A great many men are secretly ashamed of the very fact that they have to struggle with temptation in the matter of purity. In an inner chamber of their lives they contend with impure thoughts and impure suggestions, but they try to keep the doors of that chamber shut, and would blush if others knew what goes on there. Yet all healthy and normal men are so tempted. Those who seem to have escaped have generally taken the course of repressing the whole sexual side of their natures, and of shutting their eyes to the sexual facts of life, which is not a wise course. And so, firstly, in view of the task of facing temptation it would be well for us all to realize that temptation itself is not sin. We may expose ourselves to quite unnecessary temptation. We may play with fire. We may be fools, if we will. But some element of temptation is part of our normal lot in life, and we need not blush about it. To the average young man it can truly be said, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man." In this respect we are all brothers in arms, and I believe the first step towards victory lies in an honest facing of the fact. Let us admit that we are tempted and get openly to the business of understanding how temptation can be conquered.
Let me attempt first of all to clear away certain mischievous delusions about the subject. It is actually believed in many quarters, and half believed in many more, that continence is bad for a man. It is only "natural," men often say, for an adult man to satisfy his desires, and if he does not he suffers in health. It is a point on which we must let the doctors speak, even although plenty of individual men could testify from experience that the idea is nonsense. And what do the doctors say! Sir Dyce Ductworth, Sir James Paget, Sir Andrew Clark, Sir Clifford Allbutt, and scores of others have all expressed themselves with the clearest emphasis. Sir James Paget, for instance, says, "Chastity or purity of life does no harm to mind or body. Its discipline is excellent. Marriage can safely be waited for." Further, in the noble little book on "Sex" by Thomson and Geddes, I find this sentence: "Féré, a leading authority on sex pathology and hygiene, denies categorically that a man is ever hurt by continence, and affirms that he is always the stronger." What probably is true is that if a man lives in thought an impure life, and submits himself to exciting suggestions and imaginations, the secretions of his body will be increased, so that he may become subject to very severe strain. And that, if continued, may work nervous damage. But this only means that a continent life requires thought and proper direction. Thereneed beno evil effects from continence. We must be quite clear about this point, for so long as we toy in mind with the suggestion that there is any natural necessity for incontinence, we are fatally weakened for our struggle. It is a man's glory to be master of himself, and to maintain his virginity through the years before marriage. And he may quite well achieve it, if he will but go the right way about it. No doubt the struggle is much harder for some than for others. No doubt there are reasons in plenty for charity to those who fail. But there is no real reason why any man should not hope and expect to succeed, and a right expectation is the very foundation of success.
Then, secondly, a man would do well to realize one simple physiological truth about his body. That body naturally and regularly secretes semen. But it is not necessary that that semen should be discharged by sexual activity. On the contrary, a large part of it can be reabsorbed by the body and used up in mental and physical activities to the great benefit of the body and the enrichment of life. That is why the ancients taught that Diana is the natural born enemy of Venus. The man who takes plenty of regular exercise employs his vital forces in a way that lessens the strain of his moral conflict. And though it is true that this re-absorption of semen does not completely remove it, Nature has her own method during sleep of readjusting things in a quite harmless way.
From this it follows of course that the real secret of a successful struggle for purity lies in living a life full of wholesome and varied activities. Our artistic sensibilities are intimately related to our sexual natures, and by some self-expression through art, or by the sympathetic appreciation of the art of others, we provide an enriching outlet for our natural energies. Social activities and wholesome social intercourse, too, are of the very greatest importance. The sedentary and lonely life is often found quite fatal, and a life in which only male companionships are available is very undesirable. Indeed it may truly be said that the best way of avoiding undesirable relations with women lies in the cultivation of right and happy relations with them. I suppose more men have been brought through this difficult period owing to the fact that association with women of refined natures made the thought of sexual irregularity seem repulsive, than by any other single force.
But at all costs let us be sure that we live full lives. I heard lately of a man who was so constantly assailed by sexual cravings, and so convinced that in him they were abnormally strong, that he went to consult a psychotherapist. When he had been fully examined it was found that in him sexual cravings were really rather weaker than in the average man, but that in the house of his life they had no rivals, so that he imagined them to be almost all-powerful.
It is when a man allows himself to sit in idleness and indoors that the fumes of lust are apt to rise up and make the windows dim, till in that stuffy air he lives evilly at least in thought, and is weakened for the problem of defense. But the man who will get out into the bracing open air of life will find his noxious fancies blown away and his mind restored to health.
