I shall not attempt to give a definition, either brief or extensive, of Love. Many have tried and failed, and I shall not attempt the impossible. Nor shall I attempt to discuss Love in all its innumerable details.[9] To do so would alone require a book many times more voluminous than the one you have before you. I shall, however, endeavor to raise a corner of the veil which surrounds this most mysterious, most baffling and most complex of all human emotions, so that you may get a glimpse into its intricate mechanism and perhaps understand what Love is in its essence at least.

Sexual and Platonic Love. There are two widely different, in fact diametrically opposite, opinions as to what constitutes Love. One opinion is that Love is sexual love, sexual attraction, sexual desire. To people holding this opinion love and sexual desire or "lust" are synonymous. And they laugh and sneer at any attempt to idealize love, to present it as something finer and subtler, let alone nobler, than mere sex attraction. The writer has heard one cynical woman—and more than one man—say: Love? There is no such a thing. Sexual intercourse is love, and that's all there is to it.

The other opinion is that Love, true love, ideal love, or, as it is sometimes called, sentimental love, or platonic love, has nothing to do with sexual desire, with sexual attraction. Indeed, people holding this opinion consider love and sexual attraction—or lust as they like to call the latter—as antithetical conceptions, as mutually antagonistic and exclusive.

Both opinions, as is often the case with extreme and one-sided opinions, are wrong. Both opinions have a reason for their existence, because there is a grain of truth in both of them. But a grain of truth is not the whole truth, and if an opinion contains ninety-nine parts of untruth to one part of truth, then the effect of the opinion is practically the same as if it were all false.

Here is the truth, or at least what I think is the truth, as it appears to me after many years of thinking and many years of observing.

Foundation of Love. The foundation, the basis of all love is sexual attraction. Without sexual attraction, in greater or lesser degree, there can be no love. Where the former is entirely lacking the latter can have no existence. This you may take as an axiom. Some may call it love, but on analyzing it you will find that it is no such thing. It may be friendship, it may be gratitude, it may be respect, it may be pity, it may be habit, it may even be a desire or a readiness to love or to be loved, but it is not love. Experience has proved it in thousands and thousands of sad cases. And the girl who marries a man who is physically repulsive to her, who possesses no physical sexual attraction for her, though she may experience for him all of the feelings mentioned above, namely, friendship, gratitude, respect and pity, is preparing for herself a joyless couch to sleep on. Unless, indeed, she happens to belong to the class of women whom we call frigid, that is, if she is herself devoid of any sexual desire and feels no need of any sexual relations. Such a woman may be fairly or even quite happy with a husband who repels her physically, but whom she likes or respects. And what I said about the wife applies with still greater force to the husband. A man who marries a woman who is physically antipathetic to him is a criminal fool.

I repeat, sexual, physical attraction is the basis, the foundation of love. It is true we see certain cases of love which puzzle us. We cannot understand what "he" has seen in "her" or what "she" has seen in "him." But let us remember this paradox, which paradoxical though it be, is true nevertheless: Love is blind, but Love also sees acutely and penetratingly; it sees things which we who are indifferent cannot see. The blindness of Love helps her not to see certain defects which are clearly seen to everybody else; but, on the other hand, her penetrating vision helps her to see good qualities which are invisible to others. And a homely person may possess certain compensating physical qualities—such as passionate ardor or strong sexual power—which, render him or her irresistible to a member of the opposite sex.

But homeliness, ugliness or deformity have their limits, and I challenge anybody to bring forth an authenticated case in which a man fell in love with a woman—or vice versa—who had an enormous tumor on one side of the face, which made her look like a monstrosity, or whose nose was sunk in as a result of lupus or syphilis, or whose cheek was eaten away by cancer. Love under such circumstances is an absolute impossibility, because there is physical aversion here, and physical aversion is fatal to the genesis of love. A man who loved a woman may continue to love her after she has become disfigured by disease, but he cannot fall in love with such a woman.

I will repeat, then, and I trust you will agree with me on this point: sexual attraction is the foundation of all love between the opposite sexes. Where sexual attraction is lacking you can give the feeling any other name you choose: it will not be love.

Other Requisites. But a foundation is not a whole structure. To insure the stability of a high intricate building we must give it a good solid foundation; but the foundation does not make the building. That still remains to be built. So sexual attraction is the foundation of all love, but it does not constitute love. Many more factors, many more wonderful stones are needed before the wonderful structure called love is brought into existence. This wonderful structure sometimes goes up in the twinkling of an eye, as if by the touch of a magic wand—who has not seen or heard of instances of "love at first sight!"—but the rapidity of the growth of the structure called Love does not militate against our assertion that many stones, much variegated material, and a strong cement are needed for its completion. Fairies sometimes work very quickly.

A little thought will show clearly that Love is not merely sexual love, not merely a desire to gratify the sexual instinct. If love were merely sexual desire, then one member of the opposite sex, or at least one attractive member, would be as good as any other. And indeed in animals and in the lower races, where love as we understand it does not exist, this is the case. To a male dog any female dog is as good as another, and vice versa. Cats are not particular in the choice of their mates, nor are cows, horses, etc. And the same is true of the primitive savage races, and even among the lower uneducated classes of so-called civilized races. To the Hottentot, to the Australian bushman or to the Russian peasant one woman is as good as another. If the male of a low race has some preference, it will be in favor of the woman who happens to have a little property.

In fact I make the assertion that real love, true love, is a new feeling, a comparatively modern feeling, absent in the lower races and reaching its highest development only in people of high civilization, culture and education.

The platitudinous objection might be raised that "human nature is human nature," that all our feelings are born with us, and as such are inherited, that they have been with us for millions of years and that we cannot possibly originate any entirely new feeling. True from a certain viewpoint. We cannot originate intellect either. The germ of intellect with all its potential possibilities was present in our most primitive tree-climbing ancestors. But as much difference as there is between the intellect of an Australian bushman and the intellect of a Spinoza, a Shakespeare, a Darwin, a Victor Hugo, a Goethe or a Gauss, so much difference is there between the love of a primitive savage and the love of the highly cultured modern man. The love or so-called love of the primitive or ignorant man (and woman) is a simple matter and is practically equivalent to a desire for sexual gratification. The love of the truly cultured and highly civilized man and woman, while still based on sexual attraction, is so complex and so dominating a feeling that it completely defies all analysis, all attempts at dissection, as it defies all attempts at synthesis, at artificial building up.

