Tertium Organum

from a 
candle
only owing to its burning - the evolution of heat and the 
incandescence of the gases evolved. The same applies to love. We say that 
only an insignificant part of the energy of love goes to create 
progeny,
the 
greater part seems to be spent by fathers and mothers on their personal 
emotions. But that is how it should be. Without this expenditure the principal 
thing could not be obtained. Only 
because 
of these, at first sight, collateral 
results of love, because of all this whirl of emotions, feelings, agitations, 
desires, thoughts, fantasies, inner creations, only because of the 
beauty
which 
creates, can love fulfil its direct function. 
Moreover, and this perhaps is most important of all, superfluous energy is 
not in any way wasted but passed into other forms of energy. And we are 
able to trace which they are. Generally speaking, the significance of indirect 
results may often be much more important than the significance of direct 
results. And we can trace how the energy of love passes into instincts, into 
the power of ideas, into creative force on different planes of life, into images
of art, into songs, sounds, music, poetry. And we can easily imagine the same 
energy passing into intuition of a higher order, into higher consciousness 
which will open up for us a mysterious and miraculous world. 
In all living nature (and maybe even in that which we regard as dead) 
love 
is a force inciting creative activity in the most varied directions. 
In springtime, with the first awakening of the emotions of love, birds begin 
to 
sing and to build nests. 
Naturally, a positivist will try to find a simple 
explanation for all that; singing is to attract the females or the males and so 
on. But even a positivist will not be able to deny that there is much more of 
this singing than is necessary for 'the 

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propagation of species'. Of course, for a positivist 'singing' is only 'accidental', 
only a 'by-product'. But in reality this singing may be 
the main function of the 
given species,
the meaning of its existence, the purpose which nature had in 
view in creating this species. And this singing is needed not to attract the 
females, but for some general harmony of nature we only sometimes vaguely
feel. 
Thus we see that what appears as a collateral function of love, from the 
point of view of an individual, may serve as a principal function of the 
species. 
To go on: the young birds are not there yet, there is not even a hint of them. 
Yet 'houses' are already being prepared for them. Love has evoked a thirst for 
activity. 
Instinct
governs this thirst for activity, because it is expedient from 
the point of view of the species. At the first awakening of love - work starts. 
And one and the same desire creates both a new generation and the conditions 
in which this new generation is to live. One and the same desire awakes 
creative activity in all directions, brings about mating for the birth of the new 
generation and makes them 
build
and 
create
for the future generation. 
We see the same thing in men. Love is a creative force. And the creative 
force of love manifests itself not in one but in many varied directions. Perhaps 
it is precisely by this force of love, Eros, than mankind is incited to fulfil its 
main function, 
which we do not know and only sometimes dimly feel. 
But even without touching upon the purpose of mankind's existence, within 
the limits of what we can know, we must admit that all the creative activity of 
mankind is the outcome of love. Our whole world turns around love as its 
centre. 
Love opens up in man sides he was not aware of in himself. There is much 
in love of the stone age and also of the witches' sabbath. Many men cannot be 
pushed by anything but love to crime, to treason; only love can bring forth in 
them deeply hidden feelings which they considered long extinct in 
themselves. In love there is concealed a tremendous amount of egotism, 
vanity and self-pride. Love is a great force that tears off all masks. And 
people who run away from love, run away in order to keep their masks. 
If creation,