Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6: Sex in Relation to SocietyEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6: Sex in Relation to Society
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
Ellen Key in Ch. VI of her _Century of the Child_ well summarizes
the reasons against the practice of selecting for children books
that are "suitable" for them, a practice which she considers one
of the follies of modern education. The child should be free to
read all great literature, and will himself instinctively put
aside the things he is not yet ripe for. His cooler senses are
undisturbed by scenes that his elders find too exciting, while
even at a later stage it is not the nakedness of great
literature, but much more the method of the modern novel, which
is likely to stain the imagination, falsify reality and injure
taste. It is concealment which misleads and coarsens, producing a
state of mind in which even the Bible becomes a stimulus to the
senses. The writings of the great masters yield the imaginative
food which the child craves, and the erotic moment in them is too
brief to be overheating. It is the more necessary, Ellen Key
remarks, for children to be introduced to great literature, since
they often have little opportunity to occupy themselves with it
in later life. Many years earlier Ruskin, in _Sesame and Lilies_,
had eloquently urged that even young girls should be allowed to
range freely in libraries.
What has been said about literature applies equally to art. Art, as well
as literature, and in the same indirect way, can be made a valuable aid in
the task of sexual enlightenment and sexual hygiene. Modern art may,
indeed, for the most part, be ignored from this point of view, but
children cannot be too early familiarized with the representations of the
nude in ancient sculpture and in the paintings of the old masters of the
Italian school. In this way they may be immunized, as Enderlin expresses
it, against those representations of the nude which make an appeal to the
baser instincts. Early familiarity with nudity in art is at the same time
an aid to the attainment of a proper attitude towards purity in nature.
"He who has once learnt," as Höller remarks, "to enjoy peacefully
nakedness in art, will be able to look on nakedness in nature as on a work
of art."
Casts of classic nude statues and reproductions of the pictures
of the old Venetian and other Italian masters may fittingly be
used to adorn schoolrooms, not so much as objects of instruction
as things of beauty with which the child cannot too early become
familiarized. In Italy it is said to be usual for school classes
to be taken by their teachers to the art museums with good
results; such visits form part of the official scheme of
education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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