tisfaction, and as he is incapable of self-knowledge, he
never abandons the hope of meeting the woman he seeks. He differs very
little from the type represented by Sordello, who loved one woman
spiritually, but regarded all the others from the standpoint of sex. It
is the tragedy of Don Juan to revolt from the low erotic sphere which is
his portion, and where he rules supreme, and for ever to aspire to a
realm from which he is shut out. He is convinced that with the help of a
woman he may redeem himself--and sinks deeper and deeper into the slough
of his own sensuality. He becomes malevolent, cruel and callous; the
pleasure whose slave he is repels him:

From craving to enjoyment thus I reel,
And in enjoyment languish for desire.

He is insatiable, but not as the primitive hedonist, whose natural
element is pleasure, but because he again and again mistakes pleasure
for love. He knows only "women," and thus he sins against personality
and the love which is the outcome of personality.

The opinion that Don Juan is no more than a votary of pleasure is not
worthy of criticism; the famous Casanova, for instance, has nothing in
common with him. Casanova was a sensualist without psychical complexity
and without tragedy. His sole endeavour was to wring the utmost measure
of enjoyment out of life. He knew the woman of reality and did not waste
his time in running after phantoms. In his old age he revelled in the
after-taste and settled down to write his memoirs. Don Juan, on the
contrary, has such a loathing for all the women he betrays, that he
hardly remembers them, and certainly has the strongest disinclination to
evoke their memory. Casanova was an entirely unmetaphysical and
unproblematical nature. His philosophy is clearly expressed in the
preface to his Memoirs: "I always regarded the enjoyment of sensual
pleasures as my principal object; I never knew a more important one."
Casanova, who, strange to say, enjoys such high erotic honours, was
merely an ordinary, very successful man of the world, and is of no
importance to the subject in hand. But even the greater and wilder
Vicomte de Valmont (the hero of the famous novel of Choderlos de Laclos)
is in spite of all his art and _esprit_ and perverse principles no
seeker of love and no Don Juan, but a fop and a braggart, seducing women
in order to boast of his success. He is moreover only a representative
of the bored Upper Ten of the _ancien regime_, and not by an