PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



years. There is an order in these things, as in all 

 things, but it is not yet apparent; one notes only, that 

 however long and varied be the parthenogenetic period, 

 it is limited somewhere by the necessity of the female 

 principle being united with the male principle. After 

 all, hereditary fecundation is no more extraordinary than 

 particular fecundation, it is a mode of perpetuating life 

 which the exercise of one's reason should make one 

 consider as perfectly normal. 



One ought, at the end of this summary chapter, to be 

 courageous enough to say that fecundation, as vulgarly 

 understood, is merely an illusion. Taking man and 

 woman (or no matter what dioic metazoaire) the man 

 does not fecundate the woman; what happens is at once 

 more mysterious and more simple. From the male A, 

 the great Male, and from the great Female B are born 

 without any fecundation whatever, spontaneously, little 

 males a and little females b. These little males are 

 called spermatozoides, and the little females, ovules; 

 it is between these new creatures, between these spores, 

 that the fecundating union occurs. One then observes 

 that a and b resolve themselves into a third animal x, 

 which by natural growth becomes either A or B. Then 

 the cycle begins again. The union between A and B is 

 merely a preparation; A and B are nothing but channels 

 carrying a and b, carrying them often far beyond them- 

 selves. Like the plant-lice or drones, the mammifers 

 called man are subject to alternate generation, one 

 parthenogenesis always separating the veritable con- 

 junction of the differentiated elements. Coupling is 

 not fecundation; it is merely the mechanism; its utility 

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