ature!"

"Yes, but I say that Nature is our enemy, that we must always fight
against Nature, for she is continually bringing us back to an animal
state. You may be sure that God has not put anything on this earth that
is clean, pretty, elegant or accessory to our ideal; the human brain has
done it. It is man who has introduced a little grace, beauty, unknown
charm and mystery into creation by singing about it, interpreting it, by
admiring it as a poet, idealizing it as an artist and by explaining
it through science, doubtless making mistakes, but finding ingenious
reasons, hidden grace and beauty, unknown charm and mystery in the
various phenomena of Nature. God created only coarse beings, full of the
germs of disease, who, after a few years of bestial enjoyment, grow old
and infirm, with all the ugliness and all the want of power of human
decrepitude. He seems to have made them only in order that they may
reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and then die like ephemeral
insects. I said reproduce their species in an ignoble manner and I
adhere to that expression. What is there as a matter of fact more
ignoble and more repugnant than that act of reproduction of living
beings, against which all delicate minds always have revolted and always
will revolt? Since all the organs which have been invented by this
economical and malicious Creator serve two purposes, why did He not
choose another method of performing that sacred mission, which is the
noblest and the most exalted of all human functions? The mouth, which
nourishes the body by means of material food, also diffuses abroad
speech and thought. Our flesh renews itself of its own accord, while we
are thinking about it. The olfactory organs, through which the vital
air reaches the lungs, communicate all the perfumes of the world to the
brain: the smell of flowers, of woods, of trees, of the sea. The ear,
which enables us to communicate with our fellow men, has also allowed us
to invent music, to create dreams, happiness, infinite and even physical
pleasure by means of sound! But one might say that the cynical
and cunning Creator wished to prohibit man from ever ennobling and
idealizing his intercourse with women. Nevertheless man has found love,
which is not a bad reply to that sly Deity, and he has adorned it with
so much poetry that woman often forgets the sensual part of it. Those
among us who are unable to deceive themselves have invented vice and
refined debauc