CHAPTER I.
THE BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE.
I. The True Place of Man in the Animal Kingdom.—Man is a mammiferous, bimanous vertebrate—Biology the starting-point of sociology—The origin of love.
II. Reproduction.—Nutrition and reproduction—Scissiparity—Budding—Ovulation—Conjugation—Impregnation—Reproduction in the invertebrates—The entity called Nature—Organic specialisation and reproduction—A dithyramb by Haeckel.
III. Rut and Love.—Rut renders sociable—Rut is a short puberty—Its organic adornment—The frenzy of rut—Physiological reason of rut in mammals—Love and rut—Schopenhauer and the designs of Nature.
IV. Love of Animals.—Love and death—The law of coquetry—The law of battle—Jealousy and æsthetic considerations—Love amongst birds—Effects of sexual selection—The loves of the skylark—The males of the blue heron and their combats—Battles of male geese and male gallinaceæ—Courteous duels between males—Æsthetic seduction among certain birds—Æsthetic constructions—Musical seduction—Predominance of the female among certain birds—Greater sensuality of the male—Effect of sexual exaltation—A Cartesian paradox—Individual choice amongst animals—Individual fancies of females—General propositions.
We have too long been accustomed to study human society as if man were a being apart in the universe. In comparing human bipeds with animals it has seemed as if we were disparaging these so-called demi-gods. It is to this blind prejudice that we must attribute the tardy rise of anthropological sociology. A deeper knowledge of biological science and of inferior races has at last cured us of this childish vanity. We have decided to assign to man his true place in the organic world of our little globe. Granted that the human biped is incontestably the most intelligent of terrestrial animals, yet, by his histological texture, by his organs, and by the functions of these organs, he is evidently only an animal, and easily classed in the series: he is a bimanous, mammiferous vertebrate. Not that by his most glorious representatives, by those whom we call men of genius, man does not rise prodigiously above his distant relations of the mammal class; but, on the other hand, by imperfectly developed specimens he descends far below many species of animals; for if the idiot is only an exception, the man of genius is still more so. In fact, the lowest human races, with whose anatomy, psychology, and sociology we are to-day familiar, can only inspire us with feelings of modesty. They furnish studies in ethnography which have struck a mortal blow at the dreams of “the kingdom of man.”
When once it is established that man is a mammal like any other, and only distinguished from the animals of his class by a greater cerebral development, all study of human sociology must logically be preceded by a corresponding study of animal sociology. Moreover, as sociology finally depends on biology, it will be necessary to seek in physiological conditions themselves the origin of great sociological manifestations. The first necessity of societies is that they should endure, and they can only do so on the condition of providing satisfaction for primordial needs, which are the condition of life itself, and which imperatively dominate and regulate great social institutions. Lastly, if man is a sociable animal, he is not the only one; many other species have grouped themselves in societies, where, however rudimentary they may be, we find in embryonic sketch the principal traits of human agglomerations. There are even species—as, for example, bees, ants, and termites—that have created true republics, of complicated structure, in which the social problem has been solved in an entirely original manner. We may take from them more than one good example, and more than one valuable hint.
My present task is to write the history of marriage and of the family. The institution of marriage has had no other object than the regulation of sexual unions. These have for their aim the satisfaction of one of the most imperious biological needs—the sexual appetite; but this appetite is only a conscious impulse, a “snare,” as Montaigne calls it, which impels both man and animal to provide, as far as concerns them, for the preservation of their species—to “pay the ancestral debt,” according to the Brahmanical formula. Before studying the sexual relations, and their more or less regulated form in human societies, it will not be out of place to say a few words on reproduction in general, to sketch briefly its physiology in so far as this is fundamental, and to show how tyrannical are the instincts whose formation has been determined by physiological causes, and which render the fiercest animals mild and tractable. This is what I shall attempt to do in the following chapter.
