14 A BOOK OF MORTALS 



generation would suffer, by which the individual might 

 claim to put pleasure before purpose. 



Marriage, therefore, would be unnecessary in a society 

 which had not deviated from right conduct. 



This is why there is no marriage among the beasts. 

 They do not need it. 



Man is the victim of sex. It claims him always, and 

 holds him at all times and seasons prisoner in its power. 

 Nature's limit once passed — as it was passed by the woman 

 — action became dissociated from purpose, and the pursuit 

 of pleasure brought its own Nemesis of pain. 



But with the beasts, the years speed on from spring to 

 autumn, the months go by bringing appointed seed-time 

 and harvest to the green things and the herbs of the field in 

 their season, and almost as unconsciously, quite as simply, 

 soberly, faithfully, seed-time and harvest come to these our 

 fellow mortals. 



For days, weeks, months, before and after such seed- 

 time they live together, male and female, blissfully forgetful 

 of the dread heirloom of immortality to the race of which 

 they are the transient possessors ; live undisturbed to a 

 degree which would make the hell of our civilisation a 

 paradise, by the fierce and ever-present impulse which 

 threatens to overthrow the whole balance of man's 

 existence. 



True it may be — though even of this we cannot be 

 certain — that they are but unconscious puppets in the grip 

 of the mighty creative force which uses them for its own 

 ends; but at least they have not, as we have, broken loose 

 from that control and found none other. 



Think of it ! On the one side sex untrammelled by 



