Child Life and Sex Hygiene: A Remarkable MessageSmith, Otterbein Oscar
Science
Child Life and Sex Hygiene: A Remarkable Message
Smith, Otterbein Oscar
Sexual ethics
Let us now study the couple dancing. The body must be in a more or less
relaxed state, for graceful motion would not be possible with a rigid
body. The mind is at rest, because the music lulls it into quiet and
makes the dominant element in the life the feelings, for _we do not
think music, we feel it_. Just here you must recall, that the sex nerve
center is the brain of the physical life and continually sends forth
the most exquisite impulses of feeling, which manifest themselves in
all the glory and beauty of bodily charm and these _must of necessity
mingle in their outgoings with the vibrations of the music and the
feelings which it induces_.
Now you have these two persons, _with bodies relaxed, minds at rest,
just floating over the floor, and carried, as it were, on waves of
music_. Under just these conditions many an uninstructed and ignorant
girl has passed under a hypnotic spell in which she has been led to do
that which ruined her life and which she would have surrendered her
life rather than have done, had she been in her normal state.
Let me give you an instance in point. Some years ago I was lecturing on
the psychic question, and among other things I spoke of _the psychology
of the dance_. The next morning I met one of the fine, clean young
men of the little city, who was teller in one of the banks. He said
to me, “Doctor I enjoyed your lecture very much last night, and I
believe you have the right idea as to the psychology of the dance.” He
said, “Sometime ago I was dancing with one of the finest young ladies
in this city, one who is absolutely above reproach. As you said, ‘we
were just floating along over the floor charmed by the music.’ I was
looking down at her (he was a tall man), and thinking what a nice young
woman she was, when all at once she laid her face against mine. She did
not excuse herself then and she has not apologized since and I do not
believe she knew that she did it.” This is the conclusion of a sane,
thoughtful young man, as he pondered over an unusual experience with a
pure-minded and irreproachable young woman.
May I here give the testimony of an educated, thoughtful young man of
thirty? In a frank talk with me, he said: “There have been a few times
in my life when I have found it necessary to stop dancing with certain
ladies.”
There might not have been the slightest wrong thought in the minds of
this young man or the lady he was dancing with, but the outflooding
impulses from the sex nerve center in the life of the lady might just
at that time have been so vital and have been carried at such rapid
rates of vibration as to make themselves felt in the atmosphere about
her. This, my friends, might happen _without an evil thought upon the
part of either, for this brain of the physical life may and does send
out these impulses without the recognition of the intellect_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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