"Say," put in Perry, "you're right. I've had such dreams lately as a result of a fall. But I'm not bothered anymore—not in the least."

"Let's take another case, belly hunger. It is the oldest factor of all reaching back past the origin of bisexual life. If 'human nature' is not subject to change it should be the strongest of all and uncontrollable. Do you drool and slobber at a display of food? Do you fall on it like a wild animal? Do you snatch it from the plate of another? Do you sit up nights worrying about it? Yet it is there and basic. A change in environment would develop it to the point where men would fight for it, claw crusts of bread from dust bins, steal, rob, kill. You can supply many examples from experience and history. Do you begin to see that the active exercise of the factor of sex jealousy is today as stupid, as silly, as uncouth, and as unnecessary as the feeding habits of the jungle?"

Perry nodded soberly. "I begin to see, rationally at least. I'm afraid my emotions won't change quite so readily."

"Don't let that worry you. Proper emotional habits may be acquired like other habits—by conscious exercise over a period of time. If you control your acts along the pattern you desire, and exercise your will, your emotions will change. That may seem unlikely but I assure that it is a report of observed fact. Analogy in the cases of other primitive urges may make it credible to you.

"Before we go further, I would like to point out to you that the factor of sex jealousy as present in you and as exercised in the environment in which you matured was not always present in the same way in all times, places, and culture. Polygamy is, of course, well known to you, if not through experience, at least by report. It is a matter of reported fact that women in polygamous cultures were not made unhappy by the practice. The early Mormon culture is a case in point. Polyandry is less well known but was common in Tibet for a long period and worked very satisfactorily. In certain parts of Asia in recent times it was a common practice for a host to loan his wife or daughter to a guest for the night. It would have been bad form to refuse. Among certain of the Eskimo tribes it was the accepted practice in very recent times to exchange wives for considerable periods usually for reasons of domestic economy. To have disputed the practice or stirred up a fuss about it would have been thought barbaric, not to say immoral. Among certain of the Polynesian tribes promiscuity before marriage was the accepted rule. On the other hand among the Zulus as late as the twentieth century, a maid ready for marriage was examined by a committee of elder women. If they did not pronounce her a virgo intacta, she was beheaded. In contrast to this, among many people prostitution was a religious rite, reaching the extreme point in at least one highly developed culture wherein a woman could not marry until she had passed at least one night as a public prostitute. The illustrations from anthropology are endless. I have cited enough to show you that the manifestations of male sex jealousy occurring in the culture in which you were reared are not the result of an inflexible law.

"The case of female sex jealousy of the male differs greatly from that of the male. Female sex jealousy is primarily economic in origin, that of the male is primarily biological. The desire for sexual intercourse is not an important survival factor in the female. She may be impregnated without it, or even in the face of a strong contra-desire, as in rape. The dominant survival factor for the female is the need for protection and support during gestation and while caring for infant children. This will take the form of possessive sexual jealousy in any environment which requires her to capture the full attention of one man to achieve the end. It is not necessary that she be consciously aware of this. It is automatic. By and large, in such an environment, only the females who function in that pattern are able to reproduce. Many environments do not lay this requirement on the female. Yours did, to a marked degree, if the literature and records of your period are correct.

"From all I can gather the competition among women for the exclusive attention of one man must have been as fierce and ruthless as any jungle battle. It appears from history that the women of your period and before were able to freeze into law and creed that a man must take one woman and support her and her children to the exclusion of any other interest. A woman who connived with a man to break this stringent code of battle, as in adultery, was destroyed by her sisters as completely as they were able.

"Nevertheless, even in your day, the signs of environmental change and consequent changes in your 'immutable' human nature were in evidence so far as women were concerned. They were gaining greater economic freedom and consequent greater sexual independence. They no longer needed to the same extent the economic support of husbands. It was even possible for a woman of foresight and ability to bear and rear children without the economic support of a male. With increased knowledge and use of practical convenient methods of controlling conception women were liberated somewhat from the pressing necessity for capturing a man and holding him. With the advent of the New Economic Regime women no longer required the services of a man to support herself or her offspring. For the first time in history women reached the dignity of social equality with men. Up to that time any equality with men granted to them was spurious, a mere verbalism, having no real foundation in fact.

"The social consequences were of enormous importance both to women and to men. For the first time in history men and women could mate as equals without fear of concealed motives. Life was enormously enriched thereby. Love between the sexes could develop aesthetically in a way never before possible. Freed of the twin vices of masqued rape and masqued prostitution, it developed a beauty, a variety, and a richness limited only by the imagination and sensitivity of the individuals concerned. Not only did it glorify the love between man and woman but it made possible a deeper, less antagonistic, relation between man and his brother, woman and her sister, for the primary causes of rivalry were gone. Gone for men as well as for women. Why?

"You recall that the primary cause of sex jealousy in men was the desire for intercourse. In former cultures other men might lure away a desired woman with economic bait or capture her bodily. Now that the woman is no longer subject to coercion but is a free agent, the competition between males for a woman's charms is necessarily by gentler means. Excesses of jealousy are likely to defeat their own ends and lose a woman completely. You are lucky that your chosen woman was sufficiently primitive in her emotion and loyal in her intellect that she decided to stick by you. Many women would have told you to go to the devil and taken up with a less selfish man."

Perry was startled to hear himself called selfish. He started to speak, then thought better of it and held his tongue, his face a study in mixed emotions. Hedrick continued.

"As a matter of practice a man usually finds that he has lost nothing at all by ceasing to respond to the emotion of jealousy. Strictly from a biological point of view there is much data to prove that potential capacity for sexual indulgence is much greater in most women than it is in most men, so much so, that an average woman could be the mistress of, let us say, two or three average men without loss to the men. On the spiritual side there is enough of the 'Mother of All Living' principle in the nature of any woman to permit her, if she chooses, to be the source of spiritual refreshment to many men. Any man who believes the contrary is a fool who judges the soul of woman by the paucity of his own. He need only look at the mother of any large brood to know that the capacity of a woman to replenish the soul with her love is limited only by the scope of her field.