PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



riority is in the immense diversity of his aptitudes. 

 Animals are confined to one series of gestures, always 

 the same ones, man varies his mimicry without limit; 

 but the target is the same, and the result is the same, 

 copulation, fecundation and eggs. 



Belief in liberty has been born from the diversity of 

 human aptitude, from man's power to reach the neces- 

 sary termination of his activity by different routes, or to 

 dodge this termination and suicide in himself the species 

 whose future he bears. It, this liberty, is an illusion 

 difficult not to have, an idea which one must shed if 

 one wants to think in a manner not wholly irrational, 

 but it is recompensingly certain that the multiplicity of 

 possible activities is almost an equivalent of this liberty. 

 Doubtless the strongest motive always wins, but today's 

 stronger is tomorrow's weaker, hence a variety of human 

 gaits feigning liberty, and practically resulting therein. 

 Free will is only the faculty of being guided successively 

 by a great number of different motives. When choice is 

 possible, liberty begins, even though the chosen act is 

 rigorously determined and when there is no possibility 

 of avoiding it. Animals have a smaller liberty, restricted 

 in proportion as their aptitudes are more limited; but 

 when life begins liberty begins. The distinction, from 

 this view-point, between man and animal is quantitative, 

 and not qualitative. One must not be gulled by the 

 scholastic distinction between instinct and intelligence; 

 man is as full of instincts as the insect most visibly 

 instinctive; he obeys them by methods more diverse, 

 that is all there is to it. 



If it is clear that man is an animal, it is also clear 



