Schopenhauer's
hero puts the purport of love not in the actual individual, but in a
conception, and annihilates the value of the individual and the unique.
Every great emotion is an end in itself, and whatever we may read into
it of "purposes" and "expediencies," is an invention, and independent of
the emotion itself. The aim of the purely spiritual love of the second
stage was not propagation, and yet it was an emotion whose loftiness
cannot easily be surpassed. With the deification of woman love reached
far beyond the beloved into infinitude, and the phenomenon of the
love-death renders all the supposed generic purpose of love impossible.
But even if we ignored love altogether and admitted the existence of the
sexual instinct only, its mysterious endeavour in the interest of the
species would still remain pure imagination, and a conception far
inferior to that of the winged god of love. The instinct does not
possess a trace of "discretion," takes no interest in the weal and woe
of humanity, but is utterly selfish, seeking its own gratification and
nothing else.
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