George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Harvest 1956), p. 102:
This woman business! What a bore it is! What a pity we can't cut it right out, or at least be like the animals -- minutes of ferocious lust and months of icy chastity. Take a cock pheasant, for example. He jumps up on the hens' backs without so much as a with your leave or by your leave. And no sooner is it over than the whole subject is out of his mind. He hardly even notices his hens any longer; he ignores them, or simply pecks them if they come near his food. He is not called upon to support his offpsring, either. Lucky pheasant! How different from the lord of creation, always on the hop between his memory and his conscience!
Being like the animals is of course no solution, even if it were possible. A strange fix we're in: it is our spiritual nature that enables both our sinking below, and our rising above, the level of the animal.
The delusive power of the sex drive is made all the more delusive and dangerous when aided and abetted by personal magnetism and great political power. Kennedy and Clinton are two examples of how power corrupts.
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