THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE

THE FIRST STAGE: THE SEXUAL INSTINCT


To the generations slowly rising from the dark abyss of time to the
twilight of the Middle Ages, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct
offered fewer difficulties than the gratification of any other need or
desire. With every unpremeditated and cursory indulgence the craving
disappeared from consciousness and left the individual free to give his
mind to the acquisition of the necessities of life which were far more
difficult to obtain. Primitive, prehistoric man lived in the moment.
When there was plenty of food he gorged to repletion, heedless of the
starvation which might be his fate to-morrow or the day after. His
thought had neither breadth nor continuity. It never occurred to him
that there might be a connection between an abrupt and quickly forgotten
embrace and the birth of a child by a woman of the tribe after what
appeared to be an immeasurable lapse of time. He suspected witchcraft in
the phenomena of pregnancy and childbirth (to this day the aborigines of
Central and Northern Australia do not realise the connection between
generation and birth). As a rule it was remembered that a certain woman
had given birth to a certain child by the fact of her having carried it
about and fed it at her breast. Occasionally it was forgotten to which
mother a child belonged; perhaps the mother had died; perhaps the child
had strayed beyond the boundaries of the community and the mother had
failed to recognise it on its return. But it was clear beyond all doubt