i iip j j|!Hl!ill!i!!liHli! iiiiiiiiii &'.m .^-^^i TifJ^iA JAN 11 1917 u(yi ^ CHEISTIAN^ITY AND SEX PROBLEMS BY HUGH "nORTHOOTE, M.A. Second Edition Revised and Enlarged PHILADELPHIA F. A. DAVIS COMPANY, Publishers English Depot Stanley Phillips, London 1916 COPYRIGHT. 1906 COPYRIGHT. 1916 F. A. DAVIS COMPANY Copyright, Great Britain. All Rights Reserved Philadelphia, Pa., U. S. A. Press of F, A. Davis Company 1914-16 Cherry Street DEDICATION TO ALL MY FELLOWMEN AND WOMEN, HOWEVER MUCH TEMPTED AND HOWEVER FAR FALLEN, WHOSE FACES ARE STILL TURNED TOWARD THE IDEALS OF LOVE AND HOLINESS AND TRl'TII. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The first edition of this book was written with sufficient consciousness of having a purpose to fulfill, or a message to deliver, but in much literary inexperience. I had not chosen to address a particular circle of readers, and I did not produce a book which was readily assignable to any special class of literature. It is too late now to remedy in full this defect, wliich after all perhaps occasioned a broader, more human treatment of the subject than I should otherwise have given it. It is meant for thoughtful readers in general, not for any particular class or profession. If, however, one must name a section of literature to which to assign it, perhaps it should be included in moral theology. Havelock Ellis has shown that modern scientific sex literature has an ample precedent in the passion- less survey of sexual phenomena made by Sanchez and other Catholic moralists.! This body of Catholic literature has often been criti- cised and even denounced ;- nor indeed are the strictures upon it always irrelevant or unjustified. But it must not be inferred from the fact that such a thing as bad casuistry exists, that no science of casuistry is needed, and that no good casuistry is possible.-'^ Rather, it is now increasingly recognized that, however faulty particular expositions of sexual moral theology may be, this science holds a rightful place in the scheme of 1 General Preface to the Studies in the Psychology of Sex. 2 See, e.g., von Hoensbroech, Fourteen Years a Jesuit, vol. ii, p. 293; in particular, Mohler's utterance there quoted. 2" Cf. R. M. Wenley, art. Casuistry, in Hastings. Encycl. Rel. Ethics, vol (v) vi PREFACE. knowledge, and has an imjiortant function to fulrtll in the moral education of mankind. A sound apologetic for this branch of moral theology has been recently developed by the erudite Iwan Bloch. whose words I quote: "There come times when a man feels the need of relieving his mind, by the confession of even his sex- ual troubles. In this fact lies a certain justification of the books of confession and the subtle sexual casuistry of the moral theologians, works which have indeed been composed with a view to application to practical life." After indicating the spiritual aspect of medical science. and emphasizing its claim to be a formative influence in the aforesaid province of moral theology, Bloch welcomes as a sign of progress a new. scientifically conceived defense, ofifered by a Roman Catholic thinker, of the study of sex."' In fact, Howard's prophecy of a few years since, "* that sex questions would come to hold an honorable place in human thought, is already being rapidly fulfilled. A vast body of literature, iar greater than I have been able to acquaint myself with in detail, has appeared on the study of sex within the past ten years. Dr. Havelock Ellis has completed his elaborate Studies on the Psychology of Sex. Important and massive work has been produced by Forel, Westermarck. Bloch, and other eminent scientists, scholars, and thinkers. Sex ques- tions are being elaborately considered by various writers in Dr. Hastings's Eucychpcrdia of Religion and Ethics. Notable events in the progress of sex studies have been the publication in Germany of Moll's Haiidhuch der Scxiial- zi'isscnschaftcji, and the announcement and commencement of a yet more elaborate survey by Bloch and others, of the great subject. Another significant fact is the formation of special societies for the study of sex in one or other of its bearings. ■'• Bloch, Die Prostitution, bk. i, pp. 644f. ■* Howard, Hist, of Matrimonial Institutions, vol. iii, p. 257. 0 PREFACE. vii These societies have their literary organs : the Eugenics Rcvicio, Prcz'eiitioii, Die Nciic Generation, and the Itahan pub- Hcation // Rogo, are but instances out of a number of such magazines. b'inally, the organized churches have begun to join in the movement for the vmderstanding of sex. I have frequently quoted in the following pages the first volume (published with the im])rimatur of the Church of Rome) of a work, OuastiOnes Theologice Medicopasioralis, of which further volumes are an- nounced. In England a series of tracts on sex questions has been coming out under the interconfessional and undenomina- tional auspices of the National Council of Public Morals, which numbers many Anglican bishops and other ecclesiastical dignitaries among its vice-presidents. The series is popular in conception and consequently free from technicalities; its basis is scientific as well as religious; and it exhibits an ethical foresight in which boldness is, occa- sionally, at least as visible as caution."' It was, further, cer- tainly significant — it was a striking admission of the claim of modern science to influence the sex ethic — that the writer who was chosen to open this remarkable series was Dr. Havelock Ellis. For this scientist had had not only to labor, but to encoimter legal opposition, in the production of the book already referred to, a book regarded not only in England and ''E.g.. Dr. Saleeby says: "Even the supposed ultimate canons of morality must be re-examined and, if necessary, revised or restated in order to arrive at the supreme end for which the world was made, — the production of noble men and women" (The Methods of Race Regeneration, p. 14) ; and two biologists. Professors Geddes and Thomson, who have been given a prominent part in the program, in a companion work of theirs on Sex, in spite of Forel's revolutionary views and his attitude of aloofness to religious revelation (See Die sexuelle Frage, Kap. xiv, ed. 1; Kap. xv, ed. 10), recommend the English edition of his remarkable work as "the best general work on sex." They would perhaps emphasize the fact that the English version is "an adaptation." viii PREFACE. America, but in Germany also, as setting the standard, in the matter of learning and scientific range, for the literature of sex.^ The issue of his tract The Problem of Race Regenera- tion, accompanied with a recognition, on the part of the organ- izers of the series, of his eminence as a student of sex, implied a victory not only for the writer himself, in his personal con- flict, but for the cause he represents, the rights of the inductive method in the understanding of sex and the sex ethic. Nor is the development of the study of sex barren in social efl:'ect. It is aft'ecting legislation ; and civilized humanity watches the process, at the several points of marriage, eugenics, and criminology, with interest that now flushes into hope and now darkens into anxiety. In face' of all this mental activity, in presence of all the aforesaid richly informed and weighty opinion, it is with no slight feeling of diffidence that I present to the public this new edition of my book.'^ It still is, what it was at first, imperfect and fragmentary. But for a writer to deplore overmuch such an aspect of his work would only indicate an overestimate of its importance ; and it is right to remember that, as Bloch has observed, "We have attained to the knowledge that no one person can undertake the mighty work of revising the bear- ^ See Dr. Helene Stocker in Die Neue Generation, Jahrg. 8, Heft 7; and A. E. Crawley's review of Ellis's Sex and Society, in the Eugenics Review, and esp. A. Moll, pref. to The Sexual Life of the Child. ■^ I should mention that this book is written with no special ref- erence to American problems or conditions. The only reason why it is published in the United States is that, some years ago at any rate, American publishers had more courage and enterprise than English publishers in connection with work on sex questions. The fact is that in the progress of my work I have felt more and more the dis- advantage of having never been to the States and of possessing, con- sequently, a very imperfect knowledge of the efforts which that great community is making toward the solution of sexual and other moral problems. The American Social Hygiene Association is making a gen- eral survey of the sex ethic in the States (The Shield, Oct., 1915). PREFACE. ix ings of sexual morality on the basis of the change in con- ditions wrought by civilization, but that such an effort demands the co-operation of many; and that the sexual question is only a part of the social question, whose lines of direction cannot be changed suddenly, but only very gradually."'^ When I had at length seen the first edition of this book through the press and held a copy of it in my hand, I was tempted, with the natural pride w4iich an author feels especially in regard to his first book, to hope that it would speedily at- tract considerable attention. Immediately a thought came to me, shaping itself in such words as these : "Well, after all, you may see, when a few years have passed, that it was best that your book should have been quietly useful." Such was indeed the course things took. The book procured for its author no literary fame ; but on sufficient evidence I may hope and believe that it has indeed been quietly useful in its province of thought. And I trust that this good destiny will now be further fulfilled; that where, if anywhere, Christianity and Sex Problems advances wrong or injudicious views, more competent students than myself may be moved to disprove them ; and that the book may continue to be quietly useful ; of real, if humble and imperfect, service in upholding the ulti- mate objective principles and categorical elements of sexual morality, and in testing the empirical solutions of the prob- lems raised by their relation to the social, psychological, and other phenomena revealed by the progressive science of sex." H.. North COTE. Boulogne-Snr-Mer. 8 I. Bloch, in Die Neuc Generation, Jahrg. 8, Heft 1, p. 22. ^ The absence in this book of any allusion to the great war will cause the less surprise when it is considered that a state of war does not so much raise new problems in the sex life as increase the urgency of some of those which exist, and occasion emergency measures. (For discussions see The Shield, since the outljreak of war.) PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. This book has been composed amid the pressure of numerous duties and in several circumstances of difficuUy. The author feels that the most he has accomplished is the production of a series of fragmentary and imperfect studies upon his subject. His thanks are due to several gentlemen in New Zealand, Australia, the South Sea Islands and elsewhere, for courteous answers given to his inquiries. They are due especially to Prof. F. W. Haslam, of Canterbury College, X. Z., and to Dr. Havelock Ellis, from whom he received invaluable sympathy and encouragement at a difficult stage of his labors. That the writer is further greatly indebted to this eminent scientist, as also to Dr. W'estermarck and Mr. Crawley, will be sufficiently evident. (X) CONTENTS, INTRODUCTORY. page Ethic of the Sexes — Science of Sex — Literature on Sex Questions — General Result of Present Inquiry 1 CHAPTER I. General View of Sex Love. Sexual Love — Its Intensity — Modesty — Biblical Views of Sexual- ity— Exaggeration of Sexuality on the Carnal Side — Modern Efforts to Regulate Sexuality 6 CHAPTER II. Analysis of Sex Love. What is Sex Love? — Illustration from the Rainbow — Psychological Elements in Love — Abnormal Developments — Two Historical Instances — Ethical Aspects of Love — Sex Lives of Saints — Problems of Love 22 CHAPTER III. Sexuality in Childhood. Se.xual Vice — Difficulties in Coping With — x\nalysis of, in Humanity — Sexual Vice in Animals — Among Children — Methods of Deal- ing With — Hygiene — Moral Suasion — Teaching — Punishments . 31 CHAPTER IV. The Mixing of the Sexes in Schools and Institutions. Social Intercourse — Family Life — Sexual Repugnance — Co-educa- tion— Its Defects in Theory and in Practice — Homosexuality in Schools — Social Intercourse in General 53 CHAPTER V. The Battle of Chastity in the Adult. Morbidity — Sexual Neurasthenia — Consequences of Sexual Sins — Celibacy — Fornication — A Sophism and a Truth — Necessity of Marriage— Christian Doctrine of Indulgcntia— Self-sacrilice — Regulations in Certain Professions — Personal Religion 62 (xi) xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. Neomalthusianism. page Historical Aspects of the Question — Economic Aspect of — Moral Aspects of — Analogies of — Methods — Dangers — Principle of Christian Freedom — Neomalthusianism in New Zealand — Fam- ily Life 106 CHAPTER Vn. Sexual Promiscuity. A Definition of Impurity — Promiscuity — Biblical Views of Promis- cuity— Concubinage — Antenuptial Relations 128 CHAPTER VIII. Prostitution. General View of the Situation — A Dialogue — The Sacking of a City — The Victorious Soldiery — The Women in the City — Moral Grades of Women — The Phenomenon of Prostitution — Its Place in the Social Sex Process — Women in Defense of their Honor — The Main Ground of their Defense — Women's Atti- tude to Marriage and to Prostitution 138 CHAPTER IX. Prostitution and the Social Sex Process. Comparative Ethics — The Evolutionary Ethical Process — Increasing Rationality of Collective Sexual Consciousness — Ethical Evolu- tion of the Masculine Impulse — Transition from Fear to Volun- tary Self-control — Ethical Evolution of the Feminine Impulse — Women's Growing Enlightenment on the Ethics of Sex — Self- control and Sympathy the Fruits of the Evolution of Sexual Morality 149 CHAPTER X. Prostitution and Rescue Work. Treatment of Prostitutes in the Christian Roman Empire — Attitude of Christian Fathers to Prostitution — Prostitution in Medieval Europe — Rise of Rescue Work — Attitude of Modern Society toward Prostitution — Rescue Work on its Negative Side — Forel's Description of the Fate of Prostitutes — Ideals of CONTENTS. xiii PAGB Rescue Work — The Earlier Ascetic Ideal — Its Insufficiency — The Modern Positive Ideal Scientific Study of the Pros- titute— The Worker of Mercy at Work — Social Value of the Rescue Workers— The "White Slave Traffic" 158 CHAPTER XI. Venereal Disease and Legislation. Statement of the Question — Modern Ethical Thought and Prosti- tution— The Problem of Reglementation — The Morals Service — A Policy Outlined — Venereal Diseases and Marriage 171 CHAPTER XII. Further Applications of the Principle of Responsibility. Suspected Increase of Immorality in Australia — Causes of Increase — Some Proposed Remedies — Age of Consent — Removal of Dis- abilities from Illegitimates — Legitimation — Registration in the Man's Name 191 CHAPTER XIII. Marriage. Various Doctrines of Marriage^Rationale of Sexual Desire — In- tercourse During Pregnancy— Aversion During Menstruation — Control of Desire — Frigidity — Mutual Consideration — Hy- giene— A Paralile Interpreted 202 CHAPTER XIV. Spiritualized Sexual Love. Its History — Its Basis, Significance, and Place in the Economy of Life 224 CHAPTER XV. Modesty. Origin and Purpose of Modesty — Biblical Estimates of — Modesty Among Women — Woman's Right of Marriage — Woman's Special Sexual Difficulties 232 xiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVI. Divorce. page Statement of the Question — Christian Ideal of Marriage — Uncer- tainty of Ecclesiastical Opinion on Divorce — Christ on Divorce —St. Paul— Attitude of State— Duty of Church in the Matter . . 242 CHAPTER XVII. Forbidden Degrees. Origin of Sexual Repulsion — Attitude of Christianity toward In- cest— Forbidden Degrees, History of — Matriarchate and Patri- archate— Ideal Unity in Marriage — Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister Considered 257 CHAPTER XVIII. The Sexual in Art. Condemnation of Erotic Art Considered — Classical .\rt — The Nude — Zola's View — Art and Word-painting — -Indecent Pictures — Legislation 274 CHAPTER XIX. On the Nature and Ethics of Impure Language. Language and Convention — History of Dirty Words — The Test of Motive — Horace and Juvenal — St. Paul 280 CHAPTER XX. Sexual Perversions. Modern Investigation of this Obscure Subject — Causes of Perver- sions— Sexual Inversion — Proposed Toleration of Homosexual- ity Considered — Masochism — Sadism — Other Types, Bestiality. Senile Immorality — Sterilization 284 CHAPTER XXI. The Evolution of Sexual Morality. Evolution of Moral Ideas — Prehuman Stage of Morality — Growth of Humanity's Sex Knowledge — Variability of Value-judgments CONTENTS. XV PAGE — Sex Morality in the Evolution of the Race and of the Child — The Religious Factor — Ethical Ideals of the Sex Life in Civilized Society — Their Germinal Principles in Primitive Society — Statement of the Ideals — The Manner of their Reali- zation— Principles of Casuistry — Sex Morality in Relation to Theology 312 CHAPTER XXII. The Metaphysical Basis of Sexual Morality. Rational Ethics and Religion — Spiritual and Supramundane Origin of Ethical Religion — Human Cognition of the Transcendent Ethical Authority — Rights of Criticism in Ethics — True Nature of Moral Action — Autonomy of the Will — Rational Reception of the Imperative — Primitive Commands were Negative — Re- capitulation— The Supreme Ethical Concept of the Sex Life — The Cognition of Ideas — No Really Self-evident Truths — In- tuition— The Inheriting and Estimating of Moral Values — Objectivity of Moral Concepts — Their Perfect Concrete Mani- festation— The Metaphysic of Ethics Reveals God and Leads to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ 334 CHAPTER XXIII. The Virgin Maktyrs. Virginity in the New Testament — The Virgin Martyrs in Art and History — Virginity in Pagan Rome — The Christian Persecutions — The Peril to Virginity — Condemnation of Christian Women to the Lupanaria — Outraging of Virgins — The Spiritual Per- manence of Virginity — Changes in the Social Estimate of Vir- ginity— Survivals of Superstition in that Estimate — Formation of a Deeper View — The Virgin's Aureole and the Conditions of its Attainment 347 CHAPTER XXIV. The Gospel and Sex Relations. Asceticism and the Gospel— Tolstoy's Estimate— Christ's Attitude and Teaching— St. Paul— The Christian Ideal of Marriage— The Atonement and Sexual Sins 3t)3 xvi CONTENTS. APPENDIX. PAGE Additional Note A, on Primitive Marriage 387 Additional Note B, on the Genesis Narrative of the Fall 400 Additional Note C, on the Virgin Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 405 Additional Note D, on Masturbation 420 Additional Note E, on Circumcision 430 Additional Note F, on Nocturnal Pollution 434 Additional Note G, on Patristic and Medieval Attitude to Divorce . 437 Additional Note H, on Polygamy 444 Additional Note I. on Belief in God 453 The Two Fires 456 Epilogue 457 Index of authors cited 459 Index of subjects 467 CHRISTIANITY AND SEX PROBLEMS. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. Ethic of the Sexes — Science of Sex — Literature on Sex Questions — General Result of Present Inquiry. In a single sentence of their book, two modern biologists have given pregnant expression to one of the most imperative of present-day needs. We need, say they, a new ethic of the sexes. In spite of the vague and frequently petulant expression accorded to this need in conversation and in ephemeral litera- ture, it has a real and general existence, and it is gradually being met. Such a new ethic is being slowly evolved as the outcome of the thoughts and labors of many, writing with various mo- tives and with a greater or less degree of conscientiousness on the series of problems arising from the physiology and psy- chology of sex. The study of sex questions carries the student into many branches of knowledge, anthropology, biology, medicine, law, theology, and others. It directs his inquiring gaze toward the lowest depths as well as toward the most glorious heights of human development. And here it must be said at once that an investigation of the dark side of sexuality is inevitable. ^ The composition of this work on its present scale would have been impossible without access being had to scientific treatises such as those of Havelock Ellis and Krafft-Ebing, treatises in which the sex life can be seen as it is, without disguise ; and humanity comes before the beholder in many attitudes, good and bad from 1 "For it is not dishonorable to know about ugly things, but by this means the remedy of them is found, if in a right moral and intel- lectual disposition one receives what is said about them." Plato, Legg. 635 (paraphrased). (1) 2 INTRODUCTION. a moral point of view, kneeling in prayer, striving with itself, disciplining its appetites ; or, on the other hand, lying in unre- strained voluptuous enjoyment, experiencing or seeking strange forms of sensuous excitement, raving, raging, bloody, ex- hausted,— and naked always. Many of the visions in the series are calculated to try the nerve even of the trained student of such things ; and the present writer is constrained to admit, for his own part, that he has shortened his studies on impure and perverted sexuality as much as possible; that he has confined his study of human sin — for so it must be called — within the limits of bare necessity, and has left the detailed investigation of abnormal conditions to those whose special province it is. Without contributing at this point anything fresh to the con- sideration of the moral advantages or disadvantages of a scien- tific study of sex, the author would merely accept the position that the sale of works on abnormal sexual conditions should be as far as possible regulated by law. However, a policy of wholesale suppression of even this class of work is neither requisite nor feasible ^ The scientific study of sex does indeed require for its successful and profitable pursuit not merely the qualities needed by other sciences, but peculiar moral qualities, tact, caution, and forbearance in making known results, drawing inferences, and expressing opinions. The scientist must here, - The difficulties in the way of the pubhcation of special works on sexual perversions would be considerably relieved if anthropologists generally would follow, and where necessary improve on, the example set by such writers as Krafft-Ebing and Westermarck, and render the most revolting pieces of necessary evidence into Latin. Here, too, must be noticed a suggestion which Mr. H. G. Wells has set forth with his peculiar power, that a minimum price, and that a high one, should be fixed by law for certain departments of literature dealing with sex questions, and perhaps for certain classes of erotic art. In spite of the complicated nature of the problem, an approximately correct de- marcation of sexual literature and art unsuitable for general use might conceivably be arrived at, and the output of such productions might be regulated either in the manner indicated by Wells, or by the issue of special licenses for such sales. INTRODUCTION. 3 as elsewhere, amass and consider facts. It is the just ground of his quarrel with the orthodox moralist that the latter will not face facts. On the other hand, the scientific inquirer is at times too ready to look askance at traditional or conventional ideas of sexual morality, tO' speak impatiently of asceticism, ecclesiastical influence, and the like. True science will pa- tiently and carefully estimate the value of these things. It should not be forgotten that in this field of study the question whether the thinker's treatment of his subject becomes a dan- gerous philosophy of vice or a profitable elucidation of diffi- culties is decided to a more visible extent than in any other by the spirit in which the work is done. It is the author's intention and hope, in the present work, to make use of modern research on sex problems, to consider as carefully as possible the results of such research, but not to exclude or unduly minimize the traditional ideas current in Christian society.-^ Many considerations independent of sex questions strengthen the belief that in the Christian religion is found the key to the problems of life. Consequently, a vital, progressive Christianity cannot long be out of harmony with any part of science. If, as here, it should seem to be so, the apparent discord is due to an imperfect apprehension of the real requirements and aims of one or the other. A science of sex, then, is positively necessary to the under- standing and appreciation of Christian sexual ethics. At pres- ent there is much uncertainty in men's minds about the ethical ideals of sex which are really of the essence of Christian morality. Which are those ideals? How many of the current ideas about right and wrong in the sex relation ought to be accepted and upheld at all costs by Christian people? And what kind of "new ethic" of the sexes can be accepted by Christians ? 3 This is F. W. Forster's standpoint (Sexualethik und Sexual- padagogik, Vorwort). His veneration of tradition is, however, some- what excessive, and tends to preclude legitimate criticism. I note with interest his appreciation of the caution and judgment of the Anglican Church, in its handling of religious interpretations and moral problems. 4 INTRODUCTION. In the present work, therefore, endeavor is made to ad- just the relations between science and Christian thought in the region of sexual ethics. The work is not so much a contribu- tion to the science of sex as an attempt to apply that science, for the battles of chastity have been fought too long in the dark. Practical utility grounded on science has been the chief aim of the present writer. The reader will find in the follow- ing pages discussions of present-day problems, but must go elsewhere to elaborate scientific treatises, like those already referred to, for the weighing of evidence, the discovery of causes, and the investigation of origins, which have made such discussions possible. It is only here and there in the present work that the author has found himself able to make an orig- inal suggestion or criticism in the scientific investigation of sex. Just as a dull, thick wine may be rendered bright and limpid by the infusion of a draught containing fresh ingredi- ents, so popular Christian opinion on questions of sex, an opin- ion pure in its moral essence, because in the main inspired by a desire for purity and righteousness, but too frequently be- clouded by prejudice, ignorance, and misconception, may be cleared and gladdened by alliance with a true science of sex. The order in which sex problems have here been taken is to some extent the order in which they usually appear in a human life, but in certain parts of the book it has not been possible to adhere closely to any definite arrangement. The book having been written from a man's point of view, and dealing mainly with sexuality in men, a number of ques- tions belonging to the sex life in women have been left alone. In one chapter only, the anthropological interest of the subject led the writer into somewhat closer and more direct touch with women's sexual needs. ^ In considering the ethic of the sexes we are compelled to face conscience problems of which neither the revelation of 4 In the present (revised) edition a few other of the special problems of women are handled ; but it remains true that this book contains no systematic study of the sex life in women. INTRODUCTION. 5 morality in the Bible nor the illuminated wisdom of the Church has as yet offered definitive and satisfactory solutions. The attainment of such solutions is perhaps reserved for future generations, as the outcome of many preceding thought strug- gles, of unconquered faith in the Divine purpose of good toward mankind, of high and sincere moral aspirations. Re- marks which the writer trusts are instinct with caution, and which must be understood to be of a tentative character, have been made upon some of these conscience problems in their place. The discussion of such points being inspired by no other motive than a desire to discover truth, will, it is hoped, be fraught with harm to no one ; and, in fine, the author hum- bly trusts that his work will be found neither a TrupaKAr/crt? €k irXavq'i ovhe. i^ aKa6apaLa<; ov8k iv SdAo).'' The formation of a new ethic of the sexes does not involve any radical change in present-day ideas of sexual morality. The new will be recognizable as the continuous outgrowth of the old. It will be found that our inquiry in the main serves to confirm the ethical notions upon which the social systems of modern Christian nations are based. Indeed, such a conserva- tive tendency will appear in our discussions that we shall even find ourselves at times led back to older and more natural ideas of sexual morality than those obtaining in modern civilization. We shall find that sexual sin has a real and manifold exist- ence ; that moral responsibility is a factor of paramount impor- tance in the sex life. But in the progress of this inquiry it will be found that a large element of caution has to be introduced into moral judgments once too readily pronounced upon breaches of sexual morality. 5 1 Thess. 2:3. CHAPTER I. General View of Sex Love. Sexual Love — Its Intensity — Modesty — Biblical Views of Sexual- ity— Exaggeration of Sexuality on the Carnal Side — Modern Efforts to Regulate Sexuality. Dark and formless, over the red faggots in the Tophet, towers the mighty bulk of the idol of Moloch, Lord of the Baalim. As the winding tongues of fire enwrap his trunk, and leap- ing to his head, momentarily form a diadem of bright points upon his brow, the image seems to move, to exult, to rear him- self aloft as a king in the valley. In that moment a wave of life, expending itself with a demonic, resistless energy, enters into him — the life of the male principle. From his shoulder, as if flung into the Tophet by his active and potent will, the victims of the sacrifice fall into the fire- waves, there to perish writhing in torture, or after desperate struggles to emerge, should Moloch relent so far, burned and crippled, an augury of better fortune, purchased with exceeding pain. Perchance the priests of Moloch saw a deeper meaning in the victim's plunge into Tophet's flames than an augury or a propitiatory sacrifice. The sacrifices in the Valley of Ben Hin- nom are to us a lurid symbolic picture of the dangers which surround the sexual relation. They represent the tragedy of millions of human lives, the plunge into the fiery heat of sexual passion. In most races modesty amounting to fear surrounds the sexual act. For an estimate of the widespread notion of the inherent impurity of sexual relations, the reader is referred (6) GEXERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. 7 to Westermarck.i So powerful, so instinctive is this feeling of distrust that it must not be considered as merely delusive, destitute of any benefit to mankind. The obvious and great liability of the sexual instinct in humanity to corruption ren- ders it necessary that some strong counteracting influence should be, as it were, inborn in the moral consciousness of men. Thus a notion which has arisen containing elements of error, which students of morals ought to endeavor to appre- ciate at their right value, is nevertheless useful in that it naturally prepares men's minds for the watchful reception of just teaching on the ethics of sex.^ Whence had the idea of the inherent sinfulness of sexual relations its origin? Various conjectures have been made on this point. Westermarck finds its origin in the instinctive sex- ual repugnance developed between those who are members of the same household from early childhood. Letourneau sug- gests that the notion that wives were personal property, or, more strictly, the crudity of this notion in primitive times, and the consequent rigorous exaction of chastity from women were the chief factors of this idea. Havelock Ellis shows that in humanity sexual modesty, which includes the notion under discussion, is the outgrowth of an agglomeration of fears, the earliest and most powerful of which in the female is the fear connected with sexual periodicity. The female, afraid of injury, protects herself against the undesired advances of the male. The circumstance, too, that the sexual center adjoins the excretory center, when viewed in connection with develop- ing ideas of disgust, must have contributed greatly, according to Ellis, to the ethical isolation in men's thoughts of the sexual functions. Further, the development in humanity of a varied ritual surrounding the sexual relation, increased the sense of 1 Hist, of Human Marriage, pp. 151f. Q. H. Ellis, Studies, vol. vi, ch. iv : Crawley, art. Chastity, in Hastings, Encyc. of Rel. and Ethics. 2 Q. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 484, "This sensitive attitude would seem to have assisted the natural development of man." 8 GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. modesty in regard to it. And these various fears, arising from periodicity, disgust, ritual, convention, the idea of property, and the domiciHar instinct of repugnance, roused emotions to which the familiar phenomenon, of the blush gives expression, and upon which it reacts with a stimulating and auxiliary power. 3 The causes enumerated, however, hardly take us far enough back in the history of the notion under consideration. The suggestions of Letourneau and Westermarck, with several of the factors emphasized by Havelock Ellis, must indeed be accepted as contributing causes to the establishment and exten- sion of this notion in humanity, but they do not disclose its primary origin. The fact that some, at least, of the lower animals in a wild state * manifest shyness about copulation shows that the sense of sexual modesty originated amid yet more primitive emotions than those of which these anthropolo- gists describe the growth and intensification. Havelock Ellis, in his suggestion of sexual periodicity, comes nearer tO' the root of the matter ; yet even periodicity, which, as he notes, affects chiefly the female, is hardly a sufficient basis for an ethical notion entertained by men as strongly and as widely as by women. It appears, then, that the primary origin of this notion must be sought in the amatory conflicts of the males.^ That 3 Westermarck, Hist, of Hum. Marriage, 2d ed., pp. 155, 541 ; Letourneau, Evol. of Marriage, Pref., p. 10 and ch. iv; H. Ellis, Studies, vol. ii. 4 Domestic animals, which for unnumbered generations have been for the most part freed from violent interference in the performance of their sexual functions, and frequently cannot choose privacy for copulation, have lost the instinct of concealment; just as, analogously, their periodicity has been disturbed (Geddes and Thomson, Sex, p. 147). 5 1 now observe that this theory of the origin of modesty had been already formed by a French scientist in the lifetime of Robert Browning, who gave it poetic expression (Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 132, n. 1). Cp., on the whole subject, R. Michels, Sexual Ethics, pp. 60f¥. GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. 9 these conflicts should rapidly generate a desire on the part of two animals to copulate in secrecy, without fear of disturb- ance or of attack, and that from this seeking after secrecy from motives of fear should arise an instinctive feeling that the sexual act must always be hidden, is a natural enough sequence. And since it is not a long step between thinking of an act as needing concealment and thinking of it as wrong, it is easily conceivable that sexual intercourse comes to be regarded as a stolen, and therefore in some degree, a sinful pleasure. Havelock Ellis describes the rise of similar ideas in regard to eating: "Whenever there is any pressure on the means of subsistence, as among savages at some time or other there nearly always is, it must necessarily arouse a profound emotion of anger and disgust to see another person putting into his stomach what one might just .as well have put into one's own. . . . As social feeling develops, a man desires not only to eat in safety, but also to avoid being an object of disgust, and to spare his friends all unpleasant emotions." Competition in respect of the means of satisfying hunger caused the act of satisfying it to be looked upon as something to be ashamed of. And this principle of interpretation clearly holds good in regard to the phenomena of sexual modesty. To satisfy the sexual appetite in presence of others arouses that appetite in them ; such an act is therefore not only dangerous to safety, but shamefully egotistic. But why has this notion of modesty, largely, though by no means entirely, ceased in the matter of eating and become in- tensified in the other direction? For one thing, the necessity of eating is of far more frequent recurrence than the other necessity, and the development of methods of production largely decreased the strain of competition, at any rate with respect to the immediate procuring of a meal. Secrecy in re- gard to so common an act as eating could not be maintained with any sort of consistency. Further, the sacramental meals which form a part of so many rituals would have the opposite effect of making this act a social and public one. The only 10 GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. factor in the development of sexual ethics which might have powerfully combated the original impulse to concealment was religious prostitution, but this custom was largely discredited, as being in irreconcilable conflict with the monogamic ideal, that prehistoric institution which has established for the sex life in humanity, at once the earliest and the highest standard;^ and it never acquired sufficient influence to stay the general current of feeling in regard to the sexual act. It should be noted, further, that religious prostitution did not wholly dispense with privacy in sex love. In the West African prostitution, whilst the preliminaries of the act may take place with open doors, these are closed to hide the act itself.''^ Crawley, in The Mystic Rose, following Dr. J. G. Frazer, indicates the desire for the security of solitude as the first step in the evolution of the sense of sinfulness now under consid- eration. He also describes the operation of another factor, the primitive fear of the unknown and presumably supernatural influences surrounding sexual functions. From this fear arose the great system of sexual taboos, under which the sense of in- herent sinfulness in sexual relations receives ethical direction and extension — not necessarily right direction or extension at any particular stage, early or late, of human development. We see, in fact, that there has arisen in the primitive mind a dual fear surrounding the sexual relation — a fear of oft'end- ing man, which is the root of altruism, and another fear which, as known to anthropological science, is appropriate to a dim and superstitious apprehension of Divinity. This latter fear is the root of self-control and regulation in the sex life. Casual ^ Woods Hutchinson, in an article in the Contemporary Review for October, 1904, adduces much interestmg evidence of monogamous habits in the lower creation. Monogamy had therefore appeared in the biological series before the advent of man ; and the researches of VVestermarck have gone far to establish this form of marriage as the primitive one in humanity. (See, further, Howard, Hist, of Matri- monial Institutions, i, 96ff., 141, 150, 151, 201f. ; and Additional Note A on Primitive Marriage.) ■!■ Bloch, Die Prostitution, Bd. I, p. 17. GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. H and reckless sexual intercourse is abhorrent to primitive man. He can only gratify his sexual appetite when he has satisfied certain taboos. In the region of these ideas the Divine Will respecting sexual union is revealed to man.^ In making the attempt to understand the growth of this notion of the sinfulness of sexual relations, reference was made in the first edition to the metaphysical problem of the origin of moral evil and its action upon the evolution of ideas in regard to sexual functions. I feel, however, that such a theo- logical discussion as can alone do justice to this problem is out of place here ; and limit myself to the observation that, in rela- tion to humanity, evil is objective ; it is actual, not merely notional ; and we may have to conceive of the Creative Intelli- gence as willing to mature a perfect ethic of the sexes'' in con- ^ Ct^. Puglisi, II problema morale (Bilychnis, fasc. ix, p. 195). To the question whether, at a definite moment in the early life of the human race, a revelation of the ethic of marriage was given, we shall return later. It may be observed here, by anticipation, that according to both natural and revealed morality, monogamy is placed before man as the true ideal of his sexual relations. And in studying sexual customs and institutions, the Christian thinker will estimate their ethical value in part according as they develop the sex ethic in the direction of this ideal or have an adverse tendency. Some thinkers, it may be added, are satisfied with the conception of a primitive revela- tion given through wholly subjective processes, by the supreme reason immanent in human reason. In any case, Tennant's conclusion is sound : "It will perhaps be wise for theology to include under the term 'sin' immorality that is not a conscious breach of the right rela- tionship with any superhuman power, and, a fortiori, all such as is not a conscious breach of communion with the only true God." (Tennant, The Concept of Sin, p. 23f.; cp. id,. The Fall and Original Sin, p. 85; also p. 78, where Reville is cited ; and see Additional Note A on Primitive Marriage.) 9C/>. Tennant, The Concept of Sin (Cambridge, 1912), p. 147: "It is the law of our nature that the 'carnal affections' do not spontaneously die as the things belonging to the spirit begin to live and grow in us. It is conceivable that this might have been so ordered; that in so far as the functions of the lower of our endow- ments could be superseded by the exercise of reason and will, they should disappear as do certain bodily organs in the development of the embryo. But as a matter of fact this is not so." 12 GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. ditions other than those of which we have experience ; and of the actual evolution of sexual morality as distorted and vitiated by the introduction of an element, or action of a force, alien to the primal intention. It should not be forgotten that the influence of the sexual taboos, tending to a strict demarcation of the sexes and to an ascetic view of sexual relations, was early modified by mutual sympathy between the sexes. Primitive man discovers that contact with woman is not always dangerous ; sometimes it is beneficial. 1'^ Further, the phenomena of courtship and attrac- tion are yet more primitive than the early taboos, and these practices tend to promote vigorous animal feeling about sexual relations, and to counteract superstition and asceticism. Anthropology thus directs us to the idea of a sexuality in which are blended the elements of healthy animal passion and moral self-restraint; of enjoyment and of sacrifice; of self- assertion and of altruism. It appears, then, that the notion of the inherent impurity of sex relations is not to be uncritically or superstitiously enter- tained. Both ancient and modern thinkers, as Plato and Weis- mann, have found in catabolism, one of the great principles un- derlying the manifestations of sex, an especial source, if not the chief source of progress. ii Plato expresses this truth in allegorical guise, saying that "poverty is the mother of love."i- It is from sex, too, according to many writers, ^"^ that all ideas of material beauty derive their primary impulse. Nor is anything to be said in disparagement of a philosophy of beauty which undertakes the consideration and analysis of esthetic conceptions and physical charm. It is helpful as far as it goes. But there should be a recognition of the incom- pleteness of its range of thought. Conceivably, it may become 1*' Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 202. 11 C>. Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, pp. 10, 92. 12 Sympos. xxiii. 13 See the opinions collected and discussed by Havelock Ellis, Studies, vol. iv, pp. 136ff. GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. 13 morally dangerous if it remains exclusively materialistic; if its adherents, in their rapt contemplation of what is visibly attractive in nature, in humanity, or in their artistic repre- sentations, ignore the worthier types and developments of beauty. For to achieve completeness, this reasoning, that sex is the mundane origin of conceptions of beauty, must be car- ried on into the moral sphere. To say nothing of chastity, such manifestations of moral beauty as courage, self-sacrifice, meek- ness, patience, gentleness, have an easily traceable connection with the sex life and its activities. There is an objective, ideal element in beauty, recognized in the material region by writers like Stratz and Ellis ; and on the higher side, made the fulcrum of his spiritual teaching by Plato, who in the Phsedrus and Symposium chose beauty as the idea mediate between the passion of love in its sensuous aspect, and the higher enthusiasms which direct the human spirit toward eternal aims. One department, then, of the science of sex, is certainly the study of beauty; and the mind which would aim at any degree of completeness in that study, must endeavor to view the various forms of beauty, animal, esthetic, and spiritual, in their true perspective. The idea of the commingling of the two principles, male and female, in nature, was not necessarily, though in history it was frequently, productive of an immoral worship or a de- grading symbolism. The prophets of Israel use this conception to illustrate some of their highest ethical teaching. They do not shrink from symbolizing the communion of Jahweh with His people, a spiritual union of fathomless profundity and power, under the figure of a marriage between Him and His land. (Isa. 62:5; Ezek. 16; Hos. 1, 2, 3.)^-^ 14 There is no need to assume, as is done by G. A. Smith in his commentaries on Isaiah and Hosea, that the imagery is so framed as to contain no adumbration of the sexual relation on its physical side. Such an interpretation is tinged with Manich?eanism, and impoverishes the imagery of the nuptials between Jahweh and Israel. Rather it is 14 GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. The innocence of the sexual passion per se is frequently and sometimes impressively recognized in the Bible (Gen. 29: 17, 18; Ps. 45 : 11) ; its purely sensuous character being elevated and disciplined in humanity by faithful monogamy (Gen. 2: 24; Canticles). Even the heavenly word dyaTr?;, a word for which revealed religion has a peculiar fondness, even if it was not actually, as a scholar has said, "born within the bosom of revealed religion," may, like the corresponding Hebrew word ahabhah, spring from an earthly root, a root signifying physi- cal desire or aspiration. In Canticles it is used of the power- ful sexual longing, no doubt to be considered as governed by the underlying ethical motive of this poem. In other passages it and its verb are used even of sinful love (II Sam. 13 : 1 ; Lam. 1:2; Ezek. 16). In the evolution of language it took a higher place than €/3ws, which perhaps on account of the degraded sensuality so largely associated with it, is not found in the New Testament, but the verb dyaTrai/ retains even there a purified sexual application (Eph. 5:25, 28, 33). The state- ment in Grimm's N. T. Lexicon, s. v. ikiw that ayairdoi is not and can not be used of sexual love is, as the American editor points out, inaccurate. It must not, however, be forgotten that there is another circle of ideas in the Bible respecting the sexual relation, ideas in which appear a reflection of the sentiment already alluded to, that this relation on its carnal side is tainted with moral impurity. Thus it has been suggested that the narrative in Genesis of the plucking of the Forbidden Fruit is a symbolic representation of the act of sexual intercourse. I have no a most gracious condescension to the moral needs of humanity that the love of God for man is imaged as gathering up into itself and sancti- fying every part of man, all his instincts, emotions and activities. But in the prophetic religion of Israel this figure is not taken out of its proper region, the region of imagery. All attempts to transfer it into the region of material action — attempts such as issued in gross and licentious misconception among the heathen of Western Asia — are pro- hibited by the prophetic teaching. The figure is employed too in the New Testament (Bousset on Apoc. 19:7). GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. 15 doubt that this is the correct interpretation, and discuss it more fully farther on.^'* It is as if, to the writer of this narrative, the moral disease seizes most readily upon the sexual nature of all parts of the human subject. Allusion is made elsewhere to the taboo ou the intercourse of the sexes 1^, — a practice which points to a notion of impurity in- herent in the act. Further, in Hebrew thought, not less than in the thought of other nations, as their language occasionally testifies, a certain shame akin to^ the above-mentioned idea attaches to nakedness.^" There is certainly a deep significance in the fact that this view of the sexual relation, as well as the contrasted one, finds a place in the Bible. But by far the profoundest spiritual message contained in the Scriptures, in relation to sex, is to be found in the legendary but vastly significant narratives of Our Lord's conception and birth. We shall deal with this revelation separately. 18 The ascetic idea passed into Christianity, and exercised at one time a greater influence than the human and rational view of sex. There were gradations of opinion, illustrated by the thorough-going depreciation of the phenomenon of sex found in certain sects and unorthodox circles,!^ and by Catholic 1"' See Additional Note B on the Genesis Narrative of the Fall. The story of the angelic marriages in Gen. 6 has been regarded as an alternative tradition of the entrance of evil into the world. But although this mythological fragment was largely exploited in that connection by late Jewish and, following it, Christian speculation {e.g., Justin, 2 Apol., 5. Cp. Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics, vol. iv, art. De- mons and Spirits, p. 78b), the unions are not regarded, in the original story, as immoral or as productive of evil. (C/'. G. Langin, Die biblischen Vorstellungcn voni Teufcl, pp. llflf.) iGSee Ex. 19:15; I Sam. 21:5; Deut. 23:10; II Sam. 11:11. and the discussions of these passages in W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, Note C, and the Commentaries of Driver and H. P. Smith. '".Apoc. 3:4, 18; 16:15, and frequently in the O. T. Prophets; cp. Driver on Ex. 28:42. 1*^ See Additional Note C on the Virgin Birth of Our Lord. '^Von Dobschiitz, Christian Life in the Primitive Church, pp. 16 GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. Utterances of the same feeling and tendency as these, though separable from them on logical grounds ;-0 up to the better informed and more sympathetic estimates, represented spar- ingly in ancient and copiously in modern Christianity, of the sexual activities. It may be observed that the systematizing, for Christian thought, of the sense of the inherent sinfulness of sex relations, was so largely due to Augustine, as has been shown with admirable clearness by Harnack,-i that some writers22 have even made the great African Father respon- sible for its existence. Its source, however, lies, as we have seen, immeasurably farther back in the world-process. The ascetic estimate of the sex process was strengthened by being combined with the doctrine of original sin. This development was indeed largely due to Augustine; and it acquired so strong a hold of medieval thought that even Luther could not free himself of it. He fell back under its influence in his later years, and taught that sexual relations, though not impure in idea, were so in fact owing to the accidental (per accidens) association with them of the taint of original sin. There has been much controversy in Germany over Luther's attitude to sex; but Bloch has shown that it was hesitating and finally in some measure reactionary.--'^ The really potent, formative factors in this pessimistic, ascetic view of 39ff. ; Bishop John Wordsworth, The Ministry of Grace, pp. 218f. ; A. J. Maclean in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics, vol. iii, p. 493a ; G. Cross (ibid.), p. 273. -'^ Sanchez, De Matrim, Sacr. L. ix, disp. i. J. Miiller, Die Keuschheitsideen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung (ed. 2), is certainly wrong in saying (p. 58) that Catholic Christendom held aloof from exaggerations in the estimate of chastity. 21 Quoted by Bloch, Die Sexualethik des Aiigustinus (Die Pros- titution, Bd. i, pp. 642f.). Harnack exposes the logical defects of Augustine's teaching. 22 See C. H. Parez, The Sinister Legacy of Augustine, a review in The Modern Churchman, Dec, 1911, of Allin's Augustinian Revolu- tion in Theology. 22a Zu Luther's Sexualethik, in Die Neue Gen., Jahrg. 9, Heft 11. GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. 17 sex are, first, the instinct of concealment already described; second, the lassitude ensuing on sexual activity; third, the natural weariness which men feel, with advancing years, about the things of this life. The first two factors operate in the lower creation ; "post coitum omne animal triste," is a general maxim. Theologians would surely hesitate about applying a doctrine of original sin to the sexual activities of animals. The truth is that, as Kohler (quoted by Bloch) rightly perceives, faith calls us to rise superior to these racial, social and physiological de- pressing influences, and to estimate the sex process in accord- ance with higher ethical principles, to the consideration of which we shall return later in this volume ; and of which one of the chief is, as Bloch insists, mutual' responsibility. Practically, at any rate, under present conditions of human life and progress, the sensuous desire which plays so important a part in investing with happiness the sexual relation, becomes frequently a dangerous force, impelling men and women into abysses of disease, degradation, and confusion. It may be permissible to offer some remarks on a few aspects of the problem thus created. Some writers entertain a hope that the power of the sex- ual instinct is diminishing in civilized humanity in proportion as the mental faculties develop. The contention that there is such a development is itself full of difficulty, but apart from this the foregoing opinion might seem to some extent commended by the analogy of the evolution of sexual passion in one sex, the female. Dr. Sperry^s^ maintains that there are degrees of amorousness among women, involving often a large measure of difference. It is arguable that the average modern woman is less conscious of desire than the average man, but there may_ have been a time in human history when this was not so. The ancient Hebrews and Greeks seem to have be- lieved that woman was more powerfully inclined to carnal pleasure than man. Such is the idea expressed in Gen. 3 : 16.-^ --*' Husband and Wife, p. 122. -•^ See Dillmann's note in Ice. E. tr. 2 18 GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. It finds fiercer expression in compositions like the Lysistrata of Aristophanes, and later in Juvenal's Satires, where he at- tacks feminine morals,^^ though such passages do not warrant a general induction. But at all events the notion of a general weakening of sex- ual desire among civilized races is as yet "not scientifically proved. "-'5 On the other hand, there is much reason for thinking that the sexual instinct, so far from becoming en- feebled, is more than usually liable to excesses and perversions in days when towns are crowded, when competition is feverish, when nerve-power is frequently subjected to abnormal strain, when the law of heredity has had ample time to develop the evil forces in human nature, when marriage at their own social level is out of the reach of many, and the economy of the sexes becomes disturbed mitltis mirisque modis.-^ Many of tlie dark pictures of sexual immorality drawn by Juvenal, including particularly the immorality of children-" (Sat. vii, 239, 240), have their reflection in our own time. They are the product, not so much of conscious and willful depravity of spirit, as of hard and strained conditions of life, when natural instincts are unwholesomely confined. Indi- viduals of high culture and great mental development fre- quently seem to lose none of the force of animal passion, though 24 See especially Sat. VI, 254; Sat. XI, 168. 25 Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 150. 26 Cp. Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, pp. 466fif. ; Forel, Die Sexuelle Frage, p. 224; Tarnowsky, L'Instinct Sexuel et ses Manifestations Morbides, pp. 170f. ; Moll and H. Ellis, in the Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, p. 607. Gemelli, Quaestiones Theol. Medico-pasteralis, vol. i, p. 19, says : "Necesse est agnoscere quod hodiernis temporibus tam intensi sunt stimuli externi, tamque citius operantur, ut vehementiorem sexualis instinctus actionem reddant, ideas afferendo, quae potenter agunt relate ad gignendam libidinem." 27 Bloch, following Paul Ree, denies that civilization is an im- mediate cause of intensifying the sexual impulse, and looks to cumu- lative inheritance to explain such intensification, — the fact of which he recognizes (Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Times, p. 14). GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. 19 they may acquire the power of habitual, yet painful, self-re- straint, and on the whole, in view of all that is known about the moral state of modern schools, armies, and towns, one can hardly think that men, though increasingly prudent as regards marriage and procreation, find it appreciably easier than did their forefathers absolutely to forego sexual pleasure.-'^ Crawley observes (art. Chastity, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics, vol. iii, p. 47Sa) that "in the struggle for existence a strong and well- developed sexual instinct has obviously an important survival value, and the higher races are undoubtedly to be credited with its possession." {Cp. Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Times, E. tr., p. 14.) A con- jecture upon which Ellen Key, according to Forster (Sexualethik und Sexualpadagogik, pp. 57ff.), builds much reasoning, viz., that procrea- tion demands favorable erotic conditions, should be viewed in the light of these facts of sexual evolution. In spite of Forster's asser- tion that there is no scientific justification of Ellen Key's contention, it may well contain an element of truth; on the analogy of conditions of appetite being {ceteris paribus) favorable to digestion (see Gemelli, op. cit., p. 127), but, of course, the erotic conditions are neither the only nor even the principal ones, on which the quality of procrea- tion depends. Reason, will, and moral responsibility must ever have their share in determining procreative conditions ; else diseased hyper- esthesia may be mistaken for procreative capacity (Ellis and Moll, Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, p. 607), as diseased hunger might be mistaken for healthy appetite. -SHavelock Ellis (Man and Woman, p. 67) combats the theory of a decrease of physical amorousness in civilized races. "There is considerable evidence to show that the sexual instincts of the lower races are not very intense. It would probably be found that the higher races (i.e., those with the larger pelvis) have nearly always the strongest sexual impulse." See further for a more recent and fuller study of this point by the same writer. Studies, vol. iii, pp. 214ff. ; and cp. Howard, op. cit. i, p. 94, and reffs. There are some exceptions among lower or primitive peoples to the foregoing generalization, and the statuettes and drawings of the Stone Age prove not only that the mystery of sex loomed large on the horizon of primitive man, but that he knew how to stimulate sexuality artistically (Bloch, Die Pros- titution, Bd. i, pp. 46ff.). But the statement referred to seems justified in the main (G, H. Berkusky, Die sexuelle Moral der Naturvolker, in Die Neue Generation, Jahrg. 6, Heft 8, p. 310). 20 GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. In the progress of the sex life, then, are various and mighty elements of danger. Even when we have got rid of the exaggeration and high coloring with which, in the popular mind, the evil results of sexual excesses and misdemeanors are surrounded, there is still a large residuum of sad truth, a mournful tale of lives which have been consumed by entering the fire. In the thought and literature of the day many efiforts are made to solve portions of the sexual problem. These are in- spired by various motives, and have diflferent degrees of suc- cess. But alas ! how many of these efiforts are in the main futile and inadequate, even when made in quarters whither we might naturally look for the industry in observing and appreci- ating phenomena, the wisdom, sympathy, and insight necessary for dealing with a burning moral question. It is needless to multiply instances. The published report of the deliberations of the Anglican bishops on purity, at the Lambeth meeting in 1897, will suffice. The motive underlying this manifesto is excellent, and certain parts of it are useful, but can we think that this pronouncement, consisting largely of the familiar abstract statements and exhortations on the subject (one or two of which, by the way, as they find expres- sion in this manifesto, do not convey the full truth), is all the guidance that men may fairly expect, amid the saddest per- plexity and in the most exhausting struggle, from leading Christian teachers who presumably have had ample opportuni- ties for studying human nature in relation to morality and religion ? Later on, it may be necessary to comment critically on a detail of the episcopal manifesto; though its spirit is the same as that which, as the author hopes and believes, animates this essay. Here we note that the bishops make suggestions about holding discussions on various phases of the purity question. These suggestions, it may be, bear fruit in meetings for the consideration of juvenile depravity and kindred subjects, and possibly some of these meetings have a certain usefulness. It GENERAL VIEW OF SEX LOVE. 21 is not putting the matter too strongly to urge that unless such meetings result in definite and vigorous efforts in the cause of purity ; unless they conduce to a clearer and more sympathetic understanding of the real difficulties of the question, they tend merely to weaken, confuse, and depress those who take part in them. The present writer remembers a meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand, called for the purpose of considering the pre- vention of juvenile depravity. Doubtless in its methods, or at least in its results, it was typical of many similar ones. It was well attended, and an extremely painful discussion took place. The misdoings of the juveniles were painted in glaring colors, and the evil results of sexual misdemeanors were mor- bidly dwelt upon. Some useful remarks were made by the medical men present upon the care and management of young children in relation to sexual development, but they fell flat, for the most part, upon the meeting. What resulted? An unprofitable committee, which dis- banded in a few months, having done practically nothing for the improvement of public morals, and a few vague proposals for getting up entertainments to keep children off the streets at night. Invaluable suggestions ! A magic lantern, or a set of conjuring apparatus; a game of draughts or of bagatelle; some dumb crambo, and, a possible cup of coffee and a bun — to cope with the strongest of the carnal passions that belong to human nature. Tophet blazes unchecked. Moloch extends his arms and casts off from his limbs the showers of scarlet s])ray. The victims make their plunge into the flames, and we hold abortive committee meetings ! CHAPTER II. Analysis of Sex Love, What is Sex Love? — Illustration from the Rainbow — Psycho- logical Elements in Love — Abnormal Developments — Two Historical Instances — Ethical Aspects of Love — Sex Lives of Saints — Problems of Love. But before discussing measures for the regulation and purification of the sex Hfe, it will be well to realize, by a psy- chological analysis, what kind of phenomenon we are dealing with. Sex love gives direct inspiration tO' many of the strongest efforts and highest flights of the human spirit, and indirect in- spiration to much more. It is the soul of art, the life principle of literature. It seeks expression everywhere. Every one of the manifold aspects of life, grave, gay, tragic, comic, beautiful, sor- did— the love passion is in them all. Laughter, smiles, tears, moans of pain, sighs of loneliness, prayers, curses, the very life-blood itself, are each and all in turn forced out of human- ity by this heaving, pulsating principle of life, — the love passion. Some few, in the history of human thought, have tried to understand this mysterious thing. The philosophers of long ago studied it, and proposed one answer or another to the question. What is Love? In Plato's philosophy it ranks as an ecstasy, a mighty madness coming forth from God upon the human soul, and burning it with an unearthly fire. So, too, does a poet of Israel think of it.i Tertullian, in a once-famous religious controversy, inter- preted the deep sleep which God caused to fall upon the first Man, before the creation of Woman, as the first love ecstasy 1 Cant. 8:5 (R. V.): "Love is strong as death . . . tht flashes thereof are flashes of fire, a very flame of the Lord." (22) ANALYSIS OF SEX LOVE. 23 in humanity, a rapture of love in which the man prophesied of marriage, of truth and constancy, and kindness and temper- ance and all else of worth and beauty to be found in the nuptial union.- This interpretation is no doubt fanciful, resting on a mistranslation in the Greek Bible of the Hebrew word tardemah; but it is not fanciful to recognize, between the vari- ous human ecstasies or raptures, prophetic, religious, or erotic, a close connection and powerful interaction. Religious litera- ture and love literature may reach a mystic point at which they blend. The religious instinct and the love passion find common forms of expression in such poetry as the Song of Songs. Out of the millions of people who can drink a glass of wine, only a few hundreds stay to consider how the wine comes to be what it is. Only a few have the patience to sub- ject it to chemical analysis. Just SQ with love. The few who think over it, who try to understand it, perceive that it can be analyzed. It is a passion, a state, which has several constituent elements. Several subtle influences are at work upon the soul that feels it. As the best illustration of the love passion, I choose that which Professor Drummond used of ethical love,-"^ and F. Myers applied to the nature of man in general,"* viz., the ray of light broken into prismatic colors by the spectrum ; or, let us say, taking nature's own beautiful example of it, the rainbow. When the atmosphere presents the needful conditions, the proper combination of bright and dark, of rain and sunshine, then appears the rainbow. The fewest light vibrations pro- duce the red ray; then follow other colors softly harmonious; finally, with the highest number of vibrations which our eyes can respond to, we perceive the violet ray. 2 Labriolle, La poleniique antimontaniste centre la prophetic extatique (Revue d'Histoire et de Littcrature Religieuses, xi, 2), pp. nSff. ; Murillo. El Genesis, p. 287. •^ The Greatest Thing in the World. 4 Human Personality, vol. i, pp. 17ff. 24 ANALYSIS OF SEX LOVE. Just so, the love passion in humanity is made up of several emotions. It plays over the whole gamut of our elab- orate and complicated nervous system. It powerfully affects both our physical and our psychical or spiritual being. It has its red ray, its violet ray, its intermediate rays. One's life progresses; a situation is created providing the necessary con- ditions; there is a combination of tears and gladness, of the grave and the gay ; and then shines forth the love rainbow. Now, we have often noticed that the general brightness of a rainbow varies according to the atmospheric conditions which produce it. It is sometimes faint, sometimes very bril- liant. So the intensity of the love passion varies in different natures, and at different times in the same subject. If one is young or old, if one is man or woman, if one's nervous sys- tem, from hereditary causes, is highly sensitive and suggest- ible,— these and other influences, like the variations in the state of the atmosphere, will in one way or another affect the brilliancy of the love rainbow. Suppose now, further, that as we watch a rainbow we perceive some one color becoming disproportionately bright, and overpowering the other rays. We conjecture that this peculiar effect is produced by an unusual combination of some kind in the sky. I do not know that it ever does thus happen ; but it is imaginable. Something of this kind may occur in the love passion. A person may be so constituted that some one particular emo- tion, a constituent of love, may become exaggerated, may become the dominant one in his mind. Should this be the case, unusual effects, perhaps beautiful, or perhaps bizarre and ugly, would be likely to occur. And just here is the proper place to notice that, in our study of love, we have not so far touched on moral considera- tions at all. The idea of personal morality can come in only when the question arises of forming a purpose, of coming to a decision, of exerting one's will, as the outcome of something suggested by the love passion. As soon as an exercise of the ANALYSIS OF SEX LOVE. 25 will in one direction or in another is called for, moral law, social law, and various other matters have to be taken into our account. At this stage, the love passion introduces human- ity to some of its greatest moral conflicts, its most agonizing struggles. One ray or another of the rainbow may be the dominant one ; it may be highly spiritualized love, or it may not; but in either case, or in any case, so soon as the love passion becomes, under stress of circumstances or moral law, checked, controlled, inhibited and stifled, pain and distress must inevitably ensue. Here we see the love passion brought under the operation of the highest universal law known to us, the law of sacrifice. Further, even if the love passion is peculiarly, or so to speak irregularly constituted, it cannot be described as in itself evil, except in the limited sense in which we can speak of human nature possessing original or inherent evil. This point might be illustrated from the life histories of many. The cases readily occurring to me are those of two historical personages, women belonging to the same race, though widely separated in point of time. Both were exceptionally gifted, forceful, attractive, brilliant; full of a wondrous magnetism for others, and in themselves of highly nervous and amative tempera- ments. Love was in both their lives an element of great power, the source of many and mighty inspirations. Its influ- ence was none the less real because — in one of them— it was so highly spiritualized as to be undefined, and as it were, un- consciously or, rather, subconsciously entertained. lUit there is a stranger point. So far as I can interpret the historical evidence, there seems to have inhered in the love passion of these two women an unusual development, which one can best describe, by the use of our illustration, as the exaggeration from some cause difficult to estimate, of one ray in the rain- bow.-''* In other words, one of the emotional elements in the , ■ iJ I refer here to the emotional interest in blood, felt by the great Saint Catherine of Siena (see E. Gardner's Life of Catherine of Siena), as well as by the sadistic wanton, the Empress Messalina. 26 ANALYSIS OF SEX LOVE. love passion present, but more or less latent, in us all, was in these two cases unusually and dangerously suggestible. It responded to ideas which would ordinarily exercise no influ- ence at all. In one of these women, the eccentricity of the love passion became the chief evil influence of her life. It instigated her to heinous crimes, and her name stands out in history as that of one of the most infamous of her sex. She was a sinner among sinners. In the other case the unusual love phenomenon had a totally different history. It became associated with a glowing and elevated religious mysticism. Instead of, as in the previous case, benumbing the character- istic feminine tenderness and pity, it stimulated and enhanced them. It colored both lives red ; but in the latter life it was a red reflecting the robe that covered the Savior at His Passion, and in the other it was the color worn by the Woman who reigned upon the Seven Hills. Saints and mystics are not, as is sometimes imagined, unsusceptible to love; on the contrary, they are nervous, pas- sionate, and suggestible in an uncommon degree. Their pray- ers, letters, communings and hymns are at times gorgeously colored with the varied lights of love.^ And it is of great significance for a full estimate of love to observe that, when love has reached the most spiritualized stage within the com- pass of human experience, when the soul is losing itself in '^ Professor William James (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. lOff.) adversely comments on the theorj'- of interchange between the religious and the sexual emotions. He is doubtless right in maintain- ing that the occasional resemblance between the two kinds of emotion, a resemblance which he recognizes (pp. 11, 345ff.), does not warrant the inference that religious emotion has no peculiar and superior value. But it remains true that the sex nature in some subjects is affected and excited by religious suggestions — which is not to say that those suggestions have their origin in the sex consciousness ; and that the resulting type of religious emotion has a more or less definitely erotic tendency, the development of which is conditioned by the gen- eral circumstances in the organism experiencing it, by the subject's health, degree of mental enlightenment, and natural or acquired will-power. ANALYSIS OF SEX LOVE. 27 ecstasy, enveloped in the deepening glow of the violet ray; just then, the red ray in the rainbow may imperiously reassert its power,''' The strain of the spiritualized love process within the organism may prove greater than it can bear. The soul may be roughly flung back from the things of spirit to the things of sense. It is on the uncertain borderland between matter and spirit, the mysterious region where true lights and false lights shine together, where rarest saintliness and marvel- lous sins, mystic wisdom and piteous madness, appear all at once and strive for mastery, that humanity's mightiest con- flicts have been fought; conflicts as much nobler than political battles as moral force is higher than physical force ; as much braver than such battles as the courage which fights alone is greater than the courage which displays itself in company. Of the very many contemporary writers who elucidate sexual phenomena and problems, one at least, Sigmund Freud, has given proofs of an original genius in the handling of the subject ; and the influence of his analysis of the sex conscious- ness is increasingly felt in the world of thought. His leading idea is that the sexual nature being the source, or in great part the source, of the total manifestation of individual human energy, it is possible to recognize in various human activities the methods and grades of the transmutation and sublimation of the sexual impulse, and to seek in these activities compensa- tions for unsatisfied sexual needs. Erich WuMen, who has fully exploited this idea in the department of criminology, con- siders that the practice of crime constitutes one of these compensating expressions. These views have been much criticised and opposed,^ and may well require modification. To assign a sexual origin, unless in virtue of a very remote connection, to any and every manifestation of human energy, and to see sexual equiv- alents everywhere in human action, may be fanciful, or at '' Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. i, ch. ii, p. 325. ^E.g., by Moll, The Sexual Life of the Child, pp. 189ff. 28 ANALYSIS OF SEX LOVE. least of theoretic interest, rather than of immediate practical utility. The compensations procurable from the environment are in fact often in no way equivalents; they are far from adequate to meet the current needs of the sexual life. Yet, v^hen all objections have been urged, the principles of Freud and Wulffen are of great service in enabling us to understand such lives as those referred to. It becomes clear that exag- gerated and even abnormal developments of the sexual instinct may form the foundation of lofty as well as of debased char- acters. The specific sexual inheritance common to both may not indeed be conditioned and balanced to the same extent in each by other hereditary factors. In this aspect the pros- pective saint may have an initial advantage over the future criminal. Still, the resulting moral divergence between the two personalities is largely a matter of accruing factors, educa- tional and religious influences and spiritual increment. Much is to be hoped for in the solution of sex problems, for the amelioration of the sex life in humanity, from the development and application of Freud's far-reaching princi- ples. Since, after all deductions are made, it is evident that sexual energies can be and are transmuted into activities of a different order, what we have to desiderate is the extension of this process in transmutation, and its guidance along right lines; in a word, humanity needs the increasing spiritualiza- tion of the sexual impulse. We shall have regard to this spiritualization again later on. Here we have considered it in the psychology of a great saint. Human nature craves for the element of romance in life, and sexual compensations can be adequate only in so far as they contain this clement. Men and women who suffer from erotic desires, bafiled either on the physical or on the psychical side, are wise if they seek a new outlet for such desires by their transmutation into new and good forms of energy, through work, art, thought, science, philanthropic, social and humane endeavors, and, most of all, personal religion. The more unselfish is the spirit of these new energies, the ANALYSIS OF SEX LOVE. 29 larger will be the element of romance and expectation within them, and, consequently, the nearer will they approximate to the provision of adequate sexual equivalents. We may watch, in some few of the autobiographies included by Havelock Ellis in his great work, this process of transmutation taking place. There we observe people exploiting for their own support and consolation the quasi-erotic collective influence and stimulation which the sexes exercise upon each other, and by the growing spirituality of their outlook becoming conscious of a brightness gradually surrounding the rebuffs and tensions felt by the sexual nature. And when we look on to another life, yet more important results may be inferred from the psychological analysis initi- ated by Freud. The possession in common, by two persons during earth life, of a particular hereditary disability — accord- ing to our present illustration, a hyperesthetic or abnormal sexual factor — forms a point oi sympathetic contact for their two personalities, through which the ethically higher person- ality may conceivably be permitted to influence and elevate the lower. But the full consideration of such possibilities belongs to the domain of psychical science in conjunction with eschato- logical science, and cannot be followed up here. All through human history, mankind has been trying to bring the love passion into permanent touch with reason, to direct and control love developments. Just as from time to time in Church history, the Church has had to deal with pro- phetic or visionary ecstasy, and has tried to establish some standard of reasonable control, of critical sobriety in regard to it, maintaining that the spirits of the prophets should be subject to the prophets;^ so it has been and is with the love ecstasy. To set up right moral standards, right conceptions both of freedom and of discipline, in regard to it ; to restrain, and ultimately to eliminate from social life those manifesta- tions of it which hurt either the individual or society; to dis- 9 1 Cor. 14:32. 30 ANALYSIS OF SEX LOVE. cover, in fact, how this complex natural phenomenon, love, may be made to serve the best interests of humanity, — these are great problems of life upon which volumes have been and volumes will be written ; problems which require for their solution not only the fullest energies of the human intellect, but the widest and tenderest sympathies of the human heart; and, more than all, that factor which has been felt all through human history, though it has never been fully measured or adequately described, — the Light and Guidance of the Spirit of God. CHAPTER III. Sexuality in Childhood. Sexual Vice — Difficulties in Coping With — Analysis of, in Hu- manit}' — Sexual Vice in Animals — Among Children — Methods of Dealing With — Hygiene — Moral Suasion — Teaching — Punishments. Methods of coping with the huge evil of sexual impurity, by legislative and other measures, have usually the fault of be- ginning to work at the circumference of the phenomenon, on the false theory that the center and heart of it can thus be reached. To suppose that adequate remedies of this class of evils will be found in clearing the streets of children and young people after a certain hour, in getting up entertain- ments, checking the sale of sensuous pictures and promoting other surface measures, is to fall into a fatuous error. It would be as rational to think that we could curb the violence of a volcanic, eruption by carting away a little of the refuse and scoria on the outskirts of the scene of disturbance, while the cone in the center, waxing ever hotter and more furious, continued to discharge vaster supplies of fiery matter. In the present order of things it may well be doubted whether any legislator will arise capable of framing adequate laws for the treatment of sexual misdemeanors and follies. Legislation has here to cope with an adversary so subtle that save for partial success at a few points, legislative efforts must recoil baffled. Let us not, then, attempt to satisfy our consciences by the promotion of mere surface measures : not indeed that they are in every case entirely useless, but they deal with symptoms and effects rather than with causes. Let us investigate beyond these, and try to press nearer the heart of the question, wel- coming whatever help and guidance can be obtained, from the light of revelation and the light of science, in this dark region. (31) 32 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. As already hinted, a correct analysis of sexual sin cannot be arrived at merely by referring all phases of it in humanity to man's willful depravity and responsible choice. Man's sex- ual nature, and the conditions which surround it, are not so detached from those of the higher brutes as wholly to justify the comparisons which some writers on sexual subjects are fond of drawing between his ignoble depravity and corrupt- ness and the innocence of brutes. This contrast is not so instructive as it claims to be. For, in the first place, it is erroneous to assume an absence among brutes of sexual vice. In a tract of the White Cross series ^ these words occur : "The animals never sin against their nature, unless man has tampered with them." It is not quite clear what the writer means by these words. It is by no means uncommon to ob- serve the grossest perversion of . the sexual instinct among animals. The present writer has observed strange instances of this phenomenon, which seem due mainly to the fact that in a disturbed environment the instinct is denied its normal gratification. 2 Modern moralists are being compelled, in the light of facts, to recognize that abnormal sexual action, e.g., masturba- tion, occurs in certain circumstances among the lower animals. Dr. Stall admits this very reluctantly and with large reserva- tions. The real truth lies probably midway between his posi- tion and that taken up by Godfrey in the Science of Sex. Animals, when taken out of their normal sexual environment, may not masturbate as readily as Godfrey seems to believe, but there is reason to think that they do so much more readily than writers like Dr. Stall allow. We shall approach this sub- ject again later on. Secondly, it is shown by much independent investigation 1 True Manliness, by J. E. H., p. 14. 2 Q. Westermarck, Hist, of Hum. Marriage, p. 281; Moll, The Sexual Life of the Child, pp. 102f., 123 ; Fere, L'Instinct Sexuel, ch. iii ; Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat, ch. xxix ; Thoinot-Weysse, Medico- legal Moral Offenses, p. 344. SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 33 that man's resp>onsibility is surrounded by conditions which hmit, while they do not obhterate it, and on the other hand, among modern students of ethics there is an increasing tend- ency to recognize moral elements in the psychology of animals. Animals among themselves are capable of acts which appear to human observers self-sacrificing, considerate, kind, — acts which call forth human moral approval ; or, on the other hand, — again as between themselves, — of acts which seem to us deserving of reprobation. ^ As to the light in which those acts are viewed by the animals' society or environment, we are, as Westermarck states, dependent on the unsafe criterion of our subjective interpretation of the facts."* But the general consideration may be entertained, that the law of evolution implies a chain of related phenomena, physical and psychical, in the creative series. Whoever recognizes the operation of this law might well expect, with Leconte, to detect germinal moral and spiritual capacities in the lower animals. It is con- trary to analogy to demarcate rigidly between man and the lower creation in respect of moral capacity. Westermarck's de- nial to animals of any share in moral responsibility is not sup- ported either by the general operation of the evolutionary process or by the particular facts he cites. "A man must be blind," says Professor Forel, "not to recognize that the wonderful facts which the study of the psychology or biology of animals produces for us repeat themselves in the human' soul itself."^ Hence, although in our race, as compared with brutes, the sexual instinct comes under new laws, it is none the less inter- ^ A. Rolker (Windsor Magazine, March, 1905), in an article, The Rogues of a Zoo, gives striking instances of the capacity of animals for savage and meditated treachery, not only toward man, but toward their own kind. Darwin describes breaches of unwritten social law among birds (Descent of Man, ch. xiv). 4 Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i, p. 249ff. 5 Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, p. 97. 3 34 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. esting and important to^ observe that some, at least, of the causes which produce sexual vice in man may be seen operat- ing in the brute creation. The case may be stated concisely in this way : given a strong desire, ever pressing for gratifica- tion, and a set of circumstances which do not allow of its normal gratification, and unless some counteracting force can be brought into play — e.g., the will-power and nobler develop- ments of the human soul — some abnormal and illegitimate use of the sexual function must ensue. In studying sexual vice, then, in humanity, it will not be sufficient either to denounce corruptness or to emphasize responsibility. We must aim first at the recognition and ap- preciation of the causes of the exaggeration and perversion of desire ; secondly, at the removal of those causes and the conse- quent diminution or moderating of desire by medical or other means ; thirdly, since no known physical means will adequately accomplish this object, at the introduction and development of counter-influences, derivable from man's higher capacities. The ensuing discussion of children's impurity will start from these premises. It is a somewhat strange circumstance that solitary im- morality, a widespread evil in modern times, and the earliest form in which impurity usually makes its appearance in a human life, is not mentioned in the Bible. None of the Greek words used in the Bible of sexual vice explicitly refer to this form of it, though scholars have attempted to find such allu- sions.^ None the less the general principles of morality and natural law urge us to make efforts to cope with the evil. The power of the sexual instinct, mainly perhaps from hereditary causes, varies greatly in individuals, and even in young children. Just as some children are more choleric than others, so some are more sexually precocious.'^ And when it 6 Bengel on I Cor. 6 : 9. See Additional Note D on Masturbation. ■^ The progress of morphology has demonstrated the existence of the "erotic temperament" (Gemelli, op. cit., pp. 34f.)- In the auto- biographies printed by Havelock Ellis as appendices to the Studies in SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 35 is discovered or suspected that a child's sexual instinct is ab- normally developed, and likely if unchecked to lead him in his ignorance and inexperience, into habits of solitary immorality and other forms of impurity, his education, and the physical management of him, so far as they concern his sexual nature, must be directed to two ends: First, to diminish, or at least to refrain from unwittingly exciting, the physical activity of the instinct, and to keep it latent during the helpless years of childhood; and second, to develop his moral and spiritual man- hood, and to foster the growth of his will-power. Thus in boyhood and early manhood, when his youthful vitality is ma- turing, and the circle of his experiences expanding, and when the stress and responsibility of his conflict with impurity must fall directly upon himself, he will have at starting the advant- age of a childhood purely and healthily spent, and will be able to oppose to the excessive or unlawful impulses of desire — such impulses as a wider contact with society must give — the nobler forces which have been growing up within his soul. On parents in the first place devolves the duty of combat- ing and repelling this dire foe of childhood and youth, secret impurity. It is hardly possible to condemn in too strong terms the apathy shown by multitudes, perhaps by the majority of parents, in respect of the sexual development of children in early years. More reckless than the Moloch worshipers of antiquity, they suffer not merely strong, well-grown offspring, but tender little ones to feel the might of the flames. Experi- ence abundantly proves that habits of impurity will readily take root and acquire strength in quite young children if a sympathetic watch over their sexual development is neglected.^ the Psychology of Sex, illustrations of sexual precocity are to be found ; so also in Moll's book on the Child. Freud, in his Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, and other works, has analyzed the whole subject of sexuality in children yet more thoroughly. s I may here cite the following Questions for Parents in a recent devotionally beautiful and morally searching book, the product of progressive Catholicism : — "Do I try to prepare my sons in all ways for life, enlightening 36 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. Masturbation in young children may not be easily discov- erable by physical tokens,^ such as Mrs. Ennis Richmond de- scribes in her boOk, Boyhood. Havelock Ellis throws great doubt on many of the symptoms said to be indicative of mas- turbation in adults, symptoms which, in any case, are not likely to obtain a noticeable development in young children.'"^ Yet it must usually be possible for a watchful mother, awake to the danger, to perceive the formation of the habit in its beginnings. The notion which becomes an instinctive sense in the adult, that sexual functions have an element of impurity and require concealing, is as yet unformed in the young child's mind. Masturbation in very young children frequently is begun half unconsciously as a reflex act, and though they soon learn to understand that it can only be performed safely in privacy, the early stages of the formation of the habit are characterized by a considerable openness in regard to it. The act is usually performed with the hand, but not a few children them — according to age, physical and mental growth, environment and circumstances — on certain realities and certain dangers? "Do I try to furnish them with all armor for the conflict with their passions? "Do I try to implant in my sons the feeling of the grave respon- sibility which their young manhood has, in respect of themselves, of women, of their future families? "Do I try to educate them to be well prepared, either for the conjugal state or for celibacy, — so as to be able to find in this latter, if they are called and destined to it, spiritual contentment ; and so as to see in matrimony, not a means of satisfying selfish desires, but an institution designed to fulfill a civil and social mission, full of high duties?" Adveniat Regnum Tuum (Milano), pp. 136f. 9 Dr. Stall (What a Young Boy Ought to Know, cylinder xi) goes even farther, endeavoring to find among boys not only physical, but general moral and spiritual indications of the existence of the habit of masturbation. A writer in The Guardian, in a review of the above-mentioned book, rightly remarks on the futility of such attempts. Oa Weysse thinks there is no truth in the idea that juvenile mas- turbation enlarges the genital organs in either sex (Thoinot-Weysse, Medicolegal Moral Offenses, p. 34n.). SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 37 acquire, sometimes accidentally, a preference for rubbing themselves against bedding, furniture, etc. The author of Boyhood gives some excellent advice as to the kind of moral suasion likely to have effect on a little boy in whom the habit has been detected. Fere says that in his experience good results have been obtained from the use by the child's mother of prohibitive suggestion during normal sleep. The mother sitting by the bedside with the child's hand in hers would will him to resist the newly formed inclination, supporting the effort of her own volition with the power of prayer.io In modern popular medical works useful hints are given with respect to the safeguarding of children against precocious physical desires. The employment of sensible and pure- minded nurses, where nurses are a necessity of the household ; the use of wholesome, digestible foods ; care lest a very young child be inadvertently placed in positions which may excite its latent physical propensities — how often do- we see women nursing infants face downward upon their lap, heating and irritating their genitals by the gentle rocking motion and warm contact of their knees ; systematic cleanliness as regards a child's clothes and bed ; and in many cases a resort to the prac- tice of circumcision — a point to be especially considered^i — are all matters to which parents would do well to attend. Here, too, we may note, in order to condemn, the practice of sending children to bed in the daytime as a punishment. In 1'^ F. Myers refers to the use of hypnotic suggestion for the cure of several childish tricks and ailments, not explicitly mentioning mas- turbation, but undoubtedly including it. (Human Personality, etc., vol. i, 527a.) See also Religion and Medicine (Worcester, McComb, Coriat), p. 69. The method used by one of these authors was "to address the sleeping child in a low and gentle tone, telling it that I am about to speak to it and that it will hear me, but that my words will not disturb it, nor will it awake. Then I give the necessary sug- gestions in simple words, repeating them in different language several times." 11 See Additional Note E on Circumcision. 38 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. the case of a child with a strongly developed sexual instinct, one would think that few more effective ways of unduly excit- ing it could be devised than the one mentioned. Almost the first piece of advice a medical man would give to anyone who was liable to excessive carnal desire would be not to spend too much time under the bedclothes. Yet to save themselves trouble, parents and guardians will frequently visit some petty fault upon children with this unwise and dangerous pun- ish ment.^- It is necessary, at the same time, to guard against fussiness and pedantry in dealing with the sexual hygiene of childhood. It is an exaggeration to say, with a popular medical writer, ^^ that "tea, coffee, flesh meats, to say nothing of the abomina- tions of the baker and confectioner, are sufficient to account for the early tendency to sexual dissipation manifested among children. ... It may be said that unchastity, and the enor- mous and unnatural development of the sexual passions, are largely the effect of highly stimulating foods and drinks. Alcohol and tobacco no doubt goad this instinct into such a fever that it is almost uncontrollable. "^^ 1- I have known of public institutions where inmates were pun- ished by this method. It is gross mismanagement. {Cp. Moll, op. cit., p. 307; Gemelli, op. cit., p. 139; Ellis and Moll, Handbuch der Sexual- wissenschaften, p. 625.) 13 Trail, Sexual Physiology and Hygiene, pp. 224, 266. I'^It is, of course, recognized on all sides that the reckless use of alcohol works in most effectually with impure sexuality as an excita- tive of desire, and yet with detriment to the sexual power. A lady in New Zealand of great experience in rescue work told the author that she had once asked a woman, convicted after many years of keeping a house of ill fame, to mention anything which had come particularly under her notice in that capacity. The prostitute replied that she had almost invariably observed that the male visitors to her house were in some degree under the influence of drink. Cp. Good, quoted by Gemelli, op. cit., p. 134 : "There is but a short step between the public- house and the brothel." Gemelli does not, however, condemn abso- lutely the use of either alcohol or tobacco, and advocates a well-pro- portioned, generous diet. When the facts concerning the abuse of SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 39 There is an element of rashness In such statements as these. Sexual desire cannot be prevented or overcome by a mere process of dieting; else why were many of the ascetics of the Middle Ages, in spite of their rigorous abstinence in matters of eating and drinking, exposed to such fierce sexual alcohol and the evil effects of such abuse on the sex life are grouped and emphasized as they are by A. and F. Lepmann and in Forel's important work, they explain the latter writer's prohibitionist attitude. Not only does alcoholic excess interfere with the functioning of the sexual apparatus in the manner already referred to; but, ontogenet- ically, it may give an impulse to the development and expression of pathological conditions of the sex instinct in the subject himself; or, phylogenetically, the alcohol may injuriously affect the germ-plasma, causing psychosexual defects which were latent in the parent to become congenitally pronounced in the offspring. These views of the pernicious influence of alcoholic excess on the sex life and the sexual functions are supported by the authors mentioned with descriptions of experiments on animals, estimates of statistics, and personal obser- vations. Still, the theory of the alcoholizing of the germ-plasma would seem to be as yet in an undeveloped state. Some interesting, though inconclusive observations have been thrown into the scale against the above-mentioned views. It has been pointed out further that in view of the retardative action of alcohol on the organism, a measured use of alcohol in some good combination — and always accom- panied, I would suggest, with food — may even be of service before sexual congress in certain cases where the virility is weak. The balance of considerations, however, in connection with the sex life, is cer- tainly not adverse to, rather it definitely favors, voluntary total abstinence. A general discussion of temperance in alcohol would carry me beyond the limits of the present subject. It is enough to remind our- selves that there are alternative methods of general reform to that of prohibition. Of such classes of reforms — reforms preferable to pro- hibition because they take a fuller and fairer account of the facts and needs of life — the works of Messrs. Rowntree and Sherwell afford the best-known discussion. (Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 1057ff. ; Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, pp. 270ff., 322f., 454f., and passim; Orth's discussion in Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., vol. i, esp. p. 57; C. W. Saleeby in Fug. Rev., vol. ii, No. 1 ; Ethel Elderton, Parental Alcoholism, reviewed in Eug. Rev., vol. ii. No. 2, p. 150; The Tem- perance ProI)]cni and Social Reform, popular ed., 6d.) 40 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. temptations pi"^ It is moreover surprising, in regard at least of some English schools — though perhaps Dr. Trail is thinking of American schools — to hear charges brought against the authorities of overfeeding and pampering the boys. Whatever experiences some of us may have had at school, that certainly v^as not one of them. Besides care of the physical development of a young child, right moral influence, a matter of even greater importance, ought to direct the education of his ideas of sexual morality. As the child's moral sense strengthens, and the time approaches v^^hen, by his entrance upon school life, he is to take on himself to a large extent the responsibility for his sexual development, opportunities varying with circumstances will be offered of warning him against the dangers which may beset and press hard upon him during this development. The difficulty felt by a father, and still more by a mother, in turning these oppor- tunities to advantage has come in for a good deal of considera- tion in .the minds of many thoughtful people. It is sympa- thetically treated by the Rev. E. Lyttelton, Mothers and Sons, p. 95ff. Indeed, if mothers are to speak to growing boys on this subject at all, an especial care is requisite. As regards the silent observation and safeguarding of the sexual development of infants and young children, this duty can, it is true, be ordinarily performed by women better than by men. It falls more properly within their sphere. But a different phase of the subject is entered upon in the case of a boy nearing the age of puberty. Many mothers disregard the increase of sex- ual power in their son, and continue to treat him systematically and in a variety of ways as a baby, long after their instinctive modesty and feminine tact should have warned them to respect the dawn of manhood in him. Others, perhaps, are morbidly anxious and prudishly sensitive on the subject of the sexual 15 Zockler, Askese und Monchthum ; Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 113; Gasquoine Hartley, The Truth about Woman, p. 2,2Z ; F. W. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers, vol. ii. p. 223ff. SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 41 relation. The moral effect upon a boy of being spoken to on sexual matters by either of these classes of women might be a disastrous one. A mother's influence upon her growing son, in this particular, should be indirect rather than direct. Forel distinguishes, as an especial cause of the difficulty experienced by adults in safeguarding or training the sexual nature of children, the fact that in the education of his chil- dren the grown man is continually liable to impute his own feelings — the feelings of an adult — to the child. "The very thing which excites an adult sexually leaves a sexually imma- ture child quite indifferent. "i*"' If this is true, the converse is at least equally so. Sexual precocity or hyperesthesia, even in quite young children, is probably commoner than Gemelli allows,!" and various stimulations may arise on that basis. We shall note presently, for example, that masochism, or pas- sive algolagnia, frequently supplies the earliest impulse to sex consciousness. The expansion of the sex life may, and prob- ably will, diminish the power of this particular stimulation, and correspondingly increase that of the normal sexual stimuli ; with the result that the desire formerly tending toward juvenile masturbation enters another direction, toward normal sexual relations. 1^ Here, then, we have an illustration of the difference between the sexual susceptibility of a child and that of an adult. But in spite of difificulties, serious people are agreed upon the general principle that it is better that a boy should hear about sexual matters in the first instance from one who would treat them reverently, than from schoolfellows who would assuredly, from want of better knowledge, discuss them either lightly or pruriently, and with the use of a coarse vocabulary.!^ i<5 Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, p. 463. 17 Op. cit., p. 20L IS See esp. Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, ii and iii. 1^ I am glad to be able to quote a woman's opinion on the subject of sexual education, on account of its intrinsic value, and the general support it affords to the position taken up in this work. "Once a child 42 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. It is a sufficiently obvious suggestion that the person who can give this initial warning and instruction about sexual de- velopment most appropriately and impressively, after the silent watch over the earlier years has been kept by the parents, and where excessive diffidence or some other circumstance pre- vents the father from speaking, is the family physician. All due allowance may be made for a mother's, or even a father's dislike of saying even a few words on this subject to their young boy, but what after all is to hinder them from arranging an interview for him with some kindly, trustworthy medical man, and introducing him to it in some such way as this : "Look here, , you are going to school; I want Dr. to have a few minutes' talk with you. Not that you are ill ; only we can't look after you as well at school as we could at home, and he can give you some hints about taking care of yourself. Mind you listen, and don't forget them." Such a special interview would almost without doubt be deeply impressive to the boy, and he would feel comparatively little difficulty, should occasion arise, in again referring to his physician for advice or help in this great matter. A boy should, as far as possible, be led to know that in case the stress of the conflict within him becomes insupportable, he has as a reserve force — one which he will not indeed summon readily, but by a great effort of moral courage — the kindness, sympathy, and experience of some older person. As things go is curious about any of the so-called mysteries of life, that curiosity should be met and satisfied step by step as it comes, but not aroused prematurely, and children vary very much in these matters. With those precociously interested, there should be no putting off with untruths. The whole beautiful process of nature unfolds itself easily enough if the mother determines from the first never to evade an apparent difficulty by telling any kind of lie. The one thing to ensure is that a child gets its wanted information from a high-minded and intelligent source, not from a foolish or misleading one." (Mrs. Earle, Mothers and Daughters, Nat. Rev., December, 1904, p. 677.) There are now so many opinions supporting the above-quoted one, that the task of citation is hopeless. SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 43 at present, how many boys there are who brood over some sexual trouble, perhaps largely imaginary, without venturing to broach the subject to either father, doctor, schoolmaster, or chaplain ; who have one and all neglected the duty of proffer- ing unasked the help and advice which, as they must know full well, few boys can bring themselves to seek !-0 Next to parents, schoolmasters and clergymen hold usu- ally the strongest position for combating the evil ; nor can they justly use the apathy of parents as an excuse to veil their own common neglect in the matter. "Is A to shirk his duty because B shirks his? Is not rather the father's negligence in this respect even in itself an especially excellent reason why schoolmasters should bestir themselves, and try, by means of superior moral training, to make up for this recognized de- ficiency on the part of parents ?"-i The arguments adduced by some authorities,-- against collective teaching in schools on the ethics of sex, are incon- clusive and unpractical. If boys were invariably spoken to separately by the chaplain or headmaster, the tale would wax old by frequent telling, and the boys would compare notes, probably in a jocular and irreverent spirit, on their respective conversations with the master. A manly and instructive ad- dress given from time to time to a number would give a healthier impression. The writers referred to above miscon- -0 The following extract from a communication cited by Havelock Ellis, graphically illustrates the dangerous and melancholy state of afifairs still prevailing in some of our boarding schools : "For the rest, the dormitory was boisterous and lewd. . . . My principal recol- lection now is of the filthy mystery of foul talk, that I neither cared for nor understood. What I really needed, like all the other boys, was a little timely help over the sexual problems, but this we none of us got, and each had to work out his own principle of conduct for himself. It was a long, difficult, and wasteful process, and I cannot but believe that many of us failed in the endeavor." 21 Hime, Schoolboys' Special Immorality, p. 14. ^-E.g., Beale, Our Morality, p. 20; Fere, L'Instinct Scxuel, E. tr., p. 310. 44 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. ceive the privacy and delicacy surrounding the sexual feelings among boys. As a matter of fact, in their conversations among themselves, most boys are not troubled with considera- tions of this kind; at any rate the delicacy is not readily sus- ceptible of injury from the efforts of superiors at giving sexual instruction, provided those efforts are inspired by high and true motives, and tactfully and sensibly expressed. H. G. Wells emphasizes the value of books containing physiological information in sexual education. "The printed word may be such a quiet counsellor."^^ There need, we think, be no hesitation as to the abstract value of this method of instruction in the opening years of adolescence, but even the popularized and rightly motived physiological treatise can never wholly supersede oral instruction and the direct personal influence of elders. The present writer considers, in general agreement with the writer of a review published a few years since in The Guardian, that Dr. Stall's book, What a Young Boy Ought to Know — all acknowledg- ment of its high moral tone being made — is too prolix for boys of the age for which it is intended. Its intermingling of nursery phraseology with scientific medical terms has something unpleasing, and gives it an unboyish tone ; a criticism which, it must be said in passing, is equally applicable to another highly motived booklet of sexual instruc- tion, Dr. Mary Wood Allen's Almost a Man. Stall's book, moreover, is not free from a tendency to fussiness and exaggeration; and in parts it might well be unduly depressing and alarming to nervous boys. The present writer, when consulted by a parent as to whether he should put it into the hands of his 12-year-old' boy just going to school, felt unable to recommend it ; and this judgment was endorsed, indeed, had been anticipated by the gentleman himself. Perhaps The Guardian reviewer is right in questioning whether any grown-up. man has yet succeeded in putting into print proper instruction on sexual matters for young boys. Dr. M. J. Exner writes approvingly to me of Dr. W. S. Hall's From Youth into Manhood. I have not seen this book. Oppenheim 24 urges that sex knowledge should be kept from boys until they are nearly 20, so as not tO' awaken the 23 Mankind in the Making, p. 309. 2-* La Nevrosita nei fanciulli, quoted by Gemelli, op. cit., pp. 114ff. SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 45 consciousness of sex. Whether or no this plan is ideally right, it is in most cases quite impracticable; and Oppenheim himself admits: "It is undoubtedly better that they should be instructed too soon than too late." Gemelli's own view, though, at first reading, he seems adverse to the sexual in- struction of the young, on closer consideration allows for the judicious imparting of sex knowledge. Another Roman Catholic writer, Pere Gillet,-"*^ empha- sizes the primary necessity of strengthening the will and orientating it toward the ethical ideal of self-sacrifice. His general position as to the sexual instruction of the young, that it is necessary, and that, in imparting it, good sense and tact are at least as requisite as technical knowledge, is the same as my own; but his medievalist habit of thought appears in his tendency to set religion at variance with science. They are in reality two aspects of a unity. Science illumines ; personal religion motivates and disciplines. Forster, to whose views on sexual education I have al- ready referred, favors collective exhortation on general lines rather than collective instruction on sex. In relation to the latter, he calls attention to the need of protecting the growing and partly instinctive sense of modesty, and, consequently, of not concentrating too much attention on specifically erotic phenomena. The specific sexual instruction ought to be put in the right perspective in the young mind. "That sexual pedagogic is the best which says only as much as is abso- lutely necessary about sexual things, and which understands how to awaken all those forces of character and to form those habits which, by the action proper to them, place the young man in the right spiritual attitude toward his growing impulses. A teacher can disseminate with a few good words the most beneficial impulses and can procure the co-operation of the public opinion of the class in regard to sexual morals. "^-j 2-iaM. S. Gillet, Innocence et Ignorance (Paris), s-'"' For a case in point ct>. Mr. W. Sawtell's speech in the Eugenics Review, vol. v, No. 1, pp. 60f. 46 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. A fully developed sexual nature contains psychical ele- ments such as (in the man) chivalry, or those to which I have already referred in connection with beauty. Forster is espe- cially good where he lays emphasis on the need of making these elements supremely prominent as ideals, in any presenta- tion of sex knowledge to young minds ; so that, e.g., a boy can firmly grasp the idea that no amount of sexual or other suffer- ing in his own person can justify his doing a mean or cruel thing. Finally it is needful, as Gemelli justly urges, -^ to respect, in young adults, the growing sense of personal liberty ; to teach and encourage them to follow high ideals and to seek spiritual aids first and foremost, in the sex life, from their own strengthening perception of their value ; but by no means to exercise an irritating pressure based on no higher considera- tion than expediency and the appeal to fear. We may apply here an illustration given by the Italian thinker Igino Petrone. It occurs in a lecture which I regard as an extremely fine lit- erary antidote to the despondency and distrust of the higher self, which in young men connote and increase morbid weak- ness of the will. 2" "The health of the spirit," he says, "like that of the body, results in great part from the rapidity of the elimination of residues. Life's wisdom consists in elimi- nating intellectual debris, throwing it out, banishing it beneath the threshold of consciousness, deliberately excluding it from one's field of vision. Whereas, the mind which dallies, and keeps, as it were, bending over itself, feeds on such debris, drinks the aforesaid elements of decomposition'. And thus the soul's expansion is diminished, and it becomes poisoned at the inmost springs of its life."-'^ Thus, in fine, all the foregoing considerations converge upon and are crowned by the conception, well set forth by 26 0/'. cit., pp. 116f. 2" Igino Petrone, L'inerzia della volonta e le energie profonde dello spirito (Napoli, 1909). 28 Of. cit., p. 14f. SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 47 Forster and Gemelli, of the training of the ivill. Inasmuch as, on psychological analysis, will appears not as an isolated men- tal faculty, but as the final expression of intellectual and emotional processes, 29 it is obvious that the enriching and informing and directing of these processes, the educating of the powers of discrimination, comparison, valuation, inherent in them, involves the ultimate enabling of the will to make, out of the congeries of moral phenomena presented to the consciousness, a selection which shall be just and right, or, in other words, in accordance with the objective categorical prin- ciples which belong to the scheme of ethics in its wholeness. A wide field of inquiry is opened up by the question : What punishments and deterrents are suitable for checking sexual immorality and depravity? This question will have a special interest for parents and schoolmasters, in view of the difficulty of coping with the form of immorality we have been considering; nor is it an easy question to answer. It is doubt- ful whether corporal punishment would here be of much, if any use.