o which changing conditions and growing imagination constantly add. And
the traditions, more especially, bear heavily upon the individual,
overmastering his natural expression of the love instinct and forcing
him to an artificial expression of that love instinct. He loves, not as
his savage forebears loved, but as his group loves. And the love method
of his group is determined by its love traditions. Does the individual
compare his beloved's eyes to the stars--it is a trick of old time which
has come down to him. Does he serenade under her window or compose an
ode to her beauty or virtue--his father did it before him. In his
lover's voice throb the voices of myriads of lovers all dead and dust.
The singers of a thousand songs are the ghostly chorus to the song of
love he sings. His ideas, his very feelings are not his, but the ideas
and feelings of countless lovers who lived and loved and whose lives and
loves are remembered. Their mistaken facts and foolish precepts are
his, and likewise their imaginative absurdities and sentimental
philanderings. Without an erotic literature, a history of great loves
and lovers, a garland of love songs and ballads, a sheaf of spoken love
tales and adventures--without all this, which is the property of his
group, he could not possibly love in the way he does.

To illustrate: Isolate a boy babe and a girl babe of cultured breed upon
a desert isle. Let them feed and grow strong on shell-fish and fruit;
but let them see none other of their species; hear no speech of mouth,
nor acquire knowledge in any way of their kind and the things their kind
has done. Well, and what then? They will grow to man and woman and mate
as the beasts mate, without romance and without imagination. Does the
woman oppose her will to that of the man--he will beat her. Does he
become over-violent in the manifestation of his regard, she will flee
away, if she can, to secret hiding-places. He will not compare her eyes
to the stars; nor will she dream that he is Apollo; nor will the pair
moon in the twilight over the love of Hero and Leander. And the many
monogamic generations out of which he has descended would fail to
prevent polygamy did another woman chance to strand on that particular
isle.

It is the common practice of the man of the London slum to kick his wife
to death when she has offended him. And the man of the London slum is a
very natural beast who expresses himself in a very natural manner. He
has never