had fallen into ill +repute and had become associated with unholy, and even diabolical, +practices, had again come into its kingdom. Above everything it was the +beauty of woman which was re-discovered--or rather, in its new, +spiritual sense, newly discovered--and claimed the enthusiasm and love +of the best men of the period. After a thousand years of gloom and +brutality, joy and culture shed their radiance on a renewed world. The +ideal of chivalry bore very little resemblance to the old Teutonic ideal +of the hero; the older ideal had been based entirely on the appreciation +of physical strength; but chivalry was the disseminator of culture, +leaving ecclesiastical culture, which hitherto had been synonymous with +civilisation, a very long way behind. "Mezura," "masze" (the [Greek: +mphstoes] of the Platonic Greeks) was the new criterion, as compared +with the barbarian's want of restraint. + +I do not propose to give a description of the life at the courts of +Provence. The news of it travelled north, and everywhere roused a desire +to imitate it. The need of a renewed life was powerfully stirring all +hearts. Men yearned for beauty and spontaneity, for passionate life, +unprecedented and romantic. This was especially the case in the north, +in France and in Germany, and above all in Wales, the country of the +imaginative and highly-gifted Celts. Here life was harder, poorer, more +barbaric; the cultured mind suffered more from its brutal surroundings +than it did in the favoured south. It was here that the great legends of +the Middle Ages, so clearly expressive of the yearning of the period, +were first collected. The early Middle Ages had produced epic poems, +treating scriptural subjects (such as the Harmony of the Gospels of the +monk Otfrit, written in the ninth century), and celebrating the exploits +of popular heroes, as, for instance, the German Song of Hildebrand, and +the French "Chansons de Geste," which contain episodes from the lives of +Charlemagne and his nephew Roland. The true epic, arising from the rich +and poetical Celtic tradition, came into existence in the eleventh +century in the North of France and immediately burst into extraordinary +luxuriance. The legends of the heroes of the dreamy Celtic race--King +Arthur and his knights, Merlin the magician, the knights of the Holy +Grail--travelling across France, became the common property of the +civilised European nations, and filled all hearts with longing and +fantastic dreams. Chrestien de Troyes, in his romances, extolled +knightly exploits and the service of woman, thus producing by the +combination of the older and the newer ideals the novel of adventure +which has fascinated the world for centuries. It is a mistake to believe +that Don Quixote has struck at the root of it; to this day the masses +wax enthusiastic in reading of the doughty deeds of knights, the beauty +of ladies and their unswerving, undying love. + +In addition to the great and heroic subjects, there were lesser, more +intimate, and frequently sentimental, romances, especially enjoyed and +widely circulated by the ladies. The baron, riding forth, left his young +wife at home, shut up in her bower and surrounded by spies; sometimes +even physically branded as his property. A prisoner behind bars, her +imagination went out--not to the unloved husband who had married her for +the sake of her broad acres, and could send her back to her parents as +soon as he found a wealthier bride (he had but to maintain that she was +related to him in the fifth degree and the Church was ready to annul the +marriage), not to him, her lord and master, but to the unknown knight, +the passionate lover, who would gladly give his life to win her. A +jongleur arrived with stories of the courts where love was the only +ruler; where the knights willingly suffered grief and want, if by so +doing they could serve their lady; where the lover, in the shape of a +beautiful blue bird, nightly slipped through the barred windows into the +arms of his mistress. But the jealous husband had drawn barbed wire +across the window, and the lover, flying away at dawn, bled to death +before the eyes of his grief-stricken lady. The jongleur would tell of +the knight who had fallen passionately in love with a beautiful damsel +of whom he had but caught a passing glimpse; month after month he worked +at digging an underground passage; every night brought him a little +nearer to her bower--she could distinctly hear the dull sounds of his +burrowing--until at last he rose through the ground and took her into +his arms. These and similar tales, doubtless all of them of Celtic +origin--preserved for us in the charming "Lais" of Marie de +France--brought tears to the eyes of many a lonely wife and gave shape +to her vague longing. There was no reason why a man, and a lover to +boot, should not transform himself nightly into a blue bird. Those +simple stories in verse fulfilled every desire of the heart; imagination +supplied in the north what the south offered in abundant reality. But +Marie de France, the first woman novelist of Europe (about the end of +the twelfth century), deserves to be remembered for another reason; she +was the first poet voicing woman's longing for love and +romance--woman's adventure. The charming _Lai du Chevrefoile_ ("The +Story of the Honeysuckle") relates an episode from the loves of Tristan +and Isolde, the famous lovers, legendary even at that time. Tristan and +Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere, Fleur and Blanchefleur--these were the +admired and mythical lovers of whom the poets sang and dreamed. All the +world knew their adventures; all the world repeated them again and +again, reverently preserving the identical words and yet unconsciously +remoulding them. At the recital of their loves, hand clasped hand; "on +that day we read no more," confessed Dante's ill-fated lovers. + +The longing, so characteristic of the North of Europe, to see the world +and meet with adventures, was in Provence and Italy less pronounced. +These favoured climes possessed so many of the things dreamed of and +desired by other countries. Events, strange as fiction, actually +occurred. Count Raimond of Roussillon, for instance, imprisoned his wife +in a tower because the troubadour, Guillem of Cabestann, was in love +with and beloved by her. He waylaid the lover, killed him, cut his heart +out of his breast and sent it, roasted, to his countess. When she had +partaken of it, he showed her Guillem's head and asked her how she had +enjoyed the dish. "So much that no other food shall ever pass my lips," +she replied, casting herself out of the window. When the story spread +abroad, the great nobles rose up in arms against Raimond, and even the +King of Aragon made war on him. He was caught and imprisoned for life, +and his estates were confiscated. Guillem and the countess were buried +in the church, and for a long time after men and women travelled long +distances to kneel at their grave. The charming poems of Melusine and +the beautiful Magelone, which to this day delight the reader, were +composed during the same period. + +Before the eleventh century poetry in the true sense of the word did not +exist. There were only Latin Church hymns and legends, perverted +reminiscences of antiquity, and, in the vulgar tongue, legends of the +saints and simple dancing-songs for the amusement of the lower classes. +Thanks to the relentless war which the clergy waged against them, a few +only have been preserved. There can be no doubt that Provence was the +birthplace of European poetry. The "sweet language" of Provence was the +first to reach perfection and perfect maturity. It drove the language of +the German conquerors eastwards and prepared the ground for the French +tongue. + +The beginning of the twelfth century saw the birth of the poetry of the +troubadours, which possessed from the first in great perfection +everything that distinguishes modern lyric poetry from the antique. +Instead of the syllable-measuring quantity, we now have the emphasising +accent; the rhyme, one of the most important lyrical contrivances--and +in its near approach to music the most striking characteristic of modern +lyrical poetry as compared with the antique--reaches perfection together +with the complete, evenly-recurring verse which is still to-day peculiar +to lyrical art. The poems of many of the troubadours pulsate with +passionate life, and bear no trace of the traditional or the +conventional. The martial songs of Bertrand de Born stride along with a +rhythm reminiscent of the clanking of iron. I quote the first verse of +one of these: + + Le coms m'a mandat e mogut + Per N'Arramon Luc d'Esparro, + Qu'eu fassa per lui tal chanso, + On sian trenchat mil escut, + Elm e ausberc e alcoto + E perponh faussat e romput. + + The count he sent to me one day + Sir Arramon Luc d'Esparro; + A song I was to make him--so + That thousand shields with ring and stay + And mail and armour of the foe + To fragments shivered in dismay. + +The poetry of the Provencal troubadours had already passed its prime +when, in the other European countries, lyric art was still in its +infancy. The crusade against the Albigenses (1209), undertaken by +Gregory VII. with the object of killing the new spirit and the new +secular civilisation, drove many troubadours to Italy, among others the +famous Sordello, who is mentioned in Dante's _Divine Comedy_. Others +went to Sicily, to the court of the art-loving Emperor, Frederick II., +where a distinct, but not very original, poetic art arose. In Italy the +perfection of mediaeval poetry was reached in the "sweet, new style" +immortalised by Dante. But not only the great Italians, the trouveres +from the North of France also, and--to some extent--the German +minnesingers, were influenced by the art, and above all, the ideals +which had originated in Provence. The poetry of the earliest Rhenish and +Austrian minnesingers closely follows German folklore, and the songs of +Dietmar of Aist and others are still quite innocent of any trace of +neo-Latin characteristics. But very soon the technical perfection of the +Provencal poetry and the Provencal ideal of courtesy and love, famous +all over Europe, strongly influenced the German mind. + +The new poetry and the ideal of chivalry and the service of woman were +the first independent developments able to hold their own by the side of +ecclesiastical culture. The rigid Latin was superseded; the soul of man +sang in its own language of the return of spring, the beauty of woman, +knighthood and adventure. Poetry became the most important source of +secular education, and as each nation sang in its own tongue, national +characteristics shone out through the individuality of the singer. +Provencals, Frenchmen, Germans and Italians realised that they belonged +to different races. This was particularly the case during the Crusades +when, under the auspices of the Church, the nations of Europe had +apparently undertaken a common task. + +In Provence, in France and Germany, every poem was set to music, and +thus, simultaneously with the lyrical art, secular music was evolved. +J.B. Beck, the greatest authority on the music of the troubadours,--the +music of the minnesingers has been studied very little,--says, "The +poetry of the troubadours and trouveres represents in its totality a +collection of songs which in their frequently amazing naivete and +melodiousness, their spontaneity and sound music, intimate congruity of +melody and text and extraordinary originality, have been unparalleled to +this day." All these songs are distinguished by graceful simplicity; but +the ear of the non-musician can hardly perceive the originality on which +Beck lays such stress. In any case, the music is inferior to the +frequently perfect text. This same period saw the inception of our +present system of musical notation. + +The new poetry created a desire for "literature," thus giving impetus to +the already existent art of illuminated manuscripts. Every prince kept a +salaried army of copyists and illuminators, producing the manuscripts +to-day preserved and studied in our museums. Studios where this work was +carried on existed at various art centres, especially--as far as we are +able to tell to-day--at the papal courts at Avignon--that meeting-ground +of French and Italian artists--in Paris and at Rheims. These workshops +were the birthplace of miniature painting, which reached perfection in +the famous Burgundian "Livres d'Heures." + +To-day the science of aesthetics is attempting to trace the influence +which emanated from the French and even from the earlier English +workshops, and spread over the whole continent. It is very probable that +the French art of miniature painting of the first half of the thirteenth +century was mother of the later North-European art of painting. It was +in Northern Europe that, independently of Hellenic and Byzantine +influence, a new art originated, of which Max Dvorak says: "It would +hardly be possible to find an external cause for the quick and complete +disappearance of the elements of the Neo-Latin art. The past was simply +done with, and an absolutely new period was beginning. Thus the new art +was almost without any tradition." Dvorak calls this complete change the +most important in the history of painting since antiquity. George, Count +Vitzthum, has proved that the famous Cologne school of painting modelled +itself on Northern-French, Belgian, and a quite independent English +school of illuminators. It is even suggested that the English style of +miniature painting influenced Europe as far as the Upper Rhine. It is +also very significant that the Dutch art of the brothers van Eyck, whose +sudden appearance seemed so inexplicable, is now proved to have had its +source in the North of France. On the other hand, we have drawings of +three ecstatic nuns showing decided originality; Hildegarde of Bingen, +already mentioned on a previous occasion, has herself ornamented her +book, _Scivias_, with miniatures which, according to Haseloff, in spite +of their primitive style, reveal a bizarre plastic talent, and are +therefore closely related to her intuitions. Alfred Peltzer speaks of +"fantastic figures surrounded by flames." The two other nuns were +Elizabeth of Schoenau, and Herrad of Landsberg; these two were entirely +under the influence of the dawning mysticism. + +I will here quote a few more passages from Dvorak, who, in dealing with +the individual arts, does not lose sight of the whole. "Simultaneously +with a new literature," he says, "we have a new art of illustration, new +miniatures, no longer drawing inspiration from antiquity.... We meet the +new style in its full perfection wherever it is a matter of a new +technique (in the art of staining glass, for instance, or of +illustrating profane literature)...." He speaks of a new decoration of +manuscripts invented in Paris in the first half of the thirteenth +century. Thus the close and causal connection between the new poetry +and the illumination of books is clearly apparent, and it may be said +without exaggeration that the Provencal lyric poetry and the +North-French and Celtic cycles of romance led up to the new European +style of painting which did not come to perfection until two centuries +later. (Nothing positive can be said about the influence of France on +Italian art; the monumental character and the art of Cimabue, Giotto and +the Sienese does not, however, suggest that they were much influenced by +the art of miniature painting, but rather hints that they drew +inspiration from antique frescoes.) + +I must add a few words on the subject of those miniatures which are not +easily accessible to the layman, but reproductions of which are +frequently met with in books on the history of art. In addition to +religious subjects, the whole courtly company which lives and breathes +in the legends of the Round Table, kings and knights, poets, minstrels, +and fair damsels, hawking, jousting, banqueting and playing chess, +everything which stirred the poet's imagination, is depicted. The spirit +of the romances which in modern times enchanted the English +Pre-Raphaelites, six centuries ago provided food and stimulus to the +industrious illuminators whose names have long been forgotten. + +If the art of miniature painting never rose--excepting in its wider +consequences--to universal significance, mediaeval architecture stands +before our eyes magnificent as on the first day. Until the middle of the +twelfth century the monumental structures of Europe were directly +influenced by the later Hellenic civilisation. The Byzantine basilica +was slowly transformed into the Neo-Latin house, and thus, in this +important domain also, Europe drew her inspirations from antiquity. But +only the ground-plan of the Gothic cathedral, that is to say, the idea +of a nave with side-aisles, was traditional and borrowed from Neo-Latin +models. From this invisible ground-plan rose something absolutely +original and autochthonic. This new, specifically Central-European style +of architecture was developed on soil where there were no antique +buildings to stem the new life with their overwhelming domination, and +to bar the way of artistic inspiration with their ominous "I am +perfection!" In every branch of art antiquity had proved itself a foe, +until at last the Renascence was sufficiently mature to assimilate and +overcome the antique inheritance so completely that it became an +excellent fertiliser for the new art. The essence of the Gothic style is +the dissolution of all that is heavy and material--the victory of spirit +over matter. Walls were broken up into pillars and soaring arcades; +monotonous facework was tolerated less and less, and every available +inch was moulded into a living semblance. The result may be studied in +the incomparable facades of many of the cathedrals in the North of +France; and in tower-pieces almost vibrating with life and passion such +as that of St. Stephen's in Vienna. The conflict between matter and pure +form is settled--for the first and only time--in Gothic architecture. +The Greek temple with its correct proportions possessed no more than +perfection of form without spiritual admixture; it was perfect as marble +statues, which are an end in themselves, and do not point the way to +spiritual truths. Gothic architecture is probably unique in its blending +of aesthetic perfection of form and infinite spiritual wealth; in the +fusion of these two elements in a higher intuition. It is the balance of +the two characteristics of genius, inexhaustible wealth and the striving +for harmonious expression. It marked the first powerful working of the +Teutonic spirit on the world; its metaphysical yearning together with a +genuine love of nature, found in this art its own peculiar traditionless +expression, just as it found expression in the newly-evolved mysticism +which no longer re-echoed Aristotle and his commentators, but drew +inspiration from its own intuition. For this reason Gothic architecture +never became acclimatised in Italy. The soaring tower, more especially, +never appealed to the Italian architect. + +Ornamentation and capitals, previously a combination of geometrical +figures, which may have been architecturally great and imposing, but was +always more or less formal and rigid, disappeared; the new masters, +whose names have been forgotten, looked round them and drew inspiration +from nature. The forest trees of Central Europe became pillars; grouped +together, apparently haphazard, they reflected a mystical nature pulsing +with mysterious life. Spreading and ramifying, growing together in an +impenetrable network of foliage, they bore buds, leaves and fruits. +Every pinnacle became a sprig, even the pendant icicles reappeared in +the gable-boards. But the assimilation of natural objects did not cease +there; tiny animals, light as a feather, run over the tendrils, lizards, +birds, even the gnomes of German mythology, find their way into the +Gothic cathedral. Not the traditional Greek acanthus leaf, but the +foliage of the North-European oak grows under the hands of the sculptor. +Even the cross is twisted into a flower; the sacro-sanct symbol of the +Christian religion is newly conceived, newly interpreted and moulded so +that it may have a place. The Gothic cathedral with its soaring arches +free from all heaviness is the perfect expression of that cosmic feeling +that inspired Eckhart and reached its artistic perfection in Dante. + +But the soul of the mystic in stone contains the same elements as the +soul of Eckhart, who was also a schoolman. The confused and complex +scholastic world of ideas which corresponded so well with the mediaeval +temper and, together with the new art, had emanated from Paris, is +closely akin to Gothic architecture. For the Gothic style and +scholastic thought share the characteristics of the infinitely +constructive and infinitely cleft, the infinitely subtle and +ornamental--perhaps the last trace of the spirit of the north as +compared with the simplicity of the south. + +As if from fertile soil, a world of sculptured men and beasts sprang +from the facades of the new cathedrals. The figures on the cathedrals of +Naumburg, Strassburg, Rheims, Amiens and Chartres are far superior to +the artistic achievements of the dawning renascence in Italy. They are +real men, full of life and passion, no longer symbols of the +transcendental glory of the world beyond the grave. "All rigidity had +melted, everything which had been stiff and hard had become supple; the +emotion of the soul flows through every curve and line; the set faces of +the statues are illuminated by a smile which seems to come from within, +the afterglow of inward bliss" (Worringer). + +A longing went through the world, stimulating faith in miracles and a +desire for adventure, a longing which no soul could resist. Nothing +certain was known of countries fifty miles distant; the traveller must +be prepared for the most amazing events. No one knew what fate awaited +him behind yonder blue mountains. The existence of natural laws was +undreamt of; there was no improbability in dragons or lions possessing +power of speech. A period incapable of distinguishing between the +natural and supernatural will always indulge in those fancies which are +best suited to its temper. Be the native country never so poor, the long +darkness and cold of the winter never so hard to bear, far away in the +East, or in Camelot, the kingdom of King Arthur, life was full of beauty +and sunshine. The legends of King Arthur powerfully affected the +imagination; they were read, secretly and surreptitiously, in all +convents; on a sultry summer afternoon, during the learned discussion of +their preceptor, one after another of the pupils would fall asleep; the +preceptor, suddenly interrupting himself, would continue after a short +pause: "And now I will tell you of King Arthur," and all eyes would +sparkle as the pupils listened with rapt attention. Francis of Assisi +called one of his disciples "a knight of his Round Table," and three +hundred years later Don Quixote lost his reason over the study of those +legends; some of the finest works of art of the present time, Wagner's +"Lohengrin," "Tristan and Isolde," and "Parsifal," take their subject +from the inexhaustible treasure of the Celtic epic cycle. The longing +for experience and adventure had laid hold of the imagination to an +extraordinary degree. The recital of wondrous adventures no longer +satisfied the listener; he yearned to participate in them. The young +knight, trained in athletics and courtesy, and possessing a little +knowledge of biblical history, left his father's castle to face the +unknown world. There was a sanctuary, mysterious, almost supernal, +carefully guarded in the dense forest of an inaccessible mountain. A +knight whose heart was pure, and who had dedicated himself to the +lifelong service of the divine, could find it; but he would have to +wander for many years, through forests and glens and strange countries, +alone and solitary, before his eyes would behold the most sacred relic +in the world, the Holy Grail. + +The time was ripe for a great event, a universal and overwhelming +enterprise which could absorb the passionate longing. Maybe that the +wisdom of the great popes--half unconsciously, certainly, and under the +pressure of the age, but yet led by an unerring instinct--guided this +stream into the bed of the Church; the vague craving found a definite +object: the Crusades were organised. The Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred +spot on earth, was in the hands of the heathens; it was despised and +defiled--what greater thing could a man do than hasten to its rescue +and wrest it from the grasp of pagans, giants and sorcerers? In the +fantastic imagination of the men of that period the Lord's sepulchre was +nothing but the earthly realisation of their yearning for the Holy +Grail. + +As far back as A.D. 1000 Gerbert had sent messengers to all nations, +exhorting them to hoist their banners and march with him to the Holy +Land. It had been prophesied that he should be the first to read Mass in +Jerusalem; a few ships were actually equipped at Pisa--the first attempt +at a Crusade. But at that time Europe was not yet quite prepared for the +extraordinary, almost incomprehensible, enterprise--the conquest of a +country which hardly anybody had ever seen and in which nobody had any +practical interest. Before such an enterprise could be carried out all +hearts must be filled by that uncontrollable and yet vague longing, so +characteristic of the great period of fantasy. The suggestion that the +wealth of the East, exciting the greed of the western nations, led to +the Crusades, is an absolutely indefensible idea. Doubtless, rumours of +the fabulous treasure of the Orient had stirred the imagination of +Europe, appealing far less, however, to the cupidity of the individual +than to his desire for something strange, new and incredible. It was +impossible to foresee the result of the first Crusade; the crusader went +to a strange land in order to fight--the return was in God's hand. There +have been at all times men coveting wealth, but to make such men the +instigators and organisers of the Crusades is a deliberate attempt to +represent a characteristic and unique event in the history of the world +in the light of a commonplace and every-day occurrence. In the first +enchanted wood a man might chance upon a beautiful princess sitting +beside a fountain, nude and weeping; but it was equally possible that a +giant would rush upon the Christian knight, break his shield and exact +heavy penalties. It was possible to win the kingdom of a sultan or +emir--it could be achieved by bravery and in a duel--and become a great +king, for a king in those days was no more than a large landed +proprietor. Such dreams were actually fulfilled in the most +extraordinary way. Gottfried of Bouillon, a poor Alsatian knight, might +have become King of Jerusalem, had he not refused to wear a crown of +gold in a land where his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns, and +contented himself with the title of "Protector of the Holy Land." + +The embattled citadel of Jerusalem, like the Holy Grail, was pictured as +being situated outside the world. _There_ the longing which had become +so vast that it had outgrown the earth, would be stilled. A direct way +must lead from Jerusalem, the centre of the earth--it still takes this +position in Dante's _Divine Comedy_--to Paradise. Was it not the spot +where the Cross of the Saviour had been raised? Had not once before +heaven opened above the city to receive His risen body? Was it not the +scene of countless miracles in the past? Why should it be different now? +Men knew practically nothing of Palestine; they had in their minds a +fantastic picture tallying, in every respect, with Biblical accounts; +doubtless, the footprints of the Redeemer could easily be traced +everywhere; the possession of the country promised the fulfilment of +transcendental dreams. + +The impulse and the strength necessary for the organisation of the +Crusades were spiritual phenomena inherently foreign and even hostile to +the Church; but thanks to the mental superiority of the popes of that +period, and the overpowering conception of a divine kingdom, they became +the instruments of the greatest triumphs vouchsafed to the Church of +Rome. The hosts, driven across the sea by inner restlessness and +ill-defined longing, in reality fought for the aggrandisement of the +Church. The great Hildebrand resolved to lead all Christendom to +Jerusalem, to found on the site of the Holy Sepulchre the divine +kingdom preached by St. Augustine, and invest--a risen Christ--the +emperor and all the kings of the earth with their kingdoms. + +The crusader and the knight in quest of the Holy Grail present together +a paradoxical combination of the Christian-ecclesiastical and the +mundane-chivalric spirit, which is quite in harmony with the spirit of +the age. These two worlds, inward strangers, formed--in the Order of the +Knight-Templars, for instance--a union which, while possessing all the +external symbols of chivalry, attributed to it heterogeneous, +ecclesiastical motives; the glory of battle and victory, the caprice of +a beautiful damsel, were no longer to become the mainsprings of doughty +exploits; henceforth the knight fought solely for the glory of God and +the victory of Christianity. In addition to King Arthur's knights, the +classical Middle Ages worshipped the ideal of these priestly warriors +who waded through streams of blood to kneel humbly at the grave of the +Saviour, of those seekers of the Holy Grail who dedicated themselves to +a metaphysical task. King Arthur's Round Table served the actual orders +of knighthood as a model. Not only the Franciscans of Italy, but also +slow, German mystics, such as Suso and the profound Johannes Tauler, +delighted in borrowing their similes and metaphors from knighthood. +Tauler speaks of the "scarlet knightly robes" which Christ received for +His "knightly devotion": "And by His chivalric exploits he won those +knightly weapons which he wears before the Father and the angelic +knighthood. Therefore Christ exults when His knights elect also to put +on such knightly garments ...," etc. + +Not infrequently the Saracens behaved far more generously than the +Christian armies. A German chronicler, Albert von Stade, tells us that +A.D. 1221 "the Sultan of Egypt of his own free will restored the Lord's +Cross, permitted the Christians to leave Egypt with all their +belongings, and commanded all prisoners to be set free, so that at that +time 30,000 captives were released. He also commanded his subjects to +sell food to the rich and give alms to the poor and the sick." +Occasionally the pope entered into an alliance with the enemies of +Christendom against the emperor, if the latter proved troublesome. A.D. +1246 the Sultan of Egypt (Malek as Saleh Ejul) taught Innocent IV., the +speaker of all Christendom, the judge of the Christian peoples, the +following lesson: "It is not befitting to us," he wrote to him, "that we +should make a treaty with the Christians without the counsel and consent +of the emperor. And we have written to our ambassador at the court of +the emperor, informing him of what has been proposed to us by the Pope's +nuncio, including your message and suggestions." + +The most pathetic symptom of the restlessness of the age was the +Children's Crusade in 1212, which, even at its actual occurrence, caused +helpless amazement. The reports of two German chroniclers are +sufficiently interesting to be quoted verbally: "In the same year +happened a very strange thing, a thing which was all the more strange +because it was unheard of since the creation of the world. At Easter and +Whitsuntide many thousands of boys from Franconia and Teutonia, from six +years upwards, took the Cross without any external inducement or +preaching, and against the wish of their parents and relations, who +sought to restrain them. Some left the plough which they had been +guiding, others abandoned their flocks, or any other task which they had +been set to do, banded together, and with hoisted banner began to march +to Jerusalem, in batches of twenty, fifty and a hundred. Many people +enquired of them at whose counsel and admonishment they were undertaking +this journey, (for it was not many years ago that many kings, a great +number of princes and countless people had travelled to the Holy Land, +strongly armed, and had returned home without having accomplished their +desire,) telling them that in their tender years they had not yet +sufficient strength to achieve anything, and that therefore this thing +was foolish and undertaken without due consideration; the children +answered briefly that they were obeying God's will, and would willingly +and gladly suffer all the trials He would send them. And they went their +way, some turning back at Mayence, others at Piacenza, and others at +Rome; a small number arrived at Marseilles, but whether they crossed the +sea or not, and what happened to them, no one knows; only that much is +certain, that of all the thousands who went forth, only very few +returned." Another chronicler wrote: "And at this time boys without a +leader or guide, left the towns and villages of all countries, eagerly +journeying to the lands across the sea, and when asked whither they were +wending, they replied: 'To Jerusalem, to the Holy Land.' Many of them +were kept by their parents behind locked doors, but they burst open the +doors, broke through the walls and escaped. When the Pope heard of these +things he sighed heavily and said: 'These children shame us, for they +hasten to the recovery of the Holy Land while we sleep.' No one knows +how far they went and what became of them. But many returned, and when +they were asked the reason of their expedition, they said they knew not. +At the same time nude women were seen hurrying through towns and +villages, speaking no word." + +If it had not been for the Crusades, something else must have happened +to relieve the unbearable tension. The world was longing for a great +deed, a deed overstepping the border-line of metaphysics, and its +enthusiasm was sufficient guarantee of achievement. In the case of the +individual, vanity and boastfulness played no mean part. Thus the +Austrian minnesinger, Ulrich of Lichtenstein, proposed taking the Cross +"not to serve God but to please his mistress." It is quite probable, +though not historically proved, that this veritable Don Quixote dreamed +of decorating the Holy Sepulchre with his lady's handkerchief, but in +the end he remained at home. A journey to foreign lands, to return after +years of yearning for the beloved, her loyalty, or her treachery, +supplied the romantic imagination of the age with endless material. The +story of the Count von Gleichen and his two wives is famous to this day. +A charming Provencal song tells of a maid who, day after day, sat by a +fountain weeping for her lover. At this spot they had bidden farewell to +each other, and here she was awaiting his return. One day a pilgrim +arrived, and she at once asked for news of her knight. The pilgrim knew +him and had a message for her. After a short conversation he threw back +his cowl and drew the delighted maiden into his arms, for it was he +himself, her lover, who after many years of absence had returned and was +first visiting the spot where, years ago, he had said good-bye to her. + +But there was another motive, a religious one, which, joined to the +universal lust of adventure, dominated the whole mediaeval period to an +extraordinary degree; that motive was the idea of doing penance +and--after all the failures of life--returning to God. The Crusades +offered an opportunity for combining one's heart's desire with this +spiritual need. Of all good works there were none more pleasing to God, +and every participator was promised forgiveness of his sins. In the +troubadours' songs of the crusaders there is a strong yearning for +penance and sanctification, quite independent of the idea of the +delivery of the Holy Sepulchre from the rule of the infidels. + + All I held dear I now abhor, + My pride, my knightly rank and fame, + And seek the spot which all adore, + The pilgrim's goal--Jerusalem. + +sang Guillem of Poitiers, one of the gayest of the troubadours. + +Only very few of the more thoughtful minds realised that divine thoughts +have their source in the soul of man, and that these Crusades were +obviously a senseless undertaking (not to mention the fact that God does +not need human assistance). "It is a greater thing to worship God always +in humility and poverty," said the abbot, Peter of Cluny, "than to +journey to Jerusalem in great pomp and circumstance. If, therefore, it +is a good thing to visit Jerusalem and stand on the soil which our +Lord's feet have trod, it is a far better thing still to strive after +heaven where our Lord can be seen face to face." Both the great +scholastic, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux, were of the +same opinion. "They shall aspire not to the earthly, but to the heavenly +Jerusalem, and travel there not with their feet, but with the desire of +their hearts." And "They seek God in external objects, neglecting to +look into their hearts, in whose innermost depths dwells the divine." +And yet those same men, who even then seemed to have outgrown biblical +religiosity, were under the spell of the all-absorbing idea of the age. +Bernard solved the contradiction in the following way: "It is not +because His power has grown less that the Lord calls us feeble worms to +protect His own; His word is deed, and He could send more than twelve +legions of angels to do His bidding; but because it is the will of the +Lord your God to save you from perdition, He gives you an opportunity to +serve Him." In these words a significant change of the fundamental idea +can already be traced. Peter of Cluny worked for the Crusades, and +Bernard, one of the most influential and venerable personalities of the +Middle Ages, a man before whose word the popes bowed down, journeyed +through the whole of France, inciting all hearts to fanatical +enthusiasm. Whoever heard him preach forsook his worldly possessions and +took the cross, clamouring for Peter himself to lead all Christendom. +"Countless numbers flocked to his banner, towns and castles stood +forsaken and there was hardly one man to seven women. The wives were +made widows during the lifetime of their husbands." Thus Bernard wrote +to the Pope, travelling through Germany, healing the sick by his mere +presence, and preaching to the people in a tongue no one could +understand. But the personality of this physically delicate man, whose +body was only kept alive by his spirit, touched all hearts. The prudent +Emperor, Conrad, resisted for a long time, and would have nothing to do +with such an aimless enterprise. But Bernard's first sermon in the +cathedral at Speyer, on Christmas Day, moved him to tears. Bernard left +the pulpit and pinned the cross on the shoulder of the kneeling emperor. +By this symbolical act the metaphysical spirit of the time, of which the +Church had obtained control for her own purposes, visibly became master +of political common-sense. + +The Crusades were one of the great movements matured by the +newly-awakened metaphysical yearning. The same spirit in another, +profounder, way, manifested itself in the efforts of religious reform +which were being made here and there. "The appearance and spread of +heresy has always been the gauge by which the religious life of the +individual must be measured," says Buettner very pertinently in his +preface to his edition of Eckhart. For the first time since the days of +Christ true religious feeling was again quickening the hearts of men; +the ecclesiastical dogma, which until then had represented absolute +truth, no longer satisfied their need. Soon opposition, timidly at +first, made itself felt. Laymen ventured to interfere in the domain of +religion. All knowledge--and consequently all tradition and +religion--had been for a thousand years the exclusive possession of the +clergy; those laymen who had any culture at all knew a little Latin and +a few scholastic propositions. All this was changing. Despite reiterated +ecclesiastical prohibitions, parts of the Bible were translated into +the vulgar tongue and eagerly studied by ignorant folk; everywhere men +appeared to whom religion was a matter of vital importance, men who +strove to find God in their own souls, instead of blindly accepting the +God of foreign doctrine. + +The more obvious cause of the growing dislike to ecclesiastical +authority was the immorality of the priests. The contrast between the +professions of humility, and the greed, vice and tyranny of the clergy +was too pronounced. The ecclesiastical offices were publicly sold. +Divine forgiveness was cheaper than a new garment; every priest was +allowed to keep a mistress if he paid a tax to the bishop. Two poems of +the troubadour, Guillem Figueiras, express the state of affairs very +bluntly: "Our shepherds have become thievish wolves, plundering and +despoiling the fold under the guise of messengers of peace. They gently +console their sheep night and day, but once they have them in their +power, these false shepherds let their flock perish and die." In the +other poem he says of the priest: + + He lies in a woman's arms all night, + And wakes--defiled--in the morning light + To proffer the sacred host. + +Worse invectives even, no less forcible than those of later reformers, +he hurled against Rome. "In the flames and torments of hell is thy +place!... Thou hast the appearance of an innocent lamb, but inwardly +thou art a raging wolf, a crowned snake, begotten by a viper, the friend +of the devil!" Even the good-natured German minnesinger, Walter von der +Vogelweide, found bitter words against Rome: "They point our way to God +and go to hell themselves." Bernard of Clairvaux, the supporter of the +Church, sharply criticised the abuses of pope and clergy in his book, +_De Consideratione_: "The property of the poor is sown before the door +of the rich, the gold glitters in the gutter, the people come hurrying +up from all sides; but not to the neediest is it given, but to the +strongest and to him who is first on the spot." He accused the pope of +extravagance and luxury: "Was Peter clothed in robes of silk, covered +with gold and precious stones? Was he carried in a litter surrounded by +soldiers and vassals?" And he uttered a word which to this day is a +historical truth: "In all thy splendour thou art the successor of +Constantine rather than the successor of Peter." + +Dissatisfaction with the life of the clergy and the tyranny of Rome was +the more external reason which, although it vexed even those who were +indifferent to religion, did not question the sacred tradition; the +other reason was more a matter of principle; it was rooted in the desire +for a religious revival and openly attacked perverted truths. The +dreaded, hated, and cruelly persecuted heretics were fearless men, +sturdily fighting for their convictions. The fundamental ideal of these +reformers was the suppression of the outward pomp of the Church and the +return to the simplicity of the gospels. Their fates varied. The gentle +St. Francis of Assisi was canonised; the illumined Eckhart, on the other +hand, was tortured; most of them, like the ardent Arnold of Brescia, +were burnt at the stake. This conduct of the hierarchy towards the truly +religious men is easily explained. The Church was faced by a problem; on +the one hand, the genuine and profound piety of these men was +unmistakable, but on the other, the contrast of their teaching with +Church tradition was too obvious, and by many of them too strongly +emphasised to be silently ignored. + +The Provencal heretic, Peter of Bruis, seems to have been the first +reformer who preached against iconolatry and even objected to the images +of the Crucified. He ordered churches to be razed to the ground because +he acknowledged only the invisible community of the saints. He was burnt +at St. Giles' by an infuriated mob. More powerful, and far more +numerous than his followers, the Peterbrusians, were the Cathari and +the Waldenses (founded by Peter Valdez A.D. 1177) who soon spread to +Northern Italy and amalgamated with the sect of the Lombards. The +Cathari advocated a simple and ascetic life, in accordance with the +teaching of primitive Christianity, refrained from all ecclesiastical +ceremonies and despised the sacraments, particularly baptism. More +radical than later reformers, they rejected the doctrine of +transubstantiation, and saw in the eucharist only a symbol of the union +of God and the soul. This made their name synonymous with heresy. But by +far the most famous of heretical sects was the sect of the Waldenses or +Albigenses. It numbered amongst its adherents--if not publicly, at any +rate secretly--many of the great Provencal lords, and there can be no +doubt that this community was permeated by the spirit of a renewed +Christianity, the Christianity of St. Francis and the German mystics. +The Albigenses believed that not Christ, but His semblance only, had +been crucified; they rejected the God of the Old Testament and their +doctrine of the two creators,--the devil who created the objective +world, and the true God who created the spiritual world--is reminiscent +of the loftiest Parseeism and the profoundest gnosticism. They regarded +man as placed between good and evil; the choice lay in his own hand. An +extraordinary poem by Peire Cardinal--not by any means a +heretic--breathes this spirit. He confronts God not with the customary +humility, but as one power confronts the other. "I will write a new +poem, and on the day of the Last Judgment I will read it to Him who has +created me from nothing. If He should condemn me to everlasting +damnation, I will say to Him: Lord, have mercy on me, for I have always +striven against the wicked world," (the troubadour here alludes to his +many polemic poems) "and save me from the torments of hell. The heavenly +host will marvel at my speech. And I shall say to God that He sins +against His creatures if he delivers them into the hands of the devil. +Rather let Him drive away the devils, for then He will win more souls +and all the world will be blessed.... I will not despair of Thee and +therefore Thou must forgive my sins and save my soul and my heart. If I +had not been born I should not have sinned. It would be a great wrong +and a sin if Thou didst condemn me to burn in hell everlastingly, for +truly I may accuse Thee of having sent me a thousand evils for one +blessing." + +Most terrible was the punishment inflicted upon Provence by Innocent +III. That highly intellectual pope realised that he was faced by a +revival of the true religious instinct from which the authority of the +Church had far more to fear than from all sultans and emirs put +together. The system of absolute, immutable values was threatened with +destruction. In the year 1208 the Spanish nobleman Dominicus Guzman +founded the order of the Dominicans and the Inquisition, which invaded +Provence together with the papal army supported by France for political +reasons. Half a million men were butchered in order to crush the spirit +understood by a few hundreds at most; one stake was kindled by the +other; in the memory of man no greater sacrifice to tradition and dogma +had ever been made. Simon de Montfort, the head of the expedition, sent +the following laconic report to the pope: "We spared neither sex nor age +nor name, but slew all with the edge of the sword." + + +The troubadours bewailed the desolate country, the beauty that was no +more. Montanhagol, although greatly intimidated by the Inquisition, +wrote a long poem on the subject, and the otherwise unknown Bernard +Sicard de Marvajols laments: + + Oh! Toulouse and Provence, + And thou, land of Agence, + Carcassonne and Beziers! + As once I beheld you--as I behold you to-day! + +Jacob of Vitry, a cultured French prelate, took a different view. He +inveighed against the "foolish poems, the lies of the poets, the +sing-song of the women, the coarse innuendoes of the jesters." "Such +vermin flourishes on the stream of temporal abundance; it literally +crawls over all food, for, as a rule, the meal is followed by a deluge +of idle talk." A reconciliation of the two worlds was impossible. + +While the Waldenses flourished in Provence, various heretical sects +arose in the west of Germany and in the Netherlands; prominent among +them were the Apostolics, who took the Gospels literally, and introduced +communism and polygamy, and the communities of the Beghards and +Beguines, which roused little public attention, and did not aim at +reform, but advocated a life of contemplation. They found supporters in +all ranks of the community, and were connected with the later German +mystics. An indictment preserved for us proves the religious originality +of one of those sects, "The Brethren of the Free Spirit," who upheld the +heretical view that it were better that one man should attain to +spiritual perfection than that a hundred monasteries should be founded. +At the same time the inspired seer and hysterical nun, Hildegarde of +Bingen, wrote wild letters to the popes, denouncing the vice existing in +the Church and the degradation of religion. "But thou, oh Rome, who art +well-nigh at the point of death, thou wilt be shaken so that the +strength of thy feet shall forsake thee, because thou hast not loved the +royal maiden righteousness with an ardent love, but with the torpor of +sleep, and thou hast become a stranger to her. Therefore she will desert +thee if thou do not call her back." Pope Adrian IV. replied, almost +humbly: "We long to hear words of warning from you, because men say that +you are endowed with the spirit of the divine miracles." St. Bernard +craved Hildegarde's prayer, two emperors, popes, bishops and abbots +corresponded with her, requesting her prayer and advice, and the +interpretation of difficult passages of the Scriptures. Hildegarde +replied in an obscure, apocalyptical language: "In the mysteries of the +true wisdom have I seen and heard this." + +Prophets predicting the revival of the Gospel of Christ and the +regeneration of the world appeared in the north and south. The Italian +monk and fanatic, Joachim of Floris (about A.D. 1200), preached that +this regeneration was predestined to happen. A precursor of Hegel, he +taught three eras: the dominion of the Father, or the first era, +characterised by fear and the severity of the law; the dominion of the +Son, or the era of faith and compassion; and the dominion of the Holy +Ghost, or the era of love. This last era was beginning to dawn, and in +many places Joachim's words were regarded as the prophecies of a seer. +Thus the monk, Gerhard of Borgo San Domino, claimed for the dawning +third era the preaching of a new gospel of the Holy Ghost, an +unmistakable proof that the spirit of heresy was the outcome of +religious enthusiasm. + +The people despised the clergy, and were favourably disposed to every +reformer; at the same time they were entirely under the sway of a +superstitious awe of the administrators of mysterious magic which, by +appropriate practices, or by means of presents, could be turned to +advantage. The fetichism of relics flourished everywhere; a sufficient +number of pieces of the Cross of Christ were sold and worshipped to +furnish trees for a big forest--to say nothing of the bones of numerous +saints with which many monasteries, more especially French monasteries, +did a lucrative trade. Even at the time this traffic repelled the finer +intellects; in A.D. 1200, Guibert, the abbot of Novigentum, preached +against the cult of the saints and the worship of relics, adducing all +the well-known arguments which to this day, however, have proved +insufficient to overcome the evil. In Guibert's words, "It was an +abominable nuisance that certain limbs should be detached from the body, +thereby defying the law that all bodies must turn to dust. How can the +bones of any man be worth framing in gold and silver," he asked, "when +the body of the Son of God was laid beneath a miserable stone?" He +exhorted the people to turn from the visible and obvious to the +invisible. He maintained that the worship of relics was opposed to true +religion because "not until the disciples were bereaved of the bodily +presence of Christ could the Holy Ghost descend upon them." He even +rejected the prevalent, entirely materialistic, view of a life after +death, and dared to suggest that the torments of hell should be +interpreted spiritually. "The eternal contemplation of the Lord is the +supreme bliss of the righteous; who could dare to deny that the misery +of the damned consists in the eternal bereavement of the face of the +Lord?" + +Religion had been lost; what should have been a vital force had become +as far as the most learned were concerned a knowledge of historical +events. Many saw in a return to evangelical simplicity and love the only +remedy; but it was the life, not the preaching of a man, which once +again was vouchsafed to the world as a great example. "Nobody has shown +me what I should do; but the Most High Himself has commanded me to live +according to the Gospels." Francis of Assisi accepted the accounts of +the life of Christ with the utmost naivete; he neither searched for an +allegorical meaning (as the theologians did), nor did he subordinate the +man Jesus to the divine principle of the _logos_ (in the manner of the +great mystics). To him the imitation of Christ meant a ministry of love; +he did not conceive religion as dogma and the political power of a +hierarchy, but as a state of the heart. This is a characteristic which +he shares with Eckhart, the great recreator of European religion, +although he was fundamentally alien to him. St. Francis never uttered a +single hostile word against tradition or the clergy; he never inveighed +against the corruption of morals and religious indifference, as other +reformers did; he exerted a reformatory influence solely by his life, +for he possessed the secret of the great love. During his whole life he +was averse to laying down rules for his followers, although continually +urged to do so by popes and bishops. His importance does not lie in the +foundation of an order with certain regulations and a specific object, +but in the fact that he was a vital force. He broke the norms of the +Church whenever it seemed right to him to do so, for he was absolutely +sure of himself; without being ordained he preached to the people in his +own tongue, probably the first man (after the Provencal Peter Valdez) +who did so; without possessing the slightest authority he consecrated +his friend Clara as a nun. Innocent