170 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



merely for the sake of seeing that their viscera are 

 normal. 



If matters concerning sex are treated properly 

 during a child's development and education, the 

 necessity for psycho-analysis and any extension of 

 analytic knowledge of the foundations of one's own 

 mind that it may bring is done away with. If it 

 can be ensured that there is no obvious avoidance 

 of the subject leading to repression in the child's 

 mind, and on the other hand no undue prominence 

 given to it so that a morbid curiosity is aroused, a 

 large proportion of the conflicts that now arise could 

 be avoided. The other necessity is that there should 

 be provision for sublimation — ^in art or music, in 

 social service or in one's own work, in religion, or, 

 in modified form, in sport or romance. 



It is perfectly possible, in such case, for mental 

 development to proceed naturally and comparatively 

 smoothly towards a unified organization of the type 

 of which we have spoken. Psycho-analysis would 

 not help a boy or girl developing in such a way, any 

 more than would a study of all the characters we 

 have inherited from our simian forefathers help us to 

 realize our specifically human possibilities. On the 

 other hand, when the intellectual desire to know 

 things for their own sake is aroused, as it is in most 

 boys and girls between the ages of about fourteen 

 and twenty, then just as it is good, in order to get 

 a true picture of the universe, for them to know and 



