Solovyov about love summary. The meaning of love

Soloviev Vladimir

The meaning of love

Article one

Usually, the meaning of sexual love is considered to be the propagation of the species for which it serves as a means. I consider this view to be incorrect - not just on the basis of some ideal considerations, but primarily on the basis of natural historical facts. That the reproduction of living beings can do without sexual love is clear from the fact that it does without the division into sexes itself. A significant part of organisms in both the plant and animal kingdoms reproduce asexually: by division, budding, spores, and grafting. It is true that the higher forms of both organic kingdoms reproduce sexually. But firstly, organisms that reproduce in this way, both plants and partly animals, can also reproduce asexually (grafting in plants, parthenogenesis in higher insects), and secondly, leaving this aside and accepting both general rule that higher organisms reproduce through sexual union, we must conclude that this sexual factor is not associated with reproduction in general (which can occur in addition to this), but with the reproduction of higher organisms. Consequently, the meaning of sexual differentiation (and sexual love) should not be sought in the idea of ​​generic life and its reproduction, but only in the idea of ​​a higher organism. We find striking confirmation of this in the following great fact. Within living things that reproduce exclusively sexually (the vertebrate department), the higher we climb the ladder of organisms, the less power of reproduction becomes, and the power of sexual desire, on the contrary, becomes greater. In the lowest class of this department - in fish - reproduction occurs on an enormous scale: the embryos generated annually by each female are considered to be millions; these embryos are fertilized by the male outside the female's body, and the manner in which this is done does not suggest a strong sexual desire. Of all vertebrate animals, this cold-blooded class undoubtedly reproduces the most and exhibits the least passion of love. At the next stage - among amphibians and reptiles - reproduction is much less significant than among fish, although in some of its species this class, not without reason, is referred to by the Bible as one of the creatures swarming; but with less reproduction, we already find closer sexual relationships in these animals... In birds, the power of reproduction is much less, not only in comparison with fish, but also in comparison, for example, with frogs, and sexual desire and mutual affection between a male and a female reach an unprecedented level in the two lowest development classes. In mammals - they are also viviparous - reproduction is much weaker than in birds, and the sexual desire, although in the majority is less constant, is much more intense. Finally, in humans, compared with the entire animal kingdom, reproduction occurs in smallest sizes, and sexual love reaches highest value and the highest strength, combining to a superlative degree constancy of attitude (as in birds) and intensity of passion (as in mammals). So, sexual love and reproduction of the race are in an inverse relationship with each other: the stronger one is, the weaker the other. In general, the entire animal kingdom of the side under consideration develops in the following order. Below there is an enormous power of reproduction in the complete absence of anything resembling sexual love (in the absence of the division into sexes); further, in more perfect organisms, sexual differentiation appears and, accordingly, a certain sexual desire - at first extremely weak, then it gradually increases at further degrees of organic development, as the power of reproduction decreases (i.e. in direct relation to the perfection of organization and in inverse relation to the power of reproduction), until finally at the very top - in man - the strongest sexual love is possible, even with the complete exclusion of reproduction. But if, in this way, at the two ends of animal life we ​​find, on the one hand, reproduction without any sexual love, and on the other hand, sexual love without any reproduction, then it is absolutely clear that these two phenomena cannot be placed in inextricable connection with each other. each other - it is clear that each of them has its own independent meaning and that the meaning of one cannot consist in being a means of the other. The same thing comes out if we consider sexual love exclusively in the human world, where it, incomparably more than in the animal world, takes on that individual character, due to which this particular person of the other sex has unconditional significance for the lover as the only and irreplaceable, as the goal itself in itself. Here we come across a popular theory, which, recognizing sexual love in general as a means of the generic instinct, or as an instrument of reproduction, tries, in particular, to explain the individualization of the feeling of love in a person as some kind of cunning or seduction used by nature or the world will to achieve its special goals . In the human world, where individual characteristics receive much more meaning than in the animal and plant kingdoms, nature (otherwise the world will, the will in life, otherwise the unconscious or superconscious world spirit) means not only the preservation of the species, but also the implementation within its boundaries of many possible particular or species types and individual characters. But besides this common goal- manifestations of the fullest possible variety of forms - the life of humanity, understood as historical process, has the task of elevating and improving human nature . This requires not only that there be as many different examples of humanity as possible, but that its best examples be born, which are valuable not only in themselves, as individual types, but also for their elevating and improving effect on others. So, during the reproduction of the human race, that force - no matter what we call it - that moves the world and historical process is interested not only in the continuous birth of human individuals according to their kind, but also in the birth of these specific and, if possible, significant individualities. And for this, simple reproduction through a random and indifferent combination of individuals of different sexes is no longer sufficient: for an individually determined product, a combination of individually determined producers is necessary, and therefore, the general sexual desire that serves the reproduction of the species in animals is also insufficient. Since in humanity the matter is not only about the production of offspring in general, but also about the production of this offspring most suitable for world purposes, and since a given person can produce this required offspring not with every person of the other sex, but only with one specific one, then this is one and should have a special attractive force for him, seem to him as something exceptional, irreplaceable, unique and capable of giving the highest bliss. This is the individualization and exaltation of the sexual instinct, by which human love differs from animal love, but which, like that, is aroused in us by an alien, although perhaps a higher power for its own purposes, extraneous to our personal consciousness, - is aroused as an irrational fatal passion that takes possession of us and disappears like a mirage once the need for it has passed. If this theory were correct, if the individualization and exaltation of the love feeling had their entire meaning, their only reason and purpose outside this feeling, precisely in the properties of the offspring required (for world purposes), then it would logically follow that the degree of this love individualization and exaltation or the strength of love is in direct relation to the degree of typicality and significance of the offspring descending from it: the more important the offspring, the stronger the love of the parents should be, and, conversely, the stronger the love connecting two given persons, the more remarkable the offspring should be would we expect from them according to this theory. If in general the feeling of love is aroused by the world's will for the sake of the required offspring and is only a means for its production, then it is clear that in each given case the strength of the means used by the cosmic engine must be commensurate with the importance of the goal achieved for it. The more the world will is interested in the work that is about to be born, the more strongly it must attract and bind together the two necessary producers. Let us suppose that we are dealing with the birth of a world genius, who is of great importance in the historical process. The higher power governing this process is obviously as much more interested in this birth compared to others as this world genius is a rarer phenomenon compared to ordinary mortals, and, therefore, the sexual attraction by which the world the will (according to this theory) ensures that in this case the achievement of such an important goal for it. Of course, defenders of the theory may reject the idea of ​​a precise quantitative relationship between the importance of this person and by the power of passion among his parents, since these objects do not allow for precise measurement; but it is absolutely indisputable (from the point of view of this theory) that if the world will is extremely interested in the birth of a person, it must take extraordinary measures to ensure the desired result, that is, according to the meaning of the theory, it must arouse an extremely strong passion in the parents, capable of crushing all obstacles to their union. In reality, however, we find nothing of the kind - no relationship between the strength of love passion and the significance of offspring. First of all, we encounter a fact completely inexplicable for this theory that the most strong love very often it is not divided and not only produces great, but does not produce any offspring at all. If, as a result of such love, people become monks or commit suicide, then why did the world’s will, interested in posterity, bother? But even if the fiery Werther had not killed himself, his unfortunate passion still remains an inexplicable mystery for the theory of qualified offspring. Werther’s extremely individualized and exalted love for Charlotte showed (from the point of view of this theory) that it was with Charlotte that he was supposed to produce offspring that were especially important and necessary for humanity, for the sake of which the world’s will aroused this extraordinary passion in him. But how did this omniscient and omnipotent will not guess or could not act in the desired sense on Charlotte, without whose participation Werther’s passion was completely aimless and unnecessary? For a teleologically active substance, love's labor lost is a complete absurdity. Especially strong love is most often unhappy, and unhappy love very usually leads to suicide in one form or another; and each of these numerous suicides from unhappy love clearly refutes the theory according to by which strong love is only then aroused in order to produce at any cost the required offspring, whose importance you signify by the power of this love, whereas in fact in all these cases the power of love precisely excludes the very possibility of not only what is important, but also of any no offspring. Cases unrequited love are too common to be seen only as an exception that can be ignored. Even if it were so, it would help matters little, for even in those cases where love is especially strong on both sides, it does not lead to what is required by the theory. According to theory, Romeo and Juliet, in accordance with their great mutual passion, should have given birth to some very great person, at least Shakespeare, but in fact, as we know, it’s the other way around: it was not they who created Shakespeare, as the theory would have it, but he who created them. , and, moreover, without any passion - through asexual creativity. Romeo and Juliet, like most passionate lovers, died without giving birth to anyone, and Shakespeare, who gave birth to them, like other great people, was born not from a madly in love couple, but from an ordinary everyday marriage (and although he himself experienced a strong love passion, like it can be seen, by the way, from his sonnets, but no remarkable offspring came from here). The birth of Christopher Columbus was, perhaps, even more important for the world's will than the birth of Shakespeare; but we know nothing about any special love among his parents, but we know about his own strong passion for Dona Beatriz Henriques, and although he had an illegitimate son Diego from her, this son did not do anything great, but only wrote a biography of his father, which could have been done by anyone else. If the whole meaning of love is in posterity and a higher power controls love affairs, then why, instead of trying to unite lovers, does it, on the contrary, seem to deliberately prevent this union, as if its task is precisely to ensure that no matter what happens? began to take away the very possibility of offspring from true lovers: it forces them, through a fatal misunderstanding, to be stabbed to death in crypts, drowns them in the Hellespont, and in all other ways brings them to an untimely and childless death. And in those rare cases when strong love does not take a tragic turn, when a couple in love lives happily into old age, it still remains barren. A true poetic sense of reality forced both Ovid and Gogol to deprive Philemon and Baucis, Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna of their offspring. It is impossible to recognize a direct correspondence between the strength of individual love and the significance of offspring, when the very existence of offspring with such love is only a rare accident. As we have seen, 1) strong love very usually remains unrequited; 2) with reciprocity, strong passion leads to tragic end, without reaching the production of offspring; 3) happy love, if it is very strong, it also usually remains sterile. And in those rare cases when unusually strong love produces offspring, they turn out to be the most ordinary. As a general rule, from which there are almost no exceptions, it can be established that the special intensity of sexual love either does not allow offspring at all, or allows only one whose meaning does not in any way correspond to the intensity of the love feeling and the exclusive nature of the relationships it generates. To see the meaning of sexual love in purposeful procreation means to recognize this meaning only where there is no love at all, and where there is love, to deprive it of all meaning and all justification. This imaginary theory of love, compared with reality, turns out to be not an explanation, but a refusal of any explanation. The force that governs the life of mankind, which some call the world will, others call the unconscious spirit, and which in fact is the Providence of God, undoubtedly controls the timely generation of providential people necessary for its purposes, arranging in the long series of generations the proper combinations of producers in view of the future, not only the closest, but also the most distant, works. For this providential selection of producers, a wide variety of means are used, but love in the proper sense, that is, exclusive individualized and exalted sexual desire, is not one of these means. Biblical history with its true deep realism, which does not exclude, but embodies the ideal meaning of facts in their empirical details, biblical history will give evidence in this case, as always, truthful and instructive for every person with historical and artistic sense from religious beliefs. Central fact biblical history, the birth of the Messiah, more than any other, presupposes a providential plan in the selection and connection of successive producers, and indeed main interest biblical stories focuses on a variety of amazing destinies, which arranged the births and combinations of “godfathers”. But in this entire complex system of means that have determined in order historical phenomena the birth of the Messiah, there was no place for love in the proper sense; it, of course, is found in the Bible, but only as an independent fact, and not as an instrument of the Christogonic process. - The Holy Book does not say whether Abraham married Sarah out of fiery love, but in any case, Providence waited for this love to completely cool down in order to produce from hundred-year-old parents a child of faith, not love. Isaac married Rebekah not out of love, but according to a pre-arranged decision and plan of his father. Jacob loved Rachel, but this love turns out to be unnecessary for the origin of the Messiah. He must come from the son of Jacob - Judah, who is born not Rachel, but not Leah, beloved by her husband. To create the ancestor of the Messiah in this generation, it was necessary to unite Jacob with Leah; but, in order to achieve this union, Providence does not arouse in Jacob a strong love passion for the future mother of the “Theotokos” - Judas; Without violating the freedom of heartfelt feeling, a higher power leaves Rachel to love him, and for the necessary union of him with Leah, she uses a means of a completely different kind: the selfish cunning of a third party - Laban, devoted to his family and economic interests. Judah himself, in order to produce further ancestors of the Messiah, must, in addition to his former offspring, in his old age unite with his daughter-in-law Tamara. Since such a union was not at all in the order of things and could not have happened under ordinary conditions, the goal is achieved through extremely strange adventure, very tempting to superficial Bible readers. There can be no talk of any love in this adventure. It is not love that unites the harlot of Jericho Rahab with the Jewish stranger; She first gives herself to him in her profession, and then the casual connection is sealed by her faith in the power of the new God and the desire for his protection for herself and hers. It was not love that united David’s great-grandfather, the old man Boaz, with the young Moabite Ruth, and it was not from real deep love, but only from the random sinful whim of an aging ruler that Solomon was born. In sacred history, as well as in general history, love is not a means or instrument of historical goals; it does not serve the human race. Therefore, when a subjective feeling tells us that love is an independent good, that it has its own independent value for our personal life, then this feeling corresponds in objective reality to the fact that strong individual love is never a service instrument of generic goals that are achieved in addition to her. In general, as in sacred history, sexual love (in the proper sense) does not play any role and direct action does not affect the historical process: its positive significance must be rooted in individual life. What meaning does it have here?