^^ Besides breaking the bond of sympathy and confidence between parent and child, a bond of the highest value for the proper treatment of an evil in child life, usually begun in ignorance and fostered by weakness of will, the memory of corporal punishment may easily, in many cases, rather incite a child to the indulgence of depraved imaginations than deter him from them. Indeed, the author thinks well to state in this connection his own conviction that the corporal punishment of children, for any offense, should seldom or never be accom- panied by indecent stripping. 29 J. N. Baldwin, The Story of the Mind, p. 29; Wundt, Ethik, E. tr., vol. iii, p. 63. Even if, for metaphysical reasons — on what is known as the autogenetic theory (Wundt, op. cit., p. 12) — will is re- garded as a distinct psychical entity, its germinal principle is, at any rate, in the scheme of psychical evolution, indissolubly conjoined in consciousness with those of thought and feeling. •^f*In spite of Bloch's casual sanction of it (Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 427). 48 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. Corporal punishment has to be considered in relation to the phenomena classed by sexual scientists as masochism, or passive algo- lagnia. It is now well known that the infliction of blows and bodily insults, especially by a person of the opposite sex, acts in some subjects as a sexual stimulus. The adult who finds this tendency in himself can and ought to battle with it by moral effort. Here we must note that it may be incipient in a young child. Doctors have long ago noticed the tendency of the sexual instinct to excitation on the applica- tion of heat or sharp blows to the lumbar region. Fere quotes with approval Acton's warning against whipping children on the buttocks, on account of their consequent (perhaps not immediate) ^i liability to 31 This point is important, in view of Kiefer's contention in the Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenschaft, Aug., 1908. He illustrates, with the case of a woman whipping a boy, the fact that the pain of a violent whipping will subdue sexual excitement. But it is not clear that it does so more than temporarily; and even if it had a more lasting effect, success would be limited to that particular form of masochistic stimulus. One of Havelock Ellis's cases writes : "On one occasion I was beaten with the back of a brush, and the pain was sufficient to overcome any excitement; so that, ever after, this particular form of whipping left me unaffected, though the excitement still remained connected with forms of which I had no experience" (Studies, vol. iii, ed. 2, p. 140). This would seem the most that can be said for cor- poral punishment as a sedative of sexual excitement. In the case cited by Kiefer, the woman's previous whippings of the boy — it may be assumed such whippings had occurred — had assuredly failed to eliminate, nay, had no doubt intensified, the masochistic element in his sexual instinct. Some of the whippings Bloch's patient endured at the hands of the maidservant no doubt hurt at the time ; yet we read that he sought for more (Bloch, Sexual Life of Our Time, pp. 570f.). Hirschfeld, in the same number of the Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissen- schaft, rejects Kiefer's view; and I believe the German school regula- tions forbid the stripping of children for corporal punishment. Moll, while like myself feeling the impossibility of advocating the total disuse of corporal punishment, prefers its infliction on the hand instead of by the customary method, as this latter involves a specially "erogenic," i.e., sexually susceptible, area of the body (Cp. Bloch, Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 31; Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sex- ualtheorie, pp. 45, 51f.) ; and when he, with other scientists (e.g., Thoinot, op. cit., p. 429), calls attention to a further disadvantage of whipping, viz., that it sometimes excites sexually the agent as well as the victim, one feels strongly that the circumstances call at least for SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 49 sexual excitement. If stripping is resorted to, and if the punishment is inflicted by, e.g., a woman on a young boy, the danger is of course increased. The disapproval, on general grounds, of whipping expressed by Mrs. Ennis Richmond in her excellent book, Boyhood, gains greatly in force when whipping is viewed in its connection with sexual emo- tion. Krafft-Ebing emphatically calls attention to this danger ;3ia and Havelock Ellis, in his recently published third volume of Studies, deals fully with the subject of whipping in this connection. The cases cited by him afford further confirmation of the fact of which the present writer for his own part was already sufficiently convinced, that whipping has powerful sexual associations in the minds of some chil- dren, and both originates and develops within them the pernicious habit of self-abuse. In a general connection with the psychic phe- nomena of algolagnia, I may here observe that the compilers of the Priest's Prayerbook, who venture to recommend varying degrees of pain as a prophylaxis of sexual desire, do not seem aware of the fact that pain is often one of the most successful of sexual stimuli.^ib The stimulating effects of whipping are referred to by Zockler.^'- Gemelh, who finds himself obliged to regard with constant tenderness the traditional ideas and practices of the Roman Church, cautiously pronounces from the sexual point of view against whipping, whilst trying to avoid the sem- blance of discountenancing its historic occurrences in Christian asceticism. 33 Expulsion from school,^* again, is too severe a punish- ment for ordinary lapses into this sin among boys. In regard, indeed, to the major evil which exists in some schools, it is hard to see how any other measure than expulsion can be resorted to in the case of the principal offenders, though it may not be always necessary to inflict this punishment upon the younger boys who have perhaps been pressed into becoming the total disuse of stripping, and for the most restricted use possible of this form of punishment in general. {Cp. Moll, The Sexual Life of the Child, E. tr., pp. 316ff.) 31a Psychopathia Sexualis, ed. 7, E. tr., p. 28. 31b cp. Ellis u. Moll, Handb. d. Sexualwissenschaften, p. 640. 32 Askese und Monchthum, p. 609. 33 Op. cit., p. 52. 34 See Hime, Schoolboys' Special Immorality, pp. 34fif. 4 50 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. the accomplices of a crime of which they were unable to realize the enormity. Indeed, it must be observed further that as regards the principal offender, expulsion from school alone will not always meet his case. The offense might be com- mitted in a reformatory or industrial school, where expulsion would not be possible, as nothing would be gained by turning the criminal loose upon society. Probably no one punishment or remedy, in the present stage of human insight into moral problems, can be proposed as likely to be generally effective in the work of eradicating and destroying this gross form of sexual crime. Like other sins, it occurs amid varying moral and physical conditions, involving different degrees of responsibility. For the consid- eration and appreciation of these, the combined aid of religious thought, legal science, and pathological study is certainly required. By such means it may become possible to define, with an approximation to justice in each case, by what kind of pun- ishment, and with what degree of severity the occurrence of one of these unnatural crimes ought to be marked. The treat- ment of such cases as are proved to involve mental and accom- panying moral deficiency, cases which cannot be dealt with by the usual disciplinary methods, seems to lie largely in the domain of medical science, aided by the necessary legal ma- chinery. They may call for detention in a special institution,-'^ ■"' or even for a surgical operation. ^^ But as far as concerns the minor evil alone, the continual dread of being expelled if his fault became known to the mas- ters would effectually deter a boy from seeking advice and help at their hands, though he might be struggling manfully against the habit, and suffering mental anguish which a few words from an older person would readily allay. Further, as Dr. Hime points out, an occasional expulsion would simply have the effect of causing other boys addicted to the vice to sin ^'^Cp. L. Ferriani, Per la Moralita nelle scuole (II Rogo, Ann. xi, Num. 1). ^''See further, chapter xvi. SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. 51 more craftily. The policy of expulsion could hardly be con- sistently carried out. It would be a matter of the greatest difficulty to convict boys of the sin; or if some infallible means were devised for detecting the self-abusers, the number of them would be an ample rednctio ad absnrdnm of the policy of expulsion. Human punishments, as long as they do not interfere with the sexual function itself, can never prove an adequate means of checking the habit of self-abuse, in either the child or the adult. Instead of being eager to apply penal measures, school authorities and persons in similar positions should appeal by moral and religious teaching, by sensible hygienic precautions, and by disciplinary arrangements, to the higher nature and true self-love of those whom they have the care of. Cases requiring expulsion or other punishments among boys will be comparatively rare. Sometimes there will be a boy of generally loose moral tone and conversation, or one against whom a charge of obstinate self-indulgence can be proved, whom it might be the best course, or the only possible course, to expel; but most boys, even though habitual self- abusers, are not such from conscious, persistent recklessness. They would thankfully respond to a sympathetic teaching on this subject, and listen respectfully to warnings conveyed in tactful and sensible terms, against the dangers attendant upon impurity. I have already sufficiently emphasized the fact that all treatment of this delicate question in homes and schools must be undertaken with good judgment. For a parent or a school- master to exercise an obvious, fussy supervision of a child's diet, hygiene, and conduct ; to dwell upon the dangers of sexual impurity with morbid emphasis; to afifect a general puritanical suspicion of the sexual function and emotions ; to neglect sym- pathetic observation of the varying strength of passion in different individuals, would be to defeat his own ends. "So few families can give," says Professor Letourneau,-"'^ 3'^ Evolution of Marriage, p. 356. 52 SEXUALITY IN CHILDHOOD. "or know how to give, a healthy physical, moral, and intellec- tual education to the child, that in this domain large encroach- ments of the state are probable, even desirable." The assertion is undoubtedly all too true ; the inference would have to be carefully considered. For the state, e.g., to enforce circum- cision, as some legislatures enforce vaccination, might be a physical benefit to the community, but it would be purchased at the cost of a further loss of what we already part with too quickly in return for supposed advantages — personal independ- ence. It is better in such matters to arrive at reform through education than through legislation. In the foregoing pages it has not been found possible to project the outlines of any pro- gram such as might find expression in legislation ; nor has even a conception of uniformity in the methods of sexual education been reached. The object held in view has been a more general one, to stimulate thought on the question, and to call attention to particular points of physical and moral treatment which, in view of all the grave circumstances of the problem, ought to be considered and applied more dili- gently than is done at present by the majority of parents and guardians. CHAPTER IV. The Mixing of the Sexes in Schools and Institutions. Social Intercourse — Family Life — Sexual Repugnance — Co-educa- tion— Its Defects in Theory and in Practice — Homosexuality in Schools — Social Intercourse in General. It is maintained in some quarters that the promotion of free social intercourse between the sexes tends to diininish the force of sexual attraction on its animal side. It is urged that the immorality existing in boys' schools, and in other in- stitutions where boys or men are grouped together and isolated from the other sex, would disappear if the masculine element were softened and purified by the influence which girls and women, if admitted as members of such institutions, would exert. 1 This, however, in the opinion of the present writer, is a doubtful proposition. It may indeed be considered as proven that when free social intercourse exists among children from infancy, it produces an absence of sexual desire between the males and females of those particular groups of children. The purity of family life seems to be rooted in this instinctive sexual repugnance existing between male and female children who have mingled freely together in the earliest years of childhood, and had the sight of one another's nakedness in the nursery.- It is instructive to mark the care with which many primitive peo- ples separate the youth of both sexes until a marriageable age is reached. Modern society should deliberate anxiously before it relaxes, or at least before it discards, this care. Sexual taboo, as is observed 1 For a recent enthusiastic advocacy of this view, see Die Neue Gen., Jahrg. 10, Heft 5. 2 See Westermarck, Hist, of Hum. Marriage, p. 353; Cp. Moll, The Sexual Life of the Child, p. 71. (53) 54 THE SEXES IN SCHOOLS. by Crawley, is one of the influences which have assisted the elimina- tion of sexual passion from the family circle. That influence, however, is not in itself sufficient to account for the general horror of incestuous relations. The taboos have not in a general way acted as a sedative of sexual desire; nor can we assume that they would have this result in the particular direction of the family. A psychological factor, such as the instinctive repugnance described by Westermarck, seems, there- fore, a necessary supposition. It should be added that Westermarck's argument relative to the existence of this instinct is sounder than Crawley (op. cit., p. 444) allows. The development of an instinct of repugnance between persons living together from infancy does not necessarily presuppose a general use of intercourse between persons thus situated at some remote period. The instinct — which is not de- veloped on a basis of fear of the (admittedly uncertain) evil results of inbreeding, as Crawley supposes — arises naturally, like other sexual repugnances, in the midst of conditions adverse to sexual stimulation. It is, therefore, unsafe to draw inferences, as some thinkers have done (Wells, Mankind in the Making, p. 65), from the horror of incest to the projected observance of other sexual taboos of a more general kind in civilized communities; for the training of the will-power is unable to produce a guarantee of such general observance, except where an instinctive sexual repulsion is also formed. Recent anthropology has produced, so far as I am aware, no suc- cessful refutation of Westermarck's theory. Its originator has lately reaffirmed it against criticisms, including some from the pen of Dr. J. G. Frazer.2a Westermarck's theory is modified by Havelock Ellis (Studies, iv, pp. 204ff.), who maintains that the horror of incest has a merely nega- tive basis, due to the fact that sexual stimuli do not come into promi- nent notice among persons brought up from infancy in the same household ; and that there is no need to infer the existence of an instinct of repulsion. This explanation certainly helps to the proper understanding of, Westermarck's hypothesis ; but it is not clear that it necessitates' the proposed alteration in the statement of it. For if a possible object of appetite presents no stimuli and possesses no attract- iveness, it may and does surely happen that this negative state of things gives rise to a positive repulsion, though one that is not every- where uniformly accentuated. In any case, the argument of the present chapter is not aff^ected. It remains true that sexual stimuli operate in mixed institutions, in a way which is not found in households. 2a Westermarck, Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco, pp. 312ff., 370ff. THE SEXES IN SCHOOLS. 55 But quite a different set of conditions is introduced by the proposal to allow free social intercourse in schools and other institutions between boys and girls who have not been inmates of the same nursery, and in fact have never seen one another until near the age of puberty. That such an arrangement should render possible an imitation of family life in schools is certainly a delusion, because it fails to observe one of the main conditions of family purity, viz., social contact from infancy.^ There is no reason to think that the instinctive sexual repug- nance mentioned as existing in the other case would here come into play at all. It is in fact extremely difficult to think that the force of sexual desire usually experienced by a growing boy would not be largely increased by the nearness to him of girls toward whom he would have no reason whatever for feeling a sexual distaste. Sexual attraction would make itself felt at least as much as — almost certainly more than — it does in ordi- nary circumstances. In short, the theory of a free, and at the same time a pla- tonic, social intercourse between the unmarried members of the sexes is not sound."* Under modern conditions of life it cannot be made thorough-going. Our conventional ideas as to the necessity of clothes alone suffice to upset it. There is now no return for civilized races to that preventive o^ over- heated desire — the constant sight of nakedness. ■'' The effect ^ This all important condition is entirely ignored by one of the most recent advocates of co-education, and apparently by those thinkers upon whom he relies. Co-education, edited by Alice Woods, p. 29 (Longmans). ^ That is, of course, in the case of those who are within the age during which sexual passion is active. We need not deny the possible existence of platonic friendships here and there. 5 No doubt a healthier and less superstitious feeling about naked- ness than the prevailing one is to be desired, as Bloch and Ellis have urged (Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, ch. vii; H. Ellis, Studies, vol. vi, ch. iii). It is well to keep that idea in view. But Forster is right in practice, where he says that whoever thinks of the sight of nakedness as a practicable sedative of sexual feeling in modern society 56 THE SEXES IN SCHOOLS. of such a school system would be like that of semi-nudity, as when a woman in evening dress excites passion by exposing, or thinly veiling, a portion of her graceful person. It could not be the matter-of-fact indifference to nakedness and conse- quent chastity manifested by some primitive races of mankind. At the bottom of the social companionship desiderated by the advocates of the aforesaid school arrangement there must still be that sense, so stimulating to human curiosity and animal passion, that a mystery, the delight of humankind to explore, has been brought close by the wisdom of seniors, and yet is hidden ; that they have placed a fruit near to the hand and eye, and yet commanded that it shall not be touched or even seen.^ The social intercourse would have to be darkened by a strict supervision, or become merely nominal. However trusting the authorities of a school managed on this system might be, they would have to remind the inmates by a large number of pre- cautions that the companionship of boys and girls was under suspicion, and could only be tolerated within certain carefully defined limits. The actual experience of the present writer may be worth referring to in this connection. He has no practical knowledge of the mixing of the sexes in American universities, but he is a graduate of the New Zealand University, where the sexes are also mixed, men and women attending lectures in the same classroom. In his opinion the mixing of the sexes, from a social point of view, amounted to very little. Young men and women saw one another at a distance in the classroom, in the same way as they might at church ; they met on rare occasions deceives himself; or, at best, is thinking of the very few who are morally educated up to the point where it is safely applicable {op. cit., p. 213). ^ I observe that Forel in speaking of co-education has employed the same metaphor (Die sexuelle Frage, p. 474). He suggests that the forbidden fruit loses its attractiveness through being constantly seen close at hand. I doubt this. Such an expectation is at variance with a considerable body of experience, and contradicts the reason of the thing. THE SEXES IN SCHOOLS. 57 at picnics and other social functions ; they sat in the same room during meetings of the debating society. But there was noth- ing approaching to close and familiar contact, except in iso- lated cases, when a love afifair began, as it might have done anywhere. After the day's work, both men and women dis- persed to their homes and lodgings, and in fact one might very well pass through the whole course of three or four years without getting more than a bowing acquaintance with the lady students. Such an arrangement has probably no special influence on sexual passion one way or the other.*''' Students at such a uni- versity probably feel just as strong sexual inclinations as bank clerks and other young men do, and no more so. If, however, the question as to the desirability of the social mixing of the sexes has reference to the arrangements of a boarding-school, the case is very different. The present writer was formerly chaplain to a New Zealand industrial school, a boarding establishment, where the sexes were mixed. The same arrangement existed in other New Zealand schools of this kind. A strong protest was made in 1899 against this sys- tem, and evidence was adduced proving that acts of immorality between boys and girls had taken place, and that the system increased sexual passion among the inmates to an undesirable extent. It was claimed, on the other hand, by the Education Department that the fact that boys and girls had different classrooms and playgrounds, and were in other ways kept apart, the strictness of the general supervision rendered the occurrence of the alleged evils improbable. But this very con- tention showed that the system was suspicious of itself, and was in fact fatal to the theory of it.'^ Nor had the agitators much difficulty in showing that they were justified, not merely on theoretical grounds, but in view of the facts, in asking for the reors^anization of the schools. At last the then Minister Ga Cp. H. Ellis, Studies, vol. iii, ed. 2, p. 328. '^ As, indeed, modern advocates of co-education virtually admit that the co-educational system must be (op. cit., p. 111). 58 THE SEXES IN SCHOOLS. of Education was forced to promise the reforms asked for, the grouping of the sexes into separate institutions, and other measures for classifying the inmates, and a debate a few days afterward in the New Zealand Parliament resulted in a reiteration by other ministers of this promise, which has been fulfilled. The merits and demerits of co-education, then, in spite of all that has been said in its favor by some high authorities on sex questions, are by no means clear as yet. It is true that in early youth the direction of the sexual impulse is undeter- mined,^ so that under the present system of grouping the sexes in different schools there is a danger in certain cases of homo- sexual tendencies being developed, but the presence of this moral danger is not so marked as to justify as an alternative the introduction of the more certain dangers inseparable from co-education. Recognize the homosexual tendency as fully as we may, it yet cannot be maintained that it receives as rapid and general a development in human nature as the heterosexual. The development of homosexual tendencies in a school may be held in check by moral suasion, hygienic instruction, and a good prefect system. Some cases of homosexuality, it is true, if properly investigated, might yield results similar to those so carefully examined by Havelock Ellis ; they might indicate a congenital condition in which the misdirection of the sex instinct appeared. Modern investigators such as Ellis show convincingly that such conditions do occasionally exist, and they must of course be taken account of in forming an estimate of responsibility in regard to homosexual acts. But the appeal to the sense of responsibility, the endeavor to rouse the moral sense in the matter, must not be discredited on that account. Besides the physical conditions which give a special impulse to the inverted tendency in some subjects, there has to be recognized the existence in many schools of an evil tradition of homosexuality, and it was to the reckless perpetuation of 8 Moll, op. cit., p. 5. THE SEXES IN SCHOOLS. 59 this tradition by unprincipled boys that most of the cases of sodomy in schools that have come to the knowledge of the present writer appeared to be due.^ Some at least of the sub- jects of the sexual misdirection seemed from their conversation to be perfectly capable of heterosexual emotions, and to be aware of the immorality of their homosexual proceedings. Further, the homosexual temptation appeals to the majority of boys in boarding-schools with little or no force ; not merely their educated moral sense, but their healthier instincts repudi- ate it. On the other hand, the heterosexual temptation is, as might be expected, a very real and general one, and it would become even more powerful than it is at present in a school if girls were constantly brought into close proximity to the boys. In short, it seems futile to uphold co-education as a preventive of homosexual tendencies, unless the consequences of the devel- opment of heterosexual tendencies be allowed for in the school system, and, as has been shown in the present chapter, the claim that co-education is a general sedative of sexuality has not been sufficiently substantiated. The present writer is inclined to extend this opinion to the case of day schools. ^^ There does not seem much to be gained by mixing the sexes in class, and day scholars have ample opportunities of enjoying the brightness that comes from social fellowship with companions of the other sex after school hours and in their own homes. It is pretty certain — facts enough have come to the knowledge of the writer to allow of forming an induction — that a considerable element of curiosity and desire in respect of sexual matters enters into conversation, ^ Tarnowsky recognizes the importance in this connection of the spirit of imitation (L'Instinct Sexuel et ses Manifestations Morbides, p. 109) ; and Gemelli quite supports me here, "We must by no means conckide that any and every irregularity, either in act or in erotic feeling, is an infallible sign of sexual perversion; for there are aber- rations of the moral sense which are merely partial and transitory, and have not the character of true sexual anomaly" (op. cit., p. 199). ^^ Cp. some remarks by Mr. Paul Swain in The Church Times, April 18, 1913, p. 531. 60 THE SEXES IN SCHOOLS. perhaps has even worse effects, in the day schools. On the other hand, the grouping of the sexes by themselves tends to produce a certain mental attitude of shyness about the sexual act itself. It may not be worth much, but at least it implies that sexual intercourse, however much it may be talked about in the school, and however much the thought of it may incite to solitary immorality, is still thought of as a big thing. It is not so thought of if our suspicions about life in the mixed day schools are at all well grounded. In short, it is positively absurd to bring young people of opposite sexes into contact and expect them not to have sexual thoughts about one another. To suppose that social intercourse can be allowed within limits which the wisdom of seniors can always rigidly define is contrary to reason. Either keep boys in boys' schools, and try by good and healthy influence to banish sexual passion entirely, or as nearly so as possible, from their lives, until they reach a riper age; or else, if you will admit ihem to mixed schools, recognize that there is a possibility of connections somewhat closer than mere social companionships being formed, and hope and pray that lasting sexual love may be their outcome, and that meanwhile no element of dishonor may enter into them.^i But don't throw sexual allurements into young people's way, and flatter yourself with the belief that, under the influence of some vague sentiment, they will not notice them, or be affected by them. In regard to the tone of sexual morality in a school, the teachers' knowledge of it must frequently be set down as of little worth. The school with which the author has described his connection in this chapter would no doubt by its former managers and teachers have been cheerfully and confidently added to the list of schools drawn up by the authors of Co- education. Nevertheless, as has been said, immorality existed 11 Dr. Karl Wilker admits and defends the existence of an erotic element (not necessarily actualizing itself in immorality) in the life of co-educational schools (Die Neue Generation, Jahrg. 8, Heft 3). THE SEXES IN SCHOOLS. 61 between the sexes in that school under the co-educational system. My view of co-education is also that of many highly qualified German schoolteachers. A passage from the Italian magazine Luce, giving their opinions, is quoted in Vita (Aprile, 1910, pp. 118f.), in which R. Calvino sets out the objections. The moral one alone con- cerns us here. Gemelli {op. cit., pp. 54, 122f.) is decidedly against co-education. Generally, with regard to the social intercourse of the sexes, not only in childhood and youth, but thereafter, its influ- ence on sexual morality cannot be gauged by its immediate visible results. Some societies boast that under the aegis of their public opinion, men and women can travel together in the sleeping compartments of railway trains without danger to morality; women being, presumably, too pure, and men, in so public a place, too cautious, to attempt any violation of the laws of chastity. And it is claimed that such "free and healthy social intercourse of the sexes" is one of the most powerful antidotes to impurity. It is doubtful, however, whether this claim will bear close investigation. Common sense tells us, to be sure, that no man possessed of reason, however strong his desires may be, will venture to tamper with a woman, in face of immediate pub- licity. Nor would a woman, in such circumstances, make too obvious advances to a man. But it cannot be said that such free relations as are implied in bathing in company, or travelling together by night in the same sleeping compartment, have any definitely sedative tendency as affecting unmarried people. ^^ Such is not their ultimate and logical result. Customs such as these are at best indifferent. A temporary repression of sexual emotion, owing to the requirements of publicity, cannot be accepted as a complete, or even as a partial, solution of the social problem of unchastity. 12 Forel {op. cit., p. 90) remarks on the fairly common practice of. "flirting" — the term covers gross sensuality — in railway carriages, busses, etc. CHAPTER V. The Battle of Chastity in the Adult. Morbidity — Sexual Neurasthenia — Consequences of Sexual Sins — Celibacy — Fornication — A Sophism and a Truth — Necessity of Mar- riage— Christian Doctrine of Indulgentia — Self-sacrihce — Regulations in Certain Professions — Personal Religion. In the progress of sexual development from childhood to maturity individual responsibility for the preservation of chastity gradually increases. Fathers, mothers, schoolmasters and all to whom the care of yoinig people is entrusted, may indeed, as has already been shown, do much to prevent the premature and disastrous kindling of the sexual fire within a young child's being. But when childhood has passed away, responsible man in the opening years of adult life must himself prove the fires of Moloch, whether they will show themselves mild or fierce toward him. In many lives comes a time when the soul must review the past, defiled by secret impurity coinmitted in igno- rance or with puerile waywardness ; must bear the burden of the present, with its active desire and its nervous dread ; must face the harassing, uncertain future. Many morbid imagina- tions, excited by vague rumors about the awful results of sex- ual misdemeanors, conjure up the picture of an appalling destiny, the hideous blighting of all the promise of life. Such gloomy thoughts are theirs, such blackness of de- spondency, as erstwhile overwhelmed a seer's brooding soul, as in his vision he beheld souls stained with sexual impurity lamenting in the outer darkness, the gates of the Paradise of health, usefulness, and glory closed forever against them. "What profit is it to us that there are reserved habitations of health and safety, whereas we have lived wickedly ? And that the Glory of the Most High shall defend them that have led a pure life, whereas we have walked in the most wicked ways (62) THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. 63 of all? And that there shall be showed a Paradise wherein is abundance and healing, but we shall not enter into it, for we have walked in unpleasant places? And that the faces of them which have used abstinence shall shine above the stars, whereas our faces shall be blacker than the darkness?" (II Esdr. 7:51f.) Such an utter loss of both temporal and eternal manhood, vigor and glory is anticipated by despondent young men who experience the bitter effects of sexual sins. But although there can be no doubt that abuse of the sexual function is responsible for much moral, mental, and physical suffering, and indeed, if obstinately persisted in, may throw off all possibility of control and prove a chief factor in a result of ruin, it is none the less true that a large amount of exaggeration surrounds the tem- poral punishment of this class of sins. There are subtle re- storative processes in nature, potent laws of healing^ in the physical as in the moral world, and assuredly no honest effort to break from the bonds of impurity, though these have been strengthened by years of indulgence, will be without its reward. The author has examined some pamphlets issued by adver- tising specialists in the treatment of sexual disorders, men whose work is carried on independently of the faculty of medi- cine. It is undeniable that there is a certain element of truth in their presentation of the evil efi'ects of sexual excess ; per- haps also to a less extent in their contention that the qualified practitioner is not always competent or willing to undertake the careful investigation of cases of sexual weakness, involving, or seeming to involve, nervous trouble. Not every physician strives to act up to the ideals of his profession as regards in- dustry and sympathy, and occasionally, no doubt, a nervous sufferer is driven to consult the specialist "professor," whose advertisement promises close attention, on account of the quali- 1 Cp. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 464 : "God and Nature are benign, and recuperative agencies, in these years so supercharged with vitality, in cases that seem desperate, often act cito, ccrtc, et jucunde." * 64 THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. fied physician's lack of interest, and failure adequately to con- sider the case submitted to him. Nor must it be forgotten that just as in theological or ethical thought and study fresh impulses of great value may come from beyond the ranks of the clergy, the qualified and recognized exponents of those subjects, so the crude and inade- quate efforts of amateur physicians — supposing them to be, as is probably sometimes the case, well-meaning men — may not do altogether a disservice to humanity, and may stimulate the regular students of medicine to further activity in this distaste- ful branch of their subject, the nosology and treatment of dis- eases of the genital organs. Medicine is a wide field, and there is a certain need of specialization on particular portions of it. While the public does not need self-constituted specialists, whose qualifications are unrecognized by experts, it would no doubt be an advantage if qualified physicians specially trained to investigate and treat this class of nervous disorders were more accessible. ^ A warning against quackery, a mere vague assurance that "nothing much is the matter," does not always meet the case of a patient suffering from neurosis with well- defined physical symptoms. Yet in what has been said we have put the best construc- tion on the work of the quack doctor. The aforesaid pamph- lets, doubtless from an interested motive, view the physical troubles of which they treat in a distorted perspective. They are not to be considered as giving an accurate general state- ment, or as conducing to a proper understanding of the case in regard to sexual and nervous debility. Many causes may operate to produce a nervous condition which the sufferer mor- bidly attributes to the one cause, former misuse of the sexual function. - Neisser (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, p. 507) goes some way toward the position taken up in the text, by his admission, given with some reluctance and with quali- fications, that there does exist a need of specialist practitioners, in regard at least of venereal diseases. THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. 65 Although this is not strictly speaking a medical work, it will not be out of place to regard a little more nearly, by the light of some recent medical or medically informed opinions, the ordinary fears of young men in this connection. A good many acquire a habit of nervously examining their urine. A normal healthy man who has out- lived this stage thus describes it : "I began' to study my urine with great alarm, and found plenty of marks of disease ; there were reddish and whitish settlings, lack of color and overcolor, strong smell and no smell ; it was too clear, too thick, too copious, too scanty, or, worst of all,, had an irridescent scum, etc."2a The white mucus of the bladder observable in the urine often causes great and groundless fears ;2b as does also slight varicocele of the epididymis, a condition of little or no significance, and especially common on the left side.^c It would seem that varicocele is a fit subject for medical intervention only when extensively developed.^d Such symptoms, as also frequency of nocturnal pollutions — a matter which will engage our separate attention — and the escape of small quantities of prostatic secretion, derive their depressing influence from the anxiety which in an inexperienced mind centers round two chief points, the fear of impotence and the fear of coming insanity. The latter fear, the worst of the two, is groundless in this connection. The medical opinion of twenty-five years ago wavered very much in regard to recognizing a specific type of insanity due to masturbation ; and that of today denies its existence more and more decidedly.^e And as to impotence, so far as it is a consequence of abandoned masturba- tion,— continued masturbation tends, though apparently with uncer- tainty and as it were reluctance, especially in respect of the male organism, to confirm it^f, — and does not depend on congenital defects of the nervous system, it responds to curative treatment, and is indeed capable of amelioration through natural processes alone. 2a Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 452. 2b Id., p. 460. 2° Cp. Chetwood, Essentials of Genito-urinary Diseases, pp. 170flf. 2. cit., p. 188ff. i!> Plain Talks, p. 93. 76 THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. healthiest, and perhaps the highest, condition of mind and body possible ;"20 and on the other hand, that "the yielding to desire is no more to be justified upon physiological or physical than upon moral or religious grounds." The truth is that throughout his discussion of the question he has other consid- erations in view than purely physiological ones. Indeed, he admits as much. "The attempt to place marriage upon a merely physiological basis is," he says, "not justified by facts." That is so; that is the main position of the present writer; never- theless, the unhampered discussion of the purely physiological question must come first in order, though not in importance, in a scientific work on sex. It is frequently suggested that the activity of the sexual organs may be dormant in a state of continence, except for an occasional orgasm in sleep,- ^ without detriment to the gen- eral health or to the nerve-power. It is even urged further that the sexual department of continent adults is a kind of storage battery of vitality. The organs go on fulfilling their secretive functions, and it is maintained by distinguished medi- cal writers — though there is a lack of unanimity on the point — that abstinence from sexual intercourse cannot be reckoned as a cause of impotence, and cannot be proved to diminish fecun- dity. It must be observed, however, that the notion of the harmless dormancy of the sexual organs conflicts with what we know of the general relation of use to health.-- The physical 20 In the series of essays on Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, recently published from the German by Messrs. Rebman, while possible dangers in connection with marriage are clearly and unflinchingly enumerated, it is emphasized that marriage is hygienically of value, not only as a defense of existing health, but as a means of benefiting or curing several forms of ill health. Cf>. Gemelli, op. cit., p. 88: "Nowadays hygienists declare that in conjugal intercourse we have a truly physiological process in which a woman gives back to the man a certain portion of his own expended energy." 21 See Additional Note F, on the Nocturnal Pollution. 22 When it is considered that all the different systems, nervous, vascular, digestive, and the rest, which compose the body of man, are THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. JJ well-being of organs is ensured by proper use, and when denied that use the organ craves for it with an intensity which reacts upon the whole organism. For example, the experiment has been tried on long expeditions by sea of feeding men with food essences. It is found that the digestive organs cry out for their normal functioning in such a way as not only to cause an unnatural craving for harsh and gritty foods, but seriously to impair the general health and vitality. Now it is true that the sex-cells occupy a unique position in the organism. An early differentiation is made in the in- dividual between the personal and the germinal elements, the ontogenetic and the phylogenetic material ; in other words, be- tween the body and the sex-cells. We must not, then, too readily estimate the physical efifect of continence by the help of analogies derived from the functioning of other organs of the body. Yet we cannot reason fully as to the results of pro- longed continence from the bare fact that the sex-cells are, in a sense, physiologically isolated in the organism. Fere, in his argument in favor of the physical harrhlessness of conti- nence, maintains that the sexual organs belong as much to the species as to the individual. Certainly, if the sexual act in humanity were a reproductive act and nothing more, the organs with which it is performed would belong even more truly to the species than to the individual; but it has other objects than the sole one of reproduction. It is a love act.^-" Duly regu- lated, it conduces to the ethical welfare of the individual and promotes his efficiency as a social unit. The act itself and its but specializations of a common primary form, and still interact and mutually affect each other, it will be questioned whether physical an- thropology allows of the withdrawal of one of these systems, the sexual, from the operation of the law of alternate use and rest to which the remaining systems are amenable. (See Duckworth, Mor- phology and Anthropology, pp. 14, 15, 546.) 23 Q. Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, pp. 22ff. ; C. Gas- quoine Hartley, The Truth about Woman, p. 338. Luther, and after him Schleiermacher, held the same estimate of the act. 78 THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. surrounding emotions stimulate within the organism the power- ful movements of a vast psychic life. In the light of the analysis of the sexual' impulse recently made by Moll and approved with modifications by Havelock Ellis,-'* the evolution of the sexual instinct may be stated thus : In the lowest forms of life the species is propagated by fission, by the liberation from the parent organism, when its tumescent or swelling stage is complete, of other organisms, the parent organism itself dying, or to speak more accurately, becoming transmuted into other organisms. This one procreative activity is in later and more highly developed forms of life, or after sex has appeared in the economy of nature, expanded into two main sexual activities, the process of detumescence by which impregnation is caused, and the process of parturition. Detu- mescence itself requires preparatory processes ; thus the sexual instinct develops a subordinate impulse, the impulse of con- trectation, or the inclination to touch and fondle the object of desire, leading up to the required state of tumescence. The primary cell already, i.e., before the advent of sex, experi- ences an impulse to live a life containing indefinite potentiali- ties of development and expansion, according to the law of evolution. This initial impulse is self-regarding. It is a hunger. In order to fulfill the law of expansion, the individual cell must acquire and assimilate things external to itself. It becomes tumescent, drawing in nourishment from its environment. As we ascend the biological series, the original impulse is specialized in several directions. It becomes a desire to draw breath, to imbibe liquid nourishment, to obtain food, and to gratify the sexual longing. The necessity of bringing about a state of tumescence or sexual excitement in both male and female, before the climax is reached at which detumescence, the impregnating discharge of the pent-up nervous energy, takes place, gives rise in the higher parts of creation to an 21 Ellis, Studies, vol. iii. THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. 79 elaborate though secondary series of sexual activities, and it is on the basis of these that sexual love in its highest develop- ment comes into being. Although these specialized instincts now become ready to take on altruistic developments, it must not be forgotten that they are primarily self -regarding. They are the basis of a true self-love. It is true that by virtue of the catabolic principle operating throughout nature, the sex instinct has an aspect of sacrifice as well as of hunger. In the sex process the creature, from the lowliest cell upward, gives as well as takes. Indeed, in the vegetable kingdom, where there is not actual conjugation, the sex process on its catabolic side loses the aspect of hunger and consists only in the giving out of pollen. But in the animal kingdom, wherever conjugation of the male and the female is the rule, this specialized form of the aforesaid primary impulse does not cease, even in its catabolic aspect, to be a hunger, i.e., to be self-regarding. The creature's impulse is to possess a partner, with the object of conjugation. It cannot be said that primarily there is a conscious impulse to fecundation, i.e., to the result attached to conjugation. It is doubtful whether the lower creatures consciously associate fecundation with conjugation; whether, in fact, they are aware while copulating that their act is the means of impregnation. There is some reason for thinking that even in mankind a stage of knowledge once existed in which there was no association of the two ideas. Among the women of the Arunta even now pregnancy is believed to be the result of the passage of a spirit child from the nearest oknanikilla or totem center, into the body of a woman ; and this may indicate that originally the very relation of paternity was unknown. ^-'^ The sex instinct 25 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 265 ; id., Northern Tribes, ch. xiii. The same ignorance is found among South American Indians. Some Orinoco men explained to a mis- sionary that their reason for leaving agriculture to their women was "because women know how to produce children," and, inferentially, corn. (Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 80 THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. impelled primitive men and women to meet; but it was only by experience and observation that they discovered that the result of the meeting was procreation. 26 Such considerations enforce the view that the sexual act is primarily a love act; and that procreation, although to the general observer its most obvious and important, should not be regarded as its sole purpose. Accordingly, such an initial proposition as that laid down by Forel,^'^ as the basis of a gen- eral consideration of the sex Hfe, will require some modification of statement. Bloch's minute survey of the relations of the sexes in both ancient and modern times leads him to the conclusion that the sexual instinct has at least as much importance for the individual as for the race ; and that exclusive attention to the latter aspect of it was the fundamental mistake of the traditional sex ethic.^s The traditional view, has not justified itself by facts ; and it has not made for purity of morals. Further, it has been proved in various ways that the sexual instinct continues to exist in full activity, not only in man, but in the lower animals, after the power of procreation has been taken away, and even after the organs necessary to procreation have been removed. Yet again, it may be asked, does not the existence of such vol. i, p. 637.) The late W. Robertson Smith showed that the word for father in Semitic languages held no implication of physical paternity. (Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, ed. 1. pp. 116ff. ; ed. 2, pp. 139ff.) Primitive religious ideas about birth likewise testify to this ignorance of the relation of physical paternity (see E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity). These ideas underwent a change "lorsqu'on se rendit niieux compte de la necessite de I'acte sexuel." (Saintyves, Les Vierges Meres et les Naissances Miraculeuses, p. 16.) 26 Westermarck, Hist, of Hum. Marriage, p. 105 ;. Rosenthal, Der Ursprung der Ehe, in Die Neue Generation, Jahrg. 5, p. 141. -'' Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, p. 3, Beim Menschen, wie bei jedem Lebewesen, ist der immanente Zweck einer jeden sexuellen Funktion, somit auch der sexuellen Liebe, die Fortpflanzung der Art. 28 Die Prostitution, Bd. i, p. 589. THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. 81 a strange phenomenon as congenital sexual inversion, with its intense emotions — where the reproductive instinct must neces- sarily be inactive — indicate that coitus is not merely a repro- ductive act, but that in the economy of nature it serves other ends? In our discussion of the physical use of marriage in Chapter IX, this point will be further proved. Even if the analogy between the denial of functioning to the sexual organs and the similar denial to the digestive organs has to be criticised by the light of the scientific dogma of the differentiation of the sex-cells in the body, none the less it retains a large amount of truth, for the "dormancy" of the sexual organs in continence is in the experience of myriads an illusive theory. Practically they are far from being dor- mant ; on the contrary, they become highly irritable from the overfrequent activity of sexual desire, and in a person of low principle, unnatural or illicit gratification ensues, ^9 while in- somnia, depression, and other neuropathic conditions may develop in a high-minded man who, in spite of all, struggles to be continent. The vitality gathered up by that storage battery, the continent sexual department, is heavily drawn upon by the expenditure of nerve-force required for the conflict with temptation. It is true that sexual intercourse is a catabolic act, involv- ing an expenditure of energy. But in humanity the catabolism has undergone modifications. The activity implied in the process culminating in the orgasm is followed by reactionary symptoms ; but although in morbid states pathological symp- toms of a more or less alarming character may appear, ^*^ the 29 Havelock Ellis and others have noted the recourse had to mas- turbation, as being a nervous sedative, by persons greatly distressed with sexual desire. This cannot be regarded favorably from the point of view of Christian ethics, as I have shown elsewhere in this volume, but it illustrates the extent of the physical strain caused in some cases by the effort to observe continence. 20 Havelock Ellis, Die Psychologie des normalen Geschlecht- striebes (Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, p. 181). 82 THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. normal reaction is sedative, and involves a recuperation of the nervous energy expended in the act, whereas in certain cases of prolonged continence the nervous expenditure due to the effort of self-control does not, indeed, proceed by so obvious a method as the ejaculation; of semen, but is none the less actual, and does not bring about its own compensation by a natural sedative reaction. It is, therefore, wrong to argue generally from the catabolism of the act to a wholesale physio- logical condemnation of it — such a condemnation as is implied in the cynical remark of Clinias, quoted by F'ere with some approval, that the best time for a man to have connection with his wife is when he wishes to injure himself, i.e., that such connection always inflicts more or less of injury on the male. The physiological doctrine of excitant secretions or hoi- mones likewise suggests the possibility of strain accruing to the organism from ungratified sexual desire. "In adolescence the promptings of sex impulses make themselves normally and often formidably assertive. In various ways — for instance, by the liberation of chemical excitants (the 'hormones' of recent physiology) which pass from the essential reproductive organs and saturate through and through body and brain — the whole being is more or less changed, not only externally, but in its inmost recesses."-"^ There are, it is true, balancing excitants in the organism ; the reproductive are not the only ones ; and the authors of the above passage rightly warn against a young man becoming self-conscious on the ground of the excitant process. Still, that process is assuredly a possible factor in the causation of nerve-strain. There seems, then, to be no sufficient reason for ignoring the cautiously expressed opinion of Dr. Flint, that "prolonged continence may react unfavorably on the nervous system. "3- This is practically the conclusion reached by Godfrey in his lucid and temperate discussion of the physical and emotional 31 Geddes and Thomson, Problems of Sex, p. 40. 32 Quoted in Trail, Sexual Physiology and Hygiene, p. 100. THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. 83 effects of celibacy. "The effect of the cehbate Hfe," he says, "on the nervous system cannot safely be said to amount (with man) to more than a general lowering of tone, a diminution of organic activity, with periodic crises of nervous irritation. "-^^ Further, it will readily be admitted that in many cases the unfavorable reaction of continence on the nervous system does not eventuate in any marked manner. With healthy men of naturally temperate passions and possessed of no great degree of emotional activity, the assertion that in a life of continence the generative organs remain dormant without detriment to the physical health is no doubtf practically true, and a suf- ficient source of consolation, but such a type in humanity is not sufficiently representative to be taken as the sole starting point from which to reason about the effects of celibacy. Griiber, though he finds himself unable wholly to ignore the possibility of oppression of the nervous system by the retention of semen, and of general nerve-strain as a result of the effort of continence, largely discounts these possibilities. So, too, does Fiirbringer ; though he finds it necessary to admit that "there are some sensually inclined and neuropathically predisposed persons whose history does contain serious symp- toms of sexual neurasthenia." He immediately qualifies this admission as follows : "Often enough it is not the continence which is responsible for the illness, but masturbation and las- civiousness."^'* Yet it is here necessary to bear in mind that the said masturbation and lasciviousness may have to be under- stood in very many cases of juvenile and ignorant depravity, long ago repented of and as far as possible foregone ; so that the sexual tension and neurasthenia which render the effort of continence so great a strain, and upon which that effort reacts, cannot be regarded as an indication of deliberate wickedness and impurity, and certainly deserve sympathy at least as much as condemnation. ^'^ Science of Sex, pt. ii, ch. ii, sees. 2 and 3. 3'* Senator and Kaminer : Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the Married State (from the German), pp. 20fF. 229. 84 THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. D. Pastorello'"''** observes : "The science of Herzen, Heim, Forel, Good, Vornig, Weger, Foa, Mantegazza and a thousand others whom it is not worth while to enumerate here, has affirmed that abstinence has never caused any disturbance to health in the person practising it ; which does not mean, how- ever, that where the conditions are unusual, the being chaste cannot cause such disturbance, especially if to such a temporary or continued state of sexual abstinence are added habitual in- fractions of the general laws of hygiene. It is quite intelli- gible how a sedentary life or intellectual excitement with a voluptuous aspect makes chastity difficult and somewhat detrimental." Forster makes a similar admission. 34b Havelock Ellis and Moll conclude that in connection with the vigor of the nervous system and activity of the mind, sex- ual intercourse is in certain cases more favorable than absti- nence. 34c Dr. Allen, editor of the English translation of Ultzmann's work on Genito-urinary Neuroses, concludes as follows in regard to the alleged detrimental influences of prolonged con- tinence upon sexual power (and consequently upon nerve- power in general) : "The probability is that healthy, normal men — that is to say, the vast majority of them — may practise continence for many years, or indefinitely, without any loss of sexual power. On the other hand, it is also doubtless true that a certain proportion, perhaps a large proportion of sexual neurasthenics, •''•'^ are injured morally and physically by pro- 3^*1 II Rogo, ann. ii, p. 65. 3-tb Op. cit., p. 127. s^'^ Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, p. 699. 35 I would make here the obvious comment that it is not to be supposed that the sexual neurasthenic is necessarily an invalid or valetudinarian in a general way. On the contrary, his general health may be mamtained at a fair standard, though the neurotic condition will partially unfit him for work, or at least only permit of his per- forming his duties under great difficulties. Eulenberg (Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 884ff.) THE BATTLE OF CHASTITY. 85 longed continence, and run a risk of losing thereby what little sexual vigor they have."^^^ This is also Freud's opinion. "The more anyone is pre- disposed to neurosis, the harder it is for him to endure sexual abstinence."^^ Freud explains that the suppressed factors in the evolving sexual impulse exert pressure at the weak points draws a darker picture of neurasthenia and sexual neurasthenia. But this somber coloring is due partly to an assumption which runs through his discussion, that of the absence in neurasthenics of moral effort; and also to the prominence given to the severer forms of neurasthenia. He lays stress on the weakening and misdirection of the will in such subjects, as if such moral defects were almost the invariable accompaniments of their condition. But this presentation of the situation, at any rate as regards young men, requires consider- able modification. A just estimation of the moral and religious fac- tor among the psychical elements of neurasthenia makes the general outlook more encouraging. Forel observes that even habitual mas- turbation does not necessarily produce an all-round weakening of the will (op. cit., p. 233). If the masturbatory habit be acquiesced in and persistently indulged, the will-power in that particular direction becomes doubtless more and more undermined : this fact can be verified from many of the cases cited by the medical authorities ; but if the will be opposed to the growth of the habit, and summon to its aid all these elevating influences which are comprised in the religious — mystical in part, but not exclusively mystical — conception of Divine grace, then, neuropathic symptoms and conditions notwith- standing, the will becomes strengthened in the course of, and by means of, the struggle. The symptoms of sexual neurasthenia are fully enumerated by Moll (Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, pp. 697ff.). Several of them are of no great importance, and the severer ones comparatively rare. Moreover sexual neurasthenia is a condi- tion included in and subordinate to the whole phenomenon of neuras- thenia. A great deal has to be discounted from a patient's tendency to consider all his neuropathic symptoms as sexual in origin. The real fact often is that "a certain degree of weakness of the sexual functions in one form or another is largely the outcome of a neuras- thenic patient's imagination, and such as exists is merely part and parcel of the general want of tone." (Sanatogen in Diseases of the Nervous System, by a London Physician, p. 12.) 35a Op. cit., p. 168. 3 S. Bridget observes that it is only within certain Hmits and in conjunction with other factors that poverty is a beneficial school of discipline. If too severe it becomes brntalizing and adverse to re- ligion. Consequently Christianity is not interested in its prolonga- tion, and is not committed to an attitude of suspicion toward means proposed by science for its reduction. Such means, and among them the means we have here in view, need to be considered on their merits. (Xeomalthusianismo e Christianesimo, Coenobium, ann. viii, fasc. 4.) " Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, pp. 370, 391 ; Gemelli, oj^. cit., pp. 40, 109. no NEOMALTHUSIANISM. ness of life, to defeat itself in regard to its main object. It is not in the direction of arbitrary restraint of marriage, but in that of the enlightened use of marriage, that the solution of this and kindred problemiS should be sought. The subject of eugenics, or the improvement of the race by breeding, forms a special department of the science of sex, and is too large a field to be entered in the present work. No more than a brief reference to it can be made at this point. That it is a subject full of importance is evidenced by the attention which has been be- stowed upon it by both ancient and modern thinkers, and organized effort is now working upon it. Indeed, although the definite results of the science are as yet few, it has seemed to some to have advanced sufficiently to justify experimental legislation of a restrictive char- acter in regard to marriage. It should be observed that the develop- ment of the principle of prohibition in this application involves ex- tremely serious issues. It is certainly one of the chief functions of eugenics to prevent bad procreation, the propagation of unhealthy stocks : but it must be emphasized that in so far as this science neglects to develop a positive policy, viz., the substitution of adequate compensations for the sexual rights and activities it contemplates taking away, and relies on bare prohibitive legislation to attain the aforesaid end, it is reactionary, and consequently foredoomed to failure. Modern sexual science recognizes with ever-increasing clearness the need of providing equivalents when circumstances disallow the development of the primary activities of the sex life. If society should elect on insufficiently established eugenic grounds to stifle — not to trans- form or sublimate, but simply to stifle — the sex lives of an increasing number of its members, it would thereby tend to revert to the un- sympathetic handling of sex problems which history has already sufficiently discredited ; and one cannot help wondering whether it would stop at the sexual department of life, and not go on to deal in the same arbitrary way with life as a whole. It is, moreover, doubtful on eugenic grounds alone, whether it is politic to forbid the marriage of tuberculous persons. Havelock Ellis found, from a study of the Dictionary of National Biography, that genius had some unexplained predilection for a consumptive organism. Cp. Newsholme, The Declining Birthrate (New Tracts for the Times), p. 54n. Of course, the witness of history, as already observed, is strongly against the rash and general adoption by a society of NEOMALTHUSIANISM. HI the practice of prevention."^ A widespread disinclination to accept the responsibiHties of parentage constitutes a formidable menace to the progress and future prosperity of a nation. Some years ago, the writer's attention was drawn to the fre- quency of prevention in Australasian society. The Austra- lasian Colonies are described, somewhat vaguely and inaccu- rately, as young nations; in reality they are offshoots of an old nation, which have carried with them from their former home preconceived ideas as to a standard of living. Life in the British Colonies is expensive, and involves consider- able wear and tear, as few people have private means adequate "^ In the idea of rashness, as applied here, must be included the absence of religious feeling. This aspect of the matter is prominent in France. A considerable literature has sprung up around the ques- tion of the declining birth rate in that country. This literature is discussed in an article in II Rogo, ann. x, no. 7. The writer, follow- ing G. Prezzolini, La Francia e i francesi nel secolo xix, regards irreligion as the most dangerous factor in the situation : "The French middle classes have extinguished the light of heaven, but they have not kindled a light anywhere else." It must be observed, however, that the contention that religious authority is an effectual deterrent to artificial prevention is as yet unproved (Coghlan, The Decline in the Birth Rate of New South Wales, qu. by H. Onslow in The Eugenics Review, vol. v. No. 2, p. 150). In any case, as we have already seen, the medieval religious conception of the bonum speciei should not be interpreted so as to include an absolute prohibition of artificial birth control. Among the most noteworthy of the many warning utterances on the national dangers arising from this reck- lessness may be .cited a speech by the President of the United States of America, delivered at New York before the National Congress of Mothers, and referred to by English, French, and doubtless other journals; an article by Bishop Barry on Agnosticism and National Decay in the National Review for March, 1905; and more recently, Paul Bureau, La propaganda Neomalthusiana e le sua Repressione, in II Rogo, ann. iii, no. 4. Professor J. W. Taylor, in an article in the Nineteenth Century and After, adduces instances in which the volun- tary limitation of the family would have deprived the nation of some great figure in its history. But as we are unable to refer the produc- tion of individuals of genius to any law of procreation, this particu- lar argument is of uncertain validity. 112 NEOMALTHUSIANISM. to the support of a family. Good salaries are hard to get in the Colonies, as elsewhere, and the price of many commodities is high. No doubt a selfish desire to^ live in comfort decides people in many cases to use preventives, but a good deal must probably be allowed for the sense, in some degree justified by circumstances, that parentage on a large scale, added to the burden of many other necessary duties, involves not merely a loss of comfort, but a thorough overtaxing of the strength. Accordingly, we have the spectacle of communities settled in new countries requiring population, but unequal, from both physical and moral causes, to the task of supplying this want. It will readily be apparent to the reader of M. Zola's novel, Fecondite — which must be noticed at this point — that with all its good moral purpose, the exaltation by an ideal portraiture of healthy married life to its right place in a nation's estima- tion, it does not give us a full solution of all the conscience problems involved in the question' of artificial prevention. It carries us no further than the position already taken up in this chapter, that on every ground of religion and right reason the rasli and general adoption of the practice is to be avoided. M. Zola's contention that number spells victory is subject to cer- tain qualifications. The dictum in the setting he has given it really means that number, combined with vigor, spells victory, not number alone. In his ideal portraiture of married life he has not, indeed, endowed his married pair with private worldly wealth, and thus far has been true to the actual, ordi- nary facts which people have to face when they marry ; but he lias endowed them, in a measure which is not, unfor- tunately, reflected in the lives of all married couples, with physical health and gaiety. We certainly cannot conclude, from the case of the vigorous Mathieu and Marianne triumph- ing, not seemingly by virtue of any extraordinary moral or religious eft'ort, but by sheer exuberance of vitality, over the strain and anxiety of both procreation and toil, that all mar- ried couples can, if they will, equally support this strain, or that it would be beneficial either to themselves or to the com- NEOMALTHUSIANISM. 113 munity for them to attempt to do so. Neither can we say, as can be perceived from other Hnes of reasoning followed in this essay, that only such couples as have the physical vitality to support this strain ought to have a social existence. The student of this question of prevention, therefore, will read Zola's book with a certain intellectual reservation, as not feeling that it gives the matter a full treatment as to either its ethical or its utilitarian aspect ; which, indeed, was perhaps impossible in a novel. However, considered not as a philo- sophical treatise, but as what it is, an attack upon the unques- tionably evil and dangerous aspect of prevention, the appear- ance of Zola's book was an event which anyone who desires the revelation to society of right ideals in the sphere of sexual ethics could welcome. All this, then, does not fully establish the case against prevention as an occasional resource, but only as a rash and common practice. From the point of view of national welfare a declining birth rate is indeed matter of serious concern, but such concern is not removed by the addition to the population of infants whose heredity may reasonably be expected to make them eventually a burden on the community. The proverb "Necessity has no laws" will not indeed en- dure incautious applications ; but in this connection it seems to have a certain weight of truth. In circumstances of real and proved necessity, it would appear that the law of procreation might be isolated from the rest of the sex life, and either tem- porarily or absolutely suspended. In other departments of life, a man may in numberless ways interfere with natural processes or phenomena, as they affect his own person, or the persons of those under his care, with a view to the increase of health and well-being, and the removal of physical inconveniences and de- formities. Such interference would not be regarded as im- moral, provided that reasons existed sufficient to justify it, and that it was exerted after a manner which would not set at defiance the results of scientific inquiry and advance. On the other hand, for people to undergo, or to cause others to s 114 NEOMALTHUSIANISM. undergo, interferences with natural developments without suffi- cient reason, or recklessly to remain blind to the light of science in the method and conduct of such interferences, would be an immoral violation of nature's laws. Similarly, an interference with nature of the kind con- templated by the neomalthusians would doubtless be immoral if it was based on manifestly insufficient reasons, or was carried out by reckless, dangerous, and unscientific methods, but it is not so clear that it would be immoral if it w^as conducted by methods which science showed to be comparatively free from peril to man and wife, and if its object was to prevent the con- ception not of healthy children in a household where there was a fair prospect of supporting them, but of those who would inevitably from the start of life be afflicted or seriously men- aced by some hereditary disease, and who would be born into households where, in spite of every effort, proper maintenance and education could not be provided for them. Again, man may curtail the birth rate of the lower ani- mals, though to do this without sufficiently good reasons would be a wanton, cruel and immoral interference with nature. Is it certain that the principle upon which this right of interfer- ence is based — the need of checking an increase of life when the conditions requisite for its proper support do not exist — may not be extended with the greatest caution and reverence, by the use of appropriate methods, and with a due regard to the circumstances which differentiate man's sexual nature from that of brutes, to the sphere of human procreation? Nature represses potential life, in man and in creation gen- erally, on a vast scale, by methods which, though they may be regarded as ultimately providential, act nevertheless in an un- intelligent way. May not man, within certain limits, follow, by the exercise of a reasoned and conscious control of the birth rate in his own race, the precedent thus given by blind natural forces ? Nor is it unimportant in this connection to observe that in the human race the chances are against any particular act of NEOMALTHUSIAXISM. 115 sexual intercourse proving fruitful. As if to demonstrate that parentage is not the only aspect of sexuality, nature's rule for man, or at least for highly developed, civilized man, seems to be, much love for a little procreation. The writer of No. xviii in the White Cross series quotes a passage from 'Geddes and Thomson's Evolution of Sex, which he uses to support his wholesale condemnation of neomalthu- sian methods. It is misleading to separate the passage from its context in this way. The argument of the chapter whence the extract is taken does not lead to any such wholesale con- demnation. It recognizes the general importance of the neo- malthusian position, and pleads for a cautious criticism of the neomalthusian proposals. The particular passage in question is directed against the rash and licentious use of preventives. The writers urge strongly that sexual temperance is an essen- tial, indeed the most important, factor in the regulation of the birth rate ; that any use of artificial means by married people without the ethical co-operation of this higher factor would be dangerous and wrong, but their reasoning justifies the infer- ence that where the necessity for temperance and moral regula- tion is recognized, the artificial check may, in some cases, become a legitimate aid to the solution of the problem of birth rate control. The principle that coition may be justifiable apart from procreation may be considered proved for certain recorded cases in which not only potcntia gencrandi was known to be absent in one of the parties to the marriage, before the mar- riage was contracted, but even poteiitia ccriindi could be exer- cised only under peculiar conditions. Such an absence of power might be due to a malformation of the genitals, as in the case cited by Ultzmann, and might exist along with a normal or even an unusual degree of sexual desire. It cannot safely be urged, on ethical grounds, that the sexually imperfect, yet highly amative, subject should deny himself marriage — sup- posing him at any rate capable of assisting the orgasm in his wife, as well as of obtaining it himself — and should expose 116 NEOMALTHUSIANISM. himself to the temptations of masturbation and the strain of celibacy on account of his physical unfitness for procreation.^ These cases indirectly involve an ethical point which brings them into connection with the problem of neomalthu- sianism. Only by a narrow and doubtful view of the matter can we assert that this principle may never be extended to cover cases other than those of actual sexual imperfection; cases, namely, where procreation, though not physically impos- sible, is undesirable on account of the delicacy of some other part of the organism, or for some other urgent reason. Ellis's argument is of doubtful validity in the two sentences in which he places preventive intercourse involving checks in the cate- gory of sexual perversions,, comparing it to the employment of con- tact between parts of the body other than the distinctively sexual, for the purpose of producing detumescence. (See Havelock Ellis, Studies, iv, p. 20.) For if A (an organ of the human body, not one of the sexual organs) intended to produce only B (tumescence), produces not only B, but something further, C (detumescence), that is per- version, or at least extension of function. But D (a sexual organ) is intended to produce, and does produce C, and also E (conjugation), the primary result of C. The fact that it is not also used to produce F (fecundation), a normal, yet not primary or inevitable result of C, involves limitation of function; and this fact can scarcely be classed with sexual perversions of the former group. A discussion of the different methods of prevention will be found in Dr. Lyman Sperry's popular medical work, Confi- dential Talks Between Husband and Wife, p. 146fif. Some of these methods are physically and morally dangerous. Dr. Sperry suggests no one method which is at once certain and harmless in its operation. The theory of continence for a part of the month, under medical instruction, goes some way toward giving society the relief it requires in regard to marriage and parentage. Little 8 Blumreich, while regarding procreation as the main object of marriage, presents, in regard to the marriage of the sexually imperfect, a conclusion similar to the one in the text. (See Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., p. 797.) NEOMALTHUSIANISM. 117 if any exception can be taken to this theory on ethical grounds, for copulation, when thus regulated, though denied one of its proper and natural ends, viz., procreation, fulfills its other pur- pose, that of intensifying the mutual afifection of man and woman. Nor does this theory involve any direct or obviously pernicious tampering with nature, as the use of artificial checks often does. But it is open to two considerable objections: First, it is not, as is well known, certain in its operation. It is not an established fact that every woman has a sterile period in the month ; some appear to be almost constantly able to conceive. Secondly, as stated in Dr. Sperry's handbook — though his statement does not claim to be final — it seems fre- quently to require too much of human nature. The sterile periods, according to this writer, "extend from about the twelfth or fourteenth day after the cessation of the menstrual flow to a day or so preceding the next menstruation. . . There are approximately about ten or twelve days each month during which the woman is not likely to conceive." In the doctor's opinion "these sterile days during each month furnish all the opportunity that any reasonable couple can demand for sexual indulgence. A man who cannot, or will not, accommo- date himself to such conditions, when necessary, is so brutal a sex glutton that no woman ought to be required to live with him."9 Dr. Sperry at this point appears to the present writer to overstrain the theory under consideration. In the five or six first years of married life, at any rate, many husbands, and possibly some wives, however pure and temperate their inten- tion, would probably find a restriction involving continence for sixteen or eighteen days out of each month intolerable and impracticable. The physical conditions excitative of desire in a man would frequently be present just during the period when continence was required, for desire does not come and go at ^Husband and Wife, p. 156. 118 NEOMALTHUSL\NISM. a man's mere will. The doctor has elsewhere emphasized the physical harmfulness of prolonged and intense sexual excite- ment which does not have its natural consummation. Such excitement, it must be observed, would frequently be the in- evitable experience of at least the husband in the restricted period. Further, Dr. Sperry in this part of his essay has found it convenient to omit all reference to the woman's desire, which, it should be noted, manifests itself with a special activity, according to some authorities, in the week or so following men- struation. The suppression of desire during that time, until the "sterile period" is reached, might present great difficulties, not merely to the husband, but to both parties. In fine, the theory can only be stated in Dr. Sperry's way if the wife is assumed to belong to his third class of women (see p. 123 of his book), and to be quite unmoved by carnal feelings ;io and if 10 The controversy among medical scientists as to the average force of sexual passion in women is still undecided. Fiirbringer refers to the opinion of a lady doctor, J. Elberskirchen, who considers that desire is equally powerful in both sexes. But his own view, in sup- port of which he gives other opinions, is that a certain disparity exists. (Senator and Kaminer, vol. i, p. 217.) Gemelli (op. cit., p. 23) on physiological grounds credits the female organism with great capacities of sexual excitement, and implies that many women ex- perience it. None the less, he remarks on the slowness with which desire asserts itself in women, comparatively with its action in men; and admits the existence of many sexually indiflferent or frigid women. Rohleder agrees with Elberskirchen (Die Neue Gen., Jahrg. 7, Heft. 7, p. 268). Havelock Ellis has made a lengthy study of the question (Studies, vol. iii, 2d ed., pp. 192ff.), which leads him to con- clude that whereas there was formerly a tendency to exaggerate the amativeness of women, now, on the contrary, it is underestimated. He has presented some specimen expressions of the ancient and medieval belief, to which reference wasj made in a former chapter, in women's sexual sensitiveness and excitability. Yet it must be men- tioned that classical and medieval allusions of another kind to women's sexuality are not wholly wanting. Horace, for example, speaks (Epod. v, 41) of a wanton woman as mascida libidinis, imply- ing that women in general are less lustful than men ; and Aquinas NEOMALTHUSIANISM. 119 tlie physical factors in the husband's amorous inclination be ignored and the inclination falsely referred to some depravity in his will. The "periodic continence" theory, then, is practical and acceptable rather in reference to the limitation of the family than to the total avoidance of procreation. In the five or six first years of wedlock it would be found to involve an imprac- ticable discipline, in probably the majority of cases, but it is possible — we can hardly say more — that it could be translated more fully into practice as the years go on. For the natural tendency to marriage, whenever it is soberly and religiously undertaken, is to limit and moderate desire. Hence, after a marriage has been fruitful to the extent of four or five children, the number requisite to the proper maintenance of the nation's welfare, husband and wife might then be able, as they would doubtless frequently be willing, to limit themselves to acts of intercourse timed so as to escape procreation. Even so, how- ever, there will be cases in which such abstinence cannot be relied on to secure this result. It belongs, however, to medical science to recommend adequate methods where needed, and the proper course for a married couple to whom the need of an artificial check has become imperative, is to act on Dr. Sperry's advice to refer their special case to a thoroughly competent and careful physician. Medical science has hesitated long ahont putting forward any method of prevention which is at once hygienically unobjectionable and reliable for its own purpose. In Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., Fiirbringer selects the "safe" or "condom" as the most satisfactory means. 11 Kossmann somewhat modifies this judgment. Kaminer approves of condomatic coitus in tuberculous individuals, where the genital organs themselves are affected. The main, if not the only refers to the frigidity of women as if at least the observant and thoughtful among his contemporaries recognized it as decidedly as moderns do (Tert. Part. Suppl. Sum. Theol., qu. Iviii, art. i, 6). '1 1 believe that the preponderance of medical opinion assents. (See Bloch, Sexual Life of Our Time. pp. 378f., 704.) 120 NEOMALTHUSIANISM. hygienic objection which these writers have to the condom — for as to its reHableness as a means of prevention, that can be insured, accord- ing to Fiirbringer, by proper construction — is that in some cases its use may prove injurious by unduly delaying the consummation of the sexual act. If the suggestion of Sperry, that the female organs would sufifer from want of contact with the semen of the male, be valid, it is curious that it does not occupy an important place in these scientific discussions. These recent and able opinions, in fact, lend little if any support to the alarmist view of Sperry, who seems to regard satyriasis and nymphomania as the consequences which may be expected to fol- low the use of the condom. The condom, if otherwise satisfactory, compares favorably with the pessary on the ground of simplicity, cleanliness, and, not least, chivalry, the onus of employing the pre- ventive falling mainly on the man. Fiirbringer and Kossmann regard interrupted intercourse on the whole unfavorably; the latter especially warns against the risk of in- ducing nervous conditions to the wife by preventing the completion of her orgasm. But they admit that the practice is frequently followed without apparent detriment to either male or female. Von Leyden and Wolff condemn it absolutely, as tending to produce cardiac affec- tions in the woman. Nystrom disapproves of it.12 C. A. Ewald, who holds that artificial prevention is not infre- quently responsible for nervous affections of the digestive functions, considers that this result is due largely to the sexual excess which is a too frequent, but, as is here suggested, not an inevitable accompani- ment of neomalthusian methods.^^ After allowing fully for the real difficulties and perplexi- ties of society in the matter of procreation, we cannot be too earnest or emphatic in exposing the dangers involved in the reckless application of the neomalthusian doctrine. Some of the exponents of this doctrine take quite insufficient account of the possible degeneration of the moral sense in regard to the sexual relation amid the conditions of vastly increased freedom and indulgence which that doctrine would allow, of the aversion to the endurance of hardship, the lack of self- control, and the consequent declension from lofty standards of 1- Das Geschlechtsleben und seine Gesetze, qu. by H. Ellis, Studies, vol. iii (new ed.), p. 202. 13 Senator and Kaminer: Op. cit., vol. i, pp. 234, 8, 9; 254; 351; 392; 409. NEOMALTHUSIANISM. 121 self-sacrificing conduct, which would thus be engendered. Much uncertainty as yet surrounds even the theoretic possi- bility of breeding gentle, pure and attractive natures by arti- ficially regulating procreation among humankind — a theory which the author of Scientific Meliorism tries to establish ; but even granting this possibility, with what degree of confidence can it be expected that such natures would develop in corre- spondence with the start thus given them — that mere care in breeding would maintain them on a high moral level, in the absence of the moral discipline of hard social conditions? Would not multitudes abuse the indulgentia (nay, in the face of facts, one must say. Do they not ?),!'* knowing that part at least of the temporal inconveniences consequent on such abuse need no longer be feared? In the long run, it would surely prove the reverse of a boon to society at large to have recog- nized access to an intense pleasure without running any risk of incurring the chastening responsibilities which God, as a safeguard against license, has attached to it. Regarding the matter broadly, we observe that in the pres- ent order of things, the majority of people are called upon, by the wisdom of Providence, to face some kind of struggle and anxiety, and whatever may be the apparent justice of it, to see others involved along with them in the same conflict. ^^ Escape from the troubles and strain of celibacy can, in the general rule, only be lawfully bought at a price — the price of under- taking the responsibility of matrimony and possible anxiety of parentage. If in our days marriage is increasingly difficult, yet morally as needful as ever, people should consider what !■* It is in the nature of the case impossible to determine to what extent artificial birth control is practised; but some students, with very large opportunities of inquiring into the matter, estimate it as considerable (c/'. J. W. Taylor in The Nineteenth Century and After, 1906). i'"" I may refer here to some profound and beautiful remarks on the mystery of pain, quoted in Adveniat Regninn Tuum (Milan, 1912), p. 423. 122 NEOMALTHUSIANISM. legitimate ways there may be of making it easier of access. To tamper with nature's processes will not, unless in exceptional circumstances, be one of these ways. But there are many fic- titious wants and obligations in the household life of certain classes which might resolutely be curtailed by people who find marriage necessary to their health and happiness, yet are of straitened means. A good deal might be done in modern society in this direction, and any right movement — possibly aided by legislation — which by lightening the pressure of social condi- tions and introducing inexpensive modes of living and methods of education, helps toward the attainment of this end, renders an inestimable service to the twin causes of morality and of health. Although we look to the Bible in vain for a definitive solution of certain modern difficulties in the sphere of sexual morality, it will be found that a careful, devout study of the general moral and religious principles laid down therein will help the individual conscience to the decision of such questions as may affect itself. "Ye have been called," says St. Paul to the Christian Society, "for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occa- sion to the flesh" (Gal. 5: 13). i^ Viewed in the light of the principle of Christian freedom, it becomes apparent that the answer to a question of conscience — in the region of sexual morality as elsewhere — may not be the same in every case. We are not brought face to face in the Bible with any explicit or uncompromising prohibition of the artificial prevention of con- ception. It is true that the whole tenor of the Scriptural teach- ing is strongly against a licentious and wanton use of this practice. Such a use would imply a neglect of the duty of self- sacrifice and a false development of freedom. It cannot be too carefully and conscientiously considered whether the circum- stances do really justify the use of freedom for a purpose 16 Zockler's comment brings out the point of this admonition. E/s d0op,u7jj' TTj a-apKi, "as an occasion for the increasing domination (das Herrschendwerden) of carnal behavior and practices." NEOMALTHUSIANISM. 123 which human selfishness only too readily perverts to corrupt and abominable ends. Evidence gathered some years ago by a commission in New Zealand allowed them to declare the prevalence of pre- vention in the society of New Zealand, and in view of this they made the following recommendations to the New Zealand Government, in the hope of their eventually becoming law^**": 1. That the sale of preventives be restricted to qualified chemists. 2. That the sale of preventives to any person under 21 years of age be subject to penalty. 3. That the hawking of preventives be made a criminal ofifense. 4. That the wholesale dealers in preventives, whether such preventives are imported or manufactured within the colony, be required to keep a register of their sales. 5. That any advertisement or notification of preventives be made illegal, except in trade catalogues. The existence of such regulations, however difficult it might be to enforce them satisfactorily, might at least have an educational value, and in some measure induce the members of the community to give prevention a conscientious consideration, instead of resorting to it with the reckless eagerness which now appears to prevail, and which fills far-sighted people with grave alarm for the future of the British Colonies. Some of the States of the North American Union have passed more stringent and elaborate laws repressive of neo- malthusianism.i''' Such legislation finds its justification in the extensive abuse of the principle of birth control. It is well that society should be armed with a pow^erful weapon, when confronting formidable dangers. Only let panic be avoided; for that, as history warns us by many an analogy, is the worst of all social dangers. An indiscriminating application of such K'^i This hope has not yet been realized (C. Drysdale, The Small l'\'imily System, pp. 49f.). 1" O. Bureau's article in Tl Rogo, already referred to. 124 NEOMALTHUSIANISM. laws as those mentioned would be ineffective as to its primary object; for it would simply cause the unscrupulous to adopt those methods which are most emphatically discountenanced by medical science, yet are beyond the cognizance of the law. It would besides, in obscurantist fashion, check the progress of sexual science ; it would not solve, but would merely lay aside, a great and complex question. Although a system of artificial birth control, within some such limits as are defined above, has to be taken account of as a probably legitimate factor in the solution of the difficulties sur- rounding the development of the sex life in civilization, yet one inclines to distrust such sanguine estimates of its importance as appear in literature of the type of Lady Florence Dixie's Eilabelle ; and a healthy society will always keep prominently before its view the vigorous and beautiful aspects of procrea- tion as being a more desirable expansion of the sex life than anything which can be obtained through the neomalthusian teaching; and right-minded people, even if they have to aban- don the idea of family surroundings in their own case, will do so only with reluctance and regret. It is true, indeed, that children — as may be inferred from the cases cited week by week in a magazine like the Woman at Home — are not seldom, owing to the fussiness or unkindness of one of the parents, the rock on which the happiness of the marriage union is wrecked, but more usually they are one of the chief factors in cementing that union and rendering it full of permanent happiness and peace. Family life may be viewed in its aspect of beauty, as has been appealingly portrayed by Carolus Duran in his picture En Famille, or in its aspect of robust strength and vigor, which Zola has so well described. A general discussion of the causes of diminution in the birth rate is beyond the scope of the present chapter, which has dealt mainly with the ethical aspects of neomalthusianism. A few remarks are all that can be made. It is probable that an abundant food supply and the gen- eral improvement of economic conditions tend to diminish NEOMALTHUSIANISM. 125 fertility ; or, again, the effort of rising in the social scale necessi- tates the raising of the age for marriage and causes nerve- strain in the individual worker. Not all have a stock of native energy sufficient at once for constant mental work and impera- tive social duties, and for vigorous procreation as well. Success in life's struggle in the conditions of modern civilization sug- gests the expectation of a diminution in the power of this latter function. But however the causes of a declining birth rate may be apportioned, many writers adduce strong reasons for refusing to see in this phenomenon a subject of pessimism. It is pointed out that the crude birth rate of a community is by no means the gauge of its expansion or the leading symptom of its prog- ress. The most prolific nations have also the highest death rate, especially among infants. The rate of increase in popu- lation is more rapid in some countries where the birth rate is declining than in some others where it is rising ; and since most European nations belong to the former and most Asiatic nations to the latter class, the "yellow menace," of which so much has been made, becomes less formidable. ^^ It is, more- over, far from being the case that a smaller population neces- sarily succumbs to a larger, or takes a position inferior to it, in politics or in any other way, — even where other things, as qualities and resources, are equal. History demonstrates, by many striking examples, the contrary to this. Napoleon was wrong when he said that fifteen millions of people must give way before forty millions. Among the protests against panic in connection with the birth rate, we may select for notice a vigorous and timely one by W. R. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. He points out that a rapid increase of population cannot be unreservedly approved on eugenic principles. It may, on the contrary, intro- duce a preponderance of dysgenic factors into the evolutionary IS Cp. the articles by Havelock Ellis and C. Drysdale in Die Neue Gen., Jahrg. 8, Heft 9. 126 iXEOMALTHUSIANISM. process. Many of the old objections to rapid increase of popu- lation still hold good. The motives of the growing panic, arising as they do from excessive militarism or selfish capital- ism and industrialism, are antisocial. The Dean believes "that the fall in the birth rate has been an unmixed benefit for the working-class and has, perhaps, saved the country from revolu- tion." Without committing himself to the approval of neomal- thusian methods, he admits that the Malthusian League "at least see where the shoe pinches. "^^ A physician, writing in the Pall Mall Gazette — abridged in The Rapid Review for December, 1905 — predicts that the general effect of neomalthusianism will be to compensate for the diminution of the quantity of births by raising the average quality. The productiveness of the classes highest in the social scale tends to diminish in respect of either quantity or quality, owing to overapproximation of the propagating types — in the case of old feudal families — and in other cases to the fact already referred to, that the nerve-strain presupposed by the effort necessary for rising to a prominent social position is unfavorable to healthy procreation. There are, finally, many who take the view of birth con- trol presented in this chapter.i^* y>^ Newsholme ends his bro- chure. The Declining Birth Rate, by remarking that it does not appear possible for the artificial limitation of families to be pursued on a large scale without moral loss to the com- munity. Dr. Havelock Ellis, in the tract introducing the im- portant series of which the booklet just mentioned forms one, says : "There is little need at the present time either to urge restriction on the output of children or to urge the absence of restriction." Dr. Saleeby's tract more emphatically indorses the views my studies have led me to adopt: "In the name of many of the best men and women," he says, "in whose blood there may run some insane taint or what not, I protest against 1^ Eugenics Review, vol. v, No. 3, pp. 261 f. 19^ See C. V. Drysdale, The Small Family System. NEOMALTHUSIANISM. 127 the notion that marriage and parenthood are to be regarded as identical because marriage is primarily for parenthood, or because it is convenient to assume that they are so, in public discussion. "-0 Dr. C. A. Mercier expresses himself with simi- lar balance and moderation on this point.- ^ Nystrom maintains that a merely repressive policy in regard of artificial birth control is inadequate and harmful, inasmuch as in the first place it violates the rule "abusiis 11011 tollit usum," and in the second place it fosters craft, and indi- rectly abets the objectionable practice of coitus interruptus.^'^ But I have met with more supporting opinions, coming from serious, responsible quarters, than I have been able to note down ; and will limit myself to the concluding observation that S. Bridget, in the article cited, dealing with the problem from a Christian point of view, and taking account of the opposition offered in Roman moral theology to birth control, reaches a position identical with my own ; and is able to maintain it, on the ground of his wide practical knowledge, acquired in the Roman confessional, of the sex life, against the absolute con- demnation which A. Crespi, following Forster, pronounces upon the practice, in the same magazine. --^ 20 Saleeby, The Methods of Race Regeneration, pp. 24f. 21 Mercier, Crime and Insanity, p. 219. 22 Die Neue Generation, Jahrg. 7. Heft. 10, pp. 441ff. ; Das Geschlechtsleben und seine Gesetze, 8th ed., p. 177; qu. by Havelock Ellis, Studies, vol. iii, 2d ed., p: 202. 23 Coenobium, ann. viii, fasc. iv, v, and vi. CHAPTER VII. Sexual Promiscuity. A Definition of Impurity — Promiscuity — Biblical Views of Pro- miscuity— Concubinage — Antenuptial Relations. St. Thomas AouinasI defines the sin of impurity as the enjoyment of sexual pleasure, not according to right reason. This may take place in two ways : one as concerns the matter or object in which anyone seeks sexual pleasure; the other, ac- cording to which certain appointed conditions are not observed in the use of the lawful matter. In other words, this sin may occur by way of perversion, as when a man seeks to gratify his desire upon some object forbidden him by the law of nature; by way of lawlessness, as when in the gratification of his desire he disregards appointed conditions, i.e., the moral law, in the use of the lawful matter; or by way of excess, as when he uses lawful pleasure to an immoderate and dangerous ex- tent. Obviously, perversion and excess, or lawlessness and excess, may be present at the same time, and lawlessness (as here defined) may coexist with some degree of perversion. With regard to some forms and degrees of both sexual perversion and sexual excess, the healthy instincts and normal moral sense of humanity experience no difficulty about cherish- ing a proper repugnance toward them. We are not, at anv rate, considering them here. But where the distinction con- sists not in the violation of a law of nature or the disregard of another's rights, but simply in the infringement of social obli- gations, the reason for which is not readily discernible, as in the case of intercourse out of wedlock, many people will be disposed to disallow the use of the term lawlessness in such a connection. It will be thought that the condemnation of 1 Summa Theol., ed. Migne, vol. ii, qu. 154, art. i. (128) SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. 129 simple fornication, as enunciated by the Christian Church, is arbitrary. At this point, then, we may bring forward the reasons stated with such clearness and power by Aquinas, upon which this condemnation is based. ^ "Mortal sin is all sin which is committed directly against the life (i-e., against the due growth and expansion of the life) of man. Now simple fornication brings in an element of lawlessness which tends to the detriment of the life of him who is to be born of such intercourse. For we see in the case of all animals among which the care of male and female is requisite for the bringing up of the offspring, that among them there is no casual copulation, but the approach of the male to a particu- lar female, one or more, as is evident among all birds. But it is otherwise in the case of animals among which the female alone is needed for the bringing up of the young, for among these there is a casual copulation, as is evident among dogs and suchlike animals. "Now it is obvious that to the bringing up of man is requisite not only the care of the mother by whom he is fed. but to an even greater extent that of the father by whoin he must be instructed and defended, and caused to progress in matters that affect his inward as well as his outward well- being. Hence it is against the nature of man to indulge in pro- miscuous intercourse, but the male must have intercourse with a chosen female, with a view to cohabiting with her, not for a short space, but for a long time, or even for their lives. This is the cause that there is naturally among the males of the human species anxiety whether a man's reputed offspring is really his, because upon them is incumbent the duty of bring- ing up offspring. And there would be no certainty on this point if promiscuity were the rule. "Now this selection of a particular woman is called matri- mony, and on this account it is said to stand on a basis of ~ Op. cit., vol. iii, qu. 154, art. ii. 9 130 SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. natural law. But because sexual intercourse is ordained with a view to the common good of the whole human race, and because it falls within the province of law to determine things which pertain to the common good, it follows that the union of the man with the woman, which is called matrimony, should be regulated by some law. "Consequently, since fornication is promiscuous inter- course, inasmuch as it exists beside and beyond matrimony, it is opposed to a good, viz., the bringing up of offspring, and, therefore, it is mortal sin. Nor does it make any difference if any one knowing a woman by fornication makes sufficient provision for the bringing up of the oft'spring, because what- ever falls under the regulation of law is judged according to its common method of occurring, and not according to circum- stances which may attend it fortuitously." Viewed in the light of the most recent and careful research into the origins of sexual morality, the great medieval teacher's statement of the case against casual union retains its worth and force. Westermarck, in the work already cited, has shown by an accumulation of evidence which invests his case with a high degree of probability, that man's sexual instinct has normally found its gratification, in more or less durable monogamic unions, not in promiscuous intercourse. According to the nature of things, then, the practice of fornication, whether prostitution or promiscuity of a physically healthier kind, is abnormal. When its history is traced, it does not establish a claim to a natural and legitimate existence in human society.-^ Exponents of laxer views on sex relations sometimes claim to derive a measure of support from the fact that in passages of Holy Scripture which reflect the morals of remote and obscure stages of social evolution, fornication is not treated expressly as a moral offense. It becomes, therefore, incum- 3 See Additional Note A on Primitive Marriage ; and c[>. Forel, op. cif., p. 155. SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. 131 bent upon us at this stage to review the ideas of the BibHcal writers respecting extra-conjugal sex relations. The moral teaching of a BibHcal document stands in a setting of con- temporary moral ideas. If these are in Divinely recognized accord with the true progress of human evolution, the Scriptural teaching embodies and sanctions them; if they are adverse to this progress, it repudiates and condemns them. Sometimes the Biblical document reflects ideas which later inspired writers disallow ; in this case the older writer has had no deeper insight into the matter in question than his contem- poraries— to use the language of religion, we might say that the Divine Will on that point has not been declared to him. Thus, if we find concubinage or antenuptial intercourse re- ferred to in the Old Testament without any clear mark of moral condemnation, we can only infer that it was not vouch- safed to the early composer or the primitive lawgiver to see further into the ethics of the matter than other moralists of his time. None the less, the practice in question may stand condemned explicitly by some later writer taking a wider view of life and possessed of a deeper insight into ethical condi- tions ; or implicitly by comparison with the principles ultimately made manifest, in the Bible, regarded as a whole, as the true basis of the ethics of sex. Now the moral systems of most heathen nations, * as well as the Hebrew and Christian moral systems, uphold the insti- tution of marriage as a necessary factor in social welfare. They place marriage on a higher footing than even the forms of concubinage most nearly resembling it. Marriage differs from hetairism, or the temporary cohabitation of a man and a 4 As a result of his survey of primitive ideas on sex, Crawley concludes (The Mystic Rose, p. 147) that the "rights" of the in- dividual in property, marriage, and everything else, were never more clearly defined than by primitive man. It is true, at quite early stages of human development, the strictness of these individualistic notions becomes relaxed ; yet they retain the prior claim to be the right point of departure from which to commence a study of the ethic of marriage. 132 SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. woman by private mutual consent, in that the consent given in marriage is referable to an objective standard of obligation; such being, according to Christian ethics, the ideal of mono- gamic indissolubility. Hetairism has no such objective standard. It differs more markedly still from promiscuous sex rela- tions. Let us consider further, from the Biblical writings, why is the refusal of a man and woman to initiate their sexual relations by this contract an offense against morality? What detriment to social or to individual welfare does it involve in th£ view of Biblical writers? Among the Semites, the matriarchate, which favors free- dom of sexual choice for women, is the earliest discernible social system ; and it has been observed before now, as one of the bad consequences of this fact, that promiscuity of various kinds found there a congenial soil.^ A sort of tem- porary cohabitation was not merely tolerated, but was regarded as a lower form of marriage — the mota'a marriage of the Arabs. Promiscuous sexual relations of a lower grade were encouraged by the custom of religious prostitution, which the great Semitic scholar just cited describes as "an element of pollution ; a blacker spot even in the darkness of heathenism." In more or less sharply defined contrast, these sexual unions stood over against the monogamic idea which even in a setting of matriarchal customs was affirmed as primitive by the Jahwistic revelation. Accordingly, Hebrew legislation repressed religious prosti- tution with severe enactments.^ Casual seduction it disallowed and penalized to the extent of making subsequent marriage with the woman— or a pecuniary equivalent for marriage — incumbent on the seducer. The view of fornication as a moral offense against God does not come out here as distinctly as in modern ethical thought ; such a conception is as yet latent and 5 W. R. Smith, Kinship, chs. v, vi. 6 As we may infer from Gen. 38:24, Lev. 21:9, though no punishment is specified for this offense in Lev. 19 : 29, Deut. 23 : 17. SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. 133 undeveloped, though the germ of it has already come into being. The act may be compounded for in the manner stated, but it appears as an ofifense against the honor and welfare of the girl's household ; and in Deuteronomy, where some degree of force seems to accompany the seduction, as an offense against her womanhood. The gradual superseding of the matriarchal system in Israel by the patriarchal gave prominence to some special con- siderations. One of the elements of wrong in the casual union is that it deprives a brother man of a virgin wife. True, the value set upon virginity in his bride by primitive man differed not in kind, but in degree, from his estimate of all property. He preferred a whole fruit to a half-eaten one. Similarly, his sexual instinct, orientated toward monogamy, made him desire to be the first and only possessor of the person and affections of his wife. Thus the man who stepped in before his fellow and took away the virginity of the woman who might have become the latter's wife was thought of as having offended primarily against the rights, existing actually or in idea, of his brother man. A partial, and yet, as far as it goes, a true view of the iniquity of fornication, a view indorsed by the New Testament and finding expression in the teaching of St. Paul.'^ Then, as a woman's personal right to the conservation and due development of her sexual nature comes again into view, the conception is formed that the casual union is an offense against her womanhood — an idea which came into existence in very early times wherever force was used by the seducer.'*^ The higher considerations, that fornication is a breach of the Divine will (which had been thought by a large portion of mankind to approve and even to demand it), and consequently, that it is a sin against a man's own body, preventing its sancti- fication by the indwelling God, were possible only to a more ''' I Thess. 4 : 6. ^ This idea is present in the Hebrew phrase "to humble a woman" (Piel of 'ariah, Gen. 34:2, and passim). 134 ; SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. developed and enlightened moral sense. St. Paul arrives at them by a process of spiritual reasoning, and thus finally and conclusively shows casual union to be a misdirection of the sexual nature, both for man and for woman. ^ Neither in the New Testament in general, nor in the Epistles of St. Paul, the writer who deals most with the subject under consideration, do we find any attempt to place hetairism on a different moral footing from prostitution. It is histori- cally probable that the writers of the New Testament had not got before them any general manifestation of hetairism in its best aspects, such as we find in the stronger and purer days of Greek and Roman life. Hetairism as an expression of the sex life in humanity had failed; it had proved too unstable to become the foundation of sexual morality within a community. The meretrix of Terence's plays had not raised the common harlots of the town ; rather, she had descended to their level. It is not indeed improbable, as will be shown farther on, that the morality of hetairism came before St. Paul on one occasion on a local issue. There are some indications of a movement having taken place in the Church in Corinth to obtain for this form of sexual union the sanction of Chris- tian opinion. But, as will be explained later, this attempt failed. The ethical worth of marriage as against hetairism was vindicated. Marriage is universally requisite, for the reasons above alleged, as the sanction of sexual relations. Without it society has no guarantee of the permanence of the union. Therefore sexual relations without this sanction are classed in the New Testament as fornication ( iropveta ) . The just conclusion is that the Bible, although it does not indeed in every case accompany the mention of casual union with condemnatory reflections, assuredly shows it to be at variance with the true law of man's sexual nature, and repug- nant to his enlightened moral sense, to be no part of the original Divine scheme for the perfecting of human good and happiness. 0 I Cor. 6 : 18. SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. 135 Hallam notes that in Elizabethan times, before the mar- riage of clergy was recognized by English law, certain of the clergy, especially of the Bangor diocese, resorted to concubin- age. But such concubinage, being entered upon under episcopal license, is made a social and semi-public matter, and in so far as it is brought, by this conditioning and regulation, into touch with the standard of mutual obligation already premised in regard to marriage, it becomes in reality morally equivalent to marriage. ^^ It was a revolt of a body of men, not against Divine law, but against a human law, by which they were wrongfully condemned to celibacy. Another kind of unchastity — the intercourse of engaged couples who, without waiting for the sanction of wedlock, yield to their desire — cannot be passed over without remark.^ Relations before, and as a preliminary step to marriage,!