ACTON'S WISDOM
211
repr~ntative
sample of Acton's prose: its virtues are self-evident;
its shortcomings combine a tendency to garrulousness and repetition
with the use of ready-made phrases or cliche-he clearly often 'wrote
in haste. But the passage is also characterized by a peculiar confusion;
one is never quite certain of the source or location of its intense and
frozen sadness. The depression
is
there in the scene itself, but it is
also present in Acton, and not merely as a response to what he is
observing but as something he has breught to this event and projects
onto it. This inability to separate out satisfactorily what one must
call the subjective and objective components of an experience indicates,
I think, a dimmed consciousness, and further a disinclination to
examine the contents or meaning of one's responses. One thinks
again of Lydgate; and the famous "spots of commonness" which
George Eliot ascribed to him tincture the complexion of Acton's mind
as well. Yet it would be too harsh to continue criticism of
Prostitution
along these lines. It could not have been an easy book to write, it
stands out among contemporary works on
this
subject, and it represents
a genuine effort of the humane intelligence.
II
Acton's best-known and most popular work is called
The Func–
tions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs.
It was first published
in 1857; within a year a second edition was called for; a translation
into French was made in 1863, from the third edition; it went
through a number of editions in America, and was still being printed
twenty years after Acton's death, an eighth edition coming out in
Philadelphia in 1894. The currency of this work seems to have been
in accord with what was then thought of as qualified opinion, for
the book received excellent notices in the medical press. "In the work
now before us," said
The Lancet,
"all essential detail upon its subject
matter is clearly and scientifically given. We recommend it accordingly,
as meeting a necessary requisition of the day, refusing to join in that
opinion which regards the consideration of the topics in question
as beyond the duties of the medical practitioner." The "topics in
question" are sex, and
Functions and Disorders
is
an account of
human sexuality, a subject which, Acton writes in
his
introduction,
still needs "much elucidation." Until recently, he states, "many
