The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    15/546 (page IX)
    I shall not easily forget the scene, about ten years ago, in the hall hired by the Society for the Study of Sex Psychology when, with the Editor of the present series in the chair, I delivered an address, answering in the affirmative the question, “ Would a revival of incest , or the closest approximation thereto , he beneficial to mankind ? ” Nor shall I forget a meeting on a small scale held a little later in a private house on the Suffolk coast, when I briefly expounded the theory on consanguinity advanced in these pages. Even at that time, scientists had not completely committed them selves in favour of my thesis, which I admit took its original root in an emotional bias and which I then founded chiefly on the wisdom of old and flourishing civilizations. The feelings of my listeners consequently ranged from consternation in the first case, to shocked and rather contemptuous amusement in the second. On neither occasion, however, except for the chairman of the first meeting, who, as everyone knows, is among the most enlightened and broadminded of scientific men, did I meet with the smallest sign of understanding or even of curiosity among my listeners, and I have no doubt that most of those present on both occasions went away more alarmed than interested. Now as very few of the audience at the first meeting, and none at the second, had the requisite knowledge to oppose my views on biological and genetic grounds, and were shocked and hostile merely because of unreasoning prejudice, these two experiences naturally did not shake me. But they did leave me wondering. And what I asked myself was whether a State could not well afford to neglect educating its nationals for knowledge, if only it took care to train them in prejudice ; because, in the end, it is prejudices (or the prerequisites of artificially-conditioned reflexes), whether right or wrong, that control conduct. And, educationally, the State is concerned chiefly with controlling the conduct of its members. But more of this anon. Returning to the question of science ; where it seems to me to go too far in another direction, is in its excessively rigorous exclusion of those “ opinions ” and judgments which, though not scientific, are the result of a long and intelligently observant life. Such judgments have their value, because all experience, particularly that of great minds, contributes to the common stock of human wisdom. Science is the product of observation. The test now applied by science to any single piece of observation is to ask, “ Can it be verified ? Can it be confirmed ? ” And if every average man, with suitable instruments or apparatus, is