As previously stated, some writers attempt to make a clear distinction between sensual and sentimental love; many reams of paper have been used up in an endeavor to differentiate between one and the other; the first is called animal love or lust; the second pure love or ideal love; the first variety of love is said to be selfish, egotistic, the other—self-sacrificing, altruistic. These distinctions read very nicely, but they mean very little. There is no distinct line of demarkation between the two varieties of love, and one merges imperceptibly into the other. Most, if not all, of our apparently altruistic actions and feelings have an egotistic substratum; and the quality of the love depends upon the lover. In other words, there are not two separate, distinct varieties of love, but there are separate, distinct varieties of men. A fine and noble man will love finely and nobly; a coarse and brutal man will love coarsely and brutally. A man who is fine and noble may not love at all, but he cannot love coarsely and selfishly; and a coarse and brutal man can never love nobly and unselfishly. Which once more means: the difference is not inherent in the love, but in the lover.

But to say that a man may deeply love a woman and not have any sexual desire for her is nonsense. A man who loves a woman and does not want to possess her (to use the ugly ancient verb) does not love her—or he is completely impotent. Whatever the feeling may be for her—it is not love. He may abstain from having sex relations with her if the circumstances are such that sex relations may lead to her unhappiness and suffering, but to refrain from doing a thing, when reason and judgment lead us to refrain, does not mean not to want the thing.

Love at First Sight. Nothing is more firmly established than the fact that a person may fall passionately and incurably in love with a person of the opposite sex at the very first sight, in the twinkling of an eye, in the literal sense of the word. One glance may be sufficient. And such a love may exist to the end of life, and may, if reciprocated, lead to supreme happiness, or if unreciprocated to the deepest unhappiness.

What it is that causes love at first sight is unknown. Some have suggested that the beloved object sets in motion or fermentation certain internal secretions (hormones) in the lover which cannot become "satisfied" or "neutralized" except by that person; and the possession of the beloved object becomes a physical necessity. This explanation really means nothing. It is a hypothesis unsusceptible of proof. But whatever the cause of love at first sight, it is so mysterious a phenomenon that it gives the mystics and metaphysicians some justification for their talk about "electric currents" and "magnetic forces." These phrases also mean nothing, but are an attempt at explaining the suddenness and irresistibleness of the attack. So powerful is the attraction of love at first sight that people have been known to cross continents and oceans merely to get a glimpse of the beloved object; and people have been known to sacrifice everything—their career, their material possessions, their social standing, their honor, and even their wife and children, in order to gain their object. And a mother may give up her children whom she loves dearer than life, may risk ostracism and disgrace, only in order to be with the object of her love. This shows that love, then, becomes pathological, because any feeling which so completely masters an individual that he is willing to sacrifice everything he has in the world is pathological.

Infatuation and Being in Love. While, as said, the feeling of love does not readily lend itself to dissection, to analysis, still we can differentiate some phases of it. We can differentiate between "being in love," "infatuation," and "love." Being in love is, as just indicated, a pathological, morbid phenomenon. The person who is in love is not in a normal condition. He can see nothing, he cannot be argued with, as far as his love is concerned. She is the acme of perfection, physical, mental, and spiritual; nobody can be compared with her. And, of course, the man is anxiously eager to marry the object of his love—unless insuperable obstacles are in the way; for instance, if the man happens to be married.

Infatuation may be as strong as any "being in love" feeling. But with this difference. In infatuation the man may know that the object of infatuation is an unworthy one, he may despise her, he may hate her, he may pray for her death, he may do his utmost to overcome the infatuation. In short, infatuation is a feeling, chiefly physical, which the man can analyze, the unworthiness and absurdity of which he may acknowledge, but which he is unable to resist or overcome. He feels himself bewitched; he feels himself caught in a net, he is anxious to tear asunder the meshes of the net, but is not strong enough to do it.

And this is a pretty good way to differentiate between being in love and being infatuated. If in love the man does not want to be free from his chains; he does not want to cease to love or to be in love. When infatuated the man often uses his utmost will-power to break his shackles. Sexual satisfaction is often sufficient to shatter an infatuation; it is not sufficient to destroy love—it often strengthens and eternalizes it.

Neither being in love nor infatuation can last "forever"; they are acute maladies of high tension and relatively short duration. Infatuation may change into indifference or disgust; "being in love" may change into indifference, hatred, or into real love—a steady, durable love.

This will answer the often asked question: How do marriages turn out which are the result of a sudden, violent passion, or of love at first sight? No ironclad rules suitable for all cases can be given. Some turn out very unhappily, the couple gradually finding out that they are altogether unsuited to each other, that their temperaments are incompatible, that their views, ideas, likes and dislikes are different. In some cases what was supposed to be a great love is soon seen to have been merely an infatuation. And satiety and disgust follow. But in other cases, as mentioned, the sudden consuming passion turns into a warm, life-long love and the people live happily ever after.

Dr. Nystroem relates the case of a prominent physician of France, of high social and scientific standing, who beheld a young girl accidentally in the street. He did not have the slightest idea who she was. He was irresistibly attracted to her. He followed her, boarded the same omnibus and went to the house which she entered, rang the bell, introduced himself, begging pardon for his intrusion, but was dismissed. He returned and explained to her his ardent passion and asked permission to visit her parents, well-to-do people in the country, and the climax was a mutual love and a happy marriage.

Many of us know of similar cases. But as a rule the slow developing love is more reliable than the suddenly bursting out flame.

