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Title: Essays in medical sociology, Volume I (of 2)
Author: Blackwell, Elizabeth
Language: English
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VOLUME I (OF 2) ***
ESSAYS IN MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY
ESSAYS
IN
MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY
BY
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D.
_VOLUME I._
LONDON
ERNEST BELL, YORK STREET
COVENT GARDEN
1902
PREFACE.
At the request of friends I have willingly consented to the
republication of my writings of past years in a uniform edition.
Truth never grows old, though re-adaptation to different phases of life
may be necessary. I shall rejoice if anything I have written in the
past may prove helpful to the younger generation of workers, with whom
I am in hearty sympathy.
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D.
HASTINGS,
_May, 1902_.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
ESSAY PAGE
I. THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN SEX 1
II. MEDICAL RESPONSIBILITY IN RELATION TO THE CONTAGIOUS
DISEASES ACTS 83
III. RESCUE WORK IN RELATION TO PROSTITUTION AND DISEASE 113
IV. PURCHASE OF WOMEN: THE GREAT ECONOMIC BLUNDER 133
V. THE MORAL EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG IN RELATION TO SEX 175
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN SEX
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER I
THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF HUMAN SEX 9
CHAPTER II
EQUIVALENT FUNCTIONS IN THE MALE AND FEMALE 18
CHAPTER III
ON THE ABUSES OF SEX--I. MASTURBATION 34
CHAPTER IV
ON THE ABUSES OF SEX--II. FORNICATION 44
CHAPTER V
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA OF CHASTITY 60
CHAPTER VI
MEDICAL GUIDANCE IN LEGISLATION 70
APPENDIX I 75
APPENDIX II 79
INTRODUCTION
This work is written from the standpoint of the Christian physiologist.
The essence of all religions is the recognition of an Authority
higher, more comprehensive, more permanent than the human being. The
characteristic of Christian teaching is the faith that this Supreme
Authority is beneficent as well as powerful. The Christian believes
that the Creative Force is a moral force, of more comprehensive
morality than the human being that it creates. Under the symbol of a
wise and loving parent--the most just, efficient, and attractive image
that we know of--we are encouraged to regard this unseen Authority as
being in direct relation with every atom of creation, and as desirous
of drawing each atom into progressively higher forms of existence.
The Christian physiologist, therefore, knowing that there is a wise and
beneficent purpose in the human structure, seeks to find out the laws
and methods of action by means of which human function may accomplish
its highest use.
The task can only be carried out gradually. Ultimate function is not
revealed by structure, nor ultimate use by function.
The empty arteries did not suggest the circulation of the blood
to ancient physiologists, nor did the curious arrangements of the
intestinal canal explain the complicated function of digestion.
Ignorance of facts, preconceived notions, or fanciful theories as
to ‘vital spirits,’ ‘cold and hot humours,’ etc., long delayed the
attainment of correct knowledge of physiological facts.
Neither does physical knowledge of individual function reveal the
developed use of which it is capable. The new life that may be given
through touch to the blind, or the destruction of a nation through its
vices, is not revealed by the minutest examination of the mechanism of
touch, or the physical structure of the nervous system. Function and
use are only proved by observation, reflection, and rational experiment
patiently carried on age after age, with generalization based upon
accurate and accumulated facts.
Structure, function, and extended use, although closely connected,
are, nevertheless, separate branches of inquiry. Applied physiology
comprehends them all. Function is the arrangement by means of which the
independent life of the sentient being is carried on and maintained.
Developed function or use includes the growth and improvement of the
individual in relation to his fellows, and to existence outside his own
personality.
No physiological truth is more firmly established than the fact that
we can modify the action of our physical organs towards the special
objects related to them, by the way in which we use our organs. By
long-continued and careful study of the apparatus and processes of
digestion, the physiologist has discovered the general plan by means
of which food is converted into the substance of the body, and the
part which each portion of the complicated digestive system takes
in the maintenance of daily life. He does not stop, however, with
this discovery of the general plan by which food is converted into
flesh. He studies the way in which our habits of eating and drinking
may destroy or improve the power of digestion, and recognises the
effects which various kinds of food and drink may exercise upon the
character of the individual and the race. The physiologist, therefore,
proceeds to investigate, as a direct branch of necessary human
physiological inquiry, the influence which the consumption of flesh
or fruit, of alcohol or water, of warm or cold articles, of quantity
or quality, etc., exerts upon the unique organization of the human
being, in producing health or disease in mankind; or upon the power of
self-control or endurance, with the promotion of ferocious or genial
tendencies in Man. Both human strength and human character can be
affected by enlarged knowledge and control of the uses which belong to
the digestive system.
What is true of the effects of food is equally true of the effect of
every other physical condition of human life. It is, therefore, a
special work of the rational physiologist to discover the higher uses
of our varied human faculties. We only see at present the beginning
of this great work of applied physiology in enabling us to comprehend
the full effects of food, air, exercise, climate, etc., upon human
character. We possess only vague knowledge of the great facts of the
hereditary transmission of diseased or healthy tendencies; and we give,
as yet, no due consideration to the important results which follow from
such transmission. We only faintly realize the transforming power of
habit or mind in healthy growth and in morbid degeneration.
These investigations form a distinct branch of applied physiology;
and such investigation and application of physiology is the especial
duty of the rational or Christian physiologist who sees clearly that
creative force is a beneficent power; and this perception cheers and
guides him in the perplexed paths which lead towards human growth and
perfection.
Medicine and morality being related to function and use are, therefore,
inseparable in a Progressive State. The union between the physical,
moral, and intellectual elements of our nature cannot be dissolved
during lifetime. To speak of the ‘Physician of Nature’ and ‘Physician
of Grace,’ as two entirely distinct classes is an untenable position or
a misleading sophism. Sound education, State medicine, healthy society,
must all be based upon the inseparable union of the various elements
of the human constitution. This is the only rational system in a
Progressive State; any other practice leads to empirical medicine and
hypocritical morality.
The unity of human nature gives immense importance to the influences
which surround the beginning of life and the education of the young.
The greatest present obstacle to progress is the ignorance of parents,
and above all of mothers, of many facts of physiology, and particularly
of the facts of sexual physiology. For want of this knowledge our
nurseries and schools are not wisely guarded, young people lack
guidance, and marriages are too often the mischievous union of two
unsuitable partners.
By the present lamentable ignorance of sound physiology, men and women
lack the elements necessary for forming correct judgment on the most
important relations of life. Parents are thus unequal to their first
duty, viz., the guiding of domestic and social life, as helpmeets to
one another.
In all the excellent treatises on physiology, domestic economy and
education, prepared for the special instruction and help of parents and
teachers, all knowledge is generally omitted which refers to the sexual
functions; yet to the parent or educator this is an essential branch
of knowledge. A woman attempts to carry on her work blindfold, who
tries to educate her children, guide her household, or take her proper
part in society without this knowledge. She understands nothing that
is going on around her; she sees nothing but the surface of things;
her influence is either stupid, mischievous, or negative, if she is
not truthfully instructed in relation to the central force of human
emotion and action.
Mothers, requiring this knowledge for their special duties which
commence with infant life, can with propriety, purity, and reverence
study the action and uses of our sexual powers. Their intense interest
in the family and self-sacrificing devotion to its welfare, their
insight into its needs, and their sensitive consciousness of the
approach of danger to their offspring, make them the providentially
appointed guardians of the young. The profound depth of the passion of
maternity in women extends not only to the relations of marriage, but
to all the weak or suffering wherever found. It gives a sacredness to
the woman’s appreciation of sex, which has not yet been utilized for
the improvement of the social life of the nation.
The ignorance of parents in relation to essential facts is deplorable.
I believe it to be the source of our gravest social evils. In the
present work, therefore, which I offer to my profession as an aid in
the instruction of parents and guardians of the young, I shall speak
with the frankness of profound respect in relation to our God-created
faculties. As a Christian physiologist, I shall endeavour to show the
true and noble use involved in the highest of our human functions.
CHAPTER I
_The Distinctive Character of Human Sex_
A fundamental error as to the nature of human sex too generally exists
amongst us, from failure to recognise that in the human race the mind
tends to rule the body, and that sex in the human being is even more
a mental passion than a physical instinct. This superficial view dims
our perception of the causes which produce the facts around us; it also
prevents our recognising the essential difference which exists between
human and brute sex, and it blinds us to the imperative necessity of
giving human education to this part of our nature.
As the study of the human body is carried on from its simpler to
its more complex parts, it is perceived that the physiology of the
more complex functions takes in a wider range of relations. The wise
guidance of these more complex powers by parent or physician in
health, and disease, demands a careful consideration of this extended
range of relations. Thus the proper nourishment and exercise of the
brain require more extended knowledge than the hygienic treatment
of the skin, and diseases of the brain cause more serious danger to
the individual. So all the faculties which belong to the life of
relation--viz., the faculties which, like the senses, link us to our
fellows--involve a broader range of study than those which appertain
solely to those functions of the body which concern only the individual.
The portion of our organization most difficult of study, but also
requiring the widest range of knowledge for its healthy guidance, is
the faculty of sex. This faculty has a very complex aspect from its
three-fold relation to the race, to men, and to women.
Sex is not essential to individual existence, but it is indispensable
to the continuance of the race; and the progressive or retrograde
character of the race largely depends upon the wisdom with which this
faculty is guided in youth, and the character of the parental relations
which are established.
A serious difficulty in understanding how to educate and regulate the
relations of sex arises from the fact that it is the relation of two
equal but distinct halves of the human race, and exists in the dual
form--male and female. Unless the distinctive characteristics and
requirements of each of these equal halves are fully understood, the
relation between them cannot be satisfactory. The physiological meaning
of the differences in organization between the sexes is at present very
imperfectly understood.
The most striking distinction, however, in the manifestation of the
sexual faculties exists between man and the brute creation, and is
found in the mental or moral aspects which it assumes in man. The
general structural resemblance between man and the lower animals
affords no guidance to the education of this human faculty, for the
differences between man and the lower animals are radically greater
than the resemblance between them.
The most evident form of this mental difference shows itself as a
sentiment of self-consciousness which is not observed in the brute.
If an animal is not frightened by human beings it never hesitates in
carrying on sexual congress in their presence, and neither before nor
after the special act does it exhibit the smallest approach to shame
in relation to it. In man, however, from the earliest dawn of the
approaching faculty, self-consciousness is intense. This is not only
observed in well brought-up boys and girls, who shrink from indecency
of word or action, but it is never entirely extinguished in the most
corrupt man or woman; and even the poor little waifs of our streets,
blighted from earliest infancy, exhibit marked consciousness in their
infantile depravity. All the vast difference between the gregariousness
of the lower animals and the highest human civilization indicates the
mental difference which moulds the human form of the sexual relations.
Permanent parental care of offspring, mutual respect between the sexes,
reverence for these faculties as typifying the mighty Creative Power
of the universe, are stages of social progress based upon this mental
difference in human and brute sex.
It is the mental or moral aspect of our sexual powers which, as
society grows, shapes so much of the literature of every civilized
country. In the popular ballads of a people, songs of love are even
more abundant than patriotic songs; and as education spreads amongst
the masses, romances and novels form the bulk of popular reading.
The subject of love is always of the most absorbing interest to the
younger and more active portion of a people; sexual passion, in its
ennobling or debasing form, exercises irresistible attraction.
Our amusements and our customs are largely moulded by the same powerful
attraction, viz., the mental and moral quality of the relations which
are formed between the sexes. As civilization advances, and dense
masses of human beings are crowded together in heterogeneous selfish
strife, the destructive extremes of luxury and pauperism appear. From
this state of society, where misery will do anything for money, and the
satiety of luxury seeks fresh stimulus, speculation in this strongest
part of our nature--sex--arises. Its creative use disappears, and it
becomes a subject of merchandise. Every variety of effort is made to
stimulate and debase the mental quality or sentiment of sex, and the
strength of human passion furnishes an exhaustless field for corrupt
speculation.
It is therefore not the simple physical aspect of the reproductive
powers which is remarkable in humanity. The physical instinct is shared
with the rest of the animal creation. It is the unique and powerful
mental and moral element, the principle that moulds and governs human
sex, which produces such striking results in the life of our race.
The mental or emotional element in these powers, both in relation
to the action and reaction of mind and body, and the hereditary
transmission of tendencies, will, therefore, largely engage the
attention of the physiologist who truly studies our human nature. The
distinctive moral character of human sex renders the exclusive study
of physical phenomena in man as useless and unscientific a method of
investigation as would be the study of music on dumb instruments. The
distinctively mental character of human sex must therefore always be
recognised as a guide in any physiological inquiry into the structure
and functions of the physical organs especially appropriated to the use
of sex.
The clue to a true knowledge of sexual functions in man and woman is
found in this striking peculiarity of the human race, viz., that these
functions are largely dominated by mental action, and that sex in the
human being does not mean simply the action of the physical organs, but
also the conjoined mental principle directing those organs.
Sex, therefore, in the human race alone, resting upon that broad,
well-marked mental foundation, is capable of great development towards
good or towards evil. As simply material satisfaction soon reaches
the limit which bounds matter, so mental or spiritual enjoyment is
capable of indefinite growth. It is this mental sentiment peculiar to
human sex which is capable of a twofold development. It may grow into
a noble sympathy, self-sacrifice, reverence, and joy, which enlarge
and intensify the nature through the gradual expansion of the inborn
moral elements of sex. It is also this same intensity of the mental
form and power of sex, possessed by mankind alone, which allows of the
perversion and extreme degradation of sex which is observable only in
the human race. It is the degradation of this mental power when running
riot in unchecked license that converts men and women into selfish and
cruel devils--monsters, quite without parallel in the brute creation.
These facts are strikingly illustrated by the anatomical and
physiological constitution of the human being. The structure and
functions of the generative system in our race are contrived in such a
way as to support two great leading principles of existence.
These fundamental principles are--First, the independence, freedom,
and perfection of the individual. Second, the preservation of the
race. These two objects are secured to a certain extent in all
highly organized creatures; but in the human race provision is made
for individual freedom in a much more marked and perfect manner, in
accordance with the superior rank of man in creation.
The brute, both male and female, is at certain times blindly dominated
by the physical impulse of sex. This impulse in the lower animal is
a simple imperative instinct, unhesitatingly yielded to, with no
preparation or after-thought, with no calculation, shame, triumph, or
regret. But it is very different with the human race, as it grows from
lower to higher states of society. Thoughts and feelings, social ties
and conscience, religious training and the objects of life, all act
upon the distinctive mental character of sex; and it is seen that the
welfare of a third factor, viz., the child, is inseparably connected
with these relations.
Its character is thus changed to a very complex faculty. The young man
or woman blindly yielding to this power of sexual attraction, against
the remonstrance of a high sense of duty, is torn by remorse, and is
consciously self-degraded.
The influence of the moral element is also strikingly shown by an evil
peculiar to the human race, viz., suicide or insanity as the result of
unhappy love.
The growing power of the mental element over sex in all the higher
races of mankind is demonstrated by the ennobling friendships between
men and women which increasingly brighten life in our own Anglo-Saxon
civilization. The free and friendly intercourse of self-respecting
youth of both sexes satisfies the complex wants of early man and
womanhood; there is physical as well as mental refreshment in such
honourable and natural human intercourse.
In the young man or woman, just entered into the full possession of all
the human faculties, where the special attraction of two tends towards
marriage, this moral or mental predominance is still remarkable. The
attraction towards the other sex is rich in mental delights. The
passing sight of the object beloved, a word, a look, a smile, will
make sunshine in the gloomiest day. The consciousness of spiritual
attraction will sustain and guard through long waiting for more
complete union.
The physical pleasure which attends the caresses of love is a rich
endowment of humanity, granted by a beneficent Creative Power. There
is nothing necessarily evil in physical pleasure. Though inferior
in rank to mental pleasure, it is a legitimate part of our nature,
involving always some degree of mental action. The satisfaction which
our senses, sight, hearing, touch, etc., derive from all lovely objects
adapted to the special sense, indicates that beneficence latent in the
‘cosmic process’ which enters into the physical manifestation of our
present earthly life. The sexual act itself, rightly understood in its
compound character, so far from being a necessarily evil thing, is
really a Divinely created and altogether righteous fulfilment of the
conditions of present life. This act, like all human acts, is subjected
to the inexorable rule of moral law. Righteous use brings renewed
and increasing satisfaction to the two made one in harmonious union.
Unrighteous use produces satiety, coldness, repulsion, and misery to
the two remaining apart, through the abuse of a Divine gift.
At a public table in the Tyrol I once heard an Austrian officer, a most
repulsive spectacle, dying of his vices, boast of his ruined life, and
declare that he would take the consequences and live it over again had
he the power to do so. This is the insanity of lust. But it illustrates
the inseparable union of soul and body in human sex.
It is the mental element dominating the physical impulse in man, for
evil, which produces that monstrous creation, cold, selfish, and cruel,
which is seen only in the man or woman abusing the creative powers of
sex.
It will thus be seen that in the varieties of degradation of our
sexual powers, as well as in their use and ennoblement, it is the
predominance of the mental or spiritual element in our nature which
is the characteristic fact of human sex. The inventions and abuses of
lust, as well as the use and guidance of love, alike prove the striking
and important distinction which exists between the sexual organization
of man and that of the lower animals.
CHAPTER II
_Equivalent Functions in the Male and Female_
In examining the characteristics of sex in Man under its dual aspect,
male and female, Nature’s primary or rudimentary aim in establishing
sex must be clearly recognised. This aim is the reproduction of the
species.
Pleasure in sexual congress is an incident depending largely on mental
constitution. In the varying ranks of the animal creation it may or may
not exist in connection with reproduction; for it is not essential to
the one all-important dominating fact in nature, viz., parentage.
Reproduction is accomplished in various ways in the widely differing
ranks of living creatures. Man, owing to certain general resemblances
of physical structure, belongs to the higher class of animals, the
Mammalia. In this class the two factors necessary to reproduction,
viz., ova and semen or sperm, exist in separate individuals. The ova
or seed are formed in the ovaries, two small bodies placed within the
pelvis of the female; whilst the sperm or vitalizing fluid is formed
in the testes, two small bodies placed outside the pelvis of the male.
The organs or parts which produce the ova and semen are strictly
analogous in the two sexes. Each part in the female corresponds to a
similar part in the male; and at an early period of existence before
birth it is impossible to determine whether the sex of the embryo is
male or female.
Whilst the male and female organs concerned in the production of semen
and of ova are parallel and in strict correspondence, there is one
striking deficiency in the male structure. The organ essential to the
development of the human being, the organ into which the fertilized
ovum (or human seed) must be brought for growth, is wanting in the male
structure. This deficiency or difference between the sexes produces
important physiological results. The special part which the male has
to perform physically in the all-important reproductive function of
sex finishes with the act of sexual congress, but it continues in
the female. If conception has taken place, the results of this act
become increasingly important. The life of sex, or all that belongs
to the life of the race, as distinguished from the existence of the
individual, becomes continuously and for a long time inseparable
from the woman’s personal existence. Thus, all the relations of sex
form a more important part of the woman’s than of the man’s life.
Another important fact in sexual construction must be noted--viz., the
nervous connections of the sexual organs. All the parts concerned in
reproduction are in close communication with the brain by means of the
nervous system and that enlargement of the spinal cord at the base of
the brain, the medulla oblongata. If the nervous connection between the
generative organs and the brain be severed, no consciousness of those
parts will remain. But whilst the natural nervous connection exists,
the influence of the brain upon those organs is continually felt,
and information as to their changes is sent to the brain. This nerve
connection exists from birth, although the formation of ova and semen
(on which the power of reproduction depends) does not take place until
a later date. Keen nervous sensation may, therefore, be perceived at
any time after birth, although offspring cannot be produced until the
more or less perfect establishment of reproductive power at puberty.
It is of great importance to recognise this fact in the education of
children.
The above general statements respecting the division and correspondence
of the sexual organs in the male and female, and their connection with
the brain through the nervous system, are true of all the Mammalia,
where, as in man, the reproductive power exists in two separate
individuals. When, however, we consider the way in which these
functions act in the work of reproduction, an important difference is
observed between their action in man and in the lower animals. This
difference places man physically in a different and superior category
from the brute creation.
The physiological arrangement of physical sex in man corresponds to the
demands made by the increasing complexity of the sentiment of mental
sex.
As already stated, the two essential features of physical sex are
ovulation and sperm-formation. These two important factors in the
joint work of reproduction are governed by a different rule in human
and in brute life. In man they exist under the rule of continuity and
of self-adjustment--_i.e._, these functions are always existent--but
at the same time they adapt themselves to the higher needs of the
individual. These two laws under which the functions exist--viz., 1st,
continuity of action; 2nd, power of self-adjustment--are distinctive
marks of superior human sexual function. Both are necessitated by the
growth of reason--_i.e._, by a progressive civilization.
This will be understood clearly by dwelling more in detail on the
way in which these two essential parts of reproduction--viz.,
sperm-formation and ovulation--are established in the human race. In
reproduction, the ova which are constantly produced in the female
require to be fertilized by contact with the semen, which is constantly
produced by the male, before they can commence the remarkable series
of changes and transformations which result in the formation of the
embryo, the rudimentary human being.
Semen is a highly vitalized fluid, slowly but constantly secreted or
formed by the male. As is the case with all organized living fluids,
it is filled with rapidly-moving particles (spermatozoa), and its
vitality appears to be in direct ratio to the quantity and activity of
such movement. Motion seems to be inseparably connected with life, and
is distinctive of any highly vitalized fluid. Thus, in the important
and highly organized fluid, the blood, we observe constant motion and
change in the active little bodies with which it is filled.
This quality of great and active vitality appears to be indispensable
to the spermatozoon which in the work of procreation is obliged to
traverse long and winding passages in order to come in contact with the
ovum which is advancing to meet it. An intense energy in the special
act of procreation is needed to overcome the difficulties which may
prevent conception.
It is here necessary to note a common but mischievous fallacy. This
necessary energy on the part of the male, in order to overcome
anatomical difference of structure in sexual congress, is commonly
considered an indication or measurement of the superior force of sexual
attraction or passion in the male.
This superficial judgment is not unnatural, as facts which are patent
to the senses suggest the first crude thought. The chief structures
of the male are external, but they are internal in the female. This
difference of structure first suggests to the boy the meaning of
actions of the lower animals, whilst the girl may grow up to full
womanhood in complete unconsciousness of their signification.
This failure to recognise the equivalent value of internal with
external structure has led to such crude fallacy as a comparison of the
penis with such a vestige as the clitoris, whilst failing to recognise
that vast amount of erectile tissue, mostly internal, in the female,
which is the direct seat of special sexual spasm; such superficial
observation also fails to realize that sexual attraction is not limited
by any isolated physical act.
The true nature of semen remained unknown during ages of physiological
ignorance. It was regarded as the one essential element in
reproduction, planted for growth in the uterus, where it was simply
nourished by the female. The moving particles contained in it were
regarded as animalculæ, and fanciful theories as to these particles
forming the brain and nervous system, etc., of the embryo were
entertained. But all these theories have been swept away by modern
investigation. It is now proved that when the substances of spermatozoa
and ova mingle a new action is set up, and an entirely new substance
created. Life, in the true sense of separate individuality, only begins
with the mingling of the male and female elements, the commencement of
a new existence then taking place when the living ovum fixes itself
in the uterus, and remains there for full growth and final birth. The
substance of spermatozoa and the substance of ova possess no sanctity
of life apart from their union. They are both produced in lavish
abundance, and thrown off from the body in the same way as other unused
secretions are thrown off.
At the periods of menstruation unused ova are discharged. In a similar
manner unused semen is thrown off from time to time, in an entirely
healthy and beneficent way, by spontaneous natural action.
As ovulation in the female and sperm-formation in the male are
equivalent productions, so menstruation in the female and natural
sperm-emission in the male are analogous and beneficial functions.
It is in the arrangement of these two functions in man that the
physical sexual superiority of mankind to the brute creation lies. The
reason of the two distinctive laws which govern human sex is evident.
Thus:
1st. Continuity of action. Procreation in man is not limited to any
special season.[1] Men and women can be governed by reason as to the
time and circumstances when they select one another and commence the
important work of founding a family. The physical organs are maintained
in fit condition for reproduction by these functions of ovulation
and spermation, as servants ready to obey at any time the superior
intelligence of the master Will.
2nd. The power of self-adjustment. These two functions, whilst
maintaining aptitude for procreation in the activities of ovaries and
testes, by occasional spontaneous action secure also the independence
of the individual by such natural action. In the exercise of a
faculty which requires the concurrence of two intelligent beings
endowed with free will and reason, individual independence must be
secured. It would strike at the root of human progress, and convert
society into slavery, if the life and health of an adult could not be
maintained by the self-guidance and independence of the individual.
The natural occasional spontaneous action of the structures concerned
in reproduction secures individual independence whilst awaiting the
beneficial ordinance of marriage.
