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
Ellen Key rightly insists that among the young men of the present day
there is an increasing hostility to socially protected immorality (both
in the form of coercive marriage and in that of prostitution); whilst
they increasingly exhibit a monistic yearning for love. The general
diffusion, which we shall describe at length in a special chapter, of
ascetic moods and of misogyny among men and of misandry among women, is
partly connected with the feeling that the present social forms of the
sexual relationship limit to an equal extent the worth and the freedom
of mankind.
To-day the “purity fanatics and the frantic sensualists” meet in common
mistrust of the developmental possibilities of love, because they do not
believe in the possible ennoblement of the blind natural impulse. In
contrast to these, Ellen Key reminds us of the fact of the “mystical
=yearning for perfection=, which in the course of evolution has raised
impulse to become passion, and passion to become love, and which is now
striving =to raise love to an ever greater love=.”
We must recognize love as =the spiritual force of life=. Love, like the
artist, like the man of science, has a right to the peculiar, original
activity of its own poietic force, to the production of new spiritual
values. The more perfect race that is to come must, in the fullest
meaning of the words, =be brought forth by love=.
For this, however, the indispensable preliminary is the inward =freedom=
of love; the free-love union is the watchword of the future. Ellen Key
also shows that among the lower classes free love has long been
customary, and that there the dangerous utilization of prostitution is
far more limited than among the higher classes, with which view
Blaschko’s statistical data regarding the far greater diffusion of
venereal diseases among the higher classes of society are in substantial
agreement.
No less indispensable to free love, however, is the full, mature
development of the loving individual. For this reason, Ellen Key demands
self-control and sexual continence at least until the age of twenty
years. She regards the indiscriminate sexual intercourse which is to-day
an established custom among all young men as the murder of love. But too
early marriages are no less dangerous. She demands for the woman at
least an age of twenty; for the man, an age of twenty-five years; and
=until these respective ages are attained, sexual continence should be
observed as fully as possible by both sexes=.
This self-command is good for the physical development, “steels the
will, gives the joy of power to the personality; and these qualities are
later of importance in all other spheres of activity.”
With wonderful beauty, Ellen Key describes the happiness of the =power
of waiting= in love, and quotes in this connexion the lovely phrases of
the Swedish poet Karlfeldt:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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