i68 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



there, and everywhere into the breasts of those they 

 know, and interpret others' motives in terms of their 

 own repressed wishes. 



Furthermore, most of our existing laws and customs 

 are based on a state of society in which the changes 

 to which we have referred had not progressed as far 

 as they have to-day, and man's psychology was a 

 little less removed from that of other mammals. 



The result is that those who attempt the complete 

 emancipation possible to a properly-organized mind 

 are confronted first by the lag of our institutions 

 and traditions, and secondly by the unconcealed sus- 

 picion of all those — ^and they are as yet the large 

 majority — in which the conflicts arising out of sex 

 are unresolved. It is from the sum of those conflicts 

 that the spirit prevalent with regard to sex to-day 

 derives its character — shocked and shamefaced as 

 regards one's own sexual life, vindictive and grudg- 

 ing as regards the difliculties of others. The bulk 

 of men and women cannot treat sexual problems in 

 a scientific spirit, because of the store of bottled-up 

 emotion in the wrong place that they have laid up 

 for themselves by their failure to come to proper 

 terms with their sexual instincts. The soul should 

 grow to deserve the words Crashaw wrote of St. 

 Teresa — ^O thou undaunted daughter of desires.' 

 But this the soul of such disharmonic beings can 

 never do. 



This brings us to our other pressing question. 



