Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/329

Rh would have assumed another shape. Then the indiscretion of the wife would have been a fascinating weakness, which would partake somewhat of the character of a joke, while the inconstancy of the husband would have a tragic significance. Society in such a case would exact of man the same chastity outside of the marriage relation and especially before the marriage, as it now exacts of woman. Don Juan would then be Donna Juanna and in the theatre we would shed tears over the death of that poor, innocent Othello, strangled by the furious, jealous Desdemona.

I am well aware of the enormous difficulties in the way of solving peremptorily the problem of the fidelity and natural permanence of love, with our present customs and morals. If we examine the life of the higher animals, we can not fail to observe that the passion of the male for the female only lasts during the courtship or at the most, during the time which we might call the honeymoon, and that reciprocal fidelity, which only exists at all in a few isolated species, does not survive the birth of the young. No matter how violently our pride as human beings may recoil, we are yet constrained to seek for truth in these analogies from the animal kingdom, which is governed by the same vital laws as the human race, which differs from it biologically, in no particular, if we wish to know what attributes are natural and necessary, and what are artificial and arbitrary. This method of comparison would lead us to the conclusion that love exhausts itself in the effort to reach its aim and in the accomplishment of its purpose, as hunger ceases to exist when the desire for food is gratified, and that even for woman, one act in the drama of love comes to a complete close with the birth of the child, so that she can enter upon a new act with an entirely different cast of roles. If this is, as it appears to be, the true and natural condition of this human