Sex--The Unknown Quantity; The Spiritual Function of Sex (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ...we get away from the old thought that a man has but one desire, that of sexual intercourse, and a woman but one motive, that of enslaving man through his sexual appetite, we will find that men and women will meet on the plane of intellectual aflinity and not be driven by gossip of outsiders, or by the force of the race-thought in their own minds, into seeking to spoil such com panionship by a matrimonial alliance, when nature did not intend it to be so. A number of years ago, when even the little freedom which human beings now accord each other in this matter was denied the struggling sexes, a certain man and woman, who were intellectual companions, married. He was a writer; she was a physician; which is evidence in itself of a degree of intellectual power not so common at that time as now; she was moreover an unusual woman in many ways. They parted after a month of married life and to the horror and scandal of the entire community, remained friends. The scandal reached the climax of disapproval and shocked morality when the man, married again, continued his friendship with his former wife and later, when a baby came to the couple, the ex-wife and mutual friend was the attending physician. The old idea of matrimony held that the husband and wife must be yoked together, so that neither one could exercise any individual predilection or choice of friends, or recreation, or taste or desire. And this is still the average idea of a successful marriage. It is an idea that is not confined to the ignorant, and the narrow-minded. It is the attitude of society at large, though upon what argument such an idea is based, must be left to the perverted imagination. Presumably it is because of that colossal egotism which insists upon...