Even if only for a brief space, he
annihilates the higher element and gives himself up to the pleasure of
the base and degraded.
In this connection we are face to face with the strange but still
logical fact, that a man who has completely attained to the third stage
of love, feels even the purely spiritual love as odious in its
incompleteness. It strikes him as unnatural and forced, a feeling which
must, however, not be confused with the ordinary contempt of spiritual
love.
Primitively constituted man knows only undifferentiated sexuality. He
enjoys the nude, and sees no difference between a Venus by Titian and an
ordinary photograph of a nude figure; the aesthete, and more especially
the artist, can never understand that a work of art may be sensually
stimulating. That it may be so will always be bluntly denied by an
individual capable of enjoying a beautiful form, but to the uncultivated
mind the picture of the female body will only evoke memories of
pleasure. This feeling, however, is quite distinct from the obscene; it
is neither hostile to the higher spiritual life, nor is it criminal; it
is natural and harmonious.
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