Page:The Truth about Marriage.djvu/19

Rh To do so is to develop all kinds of so-called psychoses, or nervous and mental upsets, which prevent the living of a perfectly normal life.

Biologically the end of the perpetuation of the race is secured by what we know as the sex instinct, which has three developments: First, love of the opposite sex in general; second, love of one of the opposite sex, or what is called the mating instinct; and, third, love of offspring.

From the point of view of the human being love of the opposite sex is the reason for marriage. But that covers a great deal of territory.

Love of the opposite sex is with many, in the crudest and most animal-like stage, merely sense satisfaction, a satisfaction of the kind that men know as brute lust.

Now, here comes in an interpretation of marriage. With many marriage is only sensual and brute-like sex gratification. And biologically it will secure the end of the procreation of offspring, the continuance of the race. If we were animals only, and brutal animals at that, unworthy of our human inheritance, lacking in the finer feelings of the cultivated human being, let us say, uncouth, such a marriage would suffice, after a fashion, but leave us vaguely and miserably unsatisfied.

Something within us causes us to turn away from Rh