We unite
with another, but it is to divide ourselves; this most intimate embrace
is only a most intimate sundering. In its essence, the delight of sexual
love, the genetic spasm, is a sensation of resurrection, of renewing our
life in another, for only in others can we renew our life and so
perpetuate ourselves.
Without doubt there is something tragically destructive in the essence
of love, as it presents itself to us in its primitive animal form, in
the unconquerable instinct which impels the male and the female to mix
their being in a fury of conjunction. The same impulse that joins their
bodies, separates, in a certain sense, their souls; they hate one
another, while they embrace, no less than they love, and above all they
contend with one another, they contend for a third life, which as yet is
without life. Love is a contention, and there are animal species in
which the male maltreats the female in his union with her, and other in
which the female devours the male after being fertilized by him.
It has been said that love is a mutual selfishness; and, in fact, each
one of the lovers seeks to possess the other, and in seeking his own
perpetuation through the instrumentality of the other, though without
being at the time conscious of it or purposing it, he thereby seeks his
own enjoyment. Each one of the lovers is an immediate instrument of
enjoyment and a mediate instrument of perpetuation, for the other.
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