THE NATURAL 



affairs, while peace reigns over their hearthstones. In 

 the strange dissemblance between human races the 

 Aryans have, for the same purpose, made use of the 

 religious check-rein, of prayer, of the idea of sin, and 

 finally of liberty, that is to say of the pleasure of vanity 

 which bewilders the woman, and invites her to please 

 someone else before satisfying herself. 



Woman is not the only mammal for whom, apart from 

 the peculiar form of the penis, the first approaches are 

 painful; but there is perhaps no female who has better 

 reason than the mole for fearing the male. Her vulva, 

 exteriorly unperforated, is covered by hide, downy as 

 that of the rest of her body; she must, to be fecundated, 

 undergo a veritable surgical operation. One knows how 

 these beasts live, burrowing in search of food, in long 

 subterranean galleries, of which the wastage, pushed up 

 here and there forms the mole-ridge. In rutting time, 

 forgetting his hunting, the male starts in quest of a 

 female; as soon as he divines her, he starts digging in her 

 direction, furiously excavating the hostile earth. Feeling 

 herself hunted, the female flees. Hereditary instinct 

 makes her tremble before the tool which shall open her 

 belly, before the redoubtable gimlet-armed penis which 

 has perforated her mother and all her female ancestors. 

 She flees, digs, as the male advances, cross-hatching tun- 

 nels in which her persecutor may end by losing his way; 

 but the male also is educated by heredity: he does not 

 follow the female but circles round her, heads her off, 

 ends by catching her in an impasse, and while she is still 

 ramming her blind muzzle into the earth, he grips, oper- 

 ates, fecundates. Charming emblem of modesty, this 

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