gainst adultery.... Let him, however, who is,
nevertheless, overtaken by the outbreak of it console himself
with the undoubted fact that of two real lovers the most
noble-minded and deep-seeing _friend_ will always have the
preference." These wise words cannot be too deeply meditated. The
policy of jealousy is only successful--when it is successful--in
the hands of the man who counts the external husk of love more
precious than the kernel.

It seems to some that the recognition of variations in sexual
relationships, of the tendency of the monogamic to overpass its
self-imposed bounds, is at best a sad necessity, and a lamentable fall
from a high ideal. That, however, is the reverse of the truth. The great
evil of monogamy, and its most seriously weak point, is its tendency to
self-concentration at the expense of the outer world. The devil always
comes to a man in the shape of his wife and children, said Hinton. The
family is a great social influence in so far as it is the best instrument
for creating children who will make the future citizens; but in a certain
sense the family is an anti-social influence, for it tends to absorb
unduly the energy that is needed for the invigoration of society. It is
possible, indeed, that that fact led to the modification of the monogamic
system in early developing periods of human history, when social expansion
and cohesion were the primary necessities. The family too often tends to
resemble, as someone has said, the secluded collection of grubs sometimes
revealed in their narrow home when we casually raise a flat stone in our
gardens. Great as are the problems of love, and great as should be our
attention to them, it must always be remembered that love is not a little
circle that is complete in itself. It is the nature of love to irradiate.
Just as family life exists mainly for the social end of breeding the
future race, so family love has its social ends in the extension of
sympathy and affection to those outside it, and even in ends that go
beyond love altogether.[417]

The question is debated from time to time as to how far it is possible for
men and women to have intimate friendships with each other outside the
erotic sphere.[418] There can be no doubt whatever that it is perfectly
possible for a man and a woman to experience for each other a friendship
which never intrudes into the sexual sphere. As a rule, however, this only
happens under special cond