Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3: Analysis of the Sexual Impulse; Love and Pain; The Sexual Impulse in WomenEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3: Analysis of the Sexual Impulse; Love and Pain; The Sexual Impulse in Women
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
"People of sense and reflection are most apt to have violent and constant
passions," wrote Mary Wollstonecraft, "and to be preyed on by them."[229]
It is that fact which leads to the greater importance of sexual phenomena
among the civilized as compared to savages. The conditions of civilization
increase the sexual instinct, which consequently tends to be more
intimately connected with moral feelings. Morality is bound up with the
development of the sexual instinct. The more casual and periodic character
of the impulse in animals, since it involves greater sexual indifference,
tends to favor a loose tie between the sexes, and hence is not favorable
to the development of morals as we understand morals. In man the
ever-present impulse of sex, idealizing each sex to the other sex, draws
men and women together and holds them together. Foolish and ignorant
persons may deplore the full development which the sexual instinct has
reached in civilized man; to a finer insight that development is seen to
be indissolubly linked with all that is most poignant and most difficult,
indeed, but also all that is best, in human life as we know it.
FOOTNOTES:
[225] _De Rerum Naturâ_, v, 1016.
[226] Raciborski (_Traité de la Menstruation_, p. 43) quotes the
observation of an experienced breeder of choice cattle to this effect.
[227] "The organs which in the feral state," as Adlerz remarks
(_Biologisches Centralblatt_, No. 4, 1902; quoted in _Science_, May 16,
1902), "are continually exercised in a severe struggle for existence, do
not under domestication compete so closely with one another for the less
needed nutriment. Hence, organs like the reproductive glands, which are
not so directly implicated in self-preservation, are able to avail
themselves of more food."
[228] _Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science_, vol. xliv, 1900, p.
12, 31, 39.
[229] "Love," in _Thoughts on the Education of Daughters_.
APPENDIX B.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEXUAL INSTINCT.
It is a very remarkable fact that, although for many years past serious
attempts have been made to elucidate the psychology of sexual perversions,
little or no endeavor has been made to study the development of the normal
sexual emotions. Nearly every writer seems either to take for granted that
he and his readers are so familiar with all the facts of normal sex
psychology that any detailed statement is altogether uncalled for, or else
he is content to write a few fragmentary remarks, mostly made up of
miscellaneous extracts from anatomical, philosophical, and historical
works.
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