 CHAPTER XIII. UNMARRIAGE AND MARRIED LIFE ARISTHON ANDRIK TAIMA SIMPATHAYES GUNAY Marriage laws are framed not for or by the likes and dislikes of men and women, but by the exigencies of social, often of political, economy. Therefore, men and women's likes and dislikes are obliged to conform to the usages demanded by social and political economy. So, in Turkey, women accept with a good grace the custom of a plurality of wives. In Tibet, men accept with good grace a plurality of husbands. In the western world, hmm, always will there be everywhere prevalent a latent hostility between the likes and dislikes of men and women, on one hand, and the laws enforced by a social and political community on the other. This is why always there will be those who will try to reform the marriage state, some looking only to the likes and dislikes of men and women, others only to the advantages which shall accrue to the state. So, some there will be will always advocate a loosening of the marriage bond, others who will seek to make it indissoluble. Both should remember that the unit of the state is the family. Therefore, the state makes laws not to suit the tastes or conveniences of the husband and the wife, but for the good and preservation of the family, all of which surely is right and proper, since it is the business of the state to make laws governing the welfare of the generations to come, and find the children. They are the pivot about which all matrimonial controversies should turn. Reformers of marriage laws should seek a preventative, not a cure, since it is doubtful whether the ills of matrimony are really curable for, generally speaking, matrimonial incompatibility is a malignant, not a benignant disease. Its prognosis is doubtful, nor does it run a regular course. Many are the women who, soon after marriage, silently turn over in their minds this little problem, whether it were better to marry the men they loved but who did not love them, or to marry the men who loved them but to whom they were indifferent, and the men a woman ultimately marries will give her no clue to the solution, and for the following reasons. He, Von Wein, does not know that any such problem is agitating her little brain, and she, of course, dare not divulge the factors of the problem. In short, most marriages are brought about by the following simple yet fateful consideration. The man marries the woman he wants, the woman marries the men who wants her. The two propositions, though apparently identical, often produce results very far from identical, and yet, sometimes, sometimes, that glorious dream comes true, in which a hail-and-heart-hole youth implants the first pure passionate kiss upon the lips of a hail-and-heart-hole girl. Ha, happy twain! For them the sun shines, the great earth spins, and constellations share their selectest influence. It is a dream that all youth dreams. It is a dream makes wakeful life worth living. Ha, the wild dream of youth. The meanage dream. The springtime dream. Of the maid. The dim, dim dream of stalwart men, offering a love supreme, without alloy, and taking, forceful, a love as flawless, as supreme. A steady breast on which to lean, strong, circling arms. A face at firm against the world. A face that softens only to her upturned eyes that seek the lover, who is hers and hers alone. A dream of music, color, and the swaying dance. Of rivals splendidly outshone. Of home, and friends, and trappings. Of raiment, retinue, of ordered bliss. And by and by, in a still dimmer, far-off time. A time unwispered to herself. Of baby fingers, baby lips. Of the youthful men. A vivid dream. Involved, unsteady, shifting. A dream of lust, and love, and smoke. And flame and fame. Of giraffes, and horse, and saber. Of blood, and battle. Of high place. Of many, dominated by his look and gesture. Of mighty men, and orders issued, prematurely, not to be gained sad. Also, of the lithe arms, a supple waist, sweetly soft and twining limbs. A gentle, girlish woman, all his own. Who never was another's, and always will be his. And an heir, and household gods. Ha! The wild dream of youth. Youth, dream ye while ye may. And you, ye aged. I charge ye, do not wake them. It is the dream makes wakeful life worth living. And yet, and yet. Sometimes, sometimes, a lack and fiver shame. Things come to such a pass, between husband and wife, that a modus vivendi has to be tacitly agreed upon. In that case, alas, too often, between husband and wife, it depends upon who is the better actor and liar. To their shame, be it said. But before this happens, much else must have happened. For, here and there, ahem. We meet a woman who is like the moon. She circles sedately round, and dutifully faces the planet to which she is united. But that planet does not know that she is radiated and warmed by a far-distant sun. A sun which symbolizes, ahem, duty, or necessity, or affection for her children, or, telling not in gath, affection for another. And here and