Article two

In both animals and humans, sexual love is the highest flowering of individual life. But since in animals the generic life decisively outweighs the individual life, then highest voltage this latter only benefits the birth process. It is not that sexual desire is only a means for the simple reproduction or propagation of organisms, but it serves for the production of more perfect organisms through sexual competition and selection. They tried to attribute the same meaning to sexual love in the human world, but, as we have seen, it was completely in vain. For in humanity, individuality has an independent meaning and cannot be, in its strongest expression, only an instrument of the goals of the historical process external to it. Or, better to say, the true goal of the historical process is not of such a kind that the human personality can serve for it only as a passive and transitory instrument. The conviction of the irrespective dignity of man is not based on conceit, nor on the empirical fact that we do not know another, more perfect being in the order of nature. The irrespective dignity of a person consists in the absolute form (image) of rational consciousness undoubtedly inherent in him. Conscious, like an animal, of the states it has experienced and experienced, seeing one connection or another between them and, on the basis of this connection, anticipating future states with the mind, a person, moreover, has the ability to evaluate his states, and actions, and all sorts of facts in general not only by their relation to other individual facts, but also to universal ideal norms; his consciousness, beyond the phenomena of life, is also determined by the mind of truth. By aligning his actions with this higher consciousness, man can endlessly improve his life and nature without leaving the limits of the human form. That is why he is the highest being of the natural world and the real end of the universe-creating process; for in addition to the Being, which itself is the eternal and absolute truth among all others, that which is capable of cognizing and realizing the truth in itself is the highest, not in a relative, but in an unconditional sense. What reasonable basis can one come up with for the creation of new, essentially more perfect forms, when there is already a form capable of endless self-improvement, capable of containing the entirety of absolute content? With the appearance of such a form, further progress can only consist in new degrees of its own development, and not in replacing it with some creatures of a different kind, other, unprecedented forms of being. This is the essential difference between the cosmogonic and historical processes. The first creates (before the appearance of man) more and more new kinds of creatures, and the former are partly exterminated, like unsuccessful experiments, and partly along with new ones externally coexist and accidentally collide with each other, without forming any real unity due to the lack of a common consciousness in them that would connect them with each other and with the cosmic past. Such a common consciousness appears in humanity. Continuity in the animal world higher forms from the lower ones, for all its correctness and expediency, there is a fact that is certainly external and alien to them, does not exist at all: the elephant and the monkey cannot know anything about the complex process of geological and biological transformations that determined their actual appearance on earth; the comparatively higher degree of development of particular and individual consciousness does not mean here any progress in general consciousness, which is just as certainly absent in these intelligent animals as in the stupid oyster; The complex brain of a higher mammal serves as little for the self-illumination of nature in its entirety as the rudimentary nerve ganglia of a worm. In humanity, on the contrary, through increased individual consciousness, religious and scientific, universal consciousness progresses. The individual mind here is not only the organ of personal life, but also the organ of recollection and fortune-telling for all mankind and even for all nature. The Jew who wrote: here is the book of the birth of heaven and earth - and further: here is the book of the birth of man, expressed not only his personal and national consciousness - through him, for the first time, the truth of universal and all-human unity shone in the world. And all further successes of consciousness consist only in the development and embodiment of this truth; they have no need and cannot leave this comprehensive form: what else can the most perfect astronomy and geology do but completely restore the genesis of heaven and earth; in the same way, the highest task of historical knowledge can only be to restore the “book of human births,” i.e., the genetic continuity in the life of mankind, and, finally, our creative activity cannot have a higher goal than to embody in tangible images this originally created and proclaimed unity of heaven, earth and man. All truth, the positive unity of everything, is initially inherent in the living consciousness of man and is gradually realized in the life of mankind with conscious continuity (for truth that does not remember kinship is not truth). Thanks to the infinite extensibility and indissolubility of his successive consciousness, a person, remaining himself, can comprehend and realize the entire boundless fullness of being, and therefore no higher births creatures to replace him are neither needed nor possible. Within the limits of his given reality, man is only a part of nature, but he constantly and consistently violates these limits; in its spiritual creations - religion and science, morality and art - it is revealed as the center of the universal consciousness of nature, as the soul of the world, as the realized potential of absolute unity, and, therefore, only this most absolute in its perfect act can be higher than it, or eternal being, i.e. God. The advantage of man over other creatures of nature - the ability to cognize and realize the truth - is not only generic, but also individual: every person is capable of cognizing and realizing the truth, everyone can become a living reflection of the absolute whole, a conscious and independent organ of universal life. And in the rest of nature there is truth (or the image of God), but only in its objective community, unknown to private beings; it forms them and acts in them and through them as a fatal force, as a law of their existence unknown to them, to which they obey involuntarily and unconsciously; for themselves, in their inner feeling and consciousness, they cannot rise above their given partial existence, they find themselves only in their particularity, apart from everything, therefore, outside the truth; and therefore truth or the universal can triumph here only in the change of generations, in the continuation of the race and in the death of individual life, which does not contain the truth. Human individuality, precisely because it can contain the truth, is not abolished by it, but is preserved and strengthened in its triumph. But in order for an individual being to find its justification and affirmation in truth - unity, it is not enough on its part to be conscious of the truth - it must be in the truth, but initially and directly the individual person, like an animal, is not in the truth: he finds himself as an isolated particle of the universal whole, and he affirms this partial existence of his in egoism as a whole for himself, wants to be everything separately from everything - outside the truth. Egoism, as the real fundamental principle of individual life, penetrates and guides all of it, concretely determines everything in it, and therefore it cannot in any way be outweighed and abolished by the theoretical consciousness of truth alone. Until the living force of egoism meets in a person with another living force that is opposite to it, the consciousness of truth is only external illumination, a reflection of someone else’s light. If a person could only contain truth in this sense, then the connection with it of his individuality would not be internal and inseparable; his own being, remaining like an animal outside the truth, would, like it, be doomed (in its subjectivity) to destruction, surviving only as an idea in the thoughts of the absolute mind. Truth, as a living force that takes possession of a person’s inner being and truly leads him out of false self-affirmation, is called love. Love, as the real abolition of egoism, is the real justification and salvation of individuality. Love is more than rational consciousness, but without it it could not act as an inner saving force that elevates rather than abolishes individuality. Only thanks to rational consciousness (or, what is the same, consciousness of truth) can a person distinguish himself, that is, his true individuality, from his egoism, and therefore, sacrificing this egoism, surrendering himself to love, he finds in it not only living , but also life-giving power and does not lose his individual being along with his egoism, but, on the contrary, perpetuates it. In the animal world, due to their lack of their own rational consciousness, truth, realized in love, without finding in them an internal point of support for its action, can only act directly, as a fatal force external to them, taking possession of them as blind instruments for world goals alien to them; here love appears as a one-sided triumph of the general, the generic over the individual, since in animals their individuality coincides with egoism in the immediacy of partial existence, and therefore perishes along with it. Meaning human love In general, there is justification and salvation of individuality through the sacrifice of egoism. On this general basis we can solve our special task: to explain the meaning of sexual love. It is not for nothing that sexual relations are not only called love, but also represent, admittedly, love par excellence, being the type and ideal of all other love (see Song of Songs. Apocalypse). The lie and evil of egoism do not consist at all in the fact that this person values ​​himself too highly, gives himself unconditional importance and infinite dignity: in this he is right, because every human subject as an independent center of living forces, as a potential (possibility) of infinite perfection, As a being who can contain absolute truth in his consciousness and in his life, every person in this capacity has irrespective significance and dignity, is something absolutely irreplaceable and cannot value himself too highly (according to the Gospel word: what will a person give in exchange for his soul? ). Failure to recognize this unconditional meaning is tantamount to renunciation human dignity; This is the basic delusion and the beginning of all unbelief: he is so cowardly that he cannot even believe in himself - how can he believe in anything else? The main lie and evil of egoism is not in this absolute self-awareness and self-esteem of the subject, but in the fact that, rightfully attributing unconditional significance to himself, he unfairly denies others this significance; recognizing himself as the center of life, which he really is, he relates others to the circle of his being, leaving behind them only external and relative value. Of course, in an abstract, theoretical consciousness, every person who is not maddened by reason always admits the complete equality of others with himself; but in his life consciousness, in his inner feeling and in reality, he affirms an infinite difference, a complete incommensurability between himself and others: he in himself is everything, they in themselves are nothing. Meanwhile, it is precisely with such exclusive self-affirmation that a person cannot really be what he claims to be. That unconditional meaning, that absoluteness, which he generally rightly recognizes for himself, but unjustly takes away from others, has in itself only a potential character - it is only a possibility that requires its implementation. God is everything, that is, He possesses in one absolute act all positive content, all the fullness of being. A person (in general and every individual person in particular), being in fact only this and not another, can become everything only by removing in his consciousness and life that internal line that separates him from the other. “This” can be “everything” only together with others; only together with others can it realize its unconditional meaning and become an inseparable and irreplaceable part of the all-inclusive whole, an independent living and unique organ of absolute life. True individuality is some definite image of unity, some a certain way perception and assimilation of everything else. By asserting himself outside of everything else, a person thereby deprives his own existence of meaning, robs himself of the true content of life and turns his individuality into an empty form. Thus, egoism is in no way self-consciousness and self-affirmation of individuality, but, on the contrary, self-denial and death. Metaphysical and physical, historical and social conditions human existence in every possible way modify and soften our egoism, putting strong and varied barriers to discovering it in its pure form and in all its terrible consequences. But all this is complicated. The system of obstacles and adjustments, predetermined by providence and implemented by nature and history, leaves the very foundation of egoism untouched, constantly peeking out from under the veil of personal and public morality, and on occasion it manifests itself with complete clarity. There is only one force that can fundamentally undermine egoism from within, and indeed undermines it, namely love, and mainly sexual love. The lie and evil of egoism consist in the exclusive recognition of unconditional meaning for oneself and in denying it to others; reason shows us that this is unfounded and unfair, but love directly actually abolishes such unfair treatment, forcing us not in an abstract consciousness, but in an inner feeling and vital will to recognize for ourselves the unconditional significance of the other. Cognizing in love the truth of another not abstractly, but essentially, transferring in fact the center of our life beyond the limits of our empirical ability, we thereby manifest and realize our own truth, our unconditional meaning, which consists precisely in the ability to move beyond the boundaries of our actual phenomenal existence , in the ability to live not only in oneself, but also in others. Every love is a manifestation of this ability, but not every one realizes it to the same degree, not every one equally radically undermines egoism. Egoism is not only a real force, but a fundamental one, rooted in the deepest center of our existence and from there penetrating and embracing our entire reality - a force continuously operating in all the particulars and details of our existence. In order to truly undermine egoism, it is necessary to oppose it with the same concretely defined love, penetrating our entire being, capturing everything in it. That other thing, which must liberate our individuality from the shackles of egoism, must have a relationship with all this individuality, must be as real and concrete, a completely objectified subject as we ourselves, and at the same time must be different from us in everything in order to be truly different, that is, having all the essential content that we also have, to have it in a different way or image, in a different form, so that every manifestation of our being, every act of life meets in this other a corresponding, but unequal manifestation , so that the relation of one to the other is a complete and constant exchange, a complete and constant affirmation of oneself in the other, a perfect interaction and communication. Only then will egoism be undermined and abolished not only in principle, but in all its concrete reality. Only with this, so to speak chemical, union of two beings, homogeneous and equivalent, but completely different in form, is it possible (both in the natural order and in the order spiritual creation the new man, the actual realization of true human individuality. We find such a union, or at least the closest possibility to it, in sexual love, which is why we attach exceptional importance as a necessary and irreplaceable basis for all further improvement, as an inevitable and constant condition under which only a person can truly be in the truth. Recognizing the very great importance and high dignity of other types of love, with which false spiritualism and impotent moralism would like to replace sexual love, we see, however, that only this latter satisfies two basic requirements, without which the decisive abolition of selfhood in full life communication with another is impossible. . In all other types of love, there is either no homogeneity, equality and interaction between lover and beloved, or a comprehensive difference in properties that complement each other. Thus, in mystical love, the object of love is ultimately reduced to absolute indifference, absorbing human individuality; here egoism is abolished only in the very insufficient sense in which it is abolished when a person falls into a state of deep sleep (with which in the Upanishads and Vedanta the union of the individual soul with the universal spirit is compared, and sometimes directly identified). Between a living person and the mystical “Abyss” there can be no absolute indifference, due to the complete heterogeneity and incommensurability of these quantities, not only vital communication, but also simple compatibility: if there is an object of love, then there is no lover - he has disappeared, lost himself, plunged as if into a deep sleep without dreams, and when he returns to himself, the object of love disappears and instead of absolute indifference, the motley variety of real life reigns against the background of his own egoism, decorated with spiritual pride. - History knows, however, such mystics and entire mystical schools , where the object of love was not understood as absolute indifference, but took on specific forms that allowed for living relationships with it, but - quite remarkable - these relationships here received a completely clear and consistently sustained character of sexual love... Parental love - especially maternal love - both in the strength of feeling and in the concreteness of the object it approaches sexual love, but for other reasons it cannot have equal significance for human individuality. It is conditioned by the fact of reproduction and the change of generations, with a law that prevails in animal life, but does not have, or, in any case, should not have such a meaning in human life. In animals, the subsequent generation directly and quickly abolishes its predecessors and exposes their existence as meaningless, in order to be now, in turn, exposed to the same meaninglessness of existence by its own offspring. Maternal love in humanity, sometimes reaching a high degree of self-sacrifice, which we do not find in chicken love, is a remnant, undoubtedly still necessary, of this order of things. In any case, it is certain that in mother's love there cannot be complete reciprocity and vital communication simply because the loving and the beloved belong to different generations what for last life- in the future with new, independent interests and tasks, among which representatives of the past appear only as pale shadows. It is enough that parents cannot be the goal of life for children in the sense that children are for parents. A mother who puts her whole soul into her children sacrifices, of course, her egoism, but at the same time she loses her individuality, and in them, if maternal love supports individuality, it preserves and even strengthens egoism. - In addition to this, in maternal love there is, in fact, no recognition of the unconditional significance of the loved one, recognition of his true individuality, for for the mother, although her offspring is dearer than anything else, it is precisely only as her offspring, no different from other animals, i.e. here the imaginary recognition of unconditional meaning behind another is actually due to an external physiological connection. Still less can other types of sympathetic feelings have any claim to replace sexual love. Friendship between persons of the same sex lacks a comprehensive formal distinction of mutually complementary qualities, and if, nevertheless, this friendship reaches a particular intensity, then it turns into an unnatural surrogate of sexual love. As for patriotism and love for humanity, these feelings, for all their importance, in themselves are vital and cannot abolish selfishness, due to incommensurability with the beloved: neither humanity, nor even the people can be for individual person an object as concrete as himself. It is, of course, possible to sacrifice your life to the people or humanity, but to create a new person out of yourself, to manifest and realize true human individuality on the basis of this extensive love, is impossible. Here, in the real center, one’s old egoistic self still remains, and the people and humanity are relegated to the periphery of consciousness as ideal objects. The same must be said about love for science, art, etc. Having pointed out in a few words the true meaning of sexual love and its advantage over other related feelings, I must explain why it is so weakly realized in reality, and show how in this way its full implementation is possible. I will deal with this in subsequent articles.

Article three

The meaning and dignity of love as a feeling lies in the fact that it forces us, with our whole being, to recognize in another the unconditional central significance that, due to egoism, we feel only in ourselves. Love is important not as one of our feelings, but as a transfer of all our vital interest from ourselves to another, as a rearrangement of the very center of our personal life. This is characteristic of all love, but especially sexual love; it differs from other types of love by its greater intensity, more exciting nature, and the possibility of more complete and comprehensive reciprocity; only this love can lead to a real and inextricable union of two lives into one, only about it and in the word of God it is said: the two will become one flesh, that is, they will become one real being. Feeling requires such completeness of union, internal and final, but things usually do not go beyond this subjective demand and aspiration, and even then it turns out to be only transitory. In fact, instead of the poetry of an eternal and central union, there is only a more or less prolonged, but still temporary, more or less close, but still external, superficial rapprochement of two limited beings within a narrow framework everyday prose. The object of love does not in reality retain the unconditional meaning that is given to it by a lover’s dream. To an outsider, this is clear from the very beginning; but the involuntary shade of mockery that inevitably accompanies someone else’s attitude towards lovers turns out to be only a prelude to their own disappointment. All at once or little by little the pathos of a love interest passes, and it is good if the energy of altruistic feelings manifested in it is not wasted, but only, having lost its concentration and high enthusiasm, is transferred in a fragmented and diluted form to children who are born and raised to repeat the same the deception itself. I say "deception" - from the point of view of individual life and absolute meaning human personality, fully recognizing the necessity and expediency of childbirth and generational change for the progress of humanity in its collective life. But actually love has nothing to do with it. The coincidence of strong love passion with successful childbirth is only an accident, and, moreover, quite rare; Historical and daily experience undoubtedly shows that children can be successfully born, passionately loved and well brought up by their parents, even if these latter were never in love with each other. Consequently, the social and global interests of humanity associated with the change of generations do not at all require the highest pathos of love. Meanwhile, in the life of an individual, this best flowering turns out to be a barren flower. The original power of love loses all its meaning here when its object, from the height of the unconditional center of immortalized individuality, is reduced to the level of an accidental and easily replaceable means for the creation of a new, perhaps a little better, and perhaps a little worse, but in any case a relative and transitory generation of people. So, if we look only at what usually happens, at the actual outcome of love, then we must recognize it as a dream that temporarily takes possession of our being and disappears without turning into any action (since childbirth is not actually a matter of love). But, recognizing by virtue of the evidence that the ideal meaning of love is not realized in reality, should we recognize it as unrealizable? By the very nature of man, who in his rational consciousness, moral freedom and ability for self-improvement has endless possibilities, we do not have the right to consider in advance any task impossible for him, unless it contains an internal logical contradiction or inconsistency with general meaning the universe and the expedient course of cosmic and historical development. It would be completely unfair to deny the feasibility of love only on the grounds that it has never been realized until now: after all, many other things were once in the same position, for example, all the sciences and arts, civil society, control of the forces of nature. Even the most intelligent consciousness, before becoming a fact in man, was only a vague and unsuccessful aspiration in the animal world. How many geological and biological epochs have passed in unsuccessful attempts create a brain capable of becoming an organ for the embodiment of intelligent thought. Love for humans is still the same as reason was for the animal world: it exists in its rudiments or inclinations, but not yet in reality. And if vast periods of the world are witnesses to unrealized reason, they did not prevent it from finally being realized, then even more so the unrealization of love during the few comparatively thousands of years experienced historical humanity, does not in any way give the right to conclude anything against its future implementation. One should only remember well that if the reality of rational consciousness appeared in man, but not through man, then the realization of love, as the highest step to the own life of humanity itself, must occur not only in him, but also through him. The task of love is to justify in practice the meaning of love, which at first is given only in feeling; What is required is a combination of two given limited beings that would create from them one absolute ideal personality. - This task not only does not contain any internal contradiction and no inconsistency with the universal meaning, but it is directly given by our spiritual nature, the peculiarity of which is precisely that a person can, while remaining himself, in his own form contain the absolute content , become an absolute person. But in order to be filled with absolute content (which in religious language is called eternal life or the kingdom of God), the human form itself must be restored to its integrity (integrated). In empirical reality, man as such does not exist at all - he exists only in a certain one-sidedness and limitation, as male and female individuality (and on this basis all other differences develop). But a true person in the fullness of his ideal personality, obviously, cannot be only a man or only a woman, “but must be the highest unity of both. To realize this unity, or create true man, as a free unity of the masculine and feminine principles, preserving their formal isolation, but overcoming their essential discord and disintegration - this is the immediate task of love. Considering the conditions that are required for its actual resolution, we will be convinced that only non-compliance with these conditions leads love to constant ruin and forces us to recognize it as an illusion. The first step to the successful solution of any problem is its conscious and correct formulation; but the task of love was never consciously posed, and therefore was never solved properly. Love was and is looked at only as this fact , as a condition (normal for some, painful for others), which is experienced by a person, but does not oblige him to anything; True, two tasks are tied here: the physiological possession of a loved one and the everyday union with him, - of which the latter imposes some duties - but here the matter is already subject to the laws of animal nature, on the one hand, and the laws of civil society - on the other, and love, left to itself from beginning to end, disappears like a mirage. Of course, first of all, love is a fact of nature (or a gift of God), a natural process that arises independently of us; but it does not follow from this that we cannot and should not consciously relate to it and independently direct this natural process to higher goals. The gift of speech is also a natural accessory of a person; language is not invented, just like love. However, it would be extremely sad if we treated it only as a natural process that occurs within us by itself, if we spoke as birds sing, indulged in natural combinations of sounds and words to express the feelings involuntarily passing through our soul and ideas, and did not make language into a tool for consistently carrying out certain thoughts, a means for achieving reasonable and consciously set goals. With an exclusively passive and unconscious attitude towards the gift of speech, neither science, nor art, nor civil society could have been formed, and language itself, due to insufficient use of this gift, would not have developed and remained with only its rudimentary manifestations. Just as the word is important for the formation of human society and culture, love is the same and even more important for the creation of true human individuality. And if in the first area (social and cultural) we notice, although slow, but undoubted progress, while human individuality from the beginning of historical times to this day remains unchanged in its actual limitations, then the first reason for such a difference is that to verbal activity and to We relate to the works of the word more and more consciously and spontaneously, and love is still left entirely in the dark region of vague affects and involuntary attractions. Just as the true purpose of the word is not in the process of speaking in itself, but in what is said - in the revelation of the mind of things through words or concepts, so the true purpose of love is not in the simple experience of this feeling, but in the fact that through it is accomplished - in the act of love: it is not enough for her to feel for herself the unconditional meaning of the beloved object, but she must actually give or communicate this meaning to it, unite with it in the actual creation of absolute individuality. And how the highest task of verbal activity is already predetermined in the very nature of words, which inevitably represent general and abiding concepts, and not separate and transitory impressions and, therefore, in themselves, being the connection of many things together, lead us to an understanding of the universal meaning, in a similar way Thus, the highest task of love is already predetermined in the very love feeling, which inevitably, before any implementation, introduces its object into the sphere of absolute individuality, sees it in an ideal light, believes in its unconditionality. Thus, in both cases (both in the field of verbal knowledge and in the field of love) the task is not to invent something completely new from oneself, but only to consistently carry out further and to the end what is already inchoate given in the very nature of the matter, in the very basis of the process. But if the word has developed and is developing in humanity, then regarding love people remained and still remain with only natural rudiments, and even those are poorly understood in their true meaning. Everyone knows that in love there is certainly a special idealization of the beloved object, which appears to the lover in a completely different light than in which strangers see it. I am talking here about light not only in a metaphorical sense; the point here is not only in a special moral and mental assessment, but also in a special sensory perception: the lover really sees, visually perceives something different from what others do. And for him, however, this love light soon disappears, but does it follow from this that it was false, that it was only a subjective illusion? The true essence of man in general and of every person is not exhausted by his given empirical phenomena - this position cannot be opposed on reasonable and solid grounds from any point of view. For the materialist and sensualist, no less than for the spiritualist and idealist, what appears is not identical with what is, and when it comes to two various types apparent, then the question is always legitimate, which of these types more coincides with what is, or better expresses the nature of things. For the apparent, or appearance in general, is a real relationship, or interaction, between the seer and the visible and, therefore, determines their mutual properties. The outer world of man and the outer world of the mole both consist only of relative phenomena or appearances; however, hardly anyone will seriously doubt that one of these two apparent worlds is superior to the other, more consistent with what is closer to the truth. We know that man, in addition to his animal material nature, also has an ideal nature that connects him with absolute truth or God. In addition to the material or empirical content of his life, every person contains within himself the image of God, i.e. special shape absolute content. This image of God is cognized by us theoretically and abstractly in the mind and through the mind, but in love it is cognized concretely and vitally. And if this is the revelation of an ideal being, usually closed material phenomenon, is not limited in love to one internal feeling, but sometimes becomes perceptible in the sphere of external feelings, then we must recognize the greater importance of love as the beginning of the visible restoration of the image of God in material world, the beginning of the embodiment of true ideal humanity. The power of love, passing into light, transforming and spiritualizing form external phenomena, reveals its objective power to us, but then it’s up to us: we ourselves must understand this revelation and use it so that it does not remain a fleeting and mysterious glimpse of some secret. The spiritual-physical process of restoring the image of God in material humanity cannot in any way happen by itself, apart from us. Its beginning, like all the best in this world, arises from the dark for us area of ​​​​unconscious processes and relationships; there is the germ and roots of the tree of life, but we must grow it by our own conscious action; passive receptivity of feeling is sufficient to begin with, but then active faith is necessary, moral feat and work to retain, strengthen and develop this gift of light and creative love, in order through it to embody in oneself and in another the image of God and from two limited and mortal beings to create one absolute and immortal individuality. If unavoidable and involuntary inherent in love idealization shows us through empirical appearance the distant perfect image favorite object, then, of course, not so that we just admire it, but then so that we force true faith, active imagination and real creativity transformed the reality that does not correspond to it according to this true model, embodying it in a real phenomenon. But who ever thought about anything like that about love? Medieval minnesingers and knights, with their strong faith and weak minds, calmed down on the simple identification of the love ideal with a given person, turning a blind eye to their obvious inconsistency. This faith was as firm, but also as fruitless, as the stone on which the famous knight von Grünvalius sat “still in the same position” at Amalia’s castle. In addition to such faith, which only forced one to reverently contemplate and enthusiastically sing the supposedly embodied ideal, medieval love was, of course, associated with a thirst for exploits. But these warlike and destructive exploits, having nothing to do with the ideal that inspired them, could not lead to its implementation. Even that pale knight who completely surrendered to the impression of the heavenly beauty that had revealed itself to him, without mixing it with earthly phenomena, and he was inspired by this revelation only to such actions that served more to the harm of foreigners than to the benefit and glory of the “ever-feminine.” Zumen coeli! Sancta rosa! He exclaimed, wild and zealous, And like thunder his threat struck the Muslims. To defeat the Muslims, of course, there was no need to have a “vision incomprehensible to the mind.” But over all medieval chivalry there was this dichotomy between the heavenly visions of Christianity and the “wild and zealous” forces in real life, until finally the most famous and last of the knights, Don Quixote of La Mancha, having killed many rams and broken many wings at windmills, but not at all Having brought the Toboso cowshed closer to the ideal of Dulcinea, he did not come to a fair, but only a negative consciousness of his error; and if that typical knight remained faithful to his vision to the end and “like a madman he died,” then Don Quixote moved from madness only to sad and hopeless disappointment in his ideal. This disappointment of Don Quixote was a testament to chivalry to the new Europe. It still works in us today. Love idealization, having ceased to be the source of the exploits of the insane, does not inspire anyone. It turns out to be only a bait that makes us desire physical and worldly possessions, and disappears as soon as this not at all ideal goal is achieved. The light of love does not serve as a guiding ray to anyone. paradise lost; they look at him like fantastic lighting a short love “prologue in heaven”, which then nature very timely extinguishes as completely unnecessary for the subsequent earthly performance. In fact, this light extinguishes the weakness and unconsciousness of our love, which distorts the true order of things. External connection, everyday and especially physiological, has no definite relationship to love. It happens without love, and love happens without it. It is necessary for love not as its indispensable condition and independent goal, but only as its final realization. If this realization is set as an end in itself before the ideal work of love, it destroys love. Every external act or fact in itself is nothing; love is something only because of its meaning, or idea, as the restoration of the unity or integrity of the human personality, as the creation of absolute individuality. The significance of external acts and facts associated with love, which in themselves are nothing, is determined by their relationship to what constitutes love itself and its work. When a zero is placed after a whole number, it increases it tenfold, and when it is placed before it, it “reduces or fragments it by the same amount, takes away from it the character of a whole number, turning it into a decimal fraction; and the more of these zeros preceded whole, the smaller the fraction, the closer it itself becomes to zero. The feeling of love in itself is only an impulse that inspires us that we can and must recreate the wholeness of the human being. Every time human heart this sacred spark is ignited, all groaning and tormented creation awaits the first revelation of the glory of the sons of God. But without the action of the conscious human spirit, God's spark goes out, and deceived nature creates new generations of sons of men for new hopes. These hopes are not fulfilled until we are willing to fully recognize and fully realize everything that true love requires, which lies in its idea. With a conscious attitude towards love and a real decision to fulfill its task, first of all, two facts stop us, apparently condemning us to powerlessness and justifying those who consider love an illusion. In the feeling of love, according to its main meaning, we affirm the unconditional significance of another individuality, and through this the unconditional significance of our own. But absolute individuality cannot be transitory, and it cannot be empty. The inevitability of death and the emptiness of our life are completely incompatible with that heightened affirmation of the individuality of oneself and the other, which lies in the feeling of love. This feeling, if it is strong and completely conscious, cannot be reconciled with the certainty of the impending decrepitude and death of the loved one and one’s own. Meanwhile, the undoubted fact that all people have always died and are dying is accepted by everyone or almost everyone as an absolutely immutable law (so even in formal logic it is customary to use this confidence to draw up an exemplary syllogism: “All people are mortal; Kai is a man; therefore, Kai mortal"). Many, however, believe in the immortality of the soul; but it is precisely the feeling of love that best demonstrates the insufficiency of this abstract faith. The disembodied spirit is not a person, but an angel; but we love a person, an entire human individuality, and if love is the beginning of the enlightenment and spiritualization of this individuality, then it necessarily requires its preservation as such, it requires the eternal youth and immortality of this specific person, this embodied living spirit in the bodily organism. An angel or pure spirit does not need enlightenment and spiritualization; Only the flesh is enlightened and spiritualized, and it is a necessary object of love. You can imagine anything you want, but you can only love the living, the concrete, and while truly loving it, you cannot come to terms with the certainty of its destruction. But if the inevitability of death is incompatible with true love, then immortality is completely incompatible with the emptiness of our life. For the majority of humanity, life is only a change of hard mechanical labor and grossly sensual, consciousness-stunning pleasures. And that minority, which has the opportunity to actively care not only about the means, but also about the ends of life, instead uses its freedom from mechanical work mainly for meaningless and immoral pastime. I have no need to dwell on the emptiness and immorality - involuntary and unconscious - of this entire imaginary life after its magnificent reproduction in Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and the Kreutzer Sonata. Returning to my subject, I will only point out the obvious consideration that for such a life death is not only inevitable, but also extremely desirable: is it possible, without terrifying melancholy, to even imagine the endlessly continuing existence of some society lady, or some athlete, or card player? The incompatibility of immortality with such an existence is clear at first glance. But with more attention, we will have to recognize the same incompatibility with respect to other, apparently more fulfilling existences. If instead of a society lady or a player we take, at the opposite pole, great people, geniuses who have gifted humanity immortal works or who changed the fate of peoples, we will see that the content of their life and its historical fruits have meaning only as given once and for all, and with the endless continuation of the individual existence of these geniuses on earth they would lose all meaning. The immortality of works obviously does not at all require and even in itself excludes the continuous immortality of the individuals who produced them. Is it possible to imagine Shakespeare endlessly composing his dramas, or Newton endlessly continuing to study celestial mechanics, not to mention the absurdity of the endless continuation of such activities for which Alexander the Great or Napoleon became famous. It is obvious that art, science, politics, while giving content to the individual aspirations of the human spirit and satisfying the temporary historical needs of humanity, do not at all convey the absolute, self-sufficient content of human individuality, and therefore do not need its immortality. Only love needs this, and only love can achieve it. True love is that which not only affirms in subjective feeling the unconditional meaning of human individuality in another and in oneself, but also justifies this unconditional meaning in reality, truly saves us from the inevitability of death and fills our life with absolute content.

