§ 36
The most vital emotion is the erotic. I hope I shall not be misunderstood in my use of the term “erotic.” I place it above all the other emotions in dignity and complexity. It is sex plus love and more than that. “All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem.” All the dynamics of the ages in the force of one feeling. It is the physical plus the spiritual, the combination of bodily and psychical, the paradox that makes the individual’s greatest personal happiness consist in his feeling the happiness of another person of the opposite sex, the spiritual force that vitalizes and sublimates every physical thing it touches, the psychical that completely evaporates, if not supported by the most physical, an emotion that, unlike any other emotion, comes from the experience not of other things but of another’s emotions, the only emotion that responds pleasurably to every manifestation of bodily and spiritual activity of the member of the other sex. Erotism is the most nearly perfect type of conjugal love.