failure of politicians and legislators to
enact practical statutes or to remove traditional obscenities from the
law books. The most encouraging sign at present is the recognition by
modern psychology of the central importance of the sexual instinct in
human society, and the rapid spread of this new concept among the more
enlightened sections of the civilized communities. The new conception
of sex has been well stated by one to whom the debt of contemporary
civilization is well-nigh immeasurable. "Sexual activity," Havelock
Ellis has written, "is not merely a baldly propagative act, nor, when
propagation is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended
vessels. It is something more even than the foundation of great social
institutions. It is the function by which all the finer activities of
the organism, physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied."(6)

No less than seventy years ago, a profound but neglected thinker, George
Drysdale, emphasized the necessity of a thorough understanding of man's
sexual nature in approaching economic, political and social problems.
"Before we can undertake the calm and impartial investigation of any
social problem, we must first of all free ourselves from all those
sexual prejudices which are so vehement and violent and which so
completely distort our vision of the external world. Society as a whole
has yet to fight its way through an almost impenetrable forest of sexual
taboos." Drysdale's words have lost none of their truth even to-day:
"There are few things from which humanity has suffered more than the
degraded and irreverent feelings of mystery and shame that have been
attached to the genital and excretory organs. The former have been
regarded, like their corresponding mental passions, as something of a
lower and baser nature, tending to degrade and carnalize man by their
physical appetites. But we cannot take a debasing view of any part of
our humanity without becoming degraded in our whole being."(7)

Drysdale moreover clearly recognized the social crime of entrusting to
sexual barbarians the duty of legislating and enforcing laws detrimental
to the welfare of all future generations. "They trust blindly to
authority for the rules they blindly lay down," he wrote, "perfectly
unaware of the awful and complicated nature of the subject they are
dealing with so confidently and of the horrible evils their unconsidered
statements are attended with. They themselves break throug