THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE BY REMY DE GOURMONT Translated with a Postscript By EZRA POUND BON I AND LIVE RIGHT Publishers New York THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE COPYRIGHT, 1922, By BONI AND LlVERIGHT, INC. Printed in the United States of America. CONTENTS CHAPTER PACK I. THE SUBJECT OF AN IDEA n Love's general psychology. — Love according to natural laws. — Sexual selection. — Man's place in Nature. — Identity of human and animal psychology. — The animal nature of love. II. THE AIM OF LIFE 17 The importance of the sexual act. — Its ineluctable character. — Animals who live only to reproduce them- selves.— The strife for love, and for death. — Females fecundated at the very instant of birth. — The main- tenance of life. III. SCALE OF SEXES 22 Asexual reproduction. — Formation of the animal col- ony.— Limits of asexual reproduction. — Coupling. — Birth of the sexes. — Hermaphrodism and partheno- genesis.— Chemical fecundation. — Universality of par- thenogenesis. IV. SEXUAL DIMORPHISM 31 1. Invertebrates: formation of the male. — Primitiv- ity of the female. — Minuscule males: the bonellie. — Regression of the male into the male organ: the cirripedes. — Generality of sexual dimorphism. — Su- periority of the female in most insect species. — Excep- tions.— Numeric dimorphism. — Female hymenoptera. — Multiplicity of her activities.— Male's purely sexual role.— Dimorphism of ants and termites. — Grasshoppers and crickets. — Spiders. — Coleoptera. — Glow-worm. — Cochineal's strange dimorphism. V. SEXUAL DIMORPHISM 43 2. Vertebrates: — Unnoticeable in fish, saurians, reptiles. — The bird world. — Dimorphism favourable to males: v 1163473 CHAPTER PACK the oriole, pheasants, the ruff. — Peacocks and turkey- cocks. — Birds of paradise. — Moderate dimorphism of mammifers. — Effects of castration on dimorphism. VI. SEXUAL DIMORPHISM: 49 3. Vertebrates (Continued) : — Man and woman. — Characteristics and limits of human dimorphism. — Ef- fects of civilization. — Psychologic dimorphism. — The insect world and the human. — Modern dimorphism, basis of the pair. — Solidarity of the human pair. — Di- morphism and polygamy. — The pair favours the fe- male.— Sexual aesthetics.— Causes of the superiority of feminine beauty. VII. SEXUAL DIMORPHISM AND FEMINISM 59 Inferiority and superiority of the female as shown hi animal species. — Influence of feeding on the produc- tion of sexes. — The female would have sufficed. — Feminism absolute, and moderate. — Pipe-dreams: elimi- nation of the male and human parthenogenesis. VIII. LOVE-ORGANS 64 Sexual dimorphism and parallelism. — Sexual organs of man and of woman. — Constancy of sexual paral- lelism in the animal series. — External sexual organs of placentary mammifera. — Form and position of the penis.— The penial bone. — The clitoris. — The vagina. — The teats. — Forked prong of marsupials. — Sexual organs of reptiles. — Fish and birds with a penial organ. — Genital organs of arthropodes. — Attempt to classify animals according to the disposition, presence, ab- sence of exterior organs for reproduction. IX. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE 76 i. Copulation: Vertebrates. — Its very numerous va- rieties and its specific fixity. — The apparent immoral- ity of Nature. — Sexual ethnography. — Human mechan- ism.— Cavalage. — The form and duration of coupling in divers mammifers.— Aberrations of sexual surgery, the ampallang. — Pain as a bridle on sex. — Maidenhead. — The mole. — Passivity of the female. — The ovule, psychological figure of the female. — Mania of attribut- ing human virtues to animals. — The modesty of ele- phants.— Coupling mechanism in whales, seals, tor- toises.— In certain ophidians and in certain fish. vi CHAPTER PACT X. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE 91 2. Copulation (Continued) — Arthropodes. — Scorpions. —Large aquatic crustaceans. — Small crustaceans. — The hydrachne. — Scutilary. — Cockchafer. — Butterflies. — Flies, etc. — Variation of animals' sexual habits. XI. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE 98 3. Of birds and fish. — Males without penis. — Coupling by simple contact. — Salacity of birds. — Copulation of batrachians: accoucheur toad, aquatic toad, earth toad, pipa toad. — Foetal parasitism. — Chastity of fish. — Sexes separated in love. — Onanistic fecundation. — Cephalopodes, the spermatophore. XII. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE 107 4. Hermaphrodism. — Sexual life of oysters. — Gastero- podes. — The idea of reproduction and the idea of pleasure. — Mechanism of reciprocal reproduction: helices. — Spintrian habits. — Reflection on hermaphrod- ism. XIII. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE xia 5. Artificial fecundation. — Disjunction of the secret- ing apparatus from the copulating apparatus. — Spiders. — Discovery of their copulative method. — Brutality of the female. — Habits of the epeire. — The argyronete. — The tarantula. — Exceptions: the reapers. — Dragonflies (libellule) .— Dragonflies (demoiselle) virgins and "jou- vencelle." — Picture of their love affairs. XIV. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE 120 6. Cannibalism in sex. — Females who devour the male, those who devour the spermatophore. — Probable use of these practices. — Fecundation by the whole male. — Loves of the white foreheaded dectic. — The green grasshopper. — The Alpine analote. — The ephippigere. — Further reflections on the cannibalism of sex. — Loves of the praying mantis. XV. THE SEXUAL PARADE 137 Universality of the caress, of amorous preludes. — Their role in fecundation. — Sexual games of birds. — How cantharides caress. — Males' combats. — Pretended com- bats of birds. — Dance of the tetras. — Gardener bird. — His country house. — His taste for flowers. — Reflections vii V on the origin of his art. — Combats of crickets. — Parade of butterflies. — Sexual sense of orientation.— The great- peacock moth. — Animals' submission to orders of Na- ture.— Transmutation of physical values. — Rutting calendar. XVI. POLYGAMY 141 Rarity of monogamy. — Taste for change in animals. — Roles of monogamy and polygamy in the stability or instability of specific types. — Strife of the couple against polygamy. — Couples among insects. — Among fish, batrachians, saurians. — Monogamy of pigeons, of nightingales. — Monogamy in carnivora, in rodents. — Habits of the rabbit.— The ichneumon. — Unknown causes of polygamy. — Rarity and superabundance of males. — Polygamy in insects. — In fish. — In gallinaceae, in web-footed birds.— In herbivora. — The antelope's harem. — Human polygamy. — How it tempers the couple among civilized races. XVH. LOVE AMONG SOCIAL ANIMALS 157 Organization of reproduction among hymenoptera. — Bees.— Wedding of the queen. — Mother bee, cause and consciousness of the hive. — Sexual royalty. — Limits of intelligence among bees. — Natural logic and human logic. — Wasps. — Bumble-bees. — Ants.— Notes on their habits. — Very advanced state of their civilization. — Slavery and parasitism among ants. — Termites. — The nine principal active forms of termites. — Great age of their civilization. — Beavers. — Tendency of industrious ani- mals to inactivity. XVHI. THE QUESTION or ABERRATIONS 172 Two sorts of sexual aberration.— Sexual aberrations of animals. — Those of men. — Crossing of species. — Chastity. — Modesty. — Varieties and localizations of sexual bashfulness. — Artificial creation of modesty. — Sort of modesty natural to all females. — Cruelty. — Picture of carnage. — The cricket eaten alive. — Habits of carabes. — Every living creature is a prey. — Necessity to kill or to be killed. XIX. INSTINCT 184 Instinct. — Can one oppose it to intelligence? — Instinct in man. — Primordiality of intelligence. — Instinct's con- viii CHAPTER PAG1 servative role. — Modifying role of intelligence. — Intelli- gence and consciousness. — Parity of animal and hu- man instinct. — Mechanical character of the instinctive act. — Instinct modified by intelligence. — Habit of work creates useless work. — Objections to the identification of instinct and intelligence taken from life of insects. XX. TYRANNY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM 194 Accord and discord between organs and acts. — Tarses and sacred scarab. — The hand of man. — Mediocre fit- ness of sexual organs for copulation. — Origin of "lux- uria." — The animal is a nervous system served by organs. — The organ does not determine the aptitude. — Man's hand inferior to his genius. — Substitution of one sense for another. — Union and role of the senses in love. — Man and animal under the tyranny of the nervous system. — Wear and tear of humanity com- pensated by acquisitions. — Man's inheritors. TRANSLATOR'S POSTSCRIPT ......... 