it is terrible to say so,—with love; we employ our reason, not to condemn and determine this passion, but to deck it out with the peacock feathers of spirituality.
This is where les extrèmes se touchent. To ascribe all the attraction between the sexes to sexual lust seems very material, whereas, on the contrary, it is a most spiritual relation—to segregate from the spiritual sphere everything which does not belong to it, in order to be able to esteem it highly.
Passion, the source of the greatest calamities, we do not lower or moderate, but, on the contrary, fan with all our means, and then we complain that we suffer.
A woman who dresses herself up fans the passion in herself. Even while dressing others up, she lives in imagination in lust. For this reason dresses exert such an influence on women.
Fornicator is not a curse word, but a condition (I think harlot is, too), a condition of unrest, curiosity, and demand for novelty (like a drunkard), which comes from intercourse for pleasure's sake, not with one, but with many. One can contain oneself, but a drunkard is a drunkard, and a fornicator is a fornicator, and they fall with the first weakening.
What weakens us in our struggle with temptation is this, that we busy ourselves in advance with the idea of victory, that we take up a task which is above our strength, a task which it is not in our power to do, or not to do. We say to ourselves in advance, like a monk: "I promise to be chaste," meaning by it external chastity. This is, in the first place, impossible, because we cannot imagine those conditions in which we may be placed, and in which we shall not withstand the temptation. And, besides, it is bad; it is bad, because it does not aid us in reaching
