SEX BIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY 169 



Should the results of psycho-analytic methods, the 

 knowledge that the sex instinct is fundamental and 

 is interwoven into the roots of the highest spiritual 

 activities — should the inculcation and demonstration 

 of this be part of education ? Some would say yes, 

 and would argue that to know oneself is essential to 

 a proper realization of one's capacities. Personally 

 I am extremely doubtful of the correctness of this 

 answer. Knowledge of the processes of digestion 

 is not necessary to digest well — so long as we go on 

 digesting well : it is only necessary when we digest 

 badly. In that case the processes involved are auto- 

 matic : but even in processes which require a great 

 deal of learning, we find a similar state of affairs. 

 A man can become expert at, say, a game requiring 

 the most delicate adjustments of hand and eye without 

 analysing the processes he employs, but by practising 

 them as finished articles, so to speak ; and it is equally 

 obvious that Shakespeare and Shelley and Blake and 

 other great writers produced their works without the 

 least analytical knowledge of the obscure and rather 

 unpleasant processes which, if we are to believe the 

 critics who psycho-analyse dead authors in the pages 

 of Freudian journals, were ' really ' at work below 

 the surface. Analysis constitutes a serious surgical 

 operation for the mind, and, as one of the leading 

 Austrian psycho-analysts has recently said, we do not 

 want to perform this operation on healthy people 

 any more than we want to open their abdomens 



