THE STUDY OF SEX 15 



of frank relations between young people and 

 their physician will save many from miserable 

 years and even from shipwreck. 



It may also be suggested that one of the 

 gains of the study of sex will be a better 

 understanding of many phenomena which 

 burden and grieve the spirit. The saying, 

 " To know all, is to forgive all " is a warning 

 to the intolerant; but there are yet more 

 useful sayings, since it is not of such great 

 moment whether we forgive or not. What is 

 important to our successors is whether Nature 

 forgives. What is important is the practical 

 action we take in furthering or discouraging, 

 and it is here that understanding is of essential 

 importance. 



It is a fact, for instance, that we have in 

 our midst the persistence of " fossils of several 

 stages of sexual habit." In regard to these 

 we know better what to do or what not to 

 do when we see them in their historical sig- 

 nificance. Sex-festivals, as in some parts of 

 Russia, for instance, with their strange mingling 

 of religious emotion and sexual license, are 

 not inexplicable perversions of a pathological 

 character so much as survivals of a primeval 

 civilisation. Other instances may be found 

 nearer home, e.g. in that persistent and 

 deliberate ante-nuptial experimenting as to 

 the fertility of a proposed marriage, which 

 has lingered so long in northern countries. 



VARIOUS WAYS OF STUDYING SEX. The 

 problems of sex have been attacked along 

 various lines of investigation, (a) There is 

 the historical method which traces the rela- 

 tions of the sexes through the ages, which 



