165 



ELEVEN 



love in the desert 



THE ANCIENTS CALLED LOVE THE MOTHER OF ALL THINGS, 



but they didn't know the half of it. They did not know, for 

 instance, that plants as well as animals have their love life 

 and they supposed that even some of the simpler animals 

 were generated by sunlight on mud without the interven- 

 tion of Venus. 



Centuries later when Chaucer and the other medieval 

 poets made "the mystic rose" a euphemism for an anatom- 

 ical structure not commonly mentioned in pohte society, 

 they too were choosing a figure of speech more appropri- 



