The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration. Edward Carpenter

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СКАЧАТЬ that the same is true of all the cells in this new body—that they each contain the potentialities of the joint cell from which they sprang, and therefore the potentialities of both parents.

      These amazing conclusions concerning the origins of life and reproduction—here, of course, very briefly and imperfectly presented—cannot but give us pause. Contemplating the evolutions and affinities of these infinitely numerous but infinitely small organisms which build up our visible selves, and the strange intelligence which seems to pervade their movements, the mind reels—somewhat as it does in contemplating the evolutions and affinities of the unimaginable stars.^[18] We seem, certainly, to trace the same laws or operations in these minutest regions as we trace in our own corporeal and mental relations. Cells attract each other just as human beings do; and the attraction seems to depend, to a certain degree, on difference. The male spermatozoon seeks the female ovum, just as the male animal, as a rule, seeks and pursues the female. Primitive cells divide and redivide and differentiate themselves, building up the animal body, just in the same way as primitive thoughts and emotions divide and redivide and differentiate themselves, building up the human mind. But though we thus see processes with which we are familiar repeated in infinitesimal miniature, we seem to be no nearer than before to any ‘explanation’ of them, and we seem to see no promise of any explanation. We merely obtain a larger perspective, and a suggestion that the universal order is of the same character throughout—with a suspicion perhaps that the explanation of these processes does not lie in any concatenation of the things themselves, but in some other plane of being of which these concatenations are an allegory or symbolic expression. In portions of the following chapters I shall trace more in detail the resemblance or parallelism between these processes among the Protozoa and some of our own experiences in the great matters of Life and Love and Death.^[19]

CHAPTER III

       LOVE AS AN ART

       Table of Contents

      The astounding revelation of the first great love is a thing which the youthful human being can hardly be prepared for, since indeed it cannot very well be described in advance, or put into terms of reasonable and well-conducted words. To feel—for instance—one’s whole internal economy in process of being melted out and removed to a distance, as it were into the keeping of some one else, is in itself a strange physiological or psychological experience—and one difficult to record in properly scientific terms! To lose consciousness never for a moment of the painful void so created—a void and a hunger which permeates all the arteries and organs, and every cranny of the body and the mind, and which seems to rob the organism of its strength, sometimes even to threaten it with ruin; to forego all interest in life, except in one thing—and that thing a person; to be aware, on the other hand, with strange elation and joy, that this new person or presence is infusing itself into one’s most intimate being—pervading all the channels, with promise (at least) of marriage and new life to every minutest cell, and causing wonderful upheavals and transformations in tissue and fluids; to find in the mind all objects of perception to be changed and different from what they were before; and to be dimly conscious that the reason why they are so is because the background and constitution of the perceiving mind is itself changed—that, as it were, there is another person beholding them as well as oneself—all this defies description in words, or any possibility of exact statement beforehand; and yet the actual fact when it arrives is overwhelming in solid force and reality. If, besides, to the insurgence of these strange emotions we add—in the earliest stages of love at least—their bewildering fluctuation, from the deeps of vain longing and desire to the confident and ecstatic heights of expectation or fulfilment—the very joys of heaven and pangs of hell in swift and tantalizing alternation—the whole new experience is so extraordinary, so unrelated to ordinary work-a-day life, that to recite it is often only to raise a smile of dismissal of the subject—as it were into the land of dreams.

      And yet, as we have indicated, the thing, whatever it is, is certainly by no means insubstantial and unreal. Nothing seems indeed more certain than that in this strange revolution in the relations of two people to each other—called “falling in love”—and behind all the illusions connected with it, something is happening, something very real, very important. The falling-in-love may be reciprocal, or it may be onesided; it may be successful, or it may be unsuccessful; it may be only a surface indication of other and very different events; but anyhow, deep down in the sub-conscious world, something is happening. It may be that two unseen and only dimly suspected existences are becoming really and permanently united; it may be that for a certain period, or (what perhaps comes to the same thing) that to a certain depth, they are transfusing and profoundly modifying each other; it may be that the mingling of elements and the transformation is taking place almost entirely in one person, and only to a slight degree or hardly at all in the other; yet in all these cases—beneath the illusions, the misapprehensions, the mirage and the maya, the surface satisfactions and the internal disappointments—something very real is happening, an important growth and evolution is taking place.

      To understand this phenomenon in some slight degree, to have some inkling of the points of the compass by which to steer over this exceedingly troubled sea, is, one might say, indispensable for every youthful human creature; but alas! the instruction is not provided—for indeed, as things are to-day, the adult and the mature are themselves without knowledge, and their eyes without speculation on the subject. Treatises on the Art of Love truly exist—and some (for the field they cover) very good ones, like the Ars Amatoria of Ovid or the Kama-sutra of Vatsayana; but they are concerned mainly or wholly with the details and technicalities of the subject—with the conduct of intrigues and amours, with times and seasons, positions and preparations, unguents and influences. It is like instructions given to a boatman on the minutiæ of his craft—how to contend with wind and wave, how to use sail and oar, to steer, to tack, to luff to a breaker, and so forth; all very good and necessary in their way, but who is there to point us our course over the great Ocean, and the stars by which to direct it? The later works on this great subject—though not despising the more elementary aspects—will no doubt have to proceed much farther, into the deep realms of psychology, biological science, and ultimately of religion.^[20]

      As we have just said, Love is concerned with growth and evolution. It is—though as yet hardly acknowledged in that connection—a root-factor of ordinary human growth; for in so far as it is a hunger of the individual, the satisfaction of that hunger is necessary for individual growth—necessary (in its various forms) for physical, mental and spiritual nourishment, for health, mental energy, large affectional capacity, and so forth. And it is—though this too is not sufficiently acknowledged—a root-factor of the Evolution process. For in so far as it represents and gives rise to the union of two beings in a new form, it plainly represents a step in Evolution, and plainly suggests that the direction of that step will somehow depend upon the character and quality of the love concerned. Thus the importance, the necessity, of the study of the art of love is forced on our attention. It has to be no longer a subterranean, unrecognized, and even rather disreputable cult, but an openly acknowledged and honorable department of human life, leading in its due time to broad and commonsense instructions and initiations for the young.

      Casting a glance back at the love-affairs of the Protozoa, as briefly described in the preceding chapter, there certainly seems to be a kind of naive charm about them. The simple and wholehearted way in which on occasions they fuse with one another, losing or merging completely their own separate individualities in the process; or again part from each other after having exchanged essences in a kind of affectionate cannibalism; the obvious and unconcealed relation between love and hunger; the first beginnings of generation; and the matter-of-fact manner in which one person, when he finds it convenient, divides in half and becomes two persons, and after a time perhaps divides again and becomes four persons, and again and again until he is many thousands or millions—and yet it is impossible to decide (and he himself probably is not quite clear) as to whether he is still one person or different СКАЧАТЬ