I suppose that you can only conceive
of love as either a need or a sentiment."
I made a sign of assent.
"Considered as a need," said the old man, "love makes itself felt last
of all our needs, and is the first to cease. We are inclined to love
in our twentieth year, to speak in round numbers, and we cease to do
so at fifty. During these thirty years, how often would the need be
felt, if it were not for the provocation of city manners, and the
modern custom of living in the presence of not one woman, but of women
in general? What is our debt to the perpetuation of the race? It
probably consists in producing as many children as we have breasts--so
that if one dies the other may live. If these two children were always
faithfully produced, what would become of nations? Thirty millions of
people would constitute a population too great for France, for the
soil is not sufficient to guarantee more than ten millions against
misery and hunger. Remember that China is reduced to the expedient of
throwing its children into the water, according to the accounts of
travelers. Now this production of two children is really the whole of
marriage. The superfluous pleasures of marriage are not only
profligate, but involve an immense loss to the man, as I will now
demonstrate. Compare then with this poverty of result, and shortness
of duration, the daily and perpetual urgency of other needs of our
existence.
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