THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF SOCIOLOGY 



For stability and happiness, then, in the most just social order 

 which we can conceive, psychological hygiene will at all points be 

 necessary. With the "liquidation" (as we might say) of the neuroses, 

 paranoia, and the generally unrecognised but potent minor conditions, 

 such, for example, as sadism, which existed beforehand, an enormous 

 part of human unhappiness will disappear. I am well aware of the 

 fact that psychologists are often in diametrical disagreement as to the 

 proper means to be adopted for this end; e.g. sexual frustration is 

 held by Kyrle^ to be a force adverse to civilisation, and by Unwin^ 

 to be precisely the opposite. But in general I believe that the movement 

 initiated by Freud has promise of sociological importance wider 

 than most of us can yet realise, and that criticisms of such books as 

 that of Glover^ on the psychologic causes of war, from the point of 

 view of the primacy of economic causes, are misdirected though not 

 unjustified. 



The problems of sex illustrate well how the reformation of individual 

 life follows upon the reformation of social life. As Schmalhausen* 

 says : — 



"Property, [modern] puritanism, and pornography go sur- 

 prisingly well together. Property is concerned with institutions, 

 not with impulse. Puritanism is concerned with tabus on impulses 

 dangerous to the patriarchial-propertied way of life. Porno- 

 graphy is the safety-valve for emotions and curiosities repressed 

 by patriarchal-propertied puritanism. Under these darkening 

 and constricting auspices, sex was a reality remote from love, 

 and love dissociated from marriage. . . . Since the love of 

 comrades, rooted in sex attraction, but flowering in sheer 

 humanness, will be the natural state of affairs in our new society, 

 intimacy will know a wider range of possibility and fulfilment 

 than was admissible under repressive civilisations, except in 

 secret forms of 'immorality' and perversions. A certain aboriginal 

 innocence," out of primitive and pagan patterns, will be restored 

 to sex love, giving it wings and inspiration once more among 

 the pleasures and satisfactions of life. Christian marriage has 

 been built on three weird assumptions; that sex is evil, that love 

 is unreliable, and that unwanted children are socially desirable. 

 Such marriage is the compulsory method of coercing man's 



^ R. iM. Kyrle, Psyche, 193 1, 11, 48. 



^ J. D. Unwin, Sex and Culture (Oxford, 1934). 



^ E. C. Glover, War, Sadism, and Pacifism (London, 1933). * Loc. cit., pp. 237 ff. 



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