Thus in the female the constant formation of ova is subordinated to the
needs of individual freedom and to the power of mental self-government
by the function of menstruation, which only in exhausting excess
becomes menorrhœa. In the male the slower secretion of semen is adapted
to the same individual freedom and power of self-control by the natural
function of sperm-emission, which only in exhausting excess becomes
spermatorrhœa.
As menstruation in the female is the means adopted by our organization
for securing both the permanent integrity of the various essential
generative structures and their relief from any excess of vitality, so
sperm-emission is the natural relief and independent outlet of that
steady action of the generative organs in the male, which secures
through adult life the constant aptitude for reproduction distinctive
of the human race. The parallel in the two sexes is exact. Menstruation
and sperm-emission are the natural healthy actions of self-balance,
established by the economy for preserving the mastership of each
individual over her or his own nature. At the same time the integrity
of the structure is maintained by the steady action of these two
functions of ovulation and spermation. These natural functions only
degenerate into states of disease through ignorance of physiological
law and faulty hygienic conditions on the one hand, or through impure
thoughts and bad habits acting through the nervous system on the
other. When these natural functions are either injured or unduly
stimulated through the brain and nervous system, then only do they
become diseased, producing menorrhœa or leucorrhœa in the female, and
spermatorrhœa in the male.
It is impossible to overrate the wide importance of this law of
self-adjustment, under which human function is carried on. The abuses
of sex and the misunderstanding of actual facts, which have led to
widespread error on this subject, will be dwelt on later. Every parent,
however, who has been able to fulfil the true parental relationship to
the child will realize the beneficence of this law. The obligatory and
premature marriage of daughters, so largely the custom abroad, is one
result of error on this subject. A still more dangerous error is the
cruel advice sometimes given to a young man to degrade a woman, and
sin against his own higher nature by taking a mistress or resorting to
harlots.
I have often been consulted by anxious mothers who have observed
or been told by their boys of fourteen or fifteen that an unusual
discharge had taken place. It is of vital importance to the parent to
know that such action is as natural and healthy in the growing lad as
in the growing girl, but that in both it is a time requiring guidance,
both moral and physical. Respectful, earnest words of hygienic counsel,
including mind and body, are indispensable at this critical time of
youth. Parents, particularly mothers, live too often in fatal ignorance
of the conditions of sexual health and disease in their children. My
advice is constantly asked in such cases as the following: A careful
mother, who had brought up her son, a strong and healthy young man, to
the age of twenty, learned from him of this natural sign of vitality,
which both supposed to indicate disease! It was with pain and dismay
that she replied to his confidence, ‘Alas! then, my son, I fear you
must consult a doctor.’ The joyful light of gratitude and renewed hope
with which she learned the truth on this important subject--viz., that
the occasional spontaneous action of the organs (not voluntarily forced
by corrupt thought and action) is natural and beneficial--will not be
easily forgotten. It was like the gleam of transcendent joy which I
have seen illuminate the face of a young mother at the shrill cry of
her first-born infant.
The measureless evil caused, not only by their ignorance, but by the
false information given to mothers, is illustrated by the inquiry made
of a friend of mine, a clergyman, by an intelligent French mother about
to move to Paris with her son. This lady, sensible and even pious,
wrote to the clergyman to inquire ‘if providing a mistress for her son
would be very costly in Paris.’ She had accepted as a fact what she had
been taught, viz., that no young man who could not marry early could
remain healthy without resorting to vice.
From lack of true knowledge of the natural facts of their own physical
organization, young men are often terrified into a resort to quacks,
who impose on their ignorance. The young also of both sexes may be
tempted into bad habits of self-abuse at the outset of this new
life, from being unacquainted with the evils and dangers of vicious
indulgence.
It is the grave parental duty of both father and mother to be able to
direct a child at its first entrance into adult life. At an age varying
with climate, race, and temperament, the young man as well as the young
woman will experience the healthy discharge, which is a sign that the
gradual development of the reproductive organs has attained its final
stage. In both its sudden appearance often produces fright; in both
it may appear once, with long intervals of recurrence. In the girl it
tends gradually (for important natural reasons) to the establishment
of a frequent and regularly returning function. In the young man and
in the continent unmarried adult, the natural action of these organs
is of far less frequent recurrence; it may be of slow and uncertain
return, dependent greatly upon the occupation of the mind and general
physical state of the individual. In the natural healthy young man,
the occasional return of this function, even with a certain degree of
periodicity, is a valuable aid to adult self-government.
It is impossible to reprobate too strongly the false views of
physiology held by those who make no distinction between the natural
healthy growth of these functions and their abuse. No Christian
physiologist whose observation of facts is enlightened by a knowledge
of the possibility of moral growth can commit so fatal an error. It
is an insult to the male nature to infer that it is inferior to the
female nature because it does not fully possess the power of individual
self-balance. The assertion that one human being is dependent on the
degradation of another human being for the maintenance of personal
health is contradicted by physiological facts as well as social
experience.
The greater complication and elaboration of sexual structure and
function belonging to the female nature is due to the more important
share given to woman in the work of parentage. The constant production
in the female of living germs (ova), which require only a passing
act of stimulation by the male to enter into a state of active and
astonishingly rapid growth; the unique change of the small uterus into
an enormous and powerful structure, capable of containing a perfect
child, and sending it forth by tremendous efforts into the outer world;
the changes in all the surrounding organs and tissues necessitated by
the accomplishment of such a remarkable work in the short space of nine
months; and the subjection of this great physical work to the law of
individual freedom and perfection, are facts which show the superior
complication and importance of the female sexual organization. The more
elaborate processes of menstruation, as compared with the lesser work
of sperm-emission, show the greater complication of the organs to be
kept in good working order in the female than in the male.
So extensive and important are the physical structures that must be
kept in readiness for use in the mothers of the race, that their action
is more withdrawn from the dominion of the will than is the case with
men. In relation to the male, it is well known that the secretion
of semen is very much controlled by the mental condition of the
individual. Thus many a young man during keen nervous excitement (or
during the strain of examinations) becomes alarmed by the appearance of
unusual action never before noticed.
It is a fact to be carefully noted that sufficient healthy action to
insure reproductive aptitude is always maintained in the secreting
organs throughout adult life, quite independently of the will. Nature
never allows the male, any more than the female, to become impotent
through abeyance of function. No such fear need ever disturb the
mind. The utmost devotion to intellectual life, to lofty thought,
to beneficent action, never injures the procreative power, which
always remains intact, capable of its special faculty throughout the
virile age. But the active exercise of the intellectual and moral
faculties has remarkable power of diminishing the formation of semen,
and limiting the necessity of its natural removal, the demand for
such relief becoming rarer under ennobling and healthy influences.
As Dr. Acton remarks, ‘sexual distress affects particularly the
_semi-continent_--those who indeed see the better course and approve
of it, but follow the worse; who, without the recklessness of the
hardened or the strength of the pure, endure at once the sufferings of
self-denial and the remorse of self-indulgence.’[2]
The healthy limitation of sexual secretion in men sets free a vast
store of nervous force for employment in intellectual and active
practical pursuits. The amount of nervous energy expended by the male
in the temporary act of sexual congress is very great, out of all
apparent proportion to its physical results, and is an act not to be
too often repeated. In the fully matured and strong adult the nature
is adapted to such occasional expenditure, but it is a serious evil
to the growing or unconsolidated nature. Even in strong adult life
there is a great loss of social power through the squandering of adult
energy, which results from any unnatural stimulus given to the appetite
of sex in the male. The barbarous custom of polygamy, the degrading
habit of promiscuous intercourse, selfish license in marriage, and all
artificial excitements which give undue stimulus to the passion of sex,
divert an immeasurable amount of mental and moral force from the great
work of human advancement.
The control possessed so largely by the male over the physical
function of sperm-formation is not possessed by the female over the
corresponding function of ovulation. In the female, Nature apparently
cannot venture to subordinate the simple physical functions of sex
to the will, to as great an extent as in the male. A more unyielding
rule is needed in these physical activities, because the work to be
accomplished for the race by the female is so much more elaborate and
long continued. A greater amount of varied action in the complicated
organs is necessitated in order to maintain their adult aptitude. The
function of ovulation (formation of ova) is not increased or diminished
by the will, or by the dwelling of the mind upon sexual objects, at all
to the same extent that spermation (formation of sperm) may be affected
by the same mental action. Ovulation, and its natural accompaniment,
menstruation, is much more of a necessary fixed quantity than
spermation and its natural accompaniment, sperm-emission.[3]
It is thus seen that the laws guiding the human sexual functions as
established by Creative Power are as conducive to health, and as
consistent with the freedom and perfection of human growth, in one sex
as in the other. Each sex, obeying the Governing Law, is created to
help, not destroy the other. The general outline of arrangement is the
same in each, viz., power of mental and physical self-balance, strictly
guarded potency, and a certain degree of periodicity.
I repeat that parents, and especially mothers, should be acquainted
with the truths of physiology. There is in the pure sentiment of
maternity a special Divine gift of unselfishness and profound devotion
to the well-being of husband and children. This God-given power enables
a wife and mother to comprehend and apply this knowledge with the
impersonality of wisdom. The awful aberrations of our sexual nature
excite a deep pity which inevitably seeks for a remedy. When this
special aptitude given to women by the power of maternity is fully
realized, the enlarged intelligence of mothers will be welcomed as the
brightest harbinger of sexual regeneration.
CHAPTER III
_On the Abuses of Sex_--I. _Masturbation_
Of the various forms of abuse which spring from ignorance or corruption
in the exercise of the most important of our human faculties, two only
will be dwelt on--viz., masturbation and fornication. These are the
two radical vices from which all forms of unnatural vice spring. The
first is the especial temptation of the child, the last the temptation
or corruption of the adult. It will be seen how the one prepares for
the other, and how both, unchecked and unguided into rightful channels
by judicious sexual education, lead inevitably to those horrors of
unnatural vice which belong to disease, not nature. Abnormal vice
abounds on the Continent, where the virtue of Christianity has fallen
into contempt. But although it is increasing amongst ourselves as we
blindly follow in the path of foreign error, yet, happily for parental
guidance of childhood and youth, the darkest phases of human corruption
need not be exhibited here.
Of Self-abuse (called also Masturbation, Onanism, etc.) it is
necessary to speak fully. This vice may infect the nursery as well as
the school, and in innumerable cases it induces precocity of physical
sensation, and prepares the way for every variety of sexual evil.
That much contradiction of thought exists on this subject even in the
medical profession, the following facts will show. One of the most
distinguished members of the profession, a man noted for sound judgment
and large experience, made the following noteworthy statement to me in
speaking of ‘The Moral Education of the Young in Relation to Sex.’ He
said: ‘You are all wrong in what you say about masturbation. Medically
speaking, it is of no consequence whatever. Mind, I say _medically_,
not morally speaking. I know a man, the father of a family, who was
taught by his nurse to masturbate at three years old, and it has done
him no harm whatever.’
On the other hand, distinguished physicians, as Tissot and others, have
drawn frightful pictures of the mental and physical ruin which always
result from habits of self-abuse, and they refer to the records of
insane asylums to confirm these statements.
There is error and confusion of thought in both these extreme views.
Self-abuse or Solitary Vice is the voluntary purposed excitement of the
genital organs, produced by pressure or friction of those parts, or by
the indulgence of licentious thoughts.
The term ‘masturbation’ does not apply to that involuntary and
beneficent action of the organs in the adult of both sexes, with which
nature from time to time relieves necessary secretion.
This radical distinction between the independent and benign action of
nature, and the dangerous practice of voluntarily stimulated physical
sensation, has not been pointed out by physiological investigators with
necessary clearness, nor has the extreme importance of this distinction
in the guidance of practical life been dwelt on as a distinction vital
to the growth of a Christian nation.
The dangerous habit of voluntarily produced excitement, to which alone
the term ‘masturbation’ is due, may be formed by both the male and the
female, and it is found even in the child as well as the adult.
In the child, however (it being immature in body), it is the
dependencies of the brain, the nervous system, which come more
exclusively into play in this evil habit. The production of ova or
semen, which mark the adult age, has not taken place; in the child
there are none of those periodic or occasional congestions of the
organs which mark the growth or effects of reproductive substance in
the adult. In the little ignorant child this habit springs from a
nervous sensation yielded to because, as it says, ‘it feels nice.’ The
portion of the brain which takes cognizance of these sensations has
been excited, and the child, in innocent absence of impure thought,
yields to the mental suggestion supplied from the physical organs.
This mental suggestion may be produced by the irritation of worms, by
some local eruption, by the wickedness of the nurse, occasionally by
malformation or unnatural development of the parts themselves. There is
grave reason also for believing that transmitted tendency to sensuality
may blight the innocent offspring.
A serious warning against the unnatural practice of circumcision must
here be given. A book of ‘Advice to Mothers,’ by a Philadelphia doctor,
was lately sent me. This treatise began by informing the mother that
her first duty to her infant boy was to cause it to be circumcised! Her
fears were worked upon by an elaborate but false statement of the evils
which would result to the child were this mutilation not performed. I
should have considered this mischievous instruction unworthy of serious
consideration did I not observe that it has lately become common among
certain short-sighted but reputable physicians to laud this unnatural
practice, and endeavour to introduce it into a Christian nation.
Circumcision is based upon the erroneous principle that boys--_i.e._,
one-half the human race--are so badly fashioned by Creative Power that
they must be reformed by the surgeon; consequently, that every male
child must be mutilated by removing the natural covering with which
Nature has protected one of the most sensitive portions of the human
body.
The erroneous nature of such a practice is shown by the fact that,
although this custom (which originated amongst licentious nations in
hot climates) has been carried on for many hundred generations, yet
Nature continues to protect her children by reproducing the valuable
protection in man and all the higher animals, regardless of impotent
surgical interference.
Appeals to the fears of uninstructed parents on the grounds of
cleanliness or of hardening the part are entirely fallacious and
unsupported by evidence.
It is a physiological fact that the natural lubricating secretion of
every healthy part is beneficial, not injurious, to the part thus
protected, and that no attempt to render a sensitive part insensitive
is either practicable or justifiable. The protection which Nature
affords to these parts is an aid to physical purity, by affording
necessary protection against constant external contact of a part which
necessarily remains keenly sensitive; and bad habits in boys and girls
cannot be prevented by surgical operations. Where no malformation
exists, bad habits can only be forestalled by healthy moral and
physical education.
The plea that this unnatural practice will lessen the risk of infection
to the sensualist in promiscuous intercourse is not one that our
honourable profession will support.
Parents, therefore, should be warned that this ugly mutilation of their
children involves serious danger, both to their physical and moral
health.
* * * * *
It is a fact which deserves serious consideration that many ignorant
women purposely resort to vicious sexual manipulation to soothe their
fractious infants. The superintendent of a large prison for women
informed me that this was a common practice, and one most difficult,
even impossible entirely to break up.
Medical observation proves that such injury to infancy is not confined
to the lower or to the criminal classes. The habits formed by unrefined
or exposed women are brought by servants into our homes. The ignorance
or viciousness of nurses, often veiled by a respectable demeanour, has
injured and even destroyed the children of many a well-to-do nursery.
That this habit of self-abuse existing in early childhood is a danger
capable of undermining the health from its tendency to increase is a
very serious fact. A little girl of six years old was lately brought
to me whose physical and mental strength were both failing from
the nervous exhaustion of a habit so inveterate that she fell into
convulsions if physically restrained from its exercise. In this case
an evil hereditary tendency from both parents was discovered, and
malformation existed in the child. Indeed, cases of injury to childhood
from self-abuse are so common in the physician’s experience that
warning to parents should be given on this subject. The cause should be
carefully sought for wherever this vicious practice is discovered, and
the trusted family physician consulted if necessary.
Now, it is quite true that this habit, when observed in children, may
often, and I believe generally, be broken up. It is the mother who must
do this by sympathy and wise oversight. When a child is known in any
way to be producing pressure or excitement in these parts, the watchful
observation of the mother must be at once aroused. If no physical
cause of irritation, such as worms or some malformation, appears to
be present, the dangerous habit may be broken up entirely; but no
punishment must ever be resorted to. The little innocent child, to whom
the sentiment of sex is an unknown thing, will confide in its mother
if encouraged to do so. If kindly but seriously told that it may make
little children ill to do this thing, and the reply being given (as
in cases I have known) that ‘the little feeling comes of itself,’ the
child should be encouraged to come to its mother, and she ‘will help
him drive the feeling away.’
This providential guardianship of the portals of life is a special
endowment of maternity, and it is the potential motherhood of all
experienced women which fits them to understand and to guide the growth
and development of the sexual powers of our human nature. The tact of a
mother will never suggest evil to her child, but her quick perception
of danger will enable her to detect its signs, and avert it.
The frequent practice of self-abuse occurring in little children
from the age of two years old, clearly illustrates the fallacy of
endeavouring to separate mind and body in educational arrangements or
systems of medical treatment. In the very young child those essential
elements of reproduction, semen and ova, which give such mighty
stimulus to passion in the adult, are entirely latent. Yet we observe
a distinct mental impression possible, leading to unnatural excitement
of the genital organs. This mental impression, growing with the growth
of the child, produces an undue sensitiveness to all surrounding
circumstances which tend to excite this cerebral action. Touch, sight,
and hearing become avenues to the brain, prematurely opened to this
kind of stimulus. The acts of the lower animals, pictures, indecent
talk, which glide over the surface of the mind in a naturally healthy
child, excite self-conscious attention when habits of self-abuse have
grown up unchecked. The mind is thus rendered impure, and the growing
lad or girl develops into a precocious sexual consciousness.
At school a new danger arises to children from corrupt communication
of companions, or in the boy from an intense desire to become a man,
with a false idea of what manliness means. The brain, precociously
stimulated in one direction, receives fresh impulse from evil
companionship and evil literature, and even hitherto innocent children
of ten and twelve are often drawn into the temptation.
From the age when the organs of reproduction are beginning slowly to
unfold themselves for their future work, the temptation to yield to
physical sensation or mental impression increases.
The inseparable relation of our moral and physical structure is seen
in full force at the age of twelve or fourteen. Confirmed habits of
mental impurity may at any age destroy the body from the physical
results of such habits. My attention was painfully drawn to the
dangers of self-abuse more than forty years ago by an agonized letter
received from an intelligent and pious lady, dying from the effects of
this inveterate habit. She had been a teacher in a Sunday-school, and
the delight of a refined and intelligent circle of friends. But this
habit, begun in childhood in ignorance of any moral or physical wrong
which might result to her nature, had become so rooted that her brain
was giving way under the effects of nervous derangement thus produced,
whilst her will had lost the power of self-control.
It will thus be seen that there are two grave dangers attending the
practice of masturbation.
The first evil is the effect upon the mind through the brain and
nervous system from evil communications or evil literature. The mind
is thus prematurely awakened to take in and dwell upon a series of
impressions which awaken precocious sexual instinct. This precocity
gives an undue and even dominating power to this instinct over the
other human faculties. Coming into play before reason is strengthened
or the sense of responsibility awakened, there is no counterpoise or
principle of guidance to the rapidly developing powers of procreation.
Thus the precocious stimulus of childhood, even if it has not
undermined the individual health, becomes a direct preparation for the
selfishness of lust in the adult.
The other grave danger incurred by the practice of masturbation is the
risk of its becoming an over-mastering habit, from the ease with which
it can be indulged; also from the insidious and increasing power of the
temptation when yielded to, and from its association with the times
when the individual is alone, and particularly the quiet hours of the
night.
In the adult who yields to solitary vice, Nature’s marked distinction
between the beneficent effect of spontaneous healthy relief and the
injurious action of self-induced irritation is destroyed. Individual
self-control, the highest distinctive mark of the human being, is
abandoned. In this way the evil habit may become a real obsession,
leading to destruction of mental and physical health, to insanity, or
to suicide.
It will thus be seen that this first abuse of the sexual faculty given
to us by our Creator--viz., the practice of masturbation--is a special
danger to the very young as well as a temptation of the adult, and that
it is an injury to mind as well as body, through the inseparable union
of the moral and physical elements of our human constitution.
CHAPTER IV
_On the Abuses of Sex_--II. _Fornication_
The second abuse of sex to be dwelt on by the Christian physiologist
is the practice of fornication. One broad distinction separates this
form of vice from masturbation--viz., that it necessarily affects two
persons instead of only one. Its effects upon the mental and physical
development of both the male and female must therefore engage the
attention of the physiologist. This necessity of considering the
effects produced by a joint act upon two separate individualities
greatly complicates the inquiry.
It is so much easier for the popular mind to regard any act performed
by an individual or by one sex as exclusively affecting one particular
individual or sex engaged in its performance that it is extremely
difficult for most persons to fix their minds steadily upon the
inseparable double character of this exceptional human act. It requires
a certain amount of generalizing power to do this; and the power of
generalization, which leads to the recognition of abstract truth and
to the perception that a true principle is of far higher value than
any number of phenomena, is an advanced attainment of human beings.
Abstract truth commonly seems vague as compared with a material fact.
We are also so accustomed in using all our other senses, sight,
hearing, etc., to regard them as individual possessions, that it
is difficult to separate the sexual sense from all others. Yet it
distinctly belongs to a different class from all our other senses,
because its ultimate expression is not a simple individual performance,
but is a social act of vital importance to the race. The imperfection
of our intelligence, which makes it easier to consider a joint act in
its diversity than in its unity, has led to very imperfect observation
of physiological facts and many false deductions from such imperfect
observation. Very grave social errors, leading even to the general
debasement and ultimate destruction of national life, flow from the
hitherto rudimentary condition of our human intelligence in relation to
the sexual powers.
Fornication is the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. It is the
yielding to the domination of the simple physical impulse of sex, with
no perception or acceptance of the mutual responsibility involved
in the relation, and with no regard to a fundamental aspect of this
relation--viz., the well-being of offspring. Fornication is the attempt
to divorce the moral and physical elements of human nature, and to
ignore the inseparable results of joint action.
In considering this subject from a medical point of view, we are at
once brought face to face with a conflict nineteen hundred years old.
Christianity, springing up when the Roman Empire was perishing through
its vices, stamped fornication as the gravest of social crimes. There
is nothing more strongly marked in the earlier records of this religion
than the stern, even awful, condemnation of whore-mongers. The sin of
sexual impurity is denounced as the essence of hatred and fraud. We
observe that wherever the Christian Church becomes hypocritical and
cowardly, and fails to reprobate this sin alike in men and women, in
high and low, in the State and in the family, or fails to be the leader
of the people against organized evil, there the Christian Church begins
to fall into contempt, and the _vox populi_ condemns it.
The Christian physiologist, pondering the inexorable law of purity
as shown by history, is compelled to re-examine the physical and
moral facts of the human constitution, on which the rise and fall
of races depend. The question distinctly arises, Is Christianity a
superstition, dying out in the nineteenth century of science and
material development; or does it contain within itself a principle
whose transforming power has been hitherto unrecognised, but which
will now come into play, and lead the nations into renewed and more
permanent vigour of life?
One of the first subjects to be investigated by the Christian
physiologist is the truth or error of the assertion so widely made,
that sexual passion is a much stronger force in men than in women.
Very remarkable results have flowed from the attempts to mould society
upon this assertion. A simple Christian might reply, ‘Our religion
makes no such distinction; male and female are as one under guidance
and judgment of the Divine law.’ But the physiologist must go farther,
and use the light of principles underlying physical truth in order
to understand the meaning of facts which arraign and would destroy
Christianity.
It is necessary, therefore, to determine what is meant by strength
and what is meant by passion. In one sense a bull is stronger than a
man, and many of the inferior animals are superior in muscular force
or keenness of special sense to human beings, yet man is more powerful
than the animal world which he dominates to his will. Any assertion
that the animal is stronger than the human being fails to recognise the
very essence of humanity--viz., mental or moral strength.
Again, in one sense, the whirlwind or the earthquake is stronger
than the creative action of Nature; their rapid devastation strikes
the terrified imagination, yet at the very moment of their ravage
reparative and creative force is being exerted all over the world with
immeasurably more power than any sudden outbreak of destruction.
In determining the strength of races and the strength of individuals,
the various elements which constitute vital power must be considered.
Endurance, longevity, special aptitudes with the proportionate amount
of vital force given to their fulfilment--these are all elements of
relative strength.
In any attempt to settle the comparative strength of man and woman,
therefore, all these elements must be weighed. Thus the powers of
endurance which are demanded by each kind of life must be accurately
measured; the care of a sick child must be balanced against the anxiety
of business, the ceaseless cares of indoor life against the changes of
outdoor life, etc. The impossibility of so weighing the burden which
each sex bears in the various trials and difficulties of practical life
shows the futility of attempting to measure the amount of vital power
possessed by men or by women separately.
Any attempt at a comparison of absolute sexual power between men and
women will be found to be equally futile. The varying manifestations
of the sexual faculties, as exhibited in their male and female phases,
make the relative measurement of this vital force in men and women
quite impossible. Considering, however, the enormous practical edifice
of law and custom which has been built up on the very sandy foundation
of the supposed stronger character of male sexual passion, it is
necessary to examine closely the facts of human nature, and challenge
many erroneous conclusions. Any theory which proposes two methods
of judgment or two measures of law, in consequence of a supposed
difference of vital power, is emphatically uncertain, and lays itself
open to just suspicion of dangerous error.