Article Four

“Dionysus and Hades are one and the same,” said the deepest thinker of the ancient world. Dionysus, the young and blooming god of material life in the full tension of its seething forces, the god of excited and fruitful nature, is the same as Hades, the pale ruler of the gloomy and silent kingdom of departed shadows. The god of life and the god of death are one and the same god. This is a truth that is indisputable for the world of natural organisms. Fullness simmering in the individual being vitality don't eat it own life, this is someone else’s life, the life of a kind indifferent and merciless to him, which for him is death. In the lower parts of the animal kingdom this is quite clear; here individuals exist only to produce offspring and then die; in many species they do not survive the act of reproduction and die immediately on the spot, in others they survive only very a short time. But if this connection between birth and death, between the preservation of the race and the death of the individual is a law of nature, then, on the other hand, nature itself, in its progressive development, more and more limits and weakens this law of its own; The need for an individual to serve as a means of maintaining the species and to die after fulfilling this service remains, but the effect of this necessity is revealed less and less directly and exclusively as organic forms improve, as individual beings increase in independence and consciousness. Thus, the law of the identity of Dionysus and Hades - generic life and individual death - or, what is the same, the law of opposition and confrontation between the genus and the individual, acts most strongly at the lower levels of the organic world, and with the development of higher forms, more and more and weakens more; and if so, then with the appearance of an unconditionally higher organic form, which embraces an individual being, itself conscious and self-active, separating itself from nature, relating to it as an object, therefore, capable of internal freedom from generic demands - with the appearance of this being there is no must there be an end to this tyranny of the race over the individual? If nature in the biological process strives to limit more and more the law of death, then should not man in the historical process completely abolish this law? It is clear in itself that while a person reproduces like an animal, he dies like an animal. But it is equally clear, on the other hand, that simple abstinence from the birth act does not in any way relieve death: persons who have retained their virginity die, and eunuchs also die; neither one nor the other enjoys even special durability. This is understandable. Death in general is the disintegration of a being, the disintegration of its constituent factors. But the division of the sexes, not eliminated by their external and transient union in the birth act, this division between the male and female elements of the human being is in itself a state of disintegration and the beginning of death. To remain in sexual separation means to be on the path of death, and whoever does not want or cannot leave this path must, by natural necessity, go through it to the end. He who supports the root of death will inevitably taste its fruit. Only one can be immortal a whole person, and if a physiological connection cannot truly restore the integrity of the human being, then this false connection must be replaced by a true connection and not by abstinence from any connection, that is, by no means by the desire to maintain in the Statu quo a divided, disintegrated and, therefore, , mortal human nature. What does the true union of the sexes consist of and how is it accomplished? Our life is so far from the truth in this respect that only the less extreme, less flagrant abnormality is accepted here as the norm. This needs to be further clarified before going further. In Lately In the psychiatric literature of Germany and France, several special books appeared devoted to what the author of one of them called psychopathia sexualis, i.e., various deviations from the norm in sexual relations. These works, in addition to their special interest for lawyers, doctors and the patients themselves, are also interesting from such a side, which probably neither the authors nor the majority of readers thought about, namely, in these treatises, written by venerable scientists, probably of impeccable morality, the absence of any clear and definite concept of the norm of sexual relations, of what and why is due in this area, as a result of which the definition of deviations from the norm, that is, the very subject of these studies, turns out to be taken randomly and arbitrarily. The only criterion is the commonality or unusualness of the phenomena: those desires and actions in the sexual area that are relatively rare are recognized as pathological deviations requiring treatment, and those that are ordinary and generally accepted are assumed to be the norm. At the same time, the confusion of the norm with ordinary deviation, the identification of what should be with what is ordinary, sometimes reaches the point of high comedy. Thus, in the casuistic part of one of these works, we find, under several numbers, a repetition of the following therapeutic technique: the patient is forced, partly by persistent medical advice, and mainly by hypnotic suggestion, to occupy his imagination with the idea of ​​a naked female body or other obscene pictures of a normal sexual nature (sic), and then the treatment is considered successful and the recovery is complete if, under the influence of this artificial stimulation, the patient begins to visit the lupanaria willingly, often and successfully.. It is surprising how these venerable scientists were not stopped at least by this the simple consideration that the more successful therapy of this kind is, the more easily the patient can be forced from one medical specialty to turn to the help of another and that the triumph of the psychiatrist can cause great trouble for the dermatologist. The perversions of sexual feelings studied in medical books are important for us as an extreme development of what has become part of the everyday life of our society, what is considered permissible and normal. These unusual phenomena represent only in a more vivid form the very ugliness that is inherent in our ordinary relations in this area. This could be proven by considering all the particular perversions of sexual feeling; but I hope that in this matter they will excuse me for the incompleteness of my argumentation, and I will allow myself to limit myself to one more general and less disgusting anomaly in the area of ​​sexual feeling. In many persons, almost always male, this feeling is aroused primarily, and sometimes exclusively, by one or another part of a being of the other sex (for example, hair, arm, leg), or even by external objects, certain parts of clothing, etc. This anomaly is called fetishism in love. The abnormality of such fetishism obviously lies in the fact that the part is put in the place of the whole, belonging in the place of the essence. But if the hair or legs that excite the fetishist are parts of the female body, then this body itself in all its composition is only a part female creature , and yet so many lovers of the female body itself are not called fetishists, are not recognized as crazy and are not subject to any treatment. What is the difference, however? Is it really that an arm or a leg represents a smaller surface than the whole body? If, according to the principle, the sexual relationship in which a part is put in place of the whole is abnormal, then people who in one way or another buy the body of women to satisfy sensual needs and thereby separate the body from the soul should be recognized as sexually abnormal, mentally ill, fetishists in love or even necrophiliacs. Meanwhile, these lovers of carrion who are dying alive are considered normal people, and almost all of humanity goes through this second death! An unsuppressed conscience and an unharmed aesthetic feeling, in full agreement with philosophical understanding, unconditionally condemn any sexual relationship based on the separation and isolation of the lower, animal sphere of the human being from the higher. And outside of this principle it is impossible to find any firm criterion for distinguishing between what is normal and what is abnormal in the genital area. If the need for certain physiological acts has the right to be satisfied at any cost simply because it is a need, then the need of that “fetishist in love” for whom the only desired object in sexual relations is a hanging object has exactly the same right to satisfaction. on a rope, a just washed and not yet dried apron. If we find a difference between this eccentric and some chronic visitor to the Lupanars, then, of course, this difference will be in favor of the fetishist; the attraction to a wet apron is undoubtedly natural, genuine, for it is impossible to come up with any false motives for it, while many people visit lupanars not at all out of real need, but for false hygienic reasons, from imitation of bad examples, under the influence of intoxication, etc. n. Psychopathic manifestations of sexual feelings are usually condemned on the grounds that they do not correspond to the natural purpose of sexual intercourse, namely reproduction. To assert that a freshly washed apron or even a worn shoe can serve to produce offspring would, of course, be a paradox; but it is hardly less paradoxical to suppose that the institution of public women corresponds to this purpose. “Natural” debauchery is obviously just as contrary to childbearing as “unnatural”, so from this point of view there is not the slightest reason to consider one of them normal and the other abnormal. If, finally, we take the point of view of harm to ourselves and others, then, of course, a fetishist who cuts off locks of hair from unknown ladies or steals their scarves causes damage to other people’s property and his reputation, but can this harm be compared with that which is caused by the unfortunate distributors of a terrible infection that is a fairly common consequence of the “natural” satisfaction of a “natural” need? I say all this not to justify unnatural, but to condemn supposedly natural ways of satisfying sexual feelings. In general, speaking about naturalness or unnaturalness, we should not forget that man is a complex being and what is natural for one of his constituent principles or elements may be unnatural for another and, therefore, abnormal for the whole person. For man as an animal, it is completely natural to unlimitedly satisfy his sexual needs through a certain physiological action, but man, as a moral being, finds this action contrary to his higher nature and is ashamed of it... Like an animal public person It is natural to limit the physiological function related to other persons by the requirements of the social and moral law. This law from the outside limits and closes animal functions, making it a means for a social goal - the formation of a family union. But this does not change the essence of the matter. The family union is still based on external material connection sexes, it leaves the human animal in its former disintegrated, half-hearted state, which necessarily leads to further disintegration of the human being, that is, to death. If man, in addition to his animal nature, were only a social and moral being, then of these two opposing elements, equally natural for him, the final triumph would remain with the first. The social and moral law and its main objectification - the family - introduces the animal nature of man into the boundaries necessary for tribal progress; they streamline mortal life, but do not open the path to immortality. The individual being is just as exhausted and dies in the social and moral order of life, as if it remained exclusively under the law of animal life. The elephant and the raven turn out to be even much more durable than the most virtuous and careful person. But in man, besides animal nature and social-moral law, there is a third thing, highest principle -- spiritual, mystical or divine. Here too, in the area of ​​love and sexual relations, it is that “stone that is built carelessly” and “that is at the forefront.” Before the physiological union in animal nature, which leads to death, and before the legal union in the social-moral order, which does not save from death, there must be a union in God, which leads to immortality, because it does not limit only the mortal life of nature by human law, but regenerates it with the eternal and incorruptible power of grace. This third, and in the true order, the first element with its inherent requirements is completely natural for man in his entirety as a being involved in the highest divine principle and mediating between it and the world. And the two lower elements - animal nature and social law - also natural in their place, become unnatural when taken separately from the higher and placed in its place. In the area of ​​sexual love, not only is it unnatural for a person to have any disorderly satisfaction of sensual needs, devoid of higher, spiritual sanctification, like animals (in addition to various monstrous phenomena of sexual psychopathy), but also unworthy of a person and unnatural are those unions between persons of different sexes that are concluded and supported only on the basis of civil law, exclusively for moral and social purposes, with the elimination or inaction of the actual spiritual, mystical principle in man. But it is precisely this unnatural, from the point of view of an integral human being, rearrangement of these relationships that dominates our lives and is recognized as normal, and all condemnation is transferred to the unfortunate psychopaths of love, who are only driven to funny, ugly, sometimes disgusting, but for the most part harmless, comparatively extremes this is the most generally recognized and dominant perversion. Those diverse perversions of the sexual instinct that psychiatrists deal with are only outlandish varieties of the general and all-pervasive perversion of these relations in humanity - that perversion by which the kingdom of sin and death is supported and perpetuated. Although all three are natural for man in his overall relationship or connection between the sexes, namely the connection in animal life, or according to the lower nature, then the moral-worldly connection, or under the law, and, finally, the connection in spiritual life, or the connection in God, - although all these three relationships exist in humanity, they are carried out unnaturally, precisely separately from one another, in the reverse order of their true meaning and order of succession and in unequal measure. In the first place in our reality is what truly should be in the last place - the animal physiological connection. It is recognized as the basis of the whole matter, whereas it should be only its extreme conclusion. For many here the foundation coincides with the completion: they do not go further than animal relationships; for others, on this broad basis the social and moral superstructure of a legal family union rises. Here the everyday middle is taken as the pinnacle of life, and what should serve as a free, meaningful expression in the temporary process of eternal unity becomes the involuntary channel of meaningless material life. And then, finally, as a rare and exceptional phenomenon, pure spiritual love remains for a select few, from which all real content has already been taken away in advance by other, lower connections, so that it has to be content with dreamy and fruitless sensitivity without any real purpose and life goal. This unhappy spiritual love resembles little angels antique painting, which have only a head and wings and nothing else. These angels do nothing for lack of arms and cannot move forward, since their wings only have enough strength to keep them motionless at a certain height. Spiritual love is in the same sublime, but extremely unsatisfactory position. Physical passion has a certain purpose, albeit a shameful one; a legal family union also fulfills a task that is still necessary, albeit of mediocre merit. But spiritual love, as it still is, obviously has no business at all, and therefore it is not surprising that the majority efficient people glaubt an keine Liebe oder nimmt "s fur Poesio. This exclusively spiritual love is, obviously, the same anomaly as exclusively physical love and an exclusively everyday union. The absolute norm is the restoration of the integrity of the human being, and whether this norm is violated in one way or another the other side, as a result, in any case, an abnormal, unnatural phenomenon occurs. Imaginary spiritual love is not only an abnormal phenomenon, but also completely aimless, for the separation of the spiritual from the sensual, to which it strives, is already the best way accomplished by death. True spiritual love is not a weak imitation and anticipation of death, but a triumph over death, not the separation of the immortal from the mortal, the eternal from the temporal, but the transformation of the mortal into the immortal, the perception of the temporal into the eternal. False spirituality is the denial of the flesh, true spirituality is its rebirth, salvation, resurrection. “In the day that God created man, in the image of God he created him, husband and wife he created them.” “This mystery is great, but I speak into Christ and into the Church.” The originally mysterious image of God, according to which man was created, does not refer to any separate part of the human being, but to the true unity of its two main sides, male and female. As God relates to his creation, as Christ relates to his Church, so a husband should relate to his wife. As much as these words are generally known, their meaning is just as little understood. Just as God creates the universe, just as Christ creates the Church, so man must create and create his female complement. That a man represents the active principle, and a woman the passive principle, that the former should educationally influence the mind and character of the latter - these are, of course, elementary propositions, but we do not mean this superficial relationship, but that “great secret” 25, about which the apostle speaks. This great secret represents an essential analogy, although not an identity, between the human and the divine relation. After all, the creation of the Church by Christ differs from the creation of the universe by God as such. God creates the universe out of nothing, that is, from the pure potentiality of being or emptiness, successively filled, that is, receiving from the action of God real shapes intelligible things, while Christ creates the church from material that is already diversified, animated, and in its parts spontaneous, which only needs to be given the beginning of a new, spiritual life in a new, higher sphere of unity. Finally, for his creative action, a man has in the person of a woman a material equal to himself in the degree of actualization, over which he enjoys only the potential advantage of initiative, only the right and obligation of the first step on the path to perfection, and not actual perfection. God relates to creation as everything relates to nothing, that is, as the absolute fullness of being to the pure potentiality of being; Christ relates to the Church as actual perfection relates to the potentiality of perfection, formed into actual perfection; the relationship between husband and wife is the relationship of two differently acting, but equally imperfect potencies, achieving perfection only by the process of interaction. In other words. God receives nothing from the creature for himself, that is, no increase, but gives it everything; Christ does not receive from the Church any increase in the sense of perfection, but gives it all perfection, but He receives from the Church an increase in the sense of the fullness of His collective body; finally, a man and his female alter ego complement each other not only in the real, but also in the ideal sense, achieving perfection only through interaction. A person can constructively restore the image of God in the living object of his love only in such a way as to at the same time restore this image in himself; and for this he does not have the strength within himself, for if he had it, he would not need restoration; not having it in oneself, one must receive it from God. Consequently, a man (husband) is a creative, constructive principle in relation to his female complement, not in himself, but as an intermediary or conductor of Divine power. Actually, Christ creates the Church not by any separate power of his, but by the same creative power of the Divine; but, being God himself, he possesses this power by nature and actu, while we do so by grace and assimilation, having in ourselves only the ability (potency) to perceive it. Moving on to presenting the main points in the implementation process true love, that is, in the process of integrating a human being or restoring the image of God in him, I foresee the bewilderment of many: why climb to such inaccessible and fantastic heights about such a simple thing as love? If I considered the religious norm of love fantastic, then I, of course, would not propose it. In the same way, if I only meant simple love, that is, ordinary, ordinary relations between the sexes - what happens, and not what should be - then I, of course, would refrain from any reasoning on this subject, for, undoubtedly, these simple relationships belong to those things about which someone said: it’s not good to do it, but it’s even worse to talk about it. But love, as I understand it, is, on the contrary, an extremely complex, obscure and confusing matter, requiring quite conscious analysis and research, in which one must care not about simplicity, but about truth... A rotten stump is undoubtedly simpler than a many-branched tree, and a corpse is simpler than a living person. The simple attitude towards love ends with that final and extreme simplification called death. Such an inevitable and unsatisfactory end to “simple” love prompts us to look for another, more complex beginning for it. The work of true love is primarily based on faith. The root meaning of love, as has already been shown, is the recognition of unconditional significance for another being. But in its empirical existence, subject to real sensory perception, this being has no unconditional significance: it is imperfect in its dignity and transitory in its existence. Consequently, we can affirm its unconditional significance only through faith, which is the revelation of things hoped for, the revelation of things unseen, so what does faith refer to in the present case? What, exactly, does it mean to believe in the unconditional, and thereby infinite, significance of this individual person? To assert that it in itself, as such, in this particularity and isolation, has an absolute meaning would be as absurd as it is blasphemous. Of course, the word "adoration" is very common in the field love relationship, but the word “madness” also has its legitimate application in this area. So, observing the law of logic, which does not allow the identification of contradictory definitions, as well as the commandment of true religion, which prohibits idolatry, we must understand by faith in the object of our love the affirmation of this object as existing in God and in this sense having infinite significance. Of course, this transcendental attitude towards one’s other, this mental transference of him into the sphere of the Divine presupposes the same attitude towards oneself, the same transference and affirmation of oneself in the absolute sphere. I can recognize the unconditional significance of a given person or believe in him (without which true love is impossible) only by affirming him in God, therefore, by believing in God himself and in myself as having in God the focus and root of my being. This triune faith is already a certain internal act, and this act lays the first foundation for the true reunification of man with his other and the restoration in him (or in them) of the image of the triune God. An act of faith in the actual conditions of time and place is prayer (in the main, non-technical sense of the word). The inseparable union of self and other in this regard is the first step towards real union. This step in itself is small, but without it nothing further or greater is possible. Since for God, eternal and indivisible, everything is together and at once, all in one, then to affirm any individual being in God means to affirm it not in its individuality, but in everything, or, more precisely, in the unity of everything. But since this individual being in its given reality does not enter into the unity of everything, it exists separately, as a materially isolated phenomenon, then the object of our believing love necessarily differs from the empirical object of our instinctive love, although it is inseparably connected with it. This is one and the same person in two different forms or in two different spheres of existence - ideal and real. The first is still just an idea. But in real, believing and seeing love, we know that this idea is not our arbitrary invention, but that it expresses the truth of the subject, only not yet realized in the sphere of external, real phenomena. This true idea of ​​the beloved object, although it shines through in moments of love pathos real phenomenon, but in a clearer form appears at first only as an object of imagination. The specific form of this imagination, the ideal image in which I clothe my beloved face in this moment, is created, of course, by me, but it is not created out of nothing, and the subjectivity of this image as such, that is, appearing now and here before the eyes of my soul, does not in the least prove the subjective, that is, for me only existing, character of the imaginary object. If for me, who is on her side of the transcendental world, a certain ideal object appears only as a product of my imagination, this does not interfere with its full reality in another, higher sphere of existence. And although ours real life is outside this higher sphere, but our mind is not completely alien to it, and we can have some speculative concept of the laws of its existence. And here is the first, fundamental law: if in our world separate and isolated existence is a fact and reality, and unity is only a concept and an idea, then there, on the contrary, reality belongs to unity or, more precisely, all-unity, and separateness and isolation exist only potentially . And from here it follows that the existence of this person in the sphere is not individual in the sense of real existence here. There, that is, in truth, the individual person is only a ray, a living and real, but inseparable ray of one ideal luminary - the all-unified essence. This perfect face, or the personified idea, is only the individualization of the total unity, which is indivisibly present in each of these individualizations. So, when we imagine the ideal form of a beloved object, then under this form the all-unified essence itself is communicated to us. How should we think about it? God as one, distinguishing from himself his other, that is, everything that is not himself, unites all this with himself, imagining it together and at once, in an absolutely perfect form, therefore, as one. This other unity, different, although inseparable from the original unity of God, is a passive, feminine unity in relation to God, since here the eternal emptiness (pure potency) perceives the fullness of divine life. But if the basis of this eternal femininity is pure nothingness, then for God this nothingness is eternally hidden by the image of absolute perfection perceived from the Divine. This perfection, which is only just being realized for us, for God, that is, in truth, already exists in reality. That ideal unity to which our world strives and which is the goal of the cosmic and historical process, it cannot only be someone’s subjective concept (for whose?), it truly exists as the eternal object of God’s love, as His eternal other. This living ideal of God's love, preceding our love, contains within itself the secret of its idealization. Here the idealization of a lower being is at the same time the beginning realization of a higher being, and this is the truth of love pathos. Full realization, the transformation of the individual female being into a ray of eternal Divine femininity, inseparable from its radiant source, will be real, not only subjective, but also an objective reunion individual person with God, the restoration of the living and immortal image God's The object of true love is not simple, but dual: we love, firstly, that ideal (not in the abstract sense, but in the sense of belonging to another, higher sphere of being) being, which we must introduce into our real world, and, secondly, we love that natural human being who provides living personal material for this realization and who through this is idealized not in the sense of our subjective imagination, but in the sense of his actual objective change or rebirth. Thus, true love is inseparably both ascending and descending (amor ascendens and amor descendens, or those two Aphrodites, which Plato distinguished well, but poorly separated. For God, His other (i.e., the universe) has from time immemorial the image of perfect Femininity, but He wants this image to be not only for Him, but for it to be realized and incarnated for every individual being capable of uniting with it.The eternal Femininity itself, which is not only an inactive image in the mind of God, strives for the same realization and incarnation , but a living spiritual being, possessing all the fullness of powers and actions. The entire world and historical process is the process of its realization and embodiment in a great variety of farms and degrees. In sexual love, truly understood and truly realized, this divine essence receives a means for its final, extreme embodiment in the individual life of a person, a way of the deepest and at the same time the most external real-tangible connection with him. Hence those glimpses of unearthly bliss, that breath of unearthly joy that accompanies love, even imperfect, and which make it, even imperfect, the greatest pleasure of people and gods - hominum divomque voluptas. Hence the deepest suffering of love, powerless to hold on to its true object and moving more and more away from it. Here that element of adoration and boundless devotion, which is so characteristic of love and has so little meaning if it relates to its earthly subject, separately from the heavenly, receives its rightful place. The mystical basis of the dual, or, better said, two-sided nature of love also resolves the question of the possibility of repeating love. There is only one heavenly object of love, always and for everyone the same - the eternal Femininity of God; but since the task of true love is not only to worship this highest object, but to realize and embody it in another, lower being of the same female form, but of earthly nature, it is only one of many, then its only meaning for the lover, of course, can be transitory. But whether it should be so and why, this is already decided in each individual case and depends not on the single and unchangeable mystical basis of the true love process, but on its further moral and physical conditions, which we must consider.

