146 CEEAT1VE INVOLUTION 



of attention he is wont to exercise. If it is by fancy 

 engendered it will go as fancy listeth and his love 

 with it. And however attractive you may be, there 

 is no telling at what moment some other woman may 

 prove more so to a mind that is subject to the chance 

 of circumstance." The only guarantee of connubial 

 bliss is to be found in the voluntary, willed attention 

 of determinate aim, which is the highest achievement 

 of education. The many toys of babyhood, the 

 countless diversions of youth, the moving picture and 

 vaudeville shows, the racing hither and thither in 

 pleasure-seeking, are a sequence culminating psycho- 

 logically in the divorce court. If you would teach 

 loyalty, constancy, good-citizenship, teach attention, 

 for this is the foundation of all morality. 



Sir Ray Lankester has recently shown that the 

 connection between love and attention is one of bio- 

 logical evolution: that the elementary principle of 

 courtship from the lowest unicellular organism to 

 man is the impression, or the idea, derived by the 

 female from the proximity of the male. This influ- 

 ence of the male, Darwin called charm, and the ca- 

 pacity of the female to be acted upon by it, her recep- 

 tivity. The instruments of charm are significant, 

 Lankester says, only as they proclaim the presence 

 of the male in the field of consciousness and evoke a 

 series of appropriate ideas. Courtship among ani- 

 mals consists of attempts on the part of the male to 

 secure the female's attention, and to fascinate her by 



