Why have we persisted? It is idle to speak of monogamy as though it were
a senseless rule imposed on unfortunate humanity by some all-powerful
Superman. We have imposed it on ourselves. It is our doing. Why have we
done it? Surely because, in spite of its alleged "impossibility," its
obvious inconveniences, there is some need in human nature which demands a
permanent and a stable sex relationship to meet it.

I believe that there is something in our human nature which desires
stability in its relations with other human beings. It is perhaps a
recognition of the fact that, though we live in time and suffer its
conditions, we are immortal also and chafe under too strict a bondage to
time. Our relations with other human beings ought not to be evanescent!
There is something cheap and shoddy in the giving and taking of human
personality on such easy soon-forgotten terms. It is not only in sexual
relations that this is true. It is true of all human intercourse. The
longer care and devotion of human parents for their offspring is not a
physical only, but a spiritual necessity: and it is bound up with the
greater faithfulness of human lovers. In parenthood, in loverhood, in
friendship, those who take their obligations lightly are not the finer
sort of men and women, but the slighter, cheaper make. It is not a love of
freedom but a certain inferiority and shoddiness that makes it possible
for us to give ourselves, and take others, lightly. For in all human
relationships it is "ourselves" that we give and take. It is not what your
friend does for you or gives to you that makes him your friend; but what
he _is_ to you. It is his personality that you have shared. And so there
is something rather repulsive in quickly forgetting or throwing it away.
People who make friends and lose them as the trees put out their leaves
in spring to shed them in the autumn, are not quite human. The capacity to
make friends--to make many friends--is a great power: the capacity to lose