"The exogamous custom as at first established [being connected with capture] implies an extremely abject condition of women; a brutal treatment of them; an entire absence of the higher sentiments that accompany the relations of the sexes." While exogamy thwarts love by minimizing the chances of intimate acquaintance and genuine courtship, there is another form of sexual taboo which conversely and designedly frustrates the tendency of intimate acquaintance to ripen into passion and love. Though we do not know just how the horror of incest arose, there can be no doubt that there must be a natural basis for so strong and widely prevalent a sentiment. In so far as this horror of incest prevents the marriage of near relatives, it is an obstacle to love that must be commended as doubtless useful to the race. But when we find that in China there are only 530 surnames, and that a man who marries a woman of the same surname is punished for the crime of "incest"; that the Church under Theodosius the Great forbade the union of relatives to the seventh degree; that in many countries a man could not wed a relative by marriage; that in Rome union with an adopted brother or sister was as rigidly forbidden as with a real sister or brother;--when we come across such facts we see that artificial and foolish notions regarding incest must be added to the long list of agencies that have retarded the growth of free choice and true love. And it should be noted that in all these cases of exogamy and taboos of artificial incest, the man's liberty of choice was restricted as well as the woman's. Thus our cumulative evidence against the Darwin-Westermarck theory of free choice is constantly gaining in weight. XII. RACE AVERSION Max O'Rell once wrote that he did not understand how there could be such a thing as mulattoes in the world. It is certainly safe to say that there are none such as a consequence of love. The features, color, odor, tastes, and habits of one race have ever aroused the antagonism of other races and prevented the growth of that sympathy which is essential to love. In a man strong passion may overcome the aversion to a more or less enduring union with a woman of a lower race, just as extreme hunger may urge him to eat what his palate would normally reject; but women seem to be proof against this temptation to stoop: in mixed marriages it is nearly always the man who belongs to the superior race. At first thought it might seem as if this racial aversion could not do much to retard the growth of free choice and love, since in early times, when facilities for travel were poor, the races could not mix anyway as they do now. But this would be a great error. Migrations, wars, slave-making and plundering expeditions have at all times commingled the peoples of the earth, yet nothing is more remarkable than the stubborn tenacity of racial prejudices.