INTRODUCTION
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a clean sweep of prejudices, traditions and prudery. It is this which we wish to attempt.
Considered from an exalted point of view, sexual life is beautiful as well as good. What there is in it which is shameful and infamous is the obscenity and ignominy caused by the coarse passions of egoism and folly, allied with ignorance, erotic curiosity and mystic superstition, often combined with social narcotic intoxication and cerebral anomalies.
We shall divide our subject into nineteen chapters. Chapters I to VII deal with the natural history and psychology of sexual life; Chapter VIII with its pathology, and Chapters IX to XVIII with its social rôle, that is to say, its connection with the different domains of human social life.