^ are certainly not on the same footing, as a moral ofifense, as promiscuity and prostitution. If* It was in fact widely practised among the clergy in pre- reformation times (art. Concubinage, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth. ; art. Celibacy, Christian, ibid.; Wordsworth, The Ministry of Grace, p. 236). Fr. Thurston (art. Celibacy, in The Catholic Encyclopaedia) denies, in opposition to Bishop Wordsworth, any great prevalence of concubinage among the clergy. Yet the same writer immediately states that the denunciations of such unions are innumerable. Would there have been so much smoke without fire? (Cp. Dolonne, Le Clerge Contemporain et le Celibat, ch. ii ; Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, esp. vol. i, p. 230, n. 1 ; and Romischen Priesterehen, von J. Leute, in Die N. G., July, 1909. 11 For the existence in England of a low standard of opinion in regard to antenuptial intercourse, see Booth, Life and Labor, final vol., p. 44. 12 In the ethical consciousness of the natural man we see a strife between two opposing tendencies during the period of engagement, the one the influence of taboo between himself and his future wife (Crawley, op. cit., pp. 314, 315), which makes for strict morality and strengthens monogamy; the other a practice, not perhaps licentious in idea to primitive man himself, but in its essence destructive of niorality, viz., the rehearsal of the sexual activities which he was soon to be called on to exercise in marriage (id.. 307ff.). 136 SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. The idea of betrothal has sometimes been loosely defined, just as the terms denoting betrothed persons have been loosely and inaccurately used;i3 and in some societies the betrothal has been more emphasized than the celebration of marriage.^'* In this we perceive a tendency to shift the acceptance of respon- sibility, and by consequence the conveyance of sexual privilege, from marriage to betrothal ; in fact, to turn betrothal into marriage. But this development has seldom been fully carried out in Christian societies ; for the distinction that betrothal is a promise for the future, while marriage is an agreement in and from the present, has usually been maintained, and is cer- tainly a cardinal feature of modern ethical theory. The idea of mutual responsibility not being fully and finally expressed in betrothal, that event does not fulfill the conditions of mar- riage, as accepted by Christianity, sufiiciently to allow of sexual privilege being legitimately appropriated. The mutual consent to undertake life together, in accordance with the standard of obligation recognized in the social environment, is not yet definitely made.^-^ While Christian morality requires from the parties to an engagement a high standard of honor in re- spect of the promise they have made, it does not put verba de fiitiiro on the same level of obligation as z'erba\ de prccsenti. And while it encourages the parties to an engagement to acquire general personal knowledge of each other, it does not 1^ Sanchez, De Matrim. Sacr.. 1. i, disp. i. 14 Howard, Hist, of Matr. Institutions, vol. i. p. 374. 15 Cp. Aquinas, Suppl. Sum. Theol., qu. xlvi, art. 2. Aquinas holds that matrimony is not effected by the ipso facto of an engaged couple coming together, unless the act is accompanied by an inward consent equivalent to the consensus per verba de prccsenti; but that, if the case came before the Church courts they might, in default of evidence to the contrary, assume that there was such a consent, and hence, in accordance with the Church's ultimate canon of validity, might regard the marriage as effected. In other words, the Church might regard, and might hold the parties bound to regard, the so- called prenuptial relations as in fact conjugal relations. SEXUAL PROMISCUITY. 137 admit the irresponsible rehearsal of the farthest sexual activi- ties. It contains no doctrine of a Probehe.^^ Consequently, although the special circumstances in which such an irregularity takes place may conceivably be such as to soften judgment upon it; for it may come in, as it were, accidentally in the life of an engaged couple who are ordinarily well-principled ; yet it is not licit. No one can be so secure of the duration of his life as to allow of his taking the risk of being able to compensate by future marriage for an act which without such compensation would be self -regarding and anti- social, and therefore wrong. 16 "Et si non habetis uxores, non licet vobis habere concubinas, quas postea dimittatis, ut dncatis uxores." (Aug., Serm., 392, c. 2). CHAPTER VIII. Prostitution. General View of the Situation — A Dialogue — The Sacking of a City — The Victorious Soldiery — The Women in the City — Moral Grades of Women — The Phenomenon of Prostitution — Its Place in the Social Sex Process — Women in Defense of their Honor — The Main Ground of their Defense — Women's Attitude to Marriage and to Prostitution. "Suppose now, Monsieur le Commandant," I said to him, — "for your large observation of men and of the world puts you in the way of forming a competent opinion on this matter, — suppose an army had sat down before a rich city for a long time, to take it ; and suppose the soldiers had gone through much toil and danger with that prize in view, what would be likely to be the immediate moral effect upon them, when at last they broke into that city?" "Explain yourself a little in detail," said he. "Well, I will lead up to my point by a few questions. The soldiers, when they forced the defenses, would be like a pent-up stream let loose. They would have burst, all in a moment, the resisting barriers and controlling bounds which had kept them back so long. That stream would now rush hither and thither. It would sweep along with it, in its first headlong impetus, many things that had seemed solid and immovable heretofore. "Leaving the metaphor. Monsieur, would not the soldiers be likely to get out of hand in the flush of victory; and to profit by their victory on their own account, not merely for political ends? I put the matter in the rough. I think of them en masse, collectively; there are some side questions which I will not stay to ask, — as, whether the victorious soldiers of one nation would be more impetuous than those of another in exploiting the profits of victory ; whether (138) PROSTITUTION. 139 a percentage, and what percentage, of the soldiers would keep their heads, and be remarkable for self-control at that moment; how far their officers might be expected to preserve their disci- plinary function in the taking of the city, or how far they themselves might be overborne by the wave of excitement which bore upon its crest the main body of victorious men. "Speaking generally, would the army that now broke in be likely to get out of hand, and to draw its own profit from the victory ?" "It might well be so; it has been so often, and may be so again." "Well, then. Monsieur le Commandant, let me develop my questioning thought in my own way. I don't want to picture to myself the general lurid scene : — All that the mind would shrink from of excesses; All that the body perpetrates of bad ; All that we read, hear, dream, of man's distresses; All that the devil would do if run stark mad; All that defies the worst which pen expressses ; — "And 'tis not carnage that I am thinking of primarily. But tell me now ; the men would run at their will to and fro throughout the streets, squares, and buildings of that city. They would be likely to find drink ; and then, then — after the long siege,, after the toil of the trenches; after the weary days and nights; after the weeks and weeks of strict discipline; after the pain and woimds and grim realities of war, — many of them would be likely to get drunk, is it not so?" "It is likely enough," said he. "I feel sure of it, Monsieur. But that's not all. There would certainly be women in that city. Now, how would the impatient, triumphant, fiercely excited men act in regard to the women? Would not those men — all social law having bowed down for the moment, like a bed of bending rushes before the weight of the torrent — be likely to do violence to the women?" "Well, that," said he, "does happen in the sack of cities ; 140 PROSTITUTION. but why speak of it now ? Leave such things unthought of till they come, if they must come." "Monsieur le Commandant, the purport of my questions will be clear presently. Only allow my thoughts to run freely along the line of the facts." "Well, Monsieur, proceed," said he. "In regard, then, to this violence which the invading men — or, rather, many of the men ; for I know well that a general idea is only approximately in accord with facts — would offer to the women of the city, I would ask more precisely, what would be the manner and the measure of it? Say that the pent-up passions of the victorious soldiery are a fearful menace to the women of the city ; say that the menace is being momen- tarily transformed into crises of danger for the honor of the women ; say that the frenetic tumult is setting at nought all written and codified law ; yet since there are laws of wider scope than humanity's social laws, since no force in the universe — not even such as seem to us the most ungoverned — can act independently of some law, can we not, by having regard to the probabilities of this night of triumphant outrage which we are supposing, perceive that the men's violence toward the female community in that city would be in some measure reduced and checked by the action of a general law?" "What general law," said he, "what moderating principle can you discern here?" "Well, Monsieur, let us make an attempt — though 'tis indeed a hard one for two men; and we make it, as it were, from the outside, as the Earth investigates Venus through the telescope — an attempt to estimate and analyze the resistance which the women of the taken city would offer to the violence impending against them. What would the women of the city do, instinctively and'impulsively, if they knew that this danger had suddenly broken upon them, and that the life of their honor might be a matter of moments?- What would they do, when darkness closed over the city ; when they knew PROSTITUTION. 141 that force and drunkenness were in it, and that force and drunkenness were stronger than all social law ?" "Do?" said he. "Well, there is one thing I suppose they would do. They would try to keep out of the way." "I expect you are right, Monsieur le Commandant. That would be their impulse. It would be an impulse that most would feel. But then, — it is needful for us to be as precise as we can in the matter — would they all try, with a uniform desperation as, it were, to keep out of the way ?" "Why no," said he, "if you mean to be as precise as all that, I should say no. Women vary just as men vary. Some are far more particular about themselves than others. That depends on all sorts of things, temperament, upbringing, re- ligion, traditions and " "I know, Monsieur. Obviously, then, those who were most particular about themselves would be most anxious to keep out of the way. They would retreat to the farthest point possible before the inrushing soldiers. They would fall back on the last defenses. They would call on those of their own men who were left to protect them to the last. If all protec- tion failed, if all retreat was at an end, if all concealment was unavailing, then they would do desperate things. They would battle to the last gasp for their chastity. They might succeed in killing some of the men. Or they might determine to kill themselves. Women who set a very high value on their chastity have acted thus in time of war and on other occasions. 1 "Those, then, who were very particular about themselves, and who had formed very desperate resolutions to safeguard their honor, would be likely to some extent to succeed in their intention. But, Monsieur le Commandant, we must bear in mind that there would be tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of women in that citv; and we observed just now that women 1 Zockler, Askese unci Monchtum, p. 260 ; Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, bk. iii, ch. ii, rule iii ; Plos & Bartels, Das Weib, Bd. ii, Ixxvii. 142 PROSTITUTION. vary much in their estimate of their own value. And on the strength of that observation we conjectured that the whole vast mass of the women in the city would not keep out of the soldiers' way with a uniform anxiety and determination. Is not that right?" "Well, to be sure," said he, "if chastity alone were at stake, and there was no further question of injury or of loss of life, there would be several degrees or gradations of eagerness to avoid the men. It would be a more or less decided, more or less genuine, more or less doubtful and simulated eagerness. It is impossible to mark ofif the various kinds quite distinctly." "Kinds? Kinds of women?" "Yes." "Well, if there is one kind that would be very particular about chastity, there is another — leaving intermediate kinds out of account — that wouldn't be particular at all. Is not that so?" "Of course. That kind is found in every city, as certainly as the opposite kind." "We both mean the prostitutes?" "We do mean the prostitutes." "The prostitutes are the kind of women who wouldn't make any attempt at all to keep out of the men's way, — if chastity alone were in question?" "Well, no real attempt." "And even the kind of women whom we roughly class as prostitutes, Monsieur le Commandant, is made up of various subkinds, so the experts in social science maintain.- In the whole kind or genus, the idea of chastity receives various measures of value, from a certain appreciable value down to almost nil. But that question may stand over; for I am con- cerned with another, — that of estimating how the presence of the prostitutes would affect the general rush of the men upon 2 See esp. Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, pp. 299ff. ; Rosa Mayreder in Mutterschiitz for 1907, p. 102. PROSTITUTION. 143 the women in the city. For let us consider ; men weary of waiting, men full of hunger and violent passion, men coarsened and inflamed with drink, in their search for women, would not be particular as to what women they found. If some women kept out of the way, and were difficult of access, the men would seize upon those who were readier to hand. And this fact would serve as a check to the impact of headlong animal passion upon the city. It would weaken the active force of it ; in the same way as the z'is viva of a projectile becomes lost in the sandbags, so that it becomes harmless, or nearly so, when it reaches the hard defenses behind them. Thus in the taking of the city the relations of the sexes would become dis- organized on a large scale ; yet even then, rape itself, real gen- uine rape, would be rare, — that is, assuming that the number of the women is large. There are, of course, historical cases, as at Cawnpore, in which a small number of women — and those of the particular kind — have been caught by a large number of men ; and then real rape is only too probable. But in the case I am contemplating, real rape tends to be at a discount. So, Monsieur le Commandant, in the sack of the city, the easier or less moral types or grades of women, in a sense, protect the difficult and moral types, — those who are quite desperately re- solved to keep out of the men's waj. That is how the matter would work out, is it not ?" "Yes," he said, "I believe it would be approximately like that." "And the women who would be likely to meet the men first woud be the prostitutes, is it not so ?" "Certainly," he said. "Most probably, anyhow. Yes, the prostitutes. And I declare, when you come to think of it, we seem to have a picture or a concentrated account of what goes on all the time between the sexes in civilized countries." "That is what I thought when I began putting my ques- tions, Monsieur. We seem led around to the well-known position of many moralists from Augustine onward. You. as a Frenchman, can bear to have an idea expressed in 144 PROSTITUTION. philosophical language; so I would say that, regarding the sex process in humanity, as a whole, it seems as if the Female Principle^ defends itself, or rather, perhaps, defends the idea of Purity — its function being in part resistant or defensive — against the attacking Male Principle, by throw- ing forward a large number of its exponents to meet the first delivery of the attack. Were the whole onset and impetus of masculine passion not weakened in this or some such way, by unconscious generalship on the part of the defense, there would be greater confusion in the sex life of society at large, even than there is now." "That view," said he, "justifies prostitution on the ground of its social necessity." "Pardon me. Monsieur le Commandant, 'justifies' is a mis- leading word. It is premature; for I have not yet touched on ethics. Ethics deals with what ought to be, with conditions which it is the part of moral beings to bring about ; and we have been speaking hitherto of that which is, of the conditions of the social sex process as they actually are, or have been. We do not justify prostitution, unless we say that the social conditions which are, and which contain the causation of pros- titution, are also the conditions which ought to be, with the implication that prostitution ought to continue. I have con- sidered this point before, and 'tis certain that prostitution ought not to continue indefinitely ; and we may allow ourselves to think that it will not. But this prediction can as yet be made only in quite general terms." He assented by silence to this last remark. Then he said, "Do you identify the Female Principle with the aggregate of the women in a community ?" "No, surely," I replied, "the one is abstract and the other concrete. But the women of a community express the Female Principle pretty fully in their collective consciousness." 3 1 use the term in its scientific sense (=anabolism), not in its qiiasireligious sense. PROSTITUTION. 145 "Just so," said he. "Now you said that the Female Prin- ciple exhibits unconscious generalship in the matter of prostitu- tion. Doesn't that imply that the women of a community, although they are on the defensive in the social sex process, are not on that account passive or immobile, but conduct the defense actively?" "Certainly," I admitted. "Well — men apart for the moment — what is the moral result of their defensive activity among themselves?" "I don't see the drift of your questions now. Monsieur." "Well," he said, "you will see presently. Those women in the taken city, or in the social sex process in general, who take most care of themselves — what are they protecting?" "Why, Purity or Honor, to be sure." "They protect it because they value it ?" "Certainly." "Well, why do they value it?" "Really, that is not so easy to answer. If I say they value purity for its own sake, you will object that women have no metaphysical theory of what things are in themselves. They don't know, any more than we, what purity is in and for itself ; they only know it in relation to the facts of life, and it is in that relation that they must value it. If I say they value it because God desires it, you will reply that they haven't formed a theological any more than a metaphysical theory of its value; that this reason really means that they accept what priests tell them in the matter ; and that, so far as the religious reason is concerned, other women, on the authority of other priests, have accepted and acted on just the contrary principle, believing that God (as they knew Him) desired them not to guard their purity, but to give it away.-* I should think, on the whole, their strong practical reason for defending their purity is that their husbands or their prospective husbands value it ; ■iPloss & Bartels, op. cit., Bd. i, pp. 530, 558; Ed. Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme, resumed in II Rinnovamento, fasc. V, vi, pp. 427ff. 10 146 PROSTITUTION. the women protect it for their sakes. Of course, there are other reasons as well, physical shrinking from roughness, and the instinctive fear produced by the mystery of sex, and de- veloped in many societies into a mystical religious fear. But considering that the highly principled married women would defend their honor at least as energetically as the unmarried, if not more so ; and considering that an experienced woman who was giving good advice to a fast girl would urge her to be discreet largely on the ground that if she wanted discretion no right-minded or prudent man would take her as his wife, I think that the reason I have assigned is their chief one." "Then," said he, "the moral effect upon women of having husbands, or of expecting to have them, is good. Is it not so ?" "Yes," I replied, "that fact makes them value purity ; so it is good." "Then, if that expectation is good, does it not follow that a wish grounded on it is lawful and good?" •"You mean, is it morally right for women to wish to have husbands ?" "Yes." "Well, I think it is certainly a right wish ; and, col- lectively speaking, the women of the most orderly societies entertain it more or less consciously. If they had not got it, the relations of the sexes in those societies would be adjusted in quite a different manner from the present." "Then let us reason a step farther. If women, speaking generally, have that wish, they have, also speaking generally, certain means of achieving it. Is not that so?" "Undoubtedly they have. These are the feminine 'means of attraction.' Westermarck and other anthropologists discuss them very fully." "\'ery well. Now, is it wrong for a woman to employ her 'means of attraction,' in order to achieve the wish we are considering?" "Certainly not wrong, if her employment of them is genuinely inspired by that intention, and doesn't involve PROSTlTUTlOxV. 147 neglect of dignity and seemliness and modesty, and all that is implied in the defensive attitude proper to the Female Principle. As a matter of fact, this employment by women of the means of attraction in order to procure husbands does take place in the social sex process." "Then inevitably there eventuates among the women of a community a sort of subconscious competition for husbands. And this competition is a factor, perhaps the determining fac- tor, in the evolution of woman's purity or honor as we know it in our European civilizations and many other civilizations. The feeling that one must guard one's self for a man's sake, the expectation that some day that man will come, the hope and wish that he will come, the modest and dignified encour- agement offered him when he does come, — do not these move- ments go on every day in the souls of finely developed and highly principled women?" "Yes," I said, "that is so." "And as far as men are concerned," he continued, "it is well. It; is what we require. It is good for us. We learn to respect women who stand thus on their dignity." I agreed. He went on, "But now I have led up to my question. The resulting moral effect upon and among the women themselves, of this subconscious competition, what is that ? There must obviously be many losers in the competition ; and for the losers, they must be — so far as the sex life is concerned — either impure, becoming prostitutes, mistresses, and the like ; or at best negatively chaste — desolate in respect of sex love. The winners get, and perhaps deserve, the credit for the social standard of purity that results from the subconscious competition. As to the losers, — the impure ones, — society at large gives them nothing; whatever they get of satisfaction in the sex life, they must take unsanctioned, unadorned, and at their own risk. But neither does it give the pure losers any- thing. The chaste spinster gets very little social sympathy, nay, even a good deal of social contempt, for being what she is. 148 PROSTITUTION. Scientists anxiously,^ and sometimes with pessimism,^ scruti- nize life's field for compensations (Ersatz) for her sexual renunciations ; and some of us say, with more or less belief in what we say and knowledge of what we mean, that she gets various good things from God. Now, how do the winners regard the losers, with sympathy or pity or pride or contempt, or how?" "Well, variously," I replied. "Formerly it was mainly with contempt, and to a large extent it is so still.''' But now- adays sympathy and pity, in this regard, are entering largely into the minds of the winners."^ "You think so?" "I do. I base my opinion on social facts." "What facts?" "Well, Monsieur, it would be too lengthy a matter to pre- sent them at this moment. If you will excuse me, I will think our conversation over, and shall perhaps come to some conclu- sions which I can set down on paper." "Certainly," said he. "But anyhow, it looks as if deep interior changes are going on in the social sex process, affect- ing both the Male and the Female Principles in it. Is it not so?" "It is," said I- — "psychical, spiritual changes." "Changes for the better?" "Yes ; eventually they will work out for the better. Goodbye, Monsieur le Commandant. You, I know, are all for steadying the ugly rush, whether in peace or in war." "Adieu, Monsieur le Chapelain." ^ Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, pp. 118f. 6 Freud, quoted in H. Ellis, Sex in Relation to Society, p. 189. "^ Cp. Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 411. He says that marriage has been too often in a woman's life, "at the most, an event which has given her a triumph over her rivals." s Id., p. 318, "So long as we are incapable of such methods — the remedial methods proposed by the author — we must be content with the prostitution we deserve, learning to treat it with the pity and the respect which so intimate a failure of our civilization is entitled to." {Cp. C. Gasquoine Hartley, The Truth about Woman, p. 368.) CHAPTER IX. Prostitution and the Social Sex Process. Comparative Ethics — The Evolutionary Ethical Process — In- creasing Rationality of Collective Sexual Consciousness — Ethical Evolution of the Masculine Impulse — Transition from Fear to Volun- tary Self-control — Ethical Evolution of the Feminine Impulse — Women's Growing Enlightenment on the Ethics of Sex — Self-control and Sympathy the Fruits of the Evolution of Sexual Morality. Owing to the progress made in individual and collective psychology, it is at length possible to see the use of compara- tive estimates of morality. The moral history of mankind is seen to be governed by principles of evolutionary continuity and change. Just as in evolutionary psychology the processes of the soul, instinct, emotion, thought, and volition, are no longer regarded as generically distinct, with a distinctness im- plying isolation in respect of each other ;i so in the new moral philosophy, the moral phenomena are seen to overlap or blend. In the social aggregate of actions or courses of conduct or states of life, presenting itself for ethical analysis and evalua- tion, a number of gradations are perceptible. The social sense of past generations is seen to have been inexact and arbitrary, in its rigid ethical demarcations and generalizations. A French thinker has recently elaborated this point of view, particularly in reference to sexual morals. ^ He has shown that the accustomed classification of a great civilized society into distinct sections of moral and immoral livers ; of types of life, one pure without qualification, as family life; the other correspondingly impure, as the life of prostitution, is 1 James, A Textbook of Psychology, pp. 373, 398; Baldwin, The Story of the Mind; T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 153. - Paul Bureau, La Crise Morale dcs Temps Nouveaux, reviewed in Nova et Vetera, vol. i, p. 27. (149) 150 PROSTITUTION AND SOCIETY. not wholly sound: on the contrary, "there is a perceptible crescendo of acquiescence and of compromises/' — leading to the most antisocial phenomena of all. Good and evil, in fact, are graded or blended in the collective or social mind, as they are in individual minds. When a man becomes self-critical in a candid and understanding, not merely in a morbid spirit, his judgment, in spite of his general perception of the two opposed principles of good and bad, frequently has great difficulty in deciding to which of those principles his particular thought.s belong. What seems good shades off into what seems evil. And the social perplexity reproduces on a great scale the per- sonal one. In the individual and in the collective mind alike, moral sentiments and ideas strive together confusedly. But for my own part I have an optimistic faith in the out- come of the evolutionary ethical process, whatever number of gradations it now presents to our perplexed faculty of value- judging. I will make some attempt to state a posteriori reasons for this faith. As the collective mind of society be- comes adult, the whole social theory of the sex process is affected. In the growing general enlightenment, that process will become, nay, is rapidly becoming, more and more con- scious, on both its sides, the masculine and the feminine ; more and more, I mean, drawn up into the higher grades of con- sciousness, rationality, and spirituality. No doubt an analysis of this evolution could be made. Objective factors could be distinguished in it; and of these I should hold that Christian- ity— Christianity of a vital kind, full of light, love, and progress^ — is the supreme one. But I can scarcely attempt this analysis. I am content with stating my conviction, the result of such a survey of moral history as has been possible to me; that both the im- pulse to attack, the modus operandi of the Male Principle, and the impulse to defend, the response of the Female Principle, are being exercised in a manner gradually and indefinitely less 3 See a brief but luminous article on religious, inclusive of ethical, progress by A. Crespi, Nova et Vetera, ann. i, n. 9, pp. 285ff. PROSTITUTION AND SOCIETY. 151 blind. The collective moral sense of the male community is becoming finer and more discriminating in regard to the moral values of phenomena in the social sex process. For the col- lective masculine mind I believe that this is so; whatever may be said about the existence of low, fast, or selfish groups or sets, or of psychologically abnormal types, among men. Look at the ethical evolution of the masculine impulse. In primitive mankind, the masculine consciousness, or the male soul, discerned the elements of a moral law for its own action, the germinal principles of the morality which our modern collective opinion professes ; but in the experience of primitive mankind itself, such a sexual ethic as was expressed in its social customs and lay within the purview of its social outlook, was an ethic formed by external pressure and largely inspired by fear. Might and mystery, forces which a man's in- telligence had not penetrated and against which his will had not yet learned to rebel, were the chief sources of the inhibi- tions of his sex life. There arose, to be sure, in the gregarious life of primitive mankind, certain negative conditions favoring the quiescence of the Male Principle vis-a-vis with the Female. We have an important psychological factor in the ethical evolution of the Male Principle, in this primarily negative state of things, in this set of non-excitant conditions. In my view, we may look here for the origin of some positive inhibitions.-* But I am thinking now mainly of the Male Principle in a state of excitation. In the primitive darkness of humanity's existence, before the earliest dawn of history, we have to pict- ure it as rushing on the Female ; and the stronger of the con- crete exponents of the former principle, the men who were socially high and powerful, seized upon the pleasure and the ])rize. That such was the modus operandi of the social sex l^rocess on the masculine side is indicated by the former exist- ence of a different standard of morality for the socially great. -* Sec p. 53 f., where I refer to more elaborate studies of this lioint. 152 PROSTITUTION AND SOCIETY. as compared with that which was deemed obHgatory for the low ;^ and in the ancient recognition by the collective masculine mind of special rights, the bare idea of which it would now indignantly repudiate. To take the past history of Christian Europe alone, in the seignorial rights symbolized in the stepping of the chief or noble across the bed of his subject's or his retainer's bride, with the husband's submissive acquiescence ; or in the open toleration, in favor of princes and other social magnates, of a system of concubinage almost equivalent to conjugal polygamy, we perceive clearly enough a sexual ethic in which physical might is the determining element : fear of force is the inhibi- tory factor in the masculine instinct of the community. Another and a similarly motived inhibitory factor is the sense of mystery with which womanhood impresses primitive man. Anthropologists have analyzed this feeling, and set forth the prohibitions or taboos originating from it. Now there is no question that both the fear of external might and the sense of external mystery have infinitely less weight with the collective masculine mind nowadays than they used to have. The Male Principle is not restrained from move- ment by the fear of the selfishness of its stronger exponents, or by a body of superstitious imaginings in respect of the Female Principle. It has tested these restraints: it has re- jected some of them so completely as to have well-nigh forgot- ten them. The heritage upon which it is entering is a living and developing one, — a sexual ethic more and more spiritual and autonomous. The collective masculine conscience now discerns special limitations of the action of the Male Principle ; and those, not only such as depend on the recognition of other men's sexual rights, but such as depend on the recognition of the sexual ^ Cp. Bloem, in Mutterschutz for 1907, pp. 194, 195 ; Ploss & Bar- tels. Das Weib, Bd. i, pp. 687ff. ; Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 480; Westermarck, Hist, of Human Marriage, p. 78; art. Adultery in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth. PROSTITUTION AND SOCIETY. 153 rights of women. Nay more, it is acquiring a power of fine discrimination and particular evaluation of their rights, over and above the general recognition of them. We see, for ex- ample, that modern law has gradually differentiated the idea of men's unchastity with young girls from that of fornication in general.^ Facts of that kind indicate a certain psycho- logical development, an evolution of the moral sense inherent in the collective masculine sexual instinct. The Male Prin- ciple is indeed in its nature, and remains, the aggressive agent in the social sex process ; but the masculine aggression, or ad- vance to the erotic conquest of the Female Principle, tends to become less of a blind rush. The disciplinary and control- ling factors in the psychology of the Male Principle, of the collective masculine mind, are acquiring a more conscious power. And, correspondingly, the Female Principle in humanity is becoming more and more conscious and rational. It is enter- ing the self-conscious stage of its evolution; it is beginning to make a fresh synthesis of its psychological factors, to bring the various psychical elements of feminine sexuality, — the impulse to attract ; the impulse to resist or retard ; all emotions of erotic longing, and all instinctive sentiments and traditional ideas that chasten such longing; all the force of uncalculating self- abandonment on the one hand, and all the expectation of justice and consideration on the other, — into a better ordered combination, so as to readjust its attitude vis-a-vis with the Male Principle. Humanity's experience is now so large, that we can make an approximately just estimate of the collective result of the thoughts of particular epochs or generations about any activity ; and by instituting comparisons between that result and the corresponding spiritual results of other generations, can come to perceive which generation was the most en- 6 See an article, Unzucht mit Kindern, by Dr. Jur. Kurt Mar- tens, in the Zeitschrift fiir Sexuahvissenschaft, vol. i, pp. 193flf. 154 PROSTITUTION AND SOCIETY. lightened in its theory of the activity ; which, that is to say, had penetrated farthest into the causation and nature of the phenomena included in it. And the enlightenment of the spirit is the necessary condition of the eradication of evils, and of the production of durable forms of happiness. Taking then the collective result of the present-day femi- nine consciousness of the social sex process, the whole fruition of the thoughts of women in regard to that activity, — whether they be able women or dull ones, conscientious or reckless, educated or ignorant, receptive or prejudiced, — and comparing it with past collective results of the same kind, it will as- suredly appear that on the subject of the sex life in humanity, with its rights and its wrongs, its joys and its miseries, its things of beauty and its things of ugliness, the collective femi- nine consciousness has been gradually filled with an increas- ing measure of light, of hope, and of love. I cannot read Ploss & Bartels' great book on women without feeling this." The feminine mind has evolved ; it has become more capable both of reasoning and of feeling. Consider the great output of literature on sex questions written by women ; put it together in its. various literary departments and styles and qualities, with its differing points of view and its special motives ; add to it the public utterances of women, especially in Germany, on the same questions ; add to it, yet again, the social work which women are doing in more or less direct relation to the sex life in one or other of its aspects. What is the meaning of it all ? Let us put that general question to ourselves, with- out asking in detail whether this view or that is well informed or judicious; whether this woman-writer has philanthropic motives, or that other is inspired by wantonness and vanity; or how the Mother's Union compares ethically with the Mut- terschutz Bund. For the zvhole meaning of this development of feminine ethical activity, it must be what I say, — that the Female Principle in humanity, the collective moral nature of "' Ploss & Bartels, Das Weib in der Natur- unci Volkerkunde, now in its ninth edition. PROSTITUTION AND SOCIETY. 155 the female community, has been struggling for generations past into a higher stage, the self-conscious stage of its evolution ; so that the confused, purblind contact of the Male and Female Principles in society, which we have illustrated, in the preced- ing chapter, from the collective sexual experience of a great city given up to pillage, bids fair to become enlightened on both sides, and altered in character by consequence. But though one foresees the possibility of certain specific developments in the social ethic of the sexes, in the evolution- ary stage on which the two principles are entering, I must de- lay the expression of my own thought upon them. Yet if we have regard to the history of prostitution alone, it illustrates the ethical development of the Female Principle well enough ; for the collective feminine mind, instead of as formerly acqui- escing in the notion of the permanent necessity of that phe- nomenon in the general interests of social purity, is gradually bringing to bear upon it the remedial force which must be generated by sympathetic understanding, philanthropic desire, and a developed faculty of judgment. Prostitution appears in history as a method of self-defense, subconsciously adopted by the mass of the female community. The collective mind of modern women perceives, more clearly than was formerly the case, the modus operandi of this defense ; their collective sentiment is becoming more and more conscious of discontent with it. To revert to the illustration given, that of the ugly rush upon the women of a captured cit}-. The moralist should realize the psychological conditions of the rush. I do not underrate the power of the passion, the wild force of the delirium that drives men on. Neither do I deny that in the world's economy there is and must be a definite masculine activity, a significant forward movement of the Male Principle toward the Female. But I urge that an ordered advance, a movement that knows its own rationale and partially discerns its real objective, not only looks better, l)ut is more effective tb.an a confused head- 156 PROSTITUTION AND SOCIETY. long charge. Troops pushing forward under skilled guidance and firm control are more likely to win great victories than such as rush pellmell. In truth, it is ordained that men should conquer women ; nay, let us keep rather to the broad, unas- sailable truth of the abstract idea, — it is for the Male Prin- ciple in creation to achieve the conquest of the Female. To the Male Principle belongs of right the shout for mastery, while the voice of the Female cries for being overcome. The impulse to conquer inheres in- the catabolism or activity of the male organism; whilst the female organism, in its contrasted state of anabolism, remains relatively, though not absolutely, passive. Thus the aforesaid impulse is predominantly mas- culine ; and although, in individual men and women, the funda- mental principles of sex are never fully expressed to the ex- clusion of each other, so that in the battle of love the hope of victory coexists, in one and the same soul, with the delight of being subdued, — and that, too, in men as well as in women; yet it is an anomaly when the conquering impulse does not pre- ponderate in the motivation of masculine love. It is an anomaly, an exhibition of unhealthy erotic sentiment, when in sporadic cases the exponents of the two- principles feel and act in opposition to this rule of the social sex process. The scientists discuss this at large.^ But what shall be the manner and what the abiding result of the ordained victory of the Male Principle over the Female ; and what shall be the note of the cry of subjection? Is not the manner of it indissolubly bound up with the principle of chivalrous self-restraint, asserting and expressing itself in the collective masculine mind? Is not its abiding result a spiritual triumph in which the two erotic principles are both to share? Is hot the ideal victory one that crowns both vanquished and vanquisher with a glory held in common ; as when Israel's brav- 8 E.g. Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, p. 244 ; Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iii ; Love and Pain, pp. 92ff. ; Krafft- Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis ; Fere, LTnstinct Sexuel (E. tr.), p. 154; Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, ch. xxi. PROSTITUTION AND SOCIETY. 157 est men, having seized at length, by a daring effort, the Jebusite fortress, transformed it thereafter into a temple of beauty and devotion, a place full of spiritual desires, a mount of heavenly promise ?^ Hoffding propounds a doctrine of the conservation of values in the universal economy ; and that law will hold in the social sex process. The men whose spirit — the spark of Divinity in them — exerts in themselves and in aid of other men an effective but sympathetic control ; the men who, amid the turbulence of their passions, can evoke within themselves a chivalrous volition, an endeavor to refrain themselves from harming women — prostitutes not excepted ; in a word, the men who help to steady the rush, those men are forming the per- manent values in the evolution of the Male Principle. In licentious men there is sometimes visible an offensive pride in virility, a cynical exultation in the number of com- plaisances they obtain from women. That is a degenerate form of a fundamental psychological element in the Male Principle, an element capable of just and noble development. For virility is indeed a thing to take a pride in; there is joy in the sense of its power over women. But that joy will abide .only if its primary factor, the consciousness of virility, be spiritualized; if he who experiences it learns to rate its psychical elements higher than the physical. Scarcely a more ennobling joy is born in men than this, — to know that they have won the trust of women ; nor should any obligation be stronger, or more welcome to a man, than that of deserving its continuance. 0 1 Chron., 11, 4ff. CHAPTER X. Prostitution and Rescue Work. Treatment of Prostitutes in the Christian Roman Empire — Atti- tude of Christian Fathers to Prostitution — Prostitution in Medieval Europe — Rise of Rescue Work — Attitude of Modern Society toward Prostitution — Rescue Work on its Negative Side — Forel's Descrip- tion of the Fate of Prostitutes — Ideals of Rescue Work — The Earlier Ascetic Ideal — Its Insufficiency — The Modern Positive Ideal — Scien- tific Study of the Prostitute — The Worker of Mercy at Work — Social Value of the Rescue Workers — The "White Slave Traffic." In the Christianity of the Roman Empire a certain amount of work was done among young women, with a view to com- bating prostitution. But such work was hmited to vigilance, protection, and prevention. i It was not rescue work. The public prostitute was for long generally regarded as an irre- deemable outcast, with no claim on society's benevolence ; at most, a fit subject of capricious indulgence, and — so soon as her conduct manifested her as a source of injury or danger to the public — an object of society's vengeance. The social treatment of the prostitute in Christian Europe was, in fact, continuous with that accorded her imder the pagan empire ; and consisted in a general toleration and attempted regulation of the life of prostitution, varied with repressive measures. - Some at least, even of the most prominent leaders of Christian moral sentiment, felt and expressed the need of a certain degree of social toleration of prostitution. ^ Uhlhorn remarks : "It is striking that both Salvian and Augustine approve of and defend houses of ill-fame. Salvian says : "Minoris quippe esse criminis lupanar puto; meretrices enim. 1 Uhlhorn, Die christliche Liebesthatigkeit, p. 387. - See Bloch, Die Prostitution, Bd. i, ch. v, ff. 3 Uhlhorn, op. cit., p. 419, ch. vi, n. 75 ; Havelock Ellis, Sex in Relation to Society, pp. 280ff. (158) PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. 159 quae illic sunt, foedus connubiale non norunt. Ac per hoc non mactilant quod ignorant." Augustine thinks there must be a drain, so that the whole house may not be infected. The same idea and illustration are found in St. Thomas Aquinas. In Medieval Europe, public prostitutes were distinguished by peculiar costumes : some municipalities set apart dwellings or quarters for them ; and their existence was tolerated by pub- lic opinion to such an extent that in some localities in Germany these public women were called "good prostitutes" (fromme Huren) in contrast with the more dangerous ones who plied their trade in secret.'* In Ploss »S: Bartels,-"' there is quoted an old (a.d. 1500) account of the storming of a private house of ill-fame by a number of public women, with the consent of the burgermeister. Yet, in the general view of Christian society, prostitution has been discerned with increasing clearness to be a repulsive and dangerous social phenomenon. In modern Christian thought the word connotes moral impurity and social decay ; and if there is as yet no prospect of the disappearance of this phenomenon from our social horizon, it has at least been thrust back into a less prominent position than the one which it occupied in the great civilizations of antiquity and which it still occupies in parts of the East.*^ 4 Gustav Wustmann, quoted in Die Nene Generation, no. 2, p. 71. 5 Ploss & Bartels, Das Weib, Bd. i, p. 599. •• See Ploss & Bartels, op. cit., Bd. i, pp. 582, 588. The word pros- titute has been used with much vagueness. Its content is difficult to define (Bloch, Die Prostitution, Bd. i, ch. i). It popularly comprises — leaving male prostitution out of the question — such types as hetairse, or mistresses, and the hierodules, or sacred prostitutes of antiquity and of some parts of the Orient. These types have often been very well treated socially. Consequently, it is difficult to present clearly the results of a historical study of prostitution. However, the type we have chietly •in mind is the public secular prostitute, she who, according to Whar- ton's Law Lexicon, "indiscriminately consorts with men for hire," or, as Havelock Ellis defines her, "a woman who tenii)orarily sells (herself) to various persons." 160 PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. Under Christianity, the more or less reluctant toleration of prostitution to which I have referred has alternated, as already- observed, with a policy of forcible repression, frequently in- volving the savage and cruel treatment of prostitutes. Im- prisonment'^ and other forms of punishment, including mutila- tion,^ were the curative measures taken by Christian Society in regard of the prostitute, till far on into the Middle Ages. Organized rescue work, on the other hand, appears to date from the thirteenth century : rescue homes for prostitutes were founded under Popes Gregory IX and Innocent IV ;^ and that work received a further impulse from the mighty energy of love which inspired the great St. Vincent de Paul.i^ The humaner regard of prostitutes characteristic of pres- ent-day civilization indicates, in the view of some writers, that society is preparing for the elimination of prostitution by socially elevating or rehabilitating it ; that is to say, by trans- muting it into a less repulsive phenomenon, something re- sembling the hetairism and hierodulism already alluded to. Havelock Ellis notes this tendency ;ii and Tlic Spectator not long ago selected for its animadversion a passage from a con- temporary journal of sociology, in which the matter was eloquently handled from this point of view. But this tendency is really reactionary. The finest moral products of sex love are due to the element of mutual re- sponsibility present in all such sexual unions as can properly be termed marriage, and present in the largest measure in monogamic marriage. In the long run the social conscious- ness would feel, and as a matter of fact has felt, dissatisfaction with sexual unions from which that element is absent ; and its introduction even into irresoilar unions is the aim of much "^ Krauss, Im Kerker vor und nach Christus, p. 136. s Ploss & Bartels, op. cit., Bd. i, pp. 600fif. ^Zockler, Askese und Monchtum, p. 517: K. Biicher, Die Fraiien- frage im Mittelalter, p. 62. 1'^ Krauss, op. cit., p. 181. HO/), cit., p. 316. PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. 161 modern legislation. It is indeed profoundly true that, as Havelock Ellis observes, the facts of life are more important than the forms; and future societies will no doubt revise their systems of marriage more and more in the light of this prin- ciple. It is because the fact of mutual responsibility is of fundamental importance in the most intimate relations of the sexes that the educated social instinct of the future will safe- guard it against the destructive influences which radically dif- ferent theories of sex morality might exert upon it. It seems safest, then, to follow the lead of the Christian rescue workers in regard to prostitution. The theory of rescue work as of preventive work is easily comprehensible on its negative side ; it is to get women away from that life of prostitution whose disastrous issues are suc- cinctly stated by Professor Forel : ^^ "What now becomes of the young prostitutes in course of time? They cannot remain very long in the brothels, for these latter — especially the more luxurious ones — can make use only of young, blooming, pretty girls. It would be interesting to follow up the fate of these gfrls. . . . It is clear that the stock of girls belonging to a brothel is after a certain time always thrown back upon the street as a result of the necessity of its constant renewal. Many ' prostitutes are early in life ruined by alcoholism, syphilis, etc. But to many others nothing remains but to be- come street prostitutes, or to ply their trade in less expensive establishments and low places in the slums. The adroiter and more polished ones, who exhibit esthetic skill or business capacity in their profession, are able to work themselves up gradually to the position of keepers of establishments ; but these are only a priviliged few. Many end their lives by sui- cide or in the lunatic asylum. Most sum up their life's experi- ences, when they have no longer any attraction for men, by taking up the poorest and dirtiest employments. (The author specifies a number of poor trades — at which, however, in the 12 Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, pp. 301, 302, 11 162 PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. absence of precise information, it is perhaps scarcely fair to point — as being the last refuge of the broken prostitute.) Here and there a girl, superior to the rest in worldly wisdom or in self-control, succeeds in marrying." On its positive side, the question what is to be done with the women extricated from this milieu, rescue work becomes manifoldly tentative and difficult. If, as was apparently the fact, the earlier preventive work was conducted on a principle of cloister-confinement, this was modified when rescue work proper came into vogue. In the thirteenth century, when this work was begun by a priest, Rudolf, it proceeded indeed on monastic lines, the penitents being attached to an order; yet it was from the first recognized that what the reclaimed pros- titute usually required was an honorable reinstatement into civil society. The life of religious seclusion was reserved for such penitents as proved to be specially called to and gifted for it. 12 It resulted, however, in an age dominated by monas- tic ideals, and in which, owing to the numerical disproportion of the sexes, marriage often became impossible to women, that women were drawn too freely into the general current of the convent life; and doubtless the presence in considerable num- bers of such as had lived ill-regulated lives contributed tO' the moral decline of the convents in the later Middle Ages. The more practically minded organizers saw, however, from the first that the marriage of the reclaimed prostitute was the goal to be generally sought; and the idea was enun- ciated in the early Canon law, in accordance with such a Biblical precedent as the marriage of Hosea, that to marry a prostitute in order to help her to recover her purity was a noble deed of love.i^'^ 13 Biicher, op. cit., p. 62. 13a Decret. Greg. IX, deb. iv, Tit. i, ch. xx. Endowments were left with the object of rewarding men who should embark on the enter- prise of marrying a prostitute (Biicher, op. cit., p. 63). But medieval society in general could not accept, even in theory, this self-sacrificing view; and tended to penalize marriage with prostitutes. (Bloch, Die Prost., Rd. i, p. 674.) PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. 163 In the American Union an organized campaign, on the scale of vastness characteristic of tiiat country and nation, is proceeding against prostitution. Dr. Ernst Schultze, in Die Neue Generation, 1913, has sketched the history of this movement. It is inspired with a vigorous optimism, which is an essential element in higher human activities, and which will no doubt be justified by issues as yet un- foreseen. This reform movement has a positive as well as a negative policy. The Californian reformers formed plans and collected funds for rescue institutions managed on modern educational lines. The aim is to get the rescued prostitute into a milieu where the suggestion of good will be sufficiently strong and manifold to overcome the sug- gestions of evil to which she has been exposed. This policy finds support not only in the general development of sympathy in the modern world, but in scientific estimates of the cause of depravity. Bloch thinks that the typical features of the depravity of prostitutes are the product in a greater degree of the bad environment than of bad heredity. The permanent success of rescue work would appear to be quantitatively small; from this fact we gauge its difficulty.!^ This work of mercy has to be done in the teeth of re- sisting forces whose power is all the greater because it is so imperfectly understood. Those forces, the factors which pro- duce and the factors which sustain the social phenomenon of prostitution, require, for their estimate and analysis, inductive scientific work along a number of lines of inquiry. Psycho- logical science for the tmderstanding of the prostitute's own mind, the complex interrelation of her feelings and irregular development of her passions ; physiological science as the cor- relative of the former branch ; economic science for the remedial study of the condition which all the experts agree to be an operative factor of the first importance in the causa- tion of prostitution, viz., poverty ; medical science, where the question of hygiene comes in ; and the ethical and theological sciences, the function of which is not to negate the demon- strated conclusions of the others, but to achieve their adjust- ment in the scheme of cosmic truth. i^Ploss & Bartels, op. cit., Bd. i, pp. 602ff. ; Booth, Life and Labor, etc., final vol., p. 127 ; Forel, op. cit., pp. 298, 301 ; Havelock Ellis, op. cit., p. 260. 164 PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. Schultze, in the articles just cited, says that the two chief requisites for the successful abolition of prostitution are, first, adequate methods of restoring prostitutes to a right HveHhood, and, second, to find the best checks for the shpping downgrade first stage of a prostitute's career. He is of my opinion, that these tasks cannot be adequately performed by legislation, but only by personal effort, and that such eft'ort needs both en- thusiasm and knowledge — knowledge of the history of the whole subject, and that fine knowledge which gives the worker tactful insight into individual cases and needs. It requires, further, indestructible faith and patience ; Schultze emphasizes these qualities ; and it may be added that they depend for their existence ultimately on personal religion, on the communion of the soul with God. Love, Prayer, and Science — Feeling, Spirituality, Intel- lect— this hardest work of mercy calls for the strongest exer- cise of them all three. But even in its initial aspect, on its primary negative side, — the bare step of withdrawing the pros- titute from her milieu, — no one who has ever made or wit- nessed an attempt in this direction will conceive of this work of mercy as forming part of the program of a simple Gospel. It is so far above the heads of the majority of professing Christians that they rarely bestow upon it even an expression of sympathetic interest, much less give an attentive and intelli- gent consideration to the methods by which it is carried on. Those who have been privileged to watch the steps by which a Christian lady catches a prostitute with loving guile, drawing her for a time at least from her environment — such an en- vironment as is pictured in the studies of scientists like Have- lock Ellis or Professor Forel — will at least have had before them a psychological study of the most impressive interest. The whole business is a fine exhibition of moral energy on the part of the rescuing w^oman. From first to last, it may well be a year or even several years before her own part in the work of mercy reaches its fulfillment, and the case passes for future supervision into other hands. During that time her PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. 165 will is concentrated into an effort so manifold and so sustained that it is dififiicult; to find language which will describe it to the reader as it actually is. For this lady's refinement must come into living contact with social phenomena in which sexuality appears not merely as careless, impulsive, animal passion, but as fevered and diseased obscenity. She has to safeguard her own dignity, as she feels her way toward the object of her saving love. She may know full well the conditions in which the girl is living, and yet not be in possession of just the evi- dence which would secure for her the co-operation of the police and the law. Thus the spiritual force which she can bring to bear upon her work of mercy is supported by no physical force whatever. She must steal, in her philanthropic quest, upon the prey she has marked, availing herself of every moment of security, of every temporary protection that may offer itself. In her first endeavors to get in touch with the prostitute or (in the case of a young girl) with the persons who, how- ever unworthy, are yet her legal guardians, it is possible or rather probable that no success will be achieved ; that she will receive a cold, perhaps a rude and coarse rebuff; and the whole matter will seem to come to an end, or stand over in- definitely. Sometimes, indeed, the rescuing lady will carry her point, as it were, by storm; not indeed by any suggestion of social force brought into play by the laws, for, as I have said, such a course is probably out of the question ; but by spiritual and moral force, the force which is not generally perceived as force at all. That is to say, by the extraordinarily persuasive grace with which these rescuers are endowed and which the practice of their special work of mercy brings to a high de- gree of trained efficiency ; by the sweet earnestness of- her manner, by the keen insight and gentle adroitness with which she perceives and touches all that gives the least good promise in the coarsened souls with whom she is dealing; by the sense and soundness of the arguments she employs to convince the girl of the improvement in her general prospects if she will 166 PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. come away ; by the tact with which she avoids direct rehgious exhortation, and yet somehow leaves her Hsteners with the consciousness that what she says is full of the spirit of religion ; by the impression she conveys that she is at once intensely sympathetic with human trials and yet never averts her eyes from the highest moral ideals of the sex; life; in short, by a great and varied effort of moral power, she may, as the result of one or two interviews, in an hour or in a day or two, cause the prostitute to break from her life and submit her diseased nature to new influences. But if such an onset of saving love is ineft'ectual, the lady will change her plans without relinquishing her purpose. In the performance of her work of mercy, she will now mani- fest unconquerable patience and unremitting vigilance. She will watch the case from afar, keeping herself informed of its history, holding herself in readiness to step in at the next conjunction of circumstances which seems favorable; casting her thoughts round to find some one whose sympathies will be active and intelligent, and whose co-operation will be dis- creet and helpful in the matter. The psychic and nervous strain of the work will be severe; nor would it be seemly in this place to attempt to describe what can never be described, the! inner activity of tb.e rescuing woman's own soul, the unseen counterpart of her visible energy, the spiritual effort of faith in and prayer for the Divine counsel and providence and aid, — those operating fac- tors in the deed of mercy, whose action is as incalculable as it is certainly existent. These workers of mercy may not indeed have under- stood the full relation of the question of prostitution to the sex li'fe at large. They may have but a very limited acquaint- ance with the great range of moral problems presented by the phenomenon of sex. They may as yet, from ignorance or misunderstanding, leave out of their calculations, or on a priori grounds refuse to consider, solutions of sex problems which students of those problems have put forward, as the result PROSTITUTION AND RESCUE WORK. 167 of the free criticism of tradition. Their work may be, with all its value, but a single factor in the process by which prostitu- tion is being eliminated from the sex life of mankind. Yet if the educated moral sense of society can trust its own value-judgments at all, there cannot fail to be a deep significance in the tribute of honor accorded to the rescue worker with a practical unanimity on the part, not of indif- ferent and thoughtless Christians, but of all alike — Christians and non-Christians — who take the trouble to give any earnest thought to the hard and painful problems of the sex life. In my own reading on this matter, I have found many differences of opinion on various points connected with the social hand- ling of prostitution ; and not a few charges and counter- charges pass between the moralists and scientists of both sexes, who study sex and the sex life from different points of view. lUit I think I am right in saying that if to the whole body of thinkers and writers on sexual subjects, — the clergy, with habits of thought and feeling subconsciously formed by con- fessional influences ; the medical scientists, whose discoveries often seem at first to perplex and dash, yet always in the event illuminate ethical counsels; the learned anthropologists; the able women, who face sex questions with the daring which belongs to feminine passion aroused by the love of justice, — if to all these the question were fairly and squarely put, "Do you consider that Christian rescue work among prostitutes is a thing of moral and social value? Do you admit that the workers of mercy in that field deserve your personal sym- pathy and support and honor ?" ; then those men and women would find themselves in full agreement for once ; they would all reply that that work is indeed of capital value to humanity in the whole evolution of its sexual ethic; that those workers do indeed deserve all the respect and help that can be given them by souls of inferior moral endowments, but conscious like them of an objective idea of indefinable beauty striving to realize itself in the moral world, the idea of Holiness. Dr. Havelock Ellis, speaking of prostitution in its socially 168 THE WHITE-SLAVE TRAFFIC. dangerous aspect of an incubator of disease, remarks, with the use of an apt metaphor, on the inadequacy of such a social resistance to prostitution, as consists merely in unintelligent denunciation or in a prudish apathy which tries to justify itself by an appeal to conventional propriety. !•"• Such methods are like trying to operate with the blunt end of a wedge in a work where a peculiarly fine and tempered edge is needed to effect an entrance at all. To my way of thinking, if one may give to Dr. Havelock Ellis's metaphor a more general application in the prostitution question, the fine edge of the wedge is the Christian worker of mercy, if she is such as I have seen and endeavored here to portray. Psychologically, she is what is needed at the fore- front of a social movement against prostitution. Whatever the larger, weightier social forces at her back may ultimately effect for the abolition of prostitution, she at any rate must be kept to the fore. She must be backed up with all needful things, with prayer and sympathy, with money, with public respect, with judiciary encouragement, with all that the rest of society can think of, to sustain and increase her effectiveness. Of recent years, public interest in prostitution has been largely focussed on the so-called White Slave Traffic; indeed, there is a possibility of this sensational aspect of the question obscuring other aspects of not less social importance. An enormous body of literature has gathered around the subject ; but it can be only briefly considered here. Historically speaking, a vast change has come over the White Slave Traffic, a change which gives us hope, while it calls us to vigilance. In antiquity, the determining factor in the traffic was Force. Bloch has vividly and with great learn- ing described the operation of this factor, showing that the slave-prostitutes of the ancient civilizations were mainly 15 0/'. cit., p. 342. THE WHITE-SLAVE TRAFFIC. 169 prisoners of war.i*» Nowadays, the determining factor is Craft, a fact which at once indicates that the interests pro- moting the trade have become relatively weaker. Some of the sensational stories current, about the decoy and capture of girls for prostitution, have probably been invented to stimulate pub- lic interest and procure legislation. i''' But a British consul in Europe has told me of cases occurring in his own term of office, of girls disappearing and failing to be traced ; and the cynically immoral conversation, in French, of a party of foreigners in an English train not long since, convinced me, being unavoidably their auditor, that such people, though they did not indeed actually announce themselves as agents of the traffic, were capable of almost any callousness and cruelty toward the victims of prostitution. As during the classical paganism the men of a nation had to protect their women against the forcible aggression which was continually threatening to herd them into the white-slave market, so modern men have to exercise vigilance and firmness against the harpies who work by craft and fraud for the same object. The near future will see the further development in detail of this policy. I shall here detain the reader over one point only, the corporal punishment of male procurers. This drastic measure has been incorporated into the new law, at any rate in England ; but in some important quarters it meets with disapproval; and Havelock Ellis, in the article just cited, ranges himself with the objectors. It is sufficient here to make the general observation that while experimentation in the infliction of pain is certainly bad punition, as the experience of the Middle Ages proves — when pain was fruitlessly exploited in numberless ways, for the repression of crime; yet it does not follow that pain is to be wholly excluded from punition. The particular infliction now 1" Bloch, Die Prostitution, I'd. i. pp. 239ff. 1'^ See Mrs. Billington-Greig's article in The English Review, quoted by Havelock Ellis, Der Kampf gegen den Madchenhandel (Die Neue Gen., Jahrg. 9, Heft. 9). 170 THE WHITE-SLAVE TRAFFIC. in question, viz., flogging, has before now been effective as a deterrent with criminals whose moral sense had resisted every other appeal. Further, since the flogging is stringently regu- lated, it cannot degenerate into a cruel excess of punishment ; and since it is inflicted by men on men, the danger of its con- taining an algolagnic stimulus is, if not inconceivable, at least remote. The opposition to flogging in this connection and within these limitations seems, accordingly, insufiiciently grounded; though it would indeed be a welcome development of punition, if it should be proved possible wholly to reject the factor of pain. Indignation against the agents, and sympathy with the victims, of this traffic, must not blind us to the difficulties pre- sented by the folly, vanity, and obstinacy of these latter. I have known young women flout every advice and persuasion, and attach themselves to male acquaintances casually picked up in a railway journey. I have known a girl arrive in this countryi^ as an utter stranger and lodge with a woman of dubious reputation, who gave her a bedroom without lock or bolts to the door, and in a lonely part of the house. I suc- ceeded in that case in getting the girl home. Moreover, res- cue-workers know well that besides the pressure and bullying that keep prostitutes to their degraded life, an incomprehen- sible devotion to apparently worthless men — the same blind passion which, in other social strata, sometimes guides even highminded women in their choice of husbands — has to be taken account of.^^ It is interesting; it is pathetic; it is in a manner admirable ; it may subserve unknown issues in the economy of the universe ; but it is an awkward fact. 18 France. 19 Cp. an article by Charles Crittenton in The Woman's World, quoted in II Rogo, ann. x, no. 9. CHAPTER XI. . Venereal Disease and Legislation. Statement of the Question — Modern Ethical Thought and Prosti- tution— The Problem of Reglementation — The Morals Service — A Policy Outlined — Venereal Diseases and Marriage. Prostitution comes into notice in this chapter as the most effective means of spreading certain loathsome and dan- gerous forms of disease ; for in comparatively modern times this aspect of the matter has acquired a gloomy prominence. The experience of history forbids us to entertain hopes of the imminent disappearance of prostitution,^ and it therefore becomes our object to form a policy by which its attendant physical dangers — dangers by no means confined to its guilty patrons — may be minimized, and which at the same time con- serves and develops the only attitude responsible thinkers hold- ing high moral ideals and taking a wide view of life can ever assume toward prostitution on ethical grounds — an attitude of reprobation. It cannot be said that as yet any one aspect of this prob- lem has been fully solved. Reglementation, or the! sanitary regulation of prostitution, has its difficulties on the medical side. The practical inadequacy of periodic medical examina- tions conducted amid conditions of great difficulty in large centers of population has been frequently demonstrated. Such examinations to be effective require not only a considerable degree of skill on the part of the examiner, but expensive medical appliances and time in which to make full use of them. Where these conditions have been wanting, men have been known to become infected by prostitutes who have only re- 1 Miss Jane Addams thinks that an "irreducible minimum of prostitution will doubtless long exist." (A New Conscience and an .Ancient Evil, p. 9.) (171) 172 VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. cently left the physician's examining room. The proper con- duct of these examinations is, therefore, a matter of great expense, which would he defrayed by the community at large only with considerable reluctance. But were the practical difficulties of reglementation the only ones they would not be insurmountable. Medical meth- ods in the future will doubtless receive improvement and sim- plification, to the increase of effectiveness and the diminution of expense ;- and with regard to the ill grace with which, it is alleged, the community would bear an expense created by the profligacy of a section, it must be observed that the community already bears analogous expenses, bearing the burdens im- posed by the follies and willfulness of some of its members. It should not and would not make the case of the reglemen- tation of prostitution an exception. This burden with the rest it would accept from its governments, provided that— this is indeed a most necessary proviso— adequate and unre- mitting efforts were made by the sanction and with the co- operation of governments for the continual reduction of this burden. Such efforts belong to the departments of moral sua- sion, of rescue and reclamation work, of the repression of aggressive prostitution, of the protection and control of minors. These and kindred efforts may be made simultane- ously with a modified and carefully framed policy of regie- mentation. The clearer ideas formed by modern, as con- trasted with ancient and with medieval society, of its duty toward the prostitute herself, urge the performance of this manifold obligation, the fulfillment or neglect of which is also 2 It is for medical experts to determine what progress has been made, by newly discovered methods of diagnosis and treatment, toward the victory over syphilis which Bloch forecasted some years ago (Sexual Life of Our Time, pp. 385ff.). An article by Dr. Des- peignes in the Esperanto magazine Kuracisto for July, 1913, describes the Wassermann reaction as not infallible, but very useful for diag- nosing syphilis in the second or third period. "^Esculapius" in The Shield, Ap., 1915, summarizes recent discoveries in this field. VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. 173 seen vitally to affect the general welfare of the community for good or for ill. The authors of the New York report on the "social evil" appear to magnify the difficulties involved in the attempt to find a legal basis for reglementation. In their anxiety to em- phasize the fact that in the modern conception the prostitute still remains a citizen, they manifest an excessive tenderness in regard to her liberty, and while enumerating the objections to particular theories of legal compulsion as applied to pros- titutes, push overmuch into the background the general truth that human society may and does pass laws for the regulation and control of sexual relations. The idea of liberty can be used only too readily in democratic communities as a hindrance to social reform, and when set forward in this connection needs careful scrutiny. Some kind of legal supervision of, and on occasion some measure of legal interference with sexual con- duct, in the interests of social welfare, has been a recognized function of the social organism from the earliest dawn of human history. The existence of this function is a funda- mental principle of social life, however varied and difficult it may be in its application. H. G. Wells (A Modern Utopia, ch. vi, Fort. Rev., Feb., 1905) finds considerable difficulty in -maintaining his general position that the State has no concern with the sexual morality of the adult citizen, except in relation to parentage. He imperfectly estimates the influ- ences which afifect the future of the species. His principle in its practical application would seem to foster an increase in the abuse of neomalthusian methods; and by narrowing the social purport of mar- riage would tend to depreciate that institution in the popular esti- mation, and thus to affect unfavorably the future of mankind. It is a more correct description of the State function in this matter, to hold that the State must recognize certain limitations in dealing with se.xual immorality. Wells himself, among his own modifications of the principle he enunciates, allows an aggrieved wife to invoke the assistance of the State in dealing with her husband's adultery. {Cp. the remarks of C. Gasquoine Hartley, op. cit., p. 338.) The inference of present importance is that legal inter- ference is justified in regard to prostitution, when prostitution 174 VEXEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. threatens society's welfare by becoming aggressive,-'^ e.g., by manifesting itself as the chief agent for spreading venereal dis- ease. Such interference, indeed, needs the most careful con- ^Cp. The Social Evil (Putnam), pp. 147 ff., where aggressive methods are described. The suppression of ordinary solicitation in the street presents special difficulty, both in ethical theory and in social practice, as is shown in the same book, p. 87, n. 7; for it may be urged that if the law recognizes limitation to its action in regard of prostitution at all, it must logically recognize such limitation in regard to solicitation, since that is a primary necessity of the pros- titute's trade. It is clear, however, that the principle here laid down — the right of the law to combat aggressive prostitution — does justify arrests for solicitation; for the law has a positive interest in checking the spread of prostitution (the increase of its life proportionately to the general sexual life of the community), and a negative interest in its bare existence. The needful proviso in regard to that prin- ciple is that it shall be discreetly and variably applied. It is an exhibition of social firmness; it does not justify social harshness. If a woman is arrested for soliciting, her case should be dealt with on its general merits. The aim of the law in reference to the life of the community is what has been stated above, its protection against expansive prostitution: in relation to the woman herself, the law, qua law, has no positive aim. Its care in reference to her should be that at least it puts no additional difficulties in the way of the moral reformation of that woman, a reformation which, ex hypothesi, it cannot itself effect, but which may be effected by the instrumentality of the workers of mercy. And it will depend on the particular nature and circumstances of the case whether the sequel of the arrest of the soliciting woman, which will best fulfill above-mentioned posi- tive and negative aims of the law, is a discharge with a caution or a term of detention. Furthermore, just as, in the case of the White Slave business, we noted, as a sign of general moral amelioration, that the traffic is maintained no longer as of old by open, defiant, and forceful methods, but by craft; so it is with prostitution in general. Its open aggressions are by way of being reduced; but its craft is marvellous. It again takes the field under various disguises. Flex- ner (Prostitution in Europe, pp. 306ff.) gives numerous specimens of brothel advertisement afforded by London alone. To watch and repress these attempts, without being driven by panic or impatience into injustice toward the genuine activities with which they pretend to identify themselves, is the duty which devolves on the defenders of morality at this point of the vastly extended battle-line. VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. 1/5 sideration as to its methods and limits. Constant vigilance is requisite lest the mor^l members of the community should be subjected to annoyance and damage at the hands of a morals service w^hich is obliged to use suspicion — the suspicion of the propagation of disease — as one of the chief methods of its working, and stringent measures should be adopted to prevent the willful misdirection of suspicion. Much as these aspects of the matter require thought, the moral question connected with reglementation is still more difficult. The existing intellectual confusion on this subject centers round the attitude which governments, while promoting sani- tary measures with the object of repressing disease, are con- strained to take up in respect of the general question of pros- titution. It goes without saying that if a secular government should adopt a definitely antichristian policy in the handling of social problems, the collective Christian consciousness ought to com- bat such a policy, at least by spiritual methods. Examples of such a policy are forthcoming from the early history of reglementation. The old pagan civilizations attempted reglementation.'* They not only regulated, but fos- tered prostitution. The problem presented to modern govern- ments, such as recognize the impossibility of realizing Chris- tian ideals by legislation, yet determine that legislation shall at least not obstruct their realization, is how to eliminate from reglementation the antichristian factor, the patronage of pros- titution. Would such legislation, it is asked, be immoral, in that, while attempting to remove a physical evil, the result of pros- titution, or at leasf greatly intensified and increased by pros- titution, it leaves prostitution itself still in existence as a social phenomenon? Is it an immoral government which announces its position in the matter thus : "Tlie community may look to 4 Bloch, Die Prostitution, Bd. i, p. 439. 176 VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. us for the suppression of prostitution where it becomes ag- gressive ; where it forces itself upon pu^Hc notice by disorder, by importunity, by disease ; but the wholesale suppression of prostitution cannot be efifected by a civil government with ad- vantage to the morals of the community" ? If this is a tenable position — and to some such position the generality of conscientious thinkers on the subject seem to be arriving,^ it forms a basis on which to frame a policy for opposing preventive legislation to the spread of venereal dis- ease, although in the carrying out of such a policy many com- plicating circumstances would have to be taken into considera- tion, and the practical application of even a just and right theory may prove to be fraught with many difficulties. A good deal of real value attaches ta the aphorism, "Men cannot be made moral by Act of Parliament." Such aphor- isms are usually the fruit of centuries of experience, and this one has a close and important bearing on the matter now under consideration. It seems to allow a government to define its position in the manner suggested above. Are we right, it forces us to ask, in expecting from governments more than comes within the scope of their functions ? They can deal with a matter like the spread of physical disease ; against that they can wield the weapons furnished by human legislation, but the whole vast phenomenon of sexual immorality is more than they can cope with successfully. History demonstrates this ; we have no warrant in human experience for expecting govern- ments to execute work which requires a more delicate moral machinery than theirs, the machinery of personal contact and example, of sympathetic and judicious education, of religious 5 See The Social Evil. The principles of regulation and aboli- tion are now in fact blending in a common policy, and the end of the controversy between them is in sight ; though particular issues may well, for an indefinite time, need watching. The idea of regulation has been greatly modified in its applications. Abolitionism has been extended to include a positive policy. (See esp. Flexner, Prostitu- tion in Europe). VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. 177 influence and control. It is incorrect to imagine that if a government uses its police system with some discrimination as regards prostitution, only employing this weapon in the case already indicated, where prostitution is in one way or another aggressive, it is thereby throwing open the door to illicit sexual love. That door has never been shut through the long ages of human history. No human legislation can shut it. Should any government formulate a contagious diseases policy on lines which this essay is an attempt to indicate, its action need not be construed as implying an acquiescence in the existence of prostitution. It is unnecessary, in the wording of such an act, to use any such phrase as "State toleration" or "recogni- tion" of brothels. *5 The general question of prostitution is not, so far, touched by government. All that we could justly infer from the enunciation of such a policy by a government is that it perceives a limit to its powers and responsibilities in the moral sphere; it recognizes a point beyond which the action of governments cannot go, a region where more subtle forces than those of human legislation can alone effectually operate. The act would not attack the broad principle always recognized by Christian society, that lawful sexual intercourse cannot be found in fornication. It would not be an attempt to weaken the obligation to chastity, imposed by the moral law. It would have to be regarded as nothing more nor less than an attempt to get rid of certain physical evils, frequently affecting innocent persons, which prostitution helps to inten- ^ It seems gratuitous to import any considerations of sophistry here. In a policy such as is here contemplated even the idea of tolera- tion does not become prominent, so long as the State encourages and assists efforts — short of police compulsion — for the general reduction of prostitution. It must not be forgotten that the State is regarded by a large portion of the community as an educator; and its policy, therefore, properly enunciated, while defining the limits of legal action, should not, and I venture to think need not, lend support to what is rightly recognized as a fallacious generalization, the necessity of pros- titution. 12 178 VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. sify and extend. This, the sole aim of such an act, must not be confused by careless wording or strained interpretation, with other issues of the great sexual problem. The general question of prostitution must be approached by education and by moral and religious influence, not by legis- lation. Laws may deal with symptoms of the phenomenon, such as those we have been considering; they may protect to some extent juvenile and helpless classes," but they cannot, in any sweeping, wholesale fashion, abolish fornication. The responsibility for the existence of prostitution rests with indi- viduals, not with governments. It is unwise and dangerous to attempt to shift this responsibility on to the shoulders of gov- ernments. The exact form, including details, which government interference on this question ought to take would vary some- what with circumstances. A great- conflict of opinion is still in progress as to the rights of a system of compulsory ex- amination and detention of persons suffering from venereal disease. Figures and results are pointed to by both sides, with the respective objects of commending and of discrediting the system. So far as the figures are accessible to the present writer, they seem to prove, not that the principle of compul- sion by government in this matter is wrong, but that right methods of applying that principle and embodying it in legisla- tion have as yet been only partially discovered. Some of the past legislative experiments for the suppression of venereal diseases appear to have failed to produce satisfactory results because, as in France, they have been made in such a way as to weaken the claims of morality ; others because in them the principle of compulsion has been applied with too little tact and discrimination, as formerly in Sweden, or in regard of one sex to the exclusion of the other, as formerly in England. This, then, is the point at which to enlarge our considera- "^ Governments are, in fact, learning by experiment how to per- form this function. K. Rupprecht compares the French with the German methods, in Die N. G., Jahrg. 10, Heft 2. VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. 179 tion of the argument already referred to, that apart from the consideration of statistics and results, the principle now under discussion is inherently wrong. It is urged that a government cannot place venereal diseases on the same footing as other diseases for treatment, because in the case of venereal diseases a moral question is involved. There is an element of truth in this ; but it must not be inferred that governments are to have no hand at all in the treatment and remedy of venereal diseases. So long as a gov- ernment, to the best of its power, refrains from touching the moral question, so long as it avoids the reality or even the ap- pearance of becoming a purveyor of clean prostitutes for the lust of immoral persons,^ there seems no reason why it should not undertake the task of healing diseased ones by a hospital system in the working of which a principle of compulsion con- stitutes a factor. The older method of employing this prin- ciple was simple detention, the lock hospital ; the humaner feeling and larger knowledge of today enforce submission to treatment by exhibiting the dangers involved in going without it. These dangers may include some kind of disability, or in some countries punishment, consequent on the patient becom- ing a source of infection ; so that while the hospital manage- ment cannot order a patient to stay, they may show with reason ■^ Or of a landlord or licensing agent of buildings, whether brothels or houses of accommodation, in which the business of pros- titution is to proceed unchecked. But the proposal made by C. Booth (Life and Labor, final vol., pp. 128ff.) is so framed as to be free from this objection. It is on the negative side that reglementation seems ethically justifiable. Prohibitions should be the basis of the policy. The State should proceed by directly forbidding and re- pressing prostitution in any of its aggressive aspects, yet not by in any way indicating the directions in which prostitution can maintain itself without coming into collision with the law. The onus of dis- covering those directions should rest with the persons interested in prostitution. In short, while the State cannot directly suppress forni- cation, it may so frame its contagious diseases policy as not only not to encourage, but indirectly to discourage it and to make it more diffi- cult of access. 180 VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. that imprisonment or expulsion will be the probable conse- quences of leaving or giving up attendance. Respect for liberty need not carry us farther than that ; in fact, it is diffi- cult not to think tha't larger powers of detention, if exercised discreetly and in conjunction with more far-reaching activities, might again prove valuable in solving the venereal and, we may add, the somewhat analogous inebriate question. For example, in the case of the cantonments of troops in India, it does not fall within the competence of the authorities to preclude entirely the existence of prostitution within the cantonment.^ It is not possible for them to make sure of the character and motives of every native woman who wishes to reside in the cantonment or its proximity. It is only when, by disease or solicitation or self-advertisement or other method, prostitution becomes aggressive, that they can directly attack it. Even then, under the existing regulations, the atti- tude of the authorities is in the highest degree forbearing toward misdoing, sympathetic with infirmity, careful of liberty. The only hold over venereal patients permitted to the manage- ment of hospitals is the kind of quasi-compulsion just referred to; an infected woman, for example, must either submit to treatment or be expelled from the cantonment. While the patient has been under treatment every pos- sible facility should have been given to clergy and benevolent persons to consider the moral aspect of the particular case, and to bring good influence to bear in the direction and by the methods which may seem most expedient and most likely to ensure success.!^ If any course of medical treatment is known 9 The most thoroughgoing abolitionists recognize the impos- sibility of suppressing prostitution entirely. The correspondence given in the pamphlet, Our Army in India, closes on the abolitionist side with the admission that it was not proposed to prohibit the residence of prostitutes within cantonment limits, but only to suppress brothels, i.e., collective organizations. The distinction is not clear, and does not constitute a satisfactory principle of action. 10 Commenting on the special difificulties of rescue work, Booth (Life and Labor, final vol., pp. 126, 127) observes that a sense of sin VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. 181 to be effectual in diminishing sexual desire, and to be other- wise harmless, that too should be employed. It is when the period of detention under medical supervision is over, then comes in the danger that the action of the authorities, if the case be shown meanwhile to be that of a known prostitute, may clash with the interests of morality. If a prostitute, cured of venereal disease, is again allowed to enter a canton- ment which she may have frequented previously to her admis- sion to hospital, it may be argued with considerable cogency that by extending such permission the authorities thereby place themselves in a false position — that of purveyors of clean prostitutes, to facilitate the indulgence of the troops in forni- cation. On the other hand, if the prostitute, when cured, is forbidden to enter the cantonment or tO' approach within a certain distance from its boundaries, under penalties likely to prove a sufficient deterrent, it is hard to see how the govern- ing power can in such a case have exceeded its right, the right of combating aggressive prostitution ; or how it can have made light of the moral question 'with which venereal disease is associated. Therefore, as regards Indian prostitutes, who form a caste, it would seem that, in any case, once a prostitute has been before the authorities in that character, she ought, cured or not cured, to be forbidden that particular cantonment. If expelled uncured she should be and is reported elsewhere as is little discoverable among prostitutes. The moral perceptions are dull to begin with, in the class from which prostitutes are ordinarily recruited, and even the first fall evokes little but a vague feeling of shame and loss. Still, according to the same writer, even profes- sional prostitutes manifest often a considerable dissatisfaction and disgust with their position, a general sense of degradation. Here, it would seem, is the readiest approach to the prostitute's inner self, with its dormant potentialities of good. The lady already referred to, in conversation with the author, emphasized the value of letting the lowest prostitute feel that in the social strata above her own there existed some degree of real, even if ineffective, interest in her re- demption and welfare. 182 VENEREAL DISEASE AND LEGISLATION. an infected, i.c.^ presumably dangerous and aggressive prosti- tute. If discharged cured it might be prudent to notify the authorities of other cantonments of the fact ; but it would no longer be necessary to warn against her as aggressive in the sense contemplated in the present chapter. That point would be a matter for the vigilance of the other cantonments afore- said ; if indeed the woman ever got to them at all. The policy to be adopted for dealing with prostitution in cities will not be in every detail the same as that which might be applied in cantonments. It might not be possible to expel cured prostitutes from the city, but a special watch could be kept over women who had been discharged from a hospital, and who during their residence there had been discovered and proved to be prostitutes. It would indeed be immoral to issue to such women a government certificate of health, as this would amount to sanctioning their trade ; but the authorities might keep a private register of these cases, as being suspicious and dangerous, likely to develop and spread disease ; in other words, likely to become aggressive. ^^ The function of the state in this matter seems to extend thus far. It was somewhat on these lines that reglementation was reorganized in Berlin in 1846. The authors of The Social Evil draw particular attention to the fact that government in- terference with the control of prostitution did not cease at that date, though they assumed forms less exceptionable from a moral point of view than the previous ones.i- But the Berlin morals and sanitary service of 1846 did not receive a fair trial. It was not worked with proper thoroughness and en- li This is the method in England. The London police are in- structed to report the names of women acting like prostitutes (Flex- ner. Prostitution in Europe, p. 302). Such registration is, from the abolitionist point of view, unexceptional ; because under this system it is not permitted to inscribed prostitutes to do things which are for- bidden to the uninscribed. Measures are taken, not against pros- titutes as such, but against forms of prostitutional aggression (id. op., pp. 289, 296). 12 The Social Evil, pp. 48, 49. HEALTH CERTIFICATION. 183 thusiasm; and later on there was a return to more doubtful methods. Viewed, however, in conjunction with the recom- mendations of the Committee of Fifteen in The Social Evil, the Berlin policy of 1846 must be welcomed as giving a prece- dent for a state treatment of the problem of prostitution by methods which both moralists and sanitary reformers can unite in developing and rendering more efficacious. There has at length been evolved in Norway, in connec- tion with the venereal question, a policy to which, in view of its restrained application of the principle of compulsion, not even the Abolitionist Federation, with all its anxious vigilance, appears to take exception. i-'' A similar system obtains in Denmark.!-'' It will be generally admitted that Forel's description^-^ of the terrible evils of prostitution is by no means overdrawn, and the methods 'of reglementation he describes are doubtless to be condemned as inadequate ; but his indictment, considered in relation to his admission that nothing but a gradual diminu- tion of prostitution can be expected from any policy, proves no more than that the State, in dealing with this phenomenon, must define its own moral position distinctly. We are brought no farther, in fact, than the general position taken up in the present chapter. Another question, to which attention has of late been im- peratively called in more than one work of literary art^-^^ — venereal disease in relation to marriage, calls for consideration before the conclusion of the present chapter. Several modern writers recommend that men should be required to obtain a medical certificate of freedom from syphilis, gonorrhea, or 12a See Morals and Public Health, Report of the 1914 Conference of the International Abolitionist Federation, pp. 348f. 12b H. Ellis, op. cit., p. 344. 13 Forel. op. cit., pp. 286ff. (ed. 10, pp. 337 f(.). 13a One of the most powerful of these is Brieux's play, Les Avaries. It is now published in La Feuille Litteraire, and can be bought for a penny. 184 HEALTH CERTIFICATION. other contagious disease of the genitals, before receiving the state hcense to marry. The suggestion is attractive, as it re- moves the reproach often brought against the sanitary service, that it deals only with women in the matter of venereal disease. Such a measure as the examination of men before mar- riage would indeed require careful safeguarding. All attempts to institute legal hindrances to marriage and establish a state- enforced celibacy are of doubtful expediency, and need special consideration. The decision of one state-appointed medical officer should not be final in a matter of this kind; a subject who believes his certificate wrongly withheld should have some right of appeal. The physical examination should not be ex- tended to cover other general morbid conditions, e.g., phthis- ical conditions, nor even to include weakness of the genital organs ; for partial impotence in the male, the result of mas- turbation or nervous strain, tends to recover itself in the mar- ried state. 1^ But with such safeguards, the suggestion seems right and feasible enough. Such a physical examination before mar- riage could not indeed safely be extended to women ; for many of the best women would probably be deterred from marriage altogether by the thought of having to undergo this ordeal. At any rate, even granting (as statistics adduced by Neisser demand) the existence of a number of venereal patients among female candidates for marriage, the time is not yet ripe, the sexual education of the community not yet sufficiently ad- vanced, the number of women doctors not yet -large enough, to encourage the consideration of such a proposal in regard to 14 Although medical science, as expounded by Posner (Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 728, 729), sees in extreme stages of sexual weakness, when the exciting causes have been a long time in operation, a contraindication to marriage, it would be inadvisable to give this view a severe social expression ; for the reason that the percentage of such cases does not seem large enough in this class of sexual infirmity, nor the lines of demarcation between fitness and unfitness for marriage sufficiently pronounced, to justify the imposition of legal disabilities. HEALTH CERTIFICATION. 185 women. But men would not be oversensitive in such a matter, any more than they would shrink from a medical examination as a preliminary to life insurance. And even in cases where the certificate is withheld, a temporary celibacy only would frequently be required; seldom would it happen that the State required of anyone a permanent abstinence from marriage — a principle which, as already affirmed', is undesirable and un- workable. On a purely medical question, a non-medical writer must speak with a due sense of his limitations. The optimistic judgment given above is perhaps only justified (as concerns gonorrhea, and the posi- tion is analogous in regard to syphilis) if we take up the position of Neisser, who holds (Senator and Kaminer, vol. ii, pp. 495ff.) that so long as after the most exhaustive examination possible, gonococci do not reveal themselves, infection is not to be anticipated, though its possibility cannot categorically be denied ; and marriage is conse- quently permissible ; inasmuch as marriages have frequently been re- corded in which some of the secondary effects of gonorrhea con- tinued, without communication of the disease resulting. Even if medical science can do no more than affirm the improbability of in- fection, the principle of certification would be useful as ensuring that diseased men had submitted themselves to expert and adequate treat- ment before marriage; and a check would at least be placed on the reckless and selfish marriage of such persons. It is certainly impor- tant to emphasize that any such measures as are here in question, should be based on the most lenient principle and administered in the most liberal spirit possible, consistent with a reasonable degree of efficaciousness. And in spite of Neisser's objection, it would seem that the State could look after this matter better than the intending parties to a marriage themselves. Many women, from want of realizing the im- portance of the issue involved, and from the emotional power of their own erotic passion, would not be deterred from marrying a man, even if he had to show them an unsatisfactory certificate of 'health. They would decide the point from subjective considerations. The State on the other hand would look to an objective standard of health, — ex hypothesi, the demonstrable absence of gonococci, — in permitting men to marry. Obviously, to require a certificate of freedom from the said morbid conditions before marriage would not entirely 186 HEALTH CERTIFICATION. solve the question of venereal disease among men ; for these diseases are frequently contracted as a result of adultery; but this latter aspect of the matter must be considered in connec- tion with the dissolubility of marriage. It should be estab- lished as a broad principle of action that persons of either sex, married or single, who transmit venereal disease may be legally restrained and confined for treatment. If cases of syphilis in infants were required to be reported by doctors, it would become more practicable to detect the existence of venereal disease in marriage and to bring measures to bear upon it. Although the principle of compulsion, in reference to notification, to the detention of infected persons or the pro- hibition of their marrying, is viewed with little favor by many who are well qualified to speak, it does not seem wholly dis- credited. Society is undoubtedly right in showing firmness toward people who refuse the curative aid which science has enabled it to offer, and selfishly continue to disseminate disease of this kind. Nevertheless, voluntary submission to regulations having the suppression of venereal disease as their object is in every w^ay preferable to compulsion. i-' Not only should patients feel that if they willingly fall in with the regulations they are consulting their own best interests as regards health, but they should know that registration and treatment will be conducted with proper privacy and consideration. i^ These are especially 15 Uneducated men, as would naturally be expected, show less readiness than the educated in availing themselves of medical assist- ance to ascertain their marriageableness, in view of their having con- tracted venei'eal diseases. Neisser, it is true, considers that the dis- semination of right knowledge has produced an improvement in this respect in the last twenty years. But the question still presses whether legislation might not embody some general principle in re- gard to the certification of sexual health as a necessary preliminary to marriage. 16 The following are among the suggestions which have been made in the direction of leniency of treatment : to abandon oppro- HEALTH CERTH^ICATIOX. 187 necessary in regard to married patients. The innocent partner (probably the wife) would in many cases dread shame and discord more than actual disease; and so would assist the hus- band in hiding his sin, to the great physical detriment of them both. It is urged — apart from the special question of a marriage certificate of health — that the tradition of secrecy in medical ethics would be a hindrance to the treatment of male patients by compulsory periodic examination. Doctors, when con- sulted by a male venereal patient who might have received the contagion from one fall and be otherwise of good char- acter, would shrink from breaking a confidence and so bring- ing shame, not merely on the patient himself, but on the inno- cent household to which he belongs. His case seems to demand greater privacy and consideration than that of a known prosti- tute. But here the tradition of secrecy, excellent in itself, be- comes of dubious worth. In a matter of such grave sanitary importance, society, acting through the doctors as its executive, cannot afford to be too considerate, i" Cases of venereal dis- brious designations for venereal hospitals and wards, in the same way as the term "mental hospital" is now often substituted for "asylum" ; to refrain from harassing inquiries as to the occasion of infection ; to employ the out-patient system as far as is prudent ; and, generally, to make it clear that the cure, not the detention, of patients is the pri- mary object of a hospital system, and to make all aspects of the process of treatment as effectively remedial and as little penal as possible. Such measures would encourage the voluntary seeking ot treatment ; and some of them might be made conditional upon that course being chosen. 1" Nothing, however, is farther from my intention than to de- preciate medical secrecy. It is far too valuable to be spoken of with anything but reverence. It is a tradition to be conserved with as little modification as possible, if any. In the notification of venereal diseases it is not always necessary that names should go beyond the doctor consulted (Cp. H. Ellis, . cit., vol. vi, p. 343). There is room here for the working of the discretionary factor. Suppose a qualified doctor has a given number of cases under treatment. Society, expressing itself through the morals service or centra! 188 A WORK OF MERCY. ease should be reported to a central authority. A properly organized morals service should be able to deal with cases as they arise, with all possible privacy, tact, and consideration. And after all, innocent households frequently have to sutler shame in many forms from the delinquencies of particular members. Often, too, in spite of their innocence, such house- holds are not so much to be pitied on these occasions as they seem. A misdemeanor in the family involving medical treat- ment or legal action, has usually its roots in the folly, igno- rance, sloth, or misdirected tenderness of the parents. The sexual education of their children is, as we have seen, a para- mount duty of parents; and such education must of course include a warning given opportunely against the various forms of venereal disease, and about the ill-health and dis- abilities contagion involves — a warning which does not always relieve from the duty of further watchfulness. I have dealt elsewhere with sexual education, which, as Ellis observes, is the final and most important factor in the resolution of the social problems of sex. The present is not the place to deal with it in extcnso. But the following illus- tration of this work of mercy^'^ may be found instructive, — all the more so, as containing an element of surprise : — I was told that a boy in whom I was interested was likely to be sent to a situation in Paris ; and was further told that he was quite "innocent" in the popular sense, i.e., ignorant of sex- ual things. I thought the latter assertion very improbable, for I knew he had been about a great deal with boys and men ; and I had myself spoken to him, though in no great detail, about these things, when preparing him for Confirmation. authority, has confidence, ccctcris paribus, in him. Only it expects him to protect itself, as well as succor his patient; and some societies penalize the doctor if he ignores the former duty. If, therefore, he has good reason for doubting whether a patient is so far following his directions as to be innocuous to society, he may elect to report that patient by name. IS To instruct the ignorant is the first spiritual work of mercy, according to the Catholic scheme. A WORK OF MERCY. 189 However, as I did not remember just how much I had said or how far he had taken it in, I sent for him, and soon got into the subject. I found, as I expected, that my inform- ant's estimate of his ignorance was quite wrong. The boy knew about the danger of venereal disease. He quoted the French colloquial term for gonorrhea. He knew about the French system of licensing brothels. I told him that as he was going out into the world I was glad he knew about these matters ; and that I had been uneasy, thinking he didn't know enough to be on his guard. He thanked me, as young people nearly always do, when they see that an older person is trying to advise them well and truly about things of such close concern. Then I asked who had told him about these things. He said it was the French workmen in whose company he was continually. "They talk about these things a great deal ; but then you know Fm lucky to have met those that talk about them in the right way." I agreed with him, and said I thought that spoke well for his friends among the French workmen. Then he said, "And women talk about these things quite openly in this country." He told me that one day in the office a young married lady had spoken to him about coming to Paris, and had gone on to warn him freely and fully about the sexual dangers. He said, with a smile, 'T don't know how she could speak of it all to me ; but she did" ; and he seemed to think that she had done it very well. I said, "There's one thing about that you ought to think of. It must have been difficult for her, as you say, to speak of such things to a young fellow ; and she wouldn't have said all that to you, if she hadn't seen that you are trustworthy and right-minded, and would take it respectfully from her. So don't you forget that conversation. When women trust us, it puts us on our honor." 190 A WORK OF MERCY. It was thus I tried to follow up and confirm the work of mercy which the young French lady had boldly done. For a fine model of instruction for men on this subject, we may cite Lord Kitchener's Memorandum for soldiers, printed in the Soldier's Small Book.i^ 19 See Our Army in India, published by the British Abolitionist Federation. CHAPTER XII. Further Applications of the Principle of Responsibility. Suspected Increase of Immorality in Australasia — Causes of In- crease— Some Proposed Remedies — Age of Consent — Removal of Dis- abilities from Illegitimates — Legitimation — Registration in the Man's Name. Even yet the moment has not arrived in our present study, when illicit heterosexual relations, the aspect of the sex life which has hitherto claimed the largest share of our attention, can be quitted for another part of the subject. The following chapter was written some years ago, when the author was resi- dent in New Zealand and to some extent in touch with Australasian life; and although its interest is by consequence primarily local, it is retained as a contribution to the discus- sion of certain points hitherto undealt with in this work. An increase of illicit intercourse, apart from prostitution, has been suspected in the British Australasian Colonies, per- haps elsewhere ; and it faces society with a menace which fre- quently engages a good deal of popular attention in the news- papers and elsewhere.! 