As regards modern society, Darwin, Brinton, Hellwald, Bentham, and
others have advocated or endorsed the view that the reason why such a
horror of incestuous unions prevails, is that novelty is the chief
stimulus to the sexual feelings, and that the familiarity of the same
household breeds indifference. I do not understand how any thinker can
have held such a view for one moment. When Bentham wrote (_Theory of
Legislation_, pt. iii., chap. V.) that "individuals accustomed to see
each other from an age which is capable neither of conceiving desire
nor of inspiring it, will see each other with the same eyes to the end
of life," he showed infinitely less knowledge of human nature than the
author of _Paul and Virginia_, who makes a boy and a girl grow up
almost like brother and sister, and at the proper time fall violently
in love with one another. Who cannot recall in his own experience love
marriages of schoolmates or of cousins living in intimate association
from their childhood? To say that such bringing up together creates
"indifference" is obviously incorrect; to say that it leads to
"aversion" is altogether unwarranted; and to trace to it such a
feeling as our horror at the thought of marrying a sister, or mother,
is simply preposterous.
The real source of the horror of incest in civilized communities was
indicated more than two thousand years ago by Plato.
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