that the fundamental emotions of the human
heart originated in historical time, the widely spread, but unproved,
theory that everything great and decisive existed from the beginning
will be contradicted. The other complementary assertion that nothing
which once existed ever quite disappears, must be admitted; nothing
perishes in the soul of man; its position with regard to the whole is
merely shifted by newly intervening motives and values; and even when
it does not change its fundamental character, it becomes a different
thing in the whole complex of the soul. Sexuality, which in the remote
past was a matter of course, unassailable by doubt, became problematical
and demoniacal as soon as it entered into relationship with the new
factors of erotic life. An existence in harmony with nature was possible
as long as the human race was still in evolution, and not yet conscious
of itself. But as soon as intellect and self-consciousness had been
evolved, civilisation became possible. Nature has no history in the
sense of the origin of values; in the case of still uncivilised tribes
every new generation is a faithful reproduction of the preceding one.
Certainly there is modification caused by adaptation to the environment,
but there are no moral values, and consequently there is no history.

I have attempted to explain why tragedy is inseparable from love in its
highest intensity, to show the limits which check all deep emotion and
the yearning which would overstep them. The emotional life of man, which
is capable of infinite evolution, can only find satisfaction on its
lower, animal stages. Hunger, thirst, and sexual craving can be
satisfied without much difficulty, and therefore no tragic shadow falls
on the first stage. But the emotion which overwhelms the soul cannot be
appeased. Not only the great thinker's thirst for knowledge, the
mystic's religious yearning, the aesthetic will of the rare artist, but
also the love and longing of the passionate lover must reach beyond the
attainable to the infinite. This earth is the kingdom of "mean" actions,
"mean" emotions and "mean" men. And the lover, unable to bear its
limits, creates for himself a new world--the world of metaphysical love.

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