obvious, we often find it even among the unlikeliest animals. As is well
known, it is most pronounced among the birds, who have in some species
carried the erotic art,--and the faithful devotion which properly
accompanied the erotic art as being an essential part of it,--to the
highest point. We have here the great natural fact of courtship.
Throughout Nature, wherever we meet with animals of a high type, often
indeed when they are of a lowly type--provided they have not been rendered
unnatural by domestication--every act of sexual union is preceded by a
process of courtship. There is a sound physiological reason for this
courtship, for in the act of wooing and being wooed the psychic excitement
gradually generated in the brains of the two partners acts as a stimulant
to arouse into full activity the mechanism which ensures sexual union and
aids ultimate impregnation. Such courtship is thus a fundamental natural
fact.

It is as a natural fact that we still find it in full development among a
large number of peoples of the lower races whom we are accustomed to
regard as more primitive than ourselves. New conditions, it is true, soon
enter to complicate the picture presented by savage courtship. The
economic element of bargaining, destined to prove so important, comes in
at an early stage. And among peoples leading a violent life, and
constantly fighting, it has sometimes happened, though not always, that
courtship also has been violent. This is not so frequent as was once
supposed. With better knowledge it was found that the seeming brutality
once thought to take the place of courtship among various peoples in a low
state of culture was really itself courtship, a rough kind of play
agreeable to both parties and not depriving the feminine partner of her
own freedom of choice. This was notably the case as regards so-called
"marriage by capture." While this is sometimes a real capture, it is more
often a mock capture; the lover perhaps pursues the beloved on horseback,