184 THE CONTROL OF LIFE 



ful, but the increasing complexity of our needs makes 

 it increasingly often a failure for which divorce is the 

 best preventive." " Mutual Hberty, which is now de- 

 manded, is making the old form of marriage impos- 

 sible." Man is rather imperfectly monogamous, per- 

 haps, but it is difficult to accept this philosopher's 

 conclusion that monogamy becomes " sooner or later 

 retrospective, a tomb of dead joys, not a well-spring 

 of new hfe." A truer note was struck by the French 

 philosopher, Comte : " For two beings so complex and 

 so diverse as man and woman, the whole of Hfe is not 

 too long for them to know one another well and love 

 one another worthily." 



§9. The Difficult Age 



There is much to admire in the bird's life-cycle, where 

 sex activity is definitely seasonal and sharply punc- 

 tuated. One of the pecuHarities and dangers of man's 

 case is the practical absence of seasonal punctuation. 



It is rare to find instances of wild animals outliving 

 their full vigour or their effective reproductivity. Meta- 

 phorically speaking, Nature does not tolerate the used- 

 up. Literally, those races survive whose Hfe-cycle is 

 most successfully punctuated towards survival, the others 

 have got sifted out. 



The average duration of human Hfe — about forty — 

 is much the same all over the world and in all condi- 

 tions, and it is probable that the cessation of women's 

 reproductivity about that time, and the normal waning 

 of sex-impulses in both sexes somewhat later, have 