The equal numbers of men and women, their equal longevity, and
consequently equal power of enduring the wear and tear of life, prove
the equal general vital power of the sexes.
In considering further the special sexual manifestations of the two
sexes, we observe that the power of reproduction commences at an
earlier age in women than in men. The physical life of the sexual
faculties at the same early age is more vigorous in the female than in
the male, and all those social interests which centre round sex in the
human race are in the young woman stronger; whilst at the same age the
experience and intellectual development which should give dignity and
profundity to the noble object of sex--parentage--are not yet attained.
The ‘eagerness for a romance’ and the unconscious impulse towards
parentage are developed earlier, and absorb a larger proportion of
vital force in the girl than in the boy.
At a later age, when physical sex is fully developed in the young
adult, we are still struck by the greater proportion of vital force
demanded from or given by women to all that is involved in sexual
life. The physical functions of sex weigh more imperiously upon the
woman than the man, compel more thought and care, and necessitate more
enlightened intelligence in the general arrangements of life. Physical
sex is a larger factor in the life of the woman, unmarried or married,
than in the life of the man, and this is the case at every period of
the full vigour of life. In order to secure the perfect health and
independent freedom which is the birthright of every rational human
being, larger wisdom is required for the maintenance of perfect
physical health in the woman than in the man, this function being a
more important element in the one than in the other.
If this be true of the physical element of sex, it is equally true of
the mental element. No careful observer can fail to remark the larger
proportionate amount of thought and feeling, as compared with the total
vital force of the individual, which we find given by women to all that
concerns the subject of sex. Words spoken, slight courtesies rendered,
excite a more permanent interest in women. That which may be the
mere passing thought or action of the man, at once forgotten by him,
obliterated by a thousand other intellectual or practical interests in
his life, often make a quite undue impression upon the woman. Incidents
are thought of over and over again, and are supposed to mean much more
than they do mean. A romance or a scandal, a tale of true or false
love, will always excite interest, where business, politics, science,
or philosophy will fall upon deaf ears. All that concerns the mental
aspect of sex, the special attraction which draws one sex towards the
other, is exhibited in greater proportionate force by women, is more
steady and enduring, and occupies a larger amount of their thought and
interest.
The frivolity and ephemeral character of the seducer’s impulses,
as compared with the earnestness of the seduced, illustrates the
profounder character of sexual passion in woman.
Wide-spread unhappiness, social disturbance, and degradation
continually arise from the vital force of human sex in woman,
unguarded, unguided, and unemployed.
Passion and appetite are not identical. The term ‘passion,’ it should
always be remembered, necessarily implies a mental element. For this
reason it is employed exclusively in relation to the powers of the
human being, not to those of the brute. Passion rises into a higher
rank than instinct or physical impulse, because it involves the soul
of man. In sexual passion this mental, moral, or emotional principle
is as emphatically sex as any physical instinct, and it grows with the
proportional development of the nervous system.
This mental element of human sex exists in major proportion in the
vital force of women, and justifies the statement that the compound
faculty of sex is as strong in woman as in man. Those who deny sexual
feeling to women, or consider it so light a thing as hardly to be taken
into account in social arrangements, confound appetite and passion;
they quite lose sight of this immense spiritual force of attraction,
which is distinctly human sexual power, and which exists in so very
large a proportion in the womanly nature. The impulse towards maternity
is an inexorable but beneficent law of woman’s nature, and it is a law
of sex.
The different form which physical sensation necessarily takes in the
two sexes, and its intimate connection with and development through the
mind (love) in women’s nature, serve often to blind even thoughtful
and painstaking persons as to the immense power of sexual attraction
felt by women. Such one-sided views show a misconception of the meaning
of human sex in its entirety.
The affectionate husbands of refined women often remark that their
wives do not regard the distinctively sexual act with the same
intoxicating physical enjoyment that they themselves feel, and they
draw the conclusion that the wife possesses no sexual passion. A
delicate wife will often confide to her medical adviser (who may be
treating her for some special suffering) that at the very time when
marriage love seems to unite them most closely, when her husband’s
welcome kisses and caresses seem to bring them into profound union,
comes an act which mentally separates them, and which may be either
indifferent or repugnant to her. But it must be understood that it is
not the special act necessary for parentage which is the measure of the
compound moral and physical power of sexual passion; it is the profound
attraction of one nature to the other which marks passion, and delight
in kiss and caress--the love-touch--is physical sexual expression as
much as the special act of the male.
It is well known that terror or pain in either sex will temporarily
destroy all physical pleasure. In married life, injury from childbirth,
or brutal or awkward conjugal approaches, may cause unavoidable
shrinking from sexual congress, often wrongly attributed to absence of
sexual passion. But the severe and compound suffering experienced by
many widows who were strongly attached to their lost partners is also
well known to the physician, and this is not simply a mental loss that
they feel, but an immense physical deprivation. It is a loss which all
the senses suffer by the physical as well as moral void which death has
created.
Although physical sexual pleasure is not attached exclusively, or in
woman chiefly, to the act of coition, it is also a well-established
fact that in healthy, loving women, uninjured by the too frequent
lesions which result from childbirth, increasing physical satisfaction
attaches to the ultimate physical expression of love. A repose and
general well-being results from this natural occasional intercourse,
whilst the total deprivation of it produces irritability.
On the other hand, the growth in men of the mental element in sexual
passion, from mighty wifely love, often comes like a revelation to
the husband. The dying words of a man to the wife who, sending away
children, friends, every distraction, had bent the whole force of her
passionate nature to holding the beloved object in life--‘I never knew
before what love meant’--indicates the revelation which the higher
element of sexual passion should bring to the lower phase. It is an
illustration of the parallelism and natural harmony between the sexes.
The prevalent fallacy that sexual passion is the almost exclusive
attribute of men, and attached exclusively to the act of coition--a
fallacy which exercises so disastrous an effect upon our social
arrangements--arises from ignorance of the distinctive character of
human sex--viz., its powerful mental element. A tortured girl, done to
death by brutal soldiers, may possess a stronger power of human sexual
passion than her destroyers.
The comparison so often drawn between the physical development of the
comparatively small class of refined and guarded women, and the men of
worldly experience whom they marry, is a false comparison. These women
have been taught to regard sexual passion as lust and as sin--a sin
which it would be a shame for a pure woman to feel, and which she would
die rather than confess. She has not been taught that sexual passion is
love, even more than lust, and that its ennobling work in humanity is
to educate and transfigure the lower by the higher element. The growth
and indications of her own nature she is taught to condemn, instead of
to respect them as foreshadowing that mighty impulse towards maternity
which will place her nearest to the Creator if reverently accepted.
But if the comparison be made between men and women of loose lives--not
women who are allowed and encouraged by money to carry on a trade in
vice, but men and women of similar unrestrained and loose life--the
unbridled impulse of physical lust is as remarkable in the latter as in
the former. The astounding lust and cruelty of women uncontrolled by
spiritual principle is a historical fact.
The most destructive phase of fornication is promiscuous intercourse.
This riotous debauchery introduced the devastating scourge of syphilis
into Western Europe in the fourteenth century. Promiscuous intercourse
can never be made ‘safe.’ The resort of many men to one woman, with its
results, is against nature.
The special structures of the female body, which are endowed with the
elasticity necessary for the passage of a child, rich in secreting
glands, in folds, in power of absorption, cannot be treated as a plane
surface, to be washed out and labelled ‘safe.’ Physical danger will
always be connected with unnatural use of the body; neither party
engaged in promiscuous intercourse can be pronounced clean.
This is not the place to speak of the moral danger inseparable from a
corrupt bargain which debases the highest function, the creative, to
the low status of trade competition, but the Christian physician is
bound to consider this.
Some medical writers have considered that women are more tyrannically
governed than men by the impulses of physical sex. They have dwelt upon
the greater proportion of work laid upon women in the reproduction of
the race, the prolonged changes and burden of maternity, and the fixed
and marked periodical action needed to maintain the aptitude of the
physical frame for maternity. They have drawn the conclusion that sex
dominates the life of women, and limits them in the power of perfect
human growth. This would undoubtedly be the case were sex simply a
physical function.
The fact in human nature which explains, guides, and should elevate the
sexual nature of woman, and mark the beneficence of Creative Force,
is this very mental element which distinguishes human from brute sex.
This element, gradually expanding under religious teaching and the
development of true religious sentiment, becomes the ennobling power of
love. Love between the sexes is the highest and mightiest form of human
sexual passion.
The mental element in human sex, although as distinctly a part of
sexual passion as the physical element, does not necessarily imply good
use. The woman who employs the arts of dress to bring the physical
peculiarities of sex into prominence, and uses every method of coquetry
and flirtation to excite the attention and awaken the physical impulses
of men, is abusing her sexual power. The degree in which she employs
these arts, measures the extent to which her own nature is dominated
by brute sexual instinct, and the unworthiness of the use to which she
puts this instinct.
This power of sex in women is strikingly shown in the enormous
influence which they exert upon men for evil. It is not the cold
beauty of a statue which enthrals and holds so many men in terrible
fascination; it is the living, active power of sexual life embodied
in its separate overpowering female phase. The immeasurable depth
of degradation into which those women fall, whose sex is thoroughly
debased, who have intensified the physical instincts of the brute by
the mental power for evil possessed by the human being, indicates
the mighty character of sexual power over the nature of woman for
corruption. It is also a measure of what the ennobling power of
passion may be.
Happily, in all civilized countries there is a natural reserve in
relation to sexual matters which indicates the reverence with which
this high social power of our human nature should be regarded. It is
a sign of something wrong in education, or in the social state, when
matters which concern the subject of sex are discussed with the same
freedom and boldness as other matters. This subject should neither
be a topic of idle gossip, of unreserved publicity, nor of cynical
display. This natural and beneficial instinct of reserve, springing
from unconscious reverence, renders it difficult for one sex to measure
and judge the vital power of the other. The independent thought and
large observation of each sex is needed in order to arrive at truth.
Unhappily, however, women are often falsely instructed by men, for
a licentious husband inevitably depraves the sentiment of his wife,
because vicious habits have falsified his nature and blinded his
perception of the moral law which dominates sexual growth.
Each sex has its own stern battle to fight in resisting temptation,
in walking resolutely towards the higher aim of life. It is equally
foolish and misleading to attempt to weigh the vital qualities of the
sexes, and measure justice and mercy, law and custom, by the supposed
results. It is difficult for the child to comprehend that a pound of
feathers can weigh as much as a pound of lead. Much of our thought
concerning men and women is as rudimentary as the child’s. Vast errors
of law and custom have arisen in the slow unfolding of human nature
from failure to realize the extent of the injury produced by that abuse
of sex--fornication. We have not hitherto perceived that, on account
of the moral degradation and physical disease which it inevitably
produces, lustful trade in the human body is a grave social crime.
In forming a wiser judgment for future guidance, it must be distinctly
recognised that the assertion that sexual passion commands more of the
vital force of men than of women is a false assertion, based upon a
perverted or superficial view of the facts of human nature. Any custom,
law, or religious teaching based upon this superficial and essentially
false assertion, must necessarily be swept away with the prevalence of
sounder physiological views.
It is a fact that the brain and nervous system are the media of
sensation, and that pleasure, physical or mental, in whatever way it
may be aroused, must be measured by the keenness of nervous life in
both sexes, not by any special act of one sex.
It has also been shown that the secretion of semen does not necessitate
a resort to sexual congress, but that there is a distinct and healthy
provision for the removal of unneeded secretions in each sex which
leaves the individual the power of self-guidance. Physiology condemns
fornication by showing the physical arrangements which support the
moral law. There is no justification in the physiological structure
of humanity for the destructive practice of fornication. We thus
see by the light of sound physiology, and the advanced thought of
the nineteenth century, the profound insight of the founders of
Christianity, who denounced in one equal and awful condemnation the
whoremonger and the whore.
CHAPTER V
_The Development of the Idea of Chastity_
The most fundamental work which rests upon the medical profession is
the spread of physiological truth in its practical application to
the education of both boys and girls. The sexual instinct, being a
primitive elementary instinct, exists alike in men and women. It is
the necessary impulse leading to parentage, an impulse which the great
Creative Force has laid down as a law of our present human life. But
chastity and continence are not primitive instincts in either sex;
they are the higher growth of reason, and of the religious and legal
guidance by which in every age it has been found indispensable to
direct the impulse of sex.
The way in which this instinct may be exercised to the permanent
advantage of a progressive community is a gradual discovery of the
human race. It is a development or differentiation of the primitive
instinct; but the instinct and the wise method of educating or of
exercising it are separate facts.
In the savage stage, in semi-barbarous countries, and in the slums of
all great towns, both men and women are grossly unchaste.
It is by the growth and expansion of human nature under a knowledge of
providential law, that the necessity of guiding the exercise of the
original instinct is perceived. Thus, varying institutions gradually
arise out of the varied methods employed to guide the sexual impulse.
Different circumstances, different systems of education, law, and
religion, produce varying results. But all these results spring from
a perception that the sexual instinct requires guidance, and cannot,
without danger to society, be left in its primitive ignorance.
In the gradual growth of thought which leads to ever higher forms
of society, the physiologist has very important aid to render. It
is his part to show how the two great forces of Habit and Heredity
are the powerful physiological factors in the growth or degeneracy
of the human race. In these two great facts--viz., the ability to
form habits and the power of transmitting the tendencies produced by
habits--the mind and body are inseparably blended, and through them a
nation becomes chaste or unchaste. Habit can so change the nature as
to make what was difficult easy; it can so strengthen the tendencies
in directly opposite directions as to both govern, and to a great
extent change, the action of the physical organization itself, and the
fact of heredity will transmit these changed tendencies to succeeding
generations.
It is impossible in the long-run to ignore these two facts which
so powerfully govern sexual passion, because Nature has established
them. Short-sighted views may exist as to the trivial character of
the relations prevailing between the sexes. It may be considered of
slight importance whether lust or love rule these relations. The slow
or remote nature of the evils produced by the violation of Nature’s
laws, and the apparent escape of some offenders from immediate penalty,
confuse the short sight of the irreligious. But Nature disregards our
short-sightedness, sweeps away our theories and self-indulgence, and
inexorably avenges the violation of law by gradual but inevitable
degeneration of the race.
The power which habit exercises over human nature depends upon the
physiological character of the nervous system itself, through which our
will and thought act.
It has been well said by Michel Lévy that periodicity is the law of the
nervous system.[4] It is a law which both regulates its physiological
action and controls the course of its diseases.
Impressions made upon the brain by external objects or by internal
sensations modify the condition of the brain. This modification is
slight at first, but increases by repetition. When an impression
is first made upon the brain, it has to overcome the inertia or
unaccustomed state of the organization to receive that kind of
impression. But with each repetition this resistance diminishes and a
habit is formed. Owing to the rule of periodicity which governs the
nervous system, the brain tends to repeat the change which it has once
experienced, to recall sensations, and solicit a repetition of changes
which have been frequently impressed upon it.
Passing impressions may produce little effect in changing the
condition of the brain, but when such impressions are often repeated
and prolonged, when the attention is fixed upon them and the will
engaged in recalling them, then the nervous system itself undergoes
modification, and a new disposition of the organization itself is
acquired from the continuation and frequent repetition of the same
impressions.
It is in this way, through a change in the nervous system itself, that
habit becomes literally a second nature; and in this way habits most
opposite to the natural or rudimentary state are introduced into our
human organization, and ‘nature is dominated by or absorbed in habit.’
The power of habit is seen even in the action of organs withdrawn
from the will, as in the powers of adaptation to all kinds of food,
to various kinds of atmosphere and climate. It is, however, in that
portion of our nature directly connected with and governed by the brain
that the remarkable transforming power of habit is seen, and in the
sexual system this enormous power is most signally displayed.
Habits may become so much a part of our nature that they are exercised
unconsciously, the impression which first excited the brain being no
longer noticed, though still exerting its modifying influence.
But when the attention is constantly aroused, the brain acts with
sustained and increasing energy; the senses are thus strengthened or
perfected, and new and higher powers are developed in the individual,
which through inheritance may be transmitted to a succeeding generation.
It is in this way that the practice of continence or of incontinence
gradually forms a distinctive characteristic of social and national
life.
This distinctive faculty possessed by the nervous system of
modifying its own sensations, and even acquiring new aptitudes, is
the physiological basis of human progress. ‘It is the foundation of
education, of the power of law, of the influence of custom, and the
necessary condition of hygienic improvement.’
Habits, when formed in accordance with physiological law, do not tend
to indifference. By the constant repetition of impressions a new
relation is gradually established between the organs or faculties
affected and the cause which produces the effect. As the keenness
of first sensations producing transitory pleasure diminishes, habit
strengthens the important relation which grows up between faculties
and the objects which modify them. It is the superior power of the
new relation thus established by habit between the individual and the
objects that have modified his nature, that have even caused the Swiss
mountaineer to die of home-sickness, or the bereaved partner in a
lifelong union to follow the beloved object to the grave.
It will thus be seen how the idea and the practice of chastity have
grown up from a physiological basis, and may be inseparably interwoven
with the essential structure of our physical organization. Chastity
is the government of the sexual instinct by the higher reason or
wisdom--_i.e._, by our perception of the providential law which governs
our human nature. Customs, and the laws concerning marriage and the
relations of the sexes which represent them, are checks or guides
imposed upon the blind sexual impulse by the enlightened common-sense
of mankind. These customs and laws, acting slowly but persistently upon
society, generation after generation, modify the habits of thought in
the adult, and the methods of education in the child. It is thus that
the idea of chastity arises, and its practice becomes possible and
easy. It springs as a physiological habit from the effects for good
and evil which are produced by the modifications of our nervous system
through education and custom.
The universal experience of the world has proved that directly human
beings join in societies, they are compelled to impose guides upon
the exercise of the sexual powers, in the interest of society itself.
This check upon the blind, unrestrained use of the sexual impulse is a
necessity imposed by our physiological structure for the well-being and
continuance of the race.
The most important practical results flow from obedience to the
physiological law of chastity thus imposed upon our sexual nature. The
necessary mutual aid and respect of the sexes, procreative vigour and
the production of a fine race, and the extirpation of the loathsome
disease caused by promiscuous intercourse, are all subject to the
guidance of chastity.
The tremendous power of creative law, which is quite beyond our reach,
demands that the blind instinct of sex be governed and enlightened by
this inevitable higher control, and that human law be moulded upon
Divine law.
The mighty and transforming physiological power of habit, with its
tendencies transmitted by both men and women to their offspring, shows
the method by which the law of chastity must gradually extend its sway
over the human race. The choice between inevitable degeneracy and sure
improvement is left to our relatively free will, but the law which
governs results is beyond our reach. Race after race has perished from
blind or wilful ignorance, or neglect of the inexorable moral law bound
up with our physiological structure.
The importance of the truths now insisted on can be more fully realized
in their wide bearings by experienced and religious physicians than by
any other class in the community. If they will learn to trust to the
sacredness of the maternal instinct, and instruct mothers, as well as
fathers, in these vital truths concerning our sexual structures, they
will exercise a mighty influence in the elevation of our race.
To the younger members of the profession I wish to offer some farther
hints on the direct practical bearing of the foregoing truths. The
facts of our human organization should not only guide the medical
advice given in the consultation-room, but caution us respecting
the methods to be adopted in dealing with the poor, and suggest the
direction in which national sanitary measures should proceed.
The immense power of this passion of sex in the human race must never
be ignored in relation to either men or women. The beneficent control
which the human mind can exercise over the passion points out that item
in the human _materia medica_, which more than any other the physician
must strive to secure for the benefit of his patient, viz.--force of
will. He is bound to declare the sovereign efficacy of this natural
specific, and enforce the methods of securing it. All physical and
hygienic means must be called upon to develop and support that power
of will and that mental purity which alone can govern wisely the human
sexual nature.
There is another point which cannot be too strongly insisted on. The
personal modesty of patients--that elementary virtue in Christian
civilization--must be carefully cherished by the physician, who, more
than any other, is acquainted with its influence on the sexual nature.
The common resort to sexual examination is an evil grown up in medical
practice of comparatively modern date. The use of the speculum should
be strictly limited by absolute necessity. Its reckless use amongst the
poor is a serious national injury. I know from fifty years’ medical
experience amongst the poor, as well as the rich, that this custom
is a real and growing evil. It should be a last resort of medical
necessity, and it is so regarded by thoughtful physicians. That it is
sometimes necessary is unhappily true; and when a poor sufferer learns
from her trusted adviser that such investigation is quite unavoidable,
acceptance of such judgment is the part of wisdom and true modesty.
But it is essential that the medical judgment thus rendered should be
final--the result of age and special experience. The wise custom of
many physicians to decline practice in which a very special training
has not given them the positive knowledge of an expert should be a
universal rule. It is a social wrong when the serious character of this
branch of medicine is not conscientiously acknowledged. The natural
sentiment of personal modesty is seriously injured amongst respectable
people by the resort to a succession of incompetent advisers.
A really serious and national evil results from the thoughtless
treatment of the poor. In dispensary and hospital, and wherever medical
assistance is rendered to the exposed and helpless classes, the first
duty of the physician is to respect personal modesty, or to instil it
if the habit has been lost. Every physician, man or woman, is bound to
cherish with reverence the great conservative principle of society,
personal modesty and self-respect. This is a point on which the medical
practitioner cannot avoid a moral responsibility. Physicians are the
special guardians of health from infancy onward. They possess the means
of acquiring the fullest knowledge of the double elements of human
nature--the interaction of mind and body. From their culture, their
social position, and the authority which they legitimately exercise,
the weighty responsibility of rightly guarding the human faculties
rests chiefly upon them. In all those points where the physical health
of a nation is inseparably connected with its moral health, they are
more responsible than any other class of the community for the moral
condition of their country.
All medical advice and all medical measures must, therefore, be
guided by the positive fact that human sex differs from brute sex in
the possession of a mental element which is capable of elevating and
controlling it, and which must never be lost sight of in dealing with
human beings.
To the rising members of our noble profession I earnestly present
the foregoing facts for their Christian and patriotic consideration,
believing that when they fully realize these great truths they will
embrace them with the generous enthusiasm of youth. Thus, while guiding
their future practice by sound principles in relation to the care of
our human organization, they will enforce these truths by the strongest
of all arguments--the true manliness of their own lives.
CHAPTER VI
_Medical Guidance in Legislation_
All thoughtful members of the medical profession will appreciate
the power of education exercised by law, particularly on the rising
generation. As students of human physiology, knowing the inseparable
connection of mind and body, they can more fully understand how the
laws of a country mould social customs, and recognise the gradual but
widespread deterioration of social morality resulting from unjust laws.
In all legislation which endeavours to protect and improve national
health the medical profession is necessarily consulted. The advice
of experts is indispensable in framing measures which affect such
important subjects as wholesome food-supply, the healthy housing of a
people, the prevention and spread of epidemic diseases, etc. Indeed,
so important is the connection of a sound body with a sound mind,
and so linked together are all classes of society, that common-sense
and rational foresight will more and more recognise that health
regulations are a subject of national concern as well as of individual
instruction, and the advice of the medical profession will be
increasingly needed.
It is, however, equally certain that with the advance of intelligence,
of education, and of political power amongst all members of a
community, the great principle of Justice must become the foundation
on which all legislation, which is to prove of permanent benefit to a
nation, will rest. Expediency, regardless of justice, may sometimes
seem to offer an easy solution of difficult practical problems, but it
is a delusive seeming. The temporary adoption of such expedients, when
contrary to the inexorable requirements of far-seeing or sympathetic
justice, will always degrade, and in the end destroy, the society which
persists in resting upon expediency instead of principle.
For this reason slavery and polygamy are always found to hinder the
progress of any nation that is founded upon them. In our own country
the unjust condonation of adultery, by law, in 1857, against the
strenuous opposition of far-seeing statesmen, has educated more than
one generation in a false and degrading idea of physiology.
In all sanitary legislation, where the authority of the medical
profession is recognised by an appeal to any of its members for
guidance in respect to practical regulations, the counsel given
affects the honour of the whole profession, and it is vital to the
authoritative status of the profession that the advice rendered shall
be based upon a sound knowledge of the creative laws which govern our
complex human nature. Superficial or one-sided statements, made on so
momentous an occasion as an appeal by legislation to medicine, degrade
the profession; and practical measures founded upon unsound knowledge
may debase legislation and intensify the evils they are intended to
diminish.
The most serious of all the subjects on which the advice of the medical
profession is required concerns the legislative enactments or municipal
regulations which affect the relations of the sexes.
The importance of these relations cannot be overrated. They deal with
the very source of society. They may affect the soundness of both body
and mind. If legislation fosters immoral customs which spread disease
and death, then such legislation, corrupting a nation’s life, is
treachery to human nature, and the false counsel that has been given is
defiance of Divine law.
