THE NATURAL 



sexual act is, therefore, the most important of all acts. 

 Without it life comes to an end, and it is absurd to 

 suppose its absence, for in that case thought itself 

 disappears. 



Revolt is useless against so evident a necessity. Our 

 finikin scruples protest in vain; man and the most dis- 

 gusting of his parasites are the products of an identical 

 sexual mechanism. The flowers we have strewn upon 

 love may disguise it as one disguises a trap for wild 

 beasts; all our activities manoeuvre along the edge of 

 this precipice and fall over it one after another; the 

 aim of human life is the continuation of human life. 



Only in appearance does man escape this obligation 

 of Nature. He escapes as an individual, and he submits 

 as a species. The abuse of thought, religious prejudices, 

 vices sterilize a part of humanity; but this fraction is 

 of merely sociological interest; be he chaste or volup- 

 tuary, miserly or prodigal of his flesh, man is in his whole 

 condition subject to the sexual tyranny. All men do 

 not reproduce their species, neither do all animals; the 

 feeble and the late-comers among insects die in their 

 robe of innocence, and many nests laboriously filled by 

 courageous mothers are devastated by pirates or by 

 the inclemency of the sky. Let the ascetic not come 

 boasting that he has freed his blood from the pressure 

 of desire; the very importance which he ascribes to his 

 victory but affirms the same power of the life-will. 



A young girl, before the slightest love affair, will, 



if she is healthy, confess naively that she "wants to 



marry to have children." This so simple formula is the 



legend of Nature. What an animal seeks is not its own 



18 



