And on the mental side we are further
perplexed by the extraordinary suggestibility of human beings. In sexual
matters there seems to me--and I think I share a general ignorance
here--to be no directing instinct at all, but only an instinct to do
something generally sexual; there are almost equally powerful desires to
do right and not to act under compulsion. The specific forms of conduct
imposed upon these instincts and desires depend upon a vast confusion of
suggestions, institutions, conventions, ways of putting things. We are
dealing therefore with problems ineradicably complex, varying endlessly
in their instances, and changing as we deal with them. I am inclined to
think that the only really profitable discussion of sexual matters is in
terms of individuality, through the novel, the lyric, the play,
autobiography or biography of the frankest sort. But such
generalizations as I can make I will.
To me it seems manifest that sexual matters may be discussed generally
in at least three permissible and valid ways, of which the consideration
of the world as a system of births and education is only the dominant
chief.
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