Personality, individuality, consciousness, without Nature, is
nothing; or, which is the same thing, an empty, unsubstantial
abstraction. But Nature, as has been shown and is obvious, is nothing
without corporeality. The body alone is that negativing, limiting,
concentrating, circumscribing force, without which no personality is
conceivable. Take away from thy personality its body, and thou takest
away that which holds it together. The body is the basis, the subject
of personality. Only by the body is a real personality distinguished
from the imaginary one of a spectre. What sort of abstract, vague,
empty personalities should we be, if we had not the property of
impenetrability,--if in the same place, in the same form in which we
are, others might stand at the same time? Only by the exclusion of
others from the space it occupies does personality prove itself to
be real. But a body does not exist without flesh and blood. Flesh and
blood is life, and life alone is corporeal reality. But flesh and blood
is nothing without the oxygen of sexual distinction. The distinction
of sex is not superficial, or limited to certain parts of the body;
it is an essential one: it penetrates bones and marrow. The substance
of man is manhood; that of woman, womanhood. However spiritual and
supersensual the man may be, he remains always a man; and it is the
same with the woman. Hence personality is nothing without distinction
of sex; personality is essentially distinguished into masculine and
feminine. Where there is no thou, there is no I; but the distinction
between I and thou, the fundamental condition of all personality,
of all consciousness, is only real, living, ardent, when felt as the
distinction between man and woman. The thou between man and woman
has quite another sound than the monotonous thou between friends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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