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diff --git a/15687.txt b/15687.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a3759bc --- /dev/null +++ b/15687.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4604 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Little Essays of Love and Virtue, by Havelock Ellis + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Little Essays of Love and Virtue + +Author: Havelock Ellis + +Release Date: April 23, 2005 [EBook #15687] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE ESSAYS OF LOVE AND VIRTUE *** + + + + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + +LITTLE ESSAYS +OF +LOVE AND VIRTUE +BY +HAVELOCK ELLIS + + + + +BY THE SAME AUTHOR + +STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX +Six Volumes +Philadelphia: _F.A. Davis Company_ + +MAN AND WOMAN +London: _Walter Scott_ +New York: _Charles Scribners' Sons_ + +THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE +London: _Constable and Company_ +Boston: _Houghton Mifflin Company_ + +IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS +First and Second Series +London: _Constable and Company_ +Boston: _Houghton Mifflin Company_ + + +BY MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS + +THE NEW HORIZON IN LOVE AND LIFE +With a Preface by EDWARD CARPENTER +and an Introduction by MARGUERITE TRACY +London: _A. and C. Black, Ltd._ + + + + +LITTLE ESSAYS +OF +LOVE AND VIRTUE +BY +HAVELOCK ELLIS + + + + + +A. & C. BLACK, LTD. 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1 1922 + + + + +COPYRIGHT 1922 +_In Great Britain by A. and G. Black, Ltd., London_ +_In America by George H. Doran Co., New York_ + + + + +PREFACE + + +In these Essays--little, indeed, as I know them to be, compared to the +magnitude of their subjects--I have tried to set forth, as clearly as I +can, certain fundamental principles, together with their practical +application to the life of our time. Some of these principles were stated, +more briefly and technically, in my larger _Studies_ of sex; others were +therein implied but only to be read between the lines. Here I have +expressed them in simple language and with some detail. It is my hope that +in this way they may more surely come into the hands of young people, +youths and girls at the period of adolescence, who have been present to my +thoughts in all the studies I have written of sex because I was myself of +that age when I first vaguely planned them. I would prefer to leave to +their judgment the question as to whether this book is suitable to be +placed in the hands of older people. It might only give them pain. It is +in youth that the questions of mature age can alone be settled, if they +ever are to be settled, and unless we begin to think about adult problems +when we are young all our thinking is likely to be in vain. There are but +few people who are able when youth is over either on the one hand to +re-mould themselves nearer to those facts of Nature and of Society they +failed to perceive, or had not the courage to accept, when they were +young, or, on the other hand, to mould the facts of the exterior world +nearer to those of their own true interior world. One hesitates to bring +home to them too keenly what they have missed in life. Yet, let us +remember, even for those who have missed most, there always remains the +fortifying and consoling thought that they may at least help to make the +world better for those who come after them, and the possibilities of human +adjustment easier for others than it has been for themselves. They must +still remain true to their own traditions. We could not wish it to be +otherwise. + +The art of making love and the art of being virtuous;--two aspects of the +great art of living that are, rightly regarded, harmonious and not at +variance--remain, indeed, when we cease to misunderstand them, essentially +the same in all ages and among all peoples. Yet, always and everywhere, +little modifications become necessary, little, yet, like so many little +things, immense in their significance and results. In this way, if we are +really alive, we flexibly adjust ourselves to the world in which we find +ourselves, and in so doing simultaneously adjust to ourselves that +ever-changing world, ever-changing, though its changes are within such +narrow limits that it yet remains substantially the same. It is with such +modification that we are concerned in these Little Essays. + +H.E. + +_London, 1921_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER PAGE + + I Children and Parents 13 + II The Meaning of Purity 37 +III The Objects of Marriage 63 + IV Husbands and Wives 75 + V The Love-Rights of Women 102 + VI The Play-Function of Sex 116 +VII The Individual and the Race 134 + Index 183 + + + + + + +LITTLE ESSAYS OF LOVE AND VIRTUE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +CHILDREN AND PARENTS + + +The twentieth century, as we know, has frequently been called "the century +of the child." When, however, we turn to the books of Ellen Key, who has +most largely and sympathetically taken this point of view, one asks +oneself whether, after all, the child's century has brought much to the +child. Ellen Key points out, with truth, that, even in our century, +parents may for the most part be divided into two classes: those who act +as if their children existed only for their benefit, and those who act as +if they existed only for their children's benefit, the results, she adds +being alike deplorable. For the first group of parents tyrannise over the +child, seek to destroy its individuality, exercise an arbitrary discipline +too spasmodic to have any of the good effects of discipline and would +model him into a copy of themselves, though really, she adds, it ought to +pain them very much to see themselves exactly copied. The second group of +parents may wish to model their children not after themselves but after +their ideals, yet they differ chiefly from the first class by their +over-indulgence, by their anxiety to pamper the child by yielding to all +his caprices and artificially protecting him from the natural results of +those caprices, so that instead of learning freedom, he has merely +acquired self-will. These parents do not indeed tyrannise over their +children but they do worse; they train their children to be tyrants. +Against these two tendencies of our century Ellen Key declares her own +Alpha and Omega of the art of education. Try to leave the child in peace; +live your own life beautifully, nobly, temperately, and in so living you +will sufficiently teach your children to live. + +It is not my purpose here to consider how far this conception of the duty +of parents towards children is justified, and whether or not peace is the +best preparation for a world in which struggle dominates. All these +questions about education are rather idle. There are endless theories of +education but no agreement concerning the value of any of them, and the +whole question of education remains open. I am here concerned less with +the duty of parents in relation to their children than with the duty of +children in relation to their parents, and that means that I am not +concerned with young children, to whom, that duty still presents no +serious problems, since they have not yet developed a personality with +self-conscious individual needs. Certainly the one attitude must condition +the other attitude. The reaction of children against their parents is the +necessary result of the parents' action. So that we have to pay some +attention to the character of parental action. + +We cannot expect to find any coherent or uniform action on the part of +parents. But there have been at different historical periods different +general tendencies in the attitude of parents towards their children. Thus +if we go back four or five centuries in English social history we seem to +find a general attitude which scarcely corresponds exactly to either of +Ellen Key's two groups. It seems usually to have been compounded of +severity and independence; children were first strictly compelled to go +their parents' way and then thrust off to their own way. There seems a +certain hardness in this method, yet it is doubtful whether it can fairly +be regarded as more unreasonable than either of the two modern methods +deplored by Ellen Key. On the contrary it had points for admiration. It +was primarily a discipline, but it was regarded, as any fortifying +discipline should be regarded, as a preparation for freedom, and it is +precisely there that the more timid and clinging modern way seems to fail. + +We clearly see the old method at work in the chief source of knowledge +concerning old English domestic life, the _Paston Letters_. Here we find +that at an early age the sons of knights and gentlemen were sent to serve +in the houses of other gentlemen: it was here that their education really +took place, an education not in book knowledge, but in knowledge of life. +Such education was considered so necessary for a youth that a father who +kept his sons at home was regarded as negligent of his duty to his family. +A knowledge of the world was a necessary part, indeed the chief part, of a +youth's training for life. The remarkable thing is that this applied also +to a large extent to the daughters. They realised in those days, what is +only beginning to be realised in ours,[1] that, after all, women live in +the world just as much, though differently, as men live in the world, and +that it is quite as necessary for the girl as for the boy to be trained to +the meaning of life. Margaret Paston, towards the end of the fifteenth +century, sent her daughter Ann to live in the house of a gentleman who, a +little later, found that he could not keep her as he was purposing to +decrease the size of his household. The mother writes to her son: "I shall +be fain to send for her and with me she shall but lose her time, and +without she be the better occupied she shall oftentimes move me and put me +to great unquietness. Remember what labour I had with your sister, +therefore do your best to help her forth"; as a result it was planned to +send her to a relative's house in London. + +[1] This was illustrated in England when women first began to serve on +juries. The pretext was frequently brought forward that there are +certain kinds of cases and of evidence that do not concern women or that +women ought not to hear. The pretext would have been more plausible if +it had also been argued that there are certain kinds of cases and of +evidence that men ought not to hear. As a matter of fact, whatever +frontier there may be in these matters is not of a sexual kind. +Everything that concerns men ultimately concerns women, and everything +that concerns women ultimately concerns men. Neither women nor men are +entitled to claim dispensation. + +It is evident that in the fifteenth century in England there was a wide +prevalence of this method of education, which in France, a century later, +was still regarded as desirable by Montaigne. His reason for it is worth +noting; children should be educated away from home, he remarks, in order +to acquire hardness, for the parents will be too tender to them. "It is an +opinion accepted by all that it is not right to bring up children in their +parents' laps, for natural love softens and relaxes even the wisest."[2] + +[2] Montaigne, _Essais_, Bk. I., ch. 25. + +In old France indeed the conditions seem similar to those in England. The +great serio-comic novel of Antoine de la Salle, _Petit Jean de Saintre_, +shows us in detail the education and the adventures, which certainly +involved a very early introduction to life, of a page in a great house in +the fifteenth century. We must not take everything in this fine comedy too +solemnly, but in the fourteenth century _Book of the Knight of the +Tour-Landry_ we may be sure that we have at its best the then prevailing +view of the relation of a father to his tenderly loved daughters. Of +harshness and rigour in the relationship it is not easy to find traces in +this lengthy and elaborate book of paternal counsels. But it is clear that +the father takes seriously the right of a daughter to govern herself and +to decide for herself between right and wrong. It is his object, he tells +his girls, "to enable them to govern themselves." In this task he assumes +that they are entitled to full knowledge, and we feel that he is not +instructing them in the mysteries of that knowledge; he is taking for +granted, in the advice he gives and the stories he tells them, that his +"young and small daughters, not, poor things, overburdened with +experience," already possess the most precise knowledge of the intimate +facts of life, and that he may tell them, without turning a hair, the most +outrageous incidents of debauchery. Life already lies naked before them: +that he assumes; he is not imparting knowledge, he is giving good +counsel.[3] + +[3] If the Knight went to an extreme in his assumption of his daughters' +knowledge, modern fathers often go to the opposite and more foolish +extreme of assuming in their daughters an ignorance that would be +dangerous even if it really existed. In _A Young Girl's Diary_ +(translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul), a work that is +highly instructive for parents, and ought to be painful for many, we +find the diarist noting at the age of thirteen that she and a girl +friend of about the same age overheard the father of one of them--both +well brought up and carefully protected, one Catholic and the other +Protestant--referring to "those innocent children." "We did laugh so, WE +and _innocent children_!!! What our fathers really think of us; we +innocent!!! At dinner we did not dare look at one another or we should +have exploded." It need scarcely be added that, at the same time, they +were more innocent than they knew. + +It is clear that this kind of education and this attitude towards +children must be regarded as the outcome of the whole mediaeval method of +life. In a state of society where roughness and violence, though not, as +we sometimes assume, chronic, were yet always liable to be manifested, it +was necessary for every man and woman to be able to face the crudest facts +of the world and to be able to maintain his or her own rights against +them. The education that best secured that strength and independence was +the best education and it necessarily involved an element of hardness. We +must go back earlier than Montaigne's day, when the conditions were +becoming mitigated, to see the system working in all its vigour. + +The lady of the day of the early thirteenth century has been well +described by Luchaire in his scholarly study of French Society in the time +of Philip Augustus. She was, he tells us, as indeed she had been in the +preceding feudal centuries, often what we should nowadays call a virago, +of violent temperament, with vivid passions, broken in from childhood to +all physical exercises, sharing the pleasures and dangers of the knights +around her. Feudal life, fertile in surprises and in risks, demanded even +in women a vigorous temper of soul and body, a masculine air, and habits +also that were almost virile. She accompanied her father or her husband to +the chase, while in war-time, if she became a widow or if her husband was +away at the Crusades, she was ready, if necessary, to direct the defences +of the lordship, and in peace time she was not afraid of the longest and +most dangerous pilgrimages. She might even go to the Crusades on her own +account, and, if circumstances required, conduct a war to come out +victoriously. + +We may imagine the robust kind of education required to produce people of +this quality. But as regards the precise way in which parents conducted +that education, we have, as Luchaire admits, little precise knowledge. It +is for the most part only indirectly, by reading between the lines, that +we glean something as to what it was considered befitting to inculcate in +a good household, and as what we thus learn is mostly from the writings of +Churchmen it is doubtless a little one-sided. Thus Adam de Perseigne, an +ecclesiastic, writes to the Countess du Perche to advise her how to live +in a Christian manner; he counsels her to abstain from playing games of +chance and chess, not to take pleasure in the indecent farces of actors, +and to be moderate in dress. Then, as ever, preachers expressed their +horror of the ruinous extravagance of women, their false hair, their +rouge, and their dresses that were too long or too short. They also +reprobated their love of flirtation. It was, however, in those days a +young girl's recognised duty, when a knight arrived in the household, to +exercise the rites of hospitality, to disarm him, give him his bath, and +if necessary massage him to help him to go to sleep. It is not surprising +that the young girl sometimes made love to the knight under these +circumstances, nor is it surprising that he, engaged in an arduous life +and trained to disdain feminine attractions, often failed to respond. + +It is easy to understand how this state of things gradually became +transformed into the considerably different position of parents and child +we have known, which doubtless attained its climax nearly a century ago. +Feudal conditions, with the large households so well adapted to act as +seminaries for youth, began to decay, and as education in such seminaries +must have led to frequent mischances both for youths and maidens who +enjoyed the opportunities of education there, the regret for their +disappearance may often have been tempered for parents. Schools, colleges, +and universities began to spring up and develop for one sex, while for the +other home life grew more intimate, and domestic ties closer. Montaigne's +warning against the undue tenderness of a narrow family life no longer +seemed reasonable, and the family became more self-centred and more +enclosed. Beneath this, and more profoundly influential, there was a +general softening in social respects, and a greater expansiveness of +affectional relationships, in reality or in seeming, within the home, +compensating, it may be, the more diffused social feeling within a group +which characterised the previous period. + +So was cultivated that undue tenderness, deplored by Montaigne, which we +now regard as almost normal in family life, and solemnly label, if we +happen to be psycho-analysts, the Oedipus-complex or the Electra-complex. +Sexual love is closely related to parental love; the tender emotion, which +is an intimate part of parental love, is also an intimate part of sexual +love, and two emotions which are each closely related to a third emotion +cannot fail to become often closely associated to each other. With a +little thought we might guess beforehand, even while still in complete +ignorance of the matter, that there could not fail to be frequently a +sexual tinge in the affection of a father for his daughter, of a mother +for her son, of a son for his mother, or a daughter for her father. +Needless to say, that does not mean that there is present any physical +desire of sex in the narrow sense; that would be a perversity, and a rare +perversity. We are here on another plane than that of crude physical +desire, and are moving within the sphere of the emotions. But such +emotions are often strong, and all the stronger because conscious of +their own absolute rectitude and often masked under the shape of Duty. Yet +when prolonged beyond the age of childhood they tend to become a clog on +development, and a hindrance to a wholesome life. The child who cherishes +such emotion is likely to suffer infantile arrest of development, and the +parent who is so selfish as to continue to expend such tenderness on a +child who has passed the age of childhood, or to demand it, is guilty of a +serious offence against that child. + +That the intimate family life which sometimes resulted--especially when, +as frequently happened, the seeming mutual devotion was also real--might +often be regarded as beautiful and almost ideal, it has been customary to +repeat with an emphasis that in the end has even become nauseous. For it +was usually overlooked that the self-centred and enclosed family, even +when the mutual affection of its members was real enough to bear all +examination, could scarcely be more than partially beautiful, and could +never be ideal. For the family only represents one aspect, however +important an aspect, of a human being's functions and activities. He +cannot, she cannot, be divorced from the life of the social group, and a +life is beautiful and ideal, or the reverse, only when we have taken into +our consideration the social as well as the family relationship. When the +family claims to prevent the free association of an adult member of it +with the larger social organisation, it is claiming that the part is +greater than the whole, and such a claim cannot fail to be morbid and +mischievous. + +The old-world method of treating children, we know, has long ago been +displaced as containing an element of harsh tyranny. But it was not +perceived, and it seems indeed not even yet to be generally recognised, +that the system which replaced it, and is only now beginning to pass away, +involved another and more subtle tyranny, the more potent because not +seemingly harsh. Parents no longer whipped their children even when grown +up, or put them in seclusion, or exercised physical force upon them after +they had passed childhood. They felt that that would not be in harmony +with the social customs of a world in which ancient feudal notions were +dead. But they merely replaced the external compulsion by an internal +compulsion which was much more effective. It was based on the moral +assumption of claims and duties which were rarely formulated because +parents found it quite easy and pleasant to avoid formulating them, and +children, on the rare occasions when they formulated them, usually felt a +sense of guilt in challenging their validity. It was in the nineteenth +century that this state of things reached its full development. The sons +of the family were usually able, as they grew up, to escape and elude it, +although they thereby often created an undesirable divorce from the home, +and often suffered, as well as inflicted, much pain in tearing themselves +loose from the spiritual bonds--especially perhaps in matters of +religion--woven by long tradition to bind them to their parents. It was on +the daughters that the chief stress fell. For the working class, indeed, +there was often the possibility of escape into hard labour, if only that +of marriage. But such escape was not possible, immediately or at all, for +a large number. During the nineteenth century many had been so carefully +enclosed in invisible cages, they had been so well drilled in the +reticences and the duties and the subserviences that their parents +silently demanded of them, that we can never know all the tragedies that +took place. In exceptional cases, indeed, they gave a sign. When they +possessed unusual power of intellect, or unusual power of character and +will, they succeeded in breaking loose from their cages, or at least in +giving expression to themselves. This is seen in the stories of nearly all +the women eminent in life and literature during the nineteenth century, +from the days of Mary Wollstonecraft onwards. The Brontes, almost, yet not +quite, strangled by the fetters placed upon them by their stern and +narrow-minded father, and enabled to attain the full stature of their +genius only by that brief sojourn in Brussels, are representative. +Elizabeth Barrett, chained to a couch of invalidism under the eyes of an +imperiously affectionate father until with Robert Browning's aid she +secretly eloped into the open air of freedom and health, and so attained +complete literary expression, is a typical figure. It is only because we +recognise that she is a typical figure among the women who attained +distinction that we are able to guess at the vast number of mute +inglorious Elizabeth Barretts who were never able to escape by their own +efforts and never found a Browning to aid them to escape. + +It is sometimes said that those days are long past and that young women, +in all the countries which we are pleased to called civilised, are now +emancipated, indeed, rather too much emancipated. Critics come forward to +complain of their undue freedom, of their irreverent familiarity to their +parents, of their language, of their habits. But there were critics who +said the very same things, in almost the same words, of the grandmothers +of these girls! These incompetent critics are as ignorant of the social +history of the past as they are of the social significance of the history +of the present. We read in _Once a Week_ of sixty years ago (10th August, +1861), the very period when the domestic conditions of girls were the most +oppressive in the sense here understood, that these same critics were +about at that time, and as shocked as they are now at "the young ladies +who talk of 'awful swells' and 'deuced bores,' who smoke and venture upon +free discourse, and try to be like men." The writer of this anonymous +article, who was really (I judge from internal evidence) so distinguished +and so serious a woman as Harriet Martineau, duly snubs these critics, +pointing out that such accusations are at least as old as Addison and +Horace Walpole; she remarks that there have no doubt been so-called "fast +young ladies" in every age, "varying their doings and sayings according to +the fopperies of the time." The question, as she pertinently concludes is, +as indeed it still remains to-day: "Have we more than the average +proportion? I do not know." Nor to-day do we know. + +But while to-day, as ever before, we have a certain proportion of these +emancipated girls, and while to-day, as perhaps never before, we are able +to understand that they have an element of reason on their side, it would +be a mistake to suppose that they are more than exceptions. The majority +are unable, and not even anxious, to attain this light-hearted social +emancipation. For the majority, even though they are workers, the +anciently subtle ties of the home are still, as they should be, an element +of natural piety, and, also, as they should not be, clinging fetters which +impede individuality and destroy personal initiative. + +We all know so many happy homes beneath whose calm surface this process +is working out. The parents are deeply attached to their children, who +still remain children to them even when they are grown up. They wish to +guide them and mould them and cherish them, to protect them from the +world, to enjoy their society and their aid, and they expect that their +children shall continue indefinitely to remain children. The children, on +their side, remain and always will remain, tenderly attached to their +parents, and it would really pain them to feel that they are harbouring +any unwillingness to stay in the home even after they have grown up, so +long as their parents need their attention. It is, of course, the +daughters who are thus expected to remain in the home and who feel this +compunction about leaving it. It seems to us--although, as we have seen, +so unlike the attitude of former days--a natural, beautiful, and rightful +feeling on both sides. + +Yet, in the result, all sorts of evils tend to ensue. The parents often +take as their moral right the services which should only be accepted, if +accepted at all, as the offering of love and gratitude, and even reach a +degree of domineering selfishness in which they refuse to believe that +their children have any adult rights of their own, absorbing and drying up +that physical and spiritual life-blood of their offspring which it is the +parents' part in Nature to feed. If the children are willing there is +nothing to mitigate this process; if they are unwilling the result is +often a disastrous conflict. Their time and energy are not their own; +their tastes are criticised and so far as possible crushed; their +political ideas, if they have any, are treated as pernicious; and--which +is often on both sides the most painful of all--differences in religious +belief lead to bitter controversy and humiliating recrimination. Such +differences in outlook between youth and age are natural and inevitable +and right. The parents themselves, though they may have forgotten it, +often in youth similarly revolted against the cherished doctrines of their +own parents; it has ever been so, the only difference being that to-day, +probably, the opportunities for variation are greater. So it comes about +that what James Hinton said half a century ago is often true to-day: "Our +happy Christian homes are the real dark places of the earth." + +It is evident that the problem of the relation of the child to the parent +is still incompletely solved even in what we consider our highest +civilisation. There is here needed an art in which those who have to +exercise it can scarcely possess all the necessary skill and experience. +Among trees and birds and beasts the art is surer because it is exercised +unconsciously, on the foundation of a large tradition in which failure +meant death. In the common procreative profusion of those forms of life +the frequent death of the young was a matter of little concern, but +biologically there was never any sacrifice of the offspring to the +well-being of the parents. Whenever sacrifice is called for it is the +parents who are sacrificed to their offspring. In our superior human +civilisation, in which quantity ever tends to give place to quality, the +higher value of the individual involves an effort to avoid sacrifice which +sometimes proves worse than abortive. An avian philosopher would be +unlikely to feel called upon to denounce nests as the dark places of the +earth, and in laying down our human moral laws we have always to be aware +of forgetting the fundamental biological relationship of parent and child +to which all such moral laws must conform. To some would-be parents that +necessity may seem hard. In such a case it is well for them to remember +that there is no need to become parents and that we live in an age when it +is not difficult to avoid becoming a parent. The world is not dying for +lack of parents. On the contrary we have far too many of them--ignorant +parents, silly parents, unwilling parents, undesirable parents--and those +who aspire to the high dignity of creating the future race, let them be as +few as they will--and perhaps at the present time the fewer the +better--must not refuse the responsibilities of that position, its pains +as well as its joys. + +In our human world, as we know, the moral duties laid upon us--the duties +in which, if we fail, we become outcasts in our own eyes or in those of +others or in both--are of three kinds: the duties to oneself, the duties +to the small circle of those we love, and the duties to the larger circle +of mankind to which ultimately we belong, since out of it we proceed, and +to it we owe all that we are. There are no maxims, there is only an art +and a difficult art, to harmonise duties which must often conflict. We +have to be true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. To that extent +George Eliot's Maggie Tulliver was undoubtedly right. But the renunciation +of the Self is not the routine solution of every conflict, any more than +is the absolute failure to renounce. In a certain sense the duty towards +the self comes before all others, because it is the condition on which +duties towards others possess any significance and worth. In that sense, +it is true according to the familiar saying of Shakespeare,--though it was +only Polonius, the man of maxims, who voiced it,--that one cannot be true +to others unless one is first true to oneself, and that one can know +nothing of giving aught that is worthy to give unless one also knows how +to take. + +We see that the problem of the place of parents in life, after their +function of parenthood has been adequately fulfilled, a problem which +offers no difficulties among most forms of life, has been found hard to +solve by Man. At some places and periods it has been considered most +merciful to put them, to death; at others they have been almost or quite +deified and allowed to regulate the whole lives of their descendants. Thus +in New Caledonia aged parents, it is said by Mrs. Hadfield, were formerly +taken up to a high mountain and left with enough food to last a few days; +there was at the same time great regard for the aged, as also among the +Hottentots who asked: "Can you see a parent or a relative shaking and +freezing under a cold, dreary, heavy, useless old age, and not think, in +pity of them, of putting an end to their misery?" It was generally the +opinion of the parents themselves, but in some countries the parents have +dominated and overawed their children to the time of their natural death +and even beyond, up to the point of ancestor worship, as in China, where +no man of any age can act for himself in the chief matters of life during +his parents' life-time, and to some extent in ancient Rome, whence an +influence in this direction which still exists in the laws and customs of +France.