230 Ideals in the Modern World
the general social world— which Freud, to be fair, does not always
care terribly much about.
Freud is no Romantic, but the intensity of his preoccupation with
erotic life connects him, as we have seen, to the High Romantics.
Freud’s anti- Romanticism takes a simple form: he believes that only
a fool is willing to make his erotic life into his spiritual life. Only
a deluded man or woman— a Romantic— believes that he and his
works can be made new through merger with a beloved. Erotic love,
according to Freud, is best understood as “over- estimation of the
erotic object.” Why are we inclined to overestimate the beloved?
One answer is that many of us have no god and no gods, and so
cannot live without enchantment of some sort. We cannot bear ver y
much reality. We are creatures who require our illusions. There have
been many sources of illusion in the West, but the most pressing,
because the most recent in vintage, is the idea that the sexual life
can be the way to rebirth.
Aristophanes’ myth suggests that we can fi nd the beloved who is
our other half and dwell in bliss, and generations of questing Ro-
mantics have concurred. Some forget a half of the quest: they do not
know that love must produce renovation in all areas of life, and that
if it does not do so, it is not High Romantic love. Others— the
modernists— believe that imagination can get along perfectly well
without the inspiration that Eros provides. And this may be true or
it may not. T. S. Eliot is a remarkable poet, but whether he ever
leaves the Waste Land or not— even in the supposed affi rmations of
“ Little Gidding”—is an open question.
So what then is “over- estimation of the erotic object”? The line
strikes directly to the heart of High Romanticism. For the Romantic
estimates the beloved—he will never descend to use such a term as
“object”— highly indeed. She is his other half; he is hers. They pro-
vide each other the lineaments of gratifi ed desire. Together they