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The Family rests upon the Great Biological Fact of Sex. While sex does not characterize all animal forms, still it does characterize all except the simplest forms of animal life. These simplest forms multiply or reproduce by fission, but such asexual reproduction is almost entirely confined to the unicellular forms of life.
The romantic ideal, glorifying a sort of asexual love of perfect men and women, asceticism which permits sex only as a sort of necessary evil and sensuality which proclaims the pleasure of sex as the only joy and scoffs at inhibition influence the lives of us all.
Frequently also the mother or father visit the child before going to sleep, lean over the bed, allow themselves often to press the child passionately to themselves and count this asexual love toward the child. The case analyzed at the beginning teaches us how much of the grossly sexual erotic is concealed behind this, even if well hidden.
Asexually multiplied strains may be said to be generally two times or even three times superior to the common offspring. This is a difference of great practical importance, and should never be lost sight of in theoretical considerations of the productive capacity of selection. Multiplication by seed however, has one great advantage over the asexual method; it may be repeated.
If we now turn to p. 357, we find the conclusion arrived at, as it would appear, on the most satisfactory evidence, that "sexual and asexual reproduction are not seen to differ essentially; and . . . . that asexual reproduction, the power of regrowth, and development are all parts of one and the same great law."
But it is still not understood that the woman who is not temperamentally asexual may easily be made so by being forced when she is not ready, and physically hurt when a little patience and tenderness would have saved her.
Our large bulb-flowers and delicious fruits have nothing in common with natural products, and do not yield a standard by which to judge nature's work. It is very difficult for a botanist to give a survey of what practice has attained by the asexual multiplication of extremes. Nearly all of the large and more palatable fruits are due to such efforts.
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