canst thou “effect” anything without strong arms and fists? Is there known to thee, in distinction from the power of the moral order of the world, “another and more living motive power” than the lever of the criminal court? Is not Nature without body also an “empty, abstract” idea, a “jejune subtilty?” Is not the mystery of Nature the mystery of corporeality? Is not the system of a “living realism” the system of the organized body? Is there, in general, any other force, the opposite of intelligence, than the force of flesh and blood,—any other strength of Nature than the strength of the fleshly impulses? And the strongest of the impulses of Nature, is it not the sexual feeling? Who does not remember the old proverb: “Amare et sepere vix Deo competit?” So that if we would posit in God a Nature, an existence opposed to the light of intelligence,—can we think of a more living, a more real antithesis, than that of amare and sapere, of spirit and flesh, of freedom and the sexual impulse?
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 super-sensual 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
