Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6

Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
Volume 6

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Volume 6
(of 6), by Havelock Ellis
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Title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6)
Author: Havelock Ellis
Release Date: October 8, 2004 [eBook #13615]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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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