Exfoliation 



for which they all exist, and without which they 

 would be considered useless. The more you 

 look into this matter, the plainer it becomes. 

 The lesser desires — the self-preservation desires — 

 hunger, thirst, the desire of power — exist, but 

 when they are satisfied they empty themselves 

 into this one ; they find their interpretation in 

 it. The other desires are nothing by themselves 

 — the most absorbing, avarice, ambition, desire 

 of knowledge, taken alone, stultify themselves 

 — but love perpetuates itself : it is a flame which 

 uses all the rest as its fuel. And this Love, 

 which is the culmination of desire, does it not 

 appear to us as a worship of and desire for the 

 human form ? In our bodies a desire for the 

 bodily human form ; in our interior selves a 

 perception and worship of an ideal human form, 

 the revelation of a Splendour dwelling in others, 

 which — clouded and dimmed as it inevitably 

 may come to be — remains after all one of the most 

 real, perhaps the most real, of the facts of exist- 

 ence ? Desire, therefore — as it exists in man, 

 look at it how you will — as it unfolds and its ulti- 

 mate aim becomes clearer and clearer to itself, 

 is seen to be the desire and longing for the deliver- 

 ance and expression of the real human Being. 

 May it not, must it not, be the same thing in 

 animals and all through creation ? Beginning 

 in the most elementary and dim shapes, does it 

 not grow through all the stages of organic life 

 clearer and more and more powerful, till at last 

 it attains to self-consciousness in humanity and 



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