n of woman the religious need to worship finds
satisfaction. Both are combinations of love and religion, both are
metaphysical eroticism, paradoxical and yet logical conclusions of human
emotion.

The overwhelming longing which is connected at least with the first
stages of a great love, may be interpreted in another, in a social
sense. Love is the intensest and most direct relationship which can
exist between two beings, and the impossibility of realising its final
longing represents the most genuine tragedy of life among men and women
of the social world. The need which impels two beings to each other
lacks, in this union too, the possibility of complete consummation. And
if the most powerful of all social emotions (and as many believe the
root of all others) suffers from an inner duality, to how much greater
an extent must the less intense feelings which unite individuals share
the same lot! Humanity, wherever it is comprehended profoundly and
spiritually, not economically, carries within itself the germ of its
tragical imperfection. Whatever social relationship we may enter, we
find that it has a flaw, and the more genuine and profound the
relationship, the less dictated by utilitarian considerations (which in
this connection correspond to the element of sensuality in eroticism),
the more painfully does this flaw make itself felt,--whether it be in
friendship, in the relationship of master and man, or in free
companionship. Every relationship between individuals is stricken with
the curse of incompleteness--even love cannot escape this fate. Love
enforces in the deification of woman a transcending of earthly life--and
it throws itself into the last embrace of a common death--that is to
say, it shudderingly admits the impossibility of its consummation.

CHAPTER III

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND LOVE

_The Seeker of Love and The Slave of Love_

It is obvious that even an equilibrium between sexuality and love cannot
always be established, while a genuine and complete unification is very
unusual and may, perhaps, be called utopian. In the previous chapters I
have dealt with the blending of both elements in the highest form of
eroticism; in the following I will attempt to throw light on some of the
principal phenomena resulting from a defective union of sexuality and
love, phenomena which I am convinced have never been correctly
interpreted. I allude to perversions which are not inherently
pathologic