Page 347 - lady-chatterlys-lover

’Supreme pleasure?’ she said, looking up at him. ‘Is that
sort of idiocy the supreme pleasure of the life of the mind?
No thank you! Give me the body. I believe the life of the
body is a greater reality than the life of the mind: when the
body is really wakened to life. But so many people, like your
famous wind-machine, have only got minds tacked on to
their physical corpses.’
He looked at her in wonder.
’The life of the body,’ he said, ‘is just the life of the ani-
mals.’
’And that’s better than the life of professional corpses.
But it’s not true! the human body is only just coming to real
life. With the Greeks it gave a lovely flicker, then Plato and
Aristotle killed it, and Jesus finished it off. But now the body
is coming really to life, it is really rising from the tomb. And
It will be a lovely, lovely life in the lovely universe, the life
of the human body.’
’My dear, you speak as if you were ushering it all in! True,
you am going away on a holiday: but don’t please be quite so
indecently elated about it. Believe me, whatever God there is
is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from
the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.’
’Why should I believe you, Clifford, when I feel that
whatever God there is has at last wakened up in my guts, as
you call them, and is rippling so happily there, like dawn.
Why should I believe you, when I feel so very much the con-
trary?’
’Oh, exactly! And what has caused this extraordinary
change in you? running out stark naked in the rain, and

Lady Chatterly’s Lover