IV.
The Practice of Love
HAVING dealt with the theoretical aspect of the art of loving, we now are confronted
with a much more difficult problem, that of the practice of the art of loving. Can
anything be learned about the practice of an art, except by practicing it?
The difficulty of the problem is enhanced by the fact that most people today, hence
many readers of this book, expect to be given prescriptions of "how to do it yourself,"
and that means in our case to be taught how to love. I am afraid that anyone who
approaches this last chapter in this spirit will be gravely disappointed. To love is a
personal experience, which everyone can only have by, and for himself; in fact, there
is hardly anybody who has not had this experience in a rudimentary way, at least,
as a child, an adolescent, an adult. What the discussion of the practice of love can do
is to discuss the premises of the art of loving, the approaches to it as it were, and the
practice of these premises and approaches. The steps toward the goal can be practiced
only by oneself, and discussion ends before the decisive step is taken. Yet, I believe
that the discussion of the approaches may be helpful for the mastery of the art - for
those at least who have freed themselves from expecting "prescriptions."
THEART OF LOV1NG
The practice of any art has certain general requirements, quite regardless of whether
we deal with the art of carpentry, medicine, or the art of love. First of all, the
practice of an art requires discipline. I shall never be good at anything if I do not do
it in a disciplined way; anything I do only if "I am in the mood" may be a nice or
amusing hobby, .but I shall never become a master in that art. But the problem is not
only that of discipline in the practice of the particular art (say practicing every day
a certain amount of hours) but it is that of discipline in one's whole life. One might
think that nothing is easier to learn for modern man than discipline. Does he not
spend eight hours a day in a most disciplined way at a job which is strictly
routinized? The fact, however, is that modern man has exceedingly little selfdiscipline
outside of the sphere of work. When he does not work, he wants to be
lazy, to slouch or, to use a nicer word, to "relax." This very wish for laziness is
largely a reaction against the routinization of life. Just because man is forced for
eight hours a day to spend his energy for purposes not his own, in ways not his own,
but prescribed for him by the rhythm of the work, he rebels and his rebelliousness
takes the form of an infantile self-indulgence. In addition, in the battle against
authoritarianism he has become distrustful of all discipline, of that enforced by
irrational authority, as well as of rational discipline imposed by himself. Without
such discipline, however, life