Then, thirdly, there are certain fairly obvious points in relation to the right management of the body about which doctors are agreed. They really amount in general to the suggestion that we should live a simple and bracing life, and keep brother body in his proper place of subjection all round. Keep your body clean, and do not funk your cold bath in the morning. Avoid luxurious foods, and overeating of any sort. Get up when you wake up in the morning, and avoid lying in bed half awake. Take plenty of fresh air and exercise every day. And finally, and at all costs, keep absolutely sober. Probably the last of these pieces of advice is by far the most important. It is the unvarnished truth that the vast majority of men who have gone wrong did so for the first time, not when they were drunk, but when liquor had made them reckless and forgetful. The plain truth about alcohol is that it has a twofold effect upon the human constitution. On the one hand it heightens desire, and on the other it lowers self-control. It is that fatal combination that has been the undoing of many a man. On one night of folly men have thrown away that which they may have guarded jealously for years, and not because they were vicious or gross in nature, but only because they allowed the edge to go off their sobriety. Often by the next night they would have given almost anything to be able to live that bit of life over again and live it differently. But it was too late. I know of no argument for temperance that has anything like the weight of this one.
Then, too, a word must be said about the broad jest and the undesirable story.
Many a broad jest is excused because it has in it some savor of real humor; but it would be well for us to ask ourselves deliberately what things we are going to allow ourselves to laugh at. We all laugh at some of the ways of lovers and no doubt we always will. They have beautiful ways, but beyond question some of them are amusing. There is no possible reaction to a girl's persuasion that her boy is pure hero and saint except a smile; and love itself will blend with such smiles.
But it is quite a different thing to bring laughter to bear on love itself, or on marriage, or on the sacramental intimacies that express love. I believe it is a profane thing to do. Our best instincts call on us to treat these things as sacred. And sacred things are easily spoiled by careless speech. No vulgarities are quite so vulgar as those which, in printed rags and ragged talk, are clustered round marriage. In the name of all that is beautiful and holy let us be done with them.
Further still, a great many broad stories have in them a minimum of humor and a maximum of dirt. By a strange perversity men who are scrupulously clean in body and who have both intellectual and artistic capacities will stoop to defile their tongues with such things. There are few colleges or offices where public opinion entirely forbids them. But they do a deadly work none the less. They cling about the mind with fatal tenacity. They surround the subject of sex with unclean associations. They defile the inner house of life. And it is in that inner house of thought and imagination that the real battle of purity is fought.
Our real task in this part of life is to see sex as a clean and beautiful thing, to be treated with reverence. Thousands of people never achieve this, even though they live respectable and decent lives. And the reason lies in the fact that in their early days vile stories and jokes defiled the whole subject for them.
A similar thing is true of pictures. Some day we shall as a race recover the sense that the form of a woman is one of the most beautiful things in all God's earth. We shall look at the great statues and pictures which do justice to that beauty with no other feelings than thankfulness and joy. But there are very few men who can do that today. What has made it impossible is the existence of pictures of a suggestive kind, which are handed round in furtive ways, and are literally drenched with unclean associations. For which reason it is a real point in connection with a man's struggle that he should have nothing to do with suggestive pictures. Many years ago I had a friend with great intellectual power. He held a position of great responsibility and was widely respected. He also had conspicuous literary gifts, and knew how to work hard and well. But he brought to me the greatest shock I have ever had in my life. When he was well on in the forties he suddenly fell with a crash, and had to fly the country. He was never able to show his face in England again, and died a diseased exile in a foreign land. And all because he had been overtaken by sexual sin of an indescribably shameful kind. The shock he gave me was one of sorrow, for he had been a friend. But it was still more one of amazement that such a thing could have happened to such a man. Later I came to understand. When his effects were being sold there was found in his study cupboard a great pile of indecent French plays and novels. That was what did it. In secret he had for years debauched his mind, and inevitably in the end his thoughts brought forth fruit. That experience taught me once for all how certain it is that the inner world of thoughts is the real place where a man attains or misses purity.
There is something grim and stern about this business. I confess to a certain wholesome fear in connection with it which I hope never to lose; though fear will never do as our predominating emotion in this respect. But I keep a place for fear—enough of it to drive me to my knees. I have seen boys go wrong at fifteen, and I have seen old men go wrong at sixty. I believe that no man is safe until he is dead. He was no coward, nor had he a licentious past behind him, who confessed that late on in life he had to beat his body and bring it into subjection lest having preached to others he should be a castaway. He knew; and was honest and wise enough to keep up precautions to the end. There is simply no way through this part of life for the man with slack habits and a self-indulgent attitude of spirit. The man who will not stand up and brace himself, who is not game for a fight, and will not endure hardness is never going to make anything fine out of the splendid but difficult enterprise we call human life. And all the time he will need to have his sentinels out. All the time he will need to make sure that he is master in his own house of life, and allows no interloping thoughts or imaginations to run riot there.
But what about religion! The conventional way in which to end a plain talk about any sort of temptation is to say that God can and will help a man in those straits where his own will is too weak, and that through prayer there is a way of escape for us all. I believe all that absolutely. With great gratitude I may say that I know it. Indeed I cannot understand how any man who has been saved from overthrow can fail to see as he looks back on his life that it was just the goodness of God that upheld him. But I have learnt to beware how I tell men and women that by prayer they can get through, though all other means fail. Men who were having to face a severe strain of temptation have come back to me and told me that they had tried the way of prayer and that it had not availed them. The fact is that something far greater than a mere attempt to use prayer as a special device for this special need is required.
