ur time has very little to
spare for friendship, while on the other hand the man who is not erotic
in the true sense of the word, but merely sexual, has generally a poor
idea of woman and a great appreciation of male friendship. But modern
love does not only seek to combine all human relationships; it would
fain include work, recreation, art. The instinctive jealousy of every
occupation which she does not share with her lover, is nothing more than
a loving woman's fear that the things which belong to him exclusively
may become a danger to the unity of love. Whether such an all-absorbing
love is possible in richly-endowed natures, and whether it will not be
the cause of new conflict, are questions which cannot here be entered
upon. But one thing is certain: the great love cannot find its
consummation on earth.

CHAPTER II

THE LOVE-DEATH

(THE SECOND FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM)

The craving for infinitude is latent in love; its essence is the longing
to reach beyond the attainable, to find the meaning of the world in
ecstasy. The great erotic is a man whose inward being rests on emotion,
who must bring this emotion to its climax--and who is wrecked on the
incompleteness of human feeling. We recognise in him one of the tragic
figures at the confines of humanity. For it is the final tragedy of a
soul impelled by the inexorable will to self-realisation, to be broken
on the wheel of human limitations.

The tragedy of the great man of action is less conditioned by principle
than the tragedy of other types of greatness, because he is not limited
by the universal restrictions of humanity, but by individual and
accidental ones. He recognises, partly because of his unmetaphysical
constitution, no limits to human activity, and in gaining his individual
object, he reaches a relative end. It is otherwise with the thinker, the
artist, the religious enthusiast and the lover. The thinker possesses
the highest intellectual endowments; he represents cognisant humanity,
and his portion is the anguish of realising that the essence of being
cannot be grasped by the intellect. The great artist creates a
masterpiece; his heart is aglow with the ideal of perfect beauty beheld
by none but him, but his ideal eternally eludes him; the saint has
achieved perfection as far as perfection is possible to humanity, and
stands aghast at the burden of insufficiency which weighs down mankind;
the great erotic is the hero in the world of