A great physiological fact which requires now to be faced is that
promiscuous intercourse cannot be made physically healthy. The reasons
for this have already been stated.[5] But no practical measures are
sound which do not steadily repress this dangerous and debasing
practice in men and women.
This great problem of sexual evil has never hitherto been studied
from the two sides which Nature presents to us. But sound physiology
requires that the parallel functions and equal attraction in the two
halves of humanity be considered. A Christian nation must recognise
that the purchase of the weaker by the stronger is a cruel and debasing
trade which must be checked, and that the substitution of promiscuous
intercourse for Christian marriage is a physical and moral degradation
to each half of the human race.
When the facts are fully grasped--1st, that men are not made dependent
upon women for the maintenance of individual health and vigour; 2nd,
that women violate a law of nature when they fail to reverence their
potential motherhood--the great principle which should guide sex
legislation will be established.
In all practical measures required to check sex disorders in our midst,
the co-operation of experienced men and women is essential.
Whether it be for the maintenance of good order in the streets, for
purification of the slums, for reduction of brothels, for reform
of marriage laws, or for the extirpation of venereal disease, no
regulations will unite expediency with justice, which do not proceed
from the united wisdom of earnest men and women.
There are encouraging signs in the present day that such a source of
hopeful practical reform will become possible, and that men and women
of large experience are rising into that reverential recognition of
the Creative Power entrusted to the human race, which will enable them
to consult together, and thus gain the wisdom necessary for practical
action.
The awful aberrations of our sexual nature, which produce such
profound social disorder and exercise such degrading influence on the
relations of men and women, result from ignorance of physiological laws
and the adaptation of human physical structure to the maintenance of
those laws.
It is through the recognition of these facts by the medical profession,
and their instruction of parents in the truths of physiology, that the
most powerful impetus to human growth may now be given. The medical
profession can prove, through its knowledge of the physical and mental
structure of the human race, that the great Christian doctrine of one
equal standard of morality for our race is true doctrine based upon our
human constitution.
Our noble profession is summoned to a mighty warfare in the present
deadly strife between good and evil. If as Christian physicians,
believing in a beneficent Creative Power, and imbued with the spirit
of the Master, they recognise the Divine unity manifested through the
compound nature of all life, they will become the vanguard of that
growing army of truth which seeks to know and obey Divine law.
APPENDIX I. (PAGE 24)
Human procreation possesses a double relation--viz., _first_, a
relation to the race; and, _second_, a relation to the individual.
In the former character, as the inevitable method of continuing the
race, it is a great providential law whose mysteries we by no means
comprehend, and which is placed quite beyond the control of the
human will; but in the latter, the exercise of this great power of
procreation possesses the distinctive mark of self-control, and as
an individual act our power and responsibility are great. In this
important subject of procreation, no one can speak with scientific
precision and lay down absolute rules respecting its complete method
of action. It has been wisely said by one of the most skilful and
experienced French physicians:[6] ‘No opinions put forth reconcile
all facts. We are obliged to confess that there is a mystery in this
subject, that our most ingenious theories fail to enlighten.’
In considering this subject in its relation to the individual, the
beneficent educational uses of parentage to the individual must be
realized, and the irreparable loss that human society would sustain
from the absence or serious diminution of the parental relation.
Parentage is the most potent and persistent civilizer and educator
of our race. There is no other influence that will compare with the
deep-seated and unique power of parentage in breaking down the narrow,
unsocial barrier of exclusive individual selfishness. Much has always
been said and written about maternal love, but there is a very deep
significance in the persistence with which the Hebrew Scriptures
exalt the power, the supreme beneficence of fatherhood; and there is
a profound reason why universal Christendom is taught to address,
‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’ It is a special lesson to men. The
mother, by the inevitable facts of her nature, when that nature is not
corrupted, is moulded into tenderness and providential watchfulness
over the weak and helpless; her nature is a harmonious whole, and, as
a beneficent general rule, all women are potential mothers. But Nature
does not so inevitably educate men. It is only when his first-born
child is laid in his arms that the man awakens fully to the wonder
and infinite tenderness of paternity. The character of the childless
woman does not suffer from the absence of that beneficent discipline
and development which come from parentage as does the character of the
man. It is very instructive to observe how unmarried or childless women
replace by adoptions or by pets their unexercised natural affections.
Any failure to realize the Divine purpose in this joining together of
cause and effect amongst the mass of mankind, any efforts which tend to
diminish respect for the parental relation and destroy the perception
of its essential sacredness, must be disastrous to the welfare of a
nation.
The educational influence of parentage as a fundamental fact in human
progress must be borne in mind with all the reverence which is due
to it, when we seek to remedy the hideous perversions of natural
sentiment, which we find in our unhuman slums. It is not by destroying
parentage, but by teaching its responsibilities and by restoring its
educational influence upon the adult, that we must hope for progress.
In seeking to bring into the freedom of humanity, not only the swarms
of poor fellow-creatures sweltering in city slums, but all classes of
human beings struggling in the slough of unrestrained lust, we must
reverently study Nature’s laws as they are gradually discovered in
relation to parentage, by which the Creator gradually develops even the
lowest forms of mankind through parentage.
The fact established by Raciborsky, the famous German physician, in a
former generation is that ‘the period when conception is most likely to
take place is near the time of menstruation, either just before it or
during a few days after the time.’ It is not asserted that conception
in the human race is necessarily limited to this interval of time, for
it is true that great stimulus of the organs produced at any period of
the month may bring about a similar congestion or special aptitude for
conception. But the periodic character of the woman’s constitution
regulates the probability of conception to so great an extent that by
this law higher and lower sentient beings are brought into harmony, and
woman assumes her due place as the regulator of sexual intercourse.
Throughout the animal world procreation is governed by the will of
the female. Not violence, but gentleness, is shown by the male to the
female. Her refusal or desire guides sexual intercourse amongst the
lower animals. To raise the human race to this higher animal level from
which it has fallen is a special task of advanced physiology, which can
show the physical method and reason of this redemption.
Human marriage must be regarded as a life companionship, in which the
satisfaction of physical desires forms a secondary, not a primary,
part. When so entered upon, love will direct its relations for the good
of the two joined together in this unique union. The man joins himself
to the woman in loving companionship, and her constitution henceforward
must determine the times of the special act of physical union.
The foregoing physiological law is a truth full of hope and promise
of infinite progress, for nations have hitherto perished in large
measure through the abuse and degradation of women. The regulation of
sexual intercourse in the best interests of womanhood is the hitherto
unrecognised truth of Christianity, towards which we are slowly
groping. When it is fully accepted, a fresh spring of vigour will have
been discovered for the human race.
APPENDIX II. (PAGE 32)
The following sound advice on sexual physiology from the _Lancet_
should be widely known:
‘Young men in their conflict with temptation to sexual advice often
suffer under the disadvantage of receiving but little help from those
to whom they ought to look for it with confidence. Few parents have
the knowledge and the wisdom to tell their sons the most important
truths about the sexual passion just at the time when it is becoming
developed in them, and the latter are therefore left an easy prey to
their strange desires, and to those “lewd fellows of the baser sort”
who are always at hand to corrupt innocent youth.
‘If it is true that to a very large extent parents are unmindful of
one of their gravest responsibilities, it is no less true that the
medical profession has often failed in its duty in connection with
this subject. Medical writers and medical men generally are too often
silent on this matter, and unfortunately, when the silence has been
broken, it has not always been with words of truth and soberness.
We are constantly hearing and saying that “knowledge is power,” yet
we find that little effort is made to impart the knowledge which
would largely aid in preserving the virtue of the young, and the most
pernicious teaching of those who for the lowest of reasons propagate
error is left unnoticed.
‘Knowledge alone will never make a people virtuous, but it is an
invaluable aid to those who are striving to control their passions.
Seeing, on all sides, the terrible physical, mental, and social havoc
wrought by sexual vice, we feel that the medical profession should do
its utmost to stem the evil, and, at any rate, should give utterance
to the truth with no uncertain sound. What are the physiological
facts that ought to be proclaimed by the medical profession? Mainly
these. In the first place, that occasional involuntary emissions of
semen during sleep, and often in association with libidinous dreams,
are natural occurrences in unmarried continent men, and are neither
the cause nor the consequence of disease. The emissions are most
frequent between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five; they vary in
frequency in different men, but are favoured by sedentary occupations
and by lewd thoughts. The subjects of these emissions sometimes
complain of various sensations of malaise, which they attribute to the
depressing influence of these losses; but it is a striking fact that
such symptoms are only met with in those who have an exaggerated or
erroneous conception of the significance of the discharge, and that
they quickly disappear when their real meaning and causation are
understood. To regard such a physiological occurrence as a disease and
name it “spermatorrhœa” is a very serious error.
‘The second fact we wish to insist upon is that sexual continence does
not beget impotence, and that the all-prevailing cause of impotence
is prolonged sexual excess. In support of the opposite conclusion
appeal has been made to analogy. It has been pointed out that unused
muscles and bones waste, and therefore, it is urged, it must be true
that continence will lead to impotence. Such argument is utterly
fallacious, as are most arguments from analogy. Facts in abundance
prove the contrary. Common as is sexual vice, continence is not
unknown among us, and the truth of our statement is not difficult
to verify. The real argument from analogy is drawn from the breast.
This gland is generally inactive for many years after puberty, and
yet, whenever the call for its activity arrives, it is more or less
perfectly responded to. As a matter of fact, impotence does not depend
upon the testicle, but upon the spinal cord; the sexual act is a
physiological nerve-storm, and not simply an act of secretion. Loss
of sexual potency is due to some fault in the nerves of the parts,
or more commonly in the centre, in the spinal cord, which presides
over this function. It is often a solitary nervous phenomenon, and by
itself is not of grave import.
‘The third physiological fact we ought to teach is that no function of
the body is so influenced and controlled by the higher nerve-centres
as the sexual. It is excited by lewd imaginings, loose talk, and
sensuous scenes. It is set in motion by even accidental stimulus of
any part of the nervous system affected by the sexual organism. Hence
the difficulty of continence. On all sides are sights and sounds
that may become the stimulus of sexual excitement. The other side
of the picture is equally true. By the exercise of watchfulness and
self-control the occasions of such excitement may be reduced to a
minimum, and the passion may be subdued.
‘Medical men are sometimes asked to formulate rules of diet and
exercise--hygienic rules--by which immorality is to be banished. The
task is altogether impracticable. Vice is voluntary, and it is only by
the exercise of a resolute self-will that virtue is maintained.
‘We cannot but believe that were these three very elementary but
fundamental physiological truths properly presented and enforced upon
young men very much misery would be avoided. Ignorance of them drives
men into the clutches of ruthless charlatans, leaves them a prey to
groundless fears, and often leads them into vicious habits from which
they are unable to free themselves. To withhold such knowledge is in
many cases to leave youths in ignorance of the one power by which they
can successfully contend against the evil. We feel strongly the urgent
importance of this matter, and hence we speak plainly, and hope that
others, as they have opportunity, will do their best to help young men
in their struggle against vice.’
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Appendix I., p. 75.
[2] See Acton’s _Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs_,
sixth edition, p. 17.
[3] See Appendix II., p. 79.
[4] See Michel Lévy, _Traité d’Hygiène_ 5th ed., vol. i., pp. 294-299.
[5] _Ante_, p. 53. See also pp. 128, 129.
[6] See Cazeaux, _Des Accouchements_.
MEDICAL RESPONSIBILITY IN RELATION
TO THE
CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACT
_An Address given to a Meeting of Medical Women in London,
April 27th, 1897._
ADDRESS TO MEDICAL WOMEN
Having been invited to speak to you on ‘The Responsibility of Women
Physicians in relation to the Contagious Diseases Act,’ I have
considered it a duty to accept this invitation for several reasons.
It is twenty-seven years since my attention was first imperatively
called by our philanthropist, Miss Mary Carpenter, to the subject of
regulating or organizing the immorality of women. Since that time I
have necessarily given much thought to this subject.
I have always felt that the National Repeal Societies made a mistake
in relaxing effort after the first check which the Contagious Diseases
Acts suffered in 1886. The fact that, in a House of 670 members, only
245 voted on the side of a great moral question, and that 289 absented
themselves, was worthy of note. It showed that the great campaign
against perverted sex was then only beginning. After that first defeat
the mighty forces of evil, of selfishness, of ignorance, of timidity,
of hypocrisy, and of lust were sure to rally, and many genuine
but short-sighted philanthropists, seeing the shocking results of
unrestrained evil, would grope about for a remedy, and probably again
be misled by a plausible but impossible method of cure.
On studying carefully the important Government Reports just
published--viz., Representations from the Royal College of Physicians,
from the Secretary of State for India, from the Departmental Committee,
from the Army Sanitary Commission, and from Lord George Hamilton’s
despatch--I recognised more fully than ever before the great and
growing danger which is arising from sexual vice. That danger exists,
not only through our army in India, but also through the present
condition of all standing armies. Thus, by the systematic perversion
of the sexual instinct, the gradual destruction of so-called Christian
civilization is taking place.
I felt, moreover, that the reference made in these Reports to the
employment and training of women in India to examine and treat Indian
prostitutes in the military hospitals under the medical officer
demanded the notice of women physicians.
Since 1870 a body of highly educated and reliable women physicians has
grown up in Great Britain and Ireland--a body recognised by the State
as of equal standing with their professional brethren. During that
period also a most important and beneficent medical movement for the
help of our Indian sisters has been established in India, known as the
Dufferin Fund, and promoted by our European women physicians. All women
physicians willingly help the most degraded persons who voluntarily
seek their help. But any proposition that women should be medically
trained in order to prepare the most helpless class of Her Majesty’s
subjects--poor Indian women--for the use of vicious soldiers would be
so gross an insult, as well as extreme folly, that I felt sure that the
responsible gentlemen who authorized the Government Reports could not
realize the meaning of their suggestion. But it laid upon disciplined
and far-seeing medical women, who must carefully consider any practical
measures which concern the relation of the sexes, the imperative duty
of helping in the solution of an urgent and most difficult problem.
It is for these reasons that, as the oldest woman physician, I have
thought it right to accept this invitation, and I earnestly desire
to be aided in what I may suggest by the serious thought of every
experienced physician.
I propose to say a few words under the three following heads:
1st. On the growing and dangerous character of this sexual evil, which
produces venereal disease.
2nd. On the error of Governments in their endeavours to cope with
disease.
3rd. On the right principle which must guide all practical methods of
dealing with it.
I.
_On the Gravity of the Evil of Venereal Disease._
The Royal College of Physicians--our highest medical authority--makes
the following statement:
‘The increase of venereal disease appears to us to be a matter of
serious moment, and to call for the gravest consideration. The
constitutional form of the disease is one of the most serious,
insidious, and lasting of all the contagious diseases that afflict
humanity. Other contagious complaints--_e.g._, smallpox or
scarlatina--are transmissible only for a limited time, and not by
inheritance. With syphilitic disease it is far otherwise: it is the
most lasting in its effects, and most varied in the character of its
specific manifestations; it frequently gives rise to consequences far
removed from its initial symptoms, most seriously implicating and
affecting various organs of the body; it complicates other diseases;
its contagious properties extend over lengthened periods of time,
during which the sufferers are often a source of danger to innocent
people, while they may be, and frequently are as parents, the source
whence specific infection is transmitted to their children....
‘About 13,000 soldiers return to England from India ever year, and
of these, in 1894, over 60 per cent. had suffered from some form of
venereal disease.’[7]
Lord George Hamilton’s despatch quotes from a War Office Report:
‘Of the fatal character of this form of disease’ (syphilis) ‘the
committee, after a visit to the military hospital at Netley, where
invalids from India are sent for treatment, have drawn a dreadful
picture. During their short term of military service a great part
(in some cases more than half) of their time has been spent in
hospital, either in India or at home. Before reaching the age of
twenty-five years these young men have come home presenting a most
shocking appearance: some lay there having obviously but a short time
to live; others were unrecognisable from disfigurement by reason of
the destruction of their features, or had lost their palates, their
eyesight, or their sense of hearing; others, again, were in a state
of extreme emaciation, their joints distorted and diseased. Not a
few are time-expired, but cannot be discharged in their present
condition, incapacitated as they are to earn their livelihood, and in a
condition so repulsive they could not mix with their fellow-men. Their
friends and relatives refuse to receive them, and it is inexpedient
to discharge them only to seek the asylum of the poor-house, so they
remain at Netley in increasing numbers.’
The Government Departmental Committee (p. 11) uses almost the very
words of the French surgeon Diday, who, in writing some years ago of
the dangerous prevalence of venereal disease, so widespread in Paris,
warns his readers how this most insidious disease may be spread by
ordinary contact, by wet-nurses to infants, or by infants to nurses,
by public conveniences, by unsuspected touch, and even by the kiss of
relations.
These reports show that wherever a standing army exists, either in
Europe or America, whether in temperate or tropical climates, at home
or abroad, there exists a focus of the most insidious and dangerous
diseases that afflict human beings--diseases which specially injure
the procreative power, and which are annually spread in varying
amounts amongst the civil population, notwithstanding the most
rigorous measures which the wit of the military mind has been able to
devise--measures which often trample under foot every principle of
justice and mercy.
When we consider also that not only are the standing armies of
every civilized country nurseries of the various forms of venereal
disease, but that the same dangerous diseases prevail in all our large
towns, the gravity of this scourge, which is sapping the vitality of
Christendom, is evident.
The more careful study of venereal disease in its two forms of
gonorrhœa and syphilis is especially incumbent upon women physicians,
on account of the result of important modern researches. These show
that many of the female complaints which have so largely increased,
and which we are naturally called upon to treat, are now considered by
experienced and clear-headed physicians to be often due to gonorrhœal
infection derived from husbands of former loose life--infection
conveyed either directly or from recrudescent and insidious forms of
trouble hitherto unsuspected.[8]
II.
_The Errors of Official Bodies in dealing with this Subject._
Before I venture to criticise any procedure or suggestion of the
Government, I ask your consideration of certain scientific axioms which
must be laid down as necessary data before any wise course of practical
action can be initiated with rational hope of success. The first refers
to the causes of disease.
_Axiom 1._
‘In combating serious disease it is essential to ascertain the chief
cause of the disease, which must be directly attacked and steadily
removed, or no cure is possible.’
We may as well expect to cure typhoid fever whilst allowing sewer gas
to permeate the house, or cholera whilst bad drinking-water is being
taken, as try to cure venereal disease whilst its chief cause remains
unchecked.
I shall show later that Promiscuous Intercourse, or the resort of many
men to one woman, is a prolific source of venereal disease.
The second axiom refers to the physiological rank and scope of our
human faculties.
_Axiom 2._
‘The sexual organs are not essential to individual life, although they
are essential to the continuance of the race. Neither is their full
exercise by sexual congress indispensable to individual health.’
The blind obstinacy with which these scientific facts are ignored in
education, in social sentiment, and in Government organizations, is a
potent cause of national degeneracy, of impaired procreative power, and
enfeebled offspring.
_Hunger_ is the primary instinct and indispensable condition of human
life. It is that which insures the continuance of the individual.
The sexual instinct, with all its grand power to perpetuate the
race, is only a later development, growing with the unfolding of the
intellectual and moral nature. It is shared equally under varying
aspects by each of the two necessary factors in procreation, woman as
well as man.
This fact of the powerful sexual attraction necessarily existent
and dominating in woman, as mother of the race, seems to be quite
overlooked. In any true meaning of the word ‘strength,’ this potent
social force in women demands far more serious study than it has yet
received, although it may exhibit itself in less spasmodic form than in
men.[9]
There are two branches of the medical art which urgently require fuller
consideration. These are:
1st. The physiological life of the organs of generation in both men
and women.
2nd. The immense influence which the mind can exercise over the body
in controlling disease.
The susceptibility of our sexual nature to mental control and direction
to noble ends is a great and encouraging scientific truth.
From these data of true physiology the possibility of continence is
evident. With further physiological study, its great advantage, up to
the full consolidated adult age, can be proved. By scientific study of
the biological facts that underlie these data, it can be shown from
positive medical experience that promiscuous intercourse between the
sexes, or the resort of many men to the same woman, cannot be made
physically safe. The gradual elimination of this destructive practice
is essential to the progress of the race.
These statements are supported both by historical experience and sound
medical knowledge.
The human race, in advancing through lower stages of development,
passes from polygamy and concubinage to the higher state of Christian
marriage. The scientific basis which underlies this advance has not yet
been realized.
Polygamy, although morally degrading to both parties from its
injustice, tyranny, and impairment of vigour, does not produce the
special physical curse of syphilitic disease.
But promiscuous intercourse inevitably tends to give rise to varying
forms of venereal disease, no matter what precautions may be taken.
In the female subject, irritation, congestion, or inflammation of the
parts are the result of unnatural repetition of the sexual act. By
such irritation the natural and healthy secretions of those organs are
rendered morbid.
The natural secretions of the male organs also become morbid in
licentious men, developing into blennorrhagia, or purulent gonorrhœa,
and thus the danger of promiscuity is intensified.
Neither is it possible, when such injurious practices are allowed, to
cleanse or disinfect the female parts as if they were a plane surface.
The woman’s structure is designed for the passage of a child’s head. It
is consequently composed of immensely distensible or elastic tissue,
forming folds or rugæ, which may retain diseased products. It is also
abundantly supplied with active secretory and absorbent glands, whose
action may become unhealthy.
The special danger of specific disease also arising from the congress
of different races is a well-known fact. The alarming epidemic of
venereal disease, which spread like the plague through Europe in
the fifteenth century, was brought from America by the licentious
conquerors of Peru. This gravest form of racial injury is now being
emphasized by the contrast between the condition of our white and
coloured troops in India.
Although medical investigation has failed to determine precisely the
originating cause of the specific virus which produces the form of
venereal disease named syphilis, yet it is always connected more or
less directly with promiscuous intercourse, especially with the advance
of armies.[10]
We know, however, that morbid changes may take place in the natural
secretions of the male and female organs under impure sexual
intercourse, leading to advanced forms of degeneration in the various
results of gonorrhœa, producing, particularly when the epidermis is
abraded, sores, ulcers, etc. And the poison of diseased secretion is
thus conveyed from one to the other partner in vice.
Nor can the presence of infectivity, once acquired, be detected by
inspection; and no infected immoral person, still carrying on impure
sexual relations, can ever be pronounced healthy or ‘sound’ by means
of examination or ocular investigation. Neither can the absence of the
so-called venereal germ gonococcus be relied on as proving health. Its
specific significance is denied by many competent investigators, and
it is absent in some of the worst forms of disease.
‘Mediate contagion’ is also an important and well-established medical
fact. Thus a famous French harlot, called ‘Casse-noix,’ presented none
of the grosser signs of venereal disease, yet continued to infect the
men who resorted to her.
When to the difficulty of pronouncing the parts with their secretions
healthy, is added the existence of uncleanliness, of drunkenness, etc.,
in either party, the danger of these promiscuous relations is evident.
Now, these positive medical facts appear to be unknown in their full
significance to our Government advisers, judging from the latest
reports and proposals with regard to disease in the Indian army,
which seemed designed to allay national panic rather than to reach
the source of the evil. A mistake was certainly made by Government in
withdrawing a subject of such vital importance to the nation, from full
consideration by our Parliamentary representatives, on account of its
painful character. The consequence is that an active but irresponsible
Press has thrown a mass of unsifted and shocking statistics broadcast
amongst the people, creating widespread alarm.
The army statistics imperatively demand a far more searching
examination, both into facts and their causes, than has yet been given,
before rational or permanent legislation can be adopted. Any thoughtful
person examining the reports referred to, will see that such facts as
the following require elucidation: the actual number of individuals
affected (not the repeated return of the same soldier) and the varying
category of their complaints; the variations in different cantonments,
with the causes of such difference; the effect produced by the
introduction of the short-service system and by increased restrictions
on marriage; the closure of voluntary hospitals and dispensaries; the
influence of malaria and tropical climate on the constitution; the
mixture of different races; and the causes which have produced the
improved health results which are obtained in the army in England.
These points have not been sufficiently investigated by unprejudiced
inquiry. The well-meaning effort of Government to meet a very serious
state of things must inevitably fail, because the necessary bases for
legislation are not yet established.
It is clear that, until all these essential facts have been carefully
looked into by a competent Commission and the results presented to
Parliament, no legislation--which apparently destroys the foundations
of morality, which perverts and weakens our youth, and which, under the
misleading phrase ‘voluntary submission,’ reduces our helpless Indian
sisters to virtual slavery of the most destructive character--can be
permanently accepted by the British nation. We must look forward,
therefore, to a longer and more arduous struggle than the one that was
prematurely quieted in 1888. Neither can the struggle between right and
wrong methods of practical action be confined to our Indian army. It
concerns our work in Great Britain as well as in India and in Africa.
The dire diseases in question are connected with all large towns as
well as with every military station, and as physicians we must study
them in these two relations.
III.
_On the Principle which must guide all Practical Methods of dealing
with Venereal Diseases in the Army._
On this vast subject I can only refer to-day to two practical methods
of gradually extirpating venereal disease from our army in India.
