XXX THE PASSING OF THE HUSBAND WORSHIP 303 Is man's vitality declining? Undue pessimism. The wise husband. Is the male indispensable? Loeb's experiments. Twins to order. The mother is the race. Matriarchal communities. Modern woman is conceited. The terrors of the climacteric. Masculine man is in no danger of passing away.
XXXI PERFECT MATRIMONIAL ADJUSTMENTS 315 Marriage a compromise. Attractiveness an asset. Forty and hideous. Athletic movie idols. The foe of married happiness. Friendship may survive love. Separate vacations for the married. The play function of love. Psychoanalysis to the rescue. Wounded egotism. Democracy in the home.
Life would be much simpler if love among human beings were similar to love among the animals. At mating time, any animal of any species feels automatically attracted to any animal of the opposite sex belonging to the same species. Age, appearance or relationship seem of no account in the animal world. The love activities begin at a definite time of the year, have as their obvious and exclusive purpose the reproduction of the species and, after attaining their goal, end very early in the summer of the same year. An exception may be made for a few wild and domesticated animals which have several mating seasons and for a few survivals of the prehistoric fauna, like the elephants, among which the family group seems more permanent than among more "recent" biological specimens.
Nor do love activities among the animals result in lasting disturbances of their psychological life. In certain varieties of fish the male never even sees the female whose eggs he fecundates. While we observe at times duels to the death between two males for the possession of one female (elks or moose), animal life seems to suffer few lasting complications from the fact of such conflicts, which, like animal love, are purely seasonal.
A greater regularity of the food supply which has intensified the sex urge among human beings and removed its seasonal character, and the progress of civilization which, for economic reasons, has placed upon the union of male and female a thousand restrictions, has complicated terribly what was merely among animals a periodic biological activity.