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)
therefore a great effect on respiration, circulation and
nutrition. Such movements, moreover, when done as dances, could
be carried on three or four times as long without producing
fatigue as formal gymnastics. Many folk-dances were imitative,
sowing and reaping dance, dances expressing trade movements (the
shoemaker's dance), others illustrating attack and defense, or
the pursuit of game. Such neuro-muscular movements were racially
old and fitted in with man's expressive life, and if it were
accepted that the folk-dances really expressed an epitome of
man's neuro-muscular history, as distinguished from mere
permutation of movements, the folk-dance combinations should be
preferred on these biological grounds to the unselected, or even
the physiologically selected. From the æsthetic point of view the
sense of beauty as shown in dancing was far commoner than the
power to sing, paint or model."
It must always be remembered that in realizing the especial demands of
woman's nature, we do not commit ourselves to the belief that higher
education is unfitted for a woman. That question may now be regarded as
settled. There is therefore no longer any need for the feverish anxiety of
the early leaders of feminine education to prove that girls can be
educated exactly as if they were boys, and yield at least as good
educational results. At the present time, indeed, that anxiety is not only
unnecessary but mischievous. It is now more necessary to show that women
have special needs just as men have special needs, and that it is as bad
for women, and therefore, for the world, to force them to accept the
special laws and limitations of men as it would be bad for men, and
therefore, for the world, to force men to accept the special laws and
limitations of women. Each sex must seek to reach the goal by following
the laws of its own nature, even although it remains desirable that, both
in the school and in the world, they should work so far as possible side
by side. The great fact to be remembered always is that, not only are
women, in physical size and physical texture, slighter and finer than men,
but that to an extent altogether unknown among men, their centre of
gravity is apt to be deflected by the series of rhythmic sexual curves on
which they are always living. They are thus more delicately poised and any
kind of stress or strain--cerebral, nervous, or muscular--is more likely
to produce serious disturbance and requires an accurate adjustment to
their special needs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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