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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
a channel for his youthful emotion to flow normally. It seems that she responded. The call of nature was irresistible.*
One hears so much about human nature that never changes. The fact, however, is that the desire to love and be loved is the only constant of human nature. And the foundation of this essence of what is called human nature is biological. You can disassociate love from sex just as much as you quench thirst without drink, or satisfy hunger without food. Love, of course, is not limited to sex relations. But primarily, it is nothing more sublime or mysterious than emotional reflex of the urge of an organism to reproduce itself. Emotions, however noble or sublimated, are physical urge, in the last analysis. Therefore, normally, when psychological inhibitions and social taboos are absent or swept away by extraordinary combinations of circumstances, love breaks the bonds of sublimated hypocrisy, and not always successful self-deception.
*For the benefit of those who may be morally scandalised, even if sympathetically inclined towards the unhappy victims of social cruelty, it may be mentioned that incest is really not so much revolting to human nature as it is generally believed to be. The famous anthropologist Sir J. G. Frazer is of the opinion that incest was declared to be such a dreadful sin and so strict taboos were placed for its prevention, precisely because of the general tendency towards it. He came to the conclusion by exhaustive studies of human behaviour under all conditions.
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