Contents

I. THE SUBJECT OF AN IDEA. Page 11
Love's general psychology. – Love according to natural laws.– Sexual selection.– Man's place in Nature.– Identity of human and animal psychology.– The animal nature of love.

II. THE AIM OF LIFE. Page 17
The importance of the sexual act.– Its ineluctable character.– Animals who live only to reproduce themselves.– The strife for love, and for death.– Females fecundated at the very instant of birth.– The maintenance of life.

III. SCALE OF SEXES. Page 22
Asexual reproduction.– Formation of the animal colony.– Limits of asexual reproduction.– Coupling.– Birth of the sexes.– Hermaphrodism and parthenogenesis.– Chemical fecundation.– Universality of parthenogenesis.

IV. SEXUAL DIMORPHISM. Page 31
I. Invertebrates: formation of the male.– Primitivity of the female.– Minuscule males: the bonellie.– Regression of the male into the male organ: the cirripedes.– Generality of sexual dimorphism.– Superiority of the female in most insect species.– Exceptions.– Numeric dimorphism.– Female hymenoptera.– Multiplicity of her activities.– Male's purely sexual role,– Dimorphism of ants and termites.– Grasshoppers and crickets.– Spiders.– Coleoptera.– Glow worm.– Cochineal's strange dimorphism.

V. SEXUAL DIMORPHISM. Page 43
2. Vertebrates:– Unnoticeable in fish, saurians, reptiles.– The bird world.– Dimorphism favourable to males: the oriole, pheasants, the ruff.– Peacocks and turkeycocks.– Birds of paradise.– Moderate dimorphism of mammifers.– Effects of castration on dimorphism.

VI. SEXUAL DIMORPHISM. Page 49
3. Vertebrates (Continued):– Man and woman.– Characteristics and limits of human dimorphism.– Effects of civilization.– Psychologic dimorphism.– The insect world and the human.– Modern dimorphism, basis of the pair.– Solidarity of the human pair.– Dimorphism and polygamy.– The pair favours the female.– Sexual aesthetics.– Causes of the superiority of feminine beauty.

VII. SEXUAL DIMORPHISM AND FEMINISM. Page 59
Inferiority and superiority of the female as shown in animal species.– Influence of feeding on the production of sexes.– The female would have suffficed.– Feminism absolute, and moderate.– Pipe dreams: elimination of the male and human parthenogenesis.

VIII. LOVE ORGANS. Page 64
Sexual dimorphism and parallelism.– Sexual organs of man and of woman.– Constancy of sexual parallelism in the animal series.– External sexual organs of placentary mammifera.– Form and position of the penis.– The penial bone.– The clitoris.– The vagina.– The teats.– Forked prong of marsupials.– Sexual organs of reptiles.– Fish and birds with a penial organ.– Genital organs of arthropodes.– Attempt to classify animals according to the disposition, presence, absence of exterior organs for reproduction.

IX. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE. Page 76
I. Copulation: Vertebrates.– Its very numerous varieties and its specific fixity.– The apparent immorality of Nature.– Sexual ethnography.– Human mechanism.– Cavalage.– The form and duration of coupling in divers mammifers.– Aberrations of sexual surgery, the ampallang.– Pain as a bridle on sex.– Maidenhead. – The mole.– Passivity of the female.– The ovule, psychological figure of the female.– Mania of attributing human virtues to animals.– The modesty of elephants.– Coupling mechanism in whales, seals, tortoises.– In certain ophidians and in certain fish.

X. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE. Page 91
2. Copulation (Continued)– Arthropodes.– Scorpions. – Large aquatic crustaceans.– Small crustaceans.– The hydrachne.– Scutilary.– Cockchafer.– Butterflies.– Flies, etc.– Variation of animals' sexual habits.

XI. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE. Page 98
3. Of birds and fish.– Males without penis.– Coupling by simple contact.– Salacity of birds.– Copulation of batrachians: accoucheur toad, aquatic toad, earth toad, pipa toad.– F&Mac254;tal parasitism.– Chastity of fish.– Sexes separated in love. Onanistic fecundation.– Cephalopodes, the spermatophore.