III., who made the suppression of +heresy the task of his life, showed great intelligence and wisdom in +sanctioning St. Francis' sermons to the people and acknowledging his +unecclesiastical brotherhood. This probably transformed a dangerous +revolutionary into a faithful servant of the Church. Maybe the Church +was indebted to St. Francis for being saved from a great early +reformation; signs of it were not wanting, and another Arnold of Brescia +might have arisen and brought about her overthrow. It is doubtful +whether the Church would have come out of a Franciscan crusade as +victoriously as she came out of her struggle with Provence. + +St. Francis regarded science with indifference. "Every demon," he said, +"has more scientific knowledge than all men on earth put together. But +there is something a demon is incapable of, and in it lies the glory of +man. A man can be faithful to God." With those words he had inwardly +overcome tradition and theology, and direct knowledge of the divine had +dawned in his soul. He even forbade his brethren to own copies of the +Scriptures. God in the heart--that was the core of his doctrine. With +all his wonderful intuition he was absolutely innocent of the pride of +ignorance; he really felt himself smaller than the smallest of +men--unlike the bishops and popes who called themselves the servants of +the servants of God, without attaching the least meaning to it. How +characteristic of his simple mind was his passionate insistence on the +respectful handling of the vessels used at holy Mass, because they were +destined to receive the body of the Lord. And yet he hardly knew +anything of the symbolic transmutation of bread and wine--he accepted +the miracle without a thought, like a child. + +In the year 1219, St. Francis took part in a Crusade. While the battle +of Damietta was raging, he went into the camp of the Saracens and +preached before the Sultan, who received him with respect and sent him +back unharmed. According to the legend, he then went to Bethlehem and +Jerusalem, where the Sultan, touched by his personality, gave him access +to the sacred shrines. To Francis this pilgrimage to the Holy Land had a +profound meaning, for to him Christianity meant the imitation of Christ. + +Although he lived on bread himself, and poverty was his chosen lady, he +regarded the asceticism of the early Middle Ages as futile and rejected +it. The fire of life burned in him so ardently that he gave no thought +to the morrow, and literally followed the admonition of the Gospels: "So +likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he +cannot be My disciple." We read in the _Fioretti_ (perhaps the oldest +popular collection of poems in existence) that he expressly prohibited +asceticism as a principle; an idea too foreign to the spirit of the age +to have been an invention. He also disapproved of the secluded monastic +life, then the universal ideal of the _vita contemplativa_, and +insisted on his followers living in the world, radiating love and +sustaining life by the charity of their fellow-men. + +There is an anecdote contained in the _Fioretti_, reflecting the great +superiority and lucidity of his mind. On a cold winter's day he and +Brother Leo were tramping through the deep snow. "Brother Leo," said St. +Francis, "if we could restore sight to all blind men, heal all cripples, +expel evil spirits and recall the dead to life--it would not be perfect +joy." And after a while: "And if we knew all the secrets of science, the +course of the stars, the ways of the beasts--it would not be perfect +joy--and if by our preaching we could convert all infidels to the true +faith--even that would not be perfect joy." "Tell me then, Father," said +Brother Leo, "what would be perfect joy?" "If we now knocked at the +convent gates, cold and wet and faint with hunger, and the porter sent +us away with harsh words, so that we should have to stand in the snow +until the evening; if we thus waited, bearing all things patiently +without murmuring--that would be perfect joy: the mercy of +self-control." + +"He met death singing," says his biographer, Thomas of Celano, the +author of the magnificent _Dies irae, dies illa_. On his deathbed St. +Francis composed and sang without interruption the Hymn to the Sun, that +lofty song of praise in which the sum total of his noble life, love for +all created things,--is comprised and transfigured. It expresses a new +form of devotion, composed of the ecstasy of love and perfect humility. +He embraced in his heart his brother Sun, his sister Moon, the dear +Stars; his brother Wind, his sister and mother Earth; and on the day of +his death this _brother seraphicus_ added to it a powerful and touching +song of praise of his "brother Death." The legend has it that a flock of +singing-birds descended on the roof of the cottage in which he lay +dying; the songs of his "little sisters" accompanied him to the world +beyond the grave. + +We are justified in comparing this death, which was sustained by the +fundamental forces of that era, soul and emotion, to that other, more +famous, death of antiquity. Socrates died without in the least +succumbing to any personal feeling, supported by the purely logical +consideration that it was expedient to obey the laws of the State. His +death was the application of a universal proposition to an individual +case, and because no one could accuse Socrates of a dialectical error, +the conclusion, his death, had to take place. + +Francis and some of his successors realised in their lives the simple, +religious, fundamental emotion of love in a way which the people could +clearly understand. "God's minstrels" was the name given to his +followers, because they spoke and sang of the love of God without +ecclesiastical ceremony. Jacopone da Todi (1236-1306), probably next to +Dante and Guinicelli the greatest poet which Italy has produced, praised +the transcendent love of God in ecstatic verses. He was the religious +counterpart of the troubadours; his passionate devotion to the child +Jesus, the Madonna and the Crucified, eclipses their most ardent lyrics. +These southerners could not forgo the visible emblems of their religion; +the infinitely simple principle that only he who calls nothing his own, +and desires no earthly goods, is perfectly free, and can never fall foul +of his neighbour, was, if not lived up to, at any rate understood and +respected. The grateful hearts of the people surrounded the name of St. +Francis with legends; the study of his life inspired Giotto, the father +of the new art, to the study of plant and animal life. The story of St. +Francis is written on the walls of the cathedral at Assisi, the first +monumental work of Italian art. + +St. Francis re-lived the terrestrial life of Jesus; in one direction he +excelled his model, for though the love of Christ embraced all mankind, +the heart of St. Francis went out to all things, beasts and plants and +stars. He applied the words, "Whatsoever ye do to the least of my +brethren, ye have done unto me," to _Brother Bear_ and _his sisters the +little birds_. He was one of the first men, since the Greek era, who saw +nature in its true aspect and not as a hieroglyphic of the divine word. +Men had realised with a feeling of helplessness the dangers of the +elements, without perceiving their magnificence; they had speculated on +and attempted to decipher the secret language of the terrestrial and +celestial phenomena. The discovery of the beauty of nature, and with it +the revival of aesthetics, was an essential part of the new-born +civilisation. This fact was accomplished--in an almost sentimental +way--by the troubadours and minnesingers. But the relationship of St. +Francis to nature was something very different. The co-ordination of man +and beast--in his sermon to the birds, for instance--cannot be called +anything but frankly pagan. St. Francis said to his disciples: "Tarry a +little while in the road while I go and preach to my little sisters, the +birds." And he went into the fields and began to preach to the birds +which sat on the ground; and straightway all the others flew down from +the trees and flocked round him, and did not fly away until he had +blessed them; and when he touched them, they did not move. And these +were the words which he spoke to them: "My brothers and sisters, little +birds, praise God and thank Him that He has given you wings with which +to fly and clothed you with a garment of feathers. That he admitted your +kind into Noah's ark so that your race should not disappear from the +earth. Be grateful to Him that He has given you the air for your +kingdom; you sow not, neither do you reap, but your Heavenly Father +gives you abundance of food. He gave you the rivers and fountains; He +gave you the mountains and valleys as a refuge, and the high trees so +that you may build your nests in safety. And because you can neither +spin nor cook, God clothed you and your little ones. Behold the +greatness of the love of your Creator! Beware of the sin of ingratitude +and diligently praise God all day!" And when he had thus spoken, the +birds opened their beaks, beat their wings and bowed to the ground. + +More than a hundred years later (1300-1365), a man was living in Swabia +whose soul was kindred to the soul of St. Francis: Suso, who is, as a +rule, classed with the mystics. He had a profound, typically German love +of meadow and forest, and expressed it more exquisitely than the best +among the minnesingers. "Look above you and around you and behold the +vastness of heaven and the speed of its revolutions. The Lord has +emblazoned it with seven planets, each of which--not only the sun--is +far larger than the earth; he has adorned it with myriads of radiant +stars. See how serenely the glorious sun is riding in the cloudless sky, +giving to the earth abundance of fruit! Behold the verdure of the +meadow! The trees are bursting into leaf and the grass is springing up; +behold the smiling flowers and listen to glen and dale re-echoing with +the sweet song of the nightingales and little singing birds; the beasts +which the bitter winter drove into nooks and crannies, and into the dark +ground, are emerging from their hiding-places to rejoice in the sun and +seek a mate. Young and old are glad with an exceeding joy. Oh! Thou +gentle God, how fair art Thou in Thy creatures! Oh! fields and meadows, +how surpassing is your beauty!" Or: "My dear brethren, what more shall I +say to you than that my eyes have seen many gladsome sights. I walked +across the flowering meadows and listened to the heavenly harps of the +little birds praising their gentle and loving Creator so that the woods +echoed with their songs." And, more compassionate even than St. Francis: +"I will say nothing of the children of man; but the misery and sorrow +of all the beasts and little birds, and all created things, is well-nigh +breaking my heart; and having no power to help them, I sighed, and +prayed to the Most High, Most Merciful Lord, that He would deliver +them." His description of a paradisean meadow sounds like the +description of a picture by Fra Angelico: "Now behold with your own eyes +the heavenly meadow! Lo! What summer joy! Behold the kingdom of sweet +May, the valley of all true joy! Glad eyes are gazing into glad eyes! +Hark to the harps and fiddles, the singing and laughter! Young men and +maidens are leading the dance! Love without sorrow shall reign for +ever...." etc. There is a picture, drawn by this same Suso, representing +the journey of man through life, his departure from God and his return. +In this picture the path of humanity is renunciation and asceticism; +death flourishes his scythe above the heads of a dancing couple, and +underneath is written: "This is earthly love; its end is sorrow"; to +such an extent was this sincere and sensitive man under the influence of +the traditional hatred of the world which Eckhart, his great master, had +completely overcome. + +Provencals and Italians sang the delight of spring, and the German +minnesingers greeted it as the deliverer from all the hardships of the +severe winter; with the latter it was more a childish delight in the +open-air life which had again become possible, after the long +imprisonment of winter, than pure joy in beauty. But some of the German +epic poems, "Tristan and Isolde," for instance, contain genuine, sincere +descriptions of sylvan beauty. The student of art, especially the German +art of the Renascence, cannot help being struck by the extraordinary +love with which quite insignificant objects of nature, such as a bird, +or a flower, are treated. The familiar things of every-day life were in +this way brought into connection with solemn biblico-historical +subjects. + +There is no doubt that at all times a certain keen perception of the +beauty of nature has been inherent in some favoured individuals; but the +universally accepted opinion that only the supernal was really +beautiful, and that terrestrial beauty was merely its reflected glory, +was too strong even for them. Thus we have seen Suso translating the +beauty of the earthly spring to the kingdom of heaven. + +At the same time men were beginning to travel to distant countries for +the sole purpose of seeing new scenes and acquiring fresh knowledge. The +famous Venetian, Marco Polo, was the first European who (in 1300) +visited Central Asia, crossed China and Thibet, and brought news to +Europe of the fairyland of Japan. Sight-seeing as an end in itself was +discovered. Long sea-voyages for commercial purposes were no novelty, +but no human foot had ever trod the summits of the Lower Alps, unless it +had been the foot of a peasant whose cattle had strayed. Petrarch was +the first man (in 1336) to climb a barren mountain, the Mont Ventoux in +Provence, voluntarily undergoing a certain amount of fatigue for sheer +delight in the beauty of nature. This was a great, an immortal deed, +greater than all his sonnets and treatises put together. In a long +letter which has been preserved to us, he describes with much spirit and +erudition this extraordinary ascent, before whose profound significance +all the Alpine exploits of our time shrink into paltry gymnastic +exercises. + +The beauty of nature discovered and appreciated, interest began to be +evinced in the relationship existing between the various phenomena and +there arose a desire to obtain ocular proof of what was written in the +venerable books--perhaps even make new discoveries. The first man of any +importance in this direction was the German Albrecht Bollstaedt (Albertus +Magnus), who, although he contributed more than any other man to the +promulgation of Aristotelian philosophy, wrote a book on natural history +founded on personal observation; his great English contemporary, +however, Roger Bacon, is the true father of modern experimental science. +It was he who coined the expression "scientia experimentalis," and +framed the principle that all research must be based on the study of +nature. He maintained that experience was the "mistress of all +sciences," and said: "I respect Aristotle and account him the prince of +philosophers, but I do not always share his opinion. Aristotle and the +other philosophers have planted the tree of science, but the latter has +not by any means put forth all its branches or matured all its fruit." +This thought, though it seems to us self-evident, was of great moment in +the age of scholasticism. Bacon spent ten years in prison; but in spite +of everything, he was so much under the influence of scholasticism that +he considered it the task of philosophy to adduce evidence for the truth +of the Christian dogma. + +Here it is essential roughly to sketch the essence of the philosophical +thought of that period, and point out the way which led from the +Christianity of the Fathers of the Church and scholasticism to the +religion of unhistorical Christianity, the so-called mysticism. +Scholasticism had reached its climax in the thirteenth century; +universities were founded in Paris, Oxford and Padua, and he who aspired +to the full dignity of learning had to take his degrees there; even +Eckhart did not neglect to obtain his scholastic education in Paris. + +Scholasticism was an imposing and yet strangely grotesque system of the +world, built up--before a background of blazing stakes--of scriptural +passages and ecclesiastical tradition, lofty, pure thought and +antique-mediaeval superstition. Its fundamental problem, the +determination of the border line between faith and knowledge, was purely +philosophical. While the older scholasticism, based on Platonic +traditions, endeavoured to bring these into harmony with Christianity, +that is to say, prove the revelations by dialectics, Albertus Magnus +and, authoritatively, his pupil, Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274), strictly +distinguished, by the use of Aristotelian weapons, the rational or +perceptive truths from the supernatural verities or the subjects of +faith. This distinction, made in order to safeguard dogma, quickly +revealed its double-face. The handmaiden philosophy rebelled against her +mistress theology, and asked her for her credentials. According to the +classic and dogmatic doctrine of Thomas, the natural verities alone +could be grasped by human understanding; the supernatural or revealed +truths (the dogmas) were beyond proof and scientific cognition. To +submit them to research was not only an impossible task, but Thomas +stigmatised every effort in this direction as heresy, fondly believing +that he had once and for all safeguarded the position of faith. But more +resolute and profound thinkers, although not in so many words attacking +the authority of the Scriptures, and leaving Thomas' border-line +unquestioned, found the unfathomable truths not in ecclesiastical +tradition but in their own souls, thus investing "faith" with a new +meaning, unassailable by criticism. + +The idea of drawing a line between perceivable or rational truths and +imperceivable or divine truths, is fraught with the burning question as +to the limits of human knowledge, a question which to this day remains +unanswered. In the course of time the limits were extended in favour of +imperfect knowledge (but the character of the unknowable was +problematised and questioned). While Thomas was still convinced of the +possibility of proving the existence of a God by the power of the human +intellect, Duns Scotus removed the problem of the existence of a God and +the immortality of the soul from the domain of science, and made both +propositions a matter of faith. William of Occam, more uncompromising +than Duns Scotus, maintained the absolute impossibility of acquiring +knowledge of supernatural things, and taught--on this point, too, +anticipating Kant--that objective knowledge acquired through the senses +should precede abstract knowledge. The last conclusion of nominalism was +thus arrived at, the existence of universal conceptions, or universals, +supposed to exist outside material things--the curse of the Platonic +inheritance--declared to be impossible, and reality conceded to the +individual only. Roscellinus, the founder of this doctrine, had still +been content to deny the existence of the conception of "deity," leaving +the individual persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as real individuals, +untouched. + +We see from the foregoing that the universally derided scholasticism +travelled along the whole line of modern thought: from the "realism" of +Thomas, which leaves the universals as yet unassailed by doubt and +occupying the very heart of knowledge, past the first and, to our view, +very modest doubts of the nominalists, to the agnosticism of Bacon, Duns +and Occam. + +With the new position of decided nominalism the foundation was prepared +for the experimental sciences on the one hand, and mysticism on the +other. For the conclusion that things supernatural are a closed book to +us may have two results: on the one hand, the rejection of the +transcendental and the victory of science; on the other, the need to +descend into the profoundest depths of the universe and the soul, and +grasp by intuition what common sense does not see. + +The time was ripe and the consummators came: Dante in the south, Eckhart +in the countries north of the Alps. With regard to Dante, I will say one +thing only; he gathered together all the achievements of the new art and +transcended them in a work which has never been surpassed. The +profoundly symbolical words, "The new life is beginning," are written at +the commencement of his _Vita Nuova_, and with his _Divine Comedy_ the +art of Europe had attained perfection. + +It is necessary to give a more detailed account of Eckhart. He had been +almost forgotten in favour of his pupils, Tauler and Suso, and the +unknown author of the _Theologica Germanica_ (to which Luther wrote a +preface), but to-day a faint idea of the great importance of this man is +beginning to dawn upon the world. Eckhart was the greatest creative +religious genius since Jesus, and I believe that in time his writings +will be considered equal to the Gospel of St. John. He grasped the +spirit of religion with unparalleled depth; everything produced by the +highly religious later mediaeval era pales before his illumination. +Compared to him, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and even St. Francis +dwindle into insignificance; all the later reformers are small beside +the greatness of his soul. Every one of his sermons contains profound +passages, such as "God must become I and I must become God." "The soul +as a separate entity must be so completely annihilated that nothing +remains except God, yea, that it becomes more glorious than God, as the +sun is more glorious than the moon." "The Scriptures were written and +God created the world solely that He may be born in the soul and the +soul again in Him." "The essence of all grain is wheat, of all metal +gold, and of all creatures man. Thus spoke a great man: 'There is no +beast, but it is in some way a semblance of man.'" "The least faculty of +my soul is more infinite than the boundless heavens." "Again we +understand by the kingdom of God the soul; for the soul and the Deity +are one." "The soul is the universe and the kingdom of God." "God dwells +so much within the soul that all His divinity depends on it." "Man shall +be free and master of all his deeds, undestroyed and unsubdued." + +Eckhart was the first man who thought consecutively in the German +vernacular, and who made this philosophically still virginal language a +medium for expressing profound thought. In addition he wrote Latin +treatises which were discovered a short time ago; I have not read them, +but I have no doubt that his profoundest convictions were expressed in +the German tongue. The Latin language has at all times fettered the +spirit far more successfully than the still untainted and living German. + +The religious genius of a single individual had created Christianity. +But from the very beginning it was misunderstood; the salvation of the +world was linked to the person of a man who had aspired to be an example +to the whole race. The term, "Son of God," was understood in the sense +of the hero-cult of antiquity; possibly the Jewish faith in a Messiah, +the politico-national hope of the Children of Israel, was a good deal to +blame for this. A historical event was translated into metaphysic. The +only truly religious man was made the centre of a new mythology and +naively worshipped. It may sound like a paradox, but it is a fact that +the whole of the first millenary was inwardly irreligious; it concealed +its want of metaphysical intuition behind the falsification of +historical events. The entire mediaeval (and a large proportion of the +Protestant) theology laboured to obtain an intellectual grasp of the +doctrine of a unique historical salvation of humanity and frame it into +a dogma. And thus occurred that unparalleled misunderstanding (a +misunderstanding which never clouded the mind of India) which based +religion, the timeless metaphysical treasure of the soul, on the +historical record of an event which had happened in Asia Minor, and had +come down to us in a more or less garbled--some say entirely +falsified--version. This was the great sin of Christianity: It regarded +a historical event, revealing the very essence of religion, and +consequently capable of being formulated, as a divine intervention for +the purpose of bringing about the salvation of the world, instead of +recognising in the sublime figure of the founder of the Christian +religion a great, perhaps even perfect, incarnation of the eternally +new relationship between God and the soul. It promulgated the strange +thought that only the one soul, the soul of the founder, was divine, and +instead of teaching the divinity of humanity, it taught the divinity of +this one man only--Jesus became a God who could no longer be looked upon +as the perfect specimen and prototype of the race, but before whom it +behoved man to kneel and pray for salvation. Perhaps it was not possible +to understand the new doctrine in any other way; before men can conceive +the idea of their divinity, they must have become conscious of their +souls. + +This complete misunderstanding and externalising of religion which took +place in the first millenary, and which can never now be retrieved, is +fundamentally pagan, antique. The record of the salvation of the world, +achieved by a hero once and for all time, the historification of the +divine spark which is daily re-born in the soul, entirely corresponds to +the Greek myths of gods and demi-gods which before their new, symbolical +interpretation, were taken quite literally. I am not now concerned with +the problem of how far the antique heroes and Eastern mysteries directly +influenced the conception of the figure of Christ; I only wish to +emphasise the profound contrast between true religion which springs up +in the soul of the individual, and historical tradition. If there is +such a thing as religion, it must exist equally for all men, for those +who accidentally received a report of a certain historical event, as +well as for those who remained in ignorance of the fact. All heretical +demonstrations were rooted in a vague realisation of this contrast. But +Eckhart accomplished the unparalleled deed of once more building a +bridge between the soul and the deity; of relegating to the background +all the ineradicable historical misrepresentations or, if there was no +alternative, of unhesitatingly proclaiming them as erroneous, or +interpreting them symbolically. "St. Paul's words," he says, for +instance, "are nothing but the words of Paul; it is not true that he +spoke them in a state of grace." He did not regard the Scriptures as the +bourne of truth, but as subsequent proof of the directly experienced +truth of the divine event. With this conception Christianity had reached +its highest stage. Henceforth the origin of all truths and values was no +longer sought in doctrine and authority, but in the soul of man; God was +neither to be found in the heavens nor in history, but in the soul; the +soul must become divine and creative; it had found its task: the +recreation of the world. It was true, St. Augustine had said: "_Non +Christianised, Christi sumus_," but this saying had never been +understood, and very probably St. Augustine had not meant it in its +literal sense. At last the fundamental consciousness of Christianity had +triumphed: the principle of the "Son-of-Godship" inspired the soul of +the mystics; in future religion must emanate from the soul and find its +goal in God; written documents and--in the case of the profoundest +thinkers--examples were no longer needed. The heretical sects had been +content to reject post-evangelical tradition, in order to lay greater +stress on the words of Christ. They were genuine reformers, but they +were as much constrained by the historical facts as the Roman Catholic +Church, and their standpoint has to this day remained the standpoint of +the Protestant professions of faith. + +The fact of this new conception attaching no importance to the +historical Jesus of Nazareth (had he never lived it would have made no +difference) made of it a new religion. By putting aside this external +and accidental moment, it placed the metaphysical and purely spiritual +core of Christianity, the fundamental conviction of the divinity of the +soul, and the will to eternal life, within the centre of religious +consciousness, and by so doing put itself beyond the reach of historical +criticism and scepticism, Eckhart, more than any other teacher, was +profoundly convinced of the freedom and eternal value of the soul. "I, +as the Son, am the same as my Heavenly Father." He taught that Christ is +born in the soul, that the divine spark is continuously re-kindled in +the soul: "It is the quality of eternity that life and youth are one," +and that man must become more and more divine, more and more free from +all that is unessential and accidental until he no longer differs from +God. It is only a logical conclusion to say that a perfect man, +mystically speaking, is God; his being and his will are in nothing +differentiated from absolute, universal, divine will--German mysticism +agrees in this with the Upanishads. Kant would have said that the +principles of such a man would become cosmic laws; sin would be the +estrangement from God, the will to draw away from God. + +The profound and only mission of religion is the endowment of man in +this hurly-burly of life with the consciousness of eternity. Religion +places our transient life under the aspect of eternity, and therefore it +must, in its essence, remain a stranger to things temporal. Only that +moment in the life of a man can be called religious which lifts him +beyond himself, out of his petty, narrow existence, conditioned by and +subject to accidents, into timeless, universal life; which gives him the +certainty that historical events can never be regarded as definite and +ultimate--that moment which has the power to set free, to deliver, to +save. Thus it is irreligious to regard an event which occurred on the +temporal plane--and were it the greatest event which ever befell on +earth--as the pivot of metaphysical value for all men; to link the +salvation of the world to an occurrence which was relatively accidental, +to base the consciousness of eternity on the knowledge of a fact. This +would be a victory of time over eternity, a victory of irreligion over +religion. + +I regard it as the greatest achievement of that great time that +spontaneous religion again became possible. Eckhart rediscovered the +divine nature of man; never has the consciousness of timeless eternity +been expressed as he expressed it in his tract, _On Solitude_. Doubtless +there have been men before him who possessed direct religious +intuitions, and now and then gave timid utterance to them; but the +authority of tradition has always been too great, and they never did +more than compromise between the historical events on which the +Christian religion is based and the genuinely religious experience of +their own souls. Eckhart, too, was careful not to offend against the +letter, and his pupils, after suspicion had fallen on them, made many a +concession in terms, and perhaps even in thought. St. Augustine already +had steered a middle course between the historical and the religious +conception, in his phrase: _Per Christum hominem at Christum deum_, and +Suso (in his _Booklet of Eternal Wisdom_) followed his lead. "Thus +speaks the eternal wisdom: If ye will behold me in my eternal divinity +ye must know and love me in my suffering humanity. For this is the +quickest road to eternal salvation." The brutality of the tenet which +maintains that all those are eternally lost who, without their own +fault, have no knowledge of the salvation of the world (especially +therefore, those who died before the event), was a stumbling-block to +many thoughtful minds. The patriarchs of the Old Testament were looked +upon as saved--to some extent--by the fact of their being the ancestors +or prophets of Christ; but pagans and Greeks, including Aristotle, were +condemned even by the great Dante. At the conclusion of his _Divine +Comedy_ Dante proved himself a truly inspired mystic, for he gave to us +the profoundest vision of the divinity which has ever been vouchsafed to +man. But his genius was directed and restricted by the dogmas of the +Church; his religious standpoint was the standpoint of the early Middle +Ages and dogmatic Catholicism. As poet and lover he was the inaugurator +of a new world; here he represents the culmination and conclusion of the +condemned world-system. He was the iron landmark of the ages--Eckhart, +the creator of eternal values. + +The foremost of the precursors of Eckhart was Bernard of Clairvaux +(1091-1153). He was the exponent of the love of God which he placed +above knowledge; in one of his letters he calls love "the existence of +God Himself," basing his definition on the passage in the Gospel of St. +John, "God is Love." "Love is the eternal law which created and +preserves the universe; the whole world is governed by love; but +although love is the law to which all creation is subject, it is not +itself without law, but it is a law unto itself. Serfs and mercenaries +are ruled by laws which are not from God, but which they made +themselves; some because they do not love God, others because they love +the things of this world better than God.... They made their own laws +and subordinated the universal and eternal laws to their own will. But +those (who live righteously) are in the world as God is: neither serfs +nor mercenaries, but the children of God and, like God Himself, they +live only by the law of love." "His greatest happiness is complete +absorption in the vision of the divine and forgetfulness of self." "All +love is an emanation of that one love. It is the eternally creative and +governing law of the universe." "To be penetrated by such emotion is to +become deified. As a drop of water in a cup of wine is completely +dissolved and takes the taste and colour of the wine, so also, in an +indescribable manner, is the human will absorbed in the divine will, and +transformed into the will of God. For how could God become all in all if +anything human were left in man?" "They are completely immersed (the +martyrs) in the infinite ocean of eternal light, in radiant +eternity...." The entranced soul "shall lose all knowledge of itself +and become completely absorbed in God; it shall become unlike itself in +the measure as it has received the gift of becoming divine." Sensuous +metaphors from the Song of Songs and the Psalms are again and again +intermingled with these lofty thoughts. But in spite of his divine +emotion, in spite of his anticipations of the German mystics, Bernard +took the standpoint of ecclesiastical orthodoxy whenever he was not in +the ecstatic state; his contemplative mind was unable to grasp the +importance of independent thought, a fact amply proved by his inglorious +quarrel with Abelard, the greatest thinker of his time. This quarrel was +a typical illustration of the difference between the believer and the +thinker. Bernard forgot all about love, and did not hesitate to stir up +unpleasantness whenever he could do so. So he wrote to Pope Innocent +II.: "Peter Abelard is striving to destroy the Christian faith, and +imagines that his human intellect can penetrate the depths of the divine +mind.... Nothing is hidden from him, neither in the earth below, nor in +the heavens above; his intellectual pride exceeds all limits; he attacks +the doctrines of faith, and ponders problems far above his intellectual +capacity; he is an inventor of heresies ...," etc. Thanks to his +machinations, Abelard was compelled to recant at the Council of Sens, +and was condemned by the Pope to eternal silence. Berengar of Poitier +took Abelard's part, and in a satirical treatise ventured to criticise +St. Bernard's conduct: "Thus philosophise the old women at the looms. Of +course, when Bernard tells us that we must love God, he speaks a true +and venerable word; but he need not have opened his lips to do so, for +it is a self-evident truth." As a matter of fact, these words branded +and contradicted the merely subjective emotional mysticism; to the +emotional mystic salvation lies in the "absorption in God," in +shapeless, thoughtless contemplation. Richard of St. Victor, founding +his theories on St. Bernard, established six stages of meditation. The +Franciscan monk, Bonaventura, the famous author of the _Biblia +Pauperum_, added a seventh, a complete rest in God--"like the Sabbath +after the six days of labour." To Bonaventura, as later on to Dante, the +world was a ladder leading up to God. + +If we turn from these thinkers of the Neo-Latin race, who in spite of +their undeniable mysticism were completely under the dominion of the +Church--to German mysticism, we find above and beyond mysticism, we find +above and beyond love, a new principle: The soul of man is the +starting-point of religious consciousness and the content of the +religious consciousness is the soul's road to God. The nativity of +Christ ceased to be regarded as a historical event, and became the birth +of the divine principle in the soul of man. In passing I will mention a +German nun, Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212-1277), who anticipated some of +the great thoughts of Eckhart, although she was incapable of grasping +their mutual connection. "The Holy Trinity and everything in heaven and +earth must be subject to me" (the soul), were words in the true spirit +of Eckhart, leaving St. Bernard far behind. Mechthild found metaphors of +true poetical grandeur when she spoke of the union of the soul with God. +"The dominion of the fire has yet to come. That is Jesus Christ in Whose +hands the Heavenly Father has laid the salvation of the world and the +Last Judgment. On the Day of Judgment He shall fashion cups of wondrous +beauty out of the crackling sparks; therein the Father will drink on His +festival all the holiness which through His dear Son He has poured into +human souls." + +Emotional mysticism was the prevailing form of mysticism in those days; +even Eckhart's pupil, Suso, belonged to this class of mystics. This +vague sentimentalism saved many a mind from the rigid dogmas of the +Church, and as its vagueness could be interpreted in more than one way, +it caused very little offence; but these visions and ecstasies, which +are so often mistaken for true mysticism, have done much to bring the +latter into contempt with the seriously minded. Eckhart did not +acknowledge it as genuine mysticism and directly condemned it in many of +his writings; and as he rejected mystic sentimentalism, clearly divining +its pathological cause, so he also rejected asceticism and all religious +ceremonies. The evangelical poverty of the Franciscan monks was an +object of loathing to him. St. Francis (and thirty years before him +Peter Valdez) had naively interpreted the imitation of Christ as a life +of absolute poverty, and had been relentless in his denunciation of +worldly wealth, which every monk of his order had to renounce. He +himself never touched money, seeing in it the source of all evil. His +transcendent treasure was "Holy Poverty"; Jacopone wrote an ardent hymn +to "Queen Poverty," and even Thomas, the representative of Dominican +erudition, theoretically took up the cudgels on its behalf. But even in +the primitive Church the principle of worldly and spiritual poverty was +widely spread and encouraged. In the defence of poverty, which was +practically nearly always synonymous with idleness and begging, and +therefore roused much hostility among the people, Bonaventura pointed +out (in his treatise, _De Paupertate Christi_) that Jesus Himself had +never done any manual work. The universal preference for a contemplative +life encouraged the tendency, and the extreme charitableness of the +Middle Ages made its realisation possible. Work was frequently looked +upon as a punishment--a view which could easily be upheld by reference +to Adam's expulsion from Paradise--and inflicted upon the monks for +offences against the rules. Dante's friend, Guido Cavalcanti, expressed +the natural sentiment that poverty is a distressing condition, in a +canzone which bristles with insults hurled at the Queen of the +Franciscans: + + Yea, rightly art thou hated worse than death, + For he, at length, is longed for in the breast. + + But not with thee, wild beast, + Was ever aught found beautiful or good; + For life is all that man can lose by death, + Not fame and the fair summits of applause; + His glory shall not pause + But live in men's perpetual gratitude. + While he who on thy naked sill has stood + He shall be counted low, etc. + + D.G. ROSSETTI. + +The concept of the German mystics was infinitely more profound than the +concept of the merely external poverty of the Franciscans, which in the +case of St. Francis and Jacopone was an inherent characteristic and +pure, but in the case of the others more or less vicious. "Man cannot +live in this world without labour," says Eckhart, "but labour is man's +portion; therefore he must learn to have God in his heart, although +surrounded by the things of this world, and not let his business or his +surroundings be a barrier." There is a passage in the book of an unknown +author, entitled _The Imitation of Christ's Poverty_ (formerly ascribed +to Tauler), which reads as follows: "Poverty is equality with God, a +mind turned away from all creatures; poverty clings to nothing and +nothing clings to it; a man who is poor clings to nothing which is +beneath him, but to that alone which is greater than all things. And +that is the loftiest virtue of poverty that it clings only to that which +is sublime and takes no heed of the things which are base, so far as it +is possible." "The soul while it is burdened with temporal and transient +things is not free. Before it can aspire to freedom and nobility it must +cast away all the things of the world." "Nobody can be really poor +unless God make him so; but God makes no man poor unless he be in his +inmost heart; then all things will be taken from him which are not +God's. The more spiritual a man is, the poorer will he be, for +spirituality and poverty are one...." Pseudo-Tauler even affirms that a +man "can possess abundant wealth and yet be poor in spirit." The meaning +of this is clear: He whose heart is not wrapped up in the things of the +world, will find his way to God; a soul which is without desire is rich. + +But there was a still greater contrast between the naive religion +represented by St. Francis of Assisi and the religion of Eckhart. The +former lived entirely in the obvious and visible; the love of all +creatures filled his heart and shaped his life. The heart of the mystic +too, was filled with love, but it was love transcending the love of the +individual, love of the primary cause. In the last sense Eckhart taught, +contrary to traditional Christianity, and in conformity with Indian +wisdom, that the soul must be absorbed into the absolute and that +everything transient and individual must cease to exist. "The highest +freedom is that the soul should rise above itself and flow into the +fathomless abyss of its archetype, of God Himself." + +Even St. Bernard was not quite free from this mystical heresy (_cf._ the +previously quoted passages). "When he has reached the highest degree of +perfection, man is in a state of complete forgetfulness of self, and +having entirely ceased to belong to himself, becomes one with God, +released from everything not divine." Even compassion must cease in this +state, for there is nothing left but justice and perfection. + +We recognise here a characteristic of all those who are greatest among +men: of Goethe, for instance, of Bach, or Kant: namely, the +correspondence of intense personality and the most highly developed +objectivity; for the greatest personality ceases in the end to +distinguish between itself and the world, has eradicated everything +paltry, selfish and subjective and has become entirely objective, +impersonal, divine. St. Francis knew nothing of this consciousness. "God +has chosen me because among all men He could find no one more lowly, and +because through my instrumentality He purposed to confound nobility, +greatness, strength, beauty and the wisdom of the world." He was the +disciple of the earthly Jesus, Who went through life the compassionate +consoler of all those who were sorrowful. But Eckhart aspired "to the +shapeless nature of God." "We will follow Him, but not in all things," +he said of the historical Jesus. "He did many things which He meant us +to understand spiritually, not literally ... we must always follow Him +in the profounder sense." Compared to the religion of Eckhart, the +religion of St. Francis is the faith of a little child, picturing God as +a benevolent old man. Such a religion is equally true and sincere, but +it represents an earlier stage on the road of humanity. If Christianity +were--as we are occasionally assured--the religion of Jesus, then the +great mystics cannot be called Christians. And yet St. Augustine's: "We +are not Christians, but Christs," was fulfilled in them. + +The profoundest depth of European religion, of which Eckhart was the +exponent, and which found artistic expression in Gothic art, was not +sounded by music until very much later. Bach, more emphatically in the +High Mass and the Magnificat, but also in his purely instrumental music, +brought the universal feeling of mysticism to absolute artistic +perfection. The deep religious sentiment which pervades the High Mass is +so far above all cults, that it has no real connection with any +historical faith--it is pure consciousness of the divine. + +The peculiar state of the soul, called mysticism, could never become +popular, or exert any very great influence. A few men, such as Tauler, +Suso, Merswin, and the unknown author of the _Theologica Germanica_ +handed on--not by any means always unadulterated--the doctrine they had +received from Eckhart--which at all times appealed to a few +thinkers--but the real influence on the world and on history was +reserved for the reformers. The reformer, in his inmost nature, is +related to the people; his soul is agitated by formulas and ceremonies, +to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his +faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. He has every +appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on +that against which he is fighting. He suffers under its inefficiency; +his deed is the final reaction against his environment; salvation seems +to him to lie in the improvement of existing conditions, and not until +he has succeeded in accomplishing his purpose can he hope for religious +peace. The mystic is possible in all states of civilisation. He is not +dependent on external circumstances; his whole consciousness is filled +with one problem only, before which everything else pales: the +relationship of the soul to God. But the reformer is possible only under +certain circumstances. He, too, starts from an inner religious +consciousness, but his problem is soon solved, and he devotes all his +energy to the world. The mystic is not even aware of the difference +between his own conception of God and traditional religion; he is under +the impression that he is still an orthodox believer, long after he has +broken fresh ground; for he has taken from the traditional doctrine +everything which he can re-animate. The remainder is dead as far as he +is concerned. To accuse him of heresy appears to him as a monstrous +misunderstanding. + +Thus mystic and reformer drink from the same well of direct religious +consciousness. But while in the case of the mystic the well is +fathomless, it is much more shallow in the case of the reformer. Certain +of himself, he directs his energy to the conversion and reformation of +the world. He resembles in some respects the public orator and +agitator; he has a grasp of social conditions, strives to influence his +surroundings by word and deed, and is ready to sacrifice his life to his +convictions. The mystic remains solitary and misunderstood. Luther, who +was to some extent influenced by German mysticism, fought, at his best, +against the dogma of historical salvation. + +It is the tragic fate of all religions that they must crystallise into a +system. A reflection of the enthusiasm which animated their founders +still falls on their disciples: Follow me! But the second generation +already demands proofs, tradition and clumsy miracles; reports are drawn +up and looked upon as sacred--religion has become a glimpse into the +past. Most people never have any direct religious experience, their +salvation lies in the dogmas, the universally accepted doctrines. The +founder of a new religion is always regarded by his contemporaries as +abnormal, and is persecuted accordingly; not in malice, but of +necessity. Arnold of Brescia died at the stake; St. Francis was no more +than a heretic tolerated by the Church, and Eckhart escaped the tribunal +of the Inquisition only through his death. + +I have attempted to show in diverse domains of the higher spiritual and +psychical life, how powerfully _the Christian principle of the +individual soul, the real fundamental value of the European +civilisation_, manifested itself at the time of the Crusades, and +everywhere became the germ of new things. The deepest thinkers teach the +deification of man as the culmination of existence, the ultimate purpose +of this earthly life, and claim immortality for the soul. This position, +which may roughly be conceived as the raising of the individual into the +ideal, has determined the European ideal of culture and differentiated +it from all Orientalism, including even the loftiest Indian philosophy. +Every attempt to substitute for this fundamental concept and its +emotional content something else--whether it be pantheism, Buddhism, or +naturalism--will always remain a failure. + +Side by side with the splendid achievement of the German mysticism, the +Teutonic race has always been apt to give practical proof of its +individualism by endless petty quarrels and by splittings into numerous +cliques. But even before this race began to play a part in history, at +the beginning of the third century, the principle of the individual soul +was outwardly carried to extremes. While it was the ideal of the man of +antiquity to serve the higher community of the State with body and soul, +nascent Christianity cared solely for the salvation of the individual +soul, and frequently proved this by quite external evidence, by living a +hermit's life in the desert, for instance. Children left their parents, +husband and wife separated, dignitaries forsook their office to seek +solitude and prepare their souls for the world beyond the grave. The +first convents--the outcome of Christian individualism and +asceticism--were founded; and the anti-social extreme of this +individualism acquired such ominous proportions that the Emperor Valens +in the year of grace 365, was forced to legislate against the monastic +life. + +This hatred of the world, which was quite in harmony with the spirit of +Christianity, was only overcome by the profounder concepts of German +mysticism, for in the primitive dualistic view of the first millenary +the renunciation of the world was the only possibility of avoiding sin. +The Emperor Justinian decreed that any man who induced a consecrated nun +to marry him should be punished by death. The thought that personal +greatness did not consist in renouncing the world but in living in it +and overcoming it, had not yet been conceived. + +The delight in the human form, characteristic of antiquity, was +extinguished, a crude dualism denied all antique values. The body must +be hated, so that the soul could flourish. But as the Hellenic period +was preceded by vague, unindividualised, material life, so the +impersonal, chaotic, spiritual life of the first thousand years of +Christianity matured the individual soul. It found its climax in Dante +and Eckhart, the greatest poet of the Neo-Latin race, and the most +illumined religious genius of Germany. These two men, who were +contemporaries (Dante died in 1321 and Eckhart in 1329), finally +revealed the character of two kindred nations, completing and +fructifying each other. In Dante the great artistic power of the +Neo-Latin race appeared for the first time in its full intensity; it +took possession of the whole visible universe, and poured new beauty +into the traditional myths of Christendom. Eckhart experienced and +recreated the shapeless depths of the soul, the regions of the blending +of the soul with God. With these two men Europe definitely severed +herself from antiquity and barbarism, henceforth to follow her own star. + +The new world had come into existence! Renascence, the lucky heir, +gathered the ripe fruit from the tree of art which had blossomed so +marvellously. God was no longer sought in the depth of the soul, all +emotion was projected into the world of sense. Churches were built, not +from an irresistible impulse, but as store-houses of the pictures which +were painted with amazing rapidity. The fundamental principle of +personality was externalised in the Renascence. Vanity and boasting, +traces of which frequently appeared in the age of chivalry, grew +exuberantly. No less manifest than the incomparable genius and _esprit_ +of the heyday of the Renascence--although far less frequently commented +on--was the desire to be conspicuous, to shine, to display wealth and +learning. The essence of personality, instead of being sought in the +soul, was sought in outward magnificence. As a matter of fact, the much +extolled Renascence only perfected the various branches of art and +poetry, which had sprung up in the period of the Crusades. The latter +was the time of the planting of the tree of European culture; all that +followed was merely its growth and ramification. Only exact science had +its origin in the Renascence, and this fact, in historical perspective, +must be regarded as the supreme glory of this period. However +paradoxical it may sound--the "impersonal" science is the perfection of +the European system of individualism, its most potent weapon for taking +spiritual possession of the world and all that the world contains. The +consciousness of personality had to permeate the whole soul before it +could recover its external function: organic existence justified by +itself. While art borrows from nature and mankind all that we ourselves +deem beautiful, perfect, valuable, and imposes on the world a man-made +law--science strives to understand all things and all creatures +according to the law which dominates them; it strives to comprehend +nature and humanity--even where they are foreign and hostile--not +according to human values, but according to their inherent nature--and +this is only possible when the individuality of all things is respected. +The method of science has slowly become the perfect weapon by whose aid +Europe has attained the mastery of the world; it rests on the +fundamental feeling for the material, and is capable of confronting the +"I" with the whole system of natural phenomena, the "not-I," and +expresses the final victory of comprehending spirit over matter. