h the wise indulgence thereof, is the final master of all
arts! Let it be understood that in Rabelais sex is treated with the
same reverence, and the same humor, as meat and wine. Why not? Is
not the body of man the temple of the Holy Ghost? Is it not
sacrosanct and holy within and without; and yet, at the same time, is
it not a huge and palpable absurdity?

Those who suffer most from Rabelais' manner of treating sex are the
incurably vicious. The really evil libidinous people, that is to say the
spiteful, the mean, the base and inhuman, fly from his presence, and
for the obvious reason that he makes sex-pleasure so generous, so
gay, so natural, so legitimate, that their dark morbid perverted
natures can get no more joy out of it. Their lust, their lechery, is a
cold dead Saurian thing, a thing with the gravity of a slow-worm--and
when this great laughing and generous sage comes forth into
the sunshine with his noble companies of amorous and happy
people, these Shadow-lovers, these Leut-lovers, these Fleshly
Sentimentalists, writhe in shame, and seek refuge in a deeper
darkness. How strained and inhuman, too; and one might add, how
mad and irrelevant--that high, cold, disdainful translunar scorn with
which the "moral-immoralism" of Nietzsche scourges our poor flesh
and blood. One turns with relief to Zarathustra after associating with
pious people. But, after Rabelais, even that terrific psychologist
seems contorted and _thin._

For after all it is generosity that we cry out for. Courage without
generosity hugs its knees in Hell.

From the noble pleasures of meat and drink and sex, thus generously
treated; we must turn to another aspect of Rabelais' work--his
predilection for excrement. This also, though few would admit it, is
a symbolic secret. This also is a path of initiation. In this peculiarity
Rabelais is completely alone among the writers of the earth. Others
have, for various reasons, dabbled in this sort of thing--but none
have ever piled it up--manure-heap upon manure-heap, until the
animal refuse of the whole earth seems to reek to the stars! There is
not the slightest reason to regret this thing or to expurgate it.
Rabelais is not Rabelais, just as life is not life, without it.

It is indeed the way of "salvation" for certain neurotic natures. Has
that been properly understood? There are people who suffer
frightfully--and they are often rare natures, too, though they are
sometimes very vicious--from the