ORIGIN OF LOVE. 415 



same manner as he obtains his prey. He is also 

 obliged to fight duels in order to possess or to retain 

 her, and thus his courage is developed. But at a later 

 period in animal life a more peaceable kind of court- 

 ship comes into vogue. The females become queens. 

 They select their husbands from a crowd of admirers, 

 who strive to please them with their colours, their 

 perfumes, or their music. The cavaliers adorned in 

 their bright wedding suits, which they wear only at 

 the love-making season, display themselves before the 

 dames. Others serenade them with vocal song, or by 

 means of an apparatus fitted to the limbs, which cor- 

 responds to instrumental music. Rival troubadours 

 will sing before their lady, as she sits in her leafy 

 bower, till one of them is compelled to yield from sheer 

 exhaustion, and a feathered hero has been known to 

 sing till he dropped down dead. At this period 

 sexual timidity becomes a delicious coyness which 

 arouses the ardour of the male. Thus Love is 

 born: it is brought forth by the association of ideas. 

 The desire of an animal to satisfy a want grows into 

 an affection beyond and independent of the want. In 

 the same manner the love of the young for its parents 

 grows out of its liking for the food which the parents 

 supply ; and the love of parents for the young, though 

 more obscure, may perhaps also be explained by 

 association. The mother no doubt believes the off- 

 spring to be part of herself, as it was in fact but a 

 short time before, and thus feels for it a kind of self- 

 love. The affection of the offspring for the parents, 

 and of parents for the offspring, and of spouses for 

 each other, at first endures only for a season. But 

 when the intelligence of the animals has risen to a 

 certain point, their powers of memory are improved, they 