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE DEIFICATION OF WOMAN + +(THE FIRST FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM) + +_(a) The Love of the Troubadours_ + + +In the long chapter on the Birth of Europe, I have attempted to bring +corroborative evidence from all sides in support of my contention that +the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed the birth and gradual +development of a new value of the highest importance: the value of +individuality, impersonated by the citizen of Europe. We are now +prepared to realise the psychological importance and the importance for +progress of one of the greatest results of this new development--the +spiritual love of man for woman. From this subject, the specific subject +of my book, I shall not again digress. + +We are aware that the man of antiquity (and also the Eastern nations of +to-day) recognised between man and woman only the sexual bond, +uninfluenced by personal and psychological motives, and leading in +Greece to the institution of monogamy on purely economical and political +grounds. In addition to this bond there existed a very distinct +spiritual love, evolved by Plato and his circle and projected by one man +on another member of his own sex. In the true Hellenic spirit this love +aspired to guide the individual to the ideal of perfection, the beauty +and wisdom of the friend serving as stepping-stones in the upward climb. +In Christianity the spiritual love of the divine became the greatest +value and the pivot on which the emotions turned. The primitive +Christian scorned the body, his own as well as that of his fellow; he +despised beauty of form, and regarded only the divine as worthy of love. +Woman was disparaged and suspected; all thinkers, down to Thomas and +Anselm, looking upon her merely as a snare and a pitfall. The period +discussed in detail in the foregoing chapter ushered in a new and, until +then, unknown feeling. In crude and conscious contrast to sexuality, +deprecated alike by classical Greece and primitive Christianity, +spiritual love of man for woman came into existence. It was composed of +three clearly distinguishable elements: the Platonic thought, +maintaining that the greatest virtue lies in the striving for absolute +perfection; the entirely spiritual love of the divine, sufficient in +itself, and representing the final purpose of life, as developed by +Christianity; and the dawning knowledge of the value of personality. +From these three elements: the noblest inheritance of antiquity, the +central creation of Christianity, and the pivot of the new-born European +spirit, sprang the new value which is the subject of the second stage of +eroticism. The position of woman had changed; she was no longer the +medium for the satisfaction of the male impulse, or the rearing of +children, as in antiquity; no longer the silent drudge or devout sister +of the first Christian millenary; no longer the she-devil of monkish +conception; transcending humanity, she had been exalted to the heavens +and had become a goddess. She was loved and adored with a devotion not +of this earth, a devotion which was the sole source of all things lofty +and good; she had become the saviour of humanity and queen of the +universe. + +The rejection of sensuality is an inherent part of the Christian +religion; only he who had overcome his sinful desires was a hero. +Spiritual love was as yet unknown, only the sexual impulse was realised, +and that was looked upon as a sin; there was but one way of escape: +renunciation. This view is very clearly expressed in the legends of +Alexius, and in Barlaam and Josaphat (which although of Indian origin, +had found a German interpreter and were known all over Europe). The +latter legend tells how Prince Josaphat, a devout Christian, married a +beautiful princess. On his wedding night he had a vision of the +celestial paradise, the dominion of chastity, and the earthly pool of +sin. Recognising in his bride a devil who had come to tempt him, he left +her and fled into the desert. Many legends illustrate the incapacity of +the first millenary to realise the relationship between the sexes in any +other sense. Woman was evil; the struggle against her a laudable effort. + +Very probably the stigmatising of all eroticism during that long spell +of a thousand years was necessary. Only the unnatural condemnation of +love in its widest sense, a hatred of sex and woman such as was felt by +Tertullian and Origen, could result in the reverse of sexuality--purely +spiritual love with its logical climax, the deification and worship of +woman. There can be no doubt that the Christian ideal of chastity was +largely responsible for the evolution of the ideal of spiritual love. +The identity of love and chastity was propounded--in sharp contrast to +sexuality and--more particularly amongst the later troubadours, such as +Montanhagol, Sordello, and the poets of the "sweet new style" in +Italy--with a distinct leaning towards religious ecstasy. + +Infinite tenderness pervaded the nascent cult of woman. It seemed as if +man were eager to compensate her for the indignity which he had heaped +upon her for a thousand years. His instinctive need to worship had found +an incomparable being on earth before whom he prostrated himself. She +was the climax of earthly perfection; no word, no metaphor was +sufficiently ecstatic to express the full fervour of his adoration; a +new religion was created, and she was the presiding divinity. "What were +the world if beauteous woman were not?" sang Johannes Hadlaub, a German +poet. + +Once more I must revert to personality, the fundamental value of the +European. In antiquity, even in Greece and Rome, personality in its +higher sense did not exist. The hero was the epitome of all the energies +of the nation, a term for the striving of the community; the statesman +was the incarnate political will of the people; even the poet's ideal +was the representation of the Hellenic type in all its aspects. +Agamemnon was no more than the intelligent ruler, Achilles the +headstrong hero, Odysseus the cunning adventurer. The individual was a +member and servant of the tribe, the town, the state; each man knew that +his fellow did not essentially differ from him; and even at the period +when Hellas was at its meridian the individuals were, compared to modern +men, but slightly differentiated. But the Greek differed from the +Oriental, the barbarian, inasmuch as he felt himself no longer a +component part of nature, but realised his distinct individuality. + +We find the first germs of the new creative principle of personality in +the Platonic figure of Socrates who, first of all, conceived the idea of +a higher spiritual love, blended it with the love of ideas and separated +it sharply from base desire. Though his conception was not yet personal +love in the true sense, it was nevertheless a spiritual divine love. The +Greek State could not tolerate him, and sentenced him to death. But this +same Socrates also said (in "Crito") that man was indebted to the State +for his existence. "Did not thy father, in obedience to the law, take +thy mother to wife and beget thee?" This sentiment was as antique as it +could well be, and the death of Socrates--as related by Plato--was the +most magnificent confirmation of the Greek idea that the individual, +even the wisest, was entirely subordinate to the community. + +The civilisations of China and Japan are impersonal even to a greater +extent than the civilisation of ancient Greece. Percival Lowell +maintains that the diverse manifestations of the spirit of those +countries can only be understood if regarded from the standpoint of +absolute impersonality. He sees in a "pronounced impersonality the most +striking characteristic of the Far East", "the foundation on which the +Oriental character is built up." It is very instructive to observe how +it determines the individual's conception of birth and marriage, +thoughts and acts, life and death. It is carried to so great an extreme +that special terms for "I," "you," "he," do not even exist in the +Japanese language, and have to be replaced by objective circumlocutions. +Not content with the fact of having been born impersonal, it is the +ambition of the inhabitant of the Far East to become more and more so as +his life unfolds itself. Witness the heroic exploits of Japanese +soldiers during the last war: individual soldiers frequently went to +their death for the sake of a small advantage to their group. We +Europeans regard this in the light of heroism--and it would be heroism +in the case of a European. But with the sacrifice of his individual life +in the interest of the community, the Japanese instinctively yields the +smaller value. In the same way Greeks and Romans did not attach very +much importance to life; suicide was very common, and frequently +committed without any special motive. As true love is based on +personality, it is impossible for the modern East-Asiatic to know love +in our sense. Lowell agrees with this: "Love, as we understand it, is an +unknown feeling in the East." He reports that Japanese women will appear +before strangers entirely nude, without the least trace of +embarrassment--as would Greek women!--because they are innocent of that +other aspect of personality--the feeling of shame. To be ashamed implies +the desire of concealing something individual and intimate; where this +is not the case, there can be no feeling of shame. Finally, I should +like to point out that the perversity and sexual refinement peculiar to +China and Japan are attributable simply to the fact that the limits of +sexuality cannot be overstepped, and that sexuality is therefore +dependent on vice and perversity to satisfy its craving for variety. + +The first manifestation of overwhelming personality appears in Jesus, +and he created the religion of love. In him personality and love were +convertible forces, one might even say they were identical. He, first of +all, revealed their mysterious intimate connection, and clearly showed +that love can only be experienced by a distinct personality, because it +is an emanation of the soul and not a natural instinct. + +It was, again, personality which, in the twelfth century, produced a new +force: spiritual love projected not only on God and nature, but also on +woman. Now only had personality acquired its true significance; it no +longer meant--as it did in the mature Greek world--the individual +separated from his environment, the individual with a conscious +beginning and a conscious end, but the principle of the synthesis, a +higher entity above the mere individual, the source of all values and +virtue. + +Personality is the self-conscious, individual soul, producing out of its +own wealth the universal ideal values, and re-absorbing and assimilating +these ideal values in their higher form. It admits of the fusion of the +subjective with the universal and eternal, with the religious and +artistic, the moral and scientific values of civilisation. "Personality +is the blending of the universal and the individual," said Kierkegaard, +expressing, if not exactly my meaning, something very near it. + +I shall endeavour to depict the spiritual love of man for woman--the +position cannot be reversed--from its inception to its climax. I shall +submit abundant evidence to make the great unbroken stream of emotion +clearly apparent, and indicate all its tributaries. I do not pretend +that I have exhausted the subject--that would be impossible. The works +from which I have drawn may be safely regarded as the direct outpouring +of emotion; those purely lyric poets were entirely subjective and ever +intent upon their own feelings; there hardly exists one Provencal, +old-Italian, or mediaeval love-song without the "I." + +Spiritual love first appeared as a naive sentiment--unconscious of its +own peculiar characteristics--in the poems of the earlier troubadours of +Provence. There is a poem in which the Provencals claim the fathership +of the cult of woman; their opponents do not deny it, but add that it +was an invention which "could fill no man's stomach." These words +express the great and insurmountable barrier between pure spiritual love +and pleasure. The Christian dualism: soul-body, spirit-matter, had +invaded the domain of love. + +Spontaneous, genuine love, untainted by speculations and metaphysics, is +found in the songs of the earlier troubadours. The greatest among all of +them, Bernart of Ventadour, was the first to praise chaste love. If any +champion of civilisation deserves a monument, it is this poet. + + Dead is the man who knows not love, + A sweet tremor in the heart. + + Love's rapture fills my heart + With laughter and sighs. + Grief slays me a hundred times, + Joy bids me rise. + + Sweet is love's happiness, + Sweeter love's pain. + Joy brings back grief to me, + Grief, joy again. + +Guillem Augier Novella expressed the feeling of being "elated with +exaltation and grieved to death" as follows: + + Lady, often flow my tears, + Glad songs in my mem'ry ring, + For the love that makes my blood + Dance and sing. + I am yours with heart and soul, + If it please you, lady, slay me.... + +Aimeril de Peguilhan is of opinion that the pain of love is no less +sweet than the joy of love: + + For he who loves with all his heart would fain + Be sick with love, such rapture is his pain. + +And Bernart again: + + God keep my lady fair from grief and woe, + I'm close to her, however far I go; + If God will be her shelter and her shield, + Then all my heart's desire is fulfilled. + +And: + + My mind was erring in a maze, + That hour I was no longer I, + When in your eyes I met my gaze + As in a mirror strange and shy. + Oh, mirror sweet, reflecting me, + Sighing I fell beneath your spell; + I perished in you utterly + As did Narcissus in the well. + +In the same poem he goes on to say that he will ask for no reward, but +finally concludes: + + My fervent kisses her sweet lips should cover, + For weeks they'd show the traces of her lover. + +The German minnesinger, Heinrich of Morungen, called woman "a mirror of +all the delights of the world," and sang: + + Blessed be the tender hour, + Blest the time, the precious day, + When my brimming heart welled over, + When my secret open lay. + I was startled with great gladness, + And bewildered so with love, + I can hardly sing thereof. + +The sensuous element still dominated Bernart and his contemporaries to +some extent. In their poems, all of which are genuine and sincere, the +longing for kisses, sometimes for more, is frankly expressed, but the +tendency towards the not sensuous and super-sensuous is already +apparent. The lover loves one woman only, and would rather love in vain, +patiently enduring every pang she causes him, than receive favours from +another woman, were she beautiful as Venus her self. + +Bernart says: + + My sorrow is a sweet distress + To which no alien bliss compares, + And if my pain such sweetness bears, + How sweet would be my happiness! + +Elias of Barjols: + + Full of joy I am and sorrow + When I stand before her face. + +Bonifacio Calvo: + + There is no treasure-trove on earth + Which I would barter for my pain; + I love my grief, but spite and wrath + Run riot in my heart; my brain + Is reeling--and I laugh and cry. + Jubilant and desperate, + Exultant, I bewail my fate. + Quarter! Lady, ere I die. + +The earlier troubadours were still ignorant of the later dogma which +made chaste love the sole fountain of virtue and the road to +perfection--the beloved woman can make of her admirer what she wills--a +saint or a sinner. + +Thus Guillem of Poitiers says: + + Love heals the sick + And a grave does it delve + For the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself, + Makes a fool of the sage with its magic, + A clown of the courteous knight, + And a king of the lowliest wight. + +The equally early Cercamon: + + False can I be or true for her, + Sincere or full of lies, + A perfect knight or worthless cur, + Serene or grave, stupid or wise. + +Raimon of Toulouse: + + In the kingdom of love + Folly rules and not sense. + +It was typical of this enthusiastic love that the social rank of the +beloved, the mistress, was invariably above the rank of the lover. The +latter was fond of calling himself her vassal and serf, proclaiming that +she had invested him with all his goods; even kings and German emperors +composed love-songs, although in all probability they would have +achieved their purpose far more quickly by other means; but in all cases +we find the characteristic attitude of the humble lover, looking up to +his mistress. The underlying thought is obvious: Love, the loftiest +value in all the world, is the great leveller of all social differences, +a force before which wealth is as dust. "I would rather win a kind +glance from my lady's eyes than the royal crown of France," was a +favourite profession of the poets. Montanhagol, for instance, in a +rhymed meditation, stated that a lady was wise in choosing a lover of a +lower social rank, because not only could she always count on his +gratitude and devotion, but she would also have more influence over him, +a fact which in the case of a social equal or superior was, to say the +least, a little doubtful. This supreme reverence for love soon became an +accepted doctrine. We constantly meet the thought that chaste love alone +can make a man noble, good and wise. I will select a few illustrations +from a wealth of instances: + +Miraval: + + Noble is every deed whose root is love. + +Peire Rogier: + + Full well I know that right and good + Is all I do for love of her. + +Guirot Riquier: + + The man who loves not is not noble-minded, + For love is fruit and blossom of the highest. + +And: + + Thus love transfigures ev'ry deed we do, + And love gives everything a deeper sense. + Love is the teaching of all genuine worth. + So base is no man's heart on this wide earth, + Love could not guide it to great excellence. + +Giraut of Calenso said of the City of Love that no base or ignorant man +could enter it, and the Italian Lapo Gianni sang: + + The youthful maiden who appeared to me + So filled my soul with pure and lofty thoughts, + That henceforth all ignoble things I scorn. + +Dante in the _Vita Nuova_ calls Beatrice "the destroyer of all evil and +the queen of all virtues." + +The very thought of the beloved makes a good man of the lover: + + "I cannot sin when I am in her thoughts." + +asserts the sincere Guirot Riquier, and he prays Christ to teach him the +true love of woman. + +While it was a generally accepted theory that love was the source of +man's perfection, I know of only one passage (by Raimon of Miraval) +contending that woman, also, was perfected by love; everywhere else we +meet the universal and silently accepted opinion that the essence of +womanhood is something unearthly, unfathomable and divine. Perhaps the +most classical formulation of the new doctrine, to wit, that spiritual +love is the begetter of all virtue and the mother of chastity, outside +which there is nothing divine, is to be found in the poems of the +somewhat pedantic Montanhagol: + + The lover who loves not the highest love, + Is like a fool polluting precious wine. + Let loftiest love alone within thee move, + And purity and virtue will be thine. + +Guirot Riquier expressed a similar sentiment: + + For chaste and pure my love has always been, + From my "sweet bliss" I've never asked a boon; + If I may humbly serve her night and noon, + My life be her inalienable lien. + +Walter von der Vogelweide says: "Love is a treasure heaped up of all +virtues." + +As time went on the barrier erected between true spiritual love and +insidious sensuality became more and more clearly defined; the former +pervaded the erotic emotion of the whole period. Parallel with chaste +love, sensuality continued to exist as something contemptible, unworthy +of a noble mind; and it must be admitted that according to the +contemporary "Fabliaux," later German comedies and Italian and French +novels, the sexual manifestations of the period, were of incredible +coarseness. As against these, spiritual love was not merely an artistic +and theoretic concept, but the profound emotion of the cultured minds, +and remained a powerful and creative force even in later centuries. +Spiritual love and sexuality were irreconcilable contradistinctions; the +man who thought otherwise was looked upon as a libertine. The following +passages from the poems of the troubadours and their heirs, the Italian +poets of the _dolce stil nuovo_, will prove the historical reality of +this relationship, the ideal of the declining Middle Ages. We need take +no account of the German minnesingers, for although they shared the same +ideal, they did not influence principle in the same way as the neo-Latin +poets. + +Bernart of Ventadour: + + Lady, I ask no other meed + Than that you suffer me to serve; + My faith and love shall never swerve, + I'm yours whatever you decreed. + +Peire Rogier: + + Mine is her smile and mine her jest, + And foolish were I more to ask + And not to think me wholly blest. + 'Tis no deceit, + To gaze at her is all I need, + The sight of her is my reward. + +Gaucelm Faidit: + + Of all the ways of love I chose the best, + I love you, love, with ardour infinite, + Yours is my life, do as you will with it. + Nor kiss I ask, nor sweet embraces, lest + I were blaspheming.... + +The most enthusiastic champions of pure love were Montanhagol, Sordello +and Guirot Riqiuer. The former maintained that a lover who asked for +favours incompatible with his lady's honour, neither loved her nor +deserved to be loved.--"Love begets purity, and he who knows the meaning +of love can never forsake virtue." + +There is a controversy between Peire Guillem of Toulouse and Sordello, +which contains the following passages: + + Of all mankind I never saw + A man like you, Sordell', I wis, + For he who woman does adore + Will never flout her love and kiss. + And what to others is a prize + You surely don't mean to despise? + + Honour and joy I crave from her, + And if a little rose she bind + Into the wreath, Sir Guillem Peire, + From mercy, not from duty, mind, + That would be happiness indeed, + Oh! that such bliss should be my meed! + + A humble lover such as you, + Sordell', in faith, I never knew. + + Sir Peire, methinks what you express + Is lacking much in seemliness. + +In another poem the talented Sordello says: + + My love for her is so profound + I'd serve her, spurn and scorn despite + Ere with another I'd be found-- + Yet I'd not serve without requite, + +and in another, after stating that he loves his lady so much that he +would thank her even if she killed him, he continues: + + Thus, lady, I commend to thee + My fate and life, thy faithful squire + I'd rather die in misery + Than have thee stoop to my desire. + + The knight who truly loves his dame + Not only loves her comely face, + Dearer to him is her fair fame + Undimmed, unsullied by disgrace. + + How grievously I should offend + Thy virtue, if I spoke of passion; + But if I did--which God forfend! + Sweet lady, stoop not to compassion. + +Although Sordello appeared so extremely modest, yet he was grieved to +death because his lady did not return his love. There is a poem in which +he compares himself to a drowning man whom the beloved alone could save. + +This spiritual love (then as now) puzzled the commonplace, and was +misunderstood and regarded with scepticism. Bertran d'Alaman taunted +Sordello with his "hypocritical happiness" and "the whole deception of +his love," and Granet, in a satirical poem, cast doubt upon his +sincerity. + +It is very significant to find that Sordello, that typical champion of +chaste love, kept up a number of questionable liaisons with all sorts of +women. Bertran reproached him with having changed his lady at least a +hundred times, and he himself shamelessly confesses: + + The jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me, + For in the art of love I do excel, + And there's no wife, however chaste she may be + Who can resist me if I woo her well. + And if her husband hate me I'll not grumble, + Because his wife receives me in the night, + If mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight, + His pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble. + No husband e'er shall rob me of my pleasure, + None can resist me, what I wish I gain, + All do I love and never will refrain + Spite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure. + +It may seem strange at first sight that this enthusiastic exponent of +pure love should have led such a double life. But Sordello's conduct is +not in the least paradoxical; in accordance with the tendency of the +period, he carefully distinguished in his own heart between sexuality +and love; before the one he lay prostrate, unable to find words enough +in self-depreciation, so that he might the more exalt his mistress; but +with respect to all other women he was a mere sensualist. We read that +although he was "an expert in the treatment of women" in her presence +his voice forsook him and he lost all self-control. Petrarch, who--while +living with a very earthly woman--extolled all his life long a lofty +being whom he called Laura, was akin to Sordello, although he was a far +less brutal character. The latter approached the type of the seeker of +love, the Don Juan. + +In a tenzone between Peirol and the Dauphin of Auvergne, the former +maintains that love must die at the moment of its consummation. "I +cannot believe," he says, "that a true lover can continue to love after +he has received the last favour." (Otto Weininger agrees with this.) But +Peirol winds up with the subtle suggestion that though love be dead, a +man should always continue to behave as if he were still in love. + +The troubadours never weary of drawing a line between _drudaria_ and +_luxuria_, pure love and base desire. _Mezura_, seemliness, is +contrasted with _dezmezura_, licentiousness. Pure love is regarded as +the creator of all high values, luxuriousness as their destroyer. In the +same way the German minnesingers distinguished between "low" love and +"high" love. + +As both cultured minds and the upper classes, contemning sexuality, +acknowledged spiritual love only, it follows as a matter of course that +the avowal of such sentiments became good form; the motif that the +honour of the beloved must be carefully shielded, and that no desire +must dim her purity, occurs again and again. But it should not be +forgotten that a poet may love a sentiment for its own sake, without +being in the least influenced by it. Many a troubadour drew inspiration +from an emotion which all praised as the supreme value; even if he had +no earthly mistress, he adored the sublime sentiment. Not infrequently +it happened that a troubadour who had been loud in praise of high love +and denunciation of base desire--a trick of his trade--suddenly came to +himself and changed his mind. Folquet of Marseilles, for instance, after +more than ten years of vain sighing, came to the conclusion that he had +been a fool. + + Deceitful love beguiles the simple fool + And binds with magic thongs the hapless wight; + That like a moth lured by the candle-light, + He hovers, helpless, round the heartless ghoul. + + I cast thee out and follow other stars + Full evil was my meed and recompense-- + New courage steels my fainting heart, and hence + I kneel at shrines which passion never mars. + +In an interesting poem Garin the Red implores _Mezura_ to teach him the +way to love purely and nobly; but he is anything but pleased with his +instructress, and comes to the conclusion that her whole wisdom is "just +good form" and nothing else. + + But by my merry mood impelled + I kiss and dally night and morn + And do the things I feel compelled + To do--or else, with tonsure shorn, + I'd seek a cloister.... + +Elias of Barjols, finding that his love will never be returned, and +having no mind to sigh all his life in vain, renounces love altogether. +"I should be a fool if I served love any longer!" + +"All you lovers are fools!" exclaimed another. "Do you think you can +change the nature of women?" This is one of the very rare criticisms of +woman; as a rule we hear only of her angelic perfection, wisdom, beauty +and aloofness. + +The distinguished poet Marcabru was a woman-hater, and enemy of love +from the very beginning. He said of himself that he had never loved a +woman and that no woman had ever loved him. + + The love which is always a lie + And deceiver of men, I decry + And denounce; I had more than enough. + Can you count all the evil it wrought? + When I think of it I am distraught. + What a madman I was to believe, + To sigh, to rejoice and to grieve; + But no longer I'll squander my days, + We have come to the parting of the ways. Etc. + +He was indefatigable in abusing the tender passion, and had a great deal +to say about the immorality of women. But it is characteristic of the +strong public opinion of the time that even this misogynist (who, +perhaps, after all was only a disappointed man) praised "high love." + +The subject also found its theorists, prominent among whom was the +court-chaplain Andreas, who wrote a very learned book on love in Latin. +He expressed in propositions and conclusions what the contemporary poets +expressed in verse, proving thereby that spiritual love was not merely a +poetic fiction but the profoundest belief of the period, supported by +the full complement of its philosophical weapons. "In the whole world +there is no good and no courtliness outside the fountain of love. +Therefore love is the beginning and foundation of all good." He also +proved that a noble-minded man must be a lover, for if he were not, he +could not have attained virtue. "Love disregards all barriers, and makes +the man of low origin the equal and superior of the nobleman." + +This conception of spiritual nobility, which was later on perfected in +the theory of the _cor gentil_, only existed in Provence and in Italy; +it remained unknown in France and Germany. + +Andreas drew a distinction between base love, the _amor mixtus sive +communis_, and pure love, the _amor purus_. "Love," he maintained, fully +agreeing with the poets, "gives to a man the strength of chastity, for +he whose heart is brimming over with the love of a woman, cannot think +of dallying with another, however beautiful she may be." He proved from +substance and form that a man cannot love two women. In the _Leys +d'Amors_, a voluminous fourteenth-century Provencal treatise, largely a +text-book of grammar and prosody, we read: "And now lovers must be +taught how to love; passionate lovers must be restrained, so that they +may come to realise their evil and dishonourable desires. No good +troubadour, who is at the same time an honest lover, has ever abandoned +himself to base sensuality and ignoble desires." The same author opined +that a troubadour who asked his lady for a kiss, was committing an act +of indecency. On the other hand, Andreas was very broad-minded in +drawing the line between both kinds of love, allowing kisses, and even +more, in the case of true love. (The best troubadours disagree with him +in this respect.) + +A scholasticism of love, modelled on ecclesiastical scholasticism and +substituting the beloved woman for the Deity, was gradually evolved. +Love, veneration, humility, hope, etc., were the sacrifices offered at +her shrine. She was full of grace and compassion, and was believed in as +fervently as was God. Some of the poets were animated by a curious +ambition "to prove" their feelings with scholastic erudition, and more +especially by the later, Italian, school, _amore_, _cor gentil_, +_valore_, were conceived as substances, attributes, inherent qualities, +etc. The allegories of _amore_ played a prominent part, and spoiled many +a masterpiece. The German poets steered clear of these absurdities, +which even Dante did not escape. + +At the famous courts of love, presided over by princesses, the most +extraordinary questions relating to love were discussed and decided with +a ceremonial closely following the ceremonial of the petty courts of +law. Andreas preserved for us a number of these judgments, some of which +prove the really quite obvious fact that love and marriage are two very +different things, for if spiritual love be considered the supreme value, +matrimony can only be regarded as an inferior condition. And it was a +fact that in the higher ranks of society,--the only ones with which we +are concerned,--a marriage was nothing but a contract made for political +and economical reasons. The baron desired to enlarge his estate, obtain +a dowry, or marry into an influential family; no one dreamed of +consulting the future bride, whom marriage alone could bring into +contact with people outside her own family. To her marriage meant the +permission to shine and be adored by a man who was not her husband. "It +is an undeniable fact," propounded Andreas as _regula amoris_, "that +there is no room for love between husband and wife," and Fauriel +translated a passage as follows: "A husband who proposed to behave to +his wife as a knight would to his lady, would propose to do something +contrary to the canons of honour; such a proceeding could neither +increase his virtue nor the virtue of his lady, and nothing could come +of it but what already properly exists."--Another judgment maintained +"that a lady lost her admirer as soon as the latter became her husband; +and that she was therefore entitled to take a new lover." At the court +of love of the Viscountess Ermengarde, of Narbonne, the problem whether +the love between husband and wife or the love between lovers were the +greater, was decided as follows: "The affection between a married couple +and the tender love which unites two lovers are emotions which differ +fundamentally and according to custom. It would be folly to attempt a +comparison between two subjects which neither resemble each other, nor +have any connection." A husband declared: "It is true, I have a +beautiful wife, and I love her with conjugal love. But because true love +is impossible between husband and wife, and because everything good +which happens in this world has its origin in love, I am of opinion that +I should seek an alliance of love outside my married life." All this was +not frivolity, but the only logical conclusion of dualistic eroticism, +incapable of blending sensuality and love. It was equally logical that +love between divorced persons was not only regarded as not immoral, but +as perfectly right and justifiable; it was even decided that "a new +marriage could never become a drawback to old love." In the old novel, +_Gerard of Roussillon_, the princess, beloved by Gerard, is married to +the emperor Charles Martel, and compelled to part from her knight. At +their last meeting, before a number of witnesses, she called on the name +of Christ and said: "Know ye all that I give my love to Sir Gerard with +this ring and this flower from my chaplet. I love him more than father +and husband, and now I must weep tears of bitter sorrow." After this +they parted, but their love continued undiminished though there was +nothing between them but tender wishes and secret thoughts. + +Matrimony had no advantage over the love-alliance, not even the +sanction of the Church. A love-alliance was frequently accompanied by a +ceremony in which a priest officiated. Fauriel describes--without +mentioning his source--such a ceremony as follows: "Kneeling before his +lady, with his folded hands between hers, he dedicated himself to her +service, vowing to be faithful to her until death, and to shield her +from all harm and insults as far as lay within his power. The lady, on +her side, declared her willingness to accept his service, promised to +devote her loftiest feelings to him, and as a rule gave him a ring as a +symbol of their union. Then she raised and kissed him, always for the +first, usually for the last time." The parting of the lovers, too, was a +solemn act, resembling in many ways the dissolution of a marriage. + + So that our solemn plighted troth + When love is dead, we shall not break, + We'll to the priest ourselves betake. + You set me free, as I do you, + A perfect right then shall we both + Enjoy to choose a love anew, + +wrote Peire of Barjac. + +It was far more easy to dissolve a marriage than a true love-alliance; +the husband had only to state that his wife was a distant relation of +his, and the Church was ready to annul the contract. But the +love-alliance--so Sordello maintained, in a long poem--should be more +binding than any marriage. + + Only one love a woman can + Prefer. So let her choose her man + With care. To him she must be true, + For choosing once she ne'er may rue. + More binding than the wedding-tie + Is love; for a diversity + Of causes wedlock may divide, + By death alone be love untied. + +The idea that marriage and love cannot be combined is therefore only the +logical conclusion of the fundamental feeling that love and desire +cannot together be projected on one woman. + +If matrimonial love had not been questioned, the choice would have lain +between two alternatives: the canonisation of matrimony--an expedient +chosen by the Church--or a fusion of love and sexuality in our modern +sense. The first was a stage which humanity had left behind, for the +ideal of absolutely perfect and pure love had already been evolved, and +the world was not ripe for the second. The tendency of the rarest minds +was in the direction of a further idealisation of love, of freeing it +from all earthly shackles and bringing it nearer and nearer to heaven. +One of the early troubadours, Jaufre Rudel, Prince of Blaya, gave a +practical illustration to this feeling by falling in love with a lady +whom he had never seen. The story of his love was famous for centuries. +He loved a Countess of Tripoli, a Christian princess, and his whole soul +was filled with his imaginary picture of her. The _Provencal Biography_ +relates that "he worshipped her for all the good the pilgrims had +narrated of her." In order to see her, he took the cross and journeyed +across the sea; he fell ill on the ship and was carried ashore in a +dying condition. The countess, on hearing of his great love, hastened to +the inn where he lay. As she entered his room, Jaufre regained +consciousness; he knew her at once and died happily in her arms. She was +so touched by his love that she henceforth renounced the world.--This +story is no fairy tale; it is well attested and universally accounted +genuine to-day. Jaufre's love, expressed in touching poems, was no +_amour de tete_, as it is sometimes called, but a genuine _amour de +coeur_, a purely spiritual love which asked nothing of the beloved +woman but permission to love her. There are other instances, and even in +later times it is not an infrequent occurrence in the case of +imaginative people (I need only mention Buerger and Klopstock). + +We men of the present age look upon this eccentric woman-worship with +uncomprehending eyes. Perhaps we shall feel a little less bewildered +when we meet it, stripped of courtly theories and mediaeval fashions, in +some of the great men who are closely connected with our own period; in +Michelangelo, in Goethe, and in Beethoven. + +The Church, dualistic and ascetic from its inception, waged war against +sensuality as the evil of evils. "As fire and water will not mix," wrote +St. Bernard, "so spiritual and carnal delights cannot be experienced +together." The toleration of matrimony was never more than a compromise; +we require no proof that as far as the Church was concerned, chastity +was the only real value. Even Luther took up that position, and to this +day Christianity and sexuality remain unreconciled. But both the +Catholic and the Protestant professions of faith regarded matrimony as +the lesser evil, a concession made to the enemy, in order to render +existence possible. It is very interesting to observe the position taken +up by the Church in connection with the new woman-worship which, +although it sprang from the most genuine Christian dualism, had for its +object not God, but mortal woman. The logical attitude of the Church +would have been one of welcome, for the chaste worship of woman which +regarded matrimony as an inferior state, was her natural ally. Two +clerics, the court-chaplain Andreas, and the prolific rhymester Matfre +Ermengau, actually elaborated the theory of spiritual love contrary to +the spirit of the Church, but both men hastened to utter a timely +recantation and recommendation of orthodoxy as the only means of +salvation. After establishing all the desirable details of love +according to substance and accidents, Andreas deduced that every love +not dedicated to God was bound to offend Him, and advanced eighteen +points against the love of woman, starting with the well-known argument +that woman was naturally of a base disposition, covetous, envious, +greedy, fickle, garrulous, stubborn, proud, vain, sensual, deceitful, +etc. "He who serves love, cannot serve God," he declared, "and God will +punish every man who, apart from matrimony, serves Venus. What good +could come from acting against the will of God?" Here we are face to +face with a grotesque position: the official Church favouring sexuality, +that is matrimony, as against the newer and higher standard of ascetic, +spiritual love. This attitude was quite logical, if not in the spirit of +religion and in contradiction to the principle of asceticism, yet in the +spirit of orthodoxy; for "whatever was not for her, was against her." +The brave, Janus-headed abbe was spokesman for the whole clergy, which +branded love not projected on God as _fornicatio_. In his recantation +Andreas upheld the previously-despised matrimonial state at the expense +of love; "love," he maintained, "destroys matrimony." Matfre did exactly +the same thing; after recapitulating in his _Breviari d'Amor_ all the +splendid achievements rooted in the cult of woman, he suddenly veered +round (at the 27,445th verse): + + And Satan blows on their desire, + In monstrous flames leaps up the fire, + And maddened by the raging fiend, + From love of God and honour weaned, + They turn from their Creator's shrine + And call their mistresses divine. + With soul and body, mind and sense, + They worship woman's excellence. + Abandoned in her beauty revel, + And unawares adore the devil. + +Three hundred years later the fanatical Savanorola stormed: "You clothe +and adorn the Mother of God as you clothe and adorn your courtesans, and +you give her the features of your mistresses!" which, as we shall +presently see, was literally true. + +The clergy resisted all counsels of the _cortezia_ and _cavalaria_ with +the sure instinct desiring the continuance of existing conditions +rather than the victory of the higher conception. Some writers aver that +it was partly due to this fact that later on the cult of woman developed +into the cult of Mary. Again we are confronted by a process which in the +course of time has been repeated more than once: the spiritual-mystical +principle of Christianity entered upon a new stage, and took possession +of a new and important domain; but the Church, rigid and unyielding, +preferred clinging to a past lower stage rather than tolerating any +change. Had she been absolutely consistent, her greatest poet would be +on the index to-day, for, following his own intuition and ignoring her +rigid dogma, he introduced his beloved Beatrice into the Catholic +heaven. + +The new spiritual love was not without its caricatures. Famous in +Provence for many strange exploits, committed in order to please his +lady, was the talented Peire Vidal. On one occasion he caused himself to +be sewn into a wolfskin and ran about the fields; but he was set upon by +dogs and so badly mangled that he nearly succumbed to his wounds. He was +an insufferable braggart, but never had any success in love. The prince +of caricatures, however, was the German knight and minnesinger, Ulrich +of Lichtenstein. He is responsible for a novel in prose, entitled _The +Service of Woman_, which is faintly reminiscent of Goethe's _Werther_. +As a page he commenced his glorious career by drinking the water in +which his lady had washed her hands; later on he caused his upper lip to +be amputated because it displeased his mistress, for "whatever she +dislikes in me, I, too, hate." On another occasion he cut off one of his +fingers and used it, set in gold, as a clasp for a volume of his poems +which he sent to her. One of his most famous exploits was a journey +through nearly the whole of Austria, disguised as Venus, jousting, +dressed in women's clothes, with every knight he met. But in spite of +his eccentricities, the tendency of his mind was not at all +metaphysical; he craved very obvious favours, but as a rule contented +himself with a kind, or even an unkind word. Incidentally, we learn that +he was married; but he devoted his whole life to "deeds of heroism" in +honour of his lady. Not the great book of Cervantes, as is commonly +believed, held up mediaeval court life to ridicule and destroyed it as +an ideal, but the life and exploits of this knight and minnesinger. The +same spirit animated Guilhem of Balaun. At the command of his lady he +had a finger-nail extracted and sent to her, after which he was +re-admitted to her favour. + +Spiritual love was discovered by the Provencals, but the greater and +profounder Italian poets developed it and brought it to perfection. What +had been a naive sentiment with the troubadours, became in Dante's +circle a system of the universe and a religion. The Italian poet, +Sordello, who wrote in Provencal, may be regarded as the connecting +link, and the forerunner of the great Italians. He died in the year of +grace 1270, and Dante, who was almost a contemporary, immortalised his +name in the _Divine Comedy_. The doctrine on which the _dolce stil +nuovo_ was based pointed to the love of a noble heart as the source of +all perfection in heaven and earth. Purely spiritual woman-worship was +regarded as an absolute virtue. The words of the last of the Provencal +troubadours, Guirot Riquier, "Love is the doctrine of all sublime +things"--was developed into a philosophy. I will quote a few +characteristic verses, omitting Dante for the present. One of the finest +lyric poems of all tongues and ages, written by Guido Guinicelli, begins +as follows: + + Within the gentle heart love shelters him, + As birds within the green shades of the grove; + Before the gentle heart in nature's scheme + Love was not, or the gentle heart ere love. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +Cino da Pistoia says in epigrammatic brevity: + + You want to know the inmost core of love? + 'Tis art and guerdon of a noble heart. + +A wonderful canzone by Guinicelli contains the following verses: + + A song she seems among the rest and these + Have all their beauties in her splendour drowned. + In her is ev'ry grace,-- + Simplicity of wisdom, noble speech, + Accomplished loveliness; + All earthly beauty is her diadem. + This truth my song must teach-- + My lady is of ladies chosen gem. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +And Cavalcanti sings: + + What's she whose coming rivets all men's eyes, + Who makes the air so tremble with delight, + And thrills so every heart that no man might + Find tongue for words but vents his soul in sighs? + + (_Transl. by_ SIR THEODORE MARTIN.) + +The sentiment which pervades these verses has lifted us into the higher +sphere which will henceforth be our main theme. The beloved was more and +more extolled; in her presence the lover became more and more convinced +of his insignificance; she was worshipped, deified. The overwhelming +emotion, the longing for metaphysical values which dominated the whole +epoch, had reached its highest characteristic, had reached perfection. +It proved the eternal quality of human emotion: the impossibility of +finding satisfaction, the striving towards the infinite; it soared above +its apparent object and sought its consummation in metaphysic. The love +of woman and the mystical love of God were blended in a profounder +devotion; love had become the sole giver of the eternal value and +consolation, yearned for by mortal man. Christianity had taught man to +look up; now his upward gaze lost its rigidity and beheld living +beauty--metaphysical eroticism had been evolved--the canonisation and +deification of woman. The ideal of the troubadours to love the adored +mistress chastely and devoutly from a distance in the hope of receiving +a word of greeting, no longer satisfied the lover; she must become a +divine being, must be enthroned above human joy and sorrow, queen of the +world. Traditional religion was transformed so that a place might be +found in it for a woman. + +The reason for the recognition of spiritual love from the moment of its +inception as something supernatural and divine, is obvious. The heart of +man was filled with an emotion hitherto unknown, an emotion which +pointed direct to heaven. The soul, the core of profound Christian +consciousness, had received a new, glad content, rousing a feeling of +such intensity that it could only be compared to the religious ecstasy +of the mystic; man divined that it was the mother of new and great +things--was it not fitting to regard it as divine and proclaim it the +supreme value? The troubadours had known it. Bernart of Ventadour had +sung: + + I stand in my lady's sight + In deep devotion; + Approach her with folded hands + In sweet emotion; + Dumbly adoring her, + Humbly imploring her. + +Peire Raimon of Toulouse: + + I would approach thee on my knees, + Lowly and meek, + I would fare far o'er lands and seas + Thy ruth to seek. + + And come to thee--a slave to his lord-- + I'd pay thee homage with eyes that mourn, + Until thy mercy I'd implored, + Heedless of laughter, heedless of scorn. + +Raimon of Miraval had said, "I am no lover, I am a worshipper," and +Cavalcanti: + + My lady's virtue has my blindness riven, + A secret sighing thrills my humbled heart: + When favoured with a sight of her thou art, + Thy soul will spread its wings and soar to heaven. + +Peire Vidal: + + God called the women close to Him, + Because he saw all good in them. + +And: + + The God of righteousness endowed + So well thy body and thy mind + That His own radiancy grew blind. + And many a soul that has not bowed + To Him for years in sin enmeshed, + Is by thy grace and charm refreshed. + +The beauty of the adored was divine. Bernart of Ventadour wrote: + + Her glorious beauty sheds a brilliant ray + On darkest night and dims the brightest day. + +Guilhem of Cabestaing: + + God has created her without a blemish + Of His own beauty. + +Gaucelm Faidit: + + The beauty which is God Himself + He poured into a single being. + +And Montanhagol, anticipating Dante: + + Wherefore I tell you, and my words are true, + From heaven came her beauty, rare and tender, + Her loveliness was wrought in Paradise, + Men's dazzled eyes can scarce support her splendour. + +Folquet of Romans: + + When I behold her beauty rare, + I'm so confused and startled by her worth, + I ween I am no longer on this earth. + +A canzone which has been attributed to Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia and +Dante, reads as follows: + + My lady comes and ev'ry lip is silent; + So perfect is her beauty's high estate + That mortal spirit swoons and falls prostrate + Before her glory. And she is so noble: + If I uplift to her my inward eye, + My soul is startled as if death were nigh. + +Cavalcanti says: + + Round you are flowers, is the tender green, + The sun is not as bright as your dear face, + All nature in her glorious summer-sheen + Has not so fair and beautiful a place, + It pales beside you. Earth has never seen + A thing so full of loveliness and grace. + +The perfection which the mere presence of the beloved was supposed to +bestow on the lover, is here conceived more broadly and freely; not only +the lover, but all men are touched and transfigured by her appearance. +The sentiment of the lover aspired to become objective truth. This was +an important stage on the road from the spiritual to the deifying love, +which I have called metaphysical eroticism. Another rung of the ladder +of evolution had been climbed--the mistress had become queen of the +world and goddess, a being enthroned by the side of God. I will again +quote Guinicelli: + + Ever as she walks she has a sober grace, + Making bold men abashed and good men glad, + If she delight thee not, thy heart must err, + No man dare look on her, his thoughts being base; + Nay, let me say even more than I have said, + No man could think base thoughts who looked on her. + + (D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +The same poet in his canzone, _Al Cor Gentil_ says: + + "She shines on us as God shines on His angels." + +When madonna dies the angels receive her, rejoicing that she has joined +them. The Provencal, Pons of Capduelh, anticipated Dante: + + And now we know that the celestial choir + Sings songs of jubilee at her release + From this dull earth; I heard and am at rest; + Who praise His hosts, praise the Eternal Sire. + I know she is in Heaven with the blest, + 'Midst flow'rs whose glory time can never dim + Singing God's praise, and blest by seraphim. + Nought but the truth from my glad lips shall fall, + In Heaven she is, enthroned above all. + +Folquet of Romans wrote a letter to his beloved, in which he said +amongst other things: + + Kneeling in church before God's face, + --A sinner to beseech His grace,-- + And for my sins to make amends,-- + 'Twas you to whom I raised my hands; + Your loveliness alone was there, + My soul knew only of one pray'r. + I fancied "Our Father" framed + My trembling lips, when they exclaimed + Exultant at His sacred shrine: + Oh! Lady! All my soul is thine! + + Lady, you have bewitched me with your beauty, + That God I have forgotten and myself. + +Cino da Pistoia wrote the following commendatory prayer: + + Into thy hands, sweet lady of my soul, + The spirit that is dying I commend; + And which departs so sorrowful that Love + Views it with pity, while dismissing it. + + By you to His dominion it was bound, + So firmly, that it since hath had no power + To call on Him but thus: Oh, mighty Lord, + Whate'er thou wilt of me, Thy will is mine. + + (_Transl. by_ C. LYELL.) + +Lancelot, one of the great mediaeval lovers, possessed a lock of +Guinevere's hair, which he prized above all the relics of the saints. +When he parted from his mistress (whom he had loved not only +spiritually) he fell on his knees before the door of her chamber and +prayed as if "he were kneeling before the altar." + +Spiritual love was obviously acquiring a religious tinge. The mistress +took the place of God; her grace was the source of all joy and +consolation; she led the souls of the dying to eternal life. God had +yielded His position to her, she had stepped to His side, nay, above +Him. With the curse of the Church still clinging to her, she had been +remoulded by man's emotion into a perfect, a celestial being. The God of +Christianity was in danger--would the new religion of cultured minds, +the religion of woman (unwilling to tolerate any other God beside her) +replace the religion of the masses? Was a reformation imminent? Would +the traditional religion be transformed into metaphysical eroticism, +dethroning God, enthroning a goddess? It is impossible to say in what +direction the spiritual history of Europe would have developed if Dante +had been merely a metaphysical lover, and not also an orthodox +theologian; if instead of penetrating to the vision of the divine +secret, he had fainted before the face of Beatrice.... + +The religion of woman and the dominant religion came to terms. This +compromise was possible because the Christian pantheon included a female +deity who, although she had not hitherto played a prominent part, held +an exceptional position: this was Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. From +A.D. 400 to A.D. 1200, her rank had been on a level with the rank of the +antique goddesses; now the new emotion enveloped and revivified her. The +rigid, soulless image with the golden circle round the head slowly +melted into sweet womanhood. In Italy this sentiment inspired wonderful +paintings of the Madonna, and was responsible for the development of +portraiture in general. The hold of the overwhelming tradition was +broken. Rejecting the universal conviction that the historical Mary had +resembled the Mary of Byzantine art, the artist, under the dominion of +his woman-worship--which surpassed and re-valued all things--drew his +inspiration from the fulness of life. I do not agree with Thode that we +are indebted to the legend of St. Francis for the modern soulful and +highly individualised art. Its source must have been the strongest +feeling of the most cultured minds, and that was undoubtedly spiritual +love. The Jesuit Beissel wrote with deep regret: "Every master almost +formed his own conception of Mary, but in such a way that the hieratic +severity of earlier times disappeared but slowly." And he continued: "It +is true, the artists' models were the noble ladies of their period; not +only on account of their kindly smiling faces, but also on account of +the charming coquetry with which their hands drew their cloaks across +the bosom." And the art-historian, Male, says: "It is a remarkable fact +that in the thirteenth century the legend, or the story, of the Virgin +Mary was depicted on the doors of all our (_i.e._, French) cathedrals." + +The difference between the Catholic and the Protestant world-principles +is strongly marked in this connection. Catholicism with its striving for +absolute uniformity, acknowledging no individual differences, but eager +to shape all life and all doctrines in harmony with one definite ideal, +very consistently pronounced one single, historical woman to be divine, +and made her the object of universal worship. This dogma had to be +rigid, immutable, and almost meaningless. Again, the historic and pagan +principle of Catholicism was maintained; a unique event in the history +of the world was immortalised and systematised and all new religious +conceptions were excluded. Catholicism invariably places all really +important events in the past, even in a quite definite period of the +past, a period unassailable by historical criticism. But with the +commencement of individual intellectual life the uniform, ecclesiastical +image of the Madonna gradually gained life and individuality. Just as +according to Protestant teaching every soul must establish its +individual relationship with God (which is subject to change because +individuality is not excluded as it is in Catholicism), so the +imaginative emotionalist created his own Queen of Heaven. Frequently he +was still under the impression--this was especially the case with +monks--that he was worshipping the ecclesiastical deity, when he had +long been praying to a metaphysical conception of his own. The great +Italian art since the fourteenth century, as well as the Neo-Latin and +German cults of the Virgin Mary were, though apparently still orthodox, +in their innermost essence the outcome of a personal desire for love, +and had therefore abandoned the teaching of the Church and become +Protestant. The fact that the so-called Protestant Church looked askance +at Mary, and that the rather coarse-minded Luther said, in his +annoyance: "Popery has made a goddess of Mary, and is therefore guilty +of idolatry," does not contradict my statement. The true Queen of Heaven +was a conception of the artist and lover, incomprehensible to those who +were only thinkers and moralists. + +Through the legitimation of a divine woman open enmity between the +religion of woman and the religion of the Church was avoided. A woman +had stepped between God and humanity as mediator, intercessor and +redeemer. Every metaphysically-loving soul could conceive her as it +pleased, could love her and pray to her without being a heretic and +worshipper of the devil. Matfre had complained that men + + Abandoned in her beauty revel + And unawares adore the devil.