Thedoctrine that love is the only motive for sex—that physical expression is pure only so far as it is the sacramental accidence of love—leads to important conclusions. There is, for instance, a class of moralist who teach that the sex-act in marriage must only be for the purpose of procreation. It would follow from this that it is immoral for sex intimacies to occur between a man and his wife once she has passed a certain age. In the ideal marriage, so this school of thought affirms, copulation is strictly regulated and occurs only when the moment is favourable for generation.
To this theory I cannot subscribe. It runs counter to the doctrine in which I believe. It Changes the sex-act from an incident or a result to a means or a cause. It is really immoral because it lays emphasis on the physical. This cold-blooded calculation of the times when sex is to be thus physically expressed is the exact opposite of the principle by which love directs and the act merelyoccurs, with no purpose but to express love physically.
This leads us to a consideration as to how far those practices between man and woman are moral in which procreation cannot result. It is interesting to note that the English law holds that “unnatural” acts between husband and wife are criminal. Although it is true that prosecution cannot occur unless there is an absence of consent, for otherwise there would be no evidence—these acts are apparently regarded asper secriminal in nature. And this indeed is a logical position, when we remember the standpoint which the State adopts towards all sex questions.
To this class of conduct artificial preventatives are closely allied. A chaos of opinion rages over this subject, from the neo-malthusian who advocates the practice as a necessity, to the purist who talks of “child-murder.” It seems clear that this latter designation is an unwarrantable exaggeration; to prevent the possibility of life coming into existence cannot by any strain of imagination be confused with destroying what is actually alive. On the other hand, the moral test which we are applying to all these problems hardly acquits the practice. It is difficult to think of preventatives without being conscious that premeditation of the physical act isbeing emphasized, and the ideal of a natural incident almost banished. To prepare for a thing is to insist on its importance. The minds of the two parties must almost necessarily be focussed—though not absolutely necessarily—on the physical sex-act.
There is no doubt however that, apart from ideals, preventatives are a means of averting more serious evils. This is not the place to enter into a detailed consideration of eugenics. We can only face the blatant fact that thousands of degenerate parents continue each year to breed degenerate children. The moral aspect with which alone I am dealing, is that this is a crime against the community; however irresponsible or ignorant the perpetrators, they are helping to burden the State with an altogether undesirable progeny. Now, whether they are allowed to marry or not, there is not the least likelihood that they will desist from sexual intercourse. Therefore, it seems to me an obviously lesser evil to remove all excuse for procreation by placing within reach the artificial means of prevention.
In this, just as in the divorce problem, we have to determine whether it is better to insist on an ideal, which we know the majority will not keep, or to legislate down to the majority. There is no doubt in my own mind that to legislate on an ideal is not onlyimpracticable but dangerous. I may believe, for instance, that it would be a higher ideal to live on vegetables and fruit rather than to slaughter animals and drink their blood. But even so, I should vehemently oppose a law which attempted to impose vegetarianism.
I believe, too, that every moral influence should be brought to bear against marriages where the physical or mental degeneracy[12]of the parents renders the use of preventatives desirable. I wish to emphasize that the ideal towards which we should set our faces is that of fewer but healthier marriages. Both Church and State should, I feel, take pains to assure themselves that these undesirable elements are absent in all unions which they are respectively called upon to solemnize. And I emphasize this because I believe that we are suffering far too much from the popular fallacy and the smug Puritanic doctrine that the cure for all sexual proclivities is for men and women to marry, and that once they marry all things are sexually permissible. It is not only irritating, but it is a fallacy, for men who are comfortably married to declare that there is “really no sex-problem.” There is probably as much immoralitywithin the married state as outside it; and far from it being the duty of every man to marry, there are many men whose duty it is not to do so.
Closely allied with eugenics is the problem of venereal disease, and out of this again, arises the problem of prostitution. How far is prostitution tolerable, so that a medical system of registration should be introduced into England? We have seen why prostitution is immoral; it is concerned with the physical side of sex, and with little else. But no thoughtful man could reasonably advocate the suppression of prostitution by law. The result of such a measure, at the present state of national development, would be deplorable, even if it were practicable. People do not become moral because they are frightened to do what they still want to do. It is always a confession of the weakness of religion or moral influences where you have to fall back on the police-force of the State for support. In moral questions, State prosecution seems only to be justifiable where the liberty of individuals, or the welfare of the community, is endangered.
Prostitution[13]as an evil can only be treated by the slow process of moral education. Of that I shall speak later. But it is worth while remembering inthis connexion, that the feminist movement must have a beneficial effect, to some extent, on prostitution. Largely, it is an economic problem. If a woman were able to earn a decent wage, it is inconceivable that she should wish to submit herself to every voluptuous patron who happens to come along. Education and economic independence must tend largely to breed dissatisfaction with such a slavish occupation. It will not do so entirely, for a certain percentage of women are prostitutes because they hunger for promiscuous sex intercourse.
