[415] Jealousy is notoriously common among drunkards.  As K. Birnbaum points out ("Das Sexualleben der Alkokolisten,” Sexual-Probleme, Jan., 1909), this jealousy is, in most cases, more or less well-founded, for the wife, disgusted with her husband, naturally seeks sympathy and companionship elsewhere.  Alcoholic jealousy, however, goes far beyond its basis of support in fact, and is entangled with delusions and hallucinations. (See e.g., G. Dumas, “La Logique d’un Dement,” Revue Philosophique, Feb., 1908; also Stefanowski, “Morbid Jealousy,” Alienist and Neurologist, July, 1893.)

[416] Ellen Key, Ueber Liebe und Ehe, p. 335.

[417] Schrempf points out ("Von Stella zu Klaerchen,” Mutterschutz, 1906, Heft 7, p. 264) that Goethe strove to show in Egmont that a woman is repelled by the love of a man who knows nothing beyond his love to her, and that it is easy for her to devote herself to the man whose aims lie in the larger world beyond herself.  There is profound truth in this view.

[418] A discussion on “Platonic friendship” of this kind by several writers, mostly women, whose opinions were nearly equally divided, may be found, for instance, in the Lady’s Realm, March, 1900.

[419] There are no doubt important exceptions.  Thus Merimee’s famous friendship with Mlle. Jenny Dacquin, enshrined in the Lettres a une Inconnue, was perhaps Platonic throughout on Merimee’s side, Mlle. Dacquin adapting herself to his attitude.  Cf.  A. Lefebvre, La Celebre Inconnue de Merimee, 1908.

[420] The love-letters of all these distinguished persons have been published.  Rosa Mayreder (Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit, pp. 229 et seq.) discusses the question of the humble and absolute manner in which even men of the most masculine and impetuous genius abandon themselves to the inspiration of the beloved woman.  The case of the Brownings, who have been termed “the hero and heroine of the most wonderful love-story that the world knows of,” is specially notable; (Ellen Key has written of the Brownings from this point of view in Menschen, and reference may be made to an article on the Brownings’ love-letters in the Edinburgh Review, April, 1899).  It is scarcely necessary to add that an erotic relationship may mean very much to persons of high intellectual ability, even when its issue is not happy; of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the most intellectually distinguished of women, it may be said that the letters which enshrine her love to the worthless Imlay are among the most passionate and pathetic love-letters in English.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SCIENCE OF PROCREATION.