[4] Both extremes have proved compatible with a beautifully human +life. To steer midway between them seems to-day, however, the wisest +course. There ought to be no reason, and under happy conditions there is +no reason, why the relationship between parent and child, as one of mutual +affection and care, should ever cease to exist. But that the relationship +should continue to exist as a tie is unnatural and tends to be harmful. At +a certain stage in the development of the child the physical tie with the +parent is severed, and the umbilical cord cut. At a later stage in +development, when puberty is attained and adolescence is feeling its way +towards a complete adult maturity, the spiritual tie must be severed. It +is absolutely essential that the young spirit should begin to essay its +own wings. If its energy is not equal to this adventure, then it is the +part of a truly loving parent to push it over the edge of the nest. Of +course there are dangers and risks. But the worst dangers and risks come +of the failure to adventure, of the refusal to face the tasks of the world +and to assume the full function of life. All that Freud has told of the +paralysing and maiming influence of infantile arrest or regression is here +profitable to consider. In order, moreover, that the relationship between +parents and children may retain its early beauty and love, it is essential +that it shall adapt itself to adult conditions and the absence of ties so +rendered necessary. Otherwise there is little likelihood of anything but +friction and pain on one side or the other, and perhaps on both sides. + +[4] The varying customs of different peoples in this matter are set +forth by Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, +Ch. XXV. + +The parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equal +importance that they should train themselves. It is desirable that +children, as they grow up, should be alive to this necessity, and +consciously assist in the process, since they are in closer touch with a +new world of activities to which their more lethargic parents are often +blind and deaf. For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh +education, and there is no stage for which so little educational +preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period. Yet at +no time--especially in women, who present all the various stages of the +sexual life in so emphatic a form--would education be more valuable. The +great burden of reproduction, with all its absorbing responsibilities, has +suddenly been lifted; at the same time the perpetually recurring rhythm of +physical sex manifestations, so often disturbing in its effect, finally +ceases; with that cessation, very often, after a brief period of +perturbation, there is an increase both in physical and mental energy. +Yet, too often, all that one can see is that a vacuum has been created, +and that there is nothing to fill it. The result is that the mother--for +it is most often of the mother that complaint is made--devotes her own new +found energies to the never-ending task of hampering and crushing her +children's developing energies. How many mothers there are who bring to +our minds that ancient and almost inspired statement concerning those for +whom "Satan finds some mischief still"! They are wasting, worse than +wasting, energies that might be profitably applied to all sorts of social +service in the world. There is nothing that is so much needed as the +"maternal in politics," or in all sorts of non-political channels of +social service, and none can be better fitted for such service than those +who have had an actual experience of motherhood and acquired the varied +knowledge that such experience should give. There are numberless other +ways, besides social service, in which mothers who have passed the age of +forty, providing they possess the necessary aptitudes, can more profitably +apply themselves than in hampering, or pampering, their adult children. It +is by wisely cultivating their activities in a larger sphere that women +whose chief duties in the narrower domestic sphere are over may better +ensure their own happiness and the welfare of others than either by +fretting and obstructing, or by worrying over, their own children who are +no longer children. It is quite true that the children may go astray even +when they have ceased to be children. But the time to implant the seeds of +virtue, the time to convey a knowledge of life, was when they were small. +If it was done well, it only remains to exercise faith and trust. If it +was done ill, nothing done later will compensate, for it is merely foolish +for a mother who could not educate her children when they were small to +imagine that she is able to educate them when they are big. + +So it is that the problem of the attitude of the child to its parents +circles round again to that of the parents to the child. The wise parent +realises that childhood is simply a preparation for the free activities of +later life, that the parents exist in order to equip children for life and +not to shelter and protect them from the world into which they must be +cast. Education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be an +inoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment in +knowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life. Beyond that, and no +doubt in the largest part, it is a natural growth and takes place of +itself. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE MEANING OF PURITY + +I + + +We live in a world in which, as we nowadays begin to realise, we find two +antagonistic streams of traditional platitude concerning the question of +sexual purity, both flowing from the far past. + +The people who embody one of these streams of tradition, basing themselves +on old-fashioned physiology, assume, though they may not always assert, +that the sexual products are excretions, to be dealt with summarily like +other excretions. That is an ancient view and it was accepted by such wise +philosophers of old times as Montaigne and Sir Thomas More. It had, +moreover, the hearty support of so eminent a theological authority as +Luther, who on this ground preached early marriage to men and women alike. +It is still a popular view, sometimes expressed in the crudest terms, and +often by people who, not following Luther's example, use it to defend +prostitution, though they generally exclude women from its operation, as a +sex to whom it fails to apply and by whom it is not required. + +But on the other hand we have another stream of platitude. On this side +there is usually little attempt either to deny or to affirm the theory of +the opposing party, though they would contradict its conclusions. Their +theory, if they have one, would usually seem to be that sexual activity is +a response to stimulation from without or from within, so that if there is +no stimulation there will be no sexual manifestation. They would preach, +they tell us, a strenuous ideal; they would set up a wholesome dictate of +hygiene. The formula put forward on this basis usually runs: Continence is +not only harmless but beneficial. It is a formula which, in one form or +another, has received apparently enthusiastic approval in many quarters, +even from distinguished physicians. We need not be surprised. A +proposition so large and general is not easy to deny, and is still more +difficult to reverse; therefore it proves welcome to the +people--especially the people occupying public and professional +positions--who wish to find the path of least resistance, under pressure +of a vigorous section of public opinion. Yet in its vagueness the +proposition is a little disingenuous; it condescends to no definitions and +no qualifications; it fails even to make clear how it is to be reconciled +with any enthusiastic approval of marriage, for if continence is beautiful +how can marriage make it cease to be so? + +Both these streams of feeling, it may be noted, sprang from a common +source far back in the primitive human world. All the emanations of the +human body, all the spontaneous manifestations of its activities, were +mysterious and ominous to early man, pregnant with terror unless met with +immense precautions and surrounded by careful ritual. The manifestations +of sex were the least intelligible and the most spontaneous. Therefore the +things of sex were those that most lent themselves to feelings of horror +and awe, of impurity and of purity. They seemed so highly charged with +magic potency that there were no things that men more sought to avoid, yet +none to which they were impelled to give more thought. The manifold echoes +of that primitive conception of sex, and all the violent reactions that +were thus evolved and eventually bound up with the original impulse, +compose the streams of tradition that feed our modern world in this matter +and determine the ideas of purity that surround us. + +At the present day the crude theory of the sexual impulse held on one +side, and the ignorant rejection of theory altogether on the other side, +are beginning to be seen as both alike unjustified. We begin to find the +grounds for a sounder theory. Not indeed that the problems of sex, which +go so deeply into the whole personal and social life, can ever be settled +exclusively upon physiological grounds. But we have done much to prepare +even the loftiest Building of Love when we have attained a clear view of +its biological basis. + +The progress of chemico-physiological research during recent years has now +brought us to new ground for our building. Indeed the image might well be +changed altogether, and it might be said that science has entirely +transferred the drama of reproduction to a new stage with new actors. +Therewith the immense emphasis placed on excretion, and the inevitable +reaction that emphasis aroused, both alike disappear. The sexual +protagonists are no longer at the surface but within the most secret +recesses of the organism, and they appear to science under the name of +Hormones or Internal Secretions, always at work within and never +themselves condescending to appear at all. Those products of the sexual +glands which in both sexes are cast out of the body, and at an immature +stage of knowledge appeared to be excretions, are of primary reproductive +importance, but, as regards the sexual constitution of the individual, +they are of far less importance than the internal secretions of these very +same glands. It is, however, by no means only the specifically sexual +glands which thus exert a sexual influence within the organism. Other +glands in the brain, the throat, and the abdomen,--such as the thyroid and +the adrenals,--are also elaborating fermentative secretions to throw into +the system. Their mutual play is so elaborate that it is only beginning +to be understood. Some internal secretions stimulate, others inhibit, and +the same secretions may under different conditions do either. This fact is +the source of many degrees and varieties of energy and formative power in +the organism. Taken altogether, the internal secretions are the forces +which build up the man's and woman's distinctively sexual constitution: +the special disposition and growth of hair, the relative development of +breasts and pelvis, the characteristic differences in motor activity, the +varying emotional desires and needs. It is in the complex play of these +secretions that we now seek the explanation of all the peculiarities of +sexual constitution, imperfect or one-sided physical and psychic +development, the various approximations of the male to female bodily and +emotional disposition, of the female to the male, all the numerous +gradations that occur, naturally as we now see, between the complete man +and the complete woman. + +When we turn the light of this new conception on to our old ideas of +purity,--to the virtue or the vice, accordingly as we may have been +pleased to consider it, of sexual abstinence,--we begin to see that those +ideas need radical revision. They appear in a new light, their whole +meaning is changed. No doubt it may be said they never had the validity +they appeared to possess, even when we judge them by the crudest +criterion, that of practice. Thus, while it is the rule for physicians to +proclaim the advantages of sexual continence, there is no good reason to +believe that they have themselves practised it in any eminent degree. A +few years ago an inquiry among thirty-five distinguished physicians, +chiefly German and Russian, showed that they were nearly all of opinion +that continence is harmless, if not beneficial. But Meirowsky found by +inquiry of eighty-six physicians, of much the same nationalities, that +only one had himself been sexually abstinent before marriage. There seem +to be no similar statistics for the English-speaking countries, where +there exists a greater modesty--though not perhaps notably less need for +it--in the making of such confessions. But if we turn to the allied +profession which is strongly on the side of sexual abstinence, we find +that among theological students, as has been shown in the United States, +while prostitution may be infrequent, no temptation is so frequent or so +potent, and in most cases so irresistible, as that to solitary sexual +indulgence. Such is the actual attitude towards the two least ideal forms +of sexual practice--as distinguished from mere theory--on the part of the +two professions which most definitely pronounce in favour of continence. + +It is necessary, however, as will now be clearer, to set our net more +widely. We must take into consideration every form and degree of sexual +manifestation, normal and abnormal, gross and ethereal. When we do this, +even cautiously and without going far afield, sexual abstinence is found +to be singularly elusive. Rohleder, a careful and conscientious +investigator, has asserted that such abstinence, in the true and complete +sense, is absolutely non-existent, the genuine cases in which sexual +phenomena of some kind or other fail to manifest themselves being simply +cases of inborn lack of sexual sensibility. He met, indeed, a few people +who seemed exceptions to the general rule, but, on better knowledge, he +found that he was mistaken, and that so far from being absent in these +people the sexual instinct was present even in its crudest shapes. The +activity of sex is an activity that on the physical side is generated by +the complex mechanism of the ductless glands and displayed in the whole +organism, physical and psychic, of the individual, who cannot abolish that +activity, although to some extent able to regulate the forms in which it +is manifested, so that purity cannot be the abolition or even the +indefinite suspension of sexual manifestations; it must be the wise and +beautiful control of them. + +It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, +and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our +knowledge. + + +II + +We have seen that various popular beliefs and conventional assumptions +concerning the sexual impulse can no longer be maintained. The sexual +activities of the organism are not mere responses to stimulation, absent +if we choose to apply no stimulus, never troubling us if we run away from +them, harmless if we enclose them within a high wall. Nor do they +constitute a mere excretion, or a mere appetite, which we can control by a +crude system of hygiene and dietetics. We better understand the +psycho-sexual constitution if we regard the motive power behind it as a +dynamic energy, produced and maintained by a complex mechanism at certain +inner foci of the body, and realise that whatever periodic explosive +manifestations may take place at the surface, the primary motive source +lies in the intimate recesses of the organism, while the outcome is the +whole physical and spiritual energy of our being under those aspects which +are most forcible and most aspiring and even most ethereal. + +This conception, we find, is now receiving an admirable and beautifully +adequate physical basis in the researches of distinguished physiologists +in various lands concerning the parts played by the ductless glands of the +body, in sensitive equilibrium with each other, pouring out into the +system stimulating and inhibiting hormones, which not only confer on the +man's or woman's body those specific sexual characters which we admire but +at the same time impart the special tone and fibre and polarity of +masculinity or femininity to the psychic disposition. Yet, even before +Brown-Sequard's first epoch-making suggestion had set physiologists to +search for internal secretions, the insight of certain physicians on the +medico-psychological side was independently leading towards the same +dynamic conception. In the middle of the last century Anstie, an acute +London physician, more or less vaguely realised the transformations of +sexual energy into nervous disease and into artistic energy. James Hinton, +whose genius rendered him the precursor of many modern ideas, had +definitely grasped the dynamic nature of sexual activity, and daringly +proposed to utilise it, not only as a solution of the difficulties of the +personal life but for the revolutionary transformation of morality.[5] It +was the wish to group together all the far-flung manifestations of the +inner irresistible process of sexual activity that underlay my own +conception of _auto-erotism_, or the spontaneous erotic impulse which +arises from the organism apart from all definite external stimulation, to +be manifested, or it may be transformed, in mere solitary physical sex +activity, in dreams of the night, in day-dreams, in shapes of literature +and art, in symptoms of nervous disorder such as some forms of hysteria, +and even in the most exalted phases of mystical devotion. Since then, a +more elaborate attempt to develop a similar dynamic conception of sexual +activity has been made by Freud; and the psycho-analysts who have followed +him, or sometimes diverged, have with endless subtlety, and courageous +thoroughness, traced the long and sinuous paths of sexual energy in +personality and in life, indeed in all the main manifestations of human +activity. + +[5] "The man who separated the thought of chastity from Service and made +it revolve round Self," wrote Hinton half a century ago in his +unpublished MSS., "betrayed the human race." "The rule of Self," he +wrote again, "has two forms: Self-indulgence and Self-virtue; and Nature +has two weapons against it: pain and pleasure.... A restraint must +always be put away when another's need can be served by putting it away; +for so is restored to us the force by which Life is made.... How curious +it seems! the true evil things are our _good_ things. Our thoughts of +duty and goodness and chastity, those are the things that need to be +altered and put aside; these are the barriers to true goodness.... I +foresee the positive denial of _all_ positive morals, the removal of +_all_ restrictions. I feel I do not know what 'license,' as we should +term it, may not truly belong to the perfect state of Man. When there is +no self surely there is no restriction; as we see there is none in +Nature.... May we not say of marriage as St. Augustine said of God: +'Rather would I, not finding, find Thee, than finding, not find +Thee'?... 'Because we like' is the sole legitimate and perfect motive of +human action.... If this is what Nature affirms then it will be what I +believe." This dynamic conception of the sexual impulse, as a force +that, under natural conditions, may be trusted to build up a new +morality, obviously belongs to an indefinitely remote future. It is a +force whose blade is two-edged, for while it strikes at unselfishness it +also strikes at selfishness, and at present we cannot easily conceive a +time when "there is no self"; we should be more disposed to regard it as +a time when there is much humbug. Yet for the individual this conception +of the constructive power of love retains much enlightenment and +inspiration. + +It is important for us to note about this dynamic sexual energy in the +constitution that while it is very firmly and organically rooted, and +quite indestructible, it assumes very various shapes. On the physical side +all the characters of sexual distinction and all the beauties of sexual +adornment are wrought by the power furnished by the co-operating furnaces +of the glands, and so also, on the psychic side, are emotions and impulses +which range from the simplest longings for sensual contact to the most +exalted rapture of union with the Infinite. Moreover, there is a certain +degree of correlation between the physical and the psychic manifestation +of sexual energy, and, to some extent, transformation is possible in the +embodiment of that energy. + +A vague belief in the transformation of sexual energy has long been +widespread. It is apparently shown in the idea that continence, as an +economy in the expenditure of sexual force, may be practised to aid the +physical and mental development, while folklore reveals various sayings in +regard to the supposed influence of sexual abstinence in the causation of +insanity. There is a certain underlying basis of reason in such beliefs, +though in an unqualified form they cannot be accepted, for they take no +account of the complexity of the factors involved, of the difficulty and +often impossibility of effecting any complete transformation, either in a +desirable or undesirable direction, and of the serious conflict which the +process often involves. The psycho-analysts have helped us here. Whether +or not we accept their elaborate and often shifting conceptions, they have +emphasised and developed a psychological conception of sexual energy and +its transformations, before only vaguely apprehended, which is now seen to +harmonise with the modern physiological view. + +The old notion that sexual activity is merely a matter of the voluntary +exercise, or abstinence from exercise, of the reproductive functions of +adult persons has too long obstructed any clear vision of the fact that +sexuality, in the wide and deep sense, is independent of the developments +of puberty. This has long been accepted as an occasional and therefore +abnormal fact, but we have to recognise that it is true, almost or quite +normally, even of early childhood. No doubt we must here extend the word +"sexuality"[6]--in what may well be considered an illegitimate way--to +cover manifestations which in the usual sense are not sexual or are at +most called "sexual perversions." But this extension has a certain +justification in view of the fact that these manifestations can be seen to +be definitely related to the ordinary adult forms of sexuality. However +we define it, we have to recognise that the child takes the same kind of +pleasure in those functions which are natural to his age as the adult is +capable of taking in localised sexual functions, that he may weave ideas +around such functions, sometimes cultivate their exercise from love of +luxury, make them the basis of day-dreams which at puberty, when the +ideals of adult life are ready to capture his sexual energy, he begins to +grow ashamed of. + +[6] Perhaps, as applied to the period below puberty, it would be more +exact to say "pseudo-sexuality." Matsumato has lately pointed out the +significance of the fact that the interstitial testicular tissue, +essential to the hormonic function of the testes, only becomes active at +puberty. + +At this stage, indeed, we reach a crucial point, though it has usually +been overlooked, in the lives of boys and girls, more especially those +whose heredity may have been a little tainted or their upbringing a little +twisted. For it is here that the transformation of energy and the +resulting possibilities of conflict are wont to enter. In the harmoniously +developing organism, one may say, there is at this period a gradual and +easy transmutation of the childish pleasurable activities into adult +activities, accompanied perhaps by a feeling of shame for the earlier +feelings, though this quickly passes into a forgetfulness which often +leads the adult far astray when he attempts to understand the psychic life +of the child. The childish manifestations, it must be remarked, are not +necessarily unwholesome; they probably perform a valuable function and +develop budding sexual emotions, just as the petals of flowers are +developed in pale and contorted shapes beneath the enveloping sheaths. + +But in our human life the transmutation is often not so easy as in +flowers. Normally, indeed, the adolescent transformations of sex are so +urgent and so manifold--now definite sensual desire, now muscular impulses +of adventure, now emotional aspirations in the sphere of art or +religion--that they easily overwhelm and absorb all its vaguer and more +twisted manifestations in childhood. Yet it may happen that by some +aberration of internal development or of external influence this +conversion of energy may at one point or another fail to be completely +effected. Then some fragment of infantile sexuality survives, in rare +cases to turn all the adult faculties to its service and become reckless +and triumphant, in minor and more frequent cases to be subordinated and +more or less repressed into the subconscious sphere by voluntary or even +involuntary and unconscious effort. Then we may have conflict, which, when +it works happily, exerts a fortifying and ennobling influence on +character, when more unhappily a disturbing influence which may even lead +to conditions of definite nervous disorder. + +The process by which this fundamental sexual energy is elevated from +elementary and primitive forms into complex and developed forms is termed +sublimation, a term, originally used for the process of raising by heat a +solid substance to the state of vapour, which was applied even by such +early writers as Drayton and Davies in a metaphorical and spiritual +sense.