The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    50/546 page 20
    1755] been introduced by foreign travellers who seek the sublime beauties of Nature.” 1 Thus, although the modern European began to see beauty in mountains owing to a new valuation created chiefly by Romanti cists of the eighteenth century, above all Rousseau, the average young person of to-day thinks and feels as if the admiration of mountain scenery were the most eternal of human sentiments. 2 The changes of taste relating to the human body will be dealt with later; but these examples may suffice to show how often the taste and choice which seems the most necessary expression of our being, is really only an artificially-conditioned reflex, due to a fashion of the day, and, consequently, that changes of fashion generally alter our artificially-conditioned reflexes. The docile manner in which women change their taste in clothes, and show genuine horror at the fashions of a previous decade, is a case in point. Why is all this important ?—Because many of the artificially- conditioned reflexes of to-day are unhealthy and unsound, and since they must be superseded if choice in mating is to be whole some, it is important for the reader to see that, no matter how spontaneous and deep they appear to be, they are neither neces sary nor natural nor particularly sound, and that healthier reflexes can and must take their place. The process of substitution is not easy. If, however, we are healthy, it is not our deepest nature, but only the surface that has been affected. Let us, therefore, take stock of our criteria of choice and of the values controlling them. What are these values ?—Largely the product of the philosophic and religious thought of Europe during the last two thousand five hundred years. How do they condition unhealthy reflexes ?—In manifold ways. If modern man feels no horror at the spectacle of degeneracy and disease, if he can be thoroughly ill and yet thoroughly respectable; if he can be the victim of a foul disease and yet remain one of the “ best people ”, it is because of these values. If modern man thinks the physiologically botched can speak words of wisdom, and tolerates a load of taxation which to a 1 Memoirs of My Life and Writings (Oxford, 1907, pp. 76-77). 2 For a fuller discussion of this, see my Nietzsche and Art (London, 1011, Lecture II, Part III).
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