PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



CHAPTER II 



THE AIM OF LIFE 



The importance of the sexual act. Its ineluctable 

 character. Animals who live only to reproduce them- 

 selves. The strife for love, and for death. Females 

 fecundated at the very instant of birth. The main- 

 tenance of life. 



WHAT is life's aim? Its maintenance. 



But the very idea of an aim is a human illusion. There 

 is neither beginning, nor middle, nor end in the series of 

 causes. What is has been caused by what was, and what 

 will be has for cause the existent. One can neither con- 

 ceive a point of rest nor a point of beginning. Born of 

 life, life will beget life eternally She should, and wants 

 to. Life is characterized on earth by the existence of 

 individuals grouped into species, that is to say having 

 the power, a male being united with a female, to repro- 

 duce a similar being. Whether it be the internal con- 

 joining of protozoaires, or hermaphrodite fecundation, 

 or the coupling of insects or mammifers, the act is the 

 same: it is common to all that lives, and this not only 

 to animals but to plants, and possibly even to such min- 

 erals as are limited by a non-varying form. Of all 

 possible acts, in the possibility that we can imagine, the 

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