At the lower stages of human development, the pleasures of life consist chiefly in the satisfaction of natural wants and instincts. Hence savages and barbarians scarcely ever dream of voluntarily denying themselves “domestic bliss.” But, as a writer in ‘The Nation’ says, “by the general diffusion of education and culture, by the new inventions and discoveries of the age, by the increase of commerce and intercourse and wealth, the tastes of men and women have become widened, their desires multiplied, new gratifications and pleasures have been supplied to them. By this increase of the gratifications of existence the relative share of them which married life affords has become just so much less. The domestic circle does not fill so large a place in life as formerly. It is really less important to either man or woman. Married life has lost in some measure its advantage over a single life. There are so many more pleasures, now, that can be enjoyed as well or even better in celibacy.”[872] It has further been suggested that the development of the mental faculties has made the sexual impulse less powerful. That instinct is said to be most excessive in animals which least excel in intelligence, the beasts which are the most lascivious, as the ass, the boar, &c., being also the most stupid;[873] and M. Forel even believes that, among the ants, increase of mind-power may have led to the sterility of the workers.[874] Idiots, too, are known to display very gross sensuality.[875] Yet the suggestion that decrease of sexual desire is a necessary attendant upon mental evolution cannot, so far as I know, by any means be considered scientifically proved, though we may safely say that if, among primitive men, pairing was restricted to one season of the year, the sexual instinct became gradually less intense as it became less periodical. A higher degree of forethought and self-control has, moreover, to a certain extent put the drag on human passions. Finally, there can be no doubt that the higher development of feeling has helped to increase the number of those who remain single. “By the diffusion of a finer culture throughout the community,” says the above-mentioned writer in ‘The Nation,’ “men and women can less easily find any one whom they are willing to take as a partner for life; their requirements are more exacting; their standards of excellence higher; they are less able to find any who can satisfy their own ideal, and less able to satisfy anybody else’s ideal. Men and women have, too, a livelier sense of the serious and sacred character of the marriage union, and of the high motives from which alone it should be formed. They are less willing to contract it from any lower motives.”[876]