, is his "private" property and is something fixed,
permanent, static, unchanging. But all this desire for the eternally
"static" is superficial and self-deceiving.

Analysed down to its very depth, what this evil possessive instinct
desires is what all malice desires, namely the annihilation of life.
Pretending to itself that it desires to hug to itself, in eternal
immobility, the thing it loves, what in its secret essence it really
desires is that thing's absolute annihilation. It wants to hug that
thing so tightly to itself that the independence of the thing
completely vanishes. It wants to destroy all separation between
itself and the thing, and all liberty and freedom for the thing. It
wants "to eat the thing up" and draw the thing into its own being.

Its evil desire can never find complete satisfaction until it has
"killed the thing it loves" and buried it within its own identity. It
is this evil possessive element in sexual love, whether of a man for a
woman or a woman for a man, which is the real evil in the sexual
passion. It is this possessive instinct in maternal love which is the
evil element in the love of a mother for a child. Both these evil
emotions tend to make war upon life.

The mother, in her secret sub-conscious passion, desires to draw
back her infant into her womb, and restore it to its pre-natal
physiological unity with herself. The lover in his secret evil
sub-consciousness, desires to draw his beloved into ever-increasing
unity with himself, until the separation between them is at an end
and her identity is lost in his identity.

The final issue, therefore, of this evil instinct of possession, this
evil instinct of private property, can never be anything else than
death. Death is what the ultimate emotion of malice desires; and
death is an actual result of the instinct of possession carried to an
extreme limit.

The static immobility and complete "unchangeableness" which the
possessive instinct pretends to itself is all it desires is really
therefore nothing but a mask for its desire to destroy. The
possessive instinct is, in its profoundest abyss, an amorist of death.
What it secretly loves is the dead; for the dead alone can never
defraud it of its satisfaction. Wherever love exercises its creative
energy the possessive instinct relaxes its hold. Love expands and
diffuses itself. Love projects itself and merges itself The creative
impulse is always centrifugal. The indrawing movement,