there, ahem. We meet a man who, like the sun, shines steadfastly enough upon his own earth, but shines also, all on the known to earth, upon other earths, in air and comets, and small aerolites. And it is usually physical or sentimental characteristics that bring a man and a woman into the field of mutual attraction. So it is generally physical or sentimental characteristics that drag them apart. Thus, a clever wife will put up with a stupid husband, and an intellectual man will get on admirably with a dull but domestic woman. But if either party to the marriage contract disregards or is unable to appease the demands made upon him or her for sympathy or emotion, there is likely to be trouble. For sentiment, not intellect, is the cementing material in marriage, and if a man and wife cannot effuse a mutual sentiment, gradually they will grow apart. Indeed, the demands of the emotions are at once more imperious and tyrannical and more fastidious and critical than are the demands of the mind, of all of which what is the moral? This, the married pair who would live in enmity, not to say in affection, must so live as that each shall persuade the other is the sole personage under the roof of heaven that he or she desires. Alas, the unwritten motto of many a married couple is, the heart knoweth its own bitterness. Marriage reveals the moods of a man. What is an ideal marriage? That perhaps in which the man is to the woman at once, friend, husband and lover, but some people prefer these functions distinct. That is a happy marriage in which a woman's husband is also her confidant, and always husband and wife should move like binary stars, revolving about a common center, mutually attractive, and unless closely viewed, presenting a single impression. Matrimony is sometimes a terrible iconoclast, whether it throws down the images of false or of true gods depends on the religion of the worshipper. It would be difficult sometimes to determine whether constancy was an autogenous or enforced virtue. Never play pranks with your wife, your horse, or your razor. There is a thing which not gold nor favor nor even love can buy. Its true name is secret, but it is content to be called sympathy. Accordingly, let no man or woman think when he or she has won wife or husband all has been one that is necessary. For if sympathy cannot be gained from one quarter, it will probably be sought in another. At the moment of the formation of a matrimonial syndicate of two, each member of this as yet unincorporated joint-stack company verily believes that each has put into the concern his whole real and personal property. Yet it is to be feared that, although the woman possibly invests her whole capital, the man, often no doubt unwittingly to himself, retains not a few unmatured bonds and debentures. That is to say, love it is to be feared as often enough a bargain in which the woman comes off second best. For a woman gives herself, men accept the gift. Rarely, if ever, does a man give himself. He cannot. His work, his play, his politics, his friends, his club, these are matters to him highly important. To a woman the only highly important things are her husband and her home. A woman rules until she tries to rule, which will be an enigma to many. Out of a wife's obedience will grow her governance, never out of her dominance. Those who think this sheer nonsense are welcome to think so, but it is worth thinking about. A man ought to rule his wife, granted, but he cannot do this unless he rules himself. The colonel of a regiment cannot command if he himself breaks the king's or the state's regulations, and an uncontrolled wife deems her husband indifferent or weak. The number of husbands who, though they think they rule, yet in reality are ruled would astonish, not their wives, but themselves. It is customary to call the men the head of the household. Yet, between man and wife, it is a question after all whether it is not the stronger will and the cooler judgment that should, and generally does, guide the family, independent of sex or custom. As in the solar spectrum, so in love, beyond and intermingled with the visible rays of passion, are numerous ectinic, but invisible rays of affection, invisible to careless spectators, but known and felt by the recipients. These two must be introduced if the cannubial domicile is to be warmed as well as illuminated. The marriage tie loosens all other ties, in fact, neither men or women are always aware of the absoluteness of the marriage tie. Henceforward, the woman belongs not to her own people, hardly to herself. As to the men, well, often a wife will actually be jealous of the time and attention her husband spends on things and matters unconnected with her, his work, his play, his politics, his friends, his club. Many are there who still believe that the marriage service, like a legal indenture, irrevocably entails the whole estate of a human heart. In sober truth, there never was a married couple yet who had