PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



wrong side and a right side; there is neither a good nor 

 evil manner, a right nor a wrong, but there are states of 

 life which fulfill their purpose, since they exist and since 

 existence is their aim. Doubtless the discord between 

 the will and the organs is constant in all stages of life, 

 and much accentuated in man where the wishes are multi- 

 plex, but where the nervous system remains, in short, the 

 master, and governs even to the danger of its life. It 

 is not the chance of circumstances and of milieu that has 

 swelled the spermoduct of certain fish into papilla, 

 and then into penis, or formed a sheath for this penis 

 at the expense of the caudal fin; it is the will force of 

 cerebral ganglia. The evolution of the nervous system 

 is always in advance of that of the organs, this is a 

 cause of incoherence, and at the same time, of progress 

 and change. The day when the brain has no more 

 orders to give, or when the organs have exhausted their 

 faculties of obedience, the specie is fixed; if fixed in a 

 state of incoherence it moves toward certain extinction, 

 as the monotremes. Many species seem to have been 

 destroyed in full evolution by the contradictory exi- 

 gencies of a tyrannous and capricious nervous system. 



It is necessary that the male cephalopode fecundate 

 the female. How will he do it, having no organic sperm- 

 vector? He will make one. One thought for a long 

 time that the female argonauts were preyed on by a 

 parasite. This mysterious beast is nothing but the 

 instrument of fecundation. The male has a pouch where 

 sperm accumulates; in this pouch are made up little 

 bags called spermatophores, the animalcule move to- 

 ward the third arm of the argonaut (nautilus), and this 

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