Eros and libido.—Eros and libido are the two components of sensual love and are also integral parts of sentimental love, by which the latter differs from pure friendship. Libido represents the material pleasure enjoyed by the contact; eros represents the spiritual enjoyment experienced by the knowledge of loving and being loved. Hence libido is of a somatic nature, eros is a psychic phenomenon. The libidinous individual has an increased desire for sexual gratification, the erotic looks chiefly for love. The erotic individual loves with its mind, it is a craving for love by a particular individual, or by a certain class of individuals, e. g., actors or actresses. The libidinous individual is satisfied with any partner and even with other practices, serving sensual gratification, such as contrectatio, stuprum manu, paederastia, tribady, bestiality, etc. The erotic individual never thinks of the sensual pleasure, the libidinous desires to wallow in sensual enjoyment and lust.
Libido is more a masculine sex trait, eros more a feminine. For the ordinary man the libidinous part of love is of primary importance. When this emotion has been destroyed by some accident, he considers himself emasculated. He will never reveal the loss of his testicles, while a woman will openly and freely talk of ovariotomy, performed upon her, although the loss of the ovaries generally produces the impotence of experiencing orgasm, as in men the loss of the testicles. She seems not to mind this loss, provided, always, that her eros has remained intact.
In this indifference for sexual libido, so often found in women, lies the cause of woman’s superiority in sensual love. The woman rules over the man as long as he is in love. That man is henpecked who from the beginning, by reason of his excessive sexual needs, came under his wife’s authority and is continually kept under her rule by the same sensual needs. A man’s dependence upon his wife can only be explained upon a sensual basis. As soon as the man’s power and intelligence gain the victory over his sensual impulses, his independence is secured.
This is the reason why the woman is continually bent upon keeping the man’s libido alive. Her constant desire is to influence him by her charms. Her passivity, says Marro, is the passivity of the magnet, which in spite of its apparent immobility and rest attracts the iron, be the latter willing or not, and in a way enslaves it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity, says Ellis, an absorbed preoccupation in the end to be attained. But for her passivity and cunning coyness she would become the real slave of brutal force, and nothing short of adoration of her lord and master would satisfy him. As it is, she keeps the man in due bounds, even in countries where her legal status is not much higher than that of the real slave. The pride of the woman, says Kant, to keep at a distance all the importunities of men by the respect she inspires and the right to demand respect for her person, even without merits, belong to her by the title of her sex. The man has to woo for her favor even where he could command. The indulgence with an unwilling or unreciprocating mate is not satisfactory to the normal man. This is the reason why the mere satisfaction of the physical appetite in meretricious venery is so unsatisfactory to him.
Eros is a purely psychic phenomenon. It is the transcendental attraction of the two sexes, even when lust is not thought of. In being attracted to one another, the sexes seem to obey a higher will, unknown to either of them. The attraction probably emanates from the spermatozoa and ova. The little cells know what they want and take it. But their will is unknown to the lovers themselves. Their attraction appears to be as mysterious as the attraction of the two poles of the magnet, which no scientist has yet been able to elucidate. This mysterious erotic attraction is healthy and invigorating. While so attracted, the sexual glands increase the secretion of the testines or ovarines, and these chemical products have a tonic effect and make the individual happy. This accounts for the happy excitement the sight of a perfect specimen of the opposite sex, or even its conception in the fantasy, is able to awake in the heart of the individual.
Two desires of eros.—Eros consists of two desires, to love and to be loved. The man is more anxious to love, the woman to be loved. She desires to feel that she is admired or rather coveted by men. That woman withers who, in all her life, was never once loved by some man. Even the woman who for moral or morbid reasons renounces libido, will still have the desire to be admired and loved. In her day-dreams the girl pictures to herself an ideal man by whom she wishes to be loved, the man portrays in his imagination the girl he wishes to love. When he meets with his ideal he knows his own mind about his love. He recognizes the goddess upon whose altar he intends to burn his choicest incense. The girl has first to ask her oracle. She plucks the petals of her marguerite, lisping: “He loves me, he loves me not.” The man, more concerned about his own love, wears his heart on his sleeve and feels eager to have the beloved see how passionately it throbs for her. The woman, having first to discover the man’s love, will try to conceal her own emotion in the innermost recesses of her bosom, lest the lover discover her feelings prematurely. The woman is, therefore, a comma, in love affairs, the man a full stop; here, you know where you are; there, read further.
The woman is anxious to be loved by the man of her choice, the man mainly asks for the privilege to love her. This difference is mainly based upon the different value love possesses in the eyes of the two sexes. With the man the imagination does not need to come into play before he can look for joys and sorrows, hopes and fears that make up the sum and substance of love. The woman gives far more than her body, she gives her soul, her very self, her all. Another reason for the woman’s desire to be loved lies in her feminine vanity. In the relations of friends the one who desires to be loved rather than to love, is the more egotistic. The preference of the passive part of love to the active unquestionably springs from the root of egotism in human nature. In the relation of the sexes, the desire to be loved arises more or less from the wish to satisfy personal vanity. It is tacitly, although, as a rule, among civilized men erroneously, assumed that personal excellence is the cause of a particular individual of one sex being loved by the other, and that one sex is the better judge of the excellence of the other. Hence the person most deeply loved must of necessity excel his rivals. He must at least possess greater sexual charms which men and women are chiefly proud of. Vain men, for that reason, will boast of the large number of their love affairs and the many hearts broken. For the same reason a woman’s vanity is flattered to be openly preferred and loved by a good, respectable man. In present society only matrimony can satisfy her vanity. For free love can only be clandestine, and clandestine love satisfies only her libido, but not her vanity.