Stendhal has somewhere said that the beautiful is simply the outcome of the useful; changing the phrase, we may say that generation is the outcome of nutrition. If we examine the processes of generation in very simple organisms, this great function seems to answer to a superabundance of nutritive materials, which, after having carried the anatomic elements to their maximum volume, at length overflows and provokes the formation of new elements. As long as the new-born elements can remain aggregated with those which already constitute the individual, as long as the latter has not acquired all the development compatible with the plan of its being, there is simply growth. When once the limit is attained that the species cannot pass, the organism (I mean a very rudimentary organism) reproduces itself commonly by a simple division in two halves. It perishes in doubling itself and in producing two beings, similar to itself, and having nothing to do but grow. It is by means of this bi-partition that hydras, vorticellæ, algæ, and the lowest mushrooms are generally propagated.
In the organisms that are slightly more complicated the function of reproduction tends to be specialised. The individual is no longer totally divided; it produces a bud which grows by degrees, and detaches itself from the parent organism to run in its turn through the very limited adventures of its meagre existence.
By a more advanced step in specialisation the function of reproduction becomes localised in a particular cell, an ovule, and the latter, by a series of repeated bi-partitions, develops a new individual; but it is generally necessary that the cellule destined to multiply itself by segmentation should at first dissolve by union with another cell. Through the action of various organic processes the two generating cells arrive in contact. The element which is to undergo segmentation—the female element—then absorbs the element that is simply impulsive; the element called male becomes impregnated with it, and from that moment it is fertilised, that is to say, capable of pursuing the course of its formative work.
This phenomenon, so simple in itself, of the conjugation of two cellules, is the foundation of reproduction in the two organic kingdoms as soon as the two sexes are separated. Whether the sexes are represented by distinct or united individuals, whether the accessory organic apparatus is more or less complicated, are matters of no consequence; the essential fact reappears always and everywhere of the conjugation of two cellules, with absorption, in the case of superior animals, of the male cellule by the female cellule.
The process may be observed in its most elementary form in the algæ and the diatomaceæ, said to be conjugated. To form a reproductive cellule, or spore, two neighbouring cellules each throw out, one towards the other, a prolongation. These prolongations meet, and their sides absorb each other at the point of contact; then the protoplasms of the two elements mingle, and at length the two cellules melt into a single reproductive cellule (Spirogyra longata).
Between this marriage of two lower vegetal cellules, which realises to the letter the celebrated biblical words, “they shall be one flesh,” or rather one protoplasm, and the fundamental phenomenon of fecundation in the superior animals, including man, there is no essential dissimilarity. The ovule of the female and the spermatozoon of the male become fused in the same manner, with this difference only, that the feminine cellule, the ovule, preserves its individuality and absorbs the masculine cellule, or is impregnated by it.
But, simple as it is, this phenomenon of fecundation is the sole reason of the duration of bi-sexual species. Thanks to it, organic individuals that are all more or less ephemeral,
“Et, quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt.”
(Lucretius, ii. 78.)
For many organised beings reproduction seems in reality the supreme object of existence. Numbers of vegetables and of animals, even of animals high in the series—as insects—die as soon as they have accomplished this great duty. Sometimes the male expires before having detached himself from the female, and the latter herself survives just long enough to effect the laying of eggs. Instead of laying eggs, the female cochineal fills herself with eggs to such a degree that she dies in consequence, and the tegument of her body is transformed into a protecting envelope for the eggs.