1 After careful inquiry the writer finds sufficient evidence that of recent years intercourse out of wedlock has tended toward an actual increase in parts of Australasia. Trustworthy evidence is derivable mainly from the statistics of birth ; and the question as to the increase of illicit intercourse in proportion to the growth of population is not easily settled, owing to the undoubted prevalence among married peo- ple of the practice of prevention already referred to. Having been absent from the Southern Hemisphere for more than ten years I am unable to follow up the above line of inquiry any further. But since the foregoing observation has been regarded by Dr. Havelock Ellis (Studies, vol. vi, p. 385) as evidence of the development of a new ethical theory in the sex life, a theory according to which both se.xes, emancipated from tradition, freely claim sex rights, wantonness and (191) 192 PROBLEMS OF SEXUAL RESPONSIBILITY. As has been already said, there is small reason for think- ing that the sexual instinct has undergone any general modi- fication in modern civilized humanity ; on the contrary, amid the increasing complexity of life's conditions many causes con- tribute, more powerfully than formerly, to exaggerate sex- uality. To enumerate and classify these causes, and to dis- tinguish the diverse methods and the varying degrees of power with which they act on particular classes, is no easy task. If an increase of unchastity is noticeable in the cultured and brain-taxing class, it will not be due to the very same causes as a similar increase in the laboring class ; at any rate, the action of these causes will be somewhat different in the two cases. In a high state of civilization, the brain-taxing class, experiencing no diminution of desire, would find the control and suppression of it add greatly toi their existing mental and physical strain ; and unless the extra will-power requisite to meet the increased strain could be developed by religious or other influences, the conditions of the case would inevitably foster an increase of unchastity in that class. The sons of manual toil, on the other hand, would not have to endure the same nerve-strain as the brain-workers, in relation to the control of sexuality; nor perhaps would their conditions of life develop among them habitually excessive excess being averted by a balancing sense of personal responsibility, it is well to add that though the inference may have an element of truth, it was not in my own mind when the above conclusion was formed. Although there certainly existed, and may well exist now, a large amount of sexual looseness in Australasia, the conscience of the people was conservative enough to condemn it, and to urge them — as Coghlan, whom Ellis proceeds to cite, shows — to remedy it and atone for it by marriage. There were no important signs that Australasian society was moving in the direction of forming any theory radically or fundamentally different from the governing theories of the older exist- ing civilizations; though it is true that those newer civilizations are more ready than the old to accept modifications and adaptations — in re- lation to such questions as divorce and marriage prohibitions — of the traditional theories. PROBLEMS OF SEXUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 193 desire. As regards certain regions — as the British Austra- lasian Colonies, for example — considerable allowance must be made for the general departure of the growing population from the physical type which is their heritage, for particular evil influences of heredity, which may be specially strong and, as it were, concentrated in certain regions; and for climate — causes which may conceivably do much to disturb and exagger- ate the sexual function and passion. Apart from these, one would have to seek for the cause of an increase of unchastity in the weakening of some extraneous controlling influence. The chief influence which is weakened with this disastrous result is usually considered to emanate from two kindred sources, parental control and religious fear. In this connection, the Bishop of Carpentaria wrote in 1901 of Australian society, primarily of the bush settlers : "With no religious principle to restrain and guide, we cannot wonder that vices prevail to an appalling extent. I should put these, in the order -of prevalence, as impurity, gambling, and drink. The first-named sin is eating out the heart and destroying the vitality of the Australian race. It is the national sin. . "I once asked an intelligent layman to try and obtain for me some estimate of the extent of Australian immorality. When I next saw him, he said, 'I am so utterly appalled by the extent of the evil that I have come to the deliberate opinion that it is useless to take any steps against it.' But the Church of Christ can never admit this position."ia One hesitates about venturing an opinion as to how far the lack of religious instruction in schools is responsible for the growth of sexual immorality among the youth of a country where such instruction is not given. The recognition of religion in schools may indeed be considered to have a vast indirect and ultimate good effect upon morals ; but general religious teaching will not, in any case, do all that is required. It would be easy to discover and point to a great number of schools filled by English-speaking youth, where the Scriptures are systematically taught, where prayer is held and sacraments 1* The Australasian Intercollegian, vol. iv. No. 9, p. 2. 194 PROBLEMS OF SEXUAL RESPONSIBILITY. are celebrated, where duly qualified clergy have scope for their influence and ministrations; but which, if conclusions may be drawn from evidence possessed by many, but used by few, are on no higher level, in respect of sexual morality, than schools which have not these advantages. In point of fact, no amount of teaching on other branches of ethics can render needless the watchfulness over sexual development, and teaching to correspond with it, which is here desiderated. Emphasis is sometimes laid on one of the aforesaid sources of moral influence, in this connection, sometimes on the other ; but they are in truth closely united, and the weaken- ing of the disciplinary influence which comes from them is a lax development of what is in the main true and good, the modern movement of thought and feeling in the direction of a greater appreciation and realization of moral freedom, and a deeper insight into moral problems. For the trend of modern ethical thought, however much of truth and greatness it may contain on its higher' side, has, like all stages of human ad- vance, a false aspect. On the one hand thoughtful, pious, and conscientious people feel themselves to be receivers of an in- estimable blessing in the outpouring of the illuminating Spirit — for such we reverently hope the modern thought-movement in the main to be — which has made it possible to consider the development of morality and the power of religious sanctions from hitherto unnoticed -points of view ; which has shown how and where and how far to make allowance for the cir- cumstances which surround particular breaches of the moral law; which has revealed the working of secret laws of love and mercy in dark depths of human depravity from which our forefathers believed the Divine Spirit to be forever excluded ; which has immensely widened the horizon of our hopes ; which has freed religion from a vast amount of gloomy horror, and parental discipline from much morbid savagery. But on the other hand, with the unthinking multitude, in their partial survey of this growth of ideas and with their PROBLEMS OF SEXUAL RESPONSIBILITY. 195 feeble power of appreciating its true meaning, false notions of moral freedom are easily developed at a time like the present,- and these are the unhealthy and dangerous elements in the modern reaction against the harshness and savagery and igno- rance, which in bygone generations darkened religion and infused bitterness and unkindness into the family relation. It must not be inferred, however, that to counteract mod- ern unhealthy symptoms and lax developments, there is requisite a sweeping condemnation of the present trend of ethical thought and feeling. What is needed is the effort to discern clearly the actual points at which sexual immorality is most successfully encroaching on the life of modern society, the causes which render particular classes of people specially or increasingly liable to specific forms of immorality; the methods by which vice is fostered, hardened, organized, de- veloped ; the evil factors in human nature which take advan- tage of the inevitable complications and difficulties of life to wrest and distort ethical doctrines savoring of freedom into acquiescence in moral remissness and criminal self-indulgence. It must be by a carefully considered strategy, based on a clear and discriminating view of the situation, that the encroach- ments of impurity on the health and morals of society are met. The forces of purity require to be to some extent redistributed, massed according to a modified scheme. Another possible factor in the increase of immorality in Australasia will be the lack of a sufficient number of upper- class women to act as a salutary leaven in the democratic com- munities. That a fast set exists among the higher social classes 2 Cp. Beale, Our Morality, p. 165 : "While it is undoubtedly true that some kinds of knowledge are spreading at a greater rate, and entering more widely and more deeply than at any previous time, it is doubtful whether the disposition to think over important questions is as general as it was, while that invaluable mental acquisition known as judgment is probably more rare than in times when information and knowledge were less widely diffused." For other causes of the weakening of parental control, see Booth, Life and Labor, final vol., pp. 42, 43. 196 AGE OF CONSENT, of women is not to be denied ; but it is certain that the EngHsh gentlewomen, as a body, have nobly maintained a high stand- ard of fe'minine virtue and dignity, and have set a fine example in this respect to other social grades. Virtue has been strength- ened by the maxim, "noblesse oblige." The weakening of this influence in Australasia may assist looseness of morals among the rank and file of young women in those parts. The criticisms already made in this volume upon co- education need also to be considered here. A favorite theory among women is that protection will be given to their own sex, and benefit accrue to morals generally, if the age of consent is considerably raised — fixed, as some advocate, at twenty-one years. A thorough study of legislation on the age of consent, and of its history, and a comparison of the forms it has taken iii various countries, has not been possible for the author of this essay.3 Yet it must be observed that to give such a measure of protection to female virtue as is desiderated by some seems to lie beyond the functions of the State. It is for the State, in- deed, to protect helpless classes in the community against the ravages of impurity; but where persons of a responsible age and condition are concerned, nothing can be more unwise than to attempt to transfer the responsibility for moral delinquen- cies from individuals to the State. It is right to emphasize the danger of fixing the age of consent too high."^ The moral effect on the minds of young women of 16 to 21 years of age, and the consequent social disturbance, would be disastrous, if they knew that without heavy consequences to themselves as 3 This history is sketched and a bibliography given, by K. Mar- tens, in the Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenschaft, vol. i, No. 4. There is besides, a full discussion, principally in relation to homosexuality, in Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat, pp. 989fif. 3a Howard's contention {op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 19Sff.) that 21, or at lowest 18, should be the legal age, is trenchantly criticised by Havelock Ellis, Studies, vol. vi, pp. 528ff. AGE OF CONSENT. 197 regards social condemnation, they could gratify unlawfully their sexual passions. And, further, such legislation would afford room for cases of gross miscarriage of justice in respect of young male partners in fornication, cases of a nature so obvious that it needs no explanatory comment. In short, it is extremely difficult to draw a fair line of legal demarcation between responsible and irresponsible classes in respect of illicit intercourse; and the section of public opin- ion in a democracy which looks for the solution of this diffi- culty in the constant raising of the age of consent by the legis- lature, is pushing its responsible rulers toward somewhat dangerous ground. As soon as such legislation fails to recog- nize the existence of a sufficiently developed moral will in the female offender, of her power of willfully attracting the male's desirous regard,^^ of the possibility of her entertaining other bad motives than those to which the animal instinct itself gives rise, and regards her as the passive and irresponsible instru- ment of the man's indulgence, its principle becomes seriously unsound. To fix the age of consent much above the time in a girl's life when puberty becomes distinctly marked, seems to conflict with nature's declared intention in the matter, viz., to allow within the individual of either sex, as soon as a certain age has been passed, the experience of sexual desire, and the free action of the will in regard to the gratification or denial of that desire. If there is a period past puberty when doubt exists as to the moral responsibility of the female, the governing power that punishes the male offender ought at least to assert its right to treat each case on its merits as regards the female, to provide for her detention — where the circumstances after proper investigation seem to call for it — in a suitable institu- 3b This power is exercised not infrequently in unlawful directions. "We women have got to remember," says C. Gasquoine Hartley, "that if many of our fallen sisters have been seduced by men, at least an equal number of men have received their sexual initiation at the hands of our sex." (The Truth about Woman, p. 364.) For cases in illus- tration, see H. Ellis, Studies, vol. iii, ed. 2, pp. 279, 290. 198 LEGITIMATION. tion, or for the punishment of her parents or guardians, if her immoraHty is shown to be largely attributable to their neglect. The removal of disabilities and a social stigma from the offspring of illicit unions is sometimes made a subject of dis- cussion. It is impossible here to accord to this proposal the careful consideration it merits: It may be observed that the existence of such a stigma and its accompanying legal disa- bilities is due to the instinctive desire of a rightly organized society to defend itself against an increase of illegitimacy. The presence of an injustice inherent in this fact cannot indeed be denied; but it is an injustice seemingly inevitable, like others which occur under the operation of the law of heredity — a part of the present imperfect order of things. And a rash en- deavor to abolish the stigma and disabilities of illegitimacy would injure the moral sense and weaken the foundations of society. Nevertheless, seeing that those natural and social laws whose operation is harshest are not intended to act with a rigid uniformity, the frequent softening of society's severe regard of illegitimacy, by merciful considerations, is not to be regretted. The regulations under which in any country illegitimacy is placed certainly deserve attentive study from time to time on the part of thoughtful and moral members of the community, with a view to possible modification in detail, as the outcome of sentiment at once healthy and increasingly humane, on the subject. The Legitimation Act of 1894 in New Zealand, which makes provision for the legitimation of children born before marriage, on the subsequent marriage of their parents, seems based on the extension of a sound ethical principle — the possibility of recovering a forfeited position or privileges, by making amends for a piece of wrongdoing^ — so as to apply 4 As regards the heredity of illegitimates, I understand that ac- cording to some investigations carried out by French savants (La Revue, July, 1902), no average congenital inferiority for illegitimates can be demonstrated. LEGITIMATION. 199 it not merely to the wrongdoers, but to those who are injuri- ously affected as to social status by their act. Society, while it rightly maintains a jealous watch against the introduction and subsequent incorporation by law into its system, of senti- ments and ideas subversive of the moral sense which refuses to consider extra-marital relations as a recognized social cus- tom, is not justified in disallowing any sort of efficacious re- pentance on the part of offenders against its laws. From the short experience which New Zealand has had of a Legitima- tion Act we do not draw the inference that an increase of 'illegitimacy has been caused, or is likely to be caused, by it. But it is perhaps needless to develop further in these pages the foregoing line of thought. Society's increasing proneness to soften its regard of the stigma of illegitimacy is sufficiently evident, and already in some danger of exceeding the bounds of prudence. Such a questionable tendency is per- haps visible in recent Russian legislation on illegitimacy, as given in the Australasian Rcviczc of Rczicws for September, 1902. In another part of this essay some reflections are made on the baseness and cowardice with which some men contrive to escape their share of the responsibilities consequent on an act of illicit intercourse followed by conception. But these re- sponsibilities cannot always be brought home to them by moral influences ; and it is difficult to see by what means the selfish- ness of individuals can be effectually visited upon them. The obvious consideration at once arises that all attempts to introduce legal or social penalties for libertinism have the effect of causing people of loose principles to avoid with greater care and ingenuity, not the sin itself, but the concep- tion which may follow it. IS^or is this the only difficulty. Say what we will about it, we have to recognize that in the order of nature it is easier for a man to escape the inconvenience of illicit parentage — while enjoying the foregoing pleasure — than for the woman. Doubt- less in the economy of the universe, in the evolution of moral- 200 REGISTRATION OF ILLEGITIMATES. . ity, there is some good reason for this ; in any case there is a special risk of social disorder in applying legislation to the change of social conditions which go back to fundamental principles. For instance, that illegitimate children should be registered in the father's name sounds a simple proposal ; but in reality it contains at least two formidable difficulties : first, the frequent reluctance of women pregnant from illicit inter- course to disclose the male partner's name, a reluctance arising from an instinct which, however unpractical it may appear, has yet much of moral beauty about it ; and second, the facility w^ith which, unless such registration were adequately safe- guarded, conspiracies could be formed by women of a type different from the one just mentioned, to ruin and blackmail innocent men. Cases are met with — one would hope they are not widely representative — in which the girl, though not a pro- fessional prostitute, has frankly admitted that she does not know who is the father of her child. In what spirit, and with what regard to truth, such a girl would be likely to avail her- self of a law permitting her to register her child in a man's name, may be conjectured. It is not probable that the fear of a heavy penalty consequent on a conviction for conspiracy to defame would deter a badly disposed woman — for women do not ordinarily calculate the chances of the future very carefully — from making a false declaration of a man's name, with a view to having it registered as that of the father of her child. Full solutions of these difficulties will be hard to come by. The present writer has little or no light to throw upon them, and would merely make the suggestion that supposing registra- tion in the man's name to be adopted in principle, it might be preferable that the legal proceedings (where the paternity is denied) having this registration for their object, should be initiated, not by the woman herself or her relatives, but on her or their application, by such agents as the authorities in charge of the maternity home to which she may have been admitted, or by special committees of purity guilds. This may seem a cumbrous method of obtaining the registration, and the mechan- REGISTRATION OF ILLEGITIMATES. 201 ism of it would require careful adjustment in detail; but there seems to be value in the principle that the first view of the case would be taken by disinterested experts, whose sole objects would be justice, morality, and the assertion of the rights of women. On the whole, the proposal to register in the man's name is not in any case much of an advance on the present con- dition of things ; by the very fact of its existence it may stir up forces to counteract its own operation ; but the proposal is the outcome of a growing desire in society for greater justice, and points toward what is certainly a moral desideratum, the social ostracism of an obdurate male offender. CHAPTER XIII. Marriage. Various Doctrines of Marriage — Rationale of Sexual Desire — Intercourse During Pregnancy — Aversion During Menstruation — Con- trol of Desire — Frigidity — Mutual Consideration — Hygiene — A Parable Interpreted. Our view of the circumstances, conditions and problems of marriage has already made it abundantly clear that men will not all find the fruit of physical pleasure therein sweet with the same measure of delight, or to be plucked with the same freedom from care. In medieval thought, as we have already had occasion to observe, sexual intercourse even in matrimony was regarded as in some measure sinful though venial, unless it took place solely with a view to procreation. i Peter Lom- bard may be taken as the exponent of this opinion : his judg- ment is that where (in matrimony) there is "copulation beyond the purpose of generation, it is not good. . . . For necessary copulation with a view to procreation is blameless, and this alone is nuptial copulation. But that copulation which exceeds this necessity belongs to the domain, not of reason, but of lust ; and it is the, duty of a consort not to require this for himself or herself, but when it is required by the other party, to grant it, lest the other may be driven to fornication. If only one partner feels this, ex hypothesi, excessive desire and claims its gratification, the blame rests with that partner ; the other, though consenting, is innocent. But if both are subject to such desire, they do that which is not a function of marriage."!" It is admitted, however, by this school of moralists that 1 This doctrine was a legacy from the later Judaism (Lueken, in Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, Bd. ii, p. 14). la Lombard, Sentences, 1. iv, dist. xxxi, sec. 7. (202) MARRIAGE. 203 such copulation is venial. "Marriage," according to Augus- tine, "does not compel the commission of the sexual act minus the procreative intent ; but it obtains pardon for it even in such circumstances." Dr. Trail somewhat similarly enunciates a circumscribed doctrine of marriage. "It ought," he says, "to be understood by all men and women that the sexual embrace when either party is averse to it — when both parties are not inclined to it — is wrong."2 There is certainly need for self-control and forbearance in the physical use of marriage ; but the medieval theory is un- scientific; and neither that nor the view of writers like Dr. Trail is in full accord with the ethical teaching which Chris- tians at any rate regard as most authoritative, that of the Bible. A true principle of exegesis will not indeed allow of our collecting detached texts to support a theory ; but we must attach great significance to the fact that in both Testaments an ethical view of the use of marriage is put forward in books of which the special purpose is the giving of moral guidance ; books written by inspired men whose knowledge of human life and human nature and of the operation of the Divine Spirit upon them, was extraordinarily sympathetic, accurate and pro- found. And this view is more comprehensive, more liberal than either that of the medieval moralists or that adopted by Dr. Trail. So completely is sexual intercourse legalized and hallowed by marriage that in the Bible no explicit mention is made of excess in this physical use of marriage. Some scholars have seen a reference to such excess in the Biblical use of the word 7rXeov£^6a. 3 The reference is by no means clear; the passage - Sexual Physiology and Hygiene, p. 200. •' Nicholson, On the Catechism, Com. vii. Greek scholarship has not established that the word irXeove^la standing alone ever connotes impurity. The most that it seems permissible to say is that irXeove^la, in passages where it stands in a close juxtaposition with words de- noting sexual sins, itself receives a general notion or taint of impurity; 204 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. which Bishop Nicholson adduces in support of it (Heb. 13:4) seems rather to allow than to view with suspicion a free enjoy- ment of sexual pleasure in the married estate. In the thought of another of the Biblical writers, "^ vigorous and energetic desire is innocent and even commendable, provided that it is governed by the moral sanction of the monogamic marriage relation. The wife is viewed not merely as the potential mother of children, but as the source of innocent sexual pleasure. '"^ Still more widely known in this connection is the judgment of St. Paul,'^ with which the view of Dr. Trail, already referred to, is obviously to some extent at variance. Monogamic unions of long duration being the form which marriage is intended to take in the human race, as Wester- marck, the great student of the history and evolution of mar- riage, shows at length, it may be inferred that the force and frequent operation of carnal desire in man, when controlled and directed by right moral ideals, is a powerful factor in cementing such unions. To the human race belongs the experience of ^sexual desire during the pregnancy of the female.'^ It is not quite an in the same way as, by a converse process, a word used of sexual sin, the word dKadapaia, may expand its sense so as to inckide nXeove^la. (See Zockler on I Thess. 4: 7, in Strack and Zockler, Kurzg. Komm.) 4Prov. 5:15ff. 5 See Toy's commentary in loc. 6 I Cor. 7 : 3ff. '''It may be considered that an ethical objection to the practice of intercourse during pregnancy arises from the side of anthropological science, inasmuch as there is a certain body of evidence (adduced by Crawley, The Mystic Rose, p. 54) to the effect that such intercourse is avoided among primitive peoples; and the inference may be drawn that it is an unjustifiable development in civilized man. But neither is the evidence conclusive as to the primitive obligation of this avoidance, nor the inference sufficiently safe. It might indeed well be expected that pregnancy as a sexual crisis would fall within the range of the sexual taboos in primitive races ; but, as we have elsewhere had occa- sion to observe, nothing could be more unsafe than to accept un- critically the guidance in sexual matters of either savage asceticism or PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 205 exclusively human experience ; for copulation has been ob- served to take place between monkeys in similar circumstancs ; but it would seem at least confined to man and the stage of creation next below him. Intercourse during pregnancy is not prompted by male passion alone ; for the desire is felt by at least some women for some time after conception. This un- usual continuation of desire tends to make sexual unions in the human race durable and monogamic. Mutual desire con- tinued during pregnancy must be a potent physical factor in the process of cementing and rendering permanent the mar- riage contract. It has not been suggested, so far as is known to the author, that acts of intercourse during pregnancy serve any particular physical purpose, apart from this ethical one. It is not perhaps likely that any such physical purpose exists ; for some couples find it practicable, indeed expedient, to re- frain altogether from intercourse at this time. Fiirbringer regards medical permission of intercourse up to the end of the fifth or sixth month as a reasonable and sometimes necessary concession, unobjectionable on hygienic grounds, where the wife has no special weakness. He emphasizes, however, the special need of. gentleness on the husband's part at this time, and indicates precautions by which it may be insured. And he insists that the permission is of the nature of a concession, one that, as we have already seen, and as Fiirbringer illustrates, has been regarded with suspicion or even strenuously refused, among various races and in various periods of history. Kossmann offers a similar opinion. § Moll argues against a general prohibition of such inter- course.^" Among theologians, Paley refers to the prohibitio concubitus cum gravida uxori as an austerity wrongly im- posed.^ Sanchez denied that such intercourse was even a venial sin.i^ It may be observed that one of the points which savage licentiousness. At best, the anthropological evidence alone does not appear sufficient to outweigh the other considerations here adduced to justify a moderate and occasional use of such intercourse. 8 Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., pp. 225, 257. s« Ibid., p. 999. ^ Moral Philosophy, bk. iii, ch. ii. 1*^ De Matriiii. Sacr., 1. ix, disp. xxii. 206 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. apologists for polygyny have tried to make is that it favors abstinence during pregnancy and consequently protects the intra-uterine processes; but the experience of Mormonism has not shown that the children of polygamic have any constitu- tional advantage over those of monogamic unions. ^^^ While, therefore, it would be ill-advised to ignore the fact, pointed out by H. Ellis, lOb that medical opposition to inter- course during pregnancy has recently tended to increase rather than to diminish, it would seem that as yet neither the hygienic requirements of pregnancy nor eugenic considerations will sup- port a categorical prohibition of this course of action. It is sufficient for moral guidance, if the advantages of self-denial be duly exhibited, if this latter course be recommended rather than discouraged. Some moderate and helpful advice on the point now under consideration, combined with excellent general teaching on the physical use of marriage, will be found in the leaflet, entitled The Proper Discipline to be Observed by Mar- ried People in Regard to Conjugal Intercourse, published by Messrs. John Bale & Sons and Danielsson, Ltd., London. The phenomena of human sex periodicity would also seem to indicate that marriage tends to be a durable union. If sex periodicity can be made out in man — and the investigations of Perry Coste and others appear to demonstrate a rhythmical and somewhat rapid recurrence of sexual activity in the male subject — its existence may be teleogically interpreted as justi- fying, so far as the man is concerned, considerable though regulated frequency of sexual gratification ; although it is true that a great many other regulating influences ought to find their scope in a man's sex life besides the rise and fall of sexuality. Sex periodicity is far more clearly marked in woman. In her, too, it is rapidly recurrent. Anabolism. the continuous accumulation of nutritive power, reaches a culminating point '^^^ Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young and his Mormon Empire, p. 242. lot. op. cit., vol. vi, pp. 18f. PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 207 in the woman in the course of a hinar month; beyond that point, the anaboHc process is interrupted either by effectual contact with the male, or, in the absence of this, by the men- strual overflow of the anabolic surplus. Sexual desire, and even an increase of it, may be experienced by woman during the menstrual flow ; but it must not be inferred that this symp- tom marks the period as the best time for coitus ; for such an experience is not perhaps the ordinary one on the woman's part, and may be pathological. The flow itself expresses a catabolic condition in the organism. Feminine desire is usu- ally strongest before and after the flow ; and as at these times the anabolic process is either going on or has reached its' cul- mination, so that the woman's general vitality is higher then than during the catabolic flow, such times would seem more suitable for coitus than the menstrual period itself. The traditional and widespread aversion to intercourse during menstruation has been searchingly criticised by some modern anthro- pologists. The still current belief,, formed from the prima facie view of the facts, is that menstruation is an evacuation of accumulated im- purities.10^= From this has arisen "a sense of natural disgust or shame, which has been developed into an ethical and religious feeling of un- cleanness ;"iOd and which, it may be added, has made (jf the menstruat- ing woman an object of superstitious dread, and has suggested the notion that intercourse during menstruation is both dangerous to the man and liable to engender monstrous offspring. Neither of the three last notions would seem well grounded. Whatever menstruation may be — and this is still obscure — it is not merely or primarily a process of cleansing. Exact science, having pene- trated more deeply into the causation of monstrous birthsif*e hgg under- mined the second notion; and indeed Sanchez already laid little stress upon it.^of Havelock Ellis, returning to the discussion of menstruation in its relation to desire, in vol. iii of his Studies, p. 22, quotes W. Heape as concluding his survey of the sexual season in mammals with the obser- vation : "In those animals which suffer from a considerable discharge i"c Ploss & Bartels, op. cit., vol. i, p. 458. lod Driver-White, on Levit. 15 : 1. loe Keith, The Human Body, ch. viii. i"f Op. cit., 1. ix, disp. xxi. 208 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. of blood during the pro-oestrum or menstruation the main portion of that discharge, if not the whole of it, will be evacuated before sexual intercourse is allowed." But Ellis maintains that this conclusion may be subject to special moditications in the case of man. Fiirbringer, while adducing several reasons for disallowing inter- course during menstruation, nevertheless considers that the contact of menstrual blood with male organs has not been proved injurious in any marked degree. Kossmann suggests that in cases where the wife is ordinarily frigid, this frigidity disappearing during the latter stages of menstruation, intercourse at that time might be advisable. I'^s Yet even when the common aversion to intercourse dur- ing the period has been disjoined from its basis of superstitious ideas, we are not justified in thereafter rejecting it without more ado. Its ethical connotation does not evaporate with the disappearance of superstitious elements. Sanchez was right in retaining the esthetic objection to this course of sexual action, along with the proviso that for grave reasons this objection may be waived. Otherwise the common aversion holds good, and forms a sexual safeguard to women in a condition of catabolism. The rapid recurrence of periodic sexual change in both man and woman prevents mutual desire from being merely transient, a thing of a day or two, as it is in most of the lower animals. If after sexual connection both partners to the act knew that thereafter they would feel no mutual desire for many months, one of the factors in their union which makes most for its permanence and durability would be gone. The absence of a continually recurring mutual desire would prob- ably long ago have caused promiscuity, or at least a short and unenduring form of marriage rather than monogamy, to rep- resent sexual union in humanity. It would be lawless and dangerous to strain either the ethical teaching of the Biblical writers, or the scientific ex- planation of desire in the human subject, in the interests of selfish and inconsiderate license. The physical use of mar- riage has its moral bearings ; it has its peculiar attendant dan- ^^s Senator and Kaminer, ol>. cit., pp. 225, 249. PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 209 gers. There is a right and a wrong in it, though the hne which divides them is not easily discerned. If we are right in thinking that no actual reference is made in the Bible to this form of sexual excess, yet it is certain that such excess is im- plicitly condemned by the general principles of self-control and forbearance inculcated in the Bible. ^^ And it is equally cer- tain that such excess often exists, though rather perhaps from ignorance of physiology and weakness of will than from any depravity, in the marriage relation. The three to five acts of intercourse a month suggested (see the above-mentioned leaf- let) as a reasonable allowance, is far exceeded on some mar- riage-beds. Fiirbringer, who discusses at considerable length the permissible frequency of conjugal intercourse, and illustrates in various ways the difficulty of laying down rules on this point, finally concludes that in anything like normal circumstances and apart from periods of preg- nancy and menstruation, 50 to 100 acts in the year are hygienically justifiable. These would not of course be equally divided among the weeks of the year. (Senator and Kaminer, of. cif.. p. 221.) Nor must it be forgotten that the continued refusal by either husband or wife to render to the other party the physical due of marriage is not infrequently a danger to chastity and to conjugal love. When a woman, not being incapacitated from sexual intercourse by sufficient ill-health or some other just cause, persistently repels her husband's advances, she runs the risk of eventually giving him a sexual distaste for her ; and, as a result, of causing his affection for her to diminish. The same is true vice versa; though such cases, where the sexual frigidity is on the husband's side, are probably more rare. Of course, frigidity or impotentia cceundi may be abso- lute ; in which case it has been regarded as affording a just cause for the dissolution of a marriage — a marriage, indeed, which could never have been perfectly contracted. But the 11 The early Christians evidently took this view. One of the points Tertullian makes in defense of Christian morality is that Chris- tians abstain from all conjugal excess (Apol., c. ix, s. 46) ; and Athena- goras presents the same implication. 210 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. cases we have now in mind are rather those in which sexual intercourse is not physically impossible, but highly distasteful, to one party ; and where, accordingly, every effort is made to avoid it, with the result of ignoring one of the objects for which marriage was instituted. Here, as so often elsewhere, extreme opposites have the same or similar effects. Sexual frigidity, like excessive venery, is a sin against conjugal peace.^^ And as some seeds are sown in the winter, and when well settled in the soil sprout and grow abundantly in the warmer weather, so many an adultery may have its first origin in a frigid and undutiful marriage-bed, to flourish and bear abundantly the fruit of misery amid some ensuing circumstances of external sensuous temptation. It is well known that frigidity, hke excessive desire, has a physical basis; and the frigid partner might argue that physical defects are no fault of his or of hers. But the point here emphasized is that scope should consciously be given to volition and the direction and education of the intention, in the use of the marriage-bed. If constitutional tendencies err either in the direction of frigidity or in that of unusual sex- uality, an effort of the will, supported by religious and other influences, should be made to prevent such tendencies produc- ing the disaster which is their natural fruit. As the result of wide observation, Sperry maintains that there is a certain 12 See Guernsey, Plain Talks, p. 95: "Quite too many cases have come under my observation where the marriage vow has never been consummated, or, if consummated at all, in a very begrudging manner, owing to the insubordination of the wife." Catholic theologians regard the refusal of conjugal complaisance as sinful unless justified by sub- stantial reasons. (Aquinas, Suppl. Summa Theol., pars iii, quaest. Ixiv; Sanchez, 1. ix, disp. ii.) The conjugal obligation relates indeed to a matter too complex and delicate to allow of its being successfully en- forced by secular law, though this course has been tried (Ellis, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 474; Whadcoat, Every Woman's Own Lawyer, pp. 156f.), yet it holds good in the moral sphere, and Christianity cannot lose sight of it. PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 211 number of women to whom sexual intercourse affords no car- nal pleasure; there are others in whom erotic passion on its carnal side is as strongly developed as it is in the male; but with most women the physical impulse is moderate in its action. 13 The existence of the frigid class affords an argu- ment for the instruction of women in the physiology of sex before marriage. Many girls have not a theoretical knowl- edge of the sexual act when they marry. It may be said that it is fair neither to the man nor to the woman to allow of the latter's entering uninstructed and unwarned^^ on a state in which an act, physically always repulsive to her, will fre- quently have to be performed, a duty which she will never render with anything but distaste and reluctance — reluctance 'eventually leading, perchance, to serious unkindness between her and her husband. On the other hand, it may be urged that some young women might be deterred altogether from marriage by such instruction, — women who, being married, would make excellent wives in general respects, and who might be educated to a moderate appreciation of sexual pleasure. Probably, however, with regard to the difficulty of giving this instruction, it might usually be said, "solvitiir ambulando." If mothers with marriageable daughters would carefully and rightly consider the matter, they would in almost all cases find the duty a possible one, and would be able to give a theoretical knowledge of the sexual process with such considerateness and tact as neither to stimulate unduly nor to stifle the just growth of sexual emotion. Then a young woman, on marrying, would fully understand the physical direction her duty to her hus- band ought to take. She would be prepared to make the effort — if an effort were required — necessary to the pure and temperate enjoyment of the marriage-bed. i-'' She would allow 13 See page 118. 14 Cp. Forel, op. cit., p. 465 (ed. 10, p. 547). !•'' Moll urges the occasional necessity of such effort, or simulation of passion, on the part of married women (Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., p. 983). Cp. Forel, op. cit., p. 533. 212 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. herself to form no false and illusive theory of wedded love disjoined from physical pleasure. She would try to give that pleasure its proper place in the new life of her sexual nature, now no longer under her sole control. She would not think it right, after accepting the obligations of matrimony, to rebel against the law of nature by rejecting one of the most vital and important of these obligations. Moral effort on the wife's side will, however, fail in this matter unless met by responsive patience and gentleness on the part of the husband. Havelock Ellis illustrates, with his usual wealth of reference, the physiological fact that tumes- cence in the woman is ordinarily slower than in the man.^® The lack of this knowledge on the part of newly married husbands, or their selfish and petulant failure to act on it if they possess it, accounts for the repulsion some wives con- ceive to sexual intercourse on their first experience of the marriage-bed, a repulsion which may develop into chronic frigidity. 1" The self-restraint of a husband in regard to the first acts of intercourse with his bride will assist sexuality on her side and bring it to the point proper for coition. It would be well indeed, whenever it is practicable, that the husband should deny himself coition for the first night or two after his marriage, remembering that caresses and close contact take longer to produce tumescence in the woman than in himself. ^^ 16 Studies, vol. iii, ed. 2, pp. 236ff. ^"^ Fiirbringer calls attention to the physical power of the excited male organ and the occasional severity of its operation, and to the con- sequent injuries which a wife's delicate organ may suffer from the husband's undue force and impetuosity in conjugal intercourse. (Sen- ator and Kaminer, op. cit., p. 214.) See further on the need of physi- cal gentleness with a wife, Blumreich (Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., pp. 770ff.), and Eulenberg (id., p. 905), who refer to other medical opinions. It should be observed, however, that some of these authori- ties maintain that exaggerated sexual irritation in the woman her- self frequently co-operates with the impetuosity of the male in pro- ducing vaginal injuries. 18 Such temporary abstinence at the entrance to married life is a frequent phenomenon among uncivilized races (Crawley, The Mystic PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 213 A courtship, in short, must take place, not merely hefore mar- riage, but before acts of sexual union in marriage. Yet again, this line of reasoning must not be pressed unduly far, else might arise a danger of tantalizing and straining to a harmful extent the husband's organs and constitution. Says the great French novelist, speaking of the physical consummation of conjugal love, in the book wherein the sex life is so wonderfully reflected: '*If in one another's arms, they had restrained the act, they would no longer have loved one another with the whole being; they would have been retaining, withdrawing some part of them, the one from the other. The living bond would have been untied : he would have seemed to himself to be treating her as a stranger; and she would have believed herself to be no longer his wife. They gave them- selves the one to the other utterly, without any reservation either of heart or of body; and it was for the life-force to complete its own work, if it so seemed right." But the question is complicated by so many considerations that any definition of sexual temperance in matrimony must retain some elasticity. Husband and wife must be guided in the matter, not by hard and fast religious sanctions or hygienic rules of universal application — such do not seem discoverable in this connection-^— but by nature and common sense, allied with personal religion. Such are those whom Bishop Andrewes prays for in his beautiful intercession, who use the world as not abusing it, by a discreet and moderate enjoyment of the most lawful pleasures, under the constant direction and restraint of religion and Godly fear. The religious aspect, referred to by St. Paul,!^'' ^f ^gj-j-,. porary continence between married people — as an auxiliary to Rose, p. 342ff. ; O. Schrader, art. Chastity in Hastings Encyc. Rel. Ethics, vol. iii, p. 502b). Here it is indeed complicated by superstitious ideas and occasionally by useless and cruel practices, such as night watching and severe fasting. It serves, however, the purpose of a discipline, and at the same time of a subtle stimulus of erotic passion. 18a I Cor. 7 : 5. 214 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. prayer — should not escape notice at this point. i'' It is not to be inferred that conjugal relations have any taint of impurity, or are necessarily a hindrance to the performance of spiritual functions ; only that the general attitude of self-denial, finding expression in the discipline of temporary mutual abstention, proves favorable to the exercise of prayer. Abstinentia prcrvia servit precihiis. (Bengel.) The Anglican Marriage Service has taken over from the New Testament a wonderfully luminous expression about conjugal duty, one that searches the inmost depths of mar- ried life : "Ye husbands, dwell with your wives according to knozvledge, Kara yvwo-iv." Men of earnest and right purpose who, in spite of the strain to which celibacy has subjected them, in spite of their failure to observe perfect chastity, have never allowed themselves to think it a light thing to know a woman, will recognize how wide and profound that knowledge is in its conditioning environment of matrimony. By means of it man and woman are drawn into the most intimate physical relation, which wisely used will create a surprisingly intimate moral and spiritual relation as well. A man who wishes to prove a good husband to his wife will appreciate the responsi- bility which this privileged knowledge lays upon him. Rejoic- ing in its freedom, he will strive with Divine aid to preserve and increase within it every element of purity and beauty, "rvwo-ts," says the commentator Bengel on this passage, ^o "dicit moderationcm," a remark which contains implicitly a fine appreciation of the meaning of the phrase ; for an instinctive self-government and healthful moderation in physical pleas- is O. Zockler, Askese unci Monchthum, pp. 451 f. 20 1 Pet. 3: 7. Modcratio, such a judicious government of the wife as implies self-government in the husband. Bengel is indeed speaking generally of the relation between husband and wife; and we would not reject his wider interpretation in favor of our own particularized one; but the light of the passage and of his comment thereon may be, as it were, focused on conjugal sexuality, and will then convey such a special admonition as is here suggested. PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 215 ure is the natural fruit of conjugal knowledge developing under the shadow of the fear of God. How many men by unwatchfulness and petulance in regard to the carnal instinct have marred the dehcate life of conjugal knowledge in several of its highest aspects ! How many have created bitterness and caused cruel disillusionment by heedlessly ignoring the unique sacredness of the married relation, wounding the wife's feel- ings or disturbing her moral sense, by coarseness in the ex- pression of their own desire — or by unkind levity in alluding to the dangers which at no great distance surround them both; waking jealousy by thoughtlessly simulating it; rousing thoughts of adultery by tactlessly jesting about it! The cause which destroys married happiness may be only indirectly connected with the sexual nature of either of the parties, some divergence of interests, some sensitiveness or irritability of temper, an inability to bear and forbear — one cause or another out of a whole multitude. 21 But there is a -1 Independently of what is directly and primarily sexual, there are enough of general moral and psychical aspects in married life to call for treatment in such books as The Rev. E. J. Hardy's How to be Happy though Married, and Still Happy though Married, where much sympathetic advice is given, enforced by a wealth of anecdote, on mutual consideration, forbearance, gentleness, tact, household management, and other matters of importance in relation to matri- monial happiness. Luther's married life is instructive in this general connection. Rade (Die Stellung des Christenthums zum Geschlects- leben, p. 40; cp. A. Thoma, Katharina von Bora, Kap. v.) has shown that Luther's marriage with Katharina von Bora was a calculated step, not due to passion, still less to mere lust, though in view of the coarse- ness of the Reformer's language, some writers have ventured to put the latter construction upon the event. In marrying, Luther and Katharina were reinstating marriage in its rightful place in the social system; and Rade has not overestimated the benefits which ensued to the social life of Germany. The pair sustained the trials and troubles, as well as shared the joys of marriage for twenty years. Life with a man of Luther's masterful temperament could not always have been placid. There is evidence that on occasion the patience of each was sorely tried. But the common sense with which both were gifted was backed bv personal religion which none of this world's trials could 216 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. class of cases in which the destructive cause is directly sexual, a change of desire occurring in one or other of the parties ; and the consequent experiencing of a sexual distaste for the other party. Few sights are more painful and pathetic than that of a desolate woman who has ceased to be attractive to her husband, a woman whose charms have faded all too soon by reason of ill-health or trouble. Such circumstances may indeed create a severe trial to the physical man ; but the highest ethics of sex certainly de- mand that at this point the efifort of loving fidelity should sup- port such strain as there may be upon the carnal sense. A moving and profound appeal to the highest human emotions is found in the allegorical representation so well known to the prophets of the Old Testament,22 where God appears as the ever-faithful Husband of the personified Israel ; observing the marriage-covenant when the glory of the wife's womanhood has been worn to shreds and dragged in the dust; remember- ing still, after the passage of sad years, the grace of the woman's youth and the love of her betrothal-time. Such an ideal of constancy introduces, indeed, other considerations than those of physical deterioration in the wafe. In its fullness, it is an ideal which no husband in this life can attain to ; but its lesson is at least practical and forceful in this matter of the decline of a wife's physical attractiveness. Let a man when tempted to unfaithfulness or coldness toward his wife, con- sider and investigate the cause of his temptation ; and if the cause be the change of desire here contemplated, let him, in- stead of alleging and exploiting the physical reasons for this wear out. Luther once admitted to a friend that he was at that moment swallowing the pill of his wife's temper; but after all was ready to take more of it. Katharina had no doubt the same experi- ence in yet fuller measure. But they knew that the disharmonies of this world pass away; and all the more quickly if let alone. So the two stand before us in history, spiritually great figures, very human, — it would be difficult to weave idealistic legends around Martin and Katie, — yet invincibly and pathetically true and faithful and strong. 22 Jer. 2:2; Ezek. 16 ; Hos. 2 : 16, al. PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 217 change, in the interests of lawless self-indulgence, summon to his aid the moral and spiritual force which the previous years of his married life should have caused to develop;--^ let him prove that the power of the ethical elements in sexual love may exist and increase even when its physical balance is dis- turbed. And let a wife whose physical attractions fail in greater or less measure to win her husband's regard in the same degree as formerly, strive to compensate, nay, far more than compensate, for the partial loss, by strengthening the subtle charm of feminine tact, sweetness and grace of character. "Happiness dwells not," says a modern French writer,-"^ "in the unbridled multiplication of sensual pleasures. Human existence will find its highest meaning, its most lively and en- during joy, in the progressing operations of the mind and in the duly controlled gratification of the senses. The sexes will understand that their happiness depends definitely on a large sobriety respecting indulgence in amorous intercourse." 23 In the progress of years, provided that the rational control of the sex life is made the object of conscious moral choice, various psj^chic forces will come into play, pressing back the carnal impulse into its proper perspective and due subordination in life as a whole. The cultivation of intellectual interests, the extension of the sym- pathies not merely by intensified emotion, but by sustained thought and active effort, everything, in short, that is directly or indirectly implied in the spiritualization of human life and in communion with God in Christ — all this aggregate of spiritual power, combining with the physiological processes which normally modify carnal desire, tends to produce in man, as he passes the physical prime of his sex life, not necessarily a sexual frigidity, but an increasing capacity of self-con- trol and a greater ability to respond to the call of self-sacrifice and sexual temperance which is not infrequently given by the circumstances of married life. Cp. the line of thought followed by Leconte, Evolution and Re- ligious Thought, p. 24: "Youth, glorious youth, must also pass. If the next highest group of reflective and elaborate faculties do not arise and dominate in adult manhood, then progressive deterioration of character commences here — thenceforward the whole nature becomes coarse." S'lJ. Lourbet: Le Probleme des Sexes, p. 194 (Paris, 1900). 218 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. These observations are framed in the idealistic, ahnost the illusive, language of theory. Married people will fail again and again to realize the ideal set forth in them. But we may use them here to illustrate and enforce the truth that one of the legitimate objects of marriage is to reduce carnal desire to its proper relative position among the other interests and cravings of life. And as this is its object, so it is also its natural tendency. In a married life which is otherwise kindly and religious, sexual desire should naturally and without any severe strain tend to become moderate and subject to reason. "Marriage hath a natural efficacy, besides a virtue by Divine blessing, to cure the inconveniences which might otherwise afliict persons temperate and sober. "-^ Forster rightly calls physical conjugal love an impulse of nature toward the higher forms of effort, a symbol of spiritual unity and the productive interworking of two minds. -** And the failure, arising from imperfect education or inherent spiritual deficiency, to fulfill these higher obligations of mar- riage, is an important contributing cause of matrimonial dis- aster and immorality. Westermarck has given some striking illustrations of the bad moral effect which a low educa- tional standard of women and the consequent spiritual pov- erty of married life exercise upon nations.-''' Finally, the moral purpose must learn to mark, and to co-operate sympathetically with the changes, ordinary or ex- traordinary, due to age or to illness, in the subject's constitu- tion. The gratification, with its preceding strong excitement, which at one time of life may be a seasonable and beneficial relief, may become in altered circumstances of health — for ex- ample, by reason of its accelerating influence upon the heart's action — the means of emphasizing and developing some latent bodily weakness, with prejudicial or even dangerous effect. 25 Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living, ch. ii, sec. 3. Finis. 26 Forster, op. cit., p. 242. 27 Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, pp. 470f. PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 219 Such vigilance at this stage of the sex Hfe will reduce further the danger of inadvisable self-indulgence in marriage. It may result in an understanding between man and wife to keep apart for an indefinite time ; albeit here, as elsewhere, this result may not be arrived at without repeated mistakes and failures, and should at all times be considerately entertained by both parties, to obviate possible conjugal discord. There is little difficulty in these days about getting infor- mation, conveyed in a popular and intelligible style, on the hygiene of conjugal intercourse. Much instruction of the kind may be found in Dr. Lyman Sperry's book, Confidential Talks bctci'eoi Husband and IVife. It is true that such infor- mation occasionally contains inferences of doubtful value, and is open to criticism. The suggestion, e.g., which is contained in the remarks on page 119 of Sperry's book, that married people must allow themselves no caresses tending to arouse sexual excitement unless with the intention of gratifying it, may require in practice some modification. Habitually pro- longed erotic excitement, involving a heavy nerve-strain, is certainly not to be encouraged. Especially should no attempt be made to substitute habitually such excitement (ungratified) for sexual intercourse itself.-'^ This method is known as the Karezza. But Dr. Sperry's suggestion must not be given an extreme interpretation savoring of prudery; for although it is doubtless the duty as well as the interest of married couples to watch and control themselves in their erotic caresses, the prohibition of such caresses, except where sexual intercourse is actually contemplated, would impose an intolerable yoke upon the mind and conscience. The moral question here involved may be clearly stated by the use of the terminology adopted and developed from Moll by Havelock Ellis.^^ One of the impulses contributing to the formation of the sexual instinct in man is, according to Moll's analysis, the impulse of contrectation, or the desire to touch 2S C/>. Ellis und Moll, Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, p. 699. 29 Studies, vol. iii, p. 21ff., ed. 2. 220 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. and fondle the object loved. Ellis proposes a word of wider scope, "tumescence," since contrectation is incidental, not es- sential fo the sex process in its full biological extent. That, however, does not matter to us here ; because in the present connection contrectation always accompanies tumescence. This latter condition produces sexual excitement ; and the normal end of tumescence is detumescence, the act by which impregnation takes place. Are married people, then, to re- strain the impulse of contrectation under moral penalty, unless they purpose proceeding the full length, to detumescence? This would be a hard doctrine of marriage, and would stunt the development of warm reciprocal emotions. By parity of reasoning it would have to be considered immoral for a man and woman to dance together, unless the result of such action was an engagement. Indeed, when the sexual process in man is viewed in ex- tenso, ^s consisting of a series of stages from the first recip- rocal attraction, through contrectation up to detumescence and impregnation, moral considerations leave it at least uncertain whether special circumstances may not allow man to stop at any particular stage, without proceeding to the subsequent stages. We saw as much in our chapter on birth control. Nevertheless, it is true, as has been already affirmed, that married people should always reverently consider the normal end of the impulse of contrectation, and not allow themselves in a reckless self-indulgence, in calling that impulse into play, or in diverting it from its natural end. While it is urgently necessary to uphold and to strive for the ideal of sexual temperance in the married estate, modern society, not less than ancient, is liable to witness the growth, and experience the unwholesome influence of a falsely ascetic sentiment in regard to the physical use of marriage. '^^ \\^e 30 For a doctor's criticism of modern asceticism in respect of sex, the body of opinion of which Tolstoy is the most prominent Hterary exponent, I may refer to Eulenburg, in Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 877ff. PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 221 have already found this sentiment expressed in the Manichsean and other systems, and in the writings of certain modern morahsts. Here we refer to its unsystematized manifestation in priyate hfe. Even where the theory of false asceticism might be repudiated, it occasionally has some practical influence. For example, great caution must be used in the endeavor to distinguish right from wrong in conjugal intercourse by refer- ence to the reactionary feelings following coitus.^ ^ The act has been adjudged to be wrong if followed by feelings of re- gret, shame, depression, etc. These feelings, though they must by no means be ignored, do not always form a safe criterion. A religious man of nervous organization may experience exag- gerated reactionary feelings of this nature, even when he and his wife in the main strive to regulate their life according to the canons of temperance. The moral effort he may need is partly one of faith, to control the excess and morbid activity of reactionary emotions after coitus. Sexual intercourse that is innocent in itself, i.e., as performed in matrimony with a due and reasonable regard to temperance, ought not to be "made wrong by thinking." Near the close of His earthly life, our Lord Jesus Christ acted in the presence of His disciples a parable containing a reference with which we may fittingly close the present chap- ter in our consideration of sexual morality. The symbolic act of washing the disciples' feet-"^- viewed in connection with the rest of St. John's teaching about human sin, has always been taken to refer to the Divine forgiveness of sins of mere infirmity, the inevitable stains afifecting man's moral nature, even when endued with the highest spiritual pur- pose. In St. John's mind there is a clear distinction between willful rebellion against God, the state of sin which the man whose soul is in communion with God cannot enter,'^"^ as being contrary to the law of his renewed nature; and the sins of in- ^1 Cp. Sperry, Husband and Wife, p. 115. ;i2 St. Jno. 13 : 5ff. •■53 I Jno. 3 : 8, 9 ; 5:18. 222 PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. firmity which are found even in the lives of men of right and good purpose, and in regard to which they need a continual intercession, forgiveness, cleansing.^^ The symbolism of Christ's action has no doubt a general application ; but we may suggest here that it has a peculiar and pointed reference to the moral infirmities so bound up in our sexual nature. Though the language of the narrative is Greek, its spirit and imagery are Oriental : to this passage we may appropriately apply the remark of Harnack that the Greek language lies upon the Gospels like a diaphanous veil ; and it requires hardly any effort to translate their contents into Hebrew or Aramaic. In Hebrew imagery, then, "the feet" is a euphemism for the sexual organs,-'"' and remembering this, we cannot fail to see in the symbolic washing of the feet from inevitable stains, the forgiveness by the Divine mercy of those declensions from the true ideal of sexual morality which stain the souls even of men whose purpose is pure. Apart from the willful, deliberate sins of sex, the gross fornications, the cruel seductions, the abominable perversions, the ingenious incitements to sin, there is a whole world of lesser phenomena, the unavoidable infirmi- ties of sex. The full control of the sexual nature, the perfect subordination of the carnal impulse to the government of rea- son, the laws of health, and the higher law of self-sacrifice, is an ideal which frequently is not actually attainable either in celibacy or in marriage. In the best of circumstances, desire is often a source of trouble, even of danger. It exerts itself with an excess of force, or at unseasonable times ; it becomes a disturbing influence, weakening the concentration of the pur- pose on noble and elevating aims. A certain element of morbidness and intemperance mingles with it almost irre- sistibly. The deeper grows one's insight into human life, the more sadly does one murmur in this connection the question. 34 I Jno. 2 : 2. 3Msa. 6:2; 7:20; 36:12. PROBLEMS OF MARRIAGE. 223 "Since the first foundation of the world what one can say : 'My ways are pure?' " Hardly, if at all, can a man, though he keep upright and come by no great and visible fall, escape the "stain on the feet," some hidden detriment to his sexual nature. And amid secret fears arising from this cause, in the hidden struggle between the flesh and the spirit, there is much encouragement in the teaching of this parable. We have here the Divine assurance that so long as a man's purpose is right, so long as he does not turn aside in conscious and cynical rebellion from the law of purity, so long as his life progresses toward the ideal of chastity, he will not suffer deep and permanent loss from those infirmities which he cannot wholly avoid. CHAPTER XIV. Spiritualized Sexual Love. Its History — Its Basis, Significance, and Place in the Economy of Life. Moving to and fro as it does in humanity upon a wide sea of emotions and sensations, sexual love is enabled to sound the human spirit to some of its remotest depths, w^hether of good or of ill. Strange and weird indeed are the perverted forms of sexual emotion which, as we have had occasion to observe elscAvhere in this volume, lie in the obscure deeps of our social life. In other directions sexual love discovers within man spiritual movements and yearnings which the soul can hardly interpret even to itself, a love of the beautiful, a longing for its rarest, most refined manifestations — such a love as elevates human nature toward the Divine. Both the history and the analysis of the love ecstasy in humanity are surrounded with great difificulty and obscurity. The opinion has been entertained that the spiritualized sexual longing, which men and women of the modern world often experience, made its appearance in mankind during the age of chivalry, animality being before that time the chief element in love. It may safely be asserted, however, that in ages long anterior to the age of chivalry, — as, analogously, in primitive races of today^, — the sexes had felt the mutual magnetic attrac- tion of souls with a force which at times transcended that of carnal desire. The sensuous side of sexual love has been portrayed with marvelous power and warmth of coloring in poems like the 1 "Many savages," says R. R. Marrett (art. Ethics in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics, vol. v, p. 432a) "indulge in a strain of romantic love, the product of a kind of awe supervening on a basis of passion." Cp. Floss & Bartels, Das Weib, Bd. i, p. 614. (224) SPIRITUALIZED SEXUAL LOVE. 225 Incantation of Theocritus and the Song of Songs. In the former of these, and in the latter also, if we disregard the mystical interpretation, the sensuous element is most promi- nent ; indeed, it is only in the circumstances which may be supposed to lie in the background of the Song, and support the plot, if plot there be, that any other motive can be found other than those which spring from the rapturous contempla- tion of physical beauty. Although, however, its character may primarily be sensu- ous, the love of physical beauty does not remain forever co- extensive with the carnal hunger of the sexual instinct.- It awakens higher instincts of the soul. It gives an impulse to the development of moral perceptions, and of spiritual emo- tions. When we find in classical literature instances of pure self-sacrifice, deep emotion, and unshaken fidelity having their roots in sexual love, as in the characters of Penelope in Homer, of Alcestis in Euripides, of Panegyris and Pinacium in Plautus. of Sostrata in Terence; and in the history of Pollutia's widow- hood and death in Tacitus; when we find that the Hebrew word ahabhah is used with equal facility of sexual attraction. ^ and of the Divine love,"* we must conclude that the "love of women," even at the point of evolution which the human race had reached two or three thousand years ago, had frequently other and more refined elements than the carnal impulse ; and that the ecstasy of expectant sexual love at times reached then, as it sometimes does now, an intensity in which carnal excite- ment no longer predominates in the consciousness. There are in fact sufficient proofs of the existence of spiritualized sex love in antiquity ; though it is doubtless true, as Bloch and Erwin Rohde maintain, that the majority of think- ers in that age were not only perplexed by but unsympathetic with it, and thought of it as a disease of the spirit.^ - Cl>. Gemelli, op. cit., p. 22. •^11 Sam. 13: 15. 4 Hos. 11:4, Jer. 31 : 3, Is. 63 : 9, Zeph. 3 : 17. 5 Bloch, Die Prostitution, Bd. i, pp. 41, 228f. ; Lucret. iv, 1062ff. 226 SPIRITUALIZED SEXUAL LOVE. The strange spiritual intensity of sexual love attracted the notice of Plato, whose theory of its causation, while it pos- tulates the existence of the carnal impulse, allows for the move- ment of subtle forces in the mind agitated by sexual expectancy — forces which, even if they be considered to exist in germ in the carnal impulse,^ if they cannot wholly in this life sever their connection with it, none the less afford an indication of an ideal state in which the human soul filled with sexual love may rise above, may become in some measure detached from, carnal excitement; may experience and harbor intense and eager longings for the possession and enjoyment of beauty, longings which have larger elements of spiritual and moral, than of carnal attraction. Plato's conception of love as a cosmic and not merely a planetary force — a contrast drawn out by F. Myers''' — is thus of far-reaching significance, raising, as it does, sexual love in its highest aspects, above the transience of Earth and Time, and demonstrating its connection with eternal processes. It cannot escape the notice of the student of the Gospels that Christ had a powerful influence over women. That He practised reserve in His dealings with them may be inferred from St. John 4 : 27 ;^ yet his Person had an intense attraction for them.^ Other great leaders of men have possessed this ^Cp. Letourneau, Evol. of Marriage, p. 9: "If we are willing to descend to the foundation of things, we find that human love is essen- tially rut in an intelligent being. It exalts all the vital forces of the man just as rut overexcites those of the animal. If it seems to differ extremely from it, this is simply because in man the procreative need, a primordial need beyond all others, in radiating from highly developed nervous centers, awakens and sets in commotion an entire psychic life unknown to the animal." "> Human Personality, i, 335ff. 8 It was especially forbidden for a man to speak to a woman about questions of the Law (Luthardt in loc). The astonishment displayed by the disciples on this occasion testifies to the Master's ordinary re- gard for the rabbinic custom. 9 Matt. 27:55, Mark 15:40, Luke 8:2, 23:49. SPIRITUALIZED SEXUAL LOVE. 227 peculiar power of attracting to themselves the admiring and loving regard of woman, of winning from women a voluntary obedience for the furtherance of their purposes. Themistocles in a moment of danger saved his life by a decisive appeal, an appeal which was yet masterful and partook of the nature of a command, made to a woman. One of the chief elements in this mental condition in the woman is an unconscious sublimated sexuality- Christ's per- sonality, by winning the affections and dominating the will of women, subjugates the perfect female organism, and attracts to itself the whole range of feminine emotion. The history of female insanity, as appears from cases given by Havelock Ellis, shows how, when the balance of the religious emotions is upset, the latent, subconscious physical element may temporarily re- assert itself and dominate the spiritualized sexuality. i^' The common experience of mankind shows, not less clearly than philosophical speculations, the existence of these connected yet diverse elements in love. Men and women of rich, refined, and generous natures feel within themselves a longing of unutterable intensity for the enjoyment of the ideal counterpart and complement of themselves. This deep, in- definable longing for ideal beauty, and the more or less im- perfect realizations which meet it in the actual experience of life, have been over and over again described and dwelt upon, as far as the powers of human insight, language and imagination were able to do so, in the literatures of mankind. The highest imaginative genius wearies itself in its efforts to shadow forth a representation of spiritualized sexual love. Some of the finest ethical conceptions in literature have been inspired by the idea of the love-ecstasy ; it has, in truth, a mighty influence over the natural dispositions of men, and while it lasts, en- dues them abundantly even with those virtues in which they have been most conspicuously lacking. Men of the world whose minds have become mature in coarseness, and who in 1*^ Cfy. supra, pp. 26f. 228 SPIRITUALIZED SEXUAL LOVE. their lives repudiate, more and more expressly, high moral ideals, may indeed and do see nothing in a Woman's outward beauty but a stimulus to sexual excitement ; but there is that in the minds of younger men which causes them instinctively to look for moral beauty alongside of the highest physical beauty; and in many love-affairs, especially those of young lovers, a point is reached at which sexual expectancy becomes almost overpowered by ethical aspiration.'^^ It is indeed true that if such an intense reciprocal love leaves no room in the two hearts which experience it, for wider sympathies, it takes on the nature of a false development. ^^^ But love may be almost indefinitely intense without suffering the intrusion of such a circumstance. But these higher developments of love are as yet uncertain in their duration. Their progress needs to be watched and considered with soberness ; otherwise the love ecstasy, with its vast power of stirring the emotions and moral consciousness, will be like a potent draught which first invigorates and in- spires, and then induces exhaustion and debility. Even in a love affair which seems to its actors purely spiritual, carnal excitement sooner or later supervenes. Indeed, these emo- tional developments of love are not to be rashly translated into practice, with a view to eliminating from the matrimonial rela- tionship the element of animality which naturally and rightly belongs to it. The idea of marriage as a purely spiritual bond without any carnal connection does not seem, in the circum- stances of this present life of ours, a healthy or acceptable one. History records some collective movements for limiting sex love entirely to its spiritual side. The largest and most important of these belongs to early Christianity. Much attention has been recently called to the so-called syneisactic unions, in which Christian men and women — the latter were called in Greek agapctcc and in Latin virgines subiii- troductce — lived together in spiritual matrimony. The enthusiasm of early Christianity made this in some cases possible ; and this remark- 11 Cp. Thomson and Geddes, Problems of Sex, pp. 46ff. iiac/). Forel, op. cit., p. 118 (ed. 10). SPIRITUALIZED SEXUAL LOVE. 229 able development is reflected in a romantic literature of which some specimens have survived. The movement was in fact the contribution of the age to the solution of the sex problem, but though it gave humanity a brief glimpse into the psychical possibilities of the sex life, it effected no permanent moral or social amelioration. In many quarters, particularly in the North African Church, the aspiring spirit- ualized love degenerated into a mere tantalization and erotic bravado ; and public opinion and ecclesiastical authority combined to suppress it. It has reappeared occasionally down to our own day. I heard rumors of it some years ago in New Zealand, in connection with a religious sect. But until the spiritual evolution of the race has reached higher levels than at present, it is neither possible nor desirable to exploit on a large social scale the idea of spiritualized sex love.i^^ Nevertheless, as aforesaid, ecstatic love should be mor- ally bracing. It should be helpful in the work of directing and controlling the physical desire. Further, as a psychical phenomenon it has a bearing on the interpretation of life. "Love," said Renan, "is the most wonderful and the most sug- gestive fact in the world." The existence of the love ecstasy may point to the future development in the human soul of strange powers of love, and of a spiritual appetite for beauty. The Christian revelation does not make clear the future of sex in the hereafter. The doctrine of a continuous personal iden- tity which seems to be implied in the New Testament makes it evident that the division into sexes in this world must some- how bear permanent fruit in another. Though marriage as we conceive of it must vanish with the things of this world, it is not perhaps to be inferred that there will be no special unions, the outcome of a special kind or degree of reciprocal love, in the next life. The desire of beauty in the human soul may become more and more wondrously illumined, refined and spiritualized, so as to awaken new capacities of taking pleasure in a mutual relation of love, capacities which, however imper- ^^^ On the whole subject see H. Ellis, o/>. cit., vol. vi, pp. 153ff. ; Duchesne, Early Church History (E. tr.), pp. 370ff. ; Neander, Church History (E. tr.), vol. i, pp. 384 f. ; Ziegler, Gesch. der Christ. Ethik, pp. 175f. ; Lydia Stocker in Die Neue Gen., Heft x, pp. 413ff.; H. Achelis, art. Agapetse, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics. 230 SPIRITUALIZED SEXUAL LOVE. fectly we may apprehend their existence now, even when our taste for sexual enjoyment is most exalted and detached from the carnal instinct, may conceivably absorb into themselves and thus transform the carnal appetite which under present condi- tions moves with such a vast power the whole being of man. St. Augustine thus records his thought about the future relation of the sexes : — ■ "To me they seem to think most justly, who doubt not that both sexes shall rise again . . . the members of the woman shall not be adapted to their former use, but framed for a new beauty, one by which the beholder is not allured to lust, which shall not then be, but God's wisdom and mercy shall be praised, which made that to be which was not, and delivered from corruption that which was made."i- This passage ex- presses a well-grounded hope of the ultimate realization, amid appropriate conditions, of an exalted spiritual ideal. !■* The principle of consolation which the Christian faith in- troduces into the trials, disappointments, and seemingly abortive developments of sex love is to some extent amplified and ren- dered explicit by the science of psychics or psychical research, of which spiritism forms a province. The material upon which students of this subject have to work is in the first instance the rough product of certain psychological processes whose modus operandi is as yet imperfectly understood. Much of this is merely subjective; but when the whole body of crude material has been critically sifted, there remains a certain amount, — what may be called the corrected material, — whose subjective origin in the medium's or sensitive's mind is de- monstrably most improbable ; nor will any stretch of the tele- pathic hypothesis explain its appearance. i-^ Enough of such corrected material has stood the severe testings and siftings of psychological experts to be susceptible of interpretation, or, it would be truer to say of some of it, to interpret itself ; and on 12 De Civ. Dei, xxii, 17. 14 Cp. Edersheim, Life and Times, ii, 402. 15 See A. Hude, The Evidence for Communication with the Dead. SPIRITUALIZED SEXUAL LOVE. 231 the basis of this, one or two remarkable attempts have been made to construct an outHne picture of a life beyond this.^^ The reason of the thing suggests, and some of the most reliable results of modern psychical research indicate, that in the spiritual existence the phenomenon of sex obtains a cer- tain continuity ; sex is reproduced under changed and higher conditions. 1'^^ It is not merely that spiritual appearances take place in the sexual form which belonged to them in this life, — that might be merely an expedient to enable recognition, and the appearances are probably in all cases no more than projec- tions or adumbrations of the personality behind them. But more than this, the motive of the extremely remarkable au- tomatism known to students^" as the Lethe incident^^ is clearly that of confirming by an elaborate and beautiful scheme of literary allusions the proposition made by F. W. H. Myers in his lifetime that "the loves of earth persist. "^^^ It would surely be easier to bear the trials which befall love in this world, — as when, for instance, two persons feel bound by moral con- siderations to disallow the temporal expression of the mutual love they feel rising within them, — if people could feel assured that such an incident in their lives would explain and justify itself in the hereafter; that their spiritual experience in com- mon will not be wasted or forgotten, — "no poppies ever grew on Elysian shores" ; that the pain of self-denial and separa- tion here will produce for them a very garden of the gods there; that for them, Venus, purified, chastened and trans- formed, will come to her own at last.2t> 16 E.g., H. A. Dallas's Mors Janua Vitas. i6a]\jorman Pearson, in the Nineteenth Century (Sept., 1914), reasoning from biological data, reaches the same conclusion. 1^ I mean the students of the Society for Psychical Research, to which I have belonged for nine years. 18 S. P. R. Proc. (London), pts. Ix, Ixiii. 1!) Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, vol. ii, p. 287. 2" I allude here to expressions in the Lethe incident (See S. P. R. Proc, pt. Ix, pp. 95ff.). CHAPTER XV. Modesty. Origin and Purpose of Modesty — Biblical Estimates of — Modesty Among Women — Woman's Right of Marriage — Woman's Special Sex- ual Difficulties. Modesty is an extremely important part of sexual morality in modern civilization. The forms of it with which we are familiar are the product of many causes operating through long ages. It has peculiar developments in the female sex. It is not the purpose of the present chapter to attempt any further estimate of these causes, already briefly discussed in our first chapter. It is enough to say that something in the moral constitution of man responds readily to^ their action. Modesty receives very beautiful and delicate expression in quite primitive races. Ploss-Bartel's book, Das Weib, contains some illustrations of Terra del Fuegan women. i They are naked or nearly so ; but we are informed that when the pictures were obtained modesty of attitude was an unmodifiable feature. A traveller was struck with the modesty of Jakun women. - But, as it is a psychological law that an instinct will vacate the field in favor of a stronger one, even a high degree of native modesty, and strengthened moreover by upbringing and social traditions, may succumb to such an instinct as self- preservation; as when during epidemics refined ladies on their sickbeds have accepted the most intimate services from rough and vulgar men. "Niuna, quantunque leggiadra, o bella, o gen- tildonna fosse, infermando, non curava d'avere a'suoi servigi uomo, qual che egli si fosse, o giovane, o altro, ed a lui senza alcuna vergogna ogni parte del corpo aprire, non altrimenti che 1 Das Weib, 8, Bd. i, pp. 490ff. - Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. ii. p. 102. (232) MODESTY. 233 ad una femmina avrebbe fatto, solo che la necessita della sua infermita il richiedesse."-^ As we should expect, modesty finds a place in the ideals of character set forth in the Bible. The sexual nature and all that pertain to it are to be treated with reverence in speech and in act ; not spoken of coarsely,"* unnecessarily,-^ or with an evil motive. The more glaring offenses against modesty are condemned as shamefulness (aiVxpoTr/s), and shameful talk (alcrxpoXoyia) . The special obligation of modesty in women is recognized. Women are not to ape masculinity or strive for prominence in assemblies of men.^ In two passages,''' where married women seem to be specially in the writers' minds, they are commanded to set off their charms with modesty and soberness, in strong contrast to the profuse and immodest adornment of former daughters of Jerusalem. ^ It must be borne in mind that the thoughts of the writers of antiquity about women for the most part center round her in her capacity of wife. And modesty in a wife, in a woman who no longer feels the void in her life which marriage alone fills, who needs not to exert her powers of sexual attraction save in the intimate relationship upon which she has entered, is always highly valued by men. Thus Sirach 26: 15, "Grace upon grace is a shamefast woman (yw^ aio-xwrr^pa)." But modesty has many subsidiary developments ; and on investigation, some of these will be found to be neither reason- able nor consonant with the ethical tenor of Christianity. The fact that reserve and caution in regard to the performance of nature's necessary functions are sometimes carried to excess in Anglo-Saxon society may be hardly worth more than a passing allusion. Overdelicacy in the matter, in circumstances of 3 Boccaccio, Descrizione della peste dell'anno 1348. 4 Col. 3 : 8. 5Eph. 5: 12, II Cor. 4:2. 6 1 Cor. 11:2-16, 14:34fif. 7 I Tim. 29. I Pet. 3:8. 8 Isa. 3 : 18. 234 MODESTY. physical distress, is no part of a just ethical scheme. Women, particularly, will sometimes put up with great and injurious inconveniences, owing to some remote or imaginary danger of publicity. A society which exacts such a degree of modesty is pressing the need of it too far. On the other hand, some Euro- pean nations pay too little attention to ordinary modesty. They neglect from the first to educate the feeling for it, with the result that much unpleasing and unnecessary openness is exhibited, by adults as well as by children, in the connection just referred to. The question of greatest practical interest in connection with modesty relates to woman's right of seeking marriage. The time has come to examine afresh and work out in detail the principles laid down in our chapter viii. It has been argued in this work that man has a right of marriage ; and that the power of sexual desire within him is a factor of very great importance in his decision with regard to claiming that right. If continence becomes intolerable and injurious to health and work, marriage, even in circumstances which seem to render the step imprudent, becomes in some measure justifiable. But in regard to women, the question arises whether, in the event of a severe and intolerable strain upon a woman's nervous system arising from this cause^ — a condition which, though perhaps rare, is by no means non- existent— the greater obligation to modesty in woman still re- fuses to allow her to seek, if not by actual request, yet by the no less effective means of attraction, the relief of marriage. It must be borne in mind that if the obligation of modesty presses unfairly on one sex, economic considerations, the anxiety about ways and means, are the special burden of the other. Each sex, in a state of civilization, has its own peculiar ^ Havelburg describes the physical and other indications of strain — it may be frequently semiconscious strain — noticeable as the effect of enforced celibacy in the female sex. (Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 193, 294.) MODESTY. 235 and sometimes grievous difficulties in the way of the legitimate satisfying and developing of the sexual nature. But while women, even in cases where the task of restrain- ing erotic passion is exceptionally painful, are not justified in rashly disregarding the special obligation of their sex to modesty, that obligation is not to be regarded as an iron yoke, confining all with a uniform rigidity. Complete sexual pas- sivity is no part of the anabolic habit. ^^ Lourbeti^ points out that the ovum is wrongly thought of as remaining immobile when expecting the approach of the sperm. On the contrary, it manifests slight movements in the direction of the sperm. i^ There is little difficulty in establishing the proposition that the obligation of modesty is not precisely the same, has not the same ethical bearings, in the case of the unmarried, as in the case of the married woman. Westermarcki-5 has adduced a great mass of evidence to show that mankind in a primitive state allows to unmarried women a certain freedom in exercising sexual attraction by self-decoration and similar means, which is not allowed in the same degree to married women. Similarly, in the view of the Biblical writers, modesty does not bind women to a sexual passivity. The doctrine that the married woman is not to infringe conjugal rights by making herself sexually attractive to men other than her own husband, is, as we have seen, enunciated in the Bible ; but it does not seem to be implied that an unmarried woman is to make no effort to acquire a husband. On the contrary, when circum- stances emphasize the need of marriage in a woman's life, great i*J Fere (L'Instinct Sexuel, pp. 42, 188) says that for the female to manifest instincts of sexual pursuit is a sign of inversion. This con- tention must be interpreted with considerable caution. By no means every manifestation of sexual activity in the female ought to be classed as "sexual pursuit," and branded as un feminine. 11 Le Probleme des Sexes, p. 16. 1- Cp. Geddes and Thomson, Evol. of Sex, p. 151 ; id., Sex, pp. 47f. ; Forel, op. cit., p. 64; C. Gasquoine Hartley, op. cit., ch. viii. !•'' Hist, of Hum. Marriage, ch. ix. 236 MODESTY. freedom seems to be allowed her, by Biblical morality, in order to compass that end. St. Paul recognized that sexual emotion might make single life impracticable to younger women. i-* He would hardly have given them such emphatic advice to marry had he considered it always immodest in a woman to endeavor consciously to attract a man, with a view to marriage. Unmarried women, in ancient Hebrew and Jewish society, enjoyed a large amount of liberty, which is not ordinarily con- sidered by Biblical writers a matter for reprobation. Some girls, it is true, then as now abused liberty, and eagerly sought after pleasure and admiration in many quarters. Thus Sirach warns a father to keep strict watch on a headstrong (dStaT/aeVTO)) daughter with a shameless eye.i^ But here he has in mind the case of girls who, whenever they get a chance, will wantonly indulge their sexual inclinations ; not those who, whatever may be the strength of their passions, have yet a pure will ; and who would not seek for sexual gratification outside of the married state. Such passages do not weaken our general position that neither natural nor Scriptural morality misapprehend the amorous impulse in the female sex so far as to brand as im- modest in a woman every conscious attempt to give expression to the desire for marriage which she cannot refuse to enter- tain in her inner being. The morality of a woman's use of her charms must be tested more by her motive than by conventional opinion. This latter, indeed, in spite of its frequent unreason- ableness, is valuable as affording at least a temporary check to action ; and thereby giving opportunity for the proper con- sideration of motive. People impelled by a strong impulse, such as the erotic impulse, cannot always be sure of the justice of their own motive. Many a woman has doubtless been re- strained by convention from acting on an erotic impulse which, however pure it appeared in her own eyes, would have led to "I Tim. 5: 11. 15 Sir. 26: 10, 42:11. MODESTY. 237 disaster. Even a conventional modesty is something of a pro- tection to chastity. But what is here maintained is that woman's sexual rights — the question whether that right to sexual intercourse which every creature, male or female, possessed of a sexual nature must have, is in a particular case to be claimed or waived — ■ cannot be estimated, cannot be decided, in all cases, merely by reference to conventional standards and ideas of modesty. In woman's life, as in man's, exceptional dif^culties must be met in exceptional ways. Isaiah (4:1) gives us an ideal picture of women in a time of desperation, pathetically and eagerly seeking for husbands ; fearing the reproach of desolation more than the irregularity of their request. Such a picture must have some reflection in fact. More impressive still is the story of Ruth, who comes before us as one of the purest and most beautiful feminine characters in the Bible; yet who made known her desire for a husband by methods involving a superb disregard of modesty, as we consider it nowadays. i^ After making full allowance for the difference in the moral standards and ideas existing in Hebrew antiquity from those of our own time, there is a permanent significance, a doc- trine of enduring value, about the sexual rights of women, in- herent in the passages referred to. They enforce our view that a true conception of modesty does not bind woman to sexual passivity; but that amative advances to men, if only they are inspired and controlled by a pure and legitimate motive — the desire for marriage — fall within the sphere of women's just rights. The ancient and natural view, that a married woman is more bound to modesty, to the concealment of erotic passion, than an unmarried one, is better than the opposite notion largely accepted in educated circles at the present time, that a matron in society — e.g., in a ballroom — may be more free with the men than her full-grown, but unmarried daughter. "■-Ruth 3:7H. 238 MODESTY. In a paper on The Modesty of Englishwomen, in the Nineteenth Century and After, No. 290, p. 596, Mrs. Mahood makes the following reflections on the standard of modesty required of English girls by modern custom in regard to their inclinations to marriage: — "A man may remark on his intention to marry at some indefinite future time, when prudence or other considerations may make it possible or advisable, without having as a rule to run the gauntlet of a chorus of impertinent and stupid would- be witty remarks. But should a girl be bold enough, or rather, natural and simple enough, to say the same thing, what would be the result? Why, everyone knows that she would be promptly sneered out of countenance. And why? Is it im- modest for a woman to express a determination to enter into a state which we are being continually reminded is a natural and honorable state, while it is natural and proper for a man to do so?" Mrs. Mahood justly implies that there is a great element of unfairness and harshness toward women in such a state of public opinion ; which is probably the outcome, not merely, as she thinks, of the disproportion existing in England between the numbers of marriageable men and of marriageable women, but also of the growth in past generations, as well as in the present, of false notions of what female modesty ought to be, notions which, as is shown in the present chapter, suffer by comparison with the primitive natural idea. Of course the suggestion that woman's part in the initial stages of a love affair is not one of entire passivity varies greatly in its application. Some may say that it is a needless suggestion ; and that many girls might make it the basis of a disastrous eagerness for marriage. Against such a misapplica- tion we have already guarded in this chapter; but it must be observed that just as excess of sexual liberty has wrought havoc in the lives of some women, so the prudish refusal of even a certain degree of such liberty has done grievous wrong MODESTY. 239 to others. Many a woman has doubtless suffered severely from sexual isolation, who might have been happily and healthily married, had it not been for difficulties placed in her way by overstrained social exclusiveness, or by erroneous notions of the obligation of modesty. A rational system of sexual ethics will not contain any definite rules as to the methods by which women in civilized communities may legitimately discover the erotic longing with a view to its just satisfaction in matrimony. Many women find in a natural, though more or less conscious, use of feminine charms and grace all that is required by the conditions of their sexual life ; but, as already hinted, an unusual degree of erotic passion, involving an intolerable strain, may make a special boldness in the display of emotion necessary even for a woman. Perhaps the extremest methods by which women, in the artificial life of modern civiHzation, notify their desire for mar- riage, are exemplified in matrimonial agencies and advertise- ment columns. The conditions of such advertising are still so irregular that only severe pressure of circumstances could justify the risks which would be entailed by taking this step. Some years ago The Guardian, commenting on a most painful case in the English law courts, remarked that the publication of matrimonial advertisements ought to be made a penal of- fense. "They are in some cases a means of obtaining money fraudulently from silly dupes ; in other cases they are simply a trap employed by the pander and the procuress." Matrimonial advertising should at any rate be placed under stringent regulations. Newspapers should be compelled to take out a special license for the insertion of such advertisements, of which a register might be kept ; and no one should be allowed to insert such an advertisement without being able to exhibit a certificate of character from some responsible and trustworthy person in the locality. The object for which this certificate was desired need not necessarily be disclosed. Under no circumstances should men be allowed to insert such advertisements. 240 MODESTY. It might be possible to regulate matrimonial advertising, and to free the system from the worst dangers now inherent in it; but it cannot be denied that such advertising, and every other extreme method of extending, on the woman's side, her quest of a partner, could only be justified morally by extraor- dinary pressure. That such pressure may exist in isolated cases, it seems impossible to deny. Doubtless, at any rate — - could the dry columns of print unfold the real life-story — it would be seen that some women have had recourse to such expedients only after and owing to an exhausting conflict with the sexual impulse. i" Vastly more important, however, than any attempt to de- fine the manner and methods by which the sexual longing is permitted to discover itself, in woman or in man, is the empha- sis which must ever be placed upon the necessity of trusting that Divine Providence which promises, to patient faith, sup- port and guidance in every kind of conflict and perplexity ; and the due fulfillment of all human needs, sexual needs as well as any other. Where there is a numerical disproportion of the sexes, as in some colonial settlements, attempts to adjust the proportion and to give the normal facilities for marriage engage the atten- tion of governments. Wholesale importations of women have been sometimes talked of ; but such crude means obviously do not promise well. It does not follow that a policy of numerical readjustment is inadmissible in se. It is possible to encourage female immigration, under proper safeguards, by the establish- ing of a special bureau, some of whose officials should them- selves be able and conscientious women. The immediate object of such immigration should be female labor; but it would indirectly make marriage easier of access. Indeed, one is in- clined to go a step farther. It is in such circumstances as are here outlined, if anywhere, that the matrimonial agency has a legitimate place. If a colonist living in a wild part, with almost 1' Cp. Forel, op. cit., p. 414 (ed. 10, 482). MODESTY. 241 no opportunities of meeting women — as is not infrequently the case — desires a wife, it is difficult to see anything immoral or immodest in his making private application to the government agency of female immigration, managed by women of higl; character. Thus would arise at least some possibility of the fulfillment of his need. It would be interesting to know what proportion of cases have turned out well in experiments actually undertaken in regard to the provision of spouses. But the history of matri- monial agencies on its honorable side — if it has one — has yet to be written. IS IS Matrimonial advertising appears in a not unfavorable aspect in a short article by Mary Winton in the Grand Magazine for July, 1905, where some personal experiences are narrated, and a scheme, quite un- objectionable from a moral point of view, for the establishment of matrimonial bureaus, is briefly outlined. More recently, the subject has been handled by Dr. Loewenfeld in Die Neue Generation, Jahrg 9. Heft 11, in a paper entitled Ueber ehrenamtliche Vermittlung in Eheangelegenheiten. His remarks indorse what has been said in this chapter about the rightfulness of a woman's desire for marriage. He thinks that the principle of the social facilitation of marriage may be systematically applied ; and is not deterred by the incidental abuses of matrimonial agency work, from holding this opinion. His suggestion is that since the pressure of other business would not allow the State to establish matrimonial agencies, unions of social science might under- take it as a practical development of their work. Such organizations would delegate the duty of encouraging desirable marriages — what Loewenfeld calls the Vermittlungstatigkeit — to selected, specially quali- fied persons, who, from their disinterested standpoint and with their expert psychological and eugenic knowledge, would fulfill the function in question better and more responsibly than most amateur matchmakers. The social recognition of such organizations would render it easier to stamp out objectionable matrimonial agencies. The future may see some such scheme worked out in detail and under legal regulation. H this were successfully done it would well accord with the principle laid down on a previous page, that the modern sexual moralist must contrive not only to suppress vice, but to supply legitimate needs by making marriage more readily and generally acces- sible. 16 CHAPTER XVI. Divorce. Statement of the Question — Christian Ideal of Marriage — Uncer- tainty of Ecclesiastical Opinion on Divorce — Christ on Divorce — St. Paul— Attitude of State— Duty of Church in the Matter. In modern consideration of divorce, one of the most diffi- cult, as it is one of the most momentous, of sex problems, there stands out in strong relief, amid much confusion of mind, a sincere desire on the part of thinking Christians to arrive at a view of divorce which shall meet certain extreme needs arising in circumstances of exceptional stress, without weakening the highest moral obligations bound up with Christianity. It is indeed with an increased sense of responsibility that I touch this part of my subject; for, as Rade observes, a per- son's view of divorce affords a test for the soundness of his ethical teaching in general, on the sex life.i Whether the ideal of the indissolubility of marriage was actually realized and divorce was unknown among primeval men, does not appear provable. A few known peoples on the lowest plane of culture do not allow divorce; and an inference of some value may be drawn from the fact that some birds, and possibly the anthropomorphous apes, appear to pair for life. But the early history of divorce is exceedingly obscure. ^ It is frequently urged that the only bond which makes a marriage contract valid, and the only guarantee of its stability, is love ; and by an imperfect estimate of love, it is argued that when the sentiment of mutual love ceases to exist, a marriage 1 Rade, Die Stellung des Christenthums zum Geschlechtsleben, p. 81. - Howard, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 247ff. ; Westermarck, op. cit., pp. 517, 521ff. ; Skeat and Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. ii, p. 66. (242) DIVORCE. 243 contract between two parties, though originally entered upon under the shadow of the most solemn religious sanctions, need no longer be observed. But Christian society sees that this argument rests upon a fundamental misconception. Its own estimate of love is infinitely higher than one which makes it out to be no more than a sentiment. Love is an incentive to duty which stimulates the will, even when sentiment has lost much of its power over the emotions and affections. Thus love would still urge one party to a marriage to be true to the other by an elTort of will, even though circumstances might have arisen which would inevitably cause a diminution of sen- timental affection. Ideally, this incentive to duty arising from the action of love on the will-power is too strong to be nulli- fied by any of the adverse circumstances of this life. Not incompatibility of tastes or ill-temper, not imprisonment or in- sanity or adultery itself, however much they may depress the sentiments which spontaneously arise when conjugal love flour- ishes amid normal conditions, can avail to destroy the convic- tion that fidelity, maintained without regard to the self-sacri- fice involved, will ultimately meet its reward. The grandeur of some of the noblest lives which have ever graced humanity has sprung from the realization of this ideal of conjugal love, in circumstances of exceptional pain and difficulty. The view is taken by some writers, e.g., Edersheim, Life and Times, and Newman Smyth, in Christian Ethics, that by the very fact of adultery the marriage-bond is broken. The ethical tendency of this proposition is doubtful, and there are difficulties of reasoning in its elucidation. It is, as has often been pointed out, capable of a reductio ad absurdwm from the facts of human experience. A forgiven adultery is doubtless, in some cases, one of the secrets of married life; nor does this act of forgiveness render necessary the renewal of the marriage compact,-" as it must logically do according to the theory of dis- -^ Cp. Bp. Andrewes, Minor Works (Library Anglo-Ca holic Theol., p. 106), quoted in Dibdin and Healey, English Church Law and Divorce, p. 44. 244 DIVORCE. solution by adultery. Adultery cannot, according to the theory of conjugal love developed in the Bible, be regarded as a neces- sarily unpardonable sin against the remaining partner. Such moral teaching as is conveyed in a passage like the vv^onderful allegory in Ezek. 16, where Jahweh suffers the conjugal rela- tion to, subsist between Himself and Israel, at the end of her long career of reckless licentiousness, is in itself sufficient to prove that conjugal love cannot be limited in its possibilities of long-suffering, as it is under the above-mentioned hypothesis. The allegory would lose much of the force which it now pos- sesses, if the state of things which it describes were not in some degree possible in actual life. Moreover, as the Anglican mar- riage service states, there are other departments of conjugal life besides the primarily sexual. Why then should a sin in this latter department necessarily and automatically dissolve mar- riage any more than one in another? It seems preferable to state the matter thus. The occurrence of an adultery gives to the remaining partner the option of thereafter giving up his adhesion to the marriage bond which he formerly acknowl- edged. But according to the Christian ideal of matrimony one is not to avail one's self of this possibility of dissolving a mar- riage, as long as the adulterous partner may repent of and renounce the sin. That part of the Christian Church which inculcates the strictest doctrine in accordance with this ideal, is unquestion- ably rendering a vast service to society. By making the ideal of human marriage stand out in strong relief, it sternly empha- sizes the call to self-sacrifice. It prevents the general concep- tion of marriage from degenerating into one which would ener- vate character and moral strength. It lifts conjugal love from the region of animality into a sphere where it finds the highest development. All potential causes of divorce are regarded from the ideal standpoint of the Christian marriage vow as removable, or at least as capable of being rendered ineffective by moral or other means ; and many even of the most unpromising causes f re- DIVORCE. 245 quently prove to be actually curable and removable. Conse- quently, divorce for any cause must ever be below the Christian ideal of marriage. None the less, the difference of opinion in the Church re- specting the lawfulness of divorce in certain circumstances,^ and the obscurity of the Bible teaching upon it, taken as a whole, show that inevitable failures to reach the ideal are con- templated. Such at any rate seems to be the possible inference from the difficult passage, St. Matt. 19: 11.^ St. Paul, again, speaking of divorce in I Cor. 7, causes the ideal law of marriage to stand out in strong relief before the minds of those who have been brought together in wedlock under the shadow of the Christian Covenant. But, it may fairly be asked, is his language such as to allow us to infer that he desiderates a rigidly uniform enforcement of this ideal? He seems to be thinking of cases in which, after some grave difticulty has arisen between Christian man and wife, a return to the full sweetness of the conjugal relation is possible. In regard to cases in which this return is not possible, e.g., from some physical cause, would he have uniformly given the same judgment? Would a man whose attitude upon the indissolu- bility of marriage was clearly and perfectly defined, have tol- erated even such an idea as that of a Christian husband whose pagan wife left him, being allowed to regard the marriage con- tract as thereby annulled? It is true, at the same time, that even if the above infer- ence be allowed, failures to reach the marriage ideal could only be regarded as venial, according to a just view of the New Tes- tament teaching, owing to intolerable stress of circumstances. An analogy will help us to understand the progress of modern thought on divorce, in its relation to Biblical teaching. In the Middle Ages it was debated whether the putting out of 3 Such difference of opinion has existed from the earliest period. See Additional Note G on the Patristic and Medieval Attitude to Divorce. •* Sec farther, note on p. 366f. 246 DIVORCE. capital to interest was legitimate ; and a large body of opinion decided on the strength of a prima facie interpretation of St. Luke 6 : 35, taken in isolation, that it was not. Uhlhorn ob- serves that the social factor capital, now so mighty, found no place in the social life of medieval Europe.^ Social evolution would accordingly have been checked ; our modern economic system would never have come into being, had not a few think- ers found courage to break with the unscientific literalism that thus dominated Biblical interpretation. There are, indeed, doubtless many particular developments of an antichristian tendency in the modern economic system ; but will any thinking Christian venture to condemn it as a whole? The same method of isolating texts of Scripture and mak- ing them decisive of policies, retarded geographical explora- tion,*^ and was also an important factor in bringing about his- tory's most terrible episode, the Witchmania of the Middle Ages.''' Now, just as in the Middle Ages many people used the Lucan text above referred to, in order to justify their inaction, their refusal to undertake the onerous task of thinking out economic problems, so many nowadays, in their despair of making progress in the solution of sexual and matrimonial problems, search the Bible for isolated pronouncements seeming to support their negative view. E.g., Bishop Gore, in his book on Divorce, endeavors to reduce the series of Biblical counsels on divorce to a categorical prohibition of it, with the implica- tion that such prohibition can and ought to be embodied in secular legislation. His general position suggests the idea that, in St. Matthew's Gospel, the record of events is more primitive and historically trustworthy than that of the sayings of Jesus.* 5 Uhlhorn, Die christliche Liebestatigkeit, ed. 1895, p. 317. 6 Houston Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Cen- tury, vol. ii, pp. 280ff. ■7 The relevant text is Ex. 22 : 18. 8 Gore, Divorce, pp. 17ff. DIVORCE. 247 The contrary is more likely to be the real state of the case ;^ though no doubt the originality of the sayings has also been interfered with.^^ In sum, Biblical science has now put it beyond question that the ideal of indissolubility is the determining factor in the Christian ethic of marriage; but it has also shown with equal conclusiveness that the ideal is not realizable by legislative co- ercion; and that the right of applying matured moral judgment to the exigencies of individual cases inheres in the principles of the Gospel, and was in fact exercised in primitive Christian- ity.^^ This view is coming into more and more general acceptance. 12 The foregoing considerations suggest that the thinker's atti- tude to divorce may, and indeed must, vary with the standpoint from which he views it. The simplest and best attitude for the Church on the question is the one actually taken up by the High Church party in the Anglican Church, viz., to maintain the ideal of marriage as indissoluble, as it is set forth in the canon law and formularies of that Church. !•" Individual departures from the highest standard of marriage, though they may conceivably be rendered inevitable by force of circumstances, and though they may not be without some obscure sanction, as is suggested above, in the general ethical scheme of Christianity, could not be regarded indifferently by the Church. It may be said with confidence that it is the duty of the clergy to refuse to remarry persons who have been partners in a former marriage which, for any reason whatever, has been dissolved. 9 Moffatt, Historical Introduction to the New Testament, p. 248 ; Gardner, The Religious Experience of St. Paul, pp. 2f. i^J. Weiss's commentary on the Synoptics, passim. 11 Cp. J. Weiss, in Die Schriften des N. T., vol. i, pp. 60, 274. 12 There is, e.g., an article by G. W. Wade, D.D., in The Modern Churchman, vol. ii, in which the position of this chapter is reached independently. 13 See The Guardian, quoted in Luckock, History of Marriage, p. 238. 248 DIVORCE. But a decided attitude as to the special duty of the Church is compatible, among Anglicans, with some extension of view on the broad question of the lawfulness of divorce. It is not clear that the position of the Church in the matter is necessarily to be taken up by the State. If the Church, as an exponent of the highest morality known to mankind, must with its utmost efforts maintain the ideal of marriage, the State must provide for the inevitable failures of individuals here and there to reach that ideal. If the Church is to guard the general rule, the State must consider the exceptions. Conceivably there may be cases in which when one married partner persistently and irremediably fails to perform conjugal duties, the other, after full experience and sincerest effort, finds the strain thus in- duced upon mind, nerves, and health positively unendurable. From some complicating causes, constitutional defects, physical or moral weakness, or whatever they may be, his strength proves itself unequal to the burden which the severity of the Christian marriage commandment, in its ideal form, imposes. He fairly proves that it is not given him to "receive the saying." Would it be inconsistent with the view of divorce put forward in the New Testament, that view being taken in its utmost vague breadth as found in St. Matthew 19, to allow that in extreme cases where human love, after full trial, has proved unequal to an exceptional strain, remarriage should take place — after the lapse of a considerable specified timei'* — not under the sanction of the Church, but under that of the State? 1* This point is of great importance, in view of the fact that the attitude of the State on moral questions helps greatly in educating the moral sense of the community. Here we perceive one of the ways in which, as Wundt observes (Ethics, vol. iii, p. 136, E. tr.), law can serve indirectly moral ends which it cannot reach directly. The obtaining of a divorce is conditioned in our laws something in the manner indicated, time having to elapse between the decree nisi and the decree absolute. A writer in The Guardian, reviewing a recent anonymous work on divorce, warns the Christian Church against allowing the divorce law of England to be made frankly secular. If by the phrase "frankly secular" is implied an attitude of avowed hostility to the Christian DIVORCE. 