The eternal duration of such feelings is contradicted by an anthropologico-biological phenomenon of human sexuality, which I have described as “=the need for sexual variety=.”[169] Human love, as a whole and in its individual manifestations, is dominated and influenced by the need for change and variety. Schopenhauer drew attention to this primordial and fundamental phenomenon of human love; he was wrong, however, in limiting it to the male sex.[170] As I have already insisted, this general human need for variety in sexual relationships is to be regarded rather as a general =principle of explanation of admitted facts=, than as a desirable ideal. On the contrary, in my opinion, faithfulness, constancy, and durability in love, bring under control and diminish this need for sexual variety, through the recognition of the eminent =advances in civilization= by means of which the human amatory life will be further developed and perfected in a higher sense. But the facts of daily observation are not to be shuffled out of existence by any kind of hypocrisy or prudery. They must be faced and dealt with. First, it is an incontestable fact that the so-called “only” love is one of the greatest rarities; that, on the contrary, in the life of the majority of men and women a frequent repetition and renewal of love-sentiments and love-relationships occurs. For the most part these loves occur at successive intervals. Stiedenroth, in his admirable “Psychology,” makes the following remarks regarding these successive outbursts of passion and the transitory character of the feeling of love: “Since no two human beings are precisely alike, one will at one time love passionately one only; in succession, however, several can be loved, and the opinion that one person only can be loved in a lifetime originates in rare dreams regarding the ideal, of which a quite false representation is made. An object can indeed appear which transcends the ideal hitherto conceived; but passion does not need a fully developed ideal for its first foundation; it needs merely that which in the theory of the feelings has been found to be a necessary condition of love. That every love gladly thinks itself immortal, lies in the nature of the case, for on account of the overwhelming character of the sensations of love, it is impossible to understand how they can ever come to an end. Experience, however, teaches us the contrary, and insight enables us to recognize the reason.”[171]