Erotic symbolism works in its finer manifestations by means of the
idealizing aptitudes; it is the field of sexual psychology in which that
faculty of crystallization, on which Stendhal loved to dwell, achieves its
most brilliant results. In the solitary passage in which we seem to see a
smile on the face of the austere poet of the _De Rerum Natura_, Lucretius
tells us how every lover, however he may be amused by the amorous
extravagances of other men, is himself blinded by passion: if his mistress
is black she is a fascinating brunette, if she squints she is the rival of
Pallas, if too tall she is majestic, if too short she is one of the
Graces, _tota merum sal_; if too lean it is her delicate refinement, if
too fat then a Ceres, dirty and she disdains adornment, a chatterer and
brilliantly vivacious, silent and it is her exquisite modesty.[66] Sixteen
hundred years later Robert Burton, when describing the symptoms of love,
made out a long and appalling list of the physical defects which the lover
is prepared to admire.[67]
Yet we must not be too certain that the lover is wrong in this matter. We
too hastily assume that the casual and hasty judgment of the world is
necessarily more reliable, more conformed to what we call "truth," than
the judgment of the lover which is founded on absorbed and patient study.
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