It is enough to quote two or three
testimonies on this point. "The whole sentimental side of our
aesthetic sensibility," remarks Santayana, "--without which it
would be perceptive and mathematical rather than aesthetic,--is
due to our sexual organization remotely stirred.... If anyone
were desirous to produce a being with a great susceptibility to
beauty, he could not invent an instrument better designed for
that object than sex. Individuals that need not unite for the
birth and rearing of each generation might retain a savage
independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision
should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying
cruelty of the eye. But sex endows the individual with a dumb and
powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually
toward another; makes it one of the dearest enjoyments of his
life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession
the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to
solitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to
suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty? The
attention is fixed upon a well-defined object, and all the
effects it produces in the mind are easily regarded as powers or
qualities of that object.
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