Article five

An involuntary and immediate feeling reveals to us the meaning of love as the highest manifestation of individual life, which finds its own infinity in connection with another being. Isn't this instant revelation enough? Isn’t it enough to really feel your unconditional importance at least once in your life? And I know, looking at the stars from time to time, That you and I looked at them like gods. This is hardly enough even for one poetic feeling, and the consciousness of truth and the will of life absolutely cannot reconcile on this. Infinity only momentary is a contradiction intolerable for the mind; bliss only in the past is suffering for the will. There are those glimpses of another light, after which the darkness of everyday life is even darker, Like after a bright autumn lightning. If they are only a deception, then in memory they can only cause shame and bitterness of disappointment; and if they were not a deception, if they revealed to us some kind of reality, which then closed and disappeared for us, then why should we put up with this disappearance? If what was lost was true, then the task of consciousness and will is not to accept the loss as final, but to understand and eliminate its causes. The immediate reason (as was partly shown in the previous article) is the perversion of the love relationship itself. This begins very early: as soon as the initial pathos of love has time to show us the edge of a different, better reality - with a different principle and law of life, we immediately try to take advantage of the rise in energy as a result of this revelation, not in order to go further where it calls us , but only in order to take root more firmly and settle more firmly in that former bad reality, above which love has just lifted us; we take the good news from the lost paradise - the news of the possibility of its return - as an invitation to finally naturalize in the land of exile, to quickly take full and hereditary possession of our little plot with all its thistles and thorns; that rupture of personal limitations, which marks the passion of love and constitutes its main meaning, in fact leads only to selfishness in two, then in three, etc. This, of course, is still better than selfishness alone, but the dawn of love opened up completely different horizons. As soon as the vital sphere of love union is transferred to material reality, such as it is, so now the very order of union is correspondingly distorted. Its “unearthly” mystical basis, which made itself felt so strongly in the initial passion, is forgotten as a fleeting exaltation, and the most desirable, essential goal and at the same time the first condition of love is recognized as what should only be its extreme, conditioned manifestation. This latter is a physical connection put in the place of the first and thus deprived of its human meaning, returned to the animal meaning, makes love not only powerless against death, but itself inevitably becomes the moral grave of love much earlier than the physical grave takes those who love. Direct personal opposition to such an order is more difficult to execute than to understand: it can be indicated in a few words. In order to abolish this bad order of life phenomena, one must first of all recognize it as abnormal, thereby affirming that there is another, normal order, in which everything external and random is subordinated inner meaning life. Such a statement should not be unfounded; the experience of external senses must be opposed not by an abstract principle, but by another experience - the experience of faith. This latter is incomparably more difficult than the first, for it is determined more by internal action than by external perception. Only through consistent acts of conscious faith do we enter into a real relationship with the realm of truly existing things, and through this into a true relationship with our “other”; only on this basis can the unconditionality of another person for us (and, consequently, the unconditionality of our union with him), which is directly and unconsciously revealed in the pathos of love, be retained and strengthened in consciousness, for this love pathos comes and passes, but the faith of love remains . But in order not to remain a dead faith, it must constantly defend itself against that real environment where senseless chance builds its dominance on the play of animal passions and even worse human passions. Against these hostile forces, believing love has only a defensive weapon - patience to the end. To earn her bliss, she must take up her cross. In our material environment, it is impossible to preserve true love if you do not understand and accept it as a moral achievement. No wonder Orthodox Church in his rite of marriage he commemorates the holy martyrs and equates marital crowns with their crowns. Religious faith and moral achievement protect the individual person and his love from being absorbed by the material environment during his life, but do not yet give him triumph over death. The internal rebirth of the feeling of love, the correction of perverted love relationships does not correct or abolish the bad law physical life not only in the external world, but also in the person himself. He actually remains as before a limited being, subordinate to material nature. Its internal - mystical and moral - connection with complementary individuality cannot overcome either their mutual separation and impenetrability, or their general dependence on the material world. The last word remains not for a moral feat, but for the merciless law of organic life and death, and people who defended the eternal ideal to the end die with human dignity, but with animal impotence. As long as an individual achievement is limited only to its immediate subject - the correction of a personal perverted relationship between two beings - it will necessarily remain without final success in this direct task. For the evil that true love encounters, the evil of material separation, impenetrability and external confrontation between two beings internally replenishing each other - this evil is a particular, although typical, case of the general perversion to which our life, and not only ours, is subject. but also the life of the whole world. An individual person can only truly be saved, that is, revive and perpetuate his individual life in true love, only together or together with everyone. He has the right and duty to defend his individuality from the bad law common life , but do not separate your own good from the true good of all living. From the fact that the deepest and most intense manifestation of love is expressed in the relationship between two beings that complement each other, it does not in any way follow that this relationship can separate and isolate itself from everything else as something self-sufficient; on the contrary, such isolation is the death of love, for the sexual relationship itself, with all its subjective significance, turns out to be (objectively) only a transitory, empirical phenomenon. In the same way, from the fact that the perfect union of such individual beings will always remain the fundamental and true form of individual life, it does not at all follow that this life form, closed in its individual perfection, should remain empty, when, on the contrary, by the very nature of man it is capable and intended be filled with universal content. Finally, if the moral meaning of love requires the reunification of what is unjustly divided, requires the identification of oneself and the other, then separating the task of our individual perfection from the process of universal unification would be contrary to this very moral meaning of love, even if such a separation were physically possible. Thus, any attempt to isolate and isolate the individual process of rebirth in true love is met with a triple insurmountable obstacle, since our individual life with our love, separated from the process of universal life, inevitably turns out, firstly, physically untenable, powerless against time and death, then, mentally empty, meaningless and, finally, morally unworthy. If fantasy jumps over a physical and logical obstacle, then it must stop before a moral impossibility. Suppose something absolutely fantastic, suppose that some person so strengthened his spirit by consistent concentration of consciousness and will and so purified his bodily nature by ascetic feat that he actually restored (for himself and for his additional “other”) the true integrity of human individuality, achieved complete spirituality and immortality. Will this reborn individual enjoy his solitary bliss in an environment where everything still suffers and perishes? But let's go even further. May this reborn couple receive the ability to communicate to all others their highest state; this, of course, is impossible, since it is determined by a personal moral achievement, but let it be something like a philosopher's stone or a vital elixir. And so, everyone living on earth was healed of their evils and illnesses, everyone was free and immortal. But in order to be happy, they need one more condition: they must forget their fathers, forget the real culprits of this well-being, because, no matter what fantastic significance is attributed to a personal feat, it is still necessary for thousands and thousands of generations to through collective collective labor they created that culture, those moral and mental constructs, without which the task of individual rebirth could not only have been accomplished, but also conceived. And these billions of people who laid down their lives for others will rot in their graves, and their idle descendants will indifferently enjoy their free happiness! But this would imply moral savagery and even worse, because savages also honor their ancestors and maintain communication with them. How can the final and highest state of humanity be based on injustice, ingratitude and oblivion? The man who achieved supreme perfection, cannot accept such an unworthy gift; if he is not able to wrest from death all its spoils, he would rather give up immortality.

“Break this cup, evil poison lurks in it.”

