Human Physiology. 



trict than the young men with whom they have always been 

 acquainted. Savages seek their wives out of their own tribe. 



The first love of boys and girls is a romantic idealisation, 

 which is pure, chaste, and of a refining influence upon the 

 character and manners. In most cases it runs its course, dies 

 out, and exists but as a memory. Differences of age and social 

 position often make marriage undesirable. And it sometimes 

 happens that the first love of a romantic boy or girl is already 

 married. Where there is no obstacle of age or condition, the 

 second love the grand a*id serious passion may fix upon 

 the same object, and endure for life. This, however, is not the 

 rule. The single, life-long passion is the rare exception. Most 

 men and women who can be said to love at all have a capacity 

 for loving a succession of objects; and some, perhaps many, one 

 for loving, in various degrees, several objects at the same time. 

 It is difficult to say how far such idiosyncrasies are disorderly 

 or abnormal. We must, I think, admit that there are many 

 phases of affection, which are not very closely related to the 

 love which should exist between the partners of an indissoluble 

 marriage. It becomes, therefore, a matter of very serious 

 importance to distinguish a true and lasting love, which justifies 

 union for life and the rearing of a family, from the attachments 

 of friendship, romantic interest, or poetic sentiment, which may 

 be both diffusive and evanescent. 



It is my belief that, naturally I mean in a state of pure and 

 unperverted nature, but developed, cultivated and refined by 

 education every man loves womanhood itself, and all women 

 so far as they approximate to his ideal; and that, in the same 

 way, every woman loves manhood, and is attracted and charmed 

 by all its gentle, noble, and heroic manifestations. By such a 

 man, every woman he meets is reverenced as a woman, accepted 

 as a friend, loved as a mother, sister, daughter, or, it may be, 

 cherished in a more tender relation, which should be at first, 

 and may always remain, pure and free from any sensual desire. 



