Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 39

[460]

Wiethknudsen (as quoted in s.e.xual-Probleme, Dec., 1908, p. 837) speaks strongly, but not too strongly, concerning the folly of any indiscriminate endowment of procreation.

[461]

On the scientific side, in addition to the fruitful methods of statistical biometrics, which have already been mentioned, much promise attaches to work along the lines initiated by Mendel; see W. Bateson, Mendel's Principles of Heredity, 1909; also, W. H. Lock, Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, Heredity, and Evolution, and R. C. Punnett, Mendelism, 1907 (American edition, with interesting preface by g.a.y.l.o.r.d Wilshire, from the Socialistic point of view, 1909).

[462]

The study of the right conditions for procreation is very ancient. In modern times we find that even the very first French medical book in the vulgar tongue, the Regime du Corps, written by Alebrand of Florence (who was physician to the King of France), in 1256, is largely devoted to this matter, concerning which it gives much sound advice. See J. B. Soalhat, Les Idees de Maistre Alebrand de Florence sur la Puericulture, These de Paris, 1908.

[463]

Hesiod, Works and Days, II, 690-700.

[464]

This has long been the accepted opinion of medical authorities, as may be judged by the statements brought together two centuries ago by Schurig, Parthenologia, pp. 22-25.

[465]

The statement that, on the average, the best age for procreation in men is before, rather than after, forty, by no means a.s.sumes the existence of any "critical" age in men a.n.a.logous to the menopause in women. This is sometimes a.s.serted, but there is no agreement in regard to it. Restif de la Bretonne (Monsieur Nicolas, vol. x, p. 176) said that at the age of forty delicacy of sentiment begins to go. Furbringer believes (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 222) that there is a decisive turn in a man's life in the sixth decade, or the middle of the fifth, when desire and potency diminish. J. F. Sutherland also states (Comptes-rendus Congres International de Medecine, 1900, Section de Psychiatrie, p. 471) that there is, in men, about the fifty-fifth year, a change a.n.a.logous to the menopause in women, but only in a certain proportion of men. It would appear that in most men the decline of s.e.xual feeling and potency is very gradual, and at first manifests itself in increased power of control.

[466]

See, in vol. i, the study of "The Phenomena of s.e.xual Periodicity."

[467]

Among animals, also, spring litters are often said to be the best.

[468]

Bossi's results are summarized in Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, Sept., 1891. Alebrand of Florence, the French King's physician in the thirteenth century, also advised intercourse a day after the end of menstruation.

POSTSCRIPT.

"The work that I was born to do is done," a great poet wrote when at last he had completed his task. And although I am not ent.i.tled to sing any Nunc dimittis, I am well aware that the task that has occupied the best part of my life can have left few years and little strength for any work that comes after. It is more than thirty years ago since the first resolve to write the work now here concluded began to shape itself, still dimly though insistently; the period of study and preparation occupied over fifteen years, ending with the publication of Man and Woman, put forward as a prolegomenon to the main work which, in the writing and publication, has occupied the fifteen subsequent years.

It was perhaps fortunate for my peace that I failed at the outset to foresee all the perils that beset my path. I knew indeed that those who investigate severely and intimately any subject which men are accustomed to pa.s.s by on the other side lay themselves open to misunderstanding and even obloquy. But I supposed that a secluded student who approached vital social problems with precaution, making no direct appeal to the general public, but only to the public's teachers, and who wrapped up the results of his inquiries in technically written volumes open to few, I supposed that such a student was at all events secure from any gross form of attack on the part of the police or the government under whose protection he imagined that he lived. That proved to be a mistake. When only one volume of these Studies had been written and published in England, a prosecution, instigated by the government, put an end to the sale of that volume in England, and led me to resolve that the subsequent volumes should not be published in my own country. I do not complain. I am grateful for the early and generous sympathy with which my work was received in Germany and the United States, and I recognize that it has had a wider circulation, both in English and the other chief languages of the world, than would have been possible by the modest method of issue which the government of my own country induced me to abandon. Nor has the effort to crush my work resulted in any change in that work by so much as a single word. With help, or without it, I have followed my own path to the end.

For it so happens that I come on both sides of my house from stocks of Englishmen who, nearly three hundred years ago, had encountered just these same difficulties and dangers before. In the seventeenth century, indeed, the battle was around the problem of religion, as to-day it is around the problem of s.e.x. Since I have of late years realized this a.n.a.logy I have often thought of certain admirable and obscure men who were driven out, robbed, and persecuted, some by the Church because the spirit of Puritanism moved within them, some by the Puritans because they clung to the ideals of the Church, yet both alike quiet and unflinching, both alike fighting for causes of freedom or of order in a field which has now for ever been won. That victory has often seemed of good augury to the perhaps degenerate child of these men who has to-day sought to maintain the causes of freedom and of order in another field.

It sometimes seems, indeed, a hopeless task to move the pressure of inert prejudices which are at no point so obstinate as this of s.e.x. It may help to restore the serenity of our optimism if we would more clearly realize that in a very few generations all these prejudices will have perished and be forgotten. He who follows in the steps of Nature after a law that was not made by man, and is above and beyond man, has time as well as eternity on his side, and can afford to be both patient and fearless. Men die, but the ideas they seek to kill live. Our books may be thrown to the flames, but in the next generation those flames become human souls. The transformation is effected by the doctor in his consulting room, by the teacher in the school, the preacher in the pulpit, the journalist in the press. It is a transformation that is going on, slowly but surely, around us.

I am well aware that many will not feel able to accept the estimate of the s.e.xual situation as here set forth, more especially in the final volume. Some will consider that estimate too conservative, others too revolutionary. For there are always some who pa.s.sionately seek to hold fast to the past; there are always others who pa.s.sionately seek to s.n.a.t.c.h at what they imagine to be the future. But the wise man, standing midway between both parties and sympathizing with each, knows that we are ever in the stage of transition. The present is in every age merely the shifting point at which past and future meet, and we can have no quarrel with either. There can be no world without traditions; neither can there be any life without movement. As Heracleitus knew at the outset of modern philosophy, we cannot bathe twice in the same stream, though, as we know to-day, the stream still flows in an unending circle. There is never a moment when the new dawn is not breaking over the earth, and never a moment when the sunset ceases to die. It is well to greet serenely even the first glimmer of the dawn when we see it, not hastening towards it with undue speed, nor leaving the sunset without grat.i.tude for the dying light that once was dawn.

In the moral world we are ourselves the light-bearers, and the cosmic process is in us made flesh. For a brief s.p.a.ce it is granted to us, if we will, to enlighten the darkness that surrounds our path. As in the ancient torch-race, which seemed to Lucretius to be the symbol of all life, we press forward torch in hand along the course. Soon from behind comes the runner who will outpace us. All our skill lies in giving into his hand the living torch, bright and unflickering, as we ourselves disappear in the darkness.

HAVELOCK ELLIS.