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The sixth volume of Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex shifts from the individual sexual impulse to its wider social context. After five earlier books that examined the inner workings of desire, Ellis opens this installment by declaring that “we cannot afford…to pass unnoticed this relationship of the sexual impulse to third persons and to the community at large.” He promises a broad, yet concise, survey of topics that could each fill a separate volume, ranging from motherhood, sexual education, and nakedness to prostitution, venereal disease, and marriage. Rather than amassing detail, the author aims to place each subject within the “fundamental principles of sexual psychology” established in the preceding books, while acknowledging that his judgments will be partly speculative. The introduction sets a tone of scholarly ambition, noting the need to balance medical, legal, moral, and theological demands with a psychological perspective that seeks to satisfy the “totality of the impulses and ideas of civilized men and women.”
Ellis writes in the measured, didactic prose of the early twentieth‑century scientific literature, blending clinical observation with historical and cultural analysis. His style is dense but systematic, often invoking Christianity, tradition, and the evolution of social institutions to frame his arguments. Readers who relish interdisciplinary inquiry, especially those interested in the history of sexuality, social hygiene, or the interplay of psychology and morality, will find this work rewarding. It appeals to scholars, students, and curious laypersons who appreciate a rigorous, historically grounded exploration of how sex shapes, and is shaped by, the societies in which it occurs.
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PREFACE.
In the previous five volumes of these Studies, I have dealt mainly with the sexual impulse in relation to its object, leaving out of account the external persons and the environmental influences which yet may powerfully affect that impulse and its gratification. We cannot afford, however, to pass unnoticed this relationship of the sexual impulse to third persons and to the community at large with all its anciently established traditions. We have to consider sex in relation to society.
In so doing, it will be possible to discuss more summarily than in preceding volumes the manifold and important problems that are presented to us. In considering the more special questions of sexual psychology we entered a neglected field and it was necessary to expend an analytic care and precision which at many points had never been expended before on these questions. But when we reach the relationships of sex to society we have for the most part no such neglect to encounter. The subject of every chapter in the present volume could easily form, and often has formed, the topic of a volume, and the literature of many of these subjects is already extremely voluminous. It must therefore be our main object here not to accumulate details but to place each subject by turn, as clearly and succinctly as may be, in relation to those fundamental principles of sexual psychology which--so far as the data at present admit--have been set forth in the preceding volumes.
It may seem to some, indeed, that in this exposition I should have confined myself to the present, and not included so wide a sweep of the course of human history and the traditions of the race. It may especially seem that I have laid too great a stress on the influence of Christianity in moulding sexual ideals and establishing sexual institutions. That, I am convinced, is an error. It is because it is so frequently made that the movements of progress among us--movements that can never at any period of social history cease--are by many so seriously misunderstood. We cannot escape from our traditions. There never has been, and never can be, any "age of reason." The most ardent co-called "free-thinker," who casts aside as he imagines the authority of the Christian past, is still held by that past. If its traditions are not absolutely in his blood, they are ingrained in the texture of all the social institutions into which he was born and they affect even his modes of thinking. The latest modifications of our institutions are inevitably influenced by the past form of those institutions. We cannot realize where we are, nor whither we are moving, unless we know whence we came. We cannot understand the significance of the changes around us, nor face them with cheerful confidence, unless we are acquainted with the drift of the great movements that stir all civilization in never-ending cycles.
In discussing sexual questions which are very largely matters of social hygiene we shall thus still be preserving the psychological point of view. Such a point of view in relation to these matters is not only legitimate but necessary. Discussions of social hygiene that are purely medical or purely juridical or purely moral or purely theological not only lead to conclusions that are often entirely opposed to each other but they obviously fail to possess complete applicability to the complex human personality. The main task before us must be to ascertain what best expresses, and what best satisfies, the totality of the impulses and ideas of civilized men and women. So that while we must constantly bear in mind medical, legal, and moral demands--which all correspond in some respects to some individual or social need--the main thing is to satisfy the demands of the whole human person.
It is necessary to emphasize this point of view because it would seem that no error is more common among writers on the hygienic and moral problems of sex than the neglect of the psychological standpoint. They may take, for instance, the side of sexual restraint, or the side of sexual unrestraint, but they fail to realize that so narrow a basis is inadequate for the needs of complex human beings. From the wider psychological standpoint we recognize that we have to conciliate opposing impulses that are both alike founded on the human psychic organism.
In the preceding volumes of these Studies I have sought to refrain from the expression of any personal opinion and to maintain, so far as possible, a strictly objective attitude. In this endeavor, I trust, I have been successful if I may judge from the fact that I have received the sympathy and approval of all kinds of people, not less of the rationalistic free-thinker than of the orthodox believer, of those who accept, as well as of those who reject, our most current standards of morality. This is as it should be, for whatever our criteria of the worth of feelings and of conduct, it must always be of use to us to know what exactly are the feelings of people and how those feelings tend to affect their conduct. In the present volume, however, where social traditions necessarily come in for consideration and where we have to discuss the growth of those traditions in the past and their probable evolution in the future, I am not sanguine that the objectivity of my attitude will be equally clear to the reader. I have here to set down not only what people actually feel and do but what I think they are tending to feel and do. That is a matter of estimation only, however widely and however cautiously it is approached; it cannot be a matter of absolute demonstration. I trust that those who have followed me in the past will bear with me still, even if it is impossible for them always to accept the conclusions I have myself reached.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
Carbis Bay, Cornwall, England.
CONTENTS.