-- + +but now a means had been found to adore the beloved, and yet remain +faithful to God. Once in a way it was remembered that the adored, +strictly speaking, was the Mother of God--if for no other reason, for +fear of the Inquisition which the Dominicans had founded and placed +under the special patronage of Mary--her bodyguard as it were, defending +her from the onslaught of minds all too worldly. Very rarely the adored +earthly woman was identified with the official Queen of Heaven--(this +may have been done occasionally by monks); sometimes as in the case of +Michelangelo and Guinicelli, the beloved was the sole goddess; other +poets, among whom we may include Dante and Goethe, conceived her as +enthroned by the side of Mary. + +At this point I must interrupt my argument, and briefly sketch the +position occupied by Mary in the western world from the dawn of +Christianity. + + +_(b) The Queen of Heaven._ + +During the first two hundred years Mary did not occupy a prominent place +in the Christian communities; even in the fourth century she was still +regarded as a human woman and denied divinity by St. Chrysostom, who +reproached her with vainglory. But in proportion as Christ transcended +humanity, and was more dogmatically and formally interpreted by the +Church--more especially the Greek Church--the desire for a mediator +between the wrathful Deity and sinful humanity grew more pronounced, a +mediator who, although a human being, could be endowed after the manner +of the ancient demi-gods with super-human virtues. The Mother of the +Saviour gradually assumed this position. She had been an earthly woman, +born of earthly parents, and would be able to understand human needs and +wishes, and she had become the Mother of God. Would not her intercession +have weight with the Son of God? Simultaneously with the growing +recognition of asceticism, the doctrine of the immaculate conception +gained ground; in the course of time this moment was more and more +emphasised, and virginity was set up as an ideal. + +St. Athanasius (fourth century) had written: "What God did to Mary is +the glory of all virgins; for they are attached as virginal saplings to +her who is the root." At the close of the fourth century a long and +bitter controversy arose over the question as to whether Mary had +remained a virgin after the birth of Jesus. St. Ambrose, St. Jerome and +St. Augustine were in favour of this new doctrine. St. Ambrose, the +founder of Western music, was the first to praise her perfection in the +Latin tongue, and St. Augustine in his treatise _De Natura et Gratia_, +maintained that she was the only human being born without original sin. +This was the first important step towards the stripping of the Saviour's +mother of her humanity, and establishing her as a divine being. St. +Irenaeus contrasted Eve, the bringer of sin, with Mary, the second Eve, +the bringer of salvation, and St. Ambrose said: "From Eve we inherited +damnation through the fruit of the tree; but Mary has brought us +salvation through the gift of the tree, for Christ too, hung on the tree +like a fruit." + +Hitherto Mary had not been worshipped; all prayers had been addressed to +God and to Christ. The idea of approaching her in prayer appeared for +the first time in a pamphlet entitled "On the Death of Mary," written +about the end of the fourth century, and Gregory of Nazianz pictured +Mary in Heaven, caring for the welfare of humanity. The fourth and fifth +centuries produced the first hymns to the Virgin, written in Syriac; but +orthodox bishops objected to her deification; St. Epiphanus (end of +fourth century) said: "Let us honour Mary by all means, but let us +worship only the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." + +This was the position of the evangelical and historical Mary before the +famous and decisive Council of Ephesus. + +There is a very important fact which must not be overlooked. All the +nations dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean, Semites, and +Egyptians, as well as Greeks and Romans, had been accustomed to the +worship of female deities. In the minds of the ancient peoples, woman, +the symbol of sex, had always been endowed with qualities of magic and +mystery. There was something supernatural in her power of bringing forth +a living specimen of the race, and in all cults the maternal woman +occupied a very important position. Had Christianity suddenly destroyed +this ancient and natural need? We know that the Church had assimilated a +great number of antique superstitions; nor were the female deities +sacrificed. The great Asiatic Mothers had not been forgotten; the very +ancient Babylonian Istar (Astarte), Rhea Kybele of Asia Minor, and above +all the Egyptian Isis, still lived in the heart of man,--subconsciously, +probably--as lofty, sacred memories, but nevertheless influencing his +life. The Egyptian Isis with Horus in her lap is the direct model of the +Madonna with the Child. She represented earth, bringing forth fruit +without fertilisation. "This religious custom (the worship of Isis)," +says Flinders Petrie, "exerted a powerful influence on nascent +Christianity. It is not too much to say that without the Egyptians we +should have had no Madonna in our creed. The cult of Isis was widely +spread at the time of the first emperors, when it was fashionable all +over the Roman Empire; when later on it merged into that other great +religious movement, and fashion and conviction could be combined, its +triumph was assured." + +Advancing Christianity had depopulated the national pantheon. There must +have been a great sense of loss, especially among the lower classes, and +it does not require much psychological insight to realise that it was +the lack of female deities which more especially roused a feeling of +anxiety and distress. The masses were yearning for a goddess, and it was +at Ephesus, the classical seat of the hundred-breasted Diana, that the +stolen divinity was restored to them. The theologians were divided into +three camps. While some of them regarded Mary merely as "the mother of +man" others acknowledged her as the "Mother of God," and Nestorius +suggested as a compromise the title "Mother of Christ." At the synod of +Alexandria, in the year of grace 430, and at the council of Ephesus in +431, Nestorius was found guilty of blasphemy and deprived of his +bishopric. Henceforth Mary was [Greek: Theotochos], the "Mother of God," +and her worship was sanctioned by the Church. "Through Thee the Holy +Trinity has been glorified," exclaimed Cyril joyfully, "through Thee the +Cross of the Saviour has been raised! Through Thee the angels triumphed, +the devils were driven back; the tempter was beaten and human nature +uplifted to Heaven; through Thee all intelligent creatures who were +committing idolatry, have learned the truth!" Loud rejoicing filled the +streets of Ephesus. When the judgment passed on Nestorius was announced, +the people exclaimed: "The enemy of the Holy Virgin has been overcome; +glory be to the great, the divine Mother of God!" The highest authority +in the land had re-established the public worship of the great goddess, +who had for many years been worshipped in secrecy. The ancient paganism +had triumphed over the spiritual intuition of the loftier minds. +According to ancient custom sacrifices were offered at Mary's shrine; +the second epoch of her history had begun. + +In the East the worship of female divinities was older and more +spontaneous than in the Western world, and thus the cult of Mary existed +in the Orient long before it penetrated to Italy and thence into the +newly Christianised countries. The Virgin, who for the first few hundred +years had held a clearly defined position in evangelical history, had +become an independent object of worship. Festivals were held in her +honour; churches were dedicated to her; the will of the people triumphed +in the litany; art took possession of the grateful subject. The +tendency to make Mary the equal of Christ grew steadily. Metaphors +originally intended for Christ alone were used indifferently for either. +We constantly find her addressed as the "archetype, the light of the +world, the vine, the mediator, the source of eternal life, etc." Finally +she ceased being regarded as a passive participator in the work of +salvation, as the Mother of the Saviour, and was accredited with +independent saving power. John of Damascus (eighth century) first called +Mary [Greek: soteira tou chosmou], and soon after she was styled +"Saviour of the World" in the Occident also. With this the cult of Mary +had reached its third stage, the stage which interests us; she had +become the object of metaphysical love. But before dealing with this +third stage, we must glance, in passing, at the ancient Teutonic tribes. +They, too, worshipped goddesses and sacred women; virginity, a virtue +not appreciated by the Orientals, here stood in high repute. According +to Tacitus and others, the Teutons looked upon the Virgin as a +mysterious being, approaching divinity more closely than all others. +Thus there was here, perhaps, more than on the shores of the +Mediterranean, a favourable soil for the cult of Mary. The +characteristics of Holda and Freya, as well as their perfect beauty, +were transferred to Mary, and Mary's name was substituted for the names +of the old auxiliary goddesses. In the oldest German evangelical poems +Mary does not yet rank as a divinity, she is merely extolled as the most +perfect of all earth-born women. In the "Heliand" (about A.D. 830) she +is called "the most beautiful of all women, the loveliest of all +maidens"; and the monk Otfried, of Weissenburg (860), calls her, "Of all +women to God the most pleasing, the white jewel, the radiant maid." + +Mary had now taken her place by the side of God, and was commonly +addressed as divine. Anselm of Canterbury explains: "God is the Father +of all created things, Mary the Mother of all things recreated.... God +begat the creator of the world, Mary gave birth to its Saviour." Peter +of Blois declared that the Virgin was the only mediatress between Christ +and humanity. "We were sinners and afraid of the wrath of the Father, +for He is terrible; but we have the Virgin, in whom there is nothing +terrible, for in her is the fulness of mercy and purity." The twelfth +century produced the _Ave Maria_, the angelic salutation, the principal +prayer to Mary, which was introduced into all churches. The Italian +Franciscan monk, Bonaventura, and Peter Damiani, were above all others +instrumental in spreading the worship of the Virgin, and Damiani said of +her: "To Thee has been given all power in heaven and on earth." The +fresco of the Camposanto at Pisa, ascribed to Orcagna, shows the +transfigured Virgin sitting by the side of Christ, not below Him. The +numerous legends in which Mary, often regardless of justice and +propriety, delivers her faithful worshippers from all manner of dangers, +were written during the same period. One of the most famous of these is +the legend of Theophilus, the forerunner of Faust. In a German version +(by Brun of Schoenebeck) dating from the thirteenth century, Theophilus +abjures God and all things divine, with the sole exception of Mary, +wherefore she saves him from eternal damnation. This poem therefore +shows us Mary as absolutely opposed to God. + +We have now arrived at the third stage of the cult of Mary; the new, +spiritual love, translated into metaphysics, was projected on her; she +was approached by her worshippers with the ardent love which hitherto +had been the prerogative of earthly women. The two currents, the one +arising in ecclesiastical tradition, and the other in the soul of the +metaphysical lover, had met; the genuine spiritual cult of Mary was the +creation of the great metaphysical lovers, who existed not only in the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but are met not infrequently later +on; man's irresistible need to raise woman above him and worship her, +created the true Madonna, for whose sake romantic souls of all times +have "returned home" into the fold of the Church, the true Madonna who +at heart is alien to the principles of the Church, but is re-born daily +in the soul of the metaphysical lover. The hierarchy knew how to take +advantage of and control this adoring love; the metaphysical lover +raised his mistress above humanity and prayed before her shrine; +religion said: "The celestial woman whom you may lovingly adore is here, +with me. All you have to do is to call her by the name I have given her, +and the kingdom of Heaven will be yours." + +But on the other hand Mary represents to-day, and doubtless will do for +a long time to come, a dogmatically acknowledged deity, recognised by +the spirit of Protestantism as a remnant of Paganism, and duly detested; +the masses in Italy and Spain pray to-day to her image, as in bygone +days the masses prayed to the images in Greek and Roman temples. This +goddess is unchanging, and from the point of view of the psychologist +uninteresting. + +It is not difficult to understand why the two conceptions of Mary (more +especially in the souls of the monks) were so often inextricably +intermingled; circumstances frequently demanded a complete fusion. As +late as in the nineteenth century, a romantic poet, Zacharias Werner, +said: + + Oh, sov'reign lady, mistress of my fortune, + And thou, the Queen and ruler of the heavens, + (I cannot keep you sundered and apart.) + +I shall endeavour to keep them sundered and apart as far as possible, +for I am only concerned with man's metaphysical emotion of love and its +creation, womanhood deified, and not with Catholic dogmas. With this +object in view, I will return to the poets previously quoted, and +continue the unfolding of the process of deification. As a rule the +metaphysical lovers were content with immortalising their feelings in, +very often, excellent verses, raising the beloved mistress above the +earth and worshipping her as the culmination of beauty and perfection. +The quite unusual craving to give her a place in the eternal structure +of the cosmos animated only one poet, Dante, who, combining the Catholic +striving for unity with spontaneous, magnificent woman-worship, created +a masterpiece which is unique in literature. + +Typical among the later Provencals was Guirot Riquier. Several of his +poems which have been preserved to us make it impossible to say whether +they are addressed to an earthly woman or to the Queen of Heaven; these +poems mark, in a sense, a period of transition. They are exceedingly +vague, and it is not worth while to translate them; but as they are +dated it is interesting to watch the poet's love growing more and more +spiritual and religious, to see him gradually deserting his earthly love +for the Lady of Heaven. In one poem he prays to his lady "who is +worshipped by all true lovers," to teach him the right way of loving. In +the next he repents his all too earthly passion: + + I often thought I was of true love singing, + And knew not that to love my heart was blind, + And folly was as love itself enshrined. + But now such love in all my soul is ringing, + That though to love and praise her I aspire + As is her meed--in vain is my desire. + Henceforth her love alone shall be my guide + And my new hope in that great love abide. + + For her great love the uttermost shall proffer + Of honour, wealth, and earthly joy and bliss, + With her to love, my heart will never miss + Those who no gifts like her gifts have to offer. + She the fulfilment is of my desire, + Therefore I vow myself her true esquire; + She'll love me in return--my splendid meed-- + If I but love aright in word and deed. + +and one of his rather more religious songs ends as follows: + + Without true love there is on earth no peace, + Love gives us wisdom, faith which will not swerve, + A noble mind and willingness to serve. + How rare a thing on earth in perfect ease! + To Thee, oh Virgin! Mother of all love, + I dedicate this song; if thou deniest + Me not, thou shall be my "sweet bliss." With Christ + I pray Thee, intercede for me above. + +In this song, then, he calls Mary "his sweet bliss" (_bel deport_), a +name which he had previously given to a certain countess with whom he +had been in love. In the next poem, in which earthly love and love of +the Madonna are again brought into juxta-position, he commends himself +"to the Virgin, the sublime mother of love, on whom all my happiness +depends." One of his poems which begins in quite an earthly strain, ends +thus: + + I feel no jealousy; for he whose soul + Is filled with yearning for his heavenly love, + Has purest happiness; he is her serf, + And he has all things that his heart can crave. + +But long before this, in one of his very worldly poems there is a sudden +outburst, addressed to the Madonna: "He who does not serve the Mother of +God, knows not the meaning of love." Excellent proof of this intimate +connection between earthly and Madonna love is found in the poems of the +trouvere Ruteboeuf, who calls Mary his "very sweet lady." + +Lanfranc Cigala wrote genuine love-songs to the Virgin. The following +are two stanzas from one of his poems: + + I worship a celestial maid, + Serene and wondrously adorned; + And all she does is well; arrayed + In noble love and gentleness. + Her smile is bliss to all who mourn, + Her tender love is happiness, + And for her kiss the world I scorn. + Lady of Heaven, Thy heart incline + To me, and untold bliss is mine. + By day and night my only thought + Art, Mary, Thou. I am distraught + Say many men, for few can gauge + The ardour which consumes my soul. + I care not that they say bereft + I am of sense; the world I've left, + To worship Thee, love's spring and goal. + +But other poems written by Cigala are unmistakably addressed to the +celestial Madonna; some of them seem to be written in a penitential +mood; he almost seems to repent of his former passionate adoration. The +same poet, in his love-songs, uses all the metaphors which are commonly +used for Mary (or for Christ), "root and climax, flower, fruit and seed +of all goodness." + +A little older is an erotic hymn to Mary by Peire Guillem of Luserna; I +quote a few stanzas: + + Thy praise is happiness unmarred, + For he who praises Thee, proclaims the truth, + Thou art the flower of beauty, love and ruth, + Full of compassion, with all grace bedight, + From Thy white hands we gather all delight. + +The love of Mary had usurped the peculiar property of the love of woman: +it had become the source of poetic and artistic inspiration. + +The songs of Aimeric of Peguilhan resemble those of Cigala; the former +bewails the decline of the service of woman; he sings of the "root and +crown of all noble things," but it is not quite clear whether he is +addressing an earthly or a heavenly lady. "Suffer my love, which asks +for no reward!" The terms, "friends" and "lovers" (_amans_) of the +Virgin are with these poets convertible terms, and the Virgin is styled +"the true friend" (_i.e._, the beloved). + +Guilhem of Autpol wrote a fine poem to the Queen of Heaven, beginning: + + Thou hope of all sad hearts who yearn for love, + Thou stream of loveliness, thou well of grace, + Thou dove of peace in fret and restlessness, + Thou ray of light to those who, lightless, grope. + Thou house of God, thou garden of sweet shades, + Rest without ceasing, refuge of the sad, + Bliss without mourning, flow'r that never fades, + Alien to death, and shelter in the mad + Whirlpool of life, to all who seek thy port. + Lady of Heaven, in whom all hearts rejoice, + Thou roseate dawn and light of Paradise! + +Perdigon, among many worldly songs, wrote one to the _regina d'auteza e +de senhoria_, which might be translated thus: + + Supreme ruler of the world, + Thy grace sustains + And maintains + The world. + Thou fragrant rose, thou fruitful vine, + Thou wert the chosen vessel of + Mercy divine. + +Unsurpassed in the fusion of his earthly and his celestial lady was +Folquet de Lunel. Some of his poems cannot be classed with any +certainty. + +The first poem which obtained a prize at the Academy of Mastersingers of +Toulouse was a hymn to Mary. + +This very genuine sentimentalism appears strange to us; we cannot enter +into the feelings of that period. A modern philologist, Karl Appel, +regards Jaufre Rudel's pathetic songs, addressed by him to the Countess +of Tripoli: + + Oh, love in lands so far away, + My heart is yearning, yearning.... + +as songs to the Madonna; but it is a matter of indifference to the lover +whether his heart's impulse, translated into metaphysic, is projected on +an unknown Countess of Tripoli, or a still more unknown Lady of Heaven. +It is not the loved woman who is of importance--what do we know of the +ladies who inspired the exquisite mediaeval poetry? They have long been +dust, and we may be sure that their perfection was no greater than is +the perfection of their grand-daughters. But the love of the poets is +alive to-day, an eternal document of the human heart, representing one +of the great phases through which the relationship between man and woman +has passed. + +The following are a few stanzas by the German minnesinger, Steinmar, +which were later on adapted to the Holy Virgin: + + In summer-time how glad am I + When over lea or down + A country lass mine eyes espy, + Of maidens all the crown. + + Oh! Paradise! How glad am I + When o'er the heavenly down + God and God's Mother I espy, + Of women all the crown. + +The Italian poets, far more profound than the Provencals, saw a goddess +in the beloved (whom they always addressed as Madonna), and humbled +themselves before her. Social differences, which played such a prominent +part in the North, are here ignored. The impecunious poet no longer +extols the princess, the wife of his lord and master. There is no +question of such a relationship; the poet is a free citizen of the town, +subject only to the emotion of the heart, and his song carries its own +reward. It has ceased to be the married woman's privilege to be lauded +and extolled; the maiden of unaristocratic origin, who to the poets +represents more strongly the ideas of purity and perfection, has usurped +her place. We know that Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi, Guinicelli and +Dante worshipped a maiden untouched by as much as a sensuous thought, +and Frescobaldi decided the question whether it were better to love a +married woman or a maiden, in favour of the latter. The feeling of those +lovers was pure and lofty, and they had the power of giving it perfect +expression. + +In a canzone, the authorship of which is ascribed to both Cavalcanti and +Cino da Pistoia, it is said of the beloved dead that God needed her +presence to perfect Heaven, and that all the saints now worship her. +She was a miracle of perfection while she was yet on earth, but now: + + Look thou into the pleasure wherein dwells + Thy lovely lady, who is in heaven crowned, + Who is herself thy hope in heaven, the while + To make thy mem'ry hallowed she prevails. + + Of thee she entertains the blessed throngs, + And says to them, while yet my body thrave + On earth, I gat much honour which he gave, + Commending me in his commended songs. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +At the conclusion of his finest poem, "Al Cor Gentil," Guinicelli, next +to Dante doubtless the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, says: "God will +ask me after my death: 'How could'st thou have loved aught but Me?' And +I will reply: 'She came from Thy realm and bore the semblance of an +angel. Therefore in loving her, I was not unfaithful to Thee!'" Here we +have the perfection of metaphysical eroticism: the beloved woman is God; +he who loves her, loves God in her. + +Cavalcanti maintained in a poem that an image of the Madonna actually +bore the features of his lady. + + Guido, an image of my lady dwells + At San Michele, in Orto, consecrate, + And daily worshipped. Fair, in holy state, + She listens to the tale each sinner tells. + And among them who come to her, who ails + The most, on him the most does blessing fall; + She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate; + Over the curse of blindness she prevails, + And heals sick languors in the public squares.... + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +And Guido Orlandi replies to him from the ecclesiastical standpoint, as +to a lost man: "Had'st thou been speaking of Mary, thou would'st have +spoken the truth. But now I must bewail thy errors." + +A complete blending of sensuality and Mary-worship was achieved in an +Italian poem of the fifteenth century. The author of this poem addressed +Mary as "queen of my heart," and "blossom of loveliness," and goes on to +say: "I can tell by your gestures and your face that you respond to my +love; when you look at me, you smile, and when you sigh, your eyes are +full of tenderness.... Sometimes, in the evening, I stand below your +balcony; you hear my sighs, but you make no reply.... When I gaze at +your beauty, I burn with love, but when I think of your cruelty, I call +on death to release me." In this poem we have a caricature of +metaphysical eroticism. + +In the sonnets of Petrarch, metaphysical love has become stereotyped. +Adoration has become a phrase (as Cupid has become a phrase with the +earlier poets). It is obvious that he loves Laura because the play on +the word Laura and _lauro_ (laurel) caught his fancy. I can find no +spontaneous feeling in the famous Canzoniero; all I see is erudition and +perfection of form. But among the few sincere specimens there is one +beautiful poem addressed to Mary: "_Vergine bella che di sol vestida!_" +which is not without erotic warmth. But the singer and humanist +expresses himself judiciously: + + Oh, Thou, the Queen of Heaven and our goddess + (If it be fitting such a phrase to use). + +So far we have observed the current which, emanating from the beloved +woman, lifted her into supernal regions and endowed her with +perfection--the mistress is stripped of everything earthly, the longing +which can never be stilled on earth, soars heavenward. Now we will +examine the opposite current; the current which emanates from the +Madonna of dogma, the Lady of Heaven who is the same to all men, in her +last stage, that is to say when she is finally enthroned by the side of +God. Many a monk--earthly love being denied to him--was driven to a +purely spiritual, metaphysical love by the fact of his being permitted +to love the Lady of Heaven without hesitation or remorse. She was the +fairest of women, and he was at liberty to interpret the meaning of "the +fairest" in any sense he chose. + +The climax of the emotional worship of the ecclesiastical Mary was +reached by St. Bernard, the _Doctor Marianus_ mentioned on a previous +occasion. He was the author of sermons and homilies in honour of Mary, +and has been instrumental in dogmatising her worship by placing her side +by side with the Saviour. "It was more fitting that both sexes should +take part in the renewal of mankind," he says, "because both were +instrumental in bringing about the fall...." "Man who fell through +woman, can be raised only by her." "Humanity kneels at Thy feet, for the +comfort of the wretched, the release of the prisoners, the delivery of +the condemned, the salvation of the countless sons of Adam depend on a +word from Thy lips. Oh! Virgin, hasten to reply! Speak the word for +which the earth, the nethermost hell, and the heavens even, are waiting; +yea, the King and Ruler of the universe, greatly as He desires Thy +loveliness, awaits Thy consent, in which He has laid the salvation of +the world." Basing his description on the Revelation of St. John the +Divine, he draws her picture as follows: "Brilliant and white and +dazzling are the garments of the Virgin. She is so full of light and +radiance that there is not the least darkness about her, and no part of +her may be described as less brilliant, or not glowing with intense +light." And with increasingly pronounced erotic emphasis, passing from +the Church dogma of salvation to passionate fervour, he goes on to say: +"A garden of sacred delight art Thou, oh, Mary! In it we gather flowers +of manifold joys as often as we reflect on the fulness of sweetness +which through Thee was poured out on the world.... Right lovely art +Thou, oh, perfect One! A bed of heavenly spices and precious flowers of +all virtues, filling the house of the Lord with sweet perfume! Oh! Mary, +Thou violet of humility! Thou lily of chastity! Thou rose of love!" etc. + +St. Bernard inaugurated that extraordinary blending of eroticism with +half-crazy, inconceivable allegories and fantasies, which lasted for +centuries. Here, again, we perceive the ideal of metaphysical eroticism, +which in the case of a loyal son of the Church could only refer to the +official Queen of Heaven, and consisted partly of the genuine emotion of +love, partly of allegorically constructed connections with the Church +dogma. + +St. Bernard's emotional outbursts were comprehended and admired. His +authority was sufficient to override all scruples that might have stood +in the way of this downright description of Mary's charms. He became the +model for all her later worshippers; Suso, for instance, often quotes +him, and Brother Hans called him _the harpist and fiddler of her +praise_. + +The great ecstatic poet, Jacopone da Todi, sang Mary's praise as +follows: + + Hail, purest of virgins, + Mother and maid, + Gentle as moonlight, + Lady of Aid! + + I greet thee, life's fountain, + Fruitladen vine! + Infinite mercy + Thou sheddest on thine! + + Hope's fairest sunshine, + Balm's well serene! + I claim a dance with thee, + All the world's Queen! + + Gate of beatitude! + --All sins forgiven,-- + Lead us to paradise, + Sweet breeze of heaven! + + Thou pointest us upward + Where angels adore, + White lily of gentleness + Thy grace I implore. + + Mirror of Cherubim! + Seraphim laud thy grace, + All things in heaven and earth + Ring with thy praise! + +The spiritual love of Mary especially appealed to the German temper. +Among the adoring monks Suso deserves particular mention. He laid great +stress on the difference between _high_ love and _low_ love. "Low love +begins with rapture and ends with pain, but high love begins with grief, +and is transformed into ecstasy, until finally the lovers are united in +eternity." He was keenly conscious of the older motive of the cult of +Mary, namely, the need of a gentle mediator between man and the +inaccessible Deity. "Oh, thou! God's chosen delight, thou dulcet, golden +song of the Eternal Wisdom, suffer me, a poor sinner, to tell thee a +little of my sufferings. My soul prostrates itself before thee with +timorous eyes, shamefaced. Oh! thou Mother of all mercies, I ween that +neither my soul nor the soul of any other poor sinner needs a mediator, +or permission to come to thy throne, for thou, thyself, art the +intercessor for all sinners." Compared to his forerunner, St. Bernard, +Suso exhibits a marked degree of intimacy in his relationship with Mary. +He describes heaven as a kind of flowered meadow, and Mary keeping +court, like any earthly princess. "Now go and behold the sweet Queen of +Heaven, whom you love so profoundly, leading the procession of the +celestial throng in great gladness and stateliness, inclining to her +lover with roses and lilies! Behold her wonderful beauty shedding light +and joy on the heavenly hosts! Eya! Look up to her who giveth gladness +to heart and mind; behold the Mother of Mercy resting her eyes, her +tender, pitiful eyes, on you and all sinners, powerfully protecting her +beloved child." The whole sixteenth chapter of the _Booklet of Eternal +Wisdom_ is an ardent hymn to the Madonna, almost comparable to St. +Bernard's prayer to Mary in Dante's _Divine Comedy_. It was written +about the time of Dante's death, not very long, therefore, after the +composition of the last chapters of the _Paradise_. + +_The Life of Suso_ (the first German biography ever written) evidences +his adoration for the Lady of Heaven: "It was customary in his country, +Swabia, for the young men to go to their sweethearts' houses on New +Year's Eve, singing songs until they received from the maidens a chaplet +in return. This custom so pleased his young and ardent heart that he, +too, went on the eve of the New Year to his eternal love, to beg her for +a gift. Before daybreak he repaired to the statue which represented the +Virginal Mother pressing her tender child, the beautiful Eternal Wisdom, +to her bosom, and kneeling down before her, with a sweet, low singing of +his soul, he chanted a sequence to her, imploring her to let him win a +chaplet from her Child...." "He then said to the Eternal Wisdom" (and it +is uncertain whether he is addressing the mother or the child): "Thou +art my love, my glad Easter day, the summer-joy of my heart, my sweet +hour; thou art the love which my young heart alone worships, and for the +sake of which it has scorned earthly love. Give me a guerdon, then, my +heart's delight, and let me not go away from thee empty-handed." + +_With a sweet, low singing of his soul_, this worshipper approached the +statue of the Queen of Heaven. This is love of woman undisguised, it +merely has a religious undertone. Other secular merry-makings were +adapted by Suso to his celestial mistress, as, for instance, the +planting of the may-tree, and he repeatedly makes use of similes and +metaphors borrowed from the chivalrous service of woman. He frequently +alludes to himself as "the servant of the Eternal Wisdom"; the meaning +of this expression is apparently intentionally obscured, but it has a +savour of the feminine. Suso pictured himself, after the manner of +lovers, with a chaplet of roses on his brow. In his _Life_ there is a +passage unsurpassed by the best of the minnesingers: "In the golden +summer-time when all the tender little flowers had opened their buds, he +gathered none until he had dedicated the first blossoms to his spiritual +love, the gentle, flower-like, rosy maiden and Mother of God; when it +seemed to him that the time had come, he culled the flowers with many +loving thoughts, carried them into his cell and wove them into a +garland; and after he had done so, he went into the choir, or into Our +Lady's Chapel, prostrated himself before his dear lady, and placed the +sweet garland on her head, hoping that she would not scorn her servant's +offering, as she was the most wondrous flower herself, and the +summer-joy of his heart." + +Doubtless we here have an analogy to the religious feeling of the +mystics. The metaphysical lover is still under the impression that he is +worshipping the Mary of the Catholic Church; but as in the case of the +mystic the Christ of dogma is transformed into the divine spark in his +own soul, so the love of Mary has become undogmatic and pure +woman-worship, the ideal of the great lovers of that age. + +Another prominent Madonna-worshipper was Conrad of Wuerzburg (died 1278). +He began his career as a minnesinger, but later on entered a monastery. +He was the author of a very extensive, and in part, poetical collection +of songs in praise of the Queen of Heaven. "The Golden Smithy" is an +interesting instance of the mingling of genuine metaphysical eroticism +and traditional Church doctrines. Conrad inextricably mingles all the +Biblical allegories more or less applicable to Mary, the stories of the +Gospels, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, etc., with his own +emotions, and thus creates a world of feeling which, though in many +respects exaggerated, still represents in its quaint unity something +entirely novel and unique: + + Thy glorious form, + Though by beauty all envested, + Never passion has suggested + Nor has lit unholy fire + In man's heart, that gross desire + From thy purity should spring. + +He, too, describes the celestial Paradise as a lovely garden, in which +Mary walks as queen, and he says of her celestial maidens, (perhaps a +reminiscence of the mythological German swan-maidens): + + Thy white hand with blossoms + Their chaplets enhances, + Thou show'st them the dances + Of God's Paradise. + 'Mid radiant skies + Thou gather'st heavenly roses. + +The Italian Franciscan monk Giacomo of Verona also wrote poems to the +"Queen of the Heavenly Meadows". "On the right hand of Christ sits Mary, +more lovely than the flowers in the meadows and the half-opened +rose-buds. Before her face stand the heavenly hosts singing jubilant +songs in her praise, but she adorns her knights with garlands and gives +them roses." Just as Pons of Capduelh describes the transfiguration of +his earthly mistress, Jacopone describes Mary's ascent into Heaven, +where she is received by the angels singing songs of jubilee, their +_sanctus, sanctus, sanctus_, replaced by a joyful _sancta, sancta, +sancta_--a goddess has been received in the place of God. + +Gottfried of Strassburg, the author of the sensuous and passionate epic +poem "Tristan and Isolde," composed a long poem in honour of Mary +couched in the well-known terms of the loving worshipper: + + Thou vale of roses,--violet-dell, + Thou joy that makest hearts to swell, + Eternal well + Of valour; Queen of Heaven! + Thou rosy dawn, thou morning-red, + Thou steadfast friend when hope has fled, + The living bread, + Oh! Lady, hast thou given. + + Thou sheen of flow'rs with love alight, + Thou bridal crown, all maids' delight, + Thou art bedight + With heaven's golden splendour! + + Thou of all sweetness sweetest shine, + Thou sweeter than the sweetest wine, + The sweetness thine, + Is my salvation ever. + Thou art a potion sweet of love, + Sweetly pervading heaven above, + To sailors rough + Sang syrens sweeter never. + + Thou enterest through eye and ear, + Senses and soul pervading, + Thou givest to the heart great cheer, + A guerdon dear, + A glory never fading. + +The poet who wrote of Isolde's love potion here calls the Queen of +Heaven a _potion sweet of love_, a strange metaphor to use in connection +with the Mary of dogma. Another characteristic frequently alluded to is +her _sweet perfume_, an attribute which we to-day do not look upon as +exclusively celestial. + +Quaintly delicate and tender are the love-songs of Brother Hans, an +otherwise unknown monk of the fourteenth century. He himself tells us +that he deserted his earthly mistress for the Queen of Heaven. Perhaps +the dualism between earthly and transcendent love has never been +expressed more clearly than by him; for in his case the worshipping love +did not gradually lead up to Mary, the essence of womanhood, but an +earthly love had to be killed so that the pure heavenly love could live. + + Mary! Gentle mistress mine! + I humbly kneel before you; + All my heart and soul are thine. + +And: + + Oh, Mary! Secret fountain, + Closed garden of delight, + The Prince of Heaven mirrors + Him in thy beauty bright. + +But after describing all the joys of heaven, Brother Hans comes to the +conclusion that a man knows about as much of celestial matters as an ox +knows of discant singing. + +His relationship to Mary is tender, intimate and familiar: + + Within my heart concealed + There is a secret cell; + At nightfall and at daybreak + My lady there does dwell. + The mistress of the house is she, + I feel her love and care about. + If she denies herself to me, + Methinks the mistress has gone out. + +In another poem he prays to Mary to allow him to tear off a small piece +of her robe, so that he may keep himself warm with it in the winter. + +Like Cino da Pistoia, who commended his dying soul not to God but to his +loved one, Brother Hans commends himself to Mary: + + Thus I commend my soul into thy hands, + When it must journey to those unknown lands, + Where roads and paths are new and strange to it. + +And: + + Oh, come to me, thou Bride of God, + When my faint soul departs from me! + +There remains one more motif to consider, a motif which in a way +completes the picture of the celestial lady: As men love and desire the +women of the earth, so God loves the Lady of Heaven. St. Bernard first +expressed this naive idea, which makes God the Father resemble a little +the ancient Jupiter. "She attracted the eyes of the heavenly hosts, even +the heart of the King went out to her." "He Himself, the supreme King +and Ruler, so much desires thy beauty, that He is awaiting thy consent, +upon which He has decided to save the world. And Him Whom thou +delightest in thy silence, thou wilt delight even more by thy speech, +for He called to thee from Heaven: 'Oh! fairest among women! Let me hear +thy voice!'" etc. Here we have St. Bernard, the rock of orthodoxy, +representing God as Mary's languishing admirer! Suso is irreproachable +in this respect, but Conrad says that the colour of Mary's face was so +bright and made it so lovely, + + That even the Eternal Sire + Was filled with sacred fire, + And all the heavenly princes.... + +Thus, at the turn of the fourteenth century the great celestial change +was complete: By the side of God, nay, even in the place of God, a woman +was enthroned. "The Virgin became the God of the Universe," says +Michelet, a thorough, though rather imaginative expert on the Middle +Ages. The people primitively worshipped idols. The clergy, headed by the +Dominican and Franciscan monks, introduced Lady Days into the calendar +and invented the rosary to facilitate the recital of the _Aves_; secular +orders of knighthood placed themselves under the Virgin's protection (La +Chevalerie de Sainte Marie), but the rarest minds, sublimating the +beloved, raised her into Heaven and worshipped her as divine. The +established religion was compelled to enter into partnership with the +great emotion of the time, metaphysical love, lest it ran the risk of +losing its sway over humanity. + +And a feeling was born then which to this day constitutes one of the +striking differences between the Eastern and the Western worlds: the +respect for womanhood. It is based on the woman-worship of secular, and +the Madonna-worship of ecclesiastical circles. It is true that Jesus, +anticipating the intuition of Europe, had taught the divinity of the +human soul and recognised woman--in this respect--as on an equality with +man, but the instincts of Greece and the Eastern nations had proved to +be stronger than his teaching; for twelve hundred years woman was +despised, and more than once the question as to whether or no she had a +soul--in other words, as to whether or no she was a human being--had +come under discussion. The crude and primitively dualistic minds of the +period realised in her sex merely an embodiment of their own sensuality, +the enemy against whom they fought, and to whom they knew themselves +subject. The strongest argument in her favour which the first millenary +could adduce, was the fact that the Saviour of the world had been borne +by a woman, and that consequently her sex had a share in the work of +salvation; the idea that through the "other Eve" a part of the sin of +the first Eve was expiated. But genuine appreciation and respect were +only possible after base sensuality had been contrasted with spiritual +love, whose vehicle again was woman. Now the "eternal-feminine"-- +contrasted with the "earthly-feminine"--drew the lovers upwards, and +this new emotion threw such a glamour over the whole sex, that it never +entirely died away; if to-day women are respected and their efforts at +emancipation supported, they are not indebted, as they are sometimes +told, to Christian ethics, but rather to the mundane culture which had +its origin at the courts of the Provencal lords, whose ideals ultimately +became the controlling ideals of Europe, and whose inmost essence still +influences the world. + +The evolution of love had obviously arrived at a stage when respect was +considered due to women--though not perhaps to all women. I will not go +to the courts of the great for evidence, but merely relate an episode +from the life of the Dominican friar Suso: "In crossing a field, Suso +met on a narrow path a poor, respectable woman. When he was close to +her, he stepped off the dry path and stood in the mud, waiting for her +to pass. The woman, who knew him, was astonished. 'How is it, Sir,' she +said, 'that you, a venerable priest, are humbly standing aside to allow +me, a poor woman, to pass, when it were far more meet that I should +stand aside and make room for you?' 