“Love must be revealed by acts and not betrayed by words.  I regard as abnormal the extraordinary method of a hasty avowal beforehand; for that represents not the direct but the reflex path of transmission.  However sweet and normal the avowal may be when once reciprocity has been realized, as a method of conquest I consider it dangerous and likely to produce the reverse of the result desired.”  I take these wise words from a thoughtful “Essai sur l’Amour” (Archives de Psychologie, 1904) by a non-psychological Swiss writer who is recording his own experiences, and who insists much on the predominance of the spiritual and mental element in love.

It is worthy of note that this recognition that direct speech is out of place in courtship must not be regarded as a refinement of civilization.  Among primitive peoples everywhere it is perfectly well recognized that the offer of love, and its acceptance or its refusal, must be made by actions symbolically, and not by the crude method of question and answer.  Among the Indians of Paraguay, who allow much sexual freedom to their women, but never buy or sell love, Mantegazza states (Rio de la Plata e Tenerife, 1867, p. 225) that a girl of the people will come to your door or window and timidly, with a confused air, ask you, in the Guarani tongue, for a drink of water.  But she will smile if you innocently offer her water.  Among the Tarahumari Indians of Mexico, with whom the initiative in courting belongs to the women, the girl takes the first step through her parents, then she throws small pebbles at the young man; if he throws them back the matter is concluded (Carl Lumholtz, Scribner’s Magazine, Sept., 1894, p. 299).  In many parts of the world it is the woman who chooses her husband (see, e.g., M.A.  Potter, Sohrab and Rustem, pp. 169 et seq.), and she very frequently adopts a symbolical method of proposal.  Except when the commercial element predominates in marriage, a similar method is frequently adopted by men also in making proposals of marriage.

It is not only at the beginning of courtship that the act of love has little room for formal declarations, for the demands and the avowals that can be clearly defined in speech.  The same rule holds even in the most intimate relationships of old lovers, throughout the married life.  The permanent element in modesty, which survives every sexual initiation to become intertwined with all the exquisite impudicities of love, combines with a true erotic instinct to rebel against formal demands, against verbal affirmations or denials.  Love’s requests cannot be made in words, nor truthfully answered in words:  a fine divination is still needed as long as love lasts.