not to purchase their own happiness. And the only charms that increase in value as time goes on are the charms of character, vis-a-vis those of person and even those of mind are weak. In short, in marriage, as in every human relationship, it is character that avails and prevails, not else. Chemists draw a distinction between a chemical and a mechanical mixture. Mortalists might discover the same in marriage. To encircle a monogamy with an ever-increasing halo of romance, that is a problem deserving of study. Monogamy is one of the disharmonies of life. It seems, as I have said, to be the decree of politics rather than of nature. But surely polygamy or poly-indry would be more disharmonious still. Marriage renders no one immune. That is to say, unless husband and wife both avoid infection, both can catch amatory fevers. The woman who has learned how to minister to a man's creature comforts has learned much. And it has disconcerted many a young wife to discover how important a part of her education this is. Since it is certainly sometimes hard to reconcile a suture's poetic protestations with a spouse's prosaic requisitions. In the game of life, a man may venture many stakes. A woman's fate is determined by a single throw of the dice. Thus, how often it happens that a young and inexperienced maid will look about her, will weigh and consider, will pick and choose. And when she thinks she has found a man to her purpose, will set her cap at him, will attract him, enslave him, bring him to her feet, make him propose, accept him as husband, give him all the suites of engagement, regard herself and proclaim herself he's a fiance bride, all with most prudential. It may be most praiseworthy. Motives. On a sudden, the man discovers that this was no real attachment, but a fictitious, almost an enforced one. That the methods, so he thinks, were artificial, the results delusive. What happens? The man withdraws politely, gallantly. It was a mistake. He's sorry. They are unsuited. He did not know his own mind. He's sorry, and so on and so forth. They separate. And in this concatenation of circumstances, action for breach of promise is out of the question. Besides, often enough, the girl, through pride, or through sheer chagrin at the indifference of the man, pretends acquiescence. What happens to the man? Nothing. If his senses were stirred, he himself is heart-hold. He gave nothing. He merely received. He proposes again to somebody else, is accepted. Mary is happily, rears a family. What happens to the girl? Everything. The man gave her nothing. She gave all. Her lips, her looks, the recesses of her heart, the premonitions of the gift of herself. For, when she lint on him, looked up to him, clung to him, felt his strong encircling arms, was perturbed by his ardor. She gave that which was not to give again. Such woman is to be pitiated. For however much she strived to make it appear that she gave nothing, that she had all to give again. Not even her own soul will bear her witness. And sooner or later, a subsequent lover, and such girl accepts the first lover that offers, will find a void where he hoped to find an inexhaustible treasure. For the woman cannot forever keep up a fictitious affection, and languid looks and eyes that will not brighten, and smiles which are so evidently forced bespeak her sympathies elsewhere. But, as Hynes said, this is an old story often repeated. Wherefore, let us pity women. The dyes they throw are their hearts, and they have only one throw. When they have thrown away their hearts, pity women. Man have so many dyes to throw, income, status, title, virility, fortune, fame, good spirits, good connections, good looks, an air, a figure, a soul-stirring voice, manners, breeding, force, a good name, a good bank account. The pity of it is that the whole marriage question revolves about a single point. The man wants him a woman. A woman who shall be his, and only his. The woman wants her ahead of a home. And here again, and once again, we see the difference between the sexes. The one thing that the man wants is a mate. The one thing that a woman wants is a head and provider of a household. The man's thoughts never go beyond the woman. The woman's thoughts always and at once travel far beyond the man, to the children, the household, the home. This is great nature's inexorable law. But little knows the woman, and less knows the man, that the new-bile girl is merely obeying great nature's inexorable law. What price woman pays for her high office? For, in this implicit, unquestioning, and unconscious obedience to nature, she performs, perhaps, her highest function. On all accounts, therefore, let us pity women. They obey so faithfully great nature's law, and nature so often plays them false, so very false, and so very often. Besides, the woman who gives her hand without her heart finds in time that she has made a sorry bargain, a sorrier bargain, perhaps, that the woman who gives her heart without her hand. For