Sex by Henry Stanton

The happiness of all human beings, men and women, depends largely ontheir rational solution of the sexual problem. SEX and the part itplays in human life cannot be ignored. In the case of animals sexplays a simpler and less complex role. It is a purely natural andinstinctive function whose underlying purpose is the perpetuation ofthe species. It is not complicated by the many incidental phenomenawhich result, in man''s case, from psychologic, economic, moral andreligious causes. Climate, social conditions, individual modes of lifeand work, alcohol, wealth and poverty, and other factors affect sexualactivity in human beings. Sexual love, which is practically unknown to the animals, is a specialdevelopment of the sex urge in the human soul. The deeper purpose ofthe sex function in human beings, likewise, is procreation, thereproduction of species. The average man, woman and child should know the essential sex factsin order to be able to deal with the sex problems of life. Of lateyears there has been a greater diffusion of such knowledge. To a largeextent, however, children and adolescents are still taught to look onall that pertains to sex as something shameful and immodest, somethingnot to be discussed. Sex is an "Avoided Subject." This is fundamentally wrong. Sex affects the very root of all humanlife. Its activities are not obscene, but Nature''s own means tocertain legitimate ends. The sex functions, when properly controlledand led into the proper channels, are a most essential and legitimateform of physical self-expression. The veil of secrecy with which theyare so often shrouded tends to create an altogether false impressionregarding them. This discussion of these "Avoided Subjects," in "PlainEnglish," is intended to give the salient facts regarding sex in adirect, straightforward manner, bearing in mind the true purpose ofnormal sex activities. The more we know of the facts of sex, the right and normal part sexactivities play in life, and all that tends to abuse and degrade them,the better able we will be to make sex a factor for happiness in ourown lives and that of our descendants. Mankind, for its own generalgood, must desire that reproduction--the real purpose of every sexualfunction--occur in such a way as to perpetuate its own best physical
and mental qualities. THE LAW OF PHYSICAL LIFE It is a universal rule of physical life that every individual beingundergoes a development which we know as its individual life andwhich, so far as its physical substance is concerned, ends with death.Death is the destruction of the greater part of this individualorganism which, when death ensues, once more becomes lifeless matter.Only small portions of this matter, the germ cells, continue to liveunder certain conditions which nature has fixed. The germ cell--as has been established by the microscope--is the tinycell which in the lowest living organisms as well as in man himself,forms the unit of physical development. Yet even this tiny cell isalready a highly organized and perfected thing. It is composed of themost widely differing elements which, taken together, form theso-called protoplasm or cellular substance. And for all lifeestablished in nature the cell remains the constant and unchangingform element. It comprises the cell-protoplasm and a nucleus imbeddedin it whose substance is known as the nucleoplasm. The nucleus is themore important of the two and, so to say, governs the life of thecell-protoplasm. The lower one-celled organisms in nature increase by division, just asof living beings. And in all cases, though death or destruction of thecells is synonymous with the death or destruction of the livingorganism, the latter in most cases already has recreated itself byreproduction. We will not go into the very complicated details of the actual processof the growth and division of the protoplasmic cells. It is enough tosay that in the case of living creatures provided with morecomplicated organisms, such as the higher plants, animals and man, thelittle cell units divide and grow as they do in the case of the lowerorganisms. The fact is one which shows the intimate inner relationshipof all living beings.