LOVE IN RELATION TO TEMPERAMENTS—OF THE WAYS OF LOVING

I shall not repeat in these pages for the hundredth time the criticism of temperaments as they were described by the ancient schools, and which I have expounded in many of my works, small and large. Not everybody has accepted my standards of classification, but all agree with me in the belief that temperaments have had their time, and that hygiene, medicine, psychology await from the progress of modern physiology the elements to determine, as science requires, the physical and moral characteristics of a human individual. Against this impotency of modern physiology I have protested, changing the name of "temperament" to that of "individual constitution": innocent revenge of all men who, when powerless to change a thing, satisfy their rage by changing its name.

Every man loves in his own way and, as we bring to love the greatest possible tribute of psychical elements, it follows that human loves differ more than hatreds, more than the manners of eating, of motion, of will. The lower we descend from the branches to the trunk, the more human elements resemble each other; the higher we ascend to the loftiest branches of the tree, the more the elements diverge and differ. Ask a woman of easy virtue, or a Don Juan, how many are the methods of loving, and they both not only will answer that every one loves in a different manner, but will add that the manners themselves are so extraordinarily different that calling all these most variform ways of loving by the one name of the same sentiment excites repugnance.

It is true that some authors have amused themselves by[Pg 176] describing a "sanguine love," a "nervous love," a "lymphatic love," a "hepatic love"; but these pictures are innocent pastimes, arabesques traced on the epidermis of human nature, and the schools of psychology and literature, which succeed each other, so completely obliterate these arabesques that not the least trace of them is left. Even when, instead of the caricatures of temperaments, we should succeed in delineating a true family of human constitutions, it would be very difficult to class under it all forms of love. The thousands and thousands of color cases of the Roman mosaic-maker are sufficient to classify the innumerable tints that an expert eye succeeds in discerning; but who will give me a palette so gigantic that I may spread on it all the polychromic mixtures, all the simple and compound colors, all the proteiform iridescences offered by the human light when it strikes the powerful prism of love?

The question as to the quantity of love which an individual may feel is the easiest to solve; but it is also one of the most important. In every psychological problem there is an element of quantity; and as it is the simplest, it is also the most visible. It is, I would almost say, the skeleton of the phenomenon and we should grasp it eagerly, as the thread which guides us through the labyrinth of these studies.

Many men, even if possessing a lofty mind and a gentle heart, have asked themselves seriously, and more than once, whether they were capable of loving, unacquainted as they were with all that world of mysteries and passions which they found described in many books and heard from the mouths of some enamored friends. To those men my book, although I have striven to contain it within the limits of a physiological study, may seem an exaggeration, a caricature of nature. Now, all those men are petty and weak lovers. To them love is an intermittent prurience that begins at eighteen years and ends, perhaps, at forty, or fifty at the latest; a prurience that stands somewhere between pleasure and bother and which can be morally cured by only one medicine, woman. This medicine, so they say, is sometimes worse than the disease, and it is necessary to reflect at length[Pg 177] and with great care whether preference should be given to that prurience which poets call "love," or to that other load which naturalists call "the female of man" and the courteous dictionaries "woman." When these eunuchs of the sentiment of love prefer the woman, they may find that this animated object, so like ourselves, is also tolerably pleasing and congenial, and a sweet and tender habit of benevolence may tie them to this companion whom they love, and truly love, in their own way, that is, calmly, prudently, suavely. These unhappy creatures have more than one reason to ask of themselves whether what they feel is love, and a thousand reasons to inquire of true lovers: "But tell me now, will you explain to me what this love is!" The moon radiates heat; frogs, too, develop heat: well, then, these gentlemen, too, do love!

