Little Essays of Love and Virtue

Little Essays of Love and Virtue

Project Gutenberg's Little Essays of Love and Virtue, by Havelock
Ellis This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Little Essays of Love and Virtue
Author: Havelock Ellis
Release Date: April 23, 2005 [EBook #15687]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE
ESSAYS OF LOVE AND VIRTUE ***

Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

LITTLE ESSAYS OF LOVE AND VIRTUE BY HAVELOCK ELLIS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX Six Volumes
Philadelphia: _F.A. Davis Company_
MAN AND WOMAN London: Walter Scott New York: _Charles

Scribners' Sons_
THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE London: Constable and Company
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company IMPRESSIONS AND
COMMENTS First and Second Series London: Constable and
Company Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company
BY MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS
THE NEW HORIZON IN LOVE AND LIFE With a Preface by
EDWARD CARPENTER and an Introduction by MARGUERITE
TRACY London: _A. and C. Black, Ltd._

LITTLE ESSAYS OF LOVE AND VIRTUE BY HAVELOCK ELLIS

A. & C. BLACK, LTD. 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1
1922

COPYRIGHT 1922 _In Great Britain by A. and G. Black, Ltd.,
London_ _In America by George H. Doran Co., New York_

PREFACE
In these Essays--little, indeed, as I know them to be, compared to the
magnitude of their subjects--I have tried to set forth, as clearly as I can,
certain fundamental principles, together with their practical application
to the life of our time. Some of these principles were stated, more
briefly and technically, in my larger Studies of sex; others were therein
implied but only to be read between the lines. Here I have expressed
them in simple language and with some detail. It is my hope that in this
way they may more surely come into the hands of young people,
youths and girls at the period of adolescence, who have been present to
my thoughts in all the studies I have written of sex because I was
myself of that age when I first vaguely planned them. I would prefer to
leave to their judgment the question as to whether this book is suitable
to be placed in the hands of older people. It might only give them pain.
It is in youth that the questions of mature age can alone be settled, if
they ever are to be settled, and unless we begin to think about adult
problems when we are young all our thinking is likely to be in vain.
There are but few people who are able when youth is over either on the
one hand to re-mould themselves nearer to those facts of Nature and of

Society they failed to perceive, or had not the courage to accept, when
they were young, or, on the other hand, to mould the facts of the
exterior world nearer to those of their own true interior world. One
hesitates to bring home to them too keenly what they have missed in
life. Yet, let us remember, even for those who have missed most, there
always remains the fortifying and consoling thought that they may at
least help to make the world better for those who come after them, and
the possibilities of human adjustment easier for others than it has been
for themselves. They must still remain true to their own traditions. We
could not wish it to be otherwise.
The art of making love and the art of being virtuous;--two aspects of
the great art of living that are, rightly regarded, harmonious and not at
variance--remain, indeed, when we cease to misunderstand them,
essentially the same in all ages and among all peoples. Yet, always and
everywhere, little modifications become necessary, little, yet, like so
many little things, immense in their significance and results. In this
way, if we are really alive, we flexibly adjust ourselves to the world in
which we find ourselves, and in so doing simultaneously adjust to
ourselves that ever-changing world, ever-changing, though its changes
are within such narrow limits that it yet remains substantially the same.
It is with such modification that we are concerned in these Little
Essays.
H.E.
_London, 1921_

CONTENTS



CHAPTER PAGE
I Children and Parents 13 II The Meaning of Purity 37 III The Objects
of Marriage 63 IV Husbands and Wives 75 V The Love-Rights of
Women 102 VI The Play-Function of Sex 116 VII The Individual and
the Race 134 Index 183

LITTLE ESSAYS OF LOVE AND