prevent highly conscientious people from being too critical, and letting a trivial defect outweigh a large number of good qualities. Moreover, changes in the standards of sexual selection should not be too rapid, as that results in the permanent celibacy of some excellent but hyper-critical individuals. The ideal is an advance of standards as rapidly as will yet keep all the superior persons married. This is accomplished if all superior individuals marry as well as possible, yet with advancing years gradually reduce the standard so that celibacy may not result.
Having decided that there is room for improvement in the standards of sexual selection, and that such improvement is psychologically feasible, we come to point (c): in what particular ways is this improvement needed? Any discussion of this large subject must necessarily be only suggestive, not exhaustive.
If sexual selection is to be taken seriously, it is imperative that there be some improvement in the general attitude of public sentiment toward love itself. It is difficult for the student to acquire sound knowledge4 of the normal manifestations of love: the psychology of sex has been studied too largely from the abnormal and pathological side; while the popular idea is based too much on fiction and drama which emphasize the high lights and make love solely an affair of emotion. We are not arguing for a rationalization of love, for the terms are almost contradictory; but we believe that more common sense could profitably be used in considering the subject.
If a typical "love affair" be examined, it is found that propinquity and a common basis for sympathy in some probably trivial matter lead to the development of the sex instinct; the parental instinct begins to make itself felt, particularly among women; the instincts of curiosity, acquisitiveness, and various others play their part, and there then appears a well-developed case of "love." Such love may satisfy a purely biological definition, but it is incomplete. Love that is worthy of the name must be