Hence it is that we never
succeed in reducing love either to a purely intellectual or to a purely
volitional element, putting aside that part in it which belongs to the
feeling, or, if you like, to the senses. For, in its essence, love is
neither idea nor volition; rather it is desire, feeling; it is something
carnal in spirit itself. Thanks to love, we feel all that spirit has of
flesh in it.
Sexual love is the generative type of every other love. In love and by
love we seek to perpetuate ourselves, and we perpetuate ourselves on the
earth only on condition that we die, that we yield up our life to
others. The humblest forms of animal life, the lowest of living beings,
multiply by dividing themselves, by splitting into two, by ceasing to be
the unit which they previously formed.
But when at last the vitality of the being that multiplies itself by
division is exhausted, the species must renew the source of life from
time to time by means of the union of two wasting individuals, by means
of what is called, among protozoaria, conjugation. They unite in order
to begin dividing again with more vigour. And every act of generation
consists in a being's ceasing to be what it was, either wholly or in
part, in a splitting up, in a partial death. To live is to give oneself,
to perpetuate oneself, and to perpetuate oneself and to give oneself is
to die. The supreme delight of begetting is perhaps nothing but a
foretaste of death, the eradication of our own vital essence.
Pages:
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214