Man summarizes all the forms of the living nature; so that we are frequently tempted to affirm that whatever of human is in him is the greatest synthesis of all the minor forms of the living, and that he is precisely the first because under the bark of his individuality all the forces are gathered within him, from the secondary to the last; and the same phenomenon we observe in the psychical elements of his loves. Pigeons, even when intermingled with the most varied breeds, are seldom unfaithful to their mates; and although the male, in a rare whim, may break the vow of fidelity, he quickly returns to the dear nuptial bed of his spouse. Darwin kept some pigeons of different breeds shut up in the same place for a long time, and there was never a bastard among them. Do we not also find among men splendid examples of the most faithful monogamy and do you not recognize it as the social basis in almost all the superior races? The antelope of South Africa has up to a dozen mates, and the _Antilope saiga_ of Asia more than a hundred. But have we not the small and hypocritical polygamies of modern society, and those, most splendid and impudent, of the Orientals? Have we not in man, as in very many animals, females who submit to love as to a duty, and males on whom love must be imposed? Have we not libertinism at the very side of chastity? Have we not in the world of man all the lasciviousness, all the ardors, all the possibilities of lewdness of the animals' world? Several fulmineous forms of love which last no longer than the flash of the lightning not infrequently occur among men, as the cold, long-lasting kisses of many insects are an amorous practice of various human temperaments. And fiery, cruel jealousies and bloody battles are scenes common to men and brutes; nor is death for love an exclusive privilege of man. The few and coarse passions of animals are all carried as a holocaust to the altar of generation, while man carries to it all the ardors of his rich nature, all the infinite forces which he has drawn from the great womb of the living beings and which he has centuplicated with the accumulations of his hundred civilizations. The chaffinch, in the contests of amorous song, more than once falls from the tree on which he is singing his erotic hymn, smothered by pulmonary apoplexy; just as many a poet beholds the lyre of his genius and the chords of his life break at the feet of a woman. In the silence of the shady thickets, the nightingale, exhausted, swoons with love and fatigue, and dies for having been unable to vanquish a more fortunate rival in melody and strength of notes; and hundreds and hundreds of times, in the somber labyrinths of life, the human lover dies in the battles of an unhappy love, and he too dies because he could not sing louder and sweeter than his rival. Nor is coquetry peculiar to the human female only; no woman in the world will ever be the equal of a female