The task of social hygiene / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Havelock Ellis
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The task of social hygiene / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    112/444 page 88
    88 THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE had been reached, the woman whose great mission is to keep ahve the perennial fire of the ancient German hearth. Here and there, indeed, the quiet voice of science was heard in Germany ; thus Schräder, the distinguished investigator of Teutonic origins, in commenting on the oft-quoted testimony of Tacitus to the chastity of the German women, has appositely referred to the detailed evidences furnished by the Committee of pastors of the Evangelical Church as to the extreme prevalence of unchastity among the women of rural Germany, and argued that these widespread customs must be very ancient and deep-rooted. ^ But Germans in general refused to admit that Tacitus had only used the idea of German virtue as a stick to beat his own fellow- countrywomen with. The Social-Democratic movement, which has so largely overspread industrial and even intellectual Germany, prepared the way for a less traditional and idealistic way of feeling in regard to these questions. The publi¬ cation by Bebel of a book. Die Frau, in which the leader of the German Social-Democratic party set forth the Socialist doctrine of the position of women in society, marked the first stage in the new movement. This book exercised a wide influence, more especially on uncritical readers. It is, indeed, from a scientific point ^ O. Schräder, Reallexicon, Art. Keuschheit. He considers that Tacitus merely shows that German women were usually chaste after marriage. A few centuries later, Lea points out, Salvianus, while praising the barbarians generally for their chastity, makes an exception in the case of the Alemanni, (See also Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, Sex in Relation to Society, pp. 382—4.)
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