The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
808.
If one should require the most astonishing proof of how far the power of transfiguring, which comes of intoxication, goes, this proof is at hand in the phenomenon of love; or what is called love in all the languages and silences of the world. Intoxication works to such a degree upon reality in this passion that in the consciousness of the lover the cause of his love is quite suppressed, and something else seems to take its place,--a vibration and a glitter of all the charm-mirrors of Circe.... In this respect to be man or an animal makes no difference: and still less does spirit, goodness, or honesty. If one is astute, one is befooled astutely; if one is thick-headed, one is befooled in a thick-headed way. But love, even the love of God, saintly love, "the love that saves the soul," are at bottom all one; they are nothing but a fever which has reasons to transfigure itself--a state of intoxication which does well to lie about itself....
And, at any rate, when a man loves, he is a good liar about himself and to himself: he seems to himself transfigured, stronger, richer, more perfect; he _is_ more perfect.... _Art_ here acts as an organic function: we find it present in the most angelic instinct "love"; we find it as the greatest stimulus of life--thus art is sublimely utilitarian, even in the fact that it lies.... But we should be wrong to halt at its power to lie: it does more than merely imagine; it actually transposes values. And it not only transposes the _feeling_ for values: the lover actually _has_ a greater value; he is stronger. In animals this condition gives rise to new weapons, colours, pigments, and forms, and above all to new movements, new rhythms, new love-calls and seductions. In man it is just the same. His whole economy is richer, mightier, and _more complete_ when he is in love than when he is not. The lover becomes a spendthrift; he is rich enough for it. He now dares; he becomes an adventurer, and even a donkey in magnanimity and innocence; his belief in God and in virtue revives, because he believes in love. Moreover, such idiots of happiness acquire wings and new capacities, and even the door to art is opened to them. If we cancel the suggestion of this intestinal fever from the lyric of tones and words, what is left to poetry and music? ... _L'art pour l'art_ perhaps; the professional cant of frogs shivering outside in the cold, and dying of despair in their swamp.... Everything else was created by love.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.