That some serious attempt must be made, not merely to alleviate, but to prevent venereal disease, is evident to all who are aware how widespread it has become. And it may therefore be pointed out that it would not be impossible to prosecute the prostitute, suffering from these diseases, without introducing the vexed question of registration and official recognition of prostitution. All unmarried men and women below a certain age could be compelled to submit to periodical medical examination, and if any person was found to have solicited, after having been certified as infected, prosecution would lie. Probably a storm of protest would be aroused against an alleged interference with individual privacy. But the danger of syphilis may necessitate such a law, and after all, no one is being asked to do more thanthat to which every soldier and sailor has to submit.
We have seen that love, and therefore marriage, naturally contains the sense of permanence. There is also a sense of distaste towards incest, and of the apparently natural evils arising therefrom. No-one will deny that the State and the Catholic Church are scientifically justified in insisting upon some table of prohibited degrees. How far this distaste is essentially natural I do not know. I imagine that a sister who had been separated from her brother since birth, and who did not know that he was her brother, might fall in love with him. But the scientific dangers of such marriages would remain.[14]
The Church of England some years ago found herself immersed in a storm of controversy over the Deceased Wife’s Sister Act. To most men her attitude seemed pedantic and unworthy of serious attention. The English Church is unfortunate: her apparently narrow ecclesiasticism was really the result of a liberal policy at the time of the Reformation.During the Middle Ages the Church had extended her prohibited degrees to such an extent that it must have been difficult to know whom one could marry without a dispensation.[15]Only a person more than four degrees removed from the other party was an eligible partner without dispensation, the degrees so being reckoned as to include even second cousins. The English Church swept away these anomalies and concentrated on an irreducible minimum of prohibition up to three degrees (reckoned in direct ascending and descending generation from the common ancestor)—thus sacrificing all regulation against marriage between first cousins, who are four degrees removed.
The real opposition to the ecclesiastical attitude was, however, that any affinity, as distinguished from consanguinity, should be a bar to marriage. The unhappy deceased wife’s sister was merely a convenient representative. But this is a controversy which is not sufficiently imminent to engage us in these pages.
Wemust now pass from the normal or hetero-sexual to the second-class of sex-temperament. This is the homosexual—that in which the individual’s sex attraction is directed towards the same sex. And here it will be necessary to utter a note of warning. The sex instinct lies so deep in human nature that many men are incapable of regarding sex characteristics save through their own temperamental colour. Normal men are frequently found, for instance, of such underdeveloped mental faculties that they start out with an immense sex prejudice against the homosexual. Without being able to consider the question impartially they abhor this variety as an unspeakable evil. It is essential that we should place such critics outside the area of practical investigation. The homosexual tendency may be as evil as they imagine it to be, but we must only arrive at that conclusion as a result of impartial and incontestable reason. And any man who cannot undertake that inquiry is as valueless for our purpose as are hisprejudicial opinions; he must simply go back to the nursery.
Let us therefore, as far as is individually possible, attempt to treat this question with an open mind. And accordingly we shall find it most convenient first to consider the various attitudes which have been taken up with regard to this difficult problem.
The legal or State attitude we have already to some extent anticipated. The State looks with suspicious eyes on any influence which tends to sterilize the birth-rate. Accordingly, in England, homosexuality is branded as a crime for which a heavy sentence can be pronounced. It is true that legally this sentence, under the Criminal Amendment Act, can only be inflicted for the physical sex-act itself; but this includes any assault or any behaviour which may be construed as an attempt to lead up to the commission of the act. And, accordingly, any man is legally under suspicion if he is thought to be homosexual, even though no perpetration of the physical offence can be alleged against him. The hideous system of blackmail is thus encouraged by the law. Once a man is understood to be subject to these proclivities, it is assumed that sooner or later he will commit the offence, and he is watched, if not by the over-busy police, by those idle persons who trade upon the legal attitude toward this problem. Anyconversation or literature on the subject is suppressed, so far as is possible, by the State, because the physical expression being a crime, all that may become an incentive to the crime is itself criminal.
We have already mentioned the basic fallacy of the legal attitude. It does not follow that because a line of conduct may decrease the birth-rate, it is therefore wrong. Celibacy, as we have seen, may be an actual virtue. But in this particular instance there is a still more serious error. The English law, by branding homosexuality as a crime, assumes that it is a deliberate perversion; for it would be obviously ridiculous to punish a man for doing what he could not help doing. Even the law is not so illogical as to sentence a madman to penal servitude because he insists on being mad. No, the State regards the homosexual as one who has of his own choice assumed this form of sex temperament, in the same way as a man decides to rob or forge a signature. The legal attitudemustrest on this supposition, for otherwise its policy would be flagrantly unjust. And accordingly we find the law classifying this family of behaviour as “unnatural.”
Now, if there is one fact which is clear from an investigation of the problem, it is that thissupposition is as false as it is possible for any supposition to be. Let it be granted that a certain number of homosexual offences are committed by persons who are sexually normal in temperament. There remains the whole body of homosexuals, of those, that is to say, in whom the homogenic attraction is as integral a part of their nature as the appreciation of music or the love of colour. Abundant proof of this contention is to hand. There have been thousands of individuals in every age, including the present, who have never heard of homosexuality,[16]have never met other homosexuals, or come into contact with anything approaching homosexual practice; and yet they have been homosexual all their lives. I have known persons who believed that no one else in the world shared their aspirations, and also have suffered tortures because of their supposed isolated abnormality.