249 ideal of marriage, the present writer would find this warning accept- able. But there is an alternative position, the one taken up in this chapter, i.e., that the State may frame its marriage laws so as to approxi- mate to and as far as possible assist the realization of the Christian ideal of marriage, yet not so as to lend its support to the rigid and indiscriminate enforcing of that ideal upon society. It is at least patent that a law confining facilities for remarriage after divorce within very narrow limits, signally fails in practice to accomplish its purpose of penalizing the non-fulfillment of matrimonial obligations, and of pre- venting among the mass of the people a species of divorce without the assistance of the court — to borrow Mr. Booth's phrase; and an ensuing state of cohabitation resembling and approximating to the married estate. (See C. Booth, Life and LaboF, etc., final vol., p. 42.) The practical working out of this legal theory — as of legal theo- ries in general — is indeed far from perfect? A writer in II Rogo, ann. X, No. 1, p. 6, illustrates the fact from the experience of France : "The law of Apr. 21, 1886 (Cod. civ. 246) advised the judge to impose a short delay before decreeing divorce; but recourse has been rarely had to this wise provision. The courts seem persuaded that, from the moment when disagreement sets in, it is better to put an end to it quickly by the divorce applied for, and this view has come so much into vogue that an experienced magistrate, Morizot-Thibault, observes that the courts, when the case has to do with persons suing i)i forma pau- peris, do not generally require further proofs than those oi the simple inquiry made by the commission which granted leave to sue. Thus two hundred divorces were granted at one sitting." However, in reality, defects in the working of a law by no means prove that its theory is unsound. Many beneficial laws, even after the efiforts of far-seeing legislators have brought them into being, are hindered in their operation by the lack of a correspondingly educated public feeling. It is only when a law has had a long history behind it, that we can venture to speak of its strong hand, or of the sureness of its operation. What Dr. C. A. Mercier observes in regard to criminal (Mercier, Criminal Responsibility, pp. 14ff.) holds good for civil law. It may be wise, it may be grounded on the best theory discoverable ; yet for a long time it may be weak, and largely fail of fulfilling its main purpose. The position that the secular law should only attempt to discourage and delay, not to prohibit divorce, is not shaken by such adverse considerations as those just mentioned. That it is the function of secular law to delay divorce seems to me indubitable; and I cannot understand a serious student of divorce like S. B. Kitchin permitting himself to sneer at the delays imposed and reconciliations attempted by the secular courts. (Kitchin, A History of Divorce, pp. 157ff.). 250 DIVORCE. No compulsion is to be placed on the clergy, on this theory, in respect of either themselves celebrating such remarriages, or lending their churches for that purpose. For the partners to be obliged to resort to the civil registrar's court, in such a case, and to be deprived of celebrating the marriage under the sanc- tion of a venerable Christian ceremony, would in some measure safeguard society — at any rate, the society of the members of any Church which takes the highest view of the responsible nature of the marriage contract — against looking with reckless laxity upon individual failures to maintain the ideal. The un- compromising attitude of the Roman Church toward divorce is said to have had this effect in America, upon members of its own communion. 15 The Church has, besides, the power of excommunication, which might be exercised over any member who recklessly and without sufficient reason fell short of the marriage ideal. All that is here advanced is that, in extreme cases, the Church might hesitate to brand as sinful, by this method, an action to which it could not, from the ideal standpoint, give an unquali- fied approval. 1*^ It is one thing to refuse to assist a person to fall short of a moral ideal ; another thing to refrain from judg- ing his failure when it has only occurred after much struggle and effort. In view of the passage in St. Matthew already dis- cussed, the present writer ventures with all reverence to doubt whether Our Lord Himself, in spite of the distinctness and se- verity with which He promulgated the ideal marriage law, was prepared to see that law applied with ruthless uniformity. The right of civil remarriage is what many Anglican clergy already wish to see in the case of the innocent partner in a divorce for 15 See the York Report on Divorce, p. Zl . The above observation is made for what it may be worth. On the other hand, Howard (o/j. cit., iii, p. 212) concludes from the statistics at his disposal that "the growth of divorce in recent years is a remarkable phenomenon in Catholic as well as Protestant lands." 16 And let us keep in mind, too, the consideration adduced in quotation from Foley, page 441. DIVORCE. 251 adultery; and it is not clear, either from a religious-or from a utilitarian standpoint, that an extension of the right beyond this one cause would be wholly without justification. It is in- deed impossible to undertake here the detailed discussion of the reasons which commend and the difficulties — ethical, legal, medical, and other — which surround particular directions of such extension. It is enough if we are right in recognizing the principle of extension ; and it should be urged finally that what- ever applications of this principle the State may adopt, oppor- tunities of divorce should always be heavily conditioned. It is of course open to anyone to object to the view of di- vorce here adopted, on the ground that in practice the majority of persons affected would, without waiting to prove by full trial in their own consciences the justice of the step, avail themselves of the suggestion that declension from the ideal standard may not in all cases be deserving of moral condemnation. But it may be urged in reply that if the principle here enunciated can- not be shown to be inherently wrong, the onus of responsibility in the application of it rests ultimately with individuals who apply it to their own cases. Nothing in this theory of divorce discourages the Christian Church from impressing upon mar- ried persons the religious and moral urgency of mutually en- deavoring to fulfill their conjugal duties as ideally outlined in the marriage vow, even amid the most adverse circumstances. Rather the whole argument implies that the Church must with the most vigorous efforts perform this function. It is impos- sible to bring into too great prominence the moral beauty and glory of the ideal of matrimony. Are not the claims of a married consort, in some piteous case of lifelong imprisonment or hopeless insanity, still full of power? Does not the woe of an insane wife, no longer able to sustain her part in the marriage union, appeal to all that is tenderest and noblest in a husband's heart? Should not the consort who is not directly smitten by calamity still cling with every possible effort to the other whom calamity has overtaken ? Such considerations may and ought to be dwelt upon with the 252 DIVORCE. deepest earnestness and the utmost persistence and power in the sphere of moral suasion. i" And in the case of people whose conduct gives reasonable evidence that they are refusing to make any response to this teaching, and unscrupulously per- verting the just theory of divorce to selfish and immoral ends, the Church might initiate, by way of public protest, the process alluded to above; or if the state of the case was not so clearly defined as to allow of excommunication, the blame in the matter, if blame there be, lies at the door, not of the clergy or the corporate Church, but of the persons directly concerned. It is objected by the Minority Report of the Royal Com- mission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, which sat in England from 1909 onward, that the legislative developments recommended by the Majority Report are based on a principle which abrogates that of monogamous lifelong union. i^ But ia truth both reports should be read in connection with the ideal of indissolubility. The real chief difference between the Majority and Minority Reports is that the latter leans, far more decidedly than the former, to the principle of coercion. Whether this course is practically and provisionally the wiser, — as may with considerable reason be maintained, — it is as- suredly not ideally right. In the long run, it cannot be that the Christian Church will continue to rely on the secular arm to translate its principles into social practice and realize its ideals. Moral and spiritual principles call for the exertion of moral and spiritual force. When Church organizations appeal to the legislature to enforce their ethical theories, they are in fact requesting other agencies — and those incompetent for the task — to do their work in place of them. The Church should rather step forward, as an essentially moral and spiritual agency, to the task of solving this problem. It should employ the methods proper to it, the forces which belong to its heri- tage and for the use of which it is responsible. So far as I 1''' In support of such considerations I may refer to the remarks of Eulenburg (Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 915ff., 935). IS Minority Report, pp. 184ff. DIVORCE. 253 know, among all the particular organized activities of Chris- tianity, the sympathetic and expert handling of matrimonial troubles has never found a place ; there is not, and there never has been, any Mission of Concord to which married people can look for counsel, help, prayer, and the special endeavor to heal their wounded life in common. is'' May it be that a chosen and gifted soul will at some time be moved to found and organize such a mission ; and married people in trouble and discord will then feel that though they can indeed fall back on the divorce courts to end their conjugal life, yet the moral obligation of trying to avoid that step lies upon them ; and in the spiritual agency which offers to come to their aid, they will find not only emphasis laid upon that moral obligation, but help given in the performance of it. The worst feature in the present social handling of matrimonial problems, and sexual problems in general, is the smallness of the element of intelligent sympathy. The increase of that element would go far to reduce the divorce rate. But in the mean time the principle of coercion cannot be wholly abandoned ; and particular emendations of the divorce law have to be looked at on their merits, in reference to their prac- ticability and probable effect. It is a further question, and one more difficult to answer, whether the State can penalize evasions of the spirit of its mar- riage laws. To impose legal penalties on adulterous relations, except as regards the woman, has always been a doubtful and difficult task. It is well known that the punishment of the adulteress has been often undertaken, and there is sufficient record of acts of vengeance performed by the injured husband or his relatives on the adulterer, such as are referred to on another page. Of the same nature is the legal provision by which the injured husband can claim damages against his wife's paramour. But history has record of another class of penalties for adultery, based on a different principle from that of the above, namely, that adultery is punishable by the com- 1^=* I understand, however, that Prison Gate Missions incidentally do a good deal of such work among certain classes. 254 • DIVORCE. munity as an injurious breach of moral order.^^ Howard illus- trates this principle from Roman legislation, and from the older laws of England and the United States.-*' It is arguable that 1'' Israelite law prescribed adultery as a social offense punishable with death (Dt. 22:22ff.; Lv. 20:10; Ezek. 16:38, 40; 23:45, 47; and probably Prov. 5:14). I doubt whether Professor Toy is right (see Prov. 6:33) in suggesting that Ben-Sira does not refer to the death penalty in this connection. Death may very well be the form of the visitation which is to overtake the adulterous couple and the children of their union (Sir. 23:21, 24). Under the Roman rule the Jews were no longer allowed to inflict the death penalty (Jno. 18:31), though it was still part of their penal theory (Jno. 8:5); but it is probable that the rigor of the law had been relaxed independently of this circumstance. St. Paul refers to adultery among the Jews in a way suggestive of the fact that their condemnation of it found no very severe social expression (Rom. 2:22). The primitive legislation contains no attempt to discriminate be- tween cases or to estimate motives. It voices the savage, unquestion- ing desire to avenge a wrong ; the desire which, originating in the anger of the individual, makes itself felt by the whole community. So far as it expresses a conscious striving for holiness on the part of the community, a mental attitude reflected in the command "Thou shalt put away, or burn away (Piel of ba<=ar) the evil from the midst of thee," this is connected with the notion that evil threatens to cling with something analogous to physical contagion, not merely to the community but also to its God ; and that the inevitable Divine repul- sion of evil may consequently be accompanied by an indiscriminate visitation of the community with the Divine anger. (Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, i, pp. 233ff.) In such legislation we are far indeed from a discerning and just judgment on the sin of adultery. The kind of adultery contemplated implies reck- less disregard of others" rights. The complex causes which may in practice diminish responsibility for its commission, and so lessen its guilt, are not taken into account. The general attitude of the New Testament writers to adultery is one of the severest reprobation. In itself it is a sin which defiles and excludes from communion with God (Mt. 15:19; I Cor. 6:9); a sin which cries out for God's judgments (He. 13:4). It is a symbol of Godlessness in general (Rev. 2:22), as frequently in O. T. It is included in the general condemnation of rropvela, sexual license, or whoredom. 20 Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 32. 79, 169ff. DIVORCE. 255 adultery might again be penalized by the State, for the good of the community. It would seem that the law, instead of leaving to the injured partner, as a supplement to divorce pro- ceedings, the option of preferring a claim for damages against the invader of his rights, might reserve to itself the power of visiting the offense with some punishment consonant with modern ideas of justice, as at least an indication of society's corporate disapproval. For not only is it the general function of the State to prevent and correct sexual misdemeanors, but it belongs to it also to punish the non-fulfillment of contracts duly entered into. By this means the community would enter its protest against adultery more effectively than by a vague and frequently impracticable social condemnation. The law, too, would take impartial account of the special circumstances of particular cases. It is true that the question of penalizing adultery on this wider principle is highly complicated; it is true that Acts of Parliament are but indifferent moral instru- ments and limited in their operation ; and that legislative ex- periments hitherto made for the suppression of adultery have had dubious success ; but it does not seem established that no improvement can be effected in the present policy of letting each drama of conjugal misery in which adultery is a factor, and in which a divorce case is one of the acts, work itself out thereafter in unnoticed and almost haphazard fashion. 21 In the evolution of moral ideas it becomes increasingly clear that the highest and proper purpose of all punishment or punitive restraint is remedial. If accordingly a social punish- ment is to be inflicted on the adulterer or adulteress, it should rightly occur at some point in the earlier stages of a divorce process, and with a view to preventing the completion of that process. To punish the adulterer after a divorce has been 21 Cp. a letter entitled The Divorce Law, by J. C. Walton in The Guardian, May 14, 1914. The writer concludes : "Has not the time arrived when, in a community civilized and calling itself Christian, adultery should once again become a crime? A move in this direction would do more good than countless philosophical discussions." 256 DIVORCE. granted would tend to fulfill another inherent but lower pur- pose of punishment, that of being a general social deterrent from adultery. But if imposed as a corollary to a protection order granted to a wife, or to a decree nisi, in cases where an adultery has been one of the causes of the application, some measure of punishment for the adultery might awaken in the actors in it the sense of sin which so often seems completely dormant in such cases, would impress the public generally with the guiltiness of adultery, would prevent the institution of divorce proceedings as a result of collusion ; and, above all, would compel delay in the working out of the divorce process, and enforce an opportunity for reconsideration, before the final extremity of divorce absolute. CHAPTER XVII. Forbidden Degrees. Origin of Sexual Repulsion — Attitude of Christianity toward Incest — Forbidden Degrees, History of — Matriarchate and Patriarchate — Ideal Unity in Marriage — Marriage with a Deceased Wife's 'Sister Considered. The repulsion felt toward marriage within certain degrees both of consanguinity and of affinity has, according to Wester- marck, an origin which may be briefly stated as follows : "Gen- erally speaking, the feeling that two persons are intimately con- nected in some way or other . . . may give rise to the notion that marriage or intercourse between them is incestu- ous." It is, of course, in the first instance, in households that this intimate connection is found. Westermarck in his two works on marriage and morals gives many examples of the application of this principle. As was to be expected, this principle found a place in the scheme of Christian ethics. The thoroughness with which official Christianity, from quite early times, applied it is largely explained, as Watkins points out,i by the anxiety of Christians to rebut the charges of incest commonly preferred against them by pagans. This feeling stifled any impulse which the larger- minded divines may have felt toward the unbiased examina- tion of the moral and religious value of particular marriage prohibitions. In the history of Christianity the principle has been largely extended, in the light of the ideal teaching of Jesus Christ on marriage ; its .most remarkable extension being the bar to marriage arising from cognatio spiritualis. The necessity has arisen from time to time in Christian history of revising and curtailing the prohibitions derivable from this principle. A large section. of modern opinion, not satisfied with 1 Watkins, Holy Matrimony, p. 681.^ ' n ■ (257) 258 FORBIDDEN DEGREES. the amendments already made to the list of prohibitions for- merly recognized, demands further revision. Former revisions of the forbidden degrees give a certain precedent for further progress in the same direction ; pre- cedent, however, which is not to be incautiously followed, inas- much as many Christian teachers, speaking with a deep sense of responsibility, have maintained that, so far at least as the Church itself is concerned, its right of revision does not extend to those prohibitions which have a definite Biblical sanction. It is further largely maintained that to this class of prohibitions must be added a few others contained by obvious implication, though not verbally included, in the Biblical list, e.g., marriage between an uncle and niece or between a nephew and the widow of his maternal uncle. How far this latter contention is sound is a question which modern Christian thinkers may legitimately take into con- sideration. Is it out of harmony with a reverential estimate of the Divine Word, to require the excision from the ecclesiastical prohibitory code, not indeed of any of those prohibitions which the natural development of human moral instincts and revealed Divine approval both support, but of certain of those which receive a less definite sanction? Are Christian believers justi- fied in demanding that their consciences be relieved of yokes which are of authoritative human, but which may not be of Divine, imposition? The further question whether Christian opinion, even if it accepts a moral obligation for Christian society itself, is justi- fied in legally requiring its observance from people who are differently persuaded, must be discussed before the close of this chapter. Of the small class of prohibitions the retention or aboli- tion of which form, as has been said, legitimate subjects of Christian consideration, modern interest centers round the question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister. The prohi- bition of marriage within this degree of affinity is neither sup- ported nor discountenanced with any definiteness in the Bible. FORBIDDEN DEGREES. 259 On the one hand, the inference that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is wrong was not seemingly made at the date of the Code of Hohness itself ;2 for such a marriage, according to the best interpretation of Lev. 18: 18, is implicitly permitted. On the other hand, this fact alone does not prove that the inference, when drawn at a later stage of religious and moral development, may not be just; for conscience problems are not always settled for Christians by the letter of Holy Scripture. It is contended that the principle of the ideal unity is discover- able in embryo in the Code ; and it is argued that the acceptance of this principle compels by a logical process the further accept- ance of the prohibitions referred to. It must be considered presently whether this logical process is wholly sound. But first, in order to understand the development of religious, including Christian, opinion on mar- riage prohibitions, we must study this part of the Code of Holiness in relation to its history. The marriage prohibitions of the Code of Holiness and the principle upon which they are based can only be rightly estimated when taken in historical relation to the ideas in the atmosphere of which they were formed. St. Thomas Aquinas noted — as a primary fact — that "the Ancient Law, i.e., the Code of Holiness, in forming its marriage prohibitions has a special regard to habitation in common as requiring to be safeguarded against lust, declaring forbidden those persons to whom sexual approach was the more easy from the fact of their being members of the same household."^ The Christian Church, apparently finding this principle inadequate, established another on which to base further prohi- bitions. This was the multiplicatio amiciticr.^ "A secondary 2 The Levitical enumeration of forbidden degrees belongs to a Biblical document known to students as the Code of Holiness, a series of legal enactments whose inspiring idea is the danger of outraging by unholy human conduct the Holiness of God. 3 Suppl. Pars., iii, Sum. Theol., Qu. liv, art. 4, ad fin. 4 Id. eod. loc, art. 3. 260 FORBIDDEN DEGREES. object of marriage is the drawing of mankind together and the multipHcation of friendship ; inasmuch as a man stands to his wife's relations as he does to his own. Consequently damage would accrue to the multiplication of friendship, if anyone were to take to wife a woman related to him ; because out of this act no new friendship would originate to anyone through the instrumentality of the marriage." This new principle is more subtle and artificial than the former one ; its workings are less easily grasped ; and in order to work out the problem before us, we must go behind the medieval theory, and start from the historical principle under- lying the prohibitions in the Code of Holiness. Originally, relationship, to be effective in causing sexual intercourse to be tabooed, must involve habitual intimacy, close membership in the same household from infancy. The family was the unit of primitive society, and the family might be either patriarchal or matriarchal in form. Out of the family, dwell- ing together in one household, develops the wider conception of the clan. Whether, in the history of mankind at large, the patri- archate or the matriarchate is the older institution, is still de- bated; but in the section with which we are here particularly concerned, the older Semites, so far as the history of their social evolution is known, the matriarchate is the form of the family which comes first into view.-"' Kin^iip was reckoned through the mother ; and there was no bar to marriage in the male line, except probably that a man could not marry his own daughter.*^ But at the date of the codification of the Levitical laws, the matriarchate had given way to a newer institution, that of the patriarchate. Consequently, we trace the influence of both these institutions in the Code of Holiness. The flesh of a man's flesh {slf'er b^saro) was (a) his immediate blood •'' The earliest form of marriage mentioned in the Bible is de- scribed in terms which recall the matriarchate. W. Robertson Smith, Kinship, pp. 176, 177 (new ed., pp. 207f.). *^ W. Robertson Smith, Kinship, p. 163 (new' ed., p. 192). FORBIDDEN DEGREES. 261 relations through male or through female descent; (b) the wives of his nearest male kindred, sexual union with whom in- volved the symbolical profanation of what a man ought to regard as sacrosanct, the sexual rights of his near male kindred. The woman over whom those sexual rights had once been exercised, even though, owing to her husband's death, they were now non-existent, had been rendered sacred by their touch. '^ This idea, which manifestly has its roots in the patriarchal system, justifies to ancient, and in some degree to modern, ways of thinking, such a prohibition as that referring to a deceased brother's wife, union with whom would not be objectionable on physiological grounds; for it would involve no question of inbreeding. But it is condemned by the ethical requirements of the patriarchal family. And the Code of Holi- ness upholds these ethical requirements, (c) A third class of prohibitions concerns certain women closely related by affinity, who were at one time actually, and at a later time were re- garded as potentially, intimate members of the same matri- archal clan or even household, as a man at his marriage ; and thus, on Westermarck's principles, would be taboo to that man. "i" The thought will occur here that the acceptance of this view involves a condemnation of any and every repetition of marriage on the part of woman, as implying a symbolical profanation of her former husband's sexual rights. That such a condemnation has existed, and has exercised great influence in the history of human sexual relations, is indeed amply proved by Westermarck and others. Many peoples have accounted, and many do still account, the remarriage of a widow to be an insult to the memory of her former husband, without regard to the heaviness of the yoke thus imposed upon the conscience of the woman. But neither Hebrew nor Christian thought indorses this notion in its entirety ; nor discountenances in any general or unsym- pathetic way the remarriage of widows. It is only in the smaller field now before us — the projected remarriage of a widow with one of her deceased husband's own near relations — that the best Hebrew ethical thought makes use of the notion which has had so extensive an in- fluence elsewhere. And even in this field exceptional circumstances — in the case of levirate marriage — might occasion the supersession of the notion that the marrying of a brother's widow was a symbolic dishonoring of the dead brother's nakedness. 262 FORBIDDEN DEGREES. To uncover the nakedness of a mother, sister, mother's daughter, wife's mother, and wife's daughter, did not in every case involve disrespect toward the sexual rights of some near male kinsman; nor do we estimate the offense sufficiently by referring it vaguely to instinctive sexual repulsion originating in the idea of domestic intimacy. Its illegality had a farther definiteness derived from the recognition of what was true and holy in the matriarchate. This class of prohibitions illustrates in some measure the personal rights of woman. For the matri- archate, even if, as some have maintained, it did not in its origin imply consideration for women, but rather the reverse, must none the less have tended to emphasize the social impor- tance of woman, and gradually to surround womanhood with reverence and esteem. "^^ A sexual union of a man with his mother would be not merely a symbolical outrage on his father's sexual rights ; it would be an outrage on her own womanhood, sanctified in respect of that man by the relation of maternity. It is evident, therefore, that the Levitical prohibitions are drawn up on the basis of a coalition of early ideas derived from both the matriarchate and the patriarchate.^ It is further to be noticed that at the date at which the Code of Holiness was drawn up, the importance of the individual was increasing relatively to that of the family. It is this fact which accounts tor the absence, in the prohibition of marriage between a widow and her late husband's brother, of allusion to the ex- ceptional case of levirate marriage.^ And although, as we have seen, it is the taboo of domiciliar habitation in common which gives the primary impulse to these prohibitions, yet the forma- tion of a wider conception of effective relationship is already evident than one which refers it to such habitation. '^^ See C. Gasquoine Hartley, op. cit., pt. ii. 8 Here we observe the ethical superiority of the Levitical incest prohibitions to those of Hammurabi (sections 154-158), which reflect a patriarchal condition of society, and are based on regard for the sexual rights of the male. 9 Driver-White, on Lev. 18 : 16, in Haupt, SBOT. FORBIDDEN DEGREES. 263 Thus the forbidden degrees in the Code of HoHness exert an educative influence in the direction of the ideal unity of man and wife. Efifective relationship gradually becomes defined m the direction indicated by the ideal unity. This doctrine is no late ecclesiastical fiction or pious imagination. It meets us in the early legend of the formation of woman. "Ideals," says Dillmann, commenting on Gen. 2 : 24, "are here set before us, the realization of which is a concern for the further movement of history."!^ The ideal unity is without hesitation approved by Christ as the perfect expression of the Divine Will, and it is sufficiently prominent in the New Testament teaching on mar- riage. But not all the possible consequences derivable from this doctrine are adopted by the Code itself, or commend themselves to the enlightened moral sense of mankind. These consequences, when reviewed in detail, must be interpreted and estimated in relation to other human needs and obligations. Neither does the emphasis laid by our Lord and the New Testa- ment writers on the ideal unity guarantee the correctness of all the inferences subsequently drawn in respect of marriage pro- hibitions. The passage from Genesis in which this unity is symbolized is quoted in the New Testament in discourses on the durability of marriage and conjugal fidelity. It must be used with caution in elucidating problems of affinity. In post- biblical times Christian thought, working from the starting point of the ideal unity, discovered a large number of forbidden degrees which later Christians, reverting to the wiser spirit of the Code of Holiness, repudiated. Having considered the basal principles and the animating spirit of the Code of Holiness, it remains to- look more closely at the question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister. The prohibition of such a marriage is certainly derivable in logic from the doctrine of the ideal unity, and is so far potentially 10 Cp. also W. P. Paterson in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, J. V. Marriage, vol. ii, p. 265. "According to the antique mode of thought, to say that the first man had one wife only, was as much as to say that monogamy was the ideal system." 264 FORBIDDEN DEGREES. contained in the Code; but there remains,- as has already been hinted, the further question, whether it is right in practice to press logic to the extent of forming that prohibition, and whether such a prohibition is necessary for the conservation of holiness. In this doubt we find the origin of the comparative leniency in disciplinary treatment extended by one or two of the early Church councils to people who had contracted such marriages. Bishop Gore in a discussion in Convocation in- ferred from this leniency that marriage with a deceased wife's sister was not considered by early Christian society as contrari- ant to the law of God, but only as deserving to be followed by some form of discipline. Dr. Moberley more justly argued that the imposition of discipline, however lenient, implies the abstract acceptance of the principle revealed in God's Word, the ideal unity afifected in marriage ; and thus implicitly con- demns the marriage in question as contrary to that Word. The most that can be said is that the lack of emphasis in the de- cisions of the early councils reveals the existence of hesitation about the application in detail, in regard to the marriage of kindred, of the principle of the ideal unity. The Code of Holiness forbids a man to marry his wife's nearest kin in the ascending and descending line ; because to form a sexual union with either her mother or her daughter would be to violate directly the principle of the matriarchate, to ignore completely the validity of descent through the female line. A peculiar sanctity surrounded her of whose flesh and from whose womb had come the woman whom a man chose to be his wife ; and any female issue of the wife's womb was in like manner directly of the wife's flesh, and therefore taboo to her stepfather. But the wife's sister stands at a greater distance from the husband. She is not so directly of the wife's flesh as the near- est female kin in the ascending and descending line. The rela- tionship in her case travels round two sides of a triangle, in- stead of over one line, as in the case of the mother or the daughter. FORBIDDEN DEGREES. 265 Mother Man = Wife ^- Sister I Daughter Moreover, the fact that at the date of the drawing up of the Code of HoHness, Hebrew society reckoned descent no longer through the mother, but through the father, caused a man's wife's sister to remain part of a different household from his own ; for the man was not received into the woman's house- hold, as under the matriarchate, but she into his.i^ Conse- quently, after the decease of the wife, neither any breach of physiological law, nor any potential infraction of a near male relative's sexual rights, nor any marked outrage on instinct, is caused, so far as the man is concerned, by marrying the sister. So far it can hardly be said that the teaching of the Code of Holiness favors the notion that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is an actual outrage on the ideal unity ; granting, as we may do, that principle to be discoverable in embryo in the Code. But there are, further, ethical considerations having their root in the responsibility of the zvoman in regard to the ■character of a sexual union. If it is indecent for a man to Ignore his late brother's sexual rights over a woman by marry- ing the widow, is it not, by parity of reasoning, indecent for a woman to marry a man in regard to whom her departed sister had recently exercised such rights? In answering this ques- tion we must observe that there was no doubt a time in Semitic society when no such consideration as this would have pre- sented itself to the Semite mind. In the parallel case — that of levirate marriage — the man who married the childless widow of a dead brother did not despise, but rather fulfilled his brother's sexual rights ; and probably enough, the woman con- senting to become the wife of her sister's widower, was at one 11 Driver-White, on Lev. 18:18, SBOT. 266 FORBIDDEN DEGREES. time thought of as honoring, rather than as dishonoring, the memory of the sister. But as the family ceased to be the all-important social idea, and the rights and responsibilities of the individual came into fuller view, the union of a man with his .brother's widow came to be looked on as an unholy dishonor done to the memory of a sacred tie. And woman as well as man, though not perhaps to the same extent, is considered, even at the date of the Code of Holiness, to have both rights and responsibilities in forming a sexual union. For her, as well as for man, to see forbidden nakedness is unchaste and merits condign punishment.i^ The sexual rights and responsibilities of woman are recognized yet more clearly in the Christian moral system ;13 though many moralists, including apparently the Bishops of the Lambeth Conference, will not allow her responsibilities at any rate to rank with those of man. Hence, although valid arguments are not all on the side of the traditionalists in this matter, it is by no means without rea- son that Christian thinkers have largely drawn the inference that marriage with a deceased wife's sister, if not flagrantly opposed to, cannot be held to be in complete accord with, the spirit of the Code of Holiness. Moreover, the arguments of social inexpediency commonly urged against the legalizing of marriage with a deceased wife's sister — that a modest sister-in-law could not take care of her brother-in-law's household after the death of his wife, or make long visits to her sister while living; that some wives would grow jealous of their sisters; that endearments between rela- tions by marriage would become irregularis* — are not decisive, but neither are they valueless. Those who would maintain the prohibition in England have recently endeavored to press these arguments — perhaps rather more than they can bear. It 12 Lev. 20:12, 14, 17, 20. For the sexual rights of a married woman, cp. Ex. 21 : 10. 13 I Cor. 7:4. 14 S. B. James, in The Guardian, June 5, 1901. FORBIDDEN DEGREES. 267 has not been shown, so far as the writer knows, that the refusal to make the principle of the ideal unity in marriage cover the prohibition of marriage with a deceased wife's sister is fraught with general immoral consequences. The writer has been un- able to get evidence in the Australasian Colonies bearing on this point. The suggestions common in polemical literature on this subject, that wives would frequently be jealous of sisters, and that adulteries with the latter are more probable when the fear of incest is removed, are of the nature of speculation. The present writer further considers that there is a need of additional proof before the frequent assertion that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is in demand mainly in the upper classes, and that the middle and lower classes are generally opposed to its legalization, becomes acceptable. He feels doubt- ful whether this conscientious opposition exists, whether at any rate it is widespread among the lower classes. A case known to him, that of a widowed farmer, a churchgoer and to all appearance a well-conducted religious man, who proposed to two of his late wife's sisters in succession, without seemingly being conscious of any moral unfitness in such a proceeding, may be representative of a more or less general lack of disap- proval of such marriages in that class. On the other side it must be said that in spite of what is frequently urged in reference to possible suffering caused by the absence of legal sanctions for marriage within this degree, there does not seem to be such a call to sympathize with a man enamored of, yet precluded from marrying, his late wife's sister, as may exist in the case of one who is sexually separated from his living wife, yet forbidden to remarry. A British statesman in the House of Commons expressed a view of the traditional position for which its supporters have as good a right to claim the sanction of common sense as their opponents have for their own arguments on the side of change : "Are there not women enough in the world, that a man should want to marry his deceased wife's sister?" No question arises in 268 FORBIDDEN DEGREES. this dispute (so far at least as the man is concerned), as it might easily do in regard to divorce, of an intolerable yoke imposed on the sexual nature by ecclesiastical and civil law. It is not as if the prohibition to marry the deceased wife's sister involved a total deprivation of reasonable sexual gratification, and finally destroyed the sex life. All things considered, the conclusion seems justified that from the point of view of the reverent and enlightened Chris- tian conscience, the relationship of the wife's sister to the husband is of such a character as to render marriage with her unbefitting, inconvenient in the strict sense of that word. It is not so manifest an outrage on holiness, or so flagrant and reckless a breach of the principle of conjugal unity, as to be de- serving of epithets implying a severer condemnation. The principle of sacramental unity in marriage is of final signifi- cance for Christians ;^^ and that principle, though it does not make the said relationship so efifectively and decisively pro- hibitive of marriage as several other relationships, yet gives it a prohibitory character which cannot be altogether ignored. As therefore in the matter of divorce, so here, we maintain that it is the right and the duty of the Church to uphold that prin- ciple before her own members, and tO' obtain for it as wide an acceptance as possible. But the further question arises whether the method adopted should not be rather moral and intellectual suasion than legislation. It is true that the legislature of a country the majority of whose inhabitants are professed Christians ought certainly, and might be expected, to be in sympathy with Christian ethical opinion on any point where that opinion is practically unanimous and decided. For ex- ample, neither Christian morality nor, generally speaking, civilized legislation influenced by Christianity permits bigamy or polygamy; because although, as some even among Christian thinkers have held,^^ objections of some force may be found against the wholesale moral condemnation of polygamy in the !•'' Watkins, Holy Matrimony, p. 654. 16 Westermarck, op. cit., p. 434; Howard, op. cii., vol. i, p. 390. FORBIDDEN DEGREES. 269 history of mankind ; and although there is record of tem- porary compromise made by the Christian Church with regard to pluraHty of wives {c.g-, in evangehzing polygamous commu- nities of savages), yet the practically unfavorable influence and the inferior ethical aspects of polygamy are sufficiently clear to cause it to be discountenanced, as being by contrast with monogamy dishonoring to God and hurtful to the interests of man 17 It might even be urged — taking a concrete instance — that the New Zealand Legislature, by legalizing in 1900 mar- riage between a woman and her deceased husband's brother, displayed an unmeet want of sympathy with instructed Chris- tian opinion ; for in the Code of Holiness, which is certainly viewed by Christians as a Divinely inspired document, such a marriage is definitely forbidden ; and the whole history of this prohibition and of its acceptance by the Christian Church shows that its roots lie deeper than the merely contemporary social usages and ethical conceptions. In communities where descent is reckoned through the male line, and where conse- quently the wife is thought of as taken into her husband's household, not z'ice versa, the sexual union of a woman with her deceased husband's brother must assuredly be more dis- tasteful than the converse case. But on the question of mar- riage with a deceased wife's sister, it need hardly be a matter for surprise if the modern State does not see eye to eye with the Catholic Church ; even though the view of the Church is. as it would seem, on the whole the preferable view. On a point about which there is so much difference of opinion even among Christians, and in regard to which the inspired Word itself does not give perfectly clear guidance, it is at least questionable whether the dictum of the Church — however pure and right it may be ideally — should be enforced by the methods of human legislation. Thus we are brought finally to the ix>sition taken up by many of the Anglican clergy, and enunciated by Canon Mac- ^" See Additional Note H on Polygamy. 270 FORBIDDEN DEGREES. Coll in The Guardian. Speaking of the "chaos of marriage laws" in the British Empire "all sanctioned by the State," he pertinently asks, "How can churchmen expect to be able to insulate one particular Christian law and rivet it on the necks of multitudes who- own no allegiance to the Church, or even to Christianity?"^^ Quite a number of people admit that these marriages do not take place on the high level of reverence and self-control required by the Christian ideal of marriage, yet object to their non-recognition by the State. A speaker at a meeting of the English Church Union censured this position on the ground that it implied an inadmissible ethical theory of "first- and second- class marriages ;" in other words, that the celebration of marriage on a visibly lower level than the Christian stand- ard could not be tolerated. This objection does indeed hold good when considered in its proper relation, viz., to Christian ideals. The Church recognizes certain impediments of marriage ; and unless they are separately disproved, they remain equally valid in fact, even if not equiponderable in ethical importance. The Church cannot itself act on a principle of ethical differ- entiation of marriages. The Christian conscience cannot allow the influence of a visibly imperfect doctrine — one that does not fully satisfy the enlightened moral sense — in regard to itself. But the above objection loses in force when prematurely introduced into the midst of the as yet inevitably lower ethical ideals of the modern State. What the Church has everywhere a right to require is that there shall be no compulsion upon her clergy in the matter. They should not be forced either to perform the marriage cere- mony for such unions, or to lend the consecrated buildings of which they are in charge for any such function. They should not be penalized if they temporarily require from members of their congregations who, by the use of the civil ceremony, have 18 The Guardian, June 12, 1901. FORBIDDEN DEGREES. 271 contracted such marriages, a disciplinary abstention from the Holy Communion. 19 Finally, it belongs to the teaching office of 'the Church to lay before society those reasons, based on the doctrine of the ideal unity, and on considerations of social expediency, which should assuredly cause any Christian man or woman, whose mind is receptive of spiritual teaching on marriage, to seek elsewhere than so close at hand the rational gratification of the sexual longing and the just development of the sex life. 19 It is noticeable that a defender of the legal prohibition in Eng- land ignores this aspect of the matter. See Marriage Law Defense Union Tracts, No. xxxix, p. 29. Yet it is no cause for surprise that members of the Church of England entertain but slight hopes of the revival of ecclesiastical discipline. Religious organizations ought to be able to establish their own conditions of membership, and to carry out their ecclesiastical system, unhindered by the State; provided that in so doing they inflict no injury on the organic life and development of the community at large. The English Legislature, in the connection with which we are dealing, has shown a very confused perception of this elementary principle of social life. The Act of 1907, legalizing marriage with a deceased wife's sister, recognized the variations of religious opinion on the subject, and inserted accordingly a clause which was believed, not merely by the ordinary clergyman or layman of the Church of England, but by legal experts, to be intended to pro- tect clergymen who for conscientious reasons declined to accept the working of the new Act in certain important ecclesiastical connections. It was believed to cover cases of the refusal of Communion, i.e., that if a clergyman thought himself bound in conscience to refuse Com- munion, under and according to the existing ecclesiastical regulations, to parties who had contracted the marriage in question, the State would not take cognizance of such refusal, would in fact leave the settle- ment of the religious question to the religious organization. Such an attitude seems correct. If the State thought it due to protect the con- sciences of clergymen in one direction, viz., by not compelling them to celebrate marriages which they thought to be wrong, why did it not make the protective clause operative in another almost equally important direction, — the conditions of administration of the Holy Communion? If it is worth while protecting peoples' consciences at all, it is worth while doing it thoroughly, i.e., in respect of all well-grounded scruples ; and in view of the state of opinion on the subject, the refusal to 272 FORBIDDEN DEGREES. administer Communion is, with some clergymen, a well-grounded scruple, as well grounded as their primary objection to celebrate this kind of marriage. Yet when a test case, the Thompson-Bannister case, occurred, it was judicially decided, after much litigation, that this latter course could not be adopted without admitting the possibility of a clergy- man's totally ignoring such marriages as might take place under the new Act ; and so, on occasion, celebrating a marriage which would be bigamous in the eyes of the State. But though the soundness of this opinion as a logical deduction from the language of the proviso cannot be denied, the accuracy of the forecast may be disputed on the probabilities of the case; for the clergyman does not cease to be a citizen. He cannot therefore^ in' performing a service for two persons, ignore, or be allowed to ignore, the secular incident of the previous marriage of one of them; since by so doing he would be placing persons, or strictly speaking helping them to place themselves, in a false position before the secular law. In brief, the case stands thus : The harm done by the State's ignoring the refusal to administer Communion, is problematical ; be- cause although a sufficiently serious social inconvenience is imaginable — Lord Loreburn imagined it in his judgment — as a result, the chances of its actually occurring are very small ; while the injury done to the persons aggrieved by their inability to receive the Holy Communion at the hands of a particular minister of.it, is trifling; for in the state of ecclesiastical opinion about their marriage, they can without diffi- culty obtain what they want elsewhere. Consequently they suffer no appreciable injustice ; whereas, the good accruing from the State's ignoring of the refusal in question, is preponderant and assured ; it is the justice done to the conscientious objector and his sympathizers. And the possibility of a further social good's being procured, should not be left out of the account. The interests of collective morality may be served ; for the new legislation is but experimental, not final ; the objectors have some reason on their side, and they may be right. Consequently, the concluding judgment in the Bannister-Thomp- son case, considered as a move or incident in the moral evolution of society, was a blimder or a disaster. The whole legal aspect of the Thompson-Bannister incident was defective. Neither the function of jus dare nor that of jus diccre were adequately performed. The protective clause did ne^ither one thing nor the other. It did not protect thoroughly; and yet its pres- ence in the Act suggested belief in protection ; so that in the result it acted as a trap for the Anglican clergy. The law in its function of jiis dicere might have perceived this insufficiency, and made it FORBIDDEN DEGREES. 273 good by interpretation; but the judges on whom this duty devolved seemed actuated by a desire to protect the laity against a hypothetical clerical tyranny, and society in general against clerical lawlessness, neither of which dangers really existed, as has been demonstrated above. It would have been both more politic, and more in accord with the principles of justice, for the State to have let the Church alone, in such a matter; and to have contented itself with allowing the new Act to win ecclesiastical acceptance by its inherent reasonableness; to have awaited — it might have done so with no inconsiderable measure of confidence — the development indicated by the late Bishop Collins, of Gibraltar, that while the law of the State cannot of itself alter any rule of the Church, it is "quite possible that the rule of the Eng- lish Church (or of any part of the Church) might be altered in the future in the direction of the new law." (Life of William Edward Collins, by A. J. Mason, D.D.) CHAPTER XVIII. The Sexual in Art. Condemnation of Erotic Art Considered — Classical Art — The Nude — Zola's View — Art and Word-painting — Indecent Pictures — Legislation. Frederick Robertson, in a passage which Colonel Seton Churchilli quotes with approval, reflects forcibly upon the sen- suality produced among the ancient Greeks by their own works of art. It is undeniable that the sexual, in forms most alluring to the carnal instinct, is extremely prominent in the Greek art of certain periods ; and that erotic art progressed in Greece and Rome along a line of moral degeneration. "It was especially Scopas of Paros and Praxiteles of Athens, about one genera- tion after Myron and Polycletus {i.e., in the fourth century B.C.), who gave the reflex of their time in their productions. Their works expressed the softer feelings and an excited state of mind, such as would make a strong impression upon and captivate the senses of the beholders. . . . The legendary circles to which most of their ideal productions belong are those of Dionysus and Aphrodite, a fact which also shows the character of the age. Cephissodorus, a son of Praxiteles made his art subservient to passions and sensual desires."^ Later on, the same evil comes to view in Roman society. Cicero and Pliny mention "libidines" — indecent pictures^ and basreliefs — as used to adorn Roman villas and furniture ; and such pictures are found in the villas of Pompeii. The evidence does not, indeed, fully support the assertion of Frederick Rob- ertson, that, in the judgment of the heathen themselves, erotic 1 Forbidden Fruit for Young Men (6th ed.), p. 190. 2 Smith, Smaller Dictionary of Antiquities, j. v. Statuaria Ars. 3 Cp. Propertius, ii, 5. (qu. by J. Muller, Keuschheitsideen,2 p. 46.) (274) THE SEXUAL IN ART. 275 art, and particularly the nude in such art, was responsible for the sexual corruption and excess prevailing in their society. This consciousness did not, at any rate, press heavily upon the best minds among the Romans.-* The great satirists do not make nude art one of the objections of their animadversion, Pliny's-^ reference to the fact that the nude in art had a Greek source ; ancient Roman statues being draped — "togatse" — is not made in a tone of reprehension. Livy*^ and Sallust" record the im- portation of Greek works of art into Rome; regretfully enough, but not in such terms as tO' imply that they had specially in mind the harm done to sexual morality by sucli iniportations. The historical instances in which the sexual, and particu- larly the nude in art, seem to be accompanied by abnormal sexuality in society, do not justify us in condemning, without more ado and without qualification, the use of the nude.'^ Indeed, it must be remembered, in passing, that the nude in any given production, is not necessarily the erotic. Rodin's Le Baiser is a group both erotic and nude ; the Renunciation of St. Elizabeth is a picture in which the nude is used, but it is not erotic. Nor may we hastily conclude — in the case of art which is certainly erotic, and which employs the nude — that this latter element is inevitably immoral. It is the artist's province to represent human life, its good and its evil. He cannot, there- fore, wholly and on all occasions eschew the nude ; though doubtless a heavy responsibility rests upon him for his method of using it. Human life cannot always be represented draped ■* Cp. Friedlaender, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms,^ i, p. 261. 5 Nat. Hist, xxxiv, 10. 6 Hist. XXV, 40. 7 Cat. n. 8 Cp. J. Miiller, Die Keuschheitsideen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelungi, p. 21. This fact claims special consideration in North America, where a prudish fear of the nude appears to be gaining ground. (Die Verhiillung der Nacktheit in Nordamerika, in Die neue Gen., Jahrg. 10, Heft 6). 276 THE SEXUAL IN ART, either in literature or in art. The BibHcal story itself, the mir- ror of life as life is, cannot find adequate expression on canvas or in marble if the nude and the sexual be tabooed. If it be granted that erotic art, even in its best and purest forms, appeals to and in some manner arouses the sexual in- stinct, it must not be too readily inferred that such appeal magnifies harmfully or depraves the instinct. Its aim may be to impress society with the beauty and purityl of true erotic pleasure, such pleasure as is a legitimate object of men's aspira- tion. Zola points out^ that the erotic art of the Renaissance reflected sexual health and vigor. Conversely, it must have contributed to the formation of right and healthful ideals in the sexual relation. i*^ The ethics of erotic art really differ in no way from those of erotic literature ; for the nude may be as vividly represented by word-painting as on canvas. A peculiarly rich and beautiful specimen of such word-painting finds a place in the Canon. Let the Song of Songs be compared with the Second Idyll of Theocritus. In realistic sensuous word-representation of the nude the inspired poem is the superior. What differentiates it ethically from the powerful Greek love-poem is the motive which elevates and directs it. The poem of Theocritus is purely sensuous ; the pulse of desire throbs fiercely in every line. It is an erotic word-picture in all the beauty of nudity. So too is the Song of Songs ; but here the current of passion is directed and controlled by the monogamic teaching of the poem. Some passages in the song might indeed give a wrong impulse to a mind which was too ignorant, coarse or perverse to learn the real lesson of the song; but no one would venture on that 9 Fecondite, p. 50. 10 Havelock Ellis shows that in times when maternity was re- garded with healthy sentiment, the prevailing ideal of womanly beauty emphasized that function. Frequently there has even come into vogue an artificial exaggeration of the secondary sexual characteristics ex- pressive of maternity. (H. Ellis, Studies, iv, pp. 164ff.) It may be added that recently attempts have been made to utilize the appeal of erotic art to cure inversion (Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat, p. 434). THE SEXUAL IN ART. 277 account to wish the song less perfect, or less glowing as a specimen of inspired erotic literature. Similarly, a picture, or a group of statuary, if it contain a right conception and a pure motive, is not necessarily immoral because it is erotic, or because it contains the nude. That in some minds it may evoke dangerous emotions is an accident to which, as we have seen, the Song of Songs — an analogous creation, in another sphere of activity— is equally liable. Hence, it seems that the artist's responsibility to society touches his erotic conception, rather than the accidents of its expression. If the group or the picture conveys an immoral idea, or represents, in a manner of approval, an immoral sub- ject, it stands condemned; it becomes a vehicle of false and pernicious teaching; and the beauty of its execution does not redeem it. The true and final solution of this problem is the educational one, the ethical training of the esthetic sense. This is finely indicated, in reference to the producers of artistic creations, in the Preghiera universale, with which a modern book of Christian devotion, Adveniat Regniini Tuuin, fitly closes : — "God Who in science, speech and art, hast given us the means of drawing near to the True and of expressing the Beautiful, give to the workers in science, literature and art an apprehension of those sacred ideals; so that they may feel how great is the sacrilege of employing these means to serve evil ends, of making base or vulgar merchandise of them, of falsifying in men's minds the concept of the True and the Beautiful; and the blasphemy of creating an apparent contrast between the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. Make them, O Lord, fully and entirely sensible of the intimate harmony between Being and Life;ii whereby the True and the Beautiful are nothing else but avenues of approach to the Good, yea, to the ineffable splen- dor of the manifestation of the highest Good."i- In a society where nude art becomes excessively popular, it is indeed probable that the ethical element in such art will be frequently left out of account. The reasons which justify, 11 A reference to the beautiful chapter iv of G. A. Right's The Unity of Will (Chapman and Hall) is not irrelevant here. 12 Adveniat Regnum Tuum (Milano), p. 544. 278 THE SEXUAL IN ART. and at the same time direct and restrain, erotic art will cease to have their due weight. And further, even if the producer of a work of art has conscientiously striven, for his part, to satisfy the claims of ethics, the beholders may fail to discern its ethical purpose. The general public thinks and feels pri- marily with the ordinary impressions of life; a fact which gives artistic exhibits a crude social significance not commen- surate with their esthetic or symbolic rationale. ^^ Hence, prac- tically, the excessive popularity of the nude is a dangerous symptom, the moral cause of which should be counteracted by educational and other influences. Many productions may be on a low plane of morality, though on a high plane of art. They may be beautiful, but purely sensuous. Others, again — and these, perhaps, do the major portion of the harm attributed to nude and erotic pictures — are at once artistically mediocre and morally pernicious. The sale or exposure of such pictures, indecent both in idea and in execution, in shop windows, in mutoscopic exhibitions, and elsewhere, certainly call for the application of restraint. The kernel of difficulty in the matter is the definition of an immoral picture. In erotic art and literature the line of demarcation between the moral and the immoral becomes, to those who lack insight into an artist's aims and motives, at times finely drawn. What there is of evil in the motive and purpose of a picture may be so skillfully posed as t:o bring the picture just out of range of any legal prohibi- tion. And the difficulty — it may almost be said, the practical impossibility — of exercising over erotic pictures, when on a high plane of art, a wise and just censorship, renders it the more imperative that the censorship of such pictures, even in a lower class of art, should never be open to the charge of ill-advised and hasty prudery. On the whole, it is not well to exaggerate the importance of the "indecency" of pictures as a cause of impurity. Such pictures are rather a symptom than a cause of sexuality in a society ; a symptom, indeed, with a certain reactive power. At 13 G. Fonsegrive, Arte e Pornographia, in II Rogo, num. 1. THE SEXUAL IN ART. 279 all events, the allegation of such indecency should be made only after careful observation. There was much significance in the answer made by a Home Secretary in the House of Commons to the question whether the government intended to take steps to suppress indecent mutoscopic exhibitions — that he had walked certain parts of London for hours in the vain search for exhibitions that could properly be thus described. I have, however, myself seen in France popular photographic exhibi- tions that were both immoral in subject and indecent in pres- entation. The general principles of opposition to these antisocial phenomena have been embodied in various modern legislations. The New Zealand Act of 1892, which makes liable to penalty the exposure of any picture or written matter which is of an indecent, immoral, or obscene nature, or which the court shall be satisfied is intended to have an indecent, immoral, or ob- scene effect, and the English Act of similar purport, though somewhat less careful expression, seem to afford proper machinery for the purpose for which they are devised. Prob- ably a discerning administration of such existing acts would provide the necessary safeguard to public morality, so far as this particular danger is concerned. Such an administration can only be secured by the education of public opinion ; and it has therefore been thought worth while in this essay to attempt to indicate the grounds on which the condemnation or tolera- tion of an erotic picture must ultimately rest. A suggestion of Colonel Seton Churchill that censorial powers should be delegated by municipalities to some fit person, with a view of checking the exposure of such pictures, might not infrequently result in a harassing and fussy oversight. At any rate, it would be better to have a board of three or four persons than a single censor. And when in a given case the social nuisance of cheap and pornographic eroticism is fully unmasked, it merits certainly firm and possibly stern treatment. CHAPTER XIX. On the Nature and Ethics of Impure Language. Language and Convention — History of Dirty Words — The Test of Motive — Horace and Juvenal — St. Paul. This is a part of our subject which has at length begun to receive systematic and careful attention at the hands of Christian moralists. A society has been formed in England to redeem conversation from blasphemy and impure sexuality. ^ Very often it is difficult to see the basis of our popular notions of what constitutes impurity in language. Why should one word be generally considered a coarse and bad word ; and another, meaning precisely the same thing, be considered a harmless and legitimate word? It is at bottom to a large ex- tent a matter of convention. Modern society has retained for its polite use various words and phrases expressing certain things, acts, or ideas ; and has declared that other words and phrases, expressing just the same things, are fit only for school- boys and very vulgar, uneducated people. The process, here described, the evolution of convention in language, has been going on in other languages on a much larger scale than in our own. Mankind in its primitive state already learns to set apart groups of words expressing the phenomena of sex, for special use by particular classes in the community ; or by one sex to the exclusion of the other.^ In the Japanese vocabulary there is a whole set of men's words, and another of women's words. 1 In his sympathetic account of the hard conditions which favor the growth of immorality in the country districts of England, Richard Jefferies notices the power for general demoralization possessed by the random coarse word (The Toilers of the Field, p. 134). 2 The natives of Polynesia and Queensland are said to have a decent and an indecent vocabulary. (Havelock Ellis, Studies, ed. 3, vol. i, p. 67.) See farther, for the influence of sexual convention on language, Crawley, The Mystic Rose, pp. 46fif. (280) IMPURE LANGUAGE. 281 The man's word for food, for instance, is not the same as the woman's; and a woman is considered a very vulgar woman, if she uses the man's word. This is one of the developments of convention. And it has been curiously continued. In the lan- guages of civilized nations, ancient as well as modern, there is a secret vocabulary, a crowd of strange words which live under- ground like the moles, or in the darkness like the bats, and which seem quite startling and outlandish, if by any chance they find their way into print. Such words are found in the Hebrew Bible. The Q'ri, in two or three places, being shocked at certain vulgar words used by the K'thib, substitutes politer words. No doubt these vulgar words have often a very inter- esting history behind them. Tliey were not always slangy and disreputable. Words have a life-history, like people; and if one possessed the philological learning requisite to find it out, what a long and strange and eventful history some of our vulgar words would be seen to have. Our coarse words have often led lives like those of our coarse, outcast women. They were respectable once. They took their places among the other words in the language. And gradually they have dropped into a fallen, degraded state. It has come about more by the ill- usage of society than by vice inherent in the words themselves. The words would not be coarse now, if they had not for gen- erations past been coarsely used, dragged in the dirt, and flung about with all sorts of evil motives, without any effort being made to reclaim them. What is known as "good society," while it refuses to admit into its circle bad people of the lowest, coarsest type, welcomes a good many who are really just as bad, but whose lewdness is less open. Here, again, it is the same with words. Social usage does not tolerate words and expressions that are openly and impudently coarse ; but it admits others which are no better either in character or in history, simply because their meaning is better concealed.^ Our consideration, then, of what amounts to coarseness in 3 See H. Ellis, Studies, vol. i, (ed. 3), pp. 6Sff. 282 IMPURE LANGUAGE. language, and what does not, is complicated by our conventional ideas of propriety. Apart from them, it seems that the test as to whether language is bad and impure or not, is the moral test of the motive and the spirit in which it is used. There are many instances in literature of very coarse language being used, and yet used in a way that could not possibly offend any right- minded person's moral sense. Juvenal, for instance, is one of the coarsest of writers ; but his tone is manly, and his morality upright and severe. He employed coarse language, not because it gave him an evil pleasure to do so; but because in dealing with the subjects and the manners of which he had to write, its use was necessary and inevitable. A writer like Horace, on the other hand, does not use coarse language to the same extent ; but his moral tone is cer- tainly lower than Juvenal's. And other contrasts of the same kind could be found in literature. St. Paul himself, where he condemns filthiness, foolish talking, and jesting which are not convenient,^ is preferring his indictment rather against the way in which words are used, than against the words themselves. If he were condemning coarse expressions per se, without reference to the motive underlying their use, his words might be turned against himself ; for now and then, in his own epistles, his language certainly does not err in the direction of overrefinement.^ In our belief in the moral nature of God we have a guar- antee of the ultimate manifestation of a judgment upon speech which will pierce all our conventionalities and social hypoc- risies. When people commit sins of speech of the kind alluded to here, and think of them afterward with regret, they have not to think merely of the particular word or expression used. The questions which surround its use are the more important. Was it used of necessity, or carelessly flung into conversation ? Toward whom was it used, or in whose hearing? Was it 4 This passage is in St. Paul's spirit, if not by his hand. Eph. 5:4. 5 Gal. 5 : 12. IMPURE LANGUAGE. 283 intended to produce a good effect, or bad one ? Was its motive right or wrong? It is not for every word men speak that they shall give account in the Day of Judgment. It is for ttSv prjfia dpyov,^ every idle word; not for the existence in human speech of words which, however uncouth in appearance, are the natural outgrowth of human conditions; but of the circumstances which surround, and the motives which underlie their use. 6 St. Matthew 12 : 36, "Werk- und f ruchtlos, unniitz namlich im sittlichen Sinne." (Nosgen in loc, Strack and Zockler, Kurzg, Kom- mentar.) CHAPTER XX. Sexual Perversions. Modern Investigation of this Obscure Subject — Causes of Perver- sions— Sexual Inversion — Proposed Toleration of Homosexuality Con- sidered— Masochism — Sadism — Other Types, Bestiality, Senile Imrndr- ality — Sterilization. It would be easy to make the present chapter by far the most painful and repulsive in the volume. Here, more than anywhere else in our subject, the task of separating the precious from the vile^ confronts us in all its appalling difficulty, so in- extricably are those two principles entangled, and so vastly does the latter excel the former in social bulk and prominence. But sexual perversions will not here be dealt with in any detail. They can be fully studied in such works as those of H. Ellis. Moll, Krafft-Ebing, Fere, and Tarnowsky. Yet it is necessary to accord here a brief notice to the better known anomalies of the sexual instinct, for the reason that they are occasionally known to exist in otherwise fairly healthy and normal sub- jects. It by no means follows that a person is a moral leper and a menace to society, because he has, e.g., a congenital algo- lagnic or inverted tendency. He may be generally well dis- posed, well principled, and religious. His abnormality may never find expression in overt act. It may be the battle of his life to control and subjugate this tendency ; and he may succeed so far as to induce his sexual system to find sufficient gratifica- tion in normal and legitimate sexual relations. Therefore, the consideration of this subject does not belong solely to the provinces of the alienist and the penologist. Dr. Mercier's discussion of the relation between sexual perversion and volition leads to no conclusive result. He attempts, though ex- ijer. 15: 19. (284) SEXUAL INVERSION. 285 hibiting much hesitation, to put abnormal and normal desire on the same footing in regard to responsibility, contending that perverted desire is no more urgent than normal desire ; and that if society re- quires, under penalty, that the latter should be often inhibited, there is no injustice in its making the same demand in connection with the former.2 But even if Mercier's view of the comparative urgency of the desires in question is right, he leaves out of account the fact that the subject of normal desire can hope for a legitimate outlet for it, while the other subject has no such consoling prospect.^ Consequently, in the case of the sexual pervert, the strain on volition must continue indefinitely. Hence, as already observed, a remedy may have to be sought elsewhere than in the province of volition. Of sexual abnormalities we may notice here inversion, and the active and passive aspects of algolagnia. "* The researches of sexual scientists such as Havelock Ellis, Fere, Moll, and others, have demonstrated that not all, but some cases of in- version or homosexuality, i.e., the turning in of the sexual instinct toward the subject's own sex, are due to the presence in the individual of a congenital tendency. As in the lower animals,^ so in man, occasional instances of imperfect sex dif- ferentiation are found, the result of some deficiency of nutri- tion in the embryo, or of otherwise incomplete processes of gestation. ~ C. A. Mercier, Criminal Responsibility, pp. 143ff. 3 C{}. Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat, p. 438. 4 Havelock Ellis, adopting Schrenk-Notzing's terms, pointed out (Studies, iii, pp. 95, 101) the impropriety of the names "sadism" and "masochism." These have, however, become current. ^ E.g., among cattle. See Geddes and Thomson, Evolution of Sex, p. 41n ; also the chapter on Hermaphroditism. The existence of congenital sexual inversion among animals is probable (Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat, ch. 29). Enough is known of the processes by which sex is determined to warrant the opinion that in certain cases, owing to the action of some imperfectly perceived cause, the deter- mination may be abnormal and incomplete. External signs of con- genital inversion, e.g., unusual shape of the pelvis or the breasts, are sometimes observable (Senator and Kaminer, op. cit., ii, 701, 1047) ; but these, according to Moll, are rare, and to be viewed with caution (994). 286 SEXUAL INVERSION. It is in neurotic families with a vitiated heredity that con- genital inversion and other abnormal tendencies may be ex- pected to appear. It is not necessary that there should be visible malformation of the genitals. A defective correlation between the sexual system and its corresponding brain centers may be the underlying condition of inversion. The inverted tendency will probably be latent in childhood while the sex life is undeveloped; though even thus early, indications of an ab- normal state may sometimes be discoverable. Then some event, in itself perhaps apparently trifling, some shock to the sexual susceptibilities of the growing child — a thoughtless neglect on the part of an older person of the pregnant canon, "Maxima debetiir piieris reverentia"^ — or in later life a wound of some other kind inflicted upon the sexual nature, e.g., a love disappointment, may give the impulse to the latent misdirection of the sexual instinct, and inversion declares itself more fully in the. mind of the subject. His emotions, colored with more or less of sexuality, flow out toward members of his own sex ; he becomes conscious of a physical attraction toward them which normal individuals experience only in regard to the other sex. The inverted tendency manifests itself in his sensual dreams. In less pronounced cases of inversion, normal sexuality may be experienced side by side with this anomalous form of it ; but the true congenital invert feels a positive repulsion to normal sexual relations. It must be noted, however, that the carnal impulse may not bulk largely in the invert's mind at all ; the inverted tendency may be of an almost entirely emotional character; or even if a strong physical element is present, it may be kept wholly in check by the general uprightness of the invert's character, or by his high religious principles. To deal with the complicated problems connected with the origin, course, and control of an inverted tendency would re- quire at least a good-sized volume. It is sufficient here to refer ^ Cp. Tarnowsky, L'Instinct Sexuel et ses Manifestations Mor- bides, p. 30. SEXUAL INVERSION. 287 to one or two of the most obvious and important matters originating in the consideration of the subject. First, where neuropathic conditions are believed to exist in a family, where the heredity is vitiated or overrefined, special care ought to be taken to keep the sexual development of mem- bers of that family free from dangerous influences. Additional reasons exist in such cases for observing the general precautions which should attend the growth of the sex life in the child, and which have been dealt with elsewhere in this volume. Inver- sion in the adult is sometimes preceded by an algolagnic tend- ency in the child ; consequently parents and guardians should beware lest by their treatment and punishments of the child they strengthen the algolagnic instinct. One result of the study of sexual inversion has been the suggestion put forward by some modern scientists, that the attitude of the law as existing in European countries should undergo a change ; and some countries in the van of civiliza- tion— France being the typical one — have given an actual lead in this direction.'^ It is argued that where the invert is not responsible for his abnormality ; where, owing to the congenital misdirection of his instinct it is impossible for him to obtain the normal development of the sex life, the legal ban should be taken off his cohabitation with one of his own sex, provided that in such cohabitation public decency was respected, and that the invert had not resorted to compulsion or the seduction of a minor, as a preliminary step to such cohabitation. It is pointed out with considerable force that the refusal to allow a true invert to follow his inclination may be harmful in a gen- eral way to his physical well-being — we have already seen that the constant suppression of the normal sexual instinct may react unfavorably upon some nervous organisms, and we can- not but conclude that the same result may be reached in some cases of the suppression of the abnormal instinct — and that in consequence the power of the invert, who may be of intellectual '^Hirschfeld (Die Homosexualitat, pp. 842ff.) gives a conspectus of legislation on the subject. 288 SEXUAL INVERSION. capacity above the average, to perform his life's work, may be seriously impaired. In short, it is contended that in the light of increased modern knowledge of the conditions of inversion, the law should no longer undertake the wholesale abolition of homosexual relationships, but their strict and judicious regulation. In estimating these contentions, it will be well in the first place to glance at the references to homosexuality in Holy Scripture. The earliest of these references depict homosexuality as occur- ring amid the worst surroundings of excess and license ;8 and homo- sexual prostitution, over which some of the ancient societies had placed the aegis of religion, is denounced without qualification in the Bible.'^ The developed legal thought of the Old Testament condemns homosex- uality in seA'^ The fact is that the primary problem of revealed ethics, in connection with homosexuality, was to strengthen humanity's un- certain opposition to it, — uncertain, because, if we have regard to humanity as a whole, neither instinct nor religious convictions have been consistently opposed to homosexuality. Revelation set itself to develop the psychological elements which worked contrary to homo- sexual inclination. This was effected partly by the connotation of violence and license with homosexuality, an idea reflecting a not in- frequent actual association, and Scripturally illustrated by the dramatic narratives referred to above. It has been truly said that the glare of Sodom and Gomorrah is reflected throughout the whole Bible.n This connotation and this presentation of judgment prefaced the condem- nation, by the Law of Holiness, of homosexuality in se ; a legal attitude which, as Hirschfeld remarks,i2 reflects a developed social severity foreign to^. or only spasmodically apparent in, earlier times. The New Testament confirmed this antipathy to homosexuality, repeating the denunciation of homosexual prostitutioni^ and exhibit- ing the phenomenon as a specially prominent symptom of general moral depravity.i^ It is clear that there is here an abhorrence of 8 Gen. 19; Judg. 19. 9 Deut. 23:7; I Kings, 22 : 46 ; 2 Kings 23 : 7. 10 Lev. 18 : 22, 20 : 13. 11 G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 12 Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat, p. 813. 13 Rev. 22 : 15. 14 Rom. 1 : 27 ; I Cor. 6 : 9, 10 ; I Tim. 1 : 9, 10. SEXUAL INVERSION. 289 homosexual practices in se: a late allusion, in the homiletic letter to the Ephesians,!^ condemns them even if occurring in secret i.e., in circumstances where public decency is not, presumably, infringed. Indeed, were it not for one Scriptural allusion to homosexual love, we should be forced to conclude that no legitimate or good aspect of it had come within the purview of the inspired writers, that revealed ethics admitted no saving clause in regard to it. But in point of fact, so vast is the scope of the Bible, that we do find a ref- erence to this subject of a different character from the others. This is the hint given us of the relation between David and Jonathan. Saul's coarse abuse of his son^^ may imply that he regarded the pair as guilty of the same conduct as thousands of male lovers, especially comrades in arms, in ancient Greece and the Orient. The implication is not indeed certain, and was in any case made by a man who was not weighing his words. Besides, David and Jonathan were both heterosexual, and had families. Yet the phrasing of II Sam. 1 : 26 puts it beyond a doubt that their mutual affection was erotic, or, to obviate misunderstanding, let us say quasi-erotic, in its intensity. We seem here accordingly to recognize a homosexual love which, being spiritual in character, does not, so far as it remains true to that character, incur Scriptural condemnation or opposition. Its analogue in the normal sex life is that spiritualized eroticism which, as we have seen, was fairly widely attempted in early Christianity, and which, though regarded by general Christian opinion with anxiety and even suspicion, on account of the failure to realize the theory of it, was never condemned in its own proper character. The modern sexual scientist may derive encouragement, in his endeavor to make a discriminating ethical estimate of the aspects of the homosexual phenomenon, from this reference and from one or two other Scriptural allusions to intense and demonstrative affection be- tween men. He who in some real though unfathomable sense bore the sin of the world, and who is not ashamed to call us brethren, did not shrink from allowing a man greatly beloved to lean upon His breast. We Westerns, in our narrower humanity, whatever latitude we may allow to women in manifesting their mutual affection, are indisposed to tolerate such expressions of love between men;!''' yet not merely a priori considerations, but scientifically estimated cases^^ 15 Eph. 5 : 12. 16 1 Sam. 20:30. Q. Hirschfeld, op. cit., p. 743. ^'^ Cp. Carpenter, Das Mittelgeschlecht, p. 67 (qu. by Hirschfeld, op. cit., p. 998). 18 Hirschfeld, op. cit., p. 704; Ellis and Moll, Handbuch der Sex- ualwissenschaften. p. 654. in 290 SEXUAL INVERSION. indicate that along this line of sublimated spiritualized affection is to be found one of the solutions — the only solution wholly satisfying to the social consciousness — of the problem of homosexuality. There is no direct Scriptural suggestion that it is worth while extending the ethical estimate of homosexuality beyond the province of quasi-eroticism, the department of secondarily sexual feeling. Homosexual action of a definitely, directly sexual kind, is in the Bible simply labelled bad; and there is no direct encouragement to undertake an ethical analysis of it, no overt sanction of the exercise of discrimi- nation in regard to it. The religious-minded scientist may reply none the less that he takes his stand on the general broad principle of justice, which is an essential part of our conception of the Divine; and that here he has a basis broad enough for his scheme of discriminating judg- ment. The general history of homosexuality in humanity does not present us with a uniform social condemnation of it. Primitive communities located amid a defective food supply were driven to adopt various expedients — female infanticide, sterilization, and perhaps homosexuality — by which the increase of population could be checked, while the gratification of the sexual instinct was allowed. But it does not seem that these expedients were common among primitive peoples, or regarded with favor by them;!^ or to put the matter in a different light, it must be said that the general toleration of homosexuality or other birth-regulating expedient by a community, as a means of escape from the necessity of increased effort, is indicative of a deterioration in the moral purpose of that community. No healthy, progressive people could for long regard homosexu- ality, even in its most favorable aspects, as anything but an unsatisfying, and from the point of view of social welfare, un- safe method of developing the sex life. Although inversion may, in the case of some abnormal individuals, be the sexual law of their being, yet it is a law, as it were, wrongfully imposed upon them, an alien law that violates the ordered scheme of nature, the correlation of the anabolic and katabolic principles manifested in the two 19 See Westermarck's discussion of infanticide, Hum. Mar., pp. 311fif. SEXUAL INVERSION. 291 sexes, a law against which they, as units in the system of crea- tion, are morally bound to rebel. -^ No student of sex would contend that a person with an active or a passive algolagnic instinct ought to accept those abnormalities and allow them to develop. It is his part to combat and suppress such tendencies, even at the cost of severe inward strife and suffering. That some persons, inverts by nature but none the less possessed of high principles and strong religious convictions, accept and act upon, this view of their abnormality, appears from certain of the cases cited by Havelock Ellis.-'^" Their struggle with their besetting homosexual inclinations may either result in a redirection of the sexual instinct into its normal channel, or it may have a still nobler issue, the moral purification of their lives by the effort of continued self-sacrifice. Thus, finally, before concluding our consideration of the problems connected with sexual inversion, we have to return to a confessedly imperfect and from some points of view in- equitable standpoint — the standpoint of practical social admin- istration. It is impossible, in discussing homosexuality, to confine ourselves to the consideration of true inversion. The latter phenomenon by no means covers the whole ground. Even if we accept the theory of psychosexual hermaphroditism, the indifferent inclination in the same subject of the sexual in- stinct to either sex, that does not eliminate the idea of moral responsibility from the question.- 1 Want of principle, the 20 Q. the remark of Moll (S. and K., op. cit., ii, p. 990) : "The circumstance that nature must have had some definite purpose in view when creating homosexuality does not exclude the notion of its mor- bid character." 20" Studies, Sexual Inversion, pp. 57, 198ff. 21 Moll calls attention to less established and persistent forms of psychosexual hermaphroditism, maintaining that the differentiation of the sexual desire is not infrequently postponed in normal individuals, till some years after puberty has manifested itself (Senator and Kami- ner, op. cit., p. 1051). In such cases patience may have to be exercised in regard to marriage ; but right knowledge, good companionship, and, 292 SEXUAL INVERSION. reckless desire to make a horrid experiment, account for many- cases of homosexual connection.22 There is a self-recorded case given in the second edition of Havelock EUis's Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iii, pp. 306ff., hist, xiii, which claims our attention at this point. It begins with a very imperfect and confused estimate of inherited tendencies, the author contradicting himself within five lines, first saying that he knows of no abnormality among his relations, and then announcing that his brother is abnormal. Education and environment appear to have been unusually faulty, both negatively and positively, from; a sexual point of view; though there are hints of higher factors which may have left in the subconsciousness impressions as enduring as the wound in- flicted in a fit of remorse, of which the author speaks. The author boasts that he is a "militant rationalist," employing the latter tefm evidently in the debased popular sense equivalent to "unbeliever in religion." In his own person he illustrates to the full the defeat of the cause he has espoused, the failure of his intellectual system as an ancillary in the world-process. I have not yet come across a completer example of the general all-round dissolution of the human sexual instinct. The author sums up his sexual condition in words which I present in such Latin as I can command : — "Equidem cum amica quadam patricise gentis, id quod sane facile crederes, liben- tius sane cubarem. Quodsi talis abesset, turn nempe alia qualibet, a domina patricia nescio qua quam antehac non amavissem, usque ad omne genus scortorum, promptissime uterer. Etenim viris, pueris, animalibus, melonibus, libidinem meam explere, vel etiam in solitudine masturbari vellem. Nee mihi displiceret, fateor, cum sorore mea vel cum alia nescio qua e cognatis meis concubare." And the question arises whether, if the homosexual act in sc is made unpunishable, collective opinion on the subject above all, sound moral principle and sustained moral effort, will help to guide the wavering desire into the normal direction. 22 It is assuredly true of some cases that the intercourse of men with men or of women with women is "a bold attempt, originally due to unbridled lust" (Plato, Laws, 636d, Jowett's tr.). With modifica- tions, this statement applies to the young. Westermarck (Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 468) thinks that homosexual practices in early youth have a lasting effect on the sexual instinct. A Roman priest informed me that, in his experience, the confessional gave the same witness. Cp. p. 59 of this volume, and Ellis and Moll, Handbuch der Sexualwissen- schaften, p. 652. SEXUAL INVERSION. 293 may not waver. The experience of nations which have already made this readjustment of criminal law is not conclusive on this point. It has been maintained that France compares favorably with other countries in regard of the dififusion of homosexual practices ; a fact which speaks for toleration, inas- much as social antipathy to homosexuality has, presumably, at least not been weakened in France by the attitude of the law. Still, France's superiority is not proved. In theory the French law, by keeping a tight hold on the by-processes of homosexual- ity, is able to offer a sufficient check to the growth of the phenomenon. But the fact that such events as the urnings' balls mentioned by Hirschfeld^s can take place in France, causes an uneasy suspicion of a certain somnolence in that public opinion without which laws cannot be effectively ad- ministered. Among some sections of the lower classes homo- sexuality is said to be regarded with apathy.--* Viewed in connection with the general scheme of sex evolution, homosexuality — unless in its wholly psychic or spiritualized aspect — is reactionary and retardative.-^ It harks back to immature, indeterminate stages of sexual evolu- tions. The sexual nature, homosexually developed, has not come to its fullness. It has not conformed to those conditions which secure for it, heterosexually developed, a place of honor as a beneficial factor in evolution. The trouble is not merely that homosexuality is unprocreative. In that connection it might be claimed that homosexuality is on the same footing as neomalthusianism ; though indeed the claim could not be admitted, for homosexuality is capable of no partial adjust- ment to procreation, as neomalthusianism is. But more than this, homosexuality is esthetically wrong. Whatever may be said about the subjectivity of sexual attrac- tions and repulsions, there is no doubt that the majority of the 23 Hirschfeld, op. cit., p. 687. 24 H. Ellis, Studies, vol. ii (vol. i, 1st ed.), p. 211. 25 Bolsche, qu. by Hirschfeld, op. cit., p. 632; cp. Ellis and Moll, Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, p. 654. 294 SEXUAL INVERSION. methods of homosexual action, objectively considered, are irredeemably disgusting.^^ I cannot subscribe to the opinion of those who think that this aspect of the matter has no social interest. Society, humanity, creation, have a solidarity which makes the elimination of objectionable phenomena a desideratum.26' And even supposing it possible to purify homosexuality of these worst phenomena, a difficulty — one of the first magnitude — to its being tolerated as a thing socially indifferent still re- mains. It seems impossible to lay down limiting conditions, such as would be satisfactory from the social point of view, to homosexual activity. For if the homosexual act in se is made unpunishable, what degree of freedom is to be given the invert in relation to his peculiar need ? He must not use violence ; must not outrage public decency ; must not seduce a minor. But may he (or she-") — these conditions being observed — go up and down in society, seeking a male (or female) partner just as normal people choose partners heterosexually ? It is not to be assumed or expected that the invert will necessarily seek the partnership of some one whose sexual nature is con- stituted similarly to his own. Analogously with the normal, the inverted instinct in many cases requires for its full satis- faction to be put in touch with conditions of dissimilarity, with the result that the objects to which it is drawn are frequently, or usually, normal heterosexual types. The problems of selec- tion are by no means fully solved by the negative regulations 26 Hirschfeld, {op. cit., pp. 286ff.) describes four forms, of which one only approximates to normal sexual action, and that one is rela- tively uncommon, — a proof of the pathological and depraved character of the homosexual phenomenon viewed as a whole. 26a See Addendum at end of chapter. ^"^ Cp. Forel, op. cit., p. 258. England and some other countries do not now punish homosexuality in women ; but this leniency can hardly be due to a belief in the absence of the phenomenon among them. If it is so grounded, it is risky; for homosexual women do exist, and there are some very licentious ones. In the poet Dryden's time, women were liable to the death penalty for this offense. SEXUAL INVERSION. 295 associated with the legal ignoring of homosexuality in itself. Still less does that legal attitude assist the realization of the idea which dominates heterosexual morals, the idea of mutual responsibility. If all the other objections to homosexuality were removed or waived, how could the rights of partners in relation to each other be safeguarded ? It is difficult to see how the legal ban can safely be taken ofif the homosexual act, or any form or modus of it, in se, unless the legislature goes the further logical step of regulating in some way abnormal sexual union ; as it has done, throughout human history, in the case of the normal union. Can society, in its sympathy with the congenital invert, go the length of recognizing a formal compact for homosexuals? That step has been hinted at in at least one notable work on sex.^s More recently, Hirschfeld has sketched the history of homosexual compacts.-^ Even if we leave out of account such as are mere impudent caricatures of marriage, of which classical paganism affords examples, and confine our attention to such as have a basis of genuine feeling, they are socially unsatisfactory and abortive. They embody no means of rendering the standard of obligation objective. Unlike marriage, such compacts contain no positive element of which legal theory can take cognizance, no definitive sexual rights which the law can endeavor to enforce. There is no influence, save his own honor and good principle, — I am far from denying the possible sufficiency of these in particular cases, 30 — capable of restraining the invert from acquiring and casting off successive partners, so long as he does not infringe the conditions of the revised criminal code. It is also highly undesirable that homosexuals should lose their instinctive-"^ moral disapproval of their own sexual in- clination, and justify themselves to the extent of giving up the struggle with it, as they tend to do in the countries which have 28 Ford, op. cit., p. 477 (ed. 10, p. 562). 29 Hirschfeld, op. cit., pp. 700ff. 30 Q. Hirschfeld, op. cit., p. 704. 31 M, p. 811. 296 SEXUAL INVERSION. adopted toleration. ^2 Further, a perfect example of a class of cases presenting no specific sexual abnormality, such as might develop independently or in spite of the subject's will, has been adduced above. This type does not allege that he can find sexual gratification only in abnormal ways. There is ex- hibited in such cases simply the loss of, or perhaps rather a failure to develop, any and every inhibitory principle in the sex life. Now, although the higher department of ethics, where we have to deal with supramundane judgments and issues, may furnish considerations which restrain judgment even on such a class of offenders, the collective practical moral sense which governs society's everyday life cannot afford to regard them, with indifference. It would be the height of social unwisdom were modern legislatures to forego their right of watching against and repressing such entirely impudent impurity as is here manifested. It is largely the existence of this class which renders the sympathetic social handling of the homosexual question so difficult. But while, for the reasons just given, the principle of con- demnation per se should be retained in legislation on homosex- uality, the light thrown by science on its causation assuredly justifies many modifications in the application of this principle. If it is inexpedient to divert altogether the law's regard from the abnormal detumescent act to its surroundings, this is not to say that a fresh evaluation of the circumstances of a homo- sexual charge ought not to be made. The measure of the social condemnation should be largely determined by reference to the circumstances of the act. Certainly, too, a fresh criminal evaluation of the forms of homosexual action ought to be made. 32 Some legislatures make only one form punishable : this antagonism to homosexuality is perhaps too restricted. On the other hand, it is a mistake to visit all the forms with the same severity, or to stretch the interpretation of criminal ab- 32 Ellis and Moll, op. cit., p. 654 33 See Hirschfeld, op. cit., pp. 8 pp. 821 ff. SEXUAL INVERSION. 297 normality too wide. Carpzov and others have even tried to make it comprehend simple masturbation. A homosexual act, where there is proof that it arose in a condition of congenital sexual inversion, and when its criminal- ity has not been aggravated, should be regarded, not indeed as unpunishable, yet not on the other hand as socially unpardon- able. The legal penalty should be neither so light as to sug- gest the conclusion that the abnormal act is unimportant, nor so heavy as to imply that in all cases the act is uniformly rep- rehensible. Where it is proved that hereditary influences have powerfully contributed to diminish the offender's responsibility for his act, the application of legal measures to his case should be made in a spirit sympathetic rather than otherwise, should be designed to effect the restoration of what is wanting, the control of what is errant, the strengthening of what is weak, in his sexual nature ; and should not merely aim at expressing by heavy sentences the disgust felt — however rightly felt — by the sexually normal community. Recognizing the dvo/Ata of such occurrences, let the community try other means than the curse, of repressing, it may be of abolishing, that dvo/xta. In this con- nection especially, a true penology must comprise the employ- ment of all such sedative and curative means as medical science, in alliance with the psychical and the moral sciences, can sug- gest or can discover. It is perhaps on the psychical side, from the development of the various methods of suggestion, that the least painful remedies and the best results are to be hoped for. But each one of such remedial measures requires for its de- velopment such a detailed and extended study as only special- ists can undertake.34 Students of this province of sexual science unanimously emphasize the social danger of blackmail (Erpressung) ; this danger, in fact, constitutes one of the strongest reasons for advocating the non-penalization of the homosexual act in se. 34 Hirschfeld's work contains a full resume and discussion of these methods. 298 SEXUAL INVERSION. The present writer, who has found himself unable to go the full length of this advocacy, ventures to think none the less that such considerations as he has advanced, and such suggestions toward the modification of the principle of punishment as he has made, will help toward a clearer understanding of the ethics of homosexuality, and will thereby render the crimi- nality of blackmailing darker than heretofore in comparison with that of its subject, and by consequence more heavily punishable and more dangerous to attempt. We have always to recognize the possibility above referred to, that an intimacy between persons of the same sex may be quasi-erotic. It may be based on a very intense and spiritual- ized afifection. It may admit caresses and demonstrative ex- pression; and yet succeed in excluding primary sexual action. Such an intimacy may be supplying the soul-needs of two per- sons, one of them abnormally constituted, without injuring the moral life of either. It is well to leave room for this develop- ment ; and it is more socially useful, as well as pleasanter, to think and speak with honor of such inverts as successfully order their sex lives on this theory, than to calculate the maxi- mum of punishment for the failures of those who have tried, but unsuccessfully, to do likewise. Punished such failures, — that is, though hesitatingly and regretfully, the present writer's conclusion, — even such failures should continue to be; but as- suredly with the minimum of punishment. To passive algolagnia reference has already been made in this essay. It would seem to be in highly organized subjects, persons of sensitive nature, emotional keenness, and perhaps, in addition, of unusual intellectual capacity, that this misdirection of the sexual instinct generally appears. It has various forms ; the subjects of it associate the idea of sexual excitement not only with the imagined infliction upon themselves of coarse and obscene indignities, but also, by a more sentimental form of the abnormality, with refined humiliations suffered at the hands of agents for whom they entertain exalted feelings of respect and admiration. Where undoubtedly congenital, pas- ALGOLAGNIA— MASOCHISM. 299 sive algolagnia cannot perhaps be eliminated from the con- sciousness ; but it may be checked and curbed in its growth by the will, whenever the will has been stimulated to desire a pure and normal sex life.^^ The algolagniac should by an effort of will refuse himself indulgence in the imaginations which ap- peal most strongly to his sexual emotions. He must force himself to look squarely at the facts of the matter, assuring himself that the pictures which his imagination involuntarily presents are impossible of realization, except in the artificial environment of a brothel ;^6 recognizing the dangers attending the unchecked development of algolagnic instinct, its depraving influence not only upon the sexual nature, but upon the gen- eral fiber of the moral being; and its possible issue in sexual inversion. It is only in extreme cases that algolagnic visions can be said to be necessary to the algolagniac for the rousing of his sexual system ; for that may become active as a result of the brain movements which form a sufficient stimulus for the normal individual. The state of the case is rather that the algolagnic tendency is the exaggeration of one psychical ele- ment in the complex of sexual feelings; a condition which, should the will habitually consent to the pressure thus imposed, is readily adopted by the sexual system as its favorite excita- tion, to the relative exclusion of normal and healthy incite- ments. It seems impertinent to speak of the control of the sexual instinct, unless the moralist is prepared to show men with something of precision what they have to aim at controlling. For the sexual instinct is a very Nereus. Bound in one form, it appears in another. Let it be known what an algolagnic in- 3o Algolagniacs who give themselves up to their inclination have to arrange their situations to order (Cp. H. Ellis, Studies, vi, p. 298; Bloch, Sexual Life of Our Time, pp. 581ff.). 36 Cp. Ellis, Studies, vol. iv, p. 228, where a personal narrative is given; and the remarks of Moll on the possibilities of self-education and discipline in relation to sexual perversion (Senator and Kaminer, o/y. cit., vol. ii, p. 1028). 300 ALGOLAGNIA— SADISM. stinct is ; and he whose sexual nature is affected with this taint will know what battle he has to fight, and may discover what are the most effective methods of fighting. From passive algolagnia, sexuality associated with and aroused by the idea of injuries, etc., which the subject pictures as inflicted upon himself, we pass to its opposite, active algolag- nia, i.e., sexuality associated with the idea of effort and vio- lence, especially violence inflicted by the subject himself. The sight of any great display of muscular effort, as a team of horses dragging a heavy load uphill; the sight of bloodshed, as in a battle scene ; the thought of striking, biting, or maiming the object toward which the sexual desire is directed — these are the stimuli, weird and terrible as it may seem to the normal individual, which set in motion this strange development of the sexual instinct. Probably there must always be a latent predis- position to active algolagnia in the subject of it; but it would seem that certain exceptional circumstances, such as the sack of a town in wartime and the consequent exposure of helpless women to unbridled license, may produce a manifestation of active algolagnia in minds v/hich hitherto had not consciously experienced any algolagnic tendency.-"'" Moreover, the fact that in some cases it has not made its appearance as an active principle till relatively late in life, shows that, as was seen in regard to passive algolagnia, the actively algolagnic inclination may be held in check and its development prevented by the higher forces of the organism. Masturbation would not be an efficient cause of active algo- ^"^ Cp. Forel, op. cit. (ed. 10), p. 266. The relative claims of heredity and environment in the causation of sexual perversions have been much discussed. Gemelli thinks that while a homosexual tendency may be acquired, the sadistic, masochistic, and one or two other de- generate tendencies are always congenital (op. cit., pp. 57ff., 204n.) Havelock Ellis shows (Studies, iii, pp. 102ff. Cp. Ellis and Moll, Hand- buch. p. 639.) that the algolagnic tendencies are but intensified mani- festations of indispensable elements of sexual emotion. Moll remarks on the occurrence, sometimes extremely sudden, of periodic and epi- sodic manifestations of a perverted tendency (op. cit., pp. 1025ff.). ALGOLAGNIA— SADISM. 301 lagnia ; but where the algolagnic predisposition already existed, masturbation would no doubt prove a considerable factor in its intensification. On the other hand, Moll considers that mas- turbation is in some cases an indication of underlying sexual perversity, rather than a cause of such perversity {op. cit., p. 992). It must not be supposed that a person whose sexual in- stinct is thus perverted is devoid of moral responsibility. His conscience and will, if sufficiently enlightened, may struggle to repress and ultimately lessen the power of the anomalous sex- ual activity. Where this moral effort is not made, and the algo- lagnic tendency is allowed by ignorance or want of principle to grow unchecked, there is no saying to what kind of catastrophe it may not eventually lead the unhappy subject of it. The re- action following on sexual gratification, which, as we have already seen, takes on a variety of forms, may induce in the algolagniac a condition of erotic intoxication ; so that the feeble and undeveloped moral sense is no longer capable of stemming the overpowering tide of unclean and monstrous passion. Thus, although the algolagniac is not mad in the true sense of the word, he may become so, as the temporary result of the or- gasm; and there may eventuate one of the fearful murders — mutilation and butchery following on outrage — which have their origin in this terrible impulse. Hence the treatment of active algolagnia belongs in part to the domain of penology. Either society must insist on the algo- lagniac himself acquiring control over his abnormal inclination ; or where that is impracticable, society must itself exercise that control. When the algolagniac has proceeded to the length of outrage and murder, it is indeed impossible, in the region of moral judgments, to view his conduct with the same measure of severity as would be requisite in the case of a similar action per- formed by a person whose sexual instinct was not complicated by any such tendency. But human laws cannot operate in the region of final moral judgments. Society has to form: and ad- minister such laws as will in practice best fulfill the primary 302 ALGOLAGNIA— SADISM. purpose of its own protection. In such a matter as an algo- lagnic crime, of which aggression and violence are the determin- ing factors, the redemption of the individual can only be considered as a secondary question. At present the law pro- ceeds in regards to algolagnic murders on the assumption that the algolagniac is responsible with a responsibility on a par with that of the ordinary individual ; and although only the first part of this assumption is true, yet it would be unsafe to urge that the death penalty should be abolished in connection with these cases. A long term of imprisonment and supervision, accom- panied by sterilization, might meet some cases, but it is not certain that sterilization, although it would prevent the algo- lagniac propagating his degenerate kind, would eliminate the abnormal tendency from his own consciousness. The penology of the future will probably deal more sympathetically, and at the same time more effectively, with algolagnic crimes and criminal attempts. The analysis of the algolagnic impulse made by H. Ellis-^® suggests that the presence even of active algolagnia does not necessarily imply a general and complete deterioration of char- acter ; and it is questioned whether or in what degree conscious cruelty can be attributed to the subject of this condition. so Viewed from a religious standpoint, in connection with the Christian behef in a moral judgment, this analysis is of pro- found interest and of far-reaching significance; but to esti- mate properly its ethical value would require not merely a first- hand observation of algolagnic phenomena, but a comparative study of the forms and motives of cruelty in other connec- tions than the sexual. The tendency to cruelty is a morbid de- velopment accruing to fundamental instincts; and all cruelty derives its impulse from what may be described as an emotional interest of some kind in pain, the desire to stimulate and sub- sequently to gratify some passion. Suetonius ascribes to Nero cruelties perpetrated for his amusement. These were due to Studies, iii. p. 126ff. (ed. 2, pp. 159ff.). Ellis and Moll, Handbuch, pp. 640f. 38 39 Ellis an ALGOLAGNIA— SADISM, j 303 a morbid development of the instinctive craving for amusement more or less present in all minds. Nero's gaiety was most readily aroused and gratified by the sight of pain in others; just as the active algolagniac's sexual instinct responds to the same stimulus. How far the algolagniac is capable of reaHzing the in- flicted pain, of discerning his own morbidity, and so of direct- ing his will-power to the suppression of it, are questions the answer to which will affect the charge of conscious cruelty. Tarnowsky, recognizing the intermingling of love and savagery in the phenomena of active algolagnia, yet appears to hold the algolagniac more or less responsible for cruelty.'*^ Krafft- Ebing-^i refers to efforts made by algolagniacs to control their perversity, justifying the inference that the algolagniac's sub- jective view of his actions, however vitiated it may be — and there is probably, as already observed, always a congenital de- fect with this form of perversion — does not wholly absolve him from moral guilt if the controlling effort is not made. However this may be, our study of active algolagnia leads, finally, to the general conclusion that no collective social duty is more imperative than the fight with cruelty. Evolutionary progress, so far as we know, involves suffering; and some writers — an instance is given in Bloch's Sexual Life of Our Time'*^ — infer that cruelty is justified. This is a crazy deduc- tion. The principle to be applied in self-conscious human evo- lution— when, that is, the process has reached the stage at which man can consciously influence it — is to produce the maximum of progress, as discerned by the most educated and manifoldly developed faculty of estimation, with the minimum of suffering. This principle calls for the suppression of every needless infliction of pain ; of all cruel spectacles that appeal to the morbid sadistic interest in pain. It is with reason believed that the public and private cruelties of the social life of pagan 40 L'Instinct Sexuel, p. 248. 4^ Psychopathia Sexualis, E. tr., 7th ed., p. 6L 42 E. tr., pp. 587ff. 304 OTHER FORMS OF PERVERSION. Rome'*3 intensified sadistic passion ; and we know that the torturing of birds and animals has the same psychological con- nection. Bull-fighting has been condemned by Fere, Ray Lankester, and others on this ground. ^^ Cock-fighting is similarly bad; such cases as the "monsieur aux poules" men- tioned by Fere, or the young man who brought pigeons to a brothel to see their necks wrung by prostitutes, ^^ are extreme instances of the awakening of sexual excitement at the sight of the sufferings of birds. Wanton cruelties, in fact, are sexually dangerous, in addition to all the other reasons for condemning them. It may, however, be impracticable to push humanity to extreme lengths. Forms of sport that do the killing quickly are less open to objection, at any rate in connection with algolagnia. Yet other forms of the dissolution of the sexual instinct exist, besides those which we have already considered. Incest may conveniently head the list ; since, although not strictly speaking pathological, it is, from the sociological point of view, one of the phenomena of sexual abnormality. Of a more definitively perverted character are : ( 1 ) Fetichism, — eroticism concentrated upon some inanimate object, as an article of cloth- ing or a lock of hair; hair-cutting assaults on girls, such as are occasionally recorded in the papers, are probably due to this motive. (2) Exhibitionism, — the impulse to exhibit the person indecently. (3) Narcissism, — a kind of autoerotic self- admiration ; and yet more repellent forms, such as bestiality, necrophily, and parodoxy, or sexuality appearing at an abnor- mal age, viz., in extreme youth or in advanced age, and direct- ing itself by an inverse variation toward persons correspond- 43 Friedlander, Darstellungen aus cler Sittengeschichte Roms., vol. i, p. 261. So too sadism, fanned by superstition and religious fanati- cism, was one of the contributing causes of the frightful Witchmania. (Hirschfeld, in Die Neue Gen., Jahrg. 