the male
animal pursued the female. The phenomena of "marriage by capture," in its
real and its simulated forms, have been traced to various causes. But it
has to be remembered that these causes could only have been operative in
the presence of a favorable emotional aptitude, constituted by the
zooelogical history of our race and still traceable even today. To exert
power, as psychologists well recognize, is one of our most primary
impulses, and it always tends to be manifested in the attitude of a man
toward the woman he loves.[73]

It might be possible to maintain that the primitive element of more or
less latent cruelty in courtship tends to be more rather than less marked
in civilized man. In civilization the opportunity of dissipating the
surplus energy of the courtship process by inflicting pain on rivals
usually has to be inhibited; thus the woman to be wooed tends to become
the recipient of the whole of this energy, both in its pleasure-giving and
its pain-giving aspects. Moreover, the natural process of courtship, as it
exists among animals and usually among the lower human races, tends to
become disguised and distorted in civilization, as well by economic
conditions as by conventional social conditions and even ethical
prescription. It becomes forgotten that the woman's pleasure is an
essential element in the process of courtship. A woman is often reduced to
seek a man for the sake of maintenance; she is taught that pleasure is
sinful or shameful, that sex-matters are disgusting, and that it is a
woman's duty, and also her best policy, to be in subjection to her
husband. Thus, various external checks which normally inhibit any passing
over of masculine sexual energy into cruelty are liable to be removed.

We have to admit that a certain pleasure in manifesting his power over a
woman by inflicting pain upon her is an outcome and survival of the
primitive process of courtship, and an almost or quite normal constituent
of the sexual impulse in man. But it must be at once added that in the
normal well-balanced and well-conditioned man this constituent of the
sexual impulse, when present, is always held in check. When the normal man
inflicts, or feels the impulse to inflict, some degree of physical pain on
the woman he loves he can scarcely be said to be moved by cruelty. He
feels, more or less obscurely, that the pain he inflicts, or desires to
inflict, is really a part of his love, and that, moreover, it is not