The view that begetting and destroying are related
functions, is based on the supposition that love is bound up with
propagation. This is the fateful error of the modern theory of love, a
rationalistic, metaphysical abstraction, which touches no corresponding
chord in the human soul. To base the relationship of love and death on
an association of becoming and declining is a beautiful idea, but
nothing more. Modern synthetic love produces this relationship in its
metaphysical perfection out of itself; it is foreign alike to pure
sexuality and to spiritual love. (Wherever the desire to destroy is
found hand in hand with sensuality, morbid instincts are at play.)
It frequently occurs that lovers commit suicide together because
external circumstances prevent their union. This is a step corresponding
to suicide from offended vanity or incurable disease; life has become
unbearable to the individual haunted by a fixed idea, and he throws it
away. But this has nothing whatever to do with the love-death; it is a
purely negative act of despair, whereas the love-death is an altogether
positive act, namely, the will to win to a higher (and to the intellect
inconceivable and paradoxical) metaphysical unity.
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