TABOO AND GENETICS 15 



or that animal structure or behaviour we should 

 do thus and so in human society. On this point 

 sociology — especially the sociology of sex — 

 must frankly admit its mistakes and break with 

 much of its cherished past. 



The social problem of sex consists of fitting 

 the best possible institutions on to the biological 

 foundation as we find it in the human species. 

 Hence all our reasoning about which institution 

 or custom is preferable must refer directly to the 

 human bodies which compose society. We can 

 use laboratory evidence about the bodies of 

 other animals to help us in understanding the 

 physical structure and functions of the human 

 body ; but we must stop trying to apply the 

 sex-ways of birds, spiders or even cows (which 

 are at least mammals) to human society, which 

 is not made up of any of these. 



It is possible to be quite sure that some facts 

 carefully observed about mammals in a bio- 

 logical laboratory apply to similar structures in 

 man, also a mammal. Because of this relation- 

 ship, the data from medicine and surgery are 

 priceless. Thus we are enabled to check up 

 our systematic experimental knowledge of 

 animals by an ascertained fact here and there 

 in the human material, and to get a fairly exact 

 idea of how great the correspondence actually is. 

 Gaps thus filled in are narrow enough, and our 

 certainty of the ground on either side sufficiently 



