wept and said: 'Many of
my friends reproach me for my love of her, namely
Laila; alas! that they could one day see her, that my
excuse might be manifest for me.' The king sent for her
and beheld a person of tawny complexion, and feeble
frame of body. She appeared to him in a contemptible
light, inasmuch as the lowest menial in his harem, or
seraglio, surpassed her in beauty and excelled her in
elegance. Mujnun, in his sagacity, penetrated what was
passing in the king's mind and said: 'It would behove
you, O King, to contemplate the charms of Laila through
the wicket of a Mujnun's eye, in order that the miracle
of such a spectacle might be illustrated to you.'"

This story was referred to by several critics of my first book as
refuting my theory regarding the modernity of true love. They seemed
to think, with the Persian poet, that there must be something
particularly wonderful and elevated in the feelings of a lover who is
indifferent to the usual charms of femininity and prefers ugliness.
This, indeed, is the prevalent sentiment on the subject, though the
more I think of it, the more absurd and topsy turvy it seems to me. Do
we commend an Eskimo for preferring the flavor of rancid fish oil to
the delicate bouquet of the finest French wine? Does it evince a
particularly exalted artistic sense to prefer a hideous daub to a
Titian or Raphael? Does it betoken a laudable and elevated taste in
music to prefer a vulgar tune to one that has the charms of a romantic
or classical work of acknowledged beauty? Why, then, should we
specially extol Mujnun for admiring a woman who was devoid of all
feminine charms? The confusion probably arises from fancying that she
must have had mental charms to offset her ugliness, but nothing
whatever is said about such a notion, which, in fact, would have been
utterly foreign to the Oriental, purely sensual, way of regarding
women.

Fix the attention on the man in the story instead of on the woman and
the mystery vanishes. Mujnun becomes infatuated with an ugly woman
simply because he has no taste, no sense of beauty. There are millions
of such men the world over, just as there are millions who cannot
appreciate choice wines, good music, and fine pictures. Everywhere the
majority of men prefer vulgar tunes, glaring chromos, and coarse
women--luckily for the women, because most of them are coarse, too.
"Birds of a feather flock toget