BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REMARKS
I shall no doubt be reproached for not having taken sufficient notice of other works on the subject of this book. I have, however, desired to express my own opinion without allowing myself to be unduly influenced by others. I will nevertheless make a few remarks on the bibliography of this subject.
I may mention the celebrated work of the Italian physician, Mantigazza, on the Physiology of Love. It is a curious fact that this author, after his poetic descriptions of love, is in favor of prostitution. The German socialist, Bebel, has written a very remarkable book on woman in the past, the present and the future. In spite of scientific errors, which are easily excused in a self-made man who became one of the leaders of the German Reichstag, this book remains a veritable social monument on the sexual question. With the exception of his strong political bias, and the errors I have just mentioned I am, on the whole, in accord with the ideas of Bebel.
Another German author, Bölsche, (Das Liebesleben in der Natur) has recently described love among all organized beings, including man, with a tone of forced pleasantry which spoils the profound knowledge of the author on the zoölogical and other subjects which he treats.
With regard to German literature, I recommend the Archiv für Rassen und Gesellschafts' Biologie, edited by Doctor Plotz of Berlin. This publication has for its object the study of the causes of degeneration in our race and the remedies for it. Among other articles which have appeared in this publication I may specially mention those of Shallmayer on Heredity and Selection in the Life of Races, and Thurnwald, Town and Country in the Life of the Race. I may also mention Plotz: Die Tüchtigkeit unserer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen, 1895, and Mutterschutz, a journal for the reform of sexual ethics, 1905.
France has always shone in the domain of the poetry of love and the art connected with it. Apart from the ancient classics I may refer to George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Lamartine, and Madame de Stael. In the practical conception of free love, George Sand was in advance of her time. Among modern authors there are Paul Bourget; André Couvreur, who in La Graine deals with the problem of human selection; Brieux, who in Les Avariés, attacks the social tragedies of venereal disease. The book of Vacher de Lapouge on social selection is full of interesting ideas, although too much influenced by the unstable hypothesis of Gobineau. To make distinct zoölogical species of dolichocephalics and brachycephalics, as Vacher de Lapouge attempts, is a grave error in zoölogy. Charles Albert: L'Amour Libre, and Queyrat: La Démoralization de l'idée sexuelle, give the note of contemporary change in ideas on the sexual question.
In Le Mariage et les Théories Malthusiennes (Paris, 1906) Dr. Georges Guibert recommends early marriage, but does not take account of human selection. Remy de Gourmont, Physique de l'amour; Essai sur l'instinct sexuel, Paris, 1903, describes, very pessimistically, love in the animal kingdom. Jeanne Deflou (Le Sexualisme, Paris, 1905) has written a virulent feminine complaint against the injustice of the stronger sex.
But the French author who has given the most profound, the truest descriptions of the psychology of love and the sexual appetite is undoubtedly Guy de Maupassant. No doubt his last illness caused him to produce certain more or less regrettable works in which certain pornographic traits appeared. He may, perhaps, be accused of having too often described the pathology of love, which, by the way, he admirably understood. Perhaps also, he has too often dealt with exceptional situations and irresponsible passions. But these are only details, and we must admit that by drawing attention to the unhealthy features of our modern sexual life, he compels the reader to reflect, and inspires him not only with disgust for evil but with profound sadness and a feeling of revulsion. He often reveals his predilection for the refined, hypersensitive love of the boudoir which we have regarded here as a symptom of social degeneration. But this does not prevent his clear insight into the love of the proletariat, the peasant or the healthy man. He knows man as well as woman, and if he has presented them most often under their least moral aspect it is because he has observed them closely. But occasionally he rises to the greatest heights of the truest, purest and most profound love.