Chicago Tribune
SEXCERPTS
Social Explorer’s Views on Human Relationships, as Revealed by Extracts from His
Defense.
Pointed paragraphs from Prof. W. I. Thomas’s elucidation of his study of the social regime include the following:
Society certainly should not interfere with the free association of mature persons capable of planning their own lives and seeking their own values, and it certainly should interfere in the case of the immature and those incapable of doing so.
My own association with women has been varied, but always of a constructive, not a destructive kind, according to my standards.
I have met many women in many situations which would be called compromising, having gained through this much new experience, and have incidentally been instrumental in raising a number of the persons concerned to higher levels of efficiency.
I have committed not one but many indiscretions in this connection [social research], but I have done no injury to society, nor to individuals, according to my standards.
I must point out that sex is a dangerous subject to study, because it is the only remaining subject which has not been opened up freely to scientific investigation.
But there is also a large region of sexual life, both inside and outside of marriage, in which the state and the public should not concern themselves.
Sex bears to my work only the relation it out to bear as part of human nature. It is a nasty thing or a dignified thing, according to the purpose with which it is approached.
Society needs the dissent and innovation of the individual, for otherwise there would be no change, no progress, no increasing efficiency, but society tends to destroy the individual who introduces the change.
There are no possible substitutes for originality and creativeness, and there are no possible substitutes for personal freedoms in developing originality and creativeness in the individual.
