Sexual ethics

SEXUAL ETHICS
AUGUST FOREL, M.D., PH.D., LL.D.
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY AT AND DIRECTOR OF THE INSANE ASYLUM IN ZURICH (SWITZERLAND)
WITH INTRODUCTION
Dr. C. W. SALEEBY, F.R.S. Edin.
LONDON THE NEW AGE PRESS 140 FLEET STREET 1908
Translated from the German by Ashley Dukes

By Dr. C. W. SALEEBY, F.R.S. Edin.
There is something absurd, as such, in a request for an introduction by any one to the work of one of the greatest of living thinkers, and something still more absurd in the fact that Professor Forel should, at this date, need an introduction to any intelligent audience in any civilised country, as it seems he does to English readers; but if compliance with that request is at all likely to increase, even by one, the number of his readers, it is a duty to comply with it.
In his criticisms of alcohol and the abuse of capital, Professor Forel opposes himself to the most powerful of vested interests. Well, if you invest your interests in any other bank than that of the laws of life, you or your heirs will find that theirs is but a rotten concern. The history of organic evolution is proof enough that the higher life and the things which buttress it, “sagging but pertinacious,” will always win through in the long run. As a direct enemy of human life, and notably through its influence upon the sexual instinct, alcohol is certainly doomed. If life is the only wealth, the manufacture of illth is a process too cannibal to be permitted for ever.