f the "death-force" over love or
over the "life-force" is attended by exquisite and poignant
pleasure, a pleasure which culminates in unutterable ecstasy. The
shallow ethical thinkers who regard "evil" as a negation are
obviously thinkers whose consciousness has never penetrated into
the depths of their own souls. Pain and pleasure for such thinkers
must be entirely sensationalized. They cannot have experienced, to
any profound depth, the kind of pain and pleasure which are
purely emotional.

The condition of the soul which gives itself up to the "death-force"
or to the malignant power which resists creation may be sometimes
a condition of thrilling and exultant pleasure. As we have
already indicated, the normal condition of the soul, wavering
and hesitating between good and evil, is liable to be changed into a
profound melancholy, when it is confronted by the "illusion of
dead matter." But, as we have also discovered, if, in the soul thus
contemplating the "illusion of dead matter," evil is more potent
than good, there may be a thrilling and exquisite pleasure.

The "death-force" in our own soul leaps in exultation to welcome
the "death illusion" in material objects. Upon this illusion, which it
has itself projected, it rejoices to feed. There is a "sweet pain" in
the melancholy it thus evokes; a "sweet pain" that is more delicate
than any pleasure; and it is a mistake to assume that even the
insanity which this aberration may result in is necessarily an
insanity of distress. It may be an insanity of ecstasy. All this is
profoundly associated with the aesthetic sense; and we may note
that the diabolical exultation with which many great artists and
writers fling themselves upon the obscene, the atrocious, the
cruel and the abominable, and derive exquisite pleasure from
representing these things is not an example of the love in them
overcoming the malice but an example of the "death-force" in
them leaping to respond to the death-force in the universe.

It is just here that we touch one of the profoundest secrets of the
aesthetic sense. I refer to that condition of the soul when the
creative energy which is life and love, suffers an insidious
corruption by the power which resists creation and which is malice
and death. This psychological secret, although assuming an
aesthetic form, is closely associated with the sexual instinct.

The sexual instinct, which is primarily creative, may easily, by the
insidious corrupti