passionately, as a man desires a woman, the passionately desired woman will in time discover that unless she gives her heart with her hand, her gift suffers depreciation. And unless a woman gives her heart, how can she give her aid? Surely, unless a man's armor is buckled on for the strife of life by feminine sympathy, the fight is apt to be a sorry one at best. Since a woman's true business is to back her husband, if she leaves him in the lurch, there's little hope for him. For, of a truth, the strongest man is handicapped in the struggle for existence, unless he knows and feels that his wife is at his side, not pushing him so much as leaning upon him. To simulate passion for an hour is possible. To simulate a lifelong love, that is horror. For love is a thing unique and unalterable, in spite of its various alloys. Clip the coin, and it will not pass current. For ideal matrimony is founded on a monometallic basis. No amount of silver will be accepted for gold. And yet, how often, M loves and N accepts the love. Poor M. Also, in the long run, poor N. That, indeed, is a happy marriage, where M gives and wants just what N wants and gives, where M and N just want each other. For give and take is the rule of a community of two, and it is of a community of ten thousand. The ideal, and probably impossible, industrial community is that in which demand and supply are in exact equipoints. The same holds good in matrimony. In wedlock, a virtuous has probably less force than a vicious example. That is to say, a frivolous spouse is more apt to drag the couple down than is a serious spouse apt to lead the couple up. And many a maid there is, both masculine and feminine, feels like a pack mule, treading a precipitous spouse. Of every Audrey her touchstone should be able proudly to say, A poor thing, sir, but mine own. In other words, the homely violet deserves as tender cherishing as the rear exotic. What portion of himself or herself, any one complicated physical and psychological human being, really and truly conveys to another, by means of the simple contract known as the plighted troth, or that of a larger deed called the solemnization of matrimony, is a riddle difficult of solution. And as to how much one may claim on the strength of one or other of these indentures, that is a more difficult problem still. And no amateurial contract probably is it possible to include or to enumerate all the hereditments, messages or appurtenances involved. Certainly, how great so ever the community of interest, m and n, remain forever, m and n. Is there not always something in the eternal feminine which cannot quite coalesce with the ephemeral masculine? Probably, trust your wife with your purse, and seven times out of ten it will grow heavy. Many a woman, by men, is accepted at her face value. Many a men, by woman, is taken untrust. It is difficult to tell whether more bad debts are contracted by giving credit than by taking at face value. For the promissory note of marriage is undated and unendorsed, but children act as collateral security. How often a girl, even an affianced girl, accustomed to a multiplicity of admirers, forgets the men of her ultimate choice, she must then and there set above all other claimants. If the man the woman chooses for her husband does not stand in her estimation absolutely first in all other claimants nowhere, there is bound sooner or later to be trouble. For no man will play second fiddle to anybody or anything, and the realm amatory is a monarchical, not a republican one. In all realms there must be a ruler, whether elected or hereditary. Always a divided sway results in schism, whether in the family or in the state. And although often enough the wife proves herself the more effective sovereign, the forms of monarchy must be conceded to the man, even though the executive is left to the woman. How often the only breast to which one can go on to reign out the heavy mist of tears is the one inhibited. Two wills are not so easily blended into one, as that the task may be left to Cupid. Yet, unless Cupid has a hand in blending two wills, it is bound to be a sorry business at best. Always and in all wedlock there comes a time when will conflicts with will. If both wills are inflexible one must break, or both will fly apart. But love intact will relieve many a strain. Though sometimes one discovers that human eyes have a certain store of tears, it is not difficult to weep them all away. However, in the final rupture between man and wife, it is the children that turn the scales. But, oh ye young husbands and wives, remember that youth regards the whole world as its friend. Age finds itself desolate in the midst of friends. Wherefore, oh youth, cleave unto the wife of thy bosom, since a loving wife is worth a multitude of friends. Sweet are friends and fame is sweet. But sweeter far a wifely heart were on to lay a weary head. But each married pair must solve its own difficulties as best it can. If any