PREFACE 



Scientific discovery, especially in biology, 

 during the past two decades has made necessary 

 an entire restatement of the sociological problem 

 of sex. Ward's so-called " gynaecocentric " 

 theory, as sketched in Chapter 14 of his Pure 

 Sociology, has been almost a bible on the sex 

 problem to sociologists, in spite of the fact that 

 modern laboratory experimentation has dis- 

 proved it in almost every detail. While a 

 comparatively small number of people read this 

 theory from the original source, it is still being 

 scattered far and wide in the form of quotations, 

 paraphrases, and interpretations by more popular 

 writers. It is therefore necessary to gather 

 together the biological data which are available 

 from technical experimentation and medical 

 research, in order that its social implications 

 may be utilized to show the obsoleteness of 

 this older and unscientific statement of the 

 sex problem in society. 



In order to have a thoroughly comprehensive 

 survey of the institutions connected with sexual 

 relationships and the family and their entire 

 significance for human life, it is also necessary 

 to approach them from the ethnological and 

 psychological points of view. The influence of 



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