At the not very distant time when animism reigned supreme, these facts were attributed to calculations of design. Nature, it was believed, occupied herself chiefly with perpetuating organised species; as for individuals, she disdained the care of them. We now know that Nature, as an anthropomorphic being, does not exist; that the great forces called natural are unconscious; that their blind action results, however, in the world of life, in a choice, a selection, a progressive evolution, or, to sum up, in the survival of the individuals best adapted to the conditions of their existence. Without any intention of Dame Nature, the preservation of the species was necessarily, before anything else, the object of selection; and during the course of geological periods primitive bi-partition gradually became transformed through progressive differentiation into bi-sexual procreation, requiring the concurrence of special and complicated apparatus in order to be effected. But, at the same time as procreation, other functions also became differentiated by the formation of special organs; the nervous system vegetated around the chorda dorsalis; and, finally, conscious life awoke in the nervous centres. Thenceforth the accomplishment of the great function of procreation assumed an entirely different aspect. In the lowest stages of the animal kingdom reproduction is effected mechanically and unconsciously. A paramœcium, observed by M. Balbiani, produced in forty-two days, by a series of simple bi-partitions, 1,384,116 individuals, who very certainly had not the least notion of the phenomena by which they transmitted existence. But with superior animals it is very different; in their case the act of procreation is a real efflorescence, not only physical, but psychical. For the study that I am now undertaking it will not be without use to recall the principal features of this amorous efflorescence, since it is, after all, the first cause of marriage and of the family. At the same time, not to lose our standpoint, it is important to bear in mind that at the bottom all this expenditure of physical and psychical force has for motive and for result, both in man and animal, the conjugation of two generative cellules. Haeckel has written a dithyramb on this subject in his Anthropogenia, which is in the main so true that I take pleasure in quoting it—“Great effects are everywhere produced, in animated nature, by minute causes.... Think of how many curious phenomena sexual selection gives rise to in animal life; think of the results of love in human life; now, all this has for its raison d’être the union of two cellules.... There is no organic act which approaches this one in power and in the force of differentiation. The Semitic myth of Eve seducing Adam for the love of knowledge, the old Greek legend of Paris and Helen, and many other magnificent poems, do they not simply express the enormous influence that sexual love and sexual selection have exercised since the separation of the sexes? The influence of all the other passions which agitate the human heart cannot weigh in the balance with love, which inflames the senses and fascinates the reason. On the one hand, we celebrate in love the source of the most sublime works of art, and of the noblest creations of poetry and of music; we venerate it as the most powerful factor in civilisation, as the prime cause of family life, and consequently of social life. On the other hand, we fear love as a destructive flame; it is love that drives so many to ruin; it is love that has caused more misery, vice, and crime than all other calamities together. Love is so prodigious, its influence is so enormous on psychic life and the most diverse functions of the nervous system, that in regard to it we are tempted to question the supernatural effect of our natural explanation. Nevertheless, comparative biology and the history of development conduct us surely and incontestably to the simplest, most remote source of love; that is to say, the elective affinity of two different cellules—the spermatic cell and the ovulary cell.”[1]
In a former work on the evolution of morality I have described the manner in which the hereditary tendencies and instincts arise from habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a sufficient repetition of the same acts. The instinct of procreation has, and can have, no other origin. The animal species, during the long phases of their evolution, have reproduced themselves unconsciously, and by very simple processes, which we may still observe in certain zoophytes. By degrees these mere sketches of animals have become perfected and differentiated, and have acquired special organs over which the biological work has been distributed; thenceforth the play of life has echoed in the nervous centres, and has awakened in them impressions and desires, the energy of which strictly corresponds to the importance of the functions. Now, there is no more primordial function than procreation, since on it depends the duration even of the species; and for this reason the need of reproduction, or the rut, breaks out in many animals like a kind of madness. The psychic faculties of the animal, whether great or small, are then over-excited, and rise above their ordinary level; but they all tend to one supreme aim—the desire for reproduction. At this period the wildest and most unsociable species can no longer endure solitude; both males and females seek each other; sometimes, even, they are seen to form themselves into groups, or small provisional societies, which will dissolve again after the coupling time is over.
Each period of rut is for animals a sort of puberty. The hair, the plumage, and the scales often assume rich tints which afterwards disappear. Sometimes special epidermic productions appear in the male, and serve him for temporary weapons with which to fight his rivals, or for ornaments to captivate the female. It is with a veritable frenzy that the sexual union is accomplished among certain species. Thus Dr. Günther has several times found female toads dead, smothered by the embrace of the males.[2] Spallanzani was able to amputate the thighs of male frogs and toads during copulation, without diverting them from their work.
In the animal class which more particularly interests us, that of mammals, rut produces analogous, though less violent, phenomena. Now, in this case, we know that erotic fury is closely related to congestive phenomena, having for their seat the procreative glands, which swell in both male and female, and provoke in the latter a veritable process of egg-laying. We must not forget that man, in his quality of mammal, is subject to the common law, that female menstruation is essentially identical with the intimate phenomena of rut in the females of mammals, and corresponds also to an ovarian congestion, or to the swelling and bursting of one or more of the Graafian follicles; it is, in short, a production of eggs. I need not lay stress on these facts, but it is right to recall them by the way, since they are the raison d’être of sexual attraction, without which there would be neither marriage nor family.
