THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE BY REMY DE GOURMONT Translated with a Postscript By EZRA POUND BONI AND LIVERIGHT Publishers New York 1922 CONTENTS I. The Subject of an Idea Love's general psychology.--Love according to natural laws. --Sexual selection.--Man's place in Nature.--Identity of human and animal psychology.--The animal nature of love. II. The Aim of Life The importance of the sexual act.--Its ineluctable character. --Animals who live only to reproduce themselves.--The strife for love, and for death.--Females fecundated at the very instant of birth.--The maintenance of life. III. Scale of Sexes Asexual reproduction.--Formation of the animal colony. --Limits of asexual reproduction.--Coupling.-- Birth of the sexes.--Hermaphrodism and parthenogenesis. --Chemical fecundation.--Universality of parthenogenesis. IV. Sexual Dimorphism 1. Invertebrates: formation of the male.--Primitivity of the female.--Minuscule males: the bonellie.--Regression of the male into the male organ: the rirripedes.--Generality of sexual dimorphism.--Superiority of the female in most insect species.--Exceptions.--Numeric dimorphism.--Female hymenoptera.--Multiplicity of her activities.--Male's purely sexual rôle.--Dimorphism of ants and termites.--Grasshoppers and crickets.--Spiders.--Coleoptera.--Glow-worm.--Cochineal's strange dimorphism. V. Sexual Dimorphism 2. Vertebrates:--Unnoticeable in fish, saurians, reptiles. --The bird world.--Dimorphism favourable to males: the oriole, pheasants, the ruff.--Peacocks and turkey-cocks. --Birds of paradise.--Moderate dimorphism of mammifers. --Effects of castration on dimorphism. VI. Sexual Dimorphism 3. Vertebrates (Continued):--Man and woman.--Characteristics and limits of human dimorphism.--Effects of civilization. --Psychologic dimorphism.--The insect world and the human. --Modern dimorphism, basis of the pair.--Solidarity of the human pair.--Dimorphism and polygamy.--The pair favours the female.--Sexual æsthetics.--Causes of the superiority of feminine beauty. VII. Sexual Dimorphism and Feminism Inferiority and superiority of the female as shown in animal species.--Influence of feeding on the production of sexes. --The female would have sufficed.--Feminism absolute, and moderate.--Pipe-dreams: elimination of the male and human parthenogenesis. VIII. Love-Organs