The old man's libido on the wane, he thinks more clearly and more truly about sexual matters. And when the waning of all his physical forces and endowments reaches its term -- will he then think best of all, or not at all?
The dove soars through the air and imagines it could soar higher and with less effort if there were no air to offer resistance. But the dove is mistaken. The dove on the wing does not understand the principle of the wing, Bernoulli's principle. Are we like the dove? The dove needs the air to fly. Do we need the body to think? Is the body necessary for thought? Pascal says that our whole dignity consist in thought. Is our dignity tied of necessity to the flesh ?
Or are we like the rocket whose propulsion has nothing to do with wings, the rocket the principle of whose propulsion is Newton's Third Law of Motion: To every action there is an equal but opposite reaction?
A curious extrapolation and a strange analogy.