Studies in the psychology of sex, volume VI. Sex in Relation to Society by Havelock Ellis. - HTML preview

book to put

into the hands of a boy or girl at puberty than M.A.

Warren's

_Almost Fourteen_, written by an American school

teacher in 1892.

It was a most charming and delicately written book,

which could

not have offended the innocence of the most

sensitive maiden.

Nothing, however, is sacred to prurience, and it was

easy for the

prurient to capture the law and obtain (in 1897)

legal

condemnation of this book as "obscene." Anything which sexually

excites a prurient mind is, it is true, "obscene"

for that mind,

for, as Mr. Theodore Schroeder remarks, obscenity is

"the

contribution of the reading mind," but we need such books as this

in order to diminish the number of prurient minds,

and the

condemnation of so entirely admirable a book makes,

not for

morality, but for immorality. I am told that the