The State attitude simply ignores this factor, and accordingly reveals itself as unscientific.
It is true that perhaps by such an agency as psycho-analysis reasons could be found in many of these cases why the individual had developed on inverted sex lines; home repressions, the system ofearly education, the age of the parents, these or other influences, may have produced a complex which has switched the sex-nature on to a particular path. But these reasons do not necessarily show the result to be artificial; it is our very nature indeed which these influences construct. It is impossible to trace an exact line between the inherent nature and the effect which outside influences have had upon it. We must, and we do in fact, regard the permanent and fundamental traits, however derived, as “natural.”
Moreover psycho-analysis definitely indicates that there is a homosexual period through which all individuals inevitably pass.
The State theory that the temperament is “unnatural” cannot therefore be supported on any grounds, except in the cases where it is deliberately assumed by normal persons. In most cases it is natural to the individual’s nature, and not “unnatural,” but “abnormal.”
Once this simple scientific truth is grasped the legal attitude is seen to crumble in all directions. The case for criminal prosecution rests logically on the assumption that unless homosexual practices are rigidly suppressed they will spread. And since their increase would seriously diminish the birth-rate the State is necessarily anxious to avert this danger.But it is an odd perversion which imagines that sober respectable citizens are only restrained from indulging in homosexual vice by the threat of penal servitude! Once the scientific truth is grasped and homosexuality is seen to be, except in a small number of cases, the natural temperament of a small minority, it will be realized that normal persons are not likely to wish to commit unnatural acts, whether there is or there is not a penal law; nor can any Act of Parliament prevent homosexuals from being homosexual.
And in practice this theoretical conclusion is found to hold true. For in the countries, such as France, where the Code Napoléon does not cover these prosecutions, homosexuality is far less rife than in England, or in Germany, where until the Revolution the penal law was rigidly enforced.
It is well that we should face these facts unreservedly, however strong may be our personal antipathy to the practices.
The second attitude may be described generally as that of society. Public opinion must necessarily be too vague to admit of succinct definition. But generally its attitude towards this question may be defined as that of an ordinary man towards a freak; he has no sympathy with freaks andindeed dislikes them—but they are so very rare that he can afford to ignore them.
The problem of the homosexual cannot however be avoided in this way, for the simple reason that the invert forms so comparatively large and permanent a part of the community. It is difficult to attempt an accurate estimate, partly because many homosexuals are so afraid of incurring the odium of public opinion that they successfully disguise their true nature and are unsuspected even by their most intimate friends. But there is a more fundamental difficulty. It appears to be undeniable that a large number of normal people possess to some extent a strain of the homosexual temperament. We have, in fact, as in almost all classifications, not a naturally dividing gulf but a gradually ascending scale. Some individuals may have only 5 per cent. inverted and 95 per cent. hetero-sexual tendencies, while others are only 10 per cent. normal. There are a large and increasing number of persons who are almost equally balanced on either side. These bisexuals often marry happily and at the same time enjoy homogenic experiences.
When we remember that, according to psycho-analysis, everyone about the age of puberty passes through a homosexual stage, it is probably not an exaggeration to state that few people fail to preservea stratum of this nature, however small the percentage and however deeply such tendencies may be buried in the unconsciousness.
If however we decide to draw an arbitrary distinction and to define persons with less than 30 per cent. inverted nature as normal, persons from 30 to 60 per cent. as bisexual, and the remainder as homosexual, we are left with a considerable number of the last variety. Havelock Ellis has reckoned the percentage of homosexuals among the professional middle classes in England as 5 per cent. and among women as 10 per cent.[17]In any case the popular view that the proportion is so small as to be negligible is quite impossible, and is due to the fact that most men are so unobservant of psychological evidence that their opinion is of little serious value.
However undesirable, then, this species of temperament may be, it cannot be described as unnatural in the sense of artificial or unusual. The third or current scientific attitude does seem at first to avoid these superstitions and to rest on a reasonable basis. This attitude may be described as that of regardinghomosexuality as a disease, which should neither be punished nor ignored, but treated. The theory that we all pass through a homosexual period at a comparatively early stage, lends support to this conclusion. The hero-age of boys and girls, it is urged, is almost always directed towards the child’s own sex. Therefore it can fairly be argued that where the sex development has been restricted to these lines it denotes some strange dislocation which has prevented natural growth. The fact that in some cases this cause can actually be traced—such as a disappointment in an early love affair with the opposite sex, or to artificial circumstances which have made for celibacy—confirm many students of sex-science in this opinion.