If we are willing to descend to the foundation of things, we find that human love is essentially rut in an intelligent being. It exalts all the vital forces of the man just as rut over-excites those of the animal. If it seems to differ extremely from it, this is simply because in man the procreative need, a primordial need beyond all others, in radiating from highly developed nervous centres, awakens and sets in commotion an entire psychic life unknown to the animal.
There is nothing surprising to the naturalist in this procreative explosion, which evolves altruism out of egotism. We know too well, however, that it has not appeared so simple a matter to many philosophers and celebrated literary men, little familiar with biological sciences. A belated metaphysician, Schopenhauer, who has lately become fashionable, adopting the ancient stereotyped doctrine which makes Nature an anthropomorphic personage, has gratuitously credited her with quite a profound diplomatic design. According to him, it is a foregone conclusion that she should intoxicate individuals with love, and thus urge them on, without their suspecting it, to sacrifice themselves to the major interest of the preservation of the species. The glance that we have just thrown on the processes of reproduction, from the paramœcium up to man, suffices to refute this dream. I will not, however, dwell on this. What is here of great interest is to inquire how the superior animals comport themselves when pricked by desire, and to note the principal traits of their sexual psychology; for here again we shall have to recognise more than one analogy to what happens in regard to man; and we shall also see later that there exists both in the animal and the man some relation between the manner in which sexual attraction is felt and the greater or less aptitude for durable pairing, and consequently for marriage and the family.
Without giving more time than is necessary to these short excursions into animal psychology, it will be well to pause on them for a moment. They throw a light on the sources of human sociology; they force us also to break once for all with the abstract and trite theories which have inspired, on the subject of marriage and the family, so much empty writing and so many satiating trivialities. It is in animality that humanity has its root; it is there, consequently, that we must seek the origins of human sociology.
In a well-known mystic book occurs an aphorism which has become celebrated—“Love is strong as death.” The expression is not exaggerated; we may even say that love is stronger than death, since it makes us despise it. This is perhaps truer with animals than with man, and is all the more evident in proportion as the rational will is weaker, and prudential calculations furnish no check to the impetuosity of desire. For the majority of insects to love and to die are almost synonymous, and yet they make no effort to resist the amorous frenzy which urges them on. But however short may be their sexual career, one fact has been so generally observed in regard to many of them, that it may be considered as the expression of a law—the law of coquetry. With the greater number of species that are slightly intelligent, the female refuses at first to yield to amorous caresses. This useful practice may well have arisen from selection, for its result has invariably been to excite the desire of the male, and arouse in him latent or sleeping faculties. However brief, for example, may be the life of butterflies, their pairing is not accomplished without preliminaries; the males court the females during entire hours, and for a butterfly hours are years.
We can easily imagine that the coquetry of females is more common amongst vertebrates. When the season of love arrives, many male fishes, who are then adorned with extremely brilliant colours, make the most of their transient beauty by spreading out their fins, and by executing leaps, darts, and seductive manœuvres around the females.
Among fishes we begin already to observe another sexual law, at least as general as the law of coquetry, which Darwin has called the law of battle. The males dispute with each other for the females, and must triumph over their rivals before obtaining them. Thus, whilst the female sticklebacks are very pacific, their males are of warlike humour, and engage in furious combats in their honour. In the same way the male salmon, whose lower jaw lengthens into a crook during the breeding season, are constantly fighting amongst each other.[3]
The higher we ascend in the animal kingdom the more frequent and more violent become two desires in the males—the desire of appearing beautiful, and that of driving away rivals. In South America, the males of the Analis cristellatus, a fissilingual saurian, have terrible battles in the breeding season, the vanquished habitually losing his tail, which is bitten off by the victor. An old observer also describes the amorous male alligator as “swollen to bursting, the head and tail raised, spinning round on the surface of the water, and appearing to assume the manner of an Indian chief relating his exploits.”[4]
