E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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The origin of these Studies dates from many years back. As a youth I wasfaced, as others are, by the problem of sex. Living partly in anAustralian city where the ways of life were plainly seen, partly in thesolitude of the bush, I was free both to contemplate and to meditate manythings. A resolve slowly grew up within me: one main part of my life-workshould be to make clear the problems of sex.
That was more than twenty years ago. Since then I can honestly say that inall that I have done that resolve has never been very far from mythoughts. I have always been slowly working up to this central problem;and in a book published some three years ago—Man and Woman: a Study ofHuman Secondary Sexual Characters—I put forward what was, in my owneyes, an introduction to the study of the primary questions of sexualpsychology.
Now that I have at length reached the time for beginning to publish myresults, these results scarcely seem to me large. As a youth, I had hopedto settle problems for those who came after; now I am quietly content if Ido little more than state them. For even that, I now think, is much; it isat least the half of knowledge. In this particular field the evil ofignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which never can besuppressed, though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted. Ihave at least tried to find out what are the facts, among normal people aswell as among abnormal people; for, while it seems to me that thephysician's training is necessary in order to ascertain the facts, thephysician for the most part only obtains the abnormal facts, which alonebring little light. I have tried to get at the facts, and, having got atthe facts, to look them simply and squarely in the face. If I cannotperhaps turn the lock myself, I bring the key which can alone in the endrightly open the door: the key of sincerity. That is my one panacea:sincerity.
I know that many of my friends, people on whose side I, too, am to befound, retort with another word: reticence. It is a mistake, they say, totry to uncover these things; leave the sexual instincts alone, to grow upand develop in the shy solitude they love, and they will be sure to growup and develop wholesomely. But, as a matter of fact, that is preciselywhat we can not and will not ever allow them to do. There are very fewmiddle-aged men and women who can clearly recall the facts of their livesand tell you in all honesty that their sexual instincts have developedeasily and wholesomely throughout. And it should not be difficult to seewhy this is so. Let my friends try to transfer their feelings and theoriesfrom the reproductive region to, let us say, the nutritive region, theonly other which can be compared to it for importance. Suppose that eatingand drinking was never spoken of openly, save in veiled or poeticlanguage, and that no one ever ate food publicly, because it wasconsidered immoral and immodest to reveal the mysteries of this naturalfunction. We know what would occur. A considerable proportion of thecommunity, more