Sex

“ Sex is merely a manifestation of Gender on a certain plane of the Great Physical Plane—the plane of organic life. We wish to impress this distinction upon your minds, for the reason that certain writers, who have acquired a smattering of the Hermetic Philosophy, have sought to identify this Seventh Hermetic Principle with wild and fanciful, and often reprehensible, theories and teachings regarding Sex.
The office of Gender is solely that of creating, producing, generating, etc., and its manifestations are visible on every plane of phenomena. ”

“ In view of this fact, is it too much to raise the question whether or not sex in woman is designed to fulfill any other purpose than that of the reproduction of the race? True it is, that the only function of sex in all other females is merely that of producing offspring—of perpetuating its kind. Under no circumstances does it ever serve any other end, fulfill any other design. ”

“ It lies with the woman of to-day to make that faith so strong as to move mountains. I think she will succeed, for I doubt whether any mental power is inherent in sex. There are differences of degree, differences of quality; but I suspect that they are mainly due to sexual heredity, to environment, to suggestion, and that indeed, if I may trench upon biology, human creatures are never entirely male or entirely female; there are no men, there are no women, but only sexual majorities. ”

“ Especially you must have high and clean thoughts about sex that you can think about, read about it, talk about all the details without agitation, without grossness of thought, and with as impersonal a state of mind as if you were discussing the circulation of the blood. And you must learn to recognize the educational value of sex attraction in the evolution of humanity from savagery into civilization. Chiefest of all, learn that sex is holy before God and the angels. ”

“ For, through all this gradation, the difference of sex makes itself pleasurably felt. Down to the most lukewarm courtesies of life, there is a special chivalry due and a special pleasure received, when the two sexes are brought ever so lightly into contact. ”

“ It is through sex that the "desolate of the earth are set in families," and love and generosity have sway instead of selfishness. For this reason we ought to regard sex with reverent thought, to hold it sacred to the highest purposes, to speak of it ever with purest delicacy, and never with jesting or prurient smiles. I do not want you to center your thought on the physical facts of sex, but I would like to have you feel that womanhood, which is the mental, moral and physical [117] expression of sex, is a glorious, divine gift, to be received with solemn thankfulness. ”

“ Instead, then, of looking at sex as circumscribed, and perhaps as something low and vulgar, to be thought of and spoken of only with whispers or questionable mirth, we should see that sex is God's divinest gift to humanity, the power through which we come into the nearest likeness to Himself—the function by which we become creators and transmitters of our powers of body, mind, and soul. ”

“ Let those who willingly make a study of the sex explain, if they can, why this is so. All, or at least most, of my experiences with women have been against my will. My knowledge of them has usually come from some such inescapable contact as discovering one of them ensconced in my bed, from which—as in this case literally, and in others figuratively, so to speak—they poke their heads to order me out of my own room. ”

“ Thus I have endeavour’d to vindicate our Sex, from the unjust Imputations with which some unreasonable, malicious Men wou’d load us: For I am willing to think the greater, or at least the better Part of their Sex, more generous than to encourage their Scandal. ”

“ But from human birth and sex, the mysteries of creation in their divinest form, from these branches of the study of heredity the flaming sword of prudery warns us away. The subject of human sex has been the play-ground of neglect, ignorance, bigotry, superstition, persecution and every other foe to inquiry. ”

“ If you ask why there should exist this marvelous drawing of the sexes towards each other if their relation is not based upon the exercise of sex-functions, I reply that sex is more than its local expression ”

“ The first conception of a supreme power, something higher and more perfect than Man himself, originated in the mystery of Sex; not only in the sex-function as exercised by Man, but also in the evidences of sex seen in plants and animals. ”

“ And the task I have put before myself in this book is to give our girls and women sane, square and honest information about their sex organs and sex nature, information absolutely free from luridness, on the one hand, and maudlin sentimentality, on the other. The female sex is in need of such information, much more so than is the male sex. Yes, if boys, as is now universally agreed, are in need of sex instruction, then girls are much more in need of it. ”

“ Apart from the individual suffering it occasions, the question arises, Can we as a sex afford to make mere seamstresses or housewives or parlour ornaments of these highly gifted women that occasionally appear among us? Is it the individual or the multitude that makes discoveries? ”

“ What is to become of our views of the feminine ideal, if we see even the model spectimens of the fair sex wander about the streets, the. delicate head adorned with a Babylonian tower, consisting of a collection of international hair and infusoria, and the curved model back ending in a mysterious elevation of drygoods and architectural designs, moving with strange contortions, and threatening changes of form, before which, if they really were a part of the person, the entire male sex would flee into the forest? At such a sight the question: "Must a woman have brains?" ”

“ These crude examples of the result of driving sex into a dark corner exactly represent what one is up against in school, and in the world, when one begins to deal with sex openly and cleanly as a natural and non-repressible instinct. ”

“ What does sex mean to the average man and youth? What idea does he have of the function of sex in the human body and its significance in human life? To a youth, sex means a mysterious force that makes itself felt by vague desires and impulses, by an irresistible attraction toward the opposite sex, by its undefinable impulses 13in his whole being—his body, his mind, his feelings. ”

“ In those realms, sex is an instinct, a periodical function and appetite. In man, it is a fact of soul; a principle, and a mystical and divine power, altogether superior to the passing furore of beasts that perish and arc known no more ”

