That which drives men and women together, the indomitable necessity, is
like a bondage upon the people. They submit as under compulsion, under
constraint. They come together mostly in anger and in violence of
destructive passion. There is no comradeship between men and women, none
whatsoever, but rather a condition of battle, reserve, hostility.
On Sundays the uncomfortable, excited, unwilling youth walks for an hour
with his sweetheart, at a little distance from her, on the public
highway in the afternoon. This is a concession to the necessity for
marriage. There is no real courting, no happiness of being together,
only the roused excitement which is based on a fundamental hostility.
There is very little flirting, and what there is is of the subtle, cruel
kind, like a sex duel. On the whole, the men and women avoid each other,
almost shun each other. Husband and wife are brought together in a
child, which they both worship. But in each of them there is only the
great reverence for the infant, and the reverence for fatherhood or
motherhood, as the case may be; there is no spiritual love.
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