Sex instinct

“ It is time that we freed our minds from the artificial and perverted attitude toward this dominant impulse; time to rescue the word "sex" from its implications of grossness and sensuousness, and to recognize the instinct in its true light as one of the necessary and holy forces of life, a force capable of causing great damage, but also holding infinite possibilities for good if wisely directed. ”

“ The sex instinct teaches those subtleties of personal adornment likely to allure the male, and arrest the anxious eye of other females, but ancestral brain-cells are necessary for the more civilised accomplishment. ”

“ The theory that males and females contain in their constitution certain elements, more or less accentuated, of the other sex, is now so widely accepted that it has become a commonplace in all speculations upon [Pg 243] the sex question. Now among the characteristics which most frequently manifest themselves in women of marked male tendencies is a proneness to sadistic expressions of the sex instinct. The habit of teasing among hysterical girls, and even among female children not yet pubescent, is a sign of this. ”

“ But one can help wondering if it is not true that, with the existence of the possibility of engaging in coitus at will, rather than at the bidding of instinct alone, there has also come a new and added function for the sex-natures that are capable of engaging in such before-unknown experiences? To a fair-minded person, such conclusion seems not only logical, but irresistible! That is in view of this conclusion, it naturally follows that sex in the human family is positively designed to fulfill a function that is entirely unknown to all other forms of animal life. ”

“ The outstanding fact to bear in mind is that in man the sex instinct bears a more sensual, a more physical, a coarser and grosser character, if you have no objection to these adjectives, than it does in woman. In women it is finer, more spiritual, more platonic, to use this stereotyped and incorrect term. In men the sex manifestations are more centralized, more local, more concentrated in the sex organs; in women they are more diffused throughout the body. ”

“ In the intensity of initial sex instinct they are alike; the female will leap from windows, climb walls, and almost endanger her life to reach the male who waits for her, as readily as he will to gain her. ”

“ It would be evasive to shirk mention of the fact that many of the most devoted servants of health and morals object to public discussion of the facts of sex. They discard enlightenment about sex as relatively unimportant because a clean ancestry, decency in the family and neighborhood, and noble needs in friendship, love, and marriage must, in any case, be the main roots of healthy direction and ideal restraint of the sex-instinct. Or they fear enlightenment as a possible stimulus to undesirable imagination and experimentation. ”

“ Our study of the sexual associations among animals has brought us to understand how large a part the gratification of the sex-instincts plays in animal life, equalling and, indeed, overmastering and directing the hunger instinct for food. If we now turn to man we find the same domination of sex-needs, but under different conditions of expression. [97] Man not only loves, but he knows that he loves; a new factor is added, and sex itself is lifted to a plane of clear self-consciousness. ”

“ The proper way, then, to build the sex instinct into the mental system is not to have its stimulation cause a merely physiological and uninhibited desire for its gratification, nor to bring about a forcible repression and an attempt to break connection between it and the other parts of the mind. ”

“ Moreover, since the constitution of society has largely been in the hands of men, the nature of the sexual impulse in men has largely been expressed in the written and unwritten codes of social law. The sexual instinct in women is much more elusive. This, indeed, is involved at the outset in the organic psychological play of male and female, manifesting itself in the phenomena of modesty and courting. The same elusiveness, the same mocking mystery, meet us throughout when we seek to investigate the manifestations of the sexual impulse in women. ”

“ In reading books or listening to lectures on sex, you will meet with statements which will seem to you contradictory. One time you will read or hear that the sex instinct is much more powerfully developed in man than it is in woman; next time you will come across the statement that sex plays a much more important rôle in women than it does in men. ”

“ The condition of limited stimulation, also, in which woman finds herself as a result of the control by man of wealth, of affairs, of the substantial interests of society, and even of her own personality, leads woman to devote herself to display as an interest in itself, regardless of its effect on men. In doing this she is really falling back on an instinct. One of the most powerful stimulations to either sex is glitter, in the most general sense, and the interest in showing off begins in the coloration and plumage of animals, and continues as ornament in the human species. ”

“ First, the male sex hormones have not the instability nor cyclic rhythmicity of the female. Secondly, and perhaps consequently, his sex instincts have become overlayered with other more labile instincts, with habits and customs and necessities that appear to oust the sex instinct into an altogether decentralized position. ”

“ Practically the passion is a matter of universal experience; and speaking broadly and generally we may say it is a matter on which it is quite desirable that every adult at some time or other should have experience—actual and physical, as well as emotional. There may be exceptions; but, as said, the sex-instinct lies so deep and is so universal, that for the understanding of life—of one's own life, of that of others, and of human nature in general—as well as for the proper development of one's own capacities, such experience is almost indispensable. ”

“ Adults need only to recall their own youth or to observe even briefly our grammar and high school boys and girls, to be convinced that love between the sexes is one of the emotions that become conspicuously apparent in early adolescence. This is what might reasonably be expected since the emotion is derived from the sex instinct, and pubescence marks the period of rapid acceleration in the growth of the sex organs. With the increase in size and vigor of the reproductive organs there comes the strong impulse for the organs to function. ”

“ The emotion of sex-love, so plainly traceable to the reproductive instinct, has its evolution in each normal individual. It develops through various stages as do other instincts. It does not make its appearance for the first time at the period of adolescence, as has been thought. Extended and varied experience in the public schools has furnished me with very favorable opportunities for making observations upon children who were allowed to mix freely regardless of sex. ”

“ A healthy instinct warns against lightness in sexual relationships; and with reason, for the impulse of sex is one of the strongest motive forces in human development and human action. It touches the obscurest depths of the soul ”

“ Instinctively both women and men would do so if their sexual instincts were accessible. Those men and women to whom their instincts are accessible do gain their greatest comfort if not their greatest happiness through the uninhibited expression of the sex instinct. ”

“ The female is the common property of the males, the temporary booty of the strongest, who strive for the possession of the most beautiful of the opposite sex, thus carrying out instinctively a kind of sexual selection.
Woman is a movable thing, a ware, an object of bargain and sale and gift; a thing to satisfy lust and to work.
The appearance of a feeling of shame before others in the manifestation and satisfaction of the natural instinct, and modesty in the intercourse of the sexes, form the beginning of morality in the sexual life. ”

“ In the sphere of sex this process is, alas, most potently at work. The man in whom the sexual instinct still lives a more or less independent, uninhibited life of its own, tends—unless he has special evidence to the contrary, and often even then—to interpret the behaviour and the minds of others in the terms familiar to himself, and to suppose that they too must be stopped by the fear of punishment or of loss of caste if they are not to commit excesses. ”

“ The sex-usefulness 47and the human usefulness of women, their general duty to their kind, are greatly injured by this degree of distinction. In every way the over-sexed condition of the human female reacts unfavorably upon herself, her husband, her children, and the race.
In its psychic manifestation this intense sex-distinction is equally apparent. The primal instinct of sex-attraction has developed under social forces into a conscious passion of enormous power, a deep and lifelong devotion, overwhelming in its force. ”

“ Further than this, we have the inevitable fact to face that the sex-instinct in normal persons is so strong that it can only with great difficulty be suppressed, and then results in an outflow of sex activity in what we usually know as non-sexual channels. ”

“ So the sex-instinct and its associated emotion, at first simply one among a number of separate and scarcely-correlated instincts, has in man become the basis for numerous new mental functions. It can enter into the composition of various emotions, though its character is often disguised and its presence often undetected. It contributes to some of the most exalted states of mind which we can experience. ”

“ "Just as the purpose of eating is to satisfy hunger, not greed, so the sex instinct is designed for the propagation of the species according to natural law, never for the kindling of insatiable longings," he said. "Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will follow you after the astral body is torn from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered.
"Conserve your powers. ”

“ In woman, on the other hand, while less spasmodic, it is continuous. The sexual instinct with man being, as he styles it, “an appendix” and no more, he can raise himself mentally entirely outside of it. “He is conscious of it as of something which he possesses but which is not inseparate from the rest of his nature. He can view it objectively. With woman this is not the case; the sex element is part of her whole nature. Hence, it is not as with man, clearly recognisable in local manifestations, but subtly affects the whole life of the organism. ”

“ The instinct of sex is indeed extremely important. Yet it has not that all-embracing and supereminent importance which some, even of those who fight against it, are accustomed to believe. That artificially magnified conception of the sexual impulse is fortified by the artificial emphasis placed upon asceticism. We may learn the real place of the sexual impulse in learning how we may reasonably and naturally view the restraints on that impulse. ”

“ From very early times it seems possible to trace two streams of opinion regarding women: on the one hand, a tendency to regard women as a supernatural element in life, more or less superior to men, and, on the other hand, a tendency to regard women as especially embodying the sexual instinct and as peculiarly prone to exhibit its manifestations. ”

“ It asserts itself. His sex instincts are dominant, aggressive. He is man, the father of the race, and the laws of procreation are to him an open book. A girl stays innocent until she is awakened. It is the kiss, the touch, the senses stirred, that make her, in the glory of her womanhood or in her shame, acknowledge her sex.
"The very frailty of such a girl, her dependence upon her intuitions and emotions, the triumph of feeling over intellect, place her in greater danger than her brothers, even were their responsibility to society the same. ”

“ Hence in modern men and women neither sex-activity nor propagation partake of the nature of an instinct. Normal sex-attraction being an offshoot of the reproductive impulse, it is perfectly natural that if the parent impulse loses its instinctive nature, the offspring will also lose it. ”

“ Surely the impulse and organs of the 34human body, designed by the Great Creator for the highest function of human life—that of transmission of life—cannot be shameful, nor vulgar, nor immoral. The broad and intelligent interpretation of sex raises it above a mere animal instinct, ennobles and purifies it from any element of low and brutal passions, and by instilling in the man a feeling of sacredness and moral obligation on his part towards the future family, renders the sex problem a subject worthy of reverence and earnest study. ”

“ In this and the following four chapters we shall deal with the instinctive feelings by which the sexes are guided in the act of selection. We have already observed that the sexual instinct is excited by artificial means, such as ornaments, mutilations, &c. Now we have to consider the intrinsic characters of a human being which affect the passions of a person of the opposite sex. ”

“ In the first place, the assumption of an arbitrary suppression of the sexual instinct by will power or force of mind on the part of strongly sexed natures is such a violation of nature's intent that it sets other internal forces at liberty which work to a contrary purpose. ”