This latter-day vogue is not a normal, nor a pretty development. But it is another of the inevitable consequences of disturbing Nature's balances. Nature's plan and her methods of administration are so perfect that when left to herself she preserves her equilibrium and secures her aims by the safest and, at the same time, by the simplest expedients. When man destroys the hawks which, normally, reduce the smaller fry of birds to their allotted quotum in the Scheme of Things, however, the smaller fry multiply inordinately and devour his cherries and his corn. And when he destroys the smaller fry, the slugs and grubs and aphides multiply and devour his lettuces and roses.
So it is with Human traits and faculties. The balance of The Normal is the way alone of health and happiness and progress.
There is great boast now-a-days of friendship and comradeship between the sexes. Yet though friendship and comradeship are good allies of love, they are but sterile, uninspiring substitutes for the profounder, higher, vital and undying emotions of the true love-passion.
On the other hand, attachments between men and men, and between women and women, are strengthening and intensifying; absorbing the emotion and devotion formerly and normally bestowed on members of the opposite sex. While attraction between persons of opposite sex becomes ever lighter and triter in sentiment; serving more and more for brief distraction and provocative pastime rather than for a living and abiding bond.
This misplaced affection for members of the same sex arises from the attraction of traits of the opposite sex unduly developed in them. While indifference to members of the opposite sex results from lack in these of the characteristics of their sex, normally accentuated. Thus a woman is more drawn to one of her own sex possessing virile characteristics, physical or mental, than she is drawn to a weak-brained, emasculate man. Masculine women are attracted likewise by the womanly graces and quality of feminine women.
While men find in some members of their own sex, feminine traits of sympathy and sentiment absent in women of male-proclivity. All is an expression of the law of the Attraction of Opposites, which (normally) causes persons of opposite sex to be strongly drawn to one another.
On the other hand, the development in himself, or in herself, of the characteristics of the opposite sex makes members of either sex independent of and indifferent to members of the other, by supplying them with a spurious counterfeit of qualities it is natural to seek in those others.
VII
Professor Drummond, from whom I quote frequently, as being one of those biologists on the side of the angels, writes thus beautifully: