PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



source of the sound. And even then, is it to hear better? 

 Is it not rather to reflect and to hear at the same time, 

 to manage an interior concentration with which the eye, 

 essentially an explorative organ, would interfere? 



It is in love that this alliance of all the senses is most 

 intimately exercised. In superior animals, as well as in 

 man, each sense, together or in groups, comes to reinforce 

 the genital sense. None remain inactive, eye, ear, scent, 

 touch, even taste come into play. Thus one explains the 

 gleam of plumage, the dance, song, sexual odours. The 

 female eye, in birds, is more sensitive than the male eye; 

 the contrary is true of humanity; but female birds and 

 women are particularly moved by song or words. The 

 two sexes in dogs have, equally, recourse to scent; sight 

 seems to play but an insignificant role in their sexual 

 access, since minuscule canine beasts do not fear to ad- 

 dress themselves to monsters, which for man would be 

 in proportion more than that of a mammoth. Insects 

 before mating often caress each other with their mysteri- 

 ous antennae; the male is sometimes given a sounding 

 apparatus: cricket and grasshopper drum to charm their 

 companions. 



It is not necessary to explain how in humans, especially 

 in the male, all the senses concur in the amour, at least 

 when moral and religious prejudices do not stop their 

 impetus. It should be so, in an animal so sensitive, and 

 of so complex and multiple a sensibility. The abstention 

 of a single sense from the coupling is enough to enfeeble 

 the pleasure very greatly. The coldness of many wo- 

 men may proceed less from a diminution of their genital 

 sense, than from the general mediocrity of their 

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