_The first_ is the steady discouragement by Government of promiscuous
intercourse.
_The second_ is the removal of the idleness which curses our soldiery
in an army of occupation.
The first indispensable condition in the prevention of disease is the
steady discouragement of promiscuous intercourse.
Now, I assert positively that such discouragement has never been
seriously and steadily tried in the army by Government, but only by
unofficial efforts--efforts which are most valuable, but which are
entirely lacking in the force of organization and in the important
recognition and help which Government alone can afford.
In the ‘Memorandum of the Army Sanitary Commission,’ No. 2, published
this year, on the first page appears the following noteworthy
statement--so utterly misleading as to amount to virtual falsehood:
‘The efforts to teach the soldiers habits of self-control having
so signally failed, those responsible for the maintenance of the
efficiency of the army in India may well be excused if they look about
for some effective means of arresting the progress of the disease and
preserving their battalions fit for service.’
Now, what are the _Government_ efforts here referred to which are said
to have failed?
In examining the circulars issued from the Quartermaster-General’s
Department from 1870 to 1884 for the adoption of stringent measures
‘to reduce the chances of venereal disease,’ it is found that the
recommendation consists in instructing the soldiers how to cleanse
themselves after dangerous sexual indulgence! No circular is issued
from the Quartermaster’s Department requiring that the soldier shall
be taught how to control his ignorant instincts and honouring such
control (_that_ is left to scattered individual effort), but official
instruction is confined to the vain endeavour of teaching him how to
satisfy lust without extreme risk! Surely this is adding hypocrisy to
culpable disregard of the national welfare.
It is encouragement to continence which the young soldier needs; and
remember that numbers of these soldiers are enlisted between eighteen
and twenty-five years of age--an age when every physician knows that
the male organization is being consolidated, and when continence is
invaluable in helping the physical forces to build up a fine strong
manhood. Encouragement to self-control, therefore, must be afforded
from the soldier’s first introduction to Her Majesty’s service.
It must begin with the recruiting sergeants, who should be moral men,
and understand that continence in the soldiers will be regarded with
the highest honour, as preservative of physical efficiency and moral
bravery.
The inspectors of recruits, and especially the medical staff, must give
the important instructions needed by soldiers of how to restrain their
passions.
The sexual organs are not a permissible subject of trade, and purchase
of the female body should be discouraged in all the manifestations
that official influence or human law can legitimately reach. The army
surgeons must _themselves_ know the physical reasons why the practice
of immorality can never be rendered safe, and by object-lessons taken
from the military hospitals they can teach ignorant soldiers that
no death is to be feared in comparison with the shocking results of
incontinence. They can indicate the rational means of physical exercise
and mental discipline by which the eager passions of youth can be
controlled, whilst at the same time they insist upon the necessity of a
non-stimulating diet in tropical climates.
The chaplains of the army have the next and still higher duty to
perform towards each undisciplined youth who is given up body and soul
to the absolute direction of the army authorities. No chaplain should
be appointed to our Indian army who is not only himself a moral man,
but who has also learned the physical possibility and immense advantage
of self-control, and is thus able from the basis of physiological
knowledge to rise to the higher plane of religious instruction. Without
such physiological knowledge, as a sound support of well-grounded
spiritual faith, his sacred calling may seem a badge of hypocrisy, more
deadly and destructive from the profound responsibility of the position
which he has ventured to fill.
The immense influence which commanding officers may exert by their
own example and sympathy cannot be enlarged on here. But until such
influences are brought to bear on the recruits by the _Government_, it
is not true to state that efforts to teach self-control have signally
failed, for they have not been made.[11]
Our responsibilities to the people of India, where England has become
the paramount Power, are very weighty. These responsibilities are due
to its women as well as to its men. It is stated that, according to
the last census, there were the enormous number of 38,047,354 girls
under fifteen years of age in our Indian Empire. What is the duty
of a Christian Government to this helpless mass of human beings?
The formation of poor young Indian women into a class purchasable
by white soldiers--a class despised by their own people, with no
refuge before them, but when used up turned out to die--is a dire
and dastardly disgrace to any Government calling itself civilized.
The removal of temptation by forbidding our soldiers to purchase our
young Indian sisters, and, if necessary, excluding them entirely from
the cantonment, is a distinct duty on the part of any Government that
seriously means to banish venereal disease from our army.
The second urgent preventive measure which should engage our military
authorities is the removal of that dangerous idleness which is a
constant temptation to the soldiers through so many weary hours of
every day. This subject can only be referred to here, for, although
of extreme importance, its practicability and adaptations must first
of all be thoroughly discussed by military men intimately acquainted
with the exigencies of army life. But it is a paramount duty to provide
constant useful employment and healthy recreation for our soldiers in
every army of occupation, during the cooler hours of the evening in
tropical climates, when such employment becomes possible as well as
imperative.
The remarkable organization of an army is the most powerful
training-school, in good or evil, for the poorer classes of men, that
we possess. The conversion of an army of occupation into a school
of the industrial arts needed in its maintenance--with rewards for
industry, sobriety, and self-control--must surely be in the power of
any Government that resolutely determines to accomplish such a noble
transformation. The saving in health and even in money would be a
great economic gain. The Government that carried out such a grand
result would be a mighty benefactor to our race.
It is impossible now to go fully into the various branches of this
vital subject, but I would say to my younger medical sisters, who
will carry on here the grand work of medicine when I have entered
upon another sphere of life, that I most earnestly counsel them to
recognise that the redemption of our sexual relations from evil to
good, rests more imperatively upon them than upon any other single
class of society. It will be a cowardly dereliction of duty to refuse
any longer to study this grave subject of venereal disease now again
forced upon our attention, because the subject--which concerns both
sexes equally--is a repulsive one.
To us medical women, the special guardians of home life, has been
opened the path of scientific medical knowledge, which, as science,
embraces both mind and body; and it is by our advance, independently
but reverently, in that path, guided by our God-given womanly
conscience, that we shall be able to detect clearly the errors in
relation to sex, which lie at the root of our present degeneracy.
It is not conspicuous public action that is required from us, but the
thorough realization of true physiology.
We must ourselves recognise the truth, and instruct parents, that
it is a physiological untruth to suppose that sexual congress is
indispensable to male health. We must warn our young men that no loose
woman picked up in the streets, or in a brothel, or in her own house,
can be pronounced physically safe, no matter how attractive she may
seem to be. We must warn our poor young women patients that yielding
to the solicitations of a supposed lover may unfit them to become
healthy wives and mothers. We must persistently arouse the conscience
of parents to the very grave risks that their daughters run in uniting
themselves to men of former loose life.
This is the confidential but imperative duty of true physicians. It is
by quiet but never-ceasing effort to spread the true view of scientific
medicine amongst our patients, and wherever the opportunity occurs,
that our influence as Christian physicians will gradually permeate
society, and cause truth to prevail over error.
If you perceive that the principles I have laid down are sound, then
hold to them firmly as the most precious truth.
Meet together to mature practical applications of those principles by
intercommunication of experience and mutual encouragement, feeling
sure that where two or three meet together in the everlasting Spirit
of THE CHRIST, you will find, as I have found during a long life, that
light and strength will be given you, and as earnest followers of the
Great Physician you will take part in that mighty work of regeneration,
which from our present small beginnings will, I fully believe, grow and
transfigure the twentieth century.
APPENDIX I. (PAGE 91)
The following testimony is by Dr. T. GAILLARD THOMAS, a recognised
gynæcological authority of New York.
‘Until the last twenty years specific urethritis was regarded, in the
male, as an affection of the most trivial import, as rapidly passing
off, leaving few serious sequelæ, and offering itself as an excellent
subject for jest and good-natured badinage. About two decades ago,
Dr. Emil Noeggerath published a dissertation upon this affection,
which will for ever preserve his name in the list of those who have
accomplished good for mankind, and give him claim to the title of
benefactor of his race. This observer declared, first, that out of
growing young men a very large proportion prior to marriage have
specific urethritis; second, that this affection very generally causes
urethral stricture, behind which a “latent” or low-grade urethritis is
for many years prolonged; third, that even as late as a decade after
the original disease had apparently passed away the man may transmit
it to a wife whom he takes to himself at that time; and fourth, that
the disorder affects, under these circumstances, the ostium vaginæ and
urethra, and thence passes up the vagina into the uterus, through the
Fallopian tubes, where it creates specific catarrh, and by this disease
produces oöphoritis and peritonitis, which becomes chronic, and often
ends in invalidism, and sometimes even in death. For this essay Dr.
Noeggerath was assailed by ridicule and by contradiction. The matter
has now been weighed in the balance, and admitted to its place among
the valuable facts of medicine.
‘My estimate of specific urethritis as a factor in the diseases of
women--and I take no peculiar or exaggerated views concerning the
matter--will be vouched for by all progressive practitioners of
gynæcology to-day. Specific vaginitis, transmitted to virtuous women
by men who are utterly ignorant of the fact that the sins of their
youthful days are at this late period bringing them to judgment, is one
of the most frequent, most active, and most direful of all the causes
of serious pelvic trouble in women--one which meets the gynæcologist
at every turn, and one which commonly proves incurable except by the
dangerous procedure of cœliotomy.
‘Think for a moment of the terrible position in which a high-minded,
upright, and pure man finds himself placed without any very grave or
unpardonable fault on his part. At the age of nineteen or twenty,
while at college, excited by stimulants, urged on by the example of
gay companions, and brought under the influence of that fatal trio
lauded by the German poet--“Wein, Weib, und Gesang”--the poor lad
unthinkingly crosses the Rubicon of virtue! That is all! On the morrow
he may put up the prayer, “Oh, give me back yesterday!” But yesterday,
with its deeds and its history, is as far beyond our reach as a century
ago, and returns at no man’s prayer.
‘Four or five years afterward this youth goes to the marriage bed
suffering, unknowingly, from a low grade of very slight latent
urethritis, the sorrowful memento of that fatal night, which has
existed behind an old stricture, and a result is effected for the
avoidance of which he would most gladly have given all his earthly
possessions.
‘All this sounds like poetry, not prose; like romance, not cold
reality. But there is not a physician in this room who does not know,
and who will not at once admit, that every word that I have uttered is
beyond all question true, and even free from exaggeration.
‘I mentioned, in speaking of the grave duties demanded by puberty,
that one of the important functions of the physician in regard to
the development of the girl during the thirteen years which precede
it, is to instruct her and her guardians how to prepare her for the
approaching issue. In language no less strong I would here insist upon
the physician’s duty to instruct men in all stations of life as to the
importance of a “clean bill of health” in reference to gonorrhœa, both
acute and chronic, before the marriage contract be entered upon.
‘Until a very late period the plan universally followed has been
this: The man about to be married went to his physician, told him the
history of a gonorrhœa, and asked if, now that all discharge appeared
to have ceased, any danger would attend his consummating the tie. The
physician would ask a few questions, examine the virile organ carefully
as to discharge, and, if the “outside of the platter” appeared clean,
give his consent to the union. The evil which has resulted from this
superficial and perfunctory course has been as great as it has been
widespread. To-day the question of stricture, a slight, scarcely
perceptible “latent gonorrhœa,” with its characteristic “gonococcus,”
is looked into, and not until all trace of disease is eradicated is
permission given for the union. A marital quarantine is as necessary
to-day in social life as a national quarantine is for contagious
diseases in general.
‘Few men, however eager for matrimony they may be, would run the great
risks attendant upon precipitancy if they only knew of them clearly
and positively. In no field of medicine is the old adage, “Prevention
is better than cure,” more important than in this one. If physicians
would do their duty fully in the matter, how many unfortunate women now
languishing from “pyosalpinx” would in the next generation be saved!’
APPENDIX II. (PAGE 101)
_The following important Memorandum lately issued is full of promise of
a noble future in the British army._
MEMORANDUM BY THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.
‘It will be the duty of company officers to point out to the men under
their control, and particularly to young soldiers, the disastrous
effects of giving way to habits of intemperance and immorality; the
excessive use of intoxicating liquors unfits the soldier for active
work, blunts his intelligence, and is a fruitful source of military
crime.
‘The man who leads a vicious life enfeebles his constitution, and
exposes himself to the risk of contracting disease of a kind which has
of late made terrible ravages in the British army.
‘Many men spend a great deal of their short term of service in the
military hospitals, the wards of which are crowded with patients, a
large number of whom are permanently disfigured and incapacitated from
earning a livelihood in or out of the army.
‘Men tainted with this disease are useless to the State while in the
army, and a burden to their friends after they have left it.
‘Even those who do not altogether break down are unfit for service
in the field, and would certainly be a source of weakness to their
regiments and discredit to their comrades if employed in war.
‘It should not be beyond the power of company officers to exercise
a salutary influence in these matters, more particularly over the
younger men. Many of these join the army as mere lads, and are taken
away early in life from the restraints and influences of home. They
should be encouraged to look to their superiors, both officers and
non-commissioned officers, but more especially to the officers
commanding their troops, batteries, and companies, for example and
guidance amid the temptations which surround them.
‘The Commander-in-Chief expects officers and non-commissioned officers
to be always ready and willing to afford them sympathy and counsel, and
to spare no effort in watching over their physical and moral welfare.
‘Officers should do their utmost to promote a cleanly and moral tone
amongst the men, and to insure that all rowdyism and obscenity in word
or action is kept in check. In no circumstances should public acts or
expressions of indecency be tolerated, and if in any case there is
reason to suspect that immorality is carried on in barracks or other
buildings which are under the control of the military authorities,
vigorous steps should be taken by surprise visits or otherwise to put
a stop to such practices. All persons implicated in them, whatever may
be their rank or position in the Service, should be punished with the
utmost severity.
‘Nothing has probably done more to deter young men who have been
respectably brought up from entering the army than the belief,
entertained by them and by their families, that barrack-room life is
such that no decent lad can submit to it without loss of character or
self-respect.
‘The Commander-in-Chief desires that in making recommendations for
selection for promotion regard should be had to the example set to
the soldier. No man, however efficient in other respects, should be
considered fit to exercise authority over his comrades if he is of
notoriously vicious and intemperate habits.
‘The Commander-in-Chief is confident that officers, non-commissioned
officers, and men in the Queen’s service will spare no pains to remove
from the army the reproach which is due to a want of self-restraint on
the part of a comparatively small number of soldiers, and that officers
of all ranks will do their utmost to impress on their men that, in the
important considerations of morality and temperance, soldiers of Her
Majesty’s army should, as befits their honourable calling, compare
favourably with other classes of the civil population.
‘WAR OFFICE,
‘_April 28, 1898_.’
FOOTNOTES:
[7] In the alarming statistics of disease circulated by the Press no
distinction was drawn between gonorrhœa and syphilis, yet the larger
part of the Government returns of Army Venereal Disease refer to
gonorrhœal affections.--See _Report of Departmental Committee_, 1897,
p. 27.
[8] See Appendix (p. 105). See also Dr. T. More Madden in _Medical
Annual_, 1897; Dr. W. J. Sinclair’s _Gonorrhœal Infection in Women_;
Researches of _Sanger_ and other German Investigators; Dr. Lawson Tait
on _Diseases of Women_; and _The Pathology and Treatment of Diseases of
the Ovaries_, 1877 and 1883, etc.
[9] See _The Human Element in Sex_, pp. 22, 23, and pp. 47-58.
[10] See Hirsch, _Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology_,
vol. ii., chap. ii. (The New Sydenham Society).
[11] Since the above was written an event has occurred full of hope for
the future. See Appendix II. (p. 109).
RESCUE WORK IN RELATION TO PROSTITUTION AND DISEASE
_An Address given at the Conference of Rescue Workers held in London,
June, 1881_
RESCUE WORK
The letter inviting me to take part in your deliberations proposed many
important subjects for discussion, and, amongst others, the subject
of venereal disease amongst the fallen. On this point I was asked
more especially to give information. I esteem it a privilege to aid
in any way your very important work. I will begin by stating certain
propositions which are fundamental in rescue work, and which are
susceptible of ample proof.
First. By prostitution is meant mercenary and promiscuous sexual
intercourse, without affection and without mutual responsibility.
Second. Its object is on one side pecuniary gain, on the other side the
exercise of physical lust. It is the conversion of men into brutes and
of women into machines.
Third. So far from its being necessary to humanity, it is the
destruction of humanity. It is the production of disease, of gross
physical cruelty, of moral death.
Lastly. It should be checked by legislative enactment, and destroyed by
social opinion.
Now, to amplify and enforce the foregoing propositions would require
a longer space than it would be right for one person to claim in a
general conference, and would prevent the special consideration of
the subject of disease. I will, therefore, simply offer them for
consideration as fundamental propositions. I will only beg you to
observe the distinct statement in the above, that it is the sexual
intercourse without affection and without responsibility that I have
spoken of. I say nothing about the exercise of the sexual faculties
in legitimate or illegitimate single unions, where affection and
responsibility may enter as elements. However injurious, therefore,
illegitimate but single unions may be to the welfare of society, I
leave them entirely aside in these remarks, as not coming under the
head of prostitution. I speak of the conversion of soulless lust into a
business traffic--of the system of brothels, procurers, and so-called
Contagious Diseases Acts--the system which provides for, not checks,
vice. I solemnly declare that so far from this system being a necessary
part of society, it is the greatest crime that can be committed against
our common humanity.
Let me now lay bare to you the root of the whole evil system, because,
as a physician acquainted with the physiological and pathological laws
of the human frame, and as one who has lived through a generation of
medical practice amongst all classes of the community, I can speak
to you with a positive and practical knowledge rarely possessed by
women. The central point of all this monstrous evil is an audacious
insult to the nature of men, a slander upon their human constitution.
It is the assertion that men are not capable of self-control, that
they are so inevitably dominated by overwhelming physical instincts,
that they can neither resist nor control the animal nature, and that
they would destroy their mental or physical health by the practice
of self-control. Now, it is extremely important that you should
understand exactly the nature of this dangerous falsehood. It is that
most dangerous of all kinds of falsehood--the perversion of truth. I
think it was Swedenborg who said: ‘I saw a truth let down into hell,
and forthwith it became a lie.’ I have often thought of this bold
image when observing in the present day the audacious _lie_ which is
announced as truth, in relation to that grand and universal force of
humanity, the sexual power.
When you see a poor drunkard reeling about the streets, when you
recognise the crimes and misery produced by intemperance, you do not
say that drunkenness is necessary to men, and that it is our duty to
provide clean and attractive gin-shops and any amount of unadulterated
alcohol to meet the craving appetites of old and young. On the
contrary, you form a mighty crusade against intemperance. And how do
you go to work? You recognise the absolute necessity which exists in
human nature for amusement, social stimulus, refreshment, change, and
cheerful hilarity; and so you provide bright entertainments, bands
of hope and excursions for the young, attractive coffee palaces and
clubs for the adults. In your entertainments you substitute wholesome
drinks for ‘fire-water’; you repress the sale of alcohol by legislative
enactments, you arrest drunken men and women, and you establish
inebriate asylums for their voluntary cure. You recognise that
drunkenness is a monstrous perversion of legitimate human necessities,
and you set to work to reform public opinion and social customs.
Whilst on the one hand you legislate, on the other hand you educate.
You perceive that the distinctive feature of humanity is its power
of intellectually guiding life, and you train boys and girls in the
exercise of this specially human faculty, moral self-control.
Now, my friends, lust, unchecked, untransfigured by affection, is like
fiery alcoholic poison to the human constitution. It constantly grows
by indulgence; the more it is yielded to, the fiercer it becomes; an
instinct which at first was governable, and susceptible of elevation
and enlightened direction and control, becomes through constant
indulgence a vicious domination, ungovernable and unrestrainable. When
unsubdued it injures the health, produces disease, and grows into an
irresistible tyrannical possession, which converts human beings into
selfish, cruel, and inhuman devils. This is what the great universal
force of sexual passion becomes when we resolutely ignore it in
childhood and youth, refuse to guide it, but subject it to accumulated
vicious influences in manhood; and when even our churches and religious
organizations are afraid or ashamed to deal with this most powerful
force of our God-created human nature, we suffer lust to grow into a
rampant evil, a real drunkenness, and then we have the audacity to say
in this nineteenth century, ‘This is the nature of men; they have not
the human power of intelligent self-control; women must recognise this
fact, and unbridled lust must be accepted and provided for.’
Now, I say deliberately, speaking as a Christian woman, that such
a statement and such a belief is blasphemy. It is blasphemy on our
Creator who has brought our human nature into being, and it is the
most deadly insult that has ever been offered to men. Do not accept
this falsehood. I state to you as a physician, that there is no fact
in physiology more clearly known than the constantly increasing power
which the mind can exercise over the body either for good or evil. If
you let corrupt servants injure your little children, if you allow
your boys and youths to practise self-abuse and fornication at school
and college, if you establish one law of divorce for a man and another
for a woman, if you refuse to protect the chastity of minors, if you
establish brothels, prostitutes, and procurers, you are using the power
of the mind over the body for evil. You are, indeed, educating the
sexual faculty, but educating it in evil. Our youth thus grows up under
the powerful influence of direct education of the sexual instincts in
vice; but so far, even in our so-called Christian civilization, we are
ashamed to attempt direct education of those faculties for good.
I have made the above remarks as bearing directly on the subject of
disease, as well as to call your attention to the proper place which
‘rescue work’ must occupy in humanitarian work. As prostitution is the
direct result of unbridled licentiousness, you may as well attempt
to ‘mop up the ocean’ as attempt to check prostitution, unless at
the same time the root of the evil--viz., licentiousness--is being
attacked. Let it be distinctly understood, however, that I would
encourage, not discourage, rescue work. I honour the self-denial and
beneficence even of those who cannot see the source of the evil they
are trying to mitigate; but I would much more strongly encourage those
who, being engaged in this work, do at the same time clearly recognise
that the warfare against licentiousness is the more fundamental work,
and who, whilst themselves engaged in rescue work, bid God-speed and
give substantial encouragement to all others who are directly engaged
in the great struggle against every form of licentiousness--against
every custom, institution, or law that promotes sexual vice. Such
earnest rescue workers are not simply mopping up the ocean, they are
also helping by their encouragement of other fundamental work to build
up a strong dyke which will resist the ravages of destructive evil
forces. Thus, any efforts that can be made to teach personal modesty
to the little boys and girls in our Board schools all over the country
form a powerful influence to prevent prostitution. Attention to sexual
morality in educational establishments everywhere, in public and
private schools and colleges, amongst young men and young women, is of
fundamental importance. Also efforts to secure decency in the streets,
in literature, in public amusements, form another series of efforts
which make a direct attack upon licentiousness, and cut away another
cause of prostitution. Again, the abolition of unjust laws and the
establishment of _moral_ legislation form another series of effort, and
a vital attack upon the roots of prostitution. Always remember that the
laws of a country possess a really terrible responsibility through the
way in which they influence the rising generation. Inequality between
the sexes in the law of divorce, tolerance of seduction of minors, the
attempt to check sexual disease by the inspection of vicious women,
whilst equally vicious men are untouched--all these striking examples
of the unjust and immoral attitude of legislation will serve to show
how law may become a powerful agent in producing prostitution through
its direct attitude towards licentiousness. Now, every encouragement
afforded by those engaged in rescue work to fundamental efforts to
check licentiousness, either through subscription of money, through
expressed sympathy, or through active work, is also aid to rescue work,
because such fundamental efforts attack the causes of prostitution.
Having thus stated distinctly the aspect under which rescue work must
always be regarded--as a precious outgrowth of Christian charity, but
not as a fundamental reform--I will speak more fully on those points
upon which my opinion has been particularly asked for--viz., the
question of venereal disease as affecting individuals and posterity,
and the effect of late legislation on prostitution.
This subject of venereal disease is a very painful one to the
non-professional mind, and I would not bring it before an ordinary
audience. But this is an assembly of experienced women dealing directly
with the vicious classes of society. I think such persons are bound
to inform themselves on this subject. It is needed to their effective
work, and I consider it an honourable duty to furnish what necessary
medical knowledge I can.
Venereal diseases, syphilis, gonorrhœa, are all names distinctively
used for the diseases of vice, which exist in various forms. All
forms of these diseases are injurious to the health of the diseased
individuals. All forms also are injurious to the health of the
partner in sexual intercourse. But only one form of such disease is
transmissible to offspring. I shall not enter upon the question of the
extent to which these diseases endanger the health of the community. My
long public and private medical observation leads me entirely to concur
in the opinion of Sir John Simon (formerly Medical Officer of the
Privy Council), as to the exaggerated statements that have been made
respecting the extent of these diseases. I fully recognise, however,
the very grave character of venereal disease, and as a hygienist I
consider that _any_ danger from such a cause should be checked.
