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INSTINCTIVE PLANNING

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mistake to suppose—as some abstract thinkers seem to do always, and most people at some moment of purely spiritual exaltation—that the love of a man and a woman each for the other is, even at its very highest, devoid of physical emotion. The original Creator did not manifestly so intend. The world of thought is an abstract world whose inner shrine is where soul meets soul. The world of life is the world of the heart, and its beating is the sway of the pendulum between soul and flesh. The world of flesh is the real world; wrought of physical atoms in whose recurrent groupings is the elaborated scheme of nature. Into this world has been placed Man to live and rule. To this end his body is fixed with various powers and complications and endurances; with weaknesses and impulses and yieldings; with passions to animate, with desires to attract, and animosities to repel. And as the final crowning of this wondrous work, the last and final touch of the Creator's hand, Sex for the eternal renewing of established forces. How can souls be drawn to souls when such are centred in bodies which mutually repel? How can the heart quicken its beats when it may not come near enough to hear the answering throb? No! If physical attraction be not somewhere, naught can develop. Judy, the outspoken, had once almost horrified a little group of matrons who were discussing the interest which a certain young cleric was beginning to take in one of the young female parishioners. When one of them said, somewhat sanctimoniously, that his interest was only in the salvation of her immortal soul, that he was too good a man to ever think of falling in love as ordinary men do, the vivacious old maid replied:

"Not a bit of it, my dear! When a man troubles himself about an individual young woman's soul you may be quite certain that his eyes have not neglected her body. And moreover you will generally, if not always, find that she has a pair of curving red lips, or a fine bust, or a well-developed figure somewhere!"

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