[7] In the sexual sphere sublimation is of vital importance because +it comes into question throughout the whole of life, and our relation to +it must intimately affect our conception of morality. The element of +athletic asceticism which is a part of all virility, and is found +even--indeed often in a high degree--among savages, has its main moral +justification as one aid to sublimation. Throughout life sublimation acts +by transforming some part at all events of the creative sexual energy from +its elementary animal manifestations into more highly individual and +social manifestations, or at all events into finer forms of sexual +activity, forms that seem to us more beautiful and satisfy us more widely. +Purity, we thus come to see is, in one aspect, the action of sublimation, +not abolishing sexual activity, but lifting it into forms of which our +best judgment may approve. + +[7] We may gather the history of the term from the _Oxford Dictionary_. +Bodies, said Davies, are transformed to spirit "by sublimation strange," +and Ben Jonson in _Cynthia's Revels_ spoke of a being "sublimated and +refined"; Purchas and Jackson, early in the same seventeenth century, +referred to religion as "sublimating" human nature, and Jeremy Taylor, a +little later, to "subliming" marriage into a sacrament; Shaftesbury, +early in the eighteenth century, spoke of human nature being "sublimated +by a sort of spiritual chemists" and Welton, a little later, of "a love +sublimate and refined," while, finally, and altogether in our modern +sense, Peacock in 1816 in his _Headlong Hall_ referred to "that +enthusiastic sublimation which is the source of greatness and energy." + +We must not suppose--as is too often assumed--that sublimation can be +carried out easily, completely, or even with unmixed advantage. If it were +so, certainly the old-fashioned moralist would be confronted by few +difficulties, but we have ample reason to believe that it is not so. It is +with sexual energy, well observes Freud, who yet attaches great importance +to sublimation, as it is with heat in our machines: only a certain +proportion can be transformed into work. Or, as it is put by Loewenfeld, +who is not a constructive philosopher but a careful and cautious medical +investigator, the advantages of sublimation are not received in specially +high degree by those who permanently deny to their sexual impulse every +natural direct relief. The celibate Catholic clergy, notwithstanding their +heroic achievements in individual cases, can scarcely be said to display a +conspicuous excess of intellectual energy, on the whole, over the +non-celibate Protestant clergy; or, if we compare the English clergy +before and after the Protestant Reformation, though the earlier period may +reveal more daring and brilliant personages, the whole intellectual output +of the later Church may claim comparison with that of the earlier Church. +There are clearly other factors at work besides sublimation, and even +sublimation may act most potently, not when the sexual activities sink or +are driven into a tame and monotonous subordination, but rather when they +assume a splendid energy which surges into many channels. Yet sublimation +is a very real influence, not only in its more unconscious and profound +operations, but in its more immediate and temporary applications, as part +of an athletic discipline, acting best perhaps when it acts most +automatically, to utilise the motor energy of the organism in the +attainment of any high physical or psychic achievement. + +We have to realise, however, that these transmutations do not only take +place by way of a sublimation of sexual energy, but also by way of a +degradation of that energy. The new form of energy produced, that is to +say, may not be of a beneficial kind; it may be of a mischievous kind, a +form of perversion or disease. Sexual self-denial, instead of leading to +sublimation, may lead to nervous disorder when the erotic tension, failing +to find a natural outlet and not sublimated to higher erotic or non-erotic +ends in the real world, is transmuted into an unreal dreamland, thus +undergoing what Jung terms introversion; while there are also the people +already referred to, in whom immature childish sexuality persists into an +adult stage of development it is no longer altogether in accord with, so +that conflict, with various possible trains of nervous symptoms, may +result. Disturbances and conflicts in the emotional sexual field may, we +know, in these and similar ways become transformed into physical symptoms +of disorder which can be seen to have a precise symbolic relationship to +definite events in the patient's emotional history, while fits of nervous +terror, or anxiety-neurosis, may frequently be regarded as a degradation +of thwarted or disturbed sexual energy, manifesting its origin by +presenting a picture of sexual excitation transposed into a non-sexual +shape of an entirely useless or mischievous character. + +Thus, to sum up, we may say that the sexual energy of the organism is a +mighty force, automatically generated throughout life. Under healthy +conditions that force is transmuted in more or less degree, but never +entirely, into forms that further the development of the individual and +the general ends of life. These transformations are to some extent +automatic, to some extent within the control of personal guidance. But +there are limits to such guidance, for the primitive human personality can +never be altogether rendered an artificial creature of civilisation. When +these limits are reached the transmutation of sexual energy may become +useless or even dangerous, and we fail to attain the exquisite flower of +Purity. + + +III + +It may seem that in setting forth the nature of the sexual impulse in the +light of modern biology and psychology, I have said but little of purity +and less of morality. Yet that is as it should be. We must first be +content to see how the machine works and watch the wheels go round. We +must understand before we can pretend to control; in the natural world, as +Bacon long ago said, we can only command by obeying. Moreover, in this +field Nature's order is far older and more firmly established than our +civilised human morality. In our arrogance we often assume that Morality +is the master of Nature. Yet except when it is so elementary or +fundamental as to be part of Nature, it is but a guide, and a guide that +is only a child, so young, so capricious, that in every age its wayward +hand has sought to pull Nature in a different direction. Even only in +order to guide we must first see and know. + +We realise that never more than when we observe the distinction which +conventional sex-morals so often makes between men and women. Failing to +find in women exactly the same kind of sexual emotions, as they find in +themselves, men have concluded that there are none there at all. So man +has regarded himself as the sexual animal, and woman as either the passive +object of his adoring love or the helpless victim of his degrading lust, +in either case as a being who, unlike man, possessed an innocent "purity" +by nature, without any need for the trouble of acquiring it. Of woman as a +real human being, with sexual needs and sexual responsibilities, morality +has often known nothing. It has been content to preach restraint to man, +an abstract and meaningless restraint even if it were possible. But when +we have regard to the actual facts of life, we can no longer place virtue +in a vacuum. Women are just as apt as men to be afflicted by the petty +jealousies and narrownesses of the crude sexual impulse; women just as +much as men need the perpetual sublimation of erotic desire into forms of +more sincere purity, of larger harmony, in gaining which ends all the +essential ends of morality are alone gained. The delicate adjustment of +the needs of each sex to the needs of the other sex to the end of what +Chaucer called fine loving, the adjustment of the needs of both sexes to +the larger ends of fine living, may well furnish a perpetual moral +discipline which extends its fortifying influence to men and women alike. + +It is this universality of sexual emotion, blending in its own mighty +stream, as is now realised, many other currents of emotion, even the +parental and the filial, and traceable even in childhood,--the wide +efflorescence of an energy constantly generated by a vital internal +mechanism,--which renders vain all attempts either to suppress or to +ignore the problem of sex, however immensely urgent we might foolishly +imagine such attempts to be. Even the history of the early Christian +ascetics in Egypt, as recorded in the contemporary _Paradise_ of +Palladius, illustrates the futility of seeking to quench the unquenchable, +the flame of fire which is life itself. These "athletes of the Lord" were +under the best possible conditions for the conquest of lust; they had been +driven into the solitude of the desert by a genuine deeply-felt impulse, +they could regulate their lives as they would, and they possessed an +almost inconceivable energy of resolution. They were prepared to live on +herbs, even to eat grass, and to undertake any labour of self-denial. They +were so scrupulous that we hear of a holy man who would even efface a +woman's footprints in the sand lest a brother might thereby be led into +thoughts of evil. Yet they were perpetually tempted to seductive visions +and desires, even after a monastic life of forty years, and the women seem +to have been not less liable to yield to temptation than the men. + +It may be noted that in the most perfect saints there has not always been +a complete suppression of the sexual impulse even on the normal plane, nor +even, in some cases, the attempt at such complete suppression. In the +early days of Christianity the exercise of chastity was frequently +combined with a close and romantic intimacy of affection between the +sexes which shocked austere moralists. Even in the eleventh century we +find that the charming and saintly Robert of Arbrissel, founder of the +order of Fontevrault, would often sleep with his nuns, notwithstanding the +remonstrances of pious friends who thought he was displaying too heroic a +manifestation of continence, failing to understand that he was effecting a +sweet compromise with continence. If, moreover, we consider the rarest and +finest of the saints we usually find that in their early lives there was a +period of full expansion of the organic activities in which all the +natural impulses had full play. This was the case with the two greatest +and most influential saints of the Christian Church, St. Augustine and St. +Francis of Assisi, absolutely unlike as they were in most other respects. +Sublimation, we see again and again, is limited, and the best developments +of the spiritual life are not likely to come about by the rigid attempt to +obtain a complete transmutation of sexual energy. + +The old notion that any strict attempt to adhere to sexual abstinence is +beset by terrible risks, insanity and so forth, has no foundation, at all +events where we are concerned with reasonably sound and healthy people. +But it is a very serious error to suppose that the effort to achieve +complete and prolonged sexual abstinence is without any bad results at +all, physical or psychic, either in men or women who are normal and +healthy. This is now generally recognised everywhere, except in the +English-speaking countries, where the supposed interests of a prudish +morality often lead to a refusal to look facts in the face. As Professor +Naecke, a careful and cautious physician, stated shortly before his death, +a few years ago, the opinion that sexual abstinence has no bad effects is +not to-day held by a single authority on questions of sex; the fight is +only concerned with the nature and degree of the bad effects which, in +Naecke's belief--and he was doubtless right--are never of a gravely serious +character. + +Yet we have also to remember that not only, as we have seen, is the effort +to achieve complete abstinence--which we ignorantly term "purity"--futile, +since we are concerned with a force which is being constantly generated +within the organism, but in the effort to achieve it we are abusing a +great source of beneficent energy. We lose more than half of what we might +gain when we cover it up, and try to push it back, to produce, it may be, +not harmonious activity in the world, but merely internal confusion and +distortion, and perhaps the paralysis of half the soul's energy. The +sexual activities of the organism, we cannot too often repeat, constitute +a mighty source of energy which we can never altogether repress though by +wise guidance we may render it an aid not only to personal development +and well-being but to the moral betterment of the world. The attraction of +sex, according to a superstition which reaches far back into antiquity, is +a baleful comet pointing to destruction, rather than a mighty star to +which we may harness our chariot. It may certainly be either, and which it +is likely to become depends largely on our knowledge and our power of +self-guidance. + +In old days when, as we have seen, tradition, aided by the most fantastic +superstitions, insisted on the baleful aspects of sex, the whole emphasis +was placed against passion. Since knowledge and self-guidance, without +which passion is likely to be in fact pernicious, were then usually +absent, the emphasis was needed, and when Boehme, the old mystic, declared +that the art of living is to "harness our fiery energies to the service of +the light," it has recently been even maintained that he was the solitary +pioneer of our modern doctrines. But the ages in which ill-regulated +passion exceeded--ages at least full of vitality and energy--gave place to +a more anaemic society. To-day the conditions are changed, even reversed. +Moral maxims that were wholesome in feudal days are deadly now. We are in +no danger of suffering from too much vitality, from too much energy in the +explosive splendour of our social life. We possess, moreover, knowledge +in plenty and self-restraint in plenty, even in excess, however wrongly +they may sometimes be applied. It is passion, more passion and fuller, +that we need. The moralist who bans passion is not of our time; his place +these many years is with the dead. For we know what happens in a world +when those who ban passion have triumphed. When Love is suppressed Hate +takes its place. The least regulated orgies of Love grow innocent beside +the orgies of Hate. When nations that might well worship one another cut +one another's throats, when Cruelty and Self-righteousness and Lying and +Injustice and all the Powers of Destruction rule the human heart, the +world is devastated, the fibre of the whole organism, of society grows +flaccid, and all the ideals of civilisation are debased. If the world is +not now sick of Hate we may be sure it never will be; so whatever may +happen to the world let us remember that the individual is still left, to +carry on the tasks of Love, to do good even in an evil world. + +It is more passion and ever more that we need if we are to undo the work +of Hate, if we are to add to the gaiety and splendour of life, to the sum +of human achievement, to the aspiration of human ecstasy. The things that +fill men and women with beauty and exhilaration, and spur them to actions +beyond themselves, are the things that are now needed. The entire +intrinsic purification of the soul, it was held by the great Spanish +Jesuit theologian, Suarez, takes place at the moment when, provided the +soul is of good disposition, it sees God; he meant after death, but for us +the saying is symbolic of the living truth. It is only in the passion of +facing the naked beauty of the world and its naked truth that we can win +intrinsic purity. Not all, indeed, who look upon the face of God can live. +It is not well that they should live. It is only the metals that can be +welded in the fire of passion to finer services that the world needs. It +would be well that the rest should be lost in those flames. That indeed +were a world fit to perish, wherein the moralist had set up the ignoble +maxim: Safety first. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE OBJECTS OF MARRIAGE + + +What are the legitimate objects of marriage? We know that many people seek +to marry for ends that can scarcely be called legitimate, that men may +marry to obtain a cheap domestic drudge or nurse, and that women may marry +to be kept when they are tired of keeping themselves. These objects in +marriage may or may not be moral, but in any case they are scarcely its +legitimate ends. We are here concerned to ascertain those ends of marriage +which are legitimate when we take the highest ground as moral and +civilised men and women living in an advanced state of society and +seeking, if we can, to advance that state of society still further. + +The primary end of marriage is to beget and bear offspring, and to rear +them until they are able to take care of themselves. On that basis Man is +at one with all the mammals and most of the birds. If, indeed, we +disregard the originally less essential part of this end--that is to say, +the care and tending of the young--this end of marriage is not only the +primary but usually the sole end of sexual intercourse in the whole +mammal world. As a natural instinct, its achievement involves +gratification and well-being, but this bait of gratification is merely a +device of Nature's and not in itself an end having any useful function at +the periods when conception is not possible. This is clearly indicated by +the fact that among animals the female only experiences sexual desire at +the season of impregnation, and that desire ceases as soon as impregnation +takes place, though this is only in a few species true of the male, +obviously because, if his sexual desire and aptitude were confined to so +brief a period, the chances of the female meeting the right male at the +right moment would be too seriously diminished; so that the attentive and +inquisitive attitude towards the female by the male animal--which we may +often think we see still traceable in the human species--is not the +outcome of lustfulness for personal gratification ("wantonly to satisfy +carnal lusts and appetites like brute beasts," as the Anglican Prayer Book +incorrectly puts it) but implanted by Nature for the benefit of the female +and the attainment of the primary object of procreation. This primary +object we may term the animal end of marriage. + +This object remains not only the primary but even the sole end of marriage +among the lower races of mankind generally. The erotic idea, in its deeper +sense, that is to say the element of love, arose very slowly in mankind. +It is found, it is true, among some lower races, and it appears that some +tribes possess a word for the joy of love in a purely psychic sense. But +even among European races the evolution was late. The Greek poets, except +the latest, showed little recognition of love as an element of marriage. +Theognis compared marriage with cattle-breeding. The Romans of the +Republic took much the same view. Greeks and Romans alike regarded +breeding as the one recognisable object of marriage; any other object was +mere wantonness and had better, they thought, be carried on outside +marriage. Religion, which preserves so many ancient and primitive +conceptions of life, has consecrated this conception also, and +Christianity--though, as I will point out later, it has tended to enlarge +the conception--at the outset only offered the choice between celibacy on +the one hand and on the other marriage for the production of offspring. + +Yet, from, an early period in human history, a secondary function of +sexual intercourse had been slowly growing up to become one of the great +objects of marriage. Among animals, it may be said, and even sometimes in +man, the sexual impulse, when once aroused, makes but a short and swift +circuit through the brain to reach its consummation. But as the brain and +its faculties develop, powerfully aided indeed by the very difficulties +of the sexual life, the impulse for sexual union has to traverse ever +longer, slower, more painful paths, before it reaches--and sometimes it +never reaches--its ultimate object. This means that sex gradually becomes +intertwined with all the highest and subtlest human emotions and +activities, with the refinements of social intercourse, with high +adventure in every sphere, with art, with religion. The primitive animal +instinct, having the sole end of procreation, becomes on its way to that +end the inspiring stimulus to all those psychic energies which in +civilisation we count most precious. This function is thus, we see, a +by-product. But, as we know, even in our human factories, the by-product +is sometimes more valuable than the product. That is so as regards the +functional products of human evolution. The hand was produced out of the +animal forelimb with the primary end of grasping the things we materially +need, but as a by-product the hand has developed the function of making +and playing the piano and the violin, and that secondary functional +by-product of the hand we account, even as measured by the rough test of +money, more precious, however less materially necessary, than its primary +function. It is, however, only in rare and gifted natures that transformed +sexual energy becomes of supreme value for its own sake without ever +attaining the normal physical outlet. For the most part the by-product +accompanies the product, throughout, thus adding a secondary, yet +peculiarly sacred and specially human, object of marriage to its primary +animal object. This may be termed the spiritual object of marriage. + +By the term "spiritual" we are not to understand any mysterious and +supernatural qualities. It is simply a convenient name, in distinction +from animal, to cover all those higher mental and emotional processes +which in human evolution are ever gaining greater power. It is needless to +enumerate the constituents of this spiritual end of sexual intercourse, +for everyone is entitled to enumerate them differently and in different +order. They include not only all that makes love a gracious and beautiful +erotic art, but the whole element of pleasure in so far as pleasure is +more than a mere animal gratification. Our ancient ascetic traditions +often make us blind to the meaning of pleasure. We see only its +possibilities of evil and not its mightiness for good. We forget that, as +Romain Rolland says, "Joy is as holy as Pain." No one has insisted so much +on the supreme importance of the element of pleasure in the spiritual ends +of sex as James Hinton. Rightly used, he declares, Pleasure is "the Child +of God," to be recognised as a "mighty storehouse of force," and he +pointed out the significant fact that in the course of human progress its +importance increases rather than diminishes.[8] While it is perfectly true +that sexual energy may be in large degree arrested, and transformed into +intellectual and moral forms, yet it is also true that pleasure itself, +and above all, sexual pleasure, wisely used and not abused, may prove the +stimulus and liberator of our finest and most exalted activities. It is +largely this remarkable function of sexual pleasure which is decisive in +settling the argument of those who claim that continence is the only +alternative to the animal end of marriage. That argument ignores the +liberating and harmonising influences, giving wholesome balance and sanity +to the whole organism, imparted by a sexual union which is the outcome of +the psychic as well as physical needs. There is, further, in the +attainment of the spiritual end of marriage, much more than the benefit of +each individual separately. There is, that is to say, the effect on the +union itself. For through harmonious sex relationships a deeper spiritual +unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence in or out of +marriage, and the marriage association becomes an apter instrument in the +service of the world. Apart from any sexual craving, the complete +spiritual contact of two persons who love each other can only be attained +through some act of rare intimacy. No act can be quite so intimate as the +sexual embrace. In its accomplishment, for all who have reached a +reasonably human degree of development, the communion of bodies becomes +the communion of souls. The outward and visible sign has been the +consummation of an inward and spiritual grace. "I would base all my sex +teaching to children and young people on the beauty and sacredness of +sex," wrote a distinguished woman; "sex intercourse is the great sacrament +of life, he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh his +own damnation; but it may be the most beautiful sacrament between two +souls who have no thought of children."[9] To many the idea of a sacrament +seems merely ecclesiastical, but that is a misunderstanding. The word +"sacrament" is the ancient Roman name of a soldier's oath of military +allegiance, and the idea, in the deeper sense, existed long before +Christianity, and has ever been regarded as the physical sign of the +closest possible union with some great spiritual reality. From our modern +standpoint we may say, with James Hinton, that the sexual embrace, +worthily understood, can only be compared with music and with prayer. +"Every true lover," it has been well said by a woman, "knows this, and the +worth of any and every relationship can be judged by its success in +reaching, or failing to reach, this standpoint."[10] + +[8] Mrs. Havelock Ellis, _James Hinton: A Sketch_, Ch. IV. + +[9] Olive Schreiner in a personal letter. + +[10] Mrs. Havelock Ellis, _James Hinton_, p. 180. + +I have mentioned how the Church--in part influenced by that clinging to +primitive conceptions which always marks religions and in part by its +ancient traditions of asceticism--tended to insist mainly, if not +exclusively, on the animal object of marriage. It sought to reduce sex to +a minimum because the pagans magnified sex; it banned pleasure because the +Christian's path on earth was the way of the Cross; and even if +theologians accepted the idea of a "Sacrament of Nature" they could only +allow it to operate when the active interference of the priest was +impossible, though it must in justice be said that, before the Council of +Trent, the Western Church recognised that the sacrament of marriage was +effected entirely by the act of the two celebrants themselves and not by +the priest. Gradually, however, a more reasonable and humane opinion crept +into the Church. Intercourse outside the animal end of marriage was indeed +a sin, but it became merely a venial sin. The great influence of St. +Augustine was on the side of allowing much freedom to intercourse outside +the aim of procreation. At the Reformation, John a Lasco, a Catholic +Bishop who became a Protestant and settled in England, laid it down, +following various earlier theologians, that the object of marriage, +besides offspring, was to serve as a "sacrament of consolation" to the +united couple, and that view was more or less accepted by the founders of +the Protestant churches. It is the generally accepted Protestant view +to-day.[11] The importance of the spiritual end of intercourse in +marriage, alike for the higher development of each member of the couple +and for the intimacy and stability of their union, is still more +emphatically set forth by the more advanced thinkers of to-day. + +[11] It is well set forth by the Rev. H. Northcote in his excellent +book, _Christianity and Sex Problems_. + +There is something pathetic in the spectacle of those among us who are +still only able to recognise the animal end of marriage, and who point to +the example of the lower animals--among whom the biological conditions are +entirely different--as worthy of our imitation. It has taken God--or +Nature, if we will--unknown millions of years of painful struggle to +evolve Man, and to raise the human species above that helpless bondage to +reproduction which marks the lower animals. But on these people it has all +been wasted. They are at the animal stage still. They have yet to learn +the A.B.C. of love. A representative of these people in the person of an +Anglican bishop, the Bishop of Southwark, appeared as a witness before the +National Birth-Rate Commission which, a few years ago, met in London to +investigate the decline of the birth-rate. He declared that procreation is +the sole legitimate object of marriage and that intercourse for any other +end was a degrading act of mere "self-gratification." This declaration +had the interesting result of evoking the comments of many members of the +Commission, formed of representative men and women with various +stand-points--Protestant, Catholic, and other--and it is notable that +while not one identified himself with the Bishop's opinion, several +decisively opposed that opinion, as contrary to the best beliefs of both +ancient and modern times, as representing a low and not a high moral +standpoint, and as involving the notion that the whole sexual activity of +an individual should be reduced to perhaps two or three effective acts of +intercourse in a lifetime. Such a notion obviously cannot be carried into +general practice, putting aside the question as to whether it would be +desirable, and it may be added that it would have the further result of +shutting out from the life of love altogether all those persons who, for +whatever reason, feel that it is their duty to refrain from having +children at all. It is the attitude of a handful of Pharisees seeking to +thrust the bulk of mankind into Hell. All this confusion and evil comes of +the blindness which cannot know that, beyond the primary animal end of +propagation in marriage, there is a secondary but more exalted spiritual +end. + +It is needless to insist how intimately that secondary end of marriage is +bound up with the practice of birth-control. Without birth-control, +indeed, it could frequently have no existence at all, and even at the +best seldom be free from disconcerting possibilities fatal to its very +essence. Against these disconcerting possibilities is often placed, on the +other side, the un-aesthetic nature of the contraceptives associated with +birth-control. Yet, it must be remembered, they are of a part with the +whole of our civilised human life. We at no point enter the spiritual save +through the material. Forel has in this connection compared the use of +contraceptives to the use of eye-glasses. Eye-glasses are equally +un-aesthetic, yet they are devices, based on Nature, wherewith to +supplement the deficiencies of Nature. However in themselves un-aesthetic, +for those who need them they make the aesthetic possible. Eye-glasses and +contraceptives alike are a portal to the spiritual world for many who, +without them, would find that world largely a closed book. + +Birth-control is effecting, and promising to effect, many functions in our +social life. By furnishing the means to limit the size of families, which +would otherwise be excessive, it confers the greatest benefit on the +family and especially on the mother. By rendering easily possible a +selection in parentage and the choice of the right time and circumstances +for conception it is, again, the chief key to the eugenic improvement of +the race. There are many other benefits, as is now generally becoming +clear, which will be derived from the rightly applied practice of +birth-control. To many of us it is not the least of these that +birth-control effects finally the complete liberation of the spiritual +object of marriage. