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

MARRIAGEbuilt into the structure of savagelife. A tissue of uses,often fanciful though even then still helping to ennobleits exercise have been popularly or traditionally assignedto chastity among lower as well as higher races,"Yet, toa remarkable degree/' as Crawley well pointed out, "atleast in primitive sociology, these uses, whatever theirpopular explanations, harmonize with biological facts,and the value of the explanations consists in havingassisted the plastic nervous organism of man towards selfcontrol,intelligent living, and general individual andsocial efficiency." If carried too far, as Crawley also pointedout, disintegration tends to follow; but the main processcontinues, having as its goal, "after many experiments,slowly but surely, a scientific development of that primalnatural chastity with which man's sexual history began."That fundamental fact tends to be obscured preciselybecause of the extremes, referred to by Crawley, to whichthe conception of chastity has sometimes been carried byreligious creeds and social conventions. This has been wellillustrated during recent centuries in our own civilization.When chastity is transformed into a mere compulsoryabstinence it ceases to be either natural, or a virtue,or beneficial. Its essential character is lost sight of. It isthen denounced as "unnatural," and regarded as the concomitantof an outworn religious creed or an effete politicalhierarchy. Thus it is that among ourselves the decayof ancient artificialrestrictions in the sphere of sex hassometimes led to the other extreme equally unnaturaland undesirable of license and promiscuity as an ideal,if not even a practice.Such violent oscillations of the just balance of chastitymay take a considerable time to reach equilibrium, sinceany sudden rebound leads to another bound. We mayobserve this difficulty in Soviet Russia. In old Russia there[315]