THE PERENNIAL ARGUMENT
SEX, SIN AND SANCTITY, by John Lang. | don-Davies; Victor Gollancz, English price | 16/-. AN ANALYSIS OF THE KINSEY REPORTS ON SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR, edited’ by Donald Porter Geddes; Frederick | Muller, English price 10/6. 1O one with any sense expects to find | himself writing or reading the last word on sexual behaviour. Mr. Langdon(continued on next page)
BOOKS (continued from previous page) Davies admits right away that his exploration "must be, perforce, as fragmentary and ambiguous as its subject matter," and so almost disarms us. But, then, what is a Humanist, for example, to say when he speaks in the same sentence of his exploration "amid the ruins of fallen man," or when he asserts that it is human nature to be anti-feminist, to think evil of sex and to have a death wish? Still, the argument is worth pursuing, through the early philosophers, Christianity, Greece, Rome, Provence and the Enlightenment. The author takes his own line about the invention of love: a fusion, he thinks. of Provencal erotic ideology with the cult of the passionate love of the Virgin. Summing up he usefully urges a frank recognition in our morals of the difference between the sexual (procreative), erotic and lustful uses of the human body. As a history of ideas about sex the book will trap the unwary newcomer with its mixture of fact and opinion. Read critically, on the other hand, it is a very effective mental stimulant. Lionel Trilling’s well-known essay on the first Kinsey report »ends the sym- posium edited by Mr. Geddes with the remark that "although it is possible to say of the Report that it brings light, it is necessary to say of it that it spreads confusion": and that’s a pretty fair judgment on Kinsey, who is another snare for the uncritical. This book. is much more a symposium than a _ critical analysis; and it has the fault of most symovosia-it is repetitive. and their | merit-it takes in many points of view. | As in most symposia, too, the contribu- | tions vary in qualitv. and it’s a pity we have to read them all to extract the core
| of valuable criticism. |
F.A.
J.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 820, 15 April 1955, Page 13
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361THE PERENNIAL ARGUMENT New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 820, 15 April 1955, Page 13
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