nd it
[sensuality] sees nothing beyond the possession of the object.

But love does not stop at the body--that would be its tomb; it crosses
the limits of it, to rise to the soul in which it is utterly absorbed.
Thus love transfigures the being by consuming its personality, whence it
comes that he who loves, no longer lives his own life, but the life of
the being whom he contemplates.

Let the vulgar continually confound these two things in their
manifestations; let lovers themselves fail to distinguish accurately
between tenderness and sensuality; for me this confusion is henceforth
forbidden, and I can from the first glance boldly separate them, thanks
to the lessons taught me by the inflections of the head.

But let us return to the shoulder. Am I not right in saying that in this
agent I possess the organic criterion of love? Yes, I maintain it. But
let us follow the action of this organ in its various manifestations.

One thing at first amazed me, in view of the part which I felt I must
assign to the shoulder. Whence comes, if the designation of that role be
in conformity with truth,--whence comes the activity so apparent, so
vehement indeed, which the shoulder displays in a movement of anger or
of mere impatience? Whence comes its perfect concomitance or relations
with moral or physical pain? Lastly, whence comes that universal
application which I just now perceived clearly and which, until now, I
had confined to such narrow limits? But if the elevation of the shoulder
is not the criterion of love, if, on the contrary, that movement is met
with again just as correctly associated with the most contradictory
impressions, what can it mean?

Here I was, once again, thrown far back from the discovery that I was so
sure I possessed.

It is very fortunate that I have been neither an author nor a
journalist, and I bless to-day that distrust of self which has saved me
from the mania of writing. I highly congratulate myself on the spirit of
prudence that has invariably made me reply to whoever pressed me to
publish: "When I am old."

Age has come, and it has found me even less disposed to publicity than
ever. This work owes its existence solely to the earnest and continual
solicitations, the sometimes severe demands of deep friendship and
devotion, which it was impossible for me to refuse. This book is not,
then, a spontaneous enterprise on my part; it is the work of friendship.
And if this book has any measure of su