The Child's Right to Choose Its Ancestry--How This is Effected--The Mother the Child's Supreme Parent--Motherhood and the Woman Movement--The Immense Importance of Motherhood--Infant Mortality and Its Causes--The Chief Cause in the Mother--The Need of Rest During Pregnancy--Frequency of Premature Birth--The Function of the State--Recent Advance in Puericulture--The Question of Coitus During Pregnancy--The Need of Rest During Lactation--The Mother's Duty to Suckle Her Child--The Economic Question--The Duty of the State--Recent Progress in the Protection of the Mother--The Fallacy of State Nurseries.
Nurture Necessary as Well as Breed--Precocious Manifestations of the Sexual Impulse--Are they to be Regarded as Normal?--The Sexual Play of Children--The Emotion of Love in Childhood--Are Town Children More Precocious Sexually Than Country Children?--Children's Ideas Concerning the Origin of Babies--Need for Beginning the Sexual Education of Children in Early Years--The Importance of Early Training in Responsibility--Evil of the Old Doctrine of Silence in Matters of Sex--The Evil Magnified When Applied to Girls--The Mother the Natural and Best Teacher--The Morbid Influence of Artificial Mystery in Sex Matters--Books on Sexual Enlightenment of the Young--Nature of the Mother's Task--Sexual Education in the School--The Value of Botany--Zoölogy--Sexual Education After Puberty--The Necessity of Counteracting Quack Literature--Danger of Neglecting to Prepare for the First Onset of Menstruation--The Right Attitude Towards Woman's Sexual Life--The Vital Necessity of the Hygiene of Menstruation During Adolescence--Such Hygiene Compatible with the Educational and Social Equality of the Sexes--The Invalidism of Women Mainly Due to Hygienic Neglect--Good Influence of Physical Training on Women and Bad Influence of Athletics--The Evils of Emotional Suppression--Need of Teaching the Dignity of Sex--Influence of These Factors on a Woman's Fate in Marriage--Lectures and Addresses on Sexual Hygiene--The Doctor's Part in Sexual Education--Pubertal Initiation Into the Ideal World--The Place of the Religious and Ethical Teacher--The Initiation Rites of Savages Into Manhood and Womanhood--The Sexual Influence of Literature--The Sexual Influence of Art.
The Greek Attitude Towards Nakedness--How the Romans Modified That Attitude--The Influence of Christianity--Nakedness in Mediæval Times--Evolution of the Horror of Nakedness--Concomitant Change in the Conception of Nakedness--Prudery--The Romantic Movement--Rise of a New Feeling in Regard to Nakedness--The Hygienic Aspect of Nakedness--How Children May Be Accustomed to Nakedness--Nakedness Not Inimical to Modesty--The Instinct of Physical Pride--The Value of Nakedness in Education--The Æsthetic Value of Nakedness--The Human Body as One of the Prime Tonics of Life--How Nakedness May Be Cultivated--The Moral Value of Nakedness.
The Conception of Sexual Love--The Attitude of Mediæval Asceticism--St. Bernard and St. Odo of Cluny--The Ascetic Insistence on the Proximity of the Sexual and Excretory Centres--Love as a Sacrament of Nature--The Idea of the Impurity of Sex in Primitive Religions Generally--Theories of the Origin of This Idea--The Anti-Ascetic Element in the Bible and Early Christianity--Clement of Alexandria--St. Augustine's Attitude--The Recognition of the Sacredness of the Body by Tertullian, Rufinus and Athanasius--The Reformation--The Sexual Instinct Regarded as Beastly--The Human Sexual Instinct Not Animal-like--Lust and Love--The Definition of Love--Love and Names for Love Unknown in Some Parts of the World--Romantic Love of Late Development in the White Race--The Mystery of Sexual Desire--Whether Love is a Delusion--The Spiritual as Well as the Physical Structure of the World in Part Built up on Sexual Love The Testimony of Men of Intellect to the Supremacy of Love.
Chastity Essential to the Dignity of Love--The Eighteenth Century Revolt Against the Ideal of Chastity--Unnatural Forms of Chastity--The Psychological Basis of Asceticism--Asceticism and Chastity as Savage Virtues--The Significance of Tahiti--Chastity Among Barbarous Peoples--Chastity Among the Early Christians--Struggles of the Saints with the Flesh--The Romance of Christian Chastity--Its Decay in Mediæval Times--_Aucassin et Nicolette_ and the New Romance of Chaste Love--The Unchastity of the Northern Barbarians--The Penitentials--Influence of the Renaissance and the Reformation--The Revolt Against Virginity as a Virtue--The Modern Conception of Chastity as a Virtue--The Influences That Favor the Virtue of Chastity--Chastity as a Discipline--The Value of Chastity for the Artist--Potency and Impotence in Popular Estimation--The Correct Definitions of Asceticism and Chastity.
The Influence of Tradition--The Theological Conception of Lust--Tendency of These Influences to Degrade Sexual Morality--Their Result in Creating the Problem of Sexual Abstinence--The Protests Against Sexual Abstinence--Sexual Abstinence and Genius--Sexual Abstinence in Women--The Advocates of Sexual Abstinence--Intermediate Attitude--Unsatisfactory Nature of the Whole Discussion--Criticism of the Conception of Sexual Abstinence--Sexual Abstinence as Compared to Abstinence from Food--No Complete Analogy--The Morality of Sexual Abstinence Entirely Negative--Is It the Physician's Duty to Advise Extra-Conjugal Sexual Intercourse?--Opinions of Those Who Affirm or Deny This Duty--The Conclusion Against Such Advice--The Physician Bound by the Social and Moral Ideas of His Age--The Physician as Reformer--Sexual Abstinence and Sexual Hygiene--Alcohol--The Influence of Physical and Mental Exercise--The Inadequacy of Sexual Hygiene in This Field--The Unreal Nature of the Conception of Sexual Abstinence--The Necessity of Replacing It by a More Positive Ideal.
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