206 BIBLIOGRAPHY: PRACTICAL WORKS CONSULTED . . 220 THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE CHAPTER I THE SUBJECT OF AN IDEA Love's general psychology. — Love according to natural laws. — Sexual selection. — Man's place in Nature. — Identity of human and animal psychology. — The animal nature oj love. THIS book, which is only an essay, because its subject matter is so immense, represents, nevertheless, an ambi- tion: one wanted to enlarge the general psychology of love, starting it in the very beginning of male and female activity, and giving man's sexual life its place in the one plan of universal sexuality. Certain moralists have, undeniably, pretended to talk about "love in relation to natural causes," but they were profoundly ignorant of these natural causes: thus Senan- cour, whose book, blotted though it be with ideology, remains the boldest work on a subject so essential that nothing can drag it to triviality. If Senancour had been acquainted with the science of his time, if he had only read Reaumur and Bonnet, Buff on and Lamarck; if he ii THE NATURAL had been able to merge the two ideas, man and animal into one, he, being a man without insurmountable preju- dices, might have produced a still readable book. The moment would have been favorable. People were be- ginning to have some exact knowledge of animals' habits. Bonnet had proved the startling relationships of animal and vegetable reproduction; the essential principle of physiology had been found; the science of life was brief enough to be clear; one might have ventured a theory as to the psychological unity of the animal series. Such a work would have prevented numerous follies in the century then beginning. One would have become accustomed to consider human love as one form of num- berless forms, and not perhaps, the most remarkable of the lot, a form which clothes the universal instinct of reproduction; and its apparent anomalies would have found a normal explanation amid Nature's extravagance. Darwin arrived, inaugurated a useful system, but his views were too systematized, his aim too explanatory and his scale of creatures with man at the summit, as the culmination of universal effort, is of a too theologic simplicity. Man is not the culmination of nature, he is in Nature, he is one of the unities of life, that is all. He is the product of a partial, not of total evolution; the branch whereon he blossoms, parts like a thousand other branches from a common trunk. Moreover, Dar- win, truckling to the religiose pudibundery of his race, has almost wholly neglected the actual facts of sex; this makes his theory of sexual selection, as the principle of change, incomprehensible. But even if he had taken account of the real mechanism of love, his conclusions, 12 PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE possibly more logical, would still have been inexact, for if sexual selection has any aim it can be but conservation. Fecundation is the reintegration of differentiated ele- ments into a unique element, a perpetual return to the unity. It is not particularly interesting to consider human acts as the fruits of evolution, for upon animal branches as clearly separate as those of insect and mammifer one finds sexual acts and social customs sensibly analogous, if not identical in many points. If insects and mammifers have any common ancestor, save the primordial jelly, there must indeed have been very different potentialities in its amorphous contours to lead it here into being bee and there into being giraffe. An evolution leading to such diverse results has interest only as a metaphysical idea, psychology can get from it next to nothing of value. We must chuck the old ladder whose rungs the evo- lutionists ascended with such difficulty. We will imagine, metaphorically, a centre of life, with multiple lives di- verging from it; having passed the unicellular phase, we will take no count of hypothetic subordinations. One does not wish to deny, one wishes rather not to deny, either general or particular evolutions, but the genealo- gies are too uncertain and the thread which unites them ^^ * too often broken :<£what, for example, is the origin of birds, organisms which seem at once a progress and a retrogression from the mammifer?; On reflection, one will consider the different love-mechanisms of all the dioicians as parallel and contemporary. Man will then find himself in his proper and rather 13