advice were worth the offering, it would be this. Oh ye husbands and oh ye wives, if not for your own sakes, then for your children's. Lead a straight, clean, honorable life. Any other sort of life leads to despicability, to smallness, to disaster. Which only means, after all, that in the marriage relation, as in every relation, the social, the industrial, the commercial, the political, it is conduct, it is character that counts, nothing else. Beauty, wealth, culture, grace, wit, intellect, straightliness, vivacity, humor. These are much, but they are simply not, and less than not, when just this simple, single, yet insatiable thing called man, wants to live amicably, affectionately, marshally, with that simple, single, but incomprehensible thing called woman. Character, conduct, rule the world, the matrimonial, equally with the municipal. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Holy writ. It does not take much to make two hearts beat faster than one. The heart can deceive itself when it cannot deceive another, which will be cold comfort to some lovers, though it may console others. To admit a sacred visitant into the inner recesses of the human heart, those recesses must be neat indeed. Remember, too, that you can never expect an angel to act as a charwoman. The sweeping must be done by the owner. Lastly, unless each heart is permitted access to the other, their union is fictitious, perhaps perilous. Explain these tropes who can. No man can tell to whom a woman's heart belongs, not even the man who calls the woman his. And let no man imagine that when he has won him a woman, he has won him a woman's heart, since sometimes a woman will give her heart to one man and her troth to another. Besides, many a heart is hard to read, especially if it is a palimpsest. Indeed, many are illegible to their owners. Nevertheless, that the woman should not know her own heart, as so often happens, terrifies the woman as much as it exasperates the man. Yet, that must be a curious love that causes the heart to hesitate. And yet, many a man has debated for months whether to propose or not, and sometimes a woman will accept on a Friday the man that she refused point blank of a Tuesday. But perhaps, where the heart hesitates, it is not so much a case of love as a case of convenience. For an overwhelming love leaves the heart of either doubt or debate. But alas, the human heart seems to be an anatomical engine of such intricate and delicate mechanism that its workings are uncontrollable even by its owner. Is a constant heart as hard a thing to manufacture in the world of life as is an immobile thing in the world of matter? And matter, so they say, is immobile only at absolute zero when bereft of even molecular motion. A thing impossible to produce, and which to produce, would require incalculable pressure and almost incalculable cold. Is there no chemical formula for fixing the impression of the heart? Who really held burns his heart in thrall? Nelly Fitzpatrick, or Mary Campbell, or Eliason Begbie, or Margaret Chalmers, or Charlotte Hamilton, or Jenny Kruckschank, or Anne Park, or Jean Armour, or Mrs. Welpdale, or Mrs. Agnes MacLehose? And who the heart of Guta? Gretchen, or Kitty Shonkoff, or Frederica Bryan, or Charlotte Buff, or Lily Shoneman, or the Countess Agusta, or Charlotte Vanstein, or Bettina Brentano, or Mariana Van Willemere, or his wife, Christina Vulpius. However, whether it is a provision of nature or whether it is due to the perversity of man, probably the feminine heart is far more constant than the masculine, and perhaps any one of Guta's, or of Burns, his in-anomeratas would have clung to him had he been faithful to her. And yet, would you have had Shelley stick to Harriet Westbrook? And how shall one interpret his feelings for Amelia Viviani? What would have happened if Keats had lived and married Fanny Braun? She who flirted with somebody else while he was sick and did not even know that he was a poet. Yet she was an inspiration to Keats, as Mary Goodwin and Amelia Viviani were to Shelley. Footnote one. See the dedication of the revolt of Islam, and see the epicycidian. End footnote. Art Byron to have said no to Claire, or Lady Carolyn Lamb, or the Countess Guccioli, or any one of the many maids and matrons that besieged his heart. Could anything have kept Rosina Wheeler and Bulwer Leighton side by side? Rosina Wheeler to whom, before marriage, Leighton could find right, O my dear Rose, where shall I find words to express my love for you? And to whom, after marriage, he wrote, Madam, the more I consider your conduct and your letter, the more unwarrantable they appear. God in heaven, what a pitiful game it all is. And alas, as George Sand says, all this you see is a game that we are playing, but our heart and life are the stakes, and that has an aspect which is not always pleasing. Footnote two. Letter to Alfred de Massette. End footnote. Many a man's heart has been treated as a football. Yes, but many