The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [5]
Chapter 11
1. In all species, nature works to renew itself as it works to nourish itself, and to protect itself from danger,
2. Each by its kind and for its kind, in the great work of continuation that is evolution.
3. In humankind the work of renewal lies in the work of affection, the bond of one to another made by desire;
4. Among the objects that nature everywhere offers desire, there is little more worthy of pursuit, little that makes people happier,
5. Than the enjoyment of another who thinks and feels as oneself,
6. Who has the same ideas, experiences the same sensations, the same ecstasies,
7. Who brings affectionate and sensitive arms towards one’s own,
8. Whose embraces and caresses are followed with the existence of a new being who resembles its progenitors,
9. And looks for them in the first movements of life to embrace them,
10. Who will be brought up by their side to be loved together, whose happy birth already strengthens the ties that bind its parents together.
11. If there is anyone who could take offence at the praise given to the most noble and universal of passions, let us evoke nature before him, and make it speak.
12. For nature would say: ‘Why do you blush to hear the praise of pleasure, when you do not blush to indulge its temptations under cover of night?
13. ‘Are you ignorant of its purpose and of what you owe to it?
14. ‘Do you believe that your own mother would have imperilled her life to give you yours if there were not inexpressible charms in the embrace of her husband?
15. ‘Be quiet, unhappy man, and consider that it was this pleasure that pulled you out of nothingness, and gave you life.
16. ‘The propagation of beings is the greatest object of nature. It imperiously solicits both sexes as soon as they have gained their share of strength and beauty.
17. ‘A vague and brooding restlessness warns them of the moment; their condition is mixed with pain and pleasure.
18. ‘At that time they listen to their senses and turn their attention to themselves.
19. ‘But if an individual should be presented to another of the same species and of a different sex,
20. ‘Then the feeling of all other needs is suspended: the heart palpitates, the limbs tremble;
21. ‘Voluptuous images wander through the mind; a flood of sensations runs through the nerves, excites them,
22. ‘And proceeds to the seat of a new sense that reveals itself and torments the body.
23. ‘Sight is troubled, delirium is born; reason, the slave of instinct, limits itself to serving the latter, and nature is satisfied.
24. ‘This is the way things took place at the beginning of the world,
25. ‘And the way they still take place among the silks of the wealthy boudoir, just as in the shadows of the savage’s cave.’
26. Such is the great command of nature, that in a hundred thousand ways and forms, seeds flood in abundance and super-abundance,
27. Sea and air in season float myriads of possible lives; man and animals in season turn to their mates, obedient to desire;
28. Spring sees newborns emerge into light, or call from the nest for sustenance; and at the mother’s breast the suckling lies,
29. Proof that no human law or folly can change the river of life, that must flow in its power from the beginning always onwards,
30. And seek every path to its future, accepting no obstacle or hindrance.
31. For its one monarch is nature, its one guide nature’s hand, its one aim fulfilment of nature’s great imperatives.
Chapter 12
1. I wander afield, thriving in studious thought, through unpathed groves of woods trodden by none before.
2. I delight to come on undefiled fountains there, to drink their cool waters deep,
3. To pluck new flowers, and the leaves of laurel and green myrtle,
4. To make a crown for my head from regions where inquiry never yet garlanded the brow of man.
5. For, since I teach concerning mighty things, and seek to loose man’s mind from coils of blinding ignorance;
6. Since I vouchsafe themes so large, of smallest and greatest, of origin and end, in nature’s broad empire,
7.