The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Science
The Social Emergency: Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals
Sex instruction
Nor is this the only higher affection that, in the practical experience of
men, has controlled and transformed animal passion. Thousands of fully
sexed men have, through the centuries, turned their bodily and mental
energies so fully to devoted service for God and their fellows as to rise
above the clamoring demands of physical appetite, in the vigorous terms of
the New Testament making themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God's sake.
This is a hard saying, and the experience it treats of must always be
confined to a small number of men; yet it goes far toward demonstrating a
general possibility, and it should effectively dispose of the "necessity"
argument, by which men often excuse their vicious practices.
One thing more should be said on this subject of control. Not only are the
higher, more spiritual affections the most effective masters of the lower;
they are the _only_ effective masters. Public reprobation can do much, but
it is ineffectual with large numbers of relatively unattached members of
society, and it is impotent against secret vice. Motives of cautious fear
are always weak with full-blooded and generous youth, and they are likely
to become weaker with all men as medical science discovers ways to prevent
or escape the most obviously fearful consequences of sexual license.
A familiar phrase comes to my mind, as no doubt it comes to yours: "The
expulsive power of the higher affections"; yet I think that phrase is not
quite suitable. It is not a question of expulsion. It is not wholly a
question of control; it is mainly a question of direction. What we need
to-day with boys and girls for the solving of the sex problems is to
direct those energies, which in their false direction are destructive,
into right and healthful ways; that is, we need to socialize and elevate
that affection, which in baser forms has aspects of ugly animalism.
As one of the solutions of the problem of control it has been proposed to
separate the sexes in the adolescent years. From my point of view, this
would defeat our object. In the association of boys and girls during the
adolescent period, we may enlist the higher affections for the control and
the direction of the powers that are set free by sex impulses developed in
that very period of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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