OCR Text |
Show It Is Because We Are Aware of Sex That We Wish to Understand It By PROF. JOHN ERSKINE, Columbia University. I explain the large amount of recent literature dealing with sex by this conviction of our time that we ought to understand ourselves and our passions. But very little of this literature seems to me to have much value either for life or for art. The novelists who exploit sex usually fail to explain it ; they really exploit the physical aspec ta of it as though it were a new discovery and needed advertising. Of course it is just because we are .all aware of sex, as an external aspect of life, that we wish to understand it, to live on better terms with it. The books, therefore, which merely Tecord sexual attitude, whether or not they are considered indecent, become pretty tiresome to a reader who wants to get on in his knowledge of human nature. And these books also offend, for the most part, the finer sensibilities of men, what may fairly be called their poetic sensibilities. They are willing to admit, like the centaur-poet in the novel, that we are half-animal at least, but they know by experience that in moments of love we are also half-god and no discussion of this twofold nature of ours will satisfy sat-isfy which examines only the animal in us. . |