* * * * *

Love is the most complex, the most mysterious, the most unanalyzable of human emotions. It is based upon the difference in sex—upon the attraction of one sex for another. It is fostered by physical beauty, by daintiness, by a normal sexuality, by a fine character, by high aspirations, by culture and education, by common interests, by kindness and consideration, by pity, by habit and by a thousand other subtle feelings, qualities and actions, which are difficult of classification or enumeration.

A great love, greatly reciprocated, is in itself capable of rendering a human being supremely happy. Nothing else is. Other things, such as wealth, power, fame, success, great discoveries, may give supreme satisfaction, great contentment, but supreme, buoyant happiness is the gift of a great love only. Such loves are rare, and the mortals that achieve it are the envy of the gods. But a great love, unreciprocated, especially when admixed to it is the feeling of jealousy, is the most frightful of tortures; it will crush a man like nothing else will, and the victims of this emotional catastrophe are pitied by the inmates of the lowest inferno.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] To avoid confusion, I will state here that I am discussing love between the opposite sexes, and not maternal love, homosexual love, love for one's country, etc.



CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

JEALOUSY AND HOW TO COMBAT IT

Jealousy the Most Painful of Human Emotions—Impairment of Health—Mental Havoc—Jealousy as a Primitive Emotion—Jealousy in the Advanced Thinker and in the Savage—Jealousy in the Child—Feelings and Environmental Factors—Essential Factors— Vanity—Anger—Pain—Envy—The Impotent Husband's Jealousy— Anti-social Qualities—The Jealous and the Unfaithful Husband— Means of Eradicating the Evil—Iwan Bloch on the Question—Prof. Robert Michels' Statement—Remark of Prof. Von Ehrenfels—Havelock Ellis on Variation in Sexual Relationships—Advanced Ideas—Woman as Man's Chattel—The Change and the Changer—Teaching the Children—Casting Epithets at Jealousy—Free Unions and Jealousy— Feelings, Actions and Public Opinion—The Adulterous Wife of the Present Day—Jealousy Defeating Its Own Object—Jealousy of Inanimate Objects.

He or she who has been so unfortunate as to experience the pangs—or fangs—of jealousy will readily admit that it is one of the most painful, if indeed not the most painful, of all human emotions. The suffering that it metes out to its victims is indescribable. No other single human emotion so affects the body, so upsets the mind, so deranges every function, as does jealousy. The torture that it causes makes the sufferer a truly pitiable object: the complete loss of sleep and complete loss of appetite may result in a serious impairment of the sufferer's health, while the rage it often gives rise to may lead to actual insanity, or at least to great mental disturbance. With good reason has popular fancy pictured this cursed emotion as a green-eyed monster.

Jealousy is a primitive emotion. It is present not only in the primitive races, but even in animals. And being a primitive emotion, we can hardly hope to succeed in eradicating it entirely. Not in the immediate future, at any rate. But we can modify it.

The statement frequently heard that "human nature is human nature" is only a platitudinous half-truth. The fundamental part of human nature—the desire for happiness and the avoidance of suffering—cannot be changed, nor would we want to change it if we could. It would mean the disappearance of the human race. But that many of our primitive emotions can be greatly modified by culture, by new standards, by new ideals of morality, about this there can be no question.

Just as love in modern man is an entirely different feeling from what it was in primitive man, so jealousy in the advanced thinker is a different feeling from what it was in the savage; and by education and true culture it can be modified still further. We hope that in time to come—I will not venture to say how soon that time will be here—this injurious, degrading, anti-social feeling may be entirely or almost entirely eradicated from the human breast.

The primitive desire—and this primitive desire of the race is still fully exhibited by children—is to take possession of everything nice or useful that somebody else has and which we have not. But our education and our cultural standards, including fear of punishment, have so repressed this desire, have put it so deeply in the background, that normal human beings hardly feel it at all.

It is only improperly brought up people, mental defectives and those unable to adjust themselves to their environment who still have this primitive feeling of taking or stealing. And so with many other feelings and emotions; and so with jealousy.

If we, at the very first notice of a manifestation of jealousy by a child, should frown upon it, if we should explain to the child or adolescent that jealousy is a mean, degrading feeling, that it is a feeling to be ashamed of, a feeling to hide and not to show off or even be proud of—as some are now—then jealousy would manifest itself in a much smaller number of individuals, and those unfortunate enough to be attacked by it would try to repress it, to hide it, to overcome it, so that it would eventually become paler and less acute and its consequences would be less significant, less disastrous for both the victim and for the persons concerned. Feelings, let us bear in mind, are not spontaneous things uninfluenced by any environmental factors. Feelings are like plants; under one environment you may foster their growth and make them develop luxuriantly; under another environment you may dwarf their growth and strangle them.

In order to enable us to inhibit the growth of the demon of jealousy, we must learn what its essence is and what factors are favorable to its development.

Causes of Jealousy

The essential factor in jealousy is fear. Fear of losing the beloved object, fear of losing the person who provides you with sexual satisfaction, or the mere economic fear of losing a material provider. The latter kind of fear is, of course, more often manifested—even though unconsciously—in women. Women who have no love for their husbands are nevertheless often fiercely jealous, because consciously or unconsciously they are afraid that their husbands may desert them for other women, and that they may thus find themselves in a precarious economic condition.

Another factor in jealousy is wounded vanity. We do not like to feel that somebody is considered superior to us. This feeling of wounded vanity is present in other varieties of envy or rivalry. A person who loses in a race or gets a lower mark in his examination than his rival may be filled with a feeling of envy and hatred almost equal in intensity to, though never as painful as, sexual jealousy.

Another factor in jealousy is anger over loss of what we consider our property. In our present social order the man considers his wife his absolute property, and so does the wife consider her husband. And there is anger that a stranger should dare to rob us or make use of our property, just as there would be anger if a thief came and robbed us of a valuable material possession. This anger or rage part of jealousy is not a sign of love. It is very far from being so. Because it manifests itself also in men and women who have not a particle of love for their spouses; it manifests itself in spouses who have nothing but hatred and loathing for their partners.

