SEX BIOLOGY AND SEX PSYCHOLOGY 171 



We are all of us too prone to think that a phenom- 

 enon is somehow "explained," or interpreted better, 

 by analysing it into its component parts or discover- 

 ing its origin than by studying it in and for it- 

 self. 



The new type of mental organization acquired by 

 man permits of wholly new types of mental process, 

 of a complexity as far exceeding those that we deduce 

 in brutes as does the physical organism of a dog or 

 an ant that of a polyp or a protozoan: and it is part 

 of our business to realize those possibilities to the 

 fullest extent. 



To sum up, then, biological investigation in the 

 first place shows us how certain abnormalities of sex- 

 ual psychology may be more easily interpreted as 

 caused by comparatively simple physical abnormali- 

 ties than by the more complex distortions of psycho- 

 logical origin dealt with by psycho-analysis. In the 

 second place, by giving us a broader apergu than can 

 otherwise be gained over the evolution of sex and the 

 direction visible in biological history, it clears up 

 to a certain extent some of the difficulties which the 

 discoveries of the psycho-analytic school have ren- 

 dered acute. 



If the changes in the relation of the sex instinct to 

 the rest of the mind, which 1 have spoken of above 

 as being in operation at present, should one day 

 progress so far as to be more or less carried through 

 in a majority, or in a dominant section of the popula- 

 tion, the whole outlook of society towards the sex 



