Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. VI, Sex in relation to society / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
[1910], ©1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. VI, Sex in relation to society / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    148/680 (page 128)
    128 i PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. indeed, but naturally and simpl}-, like Clement, and not, like Augustine, through the distorting medium of a theological sys¬ tem. Athanasius, in the Eastern Church, spoke in the same sense as Eufinus in the Western Church. A certain monk named Amun had been much grieved by the occurrence of seminal emis¬ sions during sleep, and he wrote to Athanasius to inquire if such, emissions are a sin. In the letter he wrote in reply, Athanasius seeks to reassure Amun. All things, he tells him, are pure to the pure. For what, I ask, dear and pious friend, can there be sinful or naturally impure in excrement? Man is the hand¬ work of God. There is certainly nothing in us that is impure. ^ We feel as we read these utterances that the seeds of prudery and pruriency are already alive in the popular mind, but yet we see also that some of the most distinguished thinkers of the early Christian Church, in striking contrast to the more morbid and narrow-minded mediaeval ascetics, clearly stood aside from the popular movement. On the Avhole, they were submerged because Christianit}^ like Buddhism, had in it from the first a germ that lent itself to ascetic renunciation, and the sexual life is always the first impulse to be sacrificed to the passion for renunciation. But there were other germs also in Christianity, and Luther, who in his own plebeian way asserted the rights of the body, although he broke with mediœval asceticism, by no means thereby cast him¬ self ofE from the traditions of the early Christian Church. I have thought it worth while to bring forward this evidence, although I am perfectly well aware that the facts of Nature gain no additional support from the authority of the Fathers or even of the Bible. Nature and humanity existed before the Bible and M^ould continue to exist although the Bible should be forgotten. But the attitude of Christianity on this point has so often been unreservedly condemned that it seems as well to point out that at its finest moments, Avhen it was a young and growing power in the world, the utterances of Cliristianity were often at one with those of Nature and reason. There are many, it may be added, who find it a matter of consolation that in following the natural 1 Migne, Patrologia Grœca, vol. xxvi, pp. 1170 et seq.