order to estimate its
value?

In the midst of my pagan indulgences, you ask me if I really love, in
the usual sense of that word. This very reasonable question was at any
rate worth asking, however simple it may seem. It is concerned with the
great problem in psychology which I undertook to solve, namely, as to
which predominates in love, the heart or the senses, and whether true
love is possible when one loves four women at the same time?

It is clear that in the restricted limits of our ideas, and under the
yoke of our customs and prejudices, we can only conceive of passion as
concentrated upon a single object. Too far removed from our primitive
origin and from the patriarchal age, and moulded by the influences of
more refined customs, our minds have been stimulated to the
contemplation of a certain recognized ideal. Still, as moralists and
philosophers, we must admit that among Orientals there is, doubtless,
another conception and another ideal of love, the character of which we
cannot grasp. It is only by divesting ourselves of our moral clogs, or
the restraints of our social conventionalities, that we can attain to
the understanding of this lofty psychological problem. Indeed, no one
has ever been able to say what love consists in. "Attraction of two
hearts," say some, and "mutual exchange of fancies;" but these are
nothing but words depending upon the particular instance in which they
are employed.

The truth is that we are full of inconsistencies in all our
definitions. From a purely sentimental point of view, we start by laying
down, as an absolute axiom, that the human heart can only embrace one
object of love, and that man can only fall truly in love once in his
life. Yet if we abstract from love the distinct element which our senses
contribute to it, it is seen to consist of nothing but a form of
affection--an expansion of the soul analogous to friendship and to
paternal or filial love, sentiments equally powerful, but which we
recognize the duty of distributing between several objects.

Whence arises this strange contradiction?

Do not declare that it is a paradox, for our ideas on the subject
proceed entirely from our education and from the influence of custom
upon our minds. If we had been bred on the banks of the Ganges, of the
Nile, or of the Hellespont, our school of aesthetics would have been
different. The most romantic Turkish or Persian poet could not
understand the vain subtleties of our emot