THE ADVENTURE
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world and the individual fate have, so to speak, not yet been differ–
entiated from one another. For this reason, he is said to have a
"touch of genius." The "sleepwalking certainty" with which the ad–
venturer leads his life becomes comprehensible in terms of that pe–
culiar constellation whereby he considers that which is uncertain and
incalculable to be the premises of his conduct, while others consider
only the calculable. Unshakeable even when it is shown to be denied
by the facts of the case, this certainty proves how deeply that con–
stellation is rooted in the life-conditions of adventurous natures.
The adventure is a form of life an undetermined number of ex–
periences may acquire. Nevertheless, our definitions make it under–
standable that one of them, more than
all
others, tends to appear
in this form: the erotic-so that our linguistic custom hardly lets
us understand by "adventure" anything but an erotic one. The love
affair, even if short-lived, is by no means always an adventure. The
peculiar psychic qualities at whose meeting-point the adventure is
found must be added to this quantitative matter. The tendency of
these qualities to enter such a conjuncture will become apparent step
by step.
A love affair contains in clear association the two elements
which the form of the adventure characteristically conjoins: conquer–
ing force and unextortable concession, winning by one's own abilities
and dependence on the luck which something incalculable outside
ourselves bestows on us. A degree of balance between these forces,
gained by virtue of his sense of their sharp differentiation, can, per–
haps, be found only in the man. Perhaps for this reason, it is of
compelling significance that, as a rule, a love affair is an "adventure"
only for men; for women it usually falls into other categories. In
novels of love, the activity of woman is typically permeated by the
passivity which either nature or history has imparted to her character;
on the other hand, her acceptance of happiness is at the same time
a concession and a gift.
The two poles of conquest and grace (which manifest them–
selves in many variations) stand closer together in woman than
in
man. In man, they are, as a matter of fact, much more decisively
separated. For this reason, in man their coincidence
in
the erotic
experience stamps it quite unambiguously as an adventure. Man plays