We are so made that religion is a divine possibility for all of us. Indeed it is more than a possibility: it is a necessity if life is ever to seem complete. Without it all other things fail in the end to hold off attacks of disappointment and ennui. Because we were made with the capacity for it, we cannot be content without it. It may take many years for a man to discover that without religion life is going to be a failure; and it is that discovery that constitutes for many the tragedy of middle life. In early days the varied interests of life carry many through in some sort of satisfaction. And yet even with the young the life that is without religion is of necessity an unbalanced life. Parts of the man or woman concerned are inactive, and the other parts occupy too much of the stage. Till an interest in God—that greatest of all interests—has entered a man's life attention is too much concerned with other things. Till the spirit is awake the body obtrudes itself too much on consciousness. And thus a man fights the battle of purity on wrong terms. There is no interest so cleansing as an interest in God. Nothing so takes a man out of himself as the attempt to face His demands. Nothing is so certain to counterbalance all unruly thoughts as to know and worship Him. No discipline is so bracing and purifying as the discipline of seeking Him.
But this seeking of God means something much greater than the mere attempt to use prayer for a special purpose. It means getting our whole life rightly related to Him. It means subordinating our desires to His will, and seeing our whole life as something to be used for His glory. Religion cannot be made a mere appendage to life. It cannot be kept in an outhouse like a motor bike, to be used when occasion calls. When God comes into a life He comes to rule—and to rule everything. No doubt we are all tempted to resent the surrender of self which is thus asked of us. Instinctively we cry out for our own way. We want to manage our own lives and to plan out our futures in such ways as will please us. Because religion involves discipline and obedience, we are all apt to turn away from it. We may have liked some of the emotions which are associated with worship, and inspired by religious thoughts. But we want to call no one Master—not even God. So long as that state lasts no one will find religion a help in the battle with temptation. If we faced the truth about ourselves many of us would find that what we really want is to be allowed to live rather worldly and selfish lives and then to be able to bring God in on occasion to save us from certain particular sins which we loathe. But that cannot be.
In other words, the way of escape is to get one's whole life and one's whole nature rightly related to God. That means the profoundest of all possible readjustments, because it means that instead of putting himself in the center of every picture, a man puts God there. And when that readjustment has been completed the power of temptation is gone. I would not now say to a man merely that if he will pray he will get the help he needs. I would say that if he is willing for a real spiritual experience he may pass into a new state of being, in which he will fight with success where he used to fail. Religionwilldo all things for you if you give your whole self to it, but it will not fit into life as an occasional resource.
Let no one suppose, however, that consciousness of God has no relation to the sexual side of life. Far from it. What the man who submits to God will find is, firstly, that he is helped to clean and reverent living, and to mastery over his body. But he will also find that when at last real love calls him up into complete companionship of body and soul with a woman he loves, God Himself will enter into that life and become associated with all the emotions and activities which spring from the sex element in our beings. Such men will come to thank God that He made them with sexual powers in their natures. They will thank Him that passion is a fact. They will say with utter conviction that love with all it means both for the bodily and the spiritual life is the greatest of all God's gifts to man.
Only to have experience of that quality a manmustcome to marriage undefiled. That is the fact that makes the struggle worth while. That is what Browning meant when he said it was
"worthThat a man should strive and agonizeAnd taste a veriest hell on earthFor the hope of such a prize."
God does not call us men to a meaningless struggle. The fierceness of temptation isnotmere cruelty. The prizes in this part of life are great beyond all telling. If any man who reads these pages will but brace himself for the struggle and put forth all his manhood in order to win through, the day will come when he and a woman who is dear to him will thank God that he did fight, and will understand that it was abundantly worth while. She is waiting for you out there in the future. She hopes and prays that when you do find her, you will be such a man as can be honored and truly loved. She probably keeps herself for you, even though you have not yet met her, with some delicate and shy reserve. You will never really be worthy of all that she will give you, but you may at least prepare for her and yourself a great and holy experience. To know the full beauty of the thing that married life may be is nearly if not quite the greatest of human attainments. To spoil it beforehand is the most pitiful of all pities.
Wherefore get up and fight!
It is in this form that sexual temptation comes into the lives of a very great many men, including many able, high-minded men. All the general things already said in this chapter are relevant to your case, but I wish to add some direct words to you because I have acute sympathy with you in your trial.
You ought, of course, to have been warned when you were very young, and then you might have escaped the danger. Possibly you slipped into the habit without at first realizing that it was wrong; and probably now you hate the habit, and even sometimes hate yourselves because of it. It is quite likely, too, that false and exaggerated things have been said to you about it and made you miserably afraid.
Now itisa bad habit. It is bad because you feel it to be unworthy and rather unclean, and it creates unhappy associations in your mind in connection with sex, which is a very unfortunate thing for you. And it is a perversion. It is an unnatural way of satisfying sexual craving, and, as you know, it leaves psychic disturbance behind it. The one perfect way of satisfying sexual desire is complete union with a woman you truly and honorably love. That leaves behind it a feeling of complete satisfaction and rest. All other ways leave psychic disturbance. Further, this habit often leads to active homosexuality. I hear of men who talk as if homosexuality was quite a normal and right thing with men of a certain type. It is, in fact,alwaysa regression (see quotation from Dr. Crichton Miller in chapter for girls, p. 107). Do get that fixed in your mind. It is an abnormal, unnatural thing which has definite and evil nervous results.
