THE NATURAL 



indistinct place in the crowd, beside the monkeys, 

 rodents and bats. Psychologically, one must quite often 

 compare him with insects, marvellous flowering of the 

 life force. And what clarity from the process, lights 

 showering in from all corners. Feminine coquetry, the 

 flight before the male, the return, the game of yes and 

 no, the uncertain attitude seeming at once cruel and 

 amorous, and not peculiar to the female human? Not 

 at all. Celimene is of all species, and heteroclite above 

 all; she is both mole and spider, she is sparrow and 

 cantharide, she is cricket and adder. A celebrated author 

 in a play called, I think, La Fille Sauvage, represents 

 feminine love as aggressive. An error. The female 

 attacked by the male thinks always of retreat, she 

 never, never attacks, save in certain species which 

 appear to be very ancient and which have persisted 

 to our time only by prodigies of equilibrium. Even 

 there one must make reserves, for when one sees the 

 female aggressive, it is perhaps at the second or fourth 

 phase of the game, not at the beginning. The female 

 sleeps until the male arouses her, then she gives in, plays, 

 or takes flight. The virgin's reserve before man is but 

 a very moderate bashfulness if compared with the pell- 

 mell flight of a young mole intacta. 



This is but one fact of a thousand. There is not 

 one way of instinctive man with a maid which is not 

 findable in one or other animal species; this is perfectly 

 comprehensible seeing that man is an animal, submitted 

 to the essential instincts which govern all animality; 

 there being everywhere the same matter animate with 

 the same desire: to live, to perpetuate life. Man's supe- 

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