182 SEX 



THE EVOLUTIONARY OUTLOOK. The sex- 

 impulses, at once the glory and the shame of 

 mankind, have an inconceivably long history 

 behind them, and spring up within us with a 

 tremendous organic momentum. Here we 

 have at once warning and encouragement. 

 Warning, because for most of us there are 

 brutish elements in our sex-impulses, which 

 are badly out of date, and which, if allowed to 

 develop, will be as tares strangling out the 

 wheat. When they become insidiously domi- 

 nant we have what occupies a considerable 

 part of the terrible records of sex-pathology. 

 Few men escape paying a tax for their great 

 inheritance ; and the tax often takes the form 

 of some distressing atavism of the flesh. It 

 is the case, however, that the ape and the 

 tiger do die down, if we do not feed them. 



But besides warning there is encouragement 

 in the evolutionary outlook. Looking back- 

 wards we can discern that sex-love has 

 evolved in fineness without losing in intensity. 

 It has become more complicated, more subtle, 

 more psychical, more lasting. 



Up through the animal kingdom we see 

 a crude stimulus being replaced by physical 

 fondness, and that being adorned by aesthetic 

 embroideries. Then we find the sexes, in 

 some of the birds and mammals, remaining 

 gladly together throughout life, working 

 together in harmony. Now, there is no 

 doubt that the human ideal of love is one in 

 which all the finer threads of prehuman 

 sex-attraction (of the delicacy of some of 

 which the protagonist of man's apartness 

 and perfection has no notion) are interwoven 