But let me get back to the problem of self-abuse.
The Student Christian Movement lately collected from a number of doctors, psychologists, and other experienced people, a body of valuable truths and suggestions about this matter, and I cannot do better than pass them on to you.
Firstly, what are the facts about its consequences? These have been exaggerated. Its effects are chiefly psychical. It does not affect the intelligence or weaken mental power. It takes long to weaken the body, and it is rarely, if ever, a cause of insanity.
On the other hand, it does destroy self-respect; it does leave men psychically disturbed, and for that reason it affects consciousness of the presence of God disproportionately quickly as compared with other sins, and produces the feeling of loss of spiritual power. There are, in fact, abundant reasons for desiring deliverance, though there is no reason for panic.
As has been said again and again in this book, our sexual nature is a gift from God, with glorious possibilities in it of enriching experience. That is why it is so very important not to misuse it.
Now if you really want deliverance, you have first to realize that the seat of the trouble and of the cure is in the mind. (Occasionally there is a slight abnormality that requires surgical treatment, but that is exceptional.)
The content of the mind in ordinary times is even more important than at the crisis. It may be too late then.
You must prepare the ground by resting on God even when you do not feel the need of Him. Fill your mind with clean, healthy things, and expel lustful thoughts, even though they may seem to have no special physical effects.
Give full play to your affections—love of family, of friends, of men and women, and children.
Devote your bodily strength, and the life force that is in you, to great positive ends—the service of God and man.
Keep healthy. Here are wise practical details. Take plenty of exercise, but not too much. Men often fail when tired out. Avoid heavy meals— especially late at night. Take cold baths daily. Do not lie in bed after waking. Avoid quacks like the plague. Beware of the reactions that follow emotional excitement. Work off your emotions in positive ways. Emotionalism has danger in it.
Learn to pray for the right thing, not for deliverance, but for strength for victory. Learn to trust God in all things—in this among others.
If you want to prevent the thing from obsessing you, you must not let your failures obsess you. Turn your back on them. The only way to drive out one thought is to put another in. An attempt merely to shut down is doomed to failure. Concentrate on active life and service. The truth is, you cannot have the help of Christ just for the cure of this evil. Give yourself wholly to Him, and you will find He has set you free. You cannot bring religion in just for a part of life. If your whole life is in God's hands this trouble will disappear.
Lastly, a word to the man who is down and out.
God is strong enough and near enough for this never to happen again if you will let Him have the whole of you—not body only, but mind and heart and life. But if you do fail again, do not despair, do not blame God, and do not say or think that He has finished with you.
God's love is such that He will never turn from you if you turn to Him. God is no farther from the failures than from the successful. He cares as much for those who fail.
The real and ultimate danger of this thing is not danger to your mind and body, but the danger that it may come between you and God. Wherefore come back to God every time.
Remember, whatever the past has held, there are still great possibilities of happiness and victory before you through the power of God.
Others are in as great difficulties, and others who were in them have won through to victory. There is reason for hope.
We are not meant always to stand alone. Two are more than twice as strong as one. Perhaps you should share your difficulty. Only do not make it an excuse for getting mawkish sympathy.
(A chapter for men)
There are some things so unthinkable that they only continue because people refuse to think of them. Sweating and slums are two such things, but the supreme example in the modern world is prostitution.
It is not the prostitute who is unthinkable. She is only the tragic figure in the center of a devil's drama. It is society's attitude to her that is unthinkable. By men she is used for their pleasure and then despised and scorned. By women she is held an outcast, and yet she is the main buttress of the immunity of ordinary women from danger and temptation. She is the creation of men who traffic in lust and yet is held shameless by her patrons. She is the product of the social sins for which we are all responsible, and yet is considered the most sinful of us all. Often she was beguiled into her first mistake by the pretence of love, and because to that pretence she made a natural and sincere response. Sometimes she was cajoled into her mistake by older fiends in the shape of women. Sometimes she suffered physical violence at the hands of male fiends. Often she plunged into sin in desperation because in the modern world she could not get a living wage in return for honest work. Sometimes she made a wild, reckless dash towards excitement because she could no longer endure the stifling, drab, and hideous monotony coupled with privation which we allow to become the lot of millions.
To her men show only their worst side, and women generally their hardest. If she often regards both alike as devils, who shall blame her! Those who share her sin leave her to face alone the suffering that follows. For them society has a place even when their habits are known. For her it has no place except a shameful one. Of real love, of motherhood, or of family life she may know nothing. Even of normal human relations she remains often ignorant.
He in whom we profess to have seen God was ready to forgive and willing to love such women. We hold it wrong to forgive and impossible to love.
