THE VALUE OF LIFE 



gratification of the sex-impulse, but in the spiritual rela- 

 tion of the sexes and their constant and intimate inter- 

 course. The beautiful then unites with the good and 

 the true to form a harmonious trinity. Hence love has 

 been for thousands of years the chief source of the 

 aesthetic upUfting of man in every respect; the arts 

 — poetry, music, painting, and sculpture — have drawn 

 inexhaustively from this source. However, for the indi- 

 vidual civilized human being this higher love is of value, 

 not only because it satisfies the natural and irresistible 

 sex-impulse in its noblest form, but also because the 

 mutual influence of the sexes, their complementary 

 qualities and their common enjoyment of the highest 

 ideal good, has a great effect upon individual character. 

 A good and happy marriage — ^which is not very common 

 to-day — ought to be regarded, both psychologically and 

 physiologically, as one of the most important ends of 

 life by every individual of the higher nations. 



As a pure marriage is the best form of family life and 

 the most soUd foundation of the state, its high social 

 value is at once evident. The attraction and mutual 

 devotion of the sexes fulfils in the highest degree the 

 ethical golden rule — the balance of egoism and altruism. 

 As Fritz Schultze very truly says in his Comparative 

 Psychology 



We must not seek the causes of this altruism in the tran- 

 scendental region of the supernatural, or in any metaphysical 

 abstraction, but must go back to the very real and natural 

 qualities of the organic being— and then there can be no ques- 

 tion that the organic sex-impulse, at once physical and psychical 

 is the first and enduring source of all love, however spiritual, and 

 of all real ethical and sympathetic feelings and the morality 

 founded thereon. There are two primitive instincts in all 

 organisms : that of self-maintenance and that of the maintenance 

 of the species. The one is the strong impulse of egoism, the 

 other the spring of altruism: from the one come all unfriendly 

 and from the other all friendly feelings. Every being seeks 



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