We see it everywhere. As you say. We are very knowing. We know all sorts of other things too - about how there isn't a unitary ego - how we're made up of conflicting, interacting systems of things - and I suppose we believe that? We know we are driven by desire, but we can't see it as they did, can we? We can never say the word Love, do we - we know it's a suspect ideological construct - especially Romantic Love - so we have to make a real effort of imagination to know what it felt like to be them, here, believing in these things - Love - themselves - that what they did mattered -

Possession (A.S. Byatt)