Variation is a fact that will exist whether we will or no; it can only become healthful if we recognize and allow for it.  We may even have to recognize that it is a more marked tendency in civilization than in more primitive social stages.  Thus Gerson argues (Sexual-Probleme, Sept., 1908, p. 538) that just as the civilized man cannot be content with the coarse and monotonous food which satisfies the peasant, so it is in sexual matters; the peasant youth and girl in their sexual relationships are nearly always monogamous, but civilized people, with their more versatile and sensitive tastes, are apt to crave for variety.  Senancour (De l’Amour, vol. ii, “Du Partage,” p. 127) seems to admit the possibility of marriage variations, as of sharing a wife, provided nothing is done to cause rivalry, or to impair the soul’s candor.  Lecky, near the end of his History of European Morals, declared his belief that, while the permanent union of two persons is the normal and prevailing type of marriage, it by no means follows that, in the interests of society, it should be the only form.  Remy de Gourmont similarly (Physique de l’Amour, p. 186), while stating that the couple is the natural form of marriage and its prolonged continuance a condition of human superiority, adds that the permanence of the union can only be achieved with difficulty.  So, also, Professor W. Thomas (Sex and Society, 1907, p. 193), while regarding monogamy as subserving social needs, adds:  “Speaking from the biological standpoint monogamy does not, as a rule, answer to the conditions of highest stimulation, since here the problematical and elusive elements disappear to some extent, and the object of attention has grown so familiar in consciousness that the emotional reactions are qualified.  This is the fundamental explanation of the fact that married men and women frequently become interested in others than their partners in matrimony.”

Pepys, whose unconscious self-dissection admirably illustrates so many psychological tendencies, clearly shows how—­by a logic of feeling deeper than any intellectual logic—­the devotion to monogamy subsists side by side with an irresistible passion for sexual variety.  With his constantly recurring wayward attraction to a long series of women he retains throughout a deep and unchanging affection for his charming young wife.  In the privacy of his Diary he frequently refers to her in terms of endearment which cannot be feigned; he enjoys her society; he is very particular about her dress; he delights in her progress in music, and spends much money on her training; he is absurdly jealous when he finds her in the society of a man.  His subsidiary relationships with other women recur irresistibly, but he has no wish either to make them very permanent or to allow them to engross him unduly.  Pepys represents a common type of civilized “monogamist” who is perfectly sincere and extremely convinced in his advocacy