The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    17/546 (page XI)
    occupying my mind in various ways.” Nor could one, I think, be occupied for a whole life-time with a more beautiful and absorbing subject. From the blossom that emblazons the land scape in the spring, the flowers that make Nature and our gardens radiant with colour and freshness, and the songs of the birds which inspire the poet, to the bewildering majesty of man and woman at maturity, with the ecstasy that their union implies,— all the beauty, all the uplifting aspects of life are steeped in sex. And, if the Puritan in his ignorance and prurience, insists on keeping his sanctimonious nose to the flower, and his shocked ears to the songs of the birds, when he would dwell on the wonders of creation, simply because the fundamental sex element in these manifestations of Nature are less obvious to the un informed than in the beauties of human sexuality, I, for my part, am more catholic, and am proud to think that for all these years, my mind has dwelt on the whole panorama of sex, and not merely on those “ respectable ” aspects of it which are allowed to be seen and mentioned in middle-class drawing-rooms. I do not believe in the Christian god, but I think that those who do, pay him little honour in thus picking and choosing from among his alleged creations, and “ turning down ” what their repressed natures cannot contemplate without a shudder. This first book, Girls and Love, which, I need hardly say, was never published, was an attempt to deal with the very subject I propose to discuss in the present volume. The truth is that, on and off, I must have been thinking about it ever since my nineteenth year, and thus the circle of my life-work on sex seems to be closed. It only remains for me now to express my thanks to the Secretary and Secretarial Staff of the Eugenics Society for their untiring courtesy in allowing me to consult their library, and also gratefully to acknowledge the assistance given me by Dr. H. S. Harrison, of the Horniman Museum, and the advice and kind help I have received from the Librarian of that Institu tion, Mr. Gaskin. Anthony M. Ludovici. London. October , 1934.