Enjoyment. [1] To enjoy is to know, to experience, to feel the advantages of possessing. We often possess without enjoyment . Whose magnificent palaces are these? Who planted these immense gardens? It is the sovereign. Who enjoy s them? I do. 

But let us leave the magnificent palaces that the sovereign has built, not for himself but for others; let us leave the enchanting gardens where he never strolls; let us stop at the voluptuousness that perpetuates the chain of living beings, that voluptuousness that we have come to call enjoyment .

Among the objects that nature offers to our desires from all sides — you who have a soul, tell me: Is there an object more worthy of our pursuit, whose possession and enjoyment can render us as happy, than the one who thinks and feels as you do, who has the same ideas, who experiences the same heat, the same delights, who carries his tender and delicate arms toward yours, who embraces you? Is there an object more worthy than one whose caresses are followed by the existence of a new being who will resemble you, who in his first movements will seek you to cuddle you, whom you will raise at your sides, whom you will love together, who will protect you in your old age, who will respect you at all times, and whose happy birth has already strengthened the bond that united you?

Crude, senseless, immobile beings deprived of life, who surround us, can serve our happiness; yet they do so without knowing it, and without sharing in it. Our sterile and destructive enjoyment alters them all but does not reproduce any happiness.

If any perverse Man may have taken offence at my praise of the most august and the most prevalent of passions, I would invoke Nature before him. I would have her speak and she would say to him: Why do you blush upon hearing the name of an exquisite pleasure [ volupté ] when you do not blush for having felt attracted by it in the shadow of the night? Do you not know its aim and what you owe it? Do you think that your mother would have risked her life in order to give you yours, if she had not attached an inexpressible charm to the embraces of her spouse? Be quiet, miserable one, and bear in mind that it is pleasure that pulled you out of oblivion.

The propagation of beings is the greatest goal of Nature. She solicits the two sexes imperiously in this aim, as soon as they have received what she designed for them in strength and in beauty. A vague and melancholic anxiety informs them of the moment; their mood becomes a mixture of pain and pleasure. That is when they listen to their senses, and they turn their awareness inward.

When an individual presents himself to another of the same species and a different sex, the feeling for all other needs is suspended; the heart palpitates; the limbs quiver; voluptuous images roam the brain; the torrents of the spirit flow into the nerves, irritate them and then move to the core of a new sense, which manifests itself and torments in turn. Vision is blurred, delirium is born; reason, a slave to instinct, contents itself with serving it, and Nature is satisfied.

This is how things occurred at the birth of the world, and how they occur again in the depths of the adult savage’s lair.

But once woman began to discern, once she appeared to grow attentive to her choice, and once, among several men over whom passion cast its sights, one man stopped it, he could flatter himself for being preferred and believe to hold in a heart he esteemed, the esteem in which he held himself, and see in pleasure the reward for some merit. Once the veils, thrown on charms by modesty, gave blazing imagination the power to dispose of them at leisure, the most delicate of illusions competed with the most exquisite of senses to exaggerate happiness; the soul was seized by an almost divine enthusiasm; two young hearts overcome with love dedicated themselves, one to the other, forever, and the sky heard the first indiscreet vows.

How many happy instants in the day were lost before the instant when an entire soul sought to leap and lose itself in the soul of the loved one! We had enjoyment s [pleasures] from the moment when we began to hope.

Yet confidence, time, nature and the liberty of caresses brought about selflessness; having experienced the last exhilaration, we swore that there would be none other to compare; and this was found to be true every time sensitive and young organs, a tender heart, and an innocent soul who did not know suspicion nor remorse, were involved.

Notes

1. Translator’s note: The term jouissance holds several meanings in French, for which distinct terms exist in English, such as “taking pleasure”, “orgasm”, and “use”. Although the term enjoyment fails to fully capture this range of meanings, I have opted for this more feeble rendering for syntactical reasons: enjoyment allows a parallel construction with the verbal form, “jouir”, of the substantive, “jouissance.”