Love, like hunger, fear or pain, is an absolutely involuntary craving. We may deny it expression and gratification, even as we may pretend that we are not hungry, afraid or in pain, and go without food, protection or relief from pain; but no exertion on our part will prevent us from experiencing love and craving its gratification. Nor can we experience it thru an act of will.
This absolutely involuntary character of the love craving must be borne in mind whenever we discuss the complicated and at times puzzling relations which it brings about between human beings.
The attitude of the average person to this question is extremely vague and illogical. The person obsessed by love cravings which are not meeting with the approval of his environment, justifies himself[Pg 2] by stating loudly the overpowering character of his feelings:
"I cannot help loving him or her," "It is a feeling stronger than myself," "It came over me suddenly," "It was a case of love at first sight."
Victims of Venus. The ancients expressed their strong belief in man's helplessness against the allpowerful fascination of the love object by calling the lovelorn a victim of Cupid or of Venus, a puppet of the gods, of fate.
And on the other hand, we behold modern and ancient lovers, whenever they feel that the love object is growing indifferent to them, reversing their attitude, denying their belief in love's involuntary character, and using words like fickle, changeling, to designate the love object they are losing. They speak of deception, of betrayal, of faithlessness.
"You no longer love me," they state reproachfully. They may ask the stupid question: "Why have you ceased to care for me?" Worse yet, they may say to the love object; "You should be ashamed of your inconstancy."
Such remarks are not infrequently coupled with another remark which goes more deeply to the root of the matter: "You should not show your indifference so plainly."
[Pg 3]
In other words pretence is expected when actual love has died.
And indeed nothing else could be expected logically by such illogical lovers, unless of course a deep affection, which may have grown between two human beings in the course of many years of life partnership, successfully masks the passing of the peculiar fascination which differentiates love proper from any other human feeling.
Love and Affection. We may love a human being more than ourselves, enjoy infinitely his presence, delight in giving to him mental and physical happiness, lavish on him a thousand caresses and yet not experience the flash of desire which leads compulsively toward complete physical communion with that human being.
A simile from the animal world will make my meaning clearer.
A large number of animals "enjoy" light but only a small number of them are so "fascinated" by light that they cannot resist a "craving" to fly toward a light, contact with which may mean death to them. Only that small minority can be called in scientific jargon "positively phototropic," in sentimental parlance "hopelessly in love" with light.
[Pg 4]
All animals are affected in some fashion by an electric current passing thru their bodies, but only a minority of them are so affected by it that they must, whether they wish it or not, face the positive electrode, as a lover fascinated by the face of his sweetheart. Only these can be characterised as "positively galvanotropic."
Erotropism.Likewise a hundred men may be charmed by the sight of a woman. Only one or two from their number may feel compelled to seek complete union with her regardless of the obstacles to be surmounted, of the criticism their actions may arouse, of the expenditure of time, money and energy the adventure may entail. Only this minority may be considered as "positively erotropic."
In other words it is the primal compulsion which nature uses to assure the continuance of the race and which I might designate as "erotropism" which must be considered the basis for a discussion of love.
Love as commonly understood or misunderstood at the present day, is a series of variations on the theme of erotropism, variations due to the complication of modern civilisation and the restrictions placed upon all biological phenomena by the necessities of life in communities.
[Pg 5]
What is the Heart? The reader will notice that I have thus far avoided any mention of the "heart" altho that organ is commonly identified with the various emotions of love.
Physiologically speaking, the heart is no more vitally concerned with love than with any other disturbing feeling and emotion. Love may at times cause our heart to beat wildly, but so does strong coffee, so does acute indigestion, so does blood poisoning, so does any sort of violent fear.
The heart, we must not forget, is a mere muscle, which is no more capable of being the seat of an emotion than our biceps or our calves.
The heart is an elaborate centripetal and centrifugal pump which, in obedience to orders or impulses coming from elsewhere, draws the blood out of the veins and sends it into the arteries at a varying rate of speed.
A Dead Heart Can Be Made to Beat. The heart, taken out of the body and attached to a well fitted system of pipes, thru which an appropriate fluid is circulating, will start beating anew and keep on beating until decay sets in, due to the fact that the proper nourishment is lacking.
[Pg 6]
Talking of a sensitive heart, of a tender heart or of a heart of stone means merely juggling with pretty pictures which correspond to nothing physiologically. There may be sensitiveness, tenderness or stony harshness somewhere in the organism and the heart may give them expression by its fluctuating beats, but it acts on such occasions as a mere registering apparatus.
Adrenin taken by the mouth or injected into the blood stream causes the heart pump of a perfect indifferent man to throb as wildly as the heart of a lovelorn swain. Strong doses of the nitrates may cause valvular insufficiency and "break" a heart more effectively than any catastrophe in one's sentimental life.
The Heart is a Respectable Organ. The choice of the heart as the organ of the emotions, in particular of the love emotion, is certainly due to the fact that it is such a faithful registering apparatus and also to a "displacement upward" frequently observed in modern civilised thought.
We do not willingly mention the abdomen and therefore have rechristened it the stomach. We have read many times the appalling statement that a woman carries her child "under her heart." The seat of the mind which materialist physicians of ancient Greece located in the intestines, rose later to the level of the solar plexus and with Descartes finally [Pg 7] reached the pineal gland. Likewise the part of the body where love cravings receive their physical satisfaction having become taboo, the seat of love has been raised from the pelvis to the thorax, from the primary genital region to the breast, which bears secondary sexual characteristics.
After which, the popular imagination has established an arbitrary contrast and antagonism between the mysterious clocklike organ in the chest and the mysterious soft mass in the skull.
The Antithesis Head-heart is one which literature is not likely to abandon for years to come. We read that women "follow the dictates of their heart" while men are not so prone "to lose their head." The head is represented as the well-spring of reason while the heart is a fount of tenderness, if not of foolishness.
Modern scientific research has demonstrated that the brain is nothing but an apparatus for burning sugar which is transformed into electric current which the nervous systems distribute throughout the body.
Thought of the normal type is impossible unless the various parts of the brain are perfectly coordinated, just as the slightest accident to a telephone wire may leave a subscriber cut off from the rest of the world, but thoughts, feelings, emotions, cravings, originate elsewhere, in the autonomic nervous system.
[Pg 8]
Nerve Memory. In our autonomic nervous system all our life impressions are indelibly recorded, probably thru infinitesimal chemical modifications of the nerves and the resultant tensions. Pleasant nerve impressions (pleasant memories) direct us toward certain objects which are the source of such impressions, unpleasant impressions drive us away from the outside stimuli which once produced them.
The former cause our heart to beat slowly, peacefully, powerfully, the latter speed up the cardiac pump so as to send energy as fast as possible wherever it is needed for defence against harm.
Pleasure, indifference and pain, built upon billions of nerve memories, make up the woof of our thinking. They ARE our mind, the mind that falls in love or falls out of love.
The head supplies the energy and the heart registers the rate at which energy is sent thru the body, but the memories of which our thinking is made are stored up elsewhere.
[Pg 9]
In a scientific study of love, therefore, I shall leave the head and the heart as individual organs out of consideration.