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XVIII

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

Even under Slubgob you e the routine technique of sexual temptation, and since, for us spirits, this whole subject is one of considerable tediu) I will pass it over But on the larger issues involved I think you have a good deal to learn

The Enemy’s demand on humans takes the forated reat victory, we have rendered the former very difficult to them The latter, for the last few centuries, we have been closing as a way of escape We have done this through the poets and novelists by persuading he humans that a curious, and usually short-lived, experience which they call "being in love" is the only respectable ground for ht to, render this excitee which does not do so is no longer binding This idea is our parody of an idea that came fronition of the axio, and, specially, that one self is not another self My good is ains another loses Even an inani all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them A self does the sa; for us, itof will and freedoer "To be" means "to be in co more nor less than one continued attempt to evade this very obvious truth He ais are to be ood of one self is to be the good of another This impossibility He calls love, and this same monotonous panacea can be detected under all He does and even all He is - or claims to be Thus He is not content, even Himself, to be a sheer arithmetical unity; He claims to be three as well as one, in order that this nonsense about Love may find a foothold in His own nature At the other end of the scale, He introduces into anism, in which the parts are perverted from their natural destiny of co on sex as thehumans is only too apparent froht have been, froht have been er self preyed upon a weaker - as it is, indeed, a the spiders where the bride concludes her nuptials by eating her grooratuitously associated affection between the parties with sexual desire He has also iven the parents an i the Faanism, only worse; for the members are more distinct, yet also united in a , in fact, turns out to be si in Love

Now comes the joke The Enemy described a married couple as "one flesh" He did not lay "a happily married couple" or "a couple who married because they were in love", but you can et that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples Mere copulation, for hiet the hu in love" ere in fact plain descriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce, affection and the family, humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire which they call "being in love" is the only thing that e either happy or holy The error is easy to produce because "being in love" does very often, in Western Europe, precede ns, that is, with the intention of fidelity, fertility and good will; just as religious emotion very often, but not always, attends conversion In other words, the hue a highly-coloured and distorted version of soes follow In the first place, huift of continence can be deterred froe as a solution because they do not find the with any other motive seeard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the trans lower than a storlect to e-service very offensive) In the second place any sexual infatuation whatever, so long as it intends arded as "love", and "love" will be held to excuse a uilt, and to protect hi a heathen, a fool, or a wanton But more of this in my next,

Your affectionate uncle

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