'Why, my good woman,' replied Suso, +'I like to honour all women for the sake of the gentle Mother of God in +Heaven.'" + +It may seem extraordinary, but this absolutely unphilosophical, and +really paradoxical emotion, found an appreciator in the German +philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of Christianity. In his _Essence +of Christianity_, as well as in his treatise _On the Cult of Mary_, he +refers to it more than once. "The holy Virgin," he says, "the Mother of +God, is the only divine and positive, that is to say, the only lovable +and poetical figure of Christian mythology, and the only one worthy of +worship; for Mary is the goddess of beauty, the goddess of love, the +goddess of humanity, the goddess of nature, the goddess of freedom from +dogma." Feuerbach is right. The Lady of Heaven stands for the delivery +from dogma, because she had her origin in spontaneous emotion, clothed +with but a few rags of dogma. "The monks vowed the vow of chastity," he +continues in his great work; "they suppressed the sexual impulse, but in +exchange they had the personification of womanhood, of love, in the +Virgin in Heaven. The more their ideal, fictitious representative of her +sex became an object of spontaneous love, the more easily could they +dispense with the women of flesh and blood. The more they emphasised in +their lives the complete suppression of sexuality, the more prominent +became the part which the Virgin played in their emotions; she usurped +in many cases, the place of Christ, and even the place of God." +Feuerbach then explains the need of man to project his noblest +sentiments on Heaven, and lays much stress on the necessity of believing +in the Mother of God, because the love of a child for its mother is the +first strong feeling of man. "Where the faith in the Mother of God +declines, the faith in the Son of God, and in God the Father, declines +also." + + +I will now leave the region of the historical and examine the emotion +whose reality and influence I have substantiated, from a timeless +standpoint, for my principal point is the psychical, and more +particularly the metaphysical consummation of the emotion of love. The +sole object of the abundant evidence I have been compelled to adduce is +my desire to prove the existence and significance of all the emotions +which stir the soul, and in the later Middle Ages strove so powerfully +to express themselves. My thesis that sexuality and love are opposed +principles will no doubt be rejected, for, under the strong influence of +the theory of evolution, all the world is to-day agreed that love is +nothing but the refinement of the sexual impulse. I maintain that (as +far as man is concerned) they differ very essentially, and I have +attempted to prove their incommensurability by submitting historical +facts. That they may, and will, ultimately merge, is my unalterable +conviction. My assertion that something so fundamental as the personal +love of man and woman did not exist from the beginning, but came into +existence in the course of history, at a not very remote period, may +seem even more strange. My only reply is that instead of advancing +opinions I have brought forward facts and allowed them to speak for +themselves. Moreover, to my mind the realisation of the intimate +connection of love and evolving personality is a far more magnificent +proof of the soundness of the evolutionary theory than the reflection +that we have received all things ready-made from the hands of nature. +Has it not been proved to us that the religious consciousness of the +divinity of the human soul was also evolved in historical time, and has +never again disappeared? + +Every strong love which finds no response is fraught with the +possibility of an infinite unfolding; it may powerfully seize the whole +soul and make life a tragedy. But this tragedy is not of the very +essence of tragedy, inasmuch as here we have merely love confronted by +an unsurmountable obstacle, meeting and overwhelming it; the discord is +not inherent. Many a lover suffering from unrequited love, is born with +the tendency to become unhappy, with a secret will to the voluptuousness +of pain and melancholy; he will enjoy his unhappiness, perhaps become +productive through it. Thus, this deliberately unhappy love may be +regarded as an analogy to genuine metaphysical eroticism. For the +worship of woman is in its essence infinite striving; its object is +always unattainable, an illusion. Every earthly love, even if it finds +no response at all, may, in principle, be gratified, and is only unhappy +if external circumstances intervene. But the love of the Madonna is in +itself fraught with the tragic impossibility of requital; its foundation +is the recognition, or divination, of the fact that mortal women are too +insignificant for a passion which yearns for infinitude. A lover filled +with the longing to glorify a woman and worship her as a divine being, +has frequently experienced a certain disappointment. The beloved may +have died young--as did Beatrice--without his ever having come into +close contact with her; instinctively his soul turns heavenward--and +imagination has ample scope to transform and transfigure the dead. Or he +may have been disappointed in his mistress; it may have been that he, +attuned to pure, spiritual love, has found her all too human. He flees +from reality into the world of dreams, and envelops her with the veil of +mysteriousness and divinity. Purely spiritual love is an intense +emotion, and as men and women of flesh and blood cannot always live at +high pressure, hours of dejection and disappointment will necessarily +have to be experienced. The soul takes refuge in an illusion which +becomes more and more an end in itself, and gradually the lover creates +an inaccessibly lofty, celestial woman. For purely spiritual love +aspires to absolute transcendency; it cannot bear contact with every-day +life. The psychologists of the present day tell us that a feeling, in +becoming spiritualised, loses strength,--history teaches us that in the +case of great souls the opposite is the rule. + +These suggestions purpose to explain the inception of an ecstatic love; +but the true metaphysical erotic is born and needs no outside stimulus; +his heart yearns for the inaccessible from the very beginning. There are +certain elements of feeling which must be present in his soul +simultaneously: a religious elementary feeling tending to the +metaphysical; the need of a sacred--a divine--being, as the foundation +of all existing things; a powerful and purely spiritual craving for +love, hurt, perhaps unconsciously, in early youth, and finally an +imagination endowed with plastic force--artistic tendencies. In the case +of the mystic the soul, too, is filled with the consciousness of the +divine; he, too, has the capacity for a great love, but with him it is +not the love of woman, but of something universal, not individualised, +the world, the cosmos, God. + +While the mystic attempts to embody the inconceivable Deity in his soul, +the worshipper of the Madonna, like the artist, imaginatively creates a +being which he sets up for contemplation at the greatest possible +distance. The mystic is blind, as it were; he is yearning personified, +and he would force God into his soul. The metaphysical lover needs a +plastic figure which, in the extremest case, may represent the whole +world to him, and this figure must be a woman. It is a historical +accident that this woman is frequently connected with a woman of +ecclesiastical tradition, an accident strengthened by insufficient +creative power on the part of the lover, or lack of courage and +self-confidence. He is grateful for the support given to him by +tradition. The greatest metaphysical lovers, Dante, Goethe and +Michelangelo, freely created the objects of their love; the Protestant +Goethe--whom some people even accuse of paganism--clung more closely +than either of the others to the Mary of Catholicism (in the final scene +of _Faust_). The worship of the Madonna is the love of great solitary +souls, and--as is proved by Goethe--of the great souls in the hours of +their last solitude. + +While there was only unindividualised sexual instinct, the chastity of +woman was of no account; we have seen that neither the Eastern nations +nor the Greeks attached any value to it. The woman who had best +fulfilled her vocation as a mother, was the woman most highly respected. +In the East, as well as with Jews and Romans, a woman could be divorced +by her husband for sterility. The only women who were, to some extent, +appreciated for their own sakes, were the Greek hetaerae. But when +asceticism became a moral value, chastity, too, was regarded as a +virtue, and personal love between two individuals invested it with a +profound significance. Henceforth woman should no longer be regarded as +the vehicle for the gratification of male sensuality; it should be her +mission to lead the lover to spiritual perfection. The fusion of the +older ideal of womanhood, the mother (acknowledged and sanctioned by +religion in the mother of the Saviour), with the newer ideal, the +Virgin, created the ideal of the late Middle Ages: the virgin with the +Child. Here the natural vocation of woman and the fantastic mission laid +upon her by man were united in a paradoxical higher intuition, and it +is superfluous to point out that the most irreligious minds of the +Renascence, as well as those of all later eras, have to this day +worshipped this ideal, and never wearied of representing it under new +forms. + +But the worship of the Virginal Mother contains another element, an +element of which man in his contact with woman is deeply conscious: the +element of mystery. To a man a young girl, untouched by the faintest +breath of sensuality, has a quality of strangeness and mysteriousness +(this is probably a result of European sentiment), and at all times the +woman who has become a mother has been regarded with a slight feeling of +superstitious awe. In the Virginal Mother these two vaguely reverential +feelings are blended; she is a strange and awe-inspiring being, and man, +divining a mystery, bows down before her. + +Otto Weininger was the first to give us a psychology of the cult of the +Madonna, and he did it in a manner which proved his entire comprehension +of this peculiar sentimental disposition. He realised and pointed out +the contrast between sexuality and eroticism (his terms for sexual +impulse and love), but in accordance with his extreme mental disposition +he left these two principles in irreconcilable conflict, while I regard +their antithesis merely in the light of a transient phase which will be +followed by a reconciling synthesis. Weininger is, I believe, in +conflict with spiritual reality when (guided by ethical, not +psychological considerations) he proposes the theory that a man endows +the beloved woman with all the lofty values he desires for himself. "He +projects his ideal of an absolutely perfect being on another human +being, and this and nothing else is the meaning of his love." "To bestow +all the qualities one would like to possess, but never can quite +possess, on another individual, to make it the representative of all +values, that is to love." It is a commonplace experience that genuine +love will awaken in the soul new and transcendent emotions, compared to +which all previous experience appears petty and insignificant. The waves +of this emotion are able to carry the lover to the infinite, or at least +his emotion will help him to divine the infinite. He sees, unexpectedly, +his inmost soul revealed to him, he has exceeded the limits upon which +he has hitherto looked as a matter of course; the barrier between him +and the universe has fallen, the whole world belongs to him; the egoist +becomes less selfish, the cruel man gentle, the dullard clairvoyant; +every man feels that he has become greater and more human. This is +neither illusion nor projection, nor is it a subtle, psychical +deception--it is sober reality. Weininger's suspicion of a delusion is +nothing but the result of his ascetic solipsism, refusing to accept +another being's help in his striving for perfection, a consequence of +the one-sided, sterile cult of his individual soul, a noble but puerile +pride refusing to be indebted to the world and to his fellow-men, the +fanatical, metaphysical dualism which is so often met with in the second +stage of eroticism, and to which stage he belongs. + +Weininger shrank from the idea that an individual might be made the +means to an end, instead of being an end in itself. In my opinion his +justification for the translation of this formula--framed by Kant for +pure ethics--to empirical psychology, is doubtful. To use an individual +only as a means to an end which is alien to his inmost being, is +certainly immoral. But all social life is based on a mutual relationship +of means and ends; a man is an end in himself at the same time that he +is a means to other individuals and the community. The teacher is a +means as far as his pupils are concerned; the poet is a means in respect +to all who seek in his writings information or recreation. To carry the +stigmatisation of these facts to a logical conclusion, one would have to +call it immoral to accept anything from parents or teachers; one would +have to reject every good influence--which always comes from +outside--and become completely absorbed in the cult of one's own soul. +One would even have to object to being born, and would have to create +one's self out of nothing. It has always been regarded as the splendid +privilege of great men to exert an ennobling influence on others--why, +therefore, should the influence of a beloved woman on her lover be +objectionable? + +Weininger's error in the sphere of eroticism arises from the fact of his +imprisoning love in a formula which is by no means applicable to it. In +love the mutual relationship of means and ends does not exist, the lover +feels that the beloved is always an end in herself in the highest sense; +he would find it impossible inwardly to establish such a relationship +between himself and her; very frequently himself, his well-being and his +life, are of no account to him if he can serve her. Weininger's +assertion that at the consummation of love every woman is merely the +means of gratifying a man's passion, is simply not true. On the +contrary, it is a characteristic of genuine love that the physical +embrace is of no great importance, does not even rise to full +consciousness. The personality of the beloved is everything, physical +sensation nothing. Weininger identifies love with passion and his +argument is easily refutable by the experience of many. In love there is +neither means nor end; if, however, categoric formulas must be used, one +might speak of a reciprocal action. Equally erroneous is his +corresponding assertion that the artist loves a woman spiritually, that +is, in the sense of deifying her, for the purpose of drawing from her +inspiration for his work. If he loves her, then his love is the alpha +and omega of his striving, and if love inspires him to achieve a +masterpiece, the effect of love on him must be considered great and +good, because it is a creative effect. + +The extreme individualistic ideal would lead to an absolutely +unproductive view of life. Asceticism stands condemned because it is +unproductive. I may regard an Indian fakir who has become so godlike +that he can sustain life on six grains of rice a day, and draw breath +once every quarter of an hour--to say nothing of speech or +cleanliness--as a very strange individual; but I see nothing positive or +important in him. The road which leads from the individual to the +universal cannot be the rejection of the world; it must be its +perfection, resulting from productivity of mind, or soul, or deed. He +who on principle refuses to be productive, condemns himself to +annihilation in the higher sense. I admit that he who works at his own +perfection does good work, too; but it is the inexplicable secret of all +truly creative labour--in the highest as well as in the lowest +sense--that it must ultimately affect the world and eternity. The +strongest emotions, the inner illumination of the mystic and the love of +the great erotic, have been conceived in the _heart of hearts_; and have +ultimately grown beyond their creator, from the individual to the +universal. The more intimate and powerful the creative impulse has been, +the more retarded and abundant may, perhaps, be the effect. But the +chain which links the great soul to humanity cannot be broken, the work +will make itself manifest--the work of deed, the work of the mind, the +work of love--I do not say to "the public," but to life, to the world. +The creative personality alone is the father of the objective values of +civilisation. + +The great love which led Dante, Goethe and Wagner to the summits of +humanity is in the highest sense positive and creative. And he who +realises that love is not subject to sexual impulse, who knows it as +something purely personal, foreign and even hostile to the genus, must +admit that it is one of the very highest of values. A contrary ethic is +sterile, Indian, unproductive, not European. I am well aware that +Weininger did not explicitly draw this conclusion; but he rejects +spiritual love because it endows the lover with new capacities, the +capacities of growth and perfection, and he is therefore in the last +resort a representative of philosophic nihilism. + + +_(c) Dante and Goethe_ + +The worship of woman found its climax in Dante. Through the work of his +youth, the _Vita Nuova_ and his masterpiece, _The Divine Comedy_, we can +trace step by step the stages of the road, beginning with a glimpse of a +young girl in Florence, and ending with the incorporation of a woman +into the world-system. We are face to face with an extraordinary process +of evolution. The young girl he had seen a few times, and who died in +her youth, goes on growing and developing in his soul, until, at last, +in him the will to raise woman above time into eternity, the will to +make her a member of the divine system, reaches its full realisation. +What had been begun by the troubadours and fully comprehended by the +poets of the _sweet new style_, reached completion in Dante, and, was +henceforth an eternal value for all humanity. + +We see that the later troubadours were inclined to blend the lady of +their heart with the universal Lady of Heaven; the need of deifying the +loved woman was at the root of many dubious growths, and possibly these +early poets were also to some extent influenced by their dread of the +Inquisition (which never gained much importance in Italy). The new poets +deepened this feeling, stripped it of all externalities, and appeared +before the adored simply as lovers. They did not require the dogmatic +support of the Church, their own feeling was sufficient guarantee. +Dante, moreover, was possessed by a craving for an absolutely perfect +and consistent world-system, and had, besides, the power to build it up +and people it with sublime intelligences. And in this system, the crown +and perfection of the mediaeval-Catholic conception of the universe, he +assigned to the love of his youth a high and permanent place by the side +of the deities. Dante thus raised his individual feeling to a universal +dogma, and enriched the Catholic heaven by his personal love. What for +two hundred years had been a dream and a desire, had become a matter of +faith and truth. Now, and not until now, love and religion were one; the +love of a woman had been included in the system of eternal verities, and +had become identical with the love of immortality. "Love which moves the +sun and all the stars" was acknowledged as a fundamental feeling. The +anchoring of the subjective in the eternal was achieved in this +metaphysical setting: the deification of the beloved; and no greater +gift was ever vouchsafed to man than the creation of metaphysically true +beings and values. All that had been done before had merely prepared the +ground for this great deed: the enshrinement of the beloved in the heart +of the divine secrets. + +The _Vita Nuova_, which is at once a glorified historical record and the +greatest testimony of metaphysical love, emphasises from the outset the +inspiring, purifying influence emanating from the beloved; Beatrice is +"the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtue." "When I saw her +coming towards me and could hope for her salutation, the world held no +enemy for me, yea, I was filled with the fire of brotherly love to such +an extent, that I was ready to forgive anybody who had ever offended me. +And whoever had begged me for a gift, I should have replied: Love! and +my face would have been full of humility." Even before his love had been +translated to the world beyond, he portrayed spiritual love as hardly +any other poet before or after him. The women of Florence ask Dante: +"Why doest thou love this lady, seeing that thou canst not even bear her +presence? Tell us, for the end of such love must be incomprehensible to +men." And he replies: "Ladies, the end and aim of my love is but the +salutation of that lady; therein I find that beatitude which is the goal +of my desire. And now that it has pleased her to deny me her salutation, +my whole happiness is contained in that which can never perish." And the +women: "Tell us, then, wherein lies such happiness?" "In the words that +praise my lady" (that is to say in the emotion which is an end in itself +and in its artistic expression). The lover never exchanged a word with +her; had he done so, attempting to establish a reciprocal relationship, +Beatrice, bereft of his idealising love, would have had to descend from +her pedestal and show herself a girl like all the rest. Not until after +her deification has become an established fact, does Beatrice (in the +beginning of the _Divine Comedy_) remember her lover and come to save +him. In one of his poems Dante says that not every woman could inspire +such a love, but only a woman of peculiar nobility of character. It is +very apparent that Dante, at first, was not sure of himself, and that he +only gradually discovered the new consciousness which was stirring his +soul; with every chapter the beloved recedes to a greater distance and +becomes more sacred to him. + +It is quite in keeping with all this that our knowledge of this girl of +eighteen is very vague and uncertain. Some of Dante's commentators +believe her to have been a figment of his brain, a woman who never +lived, or an allegory of wisdom, virtue, the Church, theology, etc. But +at the death of her father Beatrice again behaves like any other earthly +maiden. There is a grain of truth in every one of these theories, for +Dante was a great scholastic as well as a great poet, and in more +advanced years he felt a need somehow to connect the love of his youth +with the system of the Church; this could be done in an allegorical way +without being inwardly untruthful. + +Vague forces, which the lover himself realises as mysterious, run high +in the _Vita Nuova_ and in the poems; the lover has hallucinations in +sleep and sickness. In the third canzone Dante speaks of the +impossibility of comprehending what gave him a glimpse of the nature of +his mistress. It was a foreboding of new and great things, struggling +slowly and gradually to take shape, for the creation of a world-system, +one of whose supporting pillars was personal love of an individual, was +an unprecedented achievement. "When she speaks a spirit inclines from +heaven." The angels implore God to call this "miracle" into their midst, +but God wills that they shall have patience until the "Hope of the +Blessed" appears. + + Love says of her can there be mortal thing + At once adorned so richly and so pure? + Then looks on her and silently affirms + That heaven designed in her a creature new. + + (_Transl. by_ C. LYELL.) + +Again and again recurs the motif of her beauty before which the world +must fall prostrate. In a sonnet not included in the _Vita Nuova_ he +says: + + In heaven itself that lady had her birth, + I think, and is with us for our behoof; + Blessed are they who meet her on the earth. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +The lover has a foreboding of the fate awaiting him: "I have set my feet +into that phase of life from whence there is no return." He divines the +sorrow to which love has predestined him. But others, too, divining that +this man "expects more, perhaps, of love than others," ask him to +explain to them the essence of love, and he answers them with the famous +sonnet: + + _Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa_ + (Love and the gentle heart are but one thing.) + +The death of Beatrice is accompanied by the same phenomena as was the +death of Christ: the sun lost its brilliance, stars appeared in the +sky, birds fell to the ground, dead, the earth trembled; God visibly +intervened in the course of nature. + + For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead + Such an exceeding glory went up hence, + That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire, + Until a sweet desire + Entered Him for that lovely excellence, + So that He bade her to Himself aspire; + Counting this weary and most evil place + Unworthy of a thing so full of grace. + + (_Transl. by_ D.G. ROSSETTI.) + +In the 29th chapter, which we, to-day, do not readily understand, Dante +established by a system of symbolical numbers a connection between +Beatrice and the Trinity; the deification of the beloved had been +achieved in thought and emotion, religion enriched by a new divinity. +"Love, weeping, has filled my heart with new knowledge," he says, at the +conclusion of the work of his youth. I repeat what I have already said +in another place, and supported by passages from the _Divine Comedy_: It +was never Dante's intention to write fictitious poems in our meaning of +the term, but at every hour of his life he was convinced that he was +proclaiming the pure truth; he knew himself to be the chosen vehicle for +the interpretation of the eternal system of the world. + +At the conclusion of the _Vita Nuova_, Beatrice is a divine being, +devoid of all emotion--enthroned in Heaven; in the _Comedy_ she becomes +her lover's saviour and redeemer, and through him a helper of all +humanity. The love of the youth had found no response in the heart of +the Florentine maiden, but the soul of the glorified woman was inspired +by love of him. She trembles for him, and when Mary's messenger +admonishes her: "Why doest thou not help him who has loved thee so +much?" she sends Virgil to him as a guide and finally herself leads her +redeemed lover to God. Now she responds to his love; she has even wept +for him. This ultimately fulfilled, but always chastely hidden longing +for love in return, gives the woman-worship of Dante a peculiarly noble +charm. At the end of his journey through life he prays to her, who has +again disappeared from his sight, and his last confession is: "Into a +free man thou transform'st a slave." + +Love's greatest miracle has been made manifest in him; it has +transfigured and purified him, and made of the slave of the world and +its desires, a personality--the fundamental motif of love. + +There is a close connection between the metaphysical love of Dante and +Goethe's confession in the last scene of _Faust_, which reveals the +poet's deepest conviction, his final judgment of life. The confessions +of both poets are identical to the smallest detail. The _Divine Comedy_ +represents the journey of humanity through the kingdoms of the world in +a manner unique and representative, applicable alike to all men, in the +sense of the Catholic Middle Ages. The fundamental idea of _Faust_ is +again the desire of man to find the right way through the world. Here +also the journey through life is intended to be typical; it is +undertaken five hundred years later; the scene is laid for the most part +on the surface of the earth, but the ultimate goal of the wayfarer is +Heaven. Hell, instead of being a subterraneous region, is embodied in a +presence, accompanying and tempting man; modern man has no faithful +guide; he must himself seek the way which to the man of the Middle Ages +was clearly indicated in the Bible. The love of his youth (which in the +case of Dante fills a book in itself) is merely an episode at the +beginning of the tragedy--the lover wanders through all the kingdoms of +the world, finally to return home to the beloved. + +The last scene of _Faust_ is an unfolding of metaphysical love into its +inherent multiplicity; its summit is the metaphysical love of woman. All +human striving is determined and crowned by the saving grace of love. +Faust has no longer a specific name; he has dropped everything +subjective, and is briefly styled _a lover_; like Dante, he has become +representative of humanity. The hour of death revives the memory of the +love of his youth, apparently forgotten in the storm and stress of a +crowded life, yet never quite extinguished in the heart of his heart. +Margaret is present and guides him (as Beatrice guided Dante) upward, to +the _Eternal-Feminine_, that is to say, to the metaphysical consummation +of all male yearning for love. "The love from on high" saves Faust as it +has saved Dante. _The blessed boys_ (who, as well as the angels, are +present in both poems) singing: + + Whom ye adore shall ye + See face to face.[2] + +are again referring to the transcendently loving lover. Like Beatrice, +Margaret intercedes for him (intercession for her lover has always been +woman's profoundest prayer) with the Queen of Heaven: + + Incline, oh incline, + All others excelling, + In glory aye dwelling, + Unto my bliss thy glance benign; + The loved one ascending, + His long trouble ending, + Comes back, he is mine! + +These words are more intimate and human than the words of Beatrice, but +fundamentally they mean the same thing. Dante, meeting Beatrice again, +says: + + And o'er my spirit that so long a time + Had from her presence felt no shuddering dread, + Albeit my eyes discovered her not, there moved + A hidden virtue from her, at whose touch + The power of ancient love was strong within me.[3] + +But when he who has said so much beholds her face to face, he is +stricken dumb. + +Beatrice receives Dante from his guide and herself unveils to him the +mysteries of life. Similarly Margaret beseeches the Virgin: + + To guide him, be it given to me + Still dazzles him the new-born day! + +and receives from on high the command which the symbolically burdened +Beatrice knows intuitively: + + Ascend, thine influence feeleth he, + He'll follow on thine upward way. + +As Beatrice approaches, the angels sing: + + Oh! Turn + Thy saintly eyes to this thy faithful one, + Who to behold thee many a wearisome pace + Hath measured. + +And with the fundamental feeling of Dante's _Divine Comedy_ Faust +concludes: + + The ever-womanly + Draws us above. + +The earthly love of his youth is fulfilled in the dream of metaphysical +love, in the dream of a divine woman. The genius creates, at the +conclusion of his life, the fulfilment of all longing. It may sound +paradoxical, but Faust--like Dante and Peer Gynt--unconsciously sought +Margaret in the hurly-burly of the world; not the young girl whom he had +seduced and deserted, but the _Eternal-Feminine_, the purely spiritual +love, which in his youth he divined, but destroyed, bound by the +shackles of desire. To Dante, to whom life and poem were one, as well as +to Goethe-Faust, the memory of first love remained typical of all +genuine, profound feeling; with Dante love and Beatrice are identical. +In the soul of these two men metaphysical love, the longing for the +eternal in woman, which they did not find on earth, gradually awoke to +life. Both place the glorified mistress by the side of another woman, +the Catholic Queen of Heaven. In Dante's, as well as in Goethe's +Paradise two women, a personal one and a universal one, are loved and +adored. The second woman, too, has her exclusive, ecstatic worshipper. +St. Bernard, the _Doctor Marianus_ of Dante, prostrating himself before +her, addresses to her the sublime prayer which begins: + + Oh, Virgin! Mother! Daughter of thy Son! + +and in _Faust_ we meet again the _Doctor Marianus_ burning--as the +representative of the totality of her worshippers--with the "sacred joy +of love" (Dante says + + The Queen of Heaven for whom my soul + Burns with love's rapture) + +and pronouncing the most beautiful prayer to the Madonna which the world +possesses, and which is almost identical with Dante's: + + Virgin, pure from taint of earth, + Mother, we adore thee, + With the Godhead one by birth, + Queen, we bow before thee! + +And, prostrated before her: + + Penitents, her saviour-glance + Gratefully beholding, + To beatitude advance, + Still new pow'rs unfolding! + Thine each better thought shall be, + To thy service given! + Holy Virgin, gracious be, + Mother, Queen of Heaven! + +In the Divine Comedy St. Bernard prays: + + So mighty art thou, Lady, and so great, + That he who grace desireth and comes not + To thee for aidence, fain would have desire + Fly without wings. + +The _Chorus mysticus_ could equally well form the conclusion of the +_Comedy_. The _inadequate_ which to _fulness groweth_, is what the +Provencals already, in their time, realised as _folly_, as a paradox: +the metaphysical love of woman, for ever remaining dream and longing, +always unfulfilled, the eternal-feminine. + +As the _Mater Gloriosa_ appears, Dante exclaims: + + Thenceforward what I saw + Was not for words to speak, nor memory's self + To stand against such outrage on her skill. + +And Goethe: + + In starry wreath is seen + Lofty and tender, + Midmost the heavenly queen, + Known by her splendour. + +Here the "sacred fire of love," metaphysical eroticism, has reached its +absolute climax. The universe is represented by a divine woman, and man, +abandoning himself to her, worships her. Goethe's _Faust_ concludes at +this point, but Dante went further, right into the heart of the eternal +glory of the Deity, there to lose himself. + +I have previously said that the last scene of _Faust_ was the final +unfolding of the manifold blossom of metaphysical eroticism, and I will +proceed to establish my point. Hitherto I have used the term +metaphysical eroticism always in its narrow sense of love of woman. +Henceforth I shall use it in its broader meaning of mystical love in +general, all love that is projected on the transcendental and the +divine. Emotion is the specific domain of humanity, its power, its +essence. And in the profoundest emotion, in love, a connection between +the temporal and the eternal may be divined. Hence the Christian mystery +of mysteries, God giving His Son to the world for love of humanity; God +unable to approach the world other than as a lover--sacrificing Himself +for the sake of love. We cannot conceive the Sublime with any other +principal function than that of love; for love is the deepest and +profoundest emotion of the human heart, and, in accordance with the +first postulate, must therefore be the soul of the universe. On this +point all mystics and all metaphysical ecstatics are agreed; "God is +love" is written in the Gospel of St. John. "Love which moves the sun +and all the stars," stands at the termination of Dante's masterpiece: +and in _Faust_ the _Pater Profundus_ confesses: + + So love, almighty, all-pervading, + Does all things mould, does all sustain. + +He is still wrestling for divine love; he still has to fight against the +temptations of doubt (of thought), + + Oh, God! My troubled thoughts composing, + My needy heart do thou illume! + +But the true enthusiastic lover of the divine, compelled to annihilate +himself so as to become absorbed in God, the lover who no longer knows +the difference between pain and delight, is represented by the _Pater +Ecstaticus_: The condition of rest is foreign to him, ceaselessly moving +up and down, he sings: + + Joy's everlasting fire, + Love's glow of pure desire, + Pang of the seething breast, + Rapture a hallowed guest! + Darts pierce me through and through, + Lances my flesh subdue, + Clubs me to atoms dash, + Lightnings athwart me flash, + That all the worthless may + Pass like a cloud away, + While shineth from afar, + Love's gem, a deathless star! + +These ejaculations completely exhaust the emotional life of the +self-destructive metaphysical erotic--he is conscious of nothing but his +passion of love which eclipses all else. With him the second form of +metaphysical love, the love-death, is reached. Goethe, in creating this +character, must have had in his mind the unique Jacopone da Todi. For +this rapturous love was the keynote of Jacopone's character, his whole +life was one great ecstasy: + + My heart was all to broken, + As prostrate I was lying, + With dear love's fiery token + Swift from the archer flying; + Wounded, with sweet pain soaken, + Peace became war--and dying, + My soul with pain was soaken, + Distraught with throes of love. + + In transports I am dying, + Oh! Love's astounding wonder!-- + For love, his fell spear plying, + Has cleft my heart asunder. + Around the blade are lying + Sharp teeth, my life to sunder, + In rapture I am dying, + Distraught with throes of love. + +And: + + Oh, Love! oh, Love! oh, Jesus, my desire, + Oh, Love! I hold thee clasped in sweet embrace! + Oh, Love! embracing thee, could I expire! + Oh, Love! I'd die to see thee face to face. + Oh, Love! oh, Love! I burn in rapture's fire, + I die, enravished in the soul's embrace. + +The legend has it that the heart of Jacopone broke with the intensity of +love. This would have been a love-death of cosmic grandeur. + +Before Jacopone St. Bernard, in whom all the radiations of metaphysical +eroticism are traceable, was consumed by similar emotions. Some of his +Latin poems very much resemble the poems of his successor: + + Oh, most sweet Jesu, Saviour blest, + My yearning spirit's hope and rest, + To thee mine inmost nature cries, + And seeks thy face with tears and sighs. + + Thou, my heart's joy where'er I rove, + Thou art the perfecting of love; + Thou art my boast--all praise be thine, + Jesu, the world's salvation, mine! + + + Then his embrace, his holy kiss, + The honeycomb were naught to this! + 'Twere bliss fast bound to Christ for aye, + But in these joys is little stay. + + This love with ceaseless ardour burns, + How wondrous sweet no stranger learns; + But tasted once, the enraptured wight, + Is filled with ever new delight. + + Now I behold what most I sought; + Fulfilled at last my longing thought; + Lovesick, my soul to Jesus turns, + And all my heart within me burns. + + (_Transl. by_ T.G. CRIPPEN.) + +We read in his writings: "Blessed and sacred is he to whom it has been +given to experience this in his earthly life; even if he have +experienced it only once, for the space of a fleeting minute. For to +melt away completely, as it were, as if one had ceased to exist, to be +emptied of self, dissolved in holy emotion, has not been given to mortal +life, but is the state of the blessed." + +I shall have to refer to both men in a future chapter, when I shall +examine the degenerate growths of metaphysical eroticism; for the ardour +of their souls was frequently kindled by sexual imaginings; in the case +of emotional mystics it is often difficult to distinguish between +sensual conceptions and the pure love of God (a fact which does not, +however, justify the superficial opinion that all mysticism is diverted +sexuality). + +It is obvious that this love of God is not the original creation of the +lover, as is the deifying love of woman, but the mystic love whose +self-evident object is God or eternity. Jacopone's (and later on +Zinzendorf's) love of Jesus, though projected on a historical +personality, was fundamentally the same thing. The love of God also--and +in this connection I might mention Jacob Boehme, Alphonso da Liguori, +Novalis--is metaphysical eroticism; but I have restricted my subject to +the metaphysical love of woman, and shall not overstep my limits. I will +merely elucidate a little more the last scene of _Faust_. + +_Pater seraphicus_, a title given both to St. Francis and to +Bonaventura--requires but a few words: he, too, praises metaphysical +love, the essence of the supreme spirits. + + Thus the spirits' nature stealing + Through the ether's depths profound; + Love eternal, self-revealing, + Sheds beatitude around. + +But even the _more perfect angels_ cannot free themselves from the +dualism of all things human (body and soul)--an unmistakable confession +of metaphysical dualism: + + Parts them God's love alone, + Their union ending. + +The identity of the last scene of _Faust_, Goethe's masterpiece, and the +conclusion of Dante's _Divine Comedy_, is so obvious that I do not think +any one could deny it. I have pointed out the thought underlying both +works, and could easily advance further proof of their similarity, but I +will keep within the limits of the last scene which contains the +totality of metaphysico-erotic yearning, and I contend that it is very +remarkable that a lifetime after the composition of Margaret, Faust (and +with him Goethe) very old, very wise, and a little cold, having had +love-affairs with demi-goddesses, and having finally renounced the love +of woman, found his mission and his happiness in uninterrupted, +productive activity. He has discovered the final value in work. But the +long-forgotten heaven opens and the love of his youth comes to meet him. +Stripped of everything earthly, a divine being, she still loves him and +shows him the way to salvation, presented under the aspect of the +_Eternal-Feminine_--exactly as in the _Divine Comedy_. There must be a +reason for the uniformity of feeling in the case of the two greatest +subjective poets of Europe (Shakespeare was greater than either, but he +was quite impersonal), for the logical possibility that Goethe imitated +Dante, and borrowed his supreme values from him, cannot be maintained +for a moment. Their mutual characteristic is the longing for +metaphysical love. When these great lovers experienced for the first +time the sensation of love, their hearts were thrown open to the +universe, they had the first powerful experience of eternity, and they +became poets. The first love and the cosmic consciousness of genius were +simultaneously present, they were one in their inmost soul. (With the +philosopher it is a different matter, for to him the love of woman is +not fraught with the same tremendous significance.) This experience of +first love, awakening the consciousness of eternity, remained to them +for all time interwoven with religion and metaphysics--interwoven, that +is to say, with all transcendent longing. And though the aged Faust had +believed it to be buried in the dark night of forgotten things, it was +still alive in his inmost heart, and the dying man's vision of the +Divine took colour and shape from it. + +The source of both great poems was the poet's will to assimilate the +world and recreate it, impregnated with his own soul; the secret motive +powers were the mystic love of eternity and the love of woman which had +outgrown this world and aspired to the next. To Goethe, thirsting to +give a concrete shape to his yearning, God and eternity were too +intangible, too remote and incomprehensible--but the woman he loved with +religio-erotic intensity was familiar to him. The Eternal-Feminine is +thus not fraught with incomprehensibility, but is rather, and this +necessarily, the final conclusion. For this conclusion is a profession +of metaphysical eroticism, that is to say, the _Eternal-Feminine_ in +contradistinction to the _Transitory-Feminine_. Both Dante, the devout +son of the Middle Ages, and Goethe, the champion of modern culture, +demand, in virtue of the inherent right of their genius, the +consummation of their mystic yearning for love in another life, and +achieve the creation of the divine woman. Precisely because Margaret was +nothing but a little provincial, Goethe could sublimate her into a new +being, for the greater the tension between reality and the vision of the +soul, the greater is the task and the more gigantic the creative power +which such a task may develop. It has been said that, in this scene, +Goethe revealed leanings towards Catholicism. I do not pretend to deny +it offhand, but I must insist on these leanings being understood in the +sense of my premises. Goethe took from tradition those elements which +were able to materialise his spiritual life and gave them a new +interpretation. We are justified in believing that he accepted nothing +but what was conformable to his nature; the Madonna represented his +profoundest feeling and, like Dante (I attribute the greatest importance +to this), he created a new deity, moulded in the shape of his first +love, and placed it by the side of the universal Queen of Heaven, the +Madonna of the Catholic Church, transformed by love. + +The emotional life of both poets agrees fundamentally. They differ not +so much in feeling as in thought and in faith. Dante possessed +unshakable faith in the reality of his visions; eternal love in the +shape of Beatrice was awaiting him; his vision was pure, eternal truth. +The vision of Goethe, on the other hand, was poetic longing, tragical, +because the vision of the transcendent came to the modern poet only in +rare hours. Where Dante possessed, Goethe must seek, strive and err. + +The deifying love of woman is, as we have seen, the extreme development +of the second stage, in which sexual impulse and spiritual love are +strictly separated, in which man despises and fights his natural +instinct, or abandons himself to it--which is the same in +principle--while his soul, worshipping love, soars heavenward. This +dualism of feeling corresponds to the persistent dualism of Christianity +and the whole mediaeval period. But as Goethe is frequently looked upon +as a _monist_, my proposition that he was a dualist _in eroticis_ will +possibly be rejected, in spite of the fact that his emotional life is +revealed to us with great lucidity. His first important work, his +_Werther_, which is also one of the most important monuments of +sentimental love, contains the germs of love as we understand it; the +love which is no longer content to look upon sexuality and soul as two +opposed principles, but strives to blend them in the person of the +beloved. I will revert to _Werther_ later on. This third stage, love in +the modern sense, is programmatically established (as it were) in +_Elective Affinities_, but all the rest of the very abundant evidence of +his emotional life exhibits the typically dualistic feeling. Many of his +early poems evidence sexuality pure and simple; in the _Venetian +Epigrams_ and in the _Roman Elegies_ it is even held up as a positive +value. In the third Elegy, for instance, the poet's sensuality is linked +directly to the famous lovers of antiquity, and everything which aspires +beyond it is rejected. In the same way his _West-Eastern Divan_ is +characterised by a gay sensuality with homo-sexual tendencies. + +The sensual quality of Goethe's eroticism was partly spent in his +relationship with Christiane Vulpius. The following passage, which forms +an interesting counterpart to Goethe's famous correspondence with +Charlotte von Stein, is taken from a letter written to Christiane +Vulpius during his absence from home. "The beds everywhere are very +wide, and you would have no reason for complaint, as you sometimes have +at home. Oh, my sweet heart! There is no such happiness on earth as +being together." + +If Christiane represented sensuality, unrelieved by any other feeling, +Frau von Stein represented the most important object of Goethe's craving +for spiritual love. These two liaisons were to some extent +contemporaneous; the _Roman Elegies_ and the famous letters to Charlotte +von Stein were written at the same period. When she reproached him with +his love-affair with Christiane, he replied with consistent dualism: +"And what sort of an affair is it? Whose interests are suffering by it?" +Frau von Stein, his senior by seven years, was thirty-four years old, +and mother of seven children when Goethe first met her. According to +Schiller she "can never have been beautiful," and in a letter to Koerner +the latter says: "They say that their relationship (Goethe's and +Charlotte von Stein's) is absolutely pure and irreproachable." It was a +great mistake ever to regard this relationship as anything but a purely +spiritual one; Goethe never felt any passion for Charlotte; he called +her "his sister," the "guide of his soul"; he told her of his little +love-affairs and was never jealous of her husband. The following are a +few typical passages culled from his letters, arranged chronologically: +"My only love whom I can love without torment!" Then, quite in the +spirit of the _dolce stil nuovo_: "Your soul, in which thousands believe +in order to win happiness," "The purest, truest and most beautiful +relationship which (with the exception of my sister) ever existed +between me and any woman." "The relationship between us is so strange +and sacred, that I strongly felt, on that occasion, that it cannot be +expressed in words, that men cannot realise it." The following passage +written by Goethe when he was thirty, might have been written by +Guinicelli or by Dante: "You appeared to me like the Madonna ascending +into heaven; in vain did the abandoned mourner stretch out his arms, in +vain did his tearful glance plead for a last return--she was absorbed in +the splendour surrounding her, longing only for the crown hovering +above her head." "I long to be purified in triple fire so as to be +worthy of you." He addresses a prayer to her and says: "On my knees I +implore you to complete your work and make a good man of me." "While +writing Tasso, I worshipped you." Charlotte knew intuitively what he +desired of her, and remained silent and passive like the Madonna. Not a +single sensual, or even passionate word, replied to all these +utterances. + +In the course of time the relationship between the lovers became one of +equality; the note of adoration disappeared, and the keynote of his +letters became friendship and familiarity. "Farewell, sweet friend and +beloved, whose love alone makes me happy." In another letter he said +that all the world held no further prize for him, since he had found +everything in her. And just as spiritual love approached more and more +the mean of a familiar friendship, so was his sexuality concentrated on +a single woman, on Christiane, in this connection, too, seeking a mean. +But it is an important point that the fundamental dualistic feeling +remained unchanged. There was no woman in Goethe's life in regard to +whom he arrived at, or even aspired to, the blending of both emotions in +a higher intuition. + +Even before his friendship with Frau von Stein, at the time of his +engagement to Lili Schoenemann, Goethe experienced a spiritual love for +a girl he had never seen. He calls Countess Auguste Stolberg "his +angel," "his only, only maiden," "his golden child," and says: "I have +an intuition that you will save me from great tribulation, and that no +other being on earth could do it." These letters also contain the +significant passage: "Miserable fate which has denied me a happy mean." +And touching the love of his youth, Lotte, Goethe wrote to Kestner: "I +really had no idea that all that was in her, for I always loved her far +too much to observe her." + +The Princess in "Tasso" and "Iphigenia" who delivers Orestes from unrest +and insanity, are modelled on Charlotte. Tasso is unmistakably a +fantastic woman-worshipper, a fact of which Leonore is fully aware: + + Now he exalts her to the starry heavens, + In radiant glory, and before that form + Bows down like angels in the realms above. + Then, stealing after her, through silent fields, + He garlands in his wreath each beauteous flower. + + He loves not us--forgive me what I say-- + His lov'd ideal from the spheres he brings + And does invest it with the name we bear. + He has relinquished passion's fickle sway, + He clings no longer with delusion sweet + To outward form and beauty to atone + For brief excitement by disgust and hate.[4] + +And Tasso says: + + My very knees + Trembled beneath me and my spirit's strength + Was all required to hold myself erect, + And curb the strong desire to throw myself + Prostrate before her. Scarcely could I quell + The giddy rapture. + +The significant avowal addressed by Dante to Beatrice: "Into a free man +thou transform'st a slave," the seal of all great spiritual love, was +repeated by Goethe in his letters to Charlotte, and is again repeated in +Tasso: + + Over my spirit's depths there comes a change; + Relieved from dark perplexity I feel, + Free as a god, and all I owe to you. + +Very interesting is also a remark which Goethe made to Eckermann: "Woman +is a silver vessel in which we men lay golden apples. I did not deduce +my idea of woman from reality, but I was born with it, or I conceived +it--God knows how." These notable words, deliberately pronounced, reveal +Goethe's feeling very clearly; he knows that there is a little +self-deception in his attitude towards woman, but he consciously and +lovingly clings to it. His pronouncements are not contradictions; it is +natural, almost essential, that in the soul of the highly-gifted and +highly-developed representative of a mature civilisation the whole +wealth of human emotions should be revivified. He possesses all +psychical qualities--at least potentially--and one element after the +other regains life and becomes productive. We shall see this with +startling clearness when we come to examine the emotional life of +Richard Wagner. The intimate connection between the individual and the +entire evolutionary process of the race will then become evident. + +It is remarkable that Dante, too, wrote a poem clearly expressive of the +fact that the beloved woman does not actually possess the qualities +ascribed to her, but that she has been endowed with them by the +imagination of her lover. + +I shall discuss the emotional life of only one other poet in detail, and +that one is Michelangelo. For the most part the poets whose emotions +were akin to that of Dante and Goethe were men who created their ideal +woman because reality left them unsatisfied. In passing I will mention +Beethoven, and his touching letter to his "immortal love" ("My angel, my +all, my I!"), whose name, in spite of all the strenuous attempts to +discover it, is to this day not known with any certainty; even if it +should ever be discovered, Beethoven's "immortal love" will yet remain a +figment of his brain, based on a human woman. + +Together with Beethoven, we may notice the other great "old bachelor" +Grillparzer, and his eternal fiancee Kathi Froehlich, and the critical +Hebbel, who at the time of composing "Genovefa" wrote in his diary: +"All earthly love is merely the road to the heavenly love." + + +Before closing this chapter, I must draw attention to a strange fact in +connection with the psychology of races. All nations endowed with fair +mental gifts and a sympathetic understanding of nature, have in the +period of their youth and anthropomorphistic and animistic thought +worshipped light, and its source, the sun, as the supreme deity, the +giver of joy and abundance. All the benevolent deities of the Arians +were celestial beings, all the malevolent divinities spirits of +darkness: Olympian gods and the demons of the netherworld--Aesir and +Giants. To the naive mind of the Indo-Germanic races it appeared a +matter of course that the sun, the conqueror of night and winter, the +fertilizing, life-giving deity, should be worshipped as the active male +principle, and represented as a god, while on the other hand the moon +was usually conceived as a female deity. In primitive Christianity +Christ, as the bringer of light, was worshipped under the symbol of the +sun. Thus we naturally find in the old and new Indo-Germanic languages +the designation of the sun--or the sun-god--of the masculine gender. In +the following words our word _sun_ is easily recognisable: + + Savar and svari (the oldest Indo-Germanic tongue). + svar and surya (Sanscrit; savitar--the sungod). + saval (the oldest European language). + savel (Gracco-Italian). + sol (Latin and related languages). + +In the Germanic languages and in the Prussian-Lithuanian both genders +occur. (Gothic sunnan and Old High-German sunno). _Sol_ in the Norse +Edda is a female deity, and the Anglo-Saxon _sol_ is also feminine. The +transition from the male to the female gender was achieved in the +Middle-High-German language of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and +the German language is the only one in which the word _sun_ is +feminine. As the old Teutonic deities of light were male (Baldur and +Sigurd), this change of gender must seem strange. The Germanic tribes at +all times observed natural phenomena with the greatest attention, +borrowed their ethical symbols from nature and used natural objects to +represent their highest values. The change of gender of the supreme +symbol of divinity, the sun, can only be explained by the fact that in +the period of woman-worship the highest value was no longer felt as male +but as female, that secretly a goddess had usurped the place of a god. +Very likely the minnesingers finally fixed the female gender when it had +become problematical, and worshipped the loved woman under the divine +symbol of "Lady Sun." + +The great erotic, Heinrich of Morungen, says in one of his poems that +his lady is radiant "as the sun at break of day." And also: + + My lady shines into the heart + As through the glass the sun does shine; + Thus the beloved lady mine + Is sweet as May, full of delight, + Unclouded sunshine, golden light. + +Mary, who had been called _Maris Stella_, the morning star, gradually +assumed the symbol of the all-conquering sun. Suso, in one of his poems, +still clinging to the older epithet, makes use of a metaphor +corresponding to the breaking of the sun through clouds. "When the +radiant morning star, Mary, broke through the suffering of thy darkened +heart, it was saluted with gladness and with these words: Greeting, +beautiful, rising morning star, from the fathomless depths of all loving +hearts!" But he also calls Mary: "Thou dazzling mirror of the Eternal +Sun!" And his Biography contains the following beautiful passage: "And +his eyes were opened and he fell on his knees, saluting the rising +morning star, the tender queen of the light of heaven; as the little +birds in the summer time salute the day, so he saluted the luminous +bringer of the eternal day, and he spoke his salutation not +mechanically, but with a sweet low singing of his soul." This is pure +and genuine nature-worship mingled with the worship of Mary. + +So much for Suso. In Goethe's _Faust_, Doctor Marianus prays: + + In thy tent of azure blue, + Queen supremely reigning, + Let me now thy secret view, + Vision high obtaining. + +It is obvious that here the Queen of Heaven and the sun are conceived as +one. Eichendorff makes use of the metaphor: + + The sun is smiling languidly + Like to a woman wondrous sweet. + +The typically un-Teutonic modern poet, Alfred Mombert, on the other +hand, conceives the sun as a youth, and contrary to all custom, calls a +poem: _Der_ Sonnengeist (the sun-spirit). + +The great Italians, also, were not unaware of this change of the sex of +the supreme value; at the conclusion of the _Paradise_ there is a +passage (in St. Bernard's prayer) which points to a connection in +Dante's mind between the sun and the Queen of Heaven: + + "The love that moves the sun in heaven!" + + +_(d) Michelangelo._ + +In Michelangelo we meet the spirit of Plato and the plastic genius of +Greece raised to a higher plane and lit by the peculiar glory of +Christianity--the conception of the soul as an absolute value. +Michelangelo was thrilled by a passionate love of beauty; beauty +absolute, eternal and immutable. He felt profoundly the need of +salvation, and he possessed an unprecedented power of spiritual vision. +In the end, added to all these things, came consuming love for a woman, +love raised to the pitch of self-destruction, an adoration which +entitles us to regard him, next to Dante, as the greatest metaphysical +lover of all times. + +At the court of the Medici at Florence, Ficinio had founded a Platonic +Academy, where Plato's works and the writings of Plotinus--his greatest +pupil--were after two thousand years translated and elucidated. Many +read and a few understood, but only in Michelangelo did the spirit of +Platonic Hellenism revive and become productive; the Platonic ideal of a +purely masculine culture, aesthetically and spiritually perfect, +illumined his soul; once again the unconditional cult of beauty and the +love of the perfect male form, which speaks to us from the _Dialogues_, +quickened an imagination, and boyhood and youth were portrayed in a +manner which has never since been equalled. + +Nearly all Michelangelo's youthful male figures--with the exception, +perhaps, of the gigantic David--deviate from the decidedly masculine and +approach the mean, the human in the abstract; thus they seem to us +imbued with a quality of femininity; they even exhibit decidedly female +characteristics. I have in mind first and foremost the youths depicted +on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (the most soulful adolescent +figures in the world), but also Bacchus, St. John, Adonis and the +figures in the background of the Holy Family at Florence. Cupid and +David Apollo (in the Bargello) are almost hermaphroditic, and even the +Adam, and the unfinished Slaves in the Bobili Gardens exhibit female +characteristics. Without going further into detail I would draw +attention to the breasts and thighs, which positively raise a doubt on +the question of sex. (I am referring to the two youths above the +Erythrean Sybil.) Seen from a distance they create the impression of +female figures, while the youth above Jeremiah is a perfect Hellenic +_ephebos_. On the other hand--with the exception of two of his early +Madonnas and, perhaps, Eve--he has not given us one glorified female +figure; all his women are characterised by something careworn and +unlovely; some of his old women--most strikingly the Cumaic Sybil--are +depicted with absolutely masculine features, masculine figures and +gigantic musculature. His ideal was the Hellenic ideal, was a human form +neither man nor woman; all extremes, but also all peculiarities and +everything personal, were, if not completely suppressed, at any rate +pushed into the background. We regard this ideal, which is alien to our +inherent nature, with a feeling akin to contempt, for the modern ideal +is male and female, but it nevertheless was of great moment in the +obliteration of sex and the accentuation of the purely human. The +Platonic (and also Michelangelo's) love of young men was in its essence +pure love of humanity, love of the perfect human body and the perfect +human soul, whose greatest harmony was achieved in the adolescent. +Moreover, the superior mental endowment of the boy made an intelligent +conversation--so highly appreciated by Platonists and neo-Platonists-- +possible, whereas with a girl a man could only jest. + +Civilisations and individuals inclining to erotic male friendships are +endowed with great plastic talent. Artists and poets whose genius lies +in the direction of the plastic arts rather than in music, frequently +have homo-sexual leanings. A musical talent, however, is as a rule +accompanied by the love of woman. I know of no great musician, or great +lyrical poet, inclined to erotic friendships with men. The simple song +suggests the love of woman, the artificial metre, let us say the Greek +rhythm, the love of man. I am, however, merely pointing out this +connection, without drawing any conclusions. + +The poems addressed by Michelangelo to Tommaso dei Cavalieri breathe a +deep longing for friendship and complete surrender, but above all things +for a return of affection; all barriers between the friends must be +thrown down, "for one soul is living in two bodies." + +These poems are calm and well-balanced, and differ greatly from the rest +of his poetry. + + If each the other love, himself foregoing, + With such delight, such savour and so well + That both to one sole end their wills combine. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +Michelangelo painted "Ganymede" for Tommaso, and even at a ripe old age +he addressed poems to Cechino Bracci, who died at the age of seventeen. + +His contempt of woman, without which the spirit of classical Greece, +too, is unthinkable, formed a parallel to his male friendships. + +In the prime of his life the Platonic element was superseded by the +other great element which stirred his soul so profoundly. Exceeding the +perfection of form of antique statuary, his later works throb with a +spiritual and passionate life quite peculiar to him; an inward fire +seems to consume his ardent figures. They are not creatures of this +earth, a breath of eternity has touched them; they are an embodiment of +the Platonic heritage which accounts all earthly things as symbols of +eternal beauty, fertilised and glorified by a deep mourning over human +destiny and a longing for deliverance. And when his years were already +beginning to decline, Vittoria Colonna came into his life, a semblance +and symbol of divine perfection. The love which took possession of him +transformed his whole life and lifted it into religion. In his +tempestuous soul this first love, coming so late in life, far exceeded +human limits; it became adoration and religious ecstasy. Michelangelo, +who could not tolerate in friendship any other relationship than that of +complete self-surrender and equality, threw himself into the very dust +before his love and debased himself almost to self-destruction. + +His book of poems is filled with an unspeakable longing for the +perfection of earthly beauty and for eternity; and his beloved mistress +is the sole symbol of this metaphysical climax. Earthly beauty is but an +imperfect semblance of the divine beauty, the embodiment of which is his +love. We meet all the familiar motives; he is nothing before her; he is +unworthy of existence; he is like the moon receiving her light from the +sun; love has raised him from his base condition and is teaching him the +futility of all he had hitherto valued. + + Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to think + That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven + Could ever be paid by work so frail as mine. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +And of love he says: + + From loftiest stars shoots down a radiance all their own, + Drawing the soul above, + And such, we say, is love. + + (_Transl. by_ HARFORD.) + +His poems, which would proclaim him a great poet if he were not an even +greater sculptor, breathe an emotion unsurpassed in its intensity. They +reveal to us in an almost unique manner the emotional process which +culminated in the deification of the beloved. If we did not know that +Vittoria Colonna was an historical individual, not much younger than +Michelangelo himself, and (if we are to credit her portrait) a very +plain woman with a large masculine nose, we might be tempted to believe +her to be a mythical personage like Beatrice Portinari, or Margaret in +_Faust_. But the conviction that all true perfection was centred only in +her, now faced his art and threw its terrible shadow over it. + +"Michelangelo conceived love in the Platonic sense," wrote his friend +and biographer, Condivi; but this is only a part of the truth. In the +heart of Michelangelo there took place the tremendous reconciliation +between the Greek cult of beauty and the religion of the beyond; he +blended the finest blossom of Hellenism with the profoundest spirit of +Christianity; he sublimated Plato and Dante into a higher intuition; the +_eroico furore_ of his contemporary, Giordano, had found an embodiment. +The two great rays which illuminated his life: the perfect earthly +beauty to which destiny had called him, and the boundless religious +longing, the last fundamental force of his soul, converged in the +glorified woman. Vittoria appeared to him as the solution of the +world-discord, a solution which he had no right to expect, a miracle. +She was the greatest experience of his great life, an experience which +almost broke him. More than once the thought of Vittoria filled him with +sudden dread. In her he had seen God and the world in one. The powerful +effect of this on so self-reliant a character, a man who had been unable +to find much sympathy with patrons and friends, to whom women had meant +nothing, may easily be imagined. All at once he had found a centre, and +more than that--a solution of all the discords of life, of the eternal +dualism of the earthly and the divine. His love was not the love of a +youth stretching out feelers to the world beyond, but the final creed of +a lonely life which had known nothing but beauty and divinity. With the +passion characteristic of him, he threw himself into this new experience +and made it his fate, flinging world and art aside. Before Vittoria he +ceased to be a sculptor and became a worshipper. + +We realise the great difference between this worship and the worship of +Dante. The latter formed the consciousness of eternity, and became a +poet, early in life. He never doubted the profoundest truth, the +metaphysical importance of his love; but in the case of Michelangelo, +the love of an old man was the last event in a life consumed by +restlessness. The adoration of this mysogynist was almost an act of +despair; not a sweet delivery from doubt, but a source of fresh shocks. +It problematised his whole previous existence and nullified the work of +his life. For before this new experience--perfection, met in the +flesh--art broke down. The greatest of sculptors never made an attempt +to imprison the beauty which had appeared to his soul in marble or in +canvas, deeply convinced that such an achievement was beyond the power +of earthly endeavour. + +Before Vittoria Michelangelo became deeply conscious of his inmost self; +she gave direction to his longing and was its symbol; she was the +perfection for which he had always striven--and he despaired of his art. + + Thy beauty it befell in yonder spheres: + A symbol of salvation, bright'ning heaven + Th' Eternal Artist sent it down to earth; + If it diminish, years succeeding years, + My love will lend it but a greater worth. + Age cannot fade the beauty God has given. + +And the conviction that only the idea of eternal beauty has any value, +and that all earthly things are as nothing before it, became stronger +and more tormenting. One instance from many: + + As heat from fire, from loveliness divine + The mind that worships what recalls the sun, + From whence she sprang, can be divided never. + + (_Transl._ by J.A. SYMONDS.) + +In the same way he realised the futility of earthly love compared to +metaphysical love: + + The one love soars, the other downward tends, + The soul lights this while that the senses stir. + +And: + + The highest beauty only I desire. + +It is extraordinary, however, that even this ecstatic adorer vaguely +suspected that he himself might be the creator of the beauty which he +saw in his mistress. In a sonnet he asks Cupid whether her beauty +really exists, or whether it is a delusion of his senses, and he +receives the reply: + + The beauty thou discernest all is hers; + But grows in radiance as it soars on high. + + (J.A. SYMONDS.) + +It is indescribably tragic to watch Michelangelo slowly despairing of +his own genius and art, and becoming more and more dominated by the +thought of the futility of all earthly things and all earthly beauty. +The religious conception of eternity and transcendent beauty, the _forma +universale_ became his last refuge. After Vittoria's death Michelangelo +said to Condivi: "I have only one regret and that is that I never kissed +Vittoria's brow or lips when she lay dying." More and more he brooded on +sin and salvation, incarnation and crucifixion. The beloved mistress had +become the sole herald of eternal truths. Melancholy and mourning took +possession of his soul with an iron grip; he could conceive of only one +happiness, death closely following on birth. But the thought of death +again was seized and symbolised with the old artistic passion: + + And cleansed by fire, I shall live for ever. + + And as the flames are soaring to the sky, + I, changed and purified, shall soar to heaven. + + Oh, blissful day! When in a single flash + Time slips away into eternity-- + The sun no longer rides across the skies.... + +Michelangelo was conscious of his near kinship with Dante; he +illustrated a copy of the _Divine Comedy_ which, unfortunately, is lost, +and wrote a poem on Dante in which the following lines occur: + + Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains, + Against his exile, coupled with his good, + I'd gladly change the world's inheritage. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +The paintings in the Sistine Chapel, with their materialised thoughts of +destiny, retribution and eternity, originated in a feeling akin to the +feeling underlying the _Divine Comedy_. Both here and there the creation +of celestial and infernal spirits was the outcome of the infinite +longing of the artistic imagination. Both men could spend the human and +creative passions with which their souls were thrilled only on the +supreme and universal. The eternal destiny of man, fate, sin, the +futility of all earthly things, the relationship of the world to God, +love surpassing all human limits and aspiring to the eternal--these are +the common objects over which they brooded. But while it was given to +Dante to create his picture of the world in harmony with his own soul, +and account it a true representation of the world-system; while his +world was a definite place with a beginning and an end, and his +life-work remained in harmony with his own soul, and the universe, +Michelangelo's lacerated soul could find peace only in the ultimate +truth, which filled his heart, and to which he yearned to give plastic +life, only to be unsatisfied after achieving it. George Simmel, in a +profound work, draws our attention to the infinite melancholy which +overshadows all Michelangelo's figures, because his genius aspired to +express the inexpressible. Even the supremest plastic representation of +the passion and longing for the transcendental which thrilled his soul +did not satisfy him. This tragedy is the tragedy of the metaphysical +erotic overflowing its own specific domain. Dante's faith in the +absolute value of his work and in the truth of the consummation of his +love in eternity--which was the sustaining power of his life--remained +unshaken, but Michelangelo lost his faith in his work; art and love +forsook him and withdrew into a transcendental world which he could +divine, but could not grasp. His faith was no blissful certainty; he +knew no more than the dark aspect of things; the imperfection of even +the sublimest, of his art and his love. + +Shakespeare's genius could breathe life into all things human, and he +found satisfaction in doing so. Michelangelo's creative, plastic power +seemed illimitable; he possessed all the gifts an artist could possibly +have, but from year to year his conviction of the futility of all +earthly things grew to a profounder certainty. He had knocked at the +iron gate of humanity with his hammer and his chisel; they had broken +into fragments and sorrow made him dumb. There is a stage in the life of +every genius when he comes to this gate, when he has to show his +credentials and reveal the inmost kernel of his being. Dante attempted +to grasp the transcendental in one gigantic vision, Goethe timidly +shrank back from it. + +In examining the prophets and youths in the Sistine Chapel, or the +chained men in the Louvre, who seem unable to bear existence, and are +therefore "slaves" of the earth; or in contemplating the half-finished +slaves in the Boboli Gardens, who seem almost to burst the stone in +their wild longing for a higher life; or in reading his last sonnets, we +can conceive a vague idea of the deep melancholy darkening the life of +this man, a gloom which was not the melancholy of the individual, but of +all humanity, unable and unwilling to deceive itself further. Can there +be a greater tragedy than the tragedy of this incomparable artist, +looking back at the work of his lifetime with despair? + + For art and wit and passion fade and vanish, + Countless achievements, ever new and great, + Are naught but dross within the sight of heaven. + +To Vasari he sent a sonnet denouncing the artistic passion which +abandons itself completely to art: + + Now know I well that that fond phantasy + Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall + Of earthly art is vain. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +Faith, is to him "the mercy of mercies," for he has never possessed its +deepest conviction. + +But the passion which burned in him remained unquelled to the last: his +soul is torn between love and the thought of death. + + Flames of love + And chill of death are battling in my heart. + +He longed to break away from love and find peace, and he called on death +for delivery, but in vain: + + Burdened with years and full of sinfulness + With evil customs grown inveterate, + Both deaths I dread that both before me wait, + Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less. + + (_Transl. by_ J.A. SYMONDS.) + +And later on he thanks love again for being his deliverer, and not +death. + +Michelangelo poured all his heart into these last sonnets. We see his +solitary and heroic age overshadowed by the thought of death. His whole +soul is wrapped in gloom; art is vanity, love is sorrow, the thought of +the futility of all things frames the portrait of his love with a wreath +of black laurel. He ponders on his life, and comes to the conclusion +that + + Among the many years not one was his. + +This man, the supremest creative genius the world has known, accused +himself of having wasted his life. + +No song of praise ever rose to the Deity from Michelangelo's heart, as +it did at least once or twice during his lifetime from the heart of +Beethoven. He never had one hour of true inward peace. He represents the +metaphysical world-feeling which (in addition to love) is the foundation +of the deification of woman, but it has grown into immensity, and has +been lifted to a higher plane; not only love, but all life is felt as +fragmentary and pointing to a world beyond. If at an earlier stage it +was the love of woman which could not find its consummation on earth, it +is now the whole of our earthly life and all our aspirations which can +only attain to their highest meaning and to final truth in a +metaphysical existence. The tragedy of metaphysical love has deepened +into the supreme tragedy of life. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] The quotations from _Faust_ are from the translation of Anna +Swanwick. + +[3] The quotations from the _Divine Comedy_ are from the translation of +Henry Francis Cary. + +[4] The quotations from Tasso are from the translation of Anna Swanwick. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +PERVERSIONS OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM + +_(a) The Brides of Christ_ + + +Hitherto I have confined myself to the analysis of the emotional life of +man, but there are two other points which must be taken into account. +The first is the question of woman's attitude towards the lofty position +assigned to her by man; the second and more important one is the +question as to whether the women of that period exhibit in their +emotional life any traces of a feeling akin to the deification of their +sex? The reply to the first question is simple enough. Naturally the +adoration and worship of their lovers could not have been anything but +pleasant to women. There is a poem by the talented Provencal Countess +Beatrix de Die, which betrays genuine sorrow at the infidelity of her +friend, and at the same time leaves no doubt that she--and probably a +great many others--took the eulogies showered upon them by the +enraptured poets, literally. Once again woman accepts the position +thrust upon her by man, not this time the position of a drudge, but that +of a perfect and godlike being. Countess Beatrix credits herself with +all the qualities with which the imagination of her worshipper had +endowed her, as if they were unquestionable facts. + + Hence all my songs will be with sadness fraught. + My lover fills my soul with bitter woe, + And yet is all the happiness I know. + My grace and favour all avail me naught. + My sparkling wit, my loveliness supreme, + They cannot hold his love and tender thought, + Of all my lofty worth bereft I seem. + +But far more interesting than this psychological misunderstanding on the +part of the much-lauded sex, is the question as to whether the emotional +life of woman matured anything that can be called a worship of man? The +answer to this is a decided "no." At no time in the history of woman do +we find even the smallest indication of a parallel phenomenon; the +profound and tragic dualism of the Middle Ages--one result of which was +the spiritual love of woman--passed her by without touching her. In the +feminine soul conflict apparently results not in tragedy and +productivity, but in morbidness and hysteria. + +It may be argued that the love of Jesus, which inspired both the nuns of +the Middle Ages and those of a later period, represents a type of +man-worship; but in examining all these more or less famous nuns and +ascetics we find, instead of genuine spirituality, a concealed and often +morbid condition, which in some cases degenerated into hysteria. The +dualistic period, the age of metaphysical love, made no impression upon +the female soul. There can be no doubt that the emotional life of woman, +in strict contrast to the emotional life of man, has had no evolution, +and can therefore have no history. It is unadulterated nature and, in +its way, it is perfect. + +In studying the female mystics, we find an imitation of metaphysical +eroticism sufficiently transparent to be easily recognised, even by the +layman, as belonging to the domain of pathology. These ecstatics were +animated not by a pure, but by an impure spirit. Perverted sensualists, +they believed their hearts to be filled with spiritual love. Contrary to +the striving of the greater number of the men, who raised their love +into heaven so as to keep it pure, and made it one with their religious +aspirations, all the figures and symbols of religion were used by these +women as an outlet and a foil to their sexuality. The loving soul +repairing to the nuptial chamber is the transparent veil of desire +half-concealed by religious conceptions. Women have described similar +situations in metaphors which--for sensuous passion--leave nothing to be +desired, even the famous love-potion of Tristan is not wanting. + +The material is abundant, and I have repeatedly touched upon it in +previous chapters. At the period of great mystical enthusiasm (the +twelfth and thirteenth centuries) this morbid love of God was a sinister +attendant phenomenon of true mysticism. Whole convents were seized by +epidemics of hysteria, the women writhed in convulsions, flogged each +other, sang hymns day and night and had hallucinations--for all of which +the love of God, or the temptation of the devil, were made responsible. + +Among the more notable of these pseudo-mystics are Christine Ebner (the +author of a book entitled, _On the Fullness of Mercy_), and Mary of +Oignies, a passionate worshipper of Christ who mutilated herself in her +ecstasies and who, on her deathbed, still sang: "How beautiful art Thou, +oh, my Lord God!" + +A shining exception among the German nuns of that time was Mechthild of +Magdeburg, a woman of rare gifts. She was a genuine mystic, but she, +too, revelled in fervent, sensuous metaphors, and it would be an +interesting task to separate the two elements in her case; but, having +admitted her genuine mysticism in a previous chapter, I will here +restrict myself to a few quotations which show her from her other side. +Her _Dialogue between Love and the Soul_ abounds in passages like the +following: "Tell my beloved that his chamber is prepared, and that I am +sick with love of him." "The closer the embrace, the sweeter the +kisses." "Then He took the soul into His divine arms, and placing His +fatherly hand on her bosom, He gazed into her face and kissed her right +well." Mechthild, too, was ready to die with love. + +Everyone of the most celebrated Brides of Christ belonged to the Latin +race; they were hysterics, and as such have long been claimed by the +psychopathist. + +The love of Jesus professed by Catherine of Siena (1347-1388), a clever +politician, who was in correspondence with the leading statesmen of her +time, found vent in passages like the following: + +"I desire, then, that you withdraw into the open side of the Son of God, +who is a bottle so full of perfume that even the things which are sinful +become fragrant. There the bride reclines on a bed of fire and blood. +There the secret of the heart of the Son of God is revealed and made +manifest. Oh! Thou overflowing cup, refreshing and intoxicating every +loving and yearning heart." "I long to behold the body of my Lord!" And +straightway the bridegroom appeared to her, opened his side and said to +her: "Now drink as much of my blood as thou desirest." + +But the saint who enjoyed the greatest fame--partly on account of her +frequent portrayal by the plastic arts--was doubtless St. Teresa +(Teresia de Jesus), a Spanish nun (1515-1582). During childhood and +early youth she suffered from serious illnesses, and on one occasion was +even believed to be dead. "Before I felt the presence of God," she says +in her biography, "I experienced for some time a very delightful +sensation, a sensation which I believe one is partly able to produce at +will (!), a pleasure which is neither quite sensuous, nor quite +spiritual, but which comes from God." She describes in her "Life" four +stages of prayer, which gradually lead the soul to God: "There is no joy +to be compared with the joy which the Lord giveth to the soul in its +exile. So great is this delight that frequently it seems that the least +thing would make it forsake the body for ever." "When the soul seeks God +in this way," the saint feels with supreme delight her strength ebbing +away and a trance stealing over her until, devoid of breath and all +physical strength she can only move her hand with great pain. The +delights experienced by her are described in great detail and very +sensuous language; hysterical conditions, such as painful convulsions, +and hallucinations, are represented as religious phenomena. "It is +dreadful what one has to suffer from confessors who do not understand +these things," she says in one of her writings with deep regret. + +St. Teresa relates her life with the well-known long-winded +self-complacency of the hysterical subject. She frequently had visions +of Jesus, and again and again she emphasised the beauty of his hands. +"Standing by my side, he said to me: 'I have come to thee, my daughter, +I am here; it is I; show me thy hands.' And it seemed to me that he took +my hands in his, and laid them in his side. 'Behold my wound,' he said, +'thou art not separated from me; bear this brief exile on earth....'" +etc. + +On one occasion she had a vision of an angel whom she describes as +follows: "He was not tall but small, very beautiful, his face so radiant +that he seemed to be one of the highest angels, who are, I believe, all +fire ... in his hand he held a golden spear, at the point of which was a +little flame; he appeared to thrust this spear into my heart again and +again; it penetrated my entrails, and as he drew it out he seemed to +draw them out also, and leave me on fire with a great love of God. The +pain was so intense that I could not but sigh deeply; yet so surpassing +was the sweetness of this pain that it made me wish never to be without +it. It is not physical, but spiritual pain, although the body often +suffers greatly from it. The caressing love between God and the soul is +so sweet that I implore Him of His mercy to let all those experience it +who believe that I am lying." + +The treatise _Thoughts of the Love of God on some Words of the Song of +Songs_ is crowded with purely sensuous passages. In accordance with the +general custom, she interprets this naively sensual Semitic poem +allegorically, becomes tremendously excited in meditating on the kiss of +the beloved and discusses the question of what the soul should do to +"satisfy so sweet a bridegroom." + +In the pamphlet _The Fortress of the Soul and its Seven Dwellings_, St. +Teresa describes similar states of mind: "The bridegroom commands the +doors of the dwellings to be closed and also the gates of the fortress +and its surrounding walls. In freeing the soul from the body, he stops +the body's breathing so that, even if the other senses are not quite +deadened, speech is impossible. At other times all sensuous perceptions +disappear simultaneously; body and hands grow rigid and it seems as if +the soul had left the body, which is scarcely breathing. This condition +is of short duration. The rigidity passes away to some extent, the body +slowly regains life, the breath comes and goes, only to die away again +and thus endow the soul with greater freedom. But this deep trance does +not endure long." She continues to describe her ecstasies and is careful +to point out the complete fusion of supreme delight and bodily pain. +Perhaps no hysterical subject has ever described her states of mind so +well. Her avowal (made in a letter to Father Rodrigue Alvarez) of her +complete unconsciousness of her body is quite in harmony with those +states of rapture. She wrote a number of spiritual love-songs which are +said to be conspicuous for their ardour and beauty; probably they have +never been translated from the original Spanish. + +Finally there is the famous Madame Guyon (1648-1717), who--in addition +to many other works--wrote a very detailed autobiography. She lived with +her husband, whom she treated with coldness, finding her sole joy in her +spiritual intercourse with God. "I desire only the divine love which +thrills the soul with inexpressible bliss, the love which seems to melt +my whole being." God burns her with His fire and still trembling with +delight, she says to Him: "Oh, Lord! The greatest libertine, if Thou +didst make him experience Thy love as Thou didst make me experience it, +would forswear carnal pleasure and strive only after Thy divine love." +"I was like a person intoxicated with wine or love, unable to think of +anything but my passion," etc. The fact that she sought in this love the +pleasure of the senses is very apparent. + +We are not concerned here with the problem of how far these women may be +regarded as pathological cases; all of them were filled with a vague +feminine desire for self-surrender, which they projected on a celestial +being, either because they did not come into contact with a suitable +terrestrial object, or because the impulse was abnormal from the +beginning. But their spiritual love never rose above empty +sentimentality and hysterical rapture. All of them, and some of them +were highly gifted, were thrilled with the love of Jesus, they had +visions of the "sweet wounds of the Saviour," and so on; but their +emotion did not kindle the smallest spark of creative power. The Queen +of Heaven, on the other hand, was a free creation of spiritually loving +poets and monks. + +The women imitated metaphysical love and distorted it; sexual impulse, +arrogantly attempting to reach beyond the earth, reigned in the place of +spiritual, deifying love. + +I have included these phenomena not for their own sakes, but to indicate +my boundary-line, for very frequently these women are cited as genuine +mystics. Even Schopenhauer mentions these "saints" in one breath with +German mystics and Indian philosophers; he calls Madame Guyon "a great +and beautiful soul whose memory I venerate." And yet there can be no +doubt that it is not the fictitious object of love which is conclusive, +but the emotion of the lover: the sensualist can approach God and the +Virgin with inflamed senses, but to the lover every woman is divine. + +The result of this chapter is as far as our investigation is concerned, +negative. The deifying love of man has no parallel phenomenon in the +emotional life of woman. + + +(_b_) SEXUAL MYSTICS. + +Sexual mysticism is a contradiction in itself, because true mysticism +has nothing whatever to do with sexuality. But frequently suppressed +sexuality, secretly luxuriating, takes possession of the whole soul, and +a religious construction is put on the results. The sexually excited +subject attributes religious motives to his ecstasy. I have no +hesitation in asserting that the majority of these ecstasies--especially +in the case of women--are rooted in sexuality, and that this so-called +mysticism is nothing but a deviation or wrong interpretation of the +sexual impulse. The same thing applies to the flagellants of the +declining Middle Ages, and some Protestant sects of modernity. The +raptures of St. Teresa and Madame Guyon, also, belong to this category, +however much the fact may be concealed by pseudo-religious conceptions. +I have no doubt that Eastern mysticism, too, grew up on a sexual +foundation, but (as I have done all along) I will limit my subject to +the civilisation of Europe. + +This counterfeit mysticism, fed from dubious sources and calling itself +love of God, taints the pure intuitions of some of the genuine mystics +and metaphysical erotics; they were not always able to steer clear of +spurious outgrowths. (Here, too, the psychological naivete of mediaeval +times must to some extent be held responsible.) Conspicuous amongst +these is St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who in his _Sermones in Canticum_ +took the "Song of Songs" as a base for mystically-sexual imaginings. + +There is nothing really new in this direction. But I will cite a few +stanzas written by St. Bernard which might equally well have come from +one of the amorous nuns: + + TO THE SIDE-WOUND OF CHRIST. + + Lord, with my mouth I touch and worship Thee, + With all the strength I have I cling to Thee, + With all my love I plunge my heart in Thee, + My very life blood would I draw from Thee, + Oh, Jesus! Jesus! Draw me unto Thee! + + How sweet Thy savour is! Who tastes of Thee, + Oh, Jesus Christ, can relish naught but Thee! + Who tastes Thy living sweetness lives by Thee; + All else is void; the soul must die for Thee, + So faints my heart--so would I die for Thee! + + (_Transl. by_ EMILY MARY SHAPCOTE.) + +The greatest religious poet of all times after St. Bernard was Jacopone +da Todi, who also, though rarely, revelled in fervid utterances. The +Latin hymn, _Stabat Mater Speciosa_, ascribed to him, is spurious. I +quote a translation taken from the Rosary of the B.V.M. + + Other Virgins far transcending, + Virgin, be not thou unbending, + To thy humble suppliant's suit. + + Grant me then, to thee united, + By the love of Christ excited, + Here to sing my jubilee. + +But he is undoubtedly the author of the following stanzas: + + Soaring upwards love-enkindled, + Does the soul rejoice, afire + In her glad triumphant flight. + Earthly cares to naught have dwindled, + Love's sweet footfall's drawing nigh her + To espouse his heart's delight. + All transformed and naked quite, + Laughing low, with joy imbued, + Pure, and like a snake renewed, + Love divine will ever tend her. + +But poems like the following undoubtedly originated in a truly religious +and pure sentiment: + + Enwrapt in love thine arms Him fast enfolding, + So closely clasp Him that they loose Him never; + And in thy heart His sacred image holding, + Far from the path of sin thou'lt journey ever. + His death in twain shall blast thy callous heart + As once the solid rock He rent apart. + +The most distinguished among the fervid lovers of God of later times +were the saints Jean de la Croix, Alfonso da Liguori, and Francois de +Sales. The _Tract of the Love of God_, written by Francois de Sales, +surpasses everything ever achieved in this direction. + +I will not dilate further on this barren aspect of emotionalism so +easily traceable through the later centuries in many a Catholic and +Protestant sentimentalist, but will conclude this chapter with a brief +discussion of Novalis. If I mention this poet in this connexion it is +not because I desire to depreciate his genius, but because, possessing +as he did, in a rare degree, depth of feeling and power of expression, +he is an important witness of an unusual type. True, here and there his +poems are reminiscent of Jacopone, but he is not sufficiently ingenuous, +and is altogether too morbid to be classed with that ardent fanatic. He +shares with Jacopone and other poets the yearning to grasp +transcendental things with the senses, to approach the Deity with a love +which cannot be called anything but sensuous. Novalis' _Hymns to the +Night_ are the most magnificent example of this perfect interpenetration +of sensuous and transcendental love, and at the same time represent a +complete fusion of the love he bore to his fiancee, who died young, and +the worship of Mary. Night has opened _infinite eyes_ in us, and we +behold the secret of love unfolding itself in the heart of this poet, at +once unique and pathetic, lofty and morbid. The whole universe he +conceives as a female being for whose embrace he is longing. It is a new +emotion: neither the chaste worship of the Madonna, nor the +sexually-mystic striving to embrace with the soul. The night gives birth +to a foreboding which excites and soothes all vague desires. The lover +thus soliloquises of the night: + + In infinite space. + Thou'dst dissolve, + If it held thee not, + If it bound thee not, + And thrilled thee, + That afire + Thou begettest the world. + Verily before thou art I was, + With my sex + The mother sent me + To live in thy world, + And to hallow it + With love. + +Here the ancient, mystical longing to become one with God is conceived +under the symbol of the night. (A symbol which we shall meet again, +magnified, in Wagner's _Tristan_.) + + Lo! Love has burst its prison. + No parting now shall be, + And life's full tide has risen + Like to a boundless sea. + One night of love supernal, + Only one golden song, + And the face of the Eternal + To light our path along. + +In addition, Novalis was a perfect woman-worshipper. He loved the Middle +Ages and Catholicism. "The reformation killed Christianity; henceforth +Christianity has ceased to exist." "Catholicism preached nothing but +love for the holy, beautiful Lady of Christianity, who, endowed with +divine virtue, was able to deliver all loyal hearts from the most +terrible dangers." He wrote hymns to Mary in the style of the pietists, +emphasising more especially the principle of motherliness: + + Oh, Mary! At thy altar + A thousand hearts lie prone, + In this drear life of shadows + They yearn for thee alone. + All hoping to recover + From life's distress and smart, + If thou, oh holy Mother, + Wilt take them to thy heart. + +He idolised his fiancee, who died young. "Her memory shall be my better +self, a sacred image in my heart before which a sanctuary lamp is ever +burning, and which will save me from the temptations of the Evil One." +And through the mouth of Heinrich of Ofterdingen he proclaims: "My +beloved is the abbreviation of the universe; the universe is the +elongation of my beloved." "Heaven has given you to me to worship. I +adore you, you are a saint, you are divine glory, you are eternal life!" + +This sentimental worship of woman, combined with an all-transcending +insatiable sensuousness, produced the peculiar sexually-mystic +world-feeling which is so characteristic of him. Night deeply moves his +soul, longing, the memory of the beloved woman, adoration for the +Virgin, his fantastic conception of an incarnated universe are fused +into one great emotion: + + Praise to the Queen of the World! + The lofty herald + Of the sacred world. + The patroness + Of rapturous love! + Thou art coming, beloved-- + Night has descended-- + My soul is ravished-- + Over is this earthly journey + And thou art mine again. + I gaze into thy dark, deep eyes, + And see naught but love and happiness. + We sink down on the altar of the night, + The soft couch-- + The veil falls, + And kindled by the rapturous embrace, + Glows the pure fire + Of the sweet sacrifice. + +The climax and unique example of sensuousness, unsurpassed for its +symbols of the physical embrace, is the hymn: "Few know the Secret of +Love." It is too long to give in full. The following are a few stanzas: + + Would that the ocean + Blushed! + And in fragrant flesh + Melted the rock! + Infinite is the sweet repast, + Never satisfied is love; + Nor close, nor fast enough + Can it hold the beloved. + By ever more tender lips + Transformed, the past ecstasy + Grows closer, more intimate. + Rapturous love + Thrills the soul; + Hungrier and thirstier + Grows the heart. + And thus the transports of love + Endure for ever. + +Here the remotest limit has been reached--sensuousness seems to flow +into eternity, voluptuousness would shatter the world to pieces and +create a new relationship of things. Before this poem all ecstasies of +sensuousness masquerading as cosmic emotion are dull and timid. The +transcendent symbols of Catholicism are used to guide the insatiable +sensuous imagination to metaphysics. "Who can say that he understands +the nature of blood?" Novalis may ask this question. It is truly blood, +human blood, longing to gush forth and pulsate through the body of the +universe. + + In time to come all will be body + One body; + In celestial blood, + Float the enraptured twain. + +The human blood has become _celestial blood_; the voluptuousness of man, +the voluptuousness of the world, and because the whole world is one +body, it needs no duality; sexuality which has become a cosmic law rules +over humanity, God, Christ and the universe. This hymn is the +immortalisation of voluptuousness. If the love-death is the +immortalisation of love unable to find satisfaction on earth, so its +counterpart, cosmic sensuousness is, in the last sense, orientalism. +Only a genius could invent a new, symbolic language to express feelings +so alien to the European. Earthly sensuality did not satisfy Novalis, +voluptuousness detached from man, voluptuousness in itself, was his +dream and his religion--the supremest creation ever achieved by +sexuality intensified into a cosmic emotion. + +I think that I have now made clear the fact that the emotional life of +man is rooted in two elements, completely distinct from the beginning: +the sexual impulse and personal love. It is in studying the love of the +transcendental, that culminating point of so many feelings springing +from various sources, that the inherent contrast between the two +fundamental principles becomes most apparent; and that we realise why +they have always been intermingled both in theory and in reality. + +We have last examined the attempt of sexuality to possess itself of the +whole universe; we will now turn our attention to the true union of both +erotic elements. This union occurred at the time when Goethe and Novalis +were bringing spiritual love and cosmic sensuousness to their highest +summit. + + + + +THE THIRD STAGE + +(The Unity of Sexual Impulse and Love) + +CHAPTER I. + +THE LONGING FOR THE SYNTHESIS. + + +Humanity inherited the pairing-instinct from the animal-world; but as +differentiation progressed, this instinct tended to restrict itself to a +few individuals--sometimes even to a single representative only--of the +other sex. In the beginning of the twelfth century a new and +unprecedented emotion--spiritual love of man for woman based on +personality--made its appearance, and until modern times the two +fundamental erotic principles existed side by side without inner +relationship. Sexuality with its various manifestations has existed from +the beginning; the ultimate object of sexual intercourse is pleasure; +but here and there, and parallel with sexual pleasure, there have been, +in varying degrees of intensity, instances of spiritual love. In the +second half of the eighteenth century there appeared--timidly at first, +but gradually gaining in strength and determination--a tendency to find +the sole course of every erotic emotion in the personality of the +beloved, a longing no longer to dissociate sexual impulse and spiritual +love, but to blend them in a harmonious whole. Personality should knit +body and soul together in a higher synthesis. The first signs of this +longing became apparent in the period of the French revolution; (we find +traces of it in the works of Rousseau and in Goethe's _Werther_); it was +developed by the romanticists and represents the typical form of modern +love with all its incompleteness and inexhausted possibilities. The +achievement of this eagerly desired unity, which would be synonymous +with the victory of personality over the limitations of body and soul, +is the great problem of modern time in the domain of eroticism. The +characteristic of this third stage of eroticism is the complete triumph +of love over pleasure, the neutralisation of the sexual and the +generative by the spiritual and the personal. The physical and spiritual +unity of the lovers has become so much supreme erotic reality, that the +line of demarcation between soul and senses is completely obliterated. +In extreme cases--which are not at all rare--the bodily union is not +realised as anything distinct, specifically pleasurable; it does not +occupy a prominent position in the complex of love; sensuous pleasure, +the universal inheritance from the animal world, has been vanquished by +personality, the supreme treasure of man. The characteristic of the +first stage was the unquestioned sway of one of the elements of erotic +life, sensual gratification (this stage has, of course, never ceased to +exist), as well as the aesthetic pleasure in the beauty of the human +form. The second stage gave prominence to all those spiritual qualities +which were most appreciated, virtue, purity, kindness, wisdom, etc., +because love rouses and embraces everything in the human soul which is +perfect. In the third stage, sensuous pleasure and spiritual love no +longer exist as separate elements; the personality of the beloved in its +individuality is the only essential, regardless as to whether she be the +bringer of weal or woe, whether she be good or evil, beautiful or plain, +wise or foolish. Personality has--in principle--become the sole, supreme +source of eroticism. In this stage there is no tyranny of man over +woman--as in the sexual stage--no submission of man to woman--as in the +stage of woman-worship; it is the stage of the complete equality of the +sexes, a mutual giving and taking. If sexuality is infinite as matter, +spiritual love eternal as the metaphysical ideal, the synthesis is human +and personal. + +Before the eighteenth century, this new erotic union did not exist as a +phenomenon of civilisation, but occasionally we find it anticipated or +vaguely alluded to. Some of the early German minnesingers (such as +Dietmar von Aist and Kuernberg) sometimes betray, especially when +speaking through the medium of a woman, sentiments prophetic of our +modern sentimental ballads. The following verses by Albrecht of +Johansdorf, express the reciprocity characteristic of modern love: + + When two hearts are so united + That their love can never wane, + Then I ween no man should blight it, + Death alone should part the twain. + +Even more modern in sentiment are the following stanzas: + + This is love's measure: + Two hearts and one pleasure, + Two loves one love, nor more nor less, + And both right full of happiness. + In woe one woe, + And neither from the other go. + +Though Walter von der Vogelweide adopted the contemporaneous conception +of love as the source of everything good and noble ("Tell me what is +Love?") he never quite accepted it: + + Love is the ecstasy of two fond hearts, + If both share equally, then love is there. + +More ancient evidence even is the definition of marriage by the +scholastic Hugo of St. Victor, who had leanings towards mysticism: +"Marriage is the friendship between man and woman," he says. + +My knowledge of the subject cannot, of course, be unexceptional, but I +do not believe that personal love of the third stage, that is, the +blending of both erotic elements, was quite definitely expressed before +the second half of the eighteenth century. We may be justified in +maintaining that the tension between sexuality and spiritual love had +been slackening in the course of the centuries, that sexuality was +conceived as less diabolical, and love as less celestial than +heretofore; but the principle had remained unchanged. Only the female +portraits of Leonardo da Vinci are deserving of special mention; the +great artist was possibly the first who artistically divined, if he did +not achieve, the synthesis. The exceptional position always granted to +his women--particularly to his Mona Lisa--must doubtless be ascribed to +this premonition. We may be certain that Leonardo not only as artist, +but as lover also, was ahead of his time; but he must be regarded as an +isolated instance. The three stages apply to the eroticism of man only. +His emotion soared from brutality to divinity, and then gradually became +human; his feeling alone has a history. The force which seized, moulded +and transformed him, had no influence over woman. Compared to man, she +is to-day what she was at the beginning, pure nature. Her lover has +always been everything to her; never merely a means for the +gratification of the senses, nor, on the other hand, a higher being to +whom she looked up and whom she worshipped with a purely spiritual love; +but at all times he possessed her undivided love, unable in its naive +simplicity to differentiate between body and soul. The higher intuition, +the object of the supreme erotic yearning of man, for the possession of +which he has struggled for centuries, and even to-day does not fully +possess, has always been a matter of course to her. She whose truest +vocation is love, received from nature that which the greatest of men +have striven hard to win and only half succeeded in winning. Man's +profound dualism is alien to her; her greatness--but also her +limitation--lies in the simplicity and infallibility of her instinct, +which has had no evolution and is consequently not liable to produce +atavisms and aberrations. She is hardly conscious of the chasm between +sexual instinct and personal love. Wherever this is not so, we _may_ +find intellectual greatness (as for instance in the case of the Empress +Catherine of Russia), but as a rule we find only morbidness, despondency +and callousness. To the normal woman the phenomena of dualistic +eroticism appear unintelligible, even unwholesome. The unity of love is +a matter of course to her, so that the third stage is practically male +acquiescence to female intuition. + +Even in our time, when so much is said and written about modern woman +and her claims, her feeling is still perfect in itself; compared to the +discord and heterogeneity of man, she represents simplicity and harmony. +Both purely spiritual worship and undifferentiated sexual desire are +exceptions as far as she is concerned and must still be regarded as +abnormal. + +This unbroken, determinative female eroticism may possibly be explained +(as Weininger explains it) by woman's sexuality, which is absolute, and +does not rise above the horizon of distinct consciousness, but +Weininger's dualism is in this direction attempting to value and +standardise something which in its essence is alien to his standard. + +Psycho-physical unity, then, is the basic characteristic of female +eroticism, but the state of affairs in the case of male eroticism is a +very different one. A study of the gradual origin of the erotic elements +will facilitate a better understanding of the relevant phenomena. + +In the case of woman, the primary sexual instinct pervades the whole +being; it has been refined and purified without any great fluctuations +or changes; in the case of man it has always been restricted to certain +regions of his physical and psychical life, and an entirely novel +experience was required before it could win to the final form of +personal love. This prize, in his case, is therefore enhanced by the +fact of being the outcome of a long conflict; the reward of a task still +showing the traces of the struggle and pain of centuries. The truth of +the words "Pleasure is degrading" had been established by experience. + +A few historical instances, illustrating female eroticism, will uphold +my contention. In the remote days of Greek antiquity, we find an example +of undivided wifely love in Alcestis, whose devotion to her husband sent +her to voluntary death in order to lengthen his life. Wifely devotion +accomplished what parental love could not achieve. The _Alcestis_ of +Euripides represents a feeling very familiar to us. Penelope, the +faithful martyr, is a similar instance. + +At the time when spiritual love, accompanied by eccentricities and Latin +treatises, gradually, and amidst heavy conflict, struggled into +existence, the soul of woman was already glowing with the emotion which +we, to-day, realise as love. I have three witnesses to prove this +statement. The _Lais_ of the French poetess Marie de France, based on +Breton and Celtic motifs, are permeated by a sweet sentimentality, very +nearly related to the sentiment of our popular ballads. They tell of +simple feelings, of love and longing and the grief of love. One of her +_lais_ treats the touching story of Lanval and Guinevere, and another an +episode of Tristan and Isolde. + + De Tristan et de la reine, + De leur amour qui tant fut fine, + Dont ils eurent mainte doulour + Puis en moururent en un jour. + +The naive sentiment of these poems forms a