another, they contend for a third life, which as yet is
without life. Love is a contention, and there are animal species in
which the male maltreats the female in his union with her, and other in
which the female devours the male after being fertilized by him.

It has been said that love is a mutual selfishness; and, in fact, each
one of the lovers seeks to possess the other, and in seeking his own
perpetuation through the instrumentality of the other, though without
being at the time conscious of it or purposing it, he thereby seeks his
own enjoyment. Each one of the lovers is an immediate instrument of
enjoyment and a mediate instrument of perpetuation, for the other. And
thus they are tyrants and slaves, each one at once the tyrant and slave
of the other.

Is there really anything strange in the fact that the deepest religious
feeling has condemned carnal love and exalted virginity? Avarice, said
the Apostle, is the root of all evil, and the reason is because avarice
takes riches, which are only a means, for an end; and therein lies the
essence of sin, in taking means for ends, in not recognizing or in
disesteeming the end. And since it takes enjoyment for the end, whereas
it is only the means, and not perpetuation, which is the true end, what
is carnal love but avarice? And it is possible that there are some who
preserve their virginity in order the better to perpetuate themselves,
and in order to perpetuate something more human than the flesh.

For it is the suffering flesh, it is suffering, it is death, that lovers
perpetuate upon the earth. Love is at once the brother, son, and father
of death, which is its sister, mother, and daughter. And thus it is that
in the depth of love there is a depth of eternal despair, out of which
spring hope and consolation. For out of this carnal and primitive love
of which I have been speaking, out of this love of the whole body with
all its senses, which is the animal origin of human society, out of this
loving-fondness, rises spiritual and sorrowful love.

This other form of love, this spiritual love, is born of sorrow, is
born of the death of carnal love, is born also of the feeling of
compassion and protection which parents feel in the presence of a
stricken child. Lovers never attain to a love of self abandonment, of
true fusion of soul and not merely of body, until the heavy pestle of
sorrow has bruised their hearts and crushed them in the same mortar of
suffering. Sensual