Fortunately, all this is just an arbitrary and idle fantasy, and things will never come to such a tragic test of moral solidarity in humanity due to our natural solidarity with the whole world - due to the physical impossibility of a private solution to a life problem by an individual person or an individual generation . Our rebirth is inextricably linked with the rebirth of the universe, with the transformation of its forms of space and time. The true life of individuality in its full and unconditional meaning is realized and perpetuated only in the corresponding development of universal life, in which we can and must actively participate, but which is not created by us. Our personal business, insofar as it is true, is the common cause of the whole world - the realization and individualization of the all-unified idea and the spiritualization of matter. It is prepared by the cosmic process in the natural world, and is continued and accomplished by the historical process in humanity. Our ignorance of the comprehensive connection of specific particulars in the unity of the whole leaves us with freedom of action, which, with all its consequences, has been included in the absolute all-encompassing plan since the century. The all-unified idea can be finally realized or embodied only in the fullness of perfect individualities, which means that the final goal of the whole matter is the highest development of each individuality in the complete unity of all, and this necessarily includes our life goal, which, therefore, we have neither incentive nor the ability to separate or isolate from the general goal. The world needs us as much as we need it; the universe has been interested in the preservation, development and perpetuation of everything that is really necessary and desirable for us, everything positive and worthy in our individuality, and we can only take the most conscious and active part in the general historical process - for ourselves and for all others inseparably. In our world, true being, or the all-unified idea, is opposed to material being - that very thing that suppresses our love with its meaningless persistence and does not allow its meaning to be realized. The main property of this material existence is double impenetrability: 1) impenetrability in time, due to which each subsequent moment of existence does not retain the previous one, but excludes or displaces it from existence, so that everything new in the environment of matter occurs at the expense of the previous one or in damage to it, and 2) impenetrability in space, due to which two parts of a substance (two bodies) cannot occupy the same place at the same time, i.e. i.e. the same part of space, but necessarily displace each other. Thus, what underlies our world is being in a state of disintegration, being fragmented into mutually exclusive parts and moments. This is what deep ground and what broad basis we must accept for that fatal division of beings, in which all the disaster lies in our personal lives. To overcome this double impenetrability of bodies and phenomena, to make the external real environment consistent with the internal unity of the idea - this is the task of the world process, just as simple in general concept, how complex and difficult in a specific implementation. The apparent predominance of the material basis of our world and life is still so great that many even conscientious, but somewhat one-sided minds think that, apart from this material existence in its various modifications, nothing exists at all. However, not to mention the fact that recognizing this visible world as the only one is an arbitrary hypothesis that you can believe in, but which cannot be proven, and without leaving this world, you must admit that materialism is still wrong, even with the factual points of view. In fact, in our visible world there is much that is not only a modification of material existence in its spatial and temporal impenetrability, but is even a direct denial and abolition of this very impenetrability. Such, firstly, is universal gravitation, in which the parts of the material world do not exclude each other, but, on the contrary, strive to include and contain themselves mutually. It is possible, for the sake of a preconceived principle, to build pseudo-scientific hypotheses one on top of the other, but for a reasonable understanding it will never be possible to explain factors of a directly opposite nature from the definitions of an inert substance: it will never be possible to reduce extension to extension, drive to derive from impenetrability and the desire to understand as inertia. Meanwhile, without these immaterial factors, even the simplest bodily existence would be impossible. Matter itself is, after all, only an indefinite and incoherent collection of atoms, to which, more generously than thoroughly, they are given a supposedly inherent movement. In any case, for a definite and permanent connection of material particles into bodies, it is necessary that their impenetrability, or, what is the same, absolute incoherence, is replaced to a greater or lesser extent by positive interaction between them. Thus, our entire universe, to the extent that it is not a chaos of isolated atoms, but a single and coherent whole, presupposes, in addition to its fractional material, a form of unity (as well as an active force that subjugates elements that are opposed to this unity). The unity of the material world is not a material unity; such a thing cannot exist at all; it is a contradictio in adjecto. Formed by the countermaterial (and from the point of view of materialism, therefore, unnatural) law of gravitation, the universal body is a real-ideal, psychophysical whole, or directly (according to Newton’s thought about the sensorium Dei) it is a mystical body. Over and above the force of universal gravitation, ideal unity is realized in a spiritual-physical manner in the world body through light and other related phenomena (electricity, magnetism, heat), the nature of which is in such clear contrast with the properties of impenetrable and inert matter that materialistic science is forced to acknowledge the evidence here. a special kind of semi-material substance, which she calls ether. This is weightless, all-permeable and all-penetrating matter - in a word, immaterial matter. Our real world is supported by these embodiments of the all-unified idea - gravity and ether, and matter itself, i.e. that is, a dead collection of inert and impenetrable atoms, only thought of by the distracting mind, but not observed and not revealed in any reality. We do not know a moment when real reality belonged to material chaos, and the cosmic idea would be an ethereal and weak shadow; we only assume such a moment as the starting point of the world process within our visible universe. Already in the natural world, everything belongs to the idea, but its true essence demands that not only everything belong to it, everything is included in it or embraced by it, but that it itself belongs to everything, that everything, that is, all private and individual beings , and therefore each of them, really possessed ideal unity and included it within themselves. Perfect unity, by its very concept, requires complete balance, equivalence and equality between the one and the whole, between the whole and the parts, between the general and the individual. The completeness of the idea requires that the greatest unity of the whole be realized in the greatest independence and freedom of particular and individual elements - in themselves, through them and for them. In this direction, the cosmic process reaches the creation of animal individuality, for which the unity of the idea exists in the form of the species and is felt with full force at the moment of sexual desire, when internal unity or community with another (with “everything”) is concretely embodied in relation to a single individual of another gender, which represents this additional “everything” - in one. The individual life of an animal organism itself already contains some, albeit limited, semblance of total unity, since here there is complete solidarity and reciprocity of all private organs and elements in the unity of the living body. But just as this organic solidarity in an animal does not go beyond the limits of its bodily composition, so for it the image of the replenishing “other” is entirely limited to the same single body with the possibility of only a material, partial connection; and therefore supra-temporal infinity, or the eternity of the idea, acting in the vital creative force of love, takes here the bad, straightforward form of limitless reproduction, that is, the repetition of the same organism in a monotonous succession of individual temporary existences. In human life, although the straight line of generic reproduction is preserved at its core, thanks to the development of consciousness and conscious communication, it is wrapped by the historical process in ever wider circles of social and cultural organisms. These social organisms are produced by the same vital creative force of love that gives birth to physical organisms. This force directly creates the family, and the family is the formative element of any society. Despite this genetic connection, the relation of human individuality to society is essentially different from the relation of animal individuality to the race: man is not a transitory specimen of society. The unity of the social organism really coexists with each of its individual members, has existence not only in him and through him, but also for him, is in a certain connection and correlation with him: social and individual life mutually penetrate each other on all sides. Consequently, we have here a much more perfect image of the embodiment of the all-unified idea than in the physical organism. At the same time, here the process of integration in time (or against time) begins from within (from consciousness). Despite the ongoing change of generations in humanity, there are already the beginnings of perpetuating individuality in the religion of ancestors - this basis of any culture, in tradition - the memory of society, in art, and finally, in historical science. The imperfect, embryonic nature of such perpetuation corresponds to the imperfection of human individuality itself and society itself. But progress is undoubted, and the final task is becoming clearer and closer. If the root of false existence consists in impenetrability, that is, in the mutual exclusion of beings from each other, then true life is to live in another as in oneself, or to find in another a positive and unconditional fulfillment of one’s being. The basis and type of this true life remains and will always remain sexual or marital love. But its own implementation is impossible, as we have seen, without a corresponding transformation of the entire external environment, that is, the integration of individual life necessarily requires the same integration in the spheres of social and world life. A certain difference, or separateness, of the spheres of life, both individual and collective, will never be and should not be abolished, because such a universal fusion would lead to indifference and emptiness, and not to the fullness of being. True union presupposes the true separateness of those connected, i.e., such that they do not exclude, but mutually posit each other, each finding in the other the fullness of their own life. Just as in individual love two different, but equal and equal beings serve each other not as a negative boundary, but as a positive complement, exactly the same should be in all spheres of collective life; every social organism should be for each of its members not an external boundary of its activity, but a positive support and replenishment: Just as for sexual love (in the sphere of personal life) the individual “other” is at the same time everything, so for its part the social everything, by virtue positive solidarity of all its elements, must appear for each of them as a real unity, as if another, replenishing it (in a new, more wide area) Living being. If the relations of individual members of society to each other should be fraternal (and filial - in relation to past generations and their social representatives), then their connection with entire social spheres - local, national and, finally, with the universal - must also be more internal, comprehensive and significant. This connection of the active human principle (personal) with the unified idea embodied in the social spiritual-physical organism must be a living syzygy relationship. Don't obey your public sphere and not to dominate her, but to be with her in loving interaction, to serve for her as an active, fertilizing beginning of movement and to find in her the fullness of life conditions and opportunities - such is the attitude of true human individuality not only to its immediate social environment, to its people, but also to all humanity. In the Bible, cities, countries, the people of Israel, and then the entire regenerated humanity or the universal Church are represented in the image of female individuals, and this is not a mere metaphor. From the fact that the image of the unity of social bodies is not perceptible to our external senses, it does not in any way follow that it does not exist at all: after all, our own bodily image is completely imperceptible and unknown to an individual brain cell or to a blood cell; and if we, as an individuality capable of fullness of being, differ from these elementary individuals not only by greater clarity and breadth of rational consciousness, but also by greater strength creative imagination, then I see no need to give up this advantage. Be that as it may, with or without an image, it is required first of all that we treat the social and universal environment as an actual living being with which we, without ever merging to the point of indifference, are in the closest and most complete interaction. This extension of the syzygy relationship to the spheres of collective and universal existence improves individuality itself, imparting to it unity and completeness. life content, and thereby elevates and perpetuates the main individual uniform love. There is no doubt that the historical process is taking place in this direction, gradually destroying false or insufficient forms of human unions (patriarchal, despotic, one-sided individualistic) and at the same time getting closer and closer not only to the unification of all humanity as a solidary whole, but also to establishing the true syzygyic image of this pan-human unity. As the all-unified idea is truly realized through the strengthening and improvement of its individual human elements, the forms of false division, or impenetrability of beings in space and time, are necessarily weakened and smoothed out. But for their complete abolition and for the final perpetuation of all individualities, not only present, but also past, it is necessary that the process of integration move beyond the boundaries of social or strictly human life, and include the cosmic sphere from which it emerged. In the dispensation physical world(cosmic process) the divine idea only from the outside clothed the kingdom of matter and death with a veil of natural beauty: through humanity, through the action of its universally rational consciousness, it must enter this kingdom from the inside in order to revive nature and perpetuate its beauty. In this sense, it is necessary to change man's attitude towards nature. And with her he must establish that syzygyic unity that determines his true life in the personal and public spheres. Until now, nature has been either the all-powerful, despotic mother of infant humanity, or a foreign slave, a thing. In this second era, only poets still retained and supported, albeit an unconscious and timid feeling of love for nature as an equal being that has or can have life in itself. True poets have always remained prophets of the universal restoration of life and beauty, as one of them so well said to his fellows: Only with you fleeting dreams look like old friends into the soul, Only with you the fragrant roses eternally shine with tears of delight. From the marketplaces of life, colorless and stuffy, It’s so joyful to see subtle paints, In the rainbows of your transparent airy sky, I feel caresses. The establishment of a true loving, or syzygytic, relationship of man not only to his social, but also to his natural and universal environment - this goal in itself is clear. The same cannot be said about the ways to achieve it for an individual. Without going into premature, and therefore dubious and inconvenient details, one can, based on solid analogies of cosmic and historical experience, confidently assert that every conscious human reality, determined by the idea of ​​a universal syzygy and having the goal of embodying a unified ideal in one or another sphere, thereby actually producing or liberating real spiritual-bodily currents, which gradually take possession of the material environment, spiritualize it and embody in it certain images of unity - living and eternal similarities of absolute humanity. The power of this spiritual-physical creativity in man is only the transformation or turning inward of that same creative force, which in nature, being turned outward, produces the evil infinity of physical reproduction of organisms. Having connected in the idea of ​​universal syzygy (individual sexual) love with the true essence of universal life, I fulfilled my direct task of determining the meaning of love, since by the meaning of any object we mean precisely that intercom with universal truth. As for some special issues that I had to touch upon, I intend to return to them.

Vladimir Solovyov

Article one.
(preliminary remarks)

Usually, the meaning of sexual love is considered to be the propagation of the species for which it serves as a means. I consider this view to be incorrect - not just on the basis of some ideal considerations, but, first of all, on the basis of natural historical facts. That the reproduction of living beings can do without sexual love is clear from the fact that it does without the division into sexes itself. A significant part of the organisms of both the plant and animal kingdoms reproduce asexually - by division, budding, spores, grafting. True, the higher forms of both organic kingdoms reproduce sexually. But, firstly, organisms that reproduce in this way, both plants and partly animals, can also reproduce asexually (grafting in plants, parthenogenesis in higher insects), and, secondly, leaving this aside and accepting how the general rule that higher organisms reproduce through sexual union, we must conclude that this sexual factor is not associated with reproduction in general (which can occur in addition to this), but with the reproduction of higher organisms. Consequently, the meaning of sexual differentiation (and sexual love) should not be sought in the idea of ​​generic life and its reproduction, but only in the idea of ​​a higher organism.

We find striking confirmation of this in the following great fact. Within animals that reproduce exclusively sexually (the vertebrate division), the higher we climb the ladder of organisms, the less power of reproduction becomes, and the power of sexual desire, on the contrary, becomes greater.

In the lowest class of this department - in fish– reproduction occurs on an enormous scale: the embryos generated annually by each female are counted in the millions; these embryos are fertilized by the males outside the female's body, and the manner in which this is done does not suggest a strong sexual desire. Of all vertebrate animals, this cold-blooded class undoubtedly reproduces the most and exhibits the least love passion.

At the next stage - in amphibians and reptiles- reproduction is much less significant than that of fish, although in some of its species this class, not without reason, is classified by the Bible among the teeming creatures (Sheretz Shirtsu); but with less reproduction we already find closer sexual relationships in these animals...

In birds the power of reproduction is much less not only in comparison with fish, but also in comparison, for example, with frogs, and sexual desire and mutual affection between male and female reach unprecedented levels in the two lower classes of development.

In mammals- they are viviparous - reproduction is much weaker than in birds, and the sexual desire, although in the majority is less constant, is much more intense.

Finally, from the little man, compared with the entire animal kingdom, reproduction occurs on the smallest scale, and sexual love reaches its greatest significance and highest strength, combining to a superlative degree the constancy of relationships (as in birds) and the intensity of passion (as in mammals).

So, sexual love and reproduction of the species are in an inverse relationship with each other: the stronger one is, the weaker the other. In general, the entire animal kingdom from the side under consideration develops in the following order. Below there is an enormous power of reproduction in the complete absence of anything resembling sexual love (in the absence of the division into sexes); further, in more perfect organisms, sexual differentiation appears and, accordingly, a certain sexual desire - at first extremely weak, then it gradually increases at further degrees of organic development, as the power of reproduction decreases (i.e. in direct relation to the perfection of organization and in inverse relation to the power of reproduction), until, finally, at the very top - in man - the strongest sexual love is possible, even with the complete exclusion of reproduction.

But if, in this way, at the two ends of animal life we ​​find, on the one hand, reproduction without any sexual love, and on the other hand, sexual love without any reproduction, then it is absolutely clear that these two phenomena cannot be placed in inextricable connection with each other. each other, it is clear that each of them has its own independent meaning and that the meaning of one cannot be a means of the other. The same thing comes out if we consider sexual love exclusively in the human world, where it, incomparably more than in the animal world, takes on that individual character, due to which this particular person of the other sex has unconditional significance for the lover as the only and irreplaceable, as the goal itself in itself.

II

Here we meet popular theory, which, generally recognizing sexual love as a means of the ancestral instinct, or as an instrument of reproduction, tries, in particular, to explain the individualization of the feeling of love in a person as some kind of cunning or seduction used by nature or the world will to achieve its special goals.

In the human world, where individual characteristics receive much more importance than in animals and flora, nature (otherwise the world will, the will to life, otherwise the unconscious or superconscious world spirit) means not only the preservation of the species, but also the implementation within its boundaries of many possible private or species types and individual characters.

But besides this general goal - the manifestation of the fullest possible diversity of forms - the life of mankind, understood as a historical process, has the task of elevating and improving human nature. This requires not only that there be as many different examples of humanity as possible, but that its best examples be born, which are valuable not only in themselves as individual types, but also for their elevating and improving effect on. others.

So, during the reproduction of the human race, that force - no matter what we call it - which moves the world and historical process is interested not only in the continuous birth of human individuals according to their kind, but also in the birth of these specific and according to their kind. opportunities for significant individuality. And for this, simple reproduction through a random and impersonal combination of individuals of different sexes is no longer sufficient: for an individually determined product, a combination of individually determined producers is necessary, and, therefore, the general sexual desire, which serves the reproduction of the species in animals, is also insufficient.

Since in humanity the matter is not only about the production of offspring in general, but also the production of this offspring most suitable for world purposes, and since a given person can produce this required offspring not with every person of the other sex, but only with one specific one, then this is one and should have a special attractive force for him, seem to him as something exceptional, irreplaceable, unique and capable of giving the highest bliss. This is the individualization and exaltation of the sexual instinct, by which human love differs from animal love, but which, like that, is aroused in us by an alien, although perhaps a higher force for our own purposes, foreign to our personal consciousness - It is aroused as an irrational fatal passion that takes possession of us and disappears like a mirage once the need for it has passed.

If this theory were correct, if the individualization and exaltation of the love feeling had their entire meaning, their only cause and purpose outside this feeling, precisely in the properties of the offspring required (for world purposes), then it would logically follow that the degree of this love individualization and the exaltation or strength of love is in direct relation to the degree of typicality and significance of the offspring descended from it; the more important the offspring, the stronger the love of the parents should be, and, conversely, the stronger the love connecting two given persons, the more wonderful offspring we should expect from them according to this theory. If in general the feeling of love is aroused by the world's will for the sake of the required offspring and is only a means for its production, then it is clear that in each given case the strength of the means used by the cosmic engine must be commensurate with the importance of the goal achieved for it.

The more interested the world will is in the work that is about to come into being, the more strongly it must attract and bind together the two necessary producers. Let us suppose that we are dealing with the birth of a world genius, who is of great importance in the historical process. The higher power controlling this process is obviously as much more interested in this birth compared to others as this world genius is a rarer phenomenon compared to ordinary mortals and, therefore, the sexual attraction by which the world power should be just as stronger than usual. according to this theory) ensures that in this case she achieves such an important goal for her. Of course, defenders of the theory may reject the idea of ​​​​an exact quantitative relationship between the importance of a given person and the strength of the passion of his parents, since these objects do not admit of precise measurement; but it is absolutely indisputable (from the point of view of this theory) that if the world will is extremely interested in the birth of a person, it must take extraordinary measures to ensure the desired result, that is, according to the meaning of the theory, it must arouse an extremely strong passion in the parents , capable of crushing all obstacles to their creation.
In reality, however, we find nothing of the kind, no correlation between the strength of love passion and the significance of offspring. First of all, we encounter the fact, completely inexplicable for this theory, that the strongest love is very often unrequited and does not produce not only great, but no offspring at all. If, as a result of such love, people become monks or commit suicide, then why did the world’s will, interested in posterity, bother? But even if the fiery Werther had not killed himself, his unfortunate passion still remains an inexplicable mystery for the theory of qualified offspring. Werther’s extremely individualized and exalted love for Charlotte showed (from the point of view of this theory) that it was with Charlotte that he was supposed to produce offspring that were especially important and necessary for humanity, for the sake of which the world’s will aroused this extraordinary passion in him. But how did this omniscient and omnipotent will not guess or could not act in the desired sense on Charlotte, without whose participation Werther’s passion was completely aimless and unnecessary? For a teleologically active substance, unrequited love is a complete absurdity.
Especially strong love is most often unhappy, and unhappy love very usually leads to suicide in one form or another; and each of these numerous suicides from unhappy love clearly refutes the theory according to which strong love is only then aroused in order at all costs to produce the required offspring, the importance of which is marked by the strength of this love, whereas in fact in all these cases the power of love precisely excludes the very possibility of not only important, but also any kind of offspring.

Cases of unrequited love are too common to see them only as exceptions that can be ignored. Even if it were so, it would help matters little, for even in those cases where especially strong love appears on both sides, it does not lead to what is required by the theory. According to theory, Romeo and Juliet, in accordance with their great mutual passion, should have given birth to some very great person, at least Shakespeare, but in fact, as we know, it’s the other way around: it was not they who created Shakespeare, as the theory would have it, but he who created them. , and, moreover, without any passion - through asexual creativity. Romeo and Juliet, like most passionate lovers, died without giving birth to anyone, and Shakespeare, who gave birth to them, like other great people, was born not from a madly in love couple, but from an ordinary everyday marriage (and he himself, although he experienced a strong love passion, as can be seen, by the way, from his sonnets, but no remarkable offspring came from here). The birth of Christopher Columbus was, perhaps, even more important for the world's will than the birth of Shakespeare; but we don’t know anything about any special love among his parents, but we know about his own strong passion for Dona Beatriz Enriches, and although he had an illegitimate son Diego from her, this son did not do anything great, but only wrote a biography of his father, which could have been done by anyone else.

If the whole meaning of love is in posterity and a higher power controls love affairs, then why, instead of trying to unite lovers, does it, on the contrary, seem to deliberately prevent this union, as if its task is precisely to ensure that no matter what happens? began to take away the very possibility of offspring from true lovers: it forces them, through a fatal misunderstanding, to bury themselves in crypts, drowns them in the Hellespont, and in all other ways brings them to an untimely and childless death. And in those rare cases when strong love does not take a tragic turn, when a couple in love lives happily into old age, it still remains infertile. A true poetic sense of reality forced both Ovid and Gogol to deprive Philemon and Baucis, Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna of their offspring.