delicious contrast to the +contemporaneous mature and subtile art of Provence, and the entire +erudite armoury of love. + +A great baron declared that only the man who could carry his daughter in +his arms to the summit of a certain mountain--an impossible +feat--should win her hand in marriage. No man possessed strength to +carry her farther than half way. But the knight whom she loved secretly +went out into the world, and after years of searching, discovered a +magic potion able to endow him who quaffed it with enormous strength. +Full of joy he returned home and, his beloved in his arms, began the +laborious ascent. Strong and jubilant, he laughed at the potion. But +after a while, feeling his strength ebbing away, the maiden implored +him: "Drink, I beseech thee, beloved!" "My heart is strong, to drink +were waste of time." And again she pleaded: "Drink now, beloved, thy +strength is diminishing fast." But he, eager to win her only by his own +effort, staggered on and reached the summit, only to sink to the ground +and expire. The maiden, throwing herself on his lifeless body, kissed +his eyes and lips and died with him. + +We recognise in this simple tale the new form of love, mutual devotion, +and the thought of the consummation of this love, the _Love-death_, +which was not definitely realised until six hundred years later. It +originated in the Celtic soul, as the worship of woman originated in the +Romanesque (the Teutonic soul shared in the development of both). It was +a dream of the suppressed Celtic race, spending its whole soul in dreams +and producing visions of such depth and beauty that even we of to-day +cannot read them without being profoundly moved. + +Next there are three love-letters written in Latin by a German woman of +the twelfth century. In very touching words she tells her lover that the +love of him can never be torn out of her heart. "I turn to you whom I +hold for ever enclosed in my inmost heart." She promises and claims +faithfulness until death: "Among thousands my heart has chosen you, you +alone can satisfy my longing, and you will never find my love wanting. I +trust myself to you, all my hope is centred in you. I could say a great +deal more," she concludes, "but there is no need of it." And then +follow the charming German stanzas: + + Thou to me and I to thee, + Knit for all eternity. + In my heart art thou imprisoned, + And I threw away the key. + Nevermore canst thou be free. + +In the third letter she drops the formal Latin and addresses him in +intimate, simple German. But the man's replies are clumsy and strange, +and plainly evidence his uncertainty of himself: "You have put a human +head on a horse's neck, and the beautiful female form ends in an ugly +fish's tail." It looks as if a parting were inevitable. + +But the most touching testimony from the Middle Ages is the famous love +story of Abelard and Heloise. We probably possess no older document of +the passionate devotion of a woman, differing in nothing from the +sentiment of the present age, than the letters of Heloise. Abelard +persuaded her to take the veil and repent in a convent the sin of +voluptuousness--but she knows nothing of God--her whole soul is wrapped +up in her lover: "I expect no reward from God, for what I did was not +done for love of Him.... I wanted nothing from you but yourself; I +desired only you, not that which belonged to you; I did not expect +marriage or gifts; I did not seek to gratify my desires and do my will, +but yours, and well you know that I am speaking the truth! The name of +wife may seem sacred and honourable to you, but I prefer to be called +your mistress or even your harlot. The more I degraded myself for your +sake, the more I hoped to find grace in your eyes.... I renounced all +the pleasures of the world to live only for you; I kept nothing for +myself but the desire to belong entirely to you." Abelard's replies are +pious sermons and theological treatises; he thinks of the love of the +past only as _the cursed desires of the flesh_, the snare in which the +devil had caught them, and urges Heloise to thank God that henceforth +they are safe. "My love which entangled both of us in sin," he says in +one of his letters, "deserves not the name of love, for it was naught +but carnal lust. I sought in you the gratification of my sinful +desires," etc. He blessed the savage crime committed on him because it +saved him for ever from the sin of voluptuousness. What Heloise loved +and treasured as her sweetest memory, was to him hell and devil's work. +He wrote to her almost as if in mockery: "What splendid interest does +the talent of your wisdom bear to the Lord day after day! How many +spiritual daughters you have borne to Him! What a terrible loss it would +have been if you had abandoned yourself to the lust of the flesh, had +borne, with travail, a few earthly children, while now, with joy, you +bear a great number of daughters for the kingdom of Heaven. You would +have remained a woman like all the rest, but now you are far exalted +even above men." This correspondence plainly reveals the tragedy of the +lacerated man of the Middle Ages, as compared to the never-varying +woman, emerging perfect from the hands of nature. A long and toilsome +road still stretches out before him; she had reached the goal, without a +struggle, at the outset. How strange is this cry of a mediaeval nun: "It +seems as if the world had grown old, as if all men and all living +creatures had lost their freshness, as if love had grown cold not in +many, but in all hearts." + +What was really the final cause of the hostility to sensuousness +displayed by dualistic mediaeval Christianity? Was it not contained in +eroticism itself? + +This hostility was based on the fact that the world knew as yet only +spiritual love and its antithesis, the sexuality which man shares with +the animals; the only salvation, not merely in the Christian sense, but +from the point of view of every lofty conception of civilisation, lay in +the victory over animalism. The contempt of and the struggle against +the lower form of eroticism animating the dualistic period was +absolutely consistent; asceticism represents the highest form of culture +attainable by that period. (The rejection of spiritual love was an +inconsistency on the part of the clergy.) The principle of personality +was the fundamental principle of Christianity; this is clearly expressed +by the fact that Christianity regarded the soul as the supreme value. +And what is the soul but the consciousness of human personality +conceived naively as substance? In the light of this higher intuition +sensuousness was bound to appear base and degrading. + +It is therefore historically correct, though essentially an error, to +regard Christianity as the religion of asceticism, for the asceticism of +the Middle Ages was nothing but the immature stage of the principle of +personality. Directly spiritual love was no longer in opposition to +sexuality, directly a synthesis had been effected, Christianity should +have drawn the obvious conclusion from its fundamental principle and +acknowledged love, which united the hostile elements. Protestantism did +so, half-heartedly. Luther's vacillating attitude towards sexuality is +typical of this indecision. At heart he could not justify sexuality; he +regarded it, in the same way as did the Fathers of the Church, as an +evil with which one had to make terms. His sanction of marriage was +nothing but a crooked and ill-founded compromise; and as he remained at +the old dualistic standpoint, it could not have been otherwise. But the +moment the new sensuous-supersensuous form of love had come into +existence, it behoved Christianity, as the religion of personality, to +acknowledge it. + +After this digression I return to the period of the inception of the +third stage of love. If I were writing a history of eroticism, I should +now have to describe the rococo period, a period essentially +rationalistic and devoted to pleasure, a period which believed in +nothing but the obvious and understood love only in the sense of sensual +pleasure. If sensuality had hitherto been evil--at least +theoretically--it now became obscene. Stripped of every grand and cosmic +feature, it degenerated into the principal form of amusement. The +eighteenth century, though instructive and interesting to the student of +eroticism, produced nothing new. Under the undisputed sway of France, a +period of sensuality set in, unparalleled by any other epoch in the +history of the race, except, perhaps, the early oriental epoch; even the +gynecocratic family of remote antiquity was openly revived by the ladies +of Paris. Casanova was the sexual hero of the age (as he is to some +extent the hero of our present impotent epoch). Indefatigable in the +pursuit of woman and successful until old age, he was a well-bred +sexualist without subtlety or depth. The Vicomte de Valmont, the hero of +Choderlos de Laclos' famous and realistic novel _Les Liaisons +Dangereuses_, an absolutely cold and cunning seducer, was its god. They +were seconded by the pleasure-loving Ninon de l'Enclos, who was still +desired at the age of eighty. + +This ultra-refinement was followed by the loathing of civilisation and +love of nature expressed by Rousseau, Werther and Hoelderlin; closely +allied to these passions was sentimental love, the direct precursor of +our modern conception of love. Its peculiarity lay in the fact that +although spiritual in its source, it yearned for psycho-physical unity, +and was therefore always slightly discordant. Rousseau was the first +exponent of this romantic nature cult and sentimental love of woman. He +represents the sharp recoil from the frivolity of the _ancien regime_, +and the beginning of the third stage of love. His _Nouvelle Heloise_ +(1759) was probably the first work in which sentimental love found +expression. In Goethe's _Werther_ (1774), which is a faithful portrayal +of the poet's personal feelings, it was represented more powerfully. +Werther's love was purely spiritual at its inception. "Lotte is sacred +to me. All desire is silent in her presence." But in the end he desires +her with unconquerable passion; a dream undeceives him about the nature +of his feelings, and as he clasps her in a passionate embrace he is +conscious of having reached the summit of his longing. This would seem +the goal of modern love, embodying all its previous stages. It is +interesting to find embodiments of the extreme poles in two incidental +characters; one has been driven mad by his adoring love for a woman and +wanders about the fields in November to gather flowers for his queen; +the other is a young peasant who kills his rival in jealous rage. But +Werther himself, steering a middle-course between these two extremes, +walks straight into modern love, which means death to him. + +Both the _New Heloise_ and _Werther_ are, sentimentally, efforts to +reach the synthesis _via_ the soul. Friedrich Schlegel, in his famous +_Lucinda_ (1799), tried the opposite way. He has been savagely attacked +for it by one side and lauded to the skies by the other, and when "the +emancipation of the flesh" became the motto of the day, he was glorified +as a martyr. The philosopher and theologian Schleiermacher saw in +_Lucinda_ a delivery from the tyranny of centuries. "Love has become +whole again and of one piece," he exclaims, joyfully calling the poem "a +vision of a future world God knows how distant." "Love shall come again; +a new life shall unite and animate its broken limbs; it shall rule the +hearts and works of men in freedom and gladness, and supersede the +lifeless phantoms of fictitious virtues." Schleiermacher also voiced the +idea of the synthesis: "And why should we be arrested in this struggle +(_i.e._, between love as the flower of sensuousness and the intellectual +mystical component of love), when in all domains we are striving to +bring the ideas, born by the new development of humanity, into harmony +with the result of the work of past ages?" His _Confidential Letters on +Schlegel's Lucinda_ have made the Protestant pastor Schleiermacher the +philosopher of the third stage of eroticism, as the chaplain Andreas was +the theorist of the second. The third stage gained its first footing +amongst the German romanticists. Women were largely instrumental in +achieving its victory. I will not go into detail but will confine myself +to mentioning in passing the names of Jean Paul, Henrietta Herz, +Brentano, Sophy Mereau, Dorothy Vest, Schelling, Friedrich Gentz. W. von +Humboldt records a conversation which he had in the year of the +Revolution with Schiller. The latter unhesitatingly professed his faith +in the unity of love. "It (the blending of love and sensuality) is +always possible and always there." But Humboldt was diffident, unable +fully to grasp the new conception. "I said that it would sever the most +beautiful, most delicate relationships, that it was too heterogeneous to +admit of coherence; but my principal argument was that in the majority +of cases it was out of the question...." + +There is a document from the year 1779 which contains in its entirety +the modern conception of harmonious love, together with its ecstatic +apotheosis, the love-death, a document which puts the later theorising +romanticists and _Lucinda_ completely in the shade. I am referring to +the only one of Gottfried August Buerger's letters to Molly, which has +been preserved. It contains the following passages: "I cannot describe +to you in words how ardently I embrace you in the spirit. There is in me +such a tumult of life that frequently after an outburst my spirit and +soul are left in such weariness that I seem to be on the point of death. +Every brief calm begets more violent storms. Often in the black darkness +of a stormy, rainy midnight, I long to hasten to you, throw myself into +your arms, sink with you into the infinite ocean of delight and--die. Oh +Love! oh Love! what a strange and wonderful power art thou to hold body +and soul in such unbreakable bonds!... I let my imagination roam through +the whole world, yea, through all the heavens and the Heaven of heavens, +and examine every delight and compare it to you, but by the Eternal God! +there is nothing I desire so ardently as to hold you, sweetest and +heavenliest of all women, in my arms. If I could win you by walking +round the earth, naked and barefoot, through thorns and thistles, over +rocks and snow and ice, and, on the point of death, with the last spark +of life, sink into your arms and draw new life and happiness from your +loving bosom, I should consider that I bought you for a trifle." + +To adduce more historical evidence of modern love would serve no +purpose; in the next chapter I shall discuss its metaphysical +consummation, the love-death. But I will briefly point out the not quite +obvious difference between synthetic love and sexuality projected on a +specific individual. In several of the higher animals the sexual +instinct is to some extent individualised, but nevertheless it is no +more than instinct, seeking a suitable mate for its gratification. All +the well-known theories of "sexual attraction," from Schopenhauer to +Weininger, accounting love as nothing but a mutual supplementing of two +individuals for the purpose of the best possible reproduction of the +species, do not apply to love in the modern sense, but to the sexual +impulse; they completely disregard the individual, and are only aware of +the species; they apprehend individualisation as an instrument in the +service of the race. But genuine personal love is not kindled by +instinct; it is not differentiated sexual impulse; it embraces the +psycho-physical unity of the beloved without being conscious of sexual +desire. It shares with the purely spiritual love the eagerness of man to +raise and glorify the beloved woman, without ulterior motive or desire. +This distinction may be called hair-splitting, and I admit that it is +frequently impossible to make it in practice, but it is important in +principle because it goes back to origins and finds in the metaphysical +climax of the third stage, the love-death, its practical anti-generic +proof. But with all this it is of common occurrence that spiritual and +sensual love are at different times projected on one and the same woman. + +Schopenhauer's instinct of philoprogenitiveness has to-day become an +article of faith with the learned and unlearned. Schopenhauer was the +first, probably, to conceive the idea that love was the consciousness of +the unconscious instincts in the service of the species, and had no +other content or purpose than the will of the species to produce the +best possible offspring. In a chapter of his principal work, entitled +_The Metaphysics of Love_, he essayed to promulgate and prove his theory +in detail. "All love, however ethereal it may pretend to be, is rooted +solely in the sexual instinct; it is nothing more nor less than +specialised, strictly speaking individualised, sexual desire." +Schopenhauer's conception of love does not rise above this specialised +impulse. He calmly ignores all phenomena such as those I have described +because they do not fit his theory. With the exception of his cheap +observation that contrasts attract each other (which is the pith of all +his "truths") he does not adduce the smallest evidence for the truth of +his myth of "the genius of the species spreading his wings over the +coming generation." However much the results of breeders may be +applicable to the human species, they have nothing to do with love, and +the believers in the theory of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness are +silent on the subject of the best and most suitable subject for the +purpose; is it the law-abiding citizen? the restless reformer? or the +artist and thinker? Strange to say, the legend of the instinct of +philoprogenitiveness, intuitively conscious of the right way, is to-day +accepted even by scientists who are in sympathy neither with +Schopenhauer's nor with any other metaphysic. It is taken for granted +that love can only serve the purpose of the species; the fact that this +theory is both metaphysically and scientifically unsound is ignored. For +even leaving the genius of the species out of the question, his +intelligent comprehension of the "composition of the next generation" is +nevertheless devoutly believed in. Even Nietzsche, that +arch-individualist, was completely under the spell of this dogma, as is +proved by many of his utterances, for instance, by the well-known +socialistic definition of marriage as "the will of twain to create that +which is higher than its creators," and also by his theory that man is +not an end in himself but a bridge to something else. Nietzsche's +pronouncement that he has not yet found the woman whom he would like to +be the mother of his children, echoes the philosophy of Schopenhauer, +the superstition of the genius of philoprogenitiveness. The intrinsic +worth of love without any ulterior motive, without a view to pleasure or +to offspring, seems to have been unknown to Nietzsche. Schopenhauer's +hero puts the purport of love not in the actual individual, but in a +conception, and annihilates the value of the individual and the unique. +Every great emotion is an end in itself, and whatever we may read into +it of "purposes" and "expediencies," is an invention, and independent of +the emotion itself. The aim of the purely spiritual love of the second +stage was not propagation, and yet it was an emotion whose loftiness +cannot easily be surpassed. With the deification of woman love reached +far beyond the beloved into infinitude, and the phenomenon of the +love-death renders all the supposed generic purpose of love impossible. +But even if we ignored love altogether and admitted the existence of the +sexual instinct only, its mysterious endeavour in the interest of the +species would still remain pure imagination, and a conception far +inferior to that of the winged god of love. The instinct does not +possess a trace of "discretion," takes no interest in the weal and woe +of humanity, but is utterly selfish, seeking its own gratification and +nothing else. + +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 sexual 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 sexual 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 sexual intercourse as such is base and degrading. But because of +the more or less clear consciousness that sexual 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 establishing the equilibrium between love and sensuousness +has not yet been accomplished. What is so often realised as _the sexual +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 sexual; 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 sexual 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 prostitute, for the latter has made of herself +a means for the gratification of male sexuality, 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 sexuality 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, emancipated +sexuality 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 sexualist represents a +past stage of male eroticism which has been largely overcome, but he is +rarely so completely under the spell of sexuality that he cannot highly +develop other parts of his entity. 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 entities. 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 principal 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 friendship 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 friendship, while on the other hand the man who is not erotic +in the true sense of the word, but merely sexual, has generally a poor +idea of woman and a great appreciation of male friendship. But modern +love does not only seek to combine all human relationships; 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 +constitution, 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 principal erotic types. I have +devoted a special chapter to the seeker of love, or the Don Juan; the +woman-worshipper 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 substitution +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 passion. 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 impassable barrier +becomes apparent. The lovers are two beings and not one indivisible +entity. 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 passionately +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 Japan, 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 God 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 "God 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. + +The thought of the love-death, the will that the world should be +governed by love, is the most unconditional postulate of feeling ever +laid down. For the love-death is the definite and irrevocable victory of +emotion; it is ecstasy as a solution of the world-problem and the +world-process. It is human to regard love and death as antitheses; to +consider them far removed from each other; marriage and funeral are the +poles of social life. The ecstasy of the love-death, however, owing to +its all-transcending claim, unites the two poles. The climax of life +shall also be its end. + +It is here, in the voluntary surrender of life in order to attain a +divined unity, and not in the union of begetting and destroying, that +the frequently assumed connection between love and death is to be found. +Voluptuousness and death are not interlinked, as is so frequently +asserted since Novalis (not on the higher plane of eroticism), but +voluptuousness has immolated itself, has been annihilated in the +love-death. The view that begetting and destroying are related +functions, is based on the supposition that love is bound up with +propagation. This is the fateful error of the modern theory of love, a +rationalistic, metaphysical abstraction, which touches no corresponding +chord in the human soul. To base the relationship of love and death on +an association of becoming and declining is a beautiful idea, but +nothing more. Modern synthetic love produces this relationship in its +metaphysical perfection out of itself; it is foreign alike to pure +sexuality and to spiritual love. (Wherever the desire to destroy is +found hand in hand with sensuality, morbid instincts are at play.) + +It frequently occurs that lovers commit suicide together because +external circumstances prevent their union. This is a step corresponding +to suicide from offended vanity or incurable disease; life has become +unbearable to the individual haunted by a fixed idea, and he throws it +away. But this has nothing whatever to do with the love-death; it is a +purely negative act of despair, whereas the love-death is an altogether +positive act, namely, the will to win to a higher (and to the intellect +inconceivable and paradoxical) metaphysical unity. The love-death +aspires to perform a miracle. It has, possibly, never been realised in +its full greatness; the evidence of the common death of Heinrich von +Kleist and Henrietta Vogel must be rejected. During the last days of his +life Kleist was wrapped up in the idea of their common death, and in a +letter to his cousin, Marie von Kleist, he says: "If you could only +realise how death and love strive to beautify these last moments of my +life with heavenly and earthly roses, you would be content to let me +die. I swear to you I am supremely happy." In the same letter he speaks +of "the most voluptuous of deaths." And yet it was no real love-death, +that is to say, death following as a necessary corollary in order that +love may be consummated. Kleist as well as Henrietta had separately +resolved to commit suicide, and when they--almost accidentally--heard of +this mutual intention, they conceived the idea of the new voluptuousness +of a common death. Love did not play a very great part in this. Kleist +further says in the same letter: "Her resolution to die with me drew me, +I cannot tell you with what unspeakable and irresistible power, into her +arms. Do you remember that I asked you more than once to die with me. +But you always said 'No.'" From this and other passages it is clear that +Kleist would have taken his life in any case, and that he only seized +this specific opportunity to plunge into the ecstasy of a common death. + +The thought of the love-death is often present in the hearts of +individuals who are genuinely in love. We read in Schlegel's _Lucinda_: +"There (in a transcendental life) our longings may perhaps be +satisfied." And in Lenau's letters to Sophy the same thought is more +than once apparent. + +The idea reached perfection and immortality in Wagner's "Tristan and +Isolde." It is Wagner's world-famous deed to have lived through and +embodied this complex of emotion for the first, and so far for the last +time; his lovers are in a superlative degree representative of human +love; they typify the climaxes of human emotion. Wagner has immortalised +the metaphysical form of synthetic love; his importance to synthetic +love surpasses Dante's importance to deification. + +Already in the first act the exchange of love-potion and death-draught +is profoundly significant: both Tristan and Isolde seek death because +they are alarmed by the external obstacles to their love. But the +thought of death and love, the foreboding that their love can find rest +only in the ultimate, in finality, has been in their hearts from the +outset. Together they receive new life from love, and together love +leads them, step by step, to death. In the profoundest sense no exchange +of potions has taken place, but the power of the love-potion has made +them conscious of what was latent in their souls, waiting to burst into +life. At the very moment when Isolde proffers Tristan the death-draught, +the conviction flashes into his soul that she is giving him death +through love: "When thy dear hand the goblet raised, I recognised that +death thou gav'st." And in the same way Isolde: "From golden day I +sought to flee, in darkest night draw thee with me, where my heart +divined the end of deceit, where illusion's haunting dream should fade, +to drink eternal love to thee, joined everlastingly, to death I doom'd +thee." + +The second act leads them further and further into the coils of their +love; they are more and more convinced that death alone is left to them, +step by step they discover the secret of the mystical union--and yet +they are still completely imprisoned within the limits of their +personalities and cannot quite understand the miracle: "How to grasp it, +how to grasp it, this great gladness, far from daylight, far from +sadness, far from parting?" For it is the profoundest secret of the +world which here must be guessed by love--the final unity of two souls +and through it unity with all life. Clearer and clearer and more and +more compelling looms the thought of a common death, until it is grasped +and comprehended; the lovers realise that to be completely one they must +surrender their lives, and that by losing life they can lose nothing +essential. "All death can destroy is that which divides us." Ultimately +Tristan pronounces the final decision, and Isolde repeats it word by +word, follows it step by step like a sleep-walker, so as to make it +quite her own. "Thus should we die no more to part, in endless joy, one +soul, one heart, never waking, never haunted by pale fear, in love +undaunted, each to each united aye, dream of love's eternity." The +grand, artistic symbol for this state of consciousness touches +metaphysic. Wagner introduces night as the visible emblem of an +existence in a world--inconceivable by our senses--beyond the grave, in +contrast to the earthly day, to "the day's deceptive glamour." +(Nietzsche later on adopted this symbol "midnight" as the emblem of +everything lofty.) The lovers who in their day-consciousness believed +that they hated each other, now that they are walking towards eternal +night divine that which is beyond the reach of their separated selves, +beyond all illusion and duality. The duality is outwardly expressed by +their different names, separated and united "by the little word _and_." +All at once the knowledge dawns upon them that great love cannot be +consummated in the day of the world, but that it points to a life +beyond. They have discovered the final meaning of life and the +world--the annihilation of individual life and death through +love--analogous to the last wisdom of the mystic: "To become God." "I +myself am the world." Death is the inevitable corollary of supreme love. +But as they tremblingly yearn for and await the inconceivable, earth +once more stretches out her arms to them, the dream of metaphysical +existence melts slowly away. In the orchestration _phantoms of the day, +dreams of morning_, suppress the new, the divined conception. + +At the opening of the third act the motif for horns and violas gradually +ascending and dying away, expresses the unspeakable dreariness and +senselessness of material life, after its profound meaning, the +re-creation of the world by love, has been lost. This feeling of +absolute senselessness dominates the awakening sleeper; Tristan, +interpreting it in the sense of Schopenhauer as the universal +aimlessness of the world and of life, is merely expressing the doom of +his own longing for the supreme: he has divined and has lost the +loftiest value. Wagner intuitively perceives that sin is a component +part of the supreme sublimation of love and personality; Tristan must +curse himself and the beloved woman because love, as the last +consequence of sin, demands the love-death, which can never find +completion; "The terrible draught myself I have brewed it! A curse on +thee, terrible draught! A curse on him who brewed it!" + +In the music at the end of the third act, which is known by the (not +quite relevant) title of "Isolde's Love-death," Wagner, after previously +expressing by Tristan's last words, "Do I near light?" the inadequacy of +the physical senses--attempts to describe the metaphysical condition of +the unity of love, which to our consciousness can only have the negative +characteristics of the unthinkable and intangible--the unconscious. This +he tried to accomplish artistically by making use of the senses, by +trying to convey in terms of sound, light, scent, what he understood by +this complete immersion in the swirling totality of cosmic life--"_in +des Weltatem's wehendem All_." The essence of this condition is that the +duality of the souls, and finally the multiplicity of the world, is +resolved in a higher unity. But as we are concerned with the emotional +life of the lovers and not with vague metaphysical propositions, we may +say that such a death is not a being dead, destroyed, annihilated, +dispersed, but a being transformed, perfected in love. The amazing +phenomenon of this complex of feeling is the fact that real life has +become unbearable, and that another life is created without the least +regard to possibility or truth; it is as if the emotion of the lovers +were endowed with divine, creative power. + +Those who realise the love-death as a necessity of their inmost being, +resemble the great ecstatic whom earthly life can no longer satisfy, +because he is conscious of a force compelling him to enter into a higher +cosmic existence. His inmost experience is the annihilation of the +individual soul in God; he aspires to a direct pouring of the soul into +the divine love. Those who die in love are directly seeking complete +unity with each other, and only indirectly, through this unity, the +divined annihilation in metaphysical being. The love-death is the +erotic, bi-human form of mystic ecstasy, and could not be evolved until +the highest form of love had been developed. + +Metaphysical eroticism is a product of the spirit of Europe, for it is +linked to personality whose will is the immortalisation of love. +Orientalism neither comprehends nor appreciates this emotion, for it +lacks the foundation of the culture of personality. The Semite, the +Indian and the Japanese experience only the rapture of the senses; and +gratification, restlessly revolving round itself between enjoyment and +exhaustion, is condemned to eternal sterility. All religio-sexual orgies +of which history tells us are so many attempts of sensuality to possess +itself of a higher intuition--vain attempts, because casual intercourse +and the annihilation of the individual can never produce new values. +According to Hegel the immanent sense of everything that happens in the +world is the destiny of the individual to grow from slavery into +freedom; but is it not rather the meaning of increased culture that man +should realise himself as an individual (which is by no means a +contradiction to the first proposition)? Metaphysical eroticism is the +completion of personality in love. Simultaneously with the birth of +personality originated the deification of woman; the destruction of the +most highly evolved personality, the last painful consequence of its +blessed-unblessed nature, gives birth to the conception of the +love-death. Like antique torch-bearing genii the two metaphysical forms +of love stand at the head and the feet of self-conscious man. Here and +there erotic emotion, transcending all limitations, becomes the pathway +leading to the ultimate secrets of life: deification creates a +supernatural female being as the erotic representative of everything +divine. This is a productive act, erotic, artistic and religious at the +same time. It produces out of its own fulness new forces for the service +of higher ideals; it creates a new world of emotion with new contents. + +Simultaneously with the projection of the love of woman into eternity +were sown the seeds of those great things on which the higher spiritual +life of to-day is based. Deification demands shape and individuality +beyond the earthly sphere, in eternity. But from one side it is love, +love without response (unless the lover finds response in and through +artistic expression), the eroticism of the solitary man, and it occurs +as such to this day in rare minds. Woman-worship is the natural and the +highest form of love for the man who does not seek his own perfection in +duality--a reciprocal relationship with another being--but solitarily, +and yet not, as the mystic, shapelessly, but rather in a love definitely +projected on another being. The dream of the perfect woman is the only +erotic dream which reality can never disappoint, for it makes no claim +on reality. Doubtless it is to some extent paradoxical that the +inherently social feeling, anchored in duality, should be experienced +and perfected solitarily, that it should waive all claim to response +and reciprocity, to all appearances the most important elements of love. + +The love-death corresponds more completely to the erotic ideal inasmuch +as it is founded on absolute equality in reciprocity. It finds its +climax not in solitude but in the company of the beloved. The idea of +complete abandonment is revolting to the solitarily loving individual; +the lover whose whole soul turns to the beloved cannot understand the +love of the solitary soul; it appears to him unnatural and cold, perhaps +meaningless and crazy. Woman does not know true solitude, the thought of +deification is foreign to her nature; she attains to the supreme only +with and through man; it is easier to her to give herself to her lover +entirely, and even to follow him into death. But in this connection I am +unable to suppress a doubt as to whether the fundamental emotion of the +mystical world-union is altogether present in woman, whether she really +divines behind her lover--eternity. + +While deification is universally creative, while it is fresh as the +spring and full of faith, the love-death with its gloomy pathos demands +the entire individual and destroys everything but itself. It has no +creative power, for there is nothing beyond it. One may justly maintain +that the love-death realises the mystico-ecstatic religious emotion, +while in the deification of woman the religious need to worship finds +satisfaction. Both are combinations of love and religion, both are +metaphysical eroticism, paradoxical and yet logical conclusions of human +emotion. + +The overwhelming longing which is connected at least with the first +stages of a great love, may be interpreted in another, in a social +sense. Love is the intensest and most direct relationship which can +exist between two beings, and the impossibility of realising its final +longing represents the most genuine tragedy of life among men and women +of the social world. The need which impels two beings to each other +lacks, in this union too, the possibility of complete consummation. And +if the most powerful of all social emotions (and as many believe the +root of all others) suffers from an inner duality, to how much greater +an extent must the less intense feelings which unite individuals share +the same lot! Humanity, wherever it is comprehended profoundly and +spiritually, not economically, carries within itself the germ of its +tragical imperfection. Whatever social relationship we may enter, we +find that it has a flaw, and the more genuine and profound the +relationship, the less dictated by utilitarian considerations (which in +this connection correspond to the element of sensuality in eroticism), +the more painfully does this flaw make itself felt,--whether it be in +friendship, in the relationship of master and man, or in free +companionship. Every relationship between individuals is stricken with +the curse of incompleteness--even love cannot escape this fate. Love +enforces in the deification of woman a transcending of earthly life--and +it throws itself into the last embrace of a common death--that is to +say, it shudderingly admits the impossibility of its consummation. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND LOVE + +_The Seeker of Love and The Slave of Love_ + + +It is obvious that even an equilibrium between sexuality and love cannot +always be established, while a genuine and complete unification is very +unusual and may, perhaps, be called utopian. In the previous chapters I +have dealt with the blending of both elements in the highest form of +eroticism; in the following I will attempt to throw light on some of the +principal phenomena resulting from a defective union of sexuality and +love, phenomena which I am convinced have never been correctly +interpreted. I allude to perversions which are not inherently +pathological, although they are as a rule only observed and described in +their pathological form. + +The fundamental form of so-called sadism may be discovered in an erotic +type which I will call the seeker of love. A lover of this type is +characterised by an unappeasable longing for pure, spiritual love; he +passes from woman to woman in the hope of realising this desire, but +owing to his own material disposition he is unable to do so. Time after +time he succumbs to sexual promptings. Thus groping, frequently quite +unconsciously--for a fictitious being, he hates every woman whose fate +it is to rouse his desire, for each one cheats him out of that which he +seeks. A genuine illusionist, he knows nothing of the woman of flesh and +blood, and continues seeking his ideal, only to be again and again +disappointed. He blames every woman he conquers for what is really his +own insufficiency; he despises her or revenges himself on her, punishes +and ill-treats her; we recognise the true Don Juan and his morbid +caricature, the sadist. But even the most brutal representative of this +type may still be psychologically described as "a man who seeks +spiritual love in woman after woman and, finding only sexuality, +revenges himself on her." Quite a number of men harbour sadistic +feelings for only one woman, and that the one to whom they owe their +great disillusionment. Doubtless many men have almost lost the psychical +roots of their perversions and are completely involved in physical acts. +There is nothing remarkable in this fact; it occurs in every sphere of +human life. The vague instinct of revenge on woman animates also, though +perhaps unconsciously, the pathological sadist. + +There is one thing which the seeker of love and the woman-worshipper +have in common: both seek a higher ideal far beyond the woman of +every-day life; but while the worshipper safeguards the purity of his +feeling by putting the greatest possible distance between him and the +object of his worship (and is therefore never disappointed), the seeker +of love, blinded by the illusion that he has at last found the object of +his quest, draws every woman towards him and again and again discovers +that he is nothing but a sensualist. Every fresh conquest destroys his +dream afresh, and he revenges himself, if he is a Don Juan, by despising +and disgracing the unfortunate victim, and if he is a sadist, by +maltreating her. And yet he never entirely loses his illusion; he craves +for complete satisfaction, and as he is incapable of self-knowledge, he +never abandons the hope of meeting the woman he seeks. He differs very +little from the type represented by Sordello, who loved one woman +spiritually, but regarded all the others from the standpoint of sex. It +is the tragedy of Don Juan to revolt from the low erotic sphere which is +his portion, and where he rules supreme, and for ever to aspire to a +realm from which he is shut out. He is convinced that with the help of a +woman he may redeem himself--and sinks deeper and deeper into the slough +of his own sensuality. He becomes malevolent, cruel and callous; the +pleasure whose slave he is repels him: + + From craving to enjoyment thus I reel, + And in enjoyment languish for desire. + +He is insatiable, but not as the primitive hedonist, whose natural +element is pleasure, but because he again and again mistakes pleasure +for love. He knows only "women," and thus he sins against personality +and the love which is the outcome of personality. + +The opinion that Don Juan is no more than a votary of pleasure is not +worthy of criticism; the famous Casanova, for instance, has nothing in +common with him. Casanova was a sensualist without psychical complexity +and without tragedy. His sole endeavour was to wring the utmost measure +of enjoyment out of life. He knew the woman of reality and did not waste +his time in running after phantoms. In his old age he revelled in the +after-taste and settled down to write his memoirs. Don Juan, on the +contrary, has such a loathing for all the women he betrays, that he +hardly remembers them, and certainly has the strongest disinclination to +evoke their memory. Casanova was an entirely unmetaphysical and +unproblematical nature. His philosophy is clearly expressed in the +preface to his Memoirs: "I always regarded the enjoyment of sensual +pleasures as my principal object; I never knew a more important one." +Casanova, who, strange to say, enjoys such high erotic honours, was +merely an ordinary, very successful man of the world, and is of no +importance to the subject in hand. But even the greater and wilder +Vicomte de Valmont (the hero of the famous novel of Choderlos de Laclos) +is in spite of all his art and _esprit_ and perverse principles no +seeker of love and no Don Juan, but a fop and a braggart, seducing women +in order to boast of his success. He is moreover only a representative +of the bored Upper Ten of the _ancien regime_, and not by any means +unique. + +Thoughtful critics contend that Don Juan was an autocrat, a destroyer, a +criminal nature with satanic tendencies, bent on the enslavement of +women, on their social and moral death; that conquest only, not +enjoyment, was his passion. I do not altogether reject this +interpretation, but it fastens too exclusively on the external and the +obvious, and overlooks the essential. What is the reason of his +preposterous procedure? Is he really actuated by the evil desire to +injure the women he woos? Such a motive may occur occasionally (the +Vicomte de Valmont was so constituted), but it cannot be regarded as the +guiding principle of a life--and above everything its pettiness is the +exact reverse of so great and demoniacal a character as Don Juan. Were +he conqueror in the highest sense, then--ascetic and proud--he would be +content with the mere consciousness of victory. But his whole attitude +belies the idea of a conqueror; he is not in the least interested in the +women to whom he makes love. They are as necessary to him as "the air he +breathes," but they are unable to give him what he seeks. At the moment +of disappointment he abandons them in disgust, innocent of any despotic +desires (which would pre-suppose interest). As far as he is concerned, +women exist only for the purpose of quickening something in his soul. +But his soul remains dead; divine love has no part in him, he cannot be +saved and is doomed to eternal damnation. + +But what is the reason why women cannot resist him? Let us first settle +the point as to why women are attracted to men. I will answer this +question briefly, and though my answer may appear dogmatical, it need +not therefore be wrong. Women know very little of man, but there is one +thing they feel with unfailing certainty, and that is whether their sex +is of great or of small significance to him. (I am only alluding to the +general effect of men on women, not to genuine personal love which is +always incommensurable.) The greater the importance a man attaches to +women, the more readily do they respond to his influence. They are +attracted by his erotic will, not by one or the other of his spiritual +or physical qualities. Women cannot resist a man to whom they mean much, +everything. It is as if they were compelled to throw themselves into the +chasm of his vacuity--every fresh victim with the fond hope of filling +it--but all of them perish. And yet, at the moment of their defeat they +are supremely happy, for they experience the full intensity of his +passion and the boundlessness of his longing. The erotic craving of a +man simply means that women are to him the most important thing in life. +Women instinctively yield to that man who most eagerly desires them. The +coarse sensualist, to whom all women are alike, attracts sensual women, +not exactly because they find in him the satisfaction of their craving, +but because they themselves act on him indiscriminately. But a woman +will adapt herself with the greatest ease to the needs of the +differentiated erotic (for instance, she will become really sentimental +to please the man who prefers sentimental women), for she loves to give +herself to the man who most desires her and as he desires her. + +Don Juan, animated by illimitable erotic yearning, is therefore the +undisputed master of the other sex. He has the power of bestowing +absolute happiness, even if only for a brief hour, because in his +boundless love (which is projected on anything but her) a woman receives +the supreme value. Maybe he would be saved if a woman denied herself to +him--maybe he would cease to be a seeker of love and become a +worshipper, for he could not refuse to believe in the woman who +rejected him; but it is his fate that no woman he woos can resist him, +that all throw themselves into his arms without an exception and without +a struggle. + +Thus the seeker of love, too, though in a restricted sense, may be +regarded as a metaphysical erotic, for he loathes sexuality--his +portion--and yearns for a higher form of love. He shares this attitude +with the slave of love, who is also a sensualist and a would-be lover. +The slave of love imitates the attitude of the worshipper, but he +infallibly sinks into the sexual sphere. What the psychopathist since +Kraft-Ebbing designates as masochism, is the pathological degeneration +of this particular emotion, which is very common and appears in various +forms, but does not seem to me to be at all morbid. Certainly it is +morbid when a man allows himself to be insulted, bound and flogged, but +it is fairly normal when his passionate admiration is roused by an +imperious woman, who passes him by like a queen without even noticing +his abject adoration; when he longs to kneel down before her and kiss +her feet, which in reward would spurn him. Quite normal, too, is the +boyish happiness in serving an admired and adored woman (Kraft-Ebbing +calls this pageism) described so beautifully in Dostoievsky's novel, _A +Young Hero_, and fairly common among troubadours and minnesingers. (I +need only mention Ulrich von Lichtenstein.) There are numerous degrees +of this feeling--we frequently come across it in the novels of +Dostoievsky, Jacobsen, Strindberg, D'Annunzio, and others--but the +essence of it is always contained in the fact that the man, although +yearning to worship the beloved woman, cannot maintain himself in the +sphere of spiritual love, and aspires to direct physical contact. His +attitude, which closely imitates purely spiritual love, cannot be other +than sexual. The blending of love and sexuality together with the +incapacity of effecting a real synthesis, the confusion of value and +pleasure is most clearly shown in the masochist--far more clearly than +in the case of the (rare) seeker of love. The outward modes preferred by +the individual are a matter of indifference; for the most part they are +symbolical acts, indicating the lover's inferiority and the loftiness +and power of his mistress. What is really of importance is the spiritual +attitude which induces him to commit these strange acts, and in these we +find the characteristic attitude of the woman-worshipper: that of the +slave before his queen. The slave of love is a sensualist incapable of +approaching woman in a normally manly, instinctive and natural way, but +requiring the pose of the spiritual worshipper. One might be tempted to +believe that he harboured the secret wish to atone for his incapacity of +feeling a pure love by being degraded and ill-treated. Thus from a human +point of view the slave of love is a higher type than the seeker of +love; all his transgressions, the fault of his morbid disposition, come +home to him; he takes the blame of his sin upon his own shoulders, while +the seeker of love revenges himself on his victims for his own +shortcomings. The seeker of love is by nature polygamous, while the +slave of love is, as a rule, monogamous (and consequently has little +success with the opposite sex). Both aspire to a union of sensual and +spiritual eroticism, but in both cases the union is a failure. All the +repulsive and terrible manifestations of these perversions which have +been recorded, can easily be shown to fit my theory. In psychological +research it is merely a question of selecting the great types from the +mass of phenomena and determining them correctly. + +The so-called _fetichist_, too, whose passion is roused by indifferent +objects which belonged, or might belong, to the beloved, or in fact to +any woman, is a variant of the slave of love. The classical +representative of fetichism is the mediaeval knight who carried a +handkerchief, a glove, or any other article of clothing belonging to his +lady, next to his heart, thus believing himself proof against evil +influences. There we see already spiritual love groping for material +objects in order to gain earthly support; not every man is a Dante, not +every man is capable of keeping his soul free from the taint of this +earthly sphere. But even the "plait-cutter," so well known to the reader +of newspapers, the collector of garters, and similar desperadoes, +require a relic, a fetich which they apparently worship. To the same +category belongs the idolatrous cult which some men, especially +artists--but also madmen--practise with female pictures and statues +(more especially with heads). In this case the fundamental feeling of +the love of beauty, which we know as an essential factor of purely +spiritual eroticism, is made to serve sensual purposes. The desired +illusion of spiritual worship is facilitated, and is protected from +self-revelation, owing to the fact that a painted head rouses in the +normal individual no passion, but inspires him with purely spiritual +sentiments. + +I have briefly touched on this subject because my theory of the two +roots of eroticism permits of a new, and in my opinion plausible, +explanation of erotic perversions; one might even go as far as to say +that the existence of perversions follows as a necessary consequence; +that they must exist because it obviously cannot _always_ be possible to +maintain a harmonious balance of sensuality and love. This chapter is +therefore a necessary supplement to the previous ones in which the +perfection of modern love is dealt with. The seeker of love and the +slave of love are phenomena of dualistic eroticism incapable of +attaining to unity. For this reason they neither existed in antiquity, +nor do we find genuine examples of them in the female sex. All female +perversions closely examined are hysteria--that is to say, want of inner +balance--in various forms; a woman's subjection to the will of a man is +in very many instances a natural symptom, and cannot be regarded as +perverse. And thus we again perceive that the eroticism of woman is more +harmonious and natural than that of the eternally groping and eternally +erring man. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE REVENGE OF SEXUALITY + +_The Demoniacal and the Obscene_ + + +In conclusion I will attempt to elucidate a group of phenomena which +play a part, important though often ignored, in the emotional life of +the present day. They are related to the subject under discussion, +inasmuch as they, too, are the result of a lack of harmony between +sensuousness and love. As long as sensuousness is felt and understood as +a natural element, and one which does not under normal circumstances +enter consciousness as a distinct principle, the emotional sphere which +may be designated as demoniacal-sexual and obscene, does not exist. Not +until sensuousness is confronted by a higher principle, a now solely +acknowledged spiritual-divine principle, will natural life, and +particularly normal sexuality, be stigmatised as low and ungodly, even +as demoniacal. In proportion as the conception of God became more +spiritual and divine, the conception of the devil became more horrible; +the higher the soul soared, the deeper sank the body. This philosophy of +pure spirituality was expressed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in the +following words: "Oh, soul, stamped with the image of God, adorned with +His semblance, espoused to faith, endowed with His spirit, redeemed by +His blood, the compeer of angels, invested with reason--what hast thou +in common with the flesh, for which thou must suffer so much?... And yet +it is thy dearest companion! Behold, there will come a day when it shall +be a miserable, pallid corpse, food for worms! For however beautifully +it may be adorned, yet it is nothing but flesh!" The man of the later +Middle Ages, and especially the cleric, who was completely dominated by +the contrast of the ascetic and the sexual, feared the devil more than +he loved God, and regarded the sensual temptations which beset his +excited, superstitious and eternally unsatisfied imagination as sent by +the devil. The naivete of sensuality had passed away for ever; as +goodness was looked upon as divine and supernatural, nature and natural +instincts were condemned. Man was torn asunder. + +But the devil was not only feared, he was also worshipped. A +devil-worship, the details of which have been little studied, existed +from the tenth to the fourteenth century (when it reached its climax), +side by side with the worship of God. The greater the dread of heresy +and witchcraft, the greater became the number of men who, despairing of +salvation, prostrated themselves before the devil, whom they seemed +unable to escape (a single evil thought was sufficient to doom their +souls to eternal damnation), in the hope that he would at least save +their bodies from the stake and vouchsafe them the pleasures of this +world. Satan promised his worshippers unlimited pleasure; he became the +redeemer of those whom the clergy persecuted. It is asserted that his +worship consisted in an obscene parody of the Mass; according to +Michelet, the body of a female worshipper served as the altar on which a +toad was consecrated and partaken of instead of the Host. The adept +solemnly renounced Jesus and did homage to Satan by kissing his image. + +Asceticism and libertinism always go hand in hand. They are convertible +principles rending their victim. _Temptation_ is the fundamental motif +of this condition. The devil was believed to send out his servants to +win new souls; monks were visited by demons in the shape of a voluptuous +woman, the _succubus_; Satan himself, or one of his emissaries, +disguised as a fashionable gentleman, the _incubus_, appeared to the +nuns. Undoubtedly the dreams of over-excited men and women played a very +important part in this connection; many hysterical women felt the +devil's kiss and embrace. All these women were themselves convinced of +the truth of their hallucinations and imaginings, and once the belief in +witchcraft was firmly established (in the thirteenth century) the +obvious atonement for their hysteria was the stake. + +The fear of witches, which existed parallel with the love of the +Madonna, was typical of the declining Middle Ages. The first Christian +centuries knew neither the Lady of Heaven in the later meaning of the +word, nor did they know anything of witches. In the reign of Charlemagne +the penalty for the belief in witchcraft was death. At all times man has +exhibited a tendency to see in woman either a celestial or an infernal +being, and nowhere was this tendency more strongly developed than in the +soul of the mediaeval dualist: he created the beloved and adored Queen +of Heaven, the mediator between God and humanity and, as her counterpart +the witch, the despised and dreaded seducer, a being between man and +devil. Powerless to effect a reconciliation between spiritual love and +sensuous pleasure, he required two distinct female types as +personifications of the two directions of his desire; love and the +pleasure of the senses could have nothing in common, and once the +highest value was realised in the spiritual love of woman, pleasure +could not appear otherwise than degraded, sinful and diabolical. In this +respect, also, woman submitted without a murmur to the dictates of male +will. + +Mary and the devil became more and more the real hostile powers of the +thirteenth century; the classical time of woman-worship was also the +climax of the fear of the devil and witchcraft. The Dominican monks +who, above all other orders, contributed to the spread of the cult of +Mary, proceeded, soon after the establishment of the Inquisition, +against the witches, the enemies of Mary. In the second half of the +thirteenth century the persecution of heresy gradually gave way to the +persecution of witchcraft. + +I will not go into these well-known details, for the psychical position +is clear enough: to the man whose heart is filled with the love of good +and the spiritual love of woman, sensuousness will appear as dangerous +and perilous, and will have at the same time the glamour of the +demoniacally-sexual. It is the diabolical element of dualistic +consciousness in the sphere of eroticism. Many people of the present day +will not be able to understand this feeling, for it pre-supposes a +completely inharmonious emotional life. + +The consciousness of the obscene is allied to the conception of the +demoniacal; it accompanies modern synthetic love as its temptation and +its shadow. In personal love sensuality and soul are no longer +independent, contrasted principles; personality, taking the spiritual as +its foundation, includes the sensuous. In this highest stage all +eroticism not hallowed by mutual affection is felt as unpardonable. The +purely sexual principle continues to exist, but whenever it appears in +its impersonal and brutal crudity as an element hostile to personality, +it creates the consciousness of the obscene. The obscene is, therefore, +the purely sexual, not in its naive normality, but as a force inimical +to a value, as a rule to the value of personality. The obscene expresses +scorn and hatred for personal love. It is the seduction of the primitive +which is no longer something _earlier_, but something baser (for every +age must gauge all things by its own standard). The aesthetic +principle--in this connection the sense of the beauty of the human +form--so powerful an element in naive sensuality as well as in every +other form of eroticism, is excluded, because in this particular +condition the beauty of the human body is not objectively realised, but +is looked upon with the eyes of the senses. The moment personality is +acknowledged as the only decisive factor in erotic life, chaotic +impersonal sensuality stands condemned. The obscene is the darker aspect +of modern love, and without modern love it could not exist. Its essence +is negative, is the tendency to caricature and mock the highest form of +love. The photograph of a nude woman is not obscene; but if the face is +hidden, and thus the personal moment intentionally eliminated in favour +of the generic element, it approaches the obscene. This accounts for the +widely felt pleasure in obscene pictures; the beholder is not personally +engaged, he can enjoy these pictures without taking upon his shoulders +any kind of responsibility. Even that minimum of respect which the very +dregs of humanity may claim is not required of him. The picture is +capable of affording pleasure without claiming a grain of human +kindness. Thus it would seem that sensual pleasure is possible without +any sacrifice of the inwardly professed higher eroticism, a sacrifice +which might be a bar to a primitive relationship with a woman of flesh +and blood. Actually, however, it is not possible, for with the surrender +to the base source of enjoyment, the spiritual position is abandoned, +and personally conceived humanity inwardly annihilated. + +It follows from the foregoing that the fascination of the obscene can +only be fully felt by one who has completely acknowledged the principle +of personality in eroticism, and who has also latent within him the +possibility of erotic dualism. The more highly evolved the emotional +life of a man (all these considerations apply only to a man in whom the +possibility of dualism is latent), the more will he realise the purely +sexual, the emphasis of the element of pleasure, as something unseemly +and disagreeable; something which he ought to deny himself, but which +attracts him with the irresistible fascination of the obscene. The man +who surrenders himself naively to sensuality does not realise it as +obscene, but the man who, conscious of his higher concept, strives +against it, experiences the reaction of sensuality with the full force +of its perverse seduction. Even if only for a brief space, he +annihilates the higher element and gives himself up to the pleasure of +the base and degraded. + +In this connection we are face to face with the strange but still +logical fact, that a man who has completely attained to the third stage +of love, feels even the purely spiritual love as odious in its +incompleteness. It strikes him as unnatural and forced, a feeling which +must, however, not be confused with the ordinary contempt of spiritual +love. + +Primitively constituted man knows only undifferentiated sexuality. He +enjoys the nude, and sees no difference between a Venus by Titian and an +ordinary photograph of a nude figure; the aesthete, and more especially +the artist, can never understand that a work of art may be sensually +stimulating. That it may be so will always be bluntly denied by an +individual capable of enjoying a beautiful form, but to the uncultivated +mind the picture of the female body will only evoke memories of +pleasure. This feeling, however, is quite distinct from the obscene; it +is neither hostile to the higher spiritual life, nor is it criminal; it +is natural and harmonious. But the same feeling may become obscene if a +man, aware of higher aesthetic values, ignores art and enjoys the +picture merely as a representation of a nude figure. Here, too, the +seduction lies in a demoniacal element, namely in the destruction of the +aesthetic value. The destructive characteristic of the obscene wars +against all higher conceptions; it is the revenge of chaotic sex +deposed by a higher principle, and has the special charm of secret +wrong-doing. + +I might go even further, and maintain that because modern love does not +admit pleasure as its foundation and content, and because the craving +for pleasure is deeply rooted in human nature, love favours to a high +degree the desire to reserve a sphere for pleasure distinct from +personal love. This region is the obscene, and one might prophesy that +it will grow in proportion as the principle of personal love acquires +dominion; for pleasure will always need an undisturbed retreat +untroubled by higher demands. This can only be found in the sphere of +the obscene in which the element of personality is entirely eliminated. + +Modern man is beset by another peculiar temptation. The beauty of woman, +which in the days of the past was regarded as sacred, can be made a +means of pleasure, and thus drawn from the realm of values into the +realm of sensuality. This is a breach with the principle of personal +love, for to the latter the beauty of a woman is so much part and parcel +of the whole personality that it cannot be enjoyed separately, that +indeed it can hardly be noticed as a distinct element. This cleavage has +become so nearly universal that we are hardly conscious of its profound +perversity. It is the arch-sin of all higher eroticism to realise beauty +not as the undetachable and self-evident outward form of a beloved soul, +but as a means of heightening pleasure. Although in its essence it is +the same thing as the examination of a work of art merely for the sake +of the pleasure it affords to the senses, the offence is here aggravated +because personality is involved. This degradation of the higher values, +whether of nature, art, beauty, knowledge, kindness, religion or the +human soul, to serve the ends of sensual pleasure is the expression of a +perversity which is possibly the most radical and characteristic of our +age. To-day the soul of a woman has frequently the same effect on man as +her physical beauty; he enjoys it as a subtile charm instead of +respecting it as a mystery. + +I can hardly expect to make my meaning quite clear to the multitude, but +the tendency to enjoy beauty of form or soul as a distinct element +represents a rupture with the principle of synthetic love, the love +which does not separate but realises the personality of the beloved as +an indivisible entity. The enjoyment of beauty as a separate element +pre-supposes a conscious, spiritual division, not only of the beloved, +but also of the lover, and is therefore the destruction of the principle +of unity. Aesthete and libertine alike sink to the lower level of +pleasure, and their emotions become obscene. There is no question of a +division when Tristan in his vision of Isolde exclaims, "How beautiful +thou art!" For great love can create the beauty of the beloved out of +its own soul. + +Prudery is based on a similar duality. It expresses a consciousness that +the nude can only be alluring, obscene, "indecent," and should therefore +be feared and avoided. It is the defensive weapon of sexually excited, +for the most part, slightly hysterical women, against the purely sexual, +whose sphere they often extend amazingly. Prudery conceives sexuality as +a distinct, restricted complex in consciousness. Such division is alien +to woman and, where it exists, a hysterical condition, a condition of +inner discord, is clearly indicated. We may take it that the obscene +which affects normal men, affects only hysterical, inwardly discordant +women who try to take shelter behind prudery. To the normal woman the +obscene does not exist as a spiritual principle; she turns with a +feeling of displeasure from all the lower sexual manifestations, and +even finds them absurd. The elimination of personality of eroticism, the +charm of which is felt by even the most highly differentiated man, has +always been foreign to woman--she lacks the duality of erotic emotion +which man is slowly and laboriously striving to overcome--a still +further proof of the unbroken, synthetic emotion of woman. + + + + +CONCLUSION + +THE PSYCHOGENETIC LAW + +_The Individual as an Epitome of the Human Race_ + + +The biogenetic law of Ernst Haeckel teaches us that the human embryo +passes through all the stages of development traversed by its ancestors +in their evolution from the lower forms of the animal world. Although +each successive stage completely replaces the preceding one, the latter +is there as its organic supposition. Man is not born as a human being +until he has travelled over the principal portions of the road to +evolution. This law, which establishes the natural connection of the +individual with the whole chain of organisms, is continued in a +psychogenetic law, not founded on the heredity of the blood but on the +heredity of culture (and therefore quite independent of the doctrine of +the origin of species). In the course of his development the individual +repeats the psycho-spiritual stages through which the species has +passed. But while the human body cannot sustain life until it is +perfectly developed, the degrees of psychic perfection vary very +considerably; not every individual reaches perfection; most men attain +to some degree, but there are others who do not even acquire the +rudiments. + +It would be an attractive and grateful task to point out the +halting-places of the human race in the life of the individual; to fix +the moment when for the first time in his life the child says "I"--a +moment which usually occurs in his second year, and represents the +humanisation of the race, the great intuition, when primitive man, +divining his spiritual nature, severed himself from the external world; +to perceive the child--like its primitive ancestors in their +day--treating all weaker creatures which fall into its hands with almost +bestial cruelty; to watch the boyish games reflecting the period when +the nations lived on war and the chase, their eagerness to draw up rules +and regulations and create gradations of rank and marks of distinction. +I am not able to carry out such a task in detail and, moreover, as I am +dealing with the erotic life only, such a proceeding would be out of +place here. + +The psychogenetic law, then, comes to this: Every well-developed male +individual of the present day successively passes through the three +stages of love through which the European races have passed. The three +stages are not traceable in all men with infallible certainty, there are +numerous individuals whose development in this respect has been +arrested, but in the emotional life of every highly differentiated +member of the human race they are clearly distinguishable, and the +greater the wealth and strength of a soul, the more perfectly will it +reflect the history of the race. The evolution of every well-endowed +individual presents a rough sketch of the history of civilisation; it +has its prehistoric, its classical, its mediaeval, and its modern +period. Many men remain imprisoned in the past; others are fragmentary, +or appear to be suspended in mid-air, rootless. The spirit of humanity +has lived through the past and overcome it, so as to be able to create +its future. + +The gynecocratic stage actually survives to this day in the nursery. +Here the mother rules supreme; the father is an intruder, the brothers +are dominated by their sisters, often their juniors. Women mature at an +earlier age than men; this assertion applies with equal force to +individual and sex in connection with the history of civilisation. After +he has left the nursery, there follows in the life of the boy a period +during which he associates only with his school-friends, shuns the +society of his mother and sisters, and is ashamed of his female +relatives. This represents the revival of the men's unions of remote +antiquity in the life of the individual of the present day. + +At the period of puberty the sexual instinct makes itself felt for the +first time; as a rule, if its nature is not recognised, it is +accompanied by restlessness and depression. I do not believe that the +instinct is, as soon as it appears, directed to the other sex, or +anything else outside the individual. This fact cannot be explained by +want of opportunity, shyness or bad example; there is a positive reason +for it; the longing for a member of the other sex is still unfelt. + +Between his twentieth and thirtieth year a man is often dominated by an +enthusiastic spiritual love quite unconnected with the sensuality which +has hitherto ruled his emotions. I will not elaborate the growth of this +love and the new feelings which arise in connection with it; just as in +the remote past the sense of personality was born as the centre of a new +consciousness, so the individual now undergoes a period of purification +and regeneration; through the love for his mistress he discovers his +inmost self, of which, until now, he had been practically ignorant. The +generative, undifferentiated impulse is supplanted by the love for an +individual and stigmatised as base and contemptible. Guincelli's words +characterising the second erotic stage of the race: _Amor e cor gentil +sono una cosa_, to-day apply to the second stage in the life of the +individual. It also occurs that in the heart of a man whom reality has +failed to satisfy an ideal woman gradually wins life and shape. +Sometimes it is the idealised counterpart of an actual woman, but not +infrequently it is a vague, unsubstantial shadow. Here we have the +deification of the woman reproduced in the heart of the individual. To +illustrate my point, I will quote the very pertinent conversation +between Foldal, the embittered old clerk, and John Gabriel Borkman +(Ibsen). + + _Borkman_: Indeed! Can you show me one who is any good? + + _Foldal_: That's just the point. The few women I've known are no + good at all. + + _Borkman_: (with a sneer) What's the good of them if you don't know + them? + + _Foldal_ (excitedly): Don't say that, John Gabriel! Isn't it a + magnificent, an ennobling thought, to know that somewhere, far + away, never mind where, the true woman lives? + + _Borkman_ (impatiently): Stop your high falutin' nonsense! + + _Foldal_ (hurt): High falutin' nonsense? You call my most sacred + belief high falutin' nonsense? + +In conclusion I should like to mention here that I look upon Otto +Weininger as a tragic victim of the second stage of love which--in our +days--is sick with an almost insurmountable inner insufficiency. + +There is no need to elaborate my subject further and point out that--the +first stage passed--the prime of life brings with it the fusion of +sexuality and love. This union is the inner meaning of marriage in the +modern sense--whether it is rarely or frequently realised is beside the +point. + +In previous chapters I have illustrated various phenomena of the +emotional life by showing their reflections on the lives of two or three +distinguished men. In conclusion I will endeavour to point out the +reproduction of all the erotic stages through which the race has passed, +in the psychical evolution of Richard Wagner, and their immortalisation +in his works. We shall recognise in him the erotic representative of +modern man, a personality in whom all that which as a rule is vague and +only half expressed, has become great and typical. Love has been the +_leitmotif_ of his life. The concluding phrase of the crude fairy tale +_Die Feen_ ("The Fairies"), composed by the youth of nineteen, is: _the +infinite power of love_, and the last words written down two days before +his death, were: _love--tragedy_. + +The opera _Das Liebesverbot_ ("The Prohibition to Love"), written in +1834, is eminently symptomatic of the first stage. It is a coarser +rendering of that bluntest of all Shakespearean plays, _Measure for +Measure_; its sole subject is the pursuit of sensual pleasure, in which +all indulge, and the ridiculing of those who appear to yearn for +something higher. To detail the contents of the text--it cannot be +called a poem--would serve no purpose; biographically, but not +artistically interesting, it exhibits with amazing candour the first, +purely sexual, stage of the young man of twenty-one. It was the period +when "young Germany's" device was the emancipation of sensuality. Wagner +himself says that his "conception was mainly directed against Puritan +cant, and led to the bold glorification of unrestrained sensuality. I +was determined to understand the grave Shakespearean subject only in +this sense." And in his "Autobiographical Sketch" he says: "I learned to +love matter." In addition to this Wagner gives us the following synopsis +of a (lost) libretto, "_Die Hochzeit_" ("The Wedding"), written at an +earlier period: "A youth, madly in love with his friend's fiancee, +climbs through the window into her bedroom, where the latter is awaiting +the arrival of her lover; the fiancee struggles with the frenzied youth +and throws him down into the yard, where he expires." + +The second, discordant, stage of love is embodied in _Tannhaeuser_, +composed when Wagner was twenty-nine years of age. There is probably no +modern work of art in which the mediaeval feeling of dualism in the +scheme of the universe has been expressed with greater pathos. We see +man tossed between heaven and hell, between the worshipped saint and +seductive sensuality, impersonated by a she-devil. A man of the Middle +Ages would have recognised in this work the tragedy of his soul. Wagner +had planned the opera before he had really reached the second period, +under the title of _Der Venusberg_ ("The Mountain of Venus"), and in +this earlier version the purely sexual occupied a far more prominent +place, probably in closer conformity with the old legend. For here +Tannhaeuser returns to Venus unsaved and defying the eternal values, +determined to renounce a higher life and give himself up to the pleasure +of the senses for all eternity. This idea was retained in a later +version up to the decisive final turn; the purely spiritual love for +Elizabeth eventually overcomes the unrestrained instinct. + +As the despairing monk of mediaeval times, apparently abandoned by the +love of God, turned to Satan and worshipped him, so Tannhaeuser, cast out +of the Kingdom of Heaven by the words of the Pope, and renounced by +Elizabeth, again gives himself up to sensuality, which is here +contrasted with spiritual love, and represented as demoniacal. +Tannhaeuser is not vacillating between the love of two women--a +spiritualised and a sensual love; he is wavering between the purely +spiritual love of Elizabeth and promiscuous sexuality represented by +Venus, not centring on her as an individual, but diffused, as it were, +through her whole kingdom. The dualism which rends the whole universe is +strongly and uncompromisingly emphasised in text and music, and Wagner +himself explained to the opera singer, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, that the +main characteristic of the principal part was "the intensest expression +of delight and remorse without any intermediate stage of feeling, +changing abruptly and decisively." The closing words of the first scene: +"My salvation lies in Mary!" are the real turning point of the drama. As +abrupt as his desertion of Venus for Mary, is his return to her in the +third act. By the side of Mary is placed the more human, the more +earthly but yet idealised form of Elizabeth, a figure closely resembling +Beatrice and Margaret. + +The music of _Tannhaeuser_ (more especially the overture) expresses the +contrast between the two erotic world-elements with striking +abruptness. The harmonious and musically perfect motive of religious +yearning (the chorus of the pilgrims) which forms the beginning and the +end of the overture, is assailed by the briefer motives of sensuous +seduction and ecstasy of the middle; the quivering, tickling passages of +the violins play round the sacred music of the chorale like so many +seductive elves. The Venusberg music is probably the most perfect +expression of pure sensuality which has ever been reached in the world +of music; it is the complete translation of sensual craving and sensual +rapture into the language of music. In the Venusberg music composed for +the performance in Paris, this motive is still more richly elaborated, +and the recently published "sketches" for the scene in the Venusberg +contain a number of details which were eliminated from the later +version. Here bestial and demoniacal sensuality, not content with human +couples, nymphs, maenads, sirens and fauns, calls for beings half-brute, +half-human, represented by centaurs and sphinxes, for black goats, cats, +tigers, panthers, and so on, finally for obscene representations of +antique legends, such as Leda and the Swan, Europa and the Bull, symbols +and illustrations of the climax of perversion. It is a magnificent, +poetico-musical picture of untrammelled sexuality, whose queen is Woman, +the priestess of voluptuousness, represented by Venus. Tannhaeuser's +yearning for humanity and divinely pure love gives to this world a tinge +of the demoniacal, for the latter is nothing but natural sensuality +regarded from a higher standpoint, in this case from the point of view +of spiritual love. Whenever it is opposed to the transcendental, the +natural is conceived as dangerous and diabolical. At the moment of the +abrupt inner change in Tannhaeuser, Venus and her world must vanish like +a phantom of the night. "A consuming, voluptuous excitement kept my +blood and nerves tingling while I sketched and composed the music of +_Tannhaeuser_...." says Wagner in one place, and in another he confesses +that sensual pleasure, while attracting and seducing him, filled him +with repugnance. He speaks of his longing to "satisfy my craving in a +higher, nobler element which, unpolluted by the sensuality so +characteristic of modern life and art, appears to me as something pure, +something chaste and virginal, unapproachable and intangible. What else +can this longing for love, the noblest feeling I am capable of, be, than +the yearning to leave this world of facts behind me and become absorbed +in an element of infinite, transcendental love, to which death would be +the gate...." + +The dualism in the music of _Tannhaeuser_ is consistently maintained. The +two elements war against each other without ever merging into one. Those +parts of the music which characterise Elizabeth are full of noble pathos +and a little sentimental. At the beginning of the second act she is not +yet herself; she can still laugh like a light-hearted girl, but when she +again succumbs to Tannhaeuser's unearthly (and to her fatal) charm, and +realises how irrevocably he has surrendered himself to Venus, she rises +to true greatness and resolutely faces the swords unsheathed to punish +the offender. Before our eyes she is transformed into the saint who +realises her mission and is ready to take her burden upon her; more +heroic than Beatrice or Margaret, she points to him "who laughingly +stabbed her heart," the road to salvation. Like her two predecessors +Elizabeth prays to Mary for the salvation of her lover--the prayer for +the beloved has ever been woman's truest and most fervent prayer. + +The thought of achieving a man's salvation through a great and steadfast +love, is the subject of the _Flying Dutchman_, and plays, as is well +known, an important part with Wagner. Strange to say he has for this +very reason frequently been scoffed at by those who call themselves +admirers of Goethe. Dante-Goethe's great problem of salvation is +represented in _Tannhaeuser_ with the utmost lucidity. The essence of it +is that love can positively intervene in the life of a man whose soul is +turned towards it, but who is confused and beset by temptations. His +vacillating heart feels the love which is brooding over him and +ultimately abandons itself to it, to be saved by its unswerving loyalty. +Maybe this is as much a miracle as "grace," but it is also a psychical +fact, because the love which yearns for the sinner awakens and increases +not only his faith in its power to help, but also in his own strength; +darkness and evil dismay him and he turns towards the light. In +_Tannhaeuser_ this spiritual condition, which is of such primary +importance in the last scene of _Faust_, is clearly expressed; his love +for Elizabeth has been strong enough to kill desire kindled in his heart +again and again by Venus; yet again he is on the point of succumbing to +his senses. The vision of Venus appears before his eyes, but at +Wolfram's exclamation, "Elizabeth!" he realises in a flash that +Elizabeth has been praying for him day and night, and has given her life +to save him. Before this sudden illumination the power of Venus sinks +into nothing; divine love falls into his darkness like a ray of +light--"Oh, sacred love's eternal power!"--it quickens his own love +which is striving upwards, and with the words: "Saint Elizabeth, pray +for me!" he sinks to the ground. His way, like Faust's, although +one-sidedly emotional, leads from chaos and sin to pure love and +salvation, not through his own strength but by the help vouchsafed to +him in the love of his glorified mistress. + +By the side of the struggling, suffering Tannhaeuser, tossed hither and +thither between God and the devil, between Elizabeth and Venus, stands +Wolfram, the untempted woman-worshipper. The two extremes clash upon +each other in the contest of the minnesingers. Tannhaeuser, at war with +himself, exasperated by the calm, matter-of-fact way in which Wolfram +sings the praise of spiritual love, rushes to the other extreme and +bursts into rapturous praise of the goddess of love and the pleasure of +the senses. I need not lay stress on the fact that at that time of his +life Wagner's own heart was the arena in which the conflict was fought +out; a work like _Tannhaeuser_ is not _made_, it is conceived in the +innermost soul of its creator. Every one of Wagner's great works bears +the unmistakable stamp of sincerity and intensity, while with Goethe, on +the other hand, it is not difficult to distinguish the genuine ones, +that is to say, those which were written under the pressure of a +compelling impulse, from those which owed their existence to the +intellect rather than to the soul. + +_Tannhaeuser_ immortalises the adolescence of the European races of +mankind; the third stage is not even anticipated. + +_Lohengrin_, the principal interest of which is other than erotic, +represents a transitional phase between the second and the third stage; +body and soul are no longer regarded as warring against each other; a +greater harmony beyond either is dimly divined. Lohengrin has set out +from a distant, transcendental kingdom to find earthly happiness in +Elsa's love--but he is doomed to disappointment. I will not analyse the +theme, but rather quote a few passages from Wagner: "Lohengrin is +seeking the woman who is ready to believe in him; who will not ask him +who he is and whence he comes, but love him as he is and because he is +so.... Lohengrin's only desire is for love, to be loved, to be +understood through love. In spite of the superior development of his +senses, in spite of his intense consciousness, he desires nothing more +than to live the life of an ordinary citizen of this earth, to love and +be loved--to be a perfect specimen of humanity." Wagner further speaks +of his longing to find "the woman"; the female principle, quite simply, +for ever appearing to him under new forms; the woman for whom the +Flying Dutchman longed in his unfathomable distress; the woman who, like +a radiant star, guided Tannhaeuser from the voluptuous caverns of the +Venusberg to the pure regions of the spirit, and drew Lohengrin from his +dazzling heights to the warm bosom of the earth. We find here the new +form of love, not yet fully comprehended but desired and anticipated in +art. + +In _Tristan and Isolde_ it is attained completely and in its highest +perfection. We possess in Wagner's letters to Matilda Wesendonk, and in +the diary written for her, the documents of the personal experience out +of which Tristan grew, and which unfold one of the most touching +love-stories. As I have already discussed _Tristan and Isolde_ in a +previous chapter, I will here only quote a passage from a letter written +by Wagner and addressed to Liszt at the time of his first meeting with +Matilda; it fully expresses the harmony of the third stage. "Give me a +heart, a mind, a woman's love in which I can plunge my whole being--who +will fully understand me--how little else I should need in this world!" + +It is very significant that side by side with _Tristan_ we have _Die +Meistersinger_, composed a little later on. Here the third stage of love +is realised in its idyllic possibility; the synthesis has been given the +shape of middle-class matter-of-factness, that is to say, the fulfilment +of love in marriage: "I love a maid and claim her hand!" For this reason +the work, although the fundamental idea is not erotic, is entitled to be +placed by the side of _Tristan_ with its demand for the absolute +metaphysical consummation of love. + +It is an amazing fact that the same genius should have experienced and +portrayed both stages so perfectly. Doubtless Tannhaeuser and Tristan are +the most personal self-revelations of the great lover, pulsating with +passion, and far remote from the colossal objective world of the +Niebelungs, the lofty serenity of Lohengrin and the wisdom of Parsifal. + +Wagner had finished the _Ring_ before he conceived the idea of _Tristan +and Isolde_. (It was printed in 1852.) In the former he intentionally +raised the value of love and its position in the universe to a problem, +embodying his knowledge of the world, and more especially of the modern +world, in supernatural, mythical figures. The greatest ambition of man +is power and wealth, the symbol of which is a golden ring. Gold in +itself is innocent--elementary--a bauble at the bottom of the river, a +toy for laughing children; but the insatiable thirst for power and +wealth has robbed it of its harmlessness and made it the tool and symbol +of tyranny. Only a being completely in the grip of the greed for riches +and dominion, a being who looks upon the world and all men as objects to +be bent to his will, and who has consequently renounced love, could have +thus enslaved the world. Love does not impair the worth of a +fellow-creature, but sets him above all things; a lover cannot be +entirely selfish; his feeling at least for his mistress, and through her +for the rest of the world, must be pure and unselfish. The struggle +between these two most powerful instincts, both in the race and in the +heart of the individual (Wotan), is the incomparable subject of this +tragedy. The whole world-process is represented as a struggle between +the apparently great, who are yet the slaves of gold and authority, and +the truly free man who serves love, and on whom ambition has no hold. + +The representatives of the petty, greedy, toiling human vermin, who +readily renounced love for the sake of wealth, because the latter will +always buy lust and pleasure, are the Niebelungs, the dwellers in the +Netherworld who never see the sun. They have but one standard: money; +one supreme value: power, the gift of wealth. Mime bewails his people +(the small tradesmen as it were), as follows; "Light-hearted smiths we +used to fashion gems and trinkets for our wives, gorgeous jewels, the +Niebelungs' pretty trifles--we laughed at the labour." But Alberich, the +capitalist, through the magic of the ring, has usurped the power and +enslaved his fellows. "Now the felon compels us to creep in the heart of +the mountains to labour for him. There we must delve and explore and +despoil, plunder and smelt and hammer the metal, restlessly toiling to +increase his treasure." The really daemonic property of the gold is that +everybody succumbs to its seduction and strives to possess it. The +former naive joy of living, embodied in the Rhine-daughters, and their +not yet humanised song, which seems to come direct from the heart of +nature, is destroyed by the theft of the Rhine-gold. What till then had +been a serenely shining "star of the deep," has been transformed into a +means by which to win authority. The programme of the greedy and +tyrannous never varies; Alberich proclaims it; "The whole world will I +win," and it is his daemonic will to depreciate love and set up power as +the only value, so that nobody shall doubt his greatness and unique +genius. "As I renounce love, so all shall renounce it, with gold have I +bought you, for gold shall you crave." Love shall die and lust shall +take its place; he will force even the wives of the gods to do his will, +for his wealth has made him master of the whole world. Compared to his +restless activity, the giant "Fafner" is "stupid"; he is incapable of +transforming gold into power; he merely enjoys its possession, content +with the consciousness of his wealth. + +But the curse of Alberich, the first who transmuted the shining metal +into money, rests on gold and power. "It shall not bring gladness--who +has it be seared by sorrow, who lacks it devoured by envy...." The curse +of the eternal concatenation: tyranny--slavery, the care which +accompanies wealth and the envy of the have-nots, can only be lifted +from the world by a man who is inwardly free, who is neither master nor +slave. Siegfried understands the song of the birds and the elementary +beings, the Rhine-daughters; he is a stranger to human desires and +passions. "I inherited nothing but my body--and living it is consumed." +He is proof against the magic of the ring; the only value he knows is +love. Alberich, his opponent, says, in speaking of him: "My curse has no +sting for the mettlesome hero, for he knows not the worth of the ring; +he squanders his prodigal strength, laughing and glowing with love his +body is burning away." Half way between Alberich, the inwardly worthless +wielder of power, and Siegfried, the truly free man, the embodiment of +all virtue, who is murdered by the powers of darkness, stands Wotan, in +whose heart both motives, authority and love, are struggling for +supremacy, who will renounce neither love nor power. Artistically and +symbolically the salvation of the world from the curse of greed and +tyranny is brought about by the restitution of the ring, and its +dissolution in the pure waters of the river from whence it had been +taken; the gold is given back to the Rhine-daughters, to fulfil again +its original purpose, namely, to delight the heart of man with its +dazzling sheen. + +Thus Wagner, the greatest and most inspired exponent of love among +modern artists, declared that of all values love was the greatest. His +intuitive genius left all the doctrines formulated by Schopenhauer and +Buddha far behind and definitely rejected pessimism as a creed. There is +an interesting letter from him to Matilda Wesendonk, written while he +was composing the music of _Tristan_, and containing modifications of +Schopenhauer's philosophy which he considered requisite. "It is a +question of pointing out the road to salvation which no philosopher, not +even Schopenhauer, discovered, the road which leads to the perfect +pacification of the will through love; I do not mean abstract love for +all humanity, but true love, based on sexual love, that is to say love +between man and woman." + +In _Parsifal_, the last and most mature of all his works, Wagner is +breaking new ground. Here love between man and woman is deposed from the +exalted position it hitherto held, subordinated to the metaphysical +purpose of the world, that is to say, "the purpose of attaining to +perfection," and absorbed in a higher association of ideas. Sexual love +has undergone a change, it is no longer love in the true sense, but the +unconditional love of the mystic. The enigmatical figure of Kundry is +not the impersonation of one woman, she is woman herself. The +incarnation of everything female, she embodies the sensuous, seductive +and destructive element together with the contempt of the man who falls +under her spell, as well as the motherly, and finally the +humbly-administrative principle, which so far had not yet become a part +of the erotic ideal. She is both positive and negative, a blind tool of +the element of evil which prompts man to forget his higher mission +(reminiscent of the second mediaeval period), and passionately yearning +for salvation. She dies before the Holy Grail, the religious ideal made +visible. Beside Kundry there are the flower-maidens, naively sensuous +beings, who blossom like the flowers and fade again, unconscious and +irresponsible. I refrain from a discussion of this work, which would +lead too far, and only maintain that the music, corresponding to the +text, is entirely unerotic and unsentimental, absolutely pure and +religious. The love of a man for a woman has been superseded by love for +the absolute and supernatural. Thus, after Wagner had experienced all +the stages of love through which humanity has passed, and embodied them +in his works, he reached a new point of view, a stage to which we have +not yet attained and which, very likely, we are not even able fully to +understand. This fourth stage--not unlike Weininger's ideal--is the +overthrow of the female and earthly element in man by a voluntary +surrender to the metaphysical. + +Wagner's last position, taken up quite deliberately, permits of two +explanations which I will point out without pressing either of them. +Only a man possessing both the wisdom of the aged Wagner and a knowledge +of the evolution of the race, and the road which still stretches out in +front of it, would be entitled to speak a decisive word. The first +obviously is that Wagner divined a last stage in the emotional life of +man, a period which has outgrown sexual love and replaced it by +mysticism. In conjecturing a potential fourth stage, the three previous +ones must be regarded as one. The second explanation is that Wagner's +feeling in his last work is no longer representative of the feeling of +the race, but is, as it were, a personal matter, at least in so far as +love is concerned. For although the principal subject in _Parsifal_ is +not love, yet it plays a very prominent part in it. I am only touching +upon these two alternatives. But if the latter debatable point be +omitted, my analysis of Wagner's emotional life must have shown in which +sense the inspired man may be rightly regarded as typical of the race. +He leads the broadest and at the same time the most personal life, and +yet he manifests in it something which is far greater, far more +universal and representative. + +My argument proves that the evolution as well as the aberrations of love +have affected man alone and, roughly speaking, to this day affect only +him. He is the Odysseus, wandering through heaven and hell, ultimately +to return home, perhaps, to where woman, the unchangeable, is awaiting +him. That which has been woman's natural endowment from all beginning, +the blending of spiritual and sensual love, man looks upon and desires +to-day as his highest erotic ideal. His chaotic sexual impulse, the +inheritance of the past, appears to him low and base in the presence of +her in whom sexuality has always been blended with love; his worship, +intensified until it reached the metaphysical, seems to him unfounded +and eccentric before her who has ever been and ever will be entirely +human, and who is perfect in his eyes because she possesses what he is +striving after. This and nothing else is the meaning of the vague +statement that in all matters pertaining to love woman occupies a higher +position than man. She is always the same; he is always new and +problematical; never perfect, he falls into error and sin where she +cannot err, for her instinct is nature herself, and she knows not the +meaning of sin. Whatever burden man has laid upon her, she has borne it +patiently and silently; she has allowed him to worship her as a goddess +and stigmatise her as a fiend, while all the time she remained +problemless and natural, inwardly remote from the aberrations in which +her intellect believed so readily. The conclusion which we have to draw, +and which touches the foundation of the psychology of both sexes, is +that only man's emotions have a history, while those of the woman have +undergone no change. + +If there is a law by which the human race is reproduced in the +individual, then the so-called atavism in the shape of abnormality +cannot be the sudden, or apparently sudden reappearance of conditions +which once were normal and then disappeared; rather must it be the final +arrest of an individual on a previous and lower stage, preventing him +from reaching our standard in one or the other emotional sphere. The +more humanity a man has in him, the more perfectly will he repeat in his +life the stages through which the race has passed, or, in other words: +the oftener that which once quickened the heart of man is repeated and +surpassed, the greater is the possibility that new things may grow out +of it. Atavism therefore is not so much the persistence of the earlier +as the absence of the later stages. (This agrees with Freud's conception +of the neurotic subject.) + +It is obvious that the three stages of love are merely the expression of +a period in one definite direction. The emotions of antiquity were +entirely earthly, obvious and impersonal; the Middle Ages, on the other +hand, attached value only to the world beyond the grave and matters +pertaining to the soul. The beauty of spring was to them but a reflexion +of another beauty. + + "How glorious is life below! + What greater glories may the heavens hold!" + +sings Brother John characteristically. But our period is conscious of +the need of realising all our desires, and attaining to the highest +possible spiritual perfection in this earthly life, and this not by +destroying the transcendent ideals, but by stripping them of their +metaphysical character, and bringing them to bear on this life, so that +it may become a higher and holier one. The will of our intellectual +heroes is not the rejection of the doctrine of the survival of the soul, +but the comprehension of past transcendental values, so that they may +become a safe guide to us in this earthly life; a more perfect blending +of realism and idealism; the glorification of life under the aspect of +eternity. This applies to love as well: the thought of the infinite, +eternal love must transfigure and ennoble all that which is natural and +human. + +If my theories are correct, they prove the ontological character of +historical evolution and the value of the study of history for the +comprehension of the human soul. I have shown in a specific and highly +important domain that that which we are fond of regarding as the +characteristic quality of man was not present from the beginning, but +has gradually been evolved in historical time. In other words: history +can and must teach us the origin and evolution of the spirit and soul of +man, as anthropology teaches us the construction of the body. In +philosophically approaching history, it must not be our object to +discover "what has been," but "what has become, how we became and what +we are." The science of history which loses sight of its bearing on our +time, content with its knowledge of the past, is antiquarian and dead; +at the most it has aesthetic value, but it is worthless as far as the +history of civilisation is concerned. Only that which has been +productive in the past, which has had a quickening influence, producing +new values, is historical in the highest sense. It creates a new and +close relationship between psychology and history. The principal +purpose, or one of the principal purposes of psychology, that is the +knowledge of the construction of the normal human being, has received a +new possibility of solution: every essential quality which the human +race has evolved in the course of history must be present in every +normally developed individual of our time. The normal man of to-day is +not the normal man of the past; every successive century finds him +richer and more complex, but he can always be discovered intuitively in +history. In this sense history is an auxiliary science of psychology, or +rather, the psychology of the human race, for the evolution of the +psychology of the individual--which has been studied very little--is +merely an abbreviated history of the evolution of the psychology of the +species. A past period of civilisation can be traced in the life of +every fully developed man, and _vice versa_ the stages in the life of +the individual point the way in history. + +If it can be established that the fundamental emotions of the human +heart originated in historical time, the widely spread, but unproved, +theory that everything great and decisive existed from the beginning +will be contradicted. The other complementary assertion that nothing +which once existed ever quite disappears, must be admitted; nothing +perishes in the soul of man; its position with regard to the whole is +merely shifted by newly intervening motives and values; and even when +it does not change its fundamental character, it becomes a different +thing in the whole complex of the soul. Sexuality, which in the remote +past was a matter of course, unassailable by doubt, became problematical +and demoniacal as soon as it entered into relationship with the new +factors of erotic life. An existence in harmony with nature was possible +as long as the human race was still in evolution, and not yet conscious +of itself. But as soon as intellect and self-consciousness had been +evolved, civilisation became possible. Nature has no history in the +sense of the origin of values; in the case of still uncivilised tribes +every new generation is a faithful reproduction of the preceding one. +Certainly there is modification caused by adaptation to the environment, +but there are no moral values, and consequently there is no history. + +I have attempted to explain why tragedy is inseparable from love in its +highest intensity, to show the limits which check all deep emotion and +the yearning which would overstep them. The emotional life of man, which +is capable of infinite evolution, can only find satisfaction on its +lower, animal stages. Hunger, thirst, and sexual craving can be +satisfied without much difficulty, and therefore no tragic shadow falls +on the first stage. But the emotion which overwhelms the soul cannot be +appeased. Not only the great thinker's thirst for knowledge, the +mystic's religious yearning, the aesthetic will of the rare artist, but +also the love and longing of the passionate lover must reach beyond the +attainable to the infinite. This earth is the kingdom of "mean" actions, +"mean" emotions and "mean" men. And the lover, unable to bear its +limits, creates for himself a new world--the world of metaphysical love. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of Love, by Emil Lucka + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE *** + +***** This file should be named 17699.txt or 17699.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/6/9/17699/ + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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