These diseases are called the diseases of vice because they spring
directly from the promiscuous intercourse of men and women. Syphilis
never arises from the single union of a healthy man and woman. We
do not know the exact conditions under which promiscuity produces
these diseases. Dirt and excess of all kinds favour their production;
but we also know that, however apparently healthy the individuals
may be who give themselves up to indiscriminate debauch, yet these
diseases will speedily arise amongst them. Now, I wish to point out
with emphasis (to you who are engaged with the criminal classes)
this chief originating cause of disease--viz., promiscuity. It is a
cardinal fact to notice in studying this subject, for it furnishes
a solid basis of observation from which you may judge legislation
and all proposed remedial measures. If you will bear in mind that
unchecked licentiousness or promiscuity contains in itself the faculty
of _originating_ venereal disease, you will possess a test by which
you may judge of the good or evil effects of any proposed measure.
Ask yourself whether any particular legislative Act tends to check
licentiousness in both men and women; if not, it is either useless
or injurious to the nation, because it does not check that source of
constantly increasing danger--viz., promiscuity. The effect of brothels
and Contagious Diseases Acts, of establishments and laws which do not
tend to check promiscuous intercourse, is to facilitate, not stop,
such vice, and cannot eradicate the diseases of vice which spring from
such intercourse. The futility of any system which leaves the causes
of disease unchecked, and only tries to palliate its effects, is
evident. The futility of such a false method would remain, even if it
compelled the inspection of vicious men as well as women. But when a
system attempts only to establish an examination of women, leaving men
uninspected, and allowing free scope to the licentiousness of all, it
becomes a direct encouragement to vice. It tends to facilitate that
brutal custom of promiscuous intercourse without affection and without
responsibilities which is the disgrace of humanity--the direct source
of physical disease as well as of measureless moral evil.
But I do not advocate letting disease and vice alone. There is a right
way as well as a wrong way of dealing with venereal disease. I consider
that legislation is needed on this subject. It is unwise to propose to
do nothing because legislation has unhappily done wrong. It is out of
the question to suppose that in this age, when we justly boast of the
progress of hygiene or preventive medicine, so great an evil as the
unchecked spread of venereal disease should be allowed to continue.
It was the necessity of providing some check to the spread of disease
which operated a few years ago, when the unjust and immoral Contagious
Diseases Acts were so unhappily introduced into England by those who
certainly could not have realized their injustice and immorality. All
legislation upon the diseases of vice which can be durable--_i.e._,
which will approve itself to the conscience of a Christian people--must
be based upon two fundamental principles--the principles, viz., of
equal justice and respect for individual rights. These principles
are both overturned in the Contagious Diseases Acts--Acts which are,
therefore, sure to be abolished in a country which, however many
blunders it makes, is equally distinguished for its love of justice
and its love of liberty. Respect for individual rights will not allow
compulsory medical examination and treatment. The right of an adult
over his or her own body is a natural fundamental right. We should
uproot our whole national life, and destroy the characteristics of the
Anglo-Saxon race, if we gave up this natural right of sovereignty over
our own bodies.
Society, however, has undoubtedly the right to prevent any individual
from injuring his neighbour. Interference to prevent such injury is
just. The same sacredness which attaches to individual right over one’s
own person exists for one’s neighbour over his or her own person.
Therefore, no individual suffering from venereal disease has a right
to hold sexual intercourse with any other person. In doing so he goes
outside his individual right and injures his neighbour. The wise
principle on which legislation should act in dealing with venereal
disease is therefore perfectly clear. Society has a right to stop any
person who is spreading venereal disease; but it has no right to compel
such a person to submit to medical treatment. It is of vital importance
to recognise the broad distinction between these two fundamental
points--viz., the just protection which society must exercise over its
members, and the inherent right of self-possession _in_ each of its
members.
Accepting, therefore, one essential legislative principle so strongly
emphasized by the Contagious Diseases Acts--viz., that the State
has a right to interfere with sexual intercourse when its vicious
action injures society--what we must strive for is an enlightenment
of public opinion which will insist upon a _just_, practical law upon
this subject. The contagious diseases legislation indicates that the
time has arrived when the intervention of law is needed to place
greater restraint upon the brutal lust which tramples on the plainest
social obligations. A law wisely enforced, making the communication
of venereal disease by man or woman a legal offence, would place
a necessary check on brutal appetite. Such a law would not be the
introduction of a new principle into legislation. The principle of
considering sexual intercourse for the good of society has always
been recognised, and must necessarily be developed with the growth of
society. It was reaffirmed, but in an injurious manner, a few years ago.
It is the just and moral application of this principle that must be
insisted on, instead of an unjust, immoral, and tyrannical perversion
of the principle. The necessary safeguards in the working of such a
law, the special inquiry, the protection of innocence, the avoidance of
public scandal, etc., must be sought for with care. But the people have
a right to require that legislators shall seek for and find the right
method of enforcing any law which is just in principle and necessary
for the welfare of society. It is not only a duty, it is the greatest
privilege of enlightened statesmen to embody the broad common-sense
and righteous instinct of a Christian people in the institutions of a
nation.
A law which makes it a legal offence for an individual suffering from
venereal disease to hold sexual intercourse with another person, and
a ground for separation, is positively required in order to establish
a true principle of legislation, a principle of just equality and
responsibility which will educate the moral sense of the rising
generation and protect the innocent. Any temporary inconveniences which
might arise before the wisest methods of administering the law had
been established by experience, would be as nothing compared with the
elevating national influence of substituting a right method of dealing
with the diseases of vice for the present unjust and evil method. The
first direct means, therefore, for checking venereal disease is to make
the spreading of this disease a legal offence.
Secondly, a necessary regulation to be established in combating
the spread of this disease is its free treatment in all general
dispensaries and hospitals supported by public or charitable funds.
Such institutions have hitherto refused to receive persons suffering
from disgraceful diseases, or have made quite insufficient provision
for them. This refusal or neglect has left venereal diseases more
uncared for than ordinary diseases. It was a perception of this
neglect which induced the establishment of special institutions for
the cure of such disease. But no general hospitals, supported by
charitable funds given to cure the sick, have a right to refuse to
make adequate provision for any class of curable suffering which is
not infectious--_i.e._, dangerous to the health of the other inmates.
The rigid exclusion in the past of venereal diseases from our general
medical charities, on the ground of their disgraceful nature, has done
great mischief by producing concealment or neglect of disease. This
mischief cannot be repaired in the present day by establishing special
or so-called Lock hospitals. A strong social stigma will always rest
on the inmates of special venereal hospitals, a stigma we ought not to
insist upon inflicting, but no such stigma rests on the inmates of a
general hospital. These hospitals are established for the purpose of
relieving human suffering, and such suffering constitutes a rightful
claim to admission not to be set aside.
While thus advocating the careful framing of a law to make
communication of venereal disease by man or woman a recognised legal
offence, and whilst insisting upon the claim of this form of physical
suffering to free treatment in all general medical charities, I would
most earnestly caution you against the dangerous sophism of attempting
to treat women as prostitutes. Never do so. Never fit women for a
wicked and dangerous trade--a trade which is utterly demoralizing to
both men and women and an insult to every class of women. The time
is coming when Christian men and women will see clearly that this
hideous traffic in female bodies, this frightful danger of promiscuous
intercourse, must be stopped. Men themselves will see that they are
bound to put a check upon lust, and forbid the exercise of physical
sex to the injury of another individual. Serious consideration will
then be given to the ways in which sexual power may be rightfully
exercised, and preserve its distinctly human features of affection
and mutual responsibility. Whilst social sentiment is growing towards
such recognition, it is our duty as women unflinchingly to oppose
prostitution--_i.e._, mercenary indiscriminate sexual intercourse--and
to refuse utterly to countenance it. The tenderest compassion may be
shown to the poor creature who _ceases_ to be a prostitute; the most
beneficent efforts may be exerted, and sympathy for the individual
human soul shown in the merciful endeavour to help every woman to leave
this vile traffic, but never fit her for it.
Let no one countenance this human trade in any way by assisting to
make vice itself attractive and triumphant over our human nature. I
therefore earnestly counsel all those engaged in rescue work to keep
this rule clearly in mind. Plead earnestly and affectionately with
the female prostitute to leave her vile trade. Offer her remunerative
occupation--every rescue worker should be able to do this.[12] If she
has children whom society may justly remove from her deadly influence,
work upon her maternal feeling to induce her to become worthy of the
care of the innocent and regain her children; but do nothing to raise
the condition of prostitutes as such, any more than you would try to
improve the condition of thieves as thieves.
There is, however, another suggestion which I will present to you,
because it bears directly upon your way of dealing with the vicious and
enforcing law, and I believe that its acceptance is only a question of
time. I refer to the introduction of a certain number of superior women
into the police organization, to act, amongst other duties, as heads
of stations where women offenders are brought. I know the scenes which
station-houses witness. I know that policemen themselves often dread
more to arrest a half-drunken woman than a man, and that it requires
more than one man to overpower the maniac who, with tooth and nail
and the fury of drink, fights more like a demon than a human being. I
know that such wretched outcasts rage in their cells like wild beasts,
filling the air with shrieks and blasphemy that make the blood run
cold. Nevertheless, wherever a wretched woman must be brought, there a
true woman’s influence should also be brought. When the drink is gone,
and only the bruised, disfigured womanhood remains, then the higher
influence may exert itself by its respect for the womanhood which still
is there.
There are many special advantages to be derived from the introduction
of a few superior women into the police-force. I think that the
services of a lady like the late Miss Merryweather, for instance,
would be invaluable, both for the actual service such a woman would
render in the management of female offenders, and also for the higher
tone that such appointments would infuse into the police force itself.
It is only the appointment of a few superior women that I should
recommend, and these must be solely responsible to the highest head of
the organization. The introduction of ordinary women corresponding to
the common policeman, or in any way subordinate to lower officials,
would be out of the question and extremely mischievous. But to secure
the insight and influence of superior and proved women in dealing
with female offenders, by placing them in positions of authority and
responsibility, would be a great step made towards the solution of
some of the most difficult problems of society. The problems which
grow out of the relations of the sexes have hitherto proved insoluble,
the despair of legislation. With the most conscientious endeavour
to act wisely, even our ablest statesmen do not know how to deal
with them. It is impossible that men alone can solve these sexual
problems, because there are two human elements to be considered in such
questions, which need the mutual enlightenment which can only result
from the intelligent comparison of those two elements. The necessary
contribution of wise practical suggestion which is needed from the
intelligence of women, can only come through the enlarging experience
gained by upright women. The reform now suggested is one of the steps
by which this necessary experience may be reached--viz., the placing
of some superior women in very responsible positions in the police
organization--positions where their actual practical acquaintance with
great social difficulties may enlighten as well as stimulate their
intelligent devotion in the search for remedies.[13]
Let me, in conclusion, heartily bid God-speed to the noble efforts of
your rescue societies, and to all those engaged in reinstating our
fallen womanhood. I hail with deep satisfaction the meeting of this
Conference. It is a brave and sincere action on the part of Christian
women to meet together and hold serious counsel upon the wisest methods
of overcoming the deep practical heathenism of our society--the
heathenism of tolerating and protecting mercenary promiscuous sexual
intercourse.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] The power of being able to offer fair remunerative occupation is
becoming more and more evidently a necessary condition of rescue work.
The pitiful response, ‘It is my bread,’ is now often addressed to those
many noble-hearted young men who, instead of yielding to, remonstrate
with, the street-walkers.
[13] I cannot now enter upon a subject most difficult and important,
a most prolific source of prostitution--viz., a standing army. I
will only state to you for a special reason that my observations
on the Continent of Europe have convinced me that the prevalence
there of the system of universal military conscription--_i.e._, the
compulsory enrolment of the entire male youth of the nation in the
military service of a great standing army, where purity of life is
not encouraged--is the greatest barrier that can exist to the gradual
humanizing of sexual life. Let us, therefore, most gratefully recognise
that in our own country we have not the gigantic evil of military
conscription to overthrow, and let us ever hold in honour the memory of
our ancestors, who have preserved us from that measureless curse.
PURCHASE OF WOMEN:
THE GREAT ECONOMIC BLUNDER
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 135
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDATIONS OF TRADE 142
CHAPTER II
TRADE IN WOMEN 155
PREFACE
The object of this work is to show the real meaning of those relations
of the sexes, which are commonly known under the term of ‘ordinary
immorality.’
Customs in the midst of which we are brought up often befog the vision.
Nations, like individuals, may journey on unsuspicious of danger, if no
fresh wind lift the veil which hides the fatal precipice towards which
they are rapidly moving.
Much has been heard of late respecting criminal immorality--_i.e._, the
abuse of the sexual powers, which human law recognises as crime. The
boundary of criminal immorality has of late been extended in the hope
of protecting young girls. When fathers and mothers begin to realize
what the destruction of their children by lust really means, natural
horror is felt at the corruption or torture of young children of
either sex, and a storm of righteous indignation compels an attempt to
provide a remedy. But at the same time the very causes which directly
lead to and produce the monstrous crimes, are not clearly seen. Horror
at effects, diverts attention from vicious customs which lie at the
root of evil, and which inevitably produce crime. Many of those who
are most actively engaged in devising safeguards for the very young,
draw at the same time a radical distinction between so-called ordinary
immorality and what, at that particular epoch, has been labelled
criminal by process of law.
It is a fatal imperfection of human laws that, being only an endeavour
to enforce fragments of Divine Law, they carry the evil of such
disruption with them, and whilst checking wrong in one direction
strengthen it in another.
This evil is shown in the broad distinction now drawn between different
kinds of sexual immorality, and the results which follow such
distinction.
Some persons who would shrink from the guilt of being the authors of a
first seduction, or of running the risks of legal prosecution, will not
hesitate to engage in ‘ordinary immorality’--that is, they will without
scruple purchase the temporary use of a consenting woman for a little
money; they will justify the transaction by the plea that what women
will sell men may buy; they may even consider that they show a little
contemptuous kindness to women in such buying, as industrial conditions
press most heavily on women. Women also accept false theories of human
nature that blaspheme their Creator, and degrade their exalted rank of
motherhood by welcoming profligates and sacrificing their daughters in
mercenary marriages.
Until the higher law of human relations is more clearly understood,
great confusion of thought will necessarily exist as the result of
ignorance and selfishness. But as old errors are gradually proved, an
inevitable and growing discussion will arise in the present age as to
the natural relations of the sexes. The most contradictory theories are
even now brought forward and actively spread abroad, and in the course
of this unavoidable growth of the mental faculties, the necessity
or expediency, the wisdom or the guilt, of what is called ordinary
immorality must finally be brought before the highest court of public
opinion--_i.e._, the enlightened conscience of men and women.
Although, however, the widest diversity of opinion may still exist on
abstract questions, there is one practical point on which all persons
are compelled to agree. It is this--viz., if temporary bargains are
made, either expressly or tacitly, by which one party gives money to
another for a certain return, such a bargain is trade. If few such
bargains are made it is a limited trade, if many it is an extensive
trade, but in each case the transactions are equally trade, and are
necessarily subject to the laws which govern trade. If, therefore,
women are made the subjects of temporary purchase they become the
subjects of trade. Now, trade is always directed by the rules and
customs prevailing at the time, and the economic aspect requires to be
studied; for the laws which govern trade are not fanciful theories, but
very real practical facts, which lie at the foundation of our social
institutions and silently mould our every-day life.
This is seen clearly by the effects which trade in land produces,
for the methods by which land is held and treated will alter the
character of a people as well as change the face of a country. The
thrifty farms of New England help to create a sturdy, self-respecting
people, whilst the Bonanza machine-managed land monopolies of the West
create luxurious absentees and permanent paupers or tramps. Extensive
enclosure of hills and commons will destroy the country tastes and
habits of generations, whose walks are confined to dusty high roads,
and the destruction of a hamlet fills the slums of a city. So the
Custom-houses and protective tariffs which municipalities create within
their limits, hamper productive industry and help to produce paupers.
Even such a modern practice as bicycling has created an extensive
trade, with dress and habits and various arrangements, all acting
and reacting on the life of the younger generation. Whatever becomes
an article of trade, will become at once subject to the methods and
regulations of trade, with the ever-widening circle of effects which
belong to all industrial action.
Every civilized nation is compelled to cope with the most difficult
of all social problems--viz., sexual evil--and the great modern
development of benevolence and reform has created a new force
endeavouring to solve the same problem. The most varied methods of
action have been called forth. Religion and morality, physiology and
expediency, pity and severity, have all been invoked in turn to rescue
the fallen and to restrain the vicious.
But the subject of ordinary immorality as a trade necessity, governed
by the economic laws which regulate trade, has not been seriously
examined in the light of political economy, nor has the inevitable
effect which trade in women must exercise on the character of a nation,
been clearly shown.
There is widespread mental evasion or unconscious hypocrisy on this
subject. So many wrongs in our social state require to be dealt
with, that reformers willingly avoid the painful consideration of
sexual evil. Hope is felt that some of the great reforms of the day,
in which all thoughtful individuals take a special interest, will
prove fundamental in their curative effects, and heal this gravest of
our diseases. Thus free access to land, co-operation and abolition
of interest, total abstinence, universal suffrage, emigration,
arbitration, State-socialism, etc., are all amongst the popular
panaceas of the present day, each important reform or theory being
chiefly relied on by its special advocates, to change all social
relations and eradicate any serious social disorder.
Favourable, however, as improved material or legislative conditions
may undoubtedly be to the extension of health and morality amongst
a people, these reforms can only be palliative, not curative, if
the fundamental conditions of growth and freedom to use them be
not guaranteed to all portions of a people. Every really curative
measure which will insure the healthy growth of society presupposes a
recognition of the needs of our human constitution and an adaptation
of our social methods to those needs. It is only by such recognition
and such adaptation that any human measure becomes an embodiment of
Divine law. Our conscience must recognise this law, and our Will must
render it obedience, in both individual and collective life, for there
is no other possible method of securing durable and progressive growth.
No human effort can change the supremacy of law written on the human
constitution. Human perversity is free to thwart it temporarily, with
delusive results which serve to bewilder our short vision; but the law
is rewritten with wonderful persistency on each fresh generation of
men, and it remains inexorable in its demand for obedience.
If trade in women be contrary to the Divine law written on the human
constitution, it will destroy society. Insignificant as the needs of
women’s lives may seem to superficial politicians or self-worshipping
wordlings, yet these apparently weak lives, because God-created, will
prove stronger than _all_ their unstable laws and customs. No arrogant
rebellion against the methods of moral progress, however splendid in
its material force and its money-worship, can change the awful reality
of Divine law.
Is the trade in women such a violation? Does it destroy the freedom,
and therefore the necessary conditions of growth, in one-half the human
race?
The time has certainly come when earnest reformers should consider
to what extent trade in the human body exists in this civilized and
Christian nation, and what its effect upon the nation is.
In a subject so vital to human welfare as the social relations which
are established between men and women, it is pusillanimous to refuse to
examine them. If the human conscience, slowly awakening, discovers that
the necessary laws of progress have been ignorantly violated during the
gradual development of humanity, none but pessimists will fold their
hands in despair, none but the partially blind will continue to rebel
against the Divine law of growth.
CHAPTER I
_The Foundations of Trade_
The wealth of a nation is that which contributes to its real and
lasting well-being, which makes it powerful in the present, and durable
and progressive in the future. A happy and intelligent people, with
just and far-seeing rulers or guides amongst them, is a rich nation,
and one that is fulfilling its duty by carrying on the gradual growth
and ever higher development of the human race.
Political economy is the study of wealth, and particularly of those
results of human activity, which spring from the necessary physical
relation of human beings to their surroundings. It is this relation
which makes the firm foundation on which political economy rests.
The subject leads to three great branches of inquiry--viz., the things
which constitute wealth, the method of their production, and the way in
which they are distributed.
The study of wealth must always take in this large scope in any lasting
system of political economy, because the many special branches which
the subject includes are all connected together. Every part is built
up on the sure foundation of the relation of human needs to their
surroundings. If our knowledge of this relation is unsound, the edifice
will in time fall down.
In seeking truth in any branch of political economy, whether it be the
relations of labour and capital, land tenure, or free trade, etc.,
examination must be made of this foundation of knowledge. Artificial
arrangements which do not recognise the primitive needs of human nature
can only lead at last to misery.
Reason shows us that physical needs are imperative in a material world
where mind works through matter. They come first in order of growth
as the primary condition of life, through which and out of which the
higher moral and intellectual forces grow. They are like the first
gasping inspiration of the infant, which sets in motion the astonishing
mechanism of conscious human life. Trade and commerce are a necessary
first outcome of a nation’s physical needs; the nature of its trade and
commerce and the methods by which they are carried on are inextricably
woven in with social life, and stamp the character of a nation.
Trade and commerce being the direct result of human needs in relation
to the material world will be governed by fixed laws respecting the
production and distribution of wealth.
The term ‘law,’ however, is often erroneously applied to temporary
phases in the arrangements of human industry, which vary with age and
country. But a fixed law in political economy can only become such
when, and because, it expresses the necessary relation between human
growth or nature, and the conditions which promote it. It is only the
result of this necessary relation that can claim the name of Law.
Political economy must, therefore, necessarily be a progressive
study, because, although human desires are unlimited, human power or
ability to discover law is much more limited. This power grows with
intelligence, and intelligence is of slower development than the
motive-spring of human life, which is desire, emotion, will.
The methods of producing and distributing wealth must, therefore,
necessarily vary. The interval of growth between the Esquimaux
bartering his skins, and the Englishman exporting machinery is great.
Even the objects and definition of wealth change with race and epoch.
There can be no such thing as finality in the applications of human
knowledge, because the law of progress--progress of individuals and
of races--is stamped on our nature. Political economy, as every other
subject of knowledge, must be revised, extended, and re-adapted from
age to age.
Although the methods of producing and distributing wealth may vary,
the creative Divine laws which determine the welfare of the human race
cannot vary. Below the changing phenomenon of epoch, country, and race
are fixed principles on which trade (which may be designated human)
must be based. The search for these necessary or fixed laws, and their
discrimination from temporary arrangements or adaptations, is not
only a legitimate but an indispensable subject of inquiry. It affects
not only the foundation, but also the whole edifice of life, which is
built upon it in every stage of its construction, helping or injuring
each individual of the community, as well as that collective mass of
individuals which we vaguely style the nation.
No religious teacher, any more than the (technically styled) social
reformer, can afford to ignore this great subject of political economy.
A knowledge of its objects, and of the laws which must govern industry,
in its march to the promised land of human welfare, constitute a Divine
revelation. It is a revelation gradually made through the honest use
of our intellectual faculties, and constantly grows from imperfect
beginnings, to clearer guidance under an earnest search for truth.
A distinct recognition of the different kinds of wealth must precede
any wise or efficient regulation of trade and commerce; for the same
method of production and distribution cannot be applied to all. We can
neither produce air nor sunshine, nor legitimately attempt to make them
the subject of trade, as, being essential to life, they are necessarily
supplied free to all. Neither can we produce earth, which (as far as
it is essential to life) cannot be made a subject of trade on exactly
the same methods, as products which can be indefinitely multiplied.
Neither can strength, energy, or character, which constitute a valuable
part of a nation’s wealth, be grown in a similar way to corn, or thrown
off by machinery like calico. Education is a different process from
printing, and if reduced to the mechanism of manufacture, or converted
into a system of money-getting, is self-destructive, frustrating the
object of education--viz., the drawing out of the infinitely varied
human faculties.
The growth of reason and conscience in the leading nations of the
world, is more and more differentiating the various kinds of wealth;
data are thus being collected from which the progressive laws of
political economy can be deduced. By the leading nations, of course
is here meant those communities where a large number of unselfish
and thoughtful men, inspired by truth, find their teaching accepted
by the uncorrupted though crude intelligence of a patient multitude.
Unfortunately, the so-called ruling classes in these nations, are now
too often the creators or the creatures of the barbarous and savage
hordes which false methods of political economy have produced in our
midst. But the possession of a band of honest truth-seekers with
earnest listeners eager to be guided, marks the really progressive
nation.
It will be found that a true system of political economy must rest
upon a moral basis. Trust, freedom, and gradually evolved sympathy are
the foundations on which all systems of industry are built up that
permanently civilize races.
_Trust._--Trust is the beginning of exchange. Nordenfeld, in his
record of observation round the Arctic circle, relates how money or
articles were left in perfect safety, and faithfully replaced by
equivalent articles in exchange. A striking instance of the necessity
of re-creating trust as the foundation of industry where it has been
lost by long-continued oppression, is related by a gentleman who many
years ago went as mineral viewer to the Nerbudda Valley. Almost alone,
and far removed from the possibility of obtaining white labour, the
natives refused to dig for him. He felt compelled to capture a few
men and enforce a day’s work, which he at once honestly paid for with
the copper currency of the region. But it seemed to the natives the
grossest folly on his part that, having gained the labour, he should
pay for what he had already obtained, and feeling sure that he would
not repeat such folly, they hid away on the following day. The capture
had to be repeated during many successive days, and the heavy coin
brought at great inconvenience for the daily payment, before the habit
of trust could be fairly established; then an oversupply of willing
workers crowded round the encampment.