But as if nature deliberately intends to thwart all easily attained explanations, she sets out certain facts, in practice, which entirely invalidate the theory. It is true that many homosexuals, both men and women, portray in general mental efficiency that peculiar want of proportion in some direction which is the inevitable symptom of mental abnormality; the male may be obviously effeminate, or, male or female, eccentric or hysterical. But this is distinctly the exception. So far as my personal experience goes, the majority of homosexuals are indistinguishable from normal men, except by somepsychic or intuitional sense, in physical or mental appearance; and I observe that this experience is shared by all those scientists who have written on the subject. The undeniable facts are that among this minority of the race a majority of men have, in all ages and races, held a pre-eminent and honourable position in society, revealing the brilliance of sanity rather than the abnormality of genius. The homosexual has succeeded not only as might have been expected in the arts. It is true that, in general, he possesses certain feminine attributes, such as a gentler and more emotional positivity than the normal. But he has excelled in such masculine paths as soldiering, statesmanship, and engineering. It is almost irritating, where one wishes to find support for the scientific explanation, to turn to history and discover that the homosexual section of the Greeks were magnificent warriors as well as philosophers; that not only Shakespeare, who wrote many of his sonnets to a boy, or Michael Angelo, but Alexander the Great, Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick II of Prussia, and William III of England, had their homosexual tendencies. Indeed, were it permissible to do so, it would be possible to instance some of our most famous generals and politicians of modern times as possessing this unmistakable temperament.
It is well then freely to admit that the scientifictheory simply does not square with the full facts of the case.
The fourth attitude is that of religion. The Church’s official position is mainly indistinguishable from that of the State, although the atmosphere of the Church has tended largely to be congenial to this development. It is evident that Christianity was influenced in its early days by the appalling condition of vice in Roman society, and it is not to be wondered at that a severe legacy of prejudice has been inherited in the light of this indescribable experience. But this brings us conveniently to a point where we must admit a fallacy underlying almost all considerations of the homogenic sex nature. And unless we are able to dispose of the fallacy in our minds, further investigation is useless.
The fallacy consists of the assumption that homosexuality means only the perpetration of the physical sex-act. In reality this is as untrue as to suppose that the normal man is necessarily a patron of prostitutes. Such a confusion of thought is obviously ludicrous. But not less inaccurate is this prevailing idea regarding the homosexual. Not only is the particular sex-act, popularly associated with this subject, an extremely rare occurence, even as among the physical sex-expressions of this temperament, but probably a vast majority of homosexualsare deliberately celibate. Homosexuality is a romantic cult rather than a physical vice. Nine-tenths of its energy is directed purely in the realm of ideals. The old misconception of sex as a rather disreputable physical function again dogs our steps. But sex is almost entirely emotional; sex-love, and especially homosexual love, is not lust. Its desire is romantic and idealistic, and when physical incidents occur, they are usually the unintentional outlets of the purely emotional passion.
The literature of homosexuality is almost entirely romantic, and small though it is forced to be, in quality and ideal its average must rank as extraordinarily noble.
It is noticeable, indeed, that in a large proportion of the unpleasant cases which are tried in police-courts, the offenders are admittedly normal men who have deliberately perpetrated homosexual acts for various causes, such as a neurotic desire for novelty, or the desire to avoid disease. There are also the considerable class of perverted normals whose deviation from their natural path as the result of some such influence as heterosexual disappointment or repression, has been so emphasized as to render their perversion distinct from natural developments, and who refuse, or are unable, to deny themselves physical gratification.
If we dissociate the true homosexual from this class, and concentrate our attention only on the “celibate” species of such attachments, it is evident that we are in the presence, not merely of something which is not criminal, but of an ideal which is sacred in character. Pure love, especially so intense a love as the homogenic attachment, is not profane but divine. And though the Church may be unable to recognize it by her sacramental benediction, because, unlike marriage, it cannot effect physical procreation, she possesses such Biblical precedents as the story of David and Jonathan—an episode which is obviously homosexual in the sense that it describes not a platonic companionship but a romantic passion.
In the social sphere also, the place of this aspect of homosexuality is obvious. The homosexual must, and does in fact, exist in the most honoured offices of the community. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to declare that few men can be successful in educational or philanthropic work unless they have some homogenic temperament in their nature. Without this they may compel discipline but they are powerless to attract sympathetic co-operation. The testimony in favour of this assertion is overwhelming.
But when we admit that sex tends to find a physical expression, and we come therefore face to face with the physical problem, the difficulty I admitto be considerable. And I can only re-emphasize that this feature is numerically and potentially the least important, but that there can be no religious countenance for any physical sex-act outside the sacrament of matrimony.
Rape, and seduction without consent, are obviously evils calling for legal prosecution, as being an infringement of personal liberty. And in this connexion it must be remembered that homosexual practices tend to seduction, inasmuch as the attraction is frequently towards those who have not attained intellectual manhood. For the rest, I am inclined only to re-affirm the general principle which I have already attempted to define—namely, that sex becomes a sin where the main objective becomes the physical gratification. Once the proportion is weighed on the side of physical expression, love is prostituted. The purity of true love is known by the fact that its face is turned not to mere physical functions, but beyond the emotional and even mental, to the spiritual ideal. Indeed, a lover, whatever his temperament happens to be, loves even if his beloved is removed from all physical reach. That is the test.
I do not look for salvation to the arms of mere criminal legislation. This seems to me to be almostpowerless as a moral force, and indeed, to encourage the hideous apparatus of blackmail.[18]Gradual and unsensational as it may be, I believe that morals can only be improved by educational and religious influences.