For a few short years in early youth she may have money in plenty, and then slowly she begins to sink. Her health becomes sapped. Often loathsome disease makes her a victim. As the shadows begin to gather she will often turn to drink that for an hour she may recover the delusion of well-being. Slowly but certainly the morass drags her down. Often she does not reach thirty. If she lives it is to face a state in which, toothless, wrinkled, and obscene, she is seen only by those who visit the murkiest parts of our cities. She dies unmoored and unloved, and is hurried into an unknown grave.
And she exists because men say theymustindulge their passions and women believe it. She is the incarnation not of her own but of society's shame. She is the scapegoat for thousands who live on in careless comfort. Every man who touches her pushes her farther down, and our hollow pretence of social morality is built upon her quivering body.
Will you men who read this please think about her! Think till you are horrified, disgusted, and ashamed. Think till you realize this unthinkable thing. And then remember that she exists only because of us. We as a sex have created this infamy. We as a sex still continue to condone it.
And there is only one cure for it. It is that we should stop uttering or believing the lie that we must indulge our passions and should act upon the truth that continence outside marriage is perfectly possible, and that we owe it to women, to ourselves, and to God to achieve it.
By early days I mean the years between sixteen and twenty-one or thereabouts, and I am sure there ought to be a chapter in this book on this subject, though I am not at all sure that I can write it. I only make the attempt because I have been urged to try, and because a book that did not recognize how distressing the "emotional muddles" of this period often are, would be a very unsympathetic production.
Most men very quickly become clearly conscious of desires springing from their sexual natures, but most girls only do so very slowly. What a girl is conscious of at this period is a new stress of emotion. She finds herself easily elated and easily depressed. She has moods she cannot understand or manage, and vague yearnings after she knows not what. Sometimes she will give way to outbreaks of temper, and afterwards feel acutely ashamed. Other people say of her that she is "difficult" or wayward, or trying; and she knows it herself better than any of them. Sometimes she is irritable. Sometimes she will hear herself saying things she never meant to say, and will wonder afterwards why she did it. In society she often feels shy, awkward, and self-conscious, and then will hate herself for being like that. She may try an assumed boldness of manner to hide her shyness, and yet that plan is not a great success. She has longings for the society of others, and then having found social intercourse difficult, is tempted to withdraw into herself. She is very easily wounded in her affections, and often suffers from the effect of little slights of which the authors are quite unconscious. On some days she will feel that the world is a wonderful and splendid place, and life a glorious delight. And then on others life will seem mysterious and puzzling, and the world cruel and hard. She understands with painful clearness what Robert Louis Stevenson meant when he talked about "the coiled perplexities of youth."
It is during these years that girls wake up to the attraction of men, and yet they find that relations with men are difficult things to manage. The conventions of society often seem quite senseless, and yet the policy of defying them does not turn out well. And so, as I have said, this is a difficult period for many girls.
It is true that many get through it very happily. They may have good health, happy homes, plenty of good friends, and many interests. For them it is a time of adventure, romance, and vivid joy. They correspond to the common conception of the fresh, happy, charming girl. But many others do not get through happily at all, and it is because their case is common that this chapter is called for.
I have already said as strongly as I can that it is of enormous importance for girls to know the facts of life, and to get to know them from some clean and natural source. By the beginning of this period they ought to have been told about the wonderful and beautiful ways in which God has ordained that new human lives should be produced, and therefore they ought to be in a position to understand themselves. And if girls are not possessed of this knowledge I can only say that the sooner they take steps to acquire it in a wholesome way the better for themselves. Only take care to whom you turn. Let it be a woman of a reverent and wise mind with a large and wholesome nature. There are others.
Those who do come to understand themselves in this way will realize that the cause of their emotional complications is partly physical and partly psychological. Both body and mind are awakening, with the inevitable result that new instincts, emotions, and desires have to be reckoned with. That is a universal experience for all of both sexes, and is just the price of entering on a larger world. Lifeismuch more complex and mysterious than we at first imagined. It may be much more varied and splendid than we at first supposed. And therefore inevitably it is also more difficult and more confusing. But it does really help us to realize that our early complex troubles have a natural and normal cause and that they are related to great possible gains.
At this point in life, further, the instinct for independence becomes often exceedingly strong. All the conventions of society and the received rules for conduct are apt to appear mere tyrannous annoyances, cramping the free expression of personality. Society itself seems rather like a monster threatening to absorb and confine us. To be compelled to consider others, and even to bow to authority, is to many very bitter. "I will at all costs be myself" is the natural cry of a human being at this stage, and because the world makes it difficult to carry out that resolve life has a strain in it. Yet here also there is something good. If each generation in turn did not thus demand freedom and self-expression the world would drift into senile decay. We cannot be independent of society. We cannot have an untrammeled freedom. And we all learn that sooner or later. But because the urge towards newness of life does reappear with every generation we do move on, though slowly. And if the price of this pulse of life in adolescents is restlessness, irritation, and even occasional depression the gain is worth the price.
For girls the process is often specially difficult. The task that confronts a girl at this stage is the task of accepting herself "as a woman." I know it is not an easy task or so many girls would not be heard saying that they would rather have been boys. No doubt one reason why girls feel this is that often their parents, and especially their mothers, have shown a preference for the boys in the family and have accorded to them a favored position. The psychologists report that an "inferiority complex" has thus been formed in many a girl's mind. And thus a very real wrong is done to them.
And yet this is not the whole explanation of the matter. In many girls there is a rebellion against their sex. Many hate the physical signs of their developing natures. It seems to them they are being called to a part in life which they have no wish to play. And if particular emotional stresses accompany that development, that may seem to them only one further reason for being annoyed at the nature of things.
I am sure too that the conventional notions of what a woman should be must often prove very annoying, if not enraging. Many men still cherish the idea of woman as a sort of household ornament—gentle and "sweet". Many have not accommodated themselves to the notion that a woman should know the blunt facts about this hard life and this disordered world. Society often seems to expect of a woman that she should be submissive, patient, and merely gentle. And of course nature has ordained that many women should be strong, stimulating, and militant in spirit. Of a really great woman it was said to me the other day that she is really more like a flame than a "cow". But the "cow" idea holds the field in many places. Well! happy those who have a sense of humor and can laugh when society is very foolish.
I dare not enter farther on a discussion of what it means for a girl to accept herself "as a woman". In that matter men seem always to flounder into folly. Even women are not yet agreed about it. Perhaps it is one of the things that is only gradually being discovered at this particular stage of human experience. I am indeed sure that we do not yet know all that women are meant to be and are capable of doing for the world. And that being so I can see that the difficulties which lie about the path of life for women to-day are peculiarly trying. It may be a real privilege to be a woman during this particular period of discovery and experiment. But it cannot but be also rather a strain. The one thing that I can with certainty say is that a woman is called to be like Christ—like Him in His meekness which was the outcome of perfect selflessness and self-mastery—in His gentleness which was the product of sensitive love—but like Him also in His strength, His boldness, His resolute refusal to bend before evil, His positive activities in the name of love.
One particular feature in a woman's impulse towards independence I cannot pass by without a special word. The very suggestion annoys some women that they are not complete in themselves without any relation to the other sex. Being without any conscious desire for the companionship of man, and without any definite sex consciousness, they resent the idea that woman is not complete in herself. To those who insist that the sexes vitally need each other such women would reply that they are altogether exaggerating and over-emphasizing the sex element in life.
Well, about the fact that man is not complete without woman I have no doubt whatever. And I have no reluctance whatever about admitting it. Perhaps that fact gives me no right to dogmatize about the other sex, but a considerable experience has left me in no doubt about the matter. I do not mean for a moment that a great and useful career is not possible to women quite apart from marriage. I do not forget that many women have great powers of intellect in the exercise of which they are living in a world apart from sex difference. But I believe it to be a serious mistake for either man or woman to imagine that they have no clamant sex instinct hidden within the depths of their personalities. And if the instinct is there it can only be folly to try to obscure the fact. It has to be reckoned with if life is to succeed. In many women it only awakens after early youth is past. The exceptions in whom it never awakens must be very few indeed. If the attempt has been made to ignore it the subsequent troubles are apt to be only the more intense. In this matter we are confronted with an unalterable decree of nature. To rebel against it is only to be broken in the long run. In various and great ways the instinct may be turned to splendid uses other than the usual ones of marriage and motherhood. But the instinct is there, and if wisdom means understanding ourselves and handling ourselves bravely, then itmustbe reckoned with. To quarrel with the nature of things is mere folly.
Another special feature of the period in a girl's life I am thinking of is a tendency to intense and passionate affections for other women—a tendency to idealize some other woman till she seems the center of life and adorable beyond words. A very real danger lurks here, and yet I would like to speak with great care about the matter, because a true friendship is always one of the finest and most enriching things in life, while agrande passionfor another member of one's own sex is a different thing with an undesirable element in it.
In girls about thirteen or thereaboutsgrandes passionsfor other girls or for school-mistresses are very common, and so far from being harmful they may serve a very useful purpose. They generally pass away pretty quickly, and unless the older woman has been unwise they leave no bad effects behind them.
But among older girls they are a very different thing and often lead to serious trouble and unhappiness. What has happened in such cases is that an instinct which is designed to produce love for one of the opposite sex has been perverted to add an element of passion to what should have been merely a healthy friendship for another woman. And the result is an unhealthy type of relationship. It is unhealthy because, to begin with, in this way girls let themselves go and allow their emotions to run away with them; and that just at a time when it is most important that they should have themselves in firm control. And further, when members of the same sex employ lovers' language, and indulge in the imitation of lovers' endearments, there is something sickly about the whole business which healthy instinct condemns. I do not mean, of course, that when girls link arms or even embrace each other in moments of excitement there is anything mistaken. To some people such expressions of emotion are as natural as breathing. Butgrandes passionslead to much more than that sort of thing, and so become a serious evil.