Another important factor is pain, pain that the person we love has ceased to love us. When we love a person and our love is not reciprocated, we feel pain which may rise to the degree of agony, even when there is no rival in the field. But when a person who loved us has ceased to love us—or we imagine so—and has transferred the love to another person that pain is so much the greater.

I will digress here for a moment to state that the fear that a person has ceased to love us because he loves somebody else is often groundless. It is based upon the erroneous and vicious idea that a man cannot possibly love two women at the same time, or that a woman cannot love two men at the same time. Psychologists, particularly those who have made a special study of sexual psychology, know that this idea is false. They know that love may be directed at the same time towards two or three individuals. They know that a second love not only does not necessarily destroy or diminish a first love, but may deepen and strengthen the latter.

Another element is pure envy. Just mean envy that somebody should have what we haven't, or what we have but are in danger of losing. Just as we envy others an automobile, a fine house, a high social position, etc., when we have not got them or have been deprived of them.

A point that I would like to mention is, that if husbands who have become impotent—having lost either the desire or the power, but particularly the latter—become jealous, their jealousy knows no bounds. No strongly potent man ever reaches the same intensity in jealousy as is reached by a sexually weak or impotent man. The knowledge that another man has displaced him and that he himself could not replace that other man even if he were permitted to fills him with impotent rage; and, as is well known, impotent rage is always more intense than rage that is potent. Women are free from this kind of rage, because women are never impotent in this sense. (They may be frigid, but they are never devoid of the potentia coeundi, except in extremely rare cases of atresia vaginae or the absence of the external genitals.)

There are a number of other components which go to make up this "queen of torments" or "king of torturers" jealousy, but those I have enumerated are the essential ones.

What are they? Fear, vanity, anger, envy and pain. None of them admirable qualities, none of them, with the exception of the first and the last, even deserving our compassion. All of them anti-social and anti-individual qualities. Should not everything be done to eradicate such a rank weed, which draws its sustenance from roots each one of which is dipped in poison?

We are told that in our primitive state jealousy was a social instinct; that by killing and keeping away rivals it helped to found and cement the family and to keep it pure. I do not care to enter here into a discussion of this point. But whatever useful role jealousy may have played in the remote ages (I doubt that it has), it is now an utterly useless, utterly vicious, utterly anti-social and anti-individual emotion. It is opposed to social life and it destroys individual happiness. And everything possible should be done to smother it, to strangle it, to eliminate it entirely from human life.

Yes, I find no compensation whatever for jealousy; I find no place for it in our modern life and I am in complete agreement with Forel, who calls jealousy "a heritage of animals and barbarians." "That is what I would say," he says, "to all those who, in the name of offended honor, would grant it rights and even place it on a pedestal. It is ten times better for a woman to marry an unfaithful than a jealous husband.... Jealousy transforms marriage into a hell.... Even in its more moderate and normal form, jealousy is a torment, for distrust and suspicion poison love. We often hear of justified jealousy. I maintain that jealousy is never justifiable; it is always a stupid, atavistic inheritance, or else a pathological symptom."

But can anything be done to eradicate this agonizing, tormenting emotion? I believe it can, and the ways and means to the eradication of this evil will be found on analyzing its components. We may not be able to destroy all the components; if we destroy the greater part of them much will have been accomplished.

The underlying factors of jealousy are: the primitive instinct, also present in many animals, our ethical and religious ideas and our economic system. The primitive instinct we can repress and modify; we can hardly hope to eradicate it entirely. But our ideas and economic system we can change. It is easier to change ideas than it is a system, and it is with our ideas we should commence.

The first idea we must endeavor to destroy is that it is impossible for a human being to love more than one other human being at the same time. We must show that the love of the modern educated and esthetic man and woman is an exceedingly complex feeling, and that a man may deeply and sincerely love one woman for certain qualities and just as deeply and sincerely love another woman for certain other qualities. Of course, love cannot be measured by the yard or bushel, nor can it be weighed on the most delicate chemical balance. And it may be impossible to determine whether he loves both women exactly alike or he loves one woman more than the other. But that one love does not exclude another, that it may even intensify the other love, that is certain, and is the opinion of every advanced sexologist.

Max Nordau, a man of high and austere ideals, a man whom nobody will accuse of a tendency to licentiousness, says in his Conventional Lies: "It may sound very shocking, yet I must say it: we can even love several individuals at the same time, with nearly equal tenderness, and we do not necessarily lie when we assure each one of our passion. No matter how deeply we may be in love with a certain individual, we do not cease to be susceptible to the influence of the entire sex."

And Iwan Bloch, than whom no greater investigator in the field of sexology ever lived, asks the question: "Is it possible for any one to be simultaneously in love with several individuals?" And he immediately says: "I answer this question with an unconditional 'yes.'" And he says further: "It is precisely the extraordinary manifold spiritual differentiation of modern civilized humanity that gives rise to the possibility of such a simultaneous love for two individuals. Our spiritual nature exhibits the most varied coloring. It is difficult always to find the corresponding complements in one single individual."

Prof. Robert Michels says: "It is Nature's will that the normal male should feel a continuous and powerful sexual attraction towards a considerable number of women.... In the male the stimuli capable of arousing sexual excitement (this term is not to be understood here in the grossly physical sense) are so extraordinarily manifold, so widely differentiated that it is quite impossible for one single woman to possess them all."

Prof. von Ehrenfels wittily remarks that if it were a moral precept that a man should never have intercourse more them once in his life with any particular woman, this would correspond far better with the nature of the normal male and would cost him far less will-power than is needed by him in order to live up to the conventional demands of monogamy.

And Havelock Ellis cautiously says: "A certain degree of variation is involved in the sexual relationships, as in all other relationships, and unless we are to continue to perpetuate many evils and injustices, that fact has to be faced and recognized."

I have devoted considerable space to this topic, and I have, contrary to my custom, quoted "authorities," because I consider this point of the utmost importance; it is the first step in combating the demon of jealousy. If our wives, fiancees and sweethearts could be convinced of the truth that a man's interest in or even affection towards another member of the female sex does not mean the death of love, or even diminished love, half of the battle would be won. Half of the misery, half of the quarrels, half of the self-torture, half of the disrupted homes, in short, half of the tyrannical reign of the demon of jealousy, would be gone.

