11
pulse. What concerns us here is the effect of "herd" instinct on one, and only one, of these impulses, the sex instinct. Herd instinct tends to inhibit all individualistic impulse, but the conflict is, in the case of the impulse of sex, most marked, and, it would seem, most ineluctable. The herd aggregates, sex, more than any other instinct, segregates; the herd is social, sex anti-social. Some animals—e.g., birds—are gregarious until breeding time, and then they separate. Had humanity had no sex, it would probably have been civilised ages ago, only there might have been no humanity to civilise.
At this point you will, I am sure, exclaim—I am almost tempted to exclaim myself—"This is impossible, outrageous." What about the primal sanctities of marriage? What about "the voice that breathed o'er Eden"? Are not man and wife the primitive unit of civilisation? From the primitive pair, you will urge, arises the family, from the family the tribe, from the tribe the state, from the state the nation, from the nation the federation, from the federation the brotherhood of all humanity. Alas, alas! To the roots of that fair Family Tree, whose leaves were for the healing of the nations, anthropology, sociology, and psychology have combined to lay the axe. Alas for Eden! Adam and Eve may have learnt there, though they appear to have forgotten, their Duty towards God, but of their Duty towards their Neighbour they necessarily knew less than a pack of hunting wolves. Society, in so far as it deals with sex, starts with the herd. Society is founded, not on the union of the sexes, but on what is a widely different thing, its prohibition, its limitation. The "herd" says to primitive man not "thou shalt marry,"