_Freedom._--A great advance was made in the onward march of humanity,
when the reasons for abolishing slavery became clear to the conscience
of the minority, those nations who lead the van of human progress. The
production and sale of human beings as articles of merchandise can be
made extremely profitable as a money-making trade. It has been truly
said that ‘if the reproduction of capital is the one great means of
a nation’s wealth’; if demand and supply, the employment of labour
by capital, and profits limited only by the wages of maintenance,
are laws of political economy and the right guides of industry, ‘why
should sentimental notions about justice and abstract rights of freedom
interfere with the national good? Why not grow corn on the sweating
system? Why not buy slaves? There is no reason, on so-called economic
grounds, why slaves should not be bred like cattle--bred to the exact
wants of the agriculturist, and when no more wanted melted down in the
sulphuric acid tank and drilled in with the root crops. Any farmer
who would have courage to carry on the economy of labour and the
reproduction of capital in that way, would farm at a splendid profit.’
For long ages the trade in human beings has been, and is still, carried
on. It has only very gradually dawned upon human intelligence, that
short-sighted trading customs which destroy the conditions of human
development, injure equally the sellers and the sold, and gradually
degrade and destroy the societies that practise them. This second
foundation of political economy--freedom--still remains unrecognised
by the large majority of the human race. But when the destructive
character or essential wrong of human slavery was once thoroughly
understood by a portion of our nation, they never rested from the fight
until it was abolished. The abolition of slavery was the revolt of
conscience and intelligence against a false mercantile system which
converts everything into money value.
The wisdom of Wilberforce and his heroic band made a great step in
advance by laying down a permanent law for the guidance of human
industry. They saw that the human being belongs to a different category
of creation from the subjects of his industry, and that he may not
be made a thing of trade, that he owes duties to himself and to his
neighbours, and that he can neither sell another adult, nor his
child, nor himself; that the purpose of human life and the methods of
attaining it, are both destroyed when the condition of human freedom
is violated by converting human bodies into chattels. The abolition of
slavery forbade henceforward the purchase or sale of any individual,
whether adult or child.
The same uprisings against injustice in the kindred nation of
the United States, has produced a similar advance in intelligent
conscientiousness. However much the American Revolution may be
misunderstood, the facts remain which prove the great moral movement
which preceded it--two generations of united and resolute lovers of
freedom, although a minority, had fought to the death for the cause of
justice, and prepared the way for the great Emancipation Act of 1863.
It could not be denied that temporary phases of political economy were
being set at nought by the abolitionists. There was no flaw in the
logic of maintaining slavery as a money-making machine. Vast tracts of
land were to be cultivated, useful products raised, craving desires
satisfied, great profits realized, and a clever, energetic race was
able to abuse a weak, childish one. But the abolition of slavery united
the two leading branches of the Anglo-Saxon race in setting a limit to
trade. They established the law that no human being may be bought or
sold. They recognised the fundamental conditions of human industry,
trust, and freedom, and thus established that higher law that removes
human beings from the operations of a mercantile system which measures
all things by the standard of money.
_Sympathy._--Another great step in advance has been made by the dawn of
the Co-operative movement amongst us. As Abolition set a limit to the
subjects of trade, so Co-operation is setting a limit to its methods.
True co-operators clearly see that to arrest the slave-owner and the
slave-dealer by the strong arm of the law, is but a first step to human
progress; it is only compelling a necessary condition, not insuring a
good end.
But co-operation will secure gradually the third necessary basis of
progressive and durable human industry--viz., sympathy.
Doubtless this statement will at once bring to mind not only the
selfish combinations of Civil Service supply, but the multifarious
quarrels and departure from principle, in the great body of working
people distinctively called co-operators.
Nevertheless, the statement is true that co-operation is a new
development of practical Christianity, which can introduce that
essential element of true political economy, sympathy, the hitherto
missing guide of human industry.
The few friends who met in a small chamber in 1828 and initiated the
Manchester and Salford Co-operative Schools were fired by enthusiasm.
The poor weavers of Toad Lane, who saved their hard-earned pence and
divided their first chest of tea, were filled with pity for their
suffering brethren, and eagerly gave the poor room, the precious
time, the exhausting thought--all they had to give--to establish the
brotherly principle of mutual help. And the large-hearted leaders
of the movement, who changed the name of Christian Socialist to
Co-operator--Maurice, Kingsley, Ludlow, Hughes, and many another of the
first noble little band--laid down a spiritual basis as the essential
foundation of durable material success.
It has been said of the labouring classes ‘that they are unfit for any
order of things which would make any considerable demand on either
their intellect or their virtue.’ The enlightened co-operator perceives
that this is true of all classes of men, rich or poor, in a state of
things where industry is ruled by unlimited competition, and trade
subjects everything to the domination of money. Where all restrictions
are removed, but no sympathy developed, new forms of oppression and
revenge arise.
Co-operation, therefore, announces a fundamental law of durable
political economy. It adopts mutual aid instead of antagonism in
industry, extends a share of the results of labour in equitable
proportion to all who produce them, and replaces competition in
money-getting by emulation in superiority of production.
Thus sympathy, the first necessary foundation of industry and social
union, is being slowly evolved by the trials, the failures, but the
ultimately assured success of the Co-operative movement.
This gradual recognition of the necessary basis of progressive
political economy--trust, freedom, and sympathy (here slightly
hinted at)--is itself founded upon a rock--viz., the immutability of
the Creator’s law of Moral Government, the adaptation of the human
constitution to its surroundings, the only method by which steady
growth can be secured. The waves of selfishness and false theories dash
themselves vainly against this rock, and race after race perishes in
the foolish attempt to set aside the Moral Law.
The hopeful light thrown upon the future by the revelation of freedom
and co-operative sympathy, as fundamental laws of true political
economy, can only be fully perceived by those who have measured the
evils of slavery and sounded the fearful depths of misery produced by
unlimited competition. The revelations of the results of this phase of
competition in which we are living are all around us, in every class of
society, in every quarter of the globe. The mercantile system, which
makes wealth and money synonymous, and reduces every interest to a
subject of trade, spares no relation of life, and desecrates every rank
of society. We need not go back to the crimes which Warren Hastings
committed to fill his treasury. The same methods of crushing the weak
for money, of bartering honour and conscience in the lust of gain,
are going on at this moment in Asia and Africa, in the islands of the
Pacific, in uncontrolled America, and enchained Russia. Its effects are
seen in the Legislature and the courts of law, in all professions and
trades, in the mansion and the lodging-house. Corruption and cruelty
inevitably resulting from a false system of political economy, are
barring the progress of the human race.
In the present day we prostitute the superior strength gained by
us from the principles of Christianity, to the debasement of human
beings. Money being considered identical with wealth, sensuality
reigns supreme. Money having under this system become the great means
of gratifying material desires, the strife to obtain it becomes
ever fiercer. The statesman regards it as a highest duty to open
new channels of commerce for national activity, quite regardless of
the conditions of mutual freedom and sympathy which make commerce
legitimate. Whisky, opium, and gunpowder bring rich returns from the
ignorant peoples to whom their use was hitherto unknown, and this
wicked abuse of our superior intelligence is in strict accord with the
short-sighted teaching of the political economy accepted by trade.[14]
This species of trade, carried on without limitation, without the
large intelligence of religious insight, must produce a fall of any
race equal to the height of its development; for although ‘religion
without science is a purblind angel, science without religion is a
full-blown devil.’
It is into the last possible phase of limitless competition in buying
and selling, that our nineteenth century has entered, by permitting
one-half the race to become the merchandise of the other half.
Under a specious hypocrisy, falsely styled freedom of contract, a
modern phase of slavery is still exercising its influence in our midst;
for the slave-holding principle that the human body may be an article
of merchandise is still applied to women, and conscience is still dead
to the essential principle of freedom--viz., the sacredness of the
human body, through which the soul must grow.
CHAPTER II
_Trade in Women_
It is necessary to define clearly the practical form of evil which is
now under consideration, and to the effects of which the consciences
of men and women must be roused. Ordinary immorality is not the
demoralization of the slums--that horrible result of monopoly and
speculation in land, where human beings are herded together like
pigs--a condition into which the bargains of trade hardly enter.
Neither is it the practice of free lust--a practice where unlimited
liberty is claimed by both men and women to indulge the impulses
of sexual caprice. Ordinary immorality is the distinct, deliberate
application to women of the trading system of money values governed
by unlimited competition. In this system activity, opportunity, and
cleverness carry the day; conscientiousness and spiritual aspiration
are out of place; innocence and ignorance constitute weakness, and, of
course, go to the wall.
Ordinary immorality or fornication, assuming the female body to be an
article of merchandise, necessarily subjects this merchandise to those
fluctuations of the market, those variations in demand and supply, and
that tyranny of capital over labour which destroy freedom of contract.
It may be urged that women ‘consent’ to be purchased, and that
therefore there is a radical difference between the purchase of the
bodies of men and women, which the anti-slavery movement has pronounced
illegal, and the purchase of women by men which we are now considering.
The sophistry of such evasion will be apparent if the question of
‘consent’ and the specious hypocrisy generally involved in freedom of
contract be closely examined. Freedom of contract can only take place
between those who in certain essential particulars are equals. The
parties to any contract must be so far equals in intelligence, that
they can equally understand any risks that may be run, and clearly
foresee the probable results of the bargain; and they must be so far
equals in social position, that neither party is compelled by the
pressure of circumstances or the fear of want, to accept conditions
which are unjust or unwise. No freedom of contract is possible where
this degree of intellectual and practical equality does not exist.
Freedom implies responsibility. There is no freedom if both parties
are not free. Any insistence upon consent to a bargain ignorantly
or forcibly made is fraud. It is fraud darkened by varying degrees
of cruelty, proportioned to the superiority of intelligence and
independence possessed by the stronger party in the bargain.
The grave error of excusing purchase by the plea of consent, is fully
shown when the relations of capital to labour in the present system
of competitive industry are understood. We are now so far removed
from the primitive trade of barter, where values were determined
by necessities, that first principles are commonly lost sight of.
Generations have passed, during which ideas about wealth have become
confused through complicated exchanges, stored-up labour inherited by
those who no longer labour, violent seizures in the past or cunning
ones in the present, with constantly changing standards or ideals. The
quite new standard of converting everything into a money value, and
measuring its value by money, has taken the place of older methods. As
a result, money has become the autocrat of industry. Character, talent,
activity still possess their uses, but only as the servants of money
or capital, which have practically become interchangeable terms. The
weaker portions of the human race are ever more and more deeply crushed
down by the misery of a limitless competitive system, which is not
based on the legitimate foundations of trust, freedom, and sympathy,
and which consequently, by placing money as the irresponsible governor
of the industrial world, makes the hypocrisy of so-called ‘freedom of
contract’ the most bitter mockery.
It is necessary to realize the overwhelming and illegitimate power of
money in the present day, if the condition of any grade is to be justly
judged, and the responsibilities for the evils of a vicious trade
rightly apportioned. In the terrible trade which converts the human
body into a marketable commodity, it is no figure of speech, but a very
weighty fact, that vicious men are the capitalists. The responsibility
of that position must be recognised.
In judging either of the parties concerned in the trade, the question,
‘Who are the capitalists or paymasters?’ is the point to be insisted
on. This is the fundamental fact to be steadily borne in mind--whether
we consider the demoralized women who consent to the conversion of
their bodies into merchandise; or the wholesale traders who organize
to meet a demand increasing beyond the power of individuals to supply;
or the State which connives at the trade; or society which condones
it--the capital on which this nefarious traffic rests is supplied by
licentious men. This is the great economic fact on which the whole
system rests. All legislation and all benevolent effort that do
not recognise this fundamental fact, will hopelessly wander in the
labyrinth of evil trade, with no clue to direct their energies aright.
From this unnatural employment of capital, two other economic evils
directly arise--viz., first, the discouragement of honest industry;
second, an unfair competition with male labour.
The discouragement of honest industry is a very serious economic evil.
Any discouragement to patient industry, thrift, and self-control is
direct encouragement to reckless improvidence, vicious indulgence, and
the creation of a dangerously increasing predatory horde. Through
obstacles to honest labour, our prisons are now filled with criminals,
our streets with the vicious, and our work-houses with paupers.
The industrious workers are taxed beyond endurance to support the
institutions rendered necessary by the suicidal policy of degrading
labour.
The discouraging difficulties which now surround all honest industry
press with increased force upon women’s labour, and compel a moral
heroism to resist the special temptation which crowds upon them.
It is now a fact that in every large city, no woman with any pretension
to natural attractiveness can fail to meet a purchaser. There are
men who think it neither shame nor wrong to purchase for shillings
or pounds, as the case may be, a temporary physical gratification,
without reflection upon the inevitable results, individual and social,
of their temporary action. The knowledge that money may be gained so
easily, spreads from woman to woman. The contrast between the ease with
which the wages of sin may be gained, and the laborious, even crushing
methods of honest industry, becomes an ever present and burning
temptation to working women.
It is undoubtedly true that the numerical excess of women in Great
Britain, with other economic facts, intensifies most heavily upon woman
the grinding pressure of our present industrial system. All rescue
workers seeking to help their fallen sisters are constantly confronted
with the appalling answer, ‘Give me work; I cannot starve.’ The awful
extent of woman’s industrial misery would now be more fully realized,
had not well-meant benevolent efforts called in the harsh hand of the
police to suppress begging, and thus crush it out of sight.
The increasing and perplexing flood of women in the streets, begging
to be bought, is a strange commentary on the effect of the stern
repression of begging for alms. If in the future, in addition to
the suppression of ordinary begging by men and women, another edict
goes forth forbidding women to present themselves for sale, but not
forbidding men to purchase them, gross injustice to women will be
added to a cruel abuse of power, and fresh impulse given to male vice.
Certainly, if it were in the nature of women to become murderous
criminals, any increasingly harsh and unjust attempts to crush their
misery and degradation out of sight, would drive them into violent
crime.
But it is not the seamstress slowly starving in her garret, nor the
mass of struggling poverty that is alone, or even chiefly, beset by
the fiery temptations of gain, and the enticing pleasures which money
can provide. The deterioration of character, which is the gravest
result of a false system of political economy, extends to much wider
circles of society. This serious fact is sufficient to prove the error
of those who look to the industrial independence of women, as the
chief means of destroying licentiousness. Although freedom to obtain
decent remunerative employment will secure an important condition for
checking social evil, it will be a means only, it can never attain the
end.
The great army of domestic servants, whether in public or private
dwellings, are surrounded by constant temptations to supplement their
wages or relieve their monotonous labour by selling themselves. When
we remember the conditions under which the vast mass of servants
have grown up, the exposures and privations of their homes, their
undeveloped mental state in relation to social duties, the exhausting
work upon which the majority of them enter in hotels, lodging-houses,
struggling households, or the special danger of rich, careless
establishments, and realize both the condition under which their
service drags on and the natural instincts of the human being, then
it is easy to understand why to a frightfully increasing extent
they yield to the solicitations to which they are exposed. The five
shillings secretly gained at night becomes an important addition to
scanty wages, the stolen pleasures an intoxicating relief to drudgery.
The economic effect of thus bringing the lightly-earned wages of
vice into competition with the hard-earned wages of honest industry
is to discredit the latter, and to produce discontent and careless,
unwilling service in industries for which women are naturally better
fitted than men; for the same state of things that is injuring domestic
service, exists in dress-making, millinery, and all peculiarly feminine
industries.
If we take the wider range of labour in which women compete more
directly with men in the labour market, it will be found that
this practice of purchasing women introduces an unfair element in
remuneration of labour. The introduction of the slave principle
(the purchase of the human body) in cheapening women’s labour, has
a formidable effect in depressing the wages of working-men. In all
systems of industry carried on by slaves the cost of maintenance is, as
a rule, the limit of expenditure, the equivalent of wages. Also in the
industrial systems of so-called free industry, the maintenance of the
labourer again forms a limit beyond which profit cannot be extracted,
for no man will consent to labour for less wages than will keep him
alive. But this is not the case in regard to women’s labour. As was
proved a generation ago in France, and can be amply verified in other
civilized countries, women’s wages are forced down below subsistence
point.
This important fact, with its cause, has evidently not been fully
realized even by so close and impartial an observer as Mill. He says:
‘The wages at least of single women must be equal to their support, but
need not be more than equal to it; the minimum in their case is the
pittance absolutely requisite for the sustenance of one human being.
Now, the lowest point to which the most superabundant competition
can permanently depress the wages of a man is always somewhat more
than this. The _ne plus ultra_ of low wages can hardly occur in any
occupation which the person employed has to live by, except the
occupation of a woman.’ Mill is evidently uncertain as to the causes
of the under-payment of women in cases of equal efficiency with men,
and is inclined to attribute it to injustice and to overcrowding in
a few employments. He remarks: ‘When the efficiency is equal but the
pay unequal, the only explanation that can be given is custom, which,
making almost every woman an appendage of some man, enables men to take
the lion’s share of whatever belongs to both.’
But in this generation, which has thrown open the broad gates of
education to women, and which has enormously extended the range of
employments into which they are invited to enter, the causes which
Mill suggests (overcrowding, injustice, etc.) do not seem to give
a sufficient economic reason. One powerful and growing cause of
derangement in the natural rewards of labour has been overlooked--viz.,
the unequal competition with male labour which must result, when the
wages given by vice are allowed to supplement the under-payment for
honest work, and the street-door key makes up for the deficient salary.
Whilst this phase of human slavery exists, and the female body remains
an article of merchandise, the increasing competition with male labour
will make itself more severely felt as wider fields of industry are
extended to women and they develop increasing ability to enter them.
The wages of women can never permanently rise to a just scale of
labour value, until this slavish principle is eliminated, because this
purchase introduces an uneconomical element into the remuneration of
labour which destroys any legitimate effect of demand and supply. It
enables competitive employers solely intent on profit to beat down
the price of male as well as female labour indefinitely. Indeed, we
have by no means reached the limits of this injustice. The practice of
purchase is still more dangerous in an economic point of view, because
whilst the labour of all women tends to sink to the lowest point of
remuneration, this lowest point can be reached in the labour of the
young and strong, who are most eagerly sought for as merchandise.
The increasing employment of less remunerated female labour while male
labour stands idle, is an alarming fact. The family is barely held
together by the earnings, of a daughter, whilst father and brother
lounge about the pot-house. The results of any sudden stoppage of a
factory where large amounts of this cheap labour has been employed (as
in the Barking jute factory, where 800 girls were suddenly thrown out
of employment) is an object-lesson in the suicidal policy of degrading
women.
The natural order of industry by which the man is the chief material
support of the family, is disturbed and destroyed by this unnatural
practice.
The purchase of young women adds cruelty to fraud. Youth must always
fail to realize results which are only known through the experience of
age. No amount of cautious or theoretic teaching given to the young can
ever place them on an equality with the experienced adult. Moreover,
it is Nature’s law for youth that sexual attraction is quite out of
proportion to intellectual development. The fact of this great natural
law of slower mental growth is the Creator’s imperative command laid
upon the older generation, to protect and guide the youth of both
sexes. The corruption of the young by the adult is not only fraud, it
is dastardly cruelty.
Moreover, Nature has laid upon woman the more important share in
the great work of continuing the race. It is not therefore pity,
but justice which requires that reverent and grateful aid should be
rendered by men, in the grand duty of creating an ever nobler race.
Trust, freedom, and sympathy form the bases of true relations between
men and women, as they are also the moral foundations of political
economy.
The depth of that sin against human nature--fornication or purchase--is
seen in the results which follow from tempting women away from the
paths of honest industry. These effects necessarily extend to the whole
position and character of one-half the race, when any portion of women
are turned into human merchandise. They are seen, by a careful study of
those reckless or hardened ones who have become so direful a problem
in all our large towns. How is that growing army of shameless women
created who, with their companions, so fearfully avenge all social
injustice on our boys and girls and our young men and maidens?
It is well known that there are thousands of ‘fallen women’ in London.
What does this general statement in relation to women mean in detail?
What is involved in living by the sale of the human body? The woman,
however ‘fallen,’ is still a human being with its desperate clinging to
life. Let it be realized what is involved in thousands of women living
to the age of three-score years and ten, who must feed themselves
three times a day, and provide lodging, clothing, and the satisfaction
of all human needs by the repeated sale of their bodies--thousands
of women, with all the craving and ever active necessities of the
human being, bodies and souls to be kept alive by the money of their
buyers, and who are compelled to use every art of corruption to find
the fresh purchasers through whom they have learned to live--women
to whom lust and drink rapidly become a second nature, and sloth and
falsehood habitual; women driven on by ceaseless material needs to
lower and lower phases of misery and vice, in whom a bitterness is
engendered that revenges itself on the weakness and innocence of youth,
tempting the lad when the adult ceases to purchase; women who--terrible
fact--finally losing their own marketable value, and scourged by their
own daily recurring needs, throw away the last remnants of womanly
instinct, and drag down young girls into their hell of life.
The grave fact must be borne in mind that each one of these thousands
of marketable women--although once an innocent infant--now forms a
centre of ever-widening corrupt influence in the varied relations of
life. Each one, with father and mother, brothers and sisters, friends
and acquaintances, servants and tradespeople, is exercising a fatal
influence, desecrating the sanctity of sexual relations, proving
the ease with which the rewards of vice are gained, bewildering the
conscience of the innocent, and transmitting sensual tendencies to
their descendants.
From these bought women come those enemies of social progress, who
enslave our young men of the higher classes, our future statesmen,
those who should be the leaders of the nation. From Skittles to Cora
Pearl, our generation has witnessed the enslaving power of these
tyrants of lust. They have dried up the generous enthusiasm of our
youth, and destroyed those principles of trust, freedom, and sympathy
which should guide our domestic and foreign policy.
Who is guilty of this appalling conversion of women into demons, this
contagion of evil which in ever-widening circles is destroying our
moral health, and injuring the modesty, freedom, and dignity of all
womanhood? The immediate cause is the man, whether prince or peasant,
who purchases a woman for the gratification of lust. It is this
purchase which draws women into the clutches of a godless, money-making
machine, which never loosens its hold of the feeble creature until the
essential features of womanhood are crushed out of recognition. The
irresponsible polyandry of prostitution, with its logical acceptance
and regulation of brothels, has replaced in the West the polygamy
of the East. In both, degradation, discouragement of marriage, and
injustice to women create a fatal barrier to permanent national
progress. But there is a more insidious source of evil than the direct
purchaser. The conversion of women into merchandise, whilst it produces
a dangerous deterioration of female character, unavoidably reacts upon
male character. This evil tends in women to produce the vices of the
slave--deceit, falsehood, and servility; in men it tends to foster the
vices of the slave-holder--arrogance, selfishness, and cruelty. In both
it engenders that deadly sin--hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is the vice which, above all others, our Lord denounces with
the most awful condemnation, raising the drunkard and the harlot,
with His far-seeing, merciful purity, and thrusting the Scribe and
Pharisee--secret fornicators--into their place. ‘He that is without
sin, let him cast the first stone.’ Hypocrisy is the vice which
distinguishes in the most marked degree those nations which dare to
call themselves Christian, but who practically deny every principle
of Christ’s teaching in the conduct of public and, to a great extent,
private affairs. It is under this reign of hypocrisy that a more
dangerous condition of sexual evil has grown up amongst us than has
ever existed amongst heathen nations. When a savage tribe enslaves
its enemies and trades in human flesh it does not trade against its
conscience. In its rudimentary condition of slow emergence from brutish
ignorance it knows no higher standard than a savage display of muscular
force. When a polygamous nation buys both men and women, or endeavours
to enforce the physical chastity of women by harem imprisonment, it
obeys the highest authority it knows of, its religion, believed in,
although erroneous in its teaching. The bitterest hatred and undying
hostility felt by Mohammedan as well as savage communities to their
Western invaders is due to the violation of their women, and the
treatment of those women according to the hypocritical customs of
their lustful conquerors. However false the standard of the savage
or semi-barbarous peoples may be, they possess one, and strive to
realize it. But the corruption which the latest and intensest phase
of competitive money values has introduced into the most enlightened
nations, is unexampled in the history of the race. The deliberate
reasoning out and justification of the conversion of women into
things is the abuse of our highest faculties, our power of reason and
conscience.
The cruel vice of fornication, protected by hypocrisy, is sowing
moral scrofula broadcast, and, like an insidious poison, producing
generations of feeble, rickety wills and maniacal monsters. It is
the degeneracy of the race. The palliation of this vice is shaking
the foundation of our civilization, by destroying the moral basis on
which alone progressive society can rest. The purchaser of a woman
is directly guilty, but a deeper source of evil influence is the man
or the woman who excuses and sanctions the purchase of women, by
upholding a double standard of morality for the sexes. In the present
age, while the actively licentious are following evil customs like
sheep, some of their intellectual and spiritual leaders are throwing
a veil of hypocrisy over these customs. The God-given faculties for
creating literature, investigating science, and promoting religion are
being perverted to the justification or palliation of lust.
Our brothers have hitherto been the rough and active pioneers of human
progress, first moulding the material framework of society, then
becoming its leaders and teachers--teachers of those fundamental moral
relations on which human society rests.
But a time has come in the development of the race, when much of the
teaching and judgment formed by one-half the race alone, is seen to be
liable to error, and requires to be weighed and approved by the other
half of mankind.