We must teach our women and men this truth, teach it from puberty on. We must show them that not every woman can necessarily fill out a man's entire life, that not every woman can necessarily occupy every nook and corner of a man's mind and heart, and that there is nothing humiliating to the woman in such an idea (and vice versa). She should be taught to find nothing shameful, painful or degrading in such a thought. I know that these ideas are somewhat in advance of the times, but if nobody ever brought forward any advanced ideas because they were advanced there would never be any advance.

Then we must teach our men that when they marry a woman she does not become their chattel, their piece of property, which nobody may touch, nobody may look at or smile at. A woman may be a very good, faithful wife and still enjoy the companionship of other men, the pressure of another man's hand or—horribile dictu—even an occasional kiss.

Then we must teach our men and women that there is essentially nothing shameful or humiliating in being displaced by a rival. The change may be a disgrace for the changer and not for the changed one. It does not at all mean that the change has been made because the rival is superior; it is a well-known fact that the rival often is inferior. The change is often made, not because the changer has gone upward, but because he has gone downward, has deteriorated. And the changer often knows it himself.

Inculcating those ideas would do away with the feeling of wounded vanity which is such an important component in the feeling of jealousy.

Further, we must teach our children from the earliest age that jealousy is "not nice," that it is a mean feeling, that it is a sign of weakness, that it is degrading to the person who entertains it, particularly to the person who exhibits it. Ideas inculcated from childhood have a powerful influence, and the various ideas exposed above would have an undoubted influence in minimizing the mephitic, destructive effects of the feeling of jealousy. People properly brought up will always succeed in controlling or suppressing certain non-vital instincts or emotions on which society puts its stamp of disapproval, which it considers "not nice" or disgraceful.

I am, therefore, an optimist in relation to the eventual uprooting of the greater number of components of the anti-social feeling of jealousy. And when woman reaches economic independence, then another component of the instinct of jealousy—the terror at losing a provider and being left in poverty—will disappear.

Jealousy Not Toward Rivals. Jealousy need not express itself toward a sexual rival only. A person may be jealous of people who can never be sexual rivals; the jealousy need not even be of people; it may be of inanimate objects, of a person's work, profession or hobby. Thus a wife may be intensely jealous of her husband's mother, towards whom he is very affectionate or simply kind and considerate. She may be jealous of her own children if she notices or imagines that the father loves them intensely, or if he spends a good deal of time with them. She may be jealous of his male friends, and many a husband had to give up, not only his female acquaintances, but his life-long male friends—in order to preserve peace in the family. A wife may be fiercely jealous of her husband's success and reputation, and cases are not unknown where the wife put every possible obstacle in her husband's way, in order to make him fail in his work, to make him turn out mediocre work, all from fear that his success would gain him admirers, which might perhaps take him away from her. Wives have been known to do everything in their power to exhaust and weaken their husbands, to make them physically unattractive, only to keep them. And so powerful is this primitive, childish, savage feeling, this desire for exclusive monopoly, that there is nothing a jealous wife, sweetheart or mistress may not do in order to retain the man, in order to regain him, or, having lost him irretrievably, in order to revenge herself. And what is said about the woman is applicable with equal force to man. It is a huge mistake to assume that jealousy is woman's prerogative, her particular characteristic, or even that it is stronger in her than in man. A man can be as savagely jealous as any woman and suffer the same tortures of hell.

Jealousy Defeats Its Object. One of the worst features about jealousy is that it defeats its own object. We have been told, as stated before, that jealousy was once upon a time a racial instinct, that by frightening away rivals it helped to found the family and to keep it chaste and pure. Quite the contrary is true now. More than one man has, by accusing his innocent wife of infidelity and by torturing her with baseless suspicions, driven her into the arms of a lover. We are all more or less susceptible to suggestion, and by continually suspecting a wife of a love affair or illicit relation a man may implant the seed of suggestion so strongly that it may grow luxuriantly and the wife may be unable to resist the suggested temptation. And very often the very lover is suggested by the husband. "Yes, don't attempt to deny it. It is useless. I know you have relations with X. I know you are his mistress." He kept on repeating it so often to his absolutely blameless, innocent young wife and he made her so wretched by his rudeness and brutality that one day she did go over to X's rooms and did become his mistress. And after that she could stand her husband's outbursts with equanimity. "If I have the name I might as well have the game," is a good bit of psychologic wisdom. And a husband should be very careful about even suspecting a wife unjustly, and thus make the first step towards rendering his baseless suspicions a reality, his unjust accusations justified. And, of course, what is true of the husband is also true of the wife. Many a wife has driven her indolent husband into the hands of prostitutes or mistresses by her incessant nagging, false accusations and vicious epithets applied to all his female friends and acquaintances.

Yes, from whatever angle you consider it, jealousy is a mean, nasty, miserable feeling. Because it is a more or less universal feeling, because "we cannot help it," does not render it less mean, less nasty, less miserable.

I do not for a moment imagine that characterizing jealousy the way it deserves to be characterized, calling it a shameful, savage, primitive feeling, etc., is at once going to banish it from the breasts of men and women in which it has found an abiding place; throwing epithets at it will not cause it to unfasten its talons. Unfortunately, I know only too well that our emotions are stronger than our reason; the man or woman at whose poor heart jealousy is gnawing day and night is not amenable to reason, is not curable by arguments; all we can do is to sympathize with such a person and ask the Lord to pity him or her.

