The choice of a mate.

  • Ludovici, Anthony M. (Anthony Mario), 1882-1971.
Date:
[1935]
    18/546 (page XII)
    able to confirm it, it passes into the stock-book of orthodox knowledge. This method has immense advantages. It acts as a sort of police patrol clearing from the highways and byways of know ledge the irresponsible vapourings of quacks and charlatans. But it also has its disadvantages, because it tends to rule out from our stock of orthodox knowledge all those observations, for the registration of which the average man does not possess either the natural antennae or even the scientific instruments of precision. Science, therefore, suffers a loss by aspiring to a too democratic or too egalitarian ideal, and it is in order to avoid this loss that I have not refrained from quoting the judgments of such great and acknowledged observers of men and life as Shakespeare, Bacon, Goethe, La Bruyère, Stendhal, Balzac, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Byron, Dickens, Heine, de Quincey, Paul Bourget, etc. Is it generally known that the modern doctrine of repressions in psychology was summed up by Schopenhauer in one short paragraph over a century ago ? Are many people aware of the fact that Goethe, in his works on the metamorphosis of plants and animal morphology, foreshadowed the Darwinian theory of evolution ? And how many readers of Freud know de Quincey on sexual repression and its effect, or Heine on the sex and body phobia of Christianity—a criticism in which he anticipated an important part of the modern Nietzschean attack on Christianity ? There is all the difference in the world between respecting as contributions to knowledge, the judgments of a merely popular figure, whether his fame has been acquired in film work or in finance, and respecting the observations of a tried and con scientious observer of men. The former is the practice of modern journalism and the public for which it caters ; the latter has been the practice of the wisest of mankind throughout the Ages. In associating myself with those who adopt the latter practice, therefore, my object was to enrich rather than to impoverish my book, and I feel that few will wish to quarrel with me on that score. One last word. This was a book which I was destined to write sooner or later. As I pointed out eleven years ago in my Intro duction to Woman : a Vindication, “ at the age of nineteen I wrote my first book, which bore the title Girls and Love, and, ever since, the subject of sex has scarcely ever ceased from
    occupying my mind in various ways.” Nor could one, I think, be occupied for a whole life-time with a more beautiful and absorbing subject. From the blossom that emblazons the land scape in the spring, the flowers that make Nature and our gardens radiant with colour and freshness, and the songs of the birds which inspire the poet, to the bewildering majesty of man and woman at maturity, with the ecstasy that their union implies,— all the beauty, all the uplifting aspects of life are steeped in sex. And, if the Puritan in his ignorance and prurience, insists on keeping his sanctimonious nose to the flower, and his shocked ears to the songs of the birds, when he would dwell on the wonders of creation, simply because the fundamental sex element in these manifestations of Nature are less obvious to the un informed than in the beauties of human sexuality, I, for my part, am more catholic, and am proud to think that for all these years, my mind has dwelt on the whole panorama of sex, and not merely on those “ respectable ” aspects of it which are allowed to be seen and mentioned in middle-class drawing-rooms. I do not believe in the Christian god, but I think that those who do, pay him little honour in thus picking and choosing from among his alleged creations, and “ turning down ” what their repressed natures cannot contemplate without a shudder. This first book, Girls and Love, which, I need hardly say, was never published, was an attempt to deal with the very subject I propose to discuss in the present volume. The truth is that, on and off, I must have been thinking about it ever since my nineteenth year, and thus the circle of my life-work on sex seems to be closed. It only remains for me now to express my thanks to the Secretary and Secretarial Staff of the Eugenics Society for their untiring courtesy in allowing me to consult their library, and also gratefully to acknowledge the assistance given me by Dr. H. S. Harrison, of the Horniman Museum, and the advice and kind help I have received from the Librarian of that Institu tion, Mr. Gaskin. Anthony M. Ludovici. London. October , 1934.
