THE NATURAL 



cede to them by necessity, in the absence of females. 

 Senancour has written wise and bold pages upon these 

 practices among humans. 



Sexual ethnography hardly exists. The scattered data 

 on this subject, though extremely important, have not 

 been co-ordinated. That would be a small matter. They 

 have not even been verified. One knows nothing of coital 

 practices save what life teaches one, questions of this 

 sort being difficult to ask, and answers being always 

 equivocal. There is here an entire science which has been 

 corrupted by Christian prudery. An order was issued 

 long ago and is still obeyed; one has concealed all that 

 unites, sexually, man and animal, everything that proves 

 the unity of origin for all that lives and feels. Physicians 

 who have studied this question have known only the ab- 

 normal, the malady: it would be imprudent to base con- 

 clusions on general practices from their observations. 

 The best source, at least for Europeans, is still the casuist 

 writings. From the enumeration of sins against chastity 

 gathered by professional confessors, one could, after some 

 study, deduce the secret sexual habits of civilized human- 

 ity. But one must take care not to retain either the old 

 idea of sin, or the idea of the same under modern cloak, 

 of fault, crime or error. Practices common to an entire 

 ethnic group can not be judged to be other than normal, 

 it matters little whether they have been stigmatized by 

 the apologists of right living. What is good is what is 

 and what will continue to be. It is known that bimanes 

 and quadrumanes are very libertine, and that this is in 

 accord with their physical suppleness and their intelli- 

 gence. It is a fact undeniable and insurmountable, even 



