The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German EditionBloch, Iwan
Philosophy
The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German Edition
Bloch, Iwan
Sex; Sexual ethics
From the preceding discussion it appears quite clearly that the
relations between religion and the _vita sexualis_ are to be regarded as
general anthropological phenomena, and not as peculiarities arising by
chance, the accidental results of beliefs, time, or race. The modern
physician, jurist, and criminal anthropologist must therefore pay the
most careful attention to the religious factor in the normal and
abnormal sexual life of mankind, if he wishes to arrive at an
unprejudiced and undisturbed knowledge of sexual anomalies. Havelock
Ellis has also laid stress on the leading significance of religious
sexual perceptions. He proved that small oscillations of erotic feelings
accompany all religious perceptions, and that in some circumstances the
erotic feelings overwhelm the religious perceptions.[68] We still meet
with sexual excesses under the cloak of religion, as occurred recently
(1905) in Holland, and (1901) in England. In the English instance young
girls were initiated into the most horrible forms of unchastity in the
religious association founded by the American Horos and his wife, and
known by the name of “Theocratic Unity.”[69]
Friedrich Schlegel, as Rudolf von Gottschall remarks, proclaimed in his
“Lucinde” the new evangel of the future, in which voluptuousness--as
during the time of Astarte--is to form a part of religious ritual. The
reawakened tendency of our own day towards romantic modes of perception
would certainly seem to involve the danger of a renewal and
strengthening of religio-sexual ideas.
For as long as the feelings of love carry with them an inexpressible,
overwhelming force, like that of religious perceptions, the intimate
association between religion and sexuality will persist both in a good
and a bad sense. An elderly physician, who in his interesting book
detailed the experiences derived from forty years of practice,[70] made
very apposite remarks regarding this religious sexualism. According to
him, unbounded piety is “often no more than a sexual symptom,”
proceeding from =deprivation of love or satiety of love=, the latter
reminding us of the saying “Young whore, old devotee.” Moreover, this is
true alike of man and woman. Piety dependent upon deprivation of love
can often be cured by “castor, cold douches, or a well-arranged marriage
with a robust, energetic man,” who drives away for ever the “heavenly
bridegroom.”[71]
The religious perception is a completely =general= yearning, and the
same is the case with the associated sexual feelings. The boundless
everlasting impulsion which both contain does not admit of any
individualization. For this reason, the religio-sexual perceptions can
play only a subordinate part in the individual love of the future; they
constitute only the first step in the history of the idealization of the
sexual impulse, and of its spiritualization to form love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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