VIII

The Necessity for Love and Its Primitive Cause.

This time, Marquis, you have not far to go, your hour has come.  The diagnosis you give me of your condition tells me that you are in love.  The young widow you mention is certainly capable of rousing an inspiration in your heart.  The Chevalier de ——­ has given me a very favorable portrait of her.  But scarcely do you begin to feel a few scruples, than you turn into a crime the advice I have been giving you.  The disorder which love brings to the soul, and the other evils which follow in its train, appear to you, so you say, more to be feared than the pleasures it gives are to be desired.

It is true that some very good people are of the opinion that the sorrows of love are about equal to its pleasures, but without entering upon a tiresome discussion to ascertain whether they are right or wrong, if you would have my opinion, here it is:  Love is a passion which is neither good nor bad of itself; it is only those who are affected by it that determine whether it is good or bad.  All that I shall say in its favor is, that it gives us an advantage with which any of the discomforts of life can not enter into comparison.  It drags us out of the rut, it stirs us up, and it is love which satisfies one of our most pressing wants.  I think I have already told you that our hearts are made for emotion; to excite it therefore, is to satisfy a demand of nature.  What would vigorous youth be without love?  A long illness:  it would not be existence, it would be vegetating.  Love is to our hearts what winds are to the sea.  They grow into tempests, true; they are sometimes even the cause of shipwrecks.  But the winds render the sea navigable, their constant agitation of its surface is the cause of its preservation, and if they are often dangerous, it is for the pilot to know how to navigate in safety.

But I have wandered from my text, and return to it.  Though I shock your sensitive delicacy by my frank speaking, I shall add, that besides the need of having our emotions stirred, we have in connection with them a physical machinery, which is the primitive cause and necessity of love.  Perhaps it is not too modest for a woman to use such language to you, but you will understand that I would not talk to every one so plainly.  We are not engaged in what may be called “nice” conversation, we are philosophizing.  If my discussions seem to you to be sometimes too analytical for a woman, remember what I told you in my last letter.  From the time I was first able to reason, I made up my mind to investigate and ascertain which of the two sexes was the more favored.  I saw that men were not at all stinted in the distribution of the roles to be played, and I therefore became a man.