But it is particularly among birds that the sentiment, or rather the passion, of love breaks out with most force and even poetry. It is especially to birds that the celebrated Darwinian theory of sexual selection applies. It is difficult, indeed, not to attribute to this influence the production of the offensive and defensive arms, the armaments, the organs of song, the glands of odoriferous secretion of many male birds, also their courage, the warlike instinct of many of them, and lastly, the coquetry of the females. Let us listen to Audubon, as he relates the loves of the skylark:—“Each male is seen to advance with an imposing and measured step, swinging his tail, spreading it out to its full extent, then closing it again like a fan in the hands of a fine lady. Their brilliant notes are more melodious than ever; they repeat them oftener than usual as they rest on the branch or summit of some tall meadow reed. Woe to the rival who dares to enter the lists, or to the male who simply comes in sight of another male at this moment of veritable delirium: he is suddenly attacked, and, if he is the weaker, chased beyond the limits of the territory claimed by the first occupant. Sometimes several birds are seen engaged in these rude combats, which rarely last more than two or three minutes: the appearance of a single female suffices to put an instant end to their quarrel, and they all fly after her as if mad. The female shows the natural reserve of her sex, without which, even among larks, every female would probably fail to find a male [this is a little too flattering for larks, and even for men]. When the latter,” continues Audubon, “flies towards her, sighing forth his sweetest notes, she retreats before her ardent admirer in such a way that he knows not whether he is repulsed or encouraged.”[5]
In this little picture the author has noted all the striking traits of the love of birds—the courage and jealousy of the male, his efforts to charm the female by his beauty and the sweetness of his song, and finally, the coquetry of the female, who retreats, and thus throws oil on the fire. The combats of the amorous males among many species of birds have been observed and described minutely. “The large blue male herons,” says Audubon, “attack each other brutally, without courtesy; they make passes with their long beaks and parry them like fencing masters, often for half-an-hour at a time, after which the vanquished one remains on the ground, wounded or killed.”[6]
The male Canadian geese engage in combats which last more than half-an-hour; the vanquished sometimes return to the charge, and the fight always takes place in an enclosed field, in the middle of a circle formed by the band or clan of which the rivals form part.
But it is especially among the gallinaceæ that love inspires the males with warlike fury. In this order of birds nearly all the males are of bellicose temperament. Our barn-door cock is the type of the gallinaceæ—vain, amorous, and courageous. Black cocks are also always ready for a fight, and their females quietly look on at their combats, and afterwards reward the conqueror. We may observe analogous facts, only somewhat masked, in savage, and even in civilised humanity. The conduct of certain females of the Tetras urogallus is still more human. According to Kowalewsky, they take advantage of a moment when the attention of the old cocks is entirely absorbed by the anxiety of the combat, to run off with a younger male.[7]
If we may believe certain authors, these amorous duels must not always be taken seriously. They are often nothing more than parades, tourneys, or courteous jousts, merely giving the males an opportunity of showing their beauty, address, or strength. This is the case, according to Blyth, with the Tetras umbellus.[8] In the same way, the grouse of Florida (Tetras cuspido) are said to assemble at night to fight until the morning with measured grace, and then to separate, having first exchanged formal courtesies.[9]
But among animals, as well as men, love has more than one string to his bow. It is especially so with birds, who are the most amorous of vertebrates. They use several æsthetic means of attracting the female, such as beauty of plumage and the art of showing it, and also sweetness of song. Strength seems often to be quite set aside, and the eye and ear are alone appealed to by the love-stricken males.
Every one has seen our pigeons and doves courteously salute their mates. Many male birds execute dances and courting parades before their females. Thus, for example, do the Tetras phasaniellus of North America, herons (Cathartes jota), vultures, etc. The male of the red-wing struts about before his female, sweeping the ground with his tail and acting the dandy.[10] The crested duck raises his head gracefully, straightens his silky aigrette, or bows to his female, while his throat swells and he utters a sort of gutteral sound.[11] The male chaffinch places himself in front of the female, that she may admire at her ease his red throat and blue head.[12]
All this æsthetic display is quite intentional and premeditated; for while many pheasants and gallinaceous birds parade before their females, two pheasants of dull colour, the Crossoptilon auritum and the Phasianus Wallichii, refrain from doing so,[13] being apparently conscious of their modest livery.