a woman's heart has been treated as a shuttlecock. Human beings there are, both men and women, out of whom, at a mere touch, virtue seems to go. Converse with them is stimulating, contact enthralling, and yet, powerful as physical or as mental attraction may be, permanently to retain the attracted object requires a profounder force. Perhaps, though, beauty and grace and brilliancy may attract, it is only something far more deep-seated that retains. In other words, charm of body and mind may appeal to body and mind. Only the heart appeals to the heart. Those who know not this, and they are many, permit the heart to leak through the senses. With the result that, when demands are made upon the heart, that cistern is found to have run dry. So, to philanderers and to flirts, when a great and true love comes, they do not comprehend it, and they cannot appreciate it. Wherefore, would be lover, keep thy heart intact until it be required of thee. You need not imagine that, because you have once been permitted to see some way down into a human heart, that you will necessarily ever again be so permitted. Hard words break no bones, but they often break hearts. Drink is too often the refuge of the masculine, and a rich husband, the refuge of the feminine, broken heart. Extreme youth thinks the world is a toy shop, where anything may be had for the asking. Old age regards it as a museum, where nothing may be touched. No heart, under repeated temperings, can remain forever keen. And as a little body, sometimes has a very big pain, so an aching heart wonders that it can bear so much. And what takes place in the quiet deeps of a troubled heart, who shall know? The way to the heart is not through the head. Between heart and heart there are many channels, but three are in universal use, the eyes, the lips, and the fingertips. Now the greatest of these is the eyes. The masculine heart will never wholly understand the feminine, nor the feminine, the masculine. Oh, the pity of it. And yet, after all, the human heart is much more the same, whether it beats under a cure-ass or under a corset. Between the masculine heart and the feminine, perfect frankness is perhaps of questionable import. But why? It is difficult to say. Perhaps because the aspirations and desires of the human heart are infinite and unappeasable. To attempt to formulate them is to frustrate them. For it is as impossible for any two human hearts, as it is impossible for any two material things, to occupy the same space. Especially when we remember that, between the masculine heart and the feminine, is a great gulf fixed. Nay, rather, from youth to age each human heart seems unwittingly to build about itself a high and ever higher growing wall, impenetrable, indelapidable, not to be scaled by the look or speech or gesture. Never can heart coalesce with heart. And yet, the absolute and intimate coalescence of heart with heart is not this, after all, the consummation that every lover seeks? To attempt that consummation by mere speech, it is this that is of questionable import. Since between heart and heart, speech is the paltriest of channels. What a thin, yet what an invisible and impenetrable, film separates those two worlds. The one, that of the visible, audible and tangible, the world of chatter and laughter, of convention, often of make-believe, and the other, the world of deep and voiceless emotions, of the feelings which know not how to give themselves utterance, of affections which crave so much, and are so important to say or to seek what they crave. It is like a layer of ice separating the hidden and soundless deeps from the aerial world of noise and motion. What would not one heart give to break the icy crust and see and know what was really passing in another? And how often we drown if we do break through? The isolation of the individual human heart is complete. It is the most pathetic past in the universe. And it is that against which the individual human heart rebels most. There must be some profound and cosmic problem underlying this fact which no philosophy and no religion can solve. That it is pathetic seems to prove it temporary, earthly, a matter of time and space. But when will the individual human heart coalesce with the heart of the universe? Which perhaps is the goal of all life. For it may be that these little terrestrial human individuals which we call men and women are after all only tiny and temporary centers of conscious activity in an ocean of infinite consciousness, as atoms orbit tiny and temporary centers of energy in an ocean of infinite ether. Could we see the sum total of supreme and infinite consciousness at a glance? Perhaps individual men and women would dissolve into a mighty unity. Could see and comprehend the whole of Illumina Ferris ether? Well perhaps love is the only known means by which the individual heart can make any expansion whatsoever beyond its own bounds. Yet alas, nothing seems to break down the barriers of sense. The human heart beats its ineffectual wings in vain against the walls of its fleshly tabernacle. Will nothing unite the boy and the girl? Will nothing bring the man and the woman really together? Yet the boy thinks that, where the girl wholly is, he and she would be happy. And the man thinks that, where the woman and he to share every thought and every emotion, he and she would want not else. Is the amalgamation impossible? Is the coalescence of thought and feeling outside the bounds of human possibility? What then impels mankind to crave it, to attempt it, to sacrifice so much for it? There is a cosmic puzzle here with which nor philosophy, nor psychology, nor religion has yet attempted to grapple. After all, pitiful as it may be, lamentable as it may be, it is true, and it must be said, that this human heart of ours goes through life hungry, very hungry and unappeased. For what it hungers, what it has missed, where to it looks for sustenance, it itself does not know. Thus this feminine heart sighs without ceasing, for because that other masculine heart upon which it staked all its all, and an all that meant so much, proved callous and indifferent, that masculine heart ceases not to curse itself for resorting to such hasty and violent methods by which to obtain for itself an ephemeral and passing pleasure. This feminine heart eats out its life with remorse, for because it gave itself so unthinkingly when asked. Though of a survey it thought that asking was a thing prompted by impulses as noble as they seemed divine, and that masculine heart, when the tidal wave of heated passion has subsided, wonders how it was led captive by lures so deceptive and untried. M regrets, and regrets in vain, that he did not await a pure and more permanent passion, and N choose for a lifetime the cud of persistent remorse for an hour's poignant pleasure. This human heart knows nothing of itself nor anything of its fellow-beating hearts. If it follows its bent, it is cracked. If it holds itself in leash, it aches. If it calls reason to aid, its soaring hopes are dashed, its romance spoiled, and it itself reduced to the level of a machine that calculates. If it acts on impulse and meeting a heart that beats, so it thinks in unison, unites itself with it, often enough that other soon palpitates to a different rhythm, or itself cannot keep time, and all things go awry. Poor aching-beating human heart. It cannot reason, it cannot count the cost. To it seems that impulse, divine and mighty impulse, is the sole law of the earth. In time it learns that impulse, the mightiest, the divinest, though it may be the law in heaven, is sometimes a veritable nemesis on earth. It gives freely, gladly, without compunction. It finds the gift rewarded by consequences too pitiful for tears. Alas, this human heart. Can no one advise it? Is there no advice will help it? Must it always go wrong and always suffer? Well, if one loves, one dare not reason. If one reasons, it is difficult to love. There seems to be something cosmic, something transcending the bounds of the visible and tangible universe, in the desires and cravings of this same human heart. This little human heart beating blindly beneath a waistcoat or a blouse. Its owner is little bigger than a beetle or an ant, and the habitat of that owner is a speck in space, a pygmy in comparison with Sirius or Arcturus, and invisible from the ultra-telescopic confines of vision. What it makes the desires and cravings of this human heart more important, more importunate to its owner than the measuring of the vastest space? Why is it that the longings, the hopes, the disappointments, the desperate aspirations, and the passionate loves of little human hearts should cause to their possessors such pre-potent commotions, such poignant qualms? Rizal and Betelgeuse and Algol rushed through space, and about them probably circled numerous planets inhabited by countless and curious beings, each and all perhaps possessing hearts as perturbedable as our own. And yet, if our own little earthly Jack cannot get our own little earthly Jill, what cares Jack what happens to Vega or Capella or to the great Nebula in Orion? Jack wants Jill. And that want is to Jack the only thing in the sight of real heavens that matters. The curious and perhaps semi-comical but holy pathetic thing about the whole matter is this, that though undoubtedly our little planet is part of and has a place in this great sidereal universe, and consequently all our Jacks and Jills are related to all the Jacks and Jills everywhere else, yet each little human heart behaves as it were the only heart in the sum total of created things. If it enjoys, it calls upon all that is to congratulate it. If it suffers, it cries aloud to high heaven to avenge its wrongs. It comports itself as if it and it alone were the only sensitive things in existence. That is curious. That it wrongs may have been wrought by itself. That is fate may have been determined in the reign