The Sexual Life Of The Child Part 16

[145] Among others by K. Holler: "Die Aufgabe der Volksschule"

("The Task of the Elementary School"), _Proceedings of the Third Congress of the German Society for the Suppression of the Venereal Diseases, at Mannheim, in the Year 1907_. In these Proceedings, which were published as the seventh volume of the _Zeitschrift zur Bekampfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten_ (_Journal for the Suppression of the Venereal Diseases_), the reader will find a vast amount of material bearing upon this question.

[146] _Briefe uber die wichtigsten Gegenstande der Menschheit (Letters Concerning Matters of the Utmost Importance to Mankind)_, written by R., and published by S. I. Teil, Leipzig, 1794, p. 100 _et seq._ To all who are interested in the subject under discussion, I strongly recommend the perusal of this book, which seems to-day to have been entirely forgotten.

[147] For example, Max Oker-Blom: _Beim Onkel Doktor auf dem Lande_. A book for parents, 2nd ed., Vienna and Leipzig, 1906.--An English version, _How my Uncle the Doctor Instructed me in Matters of s.e.x_, has been published by the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 33, West 42nd Street, New York.

[A list of a number of such books will be found in a footnote to p. 684 of my translation of Bloch's _The s.e.xual Life of Our Time_. As Oker-Blom himself says of this vital matter of s.e.xual enlightenment, "Better a year too early than an hour too late."--TRANSLATOR.]

[148] _Affektivitat, Suggestibilitat, Paranoia_, Halle, 1906.

[149] _Anthropologisch-kulturhistorische Studien uber die Geschlechtsverhaltnisse des Menschen_ (_Anthropological and Historical Studies concerning the s.e.xual Life of Mankind_), 2nd ed., Jena, 1888, p. 106.

[150] There is one bearing of the use of alcohol in relation to irregular s.e.xual intercourse, the importance of which Dr. Moll appears to me largely to ignore in his discussion of the subject, and that is the effect which even moderate doses of alcohol have in blunting the finer sensibilities, and in disturbing the balance of the judgment. (The author's only reference to the subject is on page 348, where he writes, "If so much alcohol is taken as to interfere with the natural psychical inhibitions, s.e.xual practices may occur that would not otherwise have occurred.") To take the woman's point of view first, it is, I believe, a common experience with prost.i.tutes that, in the earlier days at any rate, they find it difficult to ply their trade unless under the influence of alcohol. Turning to the man's point of view, there is quite a considerable proportion of young men who, however strong their s.e.xual impulse, object to meretricious intercourse at once on ethical and aesthetic grounds.

The ethical ground is that intercourse with a prost.i.tute infringes the elementary principle of civilised morals, that one human being should not use another as a mere means to the ends of the former, but that each of us must treat all human beings as ends in themselves; considering the general character of prost.i.tution, the fact that obligations to the individual prost.i.tute are supposed to be discharged by a conventional money payment, does not countervail the fact that this moral principle is infringed. On the aesthetic objections to prost.i.tution, it is hardly necessary to enlarge; they have been felt by all men with refined sensibilities. But it is precisely these refined sensibilities which are blunted by even moderate doses of alcohol--doses insufficiently great to abate the s.e.xual impulse itself. I do not mean to suggest that prost.i.tution would not continue, in the present economic and social conditions, were there no intoxicants in the world; but I think an evening spent in quiet observation in the "promenade" of a "fashionable" London music-hall will convince most people that the above-described effects of alcohol are by no means purely imaginary.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

[151] The arguments against raising the Age of Consent for women beyond the age of sixteen now specified in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, as ably summarised by Havelock Ellis, should be consulted in this connexion. See his _Studies in the Psychology of s.e.x_, vol. vi., _s.e.x in Relation to Society_, pp.

528-30. Davis, Philadelphia, 1910.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

[152] "Die Anfange einer Erziehung zu geistiger und korperlicher Gesundheit wahrend des ersten Lebensjahres" ("The Beginnings of an Education for the Maintenance of Mental and Bodily Health, as applied during the First Year of Life"), _Fortschritte der Medizin_, 1908, No. 21.