And so far as theoretical solutions are concerned I believe that Mr. Edward Carpenter[19]comes nearest to the truth. Nature is deliberate in creating not uniformity but variety, and I doubt if the world would continue if there were only normal men in it. The homosexual has his place, within restrictions, as has the celibate or the sexless type. The real truth, I feel to be, is that few men are wholly masculine or women feminine, and that somewhere, in comparative degrees, homosexuality is in us all. It may become so excessive as to be a disease, or so feeble as to create that unæsthetic, bourgeoise type,which is an unpleasant symptom of super-normality.
We enter the realm of pure conjecture if we attempt to inquire the purpose for which this type has been deliberately created. And I can only record my own entirely unproveable, but definite opinion, that the human race, in the far ages ahead, will return, by a spiral process, to the bisexual species from which I believe it has come. If this is so, the homosexual is apparently a prototype, a preliminary attempt of nature to combine both sex-natures in one individual. And with all his present imperfections, I believe that there are evidences which go strongly to support this conjecture.
Thereis little that need be written on this subject, not because it is devoid of interest, but because it raises no vital sex problem.
The number of sexless people is small, though apparently increasing. It may be questioned whether there are any really sexless people—individuals, i.e. whose sex-nature is non-existent. Probably in most of these cases sex, for some reason or other, is there, dormant but positive. But it is convenient so to classify those in whom, for some reason, the sex-force has never yet been stirred.
It must be remembered that this class is quite distinct from the religious celibate. The celibate has all the sexual ardour for his religious or humanitarian devotion. The sexless man or woman is cold, intellectually aloof, and generally critical.
There are only two considerations calling for remarks on this interesting psychological problem. The first is that we must not allow the great body of normal opinion to label such people as unnatural, and as having no part to play in the community.They have, on the contrary, an important rôle. Their intellectual ability is in itself a great asset, particularly in abstract and critical directions. And in all sex questions they should, and frequently have, an impartial outlook, for the very reason that they can view sex from a detached standpoint.
But, conversely—and this is the second consideration—they possess the immoral tendency of regarding sex with abhorrence, especially when they confuse sex with mere physical expression. In extreme cases the sexless individual has been known even to faint or exhibit symptoms of nausea at the chance touch of a woman. This is obviously to magnify the physical side out of all clean proportion. And probably such cases show themselves to be the result of artificial repression and consequent complex. It may be argued from this that all deviations from the normal are the results of repression. But, as we have seen, the difference between natural and unnatural is comparative, and most of our nature is built up, in the first instance, by early exterior influences.
Underthis head I have included a number of characteristics, which have no connective bearing upon one another. It seemed the most convenient classification.
Perhaps it will be best to take as the first example a sex tendency which can hardly be described as super-abnormal, for among single men, and especially among boys, it is extremely common.
Auto-eroticism in the form of self-abuse is not an easy problem to tackle. The usual policy adopted towards boys is most immoral. Well-meaning but hopelessly vicious purists, write terrifying pamphlets or deliver lectures in which they declare that this practice will inevitably lead to lunacy, paralysis or even death. The result is that the boy is scared into an ineffectual attempt at repression, which, so far as it is successful, sets the sex-impulse at work into morose channels and makes him a liar or a thief. Or he may be impelled to inquire for himself. He finds that, so long as self-abuse occurs infrequently, it does not bring about these dire evils, and accordingly he assumes that all moral doctrine ishypocrisy and often falls into the opposite extreme of constant self-abuse, with the result that actual physical and mental deterioration sets in.
What is really the truth?
The first consideration is that frequent and unregulated abuse does cause physical harm. The margin of frequency which will escape this harm varies with the individual. But, with growing boys, the practice is perhaps more dangerous than after physical maturity. The whole reserve of the physical constitution appears to be needed while the body is developing.
The difficulty of this problem is its complications. There are several entirely conflicting influences which must be weighed one against the other.
We have seen the physical danger, and, since morality must not be founded on a lie, we must freely admit that the physical danger may be eliminated by limiting the frequency of the practice. It may then be physically harmless. There remain, however, at least two causes which make for a misuse of the sex-force, that is—for immorality. The first is that it is usually the result of mental weakness, sheer inability to overcome the inclination. The mind, the will,mustbe supreme in its own house. Until that is done little else matters. And it comes, therefore, to this, so far as this particular considerationis concerned, that it is better for a man deliberately to regulate himself by programme to certain times, than to keep up an ineffectual struggle, or to obey whenever the inclination arises.
For, in both these cases, remorse follows. And this is as great an evil as the failure of will; indeed, itisfailure of will. Remorse is not penitence. It is useless thereby to regret what has been done. A man must simply own to himself that he has failed, make a resolution to be stronger next time, and then sweep the recollection from his mind, switching off on to other mental channels.
The second influence which makes for impurity is that by this practice the sex-force becomes literally selfish. Now, sex is fundamentally a movement towards union through love, whether it be physical or super-physical. This practice is merely a vicious circle, in which the love element, save in the perverted form of narcissism, is absent. Accordingly, there must, almost always, be evil mental results from this abuse. And, once again, we see that the real evil is not in the physical act but in the realm of thought, whether the act occurs or not.
