Page:The Truth about Marriage.djvu/149



I have another question to answer: "You speak of true marriage love. Is such love anything else than the instinct for mating which characterizes all animal life? In other words, is it not merely an instinct to keep the race alive and hence purely animal? I fail to see that human beings are superior to animals when it comes to mating, or that your 'true marriage love' is anything else than the instinct to propagate, an appetite as animal as eating and drinking."

In answer to this attack let me say that I do not believe that men and animals are on the same plane of life. I admit that a man is primarily an animal, as to his body, and has instincts which beasts share with him, but a man is inexpressibly more than an animal. Of course, I perceive that many people seem to be little above the animal in their knowledge, in their passions and in their grossness of living.

But I am not satisfied to class myself with the