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +HUSBANDS AND WIVES + + +It has always been common to discuss the psychology of women. The +psychology of men has usually been passed over, whether because it is too +simple or too complicated. But the marriage question to-day is much less +the wife-problem than the husband-problem. Women in their personal and +social activities have been slowly expanding along lines which are now +generally accepted. But there has been no marked change of responsive +character in the activities of men. Hence a defective adjustment of men +and women, felt in all sorts of subtle as well as grosser ways, most felt +when they are husband and wife, and sometimes becoming acute. + +It is necessary to make clear that, as is here assumed at the outset, +"man" and "husband" are not quite the same thing, even when they refer to +the same person. No doubt that is also true of "woman" and "wife." A woman +in her quality as woman may be a different kind of person from what she is +in her function as wife. But in the case of a man the distinction is more +marked. One may know a man well in the world as a man and not know him at +all in his home as a husband; not necessarily that he is unfavourably +revealed in the latter capacity. It is simply that he is different. + +The explanation is not really far to seek. A man in the world is in vital +response to the influences around him. But a husband in the home is +playing a part which was created for him long centuries before he was +born. He is falling into a convention, which, indeed, was moulded to fit +many masculine human needs but has become rigidly traditionalised. Thus +the part no longer corresponds accurately to the player's nature nor to +the circumstances under which it has to be played. + +In the marriage system which has prevailed in our world for several +thousand years, a certain hierarchy, or sacred order in authority, has +throughout been recognised. The family has been regarded as a small State +of which the husband and father is head. Classic paganism and Christianity +differed on many points, but they were completely at one on this. The +Roman system was on a patriarchal basis and continued to be so +theoretically even when in practise it came to allow great independence to +the wife. Christianity, although it allowed complete spiritual freedom to +the individual, introduced no fundamentally new theory of the family, and, +indeed, re-inforced the old theory by regarding the family as a little +church of which the husband was the head. Just as Christ is the head of +the Church, St. Paul repeatedly asserted, so the husband is the head of +the wife; therefore, as it was constantly argued during the Middle Ages, a +man is bound to rule his wife. St. Augustine, the most influential of +Christian Fathers, even said that a wife should be proud to consider +herself as the servant of her husband, his _ancilla_, a word that had in +it the suggestion of slave. That was the underlying assumption throughout +the Middle Ages, for the Northern Germanic peoples, having always been +accustomed to wife-purchase before their conversion, had found it quite +easy to assimilate the Christian view. Protestantism, even Puritanism with +its associations of spiritual revolt, so far from modifying the accepted +attitude, strengthened it, for they found authority for all social +organisation in the Bible, and the Bible revealed an emphatic predominance +of the Jewish husband, who possessed essential rights to which the wife +had no claim. Milton, who had the poet's sensitiveness to the loveliness +of woman, and the lonely man's feeling for the solace of her society, was +yet firmly assured of the husband's superiority over his wife. He has +indeed furnished the classical picture of it in Adam and Eve, + + "He for God only, she for God in him," + +and to that God she owed "subjection," even though she might qualify it +by "sweet reluctant amorous delay." This was completely in harmony with +the legal position of the wife. As a subject she was naturally in +subjection; she owed her husband the same loyalty as a subject owes the +sovereign; her disloyalty to him was termed a minor form of treason; if +she murdered him the crime was legally worse than murder and she rendered +herself liable to be burnt. + +We see that all the influences on our civilisation, religious and secular, +southern and northern, have combined to mould the underlying bony +structure of our family system in such a way that, however it may appear +softened and disguised on the surface, the husband is the head and the +wife subject to him. We must not be supposed hereby to deny that the wife +has had much authority, many privileges, considerable freedom, and in +individual cases much opportunity to domineer, whatever superiority custom +or brute strength may have given the husband. There are henpecked +husbands, it has been remarked, even in aboriginal Australia. It is +necessary to avoid the error of those enthusiasts for the emancipation of +women who, out of their eager faith in the future of women, used to +describe her past as one of scarcely mitigated servitude and hardship. If +women had not constantly succeeded in overcoming or eluding the +difficulties that beset them in the past, it would be foolish to cherish +any faith in their future. It must, moreover, be remembered that the very +constitution of that ecclesiastico-feudal hierarchy which made the husband +supreme over the wife, also made the wife jointly with her husband supreme +over their children and over their servants. The Middle Ages, alike in +England and in France, as doubtless in Christendom generally, accepted the +rule laid down in Gratian's _Decretum_, the great mediaeval text-book of +Canon Law, that "the husband may chastise his wife temperately, for she is +of his household," but the wife might chastise her daughters and her +servants, and she sometimes exercised that right in ways that we should +nowadays think scarcely temperate. + +If we seek to observe how the system worked some five hundred years ago +when it had not yet become, as it is to-day, both weakened and disguised, +we cannot do better than turn to the _Paston Letters_, the most +instructive documents we possess concerning the domestic life of excellent +yet fairly average people of the upper middle class in England in the +fifteenth century. Marriage was still frankly and fundamentally (as it was +in the following century and less frankly later) a commercial transaction. +The wooer, when he had a wife in view, stated as a matter of course that +he proposed to "deal" in the matter; it was quite recognised on both sides +that love and courtship must depend on whether the "deal" came off +satisfactorily. John Paston approached Sir Thomas Brews, through a third +person, with a view to negotiate a marriage with his daughter Margery. She +was willing, even eager, and while the matter was still uncertain she +wrote him a letter on Valentine's Day, addressing him as "Right reverent +and worshipful and my right well-beloved Valentine," to tell him that it +was impossible for her father to offer a larger dowry than he had already +promised. "If that you could be content with that good, and my poor +person, I would be the merriest maiden on ground." In his first +letter--boldly written, he says, without her knowledge or license--he +addresses her simply as "Mistress," and assures her that "I am and will be +yours and at your commandment in every wise during my life." A few weeks +later, addressing him as "Right worshipful master," she calls him "mine +own sweetheart," and ends up, as she frequently does, "your servant and +bedeswoman." Some months later, a few weeks after marriage, she addresses +her husband in the correct manner of the time as "Right reverent and +worshipful husband," asking him to buy her a gown as she is weary of +wearing her present one, it is so cumbrous. Five years later she refers to +"all" the babies, and writes in haste: "Right reverent and worshipful Sir, +in my most humble wise I recommend me unto you as lowly as I can," etc., +though she adds in a postscript: "Please you to send for me for I think +long since I lay in your arms." If we turn to another wife of the Paston +family, a little earlier in the century, Margaret Paston, whose husband's +name also was John, we find the same attitude even more distinctly +expressed. She always addressed him in her most familiar letters, showing +affectionate concern for his welfare, as "Right reverent and worshipful +husband" or "Right worshipful master." It is seldom that he writes to her +at all, but when he writes the superscription is simply "To my mistress +Paston," or "my cousin," with little greeting at either beginning or end. +Once only, with unexampled effusion, he writes to her as "My own dear +sovereign lady" and signs himself "Your true and trusting husband."[12] + +[12] We see just the same formulas in the fifteenth century letters of +the Stonor family (_Stonor Letters and Papers_, Camden Society), though +in these letters we seem often to find a lighter and more playful touch +than was common among the Pastons. I may refer here to Dr. Powell's +learned and well written book (with which I was not acquainted when I +wrote this chapter), _English Domestic Relations 1487-1653_ (Columbia +University Press). + +If we turn to France the relation of the wife to her husband was the same, +or even more definitely dependent, for he occupied the place of father to +her as well as of husband and sovereign, in this respect carrying on a +tradition of Roman Law. She was her husband's "wife and subject"; she +signed herself "Vostre humble obeissante fille et amye." If also we turn +to the _Book of the Chevalier de la Tour-Landry_ in Anjou, written at the +end of the fourteenth century, we find a picture of the relations of women +to men in marriage comparable to that presented in the _Paston Letters_, +though of a different order. This book was, as we know, written for the +instruction of his daughters by a Knight who seems to have been a fairly +average man of his time in his beliefs, and in character, as he has been +described, probably above it, "a man of the world, a Christian, a parent, +and a gentleman." His book is full of interesting light on the customs and +manners of his day, though it is mainly a picture of what the writer +thought ought to be rather than what always was. Herein the Knight is +sagacious and moderate, much of his advice is admirably sound for every +age. He is less concerned with affirming the authority of husbands than +with assuring the happiness and well-being of his dearly loved daughters. +But he clearly finds this bound up with the recognition of the authority +of the husband, and the demands he makes are fairly concordant with the +relationships we see established among the Pastons. The Knight abounds in +illustrations, from Lot's daughters down to his own time, for the example +or the warning of his daughters. The ideal he holds up to them is strictly +domestic and in a sense conventional. He puts the matter on practical +rather than religious or legal grounds, and his fundamental assumption is +"that no woman ought ever to thwart or refuse to obey the ordinance of her +lord; that is, if she is either desirous to be mistress of his affections +or to have peace and understanding in the house. For very evident reasons +submission should begin on her part." One would like to know what duties +the Knight inculcated on husbands, but the corresponding book he wrote for +the guidance of his sons appears no longer to be extant. + +On the whole, the fundamental traditions of our western world concerning +the duties of husbands and wives are well summed up in what Pollock and +Maitland term "that curious cabinet of antiquities, the marriage ritual of +the English Church." Here we find that the husband promises to love and +cherish the wife, but she promises not only to love and cherish but also +to obey him, though, it may be noted, this point was not introduced into +English marriage rites until the fourteenth century, when the wife +promised to be "buxom" (which then meant submissive) and "bonair" +(courteous and kind), while in some French and Spanish rites it has never +been introduced at all. But we may take it to be generally implied. In the +final address to the married couple the priest admonishes the bride that +the husband is the head of the wife, and that her part is submission. In +some more ancient and local rituals this point was further driven home, +and on the delivery of the ring the bride knelt and kissed the +bridegroom's right foot. In course of time this was modified, at all +events in France, and she simply dropped the ring, so that her motion of +stooping was regarded as for the purpose of picking it up. I note that +change for it is significant of the ways in which we modify the traditions +of the past, not quite abandoning them but pretending that they have other +than the fundamental original motives. We see just the same thing in the +use of the ring, which was in the first place a part of the bride-price, +frequently accompanied by money, proof that the wife had been duly +purchased. It was thus made easy to regard the ring as really a golden +fetter. That idea soon became offensive, and the new idea was originated +that the ring was a pledge of affection; thus, quite early in some +countries, the husband, also wore a wedding ring. + +The marriage order illustrated by the _Paston Letters_ and the _Book of +the Chevalier de la Tour-Landry_ before the Reformation, and the Anglican +Book of Common Prayer afterwards, has never been definitely broken; it is +a part of our living tradition to-day. But during recent centuries it has +been overlaid by the growth of new fashions and sentiments which have +softened its hard outlines to the view. It has been disguised, notably +during the eighteenth century, by the development of a new feeling of +social equality, chiefly initiated in France, which, in an atmosphere of +public intercourse largely regulated by women, made the ostentatious +assertion of the husband's headship over his wife displeasing and even +ridiculous. Then, especially in the nineteenth century, there began +another movement, chiefly initiated in England and carried further in +America, which affected the foundations of the husband's position from +beneath. This movement consisted in a great number of legislative measures +and judicial pronouncements and administrative orders--each small in +itself and never co-ordinated--which taken altogether have had a +cumulative effect in immensely increasing the rights of the wife +independently of her husband or even in opposition to him. Thus at the +present time the husband's authority has been overlaid by new social +conventions from above and undermined by new legal regulations from below. + +Yet, it is important to realise, although the husband's domestic throne +has been in appearance elegantly re-covered and in substance has become +worm-eaten, it still stands and still retains its ancient shape and +structure. There has never been a French Revolution in the home, and that +Revolution itself, which modified society so extensively, scarcely +modified the legal supremacy of the husband at all, even in France under +the Code Napoleon and still less anywhere else. Interwoven with all the +new developments, and however less obtrusive it may have become, the old +tradition still continues among us. Since, also, the husband is, +conventionally and in large measure really, the economic support of the +home,--the work of the wife and even actual financial contributions +brought by her not being supposed to affect that convention,--this state +of things is held to be justified. + +Thus when a man enters the home as a husband, to seat himself on the +antique domestic throne and to play the part assigned to him of old, he is +involuntarily, even unconsciously, following an ancient tradition and +taking his place in a procession of husbands which began long ages before +he was born. It thus comes about that a man, even after he is married, and +a husband are two different persons, so that his wife who mainly knows him +as a husband may be unable to form any just idea of what he is like as a +man. As a husband he has stepped out of the path that belongs to him in +the world, and taken on another part which has called out altogether +different reactions, so he is sometimes a much more admirable person in +one of these spheres--whichever it may be--than in the other. + +We must not be surprised if the husband's position has sometimes developed +those qualities which from the modern point of view are the less +admirable. In this respect the sovereign husband resembles the Sovereign +State. The Sovereign State, as it has survived from Renaissance days in +our modern world, may be made up of admirable people, yet as a State they +are forced into an attitude of helpless egoism which nowadays fails to +commend itself to the outside world, and the tendency of scientific +jurists to-day is to deal very critically with the old conception of the +Sovereign State. It is so with the husband in the home. He was thrust by +ancient tradition into a position of sovereignty which impelled him to +play a part of helpless egoism. He was a celestial body in the home around +which all the other inmates were revolving satellites. The hours of rising +and retiring, the times of meals and their nature and substance, all the +activities of the household--in which he himself takes little or no +part--are still arranged primarily to suit his work, his play, and his +tastes. This is an accepted matter of course, and not the result of any +violent self-assertion on his part. It is equally an accepted matter of +course that the wife should be constantly occupied in keeping this little +solar system in easy harmonious movement, evolving from it, if she has the +skill, the music of the spheres. She has no recognised independent +personality of her own, nor even any right to go away by herself for a +little change and recreation. Any work of her own, play of her own, +tastes of her own, must be strictly subordinated, if not suppressed +altogether. + +In the old days, from which our domestic traditions proceed, little +hardship was thus inflicted on the wife. Her rights and privileges were, +indeed, far less than those of the modern woman, but for that very reason +the home offered her a larger field; beneath the shelter of her husband +the irresponsible wife might exert a maximum of influential activity with +a minimum of rights and privileges of her own. To many men, even to-day, +that state of things seems the realisation of an ideal. + +Yet to women it seems increasingly less so, and of necessity since the +cleavage between the position of woman in society and law, and the +position of the wife in the sacramental bonds of wedlock, is daily +becoming greater. To-day a woman, who possibly for ten years has been +leading her own life of independent work, earning her own living, choosing +her own conditions in accordance with her own needs, and selecting her own +periods of recreation in accordance with her own tastes, whether or not +this may have included the society of a man-friend--such a woman suddenly +finds on marriage, and without any assertion of authority on her husband's +part, that all the outward circumstances of her life are reversed and all +her inner spontaneous movements arrested. There may be no signs of this +on the surface of her conduct. She loves her husband too much to wish to +hurt his feelings by explaining the situation, and she values domestic +peace too much to risk friction by making unexpected claims. But beneath +the surface there is often a profound discontent, and even in women who +thought they had gained an insight into life, a sense of disillusion. +Everyone knows this who is privileged to catch a glimpse into the hearts +of women--often women of most distinguished intelligence as well as women +of quite ordinary nature--who leave a life of spontaneous activity in the +world to enter the home.[13] + +[13] While this condition of things is sometimes to be found in the more +distinguished minority and in well-to-do families, it is, of course, +among the great labouring majority that it is most conspicuous. Mrs. +Will Crooks, of Poplar, speaking to a newspaper reporter (_Daily +Chronicle_, 17 Feb., 1919), truly remarked: "At present the average +married woman's working day is a flagrant contradiction of all +trade-union ideals. The poor thing is slaving all the time! What she +needs--what she longs for--is just a little break or change now and +again, an opportunity to get her mind off her work and its worries. If +her husband's hours are reduced to eight, well that gives her a chance, +doesn't it? The home and the children are, after all, as much his as +hers. With his enlarged leisure he will now be able to take a fair share +in home duties. I suggest that they take it turn and turn about--one +night he goes out and she looks after the house and the children; the +next night she goes out and he takes charge of things at home. She can +sometimes go to the cinema, sometimes call on friends. Then, say once a +week, they can both go out together, taking the children with them. That +will be a little change and treat for everybody." + +It is not to be supposed that in this presentation of the situation in the +home, as it is to-day visible to those who are privileged to see beneath +the surface, any accusation is brought against the husband. He is no more +guilty of an unreasonable conservatism than the wife is guilty of an +unreasonable radicalism. Each of them is the outcome of a tradition. The +point is that the events of the past hundred years have produced a +discrepancy in the two lines of tradition, with a resultant lack of +harmony, independent of the goodwill of either husband or wife. + +Olive Schreiner, in her _Woman and Labour_, has eloquently set forth the +tendency to parasitism which civilisation produces in women; they no +longer exercise the arts and industries which were theirs in former ages, +and so they become economically dependent on men, losing their energies +and aptitudes, and becoming like those dull parasitic animals which live +as blood-suckers of their host. That picture, which was of course never +true of all women, is now ceasing to be true of any but a negligible +minority; it presents, moreover, a parasitism limited to the economic side +of life. For if the wife has often been a lazy gold-sucking parasite on +her husband in the world, the husband has yet oftener been a helpless +service-absorbing parasite on his wife in the home. There is, that is to +say, not only an economic parasitism, with no adequate return for +financial support, but a still more prevalent domestic parasitism, with an +absorption of services for which no return would be adequate. There are +many helpful husbands in the home, but there are a larger number who are +helpless and have never been trained to be anything else but helpless, +even by their wives, who would often detest a rival in household work and +management. The average husband enjoys the total effect of his home but is +usually unable to contribute any of the details of work and organisation +that make it enjoyable. He cannot keep it in order and cleanliness and +regulated movement, he seldom knows how to buy the things that are needed +for its upkeep, nor how to prepare and cook and present a decent meal; he +cannot even attend to his own domestic needs. It is the wife's consolation +that most husbands are not always at home. + +"In ministering to the wants of the family, the woman has reduced man to a +state of considerable dependency on her in all domestic affairs, just as +she is dependent on him for bodily protection. In the course of ages this +has gone so far as to foster a peculiar helplessness on the part of the +man, which manifests itself in a somewhat childlike reliance of the +husband on the wife. In fact it may be said that the husband is, to all +intents and purposes, incapable of maintaining himself without the aid of +a woman." This passage will probably seem to many readers to apply quite +fairly well to men as they exist to-day in most of those lands which we +consider at the summit of our civilisation. Yet it was not written of +civilisation, or of white men, but of the Bantu tribes of East +Africa,[14] complete Negroes who, while far from being among the lowest +savages, belong to a culture which is only just emerging from cannibalism, +witchcraft, and customary bloodshed. So close a resemblance between the +European husband and the Negro husband significantly suggests how +remarkable has been the arrest of development in the husband's customary +status during a vast period of the world's history. + +[14] Hon. C. Dundas, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. +45, 1915, p. 302. + +It is in the considerable group of couples where the husband's work +separates him but little from the home that the pressure on the wife is +most severe, and without the relief and variety secured by his frequent +absence. She has perhaps led a life of her own before marriage, she knows +how to be economically independent; now they occupy a small dwelling, they +have, maybe, one or two small children, they can only afford one helper in +the work or none at all, and in this busy little hive the husband and wife +are constantly tumbling over each other. It is small wonder if the wife +feels a deep discontent beneath her willing ministrations and misses the +devotion of the lover in the perpetual claims of the husband. + +But the difficulty is not settled if she persuades him to take a room +outside. He is devoted to his wife and his home, with good reason, for the +wife makes the home and he is incapable of making a home. His new +domestic arrangements sink into careless and sordid disorder, and he is +conscious of profound discomfort. His wife soon realises that it is a +choice between his return to the home and complete separation. Most wives +never get even as far as this attempt at solution of the difficulty and +hide their secret discontent. + +This is the situation which to-day is becoming intensified and extended on +a vast scale. The habit and the taste for freedom, adventure, and economic +independence is becoming generated among millions of women who once meekly +trod the ancient beaten paths, and we must not be so foolish as to suppose +that they can suddenly renounce those habits and tastes at the threshold +of marriage. Moreover, it is becoming clear to men and to women alike, and +for the first time, that the world can be remoulded, and that the claims +for better conditions of work, for a higher standard of life, and for the +attainment of leisure, which previously had only feebly been put forward, +may now be asserted drastically. We see therefore to-day a great +revolutionary movement, mainly on the part of men in the world of Labour, +and we see a corresponding movement, however less ostentatious, mainly on +the part of women, in the world of the Home. + +It may seem to some that this new movement of upheaval in the sphere of +the Home is merely destructive. Timid souls have felt the like in every +period of transition, and with as little reason. Just as we realise that +the movement now in progress in the world of Labour for a higher standard +of life and for, as it has been termed, a larger "leisure-ration," +represents a wholesome revolt against the crushing conditions of prolonged +monotonous work--the most deadening of all work--and a real advance +towards those ideals of democracy which are still so remote, so it is with +the movement in the Home. That also is the claim for a new and fairer +allotment of responsibility, of larger opportunities for freedom and +leisure. If in the home the husband is still to be regarded as the +capitalist and the wife as the labourer, then at all events it has to be +recognised that he owes her not only the satisfaction of her physical +needs of food and shelter and clothing, but the opportunity to satisfy the +personal spontaneous claims of her own individual nature. Just as the +readjustment of Labour is really only an approach to the long recognised +ideals of Democracy, so the readjustment of the Home, far from being +subversive or revolutionary, is merely an approximation to the long +recognised ideals of marriage. + +How in practice, one may finally ask, is this readjustment of the home +likely to be carried out? + +In the first place we are justified in believing that in the future home +men will no longer be so helpless, so domestically parasitic, as in the +past. This change is indeed already coming about. It is an inestimable +benefit throughout life for a man to have been forcibly lifted out of the +routine comforts and feminine services of the old-fashioned home and to be +thrown into an alien and solitary environment, face to face with Nature +and the essential domestic human needs (in my own case I owe an +inestimable debt to the chance that thus flung me into the Australian bush +in early life), and one may note that the Great War has had, directly and +indirectly, a remarkable influence in this direction, for it not only +compelled women to exercise many enlarging and fortifying functions +commonly counted as pertaining to men, it also compelled men, deprived of +accustomed feminine services, to develop a new independent ability for +organising domesticity, and that ability, even though it is not +permanently exercised in rendering domestic services, must yet always make +clear the nature of domestic problems and tend to prevent the demand for +unnecessary domestic services. + +But there is another quite different and more general line along which we +may expect this problem to be largely solved. That is by the +simplification and organisation of domestic life. If that process were +carried to the full extent that is now becoming possible a large part of +the problem before us would be at once solved. A great promise for the +future of domestic life is held out by the growing adoption of +birth-control, by which the wife and mother is relieved from that burden +of unduly frequent and unwanted maternity which in the past so often +crushed her vitality and destroyed her freshness. But many minor agencies +are helpful. To supply heat, light, and motive power even to small +households, to replace the wasteful, extravagant, and often inefficient +home-cookery by meals cooked outside, as well as to facilitate the growing +social habit of taking meals in spacious public restaurants, under more +attractive, economical, and wholesome conditions than can usually be +secured within the narrow confines of the home, to contract with specially +trained workers from outside for all those routines of domestic drudgery +which are often so inefficiently and laboriously carried on by the +household-worker, whether mistress or servant, and to seek perpetually by +new devices to simplify, which often means to beautify, all the everyday +processes of life--to effect this in any comprehensive degree is to +transform the home from the intolerable burden it is sometimes felt to be +into a possible haven of peace and joy.[15] The trouble in the past, and +even to-day, has been, not in any difficulty in providing the facilities +but in prevailing people to adopt them. Thus in England, even under the +stress of the Great War, there was among the working population a +considerable disinclination--founded on stupid conservatism and a +meaningless pride--to take advantage of National Kitchens and National +Restaurants, notwithstanding the superiority of the meals in quality, +cheapness, and convenience, to the workers' home meals, so that many of +these establishments, even while still fostered by the Government, had +speedily to close their doors. Ancient traditions, that have now become +not only empty but mischievous, in these matters still fetter the wife +even more than the husband. We cannot regulate even the material side of +life without cultivating that intelligence in the development of which +civilisation so largely consists. + +[15] This aspect of the future of domesticity was often set forth by +Mrs. Havelock Ellis, _The New Horizon in Love and Life_, 1921. + +Intelligence, and even something more than intelligence, is needed along +the third line of progress towards the modernised home. Simplification and +organisation can effect nothing in the desired transformation if they +merely end in themselves. They are only helpful in so far as they +economise energy, offer a more ample leisure, and extend the opportunities +for that play of the intellect, that liberation of the emotions with +accompanying discipline of the primitive instincts, which are needed not +only for the development of civilisation in general, but in particular of +the home. Domineering egotism, the assertion of greedy possessive rights, +are out of place in the modern home. They are just as mischievous when +exhibited by the wife as by the husband. We have seen, as we look back, +the futility in the end of the ancient structure of the home, however +reasonable it was at the beginning, under our different modern social +conditions, and for women to attempt nowadays to reintroduce the same +structure, merely reversed would be not only mischievous but silly. That +spirit of narrow exclusiveness and self centred egoism--even if it were +sometimes an _egoisme a deux_--evoked, half a century ago, the scathing +sarcasm of James Hinton, who never wearied of denouncing the "virtuous and +happy homes" which he saw as "floating blotches of verdure on a sea of +filth." Such outbursts seem extravagant, but they were the extravagance of +an idealist at the vision which, as a physician in touch with realities, +he had, seen beneath the surface of the home. + +It is well to insist on the organisation of the mechanical and material +side of life. Some leaders of women movements feel this so strongly that +they insist on nothing else. In old days it was conventionally supposed +that women's sphere was that of the feelings; the result has been that +women now often take ostentatious pleasure in washing their hands of +feelings and accusing men of "sentiment." But that wrongly debased word +stands for the whole superstructure of life on the basis of material +organisation, for all the finer and higher parts of our nature, for the +greater part of civilisation.[16] The elaboration of the mechanical side +of life by itself may merely serve to speed up the pace of life instead of +expanding leisure, to pile up the weary burden of luxury, and still +further to dissipate the energy of life in petty or frivolous +channels.