doubtless finds things repugnant and distasteful in Nature, but he regards them as natural, inevitable results, and under this conviction he subdues his feeling as a merely subjective and untrue one. On the contrary, the subjective man, who lives only in the feelings and imagination, regards these things with a quite peculiar aversion. He has the eye of that unhappy foundling, who even in looking at the loveliest flower could pay attention only to the little “black beetle,” which crawled over it, and who by this perversity of perception had his enjoyment in the sight of flowers always embittered. Moreover, the subjective man makes his feelings the measure, the standard of what ought to be. That which does not please him, which offends his transcendental, supranatural, or antinatural feelings, ought not to be. Even if that which pleases him cannot exist without being associated with that which displeases him, the subjective man is not guided by the wearisome laws of logic and physics but by the self-will of the imagination; hence he drops what is disagreeable in a fact, and holds fast alone what is agreeable. Thus the idea of the pure, holy Virgin pleases him; still he is also pleased with the idea of the Mother, but only of the Mother who already carries the infant on her arms.
Virginity in itself is to him the highest moral idea, the cornu copiae of his supranaturalistic feelings and ideas, his personified sense of honour and of shame before common nature.[1] Nevertheless, there stirs in his bosom a natural feeling also, the compassionate feeling which makes the Mother
- ↑ “Tantum denique abest incesti cupido, ut nonnullis rabori sit etiam pudica conjunctio.”—M. Felicis, Oct. c. 31. One Father was so extraordinarily chaste he had never seen a woman’s face, nay, he dreaded even touching himself, “se quoque ipsum attingere quodammodo horrebat.” Another Father had so fine an olfactory sense in this matter, that on the approach of an unchaste person he perceived an insupportable odour.—Bayle (Dict. Art. Mariana Rem. C.). But the supreme, the divine principle of this hyperphysical delicacy, is the Virgin Mary; hence the Catholics name her Virginum Gloria, Virginitatis corona, Virginitatis typua et forma puritatis, Virginum vexillifera, Virginitatis magistra, Virginum prima, Virginitatis primiceria.