of chaos and old night, or air even cosmic nebulae were born, it does not dream. If Jill is indifferent or Jack morose, either is enough to cause Jack or Jill to curse God and die. Is there some archetypal and arcaneal secret in this the extreme, the supernal egoism of the human heart, of all of which what is the moral? Humph. Frankly I do not know what is the moral. Only this I see, that each little heart creates its own little universe. The bees, the that of its hive and the fields, mans, that of his earth and the stars. What may be above or beyond the stars, man no more knows than the bee knows what is beyond the fields. The heart, be it mans or bees, is the center of itself made sphere. Someday perhaps mans sphere will extend as far beyond the stars as today it extends beyond the fields. Then who knows. Perhaps unlimited senses and an uncircumcised intellect may find themselves commensurate with this high aspiring heart and an emancipated and ecstatic Jack unite with a congenial Jill. That there is a universe is apparent. That it is one and complete, we suppose. That there are in it Jax and Jills is indubitable. That these Jax and Jills crave mutual support, sympathy, love, friendship, wifehood, sister ship, companionship, brotherhood is also indubitable. If therefore the whole scheme of the universe is not a farce, what does this craving of love for lover mean? And yet it is quite impossible to conceive of a universe of love in which all the claims of heart and soul and senses shall be eternally and infinitely satisfied. Is it quite impossible to conceive of a universe of love in which all the claims of heart and soul and senses shall be eternally and infinitely satisfied? Nevertheless, on this little earth, perhaps ill betides the heart that leans over much on another. For alas, not even the entire emulation of one heart for another will satisfy that other. Indeed, indeed, in this life would one seek comfort and solace, one must seek it, in one's own self, or in one's God. For only one of two things can comfort, to put the world under one's feet, or to keep a God over one's head. Only he who is captain of his soul, or he who commits his soul to God, can rise above fate. There is a vacuum in every human heart, and the human heart abhors it as much as nature. What will fill this cardiac void no mortal to this moment has found out? Art cries beauty and tries to depict it. Philosophy cries truth and strives to define it. Religion cries good and does its best to embody it. And numberless lesser voices in the wilderness cry power, or gold, or work, which is a narcotic, or excitement, which is an intoxicant, and a many-toned, changeful siren with sweetly saddening music cries love. And one pursues a phantom, and another clashes a shadow, and a third cloaks his eyes with a transparent veil, or steeps his senses in floods that will not drown. No, what the human heart wants it does not know. And what is more, pathetic problem amongst problems pathetic, often it puzzles this human heart to distinguish between the things which it is right and proper to seek, wherewith to fill that void, and the things which are wrong and improper. Furthermore, how apt is the heart to seek in the illegitimate for the satisfaction which the legitimate fails to give? Problems ancient as Eden. What does it want, this human heart? What does it so earnestly desire, so strenuously seek? All about it and about are beauty, friendship, mirth, and gladness, the sea and the earth and the sky, color and music and song, and to each, if he wills it, wife or husband and children and home. Wanting is, what? Ah. One lesson this human heart has to learn, so easy to put into words, so difficult to carry out by deed, is this. To get, the human heart must give. The heart eats out itself, causes its own emptiness, creates its own void. The selfish and egotistical life breeds always the vapid and vacuous heart. Would you appease your own hunger? Feed the hungry hearts around you. Do you crave fullness of joy? Give joy to the joyless. Would you fill your own cavity, satisfy your craving, attain your desire, find what you seek? Give, give, give. The more, the better. For the greater the donation, the greater the repletion. Nature gives, gives lavishly, wantingly, unquestioningly. Every atom of soil, every drop of sap, goes to produce flowers and fruit and seed. Root and branch and leaf are but carefully constructed means by which to transmute sunshine and soil and flower and fruit and seed. No tree lives for itself. Shall, then, this human heart live for itself? Gather and store up for its own delectation? For its own good? There is no such thing as one's own good. Goodness is mutual, is communal, is only guided by giving and receiving. Wherefore, O frail weak human heart, seek thou out carefully constructed means by which to transmute sunshine and soil and showers into flowers and fruit. End of Chapter 14 End of Hints for Lovers by Theodore Arnold Halton