aling with the erotic life only, such a proceeding would be out of
place here.

The psychogenetic law, then, comes to this: Every well-developed male
individual of the present day successively passes through the three
stages of love through which the European races have passed. The three
stages are not traceable in all men with infallible certainty, there are
numerous individuals whose development in this respect has been
arrested, but in the emotional life of every highly differentiated
member of the human race they are clearly distinguishable, and the
greater the wealth and strength of a soul, the more perfectly will it
reflect the history of the race. The evolution of every well-endowed
individual presents a rough sketch of the history of civilisation; it
has its prehistoric, its classical, its mediaeval, and its modern
period. Many men remain imprisoned in the past; others are fragmentary,
or appear to be suspended in mid-air, rootless. The spirit of humanity
has lived through the past and overcome it, so as to be able to create
its future.

The gynecocratic stage actually survives to this day in the nursery.
Here the mother rules supreme; the father is an intruder, the brothers
are dominated by their sisters, often their juniors. Women mature at an
earlier age than men; this assertion applies with equal force to
individual and sex in connection with the history of civilisation. After
he has left the nursery, there follows in the life of the boy a period
during which he associates only with his school-friends, shuns the
society of his mother and sisters, and is ashamed of his female
relatives. This represents the revival of the men's unions of remote
antiquity in the life of the individual of the present day.

At the period of puberty the sexual instinct makes itself felt for the
first time; as a rule, if its nature is not recognised, it is
accompanied by restlessness and depression. I do not believe that the
instinct is, as soon as it appears, directed to the other sex, or
anything else outside the individual. This fact cannot be explained by
want of opportunity, shyness or bad example; there is a positive reason
for it; the longing for a member of the other sex is still unfelt.

Between his twentieth and thirtieth year a man is often dominated by an
enthusiastic spiritual love quite unconnected with the sensuality which
has hitherto ruled his emotions. I will not elaborate the growth of this
love and the new f