XII. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE. Page 107
4. Hermaphrodism.– Sexual life of oysters.– Gasteropodes.– The idea of reproduction and the idea of pleasure.– Mechanism of reciprocal reproduction: helices.– Spintrian habits.– Reflection on hermaphrodism.

XIII. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE. Page 112
5. Artificial fecundation.– Disjunction of the secreting apparatus from the copulating apparatus.– Spiders. – Discovery of their copulative method.– Brutality of the female.– Habits of the epeire.– The argyronete.– The tarantula.– Exceptions: the reapers.– Dragonflies (libellule).– Dragonflies (demoiselle) virgins and "jouvencelle."– Picture of their love affairs.

XIV. THE MECHANISM OF LOVE. Page 120
6. Cannibalism in sex.– Females who devour the male, those who devour the spermatophore.– Probable use of these practices.– Fecundation by the whole male.– Loves of the white foreheaded dectic.– The green grasshopper.– The Alpine analote.– The ephippigere.– Further reflections on the cannibalism of sex.– Loves of the praying mantis.

XV. THE SEXUAL PARADE. Page 127
Universality of the caress, of amorous preludes.– Their role in fecundation.– Sexual games of birds.– How cantharides caress.– Males' combats.– Pretended combats of birds.– Dance of the tetras.– Gardener bird.– His country house.– His taste for flowers.– Reflections on the origin his art.– Combats of crickets.– Parade of butterflies.– Sexual sense of orientation.– The greatpeacock moth.– Animals' submission to orders of Nature.– Transmutation of physical values.– Rutting calendar.

XVI. POLYGAMY. Page 141
Rarity of monogamy.– Taste for change in animals.– Rôles of monogamy and polygamy in the stability or instability of specific types.– Strife of the couple against polygamy.– Couples among insects.– Among fish, batrachians, saurians.– Monogamy of pigeons, of nightingales.– Monogamy in carnivore, in rodents.– Habits of the rabbit.– The ichneumon.– Unknown causes of polygamy.– Rarity and superabundance of males.– Polygamy in insects.– In fish.– In gallinaceæ, in web footed birds.– In herbivore.– The antelope's harem.– Human polygamy.– How it tempers the couple among civilized races.

XVII.LOVE AMONG SOCIAL ANIMALS. Page 157
Organization of reproduction among hymenoptera.– Bees.– Wedding of the queen.– Mother bee, cause and consciousness of the hive.– Sexual royalty.– Limits of intelligence among bees.– Natural logic and human logic. – Wasps.– Bumble bees.– Ants.– Notes on their habits. – Very advanced state of their civilization.– Slavery and parasitism among ants.– Termites.– The nine principal active forms of termites.– Great age of their civilization.– Beavers.– Tendency of industrious animals to inactivity.

XVIII. THE QUESTION OF ABERRATIONS. Page 172
Two sorts of sexual aberration.– Sexual aberrations of animals.– Those of men.– Crossing of species.– Chastity.– Modesty.– Varieties and localizations of sexual bashfulness.– Artificial creation of modesty.– Sort of modesty natural to all females.– Cruelty.– Picture of carnage.– The cricket eaten alive.– Habits of carabes.– Every living creature is a prey.– Necessity to kill or to be killed.

XIX. INSTINCT. Page 184
Instinct.– Can one oppose it to intelligence?– Instinct in man.– Primordiality of intelligence.– Instinct's conservative rôle.– Modifying rôle of intelligence.– Intelligence and consciousness.– Parity of animal and human instinct.– Mechanical character of the instinctive act.– Instinct modified by intelligence.– Habit of work creates useless work.– Objections to the identification of instinct and intelligence taken from life of insects.

XX. TYRANNY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. Page 194
Accord and discord between organs and acts.– Tarses and sacred scarab.– The hand of man.– Mediocre fitness of sexual organs for copulation.– Origin of "luxuria."– The animal is a nervous system served by organs.– The organ does not determine the aptitude.– Man's hand inferior to his genius.– Substitution of one sense for another.– Union and rôle of the senses in love.– Man and animal under the tyranny of the nervous system.– Wear and tear of humanity compensated by acquisitions.– Man's inheritors.

TRANSLATOR'S POSTSCRIPT. Page 206

BIBLIOGRAPHY: PRACTICAL WORKS CONSULTED. Page 220