Dr. Albert Moll of Berlin, in his second treatise on sexual anomalies,[4] takes occasion to express his disbelief in my view that love before marriage is a sentiment peculiar to modern man.  He declares that traits of such love occur even in the courtship of animals, particularly birds, and implies that this upsets my theory.  On the same ground a reviewer in a New York evening paper accused me of being illogical.  Such criticisms illustrate the vague ideas regarding evolution that are still current.  It is assumed that all the faculties are developed step by step simultaneously as we proceed from lower to higher animals, which is as illogical as it would be to assume that since birds have such beautiful and convenient things as wings, and dogs belong to a higher genus of animals, therefore dogs ought to have better wings than birds.  Most animals are cleaner than savages; why should not some of them be more romantic in their love-affairs?  I shall take occasion repeatedly to emphasize this point in the present volume, though I alluded to it already in my first book (55) in the following passage, which my critics evidently overlooked: 

“In passing from animals to human beings we find at first not only no advance in the sexual relations, but a decided retrogression.  Among some species of birds, courtship and marriage are infinitely more refined and noble than among the lowest savages, and it is especially in their treatment of females, both before and after mating, that not only birds but all animals show an immense superiority over primitive man; for male animals fight only among themselves and never maltreat the females.”

LOVE THE LAST, NOT THE FIRST, PRODUCT OF CIVILIZATION

Notwithstanding this striking and important fact, there is a large number of sentimental writers who make the extraordinary claim that the lower races, however savage they may be in everything else, are like ourselves in their amorous relations; that they love and admire personal beauty just as we do.  The main object of the present volume is to demolish this doctrine; to prove that sexual refinement and the sense of personal beauty are not the earliest but the latest products of civilization.  I have shown elsewhere[5] that Japanese civilization is in many important respects far superior to ours; yet in their treatment of women and estimate of love, this race has not yet risen above the barbarous stage; and it will be shown in this volume that if we were to judge the ancient Greeks and the Hindoos from this point of view, we should have to deny them the epithet of civilized.  Morgan found that the most advanced of American Indians, the Iroquois, had no capacity for love.  His testimony in detail will be found in its proper place in this volume, together with that of competent observers regarding other tribes and races.  Some of this evidence was known to the founders of the modern science of sociology.