BODY.
Remember I have never pretended that separate from you I am qualified for happiness; I affirm only that I contribute my full share of the pleasures that we enjoy together, and that if in this world you were deprived of my society you would be melancholy and forlorn. If, then, you ask me what advantages are furnished by me, I answer that one of the chief pleasures of life is the love between the two sexes.
MIND.
And do you pretend to be the author of that love? I think more nobly of the passion, and regard it as a feeling of the mind alone.
BODY.
Such has always been your doctrine; but I believe that I, though sprung from the earth, have quite as much power to inspire love as you, who are made of such great qualities as reason, imagination, memory, and I know not how many more. Lovers very commonly profess their fidelity to you, while in truth it is I on whom all their secret affections are fixed, for there are many whose notions of body and mind are so confused that they perpetually mistake one for the other. A young man declares himself enamoured of the mind of some beautiful woman, and yet when he is absent from her his thoughts are wholly occupied with her figure, and he passes his time in considering her countenance, her hair, her neck, while her reason, imagination, and memory do not once occur to him. When he is in her presence he takes great delight in pressing her hand, without betraying the least wish to press her intellect. Indeed, there can be no doubt that in most instances in which the admiration is professed to you I secretly supplant you, and win to myself all the real tenderness. If two young persons were reduced to the mere soul, and deprived of eyes, lips, and all the other conveniences which are now so instrumental in loving, I do not understand how they could contrive to love each other at all.
MIND.
I shall not condescend to reason with you any longer.