In man, rich in so many physical elements, the beautiful does not end
with the exterior form, nor should love spring from the source of
voluptuousness alone. No deformity, no disease in him who would
procreate men: this is hygiene; but the hundred forms of moral and
intellectual beauty, relieved only by a soft shade of sex, can and
should awaken ardent and tenacious passions that do not vanish with the
sun of youth. Thus, while love can dispense its delights to every man
and every woman, perfect love should be born of the contemplation and
adoration of every type of beauty; and when that of the form begins to
fade, let moral beauty shine in all its power, and, later still, let the
beauty of thought appear to us in all its brilliant majesty, so that
while one star disappears, another twinkles, and from the slumbering
desires of the senses we feel a stronger yearning awaken, the yearning
for possessing the treasures of sentiment and thought of a creature who
is all ours, and whom, if we suddenly loved her for the beauty of form,
we now love and will continue to love for her beauty of kindness,
culture, ideas, and everything that a human being can boast of beauty
and greatness. Even character and thought have a profoundly sexual type,
and feminine kindness can be adored by us, just as virile courage is
admired by the sweet and tender nature of woman. When we have loved in a
woman not only the beautiful female, but a whole nature imbued with all
the beauties and graces of the human Eve, the longest life will not
suffice to satisfy our desires of possession, and at the last hour of
extreme old age we have still some new conquest to make, and some desire
is reawakened, while the accumulation of most sweet memories fills the
void which youth, by fleeing, has left behind itself. Sublime triumph of
human nature, in which love survives the senses exhausted,
voluptuousness which is mute, the beauty of forms which is buried, while
a warm ray of light shines on the silvery heads of two old beings who
still love each other because they still desire each other and because
heart and mind unite in an embrace, sexual by origin, but ideal for the
heights attained. Our study on love in old age will complete this
picture, certainly one of the most beautiful and seductive in the great
museum of love: a picture which we should all desire to represent in the
late years of our life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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