PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



expense of life itself. Pleasure explains nothing. People 

 might simply be commanded to die as a means of repro- 

 duction, they would obey with the same eagerness: this 

 is observed even in humanity. Dithyrambs on pleasure 

 would be misplaced apropos of the mutual ticklings of 

 two snails on a vine-leaf; the subject is rather uncom- 

 fortable. 



Note then two helices, both bisexual, fulfilling exactly 

 the biblical phrase: "he created them male and female"; 

 their genital organs are very well developed; the penis 

 and oviduct opening into a vestibule, which in the act of 

 copulation unbellies itself in part, so that the penis and 

 vagina come in touch with the orifice; mutual intromission 

 takes place. A third organ comes from the vestibule, 

 without analogy in superior animals; it is a little pocket 

 containing a small stiletto, a jewelled dagger; it is an ex- 

 citative organ, the needle to prick up desires. These 

 beasts who have prepared for love by fasting, by long 

 rubbings, by whole days of close pressure, finally come 

 to a decision, the swords come out of their scabbards, 

 they conscientiously stab each other, this causes the 

 penis to rise from its sheath; the double mating is 

 accomplished. 



There are species in which the position of the organs 

 is such that the same individual can not be at the same 

 time the female of the one for whom he acts as male, but 

 he can at that moment serve as female to another male, 

 who is female to a third, and so on. This explains the 

 garlands of spintrian gasteropodes which one sees realiz- 

 ing innocently and according to the ineluctable wish of 

 nature, carnal imaginations that have been the boast of 

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