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The Role of Choice In Love
 The essential core of our individuality is not fashioned from our opinions and experiences; it is not founded upon our temperament, but rather upon something more subtle, more ethereal and independent of these. We are, more than anything else, an innate system of preferences and distastes. Each of us bears within himself his own system, which to a greater or lesser degree is like that of the next fellow, and is always rigged and ready, like a battery of likes and dislikes, to set us in motion pro or contra something. The heart, an acceptance and rejection machine, is the foundation of our personality. Before knowing a total situation we find ourselves gravitating in one particular direction, toward certain particular values. Thanks to this, we are exceedingly wise about situations in which our preferred values are brought into play, and blind about others in which different, whether equal or superior, values exist which are alien to our sensibilities. I wish to add to this idea, which is vigorously supported today by a whole group of philosophers, a second which I have not yet seen mentioned.
It is understandable that in living together with our fellow man nothing interests us so much as discovering what is his range of values, his system of preferences, for this constitutes the ultimate root of his being and the source of his character. Similarly, the historian who wishes to understand an epoch must, first of all, compile a list of the predominant values of the men of that time. Otherwise, the facts and statements which the documents of that age reveal to him will be a dead letter, an enigma and a charade, as are the words and acts of our fellow man if we have not penetrated beneath them and caught a glimpse of what values they serve in his secret self. This self, this nucleus of the heart, is, in fact, concealed to a great extent, even from ourselves who bear it within us--or, rather, who are borne by it. It acts in the subterranean penumbra, in the cellar of one's personality, and it is as difficult for us to perceive as it is to see the span of ground upon which our feet step. Neither can the pupil of an eye view itself. A good part of our lives, moreover, consists in the best-intentioned comedy which we ourselves play for our own benefit. We feign temperaments which are not our own, and we feign them in all sincerity, not to deceive others, but to enhance ourselves in our own eyes. Impersonators of ourselves, we speak and act under the motivation of superficial influences which the social environment or our will exercises upon our organism and which for the moment supplant our authentic lives. If the reader devotes a while to analyzing himself, he will discover with surprise --perhaps with fright--that a great part of "his" opinions and feelings are not his own, that they have not sprung spontaneously from his own personal self, but are instead stray ones, dropped from the social environment into his innermost valley, as dust from the road falls upon the traveler.
Acts and words are not, then, the best clues for identifying a neighbor's intimate secrets. Both are capable of being controlled and feigned. The thief who has made his fortune through crime can one fine day perform a philanthropic act, but he is still a thief. Instead of analyzing words and acts, it is better to notice what seems less important: gesture and facial expression. For the very reason that they are unpremeditated, they reveal information about profound secrets and generally reflect them with exactness.
There are situations, moments in life, in which, unawares, the human being confesses great portions of his ultimate personality, of his true nature. One of these situations is love. In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being which we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.
Someone may wish to refute this with the presumed experience that frequently a woman whom we consider to be of an eminent nature fixes her enthusiasm upon a stupid, vulgar man. But I suspect that those who make this judgment almost always suffer from an optical illusion: they speak from too great a distance, and love, being a gossamer of such delicate woof, can only be observed close up. In many instances, this enthusiasm is only apparent: in reality it does not exist. Genuine and false love comport themselves--when seen from afar--with similar movements. But let us imagine a case in which the enthusiasm is real: what ought we to think? One of two things: either that the man is not so contemptible as we think, or that the woman was not, really, of so select a temperament as we imagined.
In conversations and in university courses (when the occasion arises to define the meaning of what we call "character") I have repeatedly expounded this belief, and I have observed that it almost automatically provokes an initial reaction of protest and resistance. It is as if the idea itself contains some irritating or acid ingredient--why, as a general thesis, should we not flatter ourselves that our loves are a manifestation of our concealed beings?--and it is that automatic resistance which is tantamount to confirmation of its truth. The individual feels that he is caught by surprise, out in the open, because of a breach which he failed to close. We are always annoyed when someone judges us by some facet of our personality revealed by our negligence. They take us unawares, and this irritates us. We should like to be judged with forewarning and to pose, as for a photograph, with postures which we can control at will. (A terror of what is "instantaneous.") Of course, from the point of view of the investigator of the human heart, the most interesting adventure is to penetrate one's fellow man where he least expects it and to catch him in flagranti.
If man's will could completely supplant his spontaneity there would be no reason for delving into the recondite recesses of his personality. But the will can suspend the vigor of spontaneity only for a few moments at a time. In the course of a whole life, the intervention of will over character is practically nil. Our being tolerates a certain amount of falsification through the will: within this measure it is legitimate to say that, rather than falsify, it completes and perfects us. It is the finishing stroke which the mind-intelligence and will--gives to our primogenital clay. Long may this divine intervention of spiritual power remain in all its glory. It is necessary to modify one's illusions about it, however, and not believe that this marvelous influence can exceed a certain limit. Beyond this limit real falsification begins. The fact is that a man who goes against his instinctive inclinations during his entire life is as a consequence instinctively inclined to falseness. There are those who are sincerely hypocritical or naturally affected.
The more present-day psychology penetrates the mechanism of the human being, the more evident it becomes that the role of the will and, in general, of the mind, is not creative, but merely corrective. The will does not incite, but rather deters this or that involuntary impulse which animalistically rises from the subconscious. Its intervention is, then, negative. If it sometimes seems the contrary, it is for the following reason: it constantly occurs that, in the intricacy of our inclinations, appetites, and desires, one acts as a restraint upon the other. The will, when it defers to this restraint, allows the previously shackled inclination to flow and extend itself completely. It seems that our "wanting" has an active power when, actually, all that it has done is open the floodgates that restrained an already existing impulse.
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