Chapter 48

There are certain philosophers who contend that just as pity is akin to love, so the tender passion is largely composed of the protective instinct. The emotion most women feel for their husbands, they say, is chiefly maternal, and hence big women do not hesitate to mate with little men and seem to feel no embarrassment about it. How far the converse of this theory is true remains to be seen. To what extent does the protective instinct enter into the feeling of men for women? Does it draw the males instinctively tow…