[17] To bring order into the region of soulless machinery running +at random, to raise the super-structure of a genuinely human civilisation, +is not a task which either men or women can afford to fling contemptuously +to the opposite sex. It concerns them both equally and can only be carried +out by both equally, working side by side in the most intimate spirit of +mutual comprehension, confiding trust, and the goodwill to conquer the +demon of jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of +keeping it alive. + +[16] "The growth of the sentiments," remarks an influential psychologist +of our own time (W. McDougall, _Social Psychology_, p. 160), "is of the +utmost importance for the character and conduct of individuals and of +societies; it is the organisation of the affective and conative life. In +the absence of sentiments our emotional life would be a mere chaos, +without order, consistency, or continuity of any kind; and all our +social relations and conduct, being based on the emotions and their +impulses would be correspondingly chaotic, unpredictable, and +unstable.... Again, our judgments of value and of merit are rooted in +our sentiments; and our moral principles have the same source, for they +are formed by our judgments of moral value." + +[17] The destructive effects of the mechanisation of modern life have +lately been admirably set forth, and with much precise illustration, by +Dr. Austin Freeman, _Social Decay and Regeneration_. + +This task, it may finally be added, is always an adventure. However well +organised the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of +risks. We may smile, therefore, when it is remarked that the future +developments of the home are risky. Birds in the air and fishes in the +sea, quite as much as our own ancestors on the earth, have always found +life full of risks. It was the greatest risk of all when they insisted on +continuing on the old outworn ways and so became extinct. If the home is +an experiment and a risky experiment, one can only say that life is always +like that. We have to see to it that in this central experiment, on which +our happiness so largely depends, all our finest qualities are mobilised. +Even the smallest homes under the new conditions cannot be built to last +with small minds and small hearts. Indeed the discipline of the home +demands not only the best intellectual qualities that are available, but +often involves--and in men as well as in women--a spiritual training fit +to make sweeter and more generous saints than any cloister. The greater +the freedom, the more complete the equality of husband and wife, the +greater the possibilities of discipline and development. In view of the +rigidities and injustices of the law, many couples nowadays dispense with +legal marriage, and form their own private contract; that method has +sometimes proved more favourable to the fidelity and permanence of love +than external compulsion; it assists the husband to remain the lover, and +it is often the lover more than the husband that the modern woman needs; +but it has always to be remembered that in the present condition of law +and social opinion a slur is cast on the children of such unions. No +doubt, however, marriage and the home will undergo modifications, which +will tend to make these ancient institutions a little more flexible and to +permit a greater degree of variation to meet special circumstances. We can +occupy ourselves with no more essential task, whether as regards ourselves +or the race, than to make more beautiful the House of Life for the +dwelling of Love. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE LOVE-RIGHTS OF WOMEN + + +What is the part of woman, one is sometimes asked, in the sex act? Must it +be the wife's concern in the marital embrace to sacrifice her own wishes +from a sense of love and duty towards her husband? Or is the wife entitled +to an equal mutual interest and joy in this act with her husband? It seems +a simple problem. In so fundamental a relationship, which goes back to the +beginning of sex in the dawn of life, it might appear that we could leave +Nature to decide. Yet it is not so. Throughout the history of +civilisation, wherever we can trace the feelings and ideas which have +prevailed on this matter and the resultant conduct, the problem has +existed, often to produce discord, conflict, and misery. The problem still +exists to-day and with as important results as in the past. + +In Nature, before the arrival of Man, it can scarcely be said indeed that +any difficulty existed. It was taken for granted at that time that the +female had both the right to her own body, and the right to a certain +amount of enjoyment in the use of it. It often cost the male a serious +amount of trouble--though he never failed to find it worth while--to +explain to her the point where he may be allowed to come in, and to +persuade her that he can contribute to her enjoyment. So it generally is +throughout Nature, before we reach Man, and, though it is not invariably +obvious, we often find it even among the unlikeliest animals. As is well +known, it is most pronounced among the birds, who have in some species +carried the erotic art,--and the faithful devotion which properly +accompanied the erotic art as being an essential part of it,--to the +highest point. We have here the great natural fact of courtship. +Throughout Nature, wherever we meet with animals of a high type, often +indeed when they are of a lowly type--provided they have not been rendered +unnatural by domestication--every act of sexual union is preceded by a +process of courtship. There is a sound physiological reason for this +courtship, for in the act of wooing and being wooed the psychic excitement +gradually generated in the brains of the two partners acts as a stimulant +to arouse into full activity the mechanism which ensures sexual union and +aids ultimate impregnation. Such courtship is thus a fundamental natural +fact. + +It is as a natural fact that we still find it in full development among a +large number of peoples of the lower races whom we are accustomed to +regard as more primitive than ourselves. New conditions, it is true, soon +enter to complicate the picture presented by savage courtship. The +economic element of bargaining, destined to prove so important, comes in +at an early stage. And among peoples leading a violent life, and +constantly fighting, it has sometimes happened, though not always, that +courtship also has been violent. This is not so frequent as was once +supposed. With better knowledge it was found that the seeming brutality +once thought to take the place of courtship among various peoples in a low +state of culture was really itself courtship, a rough kind of play +agreeable to both parties and not depriving the feminine partner of her +own freedom of choice. This was notably the case as regards so-called +"marriage by capture." While this is sometimes a real capture, it is more +often a mock capture; the lover perhaps pursues the beloved on horseback, +but she is as fleet and as skilful as he is, cannot be captured unless she +wishes to be captured, and in addition, as among the Kirghiz, she may be +armed with a formidable whip; so that "marriage by capture," far from +being a hardship imposed on women is largely a concession to their modesty +and a gratification of their erotic impulses. Even when the chief part of +the decision rests with masculine force courtship is still not necessarily +or usually excluded, for the exhibition of force by a lover,--and this is +true for civilised as well as for savage women,--is itself a source of +pleasurable stimulation, and when that is so the essence of courtship may +be attained even more successfully by the forceful than by the humble +lover. + +The evolution of society, however, tended to overlay and sometimes even to +suppress those fundamental natural tendencies. The position of the man as +the sole and uncontested head of the family, the insistence on paternity +and male descent, the accompanying economic developments, and the tendency +to view a woman less as a self-disposing individual than as an object of +barter belonging to her father, the consequent rigidity of the marriage +bond and the stern insistence on wifely fidelity--all these conditions of +developing civilisation, while still leaving courtship possible, +diminished its significance and even abolished its necessity. Moreover, on +the basis of the social, economic, and legal developments thus +established, new moral, spiritual, and religious forces were slowly +generated, which worked on these rules of merely exterior order, and +interiorised them, thus giving them power over the souls as well as over +the bodies of women. + +The result was that, directly and indirectly, the legal, economic, and +erotic rights of women were all diminished. It is with the erotic rights +only that we are here concerned. + +No doubt in its erotic aspects, as well as in its legal and economic +aspects, the social order thus established was described, and in good +faith, as beneficial to women, and even as maintained in their interests. +Monogamy and the home, it was claimed, alike existed for the benefit and +protection of women. It was not so often explained that they greatly +benefited and protected men, with, moreover, this additional advantage +that while women were absolutely confined to the home, men were free to +exercise their activities outside the home, even, with tacit general +consent, on the erotic side. + +Whatever the real benefits, and there is no occasion for questioning them, +of the sexual order thus established, it becomes clear that in certain +important respects it had an unnatural and repressive influence on the +erotic aspect of woman's sexual life. It fostered the reproductive side of +woman's sexual life, but it rendered difficult for her the satisfaction of +the instinct for that courtship which is the natural preliminary of +reproductive activity, an instinct even more highly developed in the +female than in the male, and the more insistent because in the order of +Nature the burden of maternity is preceded by the reward of pleasure. But +the marriage order which had become established led to the indirect +result of banning pleasure in women, or at all events in wives. It was +regarded as too dangerous, and even as degrading. The women who wanted +pleasure were not considered fit for the home, but more suited to be +devoted to an exclusive "life of pleasure," which soon turned out to be +not their own pleasure but men's. A "life of pleasure," in that sense or +in any other sense, was not what more than a small minority of women ever +desired. The desire of women for courtship is not a thing by itself, and +was not implanted for gratification by itself. It is naturally +intertwined--and to a much greater degree than the corresponding desire in +men--with her deepest personal, family, and social instincts, so that if +these are desecrated and lost its charm soon fades. + +The practices and the ideals of this established morality were both due to +men, and both were so thoroughly fashioned that they subjugated alike the +actions and the feelings of women. There is no sphere which we regard as +so peculiarly women's sphere as that of love. Yet there is no sphere which +in civilisation women have so far had so small a part in regulating. Their +deepest impulses--their modesty, their maternity, their devotion, their +emotional receptivity--were used, with no conscious and deliberate +Machiavellism, against themselves, to mould a moral world for their +habitation which they would not themselves have moulded. It is not of +modern creation, nor by any means due, as some have supposed, to the +asceticism of Christianity, however much Christianity may have reinforced +it. Indeed one may say that in course of time Christianity had an +influence in weakening it, for Christianity discovered a new reservoir of +tender emotion, and such emotion may be transferred, and, as a matter of +fact, was transferred, from its first religious channel into erotic +channels which were thereby deepened and extended, and without reference +to any design of Christianity. For the ends we achieve are often by no +means those which we set out to accomplish. In ancient classic days this +moral order was even more severely established than in the Middle Ages. +Montaigne, in the sixteenth century, declared that "marriage is a devout +and religious relationship, the pleasures derived from it should be +restrained and serious, mixed with some severity." But in this matter he +was not merely expressing the Christian standpoint but even more that of +paganism, and he thoroughly agreed with the old Greek moralist that a man +should approach his wife "prudently and severely" for fear of inciting her +to lasciviousness; he thought that marriage was best arranged by a third +party, and was inclined to think, with the ancients, that women are not +fitted to make friends of. Montaigne has elsewhere spoken with insight of +women's instinctive knowledge of the art and discipline of love and has +pointed out how men have imposed their own ideals and rules of action on +women from whom they have demanded opposite and contradictory virtues; +yet, we see, he approves of this state of things and never suggests that +women have any right to opinions of their own or feelings of their own +when the sacred institution of marriage is in question. + +Montaigne represents the more exalted aspects of the Pagan-Christian +conception of morality in marriage which still largely prevails. But that +conception lent itself to deductions, frankly accepted even by Montaigne +himself, which were by no means exalted. "I find," said Montaigne, "that +Venus, after all, is nothing more than the pleasure of discharging our +vessels, just as nature renders pleasurable the discharges from other +parts." Sir Thomas More among Catholics, and Luther among Protestants, +said exactly the same thing in other and even clearer words, while untold +millions of husbands in Christendom down to to-day, whether or not they +have had the wit to put their theory into a phrase, have regularly put it +into practice, at all events within the consecrated pale of marriage, and +treated their wives, "severely and prudently," as convenient utensils for +the reception of a natural excretion. + +Obviously, in this view of marriage, sexual activity was regarded as an +exclusively masculine function, in the exercise of which women had merely +a passive part to play. Any active participation on her side thus seemed +unnecessary, and even unbefitting, finally, though only in comparatively +modern times, disgusting and actually degrading. Thus Acton, who was +regarded half a century ago as the chief English authority on sexual +matters, declared that, "happily for society," the supposition that women +possess sexual feelings could be put aside as "a vile aspersion," while +another medical authority of the same period stated in regard to the most +simple physical sign of healthy sexual emotion that it "only happens in +lascivious women." This final triumph of the masculine ideals and rule of +life was, however, only achieved slowly. It was the culmination of an +elaborate process of training. At the outset men had found it impossible +to speak too strongly of the "wantonness" of women. This attitude was +pronounced among the ancient Greeks and prominent in their dramatists. +Christianity again, which ended by making women into the chief pillars of +the Church, began by regarding them as the "Gate of Hell." Again, later, +when in the Middle Ages this masculine moral order approached the task of +subjugating the barbarians of Northern Europe, men were horrified at the +licentiousness of those northern women at whose coldness they are now +shocked. + +That, indeed, was, as Montaigne had seen, the central core of conflict in +the rule of life imposed by men on woman. Men were perpetually striving, +by ways the most methodical, the most subtle, the most far-reaching, to +achieve a result in women, which, when achieved, men themselves viewed +with dismay. They may be said to be moved in this sphere by two passions, +the passion for virtue and the passion for vice. But it so happens that +both these streams of passion have to be directed at the same fascinating +object: Woman. No doubt nothing is more admirable than the skill with +which women have acquired the duplicity necessary to play the two +contradictory parts thus imposed upon them. But in that requirement the +play of their natural reactions tended to become paralysed, and the +delicate mechanism of their instincts often disturbed. They were +forbidden, except in a few carefully etiquetted forms, the free play of +courtship, without which they could not perform their part in the erotic +life with full satisfaction either to themselves or their partners. They +were reduced to an artificial simulation of coldness or of warmth, +according to the particular stage of the dominating masculine ideal of +woman which their partner chanced to have reached. But that is an attitude +equally unsatisfactory to themselves and to their lovers, even when the +latter have not sufficient insight to see through its unreality. It is an +attitude so unnatural and artificial that it inevitably tends to produce a +real coldness which nothing can disguise. It is true that women whose +instincts are not perverted at the roots do not desire to be cold. Far +from it. But to dispel that coldness the right atmosphere is needed, and +the insight and skill of the right man. In the erotic sphere a woman asks +nothing better of a man than to be lifted above her coldness, to the +higher plane where there is reciprocal interest and mutual joy in the act +of love. Therein her silent demand is one with Nature's. For the +biological order of the world involves those claims which, in the human +range, are the erotic rights of women. + +The social claims of women, their economic claims, their political claims, +have long been before the world. Women themselves have actively asserted +them, and they are all in process of realisation. The erotic claims of +women, which are at least as fundamental, are not publicly voiced, and +women themselves would be the last to assert them. It is easy to +understand why that should be so. The natural and acquired qualities of +women, even the qualities developed in the art of courtship, have all been +utilised in building up the masculine ideal of sexual morality; it is on +feminine characteristics that this masculine ideal has been based, so +that women have been helpless to protest against it. Moreover, even if +that were not so, to formulate such rights is to raise the question +whether there so much as exists anything that can be called "erotic +rights." The right to joy cannot be claimed in the same way as one claims +the right to put a voting paper in a ballot box. A human being's erotic +aptitudes can only be developed where the right atmosphere for them +exists, and where the attitudes of both persons concerned are in +harmonious sympathy. That is why the erotic rights of women have been the +last of all to be attained. + +Yet to-day we see a change here. The change required is, it has been said, +a change of attitude and a resultant change in the atmosphere in which the +sexual impulses are manifested. It involves no necessary change in the +external order of our marriage system, for, as has already been pointed +out, it was a coincident and not designed part of that order. Various +recent lines of tendency have converged to produce this change of attitude +and of atmosphere. In part the men of to-day are far more ready than the +men of former days to look upon women as their comrades in the every day +work of the world, instead of as beings who were ideally on a level above +themselves and practically on a level considerably below themselves. In +part there is the growing recognition that women have conquered many +elementary human rights of which before they were deprived, and are more +and more taking the position of citizens, with the same kinds of duties, +privileges, and responsibilities as men. In part, also, it may be added, +there is a growing diffusion among educated people of a knowledge of the +primary facts of life in the two sexes, slowly dissipating and dissolving +many foolish and often mischievous superstitions. The result is that, as +many competent observers have noted, the young men of to-day show a new +attitude towards women and towards marriage, an attitude of simplicity and +frankness, a desire for mutual confidence, a readiness to discuss +difficulties, an appeal to understand and to be understood. Such an +attitude, which had hitherto been hard to attain, at once creates the +atmosphere in which alone the free spontaneous erotic activities of women +can breathe and live. + +This consummation, we have seen, may be regarded as the attainment of +certain rights, the corollary of other rights in the social field which +women are slowly achieving as human beings on the same human level as men. +It opens to women, on whom is always laid the chief burden of sex, the +right to the joy and exaltation of sex, to the uplifting of the soul +which, when the right conditions are fulfilled, is the outcome of the +intimate approach and union of two human beings. Yet while we may find +convenient so to formulate it, we need to remember that that is only a +fashion of speech, for there are no rights in Nature. If we take a broader +sweep, what we may choose to call an erotic right is simply the perfect +poise of the conflicting forces of life, the rhythmic harmony in which +generation is achieved with the highest degree of perfection compatible +with the make of the world. It is our part to transform Nature's large +conception into our own smaller organic mould, not otherwise than the +plants, to whom we are far back akin, who dig their flexible roots deep +into the moist and fruitful earth, and so are able to lift up glorious +heads toward the sky. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE PLAY-FUNCTION OF SEX + + +When we hear the sexual functions spoken of we commonly understand the +performance of an act which normally tends to the propagation of the race. +When we see the question of sexual abstinence discussed, when the +desirability of sexual gratification is asserted or denied, when the idea +arises of the erotic rights and needs of woman, it is always the same act +with its physical results that is chiefly in mind. Such a conception is +quite adequate for practical working purposes in the social world. It +enables us to deal with all our established human institutions in the +sphere of sex, as the arbitrary assumptions of Euclid enable us to +traverse the field of elementary geometry. But beyond these useful +purposes it is inadequate and even inexact. The functions of sex on the +psychic and erotic side are of far greater extension than any act of +procreation, they may even exclude it altogether, and when we are +concerned with the welfare of the individual human being we must enlarge +our outlook and deepen our insight. + +There are, we know, two main functions in the sexual relationship, or +what in the biological sense we term "marriage," among civilised human +beings, the primary physiological function of begetting and bearing +offspring and the secondary spiritual function of furthering the higher +mental and emotional processes. These are the main functions of the sexual +impulse, and in order to understand any further object of the sexual +relationship--or even in order to understand all that is involved in the +secondary object of marriage--we must go beyond conscious motives and +consider the nature of the sexual impulse, physical and psychic, as rooted +in the human organism. + +The human organism, as we know, is a machine on which excitations from +without, streaming through the nerves and brain, effect internal work, +and, notably, stimulate the glandular system. In recent years the +glandular system, and especially that of the ductless glands, has taken on +an altogether new significance. These ductless glands, as we know, +liberate into the blood what are termed "hormones," or chemical +messengers, which have a complex but precise action in exciting and +developing all those physical and psychic activities which make up a full +life alike on the general side and the reproductive side, so that their +balanced functions are essential to wholesome and complete existence. In +a rudimentary form these functions may be traced back to our earliest +ancestors who possessed brains. In those times the predominant sense for +arousing the internal mental and emotional faculties was that of smell, +the other senses being gradually evolved subsequently, and it is +significant that the pituitary, one of the chief ductless glands active in +ourselves to-day, was developed out of the nervous centre for smell in +conjunction with the membrane of the mouth. The energies of the whole +organism were set in action through stimuli arising from the outside world +by way of the sense of smell. In process of time the mechanism has become +immensely elaborated, yet its healthy activity is ultimately dependent on +a rich and varied action and reaction with the external world. It is +becoming recognised that the tendency to pluri-glandular insufficiency, +with its resulting lack of organic harmony and equilibrium, can be +counteracted by the physical and psychic stimuli of intimate contacts with +the external world. In this action and reaction, moreover, we cannot +distinguish between sexual ends and general ends. The activities of the +ductless glands and their hormones equally serve both ends in ways that +cannot be distinguished. "The individual metabolism," as a distinguished +authority in this field has expressed it, "is the reproductive +metabolism."[18] Thus the establishment of our complete activities as +human beings in the world is aided by, if not indeed ultimately dependent +upon, a perpetual and many-sided play with our environment. + +[18] W. Blair Bell, _The Sex-Complex,_ 1920, p. 108. This book is a +cautious and precise statement of the present state of knowledge on this +subject, although some of the author's psychological deductions must be +treated with circumspection. + +It is thus that we arrive at the importance of the play-function, and +thus, also, we realise that while it extends beyond the sexual sphere it +yet definitely includes that sphere. There are at least three different +ways of understanding the biological function of play. There is the +conception of play, on which Groos has elaborately insisted, as +education: the cat "plays" with the mouse and is thereby educating +itself in the skill necessary to catch mice; all our human games are a +training in qualities that are required in life, and that is why in +England we continue to attribute to the Duke of Wellington the saying +that "the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." +Then there is the conception of play as the utilisation in art of the +superfluous energies left unemployed in the practical work of life; this +enlarging and harmonising function of play, while in the lower ranges it +may be spent trivially, leads in the higher ranges to the production of +the most magnificent human achievements. But there is yet a third +conception of play, according to which it exerts a direct internal +influence--health-giving, developmental, and balancing--on the whole +organism of the player himself. This conception is related to the other +two, and yet distinct, for it is not primarily a definite education in +specific kinds of life-conserving skill, although it may involve the +acquisition of such skill, and it is not concerned with the construction +of objective works of art, although--by means of contact in human +relationship--it attains the wholesome organic effects which may be +indirectly achieved by artistic activities. It is in this sense that we +are here concerned with what we may perhaps best call the play-function +of sex.