It is impossible to recognize a direct correspondence between the strength of individual love and the meaning of posterity when the very existence of offspring for such love is only a rare accident. As we have seen,

1) strong love very usually remains unrequited;

2) with reciprocity, strong passion leads to a tragic end, not reaching the production of offspring;

3) happy love, if it is very strong, also usually remains fruitless. And in those rare cases when unusually strong love produces offspring, they turn out to be the most ordinary. As a general rule, from which there are almost no exceptions, it can be established that the special intensity of sexual love either does not allow offspring at all, or allows only one whose meaning does not in any way correspond to the intensity of the love feeling and the exclusive nature of the relationships it generates.

To see the meaning of sexual love in purposeful procreation means to recognize this meaning only where there is no love at all, and where there is love, to take away from it all meaning and all justification. This imaginary theory of love, compared with reality, turns out to be not an explanation, but a refusal of any explanation.

III

The force that governs the life of mankind, which some call the world will, others call the unconscious spirit, and which in fact is the Providence of God, undoubtedly controls the timely generation of providential people necessary for its purposes, arranging in the long series of generations the proper combinations of producers in view of the future, not only the immediate ones. , but also the most distant works. For this providential selection of producers, a wide variety of means are used, but love in the proper sense, that is, exclusive individualized and exalted sexual desire, is not one of these means. Biblical history with its true deep realism, which does not exclude, but embodies the ideal meaning of facts in their empirical details - biblical history gives evidence in this case, as always, truthful and instructive for every person with historical and artistic meaning, regardless of religious beliefs .

The central fact of biblical history, the birth of the Messiah, more than any other presupposes a providential plan in the selection and combination of successive producers, and indeed, the main interest of the biblical stories focuses on the varied and amazing destinies by which the births and combinations of “godfathers” were arranged. But in this entire complex system of means that determined the birth of the Messiah in the order of historical phenomena, there was no place for love in the proper sense; it, of course, is found in the Bible, but only as an independent fact, and not as an instrument of the Christogonic process. The Holy Book does not say whether Abraham married Sarah out of ardent love, but, in any case. Providence waited for this love to completely cool down in order to produce a child of faith, not love, from hundred-year-old parents. Isaac married Rebekah not out of love, but according to a pre-arranged decision and plan of his father. Jacob loved Rachel, but this love turns out to be unnecessary for the origin of the Messiah. He must come from the son of Jacob, Judah, who is born not by Rachel, but by her unloved husband Leah. To create the ancestor of the Messiah in this generation, it was necessary to unite Jacob with Leah; but to achieve this connection. Providence does not arouse in Jacob a strong love passion for the future mother of the “Theotokos” - Judas; Without violating the freedom of heartfelt feeling, a higher power leaves Rachel to love him and for the necessary union of him with Leah, she uses a means of a completely different kind: the selfish cunning of a third party - Laban, devoted to his family and economic interests. Judah himself, in order to create further ancestors of the Messiah, must, in addition to his former offspring, in his old age unite with his daughter-in-law Tamara. Since such a union was not at all in the order of things and could not have happened under ordinary conditions, the goal is achieved through an extremely strange adventure, very tempting for superficial readers of the Bible. There can be no talk of any love in this adventure. It is not love that unites the harlot of Jericho Rahab with the Jewish stranger; She first gives herself to him in her profession, and then the casual connection is sealed by her faith in the power of the new God and the desire for his protection for herself and hers. It was not love that united David’s great-grandfather, the old man Boaz, with the young Moabite Ruth, and it was not from real deep love, but only from the random sinful whim of an aging ruler that Solomon was born. In sacred history, as well as in general history, sexual love is not a means or instrument of historical goals; it does not serve the human race. Therefore, when a subjective feeling tells us that love is an independent good, that it has its own independent value for our personal life, then this feeling corresponds in objective reality to the fact that strong individual love is never a service instrument of generic goals that are achieved besides her. In general, as in sacred history, sexual love (in the proper sense) does not play any role and does not have a direct effect on the historical process: its positive significance must be rooted in individual life.

What meaning does it have here?

Article two

In both animals and humans, sexual love is the highest flowering of individual life. But since in animals the generic life decisively outweighs the individual, the highest tension of this latter only benefits the generic process. It is not that sexual desire is only a means for the simple reproduction or propagation of organisms, but it serves for the production of more perfect organisms through sexual competition and selection. They tried to attribute the same meaning to sexual love in the human world, but, as we have seen, it was completely in vain. For in humanity, individuality has an independent meaning and cannot be, in its strongest expression, only an instrument of the goals of the historical process external to it. Or, better to say, the true goal of the historical process is not of such a kind that the human personality can serve for it only as a passive and transitory instrument.

The conviction of the irrespective dignity of man is not based on conceit, nor on the empirical fact that we know of no other more perfect being in the order of nature. The irrespective dignity of a person consists in the absolute form (image) of the rational state undoubtedly inherent in him. Conscious, like an animal, of the states it has experienced and experienced, seeing one connection or another between them and, on the basis of this connection, anticipating future states with the mind, a person, moreover, has the ability to evaluate his states and actions and all sorts of facts in general, not only in relation to them to other individual facts, but also to universal ideal norms; his consciousness, beyond the phenomena of life, is also determined by the mind of truth. By aligning his actions with this higher consciousness, man can endlessly improve his life and nature without leaving the limits of the human form. That is why he is the highest being of the natural world and the real end of the universe-creating process; for besides the Being, which itself is capable of cognizing and realizing the truth in itself, there is the highest - not in a relative, but in an unconditional sense. What reasonable basis can one come up with for the creation of new, essentially more perfect forms, when there is already a form capable of endless self-improvement, capable of containing the entirety of absolute content? With the appearance of such a form, further progress can only consist in new degrees of its own development, and not in replacing it with some creatures of a different kind, other unprecedented forms of being. This is a significant difference between cosmogonic and historical process.

The first creates (before the appearance of man) more and more new kinds of beings, and the former are partly exterminated as unsuccessful experiments, and partly, together with a new external image, they coexist and accidentally collide with each other, without forming any real unity due to the lack of a common consciousness in them, which would connect them with each other and with the cosmic past. Such a common consciousness appears in humanity. In the animal world, the succession of higher forms from lower ones, for all its correctness and expediency, is a fact for them that is certainly external and alien, not existing for them at all: the elephant and the monkey cannot know anything about the complex process of geological and biological transformations that determined their actual appearance on earth; the comparatively higher degree of development of particular and individual consciousness does not mean here any progress in general consciousness, which is just as certainly absent in these intelligent animals as in the stupid oyster; The complex brain of a higher mammal serves as little for the self-illumination of nature in its entirety as the rudimentary nerve ganglia of a worm.

In humanity, on the contrary, through increased individual consciousness, religious and scientific, universal consciousness progresses. The individual mind here is not only the organ of personal life, but also the organ of recollection and fortune-telling for all mankind and even for all nature. The Jew who wrote: “here is the book of the birth of heaven and earth (elle tol” dot hasham-mayim ve ha’aretz)” and further: “here is the book of the birth of man (ze se-fer tol” dot ga’adam)” expressed not only his personal and the people's consciousness - through it, for the first time, the truth of universal and all-human unity shone in the world. And all further successes of consciousness consist only in the development and embodiment of this truth; they have no need and cannot leave this comprehensive form: what else can the most perfect astronomy and geology do but completely restore the genesis of heaven and earth; in the same way, the highest task of historical knowledge can only be to restore the “book of human births,” i.e., the genetic continuity in the life of mankind, and, finally, our creative activity cannot have any other higher goal than to embody this original principle in tangible images the created and proclaimed unity of heaven, earth and man. All truth - the positive unity of everything - was initially inherent in the living consciousness of man and is gradually realized in the life of humanity with conscious continuity (for truth that does not remember kinship is not truth).

Thanks to the limitless extensibility and indissolubility of his successive consciousness, a person, remaining himself, can comprehend and realize the entire boundless fullness of being, and therefore no higher kinds of beings are needed or possible to replace him. Within the limits of his given reality, man is only a part of nature; but he constantly and consistently violates these limits; in its spiritual creations - religion and science, morality and art - it is revealed as the center of the universal consciousness of nature, as the soul of the world, as the realizing potential of absolute unity, and, therefore, above it only this most absolute can be in its perfect act, or eternal being, i.e. God.

II

The advantage of man over other creatures of nature - the ability to cognize and realize the truth - is not only generic, but also individual: every person is capable of cognizing and realizing the truth, everyone can become a living reflection of the absolutely whole, a conscious and independent organ of universal life. And in the rest of nature there is truth (or the image of God), but only in its objective community; unknown to private beings; it forms them and acts in them and through them - like a fatal force, like a law of their existence unknown to them, to which they obey involuntarily and unconsciously; for themselves, in their inner feeling and consciousness, they cannot rise above their given partial existence, they find themselves only in their particularity, apart from everything - therefore, outside the truth; and therefore truth or the universal can triumph here only in the change of generations, in the continuation of the race and in the death of individual life, which does not contain the truth. Human individuality, precisely because it can contain the truth, is not abolished by it, but is preserved and strengthened in its triumph.

But in order for an individual being to find its justification and affirmation in truth - unity - it is not enough on its part to be conscious of truth alone - it must be in truth, but initially and directly an individual person, like an animal, is not in truth: he finds himself as an isolated particle of the universal whole, and he affirms this partial existence of his in egoism as a whole for himself, wants to be everything separately from everything - outside the truth. Egoism, as the real fundamental principle of individual life, penetrates and guides all of it, concretely determines everything in it, and therefore it cannot in any way be outweighed and abolished by the theoretical consciousness of truth alone. Until the living force of egoism meets in a person another living force that is opposite to it, the consciousness of truth is only external illumination, a reflection of someone else’s light. If a person could only contain truth in this sense, then the connection with it of his individuality would not be internal and inseparable; his own being, remaining like an animal outside the truth, would, like it, be doomed in its subjectivity to destruction, surviving only as an idea in the thoughts of the absolute mind.

Truth as a living force that takes possession of a person’s inner being and truly leads him out of false self-affirmation is called love. Love as the real abolition of egoism is the real justification and salvation of individuality. Love is more than rational consciousness, but without it it could not act as an inner saving force that elevates rather than abolishes individuality. Only thanks to rational consciousness (or, what is the same, consciousness of truth), a person can distinguish himself, that is, his true individuality, from his egoism, and therefore, sacrificing this egoism, surrendering himself to love, he finds in it not only living, but also life-giving force and does not lose his individual being along with his egoism, but, on the contrary, perpetuates it.

In the animal world, due to their lack of their own rational consciousness, truth, realized in love, not finding in them an internal point of support for its action, can only act directly, as a fatal force external to them, taking possession of them as blind instruments for worlds alien to them. goals; here love appears as a one-sided triumph of the general, the generic over the individual, since in animals their individuality coincides with egoism in the immediacy of partial existence, and therefore perishes along with it.

III

The meaning of human love in general is the justification and salvation of individuality through the sacrifice of egoism. On this general basis we can solve our special task: to explain the meaning of sexual love. It is not for nothing that sexual relations are not only called love, but also represent, admittedly, love par excellence, being the type and ideal of all other love (see Song of Songs, Apocalypse).

The lie and evil of egoism do not consist at all in the fact that this person values ​​himself too highly, gives himself unconditional importance and infinite dignity: in this he is right, because every human subject as an independent center of living forces, as a potential (possibility) of infinite perfection, as a being capable of containing absolute truth in his consciousness and in his life - every person in this capacity has irrespective significance and dignity, is something unconditionally irreplaceable and cannot value himself too highly (according to the Gospel word: what will a person give in exchange for a soul my?). Failure to recognize this unconditional value is tantamount to a renunciation of human dignity; This is the basic delusion and the beginning of all unbelief: he is so cowardly that he cannot even believe in himself - how can he believe in anything else? The main lie and evil of egoism is not in this absolute self-knowledge and self-esteem of the subject, but in the fact that, rightfully attributing unconditional significance to himself, he unfairly denies others this significance; recognizing himself as the center of life, which he really is, he relates others to the circle of his being, leaving behind them only external and relative value.

Of course, in an abstract, theoretical consciousness, every person who is not maddened by reason always admits the complete equality of others with himself; but in his vital consciousness, in his inner feeling and in reality, he affirms an infinite difference, a complete incommensurability between himself and others: he in himself is everything, they in themselves are nothing. Meanwhile, it is precisely with such exclusive self-affirmation that a person cannot really be what he claims to be. That unconditional meaning, that absoluteness, which he generally rightly recognizes for himself, but unjustly takes away from others, has in itself only a potential character - it is only a possibility that requires its implementation. God is everything, that is, He possesses in one absolute act all positive content, all the fullness of being. A person (in general and every individual person in particular), being in fact only this and not another, can become everything only by removing in his consciousness and life that internal line that separates him from the other. “This” can be “everything” only together with others, only together with others can it realize its unconditional meaning - become an indivisible and irreplaceable part of the all-inclusive whole, an independent living and unique organ of absolute life. True individuality is a certain specific image of all-unity, a certain specific way of perceiving and assimilating everything else. By asserting himself outside of everything else, a person thereby deprives his own existence of meaning, robs himself of the true content of life and turns his individuality into an empty form. Thus, egoism is in no way self-consciousness and self-affirmation of individuality, but, on the contrary, self-denial and death.

Metaphysical and physical, historical and social conditions of human existence in every possible way modify and soften our egoism, putting strong and varied barriers to discovering it in its pure form and in all its terrible consequences. But all this complex system of obstacles and adjustments, predetermined by Providence and implemented by nature and history, leaves untouched the very basis of egoism, which constantly peeks out from under the cover of personal and public morality, and on occasion manifests itself with complete clarity. There is only one force that can radically undermine egoism from within, and indeed undermines it, namely love, and mainly sexual love. The lie and evil of egoism consist in the exclusive recognition of unconditional significance for oneself and in denying it to others; reason shows us that this is unfounded and unfair, and love directly, in fact, abolishes such an unfair attitude, forcing us, not in an abstract consciousness, but in an inner feeling and vital will, to recognize for ourselves the unconditional significance of the other. Cognizing in love the truth of another not abstractly, but essentially, transferring in fact the center of our life beyond the limits of our empirical particularity, we thereby manifest and realize our own truth, our unconditional meaning, which consists precisely in the ability to move beyond the boundaries of our actual phenomenal existence, in the ability to live not only in oneself, but also in others.

Every love is a manifestation of this ability, but not every one realizes it to the same degree, not every one equally radically undermines egoism. Egoism is not only a real force, but a fundamental one, rooted in the deepest center of our being and from there penetrating and embracing our entire reality - a force that continuously operates in all the particulars and details of our existence. In order to truly undermine egoism, it is necessary to oppose it with the same concretely defined love that penetrates our entire being and captures everything in it. That other thing, which must liberate our individuality from the shackles of egoism, must have a relationship with all this individuality, must be as real and concrete, a completely objectified subject as we ourselves, and at the same time must be different from us in everything in order to be truly different, that is, having all the essential content that we also have, to have it in a different way or image, in a different form, so that every manifestation of our being, every life act meets in this other a corresponding, but not identical manifestation, so that the relation of one to the other is a complete and constant exchange, a complete and constant affirmation of oneself in the other, a perfect interaction and communication. Only then will egoism be undermined and abolished not only in principle, but in all its concrete reality.

Only with this, so to speak, chemical union of two beings of homogeneous and equivalent importance, but completely different in form, is it possible (both in the natural and in the spiritual order) to create a new man, the actual realization of true human individuality. We find such a union, or at least the closest possibility to it, in sexual love, which is why we attach exceptional importance to it as a necessary and irreplaceable basis for all further improvement, as an inevitable and constant condition under which only a person can truly be in the truth.

IV

Recognizing the very great importance and high dignity of other kinds of love, with which false spiritualism and impotent moralism would like to replace sexual love, we see, however, that only this latter satisfies two basic requirements, without which the decisive abolition of selfhood in full life communion with others is impossible. In all other types of love, there is either no homogeneity, equality and interaction between lover and beloved, or a comprehensive difference in properties that complement each other.

Thus, in love, the mystical object of love is ultimately reduced to absolute indifference, absorbing human individuality; here egoism is abolished only in the very insufficient sense in which it is abolished when a person falls into a state of deep sleep (with which in the Upanishads and Vedanta the union of the individual soul with the universal spirit is compared, and sometimes directly identified). Between a living person and the mystical “Abyss” there cannot be absolute indifference, due to the complete heterogeneity and incommensurability of these quantities, not only vital communication, but also simple compatibility: if there is an object of love, then the lover is not there - he has disappeared, lost himself, plunged, as it were into a deep, dreamless sleep, and when he returns to himself, the object of love disappears, and instead of absolute indifference, the motley diversity of real life reigns against the background of his own egoism, adorned with spiritual pride. History knows, however, such mystics and entire mystical schools, where the object of love was understood not as absolute indifference, but took on specific forms that allowed for living relationships with it, but - quite remarkably - these relationships here received a completely clear and consistently consistent character of sexual love...

Parental love - especially maternal love- both in the strength of feeling and in the concreteness of the object it approaches sexual love, but for other reasons it cannot have equal significance for human individuality. It is determined by the fact of reproduction and the law of generational change, which dominates animal life, but does not have, or, in any case, should not have such a meaning in human life. In animals, the subsequent generation directly and quickly abolishes its predecessors and exposes their existence as meaningless, in order to be now, in turn, exposed to the same meaninglessness of existence by its own offspring. Maternal love in humanity, sometimes reaching a high degree of self-sacrifice, which we do not find in chicken love, is a remnant, undoubtedly still necessary, of this order of things. In any case, there is no doubt that in maternal love there cannot be complete reciprocity and vital communication, if only because the loving and beloved belong to different generations, that for the latter, life is in the future with new independent interests and tasks, among which representatives of the past are just like pale shadows. It is enough that parents cannot be the goal of life for children in the sense that children are for parents.
A mother who puts her whole soul into her children sacrifices, of course, her egoism, but at the same time she loses her individuality, and in them, if maternal love supports individuality, it preserves and even strengthens egoism. In addition, in maternal love there is no actual recognition of the unconditional significance of the loved one, recognition of his true individuality, because for the mother, although her offspring is dearer than anything else, it is only as her offspring, no different from other animals, i.e. here is an imaginary recognition unconditional meaning after another is actually due to an external physiological connection.

Still less can other types of sympathetic feelings have any claim to replace sexual love.

Friendship between persons of the same sex there is a lack of comprehensive formal differentiation of qualities that complement each other, and if, nevertheless, this friendship reaches a particular intensity, then it turns into an unnatural surrogate of sexual love.

As for patriotism and love for humanity, then these feelings, with all their importance, in themselves cannot vitally and concretely abolish egoism, due to the incommensurability of the lover with the beloved: neither humanity, nor even the people can be for an individual person the same concrete object as himself. It is, of course, possible to sacrifice your life to the people or humanity, but to create a new person out of yourself, to manifest and realize true human individuality on the basis of this extensive love, is impossible. Here, in the real center, the old egoistic self still remains, and the people and humanity are relegated to the periphery of consciousness as ideal objects.

The same should be said about love for science, art, etc.

Having pointed out in a few words the true meaning of sexual love and its advantages over other related feelings, I must explain why it is so weakly realized in reality, and show how its full realization is possible. I will deal with this in subsequent articles.

Article three

The meaning and dignity of love as a feeling lies in the fact that it forces us, with our whole being, to recognize in another the unconditional central significance that, due to egoism, we feel only in ourselves. Love is important not as one of our feelings, but as a transfer of all our vital interest from ourselves to another, as a rearrangement of the very center of our personal life. This is characteristic of all love, but especially sexual love; it differs from other types of love by its greater intensity, more exciting nature, and the possibility of more complete and comprehensive reciprocity; only this love can lead to a real and inextricable union of two lives into one, only about it and in the word of God it is said: the two will become one flesh, that is, they will become one real being.