On the other hand, we must not become such abstract moralists as to deny that in many individuals the sex-force is so strong as to press almost irresistibly towards physical expression. Even dreams, whichare the normal outlet, may not be sufficient. A man who for some reason, cannot marry, will therefore argue that his only alternative is recourse to prostitution, and that self-abuse, so long as it is regulated, is morally preferable. One remedy is, as we have already seen, the transfer of the sex-force to higher channels, so that all the glow and energy of sex is energized in devotion to a group of persons, or to a religious or humanitarian ideal in concrete labour. For sex is primarily creative, and if it is not creating physical children it may have, and should have, a spiritual progeny—as in art and literature.
The truth is that each individual case must be treated according to its particular state of development. General rules in this instance are particularly dangerous. We can only repeat that the repression is worse than commission, that a seething mass of sexual thought is worse when it has no physical outlet; that the ideal, when there may be no legitimate outlet—and, indeed, to some extent, in all cases—is to find an emotional outlet, to dig thought and emotional channels along which the sex-force may flow, but the physical expression of which is, in the ordinary sense of the term, non-sexual.[20]
And this is quite possible.
II
Attraction towards young children is frequently, perhaps almost entirely, sexual. A symptom of this temperament is that romantic attachments are formed towards either sex, because, before puberty, the child is bisexual or sexless. This must essentially be a cult; it is a clean and noble cult, but the penalty of its high standard is that here all physical sex expression must be denied except in the lesser form of embrace.
Here, indeed, the prosecution of the law against sex-acts is justified. For, not only is the child incapable of giving valid consent, but the commission of the sex-act is physically and morally injurious. It is physically injurious beyond all doubt at a young age, and it is morally injurious, because it introduces sex to an age of development when the consciousness of sex should not have appeared above the horizon. The inevitable result is that if sex-acts take place the child eventually ages rapidly, as can be seen among the child-mothers of India. Maturity is induced far before its time.
The sex consciousness, as distinct from the unconsciousness, can be awakened in the earliest years of childhood. The young boy or girl often shows an extraordinarily intuitive perception that there is asexual design behind even the apparently harmless overtures. And this is why this cult is particularly dangerous. The lover, in fact, must not only entirely eliminate the morally criminal sex inclinations, but he must take care not to become so sentimental and romantic as really to suggest sex to the child’s unconsciousness. It is difficult to draw the line as to what is a lawful and what is an unlawful expression of this sex-temperament. One can only say that the remedy is not to concentrate love on one child, but on children generally. The child must not be treated as an adult; there must be no manifestations of jealousy, or insistence on a return of love expression. The embrace of children must be natural but not too ardent. In fact, the lover must diffuse his love and romp with children as a class rather than allow himself to appear emotional over one individual.
Many unthinking people will at once regard this temperament as impure when they have been convinced that scientifically it is sexual. But this is only because they cannot understand that sex is a clean thing and that the physical side of it is an occasional and by no means an inevitable incident. The cult of child-love is in fact one of the purest and noblest of sex-expressions. But it is a difficult path, and he who treads it must beware of many pitfalls.
Again, I quite deny that it is due to thwarted paternal instinct. I believe it to be as natural a variety as any other of the sex-temperaments. We have suffered too long from the superstition that sex is a uniformity of type.
III
Then there is that strange form of sex-expression known as bestiality.
To most of us the connexion between man and beast in sex is so revolting that there is a great danger of our prejudice running away with us.
I believe that prejudice against what seems to me so debased a vice, is justifiable. But I am equally sure that to punish such offences by criminal law has no shred of justification, except when the act is done in public so as to be openly indecent. No physical or moral harm can be done to the animal. And were it not tragic, the idea of sentencing the offenders to penal servitude would be itself a travesty.
The practice, which is not so uncommon as many people imagine, is not so much immoral as unnatural. I mean that this can hardly ever be a variety of sex-temperament. Although the love of women for pet dogs is probably a form of perverted sex-outlet, it seems impossible to discover here anyactual love going out towards animals rather than to humans. Therefore, the act is almost always due to a desire for mere physical expression, when this happens to have been chosen as the most convenient.
The true remedy, therefore, can only be to take the individual and educate him. He must be shown that it is immoral for man to devolve back to the animal level. He is superior to the beast. He must be reminded that sex must be a result of love, and that sex-love between man and animal would only be possible if it were moral for man to cease to reason, to go down on all fours, and to eat and drink and live like an animal. Even the most primitive man would not wish to do that. And if he feels any sense of abhorrence at such a proposal, then he must learn to extend his abhorrence to any attempt at a similar equality in sex.
IV
The strange and almost endless forms of sex-association need not be considered, since they have no moral problem of their own. The man whose sex-force is stirred into energy by the sight of some inanimate physical object is obviously the victim of a sex-repression. And such diseases must be treated as any other repressions should be. Thesegeneral considerations must suffice here for all forms of sex perversions, such as sadism and its converse. And it is not difficult to distinguish between the unnaturalness of such practices and the natural character of the main sex-types which we have already mentioned.
Itis becoming evident to all students of the sex-problem that the remedy for many of the difficulties arising therefrom is a wholesome and efficient sex-education.