[19] + +[19] The term seems to have been devised by Professor Maurice Parmelee, +_Personality and Conduct_, 1918, pp. 104, 107, 113. But it is understood +by Parmelee in a much vaguer and more extended sense than I have used +it. + +As thus understood, the play-function of sex is at once in an inseparable +way both physical and psychic. It stimulates to wholesome activity all the +complex and inter-related systems of the organism. At the same time it +satisfies the most profound emotional impulses, controlling in harmonious +poise the various mental instincts. Along these lines it necessarily tends +in the end to go beyond its own sphere and to embrace and introduce into +the sphere of sex the other two more objective fields of play, that of +play as education, and that of play as artistic creation. It may not be +true, as was said of old time, "most of our arts and sciences were +invented for love's sake." But it is certainly true that, in proportion as +we truly and wisely exercise the play-function of sex, we are at the same +time training our personality on the erotic side and acquiring a mastery +of the art of love. + +The longer I live the more I realise the immense importance for the +individual of the development through the play-function of erotic +personality, and for human society of the acquirement of the art of love. +At the same time I am ever more astonished at the rarity of erotic +personality and the ignorance of the art of love even among those men and +women, experienced in the exercise of procreation, in whom we might most +confidently expect to find such development and such art. At times one +feels hopeless at the thought that civilisation in this supremely intimate +field of life has yet achieved so little. For until it is generally +possible to acquire erotic personality and to master the art of loving, +the development of the individual man or woman is marred, the acquirement +of human happiness and harmony remains impossible. + +In entering this field, indeed, we not only have to gain true knowledge +but to cast off false knowledge, and, above all, to purify our hearts from +superstitions which have no connection with any kind of existing +knowledge. We have to cease to regard as admirable the man who regards +the accomplishment of the procreative act, with the pleasurable relief it +affords to himself, as the whole code of love. We have to treat with +contempt the woman who abjectly accepts the act, and her own passivity +therein, as the whole duty of love. We have to understand that the art of +love has nothing to do with vice, and the acquirement of erotic +personality nothing to do with sensuality. But we have also to realise +that the art of love is far from being the attainment of a refined and +luxurious self-indulgence, and the acquirement of erotic personality of +little worth unless it fortifies and enlarges the whole personality in all +its aspects. Now all this is difficult, and for some people even painful; +to root up is a more serious matter than to sow; it cannot all be done in +a day. + +It is not easy to form a clear picture of the erotic life of the average +man in our society. To the best informed among us knowledge in this field +only comes slowly. Even when we have decided what may or may not be termed +"average" the sources of approach to this intimate sphere remain few and +misleading; at the best the women a man loves remain far more illuminating +sources of information than the man himself. The more one knows about him, +however, the more one is convinced that, quite independently of the place +we may feel inclined to afford to him in the scale of virtue, his +conception of erotic personality, his ideas on the art of love, if they +have any existence at all, are of a humble character. As to the notion of +play in the sphere of sex, even if he makes blundering attempts to +practice it, that is for him something quite low down, something to be +ashamed of, and he would not dream of associating it with anything he has +been taught to regard as belonging to the spiritual sphere. The conception +of "divine play" is meaningless to him. His fundamental ideas, his +cherished ideals, in the erotic sphere, seem to be reducible to two: (1) +He wishes to prove that he is "a man," and he experiences what seems to +him the pride of virility in the successful attainment of that proof; (2) +he finds in the same act the most satisfactory method of removing sexual +tension and in the ensuing relief one of the chief pleasures of life. It +cannot be said that either of these ideals is absolutely unsound; each is +part of the truth; it is only as a complete statement of the truth that +they become pathetically inadequate. It is to be noted that both of them +are based solely on the physical act of sexual conjunction, and that they +are both exclusively self-regarding. So that they are, after all, although +the nearest approach to the erotic sphere he may be able to find, yet +still not really erotic. For love is not primarily self-regarding. It is +the intimate, harmonious, combined play--the play in the wide as well as +in the more narrow sense we are here concerned with--of two personalities. +It would not be love if it were primarily self-regarding, and the act of +intercourse, however essential to secure the propagation of the race, is +only an incident, and not an essential in love. + +Let us turn to the average woman. Here the picture must usually be still +more unsatisfactory. The man at least, crude as we may find his two +fundamental notions to be, has at all events attained mental pride and +physical satisfaction. The woman often attains neither, and since the man, +by instinct or tradition, has maintained a self-regarding attitude, that +is not surprising. The husband--by primitive instinct partly, certainly by +ancient tradition--regards himself as the active partner in matters of +love and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity. +His wife consequently falls into the complementary position, and regards +herself as the passive partner and her pleasure as negligible, if not +indeed as a thing to be rather ashamed of, should she by chance experience +it. So that, while the husband is content with a mere simulacrum and +pretence of the erotic life, the wife has often had none at all. + +Few people realise--few indeed have the knowledge or the opportunity to +realise--how much women thus lose, alike in the means to fulfill their +own lives and in the power to help others. A woman has a husband, she has +marital relationships, she has children, she has all the usual domestic +troubles--it seems to the casual observer that she has everything that +constitutes a fully developed matron fit to play her proper part in the +home and in the world. Yet with all these experiences, which undoubtedly +are an important part of life, she may yet remain on the emotional +side--and, as a matter of fact, frequently remains--quite virginal, as +immature as a school-girl. She has not acquired an erotic personality, she +has not mastered the art of love, with the result that her whole nature +remains ill-developed and unharmonised, and that she is incapable of +bringing her personality--having indeed no achieved personality to +bring--to bear effectively on the problems of society and the world around +her. + +That alone is a great misfortune, all the more tragic since under +favourable conditions, which it should have been natural to attain, it +might so easily be avoided. But there is this further result, full of the +possibilities of domestic tragedy, that the wife so situated, however +innocent, however virtuous, may at any time find her virginally sensitive +emotional nature fertilised by the touch of some other man than her +husband. + +It happens so often. A girl who has been carefully guarded in the home, +preserved from evil companions, preserved also from what her friends +regarded as the contamination of sexual knowledge, a girl of high ideals, +yet healthy and robust, is married to a man of whom she probably has +little more than a conventional knowledge. Yet he may by good chance be +the masculine counterpart of herself, well brought up, without sexual +experience and ignorant of all but the elementary facts of sex, loyal and +honourable, prepared to be, fitted to be, a devoted husband. The union +seems to be of the happiest kind; no one detects that anything is lacking +to this perfect marriage; in course of time one or more children are born. +But during all this time the husband has never really made love to his +wife; he has not even understood what courtship in the intimate sense +means; love as an art has no existence for him; he has loved his wife +according to his imperfect knowledge, but he has never so much as realised +that his knowledge was imperfect. She on her side loves her husband; she +comes in time indeed to have a sort of tender maternal feeling for him. +Possibly she feels a little pleasure in intercourse with him. But she has +never once been profoundly aroused, and she has never once been utterly +satisfied. The deep fountains of her nature have never been unsealed; she +has never been fertilised throughout her whole nature by their liberating +influence; her erotic personality has never been developed. Then +something happens. Perhaps the husband is called away, it may have been to +take part in the Great War. The wife, whatever her tender solicitude for +her absent partner, feels her solitude and is drawn nearer to friends, +perhaps her husband's friends. Some man among them becomes congenial to +her. There need be no conscious or overt love-making on either side, and +if there were the wife's loyalty might be aroused and the friendship +brought to an end. Love-making is not indeed necessary. The wife's latent +erotic needs, while still remaining unconscious, have come nearer to the +surface; now that she has grown mature and that they have been stimulated +yet unsatisfied for so long, they have, unknown to herself, become +insistent and sensitive to a sympathetic touch. The friends may indeed +grow into lovers, and then some sort of solution, by divorce or +intrigue--scarcely however a desirable kind of solution--becomes possible. +But we are here taking the highest ground and assuming that honourable +feeling, domestic affection, or a stern sense of moral duty, renders such +solution unacceptable. In due course the husband returns, and then, to her +utter dismay, the wife discovers, if she has not discovered it before, +that during his absence, and for the first time in her life, she has +fallen in love. She loyally confesses the situation to her husband, for +whom her affection and attachment remain the same as before, for what has +happened to her is the coming of a totally new kind of love and not any +change in her old love. The situation which arises is one of torturing +anxiety for all concerned, and it is not less so when all concerned are +animated by noble and self-sacrificing impulses. The husband in his +devotion to his wife may even be willing that her new impulses should be +gratified. She, on her side, will not think of yielding to desires which +seem both unfair to her husband and opposed to all her moral traditions. +We are not here concerned to consider the most likely, or the most +desirable, exit from this unfortunate situation. The points to note are +that it is a situation which to-day actually occurs; that it causes acute +unhappiness to at least two people who may be of the finest physical and +intellectual type and the noblest character, and that it might be avoided +if there were at the outset a proper understanding of the married state +and of the part which the art of love plays in married happiness and the +development of personality. + +A woman may have been married once, she may have been married twice, she +may have had children by both husbands, and yet it may not be until she is +past the age of thirty and is united to a third man that she attains the +development of erotic personality and all that it involves in the full +flowering of her whole nature. Up to then she had to all appearance had +all the essential experiences of life. Yet she had remained spiritually +virginal, with conventionally prim ideas of life, narrow in her +sympathies, with the finest and noblest functions of her soul helpless and +bound, at heart unhappy even if not clearly realising that she was +unhappy. Now she has become another person. The new liberated forces from +within have not only enabled her to become sensitive to the rich +complexities of intimate personal relationship, they have enlarged and +harmonised her realisation of all relationships. Her new erotic experience +has not only stimulated all her energies, but her new knowledge has +quickened all her sympathies. She feels, at the same time, more mentally +alert, and she finds that she is more alive than before to the influences +of nature and of art. Moreover, as others observe, however they may +explain it, a new beauty has come into her face, a new radiancy into her +expression, a new force into all her activities. Such is the exquisite +flowering of love which some of us who may penetrate beneath the surface +of life are now and then privileged to see. The sad part of it is that we +see it so seldom and then often so late. + +It must not be supposed that there is any direct or speedy way of +introducing into life a wider and deeper conception of the erotic +play-function, and all that it means for the development of the +individual, the enrichment of the marriage relationship, and the moral +harmony of society. Such a supposition would merely be to vulgarise and to +stultify the divine and elusive mystery. It is only slowly and indirectly +that we can bring about the revolution which in this direction would renew +life. We may prepare the way for it by undermining and destroying those +degrading traditional conceptions which have persisted so long that they +are instilled into us almost from birth, to work like a virus in the +heart, and to become almost a disease of the soul. To make way for the +true and beautiful revelation, we can at least seek to cast out those +ancient growths, which may once have been true and beautiful, but now are +false and poisonous. By casting out from us the conception of love as vile +and unclean we shall purify the chambers of our hearts for the reception +of love as something unspeakably holy. + +In this matter we may learn a lesson from the psycho-analysts of to-day +without any implication that psycho-analysis is necessarily a desirable or +even possible way of attaining the revelation of love. The wiser +psycho-analysts insist that the process of liberating the individual from +outer and inner influences that repress or deform his energies and +impulses is effected by removing the inhibitions on the free-play of his +nature. It is a process of education in the true sense, not of the +suppression of natural impulses nor even of the instillation of sound +rules and maxims for their control, not of the pressing in but of the +leading out of the individual's special tendencies.[20] It removes +inhibitions, even inhibitions that were placed upon the individual, or +that he consciously or unconsciously placed upon himself, with the best +moral intentions, and by so doing it allows a larger and freer and more +natively spontaneous morality to come into play. It has this influence +above all in the sphere of sex, where such inhibitions have been most +powerfully laid on the native impulses, where the natural tendencies have +been most surrounded by taboos and terrors, most tinged with artificial +stains of impurity and degradation derived from alien and antiquated +traditions. Thus the therapeutical experience of the psycho-analysts +reinforces the lessons we learn from physiology and psychology and the +intimate experiences of life. + +[20] See, for instance, H.W. Frink, _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_, +1918, Ch. X. + +Sexual activity, we see, is not merely a bald propagative act, nor, when +propagation is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended vessels. It +is something more even than the foundation of great social institutions. +It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, +physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied. Nothing, it has +been said, is so serious as lust--to use the beautiful term which has been +degraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure--and +we have now to add that nothing is so full of play as love. Play is +primarily the instinctive work of the brain, but it is brain activity +united in the subtlest way to bodily activity. In the play-function of sex +two forms of activity, physical and psychic, are most exquisitely and +variously and harmoniously blended. We here understand best how it is that +the brain organs and the sexual organs are, from the physiological +standpoint, of equal importance and equal dignity. Thus the adrenal +glands, among the most influential of all the ductless glands, are +specially and intimately associated alike with the brain and the sex +organs. As we rise in the animal series, brain and adrenal glands march +side by side in developmental increase of size, and at the same time, +sexual activity and adrenal activity equally correspond. + +Lovers in their play--when they have been liberated from the traditions +which bound them to the trivial or the gross conception of play in +love--are thus moving amongst the highest human activities, alike of the +body and of the soul. They are passing to each other the sacramental +chalice of that wine which imparts the deepest joy that men and women can +know. They are subtly weaving the invisible cords that bind husband and +wife together more truly and more firmly than the priest of any church. +And if in the end--as may or may not be--they attain the climax of free +and complete union, then their human play has become one with that divine +play of creation in which old poets fabled that, out of the dust of the +ground and in his own image, some God of Chaos once created Man. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE + +I + + +The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is the +most intimate of all relations. It is a relation which almost amounts to +identity. Yet it somehow seems so vague, so abstract, as scarcely to +concern us at all. It is only lately indeed that there has been formulated +even so much as a science to discuss this relationship, and the duties +which, when properly understood, it throws upon the individual. Even yet +the word "Eugenics," the name of this science, and this art, sometimes +arouses a smile. It seems to stand for a modern fad, which the superior +person, or even the ordinary plebeian democrat, may pass by on the other +side with his nose raised towards the sky. Modern the science and art of +Eugenics certainly seem, though the term is ancient, and the Greeks of +classic days, as well as their successors to-day, used the word Eugeneia +for nobility or good birth. It was chosen by Francis Galton, less than +fifty years ago, to express "the effort of Man to improve his own breed." +But the thing the term stands for is, in reality, also far from modern. It +is indeed ancient and may even be nearly as old as Man himself. +Consciously or unconsciously, sometimes under pretexts that have disguised +his motives even from himself, Man has always been attempting to improve +his own quality or at least to maintain it. When he slackens that effort, +when he allows his attention to be too exclusively drawn to other ends, he +suffers, he becomes decadent, he even tends to die out. + +Primitive eugenics had seldom anything to do with what we call +"birth-control." One must not say that it never had. Even the mysterious +mika operation of so primitive a race as the Australians has been supposed +to be a method of controlling conception. But the usual method, even of +people highly advanced in culture, has been simpler. They preferred to see +the new-born infant before deciding whether it was likely to prove a +credit to its parents or to the human race generally, and if it seemed not +up to the standard they dealt with it accordingly. At one time that was +regarded as a cruel and even inhuman method. To-day, when the most +civilised nations of the world have devoted all their best energies to +competitive slaughter, we may have learnt to view the matter differently. +If we can tolerate the wholesale murder and mutilation of the finest +specimens of our race in the adult possession of all their aptitudes we +cannot easily find anything to disapprove in the merciful disposal of the +poorest specimens before they have even attained conscious possession of +their senses. But in any case, and whatever we may ourselves be pleased to +think or not to think, it is certain that some of the most highly +developed peoples of the world have practised infanticide. It is equally +certain that the practise has not proved destructive to the emotions of +humanity and affection. Even some of the lowest human races,--as we +commonly estimate them,--while finding it necessary to put aside a certain +proportion of their new-born infants, expend a degree of love and even +indulgence on the children they bring up which is rarely found among +so-called civilised nations. + +There is no need, however, to consider whether or not infanticide is +humane. We are all agreed that it is altogether unnecessary, and that it +is seldom that even that incipient form of infanticide called abortion, +still so popular among us, need be resorted to. Our aim now--so far at all +events as mere ideals go--is not to destroy life but to preserve it; we +seek to improve the conditions of life and to render unnecessary the +premature death of any human creature that has once drawn breath. + +It is indeed just here that we find a certain clash between the modern +view of life and the view of earlier civilisations. The ancients were +less careful than we claim to be of the individual, but they were more +careful of the race. They cultivated eugenics after their manner, though +it was a manner which we reprobate.[21] We pride ourselves, rightly or +wrongly, on our care for the individual; during all the past century we +claim to have been strenuously working for an amelioration of the +environment which will make life healthier and pleasanter for the +individual. But in the concentration of our attention on this altogether +desirable end, which we are still far from having adequately attained, we +have lost sight of that larger end, the well-being of the race and the +amelioration of life itself, not merely of the conditions of life. The +most we hope is that somehow the improvement of the conditions of the +individual will incidentally improve the stock. These our practical +ideals, which have flourished for a century past, arose out of the great +French Revolution and were inspired by the maxim of that Revolution, as +formulated by Rousseau, that "All men are born equal." That maxim, was +overthrown half a century ago; the great biological movement of science, +initiated by Darwin, showed that it was untenable. All men are not born +equal. Everyone agrees about that now, but nevertheless the momentum of +the earlier movement was so powerful that we still go on acting as though +all men are, and always will be, born equal, and that we need not trouble +ourselves about heredity but only about the environment. + +[21] But this statement must not be left without important +qualification. Thus the ancient Greeks (as Moissides has shown in +_Janus_, 1913), not only their philosophers and statesmen, but also +their women, often took the most enlightened interest in eugenics, and, +moreover, showed it in practice. They were in many respects far in +advance of us. They clearly realised, for instance, the need of a proper +interval between conceptions, not only to ensure the health of women, +but also the vigour of the offspring. It is natural that among every +fine race eugenics should be almost an instinct or they would cease to +be a fine race. It is equally natural that among our modern degenerates +eugenics is an unspeakable horror, however much, as the psycho-analysts +would put it, they rationalise that horror. + +The way out of this clash of ideals--which has compelled us to hope +impossibilities from the environment because we dreaded what seemed the +only alternative--is, as we know, furnished by birth-control. An +unqualified reliance on the environment, making it ever easier and easier +for the feeblest and most defective to be born and survive, could only, in +the long run, lead to the degeneration of the whole race. The knowledge of +the practice of birth-control gives us the mastery of all that the +ancients gained by infanticide, while yet enabling us to cherish that +ideal of the sacredness of human life which we profess to honour so +highly. The main difficulty is that it demands a degree of scientific +precision which the ancients could not possess and might dispense with, so +long as they were able to decide the eugenic claims of the infant by +actual inspection. We have to be content to determine not what the infant +is but when it be likely to be, and that involves a knowledge of the laws +of heredity which we are only learning slowly to acquire. We may all in +our humble ways help to increase that knowledge by giving it greater +extension and more precision through the observations we are able to make +on our own families. To such observations Galton attached great importance +and strove in various ways to further them. Detailed records, physical and +mental, beginning from birth, are still far from being as common as is +desirable, although it is obvious that they possess a permanent personal +and family private interest in addition to their more public scientific +value. We do not need, and it would indeed be undesirable, to emulate in +human breeding the achievements of a Luther Burbank. We have no right to +attempt to impose on any human creature an exaggerated and one-sided +development. But it is not only our right, it is our duty, or rather one +may say, the natural impulse of every rational and humane person, to seek +that only such children may be born as will be able to go through life +with a reasonable prospect that they will not be heavily handicapped by +inborn defect or special liability to some incapacitating disease. What is +called "positive" eugenics--the attempt, that is, to breed special +qualities--may well be viewed with hesitation. But so-called "negative" +eugenics--the effort to clear all inborn obstacles out of the path of the +coming generation--demands our heartiest sympathy and our best +co-operation, for as Galton, the founder of modern Eugenics, wrote towards +the end of his life of this new science: "Its first object is to check the +birth-rate of the unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, +though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely." We can seldom be +absolutely sure what stocks should not propagate, and what two stocks +should on no account be blended, but we can attain reasonable probability, +and it is on such probabilities in every department of life that we are +always called upon to act. + +It is often said--I have said it myself--that birth-control when practised +merely as a limitation of the family, scarcely suffices to further the +eugenic progress of the race. If it is not deliberately directed towards +the elimination of the worst stocks or the worst possibilities in the +blending of stocks, it may even tend to diminish the better stocks since +it is the better stocks that are least likely to propagate at random. This +is true if other conditions remain equal. It is evident, however, that the +other conditions will not remain equal, for no evidence has yet been +brought forward to show that birth-control, even when practised without +regard to eugenic considerations--doubtless the usual rule up to the +present--has produced any degeneration of the race. On the contrary, the +evidence seems to show that it has improved the race. The example of +Holland is often brought forward as evidence in favour of such a tendency +of birth-control, since in that country the wide-spread practise of +birth-control has been accompanied by an increase in the health and +stature of the people, as well as an increase in their numbers to a +remarkable degree, for the fall in the birth-rate has been far more than +compensated by the fall in the death-rate, while it is said that the +average height of the population has increased by four inches. It is, +indeed, quite possible to see why, although theoretically a random +application of birth-control cannot affect the germinal possibilities of a +community, in practise it may improve the somatic conditions under which +the germinal elements develop. There will probably be a longer interval +between the births of the children, which has been demonstrated by Ewart +and others to be an important factor not only in preserving the health of +the mother but in increasing the health and size of the child. The +diminution in the number of the children renders it possible to bestow a +greater amount of care on each child. Moreover, the better economic +position of the father, due to the smaller number of individuals he has to +support, makes it possible for the family to live under improved +conditions as regards nourishment, hygiene, and comfort. The observance of +birth-control is thus a far more effective lever for raising the state of +the social environment and improving the conditions of breeding, than is +direct action on the part of the community in its collective capacity to +attain the same end. For however energetic such collective action may be +in striving to improve general social conditions by municipalising or +State-supporting public utilities, it can never adequately counter-balance +the excessive burden and wasteful expenditure of force placed on a family +by undue child-production. It can only palliate them. + +When, however, we have found reason to believe that, even if practised +without regard to eugenic considerations, birth-control may yet act +beneficially to promote good breeding, we begin to realise how great a +power it may possess when consciously and deliberately directed towards +that end. In eugenics, as already pointed out, there are two objects that +may be aimed at: one called positive eugenics, that seeks to promote the +increase of the best stocks amongst us; the other, called negative +eugenics, which seeks to promote the decrease of the worst stocks. Our +knowledge is still too imperfect to enable us to pursue either of these +objects with complete certainty. This is especially so as regards positive +eugenics, and since it seems highly undesirable to attempt to breed human +beings, as we do animals, for points, when we are in the presence of what +seem to us our finest human stocks, physically, morally, and +intellectually, it is our wisest course just to leave them alone as much +as we can. The best stocks will probably be also those best able to help +themselves and in so doing to help others. But that is obviously not so as +regards the worst stocks. It is, therefore, fortunate that the aim here +seems a little clearer. There are still many abnormal conditions of which +we cannot say positively that they are injurious to the race and that we +should therefore seek to breed them out. But there are other conditions so +obviously of evil import alike to the subjects themselves and to their +descendants that we cannot have any reasonable doubt about them. There is, +for instance, epilepsy, which is known to be transformed by heredity into +various abnormalities dangerous alike to their possessors and to society. +There are also the pronounced degrees of feeble-mindedness, which are +definitely heritable and not only condemn those who reveal them to a +permanent inaptitude for full life, but constitute a subtle poison working +through the social atmosphere in all directions and lowering the level of +civilisation in the community. Nowhere has this been so thoroughly studied +and so clearly proved as in the United States. It is only necessary to +mention Dr. C.B. Davenport of the Department of Experimental Evolution at +Cold Spring Harbor (New York) who has carried on so much research in +regard to the heredity of epilepsy and other inheritable abnormal +conditions, and Dr. Goddard of Vineland (New Jersey) whose work has +illustrated so fully the hereditary relationships of feeble-mindedness. +The United States, moreover, has seen the development of the system of +social field-work which has rendered possible a more complete knowledge of +family heredity than has ever before been possible on a large scale. + +It is along such lines as these that our knowledge of the eugenic +conditions of life will grow adequate and precise enough to form an +effective guide to social conduct. Nature, and a due attention to laws of +heredity in life, will then rank in equal honour to our eyes with nurture +or that attention to the environmental conditions of life which we already +regard as so important. A regard to nurture has led us to spend the +greatest care on the preservation not only of the fit but the unfit, while +meantime it has wisely suggested to us the desirability of segregating or +even of sterilising the unfit. But the study of Nature leads us further +and, as Galton said, "Eugenics rests on bringing no more individuals into +the world than can be properly cared for, and these only of the best +stocks." That is to say that the only instrument by which eugenics can be +made practically effective in the modern world is birth-control. + +It is not scientific research alone, nor even the wide popular diffusion +of knowledge, that will suffice to bring eugenics and birth-control, +singly or in their due combination, into the course of our daily lives. +They need to be embodied in our instinctive impulses. Galton considered +that eugenics must become a factor of religion and be regarded as a sacred +and virile creed, while Ellen Key holds that the religions of the past +must be superseded by a new religion which will be the awakening of the +whole of humanity to a consciousness of the "holiness of generation." For +my own part, I scarcely consider that either eugenics or birth-control can +be regarded as properly a part of religion. Being of virtue and not of +grace they belong more naturally to the sphere of morals. But here they +certainly need to go far deeper than the mere intelligence of the mind can +take them. They cannot become guides to conduct until their injunctions +have been printed on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. The demands of the +race must speak from within us, in the voice of conscience which we +disobey at our peril. When that happens with regard to ascertained laws of +racial