The origin of these _Studies_ dates from many years back. As a youth I was
faced, as others are, by the problem of sex. Living partly in an
Australian city where the ways of life were plainly seen, partly in the
solitude of the bush, I was free both to contemplate and to meditate many
things. A resolve slowly grew up within me: one main part of my life-work
should be to make clear the problems of sex.
That was more than twenty years ago. Since then I can honestly say that in
all that I have done that resolve has never been very far from my
thoughts. I have always been slowly working up to this central problem;
and in a book published some three years ago--_Man and Woman: a Study of
Human Secondary Sexual Characters_--I put forward what was, in my own
eyes, an introduction to the study of the primary questions of sexual
psychology.
Now that I have at length reached the time for beginning to publish my
results, these results scarcely seem to me large. As a youth, I had hoped
to settle problems for those who came after; now I am quietly content if I
do little more than state them. For even that, I now think, is much; it is
at least the half of knowledge. In this particular field the evil of
ignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which never can be
suppressed, though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted. I
have at least tried to find out what are the facts, among normal people as
well as among abnormal people; for, while it seems to me that the
physician's training is necessary in order to ascertain the facts, the
physician for the most part only obtains the abnormal facts, which alone
bring little light. I have tried to get at the facts, and, having got at
the facts, to look them simply and squarely in the face. If I cannot
perhaps turn the lock myself, I bring the key which can alone in the end
rightly open the door: the key of sincerity. That is my one panacea:
sincerity.
