y means
unique.

Thoughtful critics contend that Don Juan was an autocrat, a destroyer, a
criminal nature with satanic tendencies, bent on the enslavement of
women, on their social and moral death; that conquest only, not
enjoyment, was his passion. I do not altogether reject this
interpretation, but it fastens too exclusively on the external and the
obvious, and overlooks the essential. What is the reason of his
preposterous procedure? Is he really actuated by the evil desire to
injure the women he woos? Such a motive may occur occasionally (the
Vicomte de Valmont was so constituted), but it cannot be regarded as the
guiding principle of a life--and above everything its pettiness is the
exact reverse of so great and demoniacal a character as Don Juan. Were
he conqueror in the highest sense, then--ascetic and proud--he would be
content with the mere consciousness of victory. But his whole attitude
belies the idea of a conqueror; he is not in the least interested in the
women to whom he makes love. They are as necessary to him as "the air he
breathes," but they are unable to give him what he seeks. At the moment
of disappointment he abandons them in disgust, innocent of any despotic
desires (which would pre-suppose interest). As far as he is concerned,
women exist only for the purpose of quickening something in his soul.
But his soul remains dead; divine love has no part in him, he cannot be
saved and is doomed to eternal damnation.

But what is the reason why women cannot resist him? Let us first settle
the point as to why women are attracted to men. I will answer this
question briefly, and though my answer may appear dogmatical, it need
not therefore be wrong. Women know very little of man, but there is one
thing they feel with unfailing certainty, and that is whether their sex
is of great or of small significance to him. (I am only alluding to the
general effect of men on women, not to genuine personal love which is
always incommensurable.) The greater the importance a man attaches to
women, the more readily do they respond to his influence. They are
attracted by his erotic will, not by one or the other of his spiritual
or physical qualities. Women cannot resist a man to whom they mean much,
everything. It is as if they were compelled to throw themselves into the
chasm of his vacuity--every fresh victim with the fond hope of filling
it--but all of them perish. And yet, at the moment of their defeat they
are supremel