The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

BOOK 8

people The complete abolition of such hideous diseases as syphilis and gonorrhcea could be achieved in two or three generations if a world-wide observance of a few perfectly simple precautions could be imposed. But at present the mental and moral confusion of our species forbids any hope of such a feat of hygiene.

But this cleaning up of the sexual act which is now in progress in the more civilized communities, so that it becomes socially and physiologically harmless, does not begin to give us a new sexual morality. It merely clears the ground for a new sexual morality. Except in possibly the case of a few imbeciles the sexual act is never merely physical. It is not even mainly physical. It is involved with a whole world of sensuous and zsthetic discriminations. The state of the genital secretions causes changes in the blood that affect the colour and stir of the whole mental life, and conversely mental and particularly esthetic excitation affects the amount and vigour of the physical sexual activities. There is a quality of preference in most sexual advances and a sense of selection. Self-love is involved profoundly. There is a peculiar pride and glory in the successful exercise of choice in this field. Hardly any form of human love-making exists without some element of flattering illusion. The sense of personality is stirred to its depths. For most people it is the culminating self-assertion. It is therefore usually and very easily competitive. It may give rise to intense rivalries, devouring jealousies, bitter resentments, and the extremest humiliations. As we have already pointed out, all our troubles to adjust ourselves in these matters are quite unaffected by the modern detachment of sexual intercourse from parentage and infection. _ The sexual complex is the greatest power in our minds to bring our conduct into relation with our fellow creatures; there we incline towards the Freudians ; but it is not the only one. ‘There is, for example, the whole tangle of solicitudes about our personal power and position in life, a dread of being in difficult and possibly unsuccessful competition with other people, which the Freudian would explain as obscurely sexual or ignore, and which Adler would make our predominant concern. The problems and rules of conduct towards others differ

1 Further information can be found in Wise Parenthood, by Marie Stopes ; Parenthood: Design or Accident? by Michael Fielding ; or Happiness in Marriage, by Margaret Sanger,

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THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

CHAPTER 8

only in intensity in these two and any other possible fields.

The individual has first to make up his or her own mind about physical sexual gratification. Is it necessary in his or her individual case? Is it oppressively necessary ? What restraints are necessary to keep it within bounds and prevent injuries or evil accompaniments? What are to be its mental accompaniments ? Does it concentrate on some real or imagined person? What possibilities of hatred or tormenting jealousy must be guarded against? How is the individual sexual life to be lived without injury, annoyance, or boredom to other people? All these are private questions, for which no general rules apply. The defect of most moral systems in the past has been their rigorous insistence upon universally applicable codes of behaviour. But now the contemporary disposition is to let everyone build up a distinctive persona. That persona is what we promise ourselves to be and what we promise others to be, and it is not only wise but an obligation to clip our more aberrant impulses to the promise of the persona we have adopted. We must not betray the expectations we have induced people to form of us. And though we have a right to expect a similar consistency in them, we must exercise charity if we find at times some repression has got away with them.

In its general trend biological science is at one with all these higher and more intuitive developments of religious thought that are called ‘“‘ mysticism.” In all the more highly intellectual developments of mysticism there is a struggle to escape from too intense preoccupation with the “self” (the body of this death,” to quote Saint Paul) and an endeavour to identify oneself with some greater, more comprehensive, immortal being. Now as we have unfolded this general outline of biological fact we have found a constant dissolution of our ideas of the primaryimportance of individuality, and a growing realization of the continuity of life as one whole. All that has gone before in this work, the physiology, the comparative anatomy, the genetics, the psychology, has agreed in showing that individualities such as ours are temporary biological expedients, holding great somatic aggregations together in one unity. Our sense of the supreme importance and unbreakable integrity of our “selves 22 Thy aba fact, adominating delusion with great survival value. We feel it most in youth and ignorance. Then our concentration upon self