ttracted to
there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like, an
acquiring of new territory. A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice,
a queer characteristic gesture--all these things, and it is these things
that cause to arise the passion of love--all these things are like so
many objects on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk
beyond the horizon, to explore. He wants to get, as it were, behind
those eyebrows with the peculiar turn, as if he desired to see the world
with the eyes that they overshadow. He wants to hear that voice applying
itself to every possible proposition, to every possible topic; he wants
to see those characteristic gestures against every possible background.
Of the question of the sex-instinct I know very little and I do not
think that it counts for very much in a really great passion. It can be
aroused by such nothings--by an untied shoelace, by a glance of the
eye in passing--that I think it might be left out of the calculation. I
don't mean to say that any great passion can exist without a desire for
consummation. That seems to me to be a commonplace and to be therefore a
matter needing no comment at all. It is a thing, with all its accidents,
that must be taken for granted, as, in a novel, or a biography, you
take it for granted that the characters have their meals with some
regularity. But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a
passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the craving
for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the
same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the
same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For,
whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who
loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his
courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be
the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are
all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own
worthiness to exist. So, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition,
the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the
encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of
his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as
the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages
of the book will become familiar; the beautiful cor