In many cases the parents are not the persons most fitted to give this education. They may not possess the art of imparting knowledge, and often there is a certain reticence between parent and child, which when present creates a bar to the proper handling of this question. The child goes to school to learn, and the school must take its share of this responsibility. Where this is not done the effect is deplorable. In the preparatory school sex has hardly appeared. But in any school where there are older boys or girls, and where sex-education is not given, knowledge is rapidly obtained. Officially sex is ignored until, on rare occasions, it is detected. Severe punishment is then meted out, and perhaps the offender is even expelled, although the school is really penalizing the results of its own system.
It is unnecessary to labour the apology that theabsence of sex-education ensures innocence. In no school is this the case. If it were, with growing boys and girls, it would be unnatural. Sex-instinct is bound to grow as the physical body grows, and to ignore this fact is to create the conception that sex-instinct is immoral. We then obtain the usual attitude adopted in public schools—that sex is to be indulged behind closed doors and sex literature sniggered at in dark corners. The boy grows up with a totally unclean view of sex. He becomes either an intolerable prude, or else he approaches sex-experience with an entirely twisted conception of sex-morality. One is continually meeting instances of this perverted imagination. Not only boys, but men, will regard an outspoken book on sex, perhaps written with the purest of motives, as “hot stuff,” something to be greedily devoured when the eye of respectable authority is conveniently removed. Recently, a man was told that a certain clergyman was a member of a group of students studying sex-psychology. He expressed the opinion, with a knowing leer, that “some parsons are not such fools after all.”
These crude examples of the result of driving sex into a dark corner exactly represent what one is up against in school, and in the world, when one begins to deal with sex openly and cleanly as a natural and non-repressible instinct. Really these people area type of prude, much as they would resent this classification, for they persist in regarding sex as something which is rather naughty. They even imagine that to take away from it the cloak of unnaturalness with which they have surrounded it is to rob it of all its attraction. This is ridiculously untrue. Sex is attractive because it is romantic, and, so long as one does not go to the opposite extreme of regarding it merely through the musty glasses of scientific classification, it becomes no less attractive when it is open and natural, and ceases to be the cause of giggling asides.
Before any moral sense in the sex-problem can be established there must be a fundamental cleaning of this cess-pool, this strange medley of official silence, unnatural repression, and unclean secretiveness. The main road to a moral sense is sex-education. And it is necessary, therefore, to conclude this outline of principles by suggesting some conditions which should govern such instruction.
It is obvious that sex-education must be advanced on the process of a sliding scale. Before puberty sex should not appear on the horizon of the child’s consciousness. The precocious child must of course be specially dealt with, but usually the first lessons in sex should commence with the period of mental puberty. Before that time the small child jokes onlyabout the normal excretory functions, and this can be adjusted by emphasizing the unmanly and unnecessary character of such forms of humour. A child has usually an exaggerated impression of the value of the adult standard, an impression which it must be confessed is too often subject to subsequent disillusionment. While it remains, however, it can be used, and it can be pointed out that “grown-ups” do not consider the excretory system has any more claim to ridicule than the process of digestion or sleep. Vulgarity and coarseness are not symptoms even of immoral sexuality.
The problem commences, then, with puberty. And here a warning should be uttered against that school of reformers which tends to the view that sex can be regarded as naturally and as publicly as natural history or chemistry. This attitude ignores the fact that there is such a quality as sexual appetite. And consequently, sex education should be rather a matter for individuals than for public instruction. We have remarked that the parent may not infrequently be an unfortunate educator. But where these objections do not arise, the home is an admirable atmosphere for sensible teaching. The Catholic Church possesses the invaluable medium of the Confessional, and where the Confessor can give sound sex instruction no better opportunity can beimagined. There remains the school, but even here better work will be done in the study than the classroom.
The immediate problem in the early post-puberty age is the tendency towards solitary practices. It must be recognized that this is usual with all children, and that there is no evidence to show that, save in extreme exceptions, physical harm results. All attempt atalarmist prudismmust be abandoned. Sane instruction will tend rather to emphasize that sex abuse is due to a weakness of will-power, and that man is most manly, i.e. most removed from the animal, in the exercise of will-power. All education should contain that subject which is at present consistently ignored, namely, the art of thought-control. The child will be interested to follow certain simple rules of mental exercise, and where this is followed the liability to indulge in sex-acts diminishes. It is this element which must be emphasized, the fact, that is, that solitary practices are usually the result of an inability to exercise the will and control the mind.
At a slightly later period, the public-school age, there emerges the tendency, in addition to onanism, for promiscuous practices, usually of a homogenic nature. A further stage of sex-education must now be opened out, namely the principle that physicalsex expression must be the expression only of love. The problem now becomes necessarily more acute, but there is this element which tends to lessen the difficulties of the instructor’s task. The individual is always interested about himself; he is naturally egotistical. The youth will gladly listen to what can be told him of his own nature. He must be shown the immense superiority of mind both over the emotional and physical natures. This may involve a slight dethronement of the public school appreciation of sport. So long as it is slight such a dethronement will be a reform in itself. The boy in his middle teens must be taught that man is greater in his mental than in his physical activity; he must be reminded that he is inferior to many animals on the physical level. The application of this doctrine to sex is that sex-expression for the purpose of physical curiosity or excitement is a denial of the monopoly of love, which belongs to the emotional and mental capacities.