I have known a man who lived with his wife in free union, i.e., he was not married to her. He did not believe in marriage. Love was the only bond that should bind people together; as soon as love was no more the people should separate in a friendly, comradely manner. If the wife or the mistress wants another lover, she should be free to take one; she is a free human being and not her husband's chattel slave, etc., etc., etc., to the same effect. Thus the man talked. And he was sincere in his talk—or he thought he was. But one night on unexpectedly returning home he found another man; he promptly fired several shots at the man, which fortunately for both did not prove fatal, and then he beat and choked his wife—who wasn't even his wife legally—within an inch of her life. And then he married her and gave up his free love talk. And I know of any number of men who could philosophize for hours about the disgrace and humiliation of being jealous, but who, as soon as there was a justifiable cause for jealousy, became as unreasonable as a child and as jealous as any unlettered Sicilian woman ever was.

So you see, I am not deluding myself with extravagant hopes. But, nevertheless, this argumentation, this talk, is not entirely useless. A beginning must be made. This essay may not perhaps help—except for the suggestions that will be made towards the end—those who are already victims of the demon of jealousy, but it may help some people to keep out of his clutches (or should I say: her clutches? I really don't know whether the demon of jealousy is a male or a female.)

Feelings are stronger than reason; but that does not mean that feelings cannot be influenced by reason; they decidedly can be and are so influenced, and their manifestations are modified by this influence; and the more cultured, the more educated a person is (I trust you will know that I use these terms in their true and not their vulgar, misused meaning), the more will his feelings, or at least actions, be influenced by his reason. I am particularly a believer in the effect on our feelings and actions of public opinion, of ideas universally or generally entertained.

Let me give one example which is pertinent to the subject. In former days it was universally held, and in many places it is still held, that when a wife sinned she committed the most unpardonable crime that a human being could be guilty of and that she thereby dishonored her husband. And the only right thing for him to do was to shoot the rival and cast out the wife; or at least to cast her out. This was a conditio sine qua non. To take her back to his home was a disgrace, a sign of unpardonable weakness, of degeneracy. Our ideas on the subject have changed a bit. A husband is no longer considered any more dishonored—in some strata of society at least—because his wife sinned than a wife is considered dishonored because her husband sinned; and adultery in the wife is now, by most rational people, considered only different in degree, but not in kind, from adultery in the husband. These humane ideas have gained vogue only within a comparatively very recent period; but their effect has already manifested itself in a great number of instances. Forgiving the erring wife is becoming quite common. A number of cases have reached the newspapers. Recently a wife was implicated in a nasty scrape; her sin was not only unquestionable, but notorious; it was public property. And nevertheless the husband stood by her and took her back into his home and arms. And the number of such cases which do not reach the newspapers is very, very much larger than the public has any conception of, larger than it would be safe to estimate. And in a large percentage of these cases the husband begins to treat his wife with more love, more consideration, and the tie between them becomes more firm, more permanent.



CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

REMEDIES FOR JEALOUSY

Prevention and Cure—Prophylaxis of Jealousy—Fitting Remedy to Circumstances—The Neglectful and Flirtatious Husband—No Question of Love—Advice to the wife of the Flirtatious Man—An Efficient Though Vulgar Remedy—Jealousy Must Be Experienced to Be Understood—Necessity for Freedom of Association—Lines of Conduct for the Wife—Contempt for a Certain Type of Wife and Husband—The Abandoned Lover—The Effects of Unrequited Love—Sublimated Sexual Desire—Replacing Unrequited Love—The Attitude of Goethe—Simultaneous Loves Possible—Successive Loves Possible—Eternal Loves—When Sex Relationships May Be Beneficial—Purchasable Sex Relations and Their Value—The Broken Engagement—The Terrible Effects on the Young Man—The Young Streetwalker—Sex Relations with Fiance—Inundating Sense of Shame—Collapse—Attempts at Suicide—An Active Sex Life—The Results—The Prevention of Jealousy.

We are all agreed that prevention is more important than cure. But when a patient comes with a fully developed disease it is futile to speak to him of prevention. It is too late to sermonize. What he wants and what he needs is a cure, if such can be had. What has preceded has reference chiefly to the prophylaxis of jealousy, to the prevention of the development of this disease in the future.

The question is: Is there a remedy for this malady? Is there a cure for this horrible disease of jealousy?

The conditions are extremely complex, and the remedy must be fitted to the circumstances. Let us assume that the husband neglects his wife and causes her to be jealous, not because he is in love with another woman, but because he is flirtatious, light-headed, feather-brained and inconsiderate. Such cases are in the great majority. Many husbands who like or love their wives and who believe themselves secure in their love think it is quite proper for them to hunt for new conquests and to carry on petty love affairs with as many girls or women as they comfortably can. There is no question here about love—it is just flirtation or sexual relations. When this is the case the wife should have a frank and firm talk with her husband; she should tell him that she does not like his behavior and that it makes her unhappy. In many instances this alone will suffice to effect a change in the husband's conduct. Where this does not suffice, where the husband is too egotistic and does not want to give up his little pleasures, then it is left for the wife to adopt the old and rather vulgar remedy. It is old and, as said, rather vulgar, but it has the merit of efficiency: it very often works. Let the wife adopt similar tactics, let her also flirt, let her go out and come back at uncertain hours, let her keep the husband guessing as to where and with whom she is. And nine times out of ten this, under the circumstances, fully justifiable conduct on the part of the wife will effect a quick and radical change in the conduct of the husband. He will be only too glad to cry quits. Some people are utterly devoid of imagination. They lack the ability of putting themselves in another person's place. Jealousy particularly is not a feeling which any one can understand without having experienced it, unless he is endowed with the imagination of a great poet. And as few husbands have a great poetic imagination, it is only after they have felt the claws of the monster tearing at their own hearts that they can understand their wives' feelings, and are willing to act so as to save them—and themselves, of course—the cruel tortures. Many wives and many husbands have talked to me and written to me on the subject, and, as stated before, in nine times out of ten the remedy worked.

