Monday, March 7. 1860 University Daily Kancan
Page 3
From the Bookshelf
By W. D. Paden Professor of English
THE SAGE OF SEX: A Life of Havelock Ellis, by Arthur Calder-Marshall. G. P. Putnam's Sons, $5.
Between 1897 and 1910 Havelock Ellis published the six volumes of his "Studies in the Psychology of Sex." Though he had obtained a minor British medical degree as a certificate of his scientific competence, the censors, the police, and the dealers in pornography all gave him a good deal of trouble until he transferred the series to the care of a reputable publishing firm in Philadelphia that dealt exclusively in medical textbooks. There seems to be no doubt that his work broadened and encouraged the scientific study of human sexuality, which no one today—whatever he may think of Freud, Kinsey, and their likes—will dismiss as inadvisable or unimportant. It is now difficult to imagine the storm of angry disapproval and savage indignation that Ellis aroused and honorably withstood.
In the 1920's Ellis was regarded with awe by informed circles in both England and America. H. L. Mencken, who used a few admiring superlatives in his long career, referred to Ellis as one of the half-dozen completely civilized men then alive. Ellis wrote authoritatively upon a wide variety of subjects in many liberal periodicals and published several volumes of essays of an extremely pretentious kind. To open one of these volumes today brings an unexpected shock. "The Dance of Life," for example, contains an essay which presents religion as primarily an aesthetic experience at first one does not know whether to suppose it the result of effrontery or naivety. In the first seventeen pages of the essay Ellis refers with a lightness indistinguishable from patronage to Croce Faraday, Edison, Herbert Spencer, Sir George Frazer, Darwin, St Theresa, Newton, Sir Oliver Lodge, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Dr Rivers on the life of the Todas, Lao-Tze, Sakya Muni, Karl Joel Pythagoras, Lucretius, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Leonardo da Vinci, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Gothe, Einstein, Decartes, Gauss Helmholtz, and Swedenborg. And when one has observed his simple faith in adjectives one is impelled—at least, if one over fifty one is impelled—to conclude that these pages were not written by a man either wise or learned, but by a man of letters, a practitioner of literary journalism.
What had given Havelock Ellis the monolithic self-confidence that enabled him on one hand to withstand the condemnation of an entire outraged society in order to continue his studies, and on the other hand to overwea advanced thinkers so completely as to obtain the unquestioning acceptance of his really peculiar views? He wondered, himself, and wrote a detailed autobiography which at his insistence was published after his death without alteration or omission. His most recent biographer, Mr. Calder-Marshall, has had access to Ellis's unpublished journals and to much private correspondence; he has been generously assisted by the survivors among those persons most intimate with Ellis. He has a strong and accurate mind. Though his account of Ellis is not a book for the delicate-minded, it does not invite any sniggers.
His conclusions may be called astounding: the reader alternates between shouts of incredulous laughter, uneasy meditation on the illogicality of existence, and pity. It seems more than probable that Ellis's cold and complacent detachment from his milieu stemmed from his secret belief that he was not as other men. While a boy, on somewhat indecorus evidence, he became convinced that he was sexually impotent. He was over sixty when he discovered his mistake. In the meantime his carefully elaborated compensatory ideas, which he propounded with a fervour he supposed scientific, had driven his wife to insanity and suicide. He had displayed heroic courage in his successful fight against the suppression of the scientific study of sex. He had also pronounced with elaborate calmness a great deal of nonsense, which muddied the intellectual currents of his day. These things do not add up to any comfortable moral.
From the Magazine Rack
Soviet View of War
"... Since Soviet military thinking is actually so much at variance with American assumptions about that thinking, it is natural to inquire how these assumptions were established. In part, as writers of Hans Morgenthau's Chicago school argue, it is the product of America's tradition of moralistic isolation followed by abrupt precipitation into the stresses of bi-polar power rivalry, plus the irrational panic about domestic Communism. A more specific factor is the infantile fixation on the traumatic experiences of World War II, which this country shares with Russia. Both countries were victims of surprise attacks in 1941, both are determined to prevent the recurrence of such a debacle, and both are captivated with the economical magic of the weapon which brought World War II to a close and which would allegedly frighten all aggressors away from our shores. This is a crude description, but the crudity of the actual American strategy of 1945-1950 and American strategic talk from 1950 to the present deserve it.
(Excerpted from Robert Vincent Daniels' review of "The Soviet Image of Future War" by Raymond L. Garthoff in the Feb. 22, 1960, New Leader.)
"Forestalling Pearl Harbor by threatening to return to Hiroshima is the position of the strange alliance which has dominated American strategic thinking ever since 1945: penny-pinching politicians and over-enthusiastic Air Force generals with high-powered public relations. Neither the Korean experience, the called bluff of Dienbienphu, nor a succession of protest resignations in the Army high command seem to have awakened the Eisenhower Administration to the need for tactics somewhere between the good-will mission and the threat of total annihilation—i.e., the capacity to use limited force against specific threats."
Current Weather Draws Weird Theories, Ideas
The snow keeps piling higher and higher across the campus and everyone wonders when it will stop. But it doesn't stop. It just keeps coming.
There came a tapping, a gentle tapping at my chamber door, and it was more snow.
Many students around the campus have begun to guess at the reasons for the large amounts of snow this year.
Russians Know Moral
One junior says that it is a trick the Russians have pulled to lower the moral of the people in the heart of America. This way they can start to conquer the United States from the middle and work out.
Another more reasonable reason is that the Earth has slipped on its axis and now the North Pole is located in Lawrence.
A few of the sports fans feel that possibly the gods were backing some other team in the Big Eight conference and since KU persists in staying at the top in the basketball race, that the gods are angry.
There are always a few who refuse to give up on the fallout explanation. In fact, they have even increased it since they saw "On the Beach," to say that the center of each snow flake is radio-active.
Flakes Radio-Active
One student said that somebody up there dislikes us.
Whether the explanation is based on France's A-Bomb or on missiles poking holes in the sky, the snow keeps coming.
Presley Returns to Black-Eyed Peas
MEMPHIS, Tenn.—(UPI)—Mister Elvis Presley got home from the army today and headed for a mess of black-eyed peas at his $100,000 suburban mansion.
A rather small group of girls and women greeted the rock n' roll singer when he got off the night train to Memphis in a dress blue uniform he had made especially for the occasion.
"So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after." — Ernest Hemingway.
"School day, you know," a male Presley fan said apologetically.
"I've been waiting two long years for this day," the Pelvis told newsmen on the run to a waiting police escort. "I'm glad to be back."
Fraternity Jewelry
Badges, Rings, Novelties, Sweatshirts, Mugs, Paddles, Cups, Trophies, Medals
Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service, and therefore more generally chosen. — Benj. Franklin.
Balfour
411 W. 14th VI 3-1571 AL LAUTER
Prof. Dort Has Book Published on Geology
Wakefield Dort Jr., associate professor of Geology, had a laboratory manual, "Laboratory Studies in Physical Geology" published by Bursell Publishing Co.
Burgess Co. announced today that the material which was privately published in 1956 has been usetested, and proven by more than 1,500 students at Kansas University and Pennsylvania University. The manual, which uses new maps, goes with any text.
Republican Attorney To Discuss Issues
A candidate for Congress will speak to the Faculty Forum on "The Election Issues."
Robert F. Ellsworth, Lawrence attorney and Republican candidate for representative of the second congressional district will talk at noon Wednesday in the English Room of the Kansas Union.
Reservations should be phoned to the KU-Y office, no later than 5 p.m. tomorrow.
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10:05 A Little Night Music: "Concerto Grosso No. 7 in B-Flat Minor" by Houdel
11:00 Sign. Off
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