Before the birth of love beauty is necessary as advertisement: it predisposes us towards that passion by means of the praises, which we hear given to the object of our future love. Very eager admiration makes the smallest hope decisive.
In gallant-love, and perhaps in passion-love during the first five minutes, a woman, considering a possible lover, gives more weight to the way in which he is seen by other women, than to the way in which she sees him herself.
Hence the success of princes and officers.[1] The pretty women of the Court of old king Lewis XIV were in love with that sovereign.
Great care should be taken not to offer facilities to hope, before it is certain that admiration is there. It might give rise to dullness, which makes love for ever impossible, and which, at any rate, is only to be cured by the sting of wounded pride.
No one feels sympathy for the simpleton, nor for a smile which is always there; hence the necessity in society of a veneer of rakishness—that is, the privileged manner. From too debased a plant we scorn to gather even a smile. In love, our vanity disdains a victory which is too easy; and in all matters man is not given to magnifying the value of an offering.
[1] Those who remarked in the countenance of this young hero a dissolute audacity mixed with extreme haughtiness and indifference to the feelings of others, could not yet deny to his countenance that sort of comeliness, which belongs to an open set of features well formed by nature, modelled by art to the usual rules of courtesy, yet so far frank and honest that they seemed as if they disclaimed to conceal the natural working of the soul. Such an expression is often mistaken for manly frankness, when in truth it arises from the reckless indifference of a libertine disposition, conscious of superiority of birth and wealth, or of some other adventitious advantage totally unconnected with personal merit.
Ivanhoe, Chap. VIII
CHAPTER XI
Crystallisation having once begun, we enjoy with delight each new beauty discovered in that which we love.
But what is beauty? It is the appearance of an aptitude for giving you pleasure.
The pleasures of all individuals are different and often opposed to one another; which explains very well how that, which is beauty for one individual, is ugliness for another. (Conclusive example of Del Rosso and Lisio, 1st January, 1820.)
The right way to discover the nature of beauty is to look for the nature of the pleasures of each individual. Del Rosso, for example, needs a woman who allows a certain boldness of movement, and who by her smiles authorises considerable licence; a woman who at each instant holds physical pleasures before his imagination, and who excites in him the power of pleasing, while giving him at the same time the means of displaying it.
Apparently, by love Del Rosso understands physical love, and Lisio passion-love. Obviously they are not likely to agree about the word beauty.[1]
The beauty then, discovered by you, being the appearance of an aptitude for giving you pleasure, and pleasure being different from pleasure as man from man, the crystallisation formed in the head of each individual must bear the colour of that individual's pleasures.
A man's crystallisation of his mistress, or her beauty, is no other thing than the collection of all the satisfactions of all the desires, which he can have felt successively at her instance.
[1] My Beauty, promise of a character useful to my soul, is above the attraction of the senses; that attraction is only one particular kind of attraction(7). 1815.
CHAPTER XII
FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF CRYSTALLISATION
Why do we enjoy with delight each new beauty, discovered in that which we love?
It is because each new beauty gives the full and entire satisfaction of a desire. You wish your mistress gentle—she is gentle; and then you wish her proud like Emilie in Corneille, and although these qualities are probably incompatible, instantly she appears with the soul of a Roman. That is the moral reason which makes love the strongest of the passions. In all others, desires must accommodate themselves to cold realities; here it is realities which model themselves spontaneously upon desires. Of all the passions, therefore, it is in love that violent desires find the greatest satisfaction.
There are certain general conditions of happiness, whose influence extends over every fulfilment of particular desires:—
1. She seems to belong to you, for you only can make her happy.
2. She is the judge of your worth. This condition was very important at the gallant and chivalrous Courts of Francis I and Henry II, and at the elegant Court of Lewis XV. Under a constitutional and rationalist government women lose this range of influence entirely.
3. For a romantic heart—The loftier her soul, the more sublime will be the pleasures that await her in your arms, and the more purified of the dross of all vulgar considerations.
The majority of young Frenchmen are, at eighteen, disciples of Rousseau; for them this condition of happiness is important.
In the midst of operations so apt to mislead our desire of happiness, there is no keeping cool.
For, the moment he is in love, the steadiest man sees no object such as it is. His own advantages he minimises, and magnifies the smallest favours of the loved one. Fears and hopes take at once a tinge of the romantic. (Wayward.) He no longer attributes anything to chance; he loses the perception of probability; in its effect upon his happiness a thing imagined is a thing existent.[1]
A terrible symptom that you are losing your head:—you think of some little thing which is difficult to make out; you see it white, and interpret that in favour of your love; a moment later you notice that actually it is black, and still you find it conclusively favourable to your love.
Then indeed the soul, a prey to mortal uncertainties, feels keenly the need of a friend. But there is no friend for the lover. The Court knew that; and it is the source of the only kind of indiscretion which a woman of delicacy might forgive.
[1] There is a physical cause—a mad impulse, a rush of blood to the brain, a disorder in the nerves and in the cerebral centre. Observe the transitory courage of stags and the spiritual state of a soprano. Physiology, in 1922, will give us a description of the physical side of this phenomenon. I recommend this to the attention of Dr. Edwards(8).
CHAPTER XIII
OF THE FIRST STEP; OF THE FASHIONABLE WORLD; OF MISFORTUNES
That which is most surprising in the passion of love is the first step—the extravagance of the change, which comes over a man's brain.
The fashionable world, with its brilliant parties, is of service to love in favouring this first step.
It