7, Heft 10, S. 417; Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 120; id., Die Prostitution, Bd. i, pp. 647ff.) -14 Bloch, Sexual Life, p. 563. 43 H. Ellis, Studies, vi, p. 298. OTHER FORMS OF PERVERSION. 305 ingly distant from the subject in age. The determining factor in these latter cravings is in fact the stimulus of dissimilarity. Detailed information as to these and other forms of erotic eccentricity can be got from books on sexual pathology ; in this general survey, it will be unnecessary to do more than bear their existence in mind, and to take, note of certain facts and considerations which will help us to estimate their relation to moral responsibility. We have seen reason to suppose, first of all, that a class of cases exists whose formative principle is sexual recklessness. Without possessing particular abnormal impulses, this kind, being more or less devoid of inhibitory principle, experiments in whatever direction its sexual fancy happens to dictate. In many other cases, the pressure of an anomalous sexual environ- ment is the weightiest determinant of the unseemly occurrence. Thus, incest has frequently become common in country villages ; it did so in particular in medieval Europe^^ — owing to the limitations imposed on marriage and matrimonial choice, by adverse economic and social conditions. The same conditions variously modified promote it in the poorer parts of towns.'*'*' Again, bestiality is often a result of men's sexual isolation in pastoral districts ; and was doubtless formerly commoner than it is now.'*^ A recently discovered physiological fact, to which allusion has been made elsewhere in this treatise, must also be taken account of, and will go far to explain the causation of such antisocial and repulsive phenomena as we are considering. Geddes and Thomson have concisely stated it.'*^ Testes and 46 Michelet, La Sorciere, ch. xii. "^"^ Discussion in the Upper House of Convocation, reported in the Church Times, July 10, 1914. "^s Early and medieval Christianity had, apparently, frequently to punish it. (Cone. Ancyr. Can., xvi ; see Routh, Rell. Sacr., tom. iv, p. 221 ; cp. Ellis and Moll, Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, p. 637 ; Hansen, Zauberwahn, Inquisition und Hexenpro2ess im Mittelalter, p. 408.) "^^ Geddes and Thomson, Sex, pp. 80f. 20 306 OTHER FORMS OF PERVERSION. ovaries are composed of sperm- and ovum- making cells, and interstitial cells. These latter may develop and function inde- pendently of the condition of the former. They may be de- veloped ahead of the germinal cells in young testes ; they may remain normal and active in old or diseased testes. Among the functions assigned to these interstitial cells, is that of producing the sexual excitants, called by Starling "hormones," which are subsequently diffused throughout the organism. Sexual precocity and hyperesthesia in childhood need to be viewed in connection with this physiological process ; which likewise renders more intelligible the moral breakdowns of old age, thus described by Mercier: — "There are old men who have lived a normal and reputable life up to a time when, with the advance of age, their sexual desire has died away and disappeared. They have families of grown-up children and often of grandchildren. After a considerable interval of sexual neutrality, they experi- ence a revival of sexual desire, often intense in degree. The candle flares up in its socket, and they are startled to find themselves moved with all, and more than all, the sexual pro- clivity of their early manhood. "^^ Furthermore, just as the immaturity of childhood, when combined with precocious and intense sexual feeling, is pro- lific in disgusting and perverted sexual experiments, which are usually given up when the brain and sexual nature mature, so in adult life, when the inhibitory brain centers are congenitally weak, or become weak through senile decay, paradoxical and abnormal sexual acts are likely to be committed. There are, moreover, cases of congenital inclination, analogous to congenital sadistic and masochistic tendencies, to some one or other of these abnormal gratifications. Forel gives a remarkable example of sexual paradoxy — adult in- clination to young children — which can scarcely be accounted for in any other way.'^^^ 50 C. Mercier, Criminal Responsibility, p. 145. 51 Forel, Die sexuelle Frage (ed. 10), p. 291. OTHER FORMS OF PERVERSION. 307 As, then, we survey this field we perceive many and vari- ous grades of moral responsibility. It is right, in the first place, to recognize consistently and unfailingly, the objective hideous- ness of the phenomena in question. Forel's treatment of bestiality^- is unsatisfactory on this ground. He should, it seems, have emphasized more strongly the antagonism be- tween bestiality and the esthetic canon in sexual morals. The ingenious attempt to soften this antagonism by adducing the mythological conceptions of unions between animals (or birds) and human beings — conceptions which have been utilized in art — fails, or at least is seen to involve a retrogression toward immature value- judgments in the province of sexual morals, when we reflect that to mythological thought it is only the fact of a human (i.e., divine human) entity being fused with the bird or animal, that makes the union esthetically tolerable.^^ There are some symbolic conceptions — we meet such in the Bible itself — which are instructive or touching or elevating as long as they are sufifered to remain in the region of symbolism ; but which become grotesque or repulsive if translated into terms of literal fact.^"* It is therefore to the community's advantage to maintain an attitude of abhorrence and reprobation toward these phe- nomena. That is the legacy of value which the old savage penal laws have left. Only, modern society must put that legacy out to interest in ways different from those which our forefathers employed. Our laws must retain the power of exercising severity in respect of such occurrences. Even the foregoing survey, brief as* it is, has shown that penal legislation must take account of the possible, nay probable, presence of a num- ber of mitigating circumstances, in its endeavor to estimate responsibility and guilt in one of these connections. The kind 52 Ibid., pp. 292f . 53 Cp. MacCulloch, The Childhood of Fiction, quoted by G. A. Barton, art. Bestiality, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics. ^■i E.g., the picture in Apoc. John., ch. i (r/'. Trench, The Epistles to the Seven Churches) ; and see supra, p. 14n. 308 STERILIZATION. and measure of punishment due to an incestuous or bestial offense must vary greatly with the age and mental state of the person committing it. Some of the younger cases, the rationale of which is vulgar and morbid experimentation, could be remedied by methods not involving publicity or imprisonment or lasting disgrace. The mentally defective and many of the senile cases should likewise be spared this last infliction. But there are certainly some among the offenders in this province whose responsibility is conditioned by no insupportable weight of vitiated heredity or adverse circumstances; whose persistent impurity is the outcome of a cynically conceived theory of life. These merit severe punishment, the dual principle of which should be, ffrst, that modern punition, as we have already ob- served, can never again allow its necessary severity to become unbridled and experimentative savagery ; and, secondly, that the entrance of reforming influences must be kept perpetually open and free.^^ Castration or sterilization — the operation may be per- formed in several ways — is found not to be of uniform value in the extinction of sexual desire ; but it is occupying the attention of legislators in various parts of the world, inasmuch as ex- periments give reason to hope that it may, if employed as a punishment in certain cases of sexual crime, satisfactorily dis- pose of at least a percentage of them. Sexual degeneracy or abnormality, while yet incipient and unmarked by violent and outrageous acts in the subject's career, may be combated by the moral suasion method and by hygienic precautions, in the manner already outlined in this work. It may yet be possible in many such cases to guide the sexual in- stinct into its normal channel, to discipline and control it. Moreover, the problems of heredity are still so far from solu- tion that, as Moll points out,-"*^ it is often difficult to determine ^5 For a judicious and authoritative general estimate of modern developments in penal law, see R. F. Quinton, art. Criminology, in Hastings, Enc. Rel. Ethics. 56 Op. cit., p. 1042. STERILIZATION. 309 what kind or degree of sexual perversion in the individual will inevitably occasion degeneracy in his offspring. But in the case of a declared sexual degenerate of the dangerous type, when it is no longer possible to educate him, on the principle put forward by Fere and other modern thinkers, to adopt for himself such a rule of chastity as will prevent the propagation of his diseased tendency, then it seems legitimate to have re- course to physical means. Sterilization certainly raises ethical questions ; but these should not be prejudged by reference to scholastic and patristic a priori notions, or by legalistic interpretations of Scripture.^''' The principle "peccatum suhjacct voluntati"^^ is of limited application where the sexual heredity is greatly disordered. In the light of a more detailed knowledge than Aquinas possessed, we perceive the frequent inadequacy of volitional power, even when acted upon by the best religious and scientific suggestion procurable, to curb the morbid impulse. The morality of sterilization needs accordingly to be esti- mated on utilitarian principles. A great deal turns on the question of its sedative efficacy. It is not enough, where sexual perversion is concerned, merely to prevent procreation. The individualistic aspect of sexuality also needs consideration. The perverted and exaggerated instinct itself calls for help and remedy ; and since sterilization has no directive, it must at least make good its claims to have a sedative influence. This question, and that of the remoter mental and bodily effects of the operation, have to be decided at the bar of " medical knowledge. In the present state of that knowledge, the surgeon's re- sponse to voluntary applications for the operation will not be uniform. Sterilization will not be indicated in every case of perverted sexuality. Nor indeed can it stand alone as a punishment, or as a measure for reforming a sexual criminal. ^"^ For a summary of these arguments see L. H. Gray, art. Eunuch, in Hastings, Encyc. R. E. 58 Aquinas, Summa, ii, Qu. Ixv, ad 3. 310 STERILIZATION. The most that can be hoped is that in some cases it may suc- cessfully supplement and shorten detention. Whether punitive sterilization in the form of vasectomy — the cutting or opening of the vas deferens — is objectionable on the ground of cruelty, seems as yet imperfectly decided. On the evidence before the present writer he inclines, though speaking with reserve, to think the objection invalid. The operation itself, according to the testimony of .some prominent Indiana surgeons, is not formidable ; and the inconvenience caused is a mere trifle in comparison with the sadistic cruelty which, ex hypothesi, it obviates. Another objection, that if vasectomy were socially utilized as proposed, it would be abused by unscrupulous persons to antisocial ends, falls to the ground before the consideration that such abuse would not wait for the legalization of the operation ; and must, if the fear of it is well grounded, be occurring now. Moreover, the utiscrupulous hands must at any rate be hands trained in surgery. The operation would be legal only under certain conditions and at the hands of certain licensed or appointed surgeons ; and on the analogy of other illegal operations, it may be presumed that the surgeons willing to break the law would be few. The penalty should be pro- portionate to the important social bearings of the operation, and to the unusual, though scarcely insuperable, difficulty of detecting and bringing home the offense. In any case, abusus lion tollit usum.^^ Addendum to page 294 : — The psychological origin of disgust has been analyzed by Havelock Ellis and others. ^^ Hartland refers to the feeling 59 The preliminary report of an American commission on sterili- zation, under the chairmanship of Mr. Bleacher Van Wagenen has lately come into my hands. It is in accord with the views taken in this chapter, on all the main points (See American Sterilization Laws, pub. by the Eugenics Education Society London). 60 H. Ellis, Studies, vol. i, ed. 3, pp. 46ff. DISGUST. 311 in a way which impHes that it is a recently evolved product.*^ ^ This is not so, as reference to Ellis (loc. cit.) shows. Hart- land's facts illustrate, however, the readiness with which this subjective emotion gives way to the pressure of primordial needs (Sven Hedin, in Through Asia, gives an illustration from thirst),^- or even of diseased cravings. ^3 That is why to appeal to a person's feelings of disgust with a view to sedating morbid or wrong desires is of dubious efficacy taken by itself ; though this is a method which philosophers from Lucretius onward have tried. ''"^ But with whatever uncertainty of inhibition dis- gust may act, it is still one of the factors which make for the sublimation of life's common activities ; and this fact gives it an objective social value of which legislation cannot afiford to lose sight. 61 Primitive Paternity, vol. i, pp. 69fif. 62^. 2Kgs. 18:27. 63 W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 543. 64Lucr. iv, 1174ff.: Bloch, Sexual Life, pp. 436f. CHAPTER XXI. The Evolution of Sexual Morality. Evolution of Moral Ideas — Prehuman Stage of Morality — Growth of Humanity's Sex Knowledge — Variability of Value-judgments — Sex Morality in the Evolution of the Race and of the Child— The Religious Factor — Ethical Ideals of the Sex Life in Civilized Society — Their Germinal Principles in Primitive Society — Statement of the Ideals — The Manner of their Realization — Principles of Casuistry — Sex Morality in Relation to Theology. Charles Lamb, speaking of literary masterpieces in manu- script, said that "it staggered him to see the fine things as they are there, interlined, corrected, as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure, as if they might have been otherwise and just as good, as if inspiration was made up of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indifferent !" A similar feeling distresses many people in connection with accepted moral ideas and religious sanctions. They cannot bear to look at them in their becoming. They fear by so doing to see them evaporate into the clouds of ethical subjectivism and illusion. Yet in fact, ethical evolution implies the development of moral ideas from germinal principles. It will be our aim in this chap- ter to distinguish these, the primal constituents of sexual morals. It may be that we shall find in them something like a static point of origin for a fluid body of evolving ethical ideas, an objective basis for a subjective structure of sanctions. In the formation of ethical concepts, all the factors co- operate under the universal law of evolution; and as to the religious factor itself, its operation apart from or independent of that law has not been demonstrated. Indeed, the notion of such a distinct operation in the case of that factor, would seem to be an anthropomorphic method of allegorizing, rather than a rational estimate of the religious element in the formative process. (312) ORIGINS OF MORALITY. 313 The germ of mature or, rather, of still maturing ethical ideas exists already in the phylogenetic heritage received by man in his evolution from lower forms of life.i An elementary morality, and especially an elementary sexual morality, ante- cedent to man, is inductively evident ; and the proof thereof is cumulative. But the existence of such a morality may also be deduced a priori from the now established psychological fact, that there is a principle of oneness in the psychic processes formerly regarded as absolutely distinct, the processes of ratio- cination, volition, feeling, and instinct ;2 that these processes do more than coexist, more than cohere; that they are in fact cognate manifestations of the one comprehensive psychic capacity, consciousness. An instinct is a form of emotion or feeling, the subjective reaction to an impression; ratiocination is the combination in consciousness of such subjective re- actions; a volition is the product of the commotion of the psychic activities under the law of motor suggestion. Now, as it is not possible to demarcate between these overlapping stages, or blended processes, in the whole movement of consciousness, so neither is it possible to demarcate between the types of be- ing in which consciousness is exhibited, in respect of the possession or non-possession of an ethical or an ethicoreligious capacity; it is not possible to deny wholly to the lower em- bodiments of consciousness what is affirmed for higher em- bodiments of it in the series. And as the psychic capacities in the conscious entities differ in degree and elaboration of development, not in kind; so the content of those capacities, 1 Cp. Mario Puglisi, II problema morale nelle religioni primitive in Bilychnis, fasc. viii, p. 186; Thomson and Geddes, Problems of Sex, ch, i : "the primary impulses and emotions, the raw materials of morality, the springs of conduct which he — man — inherited from his prehuman ancestors." The subconscious operation of instinctive factors in the formation of ethical concepts is affirmed from the anthropological side by A. E. Crawley, art. Chastity, in Hastings, Encyc. R. E. This is the final indication of comparative ethics in humanity. It remains to follow that indication farther back in the evolutionary series; which I here attempt to do. 2 Cp. J. Hyslop, art. Conscience, Hastings, op. cit., vol. iv, p. 32b. 314 ORIGINS OF MORALITY. as held by entities of various types in the series, differs analo- gously. Whether, then, ethical religion be viewed as a sub- jective product, or as an objective group of ideas presented to the consciousness ab extra, there is now, from the recognition of evolutional law, no a priori reason why ethical religion as an elaborate notion should not have had indefinitely simpler prece- dent notions cognate with itself. For if there are entities psy- chically capable of experiencing moral and religious sentiment, or of receiving moral and religious impressions, in however simple a degree, why should that want remain unsatisfied, in the economy of the universe, any more than the more complex, but analogous and even cognate wants of higher entities in the series ? The precedent notions of ethical religion will of course be simplified, in comparison with the first named, almost ad infiiiititni. Religious consciousness gradually shades off into mere life consciousness. An ethicoreligious concept, then, is not the creation of the psychic processes in man ; for these processes do not create ex niliilo. They are means for the production of an ethico- religious concept ; but its material already exists ; not, be it ob- served, a formless material, but one which has been already sl\aped or molded in the rough, in the undeveloped conscious- ness of lower forms of life, before it is taken up and worked upon by the human consciousness. But, now, we must fully and fairly admit not only the con- tinuance, but the extent and complexity, of the action of the principle of change in humanity's sex life. That life has been a process of inquiry and experimentation, as will readily ap- pear to anyone reading such a book as Ploss-Bartels, Das IVeib in der Natur- nnd Volkcrkunde. Here we see humanity ten- tatively stating the physical and hygienic laws of the sex life. This process bears, more or less directly, on the discernment of its ethical laws and ideals. Human knowledge has passed through stages where magical conceptions have been dominant and the relation of cause and effect has been a subject of guesswork. Sex knowl- VARIATIONS OF MORAL JUDGMENT. 315 edge has not been exempted from this evolutionary law ; and it will readily be understood that the superstitious ideas thus formed have variously influenced and deflected the evolution of such germinal ethical principles as the most primitive human consciousness may have grasped. All the particular aspects — religious, social, hygienic, esthetic, and other — are being put together into an ethical synthesis in human con- sciousness ; but in the process, they illustrate the working of superstitious factors, and exhibit variations and oppositions of human judgment. The sex life is thought of, for instance, as sympathetically influencing the life of action and work. Agriculture illustrates this notion. Some peoples think that conjugal relations entered into at sowing time favorably affect the crop sown. A Javanese couple will camp in the ricefields at night with that object in view. But there are other human societies where the opposite conclusion, that sowing time is a time for continence, is held. Similarly, while some primitive communities forbid sexual intercourse at the beginning of a war, others employ it as a means of obtaining an omen.-^ There are -diversities of view in the religious aspect of the sex life. The attitude of higher or divine beings to sexual phenomena is diversely estimated, some societies holding that such beings abhor, others that they have a personal and inti- mate interest in this class of phenomena. The psychic element in sex love has been regarded by some communities as a sickness or weakness,"^ by others as a source of strength and energy. Virginity and celibacy are very variously estimated, the variations ranging from veneration to contempt. The principle of marriage prohibition receives opposite applications in the two systems of endogamy and exogamy ; and is otherwise very variously applied. Once again, humanity has experimented variously on the 3 PIoss-Bartels, Das Weib, Bd. i, p. 544. Frazer, The Magic Art, vol. ii, ch. xi. 4 Bloch, Die Prostitution, Bd. i. pp. 228f. 316 VARIATIONS OF MORAL JUDGMENT. sexual nature, with the objects of exciting or sustaining, direct- ing or repressing erotic desire ; and has Hkewise conceived many inystical notions, invented many devices, and follov^ed many practices, with the view of making procreation safe and successful. Nor did Christianity establish a distinctive sexual ethic. Its function is rather to evaluate the ideas and prac- tices of the sex life of humanity at large. Accordingly, the principle of development continues to operate in Christian ethics where they are concerned with sex. Apart from the sifting out of practices which may be set down as pagan survivals or social corruptions, and about which the inner educated Christian conscience — by no means always the same thing as current, professedly Christian opinion — was never in doubt, practices, e.g., as the jus primes noctis/^ and the socially tolerated polygamy of influential persons ;® there fall to be noted such phenomena as Christian spiritual marriage — to the historical aspect of which much attention has recently been called''' — and the changing estimates made of it by the official element in the Church ; the variations in the gen- eral estimate of polygamy,^ over and above the mere sub- servience just referred to; the various applications of the ascetic principle ; and, above all, the fact that the pre-Tridentine canon law of marriage, according to which consensus per verba in prcusenti, even without witnesses, was sufficient to constitute marriage, has been suspended, if we cannot say finally abro- gated, by modern opinion and legislation.^ There have been other minor variations in ethical valua- tion. Examples of the spirit of inquiry and experimentation in the sex life, among Christian communities, can be got from the work of Ploss-Bartels. Practices which to some Christian 5 Ploss-Bartels, op. cit., Bd. i, pp. 687ff. 6 Westermarck, Hist, of Human Marriage, p. 434. 7 See p. 228f. 8 See Additional Note H on Polygamy. 9 In England, in 1753, an Act of Parliament forbade marriages not made before a public official. See p. 98. VARIATIONS OF MORAL JUDGMENT. 317 societies have seemed to involve no offense against modesty, as the admission of mothers into the bride-chamber as witnesses of consummation, have been repudiated by the general moral sense of Christendom. Household customs which have seemed allowable to some Christian societies, such as that of "bund- ling"— two unmarried persons of opposite sex sleeping con- tinently on the same bed — or of placing a naked sword in bed, which had the same implication, have been rejected as morally dangerous. Unions which ecclesiastical authority has at one time allowed, as the sanctioning by Pope Callixtus of the tem- porary cohabitation of patrician ladies with their male slaves, have been subsequently pronounced immoral. On the other hand, certain unions which Christian ethical theory at one time strongly condemned — as those between Christians and Jews, which were ranked with unnatural oft'ensesi^ — have later on been pronounced unobjectionable. Of such Westermarck gives other examples. Opinion on the lawfulness of divorce, and as to the reasons nullifying a marriage, has largely varied. Were it not for the fact that in the following chapter we shall be able to account for the variation in human value-judg- ments by recognizing that the cognitive faculty is not uni- formly developed in all men, and functions in a great variety of conditions, we should have to conclude that sexual morality is, after all, nothing but an incoherent subjectivism, a flux of ideas wherein no consistent directive principles can be dis- tinguished. For the variations in question cannot always be recognized as degenerative, in the sense of involving the con- scious alteration of fully developed ethical theories; as a de- cadent society might be imagined adopting a lower ethical theory from vicious indifference to a higher. They are, rather, in many cases at least, developments from a primal stock of instincts, constituent elements in the comprehensive sexual in- stinct ;ii and the student of them has to determine whether they 10 Krauss, Im Kerker vor und nach Christus, p. 293. 11 Freud reminds us that we ought in strictness to speak of sexual impulses in the pkiral. 318 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX DEVELOPMENT. follow or deviate from the line of psychical evokuion leading toward the realization of the notions which on social, utili- tarian, esthetic, or comprehensively ethicoreligioiis grounds, are posited by ethics, in its role of a critical science^- as the ethical ideals of the sex life. But it is premature here to estimate the measure of a society's responsibility about its apprehension of the ideals — whether that apprehension is clear or dim, full or imperfect. For we have not yet disposed of the considerations preparatory to- the introduction of the ethical ideals and principles which here concern us. Since the stages of racial evolution are recapitulated in the individual life, we should expect that in the sex life of the child the factors determining the psychical development of the sex nature will be the same as operate racially in primitive stages of human evolution. The origination and maturing of the human sex impulse have been described, and its psychical analysis made by Have- lock Ellis and Freud. I follow the latter thinker closely at thi'; point. There takes place in the organism a gradual association of pleasurable sensations with particular parts ; or, speaking more technically, erogenic zones are formed. The very young child's sexual system is not yet definitely arranged and located. 1^ His sex consciousness proceeds indeterminately and automatically ; or. to use Havelock Ellis's precise term, auto- erotically. The adult's sexual attitude is developed out of the original indeterminate sexual disposition in consequence of organic changes and psychic checks. These latter Freud designates as shame, disgust, sympathy, and the social con- structions of morality and authority. ^^ We note further, in regard to these checks or inhibitions, that the child is capable of receiving and assimilating them, of working them into the texture of its mental life. But they 12 J. H. Muirhead, art. Ethics, in Hastings, op. cit. i"^ S. Freud, Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, ii. 14 Id., p. 77. PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX DEVELOPMENT. 319 are not spontaneously operative. Very young children will do disgusting things from curiosity, and will masturbate — if they learn the practice as a reflex animal act — at first without con- cealment. In fact, as in general, so in regard to the sex life, "the niles (I italicize the word) of morality could not be ar- rived at by any conceivable analysis of the actual consciousness of infants. "15 The child's life is, however, unimaginable apart from a social environment, the operation of which upon the child's consciousness readily produces the inhibitory feelings afore- said. The child quickly learns — perhaps all in a moment per- ceives— that such and such a practice is disgusting or shameful, and must be abandoned or at least concealed. The presence in the child consciousness of the factor sympathy is of even greater importance for the sex life than the factors just referred to. This emotion gives an impulse to control sadistic and other self -regarding manifestations of the sex consciousness, besides the promise of positive moral developments such as chivalry. Sympathy in the child is indeed fitful and in the nature of things unintelligent ; but it may appear early. Quite young children will exhibit intense feeling about the sufferings of others or of animals. Indeed, although enormous hind- rances to*the formation of sympathy had arisen in the evolu- tionary process, they were surmounted ; and sympathy had already established itself in the prehuman biological series. It thus appears that the elementary human consciousness possesses psychical elements capable in combination of forming emotions to which moral rules will appeal. And yet, since neither the child nor the race has any innate pre-established truths or standards wherewith to begin the moral life they are destined to live; since both he and it start life on a non- ethical plane; we must look in both cases for the initial I'ls a tergo in the "change from instinct and impulse, through cus- 15 G. A. Coe, art. Childhood, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth. iii, p. 519a. 320 PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX DEVELOPMENT. torn, to individual deliberation," i.e., apprehension of and re- flection on ideals, to extra-human impulses. Now the recapitulation, in the human subject, of the biological series, takes us indefinitely farther back than the higher animals ; consequently, the psychical development of the newborn infant is not beginning just where that of the full- grown '"higher animal" left off. The difference between them is that the infant has fuller potentialities. A tidal wave pur- suing lesser waves is the analogue of the relation of an infant's consciousness to that of a full-grown ape or dog. It is more primitive in form, yet it sums up into itself all and more of their heritage of instincts ; and its vastness and momentum will eventually carry it farther up the beach than they have ever gone. We must distinguish instincts as individual or auto- genetic, and social or phylogenetic. The former are the more primitive, and appear in the earliest consciousness of the child. The latter come into play later, as the child verges into adult life and realizes that it is part of a social organism. It would thus be misleading to say that just because certain of the higher animals had developed the instinct of monogamy, and the child is higher in the evolutionary series than they, a young child already possesses that instinct. We can only say that a child is instinctively monogamous, in the sense that the sensations which go to form its sexual instinct are orientated, by the pres- sure of psychic factors normally present, toward monogamy. The fact that quite young children are capable of feeling erotic attraction, psychical in character, toward particular persons, foreshadows the full development of the monogamous instinct in the child. Further, the autogenetic instincts of the child are impelled toward monogamy by the phylogenetic instincts of his social environment ; and these phylogenetic instincts are a legacy from certain of the higher animals in the prehuman series. In the case of such an individual or autogenetic instinct as modesty, some at least of the higher animals had, as we have seen, developed a sense of sexual shame or modesty up to the RELIGION IN THE CHILD. 321 maximum of which they were capable. ^^^ In the newborn infant this sense is not yet awakened, but the awakening is soon to come, and once awakened it will attain a greater elevation and complexity than it ever could do in the animal. Thus the child consciousness at its earliest stages is poten- tially receptive of moral principles. The psychical material of ethical conceptions is there, and even the content of certain of those conceptions is already foreshadowed. But the matured result of these preliminaries is largely a matter of response to environmental intluences, of the modification of the individual instincts by the later action of the social instincts. Here arises the question, What kind of a religious aspect does this process present ? Evolution is led by in- dividuals ; not all children are equally responsive to ethical calls. We can at least affirm that the child soul, like the primi- tive soul,!*^" is capable — not uniformly throughout in the mass of children or of primitive humanity, but through specially evolved individuals — of receiving an ethicoreligious revelation suited to its powers of apprehension. When it is stated that "true and deep religious experience is almost impossible before adolescence,"!' it may be answered that the truth of this propo- sition depends on the sense attached to the qualifying adjectives. Young children's religious experience does indeed differ from that of adults and adolescents ; but there is no reason for deny- ing its value. Children's earliest religious feelings and ideas about sexual morality are in fact in the taboo stage — just as their theories about sexual phenomena are parallel to those of primitive humanity. i'^ They seem to perceive, in such inhibi- tions as they feel, the control of mysterious powers ; as primi- tive man observes taboos and avoidances. It is somewhat thus ifi Supra, p. 8. i"'! C/). Mario Puglisi, op. cit., pp. lUf. 1" Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 300. ^^H. Ellis, Studies, vol. vi, pp. 40ff. ; Freud, Ueber infantilen Scxualtheorien, in Neurosenlchre, Zwcite Folge. 21 322 RELIGION IN THE CHILD. that primitive religious ethics are recapitulated in the evolving consciousness. We find in children no evidence of an educative ethical revelation which is at the same time static and infallibly de- cretive ; but we do perceive the entrance through many avenues into the child-consciousness of a spirit or principle tending to control and direct the psychical evolution of the sexual nature, and bringing the will to greater autonomy in this province. Put otherwise, and in accordance with the following chapter, this means that human consciousness, even in the most elemen- tary stage, tends to gain an increasingly full and accurate cog- nition of objects, noumenal as well as phenomenal, in the limited universe of sex. The possibility that supernormal occurrences may con- tribute to the religious development cannot here be ignored. The idea of objective spiritual presence in the environment is not to be put aside, with, e.g., Stanley Hall, as hallucinatory, as "folly and pathos" ;^^ nor, accordingly, does the religious factor in either primitive humanity or young children neces- sarily consist wholly of subjective interpretations and value- judgments of sensible phenomena. Alike in the child and in primitive man, consciousness is — occasionally and sporadically indeed, but this is in accordance with evolutional analogies — capable of extraordinary function- ings, viz., dream, trance, and the cognate processes now fre- quently termed subliminal, which indicate not only subjective activities, but also, it may be affirmed with great probability,-^ psychic means of communication with a transcendental order. With this, however imperfect, psychological analysis of the formation of ethical concepts, we may proceed to deduce 19 Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. ii, pp. 43, 292, n. 8. 20 It is impossible to deal fully with this question here, but I write as a student of psychics, an associate of the Society for Psy- chical Research, and as a tolerably diligent reader of the relevant literature. A Biblical illustration of supernormal perception turned by the Divine will to an ethical purpose, is the case of Samuel. ETHICAL IDEALS OF THE SEX LIFE. 323 from the elementary activities of the sex hfe, and from the germinal ethical principles stated by Freud, the ideals recog- nized by developed ethical thought as the comprehensive stand- ard of the sex life. The ideals are the unfolded content of the germinal principles and their evolutionary increment ; and, con- versely, the germinal principles give from the first to the psychical element "conation" or seeking — an element funda- mental to consciousness^! — an impulsion toward the intellec- tual apprehension of the ideals. R. Marrett's division of social history into two phases, the primitive or synnomic, where society is governed by custom, and the syntelic, where it is governed by ends or ideals, helps us to grasp this connection. The customs and the earlier ger- minal moral principles are cognate with the ideals, as synnomic society is related to syntelic society. -- As, then, we survey the ethical history of mankind in the syntelic stage, the ideals of the sex life reveal themselves. They are : (1) mutual responsibility, (2) temperance, (3) dig- nity, (4) procreative utility, and (5) the recognition of the spiritual status of women. Under these concepts or most of them stand subordinate or explanatory concepts ; e.g., under mutual responsibility we shall place constancy and fidelity ; under dignity, the sense of beauty or the esthetic as an element in morals, — we have noted already the sexual origin of the esthetic,23 and under our fifth heading masculine chivalry. Once a society has reached the syntelic stage of its evolution, once it has clearly discerned the ideals, its collective consciousness never wholly loses sight of them thereafter. Not every section of it indeed discerns them with equal clear- ness ; some sections may refuse to be guided by them ; yet even in those societies which are most largely and generally de- cadent, the ethical ideals tend to reassert their authority. The range of their action strengthens our contention that they have 21 Hastings, of. cit., p. 416b, art. Ethics, by J. H. Muirhead. 22 Id., p. 426a. 23 Cp. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol. i, p. 470. 324 ETHICAL IDEALS OF THE SEX LIFE. been germinally present to even the most primitive human moral consciousness. As between primitive or savage, and developed or civilized man, "the general orientation of life, the direction of the quest for the real good, does not seem to change greatly, . . . Human nature, being polarized toward virtue, needs merely to be relieved of its ignorance of the ways and means by which virtue is acquired. "^"^ It is easy to per- ceive the relationship between the ideals here exhibited and the germinal principles that we have already had in view. The primary element of the sex life is sex hunger; but since this contains a desire to afford as well as to receive gratification, and indeed the latter result is not fully achieved apart from the former, it is clear that the evolution of sex hunger must pro- ceed on altruistic as well as egoistic lines. Here is indicated the development of mutual responsibility, the "categorical value" of which in the sex Hfe has already been remarked ;--'^ and when viewed in its ideal form of constant love and fidelity, no limits can be set to its obligations, — a fact which we notice elsewhere in this essay. Sexual temperance, too, is produced by the altruistic fac- tor, working in combination with those prehuman capacities of fear and disgust which are the ground of modesty, and aided by the periodic rhythm of the sexual processes. It has been maintained that temperance (eyKpareia) was the great original contribution of Christianity to ethics. ^•^ This is not true; whether the word be understood of total sexual abstinence — apart from the question whether such abstinence is ever realized except in sexual anesthesia — for efforts have been -'^ R. R. Marrett, loc. cit., pp. 430b, 431a. 25 Perhaps the chief feature of Luther's sexual ethic, which, as Bloch, Rade, and others have shown, was decisively important in more respects than one, — we must have regard to the leading principles of his teaching rather than to his coarseness and tendency to overstate- ment,—was his reaffirmation of the principle of mutual responsibility in sex relations. (Bloch, in Die Neue Gen., Jahrg. 9, Heft. 2, p. 87.) 20 See Dean Inge, in Hastings, op. cit., vol. i, p. 318a. ETHICAL IDEALS OF THE SEX LIFE. 325 made outside of Christianity, to use such abstinence; or whether, as is more probable, it means sexual self-control in a larger sense. ^'J' Dignity in the sex life has its origin in primitive fear and disgust, supplemented by the nascent esthetic sense belonging even to prehuman evolution. It is harder to^ perceive the primitive starting point of the fourth norm, or ideal, procreative utility. Yet it is certain that progressive ethics exhibits a tendency to the general recognition of this ideal. When mankind has discerned at least the outlines of the birth process ; when it has reached the stage of sex knowledge at which sexual intercourse and con- ception are seen to be related as cause and effect, it becomes possible to consider sexuality in its relation to the species ; and rational condemnation of abnormal practices becomes possible on the ground of this relation. In so far as moral estimates of sexual activities can be made in connection with the ideal norms taken separately, it results that the farther an act is from the norm of procreative utility, the more emphatically it is condemned by educated social opinion. The turpitude, e.g., of a homosexual act seems greater than that of an autoerotic act, while the latter appears in a worse light than a heterosexual misdemeanor. But in practice moral estimates are made in a more complex way. Thus a man's seduction of a girl is more reprehensible than a sexually isolated person's lapse into masturbation; though the latter act violates norms 3 and 4, while the former may violate 1 only. The fact is that, as we shall presently discover, the ethical norms of the sex life are to be held in a relation to higher ultimate norms ; and in such a case as the one mentioned, the heterosexual misdemeanor violates these supreme norms in greater measure than the other. Educated ethical thought does not regard merely impul- 27 So primitive a race as the Central Australians have words denoting sexual intemperance (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Centra! Australia, pp. 250, 471, 2). 326 ETHICAL IDEALS OF THE SEX LIFE. sive, uncalculating procreation with favor. The norm here posited implies that procreation must be socially useful. The weight of this obligation increases with modern biological knowledge; it is emphasized by the new science of eugenics; and it perforce influences our estimate of the practice of con- trolling conception. We deal with this subject elsewhere. Here it is enough to observe that educated ethical thought ap- proves without reserve, in relation to norm 4, only true and completed heterosexual intercourse. In earlier stages of ethical evolution, before the relation of sexuality to procreation was perceived, the impulsion to the observance of this latter norm was given through the collective survival instinct and the growing esthetic sense, which latter condemned masturbatory and yet more homosexual acts as disgusting.28 To the foregoing norms must be added the recognition of the spiritual status of woman. This recognition can be traced back to primitive times. Men venerated and even feared women — particularly in their specifically sexual aspect— even while they bullied them ; and even in ignorant, corrupt, and superstitious times, when the ideal of woman- hood was most lost sight of, women tended to; get back as witches the spiritual eminence they had failed to retain as saints, matrons, and saviors of society. Bloch thinks that the best element of hope in modern developments of sexual mor- ality resides in the due spiritual valuation of women. ^9 There are some signs of a coming reconsideration of the moral aspect of polygyny. ^^ If the ethical thought of the future indorses the instinctive repugnance largely felt by women to this institution, and continues to reject it as anti- social and therefore immoral, the reason will be that polygyny 28 For a brief description, see Bloch, Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 509. 29 Id., p. 766. • 30 See Additional Note H on Polygamy. ETHICAL IDEALS OF THE SEX LIFE. 327 fails to satisfy the conditions imposed by the norm now before us ; for it conflicts with no other of them. The situation of the ethical norms stated above is, as we have seen, ideal. They hang like stars in the ideal region of our moral world; and we may apply to them what Philo said of the moral precepts of the Mosaic law. They are fire and light. "Whosoever assents to the observance of them shall pass his life as if in shadowless light, having the precepts as light- giving stars within his soul. But those who refuse to recognize their conscience-compelling power are continually scorched and burnt up by the inward action of their lusts, which, like a flame, destroys their whole hfe."3i Relationship having been discerned between the ideal norms of synteHc and the instinctive and traditional rules of synnomic society, the latter being in fact the germinal principles of the former, it is a matter of rational inference from the action of the germinal principles in the world, that the ideals are also capable of ultimate actualization. But while, on the one hand, cumulative inference from probability^- (which Bishop Butler showed to be a ground of moral obligation) urges us to strive for such actualization on an ever-wider and completer scale ; on the other hand, deduction from experience warns us that, in view of the evolutional character of the world-process, the full and universal actualization of the ideals is not to be reached by superficial secular methods. -"^^ Hence the irreducible ethical minimum of the sex life in humanity does not consist in the flawless observance or full legislative expression of the ideal norms ; but that minimum exacts that the norms must always be' kept in view, and that the theory and practice of sexual conduct must approximate to 31 Philo, De Decalogo, ch. xi. 32 I am obliged to use this cumbrous but exact phrase in place of the much misapplied word, faith. 33 The problem of divorce furnishes us with a special illustration of the truth of this proposition. See Chapter XVI. Cp. The Moralist and the Legislator, by Dean Inge, in Prevention, vol. iv, No. 15. 328 ETHICAL IDEALS OE THE SEX LIFE. them. This ethical minimum is the nearest approach to a static element in the social sex ethic that we can find. And this condition — the keeping in view of and approxi- mation to the realization of the ideal norms — being observed, we can differentiate practical applications of the principles in- herent in the norms. At this point there does indeed confront us the danger of straying into a worldly casuistry ; but lest that danger should check our progress altogether, it should be remembered that the principles of the Gospel not only tolerate, but enjoin, the exer- cise of common sense, the making of deductions from experi- ence.^'* Only, such common sense must be sanctified. Among its constituents, a suprarational (not antirational) element must find a place. Essential to the Christian is the recognition of that "complete honesty, which sees no limitations to its duties ; which does not draw up for itself a code based on rela- tive judgments, full of indulgent exceptions, of conventional transactions ;"3^ the contempt of "that weak indulgence which would persuade us that we must take the world as it is, and dissuade us from the sacred duty of fighting against evil, by way of mental reservations disguising themselves as respect for liberty, but in their true character nothing but reckless egoism and sloth."36 Putting these two considerations side by side, we conclude that in secular conditions it is impossible to give to Christian principles of conduct full and uniform social effect. It is, e.g., impossible to get uniform results from the application of the first ideal norm of the sex life, mutual responsibility. The very volume from which I have just quoted words of so uncom- promising a tendency admits this fact. The norm suggests, first, that sexual relations should not be formed outside of mar- riage; and that if that prior suggestion has been disregarded, such relations should be followed by marriage. And such 34 Cp. J. Weiss on St. Matthew 10 : 16, in Die Schriften des N. T. 35Adveniat Regnum Tuum (Milano, 1912), p. 456. 36 Id., p. 460. SEX MORALITY AND THEOLOGY. 329 should indeed be the first aim of the parties; but Christian morahty indicates further, on the ground of the norm in ques- tion, that even where this aim cannot be reaHzed, the principle of mutual responsibility ought to operate, with other results. ^^ Nor, again, does the norm of temperance fix a uniform standard; nor that of dignity enjoin everywhere the same de- tails of behavior ; nor that of normality obliterate eugenic and other reasonable considerations; nor that numbered 5 in this scheme settle the question of polygyny everywhere and always with the same emphasis of negation. Further, it has to be remembered that the ethical con- cepts which bear directly on the sex life are themselves sub- ordinate to the larger ethical concepts, justice and love, the latter in its theological sense of a spiritual principle. ^^ These supreme directive ideas oblige us to estimate particular appli- cations or pretermissions of the sexual norms, in reference to conditioning circumstances. It was, for example, by means of this final criterion that a comparative estimate of abnormal and of heterosexual misdemeanors, in respect of turpitude, was just now effected. The sex ethic has to be considered, finally, in relation to theology. Religious history is full of theories as to how man can put his conduct right with God. Sexual activities, for reasons which we have already remarked in our glance at the evolution of modesty, would seem specially difficult to adjust in this connection. Various unsuccessful, i.e., unethical, at- tempts have been made. In ancient Oriental religion, on the 37 Adv. Regn. Tuum, p. 164. "Have I seduced, or tried to seduce, persons of the other sex? If I have done so, do I try, as far as I can, to make reparation; to amend, as far as I can, all the conse- quences? If this is not possible, do I at least pray for the souls ruined or lost in the world by my fault? Do I seek to save others from such injury; to make the evil done serve as an impulse in the battle against evil?" 38 Cp. a paper, The Heart of Christianity, by Professor Henslow, in The Modern Churchman, vol. ii. No. 7. S30 SEX MORALITY AND THEOLOGY. assumption that the Divine Being disHked the whole phe- nomenon of sexuahty, endeavors were made to placate Him, either by appeasing His imagined jealousy — He being anthro- pomorphically conceived of — by symbolically giving Him a share in its pleasurable aspects, and thus implicating Him in the matter ;3^ or by interposing between the self and His pre- sumed displeasure some kind of propitiatory, lustrative, or de- fensive rite. Modern society has dispensed with the two former classes of rites, but retains a strong tendency to regard the witnessed or public marriage ceremony in the light of a de- fensive rite, something to avert from sexual relations the en- suing wrath of God. This is due mainly to the erroneous identification which men, as T. H. Green pointed out, tend to make, of the mind of society with the mind of God. The pub- lic marriage ceremony protects the parties to a sexual union against the criticism and displeasure of society. It is assumed that this result satisfies the Will of God. In reality, however practically important the public mar- riage ceremony may be for the regulation of social life, Christianity does not, as we have already seen,-io in the last resort make the validity of marriage dependent upon it. Even if the public ceremony were the external part of the sacra- ment of matrimony, — which it is not,'*i — theology would have to maintain, consistently with its general sacramental theory, that in the last resort the grace of the sacrament might exist and operate independently of the form. Matrimony is an ethical state which hallows sexual relations before God. The conditions requisite to the genesis of that state being fulfilled, there remains, from a theological point of view, no need of a religious expedient to avert the wrath of God. Public mar- 39 Ploss-Bartels, op. cit., Bd. i, chs. xvii, xviii. There is even a reflection of this notion in primitive Biblical religion. {Cp. an article in II Rinnovamento, fasc. v, vi, pp. 427ff., based on the work of A. J. Reinach and Edward Meyer.) 40 Supra, p. 96. 41 Sanchez, De Matr. Sacr., lib. ii, disp. vi. SEX MORALITY AND THEOLOGY. 331 riage ceremonies are, at most, social guarantees, and signs en- abling faith in the fact that no element of divine wrath expects appeasement in this connection. They do not belong to the ideal spiritual essence, or inhere in the heart, of the Christian doctrine of marriage. Christianity has to review all theories of conduct in the sex life, by the light of its developed doctrine of God; which is that He is both transcendent and immanent, — in St. Augus- tine's sublime words, "sine motu omnia transcendentem, sine statu intra omnia manentem."'^^ ]sJq ethical norms, principles, precepts or theories can be referred solely to the transcendental side of theistic doctrine; for that would involve either crude anthropomorphism or the elevation of the ethical concepts into an extrarational sphere; a proceeding which would deprive them of human interest and ultimately weaken their obligation. Yet neither is it adequate to construe them exclusively in relation to Divine immanence; for if the transcendental ele- ment in ethics be ignored, the character of the norms tends to become wholly human, mundane, and secular; and it will be shown in the following chapter that merely secular ethical conceptions cannot afford a satisfactory working theory of jus- tice and love. Rivers are water; but not all water is rivers. Traditional morality at a given epoch may represent an ethical counsel of God ; but it does not follow that the whole ethical counsel of God is contained in such morality.^-" Or, more fully : In sex ethics, as in ethics generally, it is wrong to exploit the Divind transcendence in such a way as Mansel did, wholly separating an ethical concept as held by God from the similarly named concept held by men. There must be "something in the transcendent consciousness of God, cognate with the leading ideas which make up our concept of chastity. At the same time we must not in this connection vitiate our theism by a crude anthropomorphism. Honyman 42 Aug. Medit., ch. xii, S. 2. 42"This is, in fact, Ellis's argument, put into the language of re- ligion. (See Studies, vol. vi, pp. 367f.) 332 SEX MORALITY AND THEOLOGY. Gillespie's essay on God furnishes an example of the latter kind of failure.43 Mankind has not in fact sufificiently realized the im- manence of God in sex and the sex life. The preponderating tendency has been to try to keep the phenomena of the sex life hidden from God ; to think of God as too pure in Himself to come in touch with our sex lives at all ; and this tendency has led to men becoming either morbidly depressed, or cynic- ally defiant, about their sex lives. They have either trembled before God in fear and despair, because of the difficulties, mistakes, and impurities of their sex lives ; or they have reck- lessly tried to put the thought of religion from them, cast the idea of purity out of their thoughts, and given themselves to uncontrolled passions and lusts. That view and its consequences are together false and lamentable. The true view is that God is in our sex lives. Purity realizes itself, not by holding apart from its opposite; but by coming into touch with this, and transforming it. Just as the impurest women are made pure again by contact with the purest women, as the rescue work of our great cities illus- trates, so human sex lives, however manifoldly defective on the side of purity, can become pure, — full, that is, of the mani- fold moral purpose described in this chapter; — but only by God's coming into touch with them and entering them. If the collective mind of a community,^ while set on the task of solving in detail the problems of the sex life, is orientated toward the realization of the ideals ; if it so frames its legislation as to allow for the operation of the spiritual factors essential to the process of realization ; then presumably that collective mind is facing the future with a rational faith, as a religious individ- ual mind would do. It is for that reason presumably making itself acceptable to the transcendent judgment of God; and even its mistakes, like those which a religious and conscientious 43 The Argument a Priori for the Being and the Attributes of The Lord God, by W. H. Gillespie, pp. 198ff. SEX MORALITY AND THEOLOGY. 333 young man makes in forming his working theory of Hfe, will be remedied and overruled for good. It is beyond the scope of the present work to speculate, by the light of eschatology,'*'^ which with general theology has be- come scientific from the influence of evolutionary doctrine, as to what cosmical processes may contribute to the working out of moral judgment. The future may hold a higher biology, and may demonstrate that reincarnation, however crudely it has been hitherto presented, is, in some form and within some limits, a true conception ; and is one of the contributing fac- tors to the cosmical result. 44 Eschatology is the province of theology dealing with final issues. CHAPTER XXII. The Metaphysical Basis of Sexual Morality. Rational Ethics and Religion — Spiritual and Supramundane Origin of Ethical Religion— Human Cognition of the Transcendent Ethical Authority — Rights of Criticism in Ethics — True Nature of Moral Action —Autonomy of the Will — Rational Reception of the Imperative — Primi- tive Commands were Negative — Recapitulation — The Supreme Ethical Concept of the Sex Life — The Cognition of Ideas — No Really Self- evident Truths — Intuition — The Inheriting and Estimating of Moral Values— Objectivity of Moral Concepts— Their Perfect Concrete Mani- festation— The Metaphysic of Ethics Reveals God and Leads to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. It was shown in the previous chapter that extra-human impulses to morahty already existed, and were ready to operate in humanity at its earliest appearance on this planet. We saw how the sex ethic objectified by the social consciousness at a given epoch, is the product of a inanifold process, the stages of which were reviewed. It may be objected that ethical concepts are by this reason- ing fined down, not merely into germinal principles, but into an ultimate vanishing point. Such an objection ignores the prime truth, ex nihilo nihil fit. The developing concepts, not being self-creating, can contain no element which is not poten- tially or conceptually present in a primordial source ; and since moral concepts or moral sentiments are complex and spiritual in their nature, their primordial source or ultimate origin is not to be found in an order of being which is simple and physical ; for if that order contains nothing of a spiritual nature or cog- nate with the spiritual, it cannot create or give rise to things spiritual. Hence, although matter has been made the receptacle of the evolutional principles of ethical sentiments and concepts, and the medium of their development, their ultimate origin and creative source has to be sought in an unestimated spiritual (334) THE MORAL UNIVERSE. 335 entity antecedent to matter and the physical order. It is a lowly enough spring whence the current of human morality takes its visible rise, and many a streamlet must enter it before it becomes a great river ; but all those waters are supplied from the atmospheric reservoir, from a source transcending the body of the stream. Thus the idea of Goodness as subjective, immanent in the soul, and working out its realization by the experience of ages, and that of Goodness as objective and transcendent, are not mutually exclusive. Just as the two notions of Freewill and Determinism may be both true (as Sir Oliver Lodge argues, 1 and as Westermarck, with something of a constructive theory, maintains), ^ so, in the formation of ethical ideas, sub- jectivism in the conception does not negate the objectivity of the concepts. The manifold material which ethics labors to systematize, is designated the moral universe or moral world. According to what has been already advanced, this phrase is no mere metaphor. It expresses the transsubjective element, the aspect of objective reality in morals. ^ The resulting notion of moral authority compels the inference that particular manifestations of such authority do not require uncritical acceptance by the human will. Over the moral universe there stands indeed — preponderant considera- tions suggest this conclusion^* — a personal imponent authority, perfect in itself, but cognizable in the world through media in which it is immanent, the media of the soul's environment, the manifold data of experience, the events, effects, developments, which are seen to stand in some relation to conduct, and to render possible the estimation of it. These media are, however, imperfect vehicles for the transmission to the finite consciousness of the higher volitions. 1 Life and Matter, pp. 175ff. 2 Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. i, pp. 320fif. 3 C/J. W. D. Niven, art. Good and Evil, in Hastings, op. cit., vol. vi, sees, iii and iv. 3a See Additional Note I on Belief in God. 336 COGNITION OF THE IMPERATIVE. It may well be that a transcendent consciousness willing to reveal its ethical nature is compelled, by self-imposed condi- tions, to manipulate these media, to make them do, as it were ; just as, on the other side, the apperceptive faculties of the recipient or cognizing subject are not ab initio fully adequate to the task of cognition. Therefore moral ideas, as appre- hended from time to time, may be recast; moral judgments may be held in reserve or amended. And even where the moral law is made known to the soul by what seems the most direct method of communication with the transcendent authority, viz., mystical intuition, it is impossible, in estimating the result- ing moral idea, to ignore the inherent imperfection both of the medium of transmission and of the cognizing subject. The notion of a code of morals fully and finally drawn up by trans- cendent authority, and promulgated through a chosen agent, has had to be largely modified, as spiritual processes have become analyzed and understood. It is now perceived that such ethical convictions as have come to the religious leaders of mankind through mystical intuitions have yet a relation to, and are in a measure the product of, the Time-spirit. They are conceived by a transcendent force, but they are formed in the pregnant soul of the community ; and the labors of those men of genius who at length give them adequate articulate expression are but as the pains of the birth effort against which the body of the community in general cries out, while yet it subconsciously desires the new thing which those birth pains procure. Those faculties of the mind by which it perceives messages and visions of moral import appear to act analogously to the faculties of conscious reasoning, which produce new thoughts, not ex nihilo, but from the surrounding thought material. Subjective preparation for mandatory visions ap- pears to take place in the recipient's subconscious mind. The environAient of St. Catherine of Siena prepares her subconscious mind for the experience of a mandatory vision, which she announces as a Divine message mystically received. St. Brigitta, in a different environment has, in reference to the COGNITION OF THE IMPERATIVE. ZZ7 same subject, a vision contradicting that of St. Catherine.'* Thus, if there be an objective element at all in such mandatory visions, it does not at any rate suggest the interposition of a Divine Will acting in the moral world independently of human co-operation in the establishment of the resulting ethical propositions. In fact, the doctrine of a transcendent moral authority wholly suprarational, and expressing itself in decisions which, by whatever method given, are and forever remain beyond the reach of criticism, destroys the concept of a moral world alto- gether. For what conclusion can be drawn from the proposi- tion that the transcendent authority, using an individual man or a church or body of men as the organ of its expression, ordains morality and requires obedience to it on principles which the inhabitants of the moral world can never apprehend, with which they can never come into conscious touch ? Nothing less than that moral action is essentially a mechanical process, a blind contact with impulsion, a motion of the same kind as the only motion of which dead matter is capable. Sir Oliver Lodge has drawn attention to the fact that matter is moved only by the application of force from behind ;^ for a little reflection shows that pulling is essentially the same thing as pushing, inasmuch as the force of the pulling agent in reality pushes a portion of the dead matter. Matter has no inherent power of following a lead: it does not move to meet the agent drawing it. It is simply shoved along. If, then, the inhabitants of the moral world are being forced into obeying laws which they can never see the use of, the means of procuring, nay, more, of eternally guaranteeing, their obedience, can only be physical force, the same force as acts on dead matter, — and that kind of force is indeed the instrument which both secular and ecclesiastical governments have made use of to this end, partly in historic criminal law, and partly by way of theological menace. The "* Cheetham, Mecli?eval Church History, p. 110. 5 The vis a tcrgo. 338 AUTONOMY OF THE WILL. whole process is not merely analogous to, but generically the same as, the pushing of dead matter in a certain direction, or the training of a tree into a certain form, by the application of external pressure. In short, this conception of the moral sys- tem ignores consciousness; for the suprarational laws have nothing to do, and can never have anything to do, with con- sciousness. Therefore the true view of the moral world essentially contains the idea of the developing autonomy of the will. In the psychological series volition, as has already been observed, is the final stage of the soul's apprehension of the objective sequences and laws of the surrounding moral world. It is the issue of the psychic process of which instinct, reason, and emotion are the imperfectly distinguished aspects. There- fore the specific decisions of moral authority, and even the purposes of the transcendent authority itself, cannot be thought of as absolutely and finally inaccessible to rational criticism. In the moral world, authority is forever proving its claims at the bar of reason ; and since the horizon of the perceptive con- sciousness continually expands, its combining or reasoning faculty is compelled to view specific claims of moral authority in the new light afforded by larger conjunctions of facts and objects, and by consequence to evaluate those claims afresh. And this fundamental principle of the moral order, the critical or rational reception of the imperative, holds good in regard to both positive and negative commands. The earliest commands were negative ; for primarily a creature develops its positive instincts by imitation ; what is required of a mandatory nature is negative, and appears in primitive moral systems as the idea of tapu, or prohibition. Some of the prohibitions of the primitive tapu systems are temporarily sanctioned and sup- ported by utilitarian reasons which become modified or wholly disappear with increasing knowledge. The social consciousness rejects in the long run such precepts, whatever sanction may be claimed for them, as cannot justify their existence as factors in progress ; or, to use a profounder phrase, as principles of life. THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR. 339 The religious sense is, however, an indispensable factor in this ethical gold-washing. Professor Forel, in his well- known work, rejects the possibility of deducing a scheme of sexual morals from religious conceptions, and derives his prop- ositions from an inductive study of the facts and phenomena of the sex life in humanity.^* He estimates sexual conduct by reference to the effects it produces, or tends to produce, upon social welfare, and classifies acts as positive (good), indifferent, and negative (bad), according to this scheme. This principle of ethical valuation would be acceptable were it not that in Forel's presentation of it the religious problem is not solved but evaded. This is not the place for reviving time-worn discussions about the indifferent in morality ; but it should be observed that a utilitarian estimate wholly dissociated from religion does not illuminate the social prospect sufficiently far. The issues of conduct are often shrouded in obscurity. While it is true that (as Forel urges) the will of God has often been misinterpreted, it does not follow that there is no will of God to know. The argument may at this point be conveniently recapit- ulated and restated. Both the moral and the physical worlds or orders have an objective basis of being. Their existence does not depend on the finite consciousness in any of its forms. If the objectivity of those worlds and their reality in relation to the finite consciousness be denied, then the approximative con- sent of the cognitions of them, made by forms of the finite consciousness, remains unaccounted for, and all knowledge of the aforesaid worlds is reduced to the nullity of illusion. There are at the same time vast differences in the sub- jective cognitions of the finite consciousness, in respect of both the physical and the moral world. To the consciousness of some finite beings the stars are fixed points of light ; to that of others they are distant suns ; others, again, do not perceive them at all ; and the differences in moral ' cognitions are 5a Die sexuelle Frage, ch. xiv (ed. 10, ch. xv). 340 THE NATURE OF IDEAS. analogous. But these are variations in the cognitions, and in no way disprove the objectivity — in relation to finiteness — of the objects or concepts cognized. It is time now to apply these principles of interpretation to the ethical side of the sex life. First, let the supreme ethical concept of the sex life be itself considered, the concept of purity. It is contained in the yet more comprehensive notion of goodness; and its objectivity in the moral world goes pari passu with that of such concepts as redness and sweetness in the physical world. We stand, then, facing the question. In what sense can objectivity be ascribed to ideas? The thought-process abstraction is not equivalent to nulli- fication. It transfers entities into the noumenal sphere, which affords at least as permanent, and it may be a more permanent basis of being than the phenomenal does. For when entities have been thought in abstraction they acquire an existence inde- pendent of the "concrete mass of events which changes from moment to moment."® We can cognize ideas only through perceiving their con- crete embodiments. We know redness and sweetness by per- ceiving red and sweet things. Our knowledge of redness and sweetness is thus limited by a great many conditions ; some conditions in the things which manifest redness and sweetness to us, and some conditions in ourselves who look at them. For, in accordance with what has been already observed, we are only in approximate agreement as to the redness or sweetness of anything. But what is the relation of abstract ideas to that eternal conscious entity whose existence we have seen reason to postulate? It is not dependent on the phenomenal world for its grasp of abstract ideas. It can form and hold an idea, not as with us after cognizing it in the concrete, but before giving it concrete expression. And so far as experience shows, God's will has been to give concrete expression, or to allow it to be given, to certain ideas ; to actualize those and not others. As I ^'Joseph, Iiitrod. to Logic, p. 440. THE COGNITION OF IDEAS. 341 have observed elsewhere, He might conceivably have formed, held and actualized other ideas.''' Had this occurred, such ideas v^^ould have been transsubjective and real in relation to any other consciousness that might subsequently have apperceived them. If He has not done so, — as, e.g., in the case of ideas which, valued from our standpoint, are evil or absurd, — this fact is referable to His will. The just conclusion is, therefore, that ideas are real only if they have somewhere an existential basis of will.^ Will is the fundamental fact of existence. Now, since goodness in various aspects, love, truth, holiness, is as a fact of experience kept in being without depending for its existence on the will of particular men or communities of men, or even — as we saw in the previous chapter — of humanity in general, the inference is warranted that it rests upon an extra-human higher will ; and since that will could not have come into existence ex nihilo, it either is itself the will of the eternal existent, or is grounded upon it. Our cognitions being hindered and limited, we cannot be individually sure that we are right in attributing to the particular objects of our cognition the qualities which we predi- cate of them. I cannot be sure that the thing which I think has redness, really has it. The only proof of the correctness of my predication, that I can find, is a cumulative proof ; it is derived from the assents of a number of cognizing subjects, that such and such a quality is to be predicated of the object cognized. These assents in combination form a collective assent, or a consent. But now let us consider the formation of human assents to propositions. The faculty of abstracting the objectivity perceived by means of the concrete is germinally present in the most primitive and elementary consciousness, in such em- bryonic rationality as is found in children or in undeveloped ''' The Interpreter, vol. ix. No. 3. vi, p. 320b Ihe Interpreter, vol. ix. No. 3. See W. D. Niven, art. Good and Evil, in Hastings, op. cit., vol. 120b. 342 THE COGNITION OF IDEAS. races; and this faculty grows till its use in reasoning becomes so habitual as to be unnoticed by the user himself. We can thus affirm that the objectivity and inherent reality of all truths, even of mathematical truths, becomes known to the cog- nizing human subject. The phrase "a self-evident truth" is inexact. All objects are presented to the consciousness to be cognized; and all propositions come before the consciousness to be examined. There is no truth or proposition which re- leases the mind from the necessity of examining it. The term "self-evident" as applied to a proposition really means that, as that proposition is examined by the cognizing subject from each point of view, and by each method of mentation possible to it, it is seen to be true ; and its truth receives accordingly an ever-increasing cumulative assent. "Intuition" again, is an unscientific term, if taken to mean that the perceptive faculty of the generic human consciousness is in any way absolved from the labor of testing and examining that which is presented to it, in order to find out values. A rapid power of combining perceptions or ideas is indeed found in individuals ; which may be described as an intuitive faculty ; but this is a very different thing from the fully developed in- tuitive faculty assumed by the older psychology to belong essen- tially and ab initio to the whole of mankind. Thus the concept of squareness is "intuitively" perceived only by minds of sufficient development ; and is reached by less developed minds only by way of tentative perceptions ; and thus the intuitive assent has been evolutionally preceded by innumerable roughly approximative assents. Modern psy- chology has ascertained that people differ in regard to the capacity of perceiving a square; and since the abstract can be apprehended only through the concrete, the inductive appre- hension of particular squares precedes the recognition of the objective truth of the abstract notion of squareness. There is no primordial, necessary intuition of squareness in the human mind. Squareness belongs to the universe; THE COGNITION OF IDEAS. 343 it is one of its constituent ideas; and cognizing subjects have to find out and to recognize the fact of its so belonging. Just so in morals. There are no "self-evident" truths. There are no primordial perfect intuitions. The human con- sciousness has slowly and gradually apperceived and tested that which has come before it, object or proposition or idea. It be- gan in the prehistoric past to test the values phylogenetically transmitted to it by the lower and simpler forms of conscious- ness out of which it had come. It found in those values the germs of morality. Thereafter, by a combination of assents, by a cumulative proof inductively arrived at, men come to comprehend ration- ally the component notions of the moral universe as they ap- prehend the parts and relations of the physical universe. All the variations in their apprehension of these notions are due to the limitations of the cognitive faculty, and to the conditions of the entities in which the ethical notions find concrete ex- pression. The leading moral ideas, accordingly, stand over against the human consciousness, on the firm ground of transsub- jective reality. Anteriorly to us, independently of our con- sciousness, Goodness, Love, Truth, Purity are. They are not mere illusions created by our religious and ethical fancy. And yet we do not fully and perfectly see them and know them. We cannot be sure that our impressions of these ideas corre- spond exactly with the reality behind the impressions. Some societies have no generic word for chastity, some none for love ; yet it cannot be inferred that the notions which those terms express, thereby fall out of existence. Thus no definitive answer is forthcoming to the question, What is Purity; or What are Love and Truth, in themselves? W^hat are they like to some being who can see them, not through such imperfect media of perception as we possess, but unconditioned and undimmed? But human interest is not fully awakened by abstract ideas, not even when accompanied by the reflection that they are held 344 THE COGNITION OF IDEAS. in real existence by the will of God. Love, Truth, and Purity cannot be dealt with solely as abstract concepts. They are not like impalpable vapors everywhere diffused and never caught. There is only one way in which we can adequately think of them ; and that is in connection with persons or beings. If there is beauty, something or someone must be beautiful; if there is redness, something or someone must be red, and similarly with ethical concepts. To say, then, that Goodness — Love, Truth, Purity — is spiritually and objectively real, is the same thing as to say that there is some Person or Being who is absolutely, in a manner dependent in no way on condi- tions, loving, true, and pure. Most of the Love, Truth, and Purity that we discern in life are conditioned. They maintain their existence in a per- son's life, if the conditions are favorable. But those condi- tions may change. Constitution and temperament undergo changes; the progress of life puts us in new circumstances, and brings new forces to bear upon us. How will it be then with Love, Truth, and Purity? Not long since I heard a man say that he had never been drunk, and never had had any temptation to get drunk. That man's goodness was dependent on the favorableness of the conditions which had made it in that respect so easy to him ; and there is no saying what will become of his goodness, if the conditions change. It is thus clear that the absolutely good Being, the Being whose Love, Truth, and Purity are unconditioned, must be thought of by us, not as if he were completely separated from the conditions, favorable or unfavorable, which surround Love, Truth, and Purity as we are able to cognize them ; but as if, whatever the conditions may be, he continues recognizably loving, true, and pure. For if we think of the absolutely good Being as quite apart from the conditions of goodness, that is to say, as out of touch with humanity's own experiences in its efforts to possess goodness, then we are putting that Being out of our moral world altogether, and ascribing to him a Love, Truth, and Purity which are in no conceivable way cognate THE DIVINE WORD INCARNATE. 345 with our own, and which consequently can have no meaning for us at all. On the contrary, that Being is in the conditions ; and yet he is independent of them. He has to be thought of as existing in all unfavorable conditions ; as surrounded by all hatred and all coldness and indifference, and yet himself not ceasing to love ; as beguiled with all the most subtle lies, and yet thinking the thought which is true, i.e., remaining what he eternally conceives himself to be ; as feeling upon himself the full force of all impure desires, and yet remaining inwardly and spiritually pure. So only can that Being be absolutely good; so only can we feel confidence that his goodness does not change. Early theological thought was not satisfied with Philo's doctrine of the Logos, a conception which gathered into itself the Platonic ideas. It desiderated a concrete personal expres- sion of the moral ideas.^ Such an expression did not need to be imagined. It lay close at hand. Its discovery was a matter of the interpretation of facts. Ethical inquiry in fact leads us to the Christian doctrine of God, — God immanent in the world, existing in and through the world's changing conditions; and God transcendent, maintain- ing Himself by His own inherent power, independent of the world's changing conditions. And it brings us to the doctrine of Jesus Christ ; for absolute goodness receives its highest human manifestation in Him; in such sort that He knows and feels all the conditions, favorable or unfavorable, in which humanity has to realize its ideas of Love, Truth, and Purity ; while yet such knowledge and such feeling do not adversely affect the Love, Truth, and Purity in Him. And so it leads us to the true doctrine of humanity, the point of moral union between God and man ; not merely a his- torical doctrine to be handed down from one generation to another, but a living doctrine which fulfills itself in men and women, though they may have but a confused consciousness ^ Cp. W. D. Mackenzie, art. Jesus Christ, in Hastings, op. cit., vol. vii, p. 531. 346 PERSONAL PURITY. of how it influences them, and a very inadequate power of expressing it in words. We saw just now, in regard to the Love, Truth, and Purity manifested in humanity, that people discern those things differ- ently. • Some have a broader and a deeper view of Love than others. Some have a keener insight into the nature of Truth than others. Some perceive the principle, the spirit of Purity more inwardly than others. And in the progress of evolution, society's whole view of Love, Truth, and Purity becomes larger and more luminous. It is important for the understanding of sex problems to bear this fact in mind, but it will be yet more instructive to glance at the concrete expression which Purity receives in the sex lives of individuals. Very largely, as we have seen, personal purity is a matter of favorable material, social and economic conditions; and students of the causes of vice and crime know quite well that it is the failure or the absence of healthy and normal conditions, either primarily in the person himself or in his environment, which produces vice and crime: Any expert in social science will tell us, for example, that the condition of poverty has a great deal to do with prostitution. But, then, human purity does at times reach a higher standard than this; for sometimes people, even when the conditions of their purity change, will fight desperately to keep the vision of purity that they have seen in their own souls. They will still try to retain purity, just as they will still try to realize love and to follow truth, when all things in them and around them are becoming more and more adverse to such observance. Here they leave behind them the con- ditioned purity, and draw nearer to the absolute, which exists whatever the conditions may be. And this is the outcome in life and conduct, of the moral self- revelation of God, through Jesus Christ, to man. For there is a philo- sophical sense in which God is in men at all times ; and there is a theological sense in which He is in them on occasions when they gather together for worship and sacrament ; but in a yet nobler sense He is in them, just when their soul-conditions seem least favor- able to His indwelling; when all things are made hard for goodness, and yet goodness struggles to live. And although mankind cannot as yet attain to a full and clear vision of the objective Purity, much is to be learned even from these partial glimpses, these imperfect cognitions, afforded by the sex lives of individuals. We shall employ this method in the following chapter. CHAPTER XXIII. The Virgin Martyrs. Virginity in the New Testament — The Virgin Martyrs in Art and History — Virginity in Pagan Rome — The Christian Persecutions — The Peril to Virginity — Condemnation of- Christian Women to the Lupa- naria— Outraging of Virgins — The Spiritual Permanence of Virginity — Changes in the Social Estimate of Virginity — Survivals of Super- stition in that Estimate — Formation of a Deeper View — The Virgin's Aureole and the Conditions of its Attainment. The subject which claims our attention is virginity, the esteem in which it is generally, though not universally, held by communities, and the obligation inferred in moral theory from that esteem, the obligation, namely, to infinite self-command, "grenzenlose Selbst-bescheidung,"i in regard of the sexual nature. The present chapter will show that such infinite self-com- mand has been, as a matter of fact, exemplified and illus- trated in humanity's experience; and will draw from those examples a significant inference which may be of service in the ethical evaluation of sexual purity, and indicate the direc- tion of that idea's evolution. The New Testament contains three passages in which vir- ginity is predicated of the Church of Jesus Christ. ^ I have elsewhere in this volume expressed a preference for the mystical and symbolical, as opposed to the literal interpretation of this New Testament idea of virginity; and the present chapter will make it further clear that to apprehend the essen- tial character of Christian virginity, a more penetrating ethical insight is required than that which literalism by itself is capable of. 1 Forster. 2 11 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:27; Rev. 14:4. (347) 348 THE VIRGIN MARTYRS. I propose to consider virginity from a point of view afiforded by Church history, to draw near to the luminous cen- tral phenomenon, along a new avenue of approach, the exist- ence of which has been demonstrated comparatively recently by the labors of scholars.^ In the ecclesiastical calendars are a number of black-letter Saints' Days ; and a fair proportion of these days are marked by the names of women, with the letters V. and M. (Virgin and Martyr) appended. There are eight such names in the Calendar of the Anglican Prayerbook. Ecclesiastical history has in times past permitted her idealizing spirit to deal freely with this group of holy names, the names of the virgins. She has surrounded them with the mellow light of legend. Nay, it has happened most often, whenever there has been occasion to recall these names to the consciousness of the modern Christian world, to make them live before men's eyes as figures rising out of the far past ; that History has stepped aside altogether, yielding her place and function to Art ; so that practically all that the churchgoers of today think or imagine about the primitive Virgin Martyrs is summed up for them in the familiar pictures and stained windows in which those saints are figured. Art is concerned with the external representation of in- ward realities ; and Art is therefore true to its function, when it tries to make the figure of the woman visibly reflect or embody the purity which tradition predicates of her. Art portrays the Virgin Martyr in the semblance which seems to harmonize best with the notion of her purity ; and thus in the pictures of the ideal Virgin Martyr, she stands before us, or lies down in death, a figure spotless in body, in features, and in vesture. There is a beautiful type of Jewish face, frequently employed by artists to externalize the virgin soul, — a pale, 3 F. Augar, Die Frau im romischen Christenprocess, in Gebhardt and Harnack, Altchristliche Literatur, xxviii, N. F. 13. More recently, Bloch has fully studied this subject (Die Prostitution, Bd. i, pp. 634ff.). THE VIRGIN MARTYRS. 349 calm face surrounded with jet-black hair, a lily framed in ebony. But now, in this chapter on the Virgin Martyrs, Aft steps back and History, coming again forward, lays her hand on the picture of the lily's last days before her martyrdom. His- tory touches, too, the ecclesiastical calendars ; with the result that in perhaps all the cases of feminine] names dating from the three first centuries of our era, and having the letters V. M. appended to them, we are under compulsion to strike out the V. To strike it out, that is to say, unless V. means something more than has been allowed for in the popular notion of it; unless a spiritual interpretation of V. can recover for us that which the literal interpretation has failed to preserve. For let us face the facts at once. In pagan Rome virginity was held in such high social esteem, that no woman, being a virgin, could be led to execution. Ploss-Bartels state that there is the record of an edict issued under Tiberius, rendering such executions impossible ;^ and there' are references in Tacitus, Dio Cassius, and Suetonius to a universal prejudice in the pagan society, against putting women to death in a state of virginity.^ These references receive support from the records and legends of the Christian persecutions. We have, then, here a particularly painful and terrible illustration of how a social sentiment which, in the ordinary course, made for general purity and nobility of life and man- ners, manifested itself as a superstition in one special direc- tion— the direction of criminal law ; and in the guise of a 4 Ploss-Bartels, Das Weib 8, Bd. i, p. 533. 5 Annals, v, 9; Dio Cassius, viii, 11, 5; Sueton., Ti. 61, 5. (Augar, op. cit., p. 77). Suetonius says: "Immaturse puellae, quia more tradito nefas esset virgines strangulari, vitiatse prius a carnifice, dein strangu- latae." I see no reason, except literary delicacy, for Principal Work- man's rejection of the plain inference that the violation of virgins before execution was a requirement of at least the "unwritten law" in ancient Rome, or for his suggestion that the practice in question originated with the lust and violence of mobs (Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, pp. 301fF.). 350 THE VIRGIN MARTYRS. superstition wrought such havoc and cruelty as can be alluded to nowadays only with guarded words. The first case in point comes 'from a pagan household: Tacitus has recorded it; but it is too sad and horrible to be reproduced here. Besides, the main business of this chapter is with the saints' days marked by V. M. The allusions collected by Augar from patristic writings and hagiography form a somewhat obscure and nebulous body of documentary matter. There is an element of pious fiction in them. Now and again the virgins are represented as being enabled to deliver their virginity fromi its impending danger, either by their own diplomacy, or by the chivalry of a man who cheats the guards and lets thej imprisoned virgin escape by the way he has entered ; or by supernatural interference in some form. There are details of importance which are glossed over, and points left doubtful ; as, whether the measures to be presently described as taken against the Christian women affected in practice all alike, or only the virgins ; whether those measures were regarded, by the magistrates who or- dained them, as an aggravation or as a postponement and miti- gation of the death penalty itself ; with what degree of prompti- tude or of reluctance, the average praetor, when he saw the lily face framed in ebony confronting him, would be likely to en- force the law. But for the law itself, for its place and opera- tion in the Imperial system, no doubts in that direction need be entertained. It was forbidden to scandalize the public by executing a virgin; and the magistrates, in dealing with Christian women, might, should, and probably would, see to it that such a scandal did not occur. How then shall it be with the well-known picture, when History has shouldered Art aside; and with her own rough brush and indelicate hand has adjusted, as she thinks fit, the foreground and the background of the Lily's environment on the canvas ; nay, has applied strange colors to the Lily framed in Ebony herself? The external spotlessness of the central figure will be ap- THE VIRGIN MARTYRS. 351 propriate enough in a picture representing the trial : there is one such picture very well known as an engraving in English households. But a month or two months after the trial, when the Lily — St. Agatha or St. Irene, or whomsoever we choose as the representative of the class of saints marked V. M. — had refused to throw incense on Csesar's altar, and was to suffer the last penalty of the law, what was she like, what were her inwardness and her outwardness, tlienf The Christian woman, when she felt the propraetor's eye upon her, was no doubt partly aware of the extent of her dan- ger; and there was superadded to her bodily fear a spiritual perplexity of the profoundest and most painful kind. For that which was immediately impending, in the shape of pain and death, might indeed be borne ; the joys of heaven were a more than sufificient recompense for that. But how, in these circumstances, to solve the religious problem of gaining en- trance to heaven ? If in the case of the woman accused of Christianity (for that came to be by itself a sufficient ground of accusation) V. and M., virginity and martyrdom, were both necessary condi- tions of winning heaven, how was heaven ever to be won at all ? For V. and M. were mutually exclusive. If one was to remain v., one must give up the idea of becoming M. ; if one per- sisted in becoming M., one would find it impossible to remain V. That is, if V. means just what people in general think it means; just that, and nothing more. The Lily framed in Ebony cannot solve it. She can only trust in the Love and Wisdom of God, and in the promise of God through Christ. She is V. now ; and she must not throw the incense on Caesar's altar. Those two points are clear in her mind, as the moment of decision comes to her. She decides from feeling rather than from calculation, being unable to reckon up or to antici- pate by imagination the fearful possibilities of the immediate future. Her spiritual instinct is to refuse, when the Imperial test is offered her ; and she does refuse. 352 THE TRIAL. Material force is all on the side of the pagan magistrate in this matter. The woman, if she has been heretofore a Roman citizen, sinks, by the fact of her refusal, to the position of a slave ; and the pagan Roman conscience has been slow in perceiving that the womanhood of a slave need be accorded any consideration at all. It was not apparently till the reign of Severus that the owners of female slaves were forbidden to sentence them, at their private and arbitrary will, to the fate now hanging over the Lily framed in Ebony. Besides, as we have seen, the measures which it is proposed to take against the Lily are not merely tolerated or connived at by the im- perial law. They are enjoined. They are a logical develop- ment of the then state of the law. Magistrates, even pagan magistrates, are not merely juridical machines. They are men: they have their personal feelings and private ideas. History is not wholly devoid of instances of magistrates combating, as men, the criminal sentences which they themselves have passed in their official capacity. And Mommsen may be right when he urges that this mitigating element in the Lily's special danger must be taken account of in a general estimate of the extent and amount of dishonor inflicted on Christian women throughout the empire. But it is my business here to follow the main line of the facts. If, under the sway of Imperial Rome, V. is a bar to the execution of a woman, V. must be broken through. And that would seem to present no difficulty. V. will surely yield to guile; or if not to guile, then to force. And there is no lack of either, in Imperial Rome. Round about the Coliseum in Rome, or the smaller arenas which represent it in the provincial cities, are many houses, which the Lily has never entered; probably has never been permitted to approach. But now, after the crisis of her religious decision, without preparation or delay, she shall be forced to see, nay rather to feel, to know with the most full and intimate measure of knowledge, their interior and the man- THE SENTENCE. 353 ner of their living. She is sentenced to provisional internment in one of the lupanaria.^ Once that sentence was put into execution, and apart from the apocryphal features of the group of references collected by Augar, it is hard to see how a woman could ever have suc- ceeded in preserving her virginity, — virginity being regarded as a thing or state of the body. For on the one hand, if she persisted in her refusal to throw incense on Cjesar's altar, her virginity must be destroyed as the necessary prelude to her execution; and on the other hand, if she yielded in the matter of religion, the immense pressure brought to bear upon her moral sense, by daily and nightly life in the lupanar, may fairly be assumed to be of sufficient weight to crush the living resistance of her purity. At this point, as the sentence of internment in the lupanar is carried out, two scenes vividly present themselves to the historic imagination. The two central figures in those scenes are similarly circumstanced. They are the figures of women. They have stood at the same doorway, a doorway in a gallery, with many like it on either hand; a doorway with a name above it and a curtain hanging before it. They have stood there in the same state, — visibly they were women. A lamp smokes in the murky room behind the curtain. There is a glint of gold on the otherwise bare breasts of both of them ; but while the hands of the one are free, those of the other, as I well believe, are bound. Juvenal has depicted the one scene, and the one figure : the other is given in the Acta of the martyrdom of St. Irene. c It is worth observing that St. Thomas Aquinas accepted the cotidemnatio ad lupanar under the pagan Empire as a historical fact. The reference (which I owe to my brother, Fr. R. H. Northcote) is in the commentary on the Magister Scntcntianim, 4 dist., xxxiii, q. 1, art. 3, 9a 1, ad 2m : "secundum jus positivum fornicatio simplex non prohibetur, immo- potius in pncnam secundum antiquas leges mulieres lupanaribus tradend?e condemnabantur." Cp. J. Miiller, Keuschheit- sideen, 2, p. 57. 23 354 THE LUPANAR. Enough of that : let it be granted, on the authority of the Acta, that St. Irene, though forcibly exposed in precisely the same manner as Messalina willingly exposed herself, re- mained for three days V, The force brought to bear on her was limited. But still, she will not burn incense on Csesar's altar. She will not give up the thought of being M. Things were thoroughly understood in the lupanar. There would be many ways of achieving the destruction of virginity by the method of guile. The keeper of the gallery, and the experienced prostitutes who aided him in its manage- ment, had a wide practical knowledge of sexual passion and its complex psychology. They were personally acquainted with the morbid phenomena which philosophers and historians of morals classify and analyze from a detached standpoint. They knew well how to stimulate and intensify masculine passion; how to meet the special demands of rough soldiers, gladiators, and slaves, of young gallants and dandies flushed with wine and excited, in the way Ovid describes, with the ubiquitous presence of pretty women; even the strange cravings of ex- hausted profligates and perverts, — they were ready for them all. And they knew the most effective methods of corrupting women; how to inflame them with wine, perfumes, amorous music, colors, and gaiety; how to transform, as by a magic touch, the cloak of feminine modesty into a mere diaphanous gauze. Force would be employed against the Lily framed in Ebony, during the first weeks of her imprisonment in the lupanar; not the savage force which, after a desperate physi- cal struggle, rends away a woman's virginity; but the subtle pressure which drives her into situations where she can be prevailed on to part with it. All the weight of the vicious moral atmosphere would descend upon her soul, stifling its pure intention; a ceaseless flow of erotic suggestions coming from her environment would envelop with their disintegrating action the crystal idea which upbringing, tradition, and religion had firmly imbedded in her THE OUTRAGE. 355 mind. But, as modern psychologists have noted, marvellous is the persistence of well-formed moral convictions in a human soul. They have shown that such convictions repel adverse suggestions, even when those suggestions have enlisted the powerful aid of hypnotic control, or some kindred influence confusing the judgment and enfeebling the volition.'^ Thus it is credible that none even of the mysterious mighty things which, by day and by night, approach the condemned woman's sexual consciousness, — the wines concealing aphrodisiac drugs, the sensuous pictures, the baths, the perfumed waters and ointments, the deceit of persuasive gentleness, the stimulation of an aggressive bearing stopping short of roiighness, the whole display of the resourcefulness of erotic passion, of the armory of the Ars Amatoria, — of the wiles of Comus, — suc- ceed in corrupting her original resolve. Come what may, she will not yield her virginity; and come what may, she will not conform with the religious requirements of the State. There- fore, finally, but one measure remains, one part of the imperial sentence, gathering up into a single ghastly episode all the brutality of the provocatio meritorii, the prolonged insult of the lupanar. Alas for thee this night, O Lily framed in Ebony ; for if virginity be only of the body, then there is no draggled Lycisca in all Thessalonica, whose virginity is more effectually defiled and destroyed, more contemned and abused, more bruised and bleeding, than thine will be, when the sun rises on the Kalends of April! Thus, in view of historical fact, the figure of a Christian woman of the three first centuries, whose name is included in the list of those distinguished as V. M., must have been ex- traordinarily unlike those of the externally spotless and serene maidens who shine upon us, like the chaste moon, from the " J. Milne Bramwell, Hypnotism, ed. 2, pp. 425ff. Cp. Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, p. 498. 356 THE EXECUTION. Stained windows. She who, at length, on the day of her exe- cution, passes — or more probably has to be borne — along the street to the place where she is to die, seems to the vast major- ity of the spectators like any other despised slave-prostitute, with nothing more to remark about her than that she is a treasonable fanatic as well. Her virginity has been simply smashed to pieces : her soiled garments, reeking of the hot lupanar, symbolize the thorough defilement of her honor. Only a few, a very few of those that behold her sorrow, per- ceive that she is in truth a very king's daughter, all glorious within, her spiritual clothing made of wrought gold, her soul's garments smelling of myrrh, aloes, and cassia. The task incumbent on philosophic historians is that of evaluating the advance made by humanity or any part of it, in the given period and along the particular line of progress they take as the subject of their study. At the present day many able minds are investigating the history of sexual morals ; and indications of change and progress, both in thought and prac- tice, are increasingly discernible in that department, as in every other department, of human history. As this planet, to our dim vision immobile, is in truth ceaselessly moving with immense velocity toward Vega ; so the concept of the Right and Good in the sex: life speeds through generations of men and epochs of history, toward some ethical ideal, some ob- jective perfect thought, which metaphysicians even now are forced to posit as the ultimate spiritual Purity. And first, it is in place here to observe that in the course of ages, the social estimate of virginity has undergone change, and received special developments. What an advance in social opinion and its expression, law, is to be inferred from the contrast between the respective points of view of a modern civilized state and that of Imperial Rome, on such a subject as the one with which this chapter has dealt! A proceeding which modern sentiment regards without any qualification as sexual outrage, as something categorically and universally wrong, was at one time part of a great legal system; justi- VIRGINITY IN HISTORY. 357 fied on an ignorant, superstitious theory of the nature of hoHness. Modern criminal law might have to pronounce sen- tence of death on a woman criminal in a state of virginity ; and modern ethical feeling, in such a case, would certainly con- sider it more wrong to deprive the condemned woman of her virginity, as a prelude to her execution, than to carry out the sentence upon her as she was. Roman ethical feeling reversed this view. The Roman community held that the wrong of executing a virgin — however, much of a social rebel or criminal she might be — was so great as to justify the steps taken to avoid it. The community outraged holiness in one way to save itself (as it believed) from outraging it in another and a worse one. Thus a superstitious social regard of virginity caused a social violation of virginity. The contrast between the ancient and/ the modern points of view is the result of ethical evolution. It has been brought about by increasing clearness of insight into the nature of the conditions, and the spiritual value of the phenomena, of the sex Hfe in humanity. A false estimate of the value of virginity caused violence in its worst form to be taken up into a system of law. Modern law and modern feeling have left that procedure, logical as it seemed at the time, far behind them, in the dark backwater of history ; and cannot now even glance back at it without abhor- rence. A cogent proof, surely, of the evolution of sexual morals. Not merely secular and pagan history, however, furnishes an illustration of the ultimate harm done to purity by a dis- position to make a social fetish of physical virginity, to con- sider (in other words) that purity in women depends abso- lutely for its existence on that physical state; but even Chris- tian opinion has often taken a purblind view as to the nature of purity. It has regarded the physical factor in that con- cept, as bulking more largely than the spiritual factor. In point of fact, here as everywhere, the spiritual aspect of the matter is of far more profound and permanent importance than the physical. Physical virginity may come to its end from 358 MORAL ESTIMATE OF VIRGINITY. several causes ; pressure of various kinds may be exerted upon the inherent resistance of that state, and may break it down. Yet, really, there is something in sexual purity that is supraphysical ; something that may remain inviolate and un- broken, when all its physical defenses have been shattered to fragments. A married woman may still be sexually pure, as we moderns clearly and' generally perceive; though thous- ands of religious people have thought and said ere now, that she is not and cannot be. A seduced woman may still be sex- ually pure; for the judgment to which she is primarily subject is the collective judgment of her own community, society, or nation; and that judgment is formed from custom and law, which are the evolving, mutable, and it may be fallacious ex- pression of an imperfectly discerned spiritual law; and which may be reversed by the judgment even of the neighboring community or of the next generation. At any rate, be the external circumstances of her fall or betrayal what they may, the spirit of purity may still abide and energize in her. The current collective judgments upon her do not penetrate to the center of her being. Finally, a violated woman may still be sexually pure ; that possibility has a spiritual basis, and has been realized to the full in the heroic cases referred to in this chapter. But more than this. To anyone who is acquainted with that body of literature in which the sex life is widely and pro- foundly studied, it will not seem arbitrary or fanciful if the above reasoning is carried a step farther, and a parallel is drawn between internal and external violence, in regard of the sexual nature. For the moral records, e.g., of monasteries and nunneries, wherever a genuine effort is made to give effect to the ascetic theory, afford illustrations, scarcely less heroic than the tribulation of' the virgin martyrs themselves, of the volitional struggle to preserve purity, under an immense and constant pressure of internal temptation. Wherever such in- ternal pressure upon the virgin will is felt — and the monastic system by no means monopolizes the whole history of it — the THE SPIRIT OF VIRGINITY. 359 spiritual result is closely analogous to that of the tragedy of the virgin martyrs. The volition of holiness, the spirit of purity, may prove indestructible, in these cases as in those others. A measure of external or physical failure, which it would not be in place to describe more fully, may quite con- ceivably eventuate during the struggle; but the inner line of moral defense may remain unbroken ; and that resisting soul, in spite of its apparent loss, will have won a greater victory for holiness than persons who, from the tranquillity of their en- vironment and the equableness of their physical constitution, have never experienced such assaults of passion at all. The proposition proved in the foregoing discussion is that the loss of physical virginity and the loss of spiritual vir- ginity are not commensurate. We have now to consider a corollary to this proposition. The men of many societies demand virginity from the unmar- ried women under penalty, sometimes personal penalty of a very severe kind, sometimes as among ourselves penalty of a subtler social action. Some societies honor virginity, but do not exact it under penalty. Some, comparatively a few, dep- recate it ; an attitude which does not however imply that the society in question has no canons of sexual morality, but is grounded on the idea, an idea carried into practice by various methods according to the moral development of the society holding it, of the necessity of education in sexual and erotic matters. In civilized communities these primitive views of virginity coexist and modify each other. Yet it cannot be said that a balanced and adequate ethical estimate of virginity has as yet been formed in the masculine consciousness of any community. The fact is that even so educated and enlightened a society as that of Britain has as yet by no means outgrown primitive- ness and superstition in its valuation of virginity. This con- clusion may be fairly drawn from some of the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Divorce (1910) and the literature arising out of it, particularly certain writings of Mr. 360 A FALSE ESTIMATE. Hall Caine. That author insists on the depreciation of a woman's value in the eyes of the male community, consequent on the loss of her physical virginity. That is evidently his point of view. "The poets, novelists, and dramatists of all ages and all countries," he says in The Daily Telegraph, "have centered their romantic interest for the most part in the young girl who has never known a man." It is easy to see how essentially superstitious this view, uncritically entertained, i.e., removed from its due relation to the spiritual estimate of purity, becomes ; or, I should rather say, is and remains ; for it has indeed, as Mr. Hall Caine im- plies, dominated the sex ethic of humanity for long and dark millenniums, and has been prolific in the phenomena of in- justice and cruelty which superstition never fails to produce. I do not say that the distinguished author himself consciously holds it thus ; yet assuredly the superstitious element is pres- ent in his thought, and confuses his treatment of the ethical question of virginity. In his discussion he assumes that the loss of physical virginity uniformly involves that of spiritual virginity. His feeling of the delicacies and complexities of the question is rendered abortive by this assumption, which has been shown in the present study to be wrong. The truth is that conventional and economic reasons are powerful, perhaps one must say determining factors, in the contemporary masculine estimate of virginity. Hall Caine alludes to the fact that the world entertains contempt for the "complacent" husband who overlooks his wife's transgression, and a priori for a man who marries a woman who has lost her virginity ; it being assumed in this latter case that she be- longs of necessity to a moral underworld of society. Here, in this uncriticised and untested assumption, is a conventional reason for valuing virginity. The estimate is a conventional point of honor with men, conserved mainly by the fear of contempt and ridicule. Further, there exists, as is pointed out by Havelock Ellis, a notion that the virgin bride brings her husband at TOWARD A DEEPER ESTIMATE. 361 marriage an important capital which is consumed on entering into full conjugal relations, and can never be recovered there- after.^ The underlying idea here is economic. To cease holding an idea superstitiously, implies holding it rationally and critically. Such reasons as the conventional and economiq ones referred to above must indeed enter into and influence, but should not by themselves determine, the mas- culine estimate of virginity. They took shape in the barbarous stages of human evolution, and still retain some portion of the spirit which then inspired them. What Ploss said of the esti- mate of virginity in primitive races, that it is often "nichts Sinniges, vielmehr nur vSinnliches"^ that causes the savage to value it, holds good, though less obviously and in a happily decreasing measure, of civilized men. The beneficial change in the moral outlook will come when men agree, not to discard the traditional estimate of virginity, but to hold it critically, to reduce, that is, the prominence of its superstitious features. This canon of development applies in fact to all moral ideas cognate with the estimate of virginity; to all aspects of the male community's requirement of feminine chastity. That requirement should press past physical facts into the region of spiritual facts ; and in that region it should institute its inquiry. If, that is, a man is confronted in a woman by the deplorable physical fact in question ; instead of merely asking whether that fact exists — a limited question whose scope is determined, as we have seen, by superstitious motives — he should ask what further fact, what fact of a spiritual nature, lies behind it. I have read of positively cruel divorces, which might have been avoided had the husband asked himself this deeper question ; for it was quite clear from the evidence that the woman, though humiliated, had not lost the permanent spiritual elements, the volitional life, of her chastity. Thus the history of the Virgin Martyrs, as we have been 8 H. Ellis, Sex in Relation to Society, p. 468. 9 PIoss-Bartels, Das Weib, 8, Bd. i, S. 526. 