SEX BIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY 167 



innumerable cases in which some sort of equilibrium 

 is only attained not by a free interaction of dominant 

 and subordinate parts, but by repression. Conflicts 

 arise, which persist, either in an open form or in the 

 subterranean regions of the unconscious. In either 

 case they tend to be projected by the subject into 

 his ideas of other people. This projection, or inter- 

 pretation of external reality in terms of one's self, is 

 a curious and almost universal attribute of the human 

 mind. The most familiar example is perhaps the 

 anthropomorphism which in religion after religion 

 has invested the powers of the universe with human 

 form, human mental process, human personality — 

 or at least with form, mind, and personality similar 

 to those of man ; while a very simple case is that 

 in which certain neurotic types project their depres- 

 sion so as to colour everything that comes into their 

 cognizance a gloomy black. 



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, un- 

 inhibited 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 femiliar 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. 



On the other hand, those in whom there is a 

 constant conflict with a sexual origin project it here. 



