THE WAY LIFE BEGINS 7 



children, or for any family life, apart from the pleasures of 

 sex relationships, is frequently not sufficient to insure human 

 reproduction. 



There is no evidence that nature is interested in the sexual 

 instinct of animals as an end in itself, or in its erotic mani- 

 festation in human life. Reproduction is the purpose in 

 view, so to speak, and instinct in animals, and instinct with 

 its associated pleasurable emotion in man seem but nature's 

 means of bringing about this end. In the human female, the 

 love for the child and for the family has gained great headway 

 over the sexual impulse. The same is true of the modern man 

 as compared with his less civilized brother. No doubt nature 

 would sanction the displacement of the sexual impulse by 

 the family instinct if the latter were the more effective means 

 of maintaining the race. Probably the impulse now has 

 and for a long time to come will have its legitimate work to 

 do; moreover we should not repudiate the agent that has 

 brought us so far. Then, too, sex emotion and love emotion, 

 like two miscible solutions, blend and interpenetrate one with 

 the other. With the right psychic soil, to change the figure, the 

 sex instinct proves the germinating seed out of which grows 

 the human qualities and associations most prized, namely, 

 love, marriage, home, father, mother, love for the child, filial 

 and paternal devotion, and from these a social system. 



Neither are we to condemn nature because man has em- 

 ployed his intellect and will to split asunder the natural 

 sequence of sex impulse and reproduction, appropriating the 

 pleasures of the former, while rejecting the hardships of 

 the latter. 



There need be no redemption of sex as it is found in nature, 

 therefore, or, indeed, in human life; there is need, however, 

 for the redemption of our idea of sex. 



The Study of Plants and A nimals Without Reference to 

 Sex or Reproduction 



A nature study that includes the whole economy and life 

 story of the animal, or, indeed, of man, cannot, if it is thor- 

 ough and sincere, ignore the place sex occupies in life. There 