Peaceful love, petty or cold love (call it what you will) does not exclusively belong to the male; but, on the contrary, it offers, although more rarely, its most perfect forms in woman. Man, however weak a lover he may be, cannot renounce the mission of sex, which compels him to attack, assault, declare that war which must lead him to conquest. Woman, on the contrary, if she be born a eunuch, need not attack her companion in the slightest way; she can, if she so wishes, avoid the trouble of directing her gaze toward her lover or opening her lips to say "yes." To let herself be loved will be enough. How many romantic delights in these few words! To let herself be loved; to leave to others every labor of conquered timidity, of injured modesty; every strategy, every tactic of moral violence; to let the others struggle and reserve for herself alone the voluptuousness of slightly opening the door or even letting others open it! To let herself be loved! What esthetic, heavenly beatitude, what voluptuousness of soft undulations and carnal prurience, what wonderful warmth of sweet caresses! And, then, no responsibility for the future of a passion which has never been confessed; no storm; a calm lake without tempest, without tides. And if the heart, full of sentiment, would take the liberty of a restless throb, to apply then and there[Pg 178] a cataplasm to bring it back to its duty, and modesty to justify the perpetual ice, and virtue to apologize for the absence of aroma. Oh, why did not heaven make us out of this blessed, soft, sweet paste? Oh, why can we not reduce love to a problem of hygiene and régime?

From this zero of the amatory scale we gradually rise to the maximum degree of the pyrometer, where every metal is melted and volatilized and the entire human organism is transformed into a red and incandescent vapor that burns everything it touches. There are tremendous lovers, who have loved before they were men, who will love, too, when they are men no longer; there are women who have loved, perhaps, since they were closed in the maternal womb, and will love even the sexton who will nail down the cover on the cold coffin which contains their morbid flesh; there are men and women in whom every affection takes a sensual form and love absorbs them like a sponge born, grown and dead in the saline depths of a tropical sea. Having neither time nor patience to wait, they love the first comer, to whom they lend their affections and their imagination; then, discouraged but not wearied, they love the next comer and, always loving more than they are loved, they remain with their thirst forever unquenched. Happy they are when they succeed, although rarely, in being satisfied with consecutive loves; but oftener they precipitate quickly into polygamy, where, through sophisms, reticences and compromises with conscience, they love this one with the heart, that other one with the mind, and all of them with the senses. They have a first love, an only love, a true love; but too frequently they forget the names of such loves and use them to designate too many different lovers, and, like the octopus, they stretch forth their numerous, avid, sucking arms to reach the hot, succulent flesh of the feminine cosmos. Among these polygamists there are some who love only with the heart, others only with the senses; while to a few giants nature concedes the sad gift of a twofold thirst for affection and voluptuousness.

Between these two poles, which mark the extreme degrees[Pg 179] of amatory intensity, plods the innumerable mass of those men who are neither Don Juans nor chaste Josephs; the numberless women who are neither Messalinas nor Joans of Arc.

Besides the variform force of amorous needs, the sentiment which we are now studying together assumes a different character, according to the passion which predominates in the individual and by which love is marked as proud, humble, egotistical, vain, furious, jealous. And around these binary compounds of love and pride, of love and egotism, of love and vanity, there are grouped many other minor elements, which, although with less energetic affinity, still form a homogeneous whole that might be called a "temperament of love" or a "constitutional form of love." I shall try to sketch some of them from nature.

Tender Love.—This love is more frequently felt by men of mild and gentle character; it has shaded outlines and little relief. Emotion surprises them for the slightest cause; tears are always ready to gush forth at the first impulse of joy or sorrow; a perennial compassion and an inexhaustible tenderness drown declarations of love, ardors of voluptuousness and outbursts of affection in a most sweet sea of milk and honey. Tender love is suppliant, lachrymose and faithful; it often touches the boundaries of sensual love, but never enters that sea under full sail. It is a love that is frequently constant and trustworthy, almost as immutable as an old and serene friendship; it has, however, a tendency to being disconsolate and mournful, if not querulous, and it sighs, sobs or weeps too often. Nevertheless, it is capable of wonderful expansiveness which, however interminable, is pregnant with intense joy and sweet solace and predisposes us to universal benevolence, to philanthropy, to forgiveness. It is a Christian, evangelical love that delights more in a caress than in a kiss, and in lingering kisses more than in sudden battles. Its most esthetic forms are found in the woman, whom we readily exculpate from a certain weakness and who may even swoon without making herself ridiculous.[Pg 180] Persons with fair complexion, Germans and lymphatic creatures love in this way.

Contemplative Love.—A high, esthetic sense, an irresistible tendency to inertness and limited genital needs constitute the soil in which germinate and grow the various forms of contemplative love. It is a lofty love—too lofty; it has something of the mystic and the supernatural; the lover places his idol very high and prostrates himself before it, lavishing upon it every kind of adoration and incense. Contemplative love is situated in the anterior lobes of the brain; it affects but slightly the somber depths of the heart and ha............