FOOTNOTES:
[23] I feel I must offer some explanation here in regard to the precise relationship of the social instinct to order. Some will object, and quite rightly, that all order is not social order, and that all rhythm is not gregarious rhythm. There is the natural rhythm (and therefore the natural order) of birds’ songs, of insects’ buzzing, of horses’ and most animals’ movements, of fish in water, of corn waving in the wind. Whatever be the strength or weakness of our social tendencies, therefore, we must, as animals, feel instinctively and deeply akin to the phenomenon of rhythm and its charm. This affinity will reside deep down in our natures, and will hark back to an age far more remote than that in which the first human society was formed. All this is perfectly true. But this very phenomenon of natural rhythm, extended into the general notion of order, is the only origin to which we can possibly trace the power of rhythmic or orderly arrangement in the creative human being. Extended into the notion of order and applied creatively by a superior human being to Nature, whereby chaos becomes arrangement, and confusion is unravelled, this rhythm constitutes the birth not only of all human society, but of each separate civilization that has ever existed. In this way I conceive of the social instinct having, as a product of natural rhythm and order, engulfed and absorbed the source of its existence, in the human kind, and established itself in humanity as the developed and highly extended form of that source.
[24] 1 Corinthians vii. 1.
[25] Ibid., vii. 7.
[26] Ibid., vii. 8.
[27] Ibid., vii. 9. “But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.”
[28] For the connexion between man’s social instinct and the Arts, see my Introduction to The Letters of a Post-Impressionist (Constable & Co., 1912).
[29] I know of only one woman who has recognized this and given man full credit for his self-mastery in regard to the consequences of his sexual lust. See Arabella Kenealy (Op. cit., pp. 178-9). The passages are too long to be quoted, but they should be read by all those who may be tempted to conclude that my views, as expressed above, have been prompted by masculine bias alone.
[30] See Sir Almroth E. Wright, M.D., F.R.S., The Unexpurgated Case against Woman Suffrage, p. 74, where the author hints at how much under civilization has been done for women by man.
[32] The part played by his self-preservative instinct in all this will be disclosed in another chapter. See chapter V, pp. 89-90.
[33] Cf. Weininger, Op. cit., p. 227: Where the author disagreeing with me says: “Great men have always preferred women of the prostitute type.” It is true that eighteen pages farther on he contradicts himself by saying of the prostitute: “She is the mate of the worst sort of men”; but this single example, taken from among the many equally amazing contradictions in this book, only tends to show its extraordinary futility.
[34] And yet most of the modern books on sex questions, particularly those written by women, take this false analogy for granted.