V.

Finally--after weeks--I was once more somewhat calmer, and was able to think a little. I had so utterly lost all power that I was only able to get from my bed to the sofa, or back again, with assistance. They had been afraid that I should not get over it at all.... Week after week to endure the most shattering, superhuman sorrows, to oscillate between death and madness!...

But superhuman =love= had also been mine! The statue of Saïs had been unveiled to me!... I had quaffed the cup of love to the =last= dregs!... But he only will have had this experience who has first drunk to the dregs the draught of =sorrow=!...

Oh, short-sighted world, which will call the murder of Mascha “sadism”!... Had not her pains cut twice as deeply into =my own= heart? Has not =my= soul been convulsed by her torment?... I wished only to torture =myself=!... Am I to blame that it was only possible to do so through her martyrdom?... Has not =she= shared also all my superearthly blisses?... He who has experienced =this= does not regret--even if he must pay =double= the price in sorrows!!

Is not that “=masochism=”?

Have you who wished to pass judgment on me learned that? No! Who will set up to be a judge of a case of which he knows nothing?

Oh, crude psychology, which teaches that out of an =inhuman= impulse--out of cruelty--we commit “crimes” on those nearest to us! Only from a purely =human= impulse--from “love”--do we do to the nearest to us what you call “crimes,” in order that he may share that unnamable happiness which we ourselves feel. Thus the influences which move us are purely =ethical=.

Do you believe that we only are masochists? Or do you believe that those only are masochists who have themselves trodden on by a prostitute, have had their ears boxed, have been whipped, befouled, and have let the prostitute spit in their faces?

Oh, idiots! I say to you all love is masochistic, and all which leads to it is associated with it, or results from it, bears the imprint “pleasure and pain.”

Nature =never= fails. Who, then, believes that it was caprice, chance, or irony, on Nature’s part, when she associated =love= with so much =torment=?

Who does not think of all the tragedies of =unhappy= love, with its murders and suicides, all its physical and spiritual martyrdom, which every day brings to us?

Who does not think of the tragedy of sexual love which is offered to us in the hospitals? all the hundreds of thousands who have to pay for the licentiousness which results from sexual =lust=--all the tabetics, syphilitics, general paralytics, etc.?

Who does not remember the torments which the sexually perverse have brought on themselves and on humanity? All the =lust-murders=! And all the punitive measures? The lust-murders which we commit--to prevent lust-murders!...

Who does not think of the torments of pregnancy? its risks of life and death?

Are all these mistakes of Nature? No! No!! The accompaniment of pleasure by pain must have some definite purpose. This purpose is: =That pleasure, without its opposite, pain, would not be perceptible, would be unthinkable, would be inconceivable--just as cold could not be apparent to our consciousness without heat, or light without darkness. Thus pleasure, in the absence of pain, would not be perceived as pleasure. Therefore, by increase of pain, pleasure becomes of greater value, for the greater the contrast the more readily do we perceive it.=

“=Masochism is thus a natural law.=”

=The more fully it is developed in any individual, the higher, the more superhuman is that person.=