sexual instinct is strictly subordinated to reproduction and very little susceptible to deviation, so that from the standpoint of those who wish to minimize sex, animals are nearer to the ideal, and such persons must say with Woods Hutchinson:  “Take it altogether, our animal ancestors have quite as good reason to be ashamed of us as we of them.”  But if we look at the matter from a wider biological standpoint of development, our conclusion must be very different.

So far from being animal-like, the human impulses of sex are among the least animal-like acquisitions of man.  The human sphere of sex differs from the animal sphere of sex to a singularly great extent.[59] Breathing is an animal function and here we cannot compete with birds; locomotion is an animal function and here we cannot equal quadrupeds; we have made no notable advance in our circulatory, digestive, renal, or hepatic functions.  Even as regards vision and hearing, there are many animals that are more keen-sighted than man, and many that are capable of hearing sounds that to him are inaudible.  But there are no animals in whom the sexual instinct is so sensitive, so highly developed, so varied in its manifestations, so constantly alert, so capable of irradiating the highest and remotest parts of the organism.  The sexual activities of man and woman belong not to that lower part of our nature which degrades us to the level of the “brute,” but to the higher part which raises us towards all the finest activities and ideals we are capable of.  It is true that it is chiefly in the mouths of a few ignorant and ill-bred women that we find sex referred to as “bestial” or “the animal part of our nature."[60] But since women are the mothers and teachers of the human race this is a piece of ignorance and ill-breeding which cannot be too swiftly eradicated.

There are some who seem to think that they have held the balance evenly, and finally stated the matter, if they admit that sexual love may be either beautiful or disgusting, and that either view is equally normal and legitimate.  “Listen in turn,” Tarde remarks, “to two men who, one cold, the other ardent, one chaste, the other in love, both equally educated and large-minded, are estimating the same thing:  one judges as disgusting, odious, revolting, and bestial what the other judges to be delicious, exquisite, ineffable, divine.  What, for one, is in Christian phraseology, an unforgivable sin, is, for the other, the state of true grace.  Acts that for one seem a sad and occasional necessity, stains that must be carefully effaced by long intervals of continence, are for the other the golden nails from which all the rest of conduct and existence is suspended, the things that alone give human life its value."[61] Yet we may well doubt whether both these persons are “equally well-educated and broad-minded.”  The savage feels that sex is perilous, and he is right.  But the person who feels that the sexual impulse is bad, or even low and vulgar, is an absurdity in the