Love and Women

When a man attends to his heart, he discerns only the most callous of emotions. Love, as it is, is known best and only by woman. If we are lucky, they deign to initiate us in its mysteries. If unlucky in love, our bitter ignorance curses it as illusion. And when we are caught up in love and yet find it empty, we men must hold faith in woman, for it is she who keeps and keeps watch over the substance of our hearts.

What is man without woman but a shell, and a dangerous creature? Shall we curse women for bringing out the worst in us, when it is the worst that we truly are? Love is a maddening, I once wrote. It is surrender, and to surrender without faith is to abandon oneself to madness.

There is no hope for love without faith. Perhaps this is what is unknowingly meant when people advise lovers to select their mates carefully, and according to a confluence of values. For man lacks the good-natured generosity to give himself over to a beauty unknown; he can be coaxed into submission only when he beholds himself submitting to a universal value, that is to say, only when he is permitted his illusions.