CHAPTER XI
Fatal Love
Animals arc subjected by narurc to a striking condition, called rutting, which urges them to reproduce their species. Only man is capable of a suNime sentiment which makes him choose his companion and tempers the carnal appetites by the most absolute devotion. This sentiment is called love. Among animals, the male mounts all the females indiscriminately and the females submit to all the males. Man is made to love an individual woman, and the woman who is worthy of respect keeps herself for her own man.
In men as in women, the allurement of the senses does not deserve the name of love: it resembles the rut in animals. Libertines, both male and female, are brute beasts.
Love gives an intuition of the absolute to the human soul, because it is absolute itself. It does not exist otherwise. When love reveals itself in a great soul, it is eternity which is revealed.
In the woman whom he loves, a man sees and adores divine motherhood, and bestows his heart for ever on the virgin whom he aspires to award with the dignity of mother.
The woman adores, in the man whom she loves, that divine fecundity which shall create in her the object of all her vows, the aim of her life, the crown of all her ambitions: the child!
So these two souls are only one which must be completed by a third. They arc a single man in three souls as God is One in Three Persons.
Our intelligence is made for truth and our heart for love. This is why Saint Augustin spoke so truly when he said to God: ‘Thou hast made us for Thyself, 0 Lord, and our heart can find no rest until it has found its rest in Thee.’ Now, God who is infinite can only be loved by man by means of an intermediary. He causes Himself to be loved by the man in the woman and by the woman in the nun. That is why the honour and happiness o(those whom
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