    ■
    t y presented ^ l^(Ey THE EDITQH Qf $V>5 J -< ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES TO THIS BOOK TO REFER TO THE AUTHORS MORE OFTEN QUOTED 1 A. Anthropométrie, by Ad. Quetelet (Brussels, 1870). A.E. The Ancient Egyptians, by G. Elliot Smith (London, 1923). A.H.E. The Anthropological History of Europe, by John Beddoe (London, 1912). A.P.F. The Assessment of Physical Fitness, by Prof. G. Dreyer and G. Fulford Hanson (London, 1920). A. -R. The Ananga-Ranga (a Hindu treatise on Conjugal Love. Translated into French by B. de Villeneuve. Paris, 1921) B. D.M. Die Behaarung des Menschen, by Dr. Oskar F. Scheuer (Vienna, 1933). B.F.L. Human Heredity, by Drs. Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz. Trans, by Eden and Cedar Paul (London, 1931). B.M. The Book of Marriage (a Symposium). Arranged and edited by Count Hermann Keyserling. Except for the Essays by English contributors, the translation has been done by various hands mentioned at the end of the volume. (London, 1926). B. M.J. British Medical Journal. C. M.R. The Mystic Rose, by Ernest Crawley (4th Edition, London, 1932). C. M.D.R. Child-Marriages, Divorces and Ratifications, etc. In the Diocese of Chester, a.d. 15 61-6, by Fred. J. Furnivall (London, 1897). D. A. De l’Amour, by Stendhal (Popular Ed., Gamier Frères). D.C.S.R. Degeneracy : Its Causes, Signs and Results, by Dr. E. S. Talbot (London, 1898). D.E.T.G. Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talents und Gen ies, by Dr. A. Reibmayr (Munich, 1908). D.M. Disease and the Man, by Dr. George Draper (London, I 93 °)* 1 All other works will be found fully described in the Notes. In cases where translations are not mentioned, the English rendering of passages quoted in the text has usually been supplied by the author of the present work.
    D.M.B. Descendants of the Mutineers of the “ Bounty ”, by Harry J. Shapiro (Hawaii, 1929). D.O.M. The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin (London, 1883) D.P. Die Prostitution, by Dr. Iwan Bloch (Vol. I. Berlin, 1912). D.P.C. Diagnosing Personality and Conduct, by Percival M. Symonds (New York, 1931). D.S.W.K. Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers, by Professor C. H. Stratz (41st Ed., Stuttgart, 1928). D. W. Das Weib in der Natur-und Völkerkunde, by Drs. H. Ploss and M. P. Bartels. Revised by Ferd. von Reit zenstein. (Berlin, 1927.) E. B. Encyclopaedia Britannica (Editions as stated in the Notes). E.G.G. Gespräche mit Goethe, by J. P. Ecker mann (Reel am edition, Leipzig). E.M. Encyclopaedia Medica (edited by Dr. J. W. Ballantyne. 2nd Ed., London, 1915). E. R. The Eugenics Review. F. Feminism, by Professor K. A. Wieth-Knudsen (London, 1929). F.F. Frauensport und Frauenkörper, by Dr. Stephan West- mann (Leipzig, 1930). F. I.L.T. Factors in the Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women, by Katherine B. Davis (New York, 1929). G. K. Geschlechtskunde, by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (Stutt gart, 1926, 1928, etc.). G.M. Geniale Menschen, by Dr. Ernst Kretschmer (2nd Ed., Berlin, 1931). G.R.P. The Glands Regulating Personality, by Dr. Louis Berman (New York, 1928). G. S. The Grammar of Science (2nd Ed., London, 1900). H. Heredity, by Dr. F. A. E. Crew (2nd Ed., London, 1928). H.E. Heredity and Eugenics, by R. Ruggles Gates (London, 1923). H.I.M. Heredity in Man, by R. Ruggles Gates (London, 1929). H.R. Hereditas (Vol. II, 1921) Rassenmischung, by Prof. H. Lundborg. H. S.W. Heine’s Sämtliche Werke (Hamburg, 1885). I. H.F. Inquiries into Human Faculty, by F. Galton (Dent’s Edition). I.M. Ideal Marriage, by Dr. Th. H. Van de Velde. (Trans, by Stella Browne, London, 1928.) I. U.V. Inzucht und Vermischung, by Dr. A. Reibmayr (Leip zig. 1897)- J. A.M.A. Journal of the American Medical Association.