viii PREFACE 



the primitive sex taboos on the evolution of the 

 social mores and family life has received too 

 little attention in the whole hterature of sexual 

 ethics and the sociology of sex. That these 

 old customs have had an inestimable influence 

 upon the members of the group, modern psy- 

 chology has recently come to recognize. It 

 therefore seems advantageous to include these 

 psychological findings in the same book 

 with the discussion of the sex taboos and other 

 material with which it must so largely deal. 

 These fields — biology, ethnology, and psy- 

 chology — are so complicated and so far apart 

 technically, although their social implications 

 are so closely interwoven, that it has seemed 

 best to divide the treatment between three 

 different writers, each of whom has devoted 

 much study to his special phase of the subject. 

 This leads to a very simple arrangement of the 

 material. The first part deals with the physical 

 or biological basis of the sex problem, which 

 all societies from the most primitive to the most 

 advanced have had and still have to build upon. 

 The second part deals with the various ideas 

 man has developed in his -quest for a satisfactory 

 adaptation of this physical basis to his own 

 requirements. Part three attempts to analyze 

 the effect of this long history of social experi- 

 mentation upon the human psyche in its modern 

 social milieu. 