Birds often assemble in large numbers to compete in beauty before pairing. The Tetras cuspido of Florida and the little grouse of Germany and Scandinavia do this. The latter have daily amorous assemblies, or cours d’amour, of great length, which are renewed every year in the month of May.[14]
Certain birds are not content with their natural ornaments, however brilliant these may be, but give the rein to their æsthetic desire in a way that may be called human. Mr. Gould assures us that some species of humming-birds decorate the exterior of their nests with exquisite taste, making use of lichens, feathers, etc. The bower-birds of Australia (Chlamydera maculata, etc.) construct bowers on the ground, ornamented with feathers, shells, bones, and leaves. These bowers are intended to shelter the courting parades, and both males and females join in building them, though the former are more zealous in the work.[15] But in this erotic architecture the palm is carried off by a bird of New Guinea, the Amblyornis inornata, made known to us by M. O. Beccari.[16] This bird of rare beauty, for it is a bird of Paradise, constructs a little conical hut to protect his amours, and in front of this he arranges a lawn, carpeted with moss, the greenness of which he relieves by scattering on it various bright-coloured objects, such as berries, grains, flowers, pebbles, and shells. More than this, when the flowers are faded, he takes great care to replace them by fresh ones, so that the eye may be always agreeably flattered. These curious constructions are solid, lasting for several years, and probably serving for several birds. What we know of sexual unions among the lower human races suffices to show how much these birds excel men in sexual delicacy.
Every one is aware that the melodious voice of many male birds furnishes them with a powerful means of seduction. Every spring our nightingales figure in true lyric tournaments. Magpies, who are ill-endowed from a musical point of view, endeavour to make up for this organic imperfection by rapping on a dry and sonorous branch, not only to call the female, but also to charm her; we may say, in fact, that they perform instrumental music. Another bird, the male of the weaver-bird, builds an abode of pleasure for himself, where he goes to sing to his companion.[17]
Audubon has made one observation in regard to Canadian geese which is in every point applicable to the human species. The older the birds are, he says, the more they abridge the preliminaries of their amours. Their poetic and æsthetic sense has become blunted, and they go straight to their object.
Wherever amongst the animal species supremacy in love is obtained by force, the male, nearly always the more ardent, has necessarily become, through the action of selection, larger, stronger, and better armed than the female. Such is in reality the case in regard to the greater number of vertebrates; certain exceptions, however, exist, and naturally these are chiefly found among birds, as they are more inclined than other types to put a certain delicacy in their sexual unions. With many species of birds, indeed, the female is larger and stronger than the male. It is well known to be the same with certain articulates, and these facts authorise us to admit that there is no necessary correlation between relative weakness and the female sex. Must we therefore conclude, with Darwin, that the females of certain birds owe their excess of size and height to the fact that they have formerly contested also for the possession of the males? We may be allowed to doubt it. Almost universally, whether she is large or small, the female is less ardent than the male, and in the amorous tragi-comedy she generally plays, from beginning to end, a passive rôle; in the animal kingdom, as well as with mankind, amazons are rare.
Among birds and vertebrates generally the male is much more impetuous than the female, and therefore he has no difficulty in accepting for the moment any companion whatever.[18] This uncontrollable ardour sometimes even urges the males to commit actual attempts on the safety of the family. Thus it happens that the male canary (Fringilla canaria) persecutes his female while she is sitting, tears her nest, throws out the eggs, and, in short, tries to excite his mate to become again a lover, forgetting that she is a mother. In the same way our domestic cock pursues the sitting hen when she leaves her eggs in order to feed.[19]
With the cousins-german of man, the mammals, sexual psychology has a general resemblance to that of birds, but more often it is far less delicate. And besides this, the sexual customs are naturally less refined in proportion as the nervous centres of the species are less perfected. Thus the stupid tatoways meet by chance, smell each other, copulate and separate with the greatest indifference. Our domestic dog himself, although so civilised and affectionate, is generally as gross in his amours as the tatoway.
With birds, as we have seen, the law of battle plays an important part in sexual selection; but it is often counter-balanced by other less brutal influences. This is rarely the case in regard to mammals, with whom especially the right of the strongest regulates the unions. The law of battle prevails among aquatic as well as land mammals. The combats of the male stags, in the rutting season, are celebrated. The combatants have been known to succumb without being able to disentangle their interlocked antlers; but seals and male sperm-whales fight with equal fury, and so also do the males of the Greenland whale.[20]
In mammals, as in birds, and as in man, sexual desire raises and intensifies all the faculties, and seems to elevate the individual above the level of normal life. Animals in a state of rut become bolder, more ferocious, and more dangerous. The elephant, pacific enough by nature, assumes a terrible fury in the rutting season. The Sanskrit poems constantly recur to the simile of the elephant in rut to express the highest degree of strength, nobility, grandeur, and even beauty.