Jealousy.—The desire for the satisfaction of personal vanity and the commonly erroneous assumption of the better judgment of one sex about the excellence of the other, are of the greatest importance in the psychology of jealousy.
Sexual jealousyAO consists of three different emotions: 1) anguish at the suspicion or knowledge of violated chastity or outraged affection; 2) rage at a rival, and 3) revenge for the violation of a vested right. Anguish is the primary emotion, rage and revenge are its results. There are always three actors in every case of jealousy, the outraged victim, the mate and the rival. Of the three emotions anguish relates to the male, rage to the rival, and revenge concerns both the rival and the mate. In the analysis of the different emotions in the train of jealousy it is found that anguish, anxiety, fear and despair, which accompany jealousy and apparently constitute its essence, are not caused by outraged affection only, for the highest degree of jealousy is often found where love has long ceased to exist, and even when hatred has already entered into the relation of the mates. Anguish over violated chastity does not explain jealousy either, for jealousy is found among savages, who unhesitatingly lend their wives to others, or offer them as a courtesy to other men without any thought of their wives’ chastity. Neither does interference with one’s enjoyment explain jealousy. For the husband is always jealous of his wife’s lover, while the lover is rarely jealous of the husband. Yet the husband’s opportunity of interfering with the lover’s possession is by far greater than that of the latter with the husband’s. Thus fear of interference cannot play any great part in the emotion of jealousy. The revenge for the violation of vested rights cannot alone explain the terrible emotion of jealousy, which the royal poet of the “Song of Songs” declares to be “as cruel as the grave.” Besides, jealousy is often found where there are no vested rights at all, only a pretended claim.
The cause of jealousy must, therefore, be sought elsewhere. There must be a reason for the husband’s jealousy of a lover and the absence of this emotion in the mind of the lover towards the husband and the presence of jealousy in the heart of the lover in relation to any other succeeding lover. There must be a reason why the lover usually feels a kind of exultation at deceiving the husband or any other lover who has a previous claim upon the woman’s affection.
The cause of jealousy is mainly personal vanity. Just as the satisfaction to be loved, where one does not love himself, lies in satisfied vanity, so is jealousy based unconsciously upon the anguish of wounded vanity. This explains the psychological difference between husband and lover, or between first and second lover. The woman who loves one man is supposed to confer a certain honor upon him, but her indulgence with two men honors the one who has the lesser right upon her love. He who has the greater or the first claim is made an object of ridicule. Man in a natural state, not influenced by motives of civilization—and there it may really be true—considers the abandoned or deceived person the less charming and the less worthy. This original notion has been transmitted to us from our remote ancestors and unconsciously governs us even at the present day. The man who is loved by a married woman or the woman who is loved by a married man are supposed to possess certain excellencies which are lacking in their respective married partners. The latter are, therefore, exposed to ridicule.
Jealousy, therefore, is simply wounded vanity. The individual possessing a greater deal of vanity will also be jealous to a greater degree. Hence, as a rule, woman is more jealous than man, although the latter may be more brutal when in that mood.
Vanity and exposure to ridicule explain also why the wife, betrayed by her husband, when she confronts the culprits, generally attacks her rival. Vanity does not allow her to admit even to herself that her husband has preferred the other to her. Consequently her rival must have used some seductive means to entice her poor, worthy husband and to lead him astray. The rival is hence the one who deserves punishment. The husband, on the other hand, if betrayed by his wife, will attack first his wife, who has exposed him to ridicule; her lover generally concerns him in a lesser degree.
If personal vanity is not wounded, jealousy is also absent. A great man, acknowledged by the world as such, like Alexander or Caesar, is not jealous if his wife betrays him with an ordinary mortal. In this case the world sees the stupidity of the woman. She is not able to recognize the value of her husband and exposes herself to ridicule. A great man may, therefore, grieve over the loss of cherished affections, but he will rarely be jealous. A comely and cultured woman will never be jealous of her coarse and ignorant maid-servant. She has only pity for her husband’s aberration of taste.
A woman will seldom or never be jealous of the women her husband has consorted with before their marriage. She is not exposed to ridicule through his former love affairs. He did not marry the others but her. She was preferred. But for the possible impairment of his health and vigor, the more love affairs he had the more the wife is honored. The man has not been changed by his former love affairs. His wife has hence no palpable reason for resentment, and she may pardon her husband’s former love affairs without any derogation to her dignity. Not so man.
The woman’s anatomy is changed by defloration. The sperma is partly absorbed within her,AP and through her veins circulate material parts of her lover. She may have been pregnant for some time, and pregnancy changes the woman’s entire anatomy. She has partly nourished her system with blood owing half its nature to her child’s father. The woman has, therefore, a perennial impression left by her former mate.AQ This is the reason why aesthetic and fastidious men refrain from marrying a widow or a divorced woman. This is also the reason why the husband consciously or unconsciously resents his wife’s former escapades. This resentment is not jealousy, although it is commonly so called. Sorrow over his wife’s former violated chastity, which conventionality considers as the biggest crime a woman could commit, is not jealousy. He is only grieved that her former impurity has lowered her value. A woman really gives herself up, soul and body, to her first lover. The virginity of her heart is no longer intact. The fragrance has departed from the rose. The earnest man who actually gives up his soul to the wife of his choice and to the mother of his children expects in return a pure and virgin heart.