Monday, January 20, 2003

The Intimate Journal of Henri Amiel: April 2, 1873

A voluptuous shepherd girl quells Attila. A baker's maid extinguishes Raphael. Delilah, with her tresses, does more than a whole people to reduce Samson ... In short, the sexual function is the most terrible of the tributes that nature has imposed upon us. And of all the ways of escaping this bondage, the surest, the only good one, is obedience to its law. Calm comes from using it, not from privation or mutilation. Woman cures us of the curiosity, the desire and the madness of sex. She cures us of the ill that she causes. She tempts, but she satiates; she excites, but she allays. And reciprocally. Each sex thus attains a balanced humanity only through the other sex. Sexu- ality is an imperfection in the individual which can be corrected only by pairing ...

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