The whole human race, we are reminded, owes its existence to folly, for what is so absurd as the male’s polymorphous pursuit of the female, his feverish idealization of her flesh, his goatish passion for copulation? What man in his senses would pay for such detumescence with the lifelong bondage of monogamy? What woman in her senses would pay for it with the pains and tribulations of motherhood? Is it not ridiculous that humanity should be the accidental by-product of this mutual attrition? If men and women paused to reason, all would be lost.
