I at first defined love: "the attraction of the two sexes towards each other with a view to reproduction," adding that this attraction becomes purified by the adjunction of the Ideal. I even made a most beautiful discovery with respect to this, namely: that there is a sexual division because it is impossible to idealize anything but the objective.--_Vol._ III. AUTHOR. How you run on! Then all of the animal and vegetable species in which the sexes are separated have an ideal in love? An ideal in the brain of a horse or a mare may pass, since there is a brain; but where will you lodge that of the male and female flower? PROUDHON. On my honor, I never thought of asking myself that question. We will return, if you please, to the definition of human love. I say, then, that love is an attraction given with a view to reproduction; notwithstanding, I think, also, that to love, properly called, progeny is odious.--_Id._ AUTHOR. But this is a contradiction... PROUDHON. Am I to blame for that! You know, that in my eyes, man and woman form _the organ of justice, the humanitary Androgynus_. Now I affirm that love is the moving power of justice, because it is this that attracts towards each other the two halves of the couple. It is through love, therefore, that the conscience of man and woman is opened to the knowledge of justice, which does not hinder it from being "the most powerful fatality by which nature could have found the secret of obscuring reason within us, of afflicting the conscience, and of chaining the free will."--_Id._ AUTHOR. The moving power of justice, the sentiment which opens the conscience of the sexes to justice, and which forms the judicial organ, disturbs the reason and afflicts the conscience! But this is a contradiction. PROUDHON. Once more, am I to blame for it? Love, sought for itself, renders man unworthy, and woman vile; and stop! "love, even when sanctioned by justice, I do not like."--_Id._ AUTHOR. Have you not said that without the love inspired in man by the beauty of woman, there would be neither art, nor science, nor industry, nor justice; that man would be only a brute? PROUDHON. Ah! I have said much more!... This love, the motor of justice, the father of civilization, is, notwithstanding, _the abolition of justice_, which exacts that it should be cast aside as soon as its office of motor is performed. The impulse, the movement given, it must be dispensed with. In marriage, it should play the smallest part possible; "all amorous conversation, even between betrothed lovers, even between husband and wife, is indecorous, destructive of domestic respect, of the love of labor and the practice of social duty." A marriage of pure inclination is nearly allied to shame, and "the father that gives his consent to it is deserving of censure."--_Id._ AUTHOR. A father deserving of censure because he unites those who yield to the motive power of justice!