The great artist creates a
masterpiece; his heart is aglow with the ideal of perfect beauty beheld
by none but him, but his ideal eternally eludes him; the saint has
achieved perfection as far as perfection is possible to humanity, and
stands aghast at the burden of insufficiency which weighs down mankind;
the great erotic is the hero in the world of feeling, his soul yearns
for the consummation of his love--and already he has reached the
confines of life.
There are various paths by which the erotic may travel towards
perfection; they correspond to the principal erotic types. I have
devoted a special chapter to the seeker of love, or the Don Juan; the
woman-worshipper who cannot find satisfaction on earth has been dealt
with already. The great and rare lover, however, the exponent of the
final form of love, who loves a woman of flesh and blood with every
fibre of his being, differs very essentially from either of these types.
The profounder the emotional depth of the soul, the greater is the
difficulty of finding a complementary being.
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