362 THE VIRGIN'S AUREOLE. able to ascertain it, is of paramount value for the understand- ing of the nature and reality of purity. It exhibits purity as a spiritual reality, not wholly coincident or commensurate with physical processes ; indeed on occasion able to transcend, to exist independently of, the events of the physical plane. There is here a word of promise, a message of immeasurable comfort and hope, for all, whatever their temporal circum- stances and experiences, who wish for personal purity. That element in chastity which is supremely dear to heaven, the inward volitional element, is indeed guarded by liveried angels ; even when all the outward cognizable elements have perished. "While the Church," says a Roman Catholic divine, "de- mands a physical integrity in those who would wear the veil of consecrated virgins, it is but an accidental quality and may be lost without detriment to that higher spiritual integrity in which formally the virtue of virginity resides. The latter integrity is necessary and is alone sufficient to win the aureole said to await virgins as a special heavenly reward. "^o And thus, though history disproves the popular super- ficial estimate of the virgin martyrs, and drops a red blot upon the V. in the calendar; yet assuredly a thoughtful reader of history will conclude, with the writer, that the spiritual instinct of the Church has been right in refusing to erase that letter ; for now we discern it once more, shining forever through the dark-red blot, with the appearance and power of fire. 10 J. W. Melody, art. Chastity, in the CathoHc Encyclopsedia. CHAPTER XXIV. The Gospel and Sex Relations. Asceticism and the Gospel — Tolstoy's Estimate — Christ's Attitude and Teaching — St. Paul — The Christian Ideal of Marriage — The Atone- ment and Sexual Sins. "Christianity," says Bishop Westcott, "disregards noth- ing in the rich development of human Hfe."i Nevertheless it goes without saying, that all aspects of human life are not considered in the scheme of the Gospel as of equal value. Briefly, it may be said that, as the Gospel interprets hfe, all departments of it — the life of sense, of intellect, of emotion, of labor, of knowledge, of pleasure, of pain — must be lived in a subordinate relation to the life of the spirit, the life consisting in the communion of the soul with God. No doctrine of gen- eral asceticism can be built upon this basis ; but particular aspects of the temporal side of life, such as those referred to, may have to be partially or entirely ignored or sacrificed if the preservation and expansion of the higher nature so require. Some prominent exponents of Christianity have lately argued, basing their view on a wholly eschatological interpretation of the Gospel's ethic,2 that Jesus inculcated despair of the physical order, and, by inference, of the sex process which forms part of it. This is the position' of Father Tyrrell in his posthumous book, Christianity at the Cross Roads; and the inference has been drawn by at least two writers in Die Neue Generation, Herman Gschwind in 1911, and Wal- ther Vielhaber in 1912, who, relying on the supposed acceptance by Jesus of a thoroughgoing dualism, urge, in effect, like His adversaries of old, "He hath a devil and is mad; why hear ye Him?" Such dualism, however, is not of the essence of Christ's teaching. The aim of His teaching, as of His life and Passion, was rather the unification of the physical and the supraphysical, the breaking down 1 Gospel of the Resurrection, ch. i, section 1. 2 Cp., for a discussion, Principal Garvie's article, Christianity, in Hastings, Encyc. Rfl. Ethics, vol. iii. (363) 364 THE GOSPEL AND ASCETICISM. of the barriers between the spiritual and the material, and the latter's renewal and elevation to higher planes of being.3 Harnack adduces three considerations showing that a rigorous asceticism does not necessarily pertain to the follow- ing of the Gospel ; that it^ is not, so to speak, an indispensable passport to the Kingdom of Heaven. ^ There is, first, the prac- tice of the Founder of Christianity Himself, as it may be gathered from the Gospel history, and particularly as it is summed up in one of His own sayings.^ Harnack's own con- clusion is as follows : "Toward the various fields in which asceticism had been traditionally practised, He must have taken up an attitude of indifference." Secondly, the practice of the majority of the first disciples, which must have been based on the precept and example of their Master, and which was inspired by His Spirit. There is little or nothing to suggest that the Christian community in the Apostolic Age consisted generally of people who were ascetics on principle.^ Thirdly, that the introduction of ascetic practices referable to legal maxims would be out of harmony with the leading thoughts in Christ's ethical teaching. Asceticism indeed finds its right place and function in con- nection with the sense of sin,''' of which feeling it is one of the symptoms, and on which it sometimes reacts for intensification. But though a very familiar, it is not an indispensable associate even of that awakened sense ;^ moral conversion may be com- 3 See Miss H. A. Dallas's articles, The Kingdom of God and The Coming of the Son of Man, in The Commonwealth for 1912. Cp.^ J. C. Lambert, art. Body (Christian), in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics. 4 What is Christianity? p. 81ff. 5 St. Matthew 11:19; St. Luke 7:34. <> Von Dobschiitz (Christian Life in the Primitive Church), though he concludes that the ascetic spirit is not innate in Christianity (pp. 376fif.), explains and to some extent justifies its influence as an external force upon the primitive Church (pp. 113, 114, and passim). "' Zockler, Askese und Monchthum, p. 4. 8 Ibid. TEACHING OF TOLSTOY. 365 pleted without it; and wherever it becomes Manichean in spirit or a ground of self-righteous complacency, it consti- tutes a deflection from the progressive Christian ethic. Further, the Christian conception of love in relation to God, to humanity, and to creation necessarily embodies an ideal self-denial, and everywhere implies a conflict with selfish- ness. In Harnack's words: "Whenever some desire of the senses gains the upper hand of you, so that you become coarse and vulgar, or in your selfishness a new master arises in you, jyou must destroy it ; not because God has any pleasure in mutilation ; but because you cannot otherwise preserve your better part." In the light of these considerations we must view the Gos- pel's attitude to the sex life. It were tedious to enumerate the obscure sects which in early Christian history endeavored to extract from the Christian Gospel a condemnation of all carnal sex relations. But such ideas are by no means extinct in our own day, and are therefore of practical interest to us. Tolstoy in particular, whose teaching on the relations of the sexes has been sum- marized in a booklet published by the "Free Age Press," treats the sex life as inimical to the ethical ideal established in the New Testament. He repudiates what is called "Christian marriage" as a means of rendering sexual intercourse lawful and hallowed. Marriage to a Christian, to any right-minded man, is a fall, and though it w^ere indeed better that a man, if he needs must fall, should fall with one woman, i.e., in matri- mony, yet he should still strive to remain in the unhappy con- dition of one who condemneth himself in that thing which he alloweth, and should say to himself: "I am falling; I hate to fall." Complete sexual abstinence, according to Tolstoy, in- heres in the Christian ideal of character. Since most men find this ideal impossible of attainment, they may aim at a less perfect chastity; but even in adopting this lower ideal, they are, as aforesaid, to condemn themselves, and merely to use it as a stepping-stone to the higher. 366 CHRIST AND THE SEX LIFE. Tolstoy gives us the Christian ideal, including absolute continence, as he has imagined it ; but the passages he ad- duces in support of his contentions, having been written with a very different purpose, will not endure the strain he places on them. They are to be found on page 18 of the booklet. Leaving for the present the question of the indissolubility of marriage upon which Tolstoy touches, and which, is by no means as free from obscurity in the Gospels as he would have us think, the present writer cannot but object that the remark "for man in general, and therefore both for the married and unmarried ones, it is sinful to look upon woman as an object of pleasure" is quite an erroneous interpretation of St. Matt. 5 : 28, 29. This passage is dealing not with lawful, i.e., con- jugal, but with unlawful sexual desire. It is a comment on the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," to the effect that the conscious indulgence of all wandering de- sires, in regard to women other than the one toward whom a man has sexual rights, is worthy of condemnation.^ Tol- stoy's exegesis of this passage is on every ground inadmis- sible; and he misses the point of St. Matt. 19:10-12 quite as fully. That passage, to which we shall refer again pres- ently, teaches no doctrine of celibacy as a counsel of perfec- tion. It does not imply that in the general rule the Kingdom of Heaven can only be entered, or can best be entered, by "becoming a eunuch." According as we interpret "the say- ing" (tov Aoyov) of verse 11, of Christ's own utterance — an interpretation which the present writer prefers^*^ — or of that of the disciples, the passage under consideration will be ^ Cp. Nosgen's remarks in loc. (Strack u. Zockler, p. 54); and J. Weiss, on St. Matthew 5 : 28, in Die Schriften des N. T. f lir die Gegenwart erklart ; Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 117. 10 The majority of commentators refer tov \6-yov in this passage to the remark of the disciples. So Edersheim, Life and Times, ii, 335n., who, however, admits that without much difificulty t6u \6yov may be applied to Christ's own saying. Grammatically, tovtov t6v \6yov might refer to a remark which immediately precedes, as in St. Mark 9: 10; CHRIST AND THE SEX LIFE. 367 either (a) a recognition on the Lord's part that the sexual nature of man could not in all cases support the strain which the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage, in its ideal per- fection, might sometimes place upon it; or (b) a statement of similar import to that of St. Paul,ii that each man hath his proper gift of God — one servant of God may be called and enabled to remain celibate, another may be called to the chaste enjoyment of sexual pleasure in the married state. Christ, it is true, seems toi enunciate a doctrine of com- plete suppression of the sexual emotions by implying that it may become necessary to withdraw from a wife's society with a view to greater efficiency and self-devotion in the cause of the Gospel.12 But there is no general discouragement of mar- riage here. The law of God's service, involving in particular cases the highest forms of self-sacrifice, is emphatically stated. Its appHcation is infinitely varied. Jesus Christ was not married; but there is no sufficient reason for thinking that He was wholly devoid of sexual emotion. To complete His circle of representative human ex- St. Luke 1 : 29, 4 : 36, etc., or to one which immediately succeeds, so St. John 21:23; Jd. 11:37 (lxx). But it seems more natural to sup- pose Tov \6yov to mean the authoritative saying of Christ (cf. St. John 6:60, 15:3), or the matter of primary importance under consideration. (Cp. Plato, Legg. 626d.) Cp. Nosgen in loc. (Strack and Zockler, Kurzg. Kommentar), who considers that rbv \6yoi>=haddabhar and is to be understood of "the matter under discussion," i.e., men's capacity for remaining celibate. This capacity, however, has to be considered not merely in relation to ecclesiastical celibacy, which is the direction in which Nosgen turns his elucidation of the passage (cp. Chrysostom, Honi. in St. Matthew 62) ; but in all cases where circumstances, on a prima facie view, seem to demand such a self-abnegation, including those in which the failure of previous married life is one of the con- ditions. More especially may it be read in this way if with Westcott- Hort TovTov be omitted on the authority of the best ancient MSS. According to the ordinary view, our Lord is represented as misunder- standing or evading the discussion of the point raised by the disciples. Ill Cor. 7:7. 12 Luke 14:26, 18:29. 368 CHRIST TEMPTED. periences, He must have felt the action of such emotion on the moral sense. Such is the view of one of the profoundest of the New Testament writers. i^ Moreover, Christ asserted natural human rights. It is clear, for example, that He asserted the natural human right of self-defense. He commanded His disciples to arm in an hour of danger. But when the crisis came, the uniqueness of the work He had to do on earth demanded that He should waive the right He had Himself asserted; and He refused to allow His disciples to use, on His own behalf, the very weapons He had commanded them to bring. i^^ Similarly, nothing in His words or practice implies a re- fusal on His part to recognize marriage as one of man's rights. 13 Heb. 2: 18; 4: IS. Cp. Kiibel's comment in loc. (Strack u. Zock- ler) : "Die Gleichartigkeit Jesu mit den Menschen ist eine allseitige, also auch Schwache, besonders Versuchbarkeit und Leidensfahigkeit in sich schliessend. Auch an die Siindhaftigkeit zu denken wird durch den Zusammenhang zum mindesten nicht gefordert und durch 4:15; 7 : 26 ; 9 : 14 unbedingt verwehrt." It should be remembered, indeed, that according to Catholic theology any experience of sexual emotion which Christ may have had could not have aroused in Him even the most rudimentary form of self-will. Such a contingency was obviated by His possession of the Divine Nature, and by the constant operation of His Divine Will ; which was the cause that the evil and corruption inherent in the human nature which He had graciously assumed re- mained potential and unrealized, and so not subject to judgment in the moral sphere. See the discussion in Liddon, Bampton Lectures, 17th ed., pp. 522ff., note C, On the Temptation of Christ; and for a judg- ment on the matter which eminently commends itself to the present writer, the luminous and reverent note of Bengel on Heb. 4:15. "In intellectu, multo acrius anima Salvaioris percepit imagines tentantes, quam nos infirmi: in voluntate, tani celeriter incursum earum retudit, qttam ignis aquce guttulam sibi objectam. Expertus est igitur, qua virtute sit opus ad tentationes vincendas." But preachers and theolo- gians who deny in toto the existence of the sexual instinct in Christ present a seriously impoverished conception of the Incarnation. J. Weiss (Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, Bd. i, p. 354) has a note- worthy comment on Matthew 19: 12. He thinks that the self-abnegation of Jesus in the sphere of the sex life must have involved a painful sacrifice. 13a Lk. 22 : 36, 49ff. ; Matt. 26 : 52. CHRIST TEMPTED. 369 He does, indeed, establish, by precept and by example, the doctrine already noticed — that this and all other rights ought to be waived when they clearly conflict with a special call to higher forms of self-sacrifice ;i^'' such a call as existed pre- eminently in His own case. It was because His own peculiar position and work in the world did not permit of His marry- ing; not because there is (as Tolstoy argues) anything in- herently sinful in sexual emotion or in the physical use of marriage; not because He approved such contemporary views as those of the Essenes, who repudiated marriage, that He Himself refrained from it. A teacher who deprecates even lawful sexual pleasure, and almost "forbids to marry," would appear to be possessed of a Christianity strongly tinged with Manichseanism ; to be the advocate of a false asceticism, not only not countenanced, but already condemned in the New Testament. 1^ But while our Lord did not give His sanction to mis- leading and impracticable ascetic doctrines in regard to sex- ual functions. He established and redefined the true and reasonable ideals of chastity which were part of the heritage of His countrymen. He did not recognize as lawful any form of sexual pleasure outside the estate of marriage; and life in that estate itself ought to correspond in sobriety and dignity to the sacredness with which in His eyes, as in those of the pious Israelites of His time, it was invested. ^^ Moreover, Christ gave a social status to celibacy. In one canonical saying (St. Matt. 19: 12), which is perhaps supported by a non-canonical saying (6 Kara rrpodtcriv evvov;(tas b loXoyrfaas fxr] yrjij.ai ayaf^os SiauevcTw, Clem-Alex Strom, iii. 15:97),!'^ He 13b The due assertion of sex rights is not possible apart from an awakened faculty of value-judging, and is to be held in connection with the call to self-sacrifice. Yet progressing humanity need not despair of that assertion and retreat on slave-morality, as Forster's argument (op. cit., p. 31f.) suggests. 14 1 Tim. 4:3; Heb. 13:4. 15 Edersheim, L. & T., i, p. 353. 1*5 The ethical insight of Christianity has perceived from the first 24 370 CELIBACY IN N. T. invested celibacy with a peculiar, though not necessarily with a pre-eminent honor; and this fact is the more impressive when it is considered that His recognition of celibacy was made amid a large expression of adverse sentiment in His own day. The ancient Semitic world disliked and despised celibacy; and, ac- cording to Dalman,!'^ the tendency of Rabbinic teaching was similarly unfavorable to that state of life.^^ In some of the later New Testament literature there is perhaps a tendency to exalt the idea of celibacy — the result of the struggle of the Church with pagan impurity — a tendency which assisted, though it did not originate, the emphasis laid upon that form of self-sacrifice in medieval times. Not only did individuals practise this form of self- abnegation, but wishes were expressed, and perhaps realized in certain localities, to make it an essential of the Christian ethical system.i9 Many have seen in such a passage as Rev. 14 : 1-5, the inspired sanction and justification of this ascetic tendency. But a very strong case can be made out against the view that this passage deals with literal celibacy. For where, as in the Apocalypse, the literary methods are mainly those of imagery and symbol, a mystical meaning will be naturally looked for; and with this interpretation such luminous expositors as Milligan, and such learned commentators as Zockler, whose note exhaustively reviews the different interpretations, profess themselves content. Indeed, even if literal celibacy was, as a matter of fact, primarily that eunuchism in this connection is a symbolical illustration ; and in fact Christian ethics disapproves of castration (except perhaps in pathological cases, see supra, p. 308ff.) as a means of fleeing temptation. Yet there have not been wanting in Christendom sects and schools which have practised and advocated castration; and at the height of the monastic period a half-disguised admiration of the practice was fairly prevalent. (Zockler, Askese und Monchthum, pp. 259f.) 17 Words of Jesus, E. tr., p. 123. IS Nevertheless, the conclusions expressed by Taylor (Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, ed. 2, p. 137n.) suggest that in Rabbinic thought there is observable a certain preparation for the social recognition of celibacy, originating in the suspicion with which sexual relations in general were regarded. Cp. the remarks of Meyrick, quoted in How- ard, op. cit., vol. i, p. 328. 19 Von Dobschiitz, Primitive Life in the Christian Church (from, the German), pp. 262, 3. GROWTH OF CHRISTIAN ETHIC. 371 in the seer's mind; and if again it is right to see in the obscure pas- sages, I Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1 : 6, a discouragement of second marriage and a step in the direction of clerical celibacyrO in both instances these ethical developments must be viewed in their proper perspective, in relation to the general New Testament presentation of Christian free- dom, and reliance upon spiritual guidance in individual cases. In so far as these passages enforce by a special illustration the general law of self-sacrifice inspired' by love, they are ethically progressive; but if they are understood as reaffirming the inherent sinfulness of sexual relations, they become from that point of view ethically reactionary and degenerate. Assuredly, a glorification of celibacy on the basis of the last-mentioned sentiment not only requires to be largely qualified by the spirit of a great body of contrasted Biblical teaching, but is even in imperfect harmony with the general attitude of the Apocalyptist himself toward sex as a source of ethical imagery.2i The line of exegesis followed by such commentators as are referred to above, seems to be the only one that brings out the permanent ethical element underlying the apparent asceticism. We find in the Synoptic Gospels, which give us at least a reasonably close picture of the historic Jesus, and report of His teaching as actually delivered, a sufficient condemnation of sexual sin in the forms generally condemned not merely by Christian, but by all educated human opinion ; even if this condemnation is not as full and explicit as many readers would expect. Moreover, to believers in Christ, His teaching, whether on sexual ethics or on any other subject, cannot be gathered from the Gospels alone; for critical difficulties not- withstanding, His Spirit inspires the rest of the New Testa- ment, and becomes the motive power of His early disciples' uncompromising hostility to sexual irregularities and impuri- ties. It is to be reinembered that the Jewish society in which Christ lived had ideas — as yet sufficiently definite, though in process of decay — as to what constituted sexual sin ; and there is no reason to think — except where His attitude to sex rela- tions implies otherwise — that He repudiated or even modified those ideas. 20 Id., p. 285. 21 Zockler, in Strack u. Zockler, Kurzg. Komm., p. 280. 372 CHRIST AND SINNERS. On the other hand, throughout the environment of pagan civilization in which Christian ideas of sexual morality had to grow up, there appears everywhere moral depravity.-- Every form of luxury that the knowledge of that age could suggest — in particular, the varied and powerful incitements of the bath^^ — was employed to inflame carnal passion. And not merely the practice, but, what is of more fundamental importance, the theory of morality was corrupted. Paganism was finding it more and more difficult to recognize that moral sanctions had any place at all in the sex life. 2"* Had there not been available in these circumstances, as the groundwork of the reformed morality, the ideas which Christ selected from the Jewish ethical system and emphatically re- affirmed, the primitive Christian moralists would have found it far more difficult to discern any general directive principles. But just here we perceive the value of the Jewish factor in the formation of the Christian ethic of the sexes. However faulty was the actual state of Jewish society in respect of the relations of the sexes — and there is contemporary evidence forthcoming to its discredit — its theory of purity was at least sounder and more distinct than was the case elsewhere. Christ's sympathy with man's experiences accounts for — what is perhaps observable — His peculiar tenderness toward people who had incurred actual stains on their sexual nature. His human knowledge of the power of the instinct and of the immense difficulties which beset the spiritual side of its development caused the Divine Love in Him, not merely to stand, and welcome, but to flow forth to meet, the penitent prostitute or the returning prodigal wasted with de- bauchery. The story of Christ and the woman taken in adul- tery, which, even if it be not historic, has a closer connection with the primitive tradition than even Westcott and Hort-"^ 22 Von Dobschiitz, op. cit., p. 372. 23 Cp. H. Ellis, Studies, vol. iv, ch. iv. 24 Von Dobschiitz, op. cit., p. 52. 25 E. Nestle, Expos. Times, vol. xiii, p. 95. ST. PAUL AND THE SEX LIFE. 373 allowed, seems truthfully to reflect the sympathetic saving pity which the Lord had for the penitent sinner against sexual morality.26 The same insight into the conditions of the sexual problem and His consequent recognition of the frequent need of the concession of marriage seems, as is pointed out in an- other chapter, not indeed! to lower His ideal of the stability of marriage, but to influence His teaching in regard to the prac- tical realization of that ideal. Prominence is not given, in Jesus Christ's own teaching, to any special abhorrence of particular forms of sin. Christ's insight into moral problems is of unrivalled depth : He attacks the spirit which works behind all real sin. As compared with Christ's teaching, that of St. Paul perhaps does manifest some- thing, in the concrete, of abhorrence for forms of sin; and not least for the forms of it connected with the sexual instinct.-^ His soul was full of an intense horror of sexual impurities, a horror continually strengthened by the commonness of the grossest sexual excesses in society around him. This feeling develops to a slight extent in his mind the indiscriminating distrust of the sexual function itself, which we have already noticed as being widespread in humanity; but which does not belong to a perfect scheme of ethics. St. Paul is almost driven to depreciate marriage. Unless we accept Professor Ramsay's estimate of the circumstances of the composition of that part of St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians which deals with marriage^^ — a theory which requires a somewhat strained interpretation of the introductory thought — Ka\6v dvOpwirw ywatKos fj-r] airTco-Qai — we must, it seems, conclude with W. P. 26 It must be noted that some writers, both ancient and modern, nave more or less willfully misconstrued Christ's attitude toward sex- ual sins. There is an essential difference between the lax regard of a sin, and a sympathetic estimate of the conditions in which it occurred. For a just estimate of Christ's attitude toward offenders against the law of purity, see von Dobschiitz, op. cit., Introduction, p. 39. 27 See especially Rom. 1 : 26ff. ; I Cor. 6 : 9-13ff. 28 In the Expositor, April and May, 1900. 374 THE SEX QUESTION AT CORINTH. Paterson, in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, s. v. "Mar- riage," that the mind of St. Paul inclines to a more ascetic presentation of the ethics of sex than that implied in our Lord's own attitude. This inclination is, however, slight ; and it was viewed with caution by the apostle himself. His readiness to welcome the return of the penitent sinner against sexual morality is not inferior to Christ's own. No difference of vital importance can be said to exist between his views and Christ's, on the sexual relation. The same spirit inspires both teachers; the same leading ideas dominate their reflections in this province of morals. Particularly instructive as illustrating the process by which ideas of sexual morality were elucidated among the first Christians, is St. Paul's treatment of the sex question in the Church at Corinth, where a false theory of Christian emancipation had created a spirit of libertinism, which aimed at reducing the married woman to the same level of social esteem as the hetaira or hierodule. According to the analysis made by von Dobschiitz of the situation obscurely presented in I Cor. 11 : 2-16, the social conflict between the married women and the free-living and free-loving women came to a head, as is the wont of great ethical and religious questions, over a small point of etiquette, the wearing of veils in the assembled Christian congregation. The veil was the symbol of conjugal fidelity in the matron, and generally of modesty in women. The hetairse, the party standing for female emancipation, re- garded unfavorably the assumption of the veil by women. They probably, and with some show of reason, claimed to be the female leaders in education and progress ; condemned the seemingly useless strictness of the moral party, and twitted them with the veil as a badge of servitude. St. Paul's insight, in deciding this conventional question between the two classes of women, is so remarkable that one may fairly see in it an evidence of his special! inspiration by the Spirit of God. He saw, more clearly than even the veiled women themselves, the importance underlying the point for CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF MARRIAGE. 375 which they contended with an obstinacy which was at once pathetic and morally great. He perceived the real drift of hetairism; he saw the want of stability inherent in even its better manifestations in history. He understood its social failure ; and though his broad sympathies forced him to enter- tain the idea of an emancipation of women, he uncompromis- ingly maintained that right moral beginnings were essential to true progress. As a counterpoise to the libertine movement, Encratite tendencies were driving the more scrupulous converts in the direction of Manichaean or Gnostic asceticism. But as St. Paul withheld his assistance from a false realization of the idea of liberty, so neither was he, in spite of his personal readiness to admit the highest and hardest claims of self-sacrifice, led to give an undue ethical prominence to celibacy. In short, no passage in the history of morals is more interesting than the series of efforts by which St. Paul, bringing his heritage of Jewish ideas into touch with Greek life, and at the same time holding those ideas in a liberal spirit, renovated and reaffirmed whatever of truth and soundness remained in pagan ethics ; and drew the main outlines of a pure, healthy, and comprehensive ethic of the sexes. As the mortal body is "clothed upon"^^ with the spiritual body, so the Christian conception of marriage as a religious state, as a sacramental ordinance, envelops, and by envelop- ing transforms and hallows the natural conception of it as a social institution. Too much stress should not be laid on the fact that the idea of marriage as a sacrament or spiritual com- pact does not appear fully formed till the Middle Ages. The obscure and mystical language of Eph. 5 : 22ff. does not indeed afford a sure basis for the whole elaborate structure of legal enactments which Christian canonists of a later date built upon it ; but marriage here and elsewhere in the New Testament is seen to be elevated into an ethical region in touch with eternal 29 II Cor. 5 : 2, 4. 376 CHRIST RECOVERS LOST IDEALS. verities ; and all later Christian teaching on marriage must be submitted to the touchstone of this lofty conception. Rightly estimating this idealism, we shall allow that Christianity^ by incorporating into its doctrine of marriage all that was best and most stable in the natural conception of it ;30 by intensifying all that there was in human society of reverent regard for the estate of matrimony, performed a work of incal- culable benefit to mankind, and gave a new starting point to the evolution of marriage legislation, and to all subsequent thought and feeling about marriage ; thus making it more than ever a powerful factor in the highest progress. Without doubt, Jesus Christ taught that the ideal of mar- riage indissoluble should be the guiding principle of men's thoughts upon sexual union, the high point whither ethical teaching on sex should lead. All around Him in human society were infinitely lower and less worthy ideals. All were pro- gressing along lines of degeneration, not of high evolution. It must be remembered that a society's practical estimate of the sanctity of marriage — the best criterion of its general view of sexual morality — cannot be inferred merely from the state of the law respecting the marriage contract and divorce ; for there have been communities, or times in the history of some particu- lar community, in which marriage has been dissoluble for several causes and by easy processes ; but in which, practically, advantage has been but seldom taken of the ability to dissolve marriage ; whereas, at other times, in less healthy social condi- tions, people have largely availed themselves of the same opportunities of getting rid of partners.^! They have learned 3*^ Crawley {op. cit., pp. 236ff.) well shows from the side of natu- ral religion how men in a primitive state have formed the ideas which establish human marriage on a firm ethical basis. The nascent con- ception of marriage as a sacrament is found in the rudest stages of human evolution, expressing itself in a series of symbolic acts insti- tuting a full reciprocity, or even a theoretical fusion of individualities between man and wife. 31 " 'In the early days of Hebrew history,' says Ewald, 'it was only in exceptional cases that husbands made an evil use of the right MORALITY IN TIME OF CHRIST. 377 to put an easier construction on the law, because the ideal of marriage has become lowered in their public opinion; while the sex relation is freely viewed as a field of pleasure, and ignored as a source of obligations. And perhaps it would be safe to say that in our Lord's time this process of lowering ideals and vitiating opinion in the region of sexual ethics had advanced farther than it had ever done before in human his- tory, or than it has done since. The ideas of marriage current among the Greeks and Romans, who tolerated temporary cohabitation, and gave a large liberty in the matter of divorce, did not tend to educate mankind up to the knowledge that an enduring love, into which entered the elements of volition and duty, as well as those of sexual attraction and emotion, is the animating principle of human marriage. On an equally low or even a lower plane, are the ideas of marriage reflected in the religious life of Asia Minor. "This religion," says Professor Ramsay, speak- ing of the ancient paganism of Phrygia, "did not recognize marriage as part of the divine life. Marriage was a human device, an outrage upon the divine freedom . . . there is not even the most rudimentary conception that famil- iarity with any other than a wife is wrong at all times."^- Similarly, in the social life of the Jews of Christ's time, the progress of opinion about marriage had declined from former standards and was rapidly degenerating. Divorce was probably common, in spite of the restraints put upon it by the prophetic teaching and by the best teaching of the rabbis.-"^^ Christ thus found the thoughts of men becoming every- where corrupt in regard to marriage and to sexual relations to divorce a wife.' Among the Greeks of the Homeric age, divorce seems to have been almost unknown, though it afterwards became an every-day event in Greece ; and in Rome, in the earHest times, it was probably very little used." (Westermarck, op. cit., p. 523.) ^~ Expository Times, vol. x, p. 108. 33 Edersheim, L & T., vol. ii, p. 332. 378 THE IDEAL AND ITS REALIZATION. generally. There was immense danger that the ethical educa- tion of the race, upon which the manifold reciprocity of sex was intended to exert, and had exerted, so powerful an in- fluence for good, would collapse when this factor ceased to have a beneficial operation. Therefore, Christ made one of His most powerful appeals to men's consciences at this threat- ened point, the region of sexual ethics. He accepted such con- temporaneous ideas of sexual morality as still retained a bene- ficial influence on men's moral sense, and were helping the evolution of perfect conceptions of love and chastity; and where, as in regard to marriage, the existing ideas and senti- ments were corrupt. He purified and restored them by His teaching. But marriage laws and doctrines conceived in the atmos- phere of Christian thought, while they must never be disjoined from the idealism of the New Testament, while they cannot have any other starting point than it, must be elaborated and expressed in accordance with a generalization which cannot be better stated than in the words of Dr. W. P. Paterson in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, s. v. Marriage: "Certainly it must be granted that the Christian morality does not consist of a cast-iron system of laws, but rather of germinal principles which entail the labor and responsibility of thinking out their inmost significance, and judging as to their proper application." Neither Jesus Christ nor St. Paul were engaged in framing statutes about marriage ; they were enunciating abstract ideal truths in the spirit of prophecy. The history of marriage among Christian nations shows that the task of practically applying the principles of the Gos- pel has not always been considerately or happily performed. Upon the modern, progressive Church lies the necessity of subjecting the ideas about marriage which, under the combined influences of ecclesiastical Christianity and Christianized law, have become more or less crystallized in society, to a temperate and truth-lovinsf criticism. THE ATONEMENT AND SINS OF SEX. 379 Nowhere, perhaps, do we find the power of sin in humanity taking to itself more horrible and revolting forms than in the life of sex. So repellent, indeed, is the full study of the dissolution of the sexual instinct that but very few minds have ventured to undertake it; to investigate and classify the painful phenomena, to analyze and estimate the causes of such dread results. In modern theology, though a study of sin as complete and searching as possible really belongs to the department of theology, the discussion of sexual criminality is generally tabooed. Yet in the Bible itself the sins of sex, and sexual relations generally, are viewed as necessary subjects for the consideration of inspired and righteous men. Nihil hii- manum aliemim. Nor is the discussion of sins of sex excluded from the system of the great medieval theologians. Therefore, in concluding the present chapter, we cannot forget that the Atonement made by the Son of God for the sins of men touches the whole circle of human sin at every point ; and nowhere does the mercy of God shine more brightly than just here, where the mystery of the Atonement and those sins which most affright the conscience of mankind are brought into contact. For centuries past, thinkers of great power and of devout purpose have meditated on the Atonement, casting rays of light far into its unfathomable depths, now in this direction, now, in that ; but it may well be believed that never while human faculties are limited by material conditions, perhaps never fully, even in the hereafter, will that mystery of love become patent to a created mind. Yet some reflections on it may be made at this point, showing impressively — if the writer can transfer to other minds the impression made upon his own — the transcendent moral greatness of Him whom God gave freely as a propitiatory gift for the sin of the world. ^^ 3^ "The crucified Christ is the votive-gift {l\a(XTr)pLov) of the Divine Love for the salvation of men." (Deissmann, Bib. Studies, E. tr., p. 133.) 380 THE BEARING OF SIN. Let us inquire how any pure and sensitive soul, such as now and then we have knowledge of, is affected by the "bearing" of sin, by the oppressive and miserable burden of guilt ; let us throw ourselves, by the aid of our experience and by an effort of the imagination, into the situation. There are three stages to be considered : — First, the soul is oppressed by an admitted weight of guilt, by the consciousness of sins formerly committed and not yet devoid of attraction. A great degree of spiritual agony is im- plied in the effort of bearing guilt in such conditions. Regret, fear, shame, the memory of the past, the struggle with the present, combine to create in a soul which, imperfection, and defilement notwithstanding, is still sensitive to the charm of goodness, an intense mental and spiritual anguish, perhaps accompanied by physical distress. Yet the burden is borne be- cause the soul recognizes; that it is in a manner rightly im- posed ; allowing for heredity and external circumstances, there has been all through an element of responsibility which at least partially explains and justifies the imposition of the moral load. But secondly, the soul may be called gn to bear an unjust, undeserved imputation of guilt. Let any minister of the Gospel, for example, imagine to himself his mental state, if, as he preached the Word to his congregation, he were to feel upon his conscience, first, the accumulated and concentrated weight of his own sin ; and after he had freed himself, by a great effort of faith in the Gospel promise of forgiveness, from the oppres- sive sense of this burden, there were to be borne in upon his mind the dreadful conviction that his congregation, even as he preached to them, were coming to believe him guilty of crimes of which he was really innocent, and which his spirit utterly loathed. In the darkening gaze of his people he reads that he is wrongfully condemned ; relentlessly accused of the worst vio- lations of the moral law, of offenses of inexpressible ghastli- ness, such as the sinful world itself cannot endure to contem- plate, even as set down and classified on the emotionless page CHRIST MADE SIN FOR US. 381 of science. And his soul cries out within him in a passionate and agonizing protestation of his innocence; indeed, it is the consciousness of innocence which alone, in such awful circum- stances, supports his being. But even yet the extreme depths of spiritual agony are not reached; for what if, by some hypersensitiveness of moral sympathy, the very consciousness of innocence at length de- serts such a soul, and a process of tremendous and overpower- ing self-accusation sets in? The soul perceives within itself the extent of the capacities for evil latent in human nature. From an external observation of the foulest criminality, it passes to the recognition of such criminality incorporated in its own experience. Something like this, according to Godet's profound theory of the Atonement,"^"^ was the spiritual process by which Jesus Christ condemned sin in human flesh. "By an unfathomable prodigy of love, He entered into the horror of the sins of which He was each day witness, as though He had Himself been the responsible author of them." Scarcely can Christian believers, even of the keenest and most far-reaching spiritual vision, realize what tremendous import there is in the mysterious identification of Christ (for purposes of the Atonement) with sinful man. There is no thought more staggering to the imagination than that of the appalling, one had almost said illimitable, capacities for sin in man, and the extent to which those capacities are actually ful- filled. There are sins which men shrink from, not so much on account of the punishments which might follow them, as from their own inherent horror. Let the reader but think of any sin for which he entertains a peculiar dread, and imagine the anguish of his feelings, if he knew that somehow that sin was within him, its power depressing the soul, the responsi- bility for it burdening and torturing the conscience. The bare 35 The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought, p. 341. 382 CHRIST'S BEARING OF SIN. imagination of a sin, ripening into a mental delusion, has driven men sometimes into insanity and suicide. When, therefore, it is understood that Jesus Christ, with a conscience more sensitive than we can»conceive of, because the union of His soul with the Divine Holiness was complete, felt within Himself, by some operation of the Spirit — not as if He saw them and studied them from outside — but with an inward, personal responsibility, the intense and direful horror of all the sins of which human history has record, the abominable ingenious cruelties, the base deceits, the loathsome impurities formerly unnamable, for which scientists have only recently invented names, the frightful murders and gross excesses — all the real, awful sins of humanity; when this is pondered, the mind utterly fails to grasp the full significance of the fact. That Christ bore the sins of humanity — this general proposi- tion is admitted by millions ; but such sins as defile the sex life, and with such a bearing ! As the method of the historic Atonement transcends our human imagination and intelligence, so does its eternal opera- tion. Canon Jelf, in a powerful and sympathetic paper pub- lished in The Guardian for October 9, 1901, speaks solemnly of "the fearful efifects in time of those widespread offenses against chastity, as forecasting their still more fearful efifects in eternity." And if in time the connection between sexual sin and ensuing misery is not always clearly discernible, since with impurity other influences are frequently co-operating factors in producing some dire spectacle of human ruin, none the less clearly does a reasonable faith point us to a future consum- mation of perfect justice in relation to the moral side of the sex life; none the less solemnly does a trained ethical percep- tion warn us that if moral law rules the universe — and our deepest intuitions support that belief — the element of responsi- bility in sexual sin, as in all other, guarantees some future terri- ble recompensing, probably in the nature of something self- inflicted,^6 of conscious, persistent, deliberate sin. 36 R. H. Charles, Eschatology, p. 405 (ed. 2, p. 463). EFFECT OF THE ATONEMENT. 383 This line of thought does indeed lead in a direction of somber fear ; but in contrast' with the most gloomy aspects of judgment, we have the eternal mystery of the Atonement, fathomless in hope and power. Here, however, we are face to face with immense problems of human destiny, lying in their fullness beyond the scope of a work like the present. It remains to remind ourselves of the need for the pres- ent application of Christ's saving power to sinners against sex- ual morality ; and to consider how that application is to be kept true to its principles and made efficacious in its working. In ethical processes the central factor, the all-important element, is the appeal to the will. It is thi^ that gives impulsion to all attempts at preaching and teaching which are truly inspired with the spirit of Christianity. Christian thought cannot wel- come a wholly non-ethical science as a remedial agency in the sphere of sexual vice or in any other. Scientific therapeutics based on an inadequate psychology of sex may not only ignore, but be directly hostile to ethics — and thus ultimately fail of accomplishing their remedial purpose ; for ethical responsibility is an essential element of sex psychology. It is such a consid- eration, for example, that causes a Christian moralist to view unfavorably the employment of hypnotic methods of curing the grosser forms of sexual perversion, when such methods are ac- companied by visits under medical sanction to brothels for the purpose of attempting fornication. This cure is certainly non- ethical, and admittedly of dubious efficacy.-^'" It gives the sexual instinct a partial impulse toward its normal objective; but does it strengthen and elevate the moral purpose? Does it rouse the will itself, or endue it with Divine grace, to S'' Moll, on hygienic as well as ethical grounds, strongly discoun- tenances prostitution as a factor in the treatment of sexual perverts, or as a means of sexual experiment when virility is in question ; and, like Fere, counsels by preference the education of the pronounced per- vert in the direction of chastity, or at least to the experiment of a dis- ciplined platonic friendship with one of the other sex, as a preliminary to marriage (o/-. cit., pp. 998, 1038). Q. Gemelli, o/'. cit., p. 229. 384 PREACHING OF SALVATION. struggle with that composite force of diseased heredity, of mis- evolution, of dangerous environment, of perverted and exag- gerated desires, which theologians gather up into the one word temptationf Preaching and teaching, moral suasion and religious in- fluence are still the most powerful weapons of the Christian Church in its battle with sexual vice.^^ Wisely and forcibly employed, they are the best means of dispelling pernicious ignorance on questions of sexual morality, rousing the dor- mant sense of responsibility, and invigorating the enfeebled will. Throughout human society there is every occasion for the proper exercise of hortatory and educational methods of diffusing the power of the Atonement in regard to sexual sin. In Confirmation classes, in the family, in the school, in the pulpit, in the prison — for the removal of penal restraint in con- nection with some forms of sexual vice is not yet proved to be a desideratum — by purity organizations and the distribu- tion of Christian literature dealing with sex problems, the preaching of the Cross of Christ, with its reasonableness and its advocacy of self-control and self-renunciation, may be brought into touch with the sex life. But as to those on whom devolves the performance of any part of this duty, no in- dolence or false delicacy must hinder them from becoming genuine students of their subject. If a non-ethical, non- Christian science of sex is inadequate and dangerous, scarcely less so is an unscientific, poorly informed hortatory teaching seeking to arm itself with the aegis of Christianity. The present writer remembers hearing a sermon on purity delivered to a congregation of men in London by one of the Cowley Fathers, the late Rev. B. W. Maturin. The preacher in this case had evidently given to his subject careful and exten- sive preparation; and the result was a pulpit oration of quite extraordinary force, the impression of which would not be 38 I am in full general accord with Forster (op. cit., pp. 217ff.) on this point. PURENESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 385 effaced in a lifetime. Too often, it is to be feared, "men o)ily" sermons, owing to a lack of the power and knowledge that come from devout and scientific study, not only fail of doing much good, but invite criticism as to the weakness' of the Church's methods in coping with sins of impurity. The Word of God places pureness and knowledge in close conj unction. ^^ Preachers of Christian purity must see that they be not dis- joined. 39 II Cor. 6:6. APPENDIX. ADDITIONAL NOTE A, ON PRIMITIVE MARRIAGE. In the inquiry as to what was the primitive type of sexual union in humanity, the question whether an instinctive tend- ency to monogamy, or at least the existence of states of mar- riage that recognized mutual responsibility, is found in the lower creation where it comes nearest to man in the evolution- ary series, becomes an important one. We naturally look prin- cipally to the higher quadrumana. If the state of marriage is found among them, the inference is almost irresistible that it obtained among the immediately prehuman ancestors. And, in fact, the evidence shows that even if the predominance of monogamy among these animals is not established, their sex- ual life expresses itself at any rate in some type of marriage, and is not satisfied with promiscuity. i It is not unreasonable to presume that the monogamic tendency had entered into competition with other matrimonial tendencies, and was indeed perhaps vigorously operating, already in the immediately prehuman ancestors ; and this being so, the argument employed by Rosenthal against Westermarck,^ that the latter's attribution of monogamy to primitive man con- tradicts the evolutionary law, which works from the general to the particular, loses its force. At any rate, by the prehuman existence of the state or habit of marriage in a large sense, conditions are created favor- able to the distinguishing of a particular type of marriage as 1 Westermarck, Hist, of Hum. Marriage, p. 508; Howard, Hist, of Matrim. Instit., vol. i, p. 97; Fallaize, art. Family, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. V. 2 Rosenthal, Der Ursprung der Ehe, in Die Neue Gen., Jahrg. 5, Heft 4, p. 139. (387) 388 THEORY OF PROMISCUITY. the ethical ideal for the sex life as evolved in humanity proper ; and we shall presently follow up a line of thought which sug- gests that a particular type was in fact so selected, and that this type was monogamy. But first, let us take account of some of the chief counter- indications, some of the phenomena which may suggest that whatever use may be made in the discussion of the aforesaid inference from animal marriage, humanity's evolution has, as a matter of fact, included a stage of sexuaf promiscuity con- stituting an unsettled period of primitive transition, before monogamy or any other form of responsible human marriage came into vogue. The first of these phenomena is prostitution. In antiquity, and in present-day communities which have retained the tradi- tions of antiquity, the centers of prostitution are temples and their precincts, or certain establishments having a quasi- religious character, which occupy positions midway between temples and entirely secular brothels."' Parallel to these local centers of sexual license are temporal centers, particular dates, festivals, and points of time at which the sexes mingle with the utmost freedom. These facts are interpreted by many anthropologists as implying an anterior state of general promiscuity ; and in particular Bloch, who illustrates the subject with immense learning, puts forward that view. But when we look more closely, in many of the examples Bloch has given, traces of a stricter ethical theory of sex relations are visible amid all the abandonment. Frequently, the license is condoned only in con- nection with some festival : "We are like swine while the feast lasts," said a chief in reference to the Manga mysteries. Or, as in Formosa, adults while practising the grossest license shrink from being seen by young people. Or the manifesta- tions of irresponsible love are a rehearsal, motived by super- stitious— i.e., quasi-religious or quasi-scientific — ideas, of the 2 I. Bloch, Die Prostitution, ch. ii. GROUP MARRIAGE. 389 sexual activities proper to marriage itself, and are discoun- tenanced after marriage. And even if, as among some peoples, such license, by its reappearance and social toleration among the married, has the guise of a reaffirmation; of the sexual rights of the individual, the right to try again after failure, — this class of cases being connected with physical or moral fail- ure supervening on marriage; such an affirmation does not destroy the general conception of the obligatory character of marriage. Or, again, a symbolic recognition of the prin- ciple of marriage maintains itself; or the women in whom promiscuous relations with men are socially tolerated are slaves, foreigners, or (as said above) matrimonial failures. Or* in other cases the sexual license, even when tolerated by custom or regulated by law, is still regarded somewhat askance by the collective social consciousness; or once more, even where quasi-religious prostitution flourishes vigorously, men try to protect their wives or assert their own conjugal rights in the face of it. In view of such modifying features, the ex- hibitions of casual and unregulated love furnished by uncivil- ized and primitive races afiford doubtful support to the theory of primitive promiscuity which it is attempted to base upon them. Indeed we shall presently see that temple-prostitution implies, on Bloch's own showing, the existence of an earlier custom which suggests primitive, and possibly even religiously grounded monogamy. At this point, however, another phenomenon which has been adduced in proof of primitive promiscuity claims our attention. This is the Australian group-marriage so fully described by Spencer and Gillen,^ and other writers on Australian anthropology. Whoever affirms primitive promiscuity on the strength of this phenomenon has to prove, in regard to the latter, two propositions : first, that group-marriage indicates anterior pro- miscuity in the Australian race itself ; secondly — without which 4 Native Tribes of Central Australia; Northern Tribes of Central Australia. 390 GROUP MARRIAGE. the first proposition is abortive for its main purpose"' — that the Australian race stands closest to primitive man, and represents him to us most truly. The latter proposition, which it is convenient to consider first, has not been proved. It has indeed been asserted*^ that the Hominidze were evolved in the Australian continent. But it is more generally believed that the now submerged lands to the southeast of Asia contained their center of origin i''' and though it is thus brought near to Australia, yet this fact does not give the Australian race any claim to be nearer in type or in ideas to primitive man than the Andamanese, who are monogamous,^ or other negrito stocks among which group- marriage is not the prevalent form of sexual union, nor, where it appears, is it modelled on the Australian system. The fact is that the claim of group-marriage to priority, in respect of monogamy, or any other type of marriage, must be judged by the inherent probabilities of the case. The external evidence as to its superior antiquity is uncertain.^ 5 Westermarck, Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 396. 6 By Schoetensach, qti. in Duckworth, Morpholog>' and Anthro- pology, p. 545. ■^ A. H. Keane, arts. Asia, Australasia, and Ethnolog}% in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics. 8 R. C. Temple, in Hastings, op. cit.. art. Andamans. 9 Even in the races which present the most plausible general ap- pearance of primitiveness, large possibilities of degenerative develop- ment have to be allowed for. The most obvious nnplications of their social organization and religious attitude are not necessarily the soundest. The custom of arranging child marriages, for example, is a considerable set off to presumed indications of primitiveness. A community which holds this custom, as the Australian natives and the Todas (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 558ff. ; Rivers, The Todas, ch. xxii), must have advanced far from the primitive attitude to marriage ; and there is consequently the less reason to expect the suggested primitive connection of such phenomena of quasi-promis- cuity as are there met with. Have we the right to assume that the peculiar ideas^ and practices of sexual morality among the Todas are primitive, any more than that their buffalo ritual is so? There is a suggestive paper by R. E. Freeth on the possibilities of degeneration PRIMITIVE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 391 By the use of the scientific imagination we may bring before our minds the steps by which the contemporary sys- tems of Australian group-marriage will have been reached. The present writer believes with Westermarck,^^ that a rudi- mentary but recognizable type of the family, not the horde, is the primitive basis of human society. But even if with many anthropologists we use the horde in drawing our first picture of society, that unit should not be exhibited in a way that begs the question at issue; for it can be shown that the monogamic tendency operated in it from the first. There is one thing to which Spencer and Gillen, though they note its existence among the Australians, ^^ have not given due weight in their interpretation of the group-marriage phenomenon. That is love-preference. Even in the horde a particular man tended by virtue of love-preference to employ his protective and other energies principally in favor of a particular woman and her children, as being her appanages ; and he would do this without necessarily knowing that he himself had procreated those children, as in fact it may be assumed owing to the love- preference, that he had done. Primitive ignorance of patern- ity may now be regarded as a proved fact;ii but it has no adverse bearing on the matter now under consideration. Another man, or perhaps a group of men, in the horde, the woman's uterine brothers, would also regard her with special attention and responsibility ;12 but for the reasons adduced by Westermarck and Havelock Ellis they would not be sexually attracted to her, as would the man who stood to her in a more distant relation in the horde. In other words, the quasi-paternal authority exercised by the mother's brother in the horde would not impair the sex rights exercised by man and retrogression among the Melanesians, in The Southern Cross Log, March, 1913. ^'i See further Fallaize, op. cit., p. 718a. 10 Native Tribes of Cent. Australia, chs. xvi, xvii. 11 Fallaize, art. Family, Hastings, op. cit., vol. v, p. 781b ; E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity. i2/(/., art. cit. 392 PRIMITIVE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. and wife in relation to each other ; and it was through the recognition of those rights and the developing general union based upon them that the husband gradually acquired paternal position and authority, displacing the mother's brother; as well as marital position and authority. Thus the monogamic family would rise in and along with the horde; and it is im- portant to note that on this view marriage (i.e., the state of marriage) is not as some, including Westermarck, have sup- posed, the product of the family ; but, as the Bible assumes, marriage has the priority over the family. Australian group-marriage, then, does not disprove the operation of a monogamic tendency, which indeed continues to act within the system. It is moreover difficult even to imagine a state of real promiscuity, with no love-preferences and jealousies tending to create obligations and durable unions. Group-marriage presents us with a large number of mar- riage prohibitions, most if not all of which, however, are sus- pended in certain circumstances and on particular occasions. Now, the genesis of such prohibitions is, as the two scientists just mentioned have shown, sexual indifference be- tween persons living in close contact from infancy. This con- dition would arise in a circle of persons within the horde ;i'^ and as this fact became established, it would give food for re- flection to that part of the horde whither primitive society always looks for legislative wisdom, the old men. 13 This principle of sexual indifference operates primarily among persons of approximate ages, i.e., brothers and sisters. The psycho- logical conditions of the relations between parents and children are dif- ferent, and have been described by Moll (The Sexual Life of the Child, pp. 70f.) and Freud (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexual Theorie, pp. 70ff.), who have shown that the principle in question does not always act, as from child to parent, at a certain stage of the child's sexual growth. It acts none the less from parent to child, which is the main condition requisite for the avoidance of incest. If we review the whole course of family life, we perceive that this principle is almost always acting in one of the two directions named ; and usually (after the close of Moll's "second period of childhood") in both at once. PRIMITIVE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 393 Then in the horde there would happen exactly what has happened in societies about whose monogamous character there has ndver been any question, viz., a multiplication of marriage prohibitions. Savage man, with his unoccupied mental life, would here have his task set him. And as a consequence primitive Australian society, just like Christian society in medieval Europe, invented a long list of these prohibitions. The next step in the formation of the system, as we know it through Spencer, Gillen, and others, is clearly dis- cernible. The prohibitions would be occasionally disregarded : during the pairing season in primitive humanity,!^ infractions of them may have taken place on a liberal scale. The infrac- tions, like the prohibitions themselves, would in course of time be systematized by saturnalian ordinances. And there is at least no more reason for taking the Australian saturnalia^"' to indicate primitive promiscuity or absence of monogamic tend- ency, than for taking the European saturnalia to do so. In short, Australian group-marriage has not strengthened the gen- eral case for primitive promiscuity. It is clear that the existence of the horde does not preclude the formation of the family. But at least, it is urged, i*^ the tendency will have been to the polygynic rather than the mono- gamic family. This view has been set forth most fully by the late J. J. Atkinson, who conceived of the prehuman family as polygynous and incestuous, the head male exercising sexual rights over the daughters as they arrived at puberty, and driving out the sons. He imagines a band of exiled young males dwelling in the primeval forest in close proximity to the family whence they originated ; but deterred from re-entrance into it, and living in enforced celibacy from fear of the in- cestuous father. 1^ Gustav Vleim sees an additional evidence of this in the glands of Bartholin (Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Times, p. 16). 15 Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, ch. xii. 16 Bloch, op. cit., p. 196. 394 THE PRIMITIVE FAMILY. This would seem to be a misconception of the situation. It will be allowed that sexual union would be sought by each member of the family as required, i.e.^ as soon as each was ripe for it. When the young male felt impelled to seek the female, he would resort to other family circles than his own. Within his own circle his sexual desires would be kept in check, first, by the fear of the head male, who would claim as his own whatever sexual pleasure was to be had in his immediate en- vironment ; and secondly, by the influence stated by Wester- marck on a positive and by Havelock Ellis on a negative theory, and resulting in the widespread horror of incest. We have already seen that this latter sedative influence would act upon the head male himself. The fact that among some primitive peoples at the present day a father will not see his daughter after puberty — Atkinson instances the Ved- dahs — does not prove the existence of a prehistoric habit of incest. This avoidance like others may have developed from a germ of sexual indifference or of sexual repulsion. More important, as against the supposition that the head male retained his own daughters for his sexual requirements, is the consideration that the pubescent females would be in demand among the expelled and wandering males of other families than their own. They would be on the look out for, they would court, these advances from the outside. By all the primitive methods of communication and attraction, the sexual requirements of the pubescent of both sexes would become known to possible partners. The love summons was given continually, and echoed back, in the' primeval forest. Moreover, if the head male of a given family was jealous of his pubescent sons, one may ask — seeing that sexual jealousy is as much a property of the female as of the male — would not his consort similarly seek to drive out, or at least encourage the exodus of, the pubescent females from the same circle ? We seem led in the direction of the conclusion that in a given family environment the only source of sexual pleasure PRIMITIVE COURTSHIP. 395 which the head male would normally desire to keep, or suc- ceed in keeping if he did desire it, was the embrace of the adult female. Secondly, and for the reason already alluded to, the in- herent moderation of the primitive sexual instinct, it is think- able that the prehuman ancestor, the young ape-man meditating sexual union for the first time, would have little temptation to promiscuity, to making experiments on a number of females. Nor would he be capable of drawing fine distinctions, such as are possible to civilized man, about female beauty ; for the power of distinguishing types of beauty, or indeed of appre- hending the beautiful at all, remains undeveloped in the lower animals, and presumably in the immediately prehuman or subhuman ancestor. His sexual choice would be no fastidious one; and the first partner he found he would endeavor to retain. The supply of -females in the primeval forest would be relatively small ; for though the factors in sex determina- tion have not yet been fully discovered, it would seem pos- sible^*^^ that the hard conditions of primitive life would favor the production of males rather than that of females ; and the proportion of difiference as between the sexes in respect of risks to life would not be so great as in more developed con- ditions. Fresh sexual unions in fact, among creatures which in the course of their evolution had been tending toward an instinctive monogamy, necessarily involved marriage, — the es- sence thereof, not yet the name. And having achieved their union, the two partners would find thereafter but few causes of separation; for the great majority of the causes of conjugal disagreement known to ourselves would be out of the question with the prehuman ancestor ; and much in the way of example among monogamous apes and animals, in the necessities of the environment in the difficulty of finding partners, above all in ^^^ See J. V. Simpson, art. Biology, in Hastings, op. cif., vol. ii, pp. 631a. 396 PRIMITIVE MONOGAMY. recurrent mutual desire^" and in the growth of a family, which would tend to make the union permanent. The natural conditions, therefore, surrounding sexual union in the types from which homo sapiens, man spiritually capable of perceiving abstract ideas, was at length evolved, produced a monogamy which was in fact adverse to promis- cuity, and in practice tended to durability. And it is con- ceivable that homo sapiens would form a conviction, or estab- lish a theory, on the basis of what he had inherited as an actuality. It would be borne in upon the soul of the earliest truly human representative that, in the two aspects referred to, monogamy had demands upon the conscience. And this theory, though it may be admitted that it would now and again fail in its application, refnained thenceforward as the lodestar of humanity in the sphere of sexual morals. The ideal Christian conception of monogamic marriage as the Divinely instituted, indissoluble relation contains, therefore, thus much of the actual, that its basis was laid down contemporaneously with the appearance on this planet of homo sapiens, and is not merely the mental creation of subsequent ages, reflected back into the primitive past. It follows that Christian is not distinguished from non- Christian monogamy by any fundamental ethical principle. All that can be affirmed is that the sacramental character of marriage comes out more distinctly in Christianity than in marriage outside of it. Even those theologians who have de- marcated Christian from non-Christian marriage the most carefully, have regarded the latter as sacramental in a large sense, as figuring the union of Christ with the Church, as conferring some kind of grace (aliquod genus gratia) — even so close a reasoner as Sanchez is driven to take refuge in this ^'''Rosenthal, Der Ursprung der Ehe (Die N. G., Jahrg. 5, pp. 141), has well described the working of this factor; and I see no reason why it should not have been operative at the beginning of human social evolution. He himself postpones its action somewhat. RELIGIOUS MONOGAMY. 397 vague expression!'^ — and as suggesting the obligation of in- dissolubility, i'' Ideally, then, the same obligations inhere in all monogamy. They press with greater weight upon the mar- ried Christian because to him the ideal has been luminously revealed, while others are only dimly conscious of it ; but it would be misleading to separate non-Christian monogamy from all relation to the ideal. Since then the ideal of indissoluble monogamic marriage stands over against the sex life of humanity in general, it cannot be said either that the formation of theories of mar- riage outside of Christianity is a matter of no ethical interest, or that the Christian is so differentiated from the non- Christian, in respect of matrimonial obligation, that the former ought to be legally compelled to realize the ideal of indis- solubility even in the most unfavorable circumstances, while the latter has little or no responsibility in regard to its realiza- tion, even where the circumstances are favorable. In examining the association of sexuality with religious feeling, Bloch remarked an evolutional fact containing an implication, unperceived by himself, which is worth consider- ing in the present connection. Herodotus says that among many peoples temples are visited for the purpose of consum- mating sex love within them.-'* Sexual intercourse is thus made a religious act ; we have already seen how that character is emphasized by the system of taboos; and since it may be inferred, and indeed is hinted by Herodotus, that before temples existed, other holy places, as the neighborhood of springs and wells, groves, and the shade of sacred trees, were used for the same purpose, the custom is seen to be rooted in the most primitive religious feeling. We have then, here, the possibility of ethical revelations — whose psychological medium may have been rational convictions, the grasp of ideas, 18 Op. cit., 1, ii, disp. vii. 19 Watkins, Holy Matrimony, p. 439. 20 Herodotus, ii, 64; Bloch, Die Prostitution, Bd. i, p. 72. 398 RELIGIOUS MONOGAMY, or perhaps dreams and visions^i — on the subject of sexual responsibility (which Bloch elsewhere calls a categorical im- perative in the sex life of humanity), and the obligatory character of the enterprise of marriage. -- The primal age, like subsequent ages, may have had its ethical geniuses, its creative souls, its prophets of morality "who have been since the world began," whose spiritual com- 21 Speaking of the evolution of the religious sentiment, A. H. Keane says : "The absolute starting point, behind which it is impossible to get, is everywhere the dream." (Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics, vol. V, p. 526a.) -2 Bloch, The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 220. It is definitely established that clairvoyant, veridical or prophetic dreams occur, and these might be utilized — whether by direct or indirect operation is indifferent (see Lang and Taylor, Hastings, op. cit., p. 29a) — in the divine economy, to introduce a transcendental and categorical element into primitive sexual morality. We are not, however, limited to the dream as the sole psychological method through which such an ele- ment might have been mediated. Various abnormal psychic activities are observable in races of low development, and are nowadays scien- tifically studied (cp. Lombroso, After Death What? ch. v; Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Cent. Australia, ch. xv, ff.). It is difficult to posit a primitive revelation more specifically than this. G. Schmidt and A. Lemonnyer have discussed the question, in connection both with theism, with which we are not now immediately concerned, and with marriage (La Revelation Primitive et les donnees actuelles de la Science) ; but much of what Schmidt advances as suggestive of the conservation of an explicit primitive revelation suits equally well with the view that the divine inspiration of the Book of Genesis is exhibited in the handling of the materials. These were folk-tales, for the most part very crude and naive. The coarse story of Noah's drunkenness, for example, is probably, as Kuenen (De Boeken des Ouden Verbonds, p. 245) suggested, a folk-tale which the compiler of J. incorporated into his document and from which he derived the chief figure in his inspired Flood story. There are similarly, as Gressmann and others have shown, vestiges of a very naive and vulgar substratum in the Paradise narrative. None the less, the recitals contained ethical doc- trines which had doubtless in rudimentary form been long current in primitive humanity. These the composers of Genesis were inspired to establish and develop ; and it is probably strictly correct to speak of their origin as a religious revelation. RELIGIOUS MONOGAMY. 399 mission it has been to guide the "vague instinctive pressure of the tribal self'-^^ along lines whose issue they were enabled dimly to discern. It was only later, as Bloch admits,-"* that religious. prosti- tution developed out of the custom of consummating love in sacred places. Religious prostitution does not therefore sup- port the theory of primitive promiscuity. It is rather a piece of misguided religious experimentation in the sex life, an abortive attempt to- search farther into the mind of Deity in regard to it.-'^ The particular superstitious factors in the growth of this custom are passed in review by anthropolo- gists ;26 they need not detain us here. Bloch quotes Wisdom of Solomon, 14: 12, as if the author had found a certain sanction of temple-prostitution in the rela- tion of sexuality to the religious consciousness. In reality the passage proves just the contrary. Idolatry and the theory of temple-prostitution are among the false inferences of the religious consciousness. As there is all the difference between Gotzen and Gottheit, so the false and the true apprehensions of the mind of God, in relation to sexuality- or in any other relation, are farther apart than the poles. 23 J. H. Muirhead, art. Ethics, in Hastings, op. cit., vol. v, p. 420a. 2-1 The Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 105; Die Prostitution, loc. cit. 25 As such it was strenuously opposed by the ethical monotheism which spiritual leaders strove to establish in ancient Israel (Bloch, Die P., vol. i, pp. 80ff.). 26 Pietschmann, Gesch. d. Phonizier, p. 229; Ploss-Bartels, Das Weib, 8, Bd. i, chs. xvii, fif., xviii; J. G. Frazer, The Magic Art, vol. i, pp. 30f. ADDITIONAL NOTE B, ON THE GENESIS NARRATIVE OF THE FALL. Most modern Biblical students admit that the form of the narrative was derived not from history, but from religious representations and traditions (see Driver, Genesis, pp. 51fif.) ; but we have to go farther back than this, and to investigate the ideas underlying the traditions themselves. The particular interpretation which is discussed below is no new one. With various modifications, it is that of a number of ancient writers^ (see Tennant, The Fall and Original Sin, pp. 153ff., 197) ; but without modern anthropology it remained fanciful and ob- scure. Tennant, referring to the researches of Barton and others, is disposed to recognize the existence of this meaning in the Jahwistic story; but considers that it is present merely in a fossilized condition, and that the Jahwistic writer "intended to clear his narrative" of this association of thought {np. cit., p. 69). Be this as it may, in the hands of the Jahwist the story obtains a fuller content and wider scope. Nevertheless, the primary meaning remains in the story as a germ, a point of origin of perennial human interest ; and the closer examination of this point of origin will throw considerable light on Biblical religious conceptions. With reference, then, to the suggested interpretation of Genesis iii, alluded to in the text! of this work, it must be observed that the command to the first pair to be fruitful and multiply occurs in the Hexateuchal document known as P. The remaining document JE, which contains the story of the Fall, has no such Divine sanction of sexual relations between 1 Some medieval mystics, e.g., interpreted the Fall as implying sexual pleasure : "Amor carnalis Adam et Evam de paradisi deliciis ejecit." (Idiotae Contemplationes, ch. xxxiv.) (400) NATURE SYMBOLISM. 401 the man and the woman; rather, perhaps, postulates in them an original absence of mutual desire, and, therefore, a complete innocence. The expression "knowing good and evil," possibly refers to sexual knowledge, with its pleasure and its respon- sibility.^ It refers at any rate to a kind of knowledge which is normally absent in young children (Deut. 1 : 39; Isa. 7: 15, 16), and in old men (II Sam. 19:35). The description of the plucking of the fruit suits very well as an allegorical represen- tation of sexual intercourse ; indeed, we often apply this sym- bolism half unconsciously. Moreover, in the folk-lore of vari- ous races a connection is established between the serpent and the sexual functions.-^ Sometimes it is considered the symbol of sexual desire; and the Swahili women are said to apply this title to the male organ of generation. Appropriately, then, Eve is tempted by a serpent to pluck the forbidden fruit. The triumphant cry of Eve on the birth of Cain : "I have gotten a man in spite of Jahweh," i.e., in spite of His condem- nation of her plucking the forbidden fruit of sexual inter- course, has been thought to strengthen this interpretation ; but such a translation of Eve's cry requires an unusual and im- perfectly supported rendering of 'eth. There is some probability that the root idea of the mystic trees in the midst of the garden is to be found in nature sym- bolism. The two trees in the Garden of Eden are perhaps a double tree, as the Third Creation Tablet of Babylonia has been thought to indicate ; but this duality will have been a later accretion to the original myth. The Tree of Life itself was probably the primary concept; and the interesting question is whether it is meant as a source of immortality and immunity 2 Tennant refers to Jastrow as understanding the expression in this way (op. cit., p. 41). Cp. G. A. Barton, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. ii, p. 705a. 3 See the evidence collected by Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. i, pp. 306ff. Cp. J. MacCulloch, art. Fall, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth. ; E. Kiister, Die Schlange in der griechischen Kunst und Religion, pp. 149ff. 26 402 NATURE SYMBOLISM. from decay, or as a symbol of fecundity. In Genesis 3 : 21, as in the twelfth book on the Epic of Gilgames,'* it appears in the former guise, like the Haoma Tree of the Iranians; but con- sidering the probable date of the composition of the version of the Paradise narrative which appears in the Book of Genesis, we must admit the possibility that later conceptions have become interwoven with the primary idea. As several critics have noted, it is unlikely that vv. 22-24 in chapter iii are original. The Jahwist may have admitted these verses in completion of the narrative, either not perceiving, or being indifferent to the fact that they contained a notioni out of harmony with the original symbolism. It is not indeed certain that J. himself was aware of the real interpretation of the allegory which he in- corporates in his book. In substance it was composed at a date long anterior to his own ; and its meaning may have be- come obscure before his time. Comparison with kindred tradi- tions— such comparison as none but modern conditions of knowledge have admitted of — alone renders possible the recov- ery of the conceptions earliest embodied in the narrative. The symbolism of the Tree of Life is more likely originally to have been fecundity than immortality. It stands for fecundity in the ancient Sumerian hymn quoted by Sayce f^ and in the Iranian mythology there appears, along with the Hoama Tree of manifold significance^ a tree called Vigpata- okhma (all-seed), from whose seed all plant-germs come on the earth.''' 4 Sayce in Expository Times, vol. vii, p. 305. ^ Expository Times, vol. vii, p. 267. Although the translation of the Babylonian text in which occurs mention of the Vine of Eridu, given by Professor Sayce and Mr. Pinches, may not absolutely allow us to speak of that vine as an emblem of fertility, yet fertility is the leading idea associated with it ; and it is brought into connection with the couch of the primeval mother. But Mr. R. Campbell Thompson regards this text as an incantation, and the Vine as a medicinal plant bestowing life in cases of sickness (Expository Times, vol. xv, p. 49). ^ Modi, art. Haoma, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. vi, p. 507a. "^ See Dillmann, Genesis, E. tr., vol. i, p. 109. THE TWO TREES. 403 It does not appear when the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was added to the prior symbol ; though obvi- ously the connection must have been made in a society which had come to discern something of the relation between sexual intercourse and birth. The net result of our inquiry is this : The two trees, or the double tree, are a symbol of sexuality, expressing on the one hand the aspect of reproduction, on the other that of pleas- sure. Man and woman, in their ideal state of innocence, are depicted as abstaining from the fruit of this double tree. Finally, as has been already noted, the first detrimental effect of the eating of the fruit on the guilty pair, is felt in the region of their sexual emotions. The interpretation in question is, in my opinion, estab- lished. Its acceptance necessitates an adjustment of ideas respecting the Biblical doctrine of the Fall. In view of what has been said already in Chapter III, it is conceivable enough that primitive man, as he speculated on the origin of moral evil in the world, should have seemed to find it in the sexual act, which had long acquired a certain connotation of sinful- ness. As a historical account of the entrance of evil into the world, the narrative in Genesis will not stand. It is rather an imperfect speculation on the part of primitive man. Yet as it appears in the Hebrew literature it is differentiated from the kindred mythical and allegorical speculations of other races ;^ and herein consists its inspiration. Although it deals with but one department of human activity, the sex life, — yet on the basis of that its idealism presents a true and profound estimate of the principles according to which evil operates in humanity, i.e., as an external force forming no original part of the 'Divine purpose in creating man, a force which the 8 Other races besides the Semites have had their primitive philoso- phers who, by allegorical or mythological repriesentations, have at- tempted to account for the existence of evil in the world. See an interesting example from the folk-lore of the Diisuns of North Borneo, in The Spectator for April 26, 1902. 404 ORIGIN OF EVIL. human will may resist or to which it may yield. A symbolic description of the yielding of the will to the pressure of sex- ual desire, here idealized as an external tempter, became the readiest and best method of illustrating to primitive man — for illustration, not explanation, is the purpose of the Genesis nar- rative— the relation, faintly apprehended, between his sinful self and God, the strenuous conflict between the higher prin- ciple of action which his spiritual capacity enabled him to recognize, and a lower principle the power of which he con- tinually felt. The narrative, like other primitive speculations on the origin of evil, fails as an explanation ; but, unlike them, succeeds as an illustration. This, however, is not the place for a more detailed discus- sion of this subject, to which I hope to return in a theological treatise of another kind.^ 9 On the interpretation of the Story of the Fall, see some brief but luminous comments in the above sense by Principal Garvie, art. Christianity, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. iii, p. 596b. ADDITIONAL NOTE C, ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. There are some quite definite difficulties in the way of interpreting the above dogma as implying a conception which excluded human participation on the masculine side. Let us envisage these. First, we have the psychological impossibility of Mary's question to the angel at the Annunciation. She was in the position of an engaged woman, and consequently, as soon as the birth of the wonderful Child was foretold, would at once have connected that event with her forthcoming mar- riage. ^ Such a detail tells against the claim of the narrative to be historical. Secondly, the vestiges, preserved in the Gospels them- selves, of a tradition that Jesus was in fact physically the son of Joseph and Mary. The same commentator says: "It is remarkable that the Davidic descent of Joseph is emphasized, although this has no particular interest for the evangelist in connection with the miraculous birth. . . . We have here the first indication that the older tradition quite freely regarded Jesus the Son of David, as the son of Joseph. "- The facts that in the Gospel according to St. Mark the Mother of Jesus is represented as trying with other relatives to restrain His missionary activity; that He placed the sym- bolic relation of a mother to Himself higher in the scale of values than the actual relation; that St. Paul's reference to the birth of Jesus makes against, rather than for, its miraculous character ;2^ and that the Davidic sonship according to the flesh figures in the earliest Christian preaching, are significant in the same sense. There is evidence outside of the New Testament that the tradition of Joseph's participation in the birth of Jesus long persisted in early Christianity. Justin's allusion to this fact is 1 Johannes Weiss, on St. Luke i. 34, in Die Schriften des N. T. fiir die Gegenwart erklart, Bd. i, p. 416. ^ Loc. cit.; cp. eod. op., p. 236m. 2a Bousset on-Gal. 4:4 (ibid.). (405) 406 THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF CHRIST. well known; and the conservation of that tradition was also a feature of Ebionism, at least in some circles of it.-^ The fact that the alternative tradition, of the miraculous conception independent of Joseph, eventually superseded the other, may have been due, not to considerations of historical probability, but partly to the growing ascetic dislike of the sex process, and partly to- the inability of the supporters of the physical paternity tradition to perceive that there might be, in any case, elements of religious truth in what many Christians were saying about the supernatural conception.^ This limita- tion of view impoverished the Christianity which asserted the physical paternity ; but I hope to show that such limitation is not the inevitable consequence of holding that tradition. We pass now to constructive considerations, which, even if they do not give us back the physical miracle as the content, or part of the content, of the dogma in question, may give us a content at least as wonderful, at least as pure, at least as majestic and divine, — perhaps even more so. First we have the initial probability that the conception narratives may be legendary.^ There are parallels to them. 3 Beveridge, art. Ebionism, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics, vol. V. To collect and discuss patristic assertions of the Virgin Birth is beyond the scope of this article ; but we may remark in this connection one significant fact. The earliest Christian reference outside of the New Testament to the Virgin Birth is Ignatius ad Eph., chs. xviii, xix. The main point of it, however, is to illustrate, not the Divine but the human side of the Incarnation; to emphasize the fact that the Christ- child was truly human, born of a woman. (Cp. F. C. Burkitt, art. Gos- pels, Hastings, E. R. E., vol. vi, p 345a.) The stress therefore is on the womanhood, not the virginity. So far as the tradition of Mary's physical virginity is concerned, it must be admitted that the use Ignatius proceeds to make of it is essentially superstitious. He thinks that it was needful that the Son of God should come into the world this way, in order to elude the vigilance of the devil. ■1 So also thinks Professor Gardner (The Modern Churchman, vol. iv. No. 2, p. 87). 5 cp. Prof. Sanday's Reply to Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criti- cism, p. 27. LEGEND AND IDEALISM. 407 more or less close, in other religions. The first shock of such a thought soon subsides, and from a destructive it becomes a constructive thought, when we reflect that as legend has with- out a doubt been admitted into the Old Testament, and there made one of the vehicles of God's inspiration, it may conceiv- ably have happened thus in the New. Besides, while some legend is mere invention, so far separated in time from its subject as to be, historically speaking, valueless; there is an- other kind that follows more closely on the heels of events.*^ The conception narratives are of this latter kind. They do not therefore deal wholly and solely with ideas. Facts are im- bedded in them. With this reflection goes another, that the element of idealism is undoubtedly present in some of the Old Testament narratives. Analogously, it may be present in these conception narratives. There is a factual nucleus in every ideal conception. When men idealize women, does that mean that they attribute to women a number of good qualities and characters which they have not got at all? No; it means that they have got, literally and actually, the things men attribute to them ; only, men are taking those things at their highest known, conceivable or imaginable expression, not at their average or less than average expression. x\nd as to permanence and value, facts may be unmade ; they may be deprived of value, they may become to all intents as if they had never been at all; physical phenomena, however wonderful, may be dissolved into their constituent elements ; but ideas, even such as are formed in limited individual human minds, last fresh and powerful and directive for millenniums ; and if they are thought by a mind above ours, a World-soul, or a transcendent God, what is to prevent them enduring for ever and ever? There are at present two contrasted tendencies in the theological consideration of the subject now before us. On the one hand such <5 E. Foresti, II Vangelo secondo Marco, Coenobium, ann. viii, No. 2, p. 2. 408 FACT AND IDEA IN DOGMA. Anglican divines, as Bishop Weston, of Zanzibar, in a sermon published in The Church Times, and such Roman Catholics as Fr. L. Murillo in his book, El progreso en la revelacion Christiana, will not allow that ideas are capable of forming a basis for Christian doctrine. On the other hand, with some theologians, as a writer in The Church Times (Feb. 27, 1914) pointed out, "the fact counts for little or nothing, and may be disbelieved, but the idea behind the fact is all-important." The present treatment of the subject concedes objective value both to fact and to idea as basic elements of dogma. And now, with this in our minds, we leave the Gospel nar- ratives for a few moments, and look at what is, beyond ques- tion, a piece of idealism, the figure of the Woman clothed with the Sun, in the 12th chapter of the Apocalypse of St. John. Modern exegesis, of which the commentaries of Bousset and J. Weiss on the Apocalypse are conspicuous examples in the width of their learning and the ripeness of their judgment, regards this figure as the idealized Israel, at once a church and a nation. That is the nucleus of the conception, which has been amplified by features derived from; remoter sources than the Scriptures of Israel. But these latter afford the clue which I am now following up. In the O. T. prophets we see Israel personified as a woman. Her title is the Virgin of Israel, or something equivalent. If it be objected that that title of itself disconnects her with the Sun-clad W^oman, seeing that the lat- ter is a mother, we are able at once to reply that though in several of the relevant passages a word is used (bethulah), which denotes physical virginity, yet this latter idea is not consistently developed in the Hebrew Scriptures. The vir- ginity of the Virgin of Israel or Virgin Daughter of Zion does not exclude maternity. In Lam. 2 : 19, her young children faint for hunger at the top of every street. Nay, it would seem that she can be pictured as a bride. The adorning of the Virgin of Israel with tabrets (tup pint) is parallel to the adorning of a bride with kelimf'^ The latter is a general expression, "things." It is used of musical instruments; and may here 6" Jer. 31 : 4, Isa. 61 : 10. THE VIRGIN OF ISRAEL, 409 quite well mean tabrets, instead of, as frequently translated, jewels. Further, in Isa. 47, the Virgin daughter of Babylon or daughter of the Chaldaeans — von Orelli observes that the terms are synonymous — can be spoken of in the same breath as a bereaved mother and a widow." Now, we know that this idealized figure, the Virgin of Israel, had existed for long centuries before the birth of the Mother of Jesus. It had preceded her in its essential form and features, even if its final Scriptural presentation, syncre- tistically amplified and draped, in the Johannine Apocalypse, occurred during or soon after her Hfetime.^ It is therefore more correct to say that this apocalyptic creation influenced the historic portraiture of Mary, than that the historic Mary — as some, especially Roman Catholic exegetes, have main- tained— suggested it. It is, however, possible, as we shall see, that the historic Mary reacted upon it. Thus, preparation had been made for the idealization of the actual Mary, Mother of Jesus ; for her idealization in the legendary part of the Gospel narrative, and for her idealiza- tion in later Christian devotion. So then we may ascend a farther step in constructive criticism. The conception of Jesus by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary is real and wonderful, even if it is not primarily related to the physical process by which the Son of God took human flesh. Relations between spiritual beings, relations of feeling, thought and purpose, are infinitely higher in the scale of values than any physical relations; these latter, in fact, rise in value '''The same holds good in reference to other ancient languages and societies (Frazer, The Golden Bough, ed. 3, vol. i, p. 36). In Assyro- Babylonian religion, the virgin, i.e., unmarried, goddesses, were greater figures than the wives of the gods, and were also mothers. (M. Jas- trow, Die Religion Bab. und Assyr., vol. i, kap. 5.) 8 The final redaction of the Johannine Apocalypse falls probably in the reign of Domitian (Moffat, Introd. Lit. N. T.). 410 THE SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION. just in proportion as they are transformed into the former. Hence it is obvious that what we must have primary regard to, in interpreting the dogma of the Conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, is the spiritual relation be- tween the two latter. As a general principle, in order to meet and mingle with the Divine Spirit, the human spirit must be at its own best. It is always at the end of some spiritual ten- sion, of penitence, of faith, of trust, of adoration, or whatever it may be, that the human spirit comes into completest, most conscious touch and union with the Divine Spirit. I suggest, then, that the primary matter for us, is to hold the truth that Jesus was the spiritual child of the Divine Spirit and the spirit of woman. Idea and fact are both present in this truth. On the one hand, Mary is idealized. Her figure, even as it appears in the conception narratives, summing up into itself through her connection with the genealogies the whole history of Israel, is cognate with the O. T. conception of the Virgin of Israel. All the women of Israel are repre- sented in her ; and Jesus is the Child of all that is best in them, all that is found worthy of the impregnating touch of Divinity. Thus, for one thing, in the realm of ideas, of eternal truth, the redemptive process is safeguarded from becoming a prepon- derantly masculine concern. Woman is given a share in the active side of it ; a share which we shall presently estimate in connection with Mary; and which, if it does not justify, will at any rate explain and excuse, even the extravagant religious honor which has since been accorded to her. And on the other hand Mary is historical. She did live, and did undergo a unique experience; which, if we wish duly to estimate, we must think of — the warning to do so is im- plicitly given in the Gospel itself^ — as before all else, a spirit- ual experience. The processes, in fact, that went forward in Mary's body are in any case of far less importance to the dogma, than those occurring in her soul. 9 St. Matthew i, 20. THE BIRTH PROCESS. 411 The emphasis laid by Mrs. Riindle Charles in her sym- pathetic and beautiful book, Ecce Ancilla Domini, on the eth- ical aspect of Mary's acceptance of the Motherhood, is of itself an encouragement to interpret the Divine-human conception along the line we are developing in these pages. The processes of birth are now known up to a very remote point. Special scientific disciplines have come into being en- abling us to review every stage of the development that lies within the range of sense perception, as far back as the chemical combinations which initiate it. But beyond that we cannot go. And when we take a larger view of the world- order, we become impressed with the reasonableness and probability of the assumption that behind these cognizable phenomena operates a spiritual factor. As William James fol- lowed up the thought process to its cognizable beginnings, and then found his data indicating the probable existence of a large background of spiritual activity, "a sort of anima mundi think- ing in all of us" ;i** so it is with the birth process. The chemical combinations within the germ-plasma are mechanical. Behind their action lies the kind of action which we vaguely designate spiritual, and which may, as the late Frederic Myers maintained, have many aspects, from automatism up to an in- comprehensible degree of ' conscious self-sacrifice. ^ Con- ception has in fact a spiritual origin. The ancients, who had not attained to a scientific presentation of this truth, and such moderns as on religious grounds dislike such a presentation, have postulated special creative Divine acts,!^ or their equiva- lent, to account for it.^-^ Holding then the biological facts in 1'* W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 346. 11 F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality, vol. ii, pp. 274f. 1- This is the Scholastic doctrine accepted by modern Romanism (Vonier, The Human Soul, p. 65). 13 The Assyrians and Ba])ylonians thought of every birth as an act of God. (Prince, art. God, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. vi. p. 2S2a). The Jews of New Testament times believed in the existence of an angel of conception (SufFrin, eod. o[>., p. 297a). 412 MARY'S SACRIFICE. juxtaposition to the theological fact in the incarnative process, we see that the spiritual aspect of the conception of Jesus by Mary remains unaltered even though the physical aspect of that conception was normal. The being who did as a matter of fact incarnate Himself by means of the protoplasmic changes initiated in the wife of Joseph, has to^ be thought of in two aspects before that event. He was first of all pre-existent in His wholeness, outside of and independently of Mary. Next, He became existent in Mary, antecedently to and conditioning the biological conception, as a potential Divine-human being, the product of the union of the Divine Spirit with the spirit of Mary. Childbirth is normally a matter in which, throughout the whole process from first to last, elements of joy and pain alternate. Medical science recognizes in pregnancy a special liability to depression, which balances its hopes. But into the sacred inwardness of Mary\s soul we have a farther glimpse than might have been afforded by such an expectation. The first fact of religious interest that emerges from this unique example of the productive union of the Divine and the human spirits is the completeness and majesty of the latter's self-surrender. This is briefly and dramatically indicated in v. 38 of the Lucan nai"rative ; but the self-sacrifice which is implied was for the historic Mary real and awful fact. Christian divines, and still more Christian worshippers, in their just anxiety to defend Mary's purity from even the shadow of a cloud, accentuate the notion of her having conserved her virginity. It is truer to say — for this is what the conception narratives imply — that she laid down her vir- ginity before God and the world, and received it back indeed, but not before it had passed through those dread altar-fires of sacrifice on which humanity lays its highest values. What does this mean? it is asked. It means that a sense of manifold impending danger filled Mary's soul as that strange conviction that she was to bear a Divine Child laid hold upon her. How that conviction came, what was the PERSECUTION OF MARY. 413 psychical event presented as an angelic vision, it may be im- possible to discover. It is enough that the conception nar- ratives indicate shame and danger as threatening Mary. If the factual germ of the narratives is that the Babe was to be physically the son of herself and her husband, but spiritually the offspring of God's Spirit and her own, then the particular form of shame and danger alluded to in the Gospels, her re- pudiation and worse, of course disappears as fact. It remains, however, as the symbol of Mary's actual suffering; for that such suffering occurred is certain. We must think of coming events as foreshortened in her soul's vision, and the elements of sorrow they contained as concentrated into an experience of anticipatory agony. There were griefs that would pierce her directly, not only such as were derived from the sorrows of her Son. Although to our view Mary stands in the purest light, yet probably no woman that ever lived has been more assailed with reproach and insult than she. The same great Biblical student to whom I have already referred, remarking on the fact that women, and those too whose sex lives had gone wrong, have been made specially prominent in the Mat- thsean genealogy, says that the reason can only be that similar reproaches were being made against the Mother of Jesus. In- deed, an allusion in Tertullian, interpreted by a passage in a pagan satirist, hints that there was no limit to the brutality with which Mary's name was bandied about. And no doubt all this began in crude actuality in her lifetime. Nothing ap- proaching to historical information about her is forthcoming after the scene in the upper chamber at Jerusalem; but it is reasonable to conjecture that when persecution arose, St. John's home could not have been a very safe asylum for a per- sonage so conspicuous in the Christian movement as she necessarily was. If it is correct to see in the historic Mary, not indeed the original, but one of the constituent elements of the apocalyptic Woman clothed with the Sun,i^ ^\'^Q inference 14 As Bisping does. See Kiibel and Zockler's commentary on the Revelation of St. John, 12:2. 414 THEOLOGICAL VALUE OF THE BIRTH-STORY. that she was pursued and persecuted becomes irresistible. Strangely enough, Roman Mariology seems to have ignored this great "Sorrow of Mary."!"*^ If, then, the undeniably weighty considerations included among those enumerated above, and the cumulative force of them all, oblige us toi part with the conception by the Holy Spirit in a miraculous (= quasi-physical) sense, we still retain it on the spiritual plane. On this theory, first, the historical Mary had a spiritual experience which makes her supreme among women. Secondly, the idealized Mary, — for it is that Mary who comes before us in the concej)tion narratives, the Virgin of Nazareth combined with the "Virgin of Israel" — is the possessor of that actual experience with its ethical values, and she is also the possessor of the idealistic amplification of the narrative. This, as we have seen reason to think, may well itself convey religious and theological truth. I shall now attempt to unfold this. There existed, first, an initial probability that the concep- tion narratives would have kept clear of the sex process alto- gether. The notion that the activities of sex are inherently sinful is still widespread in humanity; Westermarck, Havelock Ellis, Bloch, and many other psychologists and sociologists illustrate it with a wealth of information ; and in antiquity it was much more dominant than now. Not only sex relations even in marriage, but birth itself, were counted unclean ; and that too, not as now by backward peoples,^"' but by those in the van of human progress. i'' And since even this part of the sex process was supposed to offend the eyes of Deity, it is wonderful that the evangelist did not yield to the unconscious pressure of surrounding opinion, and put the conception nar- ratives into a fundamentally different form. He might have i'*^ See Campana, Maria nel Dogma CattoHco (Fr. tr.), torn, lii, ch. ix. !•"' E. S. Hartland, art. Birth, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., ii, p. 642. 1^ The prohibition by the Athenians of accouchements in Delos is typical (Thuc, iii, 104). T.iEOLOG.CAL VALUE OF THE BIRTH-STORY. 415 made the Divine Child spring from Mary's head, or from her bosom ; there was precedent in the mythologies for such a presentation of the matter.^''' But no; just here enters the illuminating controlling fac- tor of the higher inspiration. The writer is impelled to accept the sex process so far as the Mother is concerned ; and the Christian faith of a later age was| enabled to express itself in the dignified and immeasurably significant words "When Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man, Thou didst not abhor the Virgin's Womb." If there is one result or conclusion that we may pick out from the science of sex which has developed so rapidly of recent years, as thoroughly established and per- manently accepted, it is that the old notion of the sinfulness of the sex process, in sc, is superstitious, not religious ; and must be discarded before ethical religion can assert its full sway over humanity's sex life.^^ And, most assuredly, the conception narratives, by retaining the sex process to the im- portant extent of normal pregnancy and parturition, fore- shadowed and hallowed this development of ethical thought. They make it clear that the Spirit of God and the spirit of 1" The birth of Minerva illustrates this. In Indian and Chinese mythologies we read of divine or semidivine infants being born from the bosom or side of their mothers (P. Saintyves, Les Vierges Meres et les Naissances Miraculeuses, pp. 192flf.). I am not suggesting that the evangelist would have been directly influenced by any of these mythologies; only they indicate that the idea of honoring virginity "par la sortie meme de I'enfant," was entertained from the far East to the West. 18 The a priori Catholic reasons why the physical conception of Jesus Christ should have been effected without masculine co-operation are stated by St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., pars iii, qu. xxviii, art. i, respondeo, etc. So far as they are determined, and they are in fact very largely determined, by the partly instinctive, partly ascetic fear of the sex process per se, — the various aspects of the incarnative process, even (as in Greek paganism") parturition, are viewed in the light of this idea, and the subsequent life of Mary is construed accord- ing to it, — they belong to an anthropomorphic way of thinking about God, and have consequently no permanent value. So far as they safeguard the recognition of the Divine side of the Incarnation, they fit in equally well with the theory developed in these pages. 416 THEOLOGICAL VALUE OF THE BIRTH-STORY. woman, in conscious union, refuse to justify superstitious and paralyzing fears, refuse to allow that the sex process is irre- deemable ;i^ they render possible and imperative the working out of the ethical problems directly concerned with sex. That such is the implication — one of the first importance for moral theology — becomes yet clearer and more certain, when we con- sider the conception narratives in their wider theological bearings. When it was said just now that Jesus was the spiritual child of the Divine Spirit and the spirit of Mary, we were on the verge of sexual metaphors. The union of the two spiritual essences might have been illustrated by reference to the com- mingling of two portions of protoplasm. Let us now see how far in this direction the conception narratives warrant us in going, and what theological inferences the representation seems to justify. Loisy observes :20 "Les termes employes par Gabriel pour signifier I'operation de I'Esprit divin sont chastes et discrets, mais ils n'en figurent pas moins de fagon tres nette la part du mari dans I'acte physique de la generation." This comment is faulty ; and even more misleading is Franz Delitzsch's transla- tion (in his Hebrew New Testament) of eirekevaeTaL in St. Luke, i, 35, by tabho ' alaik; for bo 'al isi the equivalent of da-epx^a-datj not of iirepx^o-QaL. Johannes Weiss, however, puts us on the right track. He says : "Let us remember that we are dealing with the idealized conception narrative, that the method of the conception is tenderly indicated. All corporeal images are avoided." Such is the case, in fact, when we examine the descrip- tion of the^Holy Spirit's action, as given in the above-quoted verse. He passes over (^liripxta-dai = " abhar) Mary like a wind. He overshadows (cTrio-Kia^etv) her like a cloud. The 19 This opinion has been held even under the aegis of Christianity. Even marriage could not, it was believed, sanctify sex relations. {Cp. G. Cross, art. Celibacy, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. iii, p. 273b.) -'• Evangiles Synoptiques, vol. i, p. 291. THEOLOGICAL VALUE OF THE BIRTH-STORY. 417 cloud and the wind together are moist fertihzing agencies. They cause Mary to conceive. Now let us view this extraordinarily tender and reverent image in connection with biological fact. If there remains in our minds any feeling that the avoidance of corporeal images is due to dislike or dread, on the part of the Divine Being, of the sex process which presumably formed part of His creative counsels, what has been said already will reassure us on that point. We shall expect to find, not that thej sex process is eliminated, pushed out, discredited in the sweep of the in- spirational force which made these conception narratives what they are ; but rather that it has been held to as part of some large scheme in the mind of God ; and by putting together the revealed Gospel message and scientifically ascertained fact, we may hope to grasp the outline of this scheme. Biology tells us of presexual reproductive processes, when changes similar to those brought about by the spermatozoon's forcible irruption into the ovum are initiated by special condi- tions in the environment. This very primitive and simple fructification of protoplasm can in fact be imitated artificially. The evolution of the reproductive process is described in clear popular language by Dr. Ernst Teichmann.-'i Fructification — conception — by moist surrounding condi- tions, which, as we have seen, is the figure employed, accord- ing to the correct exegesis, in the conception narrative of St. Luke, reminds one irresistibly of that presexual primal repro- ductive process which Dr. Teichmann describes as set up by such conditions. As soon as we have perceived that the conception narra- tives are idealistic — observe, I do not say- a tissue of "mere," i.e., unrealized ideas, but idealistic — then we can at once grasp the theological meaning of the spiritual message conveyed in this at first sight unpromising literary vehicle. It is not that the sex process is thrown out of God's calculations, so to 21 Fortpflanzung unci Zeugung (Stuttgart); cp. art. Biology, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. ii. 418 THE GLORY OF MARY. speak, in His redemptive purpose. It has a far larger content than that, and an aUogether different impHcation. Nothing less than this, as I conceive it. All life, prehuman as well as human, is encircled in the vast szwep of God's redeeming love through Jesus Christ. Mary stands before us as the type of all maternity, of all reproduction. Her conception of Jesus by Divine agency casts its vasty import and itsi royal sway back across all the stages of evolved life to its primitive beginning; and assures us that God's love — nay, what is so much more significant to the theologian, His redeeming love — is extended to it all. Our world-outlook becomes universalistic. Not with- out just cause is Mary called, in an ancient liturgy, "the new loom. "22 She is the instrument which the Spirit-power em- ployed to weave the spoiled web of life into a new pattern. In truth, one of the factors that goes to produce the idealized Mary is just this apocalyptic conception of newness, one of the profoundest conceptions which the scheme of revelation contains. 23 Is not this crowning reflection enough in itself to convince us that modern exegesis does not and can not empty of con- tent the dogma that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary ; even if the basis of that dogma lies as much in the spiritual and ideal as in the physical and actual sphere? And Mary? Has the Mystic Rose faded, the Golden Censer become base, in this dry light of modern Biblical science? Have we in any way dimmed the unique luster that surrounds her name? Has not our interpretation laid at her feet a greater tribute of honor than all the platitudes about gentleness and all the tinsel accretions from paganism which devotees have brought to her through the centuries? We have been permitted to see her standing in virgin purity amid the 22 Brightman, Eastern Liturgies, p. 206. 23 R. H. Charles, Between the Old and New Testaments, p. 59; id. on Rev. xx-xxii, in The Expository Times, vol. xxvi, No. 2, and the discussion in foil, nos. THE GLORY OF MARY. 419 altar-fires of self-sacrifice; we have bowed in awe before the inmost shrine of her sacred and incommunicable sorrows ; we have followed her figure as it rose into the high eternal heaven of Divine ideas. There is hardly any limit to the gratitude and the reverence that we are called on to pay her; and the best way of giving expression to these is to share her consciousness of a higher world and her faith in a spiritual purpose proceed- ing from it; to imitate in our several ways and vocations her receptiveness of the Spirit of God; to strive after the ideals of self-sacrifice which she so fully and gloriously realized ; to leaven human life with that purity, unalloyed with supersti- tion, sanctimoniousness, and uncharity, of which she is at once the high priestess and the type and emblem ; and steadfastly to believe in, and unweariedly to further the issues of, that Divine Incarnation in which Mary sustained the part, not only of the physical instrument which the Almighty deigned to use, but of the spiritual agent whom He took into His counsels, and who consciously co-operated with Him.