PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



if annoying. The human couple has drawn from this ten- 

 dency a thousand erotic fantasies, which, in being disci- 

 plined have ended in the creation of a veritable sexual 

 method, be it disinterested pleasure, be it preservation 

 against fecundity; is this of no importance? How can 

 one lecture about depopulation if one lose sight of this 

 primordial fact? What can normal or patriotic reasoning 

 do against an instinct which has become or rebecome an 

 intelligent and conscious practice, bound to what is deep- 

 est in human sensibility? It is very difficult, especially 

 when dealing with man, to distinguish between normal 

 and abnormal. What is the normal; what the natural? 

 Nature ignores this adjective, and one has dragged out of 

 her bosom many illusions, perhaps in irony, perhaps in 

 ignorance. 



It is not perhaps very useful to describe human 

 cavalage, which is not strictly a cavalage, as the woman 

 is attacked from the front. Veritable cavalage has been, 

 as one knows, praised by Lucretius, although, it has, and 

 this detracts nothing from its merits, an air frankly 

 animal; it is the form of love called by the theologians 

 more bestiarum and by Lucretius more jerarum which is 

 the same thing: 



Et quibus ipsa modis tractetur blanda voluptas, 

 Quoque permagni refert; nam more ferarum, 

 Quadrupedumque magis ritu, plerumque putantur 

 Concipere uxores, quia sic loca sumere possunt, 

 Pectoribus positis, sublatis semina lumbis. 



This mode, considered by Lucretius as the more favour- 

 able to fecundation, is that of most mammifers, of nearly 

 all insects and of many animal families. Apes great and 

 79 