well-being we may know that we are truly following, even though not +in the letter, those great spirits, like Galton with his intellectual +vision and Ellen Key with her inspired enthusiasm, who have pointed out +new roads for the ennoblement of the race. + + +II + +It may be well, before we go further, to look a little more closely into +the suspicion and dislike which eugenics still arouses in many worthy +old-fashioned people. To some extent that attitude is excused, not only by +the mistakes which in a new and complex science must inevitably be made +even by painstaking students, but also by the rash and extravagant +proposals of irresponsible and eccentric persons claiming without warrant +to speak in the name of eugenics. Two thousand years ago the wild excesses +of some early Christians furnished an excuse for the ancient world to view +Christianity with contempt, although the extreme absence of such excesses +has furnished still better ground for the modern world to maintain the +same view. To-day such a work as _Le Haras Humain_ ("The Human Stud-farm") +of Dr. Binet-Sangle, putting forward proposals which, whether beneficial +or not, will certainly find no one to carry them out, similarly furnishes +an excuse to those who would reject eugenics altogether. Utopian schemes +have their value; we should be able to find inspiration in the most modern +of them, just as we still do in Plato's immortal _Republic_. But in this, +as in other matters, we must exercise a little intelligence. We must not +confuse the brilliant excursion of some solitary thinker with the +well-grounded proposals of those who are concerned with the sober +possibilities of actual life in our own time. People who are incapable of +exercising a little shrewd commonsense in the affairs of life, and are in +the habit of emptying out the baby with the bath, had better avoid +touching the delicate problems connected with practical eugenics. + +There is one prejudice already mentioned, due to lack of clear thinking, +which deserves more special consideration because it is widespread among +the socialistic democracy of several countries as well as among social +reformers, and is directed alike against eugenics and birth-control. This +prejudice is based on the ground that bad economic conditions and an +unwholesome environment are the source of all social evils, and that a +better distribution of wealth, or a vast scheme of social welfare, is the +one thing necessary, when that is achieved all other things being added +unto us, without any further trouble on our part. It is certainly +impossible to over-rate the importance of the economic factor in society, +or of a good environment. And it is true that eugenics alone, like +birth-control alone, can effect little if the economic basis of society is +unsound. But it is equally certain that the economic factor can never in +itself suffice for fine living or even as a cure-all of social and racial +diseases. Its value is not that it can effect these things but that it +furnishes the favourable conditions for effecting them. He would be +foolish indeed who went to the rich to find the example of good breeding +and, as is well known, it is not with the rich that the future of the race +lies. The fact is that under any economic system the responsible personal +direction of the individual and the family remain equally necessary, and +no progress is possible so long as the individual casts all responsibility +away from himself on to the social group he forms part of. The social +group, after all, is merely himself and the likes of himself. He is merely +shifting the burden from his individual self to his collective self, and +in so doing he loses more than he gains. + +Thus there is always a sound core in that Individualism which has been +preached so long and practised so energetically, especially in +English-speaking lands, however great the abuse involved in its excesses. +It is still in the name of Individualism that the most brilliant +antagonists of eugenics and of birth-control are wont to direct their +attacks. The counsel of self-control and foresight in procreation, the +restriction necessary to purify and raise the standard of the race, seem +to the narrow and short-sighted advocates of a great principle an +unwarrantable violation of the sacred rights of their individual liberty. +They have not yet grasped the elementary fact that the rights of the +individual are the rights of all individuals, and that Individualism +itself calls for a limitation of the freedom of the individual. + +That is why even the most uncompromising Individualist must recognise an +element of altruism, call it whatever name you will, Collectivism, +Socialism, Communism, or merely the vague and long-suffering term, +Democracy. One cannot assume Individualism for oneself unless one assumes +it for the many. That is a great truth which goes to the heart of the +whole complex problem of eugenics and birth-control. As Perrycoste has +well argued,[22] biology is altogether against the narrow Individualism +which seeks to oppose Collective Individualism. For if, in accordance with +the most careful modern investigations, we recognise that heredity is +supreme, that the qualities we have inherited from our ancestors count for +more in our lives than anything we have acquired by our own personal +efforts, then we have to admit that the capable man's wealth is more the +community's property than his own, and, similarly, the incapable man's +poverty is more the community's concern than his own. So that neither the +capable nor the incapable are entitled to an unqualified power of freedom, +and neither, likewise, are justly liable to be burdened by an unqualified +responsibility. It is the duty of the community to draw on the powers of +the fit and equally its duty to care for the unfit. In this way, +Perrycoste, whose attitude is that of the Rationalist, is led by science +to a conclusion which is that of the Christian. We are all members each of +the other, and still more are we members of those who went before us. The +generations preceding us have not died to themselves but live in us, and +we, whom they produced, live in each other and in those who will come +after us. The problems of eugenics and of birth-control affect us all. In +the face of these problems it is the voice of Man that speaks: "Inasmuch +as ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto +me." However firmly we base ourselves on the principles of Individualism +we are inevitably brought to the fundamental facts of eugenics which, if +we fail to recognise, our Individualism becomes of no effect. + +[22] F.H. Perrycoste, "Politics and Science," _Science Progress_, Jan., +1920. + +But it is the same with Socialism, or by whatever name we chose to call +the Collectivist activities of the community in social reform. Socialism +also brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if we +neglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments. +It is the more necessary to point this out since it is on the Socialist +and Democratic side, much more frequently than on the Individualist side, +that we find an indifferent or positively hostile attitude towards eugenic +considerations. Put social conditions on a sound basis, the people on +this side often say, let all receive an adequate economic return for their +work and be recognised as having a claim for an adequate share in the +products of society, and there is no need to worry about the race or about +the need for birth-control, all will go well of itself. There is not the +slightest ground for any such comfortable belief. + +This has been well shown by Dr. Eden Paul, himself a Socialist and even in +sympathy with the extreme Left.[23] After setting forth the present +conditions, with our excessive elimination of higher types, and undue +multiplication of lower types, the racial degeneration caused by the +faulty and anti-selective working of the marriage system in modern +capitalist society, so that in our existing civilisation unconscious +natural selection has largely ceased to work towards the improvement of +the human breed, he proceeds to consider the possible remedies. The +frequent impatience of the Socialist, and Social Reformers generally, with +eugenic proposals has a certain degree of justification in the fact that +many evils thoughtlessly attributed to inferiority of stock are really due +to bad environment. But when the environment has been so far improved that +all defects due to its badness are removed, we shall be face to face, +without possibility of doubt, with bad inheritance as the sole remaining +factor in the production of inefficient and anti-social members of the +community. A socialist community must recognise the right to work and to +maintenance of all its members, Eden Paul points out, but, he adds, a +community which allowed this right to all defectives without imposing any +restrictions in their perpetuation of themselves would deserve all the +evils that would fall upon it. It is quite clear how intolerable the +burden of these evils would be. A State that provided an adequate +subsistence for all alike, the inefficient as well as the efficient, would +encourage a racial degeneration, from excessive multiplication of the +unfit, far more dangerous even than that of to-day.[24] Ability to earn +the minimum wage, Eden Paul argues in agreement with H.G. Wells, must be +the condition of the right to become a parent. "Unless the socialist is a +eugenist as well, the socialist state will speedily perish from racial +degradation." + + +[23] In an essay on "Eugenics, Birth Control, and Socialism" in +_Population and Birth-Control: A Symposium_, edited by Eden and Cedar +Paul. + +[24] This is here and there beginning to be recognised. Thus, not long +ago, the Hereford War Pensions Committee resolved not to issue a +maternal grant for children born during a prolonged period of treatment +allowance. Such a measure of course fails to meet the situation, for it +is obvious that, when born, the children must be cared for. But it shows +a glimmering recognition of the facts, and the people capable of such a +recognition will, in time, come to see that the right way of meeting the +situation is, not to neglect the children, but to prevent their +conception. Mothers' Clinics for instruction in such prevention are now +being established in England, through the advocacy of Mrs. Margaret +Sanger and the actual initiative of Dr. Marie Stopes. + +Thus it is essential that the eugenist, dealing with the hereditary +factor of life, and the social reformer or socialist, dealing with the +environmental factor, should supplement each other's work. Neither can +attain his end without the other's help, for the eugenist alone cannot +overcome the environmental factor, even perhaps increases it if he is an +individualist in the narrow sense, and the socialist alone cannot overcome +the bad hereditary factor, and will even increase it if he is no more than +a socialist. The more socialist our State becomes the more essential +becomes at the same time the adoption of eugenic practices as a working +part of the State. "Socialism and eugenics must go hand in hand." + +Perrycoste from his own point of view has independently reached the same +conclusions. He is not, indeed, concerned with any "Socialist" community +of the future but with the dangerous results which must inevitably follow +the already established methods of social reform in our modern civilised +States unless they are speedily checked by effective action based on +eugenic knowledge. "If," he observes, "the community is to shoulder half +or three-quarters of the burden of sustaining those degenerates who, +through no fault of their own, are congenitally incompetent to maintain +themselves in decent comfort, and is to render the life-pilgrimage of +these unfortunates tolerable instead of a dreary nightmare, if it is to +assume paternal charge of all the tens or hundreds of thousands of +children whose parents cannot or will not provide adequately for them and +is to guarantee to all such children as much education as they are capable +of receiving, and a really fair start in life: then in sheer +self-preservation the community must insist on, and rigidly enforce, its +absolute claim to secure that no degeneracy or inheritable congenital +defects shall persist beyond the present generation of degenerates, and +that the community of fifty or seventy years hence shall have no incubus +of mentally, or morally, or even physically, degenerate members--none but +a few occasional sporadic morbid 'sports' from the normal, which it, in +turn, may effectively prevent from handing on their like." Unless the +problem is squarely faced, Perrycoste concludes, national deterioration +must increase and a permanently successful collectivist society is +inherently impossible. + +We are not now concerned with the details of any policy of eugenics and of +birth-control, which I couple together because although a random +birth-control by no means involves much, if any, eugenic progress, it is +not easy under modern conditions to conceive any practical or effective +policy of eugenics except through the instrumentation of birth-control. We +here take it for granted that in this field the slow progress of +scientific knowledge must be our guide. Premature legislation, rash and +uninstructed action, will not lead to progress but are more likely to +delay it. Yet even with imperfect knowledge, it is already of the first +importance to evoke interest in the great issue here at stake and to do +all that we can to arouse the individual conscience of every man and woman +to his or her personal responsibility in this matter. That is here all +taken for granted. + +It seems necessary to consider the political aspect of eugenics because +that aspect is frequently invoked, and a man's attitude towards this +question is frequently determined beforehand by what he considers that +Individualism or Socialism demands. We see that when the question is +driven home our political attitude makes no difference. It is only a +shallow Individualism, it is only a still more shallow Socialism, which +imagines that under modern social conditions the fundamental racial +questions can be left to answer themselves. + + +III + +Many years before the Great War, in all the most civilised countries of +the World, there were those who raised the cry of "Race-Suicide!" In +America this cry was more especially popularised by the powerful voice of +Theodore Roosevelt, but in European countries there were similar voices +raised in tones of virtuous indignation to denounce the same crime. Since +the war other voices have been raised in even more high-pitched and +feverish tones, but now they are less weighty and responsible voices, +since to those who realise that at present there is not food enough to +keep the population of the world from starvation it seems hardly +compatible with sanity to advocate an increased rate of human production. + +Now, though it is easy to do so, we must not belittle this cry of +"Race-Suicide!" It is not usually accompanied by definite argument, but it +assumes that birth-control is the method of such suicide, and that the +first and most immediately dangerous result is that one's own nation, +whichever that may be, is placed in a position of alarming military +inferiority to other nations, as a step towards the final extinction. It +is useless to deny that it really is a serious matter if there is danger +of the speedy disappearance of the human race from the earth by its own +voluntary and deliberate action, and that within a measurable period of +time--for if it were an immeasurable period there would be no occasion for +any acute anxiety--the last man will perish from the world. This is what +"Race-Suicide" means, and we must face the fact squarely. + +It can scarcely be said, however, that the meaning of "Race-Suicide" has +actually been squarely faced by those who have most vehemently raised +that cry. Translated into more definite and precise terms this cry means, +and is intended to mean: "We want more births." That is what it definitely +means, and sometimes in the minds of those who make this demand it seems +also to imply nothing more. Yet it implies a great number of other things. +It implies certain strain and probable ill-health on the mothers, it +implies distress and disorder in the family, it implies, even if the +additional child survives, a more acute industrial struggle, and it +further involves in this case, by the stimulus it gives to +over-population, the perpetual menace of militarism and war. What, +however, even at the outset, more births most distinctly and most +unquestionably imply is more deaths. It is nowadays so well known that a +high birth-rate is accompanied by a high death-rate--the exceptions are +too few to need attention--that it is unnecessary to adduce further +evidence. It is only the intoxicated enthusiasts of the "Race-Suicide" cry +who are able to overlook a fact of which they can hardly be ignorant. The +model which they hold up for the public's inspiration has on the obverse +"More Births!" But on the reverse it bears "More Deaths!" It would be +helpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts' +own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round and +slightly vary the monotony of their propaganda by changing its form and +crying out for "More Deaths!" "It is a hard thing," said Johnny Dunn, "for +a man that has a house full of children to be left to the mercy of +Almighty God." + +If, however, we wish to consider the real significance of the facts, +without regard for the wild cries of ignorant cranks, it is scarcely +necessary to point out here that neither the birth-rate taken by itself, +nor the death-rate taken by itself, will suffice to give us any measure +even of the growth of the population, to say nothing of the progress of +civilisation or the happiness of humanity. It is obvious that we must +consider both gains and losses, and put one against the other, if we wish +to ascertain the net result. We may roughly get a notion of what that +result is by deducting the death-rate from the birth-rate and calling the +remainder the survival-rate. If we are really concerned with the question +of the alleged suicide of the race, and do not wish to be befooled, we +must pay little attention to the birth-rate, for that by itself means +nothing: we must concentrate on the survival-rate. Then we may soon +convince ourselves, not only that the human race is not committing +suicide, but that not even a single one of the so-called civilised nations +of which it is mainly composed is committing suicide. Quite the contrary! +Every one of them, even France, where this peculiar "suicide" is supposed +to be most actively at work, is yearly increasing in numbers. + +It is interesting to note, moreover, that the French have been increasing +faster, that is to say the survival-rate has been higher in recent years +just before the war, when the birth-rate was at its lowest, than they were +twenty years earlier, with a higher birth-rate. And if we take a wider +sweep and consider the growth of the French population towards the end of +the eighteenth century, we find the birth-rate estimated at the very high +figure of 40. But the death-rate was nearly as high, the average duration +of life was only half what it is now. So that the survival-rate in France +at that time, with widely different rates of birth and death, was not much +unlike it is now. The recent French birth-rate of 19 and less, which +automatically causes the "Race-Suicide" marionette to dance with rage, is +producing not far from the same result in growth of the population--we are +not here concerned with the enormous difference in well being and +happiness--as the extremely high rate of 40 which sends our marionettes +leaping to the sky with joy. In war-time England, in 1917, the birth-rate +sank to 17.8, yet the death-rate was at 14 and the increase of the +population continued. The more the human race commits this kind of +suicide, one is tempted to exclaim, the faster it grows! + +It is, however, in the New World--as in Canada, Australia, and New +Zealand--that we find the most impressive evidence of the real criteria of +the growth in population set up for judgment on the racial suicide cranks. +Canadian statistics bring out many points instructive even in their +variation. Here we see not only unusual curves of rise and fall, but also +pronounced differences, due to the special peculiarities of the French +population, most clearly in the Province of Quebec but also in some parts +of the Province of Ontario. In Quebec the birth-rate some years ago was +35, and the death-rate 21, both rates high, and the survival-rate high at +14; recently the birth-rate has risen to 37 and the death-rate fallen to +17, with the result that the survival-rate of 20 is the highest in the +world, though it must be noted that the high birth-rate is not likely to +last long, since in Quebec, as elsewhere in the world, increasing +urbanisation causes a decreasing birth-rate. In mainly English-speaking +Ontario the birth-rate is much lower, about 24, but the death-rate is also +lower, about 14, so that the fairly considerable survival-rate of 10 is +obtained. But we note the highly significant fact that some thirty years +or more ago the birth-rate was much lower, about 19, and yet the +survival-rate was almost 9, nearly as high as to-day! The death-rate was +then at 10, and nothing could be more instructive as to the real +relationship that holds in this matter. There has been a great rise in +the birth-rate and the only result, as someone has remarked, is a great +increase in the population of the grave-yards. Equally instructive is it +to compare various cities in this same Province, living under the same +laws, and fairly similar social conditions. In the report of the +Registrar-General of Ontario for 1916 I find that highest in birth-rate of +cities in the Province stands Ottawa with a very considerable French +population. But first also stands the same city for infant mortality, +which is three times greater than in some other cities in the Province +with a low birth-rate. Sault Ste. Marie, again with an enormous +birth-rate, stands third for infant mortality. Canada shows us that, even +if we regard the crude desire for a large growth of population as +reasonable--and that is a considerable assumption--a high birth-rate is an +uncertain prop to rest on. + +Canada is an instructive example because we have some ground for believing +that the difference between the English-speaking and French-speaking +populations--the greater care of the former in procreation and the more +recklessly destructive methods of the latter in attaining the same +ends--are due to their different attitudes towards the use of methods of +birth-control. What the result of a general use of such methods is we know +from the example already mentioned of Holland, where they are taught, +officially recognised, and in general use, not only among the rich but +among the poor. The result is that the birth-rate has been falling slowly +and steadily for forty years. But the death-rate has also been falling and +at a greater rate. So that the more the birth-rate has fallen the higher +has been the rate of increase among the population. + +It is perhaps in Australia and New Zealand that we find the most +satisfactory proofs of the benefits of a falling birth-rate in relation to +"Race-Suicide." The evidence may well appeal to us the more since it is +precisely here that the race-suicide fanatic finds freest scope for his +wrath. He looks gleefully at China with its prolific women, at Russia with +its magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with +its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsense +about birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties of +perpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness and +desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of +prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is +choked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of "Race-Suicide" +nearly in sight and the spectre of the Last Man rising before him. For +there is no doubt about it, Australia and New Zealand contain a population +which is gradually reaching the highest point yet known of democratic +organisation and general social well-being, and the birth-rate has been +falling with terrific speed. Sixty-years ago in the Australian +Commonwealth it was nearly 44, only forty years ago in New Zealand it was +42. Now it is only about 26 in both lands. Yet the survival-rate, the +actual growth of the population, is not so very much less with this low +birth-rate than it was with the high birth-rate. For the death-rate has +also fallen in both lands to about 10 (in New Zealand to 9) which is lower +than any other country in the world. The result is that Australia and New +Zealand, where (so it is claimed) preventives of conception are hawked +from door to door, instead of being awful examples of "Race-Suicide," +actually present the highest rate of race-increase in the world (only +excepting Canada, where it is less firmly and less healthily based), +nearly twice that of Great Britain and able at the present rate to double +itself every 44 years. So much for "Race-Suicide." + +The outcry about "Race-Suicide" is so far away from the real facts of life +that it is not easy to take it seriously, however solemn one's natural +temperament may be. We are concerned with people who arrogantly claim to +direct the moral affairs of the world, even in the most intimately private +matters, and who are yet ignorant of the most elementary facts of the +world, unable to think, not even able to count! We can only greet them +with a smile. But this question has, nevertheless, a genuinely serious +aspect, and I should be sorry even to touch on the question of +birth-control in relation to "Race-Suicide" without making that serious +aspect clear. + +"Race-Suicide," we know, has no existence. Not only is the race as a whole +increasing in number, especially its White branches, but even among the +separate national groups there is not even one civilised people anywhere +in the world that is decreasing in number. On the contrary they are all, +even France, increasing at a more or less rapid rate. In England and +Wales, for example, where the birth-rate has steadily fallen during the +last forty years from 36 to 23 (I disregard the abnormal rates of +War-time) the population is still increasing, and even if the present +falls in birth-rate and death-rate continue, it will for years still go on +increasing by an excess of over 1,000 births a day. When we realise that +this is merely what goes on in one corner of the world and must be +multiplied enormously to represent the whole, we shall find it impossible +even to conceive the prodigious flow of excess babies which is being +constantly poured over the earth. If we are capable of realising all the +problems which thereby arise we must be forced to ask ourselves: _Is this +state of things desirable_? + +"Be ye fruitful and multiply." That command was, according to the old +story, delivered to a world inhabited by eight people. It has been handed +down to a world in which it has long been ridiculously out of place, and +has become merely the excuse for criminal recklessness among a race which +has chosen to forget that the command was qualified by a solemn +admonition: "At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, +will I require the life of man." The high birth-rate has meant a vast +slaughter of infants, it has meant, moreover, a perpetual oppression of +the workers, disease, starvation, and death among the adult population; it +has meant, further, a blood-thirsty economic competition, militarism, +warfare. It has meant that all civilisation has from time to time become a +thin crust over a volcano of revolution, and the human race has gone on +lightly dancing there, striving to forget that ancient warning from a soul +of things even deeper than the voice of Jehovah: "At the hand of man will +I require the life of man." Men have recklessly followed the Will o' the +Wisp which represented mere multiplication of their inefficient selves as +the ideal of progress, quantity before quality, the notion that in an orgy +of universal procreation could consist the highest good of humanity. + +The Great War, that is scarcely yet merged into an only less war-like +Peace, has brought at least the small compensation that it has led men to +look in the face this insane ideal of human progress. We see to-day what +has come of it, and the further evils yet to come of it are being embodied +beneath our eyes. So that at last the voice of Jehovah has here and there +been faintly heard, even where nowadays we had grown least accustomed to +hear it, in the Churches. It is Dr. Inge, the Dean of London's Cathedral +of St. Paul's, a distinguished Churchman and at the same time a foremost +champion of eugenics, who lately expressed the hope that the world, +especially the European world, would one day realise the advantages of a +stationary population.