PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



very plenitude diminishes, proportionately, the general 

 fecundity: whether we treat of man or of apple-trees, the 

 male element in- or de-creases according to famine or 

 abundance of nourishment. But the human race is not 

 sufficiently plastic for the variation of births to be ever 

 very great between the two sexes; and no warm-blooded 

 animal is sufficiently plastic for this cause, so active 

 among vegetables, ever to lead to the dissolution of the 

 male. There are no natural laws, there are tendencies, 

 there are limits: the fields of oscillation are determined 

 by the pasts of species, trenches curving into cloisters 

 which close, in nearly all directions, the alleys of the 

 future. 



It is a fact, from henceforth hereditary, that the 

 male of the human species has centralized in himself 

 most of the activities independent of the sexual motor. 

 He alone is capable of disinterested works, that is to say 

 of aims unconnected with the physical conservation of the 

 race, but without which civilization would be impossible, 

 or at least very different from what it is and from the 

 idea which we have of its future. Doubtless in humanity, 

 as in the rest of nature, the female represents the im- 

 portant sex. In utter need, as with the mason bee, she 

 could serve for the absolutely necessary work, to build 

 the shelter, to gather the food, and the male might, 

 without essential damage be reduced to the role of mere 

 fecundating apparatus. The number of males could, 

 and even should in such case, diminish with due rapid- 

 ity, but then human society would in- or de-dine toward 

 the type represented by that of social bees: continual 

 labour being incompatible with the periods of maternity, 

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