It is this ever increasing peremptory demand for erotic completeness of
the woman of developed individuality of the present time, which causes
her always to wish to more fervently cherish the personality of the man
as entirely as it is her happiness and her pride to be able to give her
own. It is this demand for entirety which, among Germanic peoples, at
least, makes woman neither desirous nor psychologically fitted for the
so-called "free love." This is evidently to be concluded from the
vicissitudes of those who have tried it.
"Free love" is moreover quite as senseless an expression as "legal
love." Because no external command can call love into being or repress
it; it is in this sense always free, yet as are all feelings, it is
bound by certain psychological laws. If not, then it does not deserve
the name of love. It is with love as with the human face: though the
individual varieties are infinite, yet there are certain general
characteristic features which make all these different faces human
faces, all these different feelings human love. And in every time there
is a type for both, which is recognized as nobler than the others.
This noblest type of love has been portrayed by a Danish writer,[A] who
endeavored to show that a conception of life founded upon evolution need
not lead to laxity in sexual relations. He shows how the erotic feeling,
as all other feelings, has been developed from an incoherent,
indeterminate and indefinite condition to one more coherent, determinate
and differentiated, and so from a simple instinct for reproduction of
the species has been finally transformed to an entirely personal, inner
love. The highest type of this love is that which exists between a man
and a woman of the same moral and intellectual level; which demands of
necessity reciprocal love in order to be perfected, and can therefore be
contented with no other kind of reciprocal love than a corresponding
erotic love. This perfect love includes the yearning desire of both
lovers to become entirely one being, to free each other and to develop
each other to the greatest perfection. If love is perfected and
consummated thus by the life together, then can it be given to only one
and only once in a lifetime. This thought of the Danish writer is
expressed with the concise brevity of the poet, by Bjornson, when he
says of the sensation "feeling oneself doubled" in the beloved one:
"_That_ is love, all else is not love." This feeling which liberates,
conserves and deepens the personality, which is the inspiration to noble
deeds and works of genius, is the opposite of the ephemeral, merely
sensual love, which enslaves, dissipates and lessens the personality.
[A] See Viggo Drewsen: "En Livsanskuelse grundet paa Elskow" ("A
Conception of Life Founded upon Love") and "Forholdet mellem
Maud og Kvinde belyst gjennem Udviklingshypothesen." ("The
Relation between Man and Woman in the Light of the Hypothesis
of Evolution.")
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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