THE NATURAL 



small know no other. The architecture of their bodies 

 would make face to face copulation very difficult. One 

 must not forget that their upright position is never more 

 than momentary, even in orangs and chimpanzees; they 

 are not much better equilibrated than bears, much less 

 so than kangaroos, marmosets l and squirrels ; even when 

 they stand up one feels that they have four feet. Love 

 among them is not free from the seasons, and although 

 they are libidinous all the year, they do not seem fit for 

 generation save through the weeks of their rutting time: 

 then their genital organs acquire a permanent rigidity; 

 the udders of the females, ordinarily as small as those of 

 the males, only swell during this period. There is, there- 

 fore, a vast difference, from the sexual standpoint, be- 

 tween man and the great apes, his anatomic neighbours. 

 Man even in the humblest species has mastered love and 

 made it his daily slave, at the same time that he has 

 varied the accomplishments of his desire and made possi- 

 ble its renewal after brief interval. This domestication 

 of love is an intellectual work, due to the richness and 

 power of our nervous system, which is as capable of long 

 silences as of long physiological discourses, of action and 

 of reflection. The brain of man is an ingenious master 

 which has managed, without possessing any very evident 

 superiority, to get out of the other organs work of the 

 most complicated sorts, and most finely-sharpened pleas- 

 ures; its (the brain's) mastery is very feeble in quadru- 

 manes and other animals; it is very strong in insects as 

 will be explained in a following chapter. 



* Here R. de G. uses the term marmot te; up to this the word 

 I have translated marmoset has been ouistiti. 



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