The young man and the girl, who has left school, will be ready to receive the whole standard of sex-morality as has been outlined in this manual. The chief trouble now becomes over-sentimentality, the tendency to develop emotionally at the expense of the mind. And it becomes, therefore, essential to remind the pupil that where there are continualpassing and promiscuous sexual or love affairs, the mind is being shut out from its natural functions. To be attracted sexually towards any pretty girl, to develop sexual relations with different women from week to week, is simply a form of mental unbalance. The emotions are in the saddle. For directly the mind begins to operate there is introduced the element of permanency and constancy. The deepest and most real pleasures only begin in the realm of mentality. The man who hears music only to beat time or remember a catchy tune is shut out of the immense joy of the intellectual love of music. So the young man who lives in a fever of hot-house sexuality, of absorbing intrigues in the dance-room, or the morbid atmosphere of the street corner, is shut out of all the exquisite joys of love. He does not know this, any more than the irreligious man knows what he loses through an absence of the spiritual sense. But he must be told.
The basic principle of sex values is that sex is immoral so far as the physical side outweighs in proportion the emotional and mental—so far indeed, as the act becomes the motive and not the incident. Sex may be dedicated only to love; divorced from love, it is an abuse. There can be no exceptions to this rule, and we can only clarify our ideas as to what is and what is not love. Perhaps this maxim, whichwe learn by gradual experience, will help us. Sex passion quickly burns itself out. The pleasures derived from passion will be of a purely temporary nature, without the satisfaction which alone comes from permanence. All physical things are less permanent than the mental. There is no joy, no divine nature in sex, save where from the ashes of passion rises the phœnix of the “sexual” but the super-passionate attachment. And this permanent possession can only come, whether in marriage or outside, where the mind, healthily developed and exercised, is taking its true place in the expression of pure love.
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Footnotes:
[1]The Origin of Sexual Modesty, by Edward Westermarck.
[2]VideR. V. Jellyman (1838) 8 C and P, 604.
[3]Until recently incest was not a civil offence.
[4]The second object of marriage is declared to be “a remedy against sin...; that such persons as have not the gift of continency marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.”
[5]1 Cor. vii. 8, 9. “Burn” means sex-obsession as mentioned on page 38.
[6]“Where the decree Tametsi of the Council of Trent has not been proclaimed, marriage is constituted by mere consent freely exchanged between persons who are by natural and canonical law competent and able to intermarry.”—Geary’sMarriage and Family Relations. (Now altered byNe temere-decree, but the principle remains.)
[7]We have already commented on the strange inconsistency of regarding the sex-act as evilper seoutside marriage, and as a virtue in marriage.
[8]I am using “celibacy” to imply complete physical chastity.
[9]With the curious inconsistency, already referred to, that in marriage non-celibacy is a virtue.
[10]Except by Act of Parliament.
[11]The Majority Report of the Divorce Commission is a good instance of the unnecessary hardship which results from half-hearted proposals of this kind. Divorce is to be allowed, for example, after desertion for three years; why not for two? Or again, the wife of an incurable drunkard is to be free to obtain divorce, while the unhappy wife of a man who suffers from violent fits of intermittent drunkenness is to be denied this relief.
[12]I refrain from adding “economic” reasons, for I believe that the State should remove, as far as possible, all such obstacles against healthy parents begetting children.
[13]Procuration for the purpose of prostitution is of course an entirely different matter.
[14]No actual physical harm need result from an incestuous union. The only effect which seems to be caused is that the characteristics to be hereditarily transmitted are doubled. Thus with only a small grain of insanity in a family the chances of aggravated insanity appearing in the offspring of a brother and sister would be considerable.
[15]Spiritual affinity was a bar, so that not only could not godparents marry each other, but there could be no valid unions between a godparent and the child’s father or mother. (Geary’sMarriage and Family Relations.)
[16]Some apology must be made for the use of this hybrid term. The unwarrantable confusion of Greek and Latin terminology must, however, be laid at the door of popular use.
[17]Psychology of Sex; Vol.Sexual Inversion. Dr. Hirschfeld in hisStatistischen Vatersuchunge über den Prozentensetz der Homosexuellen, considers that out of 100,000 inhabitants, 94,600 on the average are sexually normal, 1,500 exclusively homosexual, and 3,900 bisexual.
[18]The existence of this danger was admitted in a debate in the House of Lords on August 15, 1921, on The Criminal Law Amendment Bill. The Earl of Malmesbury, speaking on a proposal to apply criminal prosecution to homosexual offences among women, declared that “the opportunity for blackmail will be vastly and enormously increased.” Other speakers concurred in this view, and it was partly on this ground that the proposal was thrown out.
It is hardly necessary to point out that if blackmail would be encouraged by such legislation, it must equally be encouraged by the present law regarding similar offences between males.
[19]The Intermediate Sex.
[20]I cannot enter here into that further theory which may be described as “expression through a phantasy.”