Feeling requires such completeness of union, internal and final, but things usually do not go beyond this subjective demand and aspiration, and even then it turns out to be only transitory. In fact, instead of the poetry of an eternal and central union, there is only a more or less prolonged, but still temporary, more or less close, but still external, superficial rapprochement of two limited beings within the narrow framework of everyday prose. The object of love does not in reality retain the unconditional meaning that is given to it by a lover’s dream. To an outsider, this is clear from the very beginning; but the involuntary shade of mockery that inevitably accompanies the alien attitude towards lovers turns out to be only a prelude to their own disappointment. All at once or little by little, the pathos of love interest passes, and it is good if the energy of altruistic feelings manifested in it is not wasted, but only, having lost its concentration and high rise, is transferred in a fragmented and diluted form to children who are born and raised to repeat the same thing deception. I say “deception” - from the point of view of individual life and the unconditional significance of the human personality, fully recognizing the necessity and expediency of childbirth and generational change for the progress of humanity in its collective life. But actually love has nothing to do with it. The coincidence of strong love passion with successful childbirth is only an accident, and, moreover, quite rare; Historical and daily experience undoubtedly shows that children can be successfully born, passionately loved and well brought up by their parents, even if these latter were never in love with each other. Consequently, the social and global interests of humanity associated with the change of generations do not at all require the highest pathos of love. Meanwhile, in the life of an individual, this best flowering turns out to be a barren flower. The original power of love loses all its meaning here when its object, from the height of the unconditional center and perpetuated individuality, is reduced to the level of a random and easily replaceable means for creating a new one, perhaps a little better, or maybe a little worse, but, in any case, relative and passing generation of people.
So, if we look only at what usually happens, at the actual outcome of love, then we must recognize it as a dream that temporarily takes possession of our being and disappears without turning into any action (since childbirth is not actually a matter of love). But, recognizing by virtue of the evidence that the ideal meaning of love is not realized in reality, should we recognize it as unrealizable?
By the very nature of man, who in his rational consciousness, moral freedom and ability for self-improvement has endless possibilities, we do not have the right to consider in advance any task impossible for him, unless it contains an internal logical contradiction or inconsistency with the general meaning of the universe and the expedient course of cosmic and historical development.

It would be completely unfair to deny the feasibility of love only on the grounds that it has never been realized until now: after all, many other things were once in the same position, for example, all the sciences and arts, civil society, control of the forces of nature. Even the most intelligent consciousness, before becoming a fact in man, was only a vague and unsuccessful aspiration in the animal world. How many geological and biological epochs have passed in unsuccessful attempts to create a brain capable of becoming an organ for the embodiment of intelligent thought. Love for humans is still the same as reason was for the animal world: it exists in its rudiments or inclinations, but not yet in reality. And if huge world periods - witnesses of unrealized reason - did not prevent it from finally being realized, then even more so the unrealization of love during the few comparative millennia experienced by historical humanity in no way gives the right to conclude anything against its future realization. It should only be well remembered that if the reality of rational consciousness appeared in man, but not through man, then the realization of love as the highest step to the own life of humanity itself must occur not only in him, but also through him.

The task of love is to justify in practice the meaning of love, which at first is given only in feeling; What is required is a combination of two given limited beings that would create from them one absolute ideal personality. This task not only does not contain any internal contradiction and no inconsistency with the universal meaning, but it is directly given by our spiritual nature, the peculiarity of which is precisely that a person can, while remaining himself, in his own form contain absolute content, become absolute personality. But in order to be filled with absolute content (which in religious language is called eternal life or the kingdom of God), the human form itself must be restored to its integrity (integrated). In empirical reality, man as such does not exist at all - he exists only in a certain one-sidedness and limitation, as a male or female individuality (and on this basis all other differences develop). But a true person in the fullness of his ideal personality obviously cannot be only a man or only a woman, but must be the highest unity of both. To realize this unity or to create a true person as a free unity of the masculine and feminine principles, preserving their formal isolation, but overcoming their essential discord and disintegration, this is the immediate task of love. Considering the conditions that are required for its actual resolution, we will be convinced that only non-compliance with these conditions leads love to constant ruin and forces us to recognize it as an illusion.

The first step to the successful solution of any problem is its conscious and correct formulation: but the task of love was never consciously posed, and therefore was never solved properly. Love was and is looked at only as a given fact, as a state (normal for some, painful for others) that is experienced by a person, but does not oblige him to anything; True, two tasks are tied here: the physiological possession of a loved one and the everyday union with him, - of which the latter imposes some responsibilities - but here the matter is already subject to the laws of animal nature, on the one hand, and the laws of civil society, on the other, and love, left to its own devices from beginning to end, it disappears like a mirage.

Of course, first of all, love is a fact of nature (or a gift of God), a natural process that arises independently of us; but it does not follow from this that we cannot and should not consciously relate to it and independently direct this natural process to higher goals.

The gift of speech is also a natural accessory of a person; language is not invented, just like love. However, it would be extremely sad if we treated it only as a natural process that occurs naturally in us, if we spoke as birds sing, indulged in natural combinations of sounds and words to express feelings involuntarily passing through our soul and ideas, and did not make language into a tool for consistently carrying out certain thoughts, a means for achieving reasonable and consciously set goals. With an exclusively passive and unconscious attitude towards the gift of speech, neither science, nor art, nor civil society could have been formed, and language itself, due to insufficient use of this gift, would not have developed and remained with only its rudimentary manifestations. Just as the word is important for the formation of human society and culture, love is the same and even more important for the creation of true human individuality. And if in the first area (social and cultural) we notice, although slow, but undoubted progress, while human individuality from the beginning of historical times to this day remains unchanged in its actual limitations, then the first reason for such a difference is that to verbal activity and to We relate to the works of the word more and more consciously and spontaneously, and love is still left entirely in the dark region of vague affects and involuntary attractions.

Just as the true purpose of the word is not in the process of speaking in itself, but in what is said - in the revelation of the mind of things through words or concepts, so the true purpose of love is not in the simple experience of this feeling, but in what is accomplished through it, - in the matter of love: it is not enough for her to feel for herself the unconditional meaning of the beloved object, but she must actually give or communicate this meaning to it, unite with it in the actual creation of absolute individuality. And how the highest task of verbal activity is already predetermined in the very nature of words, which inevitably represent general and abiding concepts, and not separate and transitory impressions and, therefore, in themselves, being the connection of many things together, lead us to an understanding of the universal meaning; in the same way, the highest task of love is already predetermined in the love feeling itself, which inevitably, before any implementation, introduces its object into the sphere of absolute individuality, sees it in an ideal light, believes in its unconditionality.

Thus, in both cases (both in the field of verbal knowledge and in the field of love), the task is not to invent something completely new on one’s own, but only to consistently carry on further and to the end what is already rudimentarily given in the very nature of the matter, in the very basis of the process. But if the word has developed and is developing in humanity, then with regard to love people remained and still remain with only natural rudiments, and even those are poorly understood in their true meaning.

III

Everyone knows that in love there is certainly a special idealization of the beloved object, which appears to the lover in a completely different light than in which strangers see it. I am talking here about light not only in a metaphorical sense; the point here is not only in a special moral and mental assessment, but also in a special sensory perception: the lover really sees, visually perceives something different from what others do. And for him, however, this love light soon disappears, but does it follow from this that it was false, that it was only a subjective illusion?
The true essence of man in general and of every person is not exhausted by his given empirical phenomena - this position cannot be opposed on reasonable and solid grounds from any point of view. For the materialist and sensualist, no less than for the spiritualist and idealist, what appears is not identical with what is, and when we are dealing with two different types of seeming, the question is always legitimate which of these types coincides more with what is what is, or better expresses the nature of things. For the apparent, or appearance in general, is a real relation or interaction between the seer and the visible, and, therefore, is determined by their mutual properties. The outer world of man and the outer world of the mole both consist only of relative phenomena or appearances; however, hardly anyone will seriously doubt that one of these two apparent worlds is superior to the other, more consistent with what is, closer to the truth.

We know that man, in addition to his animal material nature, also has an ideal nature that connects him with absolute truth, or God. In addition to the material or empirical content of his life, each person contains within himself the image of God, that is, a special form of absolute content. This image of God is cognized by us theoretically and abstractly in the mind and through the mind, but in love it is cognized concretely and vitally. And if this revelation of an ideal being, usually hidden by material phenomena, is not limited in love to one internal feeling, but sometimes becomes perceptible in the sphere of external feelings, then all the more importance should we recognize love as the beginning of the visible restoration of the image of God in the material world, the beginning of the embodiment of true ideal humanity. The power of love, passing into light, transforming and spiritualizing the form of external phenomena, reveals its objective power to us, but then it’s up to us: we ourselves must understand this revelation and use it so that it does not remain a fleeting and mysterious glimpse of some secret.

The spiritual-physical process of restoring the image of God in material humanity cannot in any way happen by itself, apart from us. Its beginning, like all the best in this world, arises from the earthly region of unconscious processes and relationships for us; there is the germ and roots of the tree of life, but we must grow it by our own conscious action; to begin with, passive receptivity of feeling is sufficient, but then active faith, moral achievement and work are needed in order to retain, strengthen and develop this gift of bright and creative love, in order through it to embody in oneself and in others the image of God and from two limited and mortal beings to create one absolute and immortal individuality. If the idealization inevitably and involuntarily inherent in love shows us through empirical appearance a distant ideal image of a beloved object, then, of course, not so that we only admire it, but then so that we, by the power of true faith, active imagination and real creativity, transform it according to this true model reality that does not correspond to it, embodied it in a real phenomenon. But who ever thought about anything like that about love? Medieval minnesingers and knights, with their strong faith and weak minds, calmed down on the simple identification of the love ideal with a given person, turning a blind eye to their obvious inconsistency. This faith was as firm, but also as fruitless, as the stone on which the famous knight von Grünvalius sat “still in the same position” at Amalia’s castle.

In addition to such faith, which only forced one to reverently contemplate and triumphantly sing of the supposedly embodied ideal, medieval love was, of course, associated with a thirst for exploits. But these warlike and destructive exploits, having nothing to do with the ideal that inspired them, could not lead to its implementation. Even that poor knight, who completely surrendered to the impression of the heavenly beauty that was revealed to him, without mixing it with earthly phenomena, and he was inspired by this revelation only to such actions that served more to the harm of foreigners than to the benefit and glory of the “eternally feminine.”

"Heaven's light! Holy rose!
He exclaimed, wild and zealous,
And like thunder his threat
Striked Muslims."

To defeat the Muslims, of course, there was no need to have a “vision incomprehensible to the mind.” But this split between the heavenly visions of Christianity and the “wild and zealous” forces in real life weighed heavily on all medieval chivalry, until finally the most famous and last of the knights, Don Quixote of La Mancia, having killed many rams and broken many wings at windmills, but not bringing him any closer the Toboso cowshed to the ideal of Dulcinea, did not come to a fair, but only a negative consciousness of his error; and if that typical knight remained faithful to his vision to the end and “like a madman he died,” then Don Quixote moved from madness only to sad and hopeless disappointment in his ideal. This disappointment of Don Quixote was a testament to chivalry to the new Europe. It still works in us today.

Love idealization, having ceased to be the source of the exploits of the insane, does not inspire anyone. It turns out to be only a bait that makes us desire physical and worldly possessions, and disappears as soon as this not at all ideal goal is achieved. The light of love does not serve as a guiding ray to anyone's lost paradise; they look at it as a fantastic illumination of a brief love “prologue in heaven,” which then nature very timely extinguishes as completely unnecessary for the subsequent earthly performance. In fact, this light extinguishes the weakness and unconsciousness of our love, which distorts the true order of things.

IV

External connection, everyday and especially physiological, has no definite relationship to love. It happens without love, and love happens without it. It is necessary for love not as its indispensable condition and independent goal, but only as its final realization. If this realization is set as an end in itself before the ideal work of love, it destroys love. Every external act or fact in itself is nothing; love is something only due to its meaning or idea as the restoration of the unity or integrity of the human personality, as the creation of absolute individuality. The significance of external acts and facts associated with love, which in themselves are nothing, is determined by their relationship to what constitutes love itself and its work. When a zero is placed after a whole number, it increases it tenfold, and when it is placed before it, it reduces or fragments it by the same amount, takes away from it the character of a whole number, turning it into a decimal fraction; and the more of these zeros preceded by the whole, the smaller the fraction, the closer it itself becomes to zero. The feeling of love in itself is only an impulse that inspires us that we can and must recreate the integrity of the human being. Every time this sacred spark is ignited in the human heart, all groaning and tormented creation awaits the first revelation of the glory of the sons of God. But without the action of the conscious human spirit, the spark of God goes out, and deceived nature creates new generations of sons of men for new hopes. These hopes are not fulfilled until we are willing to fully recognize and fully realize everything that true love requires, which lies in its idea.

With a conscious attitude towards love and a real decision to fulfill its task, first of all, two facts stop us, apparently condemning us to powerlessness and justifying those who consider love an illusion. In the feeling of love, according to its main meaning, we affirm the unconditional significance of another individuality, and through this the unconditional significance of our own. But absolute individuality cannot be transitory, and it cannot be empty. The inevitability of death and the emptiness of our life are completely incompatible with that heightened affirmation of the individuality of oneself and the other, which lies in the feeling of love. This feeling, if it is strong and completely conscious, cannot be reconciled with the certainty of the impending decrepitude and death of the loved one and one’s own. Meanwhile, the undoubted fact that all people have always died and are dying is accepted by everyone or almost everyone as an absolutely immutable law (so even in formal logic it is customary to use this confidence to draw up an exemplary syllogism: “all people are mortal, Kai is a man, therefore Kai mortal"). Many, however, believe in the immortality of the soul; but it is precisely the feeling of love that best demonstrates the insufficiency of this abstract faith. The disembodied spirit is not a person, but an angel; but we love a person, an entire human individuality, and if love is the beginning of the enlightenment and spiritualization of this individuality, then it necessarily requires its preservation as such, it requires the eternal youth and immortality of this specific person, this embodied living spirit in the bodily organism. An angel, or pure spirit, does not need enlightenment and spiritualization; Only the flesh is enlightened and spiritualized, and it is a necessary object of love. You can imagine anything you want, but you can only love the living, concrete, and when you really love it, you cannot come to terms with the certainty of its destruction. But if the inevitability of death is incompatible with true love, then immortality is completely incompatible with the emptiness of our life. For the majority of humanity, life is only a change of hard mechanical labor and grossly sensual, consciousness-stunning pleasures. And that minority, which has the opportunity to actively care not only about the means, but also about the ends of life, instead uses its freedom from mechanical work mainly for meaningless and immoral pastime.

I have no need to dwell on the emptiness and immorality - involuntary and unconscious - of this entire imaginary life, after its magnificent reproduction in Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and the Kreutzer Sonata. Returning to my subject, I will only point out the obvious consideration that for such a life death is not only inevitable, but also extremely desirable: is it possible, without terrifying melancholy, to even imagine the endlessly continuing existence of some society lady, or some athlete, or card player? The incompatibility of immortality with such an existence is clear at first glance. But with more attention, we will have to recognize the same incompatibility with respect to other, apparently more fulfilling existences. If, instead of a society lady or a player, we take, on the opposite pole, great people, geniuses who have endowed humanity with immortal works or changed the fate of nations, then we will see that the content of their life and its historical fruits have meaning only as given once and for all, and with infinite the continuation of the individual existence of these geniuses on earth would lose all meaning. The immortality of works obviously does not at all require and even in itself excludes the continuous immortality of the individuals who produced them. Is it possible to imagine Shakespeare endlessly composing his dramas, or Newton endlessly continuing to study celestial mechanics, not to mention the absurdity of endlessly continuing such activities as Alexander the Great or Napoleon became famous for? It is obvious that art, science, politics, while giving content to the individual aspirations of the human spirit and satisfying the temporary historical needs of humanity, do not at all convey the absolute, self-sufficient content of human individuality, and therefore do not need its immortality. Only love needs this, and only love can achieve it.

True love is that which not only affirms in subjective feeling the unconditional meaning of human individuality in another and in oneself, but also justifies this unconditional meaning in reality, truly saves us from the inevitability of death and fills our life with absolute content.

Article Four

“Dionysus and Hades are one and the same,” said the deepest thinker Ancient world. Dionysus, the young and blooming god of material life in the full tension of its seething forces, the god of excited and fruitful nature, is the same as Hades, the pale ruler of the gloomy and silent kingdom of departed shadows. The god of life and the god of death are one and the same god. This is a truth that is indisputable for the world of natural organisms. The fullness of vital forces boiling in an individual being is not his own life, it is someone else’s life, the life of a kind indifferent and merciless to him, which for him is death. In the lower parts of the animal kingdom this is quite clear; here individuals exist only to produce offspring and then die; in many species they do not survive the act of reproduction and die immediately on the spot, in others they survive only for a very short time. But if this connection between birth and death, between the preservation of the race and the death of the individual is a law of nature, then, on the other hand, nature itself, in its progressive development, more and more limits and weakens this law of its own; The need for an individual to serve as a means of maintaining the race and to die after fulfilling this service remains, but the effect of this necessity is revealed less and less directly and exclusively as organic forms improve, as individual beings increase in independence and consciousness. Thus, the law of the identity of Dionysus and Hades - generic life and individual death - or, what is the same, the law of opposition and confrontation between the genus and the individual, acts most strongly at the lower levels of the organic world, and with the development of higher forms more and more weakens; and if so, then with the appearance of an unconditionally higher organic form, which embraces an individual being, self-conscious and self-active, separating itself from nature, relating to it as an object, therefore, capable of internal freedom from generic demands - with the appearance of this being, should not will there be an end to this tyranny of the race over the individual?

If nature in the biological process strives to limit more and more the law of death, then should not man in the historical process completely abolish this law? It is clear in itself that while a person reproduces like an animal, he dies like an animal. But it is equally clear, on the other hand, that simple abstinence from the birth act does not in any way relieve death: persons who have retained their virginity die, and eunuchs also die; neither one nor the other enjoys even special durability. This is understandable. Death in general is the disintegration of a being, the disintegration of its constituent factors. But the division of the sexes, which is not eliminated by their external and transient union in the birth act, this division between the male and female elements of the human being is in itself a state of disintegration and the beginning of death. To remain in sexual separation means to be on the path of death, and whoever does not want or cannot leave this path must, by natural necessity, go through it to the end. He who supports the root of death will inevitably taste its fruit. Only a whole person can be immortal, and if a physiological connection cannot truly restore the integrity of the human being, then this false connection must be replaced by a true connection, and not by abstaining from any connection, that is, not by any desire to retain in the existing a state of divided, disintegrated and, therefore, mortal human nature.

What does true union of the sexes consist of and how is it accomplished? Our life is so far from the truth in this regard that only less extreme, less flagrant abnormality is accepted here as the norm. This needs further clarification before going any further.

