Sex-education: A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its relation to human lifeBigelow, Maurice A. (Maurice Alpheus)
Science
Sex-education: A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its relation to human life
Bigelow, Maurice A. (Maurice Alpheus)
Sex instruction
To many it is surprising to find that the word "sex" has never been
used in such degraded connections as has the word "love," and that it
has not been half so much misunderstood. There is no obvious vulgarity
in the lexicographer's definitions of the word "sex." It simply means,
as the science of biology points out so clearly, that the perpetuation
of human life, and of most other species of life, has been intrusted to
pairs of individuals which are of the two kinds commonly called the
sexes, male and female. Why nature determined that each new life in the
vast majority of species should develop from two other lives has long
been a biological puzzle, and most satisfactory of the answers given is
that bi-parental origin of new individuals allows for new combinations
of heritable qualities from two lines of descent. However, such a
biological explanation of the relation of the two sexes to double
parentage is of relatively little practical significance in present-day
human life when compared with the fact that out of the necessity for
life's perpetuation by two cooperating individuals there has grown
psychical or spiritual love with all its splendid possibilities that
are evident in ideal family life. Moreover, the influence of sex in
human life has extended far beyond the family (that is, that group of
individuals who stand related to one another as husband, wife, parents,
and children), for it is a careless observer indeed who does not note
in our daily life many social and psychical relationships of men and
women who have no mutual interests relating to the biological processes
of race perpetuation. Of course, the psychologist recognizes that far
back of the platonic contact of the sexes on social and intellectual
lines is the suppressed and primal instinct that provides physical
unions for race perpetuation. However, this is of no practical
interest, for, as a matter of fact, the primal instincts are quite
subconscious in the usual social relations between the sexes.
[Sidenote: The larger view of sex.]
There is grandeur in this view of sex as originally a provision for
perpetuation of life by two cooperating individuals, later becoming the
basis of conjugal affection of the two individuals for each other and
of their parental affection for their offspring, and finally leading to
social and intellectual comradeship of men and women meeting on terms
which are practically free from the original and biological meaning of
sex.
Instead, then, of trying to keep sex, both word and fact, in the
background of the new educational movement, I believe it is best to
work definitely for a better understanding of the part which sex plays
in human life, as outlined in the preceding paragraph. Hence, in these
lectures I shall never go aside in order to avoid either the word or
the idea of sex; on the contrary, I shall attempt to direct the
discussion so as to emphasize the larger and very modern view of the
relationship of sex and human life.
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.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account