Just as hatefulness comes from hating, so love creates beauty. This is only another way of expressing the fact that beauty has as little to do with the sexual impulse as the sexual impulse has to do with love. Beauty is something that can neither be felt, touched, nor mixed with other things; it is only at a distance that it can be plainly discerned, and when it is approached it withdraws itself. The sexual impulse which seeks for sexual union with woman is a denial of such beauty; the woman who has been possessed and enjoyed, will never again be worshipped for her beauty. I now come to the second question: what are the innocence and morality of a woman? It will be convenient to start with a few facts that concern the origin of all love. Bodily cleanliness, as has often been remarked, is in men a general indication of morality and rectitude; or at least it may be said that uncleanly men are seldom of high character. It may be noticed that when men, who formerly paid little attention to bodily cleanliness, begin to strive for a higher perfection of character, they at the same time take more trouble with the care of the body. In the same way, when men suddenly become imbued with passion they experience a simultaneous desire for bodily cleanliness, and it may almost be said of them that only at such a time do they wash themselves thoroughly. If we now turn to gifted men, we shall see that in their case love frequently begins with self-mortification, humiliation, and restraint. A moral change sets in, a process of purification seems to emanate from the object loved, even if her lover has never spoken to her, or only seen her a few times in the distance. It is, then, impossible that this process should have its origin in that person: very often it may be a bread-and-butter miss, a stolid lump, more often a sensuous coquette, in whom no one can see the marvellous characteristics with which his love endows her, save her lover. Can any one believe that it is a concrete person who is loved? Does she not in reality serve as the starting point for incomparably greater emotions than she could inspire? In love, man is only loving himself. Not his empirical self, not the weaknesses and vulgarities, not the failings and smallnesses which he outwardly exhibits; but all that he wants to be, all that he ought to be, his truest, deepest, intelligible nature, free from all fetters of necessity, from all taint of earth.