It would be an attractive and grateful task to point out the
halting-places of the human race in the life of the individual; to fix
the moment when for the first time in his life the child says "I"--a
moment which usually occurs in his second year, and represents the
humanisation of the race, the great intuition, when primitive man,
divining his spiritual nature, severed himself from the external world;
to perceive the child--like its primitive ancestors in their
day--treating all weaker creatures which fall into its hands with almost
bestial cruelty; to watch the boyish games reflecting the period when
the nations lived on war and the chase, their eagerness to draw up rules
and regulations and create gradations of rank and marks of distinction.
I am not able to carry out such a task in detail and, moreover, as I am
dealing with the erotic life only, such a proceeding would be out of
place here.
The psychogenetic law, then, comes to this: Every well-developed male
individual of the present day successively passes through the three
stages of love through which the European races have passed.
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