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)
In Protestant countries the influence of the Reformation, by
rehabilitating sex as natural, indirectly tended to substitute in popular
feeling towards sex the opprobrium of sinfulness by the opprobrium of
animality. Henceforth the sexual impulse must be disguised or adorned to
become respectably human. This may be illustrated by a passage in Pepys's
_Diary_ in the seventeenth century. On the morning after the wedding day
it was customary to call up new married couples by music; the absence of
this music on one occasion (in 1667) seemed to Pepys "as if they had
married like dog and bitch." We no longer insist on the music, but the
same feeling still exists in the craving for other disguises and
adornments for the sexual impulse. We do not always realize that love
brings its own sanctity with it.
Nowadays indeed, whenever the repugnance to the sexual side of life
manifests itself, the assertion nearly always made is not so much that it
is "sinful" as that it is "beastly." It is regarded as that part of man
which most closely allies him to the lower animals. It should scarcely be
necessary to point out that this is a mistake. On whichever side, indeed,
we approach it, the implication that sex in man and animals is identical
cannot be borne out. From the point of view of those who accept this
identity it would be much more correct to say that men are inferior,
rather than on a level with animals, for in animals under natural
conditions the sexual instinct is strictly subordinated to reproduction
and very little susceptible to deviation, so that from the standpoint of
those who wish to minimize sex, animals are nearer to the ideal, and such
persons must say with Woods Hutchinson: "Take it altogether, our animal
ancestors have quite as good reason to be ashamed of us as we of them."
But if we look at the matter from a wider biological standpoint of
development, our conclusion must be very different.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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