n6 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



out an instinctive basis, was utterly impossible to 

 the scattered few of the race under the conditions 

 then prevailing, which required the utmost effort 

 from even competent members, to barely maintain 

 existence; and this reasoning discriminates with 

 equal validity against either male or female friend- 

 ships. 



There remains, then, but one kind of human being, 

 and but one relation which answers these require- 

 ments — a relation, among sexually reproducing 

 creatures, as old as life itself, as strong as the in- 

 tensest of all instincts, the deepest of all passions, 

 abundantly capable of drawing and holding two 

 human beings of opposite sex together — an instinct 

 which unites them during that period of their lives 

 when their bodies come nearest to physical perfec- 

 tion — which, although by nature only fitted to 

 enforce compliance with racial need of reproduction, 

 has yet in man acquired the power of elevating his 

 intellectual faculties to their highest possibilities, 

 of evoking and maintaining in him the heroic attitude 

 of mind, of arousing sublime and beautiful emo- 

 tions, of initiating bold aesthetic and artistic con- 

 ceptions and the most beneficent and admirable 

 aims. 



When this powerful instinct in those primitive 

 times had drawn a male and female together, there 

 did not then, as now, exist legal, conventional, or 

 educational influences to mitigate or modify the 

 force of the natural attraction, nor was there any 