“ Sex contains all, bodies, souls, Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk, All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth, These are contain’d in sex as parts of itself and justifications of itself. ”

“ I hope that in the early stages of the counter-revolution our sophisticated sons and daughters will scrutinize ‘the idea of sex,’ coolly extract from it the part that belongs to physiology and pathology; and then disuse the word as synonym for every other element in the complex human relationship which sometimes makes human beings paradisiacally happy in their blossoming season and content enough with each other even into wintry old age. ”

“ It is not for nothing that in common parlance woman is spoken of as ‘the sex.’ In this sexual differentiation of the whole life-nature of woman from man, deducible as it is from physiological and anatomical distinctions, lies the ground of those differentiations of function which culminate in the fact that while mankind in its intellectual moral and technical development is represented in the main by Man, Woman has continued to find her chief function in the direct procreation of the race. ”

“ What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance. ”

“ The very first thing to do is to change the mental attitude in regard to the whole matter of sex; to hold it in thought as sacred, holy, consecrated to the highest of all functions, that of procreation. Recognize that, conserved and controlled, it becomes a source of energy to the individual. ”

“ Views of the past.—In the past, sex has been regarded as vitally a part of our physical organism. We are now learning that sex is vitally and substantially a part of our psychic nature—physical, mental and moral life. In the male, this sex life may become chemicalized and find expression on a purely physical plane, but this is not its true or highest function. Its highest function in relation to the individual, male or female, is the creation of new life—physical, mental and moral. Its highest function in relation to society is that of reproduction. ”

“ The lower forms are interesting in tracing the steps of biological reproduction up to the higher and more complex forms of life. In sex we find the essential touch of nature that makes the whole world akin, that affords the impetus to the preservation of life and that is, as well, in the higher forms of life, when the consciousness of sex becomes evident, the source of much joy and ecstasy. ”

“ If we look at the expression of Sex from the viewpoint of the physical only, instead of basing our observations from the interior, the spiritual, outward to the physical, we might conclude that the function of sex was designed for no other purpose than that of procreation, since care of the young increases with the upward trend of life-manifestation. ”

“ So in the upward scale of life, sex becomes more specialized and refined until, in certain of the higher orders, it reaches its finest and highest expression in altruism, self-sacrifice, chivalry and devotion. ”

“ These remarks have borne reference to the female sex principally, because they are the dependent, the acquiescent sex—from nature, and habit, and position, most exposed to be swayed by opinion—and yet, too, in a certain very wide department they are the lawgivers and custom-makers of society. ”

“ It means that one should be possessed of the right kind of stuff, and that the stuff should be of supreme quality. So, in studying to obtain a knowledge of sex organs and sex functions, in the human family, the reader should not try to divest himself or herself of all sex-passion and desire ”

“ We do not hold, as do many writers dealing with the physiological side of the subject of Sex, that the sex function is primarily designed for purposes of procreation and that any other expression of sex is contrary to nature. The essential function of sex is to vitalize. ”

“ As things are now, especially in all civilized countries, and particularly among Christian people, this secondary function of sex in the human family, while blindly recognized as a fact, is none the less abused, to a most shameful degree. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still it is a sad fact that inherited maladies or constitutional defects do fall to the lot of very many of the female sex. The common phrase, which has passed into a motto—"The suffering sex"—may have been, and I think was, intended to apply to the sympathetic mind of woman quite as much as to the body ”

“ If this view of the subject be admitted, it will be perceived that sex is grounded in the very constitution of the human soul, and, therefore, that it is essentially spiritual, and consequently eternal. ”

“ Modern inquiry has shown conclusively not only the foundational importance of sex in the evolution of each human being, but also the very great VARIETY of spontaneous manifestations in different individuals and the vital necessity that these should be recognized, if society is ever to expand into a rational human form. ”

“ No institution of note has yet ventured to admit females much further than into the mysteries of the rudiments." (Female delicacy, female industry, female mind, female college were terms hard worked in those days. A belief of sex in mind was universal.) ”

“ In considering the subject, Sex and Life—the caption of the present chapter—it is not only pertinent, but imperative in an honest discussion of the theme, to indicate the background of mankind's traditions in the realm of sexual interest, as well as to allude to the far-reaching biological implications of sex and 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. ”

“ The biological meaning of sex, then, is that it is a device of nature to bring about organic variation. From the point of view of the social life we may note also that sex adds greatly to its variety, enriching it with numerous fruitful variations which undoubtedly further social evolution. The bareness and monotony of a social life without sex can readily be imagined. ”

“ Again and again she insists upon the monstrous exaggeration of the importance of sex in human life and of the need of some reduction of its importance, and she makes the boldest experimental suggestions for the achievement of that end. ”

“ This Accomplishment is best, if not only to be acquir’d by conversing with us; for besides the natural Deference, which the Males of every observable Species of the creation pay to their Females, and the Reasons before given for Complacence, which all hold good here, there is a tender Softness in the Frame of our Minds, as well as in the Constitution of our Bodies, which inspire Men, a Sex more rugged, with the like Sentiments, and Affections, and infuses gently and insensibly a Care to oblige, and a Concern not to offend us. Invention, improv’d by our Society. ”