STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME VI
Sex in Relation to Society
by
HAVELOCK ELLIS
1927
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.
CHAPTER I.
THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD.
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.