PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



life but reproduction. Doubtless many animals seem, 

 during a relatively long existence, to have but brief 

 sexual periods, but one must make allowance for the 

 period of gestation. In principle the sole occupation 

 of any creature is to renew, by the sex act, the form 

 wherewith it is clothed. To this end it eats, to this 

 end builds. This act is so clearly the aim, unique and 

 definite that it constitutes the entire life of a very great 

 number of animals, which are, notwithstanding, ex- 

 tremely complex. 



The ephemera is bora in the evening, and copulates, 

 the female lays eggs during the night, both are dead in 

 the morning, without even having looked at the sun. 

 These little animals are so little destined for anything 

 else save love that they have not even mouths. They 

 eat not, neither do they drink. One sees them hover- 

 ing in clouds above the water, among the reeds. The 

 males, although more numerous than the females, per- 

 form a multiple duty, and fall exhausted. The purity 

 of such a life is to be admired in many butterflies: the 

 silk -moths, heavy and clumsy, shake their wings for an 

 instant at birth, couple and die. The Great Peacock 

 or Oak Bombyx, much larger than they, eats no more 

 than they do: yet we see him traverse leagues of country 

 in his quest of the female. He has only a rudimentary 

 proboscis and a fake digestive apparatus. Thus his two 

 or three days' existence passes without one egoistic act. 

 The struggle for life, much vaunted, is here the struggle 

 to give life, the struggle for death, for if they can live 

 three days in search of the female they die as soon as 

 the fecundation is accomplished. 



