THE DEATH OF Dr. Alfred Kinsey removes from the scene
one of the most controversial scientific figures of his day. His great compendia, The Sexual Behaviour of the Human Male and The Sexual Behaviour of the Human Female, were contested by statisticians, his theories were denounced by religious leaders and his collection of writings on walls seized by the US customs. It was perhaps unfortunate for such a serious- minded scholar that the subject of his studies was that most likely to produce a long and loud guffaw from the irreverent layman, but laughter is surely a natural reaction to the statisti- cal presentation of basic human realities, and someone who excused most patterns of behaviour in the people he studied would hardly object to this involuntary explosion. For, after all, whether his sampling was right or wrong, Dr. Kinsey's main contribution to modern thought was a plea for a broader tolerance for deviations from majority habits. He did much to take away the nightmare of abnormality that haunts so many men and women. His statistics rubbed home the lessons that, in matters sexual, normality is a concept lacking in validity and that the State should be reluctant to legislate for the private lives of individuals.
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