It is in connection with this problem that psychologists have brought into use the rather ugly word "homosexuality", though it means nothing more dreadful than this tendency to put a member of one's own sex into the place that should be occupied by a member of the other sex. But I find a certain amount of talk going on which assumes that some people are of the homosexual type, and that it is natural and right for them to express themselves in this way. As a matter of fact homosexualityis always a sexual perversionand is fraught with great danger of nervous disorder. Dr. Crichton Miller says inThe New Psychology and the Teacher: "From the point of view of psychological development homosexuality in the adult is a regression…. Clinical experience confirms the view that in the long run the man or the woman of the intermediate type is bound to pay the price of regression in one way or another" (p. 120).
Of course the essential defect of these passionate attachments between two women is that they can never fully satisfy. They cannot give a woman children, and they leave the mother heart in her starved. For this reason it is a primary obligation on each of the two to resolve that so soon as a man enters the life of the other she will at all costs make room for him, The cost of this may be very great, but love that is at all worthy of the name will not another from a path that might lead to marriage has misunderstood the very meaning of love. Women have repeatedly told me that the passionate relationships I am speaking of lead to grave unhappiness. They almost never last, and the one who breaks away may cause acute suffering to the other; while an attempt to continue them after the life has gone out of them results in a very poor and pitiful relationship. And yet all this leaves still open the question of how they are to be dealt with in actual life. One thing worth saying is—Be warned in time, and do not let them grow. When they threaten they can be turned into true friendships by girls who understand, and true friendship is always a bracing and strengthening thing. But I would not for a moment suggest that a "G. P." should be ruthlessly broken. That would often be a cruel thing to do which might cause great and even permanent damage to a sensitive nature. But if both who are involved in the matter will face the truth about it, they may succeed in passing on into a natural and healthy friendship which may be invaluable to both and a gain to society. If it be asked wherein lies the essential difference between a G. P. and a friendship I think answer has been given in the words: "Friendship is an other-regarding emotion and proves itself to be an uplifting force, while a G. P. is self-regarding, and consequently generally is socially exclusive and therefore harmful." A G. P. generally involves a desire to have somebody else all to yourself. That is the sign of the unnatural sex element in it. But a friendship leads to happy co- operation between two people in the work and recreation of the world. One of the tests of universal application in this realm of life lies in the fact that real love always wants to give, and that the attitude of wanting greedily to get is not true love. Many and many an unhappy girl who frets and torments herself because she does not get all she wants from some other woman would find the world and life transformed if she would but wake up to the fact that in her bit of the world there are other people who need the love she might give them. She would thus find a noble outlet for her emotions, become a boon to other people, and in the process discover her own happiness—possibly to her own surprise.
I know very well what is likely to happen to some girls who read these words and who are involved in a passionately affectionate attachment. I can almost hear one such saying, "Of course I see that these things ought to be said, and that some girls are very silly about their friendships, and it only makes me the more thankful that in my case everything is so natural, and right, and good."
We are all like that! We are extraordinarily slow to recognize in our own lives the evils and dangers which we can see so clearly in the lives of others. And so I would like to make a direct appeal to all girls, and to all men too, who are involved in these relationships. Do face the facts openly! Do look ahead! Do ask yourselves what you are going to do about these affairs as time goes on! You must know they cannot last in their present form. You would be right if you even said that they to last. You may drift along, always postponing any definite action, and just enjoying the present while it lasts. But that is exactly the way in which calamity is allowed to enter people's lives. And you and she, or you and he, might forthwith face the unalterable facts I have been referring to, and take all danger by the throat and throttle it. You might do thatnow. That is to say, you and your dear friend might agree that you will at once get the passionate element out of your relationship, and forego the pleasure you have in that respect. You might begin now to learn true friendship, and get rid of what is really a sickly thing. It might hurt—it probably would at first. But none of us human beings need be the mere creatures of our feelings. Our true and lasting happiness always depends upon refusing any such slavery. If you do achieve a wholesome and true friendship it may enrich your whole future life. If you let things go on as they are you will have a very unpleasant memory to humiliate you.
I feel sure that certain general counsels apply with special force to this part of life, and in particular the one which bids us all live busy and positive lives. Brooding is not a wholesome occupation for anybody at any time, but, on the other hand, through hours of active effort emotion finds an outlet and our natures are restored to peace. Introspection is to many people an actual luxury, but like other luxuries it enervates. Reveling in their own emotions is a favorite hobby with quite a lot of people, but for all that it is a very bad one. There really should be no time for it. Our emotions are all needed as driving forces for the times of action. In particular the cultivation of a sense of beauty in art is one of the normal outlets for emotion, and even for sex emotion. Some happy people can themselves make music, and so express themselves. Most of us find that common kindness suggests that we should restrict our efforts in that direction to times when we are alone. But if we cannot play we can at least learn the art of good listening. And if we are not musical at all we can perhaps appreciate true painting, or great poetry, or fine literature. It all helps.