But obviously I must not linger very long over the loves of the animals. My chief object is to study sexual union and marriage amongst human beings. The rut of animals and their sexual passions merely interest us here as preliminary studies, which throw light on the origin of analogous sentiments in mankind. Before leaving this subject, however, it will be useful to note a few more facts which, from the point of view of sexual psychology, bring animals and men near to each other.
The old Cartesian paradox, which makes the animal an unconscious machine, has still many partisans. A widely-prevailing prejudice insists that animals always obey blind instincts, while man alone, homo sapiens, made after the image of God, weighs motives, deliberates and chooses. Now, as procreation constitutes one of the great necessities of organised beings, and is an imperious law which no species can elude without disappearing, surely we ought to find amongst animals the most exact regularity in the acts connected with it. Man alone ought to have the privilege of introducing caprice and free choice into love. It is not so, however. On this side of his nature, as on all the others, man and animal approach, resemble, and copy each other. In his celebrated invocation to Venus, Lucretius has truly said, proclaiming the universal empire of the instinct of reproduction—
“Per te quoniam genus omne animantum
Concipitur, visitque exortum lumine solis.”
The animal, as well as the morally developed man, is capable of preference and individual passion; he does not yield blindly and passively to sexual love.
According to observers and breeders, it is the female who is specially susceptible of sentimental selection. The male, even the male of birds, is more ardent than the female, that is to say, more intoxicated and more sharply pricked by instinct, and thus generally accepts any female whatever: all are alike to him. This is the rule, but it is not without exceptions; thus, the male pheasant shows a singular aversion to certain hens. Amongst the long-tailed ducks some females have evidently a particular charm for the males, and are courted more than the others.[21] The pigeon of the dovecot shows a strong aversion to the species modified by breeders, which he regards as deteriorated.[22] Stallions are often capricious. It was necessary, for example, to use stratagem in order to induce the famous stallion Monarch to beget Gladiateur, who became still more famous.[23] Analogous facts have been observed in regard to bulls.[24]
But it is more especially the females who introduce individual fancy into sexual love. They are subject to singular and inexplicable aversions. Mares sometimes resist, and it is necessary to deceive them.[25] Female pigeons occasionally show a strong dislike to certain males without apparent cause, and refuse to yield to their caresses. At other times a female pigeon, suddenly forgetting the constancy of her species, abandons her old mate or legitimate spouse to fall violently in love with another male. In the same way peahens sometimes show a lively attachment to a particular peacock.[26] High-bred bitches, led astray by passion, trample under foot their dignity, honour, and all care for nobility of blood, to yield themselves to pug-dogs of low breed or mongrel males. We are told of some who have persisted for entire weeks in these degrading passions, repulsing between times the most distinguished of their own race.[27]
Even among species noted for their fidelity it sometimes happens that acts of sexual looseness are committed. The female pigeon often abandons her mate if the latter is wounded or becomes weak.[28] Misfortune is not attractive, and love does not always inspire heroism.
In concluding this short study of sexual union in the animal kingdom, I will attempt to formulate the general propositions which may be drawn from it.
All organic species undergo the tyranny of the procreative function, which is a guarantee of the duration of the type.
The phenomenon of reproduction, when detached from all the complicated accessories which often conceal it in bi-sexual species, goes back essentially to the conjugation of two cellules.
With intelligent animals the procreative function echoes in the nervous centres under the form of violent desires, which intensify all the psychic and physical faculties in awakening what we call love.
At its base, the love of animals does not differ from that of man. Doubtless it is never such a quintessence as the love of Petrarch, but it is often more delicate than that of inferior races, and of ill-conditioned individuals, who, though belonging to the human race, seek for nothing in love but, to use an energetic expression of Amyot’s Plutarch, to “get drunk.”
But among many of the animal species the sexual union induces a durable association, having for its object the rearing of young. In nobility, delicacy, and devotion these unions do not yield precedence to many human unions. They deserve attentive study.
I have now, therefore, to consider marriage and the family amongst the animals.