The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration. Edward Carpenter
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and choked with rubbish. That some sort of purpose, in the evolution of humanity, may have been fulfilled by this strange negation, it would be idle to deny; indeed some such purpose—in view of the wide prevalence of the negation, and its long continuance during the civilization period—seems probable. But this does not in any way controvert the fact that it has in its time caused a disastrous crippling of human health and vitality. Human progress takes place, no doubt, in sections—one foot forward at a time, so to speak; but this does not mean that the other foot can be permanently left in the rear. On the contrary, it means its all the more decided advance when its turn arrives.
To-day we seem at the outset of a new era, and preparing in some way for the rehabilitation of the Pagan conception of the world. The negative Christian dispensation is rapidly approaching its close; the necessity of love in its various forms, as part and parcel of a healthy life, is compelling our attention. No one is so poor a physiognomist as not to recognize the health-giving effects of successful courtship—the heightened color, the brilliant eye, the elastic step; the active brain, the prompt reflexes, the glad outlook on the world. Indeed the effect upon all the tissues—their nourishment, growth, improvement in tone, and so forth—is extraordinary; and yet—remembering what has been said about Love and Hunger—quite natural. For, after all, we have seen that every cell in the body is a replica of the original cell from which it sprang; and so the love which reaches one probably in some way reaches all. And there is probably not only union and exchange (in actual intercourse) between two special sex-cells; but there is also (all through the period of being “in love”) an etheric union and exchange going on between the body-cells generally on each side; and a nourishment of each other by the interchange of finest and subtlest elements.
That this mutual exchange and nutrition may take place between the general cells of two bodies is made all the more probable from the experiments already alluded to with regard to chemical fertilization—whereby it has been shown that some ova or egg-cells may be started on a process of subdivision and growth by treatment with certain chemicals, such as weak solutions of strychnine, or common salt, apart from any fertilization by a spermatozoon.[21] Now since—when the body is once fairly formed—its further growth and sustenance is maintained by continued division and subdivision of the body-cells, this stimulus to growth may easily (we may suppose) be supplied by the subtle radiations and reactions from another body within whose sphere of influence it comes—radiations and reactions sufficiently subtle to pass through the tissues to the various cells, and of course sufficiently characteristic and individual to be in some cases, as we have supposed, highly vitalizing and stimulating—though in other cases of course they may be poisonous and harmful. Of course, also, it is only love that supplies and is the vitalizing relation.
So intense, at times, is this vitalizing force, and so ardent the need of it, that the whole body leaps and throbs in pain. Plato, in his poetic way, explains the scorching sensation in all the skin and tissues by feigning that it is caused by the wing-feathers of the soul sprouting everywhere (i.e. according to our view, in every little cell). Nevertheless, his words on the subject are singularly pregnant with meaning. For he says (in the Phædrus): “Whenever indeed by gazing on the beauty of the beloved object, and receiving from that beauty particles which fall and flow in upon it (and which are therefore called ‘desire’), the soul is watered and warmed, it is relieved from its pain, and is glad; but as soon as it is parted from its love, and for lack of that moisture is parched, the mouths of the outlets by which the feathers start become so closed up by drought, that they obstruct the shooting germs; and the germs being thus confined underneath, in company of the desire which has been infused, leap like throbbing arteries, and prick each at the outlet which is closed against it; so that the soul, being stung all over, is frantic with pain.”[22]
This fusion of complementaries, then, which is the characteristic of fertilization, takes place between the lovers—not only in respect of their sex-cells, but probably also to a considerable degree in respect of their body-cells. And though with any mortal lovers the complementary nature of the fusion can hardly be so complete as to restore the full glory of the race-life, yet very near to that point it sometimes comes, filling them with mad and immortal-seeming ecstasies, and excusing them indeed for seriously thinking that the wings of their souls have begun to grow! In lesser degree this complementary fusion and exchange is doubtless the explanation (or one explanation) of that very noticeable point—the strange way in which lovers after some years come to resemble each other—in form and feature, in facial expression, tone of voice, carriage of body, handwriting, and all sorts of minute points.
I suppose at this point it will be necessary to explain that the recognition of love (in all its aspects) as a general condition of human health, does not mean a recommendation of wild indulgence in any and every passion—necessary, because in these cases it seems to be generally assumed that the proposer of a very simple thesis means a very great deal more than he says! It is here that the necessity of education comes in; for hitherto public instruction and discussion in these matters have been so defective that folk have been unable to talk about them except in a hysterical way—hysterical on the one side or the other. The positive value of love, its positive cultivation as a gracious, superb, and necessary part of our lives has hardly (at least in the Anglo-Saxon world) entered into people’s minds. To teach young things to love, and how to love, to actually instruct and encourage them in the art, has seemed something wicked and unspeakable. Says Havelock Ellis:[23] “Whether or not Christianity is to be held responsible, it cannot be doubted that throughout Christendom there has been a lamentable failure to recognize the supreme importance, not only erotically but morally, of the art of love. Even in the great revival of sexual enlightenment now taking place around us there is rarely even the faintest recognition that in sexual enlightenment the one thing essentially necessary is a knowledge of the art of love. For the most part sexual instruction, as at present understood, is purely negative, a mere string of thou-shalt-nots. If that failure were due to the conscious and deliberate recognition that while the art of love must be based on physiological and psychological knowledge, it is far too subtle too complex, too personal, to be formulated in lectures and manuals, it would be reasonable and sound. But it seems to rest entirely on ignorance, indifference, or worse.”
It is, I think, not unfair to suppose that it is this indifference or vulgar Philistinism which is largely responsible for the sordid commercialism of the good people of the last century. Finding the lute and the lyre snatched from their hands they were fain to turn to a greater activity with the muck-rake.
Love is a complex of human relations—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and so forth—all more or less necessary. And though seldom realized complete, it is felt, and feels itself, to be imperfect without some representation of every side. To limit it to the expression of one particular aspect would be totally inadequate, if not absurd and impossible. A merely physical love, for instance, on the sexual plane, is an absurdity, a dead letter—the enjoyment and fruition of the physical depending so much on the feeling expressed, that without the latter there is next to no satisfaction. At best there is merely a negative pleasure, a relief, arising from the solution of a previous state of corporeal tension. And in such cases intercourse is easily followed by depression and disappointment. For if there is not enough of the more subtle and durable elements in love, to remain after the physical has been satisfied, and to hold the two parties close together, why, the last state may well be worse than the first!
But equally absurd is any attempt to limit, for instance, to the mental plane, and to make love a matter of affectionate letter-writing merely, or of concordant views on political economy; or again, to confine it to the emotional plane, and the region of more or less sloppy sentiment; or to the spiritual, with a somewhat lofty contempt of the material—in which case it tends, as hinted before, to become too like trying to paint a picture without the use of pigments. All the phases are necessary, or at least desirable—even if, as already said, a quite complete and all-round relation is seldom realized. The physical is desirable, for many very obvious reasons—including corporeal needs and health, and perhaps especially because it acts in the way of removal of barriers, and so opens the path to other intimacies. The mental is desirable, to give form and outline to the relation; the emotional, to provide the something to be expressed; and the spiritual to give permanence