^-i -■* The recognition, in the foregoing exegetical theory of this card- inal point, will, 1 apprehend, make the theory itself acceptable even to Roman theologians. (Cp. Campana, op. cit., toni. i, pp. 225ff.). ADDITIONAL NOTE D, ON MASTURBATION. It is no part of the present writer's purpose to attempt any elaborate addition to the large and growing literature of this part of the subject of sex. The reader who desires to study this subject scientifically may profitably consult the very full and able presentation of facts and opinions, in the first volume of Havelock Ellis's Studies in the Psychology of Sex. However, a few observations seem necessary at this point, in addition to the references to masturbation already made ; if for no other purpose than to define more clearly than is pos- sible, solely with the help of such a treatise as that of Havelock Ellis, the ethical view natural as well as Christian morality seem to compel us to take of this practice. The present writer thinks it unnecessary to record in full his own observations and inquiries proving that masturbation, as Ellis carefully notes, is common enough among several species of animals, chiefly in the absence of normal sexual gratification.! It is possible that isolated cases may become pathologically addicted to the habit, and practice it, owing to the ease with which it is performed, even when sexual inter- course is accessible. An observer in New Zealand mentions to me the case of a pigeon appearing to masturbate on the roof of a house. I am informed by a gentleman who has had considerable experience of ferrets, that if the bitch when in heat cannot obtain a dog, she pines and becomes ill. If a smooth pebble is introduced into the hutch she will masturbate upon it, thus preserving her normal health for one season. But if this arti- ficial substitute is given to her a second season, she will not, as formerly, be content with it. It should be noted, on the other hand, that superficial ob- servation may infer masturbation among animals from appear- 1 Cp. Moll, The Sexual Life of the Child, p. 29. (420) MASTURBATION IN PRIMITIVE RACES. 421 ances which do not in reaUty support such an inference. Three gentlemen of South Africa, who had kept a pet male monkey for a considerable time, inform me that though it was much given to handling the penis, they had never seen it practising actual masturbation. In Havelock Ellis's essay it is suggested that masturbation is known among primitive races, and consequently must not be thought of as a special vice of civilization. I am in no posi- tion either to confirm or to refute most of the evidence adduced in support of this view. Havelock Ellis mentions that he has been unable to find any evidence for the practice of masturba- tion among the Australian blacks. My own inquiries have like- wise elicited from a high authority a strongly worded negative. - With regard to the Maoris, a private letter gives me as the nearest Maori equivalent of "to masturbate," the word "titoitoi'' ; but this word is declared a rare one; and the writer of the letter, a distinguished Maori scholar, says that he knows of no allusion to the practice in Maori literature. Indeed, the word "titoitoi" does not exactly signify "to masturbate" ; but rather "to excite, titillate the penis." My' informant appears to discredit the idea that masturbation was practised among the primitive Maoris. From another source I learn that in Raratonga the word for "masturbate" is also "titoi." The Maoris and the Poly- nesians of Cook Islands consider the act unmanly. They apply to it a phrase meaning "to make women of themselves," and the practice appears to be generally confined to children. A gentleman resident for some years among the Kaffirs of South Natal replies to my questions, first, that he has found no expression equivalent to masturbate in the language he knows ; and secondly, that he does not think Kaffirs practise mas- turbation. It is of course needful to remember that inquiries on an obscure point such as masturbation are peculiarly liable to 2 Cfy. Hastings, Enc. Rel. Eth., vol. v, p. 442a. 422 THE GREEK AND LATIN CLASSICS. receive inexact or imperfectly informed replies, even when presented in what seems the likeliest quarter for information. Even men of capacity and ability may entirely fail to notice, in spite of the fullest opportunities, what they themselves feel no interest in studying. The author invariably found this to be the case in prosecuting his inquiries about the sexual habits of animals. Among the allusions to masturbation in the Greek and Latin classics,^ there are some in which it seems to be regarded as ethically indifferent, in others it is vigorously condemned. It is true that Aristophanes alludes to masturbation among both men and women without any note of serious denunciation — such was perhaps not to be expected in a comic poet; yet the fact of his connecting the practice with slaves (Eq., 24, 29), feeble old men (Nub., 734), and women (Lys., 109; Frag., 309-10), implies that neither he nor his audience re- garded it as consistent with manliness. If ^schines is to be understood as charging Demosthenes before a grave assembly of Greek citizens with having practised masturbation — and his words probably mean as much (Cont. Ctes., 174) — the posi- tion that the ancient Greeks regarded masturbation with in- difference becomes less tenable. Among the Romans, Juvenal, as has been already noticed, refers to masturbation among schoolboys in terms of strong condemnation. Martial in a very remarkable epigram (lib. ix, 41 ) denounces it as wicked and unnatural ; and elsewhere (lib. xi, 104), Hke Aristophanes, notes its prevalence among slaves. Morris Jastrow, Jr., says that masturbation is frequently referred to in the Assyrian and Babylonian omen-literature; but does not state how it was morally regarded.'^ In view of these adverse reflections from profane writers 3H. Ellis, Studies, vol. ii, pp. 117, 198-9 (ed. 3, vol. i, pp. 169, 277f.). ^ Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, vol. ii, p. 952, No. 5. SCRIPTURAL ALLUSIONS. 423 of antiquity, it must be maintained a fortiori that masturbation comes within the scope of the Biblical condemnations of im- purity. Although not expressly referred to/*^ it would be in- cluded in the general term aKaOapaia;^ it is possible that in later Greek this word was specially connected with mas- turbation. The Catholic theologians condemned masturbation. 6^ Aquinas treats masturbation as ethically worse than fornica- ^ Spero equidem fore ut lectores benevolissimi huius voluminis mihi conjecturam de sensu versus cuiusdam Sanctarum Scripturarum, audacter sane, sed haudquaquam modo nugantis facienti veniam dent. Etenim verba ista obscurissima apud prophetam Jeremiam (31 : 22) aliquid de rebus venereis indicate jamdudum suspicor. Tcsobhebh scilicet amplecti, sicut vir feminam in actu sexuali amplectitur; tith- chammakin vero inasturbari significare, baud penitus impossibile est. Saltern hoc verbo, ut forma ejus (Hithpael) fere suggerit, aliquid quod niulier sibimet ipsi faciat, ostendi videtur. Quod sane ad verbum istud tesobhebh attinet, amplexus mulierum apud poetas alicubi simili- bus verbis, sc. x^ et diJ.4>nrlwT apud Homerum, circwnfimdor apud Lucretium Ovidiumque, describi baud ignoro. Quae tanien loca cum hoc nostro comparata, analogiam tantum imperfectam habere videbun- tur ; quippe quod de amplexu matris filium protegentis (Hom. II. v, 314) vel uxoris mortem viri lugentis (id. xix, 284), vel etiam de blandimentis usitatissimis amantium (Lucret. i, 40) istis verbis "creavit Dominus novum super terram," uti omnino non possis. Ellis autem necnon et Rohleder (Zeitschrift fiir Sexualwissenchaft, No. 11, p. 636) aliosque viros doctissimos, credere magnam sane partem viduarum aliarumque mulierum quae viris careant hand raro masturbari, animad- vertendum est. Ellis autem, viatoribus quamplurimis ad testimon- ium citatis, mulieres Orientalium regionum ad istud vitium praecipue pronas esse asserit. (Studies, vol. i, ed. 2, p. 167; cp. Gray, art. Cir- cumcision, Hastings, Enc. Rel. Eth., vol. iii, p. 669b.) Neque scilicet interpretatio Vulgatse "deliciis dissolveris" hie praetermittenda est. Quodsi sensus verborum re ipsa talis sit, Deum Opt. Max. potius misericordia quam ira in istam mulierem, desolatam, viri egentem, atque quasi per angustias in peccatum detrusam, moveri notandum est. 6 Franz Wenck, Spirito e spiriti nel Nuovo Testamcnte, in La Cultura Contemporanea, Marzo, 1911, 9, 17Sn, apparently takes dKaOapa-ta to mean masturbation, — "vocabolo proprio di Paolo nel N. T., e sta a designare I'abito costante della impurita." CH. Ellis, op. cit., vol. i (ed. 3), p. 279. 424 ETHICS OF MASTURBATION. tion;" but as less heinous than the other sexual vices against nature. We have seen elsewhere in this volume that an enlarged science of the sex life has freed humanity from the exagger- ated fears that surrounded masturbation. None the less the peculiar difficulty of controlling the habit and preventing it run- ning to excess constitutes a special danger in connection with it; for it remains true at the least that excessive masturbation is hygienically as unadvisable as sexual intemperance in gen- eral; and many medical authorities still regard it more un- favorably than excessive normal coitus.^ And however this may be, the freedom from pessimism which science has won for humanity in this connection is not a liberty to be used as an occasion for the fiesh,^ nor, conse- quently, does it absolve the modern moral theologian from the duty of making his ethical estimate of this phenomenon. In order to elucidate the ethics of masturbation, we have to sep- arate the masturbatory act from associations of license and pernicious excess. Is masturbation wrong in principle? This question must be viewed in the light of the ethical ideas al- ready referred to. An act of consciously achieved detumes- cence which fulfills neither the purpose of procreation nor that of love — the physical and the emotional sides of the sex process — would seem essentially wrong. It is moreover esthetically objectionable. It may be urged that autoerotic phenomena are inevitable in the sex life, if that life is denied its normal expansion, and that masturbation belongs to the physical group of these phenomena. But in fact the whole range of autoerotic phe- nomena, in common with everything which is not truly normal to the sex life, however numerous those phenomena may be, and under whatever pressure of circumstances they may arise. '^ Not so — at least not in all cases — Jeremy Taylor (Ductor Dubi- tantium, bk. ii, ch. i, rule 6). 8 Ellis and Moll, Handbuch der Sexualwissenchaften, p. 620. 9 Gal. 5 : 13. ETHICS OF MASTURBATION. 425 become transmuted into wrongdoing in the moral sphere in proportion as they are accepted by the will. The autoerotic experiences of saints are wrong as far as the carnality with which they are sometimes colored is allowed and indulged; as far as the subjects of these experiences con- sent to the lowering of their ethical ideals, and consciously accept this carnality as a substitute for normal sexuality.i^ The latent sensuous element strives continually for expres- sion in such lives. Their greatest moral effort is expended in combating it; and it successfully achieves its grosser manifes- tations only when the moral judgment is weakened and the mind is tending toward insanity.^ It may have to be ad- mitted (in spite of the general truth of such religious observa- tions as I Cor. 10: 13) that, for reasons! to us inscrutable in the economy of the universe, the law of sacrifice presses so hardly on certain particular cases as to seem to defeat its own purpose; that, e.g., by exacting compliance with its demand for sexual abstention, it overtaxes the subject's powers of inhibition, with the result of the appearance of autoerotic or other abnormal sexual phenomena in the life of that subject. It is conceivable that when there are special, e.g., congenital, causes of physical or psychical weakness in the organism, moral effort and autosuggestion, in spite of their activity and the rectitude of their direction, may fail to prevent an out- break, a volcanic upheaval of the carnality of the sexual in- stinct.i- So far as responsibility and inhibitory power are absent, such phenomena do not of course come under moral condemnation; but a moral question of the deepest moment faces us when we are asked to consider whether any stress of 10 History accords a certain measure of truth to Ford's gener- alization : "... wenn der Mensch nach reinem Geist und reiner Heiligkeit schwarmt und dadurch seine wahre Natur verleugnet, er unbewusst in die plumpeste Sinnlichkeit zuriickzufallen und •damit letzterc heilig zu sprechen in Gefahr steht." {Op. cit., p. 344.) 11 Q. H. Ellis, Studies, vol. i, ed. 3, pp. 310ff.; T. C. Hall, art. Asceticism, Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. ii, p. 632. 12 Cf. supra, p. 27. 426 ETHICS OF MASTURBATION. circumstances justifies their previous acceptance by the moral will. In fine, in circumstances where legitimate sexual grati- fication is unattainable and where there is no prospect of it, do moral considerations or do they not allow the commission of an act of masturbation faute de miciixf Forel reluctantly sug- gests in this connection that a physician might feel called on to recommend masturbation in the last resort — as an alternative to castration — with a view to preventing the manifestation of more serious sexual perversions. ^-^ Is masturbation, in such cases, likely to provide the pre- vention desiderated ? One may feel grave doubts on this point, at any rate as regards the permanence of the results. For if the masturbatory act were performed under the stimulus of abnormal images, as one would expect on a prima facie view, then, although it would afford a temporary relief, it would be likely in the long run to stereotype the misdirection of the instinct. But it is for medical science to throw light on the question whether, in the case of a sexual pervert, a mastur- batory act accompanied by the moral effort to coerce the sexual fancy hack into the normal channel, would render such moral effort more permanently effectual; and whether, unless such a course were adopted by the patient, his inhibitory power over his special perversion would be likely to fail.^^ Should such questions be resolved in the affirmative, and it be proved that in cases of such extreme difficulty masturbation (carefully controlled, — assuming this possibility) may be re- garded as of possible prophylactic value, it must none the less be presented always as a deflection from the ideals of sexual conduct. It is therefore not to be recommended. For the doctor to take over the patient's responsibility so far as is im- 13 Forel, op. cit., p. 499, 10th ed. 11 Forel gives a case in point : "Er war ein durchaus guter, ethisch hochstehender Mensch, geriet in Verzweiflung, Hess sich aber nie zu einer schadigenden Handlung hinreissen, sondern behalf sich mit Onanie und dergleichen." {Op. cit., p. 459, ed. 10.) ETHICS OF MASTURBATION. 427 plied in the recommending of this course, would seem to be undesirable even in a pathological case. Education to complete sexual abstinence is the ideal course for such cases, and the possibility of attaining this end is always to be kept in view ; as also the superiority of normal and heterosexual imagina- tions to the others, — this latter point to be considered in con- nection with what it would be fatuous to ignore, even at the risk of approximating to casuistical subtlety, viz., the element of spontaneity in sexual emotion. Should an act of masturba- tion occur, even in these latter circumstances and with a heterosexual connotation, it should not be regarded by the sub- ject himself as other than a moral fall, an unworthy and regrettable incident. His special circumstances should not absolve him from the duty incumbent upon all, — of resisting to the uttermost. When, however, an external judgment of such a matter is attempted, it is to be considered how widely an act of mas- turbation performed under such pressure of circumstances is differentiated from one performed by a normal individual who might, after an exercise of self-control, obtain access to lawful sexual gratification. In short, circumstances may, and not seldom do, put masturbation in the light of an infirmity, some- thing almost spontaneous and inevitable ; but its dvofxia^ when viewed in the abstract, must never be lost sight of. Therefore it cannot be recommended or accepted, even temporarily, as a legitimate substitute for normal sexual relations legalized and sanctified by marriage. Further, it is requisite to mark the difference between masturbation and artificial birth control. The question may be raised, whether, granting that birth control is sometimes justi- fiable in married life, mutual masturbation might not be ad- mitted as one of the methods of exercising such control. It is sufficient in answer to repeat what has been already suggested in these pages on the subject of birth control in marriage, viz., that if special circumstances indeed give it a moral justifica- tion, at least it should be performed in the best possible way, 428 ETHICS OF MASTURBATION. by the method least objectionable from the point of view of hygiene, and most closely approximating to the normal sexual act. Deliberate reciprocal masturbation does not fulfill these conditions. Condomatic intercourse involves conjugation; it fulfills the process or series of processes comprised in the sexual act, stopping short only at procreation. Masturbation does not carry out these processes in their order. It involves not merely leaving the sex process incomplete ; were that the only aspect of it, moral considerations might, in accordance with the general remark made in another place (p. 220), give it a certain degree of justification; but it involves, further, the perversion and positive misdirection of the sex process. The above objections, it should be noted, hold good of mutual masturbation ; but it is not so clear whether the act is illicit, e.v parte mulieris, in the circumstances described by the theologian Gury,!^ i^e., ad actum conjugalem quoad mulierem inconsummatum finiendum. The particular reason which seemed to Gury decisive has since been scientifically disproved ; and it is consequently preferable, even in the cir- cumstances mentioned, to avoid the course in question. But in so complex and delicate a matter it is hardly to be won- dered at if some moral theologians still shrink from deciding the point with a more categorical negative. When lastly the phenomenon is viewed in a special con- nection with women, the moral estimate works out to the same result. Gemelli's just and sympathetic remarks cited below, ^^ should indeed, first of all, be borne in mind; and they are in- dorsed by the Scriptural passage referred to above, assuming that the interpretation suggested is correct. 15 Quoted by H. Ellis, Studies, vol. i, ed. 3, p. 279. 16 "MuHer enim carne et ossibus constat, sicut et vir ; in ipsa quidem concupiscentise fomes minus gravis baud est; quin immo ratio sane exstat, ob quam majorem ipsa indulgentiam mereretur, quia systema ejus nerveum excitabilius, sensus vividiores, ipseque mobilior animus totidem causae sunt, quibus mitius ferendum esset judicium de mulieris quam viri lapsu, et illius reatum minoris gravitatis censeri oporteret." (Gemelli, op. cit., p. 95.) ETHICS OF MASTURBATION. 429 Yet if we take a survey of cases, which the investigations, e.g., of Ellis enable us to do, those which exhibit resistance to the practice we are considering surely evoke a larger sym- pathy than those which accept it as a working theory of their lives.i'^ The former, in spite of their failures, have not necessarily, as I have demonstrated on a previous page, for- feited their title to the spiritual aureole of virginity; the latter we must not judge, but may not honor. IT Ellis, Studies, vol. i, ed. 3, pp. 271ff. ADDITIONAL NOTE E, ON CIRCUMCISION. The practice of circumcising the foreskin is not peculiar to the Hebrew race ; nor is there sufficient reason for regard- ing the Hebrew narrative of its Divine institution as his- torically accounting for its origin. It has been thought by some to have developed from the custom of mutilating an enemy slain in battle by cutting off the membrum virile and presenting it to the chief — a custom referred to in I Sam. 20 : 27 . As a further development, male captives may have been similarly, though not so dangerously, mutilated as a badge of servitude to the victorious chief. From the set of ideas thus formed might arise the custom of circumcising all the males of a tribe and offering the foreskins as a badge of servi- tude to the god of the tribe. This theory of the origin of the practice would be supported by evidence making circumcision a form of the blood covenant between a people and its god ; and it must be observed that evidence pointing — but not very con- clusively— in that direction is forthcoming in certain Aus- tralian tribes. 1 Herodotus no doubt represents the attitude of several peoples toward circumcision where he describes it as a disfigurement in itself, but one which men would accept as being the means of obtaining through increased purity a closer communion with the Divine Being (Trport/Aeovres KaOdptot etvat •^ ew/aeTreore/aoi, ii, 27). On the other hand, it is highly probable that the ideas outlined above have been grafted upon a still more primitive stock of ideas in connection with circumcision ; and it is to these latter that we must look, as Westermarck has done, for the first appearance of this custom in our race. According to the hypothesis of Westermarck, circumcision is but one of a number of similar practices of mutilation, having sexual at- traction as their object. In the early dawn of the life of the race, men and women discovered that to attract attention to 1 Remondino, History of Circumcision, p. 45. (430) ORIGIN OF CIRCUMCISION. 431 the pubic region by ornamentation, ^ depilation or circumcision was an effective addition to natural charms, and exceedingly helpful in the competition for partners.-^ Little is to be gained by discussing the local origin of circumcision ; this problem is at any rate bound up with the general one of the early migra- tory dispersion of the human race. Herodotus somewhat doubtfully proposed Ethiopia as the place of origin of circum- cision. The priority of Egyptian to Hebrew circumcision, indicated, according to Kuenen and others, in Jos. 5, — perhaps too in Jer. 9 : 25, — indirectly supports this. The age at which circumcision was performed is an im- portant indication of its purpose. The Hebrews from an early date performed the rite on infants, as do their modern descend- 2 The tattooing of the glans penis is practised among the Tongans and other Polynesians (L. H. Gray, art. Circumcision, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. iii, p. 665b.). Crawley (o/i. cit., p. 135) endeavors to explain the origin of circumcision and other mutilations by reference to early religious ideas and taboos. It seems more probable, however, that this practice origi- nated before the evolution of a system of taboos, rather than as one of its results. Other practices of nature-peoples, such as elongation of the breasts, painting, hairdressing, enlargement or confinement of organs, are surely more naturally explained, with Westermarck, as having sexual ornamentation for their motive, than on the principle contended for by Crawley; and it is by the analogy of these practices that primitive circumcision can be most readily accounted for. Never- theless, that the religious notion of sacrificing a part to safeguard the whole from evil influence was applied later to the practice of circum- cision, is not to be denied. St. Paul, when he speaks of spiritual cir- cumcision as an d7r^/c5i'(rtsToO(rw/xaTosr^scra/3/cds(Col. 2: 11), had a develop- ment of this idea in his mind. Similarly, the religious idea of circum- cision as being helpful in the process of reincarnation, a notion which, according to Frazer's suggestion (Independent Review, vol. iv. No. 14), may have obtained at one time among the early Australian natives, is to be regarded rather as an accretion to the rite than as the source of its institution. 3 It is strange that L. H. Gray in his elaborate study of circum- cision (Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Ethics, vol. iii), while discussing a number of theories of its origin, has omitted to notice this simple and probable explanation. 432 ACCRETIONS TO THE RITE. ants; but there are reasons for thinking that infancy was not the age for its performance in still earlier times. -^^ Puberty was the circumcising age among the ancient Egyptians, as it is among the Australian natives, and among the peoples of the Lower Congo.'* That the primitive Hebrews, like the Arabs, performed the rite on young men as a prelude to marriage, is clear from the root hatJian. These facts support Wester- marck's hypothesis. In view of the variations in the practice of circumcised peoples on this point, it is well to note that puberty is more likely than infancy to have been the original age for the performance of the rite. Motives of convenience or religion might induce a people who formerly circumcised at puberty to transfer the rite to infancy; but once a tribe had acquired the habit of circumcising in infancy, it is unlikely that they would allow the diiificulty of the performance to be en- hanced by changing to an age nearer manhood. In course of time, as Westermarck points out, a primitive practice takes on fresh meanings, particularly of a religious character, and new reasons for its performance. To some of these developments, in connection with circumcision, reference has been made above. It is probable that, among some peoples, the chief reason for retaining circumcision after the rite had lost its original significance, was the desire to test the capacity of the males for bearing pain — the practice was cruelly de- veloped among the Arabs of North Africa with this object. Among others, as the Hebrews, it was associated with a religious conception. It accords well enough with analogy that the existing practice of circumcision should become for the Hebrews a Divine ordinance. As in New Testament times practices of long standing like religious ablutions or the laying on of hands were used by Christ and His Apostles to fulfill new purposes, ^^ See Kennett, art. Israel, in Hastings, op. cit., p. 441a. 4 But not apparently among the peoples of the Upper Congo, who circumcize twelve days after birth. (Johnston, The River Congo, pp. 276, 290.) HYGIENE OF CIRCUMCISION. 433 on account of the readiness with which those practices lent themselves to adaptation; so at an earlier period, Divine wis- dom chose a well-known custom by which to convey a new spiritual truth. Circumcision is admirably adapted to become an ethical symbol. The figure of "circumcising the heart" used in both Testaments, vividly expresses the difference between a heart closed in, covered with old impurity and im- pervious to spiritual influences, and a heart freed from selfish- ness and prejudice, and receptive of the Spirit of God. Nothing better could have been chosen as the Covenant token. ^ St. Paul's opposition to circumcision related solely to its religious aspect, which has since lost its importance in the Christian world ; and it need not therefore be given a place in a discussion of the hygiene of circumcision. A large — I be- lieve a preponderating — body of medical opinion recommends the practice for hygienic reasons, in part noted already by Herodotus. Some enthusiasts perhaps overrate its hygienic value. Medical works must be consulted for a full discussion of this part of the subject. It is enough here to recall the fact that the primitive purpose of the prepuce — that of protecting the glans penis — no longer exists in its original force, owing to the adoption by mankind of clothes. It is obvious that the prepuce readily becomes subject to congenital or acquired mal- formations, the source of phimosis and attendant evils, early masturbation being the worst. When the prepuce has been removed, the glans penis is no doubt sensitive at first, but rapidly becomes sufficiently hardened to prevent irritation and the consequent directing of the subject's attention to these parts. The cleanliness of the glans is easily preserved in a state of circumcision ; without moreover the dangerous neces- sity of subjecting young children to frequent local washings of the genitals — a process, as Dr. Guernsey notes, "^ likely to cause premature curiosity and excitement. ^ For the spiritual application of circumcision, see Driver's note (Genesis, Westminister Commentary, p. 191). •5 Plain Talks on Avoided Subjects, p. 31. 28 ADDITIONAL NOTE F, ON NOCTURNAL POLLUTION. There are references enough in the byways of Hterature to show that the nocturnal pollution has proved puzzling and distressing to mankind, both as a physical phenomenon and in its ethical bearings. There has been considerable discussion of recent years as to whether it is normal or pathological ; and if the latter, in what degree. We cannot here enter fully into this dispute, which belongs mainly to medical literature. ^ The general prevalence of the pollution in the human race indicates at any rate that it is, except in excess, but a slight deviation from normal sexual health. As to what constitutes excess, there is probably no general rule. A few observers, notably Mr. Perry-Coste, have undertaken to keep records with a view to investigating this point. These investigations, backed by opinions based on large observation, established at least the fact that for most constitutions, one pollution in ten days is not excessive. Some, indeed, have them much more seldom; while others may have them oftener without experiencing any consequent debility. The frequency of nocturnal emissions will be affected by that rhythm in the human body, the alter- nate working of the anabolic and catabolic principles, which, as we have already seen, has to be taken account of in investi- gating the phenomena of sex. Some authorities maintain that exeess must never be predicated of the emission unless it is followed by weakness and depression. - Frequently, therefore, there is really no need for the dis- tressful perplexity experienced by nervous subjects of emis- sions. Whatever harm seems to accrue to the system from these occurrences often arises rather from the mental dis- quietude which they occasion than from any pathological in- 1 See Ellis und Moll, Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften, pp. 612ff., 712ff. 2 This opinion — that of Curschmann — seems still the one commonly accepted by medical scientists. {Cp. Fosner, in S. and K., op. cit., ii, p. 726.) (434) THE NOCTURNAL POLLUTION. 435 fluence of the phenomenon itself. It is true that when occur- ring with undoubted overfrequency, pollutions may be a symp- tom of a generally weakened condition of the sexual system ; but even so, there is no just occasion for despondency, inas- much as the prognosis of most cases of sexual weakness is favorable; and this condition may be ameliorated or cured by proper treatment — a fact to which our attention has already been called. Sometimes a simple cold-water treatment, atten- tion to dieting, and regulation of the hours allotted to rest, will reduce the frequency of emissions without recourse being had to severer or more difficult treatment.^ Much perplexity has surrounded the moral aspect of the nocturnal pollution. The suspicion of wrong attaching to sex- ual relations in general, in the sentiment of mankind, was sure to fall upon this mysterious manifestation of sexual activity. Hebrew law embodied ceremonial directions concerning pollu- tions. Medieval thought regarded the occurrence of them as tainted with sin if in any way provoked or encouraged by the imaginations of waking hours."* The semiconscious volition which often attends the sexual dream, the reluctance of the will even during sleep to consent to the motions of the sexual system, strengthens this idea of moral impurity in relation to the nocturnal pollution. The anguish of souls sensitive to the touch of impurity even in sleep finds a voice in the ancient hymn : — "Hostemque nostrum comprime Ne polluantur corpora."^ 3 I venture to suggest that a judicious use of the Sandow exer- cises, especially those which strengthen the back, loins, and stomach muscles, would be of benefit to patients suffering from sexual weakness and overfrequent seminal emissions. •* Aquinas, Sum. Theol., ii», n^, qu. cliv, art. v. 5 Tr, in A, & M. Hymnbook : — "Our ghostly enemy restrain. Lest aught of sin our bodies stain." "Keep us . . . Pure in our foes' despite." 436 THE NOCTURNAL POLLUTION. This ethical fear is reflected in the directions to intending celebrants in the Roman Missal. Nor can this aspect of the matter be wholly set aside as false and groundless. So intricate is the connection, in the sexual as well as in other spheres, between the activities of mind and of body, that sexual excitement entertained and allowed without any attempt at inhibition in a waking state, induces, by a physiological law, a greater spontaneity of ejac- ulation during sleep. Not but what even when the moral energies of the will have continually been exerted to purify the waking thoughts, physical causes will of themselves fre- quently be strong enough to bring about a nocturnal pollution. This is sometimes accompanied by the aforesaid semiconscious volitional activity. With many people indeed the will-power becomes sufficiently awake to allow of their inhibiting the pol- lution when on the point of occurring. Some moralists have gone so far as to recommend the cultivation of a habit of semiconscious inhibition, as if it were a matter of ethics.^ But it ought to be considered whether such a procedure would not intensify nervous conditions, and in some cases do more harm than the emission itself."^ While the nocturnal pollution cer- tainly ought not to be courted and prepared for by the con- scious attitude of the mind during wakefulness, it is a mistake to regard it with a large amount of fear and anxiety, in either its physical or its moral aspect.^ 6 See Stall, What a Young Man Ought to Know, pp. 90flf. "^ Cp. Woods Hutchinson, What Not to Teach our Children upon Race Hygiene, in Prevention, vol. iii. No. 12, p. 235. 8 Reference was made above (p. 71) to pollution occurring in the moments of waking, or to the prolongation of a dream-pollution into those moments. The Roman moral theologians take a common-sense view of this phenomenon, which is far from rare. De Joriis (De Magn. Matrim. Sacramento, pars xix, quaest. xxxviii) endorses another divine's opinion, to the eflfect that "ceptam in somno pollutionem non tenetur Evigilans reprimere, sufficit enim non placere." The latter caution is in general all that is needed. Only if the occurrence becomes very fre- quent and troublesome, does it call for special counterexpedients {cp. a case in H. Ellis, Studies, Sexual Selection in Man, p. 226). ADDITIONAL NOTE G, ON THE PATRISTIC AND MEDIEVAL ATTITUDE TO DIVORCE. The early Christian teachers, leaders, and fathers of the Church present us with a large body of opinion on divorce. Its vital center is the scriptural interpretation. The fathers viewed life in the light of the Scriptures. This fact by no means deprived them of intellectual freedom, as their handling of the divorce problem shows. They were faced by much lax- ity in the secular environment, and in Roman society by a theory of divorce for mutual consent, — a theory which was largely and readily translated into practice ; for in the pagan world it was balanced by few considerations of chivalry or patience or honor. The fathers and councils were able to show that divorce had been discouraged even from the earlier stand- point of the religion of Israel. The Pentateuchal legislation, although it had not taken the high ground of Christian ethics, had not been lax as regards divorce. ^ The element of laxity had been introduced into Jewish theory later on. The Christian moralists were able to show how the Old Testament teaching on marriage had prepared for the exaltation of the Christian ideal amid the confused and lax views generally prevailing about the obligations of marriage ; and they illus- trated the compelling force of this ideal from the conception of Christ as the infinitely true and patient husband of the per- sonified Church. But when the early Christian teaching is viewed in the aggregate, it becomes clear that it does not, any more than the Scriptural teaching of which it is the extension, afiford a basis 1 Chrys. Horn, in Matthew xvii ; Aug. de Serm. Domini, ch. i, S. 39. The Deuteronomic legislation was calculated to make men pause before resorting to divorce (Driver on Deut. 24: Iff.; Luckock, Hist, of Marriage, ch. iii). (437) 438 PATRISTIC VIEWS OF DIVORCE. for a legalistic system.^ Chromatius condemns remarriage after divorce on the ground of its motive being unbridled lust;^ and no doubt, as I have already hinted, the fathers had before them plenty of illustrations of such remarriage. They were in fact so intent on dealing repressively with this aspect of the matter, that they had no inclination to work out the more com- plicated problems of matrimonial failure. That these problems, however, had begun to present them- selves to thoughtful minds, is evident. Christian opinion had to consider whether adultery was a permissible or an impera- tive ground of divorce ; also whether or not it might be under- stood in a wider sense than the literal one. The general tend- ency was to consider that a husband ought to put away an adulterous wife, but not vice versa. There was nothing specifically Christian about this view ; it was the outcome of "man-made" morality, and S. Basil and others combated it. The larger interpretation of adultery was maintained by many from Hermes (2d century) onward; and more than one equivalent of adultery was suggested. Theodoret, while discouraging divorce, observes : "Un- less it is for some just and reasonable cause (Trpodaaiv) that ye loose the marriage-bond, the Lord of All shall be your judge." Origen says that even in the New Covenant there are injunctions analogous to "Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives." After glancing at mar- riage in its aspect of an, indidgentia, he goes on to say that some of the leaders of the Church have extended that principle 2 Von ifobschiitz has well observed that the fact has established itself more and more that in the records of long-past ages— including the Scriptures in these — ideals might be found for the individual and social life, but not an immediate legal system (art. Bible in the Church, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. ii, p. 592a). This fact is certainly already visible in early Christianity. 3 Qu. in Watkins, op. cit., p. 246. I am mainly indebted to the work of Watkins, who gives copious quotations in the original, for my knowledge of the patristic views. PATRISTIC VIEWS OF DIVORCE. 439 beyond the limits actually indicated in certain New Testament expressions, viz., by allowing women to remarry in the life- time of their canonical husbands. Now, it is misleading to say^ that because Origen did not in unqualified terms denounce such remarriages, therefore he "approved of" them. On the contrary, he presses home, with all the force he can, the need of faithfully and persistently asking God for the grace and gift of chastity — for in the Father's view it is a gift — in cases of matrimonial failure. Yet it is true that Origen regarded the action of the aforesaid clergy, in permitting remarriage, as "not wholly unreasonable; for it is natural that this con- cession should be made, though contrary to the primal laws and precepts, as being a slight evil in comparison with worse.""' The harder problems of matrimonial ethics could not wholly escape the notice of this great divine. He devotes some sentences to the idea that there are other ways by which one spouse may drive another in the direction of adultery, besides actual dismissal. Withdrawing from the marriage-bed on the pretext of sanctity may become blameable on these grounds. According to Origen, a man who entirely ignores his wife's sexual needs is perhaps more culpable than one who has divorced his wife for some grave reason other than adultery. Timothy of Alexandria, in the fourth century, declared himself unable to decide as to the lawfulness of divorce with remarriage in the case of a wife's acute insanity. Lactantius explicitly admitted remarriage after divorce for adultery. Epiphanius did the like, and by employing the expression KaKY] aiTia, grave charge, evidently accepted the larger inter- pretation of adultery. 6 The idea of hell being an essential part of the doctrine of moral retribution, — the content and realization of the idea ^ With Kitchin, Hist, of Divorce, p. 24. 5 Com. on St. Matthew, 19. ^ In the passage Panarion lix, cap. 4, cited by Watkins and Luck- ock, V must have slipped out through confusion with the final letter of Te\evTr](rdffr]. 440 PATRISTIC VIEWS OF DIVORCE. suggest further questions/ — it has a rightful place in a con- sideration of divorce. But to introduce it in order to fore- close theological inquiry and paralyze ethical judgment, indi- cates a lack of discrimination. Chrysostom's treatment of the divorce question is faulty on this ground. He relied on the threat of hell to justify his intolerably unsympathetic attitude to the trials of married life. What can be thought) of such teaching as that of the tractate De Virginitate, where marriage is set out as a servitude which, however hard and bitter, has to be borne? That Chrysostom expects it to be generally, or frequently, hard and bitter, is clear from his poor opinion of women. A particularly unpleasing feature of his doctrine is his refusal to accord any credit or eulogy to separated partners who refrained from remarriage and strove to keep chaste. Chrysostom's harshness was not unprecedented. Basil had expressed himself as follows, in the Hexahemeron : "However rough and surly and ill-tempered one spouse may be, the other must put up with him or her, and not attempt to break the conjugal unity on any pretext whatever. Does he beat you? He is your husband all the same. Does he drink? He has been made one with you, however, by the bond of nature. Is he rough and sullen? Yet he is one of your mem- bers, yea, the most honorable of them all." Such language, if it is in place in relation to^ a moral "* A tragedy from America was recorded in the English papers a few years ago. A young couple who had tried adulterous love, found themselves disillusioned, and committed suicide by gas fumes. The letter left by the female victim, a very young and beautiful married woman, was most pathetic. I have lost the cutting ; but my memory serves me well enough. "Cynical, young and absorbed in all the ex- citement of the great city, Fred (her paramour) has often scoffed at old things like religion. But I have learnt that there is truth in what we used to be told, and that the wages of sin are something worse than death. It is hell." There are theological considerations which allow us to hope for a happy ultimate issue even to such an episode ; but in itself it is unspeakably sad, fraught with intense human suffering. PATRISTIC VIEWS OF DIVORCE. 441 ideal, becomes repellent when indorsed by secular enactments. Basil, however, had no idea of bringing his teaching against divorce into this latter connection. It was not till the time of Innocent I (410 a.d.) that the attempt was made to realize the ideal by secular legislation. As for Basil, when, from presenting the ideal by suasion and eloquence, he turned to bring specific matrimonial difficulties into relation with it in an ecclesiastical code — a code whose rules were enforceable by spiritual methods — he saw that failure to reach the ideal must be ethically evaluated according to circumstances. Thus he said that soldiers' wives who presumed their husbands' deaths and married again were less blameable than wives who did the like, having been deserted by civilian husbands ; the presump- tion in the former case being stronger. The pronouncements of the early Church councils on divorce vary as do those of the fathers. It need hardly be said that they uniformly discouraged reckless divorce; but such a standpoint as that of the Council of Aries (314) in regard to remarriage is significantly considerate toward human nature. It was decided that by every possible moral per- suasion, exhortation and assistance, the parties to a divorce were to be restrained from marrying others. The restraints are the negative ones of suspension from spiritual privileges ; and it should be observed in this connection that the refusal of Absolution and consequent withholding of Communion imply "that the offense committed is one with respect to which the Church has no authority to promise the Divine pardon, but does not imply a claim to limit God's power" to grant forgive- ness, and must not be taken as a declaration that the guilty per- son will certainly be finally lost."^ Before leaving the fathers it is proper to observe that there is something quite incongruous, even unintentionally ofifensive in the free use made by some divines of the word "lax," to label patristic views with which they do not agree. ^ W. M. Foley, art. Adultery in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. i, p. 133a. 442 DIVORCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. To suggest that men like Lactantius, Origen, Epiphanius^ Basil, Theodoret, Theodore of Tarsus, — men of ascetic, devout, self- sacrificing life; men who, like their Master, had given up their own sex lives for humanity's sake, — were "lax" in their moral theories, is intolerable. If they said that in certain circum- stances remarriage after divorce might be justifiable (they never put it more encouragingly than that) ; or if they held that certain things might be equivalent to^ adultery as grounds of divorce, it was not from "laxity," but because they had conscientiously come to that conclusion. Luckock's contention^ that divorce a vinculo originally meant simply declaration of nullity ab initio, while it is meant to strengthen, really damages the case for the legal enforce- ment of the ideal of indissolubility. It is vain to claim that in- dissolubility is maintained because divorce is forbidden ; while yet divorce is brought in under another name. It was charac- teristic of medieval Western Christianity — the tendency is still strongly represented — to draw up elaborate systems of rules, and then to spend much ingenuity in studying how to slip through them. It happened thus in regard to divorce. Ways were discovered of eluding the strictness or modifying the impracticability of the prohibition. The idea of nullity of marriage unfolded numerous possibilities of separation and freedom. There were many grounds on which it could be de- clared ;io and it would seem that this method of escaping from marriage was frequently resorted to. Even Professor Whit- ney, of King's College, London, while maintaining before the English Divorce Commission^ that the number of divorces obtained by indirect methods in the Middle Ages was smaller than is commonly supposed, safeguards himself against stating that the cases of nullity were few. 9 Luckock, Hist, of Marriage, p. 174. 10 Rockwell, Die Doppelehe des Landgrafen Phillip von Hessen, refifs. under Ehehindernisse ; Howard, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 56ff. ; Dibdin and Healey, Eng. Church Law and Divorce, p. 24. 11 As reported in The Daily Telegraph, Nov. 23, 1910. MEDIEVAL MORALS. 443 The modern Roman Church has not ceased to use this method of quahfying the principle of indissolubiHty. Cases are given in the periodical, Roman Documents and Decrees;^- but I do not know whether the authorities have few or many to deal with yearly. Other legislatures, as the British, still admit several grounds of nullity. ^'^ Even if Professor Whitney is right in thinking that, nul- lity apart, the marriage system of the medieval Church worked with few divorces in the strict legal sense, it must not be con- cluded that the standard of sexual morality was high. Adul- tery was widely connived atM It falls to be noted, further, that both the legal and the moral estimate of the concubinate rose considerably during the Middle Ages. As early as the Christian Council of Toledo (a.d. 400), it was enacted that a man who had a concubine instead of a wife was not to be excluded from the Holy Communion as long as he kept to the one. Here the concubinate, while it does not expressly take on the permanency of monogamic marriage, models itself none the less on the monogamic principle ; and it is a matter of just inference, from the evidence available, that many people evaded the unalterable status of marriage by recourse had to a state wdiich had become one of at least second-rate respectability, and had acquired a legal basis. i-"* 12 Washbourne (London); Benziger (N. Y. ). 13 Whaclcoat, Every Woman's Own Lawyer, ch. xvii. 1^ Ploss-Bartels, Das Weib, 8, Ed. i, pp. 523, 692; art. Adultery, in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. i, p. 133a. Westermarck says (Moral Ideas, voL ii, p. 432) that the immorality of the Middle Ages was gross and open. 15 Lea, Hist, of Sacerdotal Celibacy, vol. i, p. 231, n. 1 ; art. Concubinage (Christian, and Greek and Roman) in Hastings, Encyc. Rel. Eth. ADDITIONAL NOTE H, ON POLYGAMY. To pursue the study of polygamy with any profit, it is necessary to ehminate every element of prejudice and panic. A warning of this kind is given, even in connection with the strange phenomenon Mormonism, by two historians of the latter movement. ^ Of the pleas put forward in the developed apology for polygamy, some are negative ; it does not meet with definite condemnation where such condemnation might fairly be looked for. And some are positive ; it is attempted to adduce reasons of expediency in its favor. Tlie former class calls for prior consideration. The con- demnation of polygamy cannot be based on explicit Scriptural prohibitions ; for, as Luther observed, none such exist.^ Con- sequently, many divines from Augustine onward, have hesi- tated to pronounce an absolute condemnation of polygamy, or at least of polygyny.^ The theoretical Christian opposition to it is based on inference. Peter Lombard and Aquinas may be taken as authoritative exponents of the developed ecclesiastical case against polyg- amy. The first named maintained that polygamy is wrong as being against the primal monogamic law, — "secundum in- choationis modum inter duos tantum per omnem successionem temporum contraheretur conjugium si primi homines in obedi- entia perstitissent."'* Yet he sees no inconsistency in the fact that God gave command or a dispensation to certain persons to do this thing, evil in itself, in order that subsequent good might come. The proposition on which he bases this argument is "pro varietate temporum varia invenitur dispensatio Condi- 1 Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young and his Mormon Empire, p. 237. 2 Westermarck, Hist, of Human Marriage, p. 434. 3 Watkins, e.g., exhibits this caution (Holy Matrimony, p. 634). ■* Sent., Hb. iv, dist. xxxiii. (444) CHRISTIANITY AND POLYGAMY. 445 toris," This has since, as we shall see, been reaffirmed; and has been stated in connection with the variation of other cir- cumstances besides that of time. St. Thomas Aquinas mar- shals as the principal objections to polyg>'ny, and d fortiori to polyandry, the fact that the polygamic contract is not recon- cilable with the monogamic; the existence of sexual jealousy; the primitive ideal of matrimony ; the mystical and sacramental conception of marriage, resulting from the Christianizing of the primitive ideal. The idealistic argument is, in Aquinas's own view, the strongest of these : it is only the sacramental or mystical aspect of matrimony that is fully obscured or destroyed by polygamy ; though it also endangers other func- tions of marriage.^ The ethical question of polygamy has often perforce ob- truded itself in the mission field. In 1888, the Anglican bishops, while decisively rejecting any contact of polyandry with organized Christianity, left the question of polygyny a little open on one side. It was decided that a female convert who is the wife of a polygamist husband may in some cases be permitted to continue conjugal relations with him after Baptism. In that case the union would become, to her. Christian marriage, and therefore both exclusive and indis- soluble.*' The necessity of preserving for the present this illogical attitude to polygyny was further emphasized by sev- eral speakers at the Pan-Anglican Congress in 1908.'^ Chris- tian hesitation about the ethics of polygamy can be further illustrated. We have already seen that in early medieval society the concubinate approximated to, though it never definitively attained, the moral level of monogamy; and the ^ Suppl. Sum. Theol., quasst. Ixv. 6 Watkins, Holy Matrimony, p. 628fTf. '' The Times Repoft, pp. 23ff . The attitude above mentioned is illogical; for it might be asked if the polygamous state is altogether irreconcilable with the claims of Christianity, ought even the wives to continue living in it after Baptism? There is an informing article on polygamy as a problem of the mission field, by Bishop Gibson, in The East and the West, vol. v, No. 18. / 446 CHRISTIANITY AND POLYGAMY. Church exhibited a certain amount of tolerance toward the situation thus created. ^ In the later Middle) Ages, the ques- tion received a fuller academic discussion, of which an ac- count is given in Rockwell's monograph, Die Doppclchc des Landgrafen Phillip von Hesscn. A number of divines, Roman Catholic as well as Reformed, thought that the ethical question connected with polygamy was not finally settled. They considered that, as God had in times past seen fit to allow polygyny even to the chosen agents of His self-revelation, it was conceivable that the same thing might happen again. "Posset quidem Deus dispensare nunc sicut tunc, si ejus placeret voluntati."^ There were various opinions as to how the Divine Will in this matter might be revealed. Some thought the Pope could give the necessary dispensation ; some that the secular law might, on grounds of social expediency, modify its prohibition of polygamy ; some that a special revela- tion would be necessary to justify any change in the existing moral system. It would be an unfair way of putting the matter, to say that these moralists "favored" polygamy. It would be quite unjust to accuse them of laxity. There was no question with them, as with the Mormons, of accepting polygamy as a gen- eral social principle. They were viewing it in connection with exceptional circumstances. The extensive calamities of the time, particularly the great and constant wars, forced the problem of the ethics of polygamy upon their consideration. Indeed, if any circumstances could justify polygamy, i.e., polygyny, the numerical disproportion of the sexes and the general deterioration of morals consequent on war would seem to be such.io When, to use the expressive Biblical phrases, a s See p. 443. Bishop Gibson quotes from a letter of Father Pul- ler's in which the writer draws a parallel between South African polyg- amy and the concubinage with which the early Church had to deal. 9 Gabriel Byel, qu. by Rockwell, op. cit., p. 228. ^^ Cp. Uhlhorn, Die christliche Liebesthatigkeit, pp. 626, 629. Even Cannon and Knapp, in their drastic criticism of polygamy (Brigham Young and his Mormon Empire, p. 241) incline to admit this. CAN POLYGYNY BE JUSTIFIED? 447 man is more rare than fine gold;ii when seven women are taking hold of one man ;12 when the sexual needs of desolate women force them into the contrary and unnatural masculine role, 13 what wonder is it if the relations of the sexes fall into grave disorder? It is a question in such circumstances whether a legislature's duty is to let things be as they are, in the hope that they will eventually regain their equilibrium ; or to try the aforesaid bold experiment to regulate the con- fusion. There is, in point of fact, historical evidence of the adoption of the latter course. Polygyny was allowed in parts of Germany after the Thirty Years' War.^"' I am unaware of other instances of such legal recognition of it; but an analogous modification of an ethical system is the papal per- mission to marry granted to the clergy in some of the South American States in the nineteenth century. i"' Whether or not such exceptional circumstances constitute a limited justification of polygamy, the mention of them di- rects us toward those positive considerations in the apologetic of polygamy, to which reference was just now made. For the toleration of polygamy has been mooted in other social con- nections besides the growth of population. It has been ad- 11 Is. 13: 12. 12 Is. 4: 1. 13 Jer. 31 : 22. (See supra, p. 423.) 14 The following is the Nuremberg ordinance of Feb. 14, 1650. The original is given in Rockwell, op. cit., p. 280, No. 2: "To make up the loss in population due to the Thirty. Years' War and to pesti- lence," it was decided, "to limit the numbers of young men admitted to monasteries; to encourage the marriage of priests; and that every man shall bd allowed to marry two wives; but that in this connection each and every man shall constantly bear in mind, and shall be often admonished from the pulpit, that he do steadfastly and discreetly be- have himself, and give all due diligence that as a married man who has ventured to take two women, he not only provide for both wives in all needful ways, but also guard against discord between them." 15 Readers of E. F. Knight's Voyage of the Falcon, ch. xxiii, will remember that his tour in Paraguay after the wars of Lopez fully indorses the Biblical expressions just referred to. 448 MODERN ADVOCACY OF POLYGAMY. vocated on eugenic grounds; as a preventive of prostitution, viz., as constituting a form of sexual union which is at any rate superior to that depraved and irresponsible form; and to meet exceptional conjugal difficulties. Some premonition of these views appears indeed already in the older discussions re- sumed by Rockwell.16 Among contemporary attempts to obtain for polygamy, not merely an unprejudiced, but even a sympathetic considera- tion, as a possible factor in the social systems of future civili- zation, we may here note that of Forel.i''' He observes that polygyny has assumed several forms in the course of its his- tory, and refers to one, found among the Columbian Indians, which he considers is not liable to one of the greatest practical objections to this institution, the tendency to lower the social and spiritual status of women. i^ Facts, moreover, are ad- duced by this and other leading anthropologists and sociolo- gists, calculated to allay the uneasy feeling that polygamy would ever, in any form, spread at all widely in the modern civilized world. It is pointed out that, even in primitive societies,!^ polygamy tends to gravitate toward monogamy. This holds true of both its main divisions. It is arsfued 16 See, further, Cannon and Knapp, op. cit., pp. 243ff. ; Van Wagenen, American Sterilization Laws (Eugenics Educ. Soc), p. 5. i'^ Forel, Die sexuelle Frage, pp. 183, Z77 (cp. C. Gasquoine Hart- ley, op. cit., p. 279; Worcester, McComb and Coriat, Religion and Medicine, p. 138). Fore! would give even polyandry a place in the social system in certain circumstances. Polyandry, it should be re- marked, is more generally distasteful even than polygyny; the Lambeth Conference of 1888 would not discuss it (Watkins, op. cit., p. 624). The Summa Angelica, quoted by Rockwell (op. cit., p. 291) held that a papal dispensation could allow polygyny, but not polyandry. To Gabriel Byel, a commentator on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, even polyandry in certain circumstances was conceivable, but not without a special divine sanction or revelation (ibid., p. 288). 18 Polygamy, when the aforesaid tendency is operative, is thought by some writers to favor indirectly the extension of homosexual prac- tices (Westermarck, Moral Ideas, vol. ii, pp. 466f.). i9Forel, Die sexiielle Frage, ed. 1, p. 179; ed. 10, p. 200. MODERN ADVOCACY OF POLYGAMY. 449 a fortiori that in developed modern society, — where, if Forel's generaHzation is sound, there exists, in addition to reHgious traditions, a psychological obstacle to the growth of polygamy, viz., the exclusive and monandrous element in women's sexual emotion, — no great or permanent extension of polygamy is to be feared. It would be unwise, however, to repose too much confi- dence in this feminine monandrous bias.-^ Mormonism shows us that this factor is not strong enough, in the] absence of religious and social opposition to polygamy, to prevent the extension of that custom far beyond the lengths contemplated by, e.g., the medieval moralists.^i It is therefore beyond the range of practical politics to put polygamy once more into competition with monogamy in western civilization ;22 but that developments of some kind will occur, is a possibility to be reckoned with. It may eventuate that legislatures will try the effect of shifting the main incidence of criminality from polygamy itself to its cir- cumstances, in so far as these are antisocial and immoral. Nay, there are already some anticipations of such a course. The following case was reported in the newspapers not long since : — F. H., 41, pleaded guilty to committing bigamy. It was stated that the defendant was married to his first wife in 1887, and she was -0 R. Michels, Sexual Ethics, p. 222, does not recognize it. 21 It is true at the same time that, in the, event. Mormon polygamy itself may not escape the circumscribing action of the economic and psychological laws which have been observed to reduce polygamy elsewhere (cp. R. and R. W. Kauffman, The Latter-day Saints, pp. 340ff.). 22 As Forel has suggested, he. cit. Havelock Ellis cites other opinions advocating, with more or less intensity of conviction, the same course ; but his own view is that "any radical modification of the existing monogamic order is not to be expected, even if it were generally recognized, which cannot be said to be the case, that it is desirable." The practical question is merely one of the recognition of exceptional cases. (Cp. H. Ellis, Studies, vol. vi, p. 502.) 29 450 POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS. still living. He was a very good husband. In June last he married a young woman in Wales, telling her that he was single, and he treated her very well. For nine months of the year he was away at sea, and when on shore he lived sometimes with his first wife and sometimes with the second. Neither made any complaint against him. He voluntarily gave himself up to the police. The second wife strongly recommended the defendant to mercy. The defendant, who bore an excellent character, said he gave him- self up to ease his conscience. The magistrate passed a nominal sentence of three days' imprisonment, which entitled the defendant to be at once discharged.23 That sentence would seem to be too lenient in the present state of the law ; nor would it seem advisable that polygamy, even in its most favorable manifestations, should be entirely exempted from penalty, in societies whose general principle of marriage is monogamic. The most we can say is that the incidence of punishment on polygamy per sc might be so far lightened as to make it possible to differentiate effectively be- tween the degrees of criminality attaching to its attendant cir- cumstances. A bigamy or polygatny initiated by deception, and unfulfilled as to its inherent obligations, ought to be visited more severely than one which does not present these aggravat- ing circumstances ; and which perhaps obviates other courses of conduct even more antisocial than itself. But in saying this, we must not be understood to suggest that organized Christianity can extend any sort of patronage to polygamy. The most that Christianity can do is to refrain from hampering secular legislatures, in their endeavors to solve social sex problems, by placing its ideals before them in a wrong perspective; and the least that it can demand in re- turn is that its own disciplinary regulations shall not be sub- jected to secular interference. For whatever developments may take place in the attitude of secular legislatures to polygamy, it is certain that it is the function of Christian opinion to safeguard the superior value of monogamy. 23 Some other cases of magisterial leniency toward bigamy in certain circumstances are recorded in The Times of June 25, 1914. CHRISTIAN JUDGMENT. 451 Hence, however charitably Christians may regard polyg- amists who are acting up to their theory, Christian communi- ties could not unreservedly admit them, along with monog- amists, to full Church privileges. To do so would cause harmful confusion. The resulting question, whether polyg- amists ought always; to be urged to dissolve their unions and consequently evade their responsibilities, as the condition of receiving Church privileges, has come up as a practical one in the mission field ; for apparently the custom of baptizing male polygamists nowhere obtains. It is noticeable that while European clergy, out of sympathy and perplexity as to the rights of the case, have been disinclined to urge native polyg- amists to give up their marriage unions, native clergy have taken the opposite course.-'* The view of the Europeans is theologically the better of the two. It embodies no rash judgment of dutiful polygamists. It is grounded on the spiritual conception that God is no respector of persons, and can save without external baptism. But the native clergy must be credited with the greater knowl- edge of the character of their race ; and their more thorough- going opposition to polygamy may be the soundest policy, in respect of immediate moral needs. It is for the spiritual benefit of the whole community that people who take up with a theory and custom of marriage lower than monogamy should incur a certain measure of ecclesiastical censure and disability; that the inferior matri- monial status should be marked. Only it must be borne in mind that, as we have noted in another connection, ecclesias- tical censures and deprivals are not infallibly and exhaustively interpretative of the judgment of God. On principles of Christian hope, and of faith in the Divine justice. Bishop Gibson suggests that non-sacramental grace may be conferred on women living in polygyny, who are desirous of baptism, yet whom the Church authorities think it inexpedient to baptize. -■^ Bishop Gibson, art. cit., p. 142. 452 CHRISTIAN JUDGMENT. And this suggestion deserves consideration in connection with other persons who, it may be, having entered the state of polygamy from imperative reasons and under exceptional stresses, live in accordance with the canons which it has re- tained from the full ethical scheme of monogamy. And although loyalty to the monogamic ideal and respect for the monogamic sentiment and theory of the historic Christian Church preclude the dispensers of sacramental privileges from communicating publicly, in facie ecclcsice, even such polyg- amists, it is possible that those same far-reaching Christian principles to which we have just referred would justify private communion in such cases, where sickness or some equivalent circumstance had made the question urgent. ADDITIONAL NOTE I, ON BELIEF IN GOD. The present writer showed the necessity of postulating a primal existent, and drew out from that postulate a body of necessary inferences, in the philosophical competition opened a few years since in connection with the late Mr. W. Honyman Gillespie's book. The A Priori Argument for the Being and Attributes of The Lord God. It will be in place here to repro- duce a few sentences from his unpublished essay : — "We choose, as our method of establishing conscious- ness as a primary factor in the world-problem, a line of argu- ment starting from a proposition which is inherent in all thought. From this premiss we shall be logically necessitated to infer our primary factor; and shall then be able to draw inferences as to its nature. Among these inferences will be that the primary factor in the world-problem is, inter alia, a conscious entity. It will also follow directly that the said conscious entity possesses a productive or creative power. "To proceed, then : metaphysically, logically, mathematically, it is true that nothing is nothing. "If ever there were an inescapable truth, patent to the un- derstanding from all points of view, and essential to all coher- ent thought, it is here. If there were a primal and eternal 0, all that could be predicated of it is that it isi O. But, indeed, we have to create a symbol for nothing before we can apply thought or language to nothing. We are using a figure of speech, when we say that nothing is. "If, again, 0 could be in any way mathematically treated, added to itself to n terms, or raised to the nth power, it still is O. But, as a matter of fact, it is illegitimate to bring the concept of number into touch with the supposed primal noth- ing.! O: that is all that can be said of it. Therefore, if there 1 Mt; Tolvvv firjS'' iirix^ipConev apidiwv n-f)Te TrXijdoi M^re TO ev irpos to p.rj ov irpo. J. S. Mackenzie, art. Eternity, ad fin., in Hastings, op. cit., vol. V. •"• Cp. The Interpreter, vol. ix, No. 3, pp. 327f. > ■* See Macgregor, The Great Fallacy of Idealism, in The Hibbert Journal, vol. iv, No. 4. ^ Iverach, art. Epistemology, in Hastings, op. cit., p. 339a. 6 Salvatorelli, Introduzione Bibliografica alia Scienza delle Re- ligioni (Roma, 1914). 456 THE TWO FIRES. THE TWO FIRES. Prov. 6 : 27 — "Can a man take nre in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?" Fierce as the fiery brand to bosom pressed Of frenzied prophet, heedless of his vest Scorched and consumed, ofttimes the slumb'ring glow Of human passion, when the breath doth blow Of sin mysterious, flames with forceful ire, Fervid and fatal as Elissa's fire.i Crave then the touch of Heaven's altar flame Purging that other,2 through the gracious Name That saves a world corrupt through lawless lust; (Strong are the tempted who in Jesus trust!) As sunlight conquers storm, so changes Grace Foul flames of lust to light of holiness. Yet hold ! mistake not ; there is pain with fire : That bosom scarr'd, those flame-wounds of desire Proclaim that word; here glimmers no soft sheen Gentle as rose-flush 'mid the restful green ; But pain-drawn lips, marred brows, and fever'd eyes Reflect the blood-red glow of sacrifice. 1 "Cseco carpitur igni," Virg. ^5£n., iv, 2; "Quae tantum accenderit ignem Causa latet." Id., v, 4. 2 Isa. 6 : 6, 7. EPILOGUE. It is well to find room on our concluding pages for some leading, luminous idea which may give a general character and final direction to. the foregoing essay, as it now reappears in larger fullness of growth, and may be said to have reached its majority in the world of books. Such an idea has been sug- gested to me by a personal reminiscence. Years ago, when the plan of this book had not yet begun to form in my mind, I remember preaching a sermon to boys on purity, — I should say, rather, against impurity. I alluded to the fact that the Christian hermits imaged the Spirit of Impurity as a black child. Someone in the congregation after- ward asked why this was the image employed. I gave an im- perfect, tentative answer. Now, after studying for years the phenomena of sex, I think I see the reason. In the foregoing discussion of sex questions, the operation of the law of evolution has been recognizd throughout. We have seen how the human sexual instinct gathers in many and various materials and fuses them together. It is thus that it grows. The maturing sexual instinct ought to be producing more and more surely and abundantly its higher phenomena, — chiv- alry, dignity, self-sacrifice, and the larger impulses of love ; otherwise, in point of fact, it is not maturing. The sex life ought to become such as can be taken up into the perfect spiritual manhood exhibited in the character of Christ. As the obverse to this higher growth, we perceive the Black Child. Impurity always spells sexual immaturity of some kind; it may be the dissolution of the composite sexual instinct and the abnormal growth of some particular constit- uent ; or it may be retrogression to standards of conduct which it is men's duty and interest to overpass. (457) 458 EPILOGUE. Here is our leading idea. How to realize it? Well, ob- viously, the sexual instinct must be spiritualized. It must claim as its rightful domain those upper regions of thought, feeling, and faith where glow spiritual fires in ever-changing beauty. It must itself reflect their brightness, as shot silk be- trays the presence of a new material. What is the chief force by which this change is effected? Here we reach a second leading idea, which differentiates the present work from certain others which have treated of the same theme. Josef Miiller, in a book cited several times in the foregoing pages, refers sympathetically to the teaching of the mystic Eckhardt, namely, that ascetic renunciation is a higher state of the soul than love, that it establishes between the soul and God a closer connection than love can effect. Here, then, is a clear point of difference between the medievalist and the modernist theologies. The present volume — if it may be classed as moral theology — belongs to the latter school of thought ; and the author trusts he has sufficiently established, by the whole drift of his argument, the conclusion that, while asceticism has indeed proved a factor of power and value in the world-process, it is none the less immeasurably in- ferior in spiritual effectiveness to love. The chief stress of the , Christian ethical revelation is on love to God and His creation. And, theologically speaking, love is identical with light. Love throws more light on obscure problems than asceticism can do. Humane feeling, co-operating with informed, illumined reason, is a more effectual defense than austerity against sexual sins, and is better able to mold aright the growing sexual instinct. INDEX OF AUTHORS CITED. Abolitionist Federation, 183 Achelis, 107n., 229n. Acta Martyrum, 353, 354 Acton, 48 Addams, 171n. Adveniat Regnum Tuum, 36n., 121n., 277, 328n., 329n. ^schines, 422 "/Esculapius," 172n. Allen, 84 Allen, Man' Wood, 44 Andrewes, Bp., 213, 243n. Apocalypse of St. John, 15n., 307n., 408 Aquinas, 43n., 96n., 118n., 128, 129 136n., 159, 210n., 259, 309, 353n., 379, 415n., 423, 435n., 444, 445 Aristophanes, 18, 422 Ars Amatoria, 355 Athenagoras, 107, 209n. Atkinson, J. J., 393, 394 Augar, 348n., 349n., 350, 353 Augustine, 16, 70, 93n., 94, 137n., 158, 159, 230, 331, 444 Baldwin, J. N., 47, 149n. Barr.v, Bp., 11 In. Bartels, see Ploss & Bartels Barton, 307n., 401n. Basil, St., 438, 440, 441, 442 Beale, 43n., 75, 195n. Bengel, 34n., 214ff., 368n. Benziger, 443n. Berkusky, 19n. Beveridge, 406 Billington-Greig, 169n. Bishop of Carpentaria, 193 Bisping, 413n. Blackwell, Elizabeth, 91 Blagden, 232n., 242n. Bloch, vi, ix, 8n., lOn., 12n., 16, 17, 18n., 19, 40n., 47n., 48n., 55n., 65n.. 77n., 80, 88n., 93n., lOln., 119n., 156n., 158n.. 159n., 162n.. 168, 169n., 172n.. 175n., 225, 299n., 303, 3(Hn., 311n., 315n., 324n.. 326, 348n.. 366n., 388. 389, 393n., 397, 398, 399, 414 Bloem, 152n. Blumreich, 116n. Boccaccio, 233n. B51sche, 293n. Booth, 135n., 163n., 179n., 180n., 195n., 249 Bousset, 14n., 405, 408 Bramwell, Milne, 355n. Bridget, S., 109n., 127 Brieux, 183n. Brightman, 418n. Browning, 8n. Biicher, K., 103n., 162n. Bullen, F. T., 101 Bureau, P., 11 In., 123n., 149n. Burkitt, F. C, 406n. Byel, Gabriel, 446n., 448n. Caine, Hall, 360fF. Callixtus, Pope, 317 Calvino, 61 Campana, 414n., 419n. Cannon, 206n., 444n., 446n., 448n. Canon Law, 92n. Canticles, 14, 22n. Carpenter, 289n. Carpzov, 297 Catholic Encyclopaedia, 362n. Chamberlain, 246n. Charles, R. H., 382n., 418n. Charles, Mrs. Rundle, 411 Cheetham, 337n. Chetwood, 65n. Chromatins, 438 Chronicles, 157n. Chrysostom, St., 367n., 440ff. Church Times, The, 59n., 305n. 408 Churchill. Col. Seton, 274, 279 Cicero, 274 Clement of Alexandria, 369 Clinias, 82 Code of Holiness, 259-269 Coe, 319n. Coenobium, 109n., 127n. Coghlan. 92, 11 In., 192n. Collins, Bp., 273 Colossians, Epl. to, 233n. (459) 460 INDEX. Comber, Dean, 94n. Committee of Fifteen, 183 Commonwealth, The, 364n. Contemporary Review, 10 Coriat, 37n., 448n. Corinthians, Epl. to, 29n., 34n., 73n, 93n., 104n., 134n., 204n., 213n., 233n., 245. 254n., 266n., 347n., 367n., 373n., 374, 375n., 385n, 425n. Crawley, A. E., viii. 7n., 10, 12n., 19, 54ff., 75n., 131n., 135n., 152n., 204n, 212n., 280n., 313n., 376n., 43 In. Crespi, A., 127, ISOn. Crittenton, 170n. Cross, 416n. Curschmann, 434n. Dallas, H. A.. 231n., 364n. Dalman, 87n., 370 Darwin, 33n. Deissmann, 379n. de Joriis, 97n., 436n. Delitzsch, 416 Demosthenes, 422 Despeignes, 172n. Deuteronomy, 15n., 132n., 133, 254n., 288n., 401 Dibdin and Healey, 97n., 243n., 442n. Die Neue Gen., vii, 53n., 71n. Dillmann, 17n., 263, 402n. Dio Cassius, 349 Divorce Reports, 91n., 250n., 252 Dixie, Lady Florence, 124 Dobschiitz, von, 15n.. 364n., 370n., 372n., 373n., 374, 438n. Dolonne, 135n. Driver, S. R., 15n., 87n., 107n., 400, 433n., 437n. Driver-White, 207n.. 262n., 26Sn. Drumomnd. Prof., 23 Dryden, 294n. Drysdale, 123n., 125n., 126n. Duchesne, 229n. Duckworth, 77n. Duran, Carolus, 124 Earle, Mrs., 42n. Edersheim, 230n., 243, 366n., 369n. 377n. Elberskirchen, 118n. Elderton, E., 39 Ellis, Havelock, v, vi, vii, 1, 7. 8, 9, 12n., 13, 18n., 19, 19n., 27n., 29, 34n., 36, 38n., 43n., 48n., 49, 54, 55n., 57n., 58, 65n., 78, 81n.. 84, 110, 116, 118n., 120n., 125n., 126, 127n.. 148n., 156n., I58n., 159n., 160, 161, 163n., 164, 167, 168. 169, 183n., 187n., 188, 191n., 192n., 196n., 197n., 206, 207, 208, 210n., 212, 219, 220, 227, 229n., 276n., 280n., 281n., 284, 285. 289n.. 291, 292, 293n., 296n., 299n., 300n., 302n., 305n., 310, 311, 318, 321n., 331n., 360, 372n., 391, 394, 401n., 414, 420. 421, 422n., 423n., 424n., 425n., 428n., 429, 434n., 436n., 449n. English Review, The. 39. 169n. Ephesians, Epl. to, 14, 233n., 282n.. 289, 347n., 375 Epiphanius, 439, 442 Eugenics Review, vii, 45n., 92n., 11 In., 126n. Eulenburg, 84. 212n., 220n., 252n. Euripides, 225 Evangiles Synoptiques, 416n. Ewald, C. A., 120 Ewald, H. von, 376n. Exner, 44 Exodus, Book of, 15n., 246n.. 266n. Expositor, 373n. Expository Times, 377n., 402n.. 418n. Ezekiel, Book of, 14, 216n., 244. 254n. Fallaize, 387n., 391n. Farrar, F. W., 40n. Fere, C, 32n., 37, 43n.. 48, 82, 156n, 235n., 284, 285, 304, 309, 383n. Ferriani, 50n. Flexner, 174n., 176n., 182n. Flint, 82 Foa, 84 Foley, 441n. Fonsegrive, G.. 278n. Forel, vi, vii, 18n., 33, 39, 41, 56n., 61n., 66n.. 72n.. 80, 84, 85, 95n.. 130n., 142n., 148n., 156n., 161, 163n., 164, 183, 211n., 228n., 235n., 240n., 294n., 295n., 300n.. 306, 307, 339, 355n., 425n, 426ff., 448. 449 INDEX. 461 Foresti, 407n. F6rster. 3, 19, 45. 46. 5Sn., 72n., 75n.. 84, 86, 100, 127, 218, 347n., 368n., 384n. Frazer, J. G., 10, 54, 399n., 409n, 431n. Freeth, R. E., 390n. Freud, S., 27ff., 3Sn., 41n.. 48n., 71n., 85, 87flF., 148n., 317n., 318, 321n., 2>2?>, 392n. Friedlander, L., 275, 304n. Fiirbringer, 83, 118n., 119, 120, 205, 208, 209n., 212n. Galatians, Epl. to, 122, 282n., 424n. Galeeby, C W., 39 Gardner, E., 25n., 247n., 406n. Garlitt, 73n. Garvie, 363n., 404n. Gaster, 66n. Gebhardt, 348n. Geddes and Thomson, vii, 8n., 73n., 82, 115, 228n., 235n., 285n., 305 313 Geme'lli, 18n., 19. 34n., 38n., 41, 44n.. 45, 46, 49, 59n., 61, 67n., 71, 7Sn., 76n.. 109n., 118n., 225n., 300n., 383n., 428 Genesis, Book of. 14, 15n., 17, 67, 107n., 132n., 133n., 263n., 288n., 398n., 400, 402, 403 Gibson, Bp., 445n., 446n., 451n. Gilgames, Epic, of, 402 Gillen, 79n., 325n.. 389, 393 Gillespie. W. H., 2Z2, 453, 454 Gillet, 45 Godet, 381 Godfrey. J. A., Z2, 95, 97 Good, 38n., 84 Gore, Bp., lln., 246, 264, 406n. Grand Magazine, 241n. Grav. L. H., 309n., 423n., 431n. Green. T. H.. 149n., 330 Gressmann, 398n. Griiber, 83, 92n. Gschwind, 363 Guardian, The, 36n., 44, 239, 247n., 248n., 255n., 266n., 269, 270n., 382 Gurnsey. 75, 210n., 433 Gury, 428 Hall Caine, 360ff. Hall. Stanlev. 63n., 65n., 321n., Z22, 323n., 425n. Hall, T. C.. 93n. Hall, W. S., 44 Hallam, 135 Halsbury, Lord, 99n. Hansen, 305n. Hardwicke, Lord, 98 Hardy, E. J., 215n. Harnack, 16. 222, 348n., 364, 365 Hartland, 80n., 310, 311, 391n., 414n. Hartley, 40n., 77n., 148n., 173, 197n., 235n., 262n., 448n. Hastings, vi, 7n.. 15n., 16n., 66n., 93n., 98n., 107n., 135n., 152n., 213n., 224n., 229n., 263n., 307n., 308n., 309n., 313n., 319, 323n., 335n., 341n., 363n., 364n., 374, 378, 387. 390n., 391n., 395n., 398n., 401n., 402n., 404n., 406n., 411n., 414n., 416n., 417n., 421n., 423n., 425n., 431n., 438n., 441n., 443n., 445n. Hastings, Warren. 92n. Havelburg. 92n., 234n. Healey, 442n. Heape, 207 Hebrews, Epl. to, 93n., 204, 254n., 368n. Heim, 84 Henslow, 329n. Hermes, 438 Herodotus, 397, 431, 433 Hight. G. A.. 277n. Hime, 43n., 49n., 50 Hirschfeld, 32n., 48n., 71n., 196n., 276n.. 285n., 287n., 288, 289n., 293, 294n., 295, 296n., 297n., 304n. Hoensbroech, von, v. Hoflfding, 157 Homer, 225, 423n. Horace, 118n., 282n. Hosea, 13n., 216n., 225n. Howard, vi, lOn., 19n.. 96n., 97, 105n., 136n.. 196n., 242n., 250n., 254, 268n., 387n., 442n. Hude, Anna, 230n. Hurtado, 97n. Hutchinson, Woods, 436n. Hyslop, J., 313n. Idiotae Contemplationes, 400n. Ignatius, 406n. II Rinnovamento. 330n. 462 INDEX. II Rogo, vii, 84n.. lllii., 123ii., 278n. Inge, Dean, 125, 126, 342n., 327n. Interpreter, The, 341n., 455n. Isaiah, 13n., 22n.. 233n., 237, 401, 408n., 409, 447n., 452n. Iverach, 455n. James, S. B., 149n., 266n. James, W., 26n., 311n, 411 Jastrow, Morris, 401n., 409n., 422 J. E. H., 32n. Jeffries, Richard. 280n. Jelf, 382 Jeremiah, 216n., 408n, 423n., 431, 447n. John, Epl. of, 221 ff., 222n., 226, 254n.. 367n. Johnston, 432n. Joseph, 340n. Jowett, 292n. Justin Martyr, 15n., 405 Juvenal, 18, 106, 107, 282, 353, 422 Kaminer, 39, 64n., 65n., 83n., 92n., 109n., 116n., 118n., 119, 120n., 184n., 185, 205n., 208n., 209n., 21 In., 212n., 220n., 234n., 252n., 285n., 291n., 299n. Kauffman, 449n Keane, A. H., 390n., 398n. Keith, 207n. Kennett, 432n. Key, E., 19 Kiefer, 48n. 2 Kings, 311n. Kitchener, Lord, 190 Kitchin, S. B., 249. 439n. Knapp, 206n., 444n., 446n., 448n. Knight, E. F., 447n. Kohler, 17 Kossmann, 119, 120, 205. 208 Krafft-Ebing, 1, 2n., 49, 156n.. 285. 303 Krauss, 160n., 317n. Kubel, 368n., 413n. Kuenen, 398n., 431 Kuster, 401n. La Revue, 198n. Labriolle, 23n. Lactantius, 439, 442 Lamb, Charles, 312 Lambert, 364n. Lambeth Conference, 266, 448n. Lamentations, Book of, 14, 408 Lang, A., 398n. Langin, 15n. Lankester, Ray, 304 Lea. H. C. 99n., 135n., 443n. Leconte, 33, 217n. Lemonnyer, 398n. Lepmann, A. and P., 39 Letourneau, 7, 8, 51, 226 Leute, 135n. Leviticus. 132n., 207n.. 254n., 259, 262n., 265n., 266n.. 288n. Leyden, von, 65n., 120 Liddon, 368n. Livy, 275 Lodge, Sir O., 335, 337 Loewenfeld, 24ln. Loisy, 416 Lombard, Peter, 93, 97. 202, 444, 448n. Lombroso, 398n. Loreburn, Lord. 272 Lourbet. 217n.. 235 Love and Pain, 156n. Luce, 61 Luckock, Dean. 247n.. 437n.. 439n.. 442 Lucretius. 225n.. 311, 423n. Luekin, 202n. Luke, St., Gospel ace. to, 226n.. 246, 364n., 367n., 369n., 416, 417 Luthardt, 226n. Luther. 16. 77n., 215n., 216n., 444 Lyttelton, Rev. E., 40 MacColI, Canon, 269 MacCulloch, 307n., 401n. Macgregor, 455n. Mackenzie. 344n.. 455n. Maclean, 16n. Mahood, Mrs.. 238 Mantegazza, 84 Mark, St., Gospel ace. to, 226n., 366n., 405 Marrett, 224n., 232, 324n. Martens, 153n., 196n. Martial, 422 Mason, A. J., 273 Matthew. Gospel ace. to, 226n., 245, 246, 248. 250. 254n., 283n., 328n., 364n., 366. 369ff.. 410n., 437n., 439n. Maturin, Rev. B. W., 384 INDEX. 463 Mayreder. Rosa, 142n. McComb, 37n., 448n. Melody, J. W., 362n. Mercier, C. A., 127, 249, 284, 285, 306 Meyer, 14Sn., 330n. Meyrick, 370n. Michelet, 305n. Michels, R., 8n., 449n. Milligan, 370 Missal, Roman, 436 Moberley, 264 Modern Churchman, The, 16n. Modi, 402n. Moffat, 247n., 409n. Mohler, v. Moll, vi, viii, 18n., 19. 27n., 32n., 35n.. 38n., 49n., 58n., 65n.. 71n., 78. 84. 85. 205. 21 In., 219, 284, 285, 289n., 291n., 292n., 293n., 299n., 300n., 301, 302n., 305n., 308, 383n., 392n., 420n., 424n., 434n. Mommsen, 352 Morizot-Thibault, 249 Muirhead. J. H., 318n.. 323n., 399n. Miiller, J., 16n., 274n., 275n., 353n. Murillo, 408 Mvers, F., 23, 37n., 66, 226, 231, 411 Xapoleon, 125 National Review, 11 In. Neander, 229n. Neisser, 64n., 184, 185, 186n. Nestle. 372n. New York Report, 173 Newman, Cardinal, 70 Newsholme, 110. 126 Nicholson, Bp.. 203n., 204 Nineteenth Century, 231n.. Nineteenth Century and After, 11 In., 121n.. 238 ' Niven, 335n., 341n. Northcote, R. H.. 353n. Nosgen, 283n., 366n., 367n. Nova et Vetera, 149n., 150 Nystrom, 120, 127 Onslow. 11 In. Oppenheim. 44 Orelli, von, 409 Origen. 438, 439, 442 Our Army in India, 180n., 190n. Ovid, 354 Paley, 205 Pall Mall Gazette, 126 Parez, C. H., 16n. Pastorello, 84 Pater son, W. P., 263n., 374, 378 Paul St., 73, 93n., 94, 122, 133, 134fif., 204, 213, 236, 245, 254n., 282, 367, 373ff., 374ff., 375, 405, 431n., 433 Pearson, Norman, 231n. Perry-Coste, 206, 434 Peter, St., Epl. of, 214n. Petrone. Igino, 46 Philo, 327, 345 Pietschmann, 399n. Pinches, 402n. Plato, In.. 12, 13, 22, 226, 292n., 367n., 453n. Plautus, 225 Pliny, 274 Ploss & Bartels, 141n., 145n., 152n., 154, 159, 160n., 163n., 207n., 224n., 232. 314, 315n., 316n., 330n., 349, 361, 399n., 443n. Posner, 65n., 184n., 434n. President of U. S. A., 11 In. Prevention, vii. Prezzolini, llln. Priests' Prayerbook, 49 Prince, 411n. Propertius, 274n. Prophets, O. T., 15n. Proverbs, Book of, 204n., 254n., 452 Psalms, Book of, 14 Puglisi, lln., 313n., 321n. Putnam, 174n. Qujestiones Theologize Medicopas- toralis, vii. Quinton, 308n. Rade, M., 93n., 215n., 242, 324n. Ramsay, 2,73, Z77 Rapid Review, The, 126 Ree, 18n. Reinach, 330n. Remondino. 430n. Renan, Revelations, 254n., 288n., 347n. Review of Reviews, 199 464 INDEX. Richmond, Ennis, 36, Zl , 49 Rivers, 390n. Robertson, F. L., 274 Rochefort, 102n. Rockwell, 442n., 446, 447n., 448 Rodin, 275 Rohde, 225 Rolker, 33n. Romans, Epl. to, 254n., 288n., 373n. Roper, A. G., 106 Rosenthal. 80n., 387, 396n. Routh, 305n. Rowntree, 39 Rudolf, 162 Rupprecht, 178n. Ruth, Book of, 237 Saintyves, P., 80n., 415n. Saleeby, vii, 126, 127n. Sallust, 275 Salvatorelli, 455n. Salvian, 158 Samuel, Bks. of, 14, 15n., 90n., 225n., 289, 401, 430 Sanchez, v, 16n., 96n., 108, 136n., 205, 207, 208, 210n., 330n., 396 Sanday, 406n. Sandow, 435n. Sawtell, 45n. Sayce, 402 Schleiermacher, 77n. Schmidt, 398n. Schoetensach, 390n. Schrader, 213n. Schrenk-Notzing:, 285n. Schultze, 163, 164 Senator and Kaminer. 39, 64n., 65n., 83n., 92n., 109n., 116n., 118n., 119, 120n., 184n., 185, 205n., 208n., 209n., 21 In., 212n., 220n., 234n., 252n., 285n., 291n., 299n. Sherwell, 39 Shield, The, viii, ix, 172n. Simpson, J. V., 395n. Sirach, 233, 236, 254n. Skeat, 232n., 242n. Smith, G. A., 13n., 288n. Smith, H. P., 15n. Smith, W. R., 15n., 80n., 132n., 260n. Smyth, Newman, 243 Social Evil, The, 173, 176n., 182, 183 Soldiers' Small Book, 190 Song of Songs, 27,, 225, 276, 277 (see also Canticles). Southern Cross Log, 391n. Spectator, The, 160, 403n. Spencer and Gillen, 79n, 325n., 389, 390n., 391, 393, 398 Sperry, 17, 92n., 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 210, 219fif., 221n. Stall, Z2, 36n., 44, 436n. Stocker, Helene, viii. 71 Stocker, Lydia, 229n. Strack, 204n., 283n., 368n. Stratz, 13 Stuttgart, 417n. Suetonius, 302, 349n. Suffrin, 411n. Summa Angelica, 448n. Swain, P., 59n. Tacitus, 225, 349, 350 Tarnowsky, 18n., 59n., 284, 286n., 303 Taylor, C, Bp., 370n. Taylor, J. W., llln., 121n. Taylor, Jeremy, 141n., 218n., 424n. Teichmann, E., 417 Telegraph, The Dailv, 442n. Temple, R. C, 390n.' Tennant, lln., 400, 401n. Terence, 134, 225 TertuUian, 22, 209n., 413 Theilhaber, 106 Themistocles, 227 Theocritus, 225, 276 Theodore of Tarsus, 442 Theodoret, 442 Thessalonians, Epl. to, 5n., 93n., 133n., 204n. Thoinet-Weysse, 32n., 48n. Thoma, 215n. Thompson, R. Campbell, 402n. Thomson, see Geddes and Thom- son. Thucydides, 414n. Thurston, 135n. Tiberius. 349 Times, The, 445n., 450n. Timothy. Epl. to, 233n., 236n., 369n., 371 Timothv of Alexandria, 439 Titus, Epl. to, 371 Tolstov, 220n.. 365, 366, 369 Toy, 204n.. 254n. INDEX. 46: Trail, 38, 40, 82, 203ff., 204 Trench, 307n. Troitsky, 98n. Tyrrell, 363 Uhlhorn, 158, 246. 446n. Ultzmann, 84 Union Tracts, 271n. Ussher, R., 108 Vergil, 452n. Vielhaber, 363 Vita, 61 Vleim, G., 393n. Vonier, 41 In. Vornig, 84 Vuillermet, 100 Wade, G. W., 247n. Wagenen, Van, 310n., 448n. Walton, 25Sn. Washbourne, 443n. Wassermann, 172n. Watkins, 257, 268n., 397n., 438n., 439n., 444n., 445n., 448n. Weger, 84 Weiss, J., 247n., 328n., 366n., 368n., 405n., 408, 416 . Weissmann, 12 Wells, 2n., 44, 54, 173 Wenck, F., 423n. Wenley, v. Westcott & Hort, 367n., Z12 Westermarck, 2n., 7, 8, lOn., 18n., 32n., 33f., 53n., 54ff., 79n., 80n., 130; 146, 152n., 204, 218, 235, Westermarck (continued) . 254n., 257, 261, 268n., 290n., 292n., 316n., 317, 335, 377n., 387, 390n., 391, 392, 394, 414, 430, 431n., 432, 443n., 444n., 448n. Weston, Bp., 408 Weysse, 36n. Whadeoat, 210n., 443n. Wharton, 159n. White Cross series, 32, 115 Whitney, 442, 443 Wilker, 60n. Windsor Magazine, 33n. Winton, Marv, 241n. Wisdom, Book of, 399 Wolff, 65n., 120 Woman at Home, The, 124 Woman's World, The, 170n. Woods, Alice, 5Sn. Woods, Hutchinson, lOn. Worcester, 37n., 448n. Wordsworth, Bp., 16n., 135n. Workman, 349n. Wulffen, E., 27f. Wundt, 47n., 248n. Wustmann, 159n. York Report on Divorce, 250n. Zeitschrift f. Sexualwissenschaft, 423n. Zephaniah, Book of, 225n. Ziegler, 105, 229n. Zockler, 40n., 49, 122n., 137n., 160n., 204n., 214n., 283n., 364n., 368n., 370, 371n., 413n. Zola, 112, 113, 124, 213, 276 30 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Abhag, 67. Abnormalitv. sexual, 2, 25ff., 47ff., 116, 128, 284ff., 383. Abolitionism, 180n. Abolitionist federation, 183n. Abstinence, sexual, in marriage, 116, 123f., 212, 365. Accommodation, houses of, 179n. Adolescence, 65, 82. Adultery, Christian interpretation of, 210, 215, 216, 243, 366. in Middle Ages, 39, 158ff. punishment of, 251, 308. woman taken in, Z12. Advertisements, esthetic, 241. immoral, 239. matrimonal, 239ff. Affinity, 257ff. (XYdTrr;, 14. Agapetas. 14. Agatha, 351. Age of consent, 196f. of marriage (see Nubility). stone, 19n. Agencies, matrimonial, 241. Ahabhah, 14, 225. dKadapffla, 423. Albanians, 92n. Alcestis, 225. Alcohol, 38. Algolagnia, 41, 49, 170, 285, 298. Altruism, 10. Amatory conflicts, 8. American Indians, 448. legislation, 163. morals, 447. Anabolism, 156, 206, 235, 290, 434. Analysis of sex impulse, 156. of sex love, 22, 156. Ancestor, pre-human, 387. y\ndamanese, 390. Angel of Conception, 405. Angels, marriages of, 15n. Anglican bishops, 20. church, 3n., 73, 247. marriage service, 94, 214, 244. prayer book, 348. Anima mundi, 411. Animals, birth rate among, 114. modesty among, 8. monogamy among, 10. morality in, 32. psychology of, 33. sex differentiation among, 285. sexual sin among, 32. Annunciation, 405. Antenuptial intercourse, 135n. Anthropology, 10-12, 74, 131n., 204. physical, 77n. Anthropomorphism, 312, 331. Antichristianism, 349. Antinomies, 455. Antiquity, sex love in, 22, 160. Apes, 205, 421. Apocalypse, 408. Appendix, 387. Arabs (see Semites). Aristotelian categories of thought, 455. Aries, Council of, 441. Army regulations, 102, 179ff. Ars amatoria, 355. Art, ecclesiastical, 276. erotic, 274ff. Arunta, women of the, 79. Asceticism, 3, 12, 15, 39, 49, 219f., 366ff., 458. Jesus Christ and, 363f. love superior to, 458. of St. Paul, 367. the Gospel and, 364. Asia Minor, morality in, 14, 377. Aspiration, ethical, 228. Assyrians, 41 In.. 422. Athenians, 414n. Atonement, 379ff. effect of the, 383. Attraction (see Sexual attraction). Aureole, the virgin's, 362. Australasia, marriage laws in, 266ff. prevention in. 111, 123f. sexuality in, 191. (467) 468 INDEX. Australian aborigines, 389, 421, 432. Authority, moral, 5, 34f., 40, 131, 302. Autoerotism, 425. Autonomy of will, 338. Babylonians, 41 In., 422. Bath, the, 372. Bearing of sin, 379fTf. Beauty, 12, 89, 224. 227, 276. Belief in God, 453ff. rational basis for, 455. Berlin "C. D." policy, 181f. Bestiality, 305, 307. Bethulah, 408. Betrothal, 136. Bible on marriage, 93. Biblical views of se.xuality, 14. Bigamy, 268f. Birth (see Maternity). control (see Prevention). of Jesus Christ, 411. process, 411. unclean, 414. rate, 125. Bishops, Anglican, 20, IZ. Black Child, the, 457f. Blush, 8. Body, sacredness of, 133. Boyhood, 34f. Brigitta, St.. 336. Brothel advertisements. 174n. Brothels, 88, 177, 179, 384, 434. Bull-fighting, 304. "Bundling," 317. Bureaus, matrimonial, 241. Caesar (Emperor). 351. Caesar's altar, 353f. Cain, birth of, 401. California, purity work in, 163. Cantonments, 180f. Cardiac affections, 120. Caresses, 219. between men, 2, 25ff., 47ff., 116, 128, 284ff., 383. between relations, 265. Carnal sexuality, 14. Castration (see Sterilization). Catabolism, 12, 81, 156, 206f., 235, 290, 434. Catherine of Siena, St., 336. Celibacy, 12, 94, 365f., 369ff. clerical, 367n., 371. effects of, 72, 82f., 234. in New Testament, 370. Jewish view of, 370. obligation of, in professions, 101. temporary, 185. in women, 184. Certificates, medical, 184f. of character, 239. Change (see Evolution). Charms, use of, 66. Chastity, 4, 13, 62, IZ, 87. hardness of, 62, 12>, 250. 268. 288, 369. ideals of, 369f. Child, Divine, 412. marriage, 390n. religion in the, 321 f. Childhood, hygiene of, 2>1 , 51. impurities of, 34ff. Chivalry, 457. Christ (see Jesus Christ). Christian conception of marriage, 375. doctrine of indulgentia, 93f. 121. ethics, 3f.. 81n., 97, 316, 371. freedom, 122. morality, changes in, 3, 328f. persecutions, 349. revelation, 87. virginity, 347. Christianity, attitude of, toward sex questions, 3ff, 20, IZ. and asceticism (see Asceticism), healing message of, 66. Church, Christian, 5, 29, 73f., 93. 129, 347. Anglican, 3n., IZ, 247. attitude of, on special ques- tions, 29, 244ff., 267ff.. 378. Early North African. 229. Eastern Orthodox, 98. Roman, 49, 98f., 443. Church Councils, 441. High, 247. history, 348. Circumcision. Zl , 52, 430ff. accretions to the rite, 432. age for performing, 432f. as ornamentation, 431. hygiene of, 37, 52, 433. origin of, 431. religious symbolism of, 430ff. INDEX. 469 Circumcision, St. Paul's opposi- tion to, 433. City, sack of a, 139. Clandestine marriage, 96f., 99. Cleanliness, 430, 433. Clergj' (see Moralists), celibacy of, 135. Elizabethan, concubinage among, 135. Clergymen, 43. Cock-fighting, 304. Code of Holiness, 265f. Coeducation, 53ff. Cognatio spiritualis, 257. Cognition of ideas, 341 ff. of the imperative, 336f. Cohabitation, temporary, 132. Coition, infertile, 115f. Coitus (see Sexual act. Conjugal intercourse). Collective teaching, 44. Columbian Indians, 448. Committee of Fifteen, 183. Comus, 355. '"Conation," 323. Conception, angel of, 405. narratives, 411.- of Jesus, the Son of God, 409ff. spiritual, 409ff. Concord, mission of, 253. Concubinage, 131ff., 443. among clergy, 135. Condemnatio ad lupanar, 353n. Condom, 119f., 428. Conflicts, amatory, 8. Congo, peoples of. 432. Congress of Mothers, American, llln. Pan-Anglican, 445. Conjugal intercourse, frequcncv of, 205, 209. Conjugation, 79. Consanguinity, 257. Consequence of sexual sin, 62ff. of sin, 69. Constancy, 216, 242f. Continence, effects of, 72^., 82ff. in women, 234. law of. 84f. periodic, 116fF. Contrectation, 78, 219f.. Convention. 236, 280f. Convents, 162. Conversation, purification of, 280. Cook Islands, 421. Corinth, church in, 134, 374. Corporal punishment, 47ff. Council of Trent, 98f. Courting, 12, 395. Covenant token, 433. the new, 438. Creation tablet, Babylonian, 401. Criticism, ethical, 149ff., 193f. David and Jonathan, 289. Davidic descent of Jesus, 405. Day schools, 59. Deceased husband's brother, mar- riage with, 268f. wife's sister, marriage with, 258f., 264ff. Degeneracy, sexual, 308. Desexualization (see Steriliza- tion). Detention, legal, 50, 181, 197f., 384. Deterrents, 47ff. Detumescence, 78, 116, 220. Development, sexual, 35, 286f. Differentiation, sexual, 116, 286. Dignity, 457. Discipline, church, 250, 263, 270. Disgust, 311. Divine beings and sex, 229. Child, 412. grace, 103f., 166, 213f. love (see Love of God"). providence, 104, 121, 140, 240. Spirit, 410f., 416. will, 11, 131, 133. Z27. Divorce, Christ's attitude toward, 250. church's attitude toward, 244, 247ff., 437, 441. Commission, 252, 359, 442. frequency of, 377f. in Christ's time, Z77. in primitive times, 442. Jewish teaching on, 254n., 2)77. legislation on, 248, 254f. modern consideration of, 242ff. patristic views on, 437ff. St. Paul's attitude toward, 245. State's attitude toward, 248ff. Divorce Commission, 252. Doctors, 42, 48, 75, 187. Doctrine of God, 345. of humanity, 345f. 470 INDEX. Doctrine of Jesus Christ, 345. of St. Paul, 94. Dogma, fact and idea in, 408. Dormancy of sexual organs, 81, 94. Dreams, 64, 76, 434fif. Dress, 233. Drunkenness, 139. Dusuns, 403. Eating, 9. Ebionism, 406. Economics, 109, 121. Ecstasy, sexual, 224ff., 227. Eden, Garden of, 401. Education, sexual, 35, 40fif., 193, 291n., 294ff.. 383n. of women, 21 If. Egyptians, 432. Elizabeth, Renunciation of St., 275. Emigration of women, 240f. Encratites, 375. Engagement, ethics of, 97ff., 136. English Church Union, 270. Englishwomen, chastity of, 196. modesty of, 238. Entertainments, 21. Epilogue, 457 f. Eridu, vine of, 402. Erogenic zones, 48. "Epwj, 14. Erotic art, ethics of, 2, 274ff. desire, 28. temperament, 34n. Eschatology, 333. Essenes, 369. Esthetic advertisements, 241. Ethical aspects of love, 24. aspiration, 228. ideals of sex life, 323ff. religion, 321 f. thought, modern, 193f. Ethics, Christian. 3f., 81n., 97, 132, 150, 316. 371. comparative, 149ff. evolutionary, 150. of sex (see Sexual ethics). Ethiopia, 431. Eugenics, 91ff.. 110. Eunuchism, 370n. Evil, origin of, 11, 404. Evolution of sexual morality, 312ff. Evolution, spiritual, lS4f. Excommunication, 250. Exhibition of erotic art, 277. Expulsion from school, 49fif. Fact and idea in dogma, 408. Fall of man, lln., 15n., 400fif. Family life. 53, 124. beauty of, 124. limitation of, 119. physician, 42. primitive, 394. Fathers, Christian, 437. Fecundation, 79. Feet, figurative use of, in Hebrew, 222. Female, conquest of, 156. principle, 144ff., 150ff. Ferret, masturbation in, 420. Fertility, 92, 402. Fertilization (see Procreation). Fires, the two, 456. Flesh, the, 405. Flirting, 61n. Flogging (see Whipping). Folly of girls, 153. Forbidden degrees (see Marriage prohibitions). fruit (see Fall). Forgiveness of sins, 63, 66ff., 221 ff.. 372f., 379ff. Formosa, 388. Fornication, 74ff., 88fif., 129ff., 374, 423 f. Biblical views of, 130fif. demoralization effects of, 75f. prescribing of, 74, 383. France, birth control in (see Prevention). exhibitions in, 293. homosexuality in, 293. Fraternity, primitive, 79f., 371. Free love, 95ff. Freedom, Christian, 122. Frigidity, sexual, 209f. Fructification, 417. Future life, 229ff., 382. Genesis narrative of the fall, • 400ff. Gentleness, marital, 212. Gilgames, epic of, 402. Girls, vounef. men's unchasity with. 153. INDEX. 471 Glands of Bartholin, TyQa-is, 214. Gnosticism, 375. God, a conscious entity, 453. a personal, 455. a purely subjective notion, 455. belief in, 453ff. doctrine of, 345. in the sex life, 332, 453. mercies of, 379. spirit of, 30, 374, 413, 415. the eternal existent, 454. will of, 339fT. Good and evil, 400f. Goodness, 3431if. Gospel and asceticism, 364. and sex relations, 363fif. Grace of God (see Divine Grace). Gregorian decretals, 162n. . Gregory IX, Pope, 160. Group-marriage. 389fif. Hammurabi, 262n. Haoma tree, 402. Harlot (see Prostitution). Hathan, 432. Healing processes, 63, 66. Heart, circumcision of, 433. Heaven, 87n., 364, 366. Hebrews (see Semites). Heredity, vitiated, 18, 34f., 50, 113f., 286. Hermaphroditism, 285n. Hetairse, 374. Hetairism (see Concubinage). Heterosexualitv, 58f. High Church, "247. Holiness, code of, 265f. Home Secretary, 279. Homeric Age, divorce in, 377n. Hominid?e, 390. Homosexuality, Biblical views of, 288f. forms of, 284ff. in schools. 48f.. 53f., 58f. suggested toleration of, 287ff. Hope in God, 69. Horde, the, 391ff. Hormones, 82, 306. Hospitals, lock, 179fif. House of Commons, 267, 279. Human cognition, 455. Humanity, doctrine of, 345f. "Humble a woman." 133n. Husbands, competition for, 147. wished for, 146. Hygiene, 35, 51, 433, 435. Hymns, 435. Hyperesthesia, sexual, 41. Hypnotism, 37, 383. Ideals, ethical, 263, 376. Ideas, cognition of, 341 ff., 408. moral, 5, 131, 302. nature of, 340. Idle word, the, 280n., 283. Ignorance, danger of, 42f. Illegitimacy, disabilities of, 198fif. Russian legislation on, 199. Illegitimates, heredity of, 198n. Illicit sexual unions, 95ff. Immanence, 453. Immoral advertisements, 239. Immorality (see Sexual sin. Sex- ual perversions). Immortality and sex, 229f. Imperative, cognition of the, 336f. Impotence, sexual, 65, 183f.. 209. Impregnation, 79. Impure thoughts, 70f., 366. Impurity, definition of, 128ff., 457. idea of, in sex, 7ff., 14, 36. sermon against, 457. sexual, 31, 36. spirt of, 457f. Inbreeding, 54, 261. Incarnation, the, 406n., 412. Divine, 419. Incest. 53, 257, 262. Incontinence, causes of, 17f., 192. struggles with, 70fif. Indian army, prostitution in, 180f. Indissolubilitv of marriage. 91ff., 375, 243f. Indulgentia, doctrine of. 93fif., 104, 107. 121. Infanticide, 290. Infidelity, religious, 135. Infirmity, sins of, 221flf. Innocent IV, Pope, 160. Instinct, development of sexual, 28, 77, 457. Instruction, religious. 194. Intercourse, antenuptial, 135ft'. conjugal. 221. interrupted, 120. promiscuous, 130. sexual (see Sexual intercourse). 472 INDEX. Intercourse, social, 53ff. in general, 6(Jf. Intuition. 342. Inversion, sexual, 81 (see also Homosexuality) . Invert, not necessarily a Sodo- mite, 286f. Irene, St, 351, 354. Isolation, sexual, 238. Israel, virgin of, 408. Jacob, 67ff. Javanese custom, 315. Jesus Christ and sinners, Zll. and the sex life, 366f. attitude toward asceticism, 363f. toward sinners, Z12. birth of, 411. character of, 457. doctrine of, 345. human experiences of, 367. influence over women, 226. made sin for us, 381. morality in time of, 377. pre-existence of, 412. recovers lost ideals, 376. son of David, 405. . son of Joseph, 405. sovereignty of, IZ. teaching on sexual morality, 220ff., 244ff., 257, 263, 367ff. temptation of, 87n., 368f. Jewish ethical thought, 13f., 370ff. (see also Semites). Joseph, husband of Mary, 405, 412. Juvenile depravity, 15, 20, 83, 197. Kaffirs. 421. Karezza, 219. Katabolism (see Catabolism). Kingdom of Heaven, 87n., 364, 366. King's daughter, a, 356. Knowledge, conjugal, 214f. of sex, 35, 40ff., 74ff., 188, 315, 324. 331, 457. K'thib, 281. Lambeth Conference, 20, IZ, 266, 448n. Language (see Words). Lasciviousness, 83. Legend, religious value of, 407. Legislation on erotic art, 277f. on sexual morality, 31, 52, 173, 178, 256, 268ff. Legitimation, 198. Levirate marriage, 262, 265. Liberty, Christian (see Freedom). "Libidines," 274. Life beyond, 229. family, 53, 124. Lily framed in ebony, 349ff. Literature on sex, 2, 43, 227, 242, 397fif. Lock hospitals, 179ff. Love, 343ff. conjugal, 216f., 242f. impulses, 475. is light, 458. moral considerations, 24. obligation of, 243. 7,11. of God, 13, 69, 140, 351, 418. of women, 225f. passion, 25. preference, 391. psychological elements in, 24, 153fif. sexual, 6. 22, 11^., 156f. spiritualized, 157, 224ff. superior to asceticism. 458. Love-ecstasy, a moral stimulus, 226, 229. despised in antiquity, 22, 160. history of, 224ff. passion, 29. Lupanaria, 353ff. Luther's marriage, 215n. Lycisca, 355. Male organ, 212n., 401, 421, 430, 433. principle. 6, 13. 144ff., 150ff. Manga Mysteries, 388. Manichseanism, 13, 221, 365, 369, 375. Man's responsibility, ZZ. Maoris, 421. Marriage, a religious symbol, 13. accessible to soldiers, 103n. age for, 91. among animals, 129, 387f. arbitrary restraints of, lOOff. bond, 243f. bureaus. 241. child. 390n. Christian conception of, 375. INDEX. 473 Marriage, civil, 99, 101. clandestine, 96f., 99. clerical, 99, 447. considered impure, 414. contrasted with concubinage, 129ff. early, 91 ff., 238. ecclesiastical, 101. essentials of, 95f., 98, 131ff. ethics of. lln.. 94, 131. forms of, 96ff., 397ff. group, 389ff. happiness in, 214. hygienic benefits of, 76. ideal of, 131, 243f., 248n.. 262ff.. 366, 375 f. in Middle Ages, 96, 131, 375. in New Testament, 375. in the Bible, 93, 131. is a fall, 365. laws, reform of, 91. Luther's, 215n. masturbation in, 427f. mota'a, 132. motives of, 103f. necessity of, IZ, 91 ff., Z12. obligations of, 243. origin of, 387ff. physical use of, 202ff., 364f. primitive, 387ff. prohibitions, lOOff., 257ff., 392f. public, 330f. relations unclean, 414. revelation of, 11. right of, 86f.. 375. sacramental theory of, 96f ., 376. secundam indulgentiam, 93f. service (see Anglican marriage service). spiritual, 228. St. Paul's doctrine, 94. what constitutes, 96ff. Marriageableness (see Nubility). Martyrdom, 347ff. Martyrs, virgin, 347ff. Mary, glory of, 418. mother of Jesus, 409ff. persecution of, 413. self-sacrifice of, 412. spirit of, 416. Masochism, 41, 48. Masturbation, 421 ff. condemned by Catholic moral- ists, 422f. Masturbation, effects of, 83, 300. ethical estimate of, 81, 115f., 424ff. in animals, 32, 420. in Bible, 34, 423. in children, 18, 36, 421 f. in Greek and Latin classics, 422. in married life, 427f. in primitive races, 421. in schools, 43ff. in young children, 36. mental, 72. mutual, 427f. Materialism, 94. Maternity, considered impure, 414. homes, 200. Matriarchate, 132, 260. Matrimonial advertisements, 239ff. failure, 242ff., 437ff. Matrimony (see Marriage). Medical ethics (see Secrecy). examination, 171f. men (see Doctors). Medicine, 64ff., 71. Medieval morals, 443. Meetings, purity, 20. Melanesians, 391n. Men, affection between, 284ff. Menstruation, intercourse during, 207f. Mercies of God, 63ff., 379. Meretrix, 134. Messalina, 354. Metaphysical basis of sexual mor- ality, 334ff. Middle Ages, divorce in, 442. marriage in, 96. morality in, 39. 158ff. prostitution in, 158ff. Missal, Roman, 436. Mission field, polygamy in, 444ft'. of concord. 253. Moderatio. 214n. Modesty about natural functions, 233. Biblical' estimate of, 14, 232ff. ethical purpose of, 7, 232. in animals, 320. of Englishwomen, 238. origins of, 7ff., 232. sexual. 7, 312ff. Moloch, 6. 21, 35. 62. 95. Monandry, 449. Monkeys, sexuality in, 205. 421. 474 INDEX. Monogamy, 10, 11, 14, 387ff., 396ff. universe, 335. Monotheism, 66. Moral growth, 34f. judgments, imperfection of hu- man, 5, 131, 302. suasion, 40, 172, 176, 251, 268, 270 384 Moralists,' 2, 32, 88. 130, 384. Morality among soldiers, 138ff. Christian, 328f. in New Testament times, 371, 376. in time of Christ, Zll . origin of, 312ff. standards of, 149ff. theology. 329ff. Morals, medieval, 443. service, 175, 188. sexual, 149. Morbidity, 51, 62, 66, 436. Mormonism, 444. Mortal sin, 129f. Mosaic law, 327. Mothers and sons, 40f. Multiplicatio amicitise. 259f. Murder, algolagnic, 90, 301. Mutterschutz Bund, 154. Mystic rose (symbol of B. V. Mary). Mystical intuition, 342. Mystics, medieval, 26. Mythology, 414f. Nakedness, 15, 53, 55, 262. Narcissism, 304. Nature, interference with, 114. of ideas, 340. symbolism. 401 f. worship, 12f. Neomalthusianism (see Preven- tion). Nero, 302f. Neurasthenia, 63f., 83ff. Neuropathic conditions, 62, 81, 286f. New Zealand, 21, 38. 123, 191, 198f. commission appointed in, 123f. government. 58. 123. legislation. 123, 269. 279. schools. 57. Nocturnal pollution. 64. 76, 434ff. frequency of, 434. in literature, 434. Nocturnal pollution, moral aspect of, 435f . volitional repression of, 435 f. Norms, ethical, 193f. Notification of disease, 183ff. Nubility, 91ff. Nude in art, 275fif. Nullity of marriage, 242ff., 437ff. Nurses, Zl . Nymphomania, 120. Oknanikilla, 79. Onan's trespass, 106. Onanism (see Masturbation). Opfer, 87. Orgasm, sexual, 76. 81, 115. 120. reaction after, 81, 221. 301. Orinoco belief, 79n. Ornamentation, 43 In. Ovum, not sexually passive, 235. Pain, a sexual stimulus, 48 (see also Algolagnia). power of bearing, 433. Pairing season, primitive, 387. Panegyris, 225. Paradise, 62f. narrative (see Fall). Pardon, divine, 441. Parental control, 193. Parents, duties of, 40ff., 62, 188. Paternity, primitive, 79f., 371. registration of, 198ff. unknown, 79f. Patriarchate, 260ff. Peasantrv, morality among, 312ff. Penis (see Male organ). Penology, 49f.. 284f., 301. Periodicity, sex, 8, 206, 434. Persecutions. Christian, 349. Personal purity, 346. religion, 103f., 164. Perversion, sexual (see Sexual perversion). Phimosis, 433. Phrygia, morality in, Zll . Physical degeneration. 112. Pictures, indecent, 277f. Pigeon, masturbation in, 420. Pinacium, 225. Platonic friendship, 55. TrXeovefta, 203. Pollution (see Nocturnal pollu- tion). INDEX. 475 Polyandry, 448n. Polygamy, 268. 444ff. after the Thirty Years' War, 447. Christian judgment, 451 f. conjugal, 152. how justified, 447f. native clergy on, 451. possible developments, 450. Polynesians, 280, 421. Pope, dispensing power of, 446. Population, checks on, 106, 114f., 431. Potentia coeundi, 115. generandi, 115. Poverty. 107. Prayer, 2>7. Preaching, 383f. Pregnancy, intercourse during, 204f. spiritual, 79. Pre-human ancestor, 2)%7. Prepuce, 430, 433. Prevention, 96ff., 106ff., 290. analogies of, 113f., 123. dangerous, 116, 120. economic aspects, 109. ethical aspects, 124. • historical aspects, 106. in Bible, 122. in Middle Ages, 107. in United States, 123. legislation on, 122f. methods of, 114ff. moral aspect of, 108f., 113ff. Primitive courtship, 395. family, 394. marriage, 387ff. morality, 131n., 135n. paternity, 79f., 371. social organization, 391fif. Principles, female, 144ff., 150ff. male, 144ff., ISOff. Privacy in sex love, 22, 160, 323flf., 457. Probehe, 137. Procreation, 80f., 91 f., 116f., 326. control of (see Prevention). Procreative utility, 326. Procurers, punishment of, 169f. Prohibition of marriage, 262. of prostitution, 179n., 392. . Promiscuity, 128ff., 388f. Prophets of Israel, 13. Prophets of morality, 371, 376. Prostate, 72. Prostatic fluid, 65. Prostitute, a citizen, 173. an outcast, 158. product of environment, 163. Prostitutes, fate of, 161. "good," 159. in captured city, 142f. in medieval Europe, 159. marriage of, 162. psychology of 163ff. purveyors of clean, 179, 181. registration of, 179, 182. repression of, 160, 178f. rescue work among, 158ff. sense of sin among, 142. 181 n. treatment of, 158ff., 180. Prostitution, 74ff., 88, 138ff., 388. aggressive, 173ff. alleged necessity of, 74ff., 144, 180. Christian views of, 159. dangers of, 86f., 95, 171 f. discontent with it, 155. 181n. in a garrison town, 103n., 180. in India, 180. justified (?), 144, 180. legislative control of, 172ff., 164, 178, 182f. psychological conditions, 155. religious, 10, 132. repulsive, 159. toleration of, 155, 158f., 177. self-defense, 155. Prudery, 94, 238, 278. Psychology, 318ff., 342. Psychosexual hermaphroditism, 291. Puberty, 91. Punishment, 47ff. capital, 284f., 301. corporal, 47f. divine, 62f., 382. unwise. 38, 287. Purity, 20, 144f.. 22,2, 343ff., 384f guilds, 200. 383f. personal, 346. question, 20, 31. spirit of, 3S8ff. Q'ri, 281. Quacks (see Specialists). Queenslanders, 280n. 476 INDEX. Questions for parents, 35n. Rainbow, 23. Rape, 143. Rarotongans, 421. Reaction after orgasm, 81, 221, 301. Recklessness, sexual, 128, 203, 208f. Reformation, moral, 40, 172, 176, 251, 268, 270, 384. Reformatories, 50, 56ff., 197. Registration of illegitimates, 198fif. of prostitutes, 179, 182. Reglementation. 171 ff.. 182. Rehearsal, sexual, 135n. Reincarnation, 412. Religion and sex, 329f!'. in the child, 321 f. personal, 103f., 213f., 456. Religious factor, 339. instruction, 194. Remarriage, 248ff., 261n., 371. after divorce, 248ff. Renaissance, art of, 276. Repugnance, sexual, 53. Repulsion, sexual, 53, 209, 257, 262. Rescue work, 158ff., 173, 176f., 180. Responsibility, 5, 32, 299, 302f. of woman, 265. Restoration of sexual nature (see Healing processes). primitive, 11, lln. Revelation, Christian, 87. Rights, natural, 131, 368. sexual. 86f., 131, 237. 260ff., 369. Roman Church and divorce, 250. missal, 436. Russian legislation, 199. Rut, 226n. Ruth, story of, 237. Sack of a city, 139. Sacrament of marriage, 96f., 375f. Sadism (see Algolagnia). Safe (see Condom). Saints, 26. Saints' days, 348. Salvation, preaching of, 384. Sandow exercises, 435n. Satyriasis, 120. Savages, sex love in, 19n. School life, 42ff.. 49ff. Schoolmasters, 43, 62. Science of sex, 3. Sculpture, Greek, 274. Roman, 275. Secrecy, desire for, 8fif. medical, 187. Secularism, 248n. Seduction, 90, 132. Self-abuse (see Masturbation), -control, 156f. -love, 79. -sacrifice, 45, 87, 95. 103, 121 f., 233, 244, 291, 308f., 364ff., 370. 375, 457. of Mary. 412. -suggestion, 66. Selfishness, masculine, 89f., 199f. Seminal discharges (see Nocturn- al pollution). Semites, 432. Sermon agaist impuritj^ 457. Serpent, 401. Severus, 352. Sex, a factor in progress, 12. -cells, 77. differentiation, imperfect, 115f., 286. future of, 228f. hunger, 324. knowledge, 35, 40ff., 74ff., 188, 315, 324, 331. life, ethical ideals of, 323ff., 457. Christ and the, 366f. God in the, 332. St. Paul and the, 367, 373f. lives of saints, 26. love, analysis of, 22, 160. metaphysical basis of, 334ff. mixing of, 56ff. morality and theology, 329ff. question at Corinth, 374. relations vmclean, 414. science of, 3. sins of, 379. .Sexes, disproportion of, 446. Sexual abstinence, 116, 123f., 212f., 365. act, 77, 114ff. counted unclean, 414. activity in the female, 235. » attraction, 12, 54. 225, 233, 235. desire, moderated in marriage, . 119. women's, 118. education, 35, 40ff., 188. INDEX. 477 Sexual ethics, 1, 11, 24, 144, 331. Christian, 3f., 81n., 131ff., 371ff. evolution, 312flf. excess in marriage, 128, 203, - 208f. function, imperfect control of, 71. gratification, how far necessary, 74ff. immaturity, 457. impurity, 31, 443, 457f. instinct, development of, 28, 11, 457. spiritualized, 458. instruction 40ff. intercourse, 75. inversion, sexual, 81 (see also Homosexuality ) . literature, 2. love, 6, 22, 77ff. morality, 40ff., 91, 312ff. nature, cleansing of. 221ff. neurasthenia, 63f., 83, 183f., 435. organs, dormancy of, 81, 94. imperfect formation of, 115f. periodicity (see Periodicity), perversion, 2, 25ff., 47ff., 116, 128, 284ff., 383. phenomena, 27. precocity, 34f. prohibitions, 152. promiscuity, 128ff. relations, the Gospel and, 363ff. must be spiritualized, 458. renunciations, 148. repugnance, 53. repulsion (see Repulsion), rights, 324. shame in animals. 320. sin, 5, 88, 221 ff., 379ff. among animals, 32. analysis of, 15, 32f. consequences of, 62ff., 68. effects of, 62ff., 382. taboo, 53. temperance, 324. unions, illicit. 95ff., 131ff. Sexuality in antiquity, 17, 224f. in celibacy, 72. in civilization, 1, 14ff., 191, 234. in Middle Ages. 442f. in primitive races, 19n. in spiritually minded men, 70. in women, 17. 117, 210, 234, 240. Sexuality on the carnal side, 14. spiritualized, 28, 224ff. two Biblical views of, 13ff. Shame (see Modesty). Sin (see Evil). "bearing" of, 380. mortal, 129. sense of, 5, 88, 221 ff., 379ff. Sins of sex, 379. Sinfulness, notion of. in sex (see Modesty, Impurity). Slave morality, 317. prostitutes, 168f. Slavery, 430. Social evil (see Prostitution). intercourse, 53ff. Society, evolution of, 391 ff. Sociology, 455. Sodomy (see Homosexuality). Soldiers, morality among, 138ff. Soldiers' wives, 441. Solicitation, 174n. Specialists, 64ff., 71. Speech, impurity of, 457f. sins of, 215, 282. Sperm, 235. Spinsters, freedom of, 235. Spirit of God, 30, 374, 413. 415. Divine, 410, 416. Holy. 410. 414. Spiritism. 230. Spiritual beings, evolution, 154f. enlightenment, 154. manhood, 457. marriage, 228. Spiritualized love, 157, 224ff. sexual instinct, 458. St. Vincent de Paul, 160. State (see Legislation). Statuary (see Sculpture). Sterile period. 117f. Sterilization, 50. 80, 308ff. Stimuli, sexual. 54. 299. Stone Age. sexuality in, 19n. Sufferings of Mary, 412f. Suggestion, prohibitive, Zl . self-, 66. Summa Angelica, the, 448n. Sun-clad woman, 408. Swahili women, 401. Symbolism, nature, 401 ff. Sympathy, IZ, 83, 267. Syphilis, 184f. 478 INDEX. Taboo, sexual, 10, 15, 53, 152, 260, 262 f. Tardemah, 23. Tattooing, 431n. Teaching, 194, 383f. of Tolstoy, 365. Temperament, erotic, 34n. Temperance, 324. Temptation, 384, 403, 456. Themistocles, 227. Theology and sex morality, 329ff. Thoughts, impure (see Impure thoughts). Tiberius, 349. Tobacco. 38. Todas, 390n. Toledo, Council of, 443. Tongans, 431. Transmutation, 28f. Tree of knowledge, 403. oi life, 401 ff. Trent, Council of, 98f. Trust in God, personal, 67. Truth, 343ff. self-evident, 342f. Tuberculosis, 109. Tumescence, 78, 116, 212, 220. Unchastity (see Incontinence, Sexual sin). Universe, the moral, 335. University life, 56f. Unnatural crimes (see Sexual perversion). Use, law of, 76. Varicocele, 65. Veddahs. 394. Veil, symbolism of, 374. Venereal disease, prevention of, 171ff. and marriage, 183ff. medical examination be- fore, 183ff. secrecy, 187. registration, 186. Vigpataokhma tree. 402. Vincent de Paul, St., 160. Vine of Eridu (see Eridu). Virgin birth, the, of Christ, 405fif. goddesses, 409n. of Israel, the, 408, 414. of Nazareth, 414. martyrs, 347fif. Virgin martyrs, execution, 356. the outrage, 355. the sentence, 353. the trial, 352. Virgin's aureole, the, 362. Virginitate, De, 440. Virginity, Christian, 347. estmiates of. 133, 358. false estimate of, 360. glory of, 362. in art, 348. in history, 357. in New Testament, 347. in pagan Rome, 349. spirit of, 359. toward a deeper estimate of, 361. Virility, 157. in primitive races, 361. Volition (see Will). War, ix, 138ff., 315. Washing, hygiene of, 433. symbolism of, 221 f. What is love, 22. Whipping, 48f., 89. White-slave traffic, 168ff. Widowhood, 261n. Wife's kindred, 262. Will, 47, 70f., 85, 286, 243, 341. autonomv of the, 338. Divine, 11, 131, 133, 2,27, 446. of God. 339ff. Wives, soldiers', 441. Woman, emancipation of, 374. the sun-clad, 408. Women, education of, 21 If. homosexuality in, 284ff. literature by, 154. masturbation in, 422. modesty in, 232ff., 238, 374. of the Arunta, 79. public utterances of, 154. sexuality in, 17, 118, 234. social work of, 154. spiritual evolution of, 375. trust of, 157. Word, the, 380. -painting, 276. Words, indecent, 280ff., 457f. Yellow peril, 125. Young girls, men's unchastitv with, 153.