PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



between woman and dog, man and goat, the coupling of 

 primates of different orders offers no evidence either. 

 There is however a relation between man and apes, it is 

 that they are both divisible into polygamists and monog- 

 amists, at least temporary; but this does not differentiate 

 them from most other animal species. 



In most human races there is a radical polygamy, 

 dissimulated under a show-front of monogamy. Here 

 generalizations are no longer possible, the individual 

 emerges and with his fantasy upsets all observations, 

 and annihilates all statistics. The monogamist's brother 

 is polygamous. A woman has known only one man, and 

 her mother was every one's fancy. One may assert the 

 universal custom of marriage and deduce monogamy as a 

 conclusion, and this will be false or true according to the 

 epoch, milieu, race, moral tendencies of the moment. 

 Moral codes are essentially unstable, since they represent 

 only a hand-book ideal of happiness; morality will 

 modify itself according to the mobility of this ideal. 



Physiologically, monogamy is in no way required by 

 the normal conditions of human life. Children? If the 

 father's help is necessary it can be exercised over the 

 children of several women as well as over those of one 

 woman only. The duration of tutelage among civilized 

 people is, moreover, excessive; it is dragged out, when 

 it is a matter of certain careers, almost until ripe age. 

 Normally puberty ought to liberate the young human, 

 as it liberates the young of other mammals. The couple 

 need then last only ten or fifteen years; but female 

 fecundity accumulates children at a year's interval, so 

 that, as long as the father's virility lasts, there might be 



