ent
objects which belonged, or might belong, to the beloved, or in fact to
any woman, is a variant of the slave of love. The classical
representative of fetichism is the mediaeval knight who carried a
handkerchief, a glove, or any other article of clothing belonging to his
lady, next to his heart, thus believing himself proof against evil
influences. There we see already spiritual love groping for material
objects in order to gain earthly support; not every man is a Dante, not
every man is capable of keeping his soul free from the taint of this
earthly sphere. But even the "plait-cutter," so well known to the reader
of newspapers, the collector of garters, and similar desperadoes,
require a relic, a fetich which they apparently worship. To the same
category belongs the idolatrous cult which some men, especially
artists--but also madmen--practise with female pictures and statues
(more especially with heads). In this case the fundamental feeling of
the love of beauty, which we know as an essential factor of purely
spiritual eroticism, is made to serve sensual purposes. The desired
illusion of spiritual worship is facilitated, and is protected from
self-revelation, owing to the fact that a painted head rouses in the
normal individual no passion, but inspires him with purely spiritual
sentiments.

I have briefly touched on this subject because my theory of the two
roots of eroticism permits of a new, and in my opinion plausible,
explanation of erotic perversions; one might even go as far as to say
that the existence of perversions follows as a necessary consequence;
that they must exist because it obviously cannot _always_ be possible to
maintain a harmonious balance of sensuality and love. This chapter is
therefore a necessary supplement to the previous ones in which the
perfection of modern love is dealt with. The seeker of love and the
slave of love are phenomena of dualistic eroticism incapable of
attaining to unity. For this reason they neither existed in antiquity,
nor do we find genuine examples of them in the female sex. All female
perversions closely examined are hysteria--that is to say, want of inner
balance--in various forms; a woman's subjection to the will of a man is
in very many instances a natural symptom, and cannot be regarded as
perverse. And thus we again perceive that the eroticism of woman is more
harmonious and natural than that of the eternally groping and eternally
erring man.

CHAPTER IV