ut exist in what we call "matter" also. Consequently love,
when in its craving for complete reality it demands "the eternal
idea of the body" does not demand that this eternal idea should be
realized in any actual body.

When a demand of this kind is made, it is not made by love but by
the sexual instinct, and it is invariably doomed to a ghastly
disillusion. For it is just this very craving, namely that in some
actual human body "the eternal idea of the body" should be
realized, that the sweet and terrible madness of sexual love
continually implies. But real love, the love which is the supreme
synthesis of those ideas which represent the creative power in the
ultimate duality, can never be disillusioned.

And it cannot be disillusioned because it is able to see, beneath the
chaotic litter and unessential debris of "matter," the eternal idea of
"matter" and because it is able to see, under the lamentable
repulsiveness and offensiveness of so much actual flesh and
blood, "the eternal idea of flesh and blood."

Love's attitude toward this element of litter and chaos in the
universe is sometimes an attitude of humorous toleration and
sometimes an attitude of destructive fire. Love's attitude towards
the repulsive and the offensive in human souls and bodies is
sometimes an attitude of humorous toleration and sometimes an
attitude of destructive fire.

But along with this passion of destruction, which is so essential a
part of the passion of creation, and along with this humorous
indulgence, there necessarily mingles, where human beings are
concerned, an element of profound pity. The best concrete
example of the mood I am trying to indicate is the emotion which
any one would naturally feel in the presence of some torturer or
tyrant whom he had slain, or even whom he had surprised asleep.
For the prerogative of both sleep and death is that they obliterate
the repulsive elements of flesh and blood and set free its eternal
idea.

And this is true of death even after the ghastly process of chemical
dissolution has actually begun. A loathing of matter as matter, a
hatred and contempt for the body as the body, is therefore a
manifestation not of love but of the opposite of love. Such a
loathing of the physiological is a sign of a weakening of the
creative energy. It is also a sign of the stiffening of the resistant
"malice," or "motiveless malignity," which opposes creation. What
the energy of love directs its desire and i