[25] Such a recognition, such an aspiration, +indicates that a new hope is dawning on the world's horizon, and a higher +ideal growing within the human soul. The mad competition of the industrial +world during the past century, with the sordid gloom and wretchedness of +it for all who were able to see beneath the surface, has shown for ever +what comes of the effort to produce a growing population by high +birth-rates in peace-time. The Great War of a later day has shown, let us +hope in an equally decisive manner, what comes to a world where men have +been for long generations produced so copiously and so cheaply that it is +natural to regard them as only fit to sweep off the earth with machine +guns. And the whole world of to-day--with its starving millions struggling +in vain to feed themselves, with most of its natural beauty swept away by +the ravages of man, and many of its most exquisite animals finally +exterminated--is likely to become merely the monument to an ideal that +failed. It was time, however late in the day, for a return to +common-sense. It was time to realise that the ideal of mere propagation +could lead us nowhere but to destruction. On that level we cannot compete +even with the lowest of organised things, not even with the bacteria, +which in number and in rapidity of multiplication are inconceivable to us. +"All hope abandon, ye that enter here" is written over the portal of this +path of "Progress." + +[25] This has long been recognised by men of science. Even anyone with +the slightest knowledge of biology, Professor Bateson remarked in a +British Association Presidential address in 1914, is aware that a +population need not be declining because it is not increasing; "in +normal stable conditions population is stationary." Major Leonard +Darwin, the thoughtful and cautious President of the Eugenics Education +Society, has lately stated his considered belief ("Population and +Civilisation," _Economic Journal_, June, 1921) that increase in numbers +means, ultimately, relative reduction of wealth per head, with +consequent lowering of the standard of civilisation; that it also, under +existing conditions, involves the production of a smaller proportion of +men of ability; and, further, a depreciation of our traditions; he +concludes that, whatever element in civilisation we regard--wealth, or +stock, or traditions--"any increase in the population _such as that now +taking place_ will be accompanied by a lowering in the standard of our +civilisation." + +There are definite reasons why real progress in the supreme tasks of +civilisation can best be made by a more or less stationary population, +whether the population is large or small, and it need scarcely be added +that, so far as the history of mankind is yet legible, the great advances +in civilisation have been made by small, even very small populations. +Where the population is rapidly growing, even if it is growing under the +favourable conditions that hardly ever accompany such growth, all its +energy is absorbed in adjusting its perpetually shifting equilibrium. It +cannot succeed in securing the right conditions of growth, because its +growth is never ceasing to demand new conditions. The structure of its +civilisation never rises above the foundations because these foundations +have perpetually to be laid afresh, and there is never time to get +further. It is a process, moreover, accompanied by unending friction and +disorder, by strains and stresses of all kinds, which are fatal to any +full, harmonious, and democratic civilisation. The "population question," +with the endlessly mischievous readjustment it demands, must be eliminated +before the great House of Life can be built up on a strong solid human +foundation, to lift its soaring pinnacles towards the skies. That is what +many bitter experiences are beginning to teach us. In the future we are +likely to be much less concerned about "race-suicide," though we can never +be too concerned about race-murder. + +When we think, however, of the desirability of a more or less stationary +population, in order to insure real social progress, as distinct from that +vain struggle of meaningless movement to and fro which the history of the +past reveals, we have to be clear in our minds that it may be far from +desirable that the present overgrown population of the world should be +stationary. That might indeed be better than further increase in numbers, +it would arrest the growth of our present evils; it might open the way to +methods by which they would be diminished or eliminated. But the process +would be infinitely difficult, and almost infinitely slow, as we may +easily realise when we consider that, with a population even smaller than +at present, the human race has not only ravished the world's beauty almost +out of existence, but so ravaged its own vital spirit that, as was found +with some consternation during the Great War, a large proportion of the +male population of every country is unfit for military service. + +So often we hear it assumed, or even asserted, that greatness means +quantity, so that to look forward to the replacement of the present +teeming insignificant human myriads by a rarer and more truly greater race +is to be a pessimist! Oh, these "optimists"! To revel in a world which +more and more closely resembles all that the poets ever imagined of Hell, +is to be an "optimist"! One wonders how it is that in no brief moment of +lucidity it occurs to these people that the lower we descend in the scale +of life the greater the quantity in a species and the poorer the quality, +so that to reach what such people should really regard as the world's +period of supreme greatness in life we must go back to the days, before +animal life appeared, when the earth was merely a teeming mass of +bacteria.[26] + +[26] See, for instance, H.F. Osborn, _The Origin and Evolution of Life_, +1918, Chapter III. + +To-day, we are often told, the majority of human beings belong either to +the Undesired Class or the Undesirable Class. To realise that this is so, +we are bidden to read the newspapers or to walk along the streets of the +cities--whichever they may be--wherein dwell the highest products of our +civilisation. In the better class quarters it is indeed the Undesirable +Class that seems to predominate, and in the poor quarters, the Undesired. +Yet, viewing our species as a whole, the two classes may be seen to walk +hand in hand along the same road, and in proportion as our nobler +instincts germinate and develop, we must doubtless admit that it ought to +be our active aim to make that road for both of them--socially though not +individually--the Road to Destruction. + +To stem the devastating tide of human procreativeness, however, easy as it +may seem in theory, is by no means so easy as some think, especially as +those think who believe that the human race stands on the brink of +suicide. For there is this about it that we must never forget: the +majority of those born to-day die before their time, so that by +diminishing the production of the unfit, as well as by the progressive +improvement of the environment that automatically accompanies such +diminution, we may make an imposing difference in the appearance of the +birth-rate, whilst yet the population goes on increasing rapidly, probably +even more rapidly than before. It needs a most radical and thorough attack +on the birth-rate before we can make any real impression on the rate of +increase of the population, to say nothing of its real reduction. There is +still an arduous road before us. + +True it is that we have two opposing schools of thought which both say +that we need not, or that we cannot, make any difference by our efforts to +regulate the earth's human population. According to one view the +development of population, together with the necessity for war which is +inextricably mixed up with a developing population, cannot be effected +without, as one champion of the doctrine is pleased to put it, "shattering +both the structure of Euclidean space and the psychological laws upon +which the existence of self-consciousness and human society are +conditional."[27] In simpler words, populations tend to become too large +for their territories, so that war ensues, and birth-control can do +nothing because "it is doubtful whether a group in the plenitude of vigour +and self-consciousness can deliberately stop its own growth." The other +school proclaims human impotence on exactly opposite grounds. There is not +the slightest reason, it declares, to believe that birth-control has had +any but a completely negligible influence on population. This is a natural +process and fertility is automatically adjusted to the death-rate. +Whenever a population reaches a certain stage of civilisation and nervous +development its procreativeness, quite apart from any effort of the will, +tends to diminish. The seeming effect of birth-control is illusory. It is +Nature, not human effort, which is at work.[28] + +[27] B.A.G. Fuller, "The Mechanical Basis of War," _Hibbert Journal_, +1921. + +[28] Sir Shirley Murphy some years ago (_Lancet_, 10 Aug. 1912) argued +that the fall of the birth-rate, as also that of the death-rate, has +been largely effected by natural causes, independent of man's action. +Mr. G. Udney Yule (_The Fall in the Birth-rate_, 1920) also believes +that birth-control counts for little, the chief factor being natural +fluctuations, probably of economic nature. Recently Mr. C.E. Pell, in +his book, _The Law of Births and Deaths_ (1921), has made a more +elaborate and systematic attempt to show that the rise and fall of the +birth-rate has hitherto been independent of human effort. + +These two opposing councils of despair, each proclaiming, though in a +contrary sense, the vanity of human wishes in the matter of procreation, +might well, some may think, be left to neutralise each other and evaporate +in air. But it seems worth while to point out that, with proper +limitations and qualifications, there is an element of truth in each of +them, while, without such limitations and qualifications, both are alike +obviously absurd and wrong-headed. Undoubtedly, as the one school holds, +in certain stages of civilisation, even at a fairly advanced stage, +nations tend to break out over their frontiers with resulting war; but the +period when they reach "the plenitude of vigour and self-consciousness" is +exactly the period when the birth-rate begins to decline, and the +population, deliberately or instinctively, controls its own increase. That +has, for instance, been the history of France since the great expansion of +population, roughly associated with the Napoleonic epopee,--which +doubtless covered a web of causes, sanitary, political, industrial, +favourable to a real numerical increase of the nation--had died down +slowly to the level we witness to-day.[29] Similarly, with regard to the +opposing school, we must undoubtedly accept a natural fall in the +birth-rate with a rising civilisation; that has always been visible in +highly civilised individual couples, and it is an easily ascertainable +zoological fact that throughout the evolution of life procreativeness has +decreased with the increased development of species. We may agree that a +natural factor comes into the recent fall in the human birth-rate. But to +argue that because a natural decline in birth-rate is the essential factor +in the slowing down of procreative activity with all higher evolution, +therefore deliberate birth-control counts for nothing, since exactly the +same result follows when voluntary prevention is adopted and when it is +not, seems highly absurd. We must at least admit that voluntary +birth-control is an important contributory cause, in some sense indeed, of +supreme importance, because it is within man's own power and because man +is thus enabled to guide and mould processes of Nature which might +otherwise work disastrously. How disastrously is shown by the history of +Europe, and in a notable degree France, during the four or five centuries +preceding the end of the eighteenth century when various new influences +began to operate. During all these centuries there was undoubtedly a very +high birth-rate, yet infant mortality, war, famine, insanitation, +contagious diseases of many and virulent kinds, tended, as far as we can +see, to keep the population almost or quite stationary,[30] and so ruinous +a method of maintaining a stationary population necessarily used up most +of the energy which might otherwise have been available for social +progress, although the stationary population, even thus maintained, still +placed France at the head of European civilisation. The more firmly we +believe that the diminution of the population is a natural process, the +more strenuously, surely, we ought to guide it, so that it shall work +without friction, and, so far as possible, tend to eliminate the +undesirable stocks of man and preserve the desirable. Clearly, the theory +itself calls for much effort, since it is obvious that along natural lines +the decline, if it is the result of high evolution, will affect the fit +more easily than the unfit. + +[29] The reader may point to the renewal of Militarism and Imperialism +in France since the Great War. That, however, has been an artificial +product (in so far as it exists among the people themselves) directly +fostered from outside by the policy of England and the United States, +just as the same spirit in Germany before the war, in the face of a +falling birth-rate, was artificially fostered from above by a military +and Imperialistic caste. + +[30] See especially Mathorez, _Histoire de la Formation de la Population +Francaise_, Vol. I, 1920, _Les Etrangers en France_. The fecundity of +French families, even among the aristocracy, till towards the end of the +eighteenth century, was fabulous; in the third quarter of the +seventeenth century the average number of children was five in Paris. +But the mortality was extremely high; under the age of sixteen, Mathorez +estimates, it was 51 per cent., and infant mortality was terrible in all +classes, small-pox being specially fatal. Then there were the various +diseases termed plagues, with famine sometimes added, while war, +emigration, and religious celibacy all counteracted the excessive +fecundity, so that from the thirteenth century to the third quarter of +the eighteenth the population seems to have been stationary, about +twenty-two millions. Then the size of the family fell in Paris to 3.9 +and in France generally to 4.3, while also there were fewer marriages. +Therewith there was an increase of prosperity. + +Thus there seems, on a wide survey of the matter, no reason whatever to +quarrel with that conviction, which is gradually over-spreading all +classes of human society in all parts of the world, and ever more widely +leading to practical action, that the welfare of the individual, the +family, the community, and the race is bound up with the purposive and +deliberate practice of birth-control, whether we advocate that policy on +the ground that we are thereby furthering Nature, or on the opposite, and +no doubt equally excellent, ground that we are thereby correcting Nature. + +Along this road, as along any other road, we shall not reach Utopia; and +since the Utopia of every person who possesses one is unique that perhaps +need not be regretted. We shall not even, within any measurable period of +time, reach a sanely free and human life fit to satisfy quite moderate +aspirations. The wise birth-controller will not (like the deliciously +absurd suffragette of old-time) imagine that birth-control for all means a +New Heaven and a New Earth, but will, rather, appreciate the delightful +irony of the Biblical legend which represented a world with only four +people in it, yet one of them a murderer. Still, it may be pointed out, +that was a state of things much better than we can show now. The world +would count itself happier if, during the Great War, only twenty-five per +cent of the population of belligerent lands had been murderers, virtually +or in fact. There is something to be gained, and that something is well +worth while. + +Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of +the human population becomes increasingly urgent.[31] To many of our +Undesirables it may seem, mere sentiment to trouble about the ravishing of +the world's beauty or the ravaging of the world's humanity. But certain +hard facts, even to-day, have to be faced. The process of mechanical +invention continues every day on an ever increasing scale of magnitude. +Now that process, however necessary, however beneficial, involves some of +the chief evils of our present phase of what we call civilisation, partly +because it has deteriorated the quality of all human products and partly +because it has enslaved mankind, and in so doing deteriorated also his +quality.[32] Now we cannot abolish machinery, because machinery lies in +the very essence of life and we ourselves are machines. But, as the +largest part of history shows, there is no need whatever for man to become +the slave of machinery, or even for machinery to injure the quality of his +own work; rightly used it may improve it. The greatest task before +civilisation at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the +slaves, instead of the masters of men; and if civilisation fails at the +task, then without doubt it and its makers will go down to a common +destruction. It is a task inextricably bound up with the task of moulding +the human race for which birth-control is the elected instrument. Indeed +they are but two aspects of the same task. We have to accept the rugged +fact that every step to render more nearly perfect the mechanical side of +life correspondingly abolishes the need for men. Thus it is calculated +to-day that whenever, in accordance with a growing tendency, coal is +superseded by oil in industry two men are enabled to do the work of +twelve. That is merely typical of what is taking place generally in our +modern system of civilisation. Everywhere a small number of men are being +enabled to replace a large number of men. Not to avoid looking ahead, we +may say that of every twelve millions of our population, ten millions will +be unwanted. Let them do something else! we cheerfully exclaim. But what? +No doubt there are always art and science, infinite in their possibilities +for joy and enlightenment, infinite also, as we know, in their +possibilities of mischief and shallowness and boredom. Let it only be true +science and great art, and one man is better than ten millions. To say +that is only to echo unconsciously the ancient saying of Heraclitus, "One +is ten thousand if he be the best." + +[31] Professor E.M. East, a distinguished biologist and lately President +of the American Society of Naturalists (_Nature_, 23 Sept., 1920), has +estimated that, for all the fall in the birth-rate, the present rate of +increase in the population of the world, chiefly of whites, who are +increasing most rapidly, will, in the lives of our grandchildren, lead +to a struggle for existence more terrible than imagination can conceive. + +[32] This has been set forth with admirable lucidity and wealth of +illustration by Dr. Austin Freeman in his _Social Decay and +Regeneration_ (1921), already mentioned. + +The vistas that are opened up when we realise the direction in which the +human race is travelling may seem to be endless; and so in a sense they +are. Man has replaced the gods he once dreamed of; he has found that he is +himself a god, who, however realistic he seeks to make his philosophy, +himself created the world as he sees it and now has even acquired the +power of creating himself, or, rather, of re-creating himself. For he +recognises that, at present, he is rather a poor sort of god, so much an +inferior god that he is hardly, if at all, to be distinguished from the +Lords of Hell. + +The divine creative task of man extends into the future far beyond the +present, and we cannot too often meditate on the words of the wisest and +noblest forerunner of that future: "The whole world still lies before us +like a quarry before the master-builder, who is only then worthy of the +name when out of this casual mass of natural material he has embodied with +all his best economy, adaptability to the end, and firmness, the image +which has arisen in his mind. Everything outside us is only the means for +this constructing process, yes, I would even dare to say, also everything +inside us; deep within lies the creative force which is able to form what +it will, and gives us no rest until, without us or within us, in one or +the other way, we have finally given it representation." The future, with +all its possibilities, is still a future infinitely far away, however well +it may be to fix our eyes on the constellation towards which our solar +system may seem to be moving across the sky. + +Meanwhile, every well-directed step, while it brings us but ever so little +nearer to the far goal around which our dreams may play, is at once a +beautiful process and an invigorating effort, and thereby becomes in +itself a desirable end. It is the little things of life which give us most +satisfaction and the smallest things in our path that may seem most worth +while. + + + + + + +INDEX + +Abstinence, sexual, 59. +Acton, 110. +Adrenal glands, 132. +Anstie, 45. +Art of love, 121. +Asceticism and sexuality, 57. +Augustine, St., 58, 77. +Australian birth-rate, 162. +Auto-erotism, 46. + +Bantu, marriage among the, 92. +Bateson, 166. +Bell, W. Blair, 119. +Binet-Sangle, 146. +Birth-control, 72, 138 _et seq._ +Birth-rate, in France, 159, 174. + in Australia, 162. + in Canada, 160. + in England, 159, 164. +Book of the Knight of the Tour-Landry, 18, 82. +Brontes, the, 25. +Browning, Mrs., 26. +Brown-Sequard, 45. +Burbank, Luther, 139. + +Canada, birth-rate in, 160. +Chastity, 57. +Chaucer, 56. +Children, to parents, relation of, 13 _et seq._ + in modern life, 24 _et seq._ + sex in, 48. +China, parents in, 32. +Christianity, 57, 65, 70, 76, 108, 110. +Continence, the value of, 38, 42. +Courtship in Nature, 103. +Crooks, Mrs. Will, 89. + +Davenport, C.B., 143. +Darwin, Major Leonard, 166. +Davies, 51. +Drayton, 51. +Dundas, C, 92. + +East, E.M., 176. +Education, 14. + in Old England, 16. + in Old France, 17, 19. +Electra-complex, 22. +Eliot, George, 31. +Ellis, Mrs. Havelock, 68, 69, 96. +English social history, 15, 16, 79, 159, 164. +Erotic claims of women, 112. +Erotic personality, 121. +Eugenics, 134 _et seq._ +Ewart, 141. + +Family, sex in life of, 22 _et seq._, 78. +Feeblemindedness, 143. +Feudal education, 19. +Francis of Assisi, St., 58. +Freeman, Austin, 99, 177. +French social history, 17, 19, 81, 159, 173. +Freud, 33, 46, 52. +Frink, H.W., 131. +Fuller, B.A.G., 171. + +Galton, Sir Francis, 134, 139, 140, 144, 145. +Girls, emancipated, 27. +Goddard, 143. +Goethe, 179. +Gratian, 79. +Greeks, eugenics amongst ancient, 137. +Groos, 119. + +Hadfield, Mrs., 32. +Heraclitus, 178. +Hinton, James, 29, 45, 67, 68, 69, 98. +Home, revolution in the, 93. +Hormones, 40, 117. +Husbands, 75 _et seq._ + +Individualism and eugenics, 148. +Infanticide, ancient, 135. +Infantile arrest, 33. +Inge, Dr., 166. +Internal secretions, 40, 117. + +Jonson, Ben, 51. +Juries, women on, 16. + +Key, Ellen, 13, 14, 15, 145. +Lasco, John a, 70. +Loewenfeld, 52. +Luchaire, 19. +Luther, 109. + +Machinery and civilisation, 177. +Magic and sex, 39. +Marriage, 63 _et seq._, 76 _et seq._, 108 _et seq._, 117 _et seq._ +Martineau, Harriet, 27. +Mathorez, 174. +Matsumato, 48. +McDougall, W., 99. +Meirowsky, 42. +Milton, 77. +Moissides, 137. +Monogamy, 106. +Montaigne, 17, 21, 37, 108, 109. +Morality, and nature, 55. + in marriage, 109. +More, Sir Thomas, 37, 109. +Murphy, Sir Shirley, 172. + +Naecke, 59. +Nature and morality, 55. +New Caledonia, treatment of parents in, 32. +Northcote, H., 71. + +Oedipus-complex, 22. +Osborn, H.F., 170. + +Palladius, 57. +Parasitism in the home, 90. +Parents, merciful destruction of, 32. + relation of children to, 13 _et seq._, 24. + training of, 34. + veneration of, 32. +Parmelee, 120. +Paston Letters, 16, 79. +Paul, Eden & Cedar, 18, 151. +Paul, St., 77. +Peacock, 51. +Pell, C.E., 172. +Perrycoste, F.H., 149, 153. +Perseigne, Adam de, 20. +Pituitary gland, 118. +Play-function of sex, 116 _et seq._ +Pleasure, the function of, 67. +Polonius, 31. +Powell, Dr., 81. +Protestantism and marriage, 77. +Psycho-analysis, 22, 130. +Purity, 37 _et seq._ + +Race-suicide, 155 _et seq._ +Ring in marriage, 84. +Rite, the marriage, 83. +Robert of Arbrissel, 58. +Rohleder, 43. +Rolland, Romain, 67. + +Sacrament, sex as a, 69. +Salle, Antoine de la, 17. +Sanger, Margaret, 152. +Schreiner, Olive, 69, 90. + and asceticism, 57. +Sex, and magic, 39. + as a sacrament, 69. + evolution in, 66. + nature of impulse of, 44. + play-function of, 116 _et seq._ + spiritual element in, 66. + sublimation of, 47, 50. +Shaftesbury, 51. +Socialism and eugenics, 150. +_Stonor Letters_, 81. +Stopes, Marie, 152. +Suarez, 62. +Sublimation, 47, 50. + +Theognis, 65. + +Wells, H.G., 152. +Westermarck, 32. +Wives, 75 _et seq._ + love rights of, 102 _et seq._ +Wollstonecraft, Mary, 25. +Women, erotic claims of, 112. + erotic ideas of average, 124, + in Crusades, 20. + in marriage, 75, 78. + in old France, 19 _et seq._ + in subjection to men, 111. + love rights of, 102 _et seq._ + on juries, 16. + +Yule, G. Udney, 172. + + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER. + + + + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's Notes: + +in the index, Wollstonecroft was changed to Wollstonecraft +also in the index, a was changed to a in: Lasco, John a +some punctuation normalized +everything else was left as found in the original + + * * * * * + + + +[ADVERTISEMENTS] + + +PARTICULARS OF +OTHER WORKS ON +SEX, SEX PSYCHOLOGY, +HEREDITY & EVOLUTION + +WILL BE FOUND ON THE THREE FOLLOWING PAGES + +[Illustration] + +Mrs. Havelock Ellis: + +THE NEW HORIZON IN LOVE AND LIFE. With a Preface by Edward Carpenter. + + +S. Herbert, M.D., M.R.C.S.: + +AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. + +THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY. (Second Edition.) + +THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EVOLUTION. (Second Edition.) + +FUNDAMENTALS IN SEXUAL ETHICS. + + +Mrs. S. Herbert: + +SEX LORE: A PRIMER, ON COURTSHIP, MARRIAGE AND PARENTHOOD. + + +Dr. & Mrs. Herbert: + +SEXUAL LIFE OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE. Authorized Translation of Hans +Fehlinger's volume. + + +PUBLISHED BY +A. & C. BLACK, LTD., 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1 + + + + +THE NEW HORIZON +IN LOVE AND LIFE + +By MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS + +WITH A PREFACE BY EDWARD CARPENTER AND +AN INTRODUCTION BY MARGUERITE TRACY + +_Demy 8vo_ PRICE 10/6 NET (_By Post, 11s._) + +Questions of Marriage and Divorce, of sex variation, of love in the past +and in the future all come up for subtle consideration. The items of our +common knowledge are regrouped. Here we see clearly revealed the personal +conception of life that lay behind Mrs. Havelock Ellis's brilliant novels. +We are arrested and spell-bound by the same understanding, the same +directness of touch, the same beauty. + +CONTENTS: + +Preface, by Edward Carpenter. Introduction, by Marguerite Tracy. Note, by +Havelock Ellis. + +PART I.--LOVE AND MARRIAGE. The Love of To-Morrow. A Noviciate for +Marriage. Semi-Detached Marriage. Marriage and Divorce. Eugenics and the +Mystical Outlook. Eugenics and Spiritual Parenthood. Blossoming Time. Love +as a Fine Art. + +PART II.--THE NEW CIVILIZATION. Democracy in the Kitchen. The Masses and +the Classes. The Maternal in Domestic and Political Life. Political +Militancy: Its Cause and Cure. War. The New Civilization. The Philosophy +of Happiness. Bibliography. Index. + +OPINIONS: + +"Bold in pursuit of honesty."--_Observer._ + +"The charm of style, the frankness and courage, the delicacy and idealism +which marked her life's work are here in full measure."--_Challenge._ + +"A wholly sincere, clear-headed woman, Mrs. Ellis was often misunderstood +because she was sane."--_W.L. George._ + +"Stimulates thought, arouses controversy, may shock the timidly +conventional."--_Sunday Times._ + +PUBLISHED BY +A. & C. BLACK, LTD., 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1 + + + + +THE HERBERT BOOKS +BY S. 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Cloth, 12s. 6d. net (by +post, 13s. 6d.). _Revised Edition._ + +"The author attempts to examine and test the principles of the theory of +evolution as applied to the known phenomena of the cosmos. To do this at +all satisfactorily in little more than 300 pages, and at the same time +bring under review all that is most valuable in recent scientific +research, is no easy task. We may say at once that, in our opinion Dr. +Herbert has succeeded wonderfully well."--_Athenaeum._ + +"Contains not a single dry page--far and away the most compact and +complete account of evolution in all its aspects."--_Globe._ + +"We congratulate Dr. Herbert on his masterly arrangement.... It will serve +as an admirable introduction to a difficult subject."--_Dundee +Advertiser._ + + * * * * * + +AN INTRODUCTION TO THE +PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX + +49 Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. 7s.6d. net (by post, 8s. 1d.). + + This fills a gap in the literature of sex. It gathers together for the + general reader a vast array of facts about sex, mating and + reproduction which have never before been so clearly and directly + stated. + +"For a simple statement, expressed in language as far as possible free +from technicalities, of the principal phenomena of generation, Dr. +Herbert's book is the best that we have seen."--_Cambridge Review._ + +"It is therefore a real satisfaction to find a sex manual which may be +placed with confidence in the hands of any educated person.... He has +certainly produced the best little manual which we yet possess in this +field."--HAVELOCK ELLIS in _Eugenics Review._ + + * * * * * + +BY MRS. HERBERT. + +SEX LORE. A Primer on Courtship, Marriage and Parenthood. +55 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 7s. 6d. net (by post, 8s. 1d.). + +"The author in simple, non-technical language expounds the main facts of +sex, especially with regard to biology and physiology, and she treats this +delicate subject in a tactful manner. A special feature of the book is the +large number of illustrations. The volume is intended for the 'younger +generation,' but parents and teachers would be well advised to peruse the +book, which should prove invaluable for educative purposes. '--_Medical +Times._ + +"... may be left with confidence in the hands of any educated person who +is attaining to manhood or womanhood."--_Aberdeen Daily Journal._ + + * * * * * + + +PUBLISHED BY +A. & C. BLACK, LTD., 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1 + + + + +THE HERBERT BOOKS + +SEXUAL LIFE +OF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE + +BY HANS FEHLINGER + +Translated by DR. S. HERBERT AND MRS. HERBERT + +Large Crown 8vo. Cloth, 6s. net (by post, 6s. 6d.). + +"A concise survey of the beliefs and customs of primitive peoples in such +matters as modesty, conjugal fidelity, courtship, marriage, birth and +feticide."--_The Times._ + +"If anyone doubts that the world is progressing, we commend to his +attention this book of Mr. Fehlinger."--_Dublin Evening Mail._ + +"In this translation Dr. and Mrs. Herbert present clearly and fairly all +the more important facts which recent research has brought to +light."--_Times of India._ + + * * * * * + +FUNDAMENTALS IN +SEXUAL ETHICS +AN ENQUIRY INTO MODERN TENDENCIES + +BY S. HERBERT, M.D., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. + +Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. Price 12s. 6d. net (by post, 13s. 3d.). + +CONTENTS: + +Part I.--THE BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SEX. +Part II.--SEX RELATIONSHIPS: Sex Morality. Sex Vice and Disease. + Sex Aberration and Abnormality. Auto Eroticism. Sexual Inversion. +Part III.--MARITAL RELATIONSHIP: Factors; Moral, Biotic, Eugenic, + Economic, Social. +Part IV.--SEX AND EDUCATION: Sex Education. Co-Education. + +OPINIONS: + +"He treats with knowledge all the urgent sexual questions and sexual +phenomena, normal and abnormal."--_The Times._ + +"A very valuable book dealing with a vastly important +subject."--_Justice._ + +"What we want is the best that is known and thought in the world on a +matter that vitally concerns us. We need also intelligent, sympathetic +common-sense guidance amid the opposing extremes of a narrow materialism +and a narrow spiritualism. Dr. Herbert supplies both these needs ... and +we could not well ask more of him."--HAVELOCK ELLIS in _Daily Herald_. + +"We may congratulate him on the success of his undertaking."--_Manchester +Guardian._ + +"Wide knowledge, conscientious thoroughness, sincere conviction, +sympathetic understanding and, even more, spiritual aspirations.... A +splendid feminist." + +EDITH BETHUNE BAKER in _Woman's Leader_. + + * * * * * + +PUBLISHED BY +A. & C. BLACK, LTD., 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1 + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Little Essays of Love and Virtue, by Havelock Ellis + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE ESSAYS OF LOVE AND VIRTUE *** + +***** This file should be named 15687.txt or 15687.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/6/8/15687/ + +Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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