181 '°^^ ''^ ^^^ desert 



penalty of abandoning all hope of ever l)eing anytliing 

 except a dandelion, even of being a better dandelion tlian 

 it is. It seems to have said at some point, "This is good 

 enough for me. My tribe flourishes. We have found how to 

 get along in the w^orld. Why risk anything?" 



But if, from the strict biological standpoint, sex is "noth- 

 ing but" a mechanism for encouraging variation, that is a 

 long way from saying that there are not other standpoints. 

 It is perfectly legitimate to say that it is also "for" many 

 other things. Fev^ other mechanisms ever invented or stum- 

 bled upon opened so many possibilities, entailed so many 

 unforeseen consequences. Even in the face of those who 

 refuse to entertain the possibility that any kind of purpose 

 or foreknowledge guided evolution, we can still find it per- 

 missible to maintain that every invention is "for" whatever 

 uses or good results may come from it, that all things, far 

 from being "nothing but" their origins, are whatever they 

 have become. Grant that and one must grant also that the 

 writing of sonnets is one of the things which sex is "for." 



Certainly nature herseK discovered a very long time ago 

 that sex was— or at least could be used — "for" many things 

 besides the production of ofiFspring not too monotonously 

 like the parent. Certainly also, these discoveries anticipated 

 pretty nearly everything which man himself has ever 

 found it possible to use sex "for." In fact it becomes some- 

 what humiliating to realize that we seem to have invented 

 nothing absolutely new. 



Marital attachment? Attachment to the home? Devotion 

 to children? Long before us, members of the animal king- 

 dom had associated them all with sex. Before us they also 

 founded social groups on the family unit and in some few 

 cases even established monogamy as the rule! Even more 



