The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Science
The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Sex instruction
We can scarcely escape the conviction that these are not different
awakenings, but rather different phases of the one great awakening of the
young life as it prepares for the tasks and responsibilities of manhood
and womanhood. The part that sex development plays in this awakening has
been variously stressed by different special students of the physiology
and psychology of adolescence. Some scientists have not hesitated to give
it first place and to treat social passion and religious enthusiasm as
secondary manifestations of sex energy.[59] However that may be, we know
that each speaks naturally in terms of the other. The religious mystic of
the Middle Ages was devoted to the Divine Lover or the Heavenly Lady, and
the modern revolutionary is _wedded_ to the Cause. On the other hand, the
lover naturally adopts the language of religion to express his devotion to
the lady of his heart. The water-tight compartment theory of life is in
these days thoroughly discredited. We know that the various powers of soul
and body are related and interdependent, and we feel sure that the
developing powers of sex do have very vital relation to developing powers
of moral purpose and religious aspiration. In support of this relation we
recall the unfortunate effects upon the character of those who by chance
or the barbarity of men have been desexed in childhood. We must allow for
other factors at work here, yet the clearly established facts of the
stunting of mental and moral growth in desexed children reinforce our own
experience and observation, and indicate that the energies that are
developed with sex and maturity are largely available for moral and
religious growth. The youth with full sex consciousness and impulse is
normally the youth of abundant energy for moral and religious activity. It
seems, therefore, quite fundamental to the right understanding of sex that
we consider the body, not the enemy of the soul, but its friend; not a
clog upon the spiritual growth of boy and girl advancing into manhood and
womanhood, but an important source of energy for the upward climb.
When we turn to the second part of our discussion and ask how in matters
of sex soul helps flesh, the need and the fact are clearer and perhaps
more urgent. Dante found the souls of the lustful in the second circle of
hell, driven hither and thither by warring winds,--
"The stormy blast of hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on,
Whirled round and dashed amain with sore annoy."
Here we have clear recognition of the two great characters of sex impulse,
its violence and its fitfulness. In the one character it needs to be
subdued that it may not destroy; in the other it needs to be directed that
it may build up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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