CHAPTER I
THE ELEMENTARY PHENOMENA OF HUMAN LOVE
“The critical natural philosopher conceives this process, this ‘crown of love,’ in a very matter-of-fact manner, as the process of conjugation of two cells and the coalescence of their nuclei.”—Ernst Haeckel.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER I
The well-spring of love — The conjugation of the germinal cells as the simplest expression of the nature of the sexes — The active masculine and the passive feminine principles of sexuality — Their representation in ancient mythology — The significance of sexual procreation — The most important principle of progressive development — The significance of sexual differentiation — The development of heterosexuality — Vestiges of an original hermaphroditic state in men and women — New acquisitions — The hymen — Metchnikoff’s hypothesis of the original significance of the hymen — The “third sex” — The attainment of perfection by means of progressive sexual differentiation — The increase in the intensity of the sexual attractive force in the course of human evolution — Its cause — Explanation of Paul Rée — Theory of Havelock Ellis — Elementary psychical phenomena of love — A sensation analogous to one of smell — Theories of Steffens, Haeckel, and Kröner — The specific sexual odours of the capryl group — Odoriferous glands in animals and human beings — An example from Southern Slavonic folk-lore — The position of the nose in relation to the genital system — The sexual rôle of artificial perfumes — Origin of the latter — Reduction in size of the organ of smell in the human species — Primary and secondary elements in human sexuality — Bölsche’s “fusion-love” and “distance-love” — Their different significance.
CHAPTER I
The mystery of sexual love, of this “wonder of life,” from which both religious belief and artistic inspiration have drawn and continue to draw the major part of their force, may ultimately be referred to a single phenomenon in the sexuality of the great group of metazoa to which the major part of the animal world and the human species belong. This process is a conjugation of the female germ cell with the male sperm cell—the “well-spring of love,” to use Haeckel’s expression; in comparison with this conjugation, all other spiritual and physical phenomena, however complicated, are of a subordinate and secondary nature. From this primitive organic process of reciprocal attraction and conjugation of the two reproductive cells has arisen the entire complex of the remaining physical and spiritual phenomena of love. We have, in this process of cell conjugation, a picture in little of love, a greatly simplified representation of the nature of the relations between man and woman; moreover, the highest and the finest psychical experiences and impressions occurring under the influence of love are ultimately no more than the results of this “erotic chemotropism” of the sperm and germ cells.
Sexual differentiation existed already as a natural product in the early stages of organic evolution, and civilization has done no more than develop, increase, and refine that differentiation, which is typified in a manner at once simple and convincing—because directly visible—in the male sperm cell and the female germ cell. Herein the specific sexual differences are made visibly manifest.
Procreation results from the approach of the male sperm cell towards the female germ cell, and from the entrance of the former into the latter.