But how about the tenth case? How about the cases where the husband is unable or unwilling to give up his outside flirtations and relations? We, advanced sexologists, know that not all men, no more than all women, are made in the same mould, and what is possible or even easy for nine men may be very difficult or absolutely impossible for the tenth. We know that there are some men to whom an ironclad monogamic relation is an absolute impossibility. The stimulation of other women—either the purely mental, spiritual stimulation or the stimulation of physical relations—is to them like breath in the nostrils. In fact, there are some men whose very possibility of loving their wives depends upon this freedom of association with other women. They can be extremely kind to and love their wives tenderly, if they can at the same time associate—spiritually or physically—with other women. If they are entirely cut off from any association with any other woman they begin to feel irritable, bored, may become ill, and their feeling towards their wives may become one of resentment, ill-will, or even one of hatred. This is not the place to talk of the wickedness of such men—thus they are made and with this fact we have to deal.

What is the wife of such a man to do? Two lines of conduct are open to her—two avenues of exit. The line of conduct will depend upon her temper and upon her ideas of sex morality. But she ought to select the line of conduct which will cause the least pain, the least unhappiness. If she is a woman of a proud, independent temper, particularly if she belongs to the militant type, she will leave her husband in a huff, regardless of consequences. But if she is a woman of the gentler, more pliable, more supple (and I may also say more subtle) type, and if she really loves her husband, she will overlook his little foibles, peccadilloes and transgressions—and she may live quite happily. And the time will come when the husband himself will give up his peccadilloes and transgressions and will cleave powerfully to his wife, will be bound to her by bonds never to be torn asunder. I know of several such cases.

And I will take this opportunity to say that I have the deepest contempt for the wife who, on finding out that her husband had committed a transgression or that he has a love affair, leaves him in a huff, or makes a public scandal, or sues for divorce. Such a wife never loved her husband, and he is well rid of her. And what I said about the wife applies with almost equal force to the husband.

The Abandoned Lover. But what shall the abandoned lover do? Let us take the case of A and B, and let A stand for any man and B for any woman; or, vice versa, let A be the woman and B the man, for in jealousy and love what applies to one sex is applicable with practically the same force to the opposite sex. Suppose A is intensely jealous of and deeply, passionately in love with B; but B is utterly indifferent and does not care what A may feel or do. A and B may be married or not; this does not alter the case materially. Suppose B, if unmarried to A, goes off and marries another man, or, if married to A, goes off and leaves him; or suppose B does not love anybody else, but just remains indifferent to A's advances or repels him because she cannot reciprocate his love. Unrequited love alone can cause almost as fierce tortures as the most intense jealousy. And A suffers tortures. What shall he do? What shall he do to save himself—to save his health, his mind, his life? For he is unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to work, and he feels that he is going to pieces. He has lost his position and is in danger of losing his reason. What shall he do to escape insanity or a suicide's grave? There is but one remedy. Let him use all his energies to find a substitute. I mean a living substitute. Mere sexual desire may be sublimated, to a certain extent, into other channels, may be replaced by work, study, a hobby or some engrossing interest. A great unrequited love, with the element of jealousy present or absent, cannot be replaced by anything else except by another love. And where as great a love is impossible let it be a minor love or a series of minor loves. When Goethe, one of the world's great lovers, was unable to walk in the broad avenue of a great love he would walk in the by-paths of a number of little loves. The common talk about a person being unable to love more than once in his or her life is silly nonsense. A man or a woman is able to love, and love very deeply, a number of times; and love simultaneously or successively. It is often a mere matter of opportunity. I know that there are loves that are eternal; that there are loves for which no substitute can be found. But these supreme, divine loves are so rare that among ordinary mortals they may be left out of account. They are the portion of supermen and superwomen. Ordinarily a substitute may be found. The substitute love may never reach the intensity of the original love, it may never give full or even half-full satisfaction; but it will help to dull the sharp cutting edge, it will act as a partial hemostatic to the bleeding heart, it will soothe and anesthetize the wound even if it cannot completely heal it. And this is a valuable aid while the sufferer is coming to himself or herself, while the gathered fragments of a broken life are being cemented and while the cement is hardening. Yes, the man or woman who is in inferno on account of an unreciprocated or a betrayed love should lose no time in searching for a substitute love. I do not believe in people losing their health and their minds on account of suffering which does nobody any good.

But I will go still further. Where a substitute love—great or minor—cannot be found, then mere sex relations may help to diminish the suffering, to quiet the turbulent heart, to relieve the aching brain. As everything connected with sex, so our ideas about illicit sex relations that are not connected with love, are honeycombed with hypocrisy and false to the core. While purchasable, loveless sex relations can, of course, not be compared to love relations, still under our present social, economic and moral code they are the only relations that thousands of men and women can enjoy, and they are better than none; and in quite a considerable percentage of cases an element of romance and greater or lesser permanency do become attached to them, and they act as a more or less satisfactory substitute for genuine love relations.

I am not spinning theoretical gossamer webs. I am speaking from experience—the experience of patients and confiding friends. I could relate many interesting cases. And I may, in a more appropriate volume. Here one or two will have to suffice.

He was twenty-six years old and a senior student in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York. He had been in love with and had considered himself engaged for four or five years to a young lady two years his junior. She was, of course, the most wonderful young lady in the world, the whole world; in fact, there was not another one to compare her to. She was unique; she stood all alone. But for a year or so she was getting rather cool towards him; which fanned his flame all the more. And suddenly he received a note asking him not to call any more, nor to try to communicate in any other way. He did write, but his letters were returned unopened. And soon after he read of her engagement to a prominent young banker. He nearly went insane, and this is used not in any figurative sense. His insomnia was complete, and resisted all treatment. When his pulse became very rapid and his eyes acquired the wild look that they do after many sleepless nights an attempt was made to administer hypnotics, but they had practically no effect. Chloral, veronal, etc., only made him "dopy," irritable and depressed, but did not give him one hour of sound sleep. His appetite was gone, now and then his limbs would twitch, and he would sit and stare into space for hours at a time. To study or attend the clinics was out of the question, and he did not even attempt to take the final examinations. The parents felt distressed, but were unable to do anything for him. The least attempt at interference on their part, any attempt to console him, to induce him to pull himself together, made him more irritable, more morose; so that they finally left him alone. He was practically a total abstainer, but one evening he went out and came home drunk; and after that he drank frequently and heavily. His parents could do nothing with him. One evening on Broadway he was accosted by a young street-walker. She had a pleasant, sympathetic face, and he went with her. That was his first sex experience. Up to that time he was chaste. He met her again the following evening. Gradually a sort of friendship grew up between them. She found out the cause of his grief, and with maternal solicitude she tried everything in her power to console him, and he began to look forward to the nightly meeting with her. His grief became gradually less acute, he gave up drinking, which he disliked, and which he had taken up only to deaden his pain; he began to pull himself together, and in six or eight months he took over his last year in Columbia and was properly graduated. He kept up the friendship with the girl for over two years, when she died of pneumonia. He did not love her, but he liked to be with her, as her presence gave him physical and mental comfort. It is possible that she loved him genuinely, but there was never any sentimental talk between them, and there was never any question between them of the permanency of the relationship. They both knew that it was temporary. But he is absolutely certain that but for one of the representatives of the class that is despised, driven about and persecuted by brutal policemen and ignorant judges, he would have become a bum, or, most likely, he would have committed suicide—at the point of which he was several times; only pity for his mother and sisters restrained him.

And here is another case. A girl about twenty-eight years of age fell in love with a man four or five years her senior. The love seemed to be reciprocated, and they soon became engaged to be married. He asked that the engagement, on account of certain business reasons, be kept secret. She did not know the man well; she had met him at several entertainments and church affairs and he seemed very nice. He always found some excuses for delaying the marriage, and after they had been engaged about a year he began to insist on sex relations. Though of a refined and noble character, she was of a passionate nature and she did not offer much resistance. Many girls who would under no circumstance indulge in illicit relations, considering it a great sin, have no compunctions about having relations with their fiances. They lived together for about a year. They were together almost daily, except now and then, when he would go away for a week or two on business. Once he went away—and never came back. He wrote to her that their relations were at an end; that he was a married man and a father of children; he had hoped he might get a divorce, but that now he had changed his mind and that she must forget him, etc. Everything was black before her. It cost her a supreme effort not to faint, and she was supported in this effort by the fact that when the letter came she was in the presence of friends; a terrible, overpowering, all-inundating sense of shame gave her the strength not to betray her condition and her story before the world at large. But as soon as she was alone she collapsed completely. There was the most absolute insomnia imaginable, complete anorexia, but the most distressing features were frequent fainting spells, severe palpitation of the heart and tremors. She had no love for the man—so she said. Her love had turned to hatred and contempt—but the jealousy was all-consuming. Like a fire it was burning in her, searing her brain and her soul day and night.

She felt that she was not strong enough to stand this physical and mental torture, and so she decided to commit suicide. As the means she selected gas. Fortunately, the smell became perceptible before the injury was irreparable. She was saved. But she felt that she could not stand the torture very long—and more than anything was she afraid that her mind would give way. She had a special horror of insanity. And so she decided to make another attempt This time with bichloride. Again she was saved. A friend of hers then got an inkling of the events that were transpiring, and she introduced her to some gentlemen friends. They were nice people and more or less radical on the sex question. In order to drown her pain she began to go out very frequently with that crowd, and to her surprise and delight she found that she soon began to think less and less about her contemptible seducer, and, what was more important to her, she was soon able to sleep. For about six months she led an extremely active, almost promiscuous sex life. But then she gave it up, as she felt herself normal and no longer in need of it. She is now happily married.

I am through with this rather lengthy essay on one of the most painful manifestations of human emotional life. I repeat that I am aware that feelings are often stronger than reason; but saying this does not mean asserting that feelings cannot be modified and held in check by reason. And I feel confident that a careful, open-minded reading of these pages and an acceptance of the ideas therein promulgated would aid in preventing a good deal of the misery of jealousy and in curing a certain proportion of it after it has found lodgment in the hearts of unhappy men and women.

There are one or two more points that might be touched upon, but with the freedom of press in reference to sex matters as it exists in this country to-day, I have said all that I could say.



CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CONCLUDING WORDS

It is my sincere belief—and I cherish the belief in spite of this horrible, wretched war which seems to be shattering the very foundations of everything that we hold dear, destroying all the humane and moral achievements that have been laboriously built up in the course of many centuries—that the time will come when the world will be practically free from pain and suffering. Almost all disease will be conquered, accidents will be rare, the fear of starvation or poverty or unemployment will no longer haunt men and women, every infant born will be well-born and welcome, and the numerous anxieties and ambitions that now disturb the lives of so many of the earth's inhabitants will no longer plague us. They will be the dead memories of a dead and forgotten past.

Yes, I believe that the time will come when the world will be practically free from pain and suffering. But there is one exception. I do not believe that we will ever be able entirely to eliminate the tragedies of the heart. For our physical ills, which will be few in number, there will be a socialized medical profession; everywhere there will be free hospitals and convalescent homes. The unemployment problem will be dealt with by the State, and dealt with so that there will be no unemployment problem. There will be work for everybody and everybody will do the work which he finds most congenial. But the State, I fear, will be able to do nothing in affairs of the heart. When John loves Mary with every fiber of his soul, and Mary remains completely indifferent, then no State physician and no Government official will be able to offer any balm or consolation to poor John. And if Mary loves Robert, and Robert behaves so that he breaks Mary's heart, then no official glue will put it together and no convalescent home will make it whole.

Yes, I believe that love pangs and tragedies of the heart will cause mortal men and women suffering even under the most perfect social regime. But I also believe that these pangs will be less acute, that the suffering will be less cruel than it is now.

Proper ideas about love, freer intercourse between the sexes, a normal and regular sex life, a saner attitude towards many things which are now unjustly considered shameful or criminal will, to a large degree, prevent the heart tragedies and facilitate their cure where they cannot be prevented.

And it is the duty of everybody who loves mankind to study the various phases of human sexuality and help to spread sane and humane ideas on the subject of Sex and Love.

The author trusts that WOMAN: HER SEX AND LOVE LIFE will help, in some slight degree, in spreading healthy, sane and honest ideas about sex among the men and women of America.

THE END



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