THE NATURAL 



the eye, decoration, the toilet, painting; luxuria, music; 

 luxuria, the marvellous exercises of the hand, so marvel- 

 lous that direct hand work can be mimicked by a machine 

 but never equalled; luxuria, flowers, perfumes; luxuria, 

 rapid voyages; luxuria, the taste for landscape; luxuria, 

 all art, science, civilization \luxuria, also the diversity of 

 human gestures, for the animal in his virtuous sobriety 

 has but one gesture for each sense, and that gesture un- 

 varying; or if the gesture, as probable, undergoes a 

 change, it is but a slow, invisible change, and there is at 

 the end but one gesture. The animal is ignorant of di- 

 versity, of the accumulation of aptitudes; man alone is 

 "luxurieux," is libidinous. 



There is a principle which I will call the individualism 

 of species. Each specie is an individual which profits 

 as best it may, for its useful ends, by the instruments 

 which have devolved to it. A specie of hymenoptera 

 feels itself obliged to protect its eggs from new enemies, 

 by digging holes in the ground ; it makes use of the tools 

 which it has, without taking count of the fact that these 

 tools have not been made for excavation; it acts thus at 

 pressure of necessity, as man climbs trees in a flood, or 

 gets onto the roof in case of fire. The need is independent 

 of the organ; it precedes it, and does not always create 

 it. In the sexual act, need commands the gesture: the 

 animal adapts itself to positions which are strange to it, 

 and very difficult. Coupling is nearly always a grimace. 

 One would say that nature has set the male organ here, 

 and the female there, and left to specific ingenuity the 

 care of effecting the junction. 



It is, I think, permitted us to conclude from the medi- 

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