We cannot understand the significance of the changes around us, nor face them with cheerful confidence, unless we are acquainted with the drift of the great movements that stir all civilization in never-ending cycles.
In discussing sexual questions which are very largely matters of social hygiene we shall thus still be preserving the psychological point of view.
Such a point of view in relation to these matters is not only legitimate but necessary.

Discussions of social hygiene that are purely medical or purely juridical or purely moral or purely theological not only lead to conclusions that are often entirely opposed to each other but they obviously fail to possess complete applicability to the complex human personality.

The main task before us must be to ascertain what best expresses, and what best satisfies, the totality of the impulses and ideas of civilized men and women.

So that while we must constantly bear in mind medical, legal, and moral demands--which all correspond in some respects to some individual or social need--the main thing is to satisfy the demands of the whole human person.
It is necessary to emphasize this point of view because it would seem that no error is more common among writers on the hygienic and moral problems of sex than the neglect of the psychological standpoint.

They may take, for instance, the side of sexual restraint, or the side of sexual unrestraint, but they fail to realize that so narrow a basis is inadequate for the needs of complex human beings.