KINSEY, THE UNDERWORLD AND WORK
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happiness lies outside the inner meaning of the sexual act but it is seen to be felt very deeply and it cannot be extricated and isolated without losing its truth. Thus the authors themselves knew what abyss yawned beneath the facts they report. Though they may have sensed that much, the difficulties could not deter them. Their bias and their weakness are nowhere more apparent than in a case where they make an exception to their general rule of going by the subject's own account and not by direct observation. Without having personally witnessed the cases, they publish certain data furnished presumably by the objective observation of other parties. They have examined the time necessary-very short -for infants of six to twelve months to reach an orgasm through masturbation. These times, they tell us, were assessed either with a stopwatch or a chronometer. The incompatibility of the manner of observation and the fact observed, of the method suitable for things and an always embarrassingly intimate act goes beyond the point where it is laughable. There are more serious obstacles to the observation of adult practices, but the helplessness of the child and the immeasurable tenderness that disarms us in his presence make the trick with the watch a hurtful thing. In spite of the authors the truth will out; only a serious lack of understanding would confuse something completely different in kind, something sacred, with a mere thing; it is disturbing to transfer to the vulgarity of the profane world of things the momentous quality we sense in the secret violence of man or child. The violence of human sexuality, animal activity as it is, never fails to disarm us; to perceive it is to be deeply stirred. Work binds us to an objective awareness of things and reduces sexual exuberance. Only the underworld retains its exuberance. Let me return to the fact that theoretically animal nature can usually be treated as a thing. I cannot lay too great an emphasis on this; I shall endeavour to throw light on the problem by pursuing my analysis with the help of data from the Reports.