Essays in medical sociology, Volume 1 (of 2)Blackwell, Elizabeth
Science
Essays in medical sociology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Blackwell, Elizabeth
Prostitution; Sexual ethics; Social medicine
The growing power of the mental element over sex in all the higher
races of mankind is demonstrated by the ennobling friendships between
men and women which increasingly brighten life in our own Anglo-Saxon
civilization. The free and friendly intercourse of self-respecting
youth of both sexes satisfies the complex wants of early man and
womanhood; there is physical as well as mental refreshment in such
honourable and natural human intercourse.
In the young man or woman, just entered into the full possession of all
the human faculties, where the special attraction of two tends towards
marriage, this moral or mental predominance is still remarkable. The
attraction towards the other sex is rich in mental delights. The
passing sight of the object beloved, a word, a look, a smile, will
make sunshine in the gloomiest day. The consciousness of spiritual
attraction will sustain and guard through long waiting for more
complete union.
The physical pleasure which attends the caresses of love is a rich
endowment of humanity, granted by a beneficent Creative Power. There
is nothing necessarily evil in physical pleasure. Though inferior
in rank to mental pleasure, it is a legitimate part of our nature,
involving always some degree of mental action. The satisfaction which
our senses, sight, hearing, touch, etc., derive from all lovely objects
adapted to the special sense, indicates that beneficence latent in the
‘cosmic process’ which enters into the physical manifestation of our
present earthly life. The sexual act itself, rightly understood in its
compound character, so far from being a necessarily evil thing, is
really a Divinely created and altogether righteous fulfilment of the
conditions of present life. This act, like all human acts, is subjected
to the inexorable rule of moral law. Righteous use brings renewed
and increasing satisfaction to the two made one in harmonious union.
Unrighteous use produces satiety, coldness, repulsion, and misery to
the two remaining apart, through the abuse of a Divine gift.
At a public table in the Tyrol I once heard an Austrian officer, a most
repulsive spectacle, dying of his vices, boast of his ruined life, and
declare that he would take the consequences and live it over again had
he the power to do so. This is the insanity of lust. But it illustrates
the inseparable union of soul and body in human sex.
It is the mental element dominating the physical impulse in man, for
evil, which produces that monstrous creation, cold, selfish, and cruel,
which is seen only in the man or woman abusing the creative powers of
sex.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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