There is, too, a really appalling prevalence of the superstition that
the sexual instinct in men is utterly promiscuous, and that the
least relaxation of law and custom must produce a wild outbreak of
licentiousness. As far as our moralists can grasp the proposition that
we should deal with the sexual relation as impersonal, it seems to
them to mean that we should encourage it to be promiscuous: hence their
recoil from it. But promiscuity and impersonality are not the same
thing. No man ever fell in love with the entire female sex, nor any
woman with the entire male sex. We often do not fall in love at all;
and when we do we fall in love with one person and remain indifferent
to thousands of others who pass before our eyes every day. Selection,
carried even to such fastidiousness as to induce people to say quite
commonly that there is only one man or woman in the world for them, is
the rule in nature. If anyone doubts this, let him open a shop for the
sale of picture postcards, and, when an enamoured lady customer demands
a portrait of her favorite actor or a gentleman of his favorite actress,
try to substitute some other portrait on the ground that since the
sexual instinct is promiscuous, one portrait is as pleasing as another.
I suppose no shopkeeper has ever been foolish enough to do such a thing;
and yet all our shopkeepers, the moment a discussion arises on marriage,
will passionately argue against all reform on the ground that nothing
but the most severe coercion can save their wives and daughters from
quite indiscriminate rapine.