heard of Hero and Leander, and the comparison of the missus'
eyes to the stars would to him be arrant bosh. The gentle, tender,
considerate male is an artificial product. And so is the romantic lover,
who is fashioned by the love traditions which come down to him and by
the erotic literature to which he has access.

And now to the point. Romantic love being an artificial product, you
cannot base its retention upon the claim that it is natural. Your only
claim can be that it is the best possible artifice for the perpetuation
of life, or that it is the only perfect, all-sufficient, and
all-satisfying artifice that man can devise. On the one hand, for the
perpetuation of life, man demonstrates the inefficiency of romantic love
by his achievements in the domestic selection of animals. And on the
other hand, the very irrationality of romantic love will tend to its
gradual elimination as the human grows wiser and wiser. Also, because
it is such a crude artifice, it forces far too many to contract the
permanent marriage tie without possessing compatibility. During the time
romantic love runs its course in an individual, that individual is in a
diseased, abnormal, irrational condition. Mental or spiritual health,
which is rationality, makes for progress, and the future demands greater
and greater mental or spiritual health, greater and greater rationality.
The brain must dominate and direct both the individual and society in
the time to come, not the belly and the heart. Granted that the function
romantic love has served has been necessary; that is no reason to
conclude that it must always be necessary, that it is eternally
necessary. There is such a thing as rudimentary organs which served
functions long since fallen in disuse and now unremembered.

The world has changed, Dane. Sense delights are no longer the sole end
of existence. The brain is triumphing over the belly and the heart. The
intellectual joy of living is finer and higher than the mere sexual joy
of living. Darwin, at the conclusion of his "Origin of Species,"
experienced a nobler and more exquisite pleasure than did ever Solomon
with his thousand concubines and wives. And while our sense delights
themselves have become refined, their very refinement has been due to
the increasing dominion over them of the intellect. Our canons of art
are not founded on the heart. No emotion elaborated the laws of
composition. We cannot experience a sense of delight in any art o