Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays

[34] Yet there is no doubt that lasting and passionate love may exist between two persons thus nearly related. The danger to the health of the offspring from occasional in-breeding of the kind appears to arise chiefly from the accentuation of infirmities common to the two parents. In a state of society free from the diseases of the civilisation-period, such a danger would be greatly reduced.

[35] Modern writers fixing their regard on the physical side of this love (necessary no doubt here, as elsewhere, to define and corroborate the spiritual) have entered their protest as against the mere obscenity into which the thing fell—for instance in the days of Martial—but have missed the profound significance of the heroic attachment itself. It is, however, with the ideals that we are just now concerned and not with their disintegration.

[36] In the later Egyptian centuries vivisection apparently became an approved practice.

[37] The derivation of the word "wicked" seems uncertain. May it be suggested that it is connected with "wick" or "quick," meaning alive?

[38] For further on the same subject see the last chapter, infra, on "The New Morality."