850 
PASSIONAL 200L0GY. 
stance more precious, more odorous, a thousand times more splen- 
did than the stuff of the Queen of England’s mantle. Oh ! let me 
hide the sorrow that is killing me ; the eye of the profane shall not 
deflower that alcove of my virgin life which love, alas ! has forgot- 
ten.” She has spoken, and her last perfume exhales, and her 
head wilts down upon its stalk. 
How many others have perished, a prey to the gnawing worm — 
to misery, to hunger, to thirst, and to cold ! 
Oh yes ! the flowers confess the universal law of love, like sul- 
phuric acid and potassium, the law of attraction and of happiness 
impressed on the hearts of all beings by the signet of God. 
The luxury and lustre of the flower affirm that happiness is the 
end of satisfied passion, its withering and faded colors, that suf- 
fering is the end of passion compressed. The flowers, in obey- 
ing the law of God, who commands pleasure, show themselves 
more intelligent than a crowd of civilized moralists, who pretend to 
re-make the work of God, and who go about preaching that morti- 
fication and fasting, from which they abstain as much as possible 
on their own personal account. And what is certainly very whim- 
sical is, that the so-styled God of sorrow, even the God of the Cath- 
olics, has not at all the air of disapproving the flowers which most 
zealously obey his command, Love ye one another .... and that 
it is, on the contrary, precisely to those which ruin themselves fast- 
est in toilet expenses and perfumes, that He accords a privileged 
place in His temples and on His altars. 
The vine is certainly a holy plant, and a plant cherished by the 
Lord and His ministers, since it is with the blood of the vine that 
the priest administers communion. We shall see, nevertheless, of 
what perseverance and of what incredible efforts the holy plant is 
capable, in surmounting obstacles which hinder the development of 
its passional dominant, a passion generally very peaceable, the ne- 
cessity of gossiping .... See Comparative Psychology,” page 70. 
Let those serious persons, those civilized moralists, in whom the 
lecture of the preceding pages has insphed a sentiment of pity or 
of anger ; let all who claim for the author of this book a place in 
Charenton, [an insane asylum,] wait before they condemn me, un- 
til I have told them all — until I have named my accomplices. 
