THE NATURAL 



flood, bringing new crops, new invention. And as Gour- 

 mont says, there is only reasoning where there is initial 

 error, i.e., weakness of the spurt, wandering search. 



In no case can it be a question of mere animal quantity 

 of sperm. You have the man who wears himself out and 

 weakens his brain, echo of the orang, obviously not 

 the talented sieve; you have the contrasted case in the 

 type of man who really can not work until he has relieved 

 the pressure on his spermatic canals. 



This is a question of physiology, it is not a question 

 of morals and sociology. Given the spermatozoic thought, 

 the two great seas of fecundative matter, the brain lobes, 

 mutually magnetized, luminous in their own knowledge 

 of their being; whether they may be expected to seek 

 exterior "luxuria," or whether they are going to repeat 

 Augustine hymns, is not in my jurisdiction. An exterior 

 paradise might not allure them "La betise humaine est 

 la seule chose qui donne une idee de 1'infini," says Renan, 

 and Gourmont has quoted him, and all flesh is grass, a 

 superior grass. 



It remains that man has for centuries nibbled at this 

 idea of connection, intimate connection between his sperm 

 and his cerebration, the ascetic has tried to withhold all 

 his sperm, the lure, the ignis fatuus perhaps, of wanting 

 to super-think; the dope-fiend has tried opium and every 

 inferior to Bacchus, to get an extra kick out of the organ, 

 the mystics have sought the gleam in the tavern, Helen 

 of Tyre, priestesses in the temple of Venus, in Indian 

 temples, stray priestesses in the streets, un-uprootable 

 custom, and probably with a basis of sanity. A sense 

 of balance might show that asceticism means either a 

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