CHAPTER IV[ToC]
THE SEXUAL APPETITE
If we sum up the three preceding chapters we arrive at the philosophical conclusion that reproduction depends on the general natural tendency of all living beings to multiply indefinitely. Fission and sexual reproduction arise from the simple fact that the growth of each individual is necessarily limited in space as well as time. Reproduction is thus destined to assure the continuation of life; the individual dies but is perpetuated in his progeny. We do not know why the crossing of individuals is rendered necessary by the phenomenon of conjugation. On this subject we can only build hypotheses, but the study of nature shows us that where conjugation ceases reproduction is etiolated and finally disappears, even when it is still possible for a certain time.
From the commencement of life there is thus a powerful law of attraction with the object of reproduction. At first there are unicellular organisms, in which one cell penetrates the other in the act of conjugation. Their substances combine intimately, while the molecules of each nucleus become so arranged as to give the new individual a more fresh and powerful energy of growth.
In the lower multicellular plants and animals which bud, fresh buds live at the expense of the old trunk to give life to new branches, and the male cells or pollen fecundate the female cells so as to disperse the germs capable of growth and of thus reproducing the species. It is also the same in the madrepores and other agglomerated animals (such as the solitary worms), composed of parameres or metameres, so long as a single central nervous system does not coordinate the metameres, or primary agglutinated animals, into a single organism.
In the higher animals, the complex polycellular individuals formed by the agglomeration of several primitive animals, are transformed into a higher and mobile unity by the aid of the great vital apparatus called the nervous system, which becomes the mental director of the living organism and invests it with its individual character. However, this higher unity of life, which always becomes more psychic, that is to say, at the same time intellectual, sentimental and voluntary, by its complication and its numerous relations with other individuals, this unity called the central nervous system cannot do without the necessity for reproduction. In animal phylogeny, as soon as hermaphrodism has ceased and each individual has become the sole bearer of one of the two kinds of sexual cells, the species will eventually disappear if the male cells cannot reach the female cells by the active movement of the whole individual. Thus is produced the marvelous phenomenon of the desire of increase and reproduction, originally peculiar to the male cell, penetrating the nervous system, that is to say life and soul in its entirety, the life of the higher unity of the individual. An ardent desire, a powerful impulse thus arises in the nervous system at the time of puberty and attracts the individual toward the opposite sex. The care and the pleasure of self preservation, which had hitherto fully occupied his attention, become effaced by this new impulse. The desire to procreate dominates everything. A single pleasure, a single desire, a single passion lays hold of the organism and urges it toward the individual of the opposite sex, and to become united with it in intimate contact and penetration. It is as if the nervous system or the whole organism felt as if it had for the moment become a germinal cell, so powerful is the desire to unite with the other sex.
In some beautiful verses the German poet-philosopher Goethe (West-Oestlicher Divan, book VIII, "Suleika") describes the desire to procreate (p. 63):
Und mit eiligem Bestreben
Sucht sich, was sich angehört,
Und zu ungemessnem Leben
Ist Gefühl und Blick gekehrt.
Sei's ergreifen, sei es raffen,
Wenn es nur sich fasst und hält!
Allah braucht nicht mehr zu schaffen,
Wir erschaffen seine Welt!