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Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946

"First and Last Things"


The peculiar defects of the human mind when they approach these
questions of sex are reinforced by passions peculiar to the topic, and
it is perhaps advisable to point out that to discuss these possibilities
is not the same thing as to urge the married reader to take unto himself
or herself a second partner or a series of additional partners. We are
trained from the nursery to become secretive, muddle-headed and
vehemently conclusive upon sexual matters, until at last the editors of
magazines blush at the very phrase and long to put a petticoat over the
page that bears it. Yet our rebellious natures insist on being
interested by it. It seems to me that to judge these large questions
from the personal point of view, to insist upon the whole world without
exception living exactly in the manner that suits oneself or accords
with one's emotional imagination and the forms of delicacy in which one
has been trained, is not the proper way to deal with them. I want as a
sane social organizer to get just as many contented and law-abiding
citizens as possible; I do not want to force people who would otherwise
be useful citizens into rebellion, concealments and the dark and furtive
ways of vice, because they may not love and marry as their temperaments
command, and so I want to make the meshes of the law as wide as
possible.


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