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The author presents in this little book a considerable accumulation of factual evidence calculated to counter the position so ably maintained by Havelock Ellis that sexual relations are matters entirely of private concern unless a child enters into the situation, and then they become matters of social concern.
The thesis maintained by the author is briefly this: that man and society are so intimately and reciprocally interrelated that nothing can be individual without, at the same time being social; nor social without, at the same time, being individual. Individual man makes up society; he contributes to society his individual traditions, and receives therefrom in return these same traditions socialized.
The factual material covers a discussion of the sex relationships in many and divers people all over the world and the author is able to show that, no matter how different from our standards these relations may be, no matter how seemingly promiscuous and without control they may appear, nevertheless in every instance, without exception, there are social standards and taboos which exercise a controlling influence over their expression.
The different standards and the different taboos which are maintained serve well to show all of the varying possibilities realized in actual life, and serve to indicate the possibility of maintaining this standard as necessarily higher, or better than that in many instances. They indicate further and more particularly that the standard which is accepted by the herd is in turn accepted by the individual and made his very own, and that in conforming to this standard the individual thinks that he is carrying out his own personal desires. Nonconformity naturally implies rebellion against conformity, and so is further evidence of the existence of standards.
The author makes a very strong case and one well worth careful consideration. Havelock Ellis makes the point that the wide use of contraceptive measures go far toward removing sexual relatio