II

Recently, several special books have appeared in the psychiatric literature of Germany and France devoted to what the author of one of them called “sexual psychopathy,” that is, various deviations from the norm in sexual relations. These works, in addition to their special interest for lawyers, doctors and the patients themselves, are also interesting from such a side, which probably neither the authors nor the majority of readers thought about, namely, in these treatises, written by venerable scientists, probably of impeccable morality, the absence of any clear and definite concept of the norm of sexual relations, of what and why is due in this area, as a result of which the definition of deviations from the norm, that is, the very subject of these studies, turns out to be taken randomly and arbitrarily. The only criterion is the commonality or unusualness of the phenomena: those desires and actions in the sexual area that are relatively rare are recognized as pathological deviations requiring treatment, and those that are ordinary and generally accepted are assumed to be the norm. At the same time, the confusion of the norm with ordinary deviation, the identification of what should be with what is ordinary, sometimes reaches the point of high comedy.

Thus, in the casuistic part of one of these works we find, under several numbers, a repetition of the following therapeutic technique: the patient is forced, often by persistent medical advice, mainly by hypnotic suggestion, to occupy his imagination with the representation of a naked female body or other obscene pictures of a normal sexual nature (sic!) , and then the treatment is considered successful and the recovery is complete if, under the influence of this artificial stimulation, the patient begins to visit willingly, often and successfully brothel... It is amazing how these venerable scientists were not stopped at least by the simple consideration that the more successful therapy of this kind is, the more easily the patient can be forced from one medical specialty to turn to the help of another, and that the triumph of the psychiatrist can cause great trouble for the dermatologist .

The perversions of sexual feelings studied in medical books are important for us as an extreme development of what has become part of the everyday life of our society, what is considered permissible and normal. These unusual phenomena represent - only in a more vivid form - the very ugliness that is inherent in our ordinary relations in this area. This could be proven by considering all the particular perversions of sexual feeling; but I hope that in this matter I will be excused for the incompleteness of my argumentation, and will allow myself to limit myself to one more general and less disgusting anomaly in the area of ​​sexual feeling. In many persons, almost always male, this feeling is aroused predominantly, and sometimes exclusively, by one or another part of a being of the other sex (for example, hair, arm, leg), or even by external objects - certain parts of clothing, etc. This anomaly is called fetishism in love. The abnormality of such fetishism obviously lies in the fact that the part is put in the place of the whole, belonging in the place of the essence. But if the hair or legs that excite the fetishist are parts of the female body, then this body itself in its entire composition is only a part of the female being, and, however, so many lovers of the female body in itself are not called fetishists, are not recognized as crazy and are not subjected to no treatment. What is the difference, however? Is it really that an arm or a leg represents a smaller surface than the whole body?

If, according to the principle, the sexual relationship in which a part is put in place of the whole is abnormal, then people who in one way or another buy the body of women to satisfy sensual needs and thereby separate the body from the soul should be recognized as sexually abnormal, mentally ill, fetishists in love or even necrophiliacs. Meanwhile, these lovers of carrion who die alive are considered normal people, and almost all of humanity goes through this second death.

An unsuppressed conscience and an unhardened aesthetic feeling, in full agreement with philosophical understanding, unconditionally condemn any sexual relationship based on the separation and isolation of the lower animal sphere of the human being from the higher ones. And outside of this principle it is impossible to find any firm criterion for distinguishing between what is normal and what is abnormal in the genital area. If the need for certain physiological acts has the right to be satisfied at any cost simply because it is a need, then the need of that “fetishist in love”, for whom the only desired object in sexual relations is a hanging object, has exactly the same right to satisfaction. on a rope, a just washed and not yet dried apron. If we find a difference between this eccentric and some chronic visitor to the Lupanars, then, of course, this difference will be in favor of the fetishist; the attraction to a wet apron is undoubtedly natural, genuine, for it is impossible to come up with any false motives for it, while many people visit lupanars not at all out of real need, but for false hygienic reasons, out of imitation of bad examples, under the influence of intoxication, etc. .

Psychopathic manifestations of sexual feelings are usually condemned on the grounds that they do not correspond to the natural purpose of sexual intercourse, namely reproduction. To assert that a freshly washed apron or even a worn shoe can serve to produce offspring would, of course, be a paradox; but it is hardly less paradoxical to suppose that the institution of public women corresponds to this purpose. “Natural” debauchery is obviously just as contrary to childbearing as “unnatural”, so from this point of view there is not the slightest reason to consider one of them normal and the other abnormal. If, finally, we take the point of view of harm to ourselves and others, then, of course, a fetishist who cuts off locks of hair from unfamiliar ladies or steals their scarves damages other people’s property and his reputation, but can this harm be compared with that which is caused by the unfortunate distributors of a terrible infection that is a fairly common consequence of the “natural” satisfaction of a “natural” need?

III

I say all this not to justify unnatural, but to condemn supposedly natural ways of satisfying sexual feelings. In general, speaking about naturalness or unnaturalness, we should not forget that man is a complex being and what is natural for one of his constituent principles or elements may be unnatural for another and, therefore, abnormal for the whole person. For man as an animal it is completely natural to have unlimited satisfaction of his sexual needs through a certain physiological action, but man as a moral being finds this action contrary to his higher nature and is ashamed of it... As a social animal, it is natural to limit the physiological function related to other persons by the requirements of social and moral law. This law from the outside limits and closes animal functions, making it a means for a social goal - the formation of a family union. But this does not change the essence of the matter. The family union is based, after all, on the external material union of the sexes: it leaves the human animal in its former disintegrated, half-hearted state, which necessarily leads to further disintegration of the human being, that is, to death.

...If man, in addition to his animal nature, were only a social and moral being, but of these two opposing elements - equally natural for him - the final triumph would remain with the first. The social and moral law and its main objectification - the family - introduce the animal nature of man into the boundaries necessary for tribal progress; they streamline mortal life, but do not open the path to immortality. The individual being is just as exhausted and dies in the social and moral order of life, as if it remained exclusively under the law of animal life. An elephant and a raven turn out to be even much more durable than the most virtuous and careful person. But in man, in addition to animal nature and the social and moral law, there is also a third, higher principle - spiritual, mystical or divine. Here, too, in the area of ​​love and sexual relations, it is that “stone that is built carelessly,” and “that is at the forefront.” Before the physiological union in animal nature, which leads to death, and before the legal union in the social-moral order, which does not save from death, there must be a union in God, which leads to immortality, because it does not limit only the mortal life of nature by human law, but regenerates it with the eternal and incorruptible power of grace. This third, and in the true order, the first element with its inherent requirements is completely natural for man in his entirety as a being involved in the highest divine principle and mediating between it and the world. And the two lower elements - animal nature and social law - which are also natural in their place, become unnatural when taken separately from the higher and placed in its place. In the area of ​​sexual love, not only is it unnatural for a person to have any disorderly satisfaction of sensual needs, devoid of the highest spiritual sanctification, like animals (in addition to various monstrous phenomena of sexual psychopathy), but also unworthy of a person and unnatural are those unions between people of different sexes that are concluded and supported only on the basis of civil law, exclusively for moral and social purposes with the elimination or inaction of the actual spiritual, mystical principle in man. But it is precisely this unnatural, from the point of view of an integral human being, rearrangement of these relationships that dominates our lives and is recognized as normal, and all condemnation is transferred to the unfortunate psychopaths of love, who only lead to ridiculous, ugly, sometimes disgusting, but for the most part harmless, comparatively extremes this is the most generally recognized and dominant perversion.

IV

Those diverse perversions of the sexual instinct that psychiatrists deal with are only outlandish varieties of the general and all-pervasive perversion of these relations in humanity - that perversion by which the kingdom of sin and death is supported and perpetuated. Although all three relationships or connections between the sexes are natural for man as a whole, namely the connection in animal life or according to the lower nature, then the moral-everyday connection or under the law and, finally, the connection in spiritual life or the connection in God - although all these three relationships exist in humanity, but they are carried out unnaturally, namely separately from one another, in the opposite of their true meaning and order of succession and in unequal measure.

In the first place in our reality is what truly should be in the last place - the animal physiological connection. It is recognized as the basis of the whole matter, whereas it should be only its extreme conclusion. For many here the foundation coincides with the completion: they do not go further than animal relationships; for others, on this broad basis the social and moral superstructure of a legal family union rises. Here the everyday mean is taken as the pinnacle of life, and what should serve as a free, meaningful expression, in a temporary process, of eternal unity, becomes the involuntary channel of meaningless material life. And then, finally, as a rare and exceptional phenomenon, pure, spiritual love remains for a select few, from which all real content has already been taken away in advance by other, lower connections, so that it has to be content with dreamy and fruitless sensitivity without any real task and life goal. This unhappy spiritual love resembles the little angels of ancient painting, who have only a head and wings and nothing else. These angels do nothing for lack of arms and cannot move forward, since their wings only have enough strength to keep them motionless at a certain height. Spiritual love is in the same sublime, but extremely unsatisfactory position. Physical passion has a certain purpose, albeit a shameful one; a legal family union also fulfills a task that is still necessary, albeit of mediocre merit. But spiritual love, as it still is, obviously has no business at all, and therefore it is not surprising that the majority of efficient people are glaub an keine Liebe der nimmt’s fur Polsie.

This exclusively spiritual love is, obviously, the same anomaly as exclusively physical love and an exclusively everyday union. The absolute norm is the restoration of the integrity of the human being, and whether this norm is violated in one direction or another, the result in any case is an abnormal, unnatural phenomenon. Pseudo-spiritual love is not only an abnormal phenomenon, but also completely aimless, for the separation of the spiritual from the sensory, to which it strives, is already best accomplished by death. True spiritual love is not a weak imitation and anticipation of death, but a triumph over death, not the separation of the immortal from the mortal, the eternal from the temporal, but the transformation of the mortal into the immortal, the perception of the temporal into the eternal. False spirituality is the denial of the flesh, true spirituality is its rebirth, salvation, resurrection.

V

“In the day that God created man, in the image of God he created him, husband and wife he created them.”
“This mystery is great, but I speak into Christ and into the Church.” The originally mysterious image of God, according to which man was created, does not refer to any separate part of the human being, but to the true unity of its two main sides, male and female. As God relates to his creation, as Christ relates to his Church, so a husband should relate to his wife. As much as these words are generally known, their meaning is just as little understood.

Just as God creates the universe, just as Christ creates the Church, so man must create and create his female complement. That a man represents an active principle, and a woman a passive one, that the former should educationally influence the mind and character of the latter - these are, of course, elementary propositions, but we do not mean this superficial relationship, but that “great mystery” that the apostle speaks of. This great mystery represents an essential analogy, although not an identity, between the human and the divine relation.

After all, the creation of the Church by Christ already differs from the creation of the universe by God as such. God creates the universe out of nothing, i.e. from the pure potentiality of being or emptiness, successively filled, that is, receiving from the action of God the real forms of intelligible things; whereas Christ creates the Church from material already diversified, animated and in its parts self-active, which only needs to be given the beginning of a new spiritual life in a new higher sphere of unity.

Finally, for his creative action, a man has in the person of a woman a material equal to himself in the degree of actualization, over which he enjoys only the potential advantage of initiative, only the right and obligation of the first step on the path to perfection, and not actual perfection.

God relates to creation as everything relates to nothing, that is, as the absolute fullness of being to the pure potentiality of being, Christ relates to the Church as actual perfection to the potentiality of perfection, formed into actual perfection, the relationship between husband and wife is the relationship of two differently acting, but equally imperfect potencies, achieving perfection only by the process of interaction. In other words, God receives nothing from the creature for himself, that is, no increase, but gives everything to it; Christ does not receive from the Church any increase in the sense of perfection, but gives it all perfection, but He receives from the Church an increase in the sense of the fullness of His collective body; finally, a man and his female “second self” complement each other not only in the real, but also in the ideal sense, achieving perfection only through interaction. A person can constructively restore the image of God in the living object of his love only in such a way as to at the same time restore this image in himself; and for this he does not have the strength within himself, for if he had it, he would not need restoration; not having it in oneself, one must receive it from God. Consequently, a man (husband) is a creative, constructive principle in relation to his female complement, not in himself, but as an intermediary or conductor of Divine power. Actually, Christ creates not by any separate power of his, but by the same creative power of the Divine; but being God himself, He possesses this power by nature and actu, while we by grace and assimilation, having in ourselves only the ability (potency) to perceive it.

Moving on to presenting the main points in the process of realizing true love, that is, in the process of integrating a human being or restoring the image of God in him, I foresee the bewilderment of many: why climb to such inaccessible and fantastic heights about such a simple thing as love? If I considered the religious norm of love fantastic, then I, of course, would not propose it. In the same way, if I had in mind only simple love, that is, ordinary, ordinary relations between the sexes - what happens, and not what should be - then I, of course, would refrain from any reasoning on this subject, for, undoubtedly, these simple relations belong to those things about which someone said: it’s not good to do this, but it’s even worse to talk about it. But love, as I understand it, is, on the contrary, an extremely complex, obscure and confusing matter, requiring quite conscious analysis and research, in which one must care not about simplicity, but about truth... A rotten stump is undoubtedly simpler than a multi-colored tree, and a corpse simpler than a living person. The simple attitude towards love ends with that final and extreme simplification called death. Such an inevitable and unsatisfactory end to “simple” love prompts us to look for another, more complex beginning for it.

VI

The work of true love of all is based on faith. The root meaning of love, as has already been shown, is the recognition of unconditional significance for another being. But in its empirical existence, subject to real sensory perception, this being has no unconditional significance: it is imperfect in its dignity and transitory in its existence. Consequently, we can affirm its unconditional significance only through faith, which is the revelation of things hoped for and the revelation of things unseen. But what does faith refer to in the present case? What, exactly, does it mean to believe in the unconditional, and thereby infinite, significance of this individual person? To assert that it in itself, as such, in this particularity and isolation, has an absolute meaning would be as absurd as it is blasphemous. Of course, the word “adoration” is very common in the field of love relationships, but the word “madness” also has its legitimate application in this field. So, observing the law of logic, which does not allow the identification of contradictory definitions, as well as the commandment of true religion, which prohibits idolatry, we must understand by faith in the object of our love the affirmation of this object as existing in God and in this sense having infinite significance. Of course, this transcendental attitude towards one’s other, this mental transference of him into the sphere of the Divine presupposes the same attitude towards oneself, the same transference and affirmation of oneself in the absolute sphere. I can recognize the unconditional significance of a given person or believe in him (without which true love is impossible) only by affirming him in God, therefore, by believing in God himself and in myself as having in God the focus and root of my being. This triune faith is already a certain internal act, and this act lays the first foundation for the true reunification of man with his other and the restoration in him (or in them) of the image of the triune God. An act of faith in the actual conditions of time and place is prayer (in the main, non-technical sense of the word). The inseparable union of self and other in this regard is the first step towards real union. This step in itself is small, but without it nothing further or greater is possible.

Since for God, eternal and inseparable, everything is together and at once, all in one, then to affirm any individual being in God means to affirm it not in its individuality, but in everything or, more precisely, in the unity of everything. But since this individual being in its given reality does not enter into the unity of everything, it exists separately, as a materially isolated phenomenon, then the object of our believing love necessarily differs from the empirical object of our instinctive love, although it is inseparably connected with it. This is one and the same person in two different forms or in two different spheres of existence - ideal and real. The first is still just an idea. But in real, believing and seeing love, we know that this idea is not our arbitrary invention, but that it expresses the truth of an object that has not yet been realized in the sphere of external real phenomena.
Although this true idea of ​​a beloved object shines through a real phenomenon in moments of love pathos, it appears in a clearer form at first only as an object of imagination. The specific form of this imagination, the ideal image in which I clothe my beloved face at the moment, is created, of course, by me, but it is not created out of nothing, and the subjectivity of this image as such, that is, appearing now and here before the eyes of my soul , does not at all prove the subjective, i.e. for me only existing, nature of the imaginary object itself. If for me, who is on her side of the transcendental world, a certain ideal object appears only as a product of my imagination, this does not interfere with its full reality in another, higher sphere of existence. And although our real life is outside this higher sphere, our mind is not completely alien to it, and we can have some speculative concept of the laws of its existence.

And here is the first, fundamental law: if in our world separate and isolated existence is a fact and reality, and unity is only a concept and an idea, then there, on the contrary, reality belongs to unity or, more precisely, all-unity, and separateness and isolation exist only potentially and subjectively. And from here it follows that the existence of this person in the transcendental sphere is not individual in the sense of local real existence. There, that is, in truth, the individual person is only a living and real ray, but an undivided ray of one ideal luminary - the all-unified essence. This ideal person, or personified idea, is only an individualization of the total unity, which is indivisibly present in each of these individualizations. So, when we imagine the ideal form of a beloved object, then under this form the all-unified essence itself is communicated to us. How should we think about it?

VII

God as one, distinguishing from himself his other, that is, everything that is not himself, unites all this with himself, imagining it together and at once, in an absolutely perfect form, therefore, as one. This other unity, different, although inseparable from the original unity of God, is a passive, feminine unity in relation to God, since here the eternal emptiness (pure potency) perceives the fullness of divine life. But if the basis of this eternal femininity is pure nothingness, then for God this nothingness is eternally hidden by the image of absolute perfection perceived from the Divine. This perfection, which is only just being realized for us, for God, that is, in truth, already exists in reality.

That ideal unity to which our world strives and which is the goal of the cosmic and historical process, it cannot only be someone’s subjective concept (for whose?), it truly exists as the eternal object of God’s love, as His eternal other. This living ideal of God's love, preceding our love, contains within itself the secret of its idealization. Here the idealization of a lower being is at the same time the beginning realization of a higher being, and this is the truth of love pathos. Full realization, the transformation of the individual female being into a ray of eternal Divine femininity, inseparable from its radiant source, will be a real, not only subjective, but also an objective reunion of the individual person with God, the restoration in him of the living and immortal image of God.

The object of true love is not simple, but dual: we love,

Firstly, that ideal (not in the abstract sense, but in the sense of belonging to another sphere of existence) being that we must introduce into our ideal world, and,

Secondly, we love that natural human being who provides living personal material for this realization and who through this is idealized not in the sense of our subjective imagination, but in the sense of his actual objective change or rebirth.

Thus, true love is inseparably both ascending and descending (or those two Aphrodites, which Plato distinguished well, but separated poorly). For God, His other (i.e., the universe) has from time immemorial the image of perfect femininity, but He wants this image to be not only for Him, but so that it is realized and incarnated for every individual being capable of uniting with it. Eternal Femininity itself strives for the same realization and incarnation, which is not just an inactive image in the mind of God, but a living spiritual being, possessing all the fullness of strength and action. The entire world and historical process is the process of its implementation and embodiment in a great variety of forms and degrees.

In sexual love, truly understood and truly realized, this divine essence receives the means for its final extreme embodiment in the individual life of man. a way of the deepest and at the same time the most external, really tangible connection with him. Hence those glimpses of unearthly bliss, that breath of unearthly joy that accompanies even imperfect love and which make it, even imperfect, the greatest pleasure of people and gods. Hence the deepest suffering of love, powerless to hold on to its true object and moving more and more away from it.

Here that element of adoration and boundless devotion, which is so characteristic of love and has so little meaning if it relates only to its earthly subject, separately from the heavenly, receives its rightful place.

The mystical basis of the dual or, better to say, two-sided nature of love resolves the question of the possibility of repeating love. The heavenly object of our love is only one, always and for everyone the same - the eternal Femininity of God; but since the task of true love is not only to worship this highest object, but to realize and embody it in another, lower being of the same female form, but of earthly nature, which is only one of many, then its only meaning for the lover, of course, may be transitory. But whether it should be so and why, this is already decided in each individual case and depends not on the single and unchangeable mystical basis of the true love process, but on its further moral and physical conditions, which we must consider.