Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/290

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276
THE MATRIMONIAL LIE.

matrimony; the result will be the same, whatever the motives, that led to it, may have been. Great similarity between individuals not only does away with the necessity of love, but also with its possibility. The impulse of procreation arouses in the individual a general wish for the companionship of an individual of the other sex, but it does not individualize, in a word it does not rise to its highest form, the concrete love for a certain individual and for none other. One entire sex has a general attraction for the other entire sex, it is quite immaterial to the man as well as to the woman, which man or which woman becomes their companion. When by chance some individual does arise who differs from the uniformity of the tribe and is distinguished above all the other members by surpassing mental or physical qualities, the difference is appreciated with an intensity of which we can form no conception, as we are so accustomed to see striking individual differences in the people around us. The great zoological law of sexual selection then begins to operate with the power of an elementary force of nature, and the desire for the possession of this superior individual becomes a fearful, furious passion leading to the most extreme actions. The case is quite otherwise in a civilized people, whose individuals all differ so widely. Among the uncultivated, that is, the less developed lower classes, the impulse for propagation is revealed much more frequently as a general attraction towards the other sex than as an individualizing, discriminating affection for one, and contrary to the universal sentimental romancing of non-observing poets, violent love for one chosen being is exceedingly rare among them. But among the upper classes, whose members are highly developed, of innumerable variety and the individual types sharply defined, the sexual impulse becomes exclusive and discriminating; if