The next great change is being made now; it concerns a further
development of mind and a consequent fresh mode of connection of sex
with mental life. As we have outlined above, this change in mind
consists in the tendency towards uniting the different parts of the
psyche, both those portions given by heredity and the modification due
to experience, into a single organic whole, and in making this whole
more dominant over the other aspects of the organism; the consequent
tendency as regards the relationship of sex to the organism is towards
taking it out of its single groove, its water-tight compartment, and
bringing it into more complete and more permanent union with the rest
of the mind. Furthermore, the main change and the consequent change as
regards sex are both of a biologically progressive nature.
We are now, I think, owing to our taking this broad biological view,
in a better position to make up our minds as to some at least of the
difficulties which beset us to-day in any attempt to deal squarely
with the relation of sex to human life. It is true that some of
these difficulties are permanent. The synthesis of a unitary and
comprehensive mental organization can never be an easy task. The
child is endowed with a number of instinctive tendencies which, as
in animals, each tend whenever aroused to occupy the whole mental
field to the exclusion of all others, producing divergence and lack
of co-ordination instead of unity and organization. Then again, the
experience of any one individual may be highly unusual. For the child
to co-ordinate his various tendencies with each other and with his
own experience and with the tradition and experience of the race must
always be difficult, and there will always be some failures.
There is another permanent difficulty, a biological disharmony, in the
fact that sexual maturity in man comes several years before general
maturity, and that again, at least in any state of civilization which
we can at present imagine as practicable, several years before the
economic possibility of marriage. There will always be crises of
adolescence; there will always be suffering and difficulty due to this
disharmony in time between the origin of the full sexual instinct and
the possibility of its proper satisfaction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account