May I say a plain word or two about the shyness and self-consciousness in society which so torment young girls? The first thing I would say is that they will almost certainly pass away before long, and that therefore they need not be bothered about. Lots of the most effective and socially successful men and women in the world went through a painful period of shyness in early youth, and now only smile at the memory of those days.
In so far as that self-consciousness is produced by society of any sort, it is based upon the delusion that other people look at us and think about us a great deal more than they do. It is also due to a habit of minding what other people think and say a great deal more than the facts warrant. We are not so important as to attract much general notice, and other people are not so important that on account of their prejudices and conventions we should distress ourselves.
But in so far as discomfort in society is due to the presence there of members of the opposite sex, there is something different to be said. The whole contention of this book is that the attraction which exists between the sexes is a right and wholesome thing, and that the way of wisdom is to accept the fact of it quite simply. When that is done it is found possible to let that mutual attraction issue in friendship and camaraderie of a kind that enriches and dignifies life.
Of course all this is much easier for girls who have been brought up with boys. They learn to be at home with the other sex, not to be fussy and foolish, and not to trade upon their sex. But that sort of relationship to men is also quite possible even for those who were not brought up with boys, and in the attaining to it girls find their real peace of mind.
I would also like to put down here some thoughts about beautiful girls.
A beautiful girl always makes me want to do two things. One is to thank God for making so lovely a thing, and the other is to say a prayer that she may have special help given her for her specially difficult lot. For beauty is both a very great gift and a very hard thing to handle. Some of you must know that you are beautiful, and you are sure to find the fact exciting, delightful, and yet embarrassing. You have great powers—powers over other women and over children in part—and very great powers over men. You can, if you will, use that power to induce men to make fools of themselves. You can let yourselves slip into the habit of living on admiration and feeding on the pleasure it gives you. You can exploit your beauty to win through it things you do not really deserve. People will forgive much to a beautiful woman, and you can trade on that fact. You can get a great deal of your own way if you master the art of being charming as well as beautiful; and you can in that way use your beauty to your own undoing, and make it partly a curse to others. In fact you are certain to have to face many temptations which the majority of women escape. That is the hard part of your lot. All who understand know quite well that life cannot but be more complicated for you than for most, and you have a very great claim on their sympathy. But the way to avoid your dangers is not to pretend to yourself that you are not beautiful. Pretence never helps us. The way is to face the fact of your beauty, realize that you did not create it, and therefore need not be vain about it, and then go on to decide what use you are going to make of the power it gives you. It can be used for God—otherwise He would not have given it. It can be turned into influence of a very wonderful kind. If you can induce men to make fools of themselves, you can also draw out all that is best in them, and inspire them for fine living. In plain English, when a beautiful woman is also a good woman she is one of the greatest boons to mankind. She can give great pleasure to others—but she can do more, she can stir the latent idealism in men and women in wonderful ways. She can move through the world as a source of gracious, kindly, and bracing influence. Of course, once again, the essential secret is to think of giving and not of getting, to get self into the background and live for love and service—to employ your great gift for the sake of the giver of it. I suspect that it must need a great deal of self-discipline— perhaps more than a man can understand. I am sure it must need a great deal of prayer. But it has been done, and can be done again.
And that leads me naturally to the last thing I want to say in this chapter. I have already said in the chapter specially addressed to men that the great help for the difficult early days of life is to be found in religion. [Footnote: Cp. p. 80ff.] And of course that is equally true for girls.
Religion means having a great and worthy interest at the center of our lives, which gives meaning to the whole of them. Being religious means that the essential and eternal part of us is coming into life, and it almost necessarily follows then that the other parts of our personalities slip into their proper places. It means having an object for our affections more than worthy of all our deepest emotions, and more than able to fill our empty hearts. Religion in the early days of life is generally very emotional. I believe that that is perfectly right and natural, provided we also make efforts to be sincere and to love the truth. Because it is emotional, its value as an outlet for feeling is very great. It does not remain at its first emotional level. Later on there comes an inevitable change when many think, quite wrongly, that they are losing their religion. But at the stage I am thinking of religion naturally and normally expresses itself in intense feeling. We are all hero worshippers at that stage of life. Hero worshipping, however, is apt to get us into trouble, for our heroes fail us in time. The one perfect hero who never fails us is Christ. He alone never disappoints, and to love Him is to have all the nobler chords in our beings set in motion. We are sure to despair of ever becoming worthy of Him. But no leader of men was ever so willing to take us as we are and make the best of us. To be near Him may mean being made to feel deeply ashamed. In His presence we are sure to feel small and mean. But that also is a good thing, and in spite of it He loves us. In other directions we seek with longing to find love, and often fail. With Him we may be quite sure of finding love. And He goes on loving to the end.
Being loved by Him does at last draw out the best in us. Inevitably we begin to want to be more worthy—to serve and love others for His sake—to know and love the truth—to find and worship beauty. And that means having a life full of splendid and worthy interests.
Emotional muddles may in fact be the lot of most of us for a while. But if at the center of them all there is an honest love for Christ, they cannot overwhelm us; and in the long run we are sure to emerge into the life that has both peace and power in it.