244 THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL ASPECTS. 



I. Common Ground Between Animals and Men. — 

 Hitherto we have been justifying the orthodoxy of an anatomical 

 training, by almost wholly ignoring the fact that animals have a 

 psychic life, or only mentioning the mere neural aspect of functions. 

 Only in discussing sexual selection, and the general facts of sexual 

 union and of parentage, have we intruded words like " care," "sacri- 

 fice," and "love." A purely physiological treatment of sex and 

 reproduction is, however, obviously incomplete. It would be rejected 

 with scorn in reference to human life; it must be equally rejected in 

 regard to the higher animals, which, taken together, exhibit the 

 analogues of almost every human emotion, and of all our less recon- 

 dite intellectual processes. It is with emotions that we have here most 

 to do; and without raising the difficult question whether animals 

 exhibit any emotions exactly analogous to those which in man are 

 associated with the "moral sense," "religion," and "the sublime," 

 we accept the conclusion of Darwin, followed by Romanes and 

 others, that all other emotions which we ourselves experience, are 

 likewise recognizable in less perfect, or sometimes more perfect, 

 expression in the higher animals. Those which are associated with 

 sex and reproduction are indeed among the most patent; love of 

 mates, love of offspring, lust, jealousy, family affection, social sympa- 

 thies, are undeniable. 



II. The Love of Mates. — In the lowest animals, where two 

 exhausted cells flow together in incipient sexual union, there is 

 apparently only one component of that most complex musical chord 

 in life which we call "love." There is physical attraction, and the 

 whole process is very much a satisfaction of protoplasmic hunger. 



In multicellular animals, the liberation of sex-element is at first 

 very passive. It concerns the individual alone. Fertilization is a 

 random matter; and though sex exists, sexual attraction does not. 



A grade higher, true sexual union begins to appear. But at first 

 this simply occurs between any male and any available female. The 

 union is physiological, not psychological; there is no genuine paring, 

 and it would be folly to use the word love in such cases. 



Gradually, however, for instance among insects, the sexes associate 

 in pairs. There is some psychic sexual attraction, often accompanied 

 with no little courtship, but much more important is the occasional 



