Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN YOUTHperhaps with some physical mutilation or severe abstinenceor isolation, while the elders impart instruction inthe duties of life and reveal the sacred mysteries of thetribe. Thereafter the child becomes a man or a woman,and takes on new privileges, new duties, new responsibilities.It is an admirable system: nothing better couldwell be devised under more or less primitive conditionsof life. It has been unfortunate that in Christendom therelics of such systems had so far decayed as to becomeinsignificant, or for the most part to disappear.Today we are waking up to that loss and striving torepair it. But we can no longer build up any system on thesame lines, and before building at all we have to considerthe nature of the phase of civilization out of which weare passing.In that phase the insistence was all on the intellect andthe methods of teaching which carried weight, or acquiredwide popularity, were methods of educating the intelligence.But the sexual impulse which yetis the mainfoundation of social as well as personal life is not easilybrought into the sphere of intelligence. So it has comeabout that our educational systems have, even up to thepresent, almost completely excluded the irrational elementof sex; they have had little in common with those admirable,and, so far as the conditions allowed, completeschemes of initiation which prevailed in earlier ages ofthe world, the ages in which Man learned to become Man.Education with us has not been an education for life, butonly for a part of life, especially the money-earning part.This has been associated with in various stages anddegrees an indifference, dislike, even contempt for thatpart of life which is based on the sexual impulse, since itfailed to come into the sphere of intelligence with whichour educational activities were concerned. It is a familiar