The women half is necessarily slower in development, from being
appointed to bear that great altruistic burden, maternity. But the
very shackles or sufferings thus undergone for the sake of the race
tend gradually to produce in women special adaptations to the higher
spiritual ends of creation.
When we now inquire into and weigh the value of the teachings offered
to women as the guide of their human relationship to men, we are
struck with its amazing contradictions. All classes and sections
bring forth their varying opinions. The scientist and the theologian,
the physician, the lawyer and the journalist, the literary and the
business man, the official and the man of leisure, are all seen
carrying their load of heterogeneous materials to help build up the
Babel of advice to women. All assert their knowledge of ‘Nature and
Instinct,’ of ‘Science and History,’ or ‘the tragical plea of material
necessity,’ to justify opinions founded on misunderstood data. But the
sectional opinions of a portion of the race must necessarily be either
imperfect, arrogant, or sentimental, and God confounds the Tower which
foolish mortals strive to raise to heaven. All those, both men and
women, who retain their reverence for sex, turn away from this unseemly
Babel of conceit and short-sightedness, and ponder these things in
hearts earnestly seeking truth.
The great question now at issue is the Unity of the Moral Law. This
unity is being attacked by the intellectual short-sightedness or
unconscious intellectual dishonesty of those who should be its most
enlightened upholders.
One of our leading family journals has lately stated that ‘the modern
notion of equality impairs the responsibility of special classes for
special virtues.’ There is a sense in which special classes may be said
to hold special responsibility. Women who are so vitally affected by
the relations of the sexes are especially called on to strengthen and
guide the sexual virtue of a people. They must consider the conditions
essential to such virtue, and when they clearly see the truth, an army
of noble men will zealously help in shaping truth in practice. The
great truth which women are now learning is the necessity that every
man should be chaste. This is the truth so long unrecognised, but at
last discovered as the solution of the great social problem. Without
male chastity, female chastity is impossible.
Virtue is not self-righteousness. It is unconscious of self, because
it has become a mode of individual existence, and it maintains its
vitality by care for others. A chaste woman does not think of her own
purity; she thinks of the poor girl drudging in cellars, or hurrying
at night, waylaid by tempters, to her poor home, or ‘drilled’ in the
rich man’s shop; she thinks of her cherished sons with their noble
and innocent young manhood exposed to the influence of the corrupt
adult. Women’s responsibility for the purity of society commands her
to announce the conditions of purity, and unmask with a relentless
justice--which is now the truest mercy--those destroyers of national
purity, the upholders of a double standard of sexual morality. The fact
that so many cultivated intellects resort to fallacy or metaphysical
abstraction to palliate the destructive abuse of our sexual powers, is
a direct call on women to help in spreading truth.
There cannot be one moral law for human beings, which is at the same
time of unequal application to them. Moral law is not the creation of
mediæval art, which, substituting a symbol for entity, represents the
Great Creator as an aged man with long gray beard seated upon clouds.
The moral law is not the arbitrary dictum of a man. The authority of
the moral law springs from its adaptation by the Creator, to the nature
of the beings subjected to it. It is the guide to the highest end of
that nature, the necessary method by which its welfare is secured.
Its authority is absolute, not relative, because it is the method of
highest growth. Divine law admits of no exception, it cannot contradict
itself. It is equally binding on the weakest as on the strongest, on
the man as on the woman, or it is not law. If men are so constituted
that they can grow to the full stature of manhood without obedience
to the law of purity, then the moral law of purity does not exist for
them, because it is not a necessary method of growth to their highest
human development; their nature is not adapted by the Creator to the
moral law; its influence over them is thus weakened, its absolute
authority destroyed.
To profess to accept the unity of the moral law, but at the same time
seek to avoid its consequences, is hypocrisy. The moral law cannot be
evaded by any metaphysical creation of ‘noble moral paradoxes.’[15] Any
attempt to define purity as unequally binding on the sexes by being
‘more for women, but not less for men,’ is worse than nonsense, it is
dangerous sophistry. It is a confusion of right and wrong, placing men
and women on diverging paths which will lead them ever farther apart.
It is a strange spectacle, the nineteenth-century Adam cowering under
the overpowering justice of the moral law, seeking refuge behind a
paradox! But the weak and erring children of one Great Creator, bound
to live together and help or injure one another, must not be turned
away from each other by the arrogance or ignorance of any portion of
the race. What mortal can determine the varying kind and quality of
temptations which assail another mortal life? Who shall dare to say
to another, You are not tempted as I am? Who can measure the weakness
or the strength of another soul, and measure out judgment by shifting
standards of right and wrong? Only by humility can we gain wisdom. Only
by doing the will of the Creator shall we learn the doctrine of truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] ‘At a meeting of the British Association, held September 7, 1886,
the eminent African explorer, Mr. Joseph Thompson, spoke boldly of
the evil influence of Europeans in Africa, remarking that it has been
terrible, and that for one negro influenced for good by missionaries
there were a thousand who had been driven to deeper degradation. We
supplied them still with an incredible quantity of gin, rum, gunpowder,
and guns.’
[15] See the _Spectator_, July 31, 1886.
THE MORAL EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG IN RELATION TO SEX
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 177
CHAPTER I
PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS WHICH INFLUENCE THE PHYSICAL AND
MENTAL GROWTH OF SEX 180
CHAPTER II
SOCIAL RESULTS OF NEGLECTING THESE PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS 206
CHAPTER III
THE HYGIENIC ADVANTAGE OF SEXUAL MORALITY 240
CHAPTER IV
METHODS BY WHICH SEXUAL MORALITY MAY BE PROMOTED 259
APPENDIX I 306
APPENDIX II 308
INTRODUCTION
Age after age brings forward varying phases of thought, when some
particular facts of life are thrown into unusual prominence, such
special development of thought serving to mould the society of that
generation, giving it a special stamp, and thus advancing the progress
of humanity one step forward. Of all the ideas gradually worked out
and gained as the permanent possession of human society, the slowest
in growth is the idea of the true relations of the sexes. The instinct
of sex always exists as the indispensable condition of life and the
foundation of society. It is the strongest force in human nature.
Whatever else disappears, this continues. Undeveloped, no subject of
thought, but nevertheless as the central fire of life, Nature guards
this inevitable instinct from all possibility of destruction. But
as an idea, thought out in all its wide relations, shaped in human
practice in all its ennobling influences, it is the latest growth of
civilization. In whatever concerns the subject of sex, customs are
blindly considered sacred, and evils deemed inevitable. The mass of
mankind seems moved with anger, fear, or shame, by any effort made
to consider seriously this fundamental idea. It must necessarily come
forward, however, in the progress of events, as the subject of primary
importance. As society advances, as principles of justice and humanity
become firmly established, as science and industry prepare the way for
the more perfect command of the material world, it will be found that
the time has come for the serious consideration of this first and last
question in human welfare, for the subject of sex will then present
itself as the great aid or obstacle to further progress. The gradually
growing conviction will be felt that, as it is the fundamental
principle of all society, so it is its crowning glory. In the relations
of men and women will be found the chief cause of past national
decline, or the promise of indefinite future progress.
The family, being the first simple element of society--the first
natural product of the principle of sex--the whole structure of society
must depend upon the character of that element, and the powers that
can be unfolded from it. Morality in sex will be found to be the
essence of all morality, securing principles of justice, honour, and
uprightness in the most influential of all human relations, and as it
is all-important in life, so it is all-important in the education which
prepares for life. A great social question lies, therefore, at the
foundation of the moral education of youth, and influences more or less
directly each step of education. It becomes indispensable to consider
the relation of this subject to the various stages of education, and
the methods by means of which education may guide and strengthen youth
in their entrance into wider social life.
The principles which should guide the moral education of our
children--our boys and girls--must necessarily depend upon the views
which we hold in relation to their adult life, as men and women; these
views will unavoidably determine the course of practical education. Two
great questions, therefore, naturally present themselves at the outset
of every careful consideration of moral sexual education--
1. What is the true standard for the relations of men and women--the
type which contains within itself the germ of progress or continual
development?
2. How can this standard be attained by human beings?
The endeavour to ascertain the true answer in its bearing upon the
growth of the young and the welfare of family life is the object of
this essay.
CHAPTER I
_Physiological Laws which Influence the Physical and Mental Growth of
Sex_
The very gradual growth of mankind from lower to higher forms of social
life, makes the study of the relation of the sexes a very complicated
one; but a sure guide may be found in the great truths of physiology,
viewed in their broad relation to human progress, and it is on the
solid foundation of these truths that correct principles of education
must be based. The tendency of our age, in seeking truth, is to
reject theories and study facts--facts, however, on the largest and
most comprehensive scale. Every physician knows that nothing is more
stupid than routine practice; nothing more unreliable than theories
unsupported by well-observed facts; and, at the same time, nothing
more misleading than partial facts. The laws of the human constitution
itself, as taught by the most comprehensive investigations of science,
must be carefully studied. We must learn what reason, observing the
facts of physiology, lays down as the true laws which should govern
the relations of men and women--laws whose observance will secure the
finest development of our race, and serve as a guide in directing the
education of our children.
The relations of human beings to each other, depend upon the nature and
requirements of individuals. It is, therefore, essential to know what
the nature of the individual human being really is; how it grows and
how it degenerates. Such knowledge must necessarily form the basis of
all true methods of education.
We find throughout Nature, that every creature possesses its peculiar
type, towards which it must tend, if it is to accomplish the purpose
of its creation. There is a capacity belonging to the original germ,
which, if the necessary conditions are presented, will lead it through
the various stages of growth and of development, to the complete
attainment of this type.
This type or pattern is the true aim of the individual. With the
process by which it is reached, it constitutes its nature.
In order to determine the nature of any creature, both the type it
should attain and the steps by which alone that type can be attained,
must be taken into consideration, or we are led astray in our judgment
of the nature of the individual. Thought is often confused by a vague
use of the term ‘nature.’ The educated man is more natural than the
savage, because he approaches more nearly to the true type of man, and
has acquired the power of transmitting increased capacities to his
children. What is popularly called a state of nature, is really a
state of rudimentary life, which does not display the real nature of
man, but only its imperfect condition.
Striking instances of unusual imperfection may often be observed in
the physical structure of the individual, for there are blind as well
as intelligent forces at work, in the long and elaborate process of
forming the complete human being. Thus, sometimes we find that the
developmental process of the body goes wrong, and produces six fingers
instead of five through successive generations, or the formative
power of some organ runs blindly into excess, producing the diseased
condition of hypertrophy. Arrest of development, also, may take place
at any stage of youthful life as well as before birth, the consequence
being deficiency of organic power, or even defective organs, although
in such cases growth and repair continue, and even long life may be
attained. These conditions are not natural, because, although they
exist, they are contrary to the type of man. For the same reason the
cannibal must be regarded as unnatural.
In studying the individual human type, we find some points in which
it resembles the lower animals, some points in which it differs from
all others, and some temporary phases during which it passes from the
brute type to the human. If it stop short at any stage of the regular
sequence or development, it fails in its essential object, and,
although living, it is unnatural.
When we seek for the distinguishing type of the human being--the type
for which the slow and careful elaboration of parts is necessary--we
find it in the mental, not in the physical, capacity of man. Physical
power and the perfection of physical instincts are attained by the
lower animals in a higher degree than by man. It is only when we
observe the uses and education of which the physical powers are
susceptible, and the development of which the mental powers are
capable, that we perceive the immense superiority of the human race,
and recognise the type--viz., the true nature of man, towards the
attainment of which all the elaborate processes of growth are directed.
The more carefully we examine the intellectual growth of the lower
animals, tracing the reflex movements and instinctive actions of the
invertebrata, through the intelligent mental operations of the dog
or the elephant, the more clearly we perceive the distinguishing
type of Man. This type is that union of truth and good which we name
Reason. Reason is the clear perception of the true relation of things,
and the love of their harmonious relations. It includes judgment,
conscience--all the higher intellectual and moral qualities.
Reason, with the Will to execute its dictates, is the distinguishing
type of man. It is towards this end that his faculties tend; in this
consists his peculiarity, his charter of existence. Any failure to
reach this end, is as much an arrest of development as is a case of
spina bifida, or the imperfect closure of the heart’s ventricles. We
cannot judge of the Nature of man, without the clear recognition of
this distinctive type, and it is impossible to establish sound methods
of education, without constantly keeping in view, both the true nature
of man and the steps by which it must be reached. These steps--_i.e._,
the method by which man grows towards his distinctive type in
creation--constitute the fundamental question in the present inquiry.
One distinguishing feature of human growth is its comparative slowness.
No animal is so helpless during its infancy, none remains so long in
a state of complete dependence on its parents. During the first few
years, the child is quite unable either to procure its own food, or to
keep itself from accidents, and it attains neither its complete bodily
nor mental development, until it is over twenty years of age. We find
this slow growth of faculties to be an essential condition of their
excellence. It is observed to be a law of organized existence that the
higher the degree of development to be reached, the slower are the
processes through which it is attained, and the longer is its period of
dependence on parental aid.
The forces employed in the elaboration of the human being, differ in
their manifestation at various stages of its growth. There are two
marked forces to be noted, often confounded together, but important to
distinguish--viz., the power of growth and the power of development,
the former possessed throughout life, the latter at certain epochs
only. The capacity for _growth_ and nutrition, by means of which the
human frame is built up and maintained out of the forces derived from
food and other agents, is shown until the last breath of life, by the
power of repair, which continues as long as the human being lives. All
action of the organism, every employment of muscular or nervous tissue,
uses up such tissue. The body is wasted by its own activities, and it
is only by the exact counterpoise of these two forces--disintegration
and repair--that health and life itself are maintained. In youth, in
connection with very rapid waste of tissue, exists a great excess of
formative power, which excess enables each complete organ to enlarge
and consolidate itself. The reduction of this excess of formative power
to a balance with the waste of tissue, marks the strength of adult
life. Its diminution below the power of repair marks the decline of
life.
The force of _development_, however, is shown, not in the enlargement
and maintenance of existing parts, but in the creation of new tissues
or organs or parts of organs, so that quite new powers are added to
the individual. After birth these remarkable efforts of creative force
belong exclusively to the youth of the individual. They are chiefly
marked by dentition, by growth of the skeleton and the brain, and
still more by the addition of the generative powers. With this work of
development the adult has nothing to do; it is a burden laid especially
upon the young: it is a work as important and exclusively theirs, as
child-bearing is the exclusive work of the mother.
One of the first lessons, then, that Physiology teaches us in relation
to the healthy growth of the human being, is the slow and successive
development of the various faculties. Although the complete type of
the future man exists potentially in the infant, long time and varying
conditions are essential to its establishment, and the type will never
be attained, if the necessary time and conditions are not provided.
The second physiological fact to be noted is the order observed in
human development. The faculties grow in a certain determined order.
First, those which are needed for simple physical existence; next,
those which place the child in fuller relations with Nature; and,
lastly, those which link him to his fellows. As digestion is perfected
before locomotion, so muscular mobility and activity exist before
strength, perception before observation, affection and friendship
before love. The latest work of Nature in forming the perfect being is
the gift of sexual power. This is a work of development, not simply
of growth. There are new organs coming into existence, and the same
necessary conditions of gradual consolidation and long preparation for
special work exist as in the growth of all the organs of animal life.
At the age of puberty, when the special life of sex commences, the
other organs of relation--skeleton, muscles, brain--are still carrying
on their slow process of consolidation. ‘At eighteen the bones and
muscles are very immature. Portions of the vertebræ hardly commence to
ossify before the sixteenth year. After twenty, the two thin plates on
the body of the vertebræ form, completing themselves near the thirtieth
year. Consolidation of the sacrum commences in the eighteenth year,
completing after the twenty-fifth. The processes of the ribs and of the
scapula are completed by the twenty-fifth year; those of the clavicle
begin to form between eighteen and twenty; those of the radius and
ulna, of the femur, tibia, and fibula, are all unjoined at eighteen,
and not completed until twenty-five. The muscles are equally immature;
they grow in size and strength in proportion to the bones, and it is
not until twenty-five years of age, or even later, that all epiphyses
of the bones have united, and that the muscles have attained their full
growth.’[16]
As a necessary consequence of this slow order of natural growth,
the individual is injured when sufficient time for growth is not
allowed, or when faculties which should remain latent, slowly storing
up strength for the proper time of unfolding, are unduly stimulated
or brought forward too soon. The writer above quoted remarks: ‘It is
not only a waste of material, but a positive cruelty, to send lads
of eighteen or twenty into the field.’[17] The evil effect of undue
stimulation to a new function is twofold. The first effect is to divert
Nature’s force from the consolidation of faculties already fully
formed, and, second, to injure the substantial growth of the later
faculty, which is thus prematurely brought forward. Thus the child
compelled to carry heavy burdens will be deformed or stunted; the
youth weighed down by intellectual labour will destroy his digestion
or injure his brain. So, if the faculty which is bestowed as the last
work of development, that which requires the longest time and the
most careful preparation for its advent--the sexual power--be brought
forward prematurely, a permanent injury is done to the individual,
which can never be completely repaired.
The marked distinction which exists between puberty and nubility
should here be noted. It is a distinction based upon the important
fact that a work of long-continued preparation takes place in the
physical and mental nature, before a new faculty enters upon its
complete life. Puberty is the age when those changes have taken place
in the child’s constitution, which make it physically possible for it
to become a parent, but when the actual exercise of such faculty is
highly injurious. This change takes place, as a general rule, from
fourteen to sixteen years of age. Nubility, on the other hand, is that
period of life when marriage may take place, without disadvantage to
the individual and to the race. This period is generally reckoned, in
temperate climates, in the man at from twenty-three to twenty-five
years of age. About the age of twenty-five commences that period of
perfect manly vigour, that union of freshness and strength, which
enables the individual to become the progenitor of vigorous offspring.
The strong constitution transmitted by healthy parents between the
ages of twenty-five and thirty-five indicates the order of Nature in
the growth of the human race. The interval between these two epochs of
puberty and confirmed virility, is a most important period of rapid
growth and slow consolidation. Not only is the lifelong work of the
body going on at this time, with much greater activity than belongs to
adult life--_i.e._, the work of calorification, nutrition, and all that
concerns the maintenance of the body during its unceasing expenditure
of mechanical and mental force--but the still more powerful actions of
development and growth are being carried on to their last and greatest
perfection. Although, as will be shown later, the influences brought to
bear upon the very young child strongly affect its later growth in good
or evil, yet this period between fourteen and twenty-five is the most
critical time of preparation for the work of adult life.
Another important fact announced by physiological observation, is
the absolute necessity of establishing a proper government of the
human faculties, by the growth of intelligent self-control. Reason,
not Instinct, is the final guide of our race. We cannot grow, as do
the lower animals, by following out the blind promptings of physical
nature. From the earliest moment of existence, intelligence must
guide the infant. At first this guiding intelligence is that of the
mother, and through all the earlier stages of life, a higher outside
intelligence must continue to provide the necessary conditions of
growth, until the gradual mental development of the child fits it for
independent individual guidance. The great difficulty of education
lies in the adjustment of intelligence, for there are antagonisms to be
encountered. There is first of all to be considered the adaptation of
parental intelligence to the large proportion of indispensable physical
instinct, with which each child is endowed by Nature. There is next the
adjustment of the two intelligences, the parental and filial. These
relations are constantly changing, and the true wisdom of education
consists in meeting these changes rightly.
It is very important to observe that each new phase of life, each new
faculty, begins in the child-like way--that is to say, there is always
a large proportion of the blind, instinctive element which absolutely
needs a higher guidance. The instinctive life of the body always
necessarily exists, and, therefore, constantly strives to make itself
felt. This life of sensation will (in many different ways) obtain a
complete mastery over the individual, if Reason does not exist, and
grow into a controlling force. This danger of an undue predominance
of the instinctive force is emphatically true of the life of sex. It
begins, child-like, in a tumult of overpowering sensations--sensations
and emotions which need as wisely-arranged conditions and as high a
guiding influence as does the early life of the child. At this period
of life, an adjustment of the parental and filial intelligence is
required, quite as wisely planned as in childhood, in order to secure
the gradual growth of intelligent self-control in the young life of
sex. If we do not recognise this necessity, or fail to exercise this
directing influence, we do not perceive the crowning obligation of the
older to the younger generation. However much parents may now shrink
from this obligation, and, owing to incorrect views of sex, be really
unable to exercise the kind of influence required, the necessity
for such influence, nevertheless, exists as a law of human nature,
unchangeable, rooted in the human constitution. It is Nature’s method,
that every new faculty requires intelligent control from the outset,
but only gradually can this guidance become self-control.
This necessity is seen more clearly as we continue our physiological
inquiry. The preceding considerations refer chiefly to the slow
processes by which the various parts of the body must be built up step
by step, under the guidance of outside intelligence, which furnishes
the proper conditions of physical growth. Equally certain, and within
the legitimate scope of true physiology, is the influence which the
mind of the individual exercises upon the growth of the body. This
difficult half of the subject presents itself in increasing importance
as science advances. The particular theory of mind held by individuals
does not affect our inquiry. Everyone understands the term, and gives
to its influence a certain importance. Our perception of the degree of
power exercised by the mind over the body, and the importance of that
power, will continually grow as we observe the facts around us. It is
a fact of every-day experience, that fright will make the heart beat,
that anxiety will disturb digestion, that sorrow will depress all the
vital functions, whilst happiness will strengthen them. How often does
the physician see the languid, ailing invalid converted from mental
causes--through happiness--into a bright, active being! Medical records
are full of accumulated facts showing the extent to which such mental
or emotional influence may go; how the infant has been killed when the
mother has nursed it during a fit of passion, or the hair turned gray
in a single night, through grief or fright.
We find that the mind, acting through the nervous system, affects not
only the senses and muscles--the organs of animal life, under the
direct influence of the cerebro-spinal axis--but that it may also
extend its influence to those processes of nutrition and secretion
which belong to the vegetative life of the body. Emotion can act where
Will is powerless, but a strong Will also can acquire a remarkable
power over the body. It has been remarked ‘that men who know that
there is any hereditary disease in their family, can contribute to the
development of that disease, by closely directing their attention to
it, and so throwing their nervous energy in that direction.’ It was a
remark of John Hunter ‘that he could direct a sensation to any part of
his body.’
‘As in the case of other sensations, the sexual, when moderately
excited, may give rise to ideas, emotions, and desires of which
the brain is the seat, and these may react on the muscular system
through the intelligence and Will. But when inordinately excited, or
when not kept in restraint by the Will, they will at once call into
play respondent movements, which are then to be regarded as purely
automatic. This is the case in some forms of disease in the human
subject, and is probably also the ordinary mode of operation in some
of the lower animals.... In cases, however, in which this sensation is
excited in unusual strength, it may completely over-master all motives
to the repression of the propensity, and may even entirely remove
the actions from volitional control. A state of a very similar kind
exists in many idiots, in whom the sexual propensity exerts a dominant
power, not because it is in itself peculiarly strong, but because the
intelligence being undeveloped it acts without restraint or direction
from the Will.’[18]
The mental power exercised by the Will over the body is strikingly
shown in the control exerted by human beings over the strongest of all
individual cravings--the craving of hunger. The exigencies of human
society have caused this tremendous power of hunger to be kept so
completely in check, that the gratification of it, except in accordance
with the established laws (of property, etc.), is considered as a
crime. In spite of the terrible temptation which the sight of food
offers to a starving man, society punishes him if he yield to it. Still
stronger than the established laws are those unwritten laws which are
enforced by ‘public opinion,’ in obedience to which, countless people
in all civilized countries suffer constant deprivation--even starving
more or less slowly to death--rather than transgress universally
accepted principles, and subject themselves to social condemnation by
taking the food which does not belong to them. Another curious and
important illustration of mental action is shown in the accumulating
instances of self-deception, of contagious hallucination, and of
emotional influence acting upon the physical and mental organizations,
so strikingly depicted by Hammond and other writers in the accounts of
pretended miracles, ecstasies, visions, etc.
Of all the organic functions, that of secretion is the one most
strongly and frequently influenced by the mind. The secretion of
tears, of bile, of milk, of saliva, may all be powerfully excited by
mental stimuli, or lessened by promoting antagonistic secretions. This
influence is felt in full force by those of the generative system,
‘which,’ writes a distinguished author, ‘are strongly influenced by
the condition of the mind. When it is frequently and strongly directed
towards objects of passion, these secretions are increased in amount
to a degree which may cause them to be a very injurious drain on the
powers of the system. On the other hand, the active employment of the
mental and bodily powers on other objects, has a tendency to render
less active, or even to check altogether, the processes by which they
are elaborated.’[19]
That the mind must possess the power of ruling this highest of the
animal functions, is evident, from its uses, and from the nature of
man. The faculty of sex comes to perfection when the mind is in full
activity, and when all the senses are in their freshest youthful
vigour. Its object is no longer confined to the individual, it is the
source of social life, it is the creator of the race. Inevitably, then,
the human mind (the Emotions, the Will) must control this function more
than any other function. It assumes a different aspect from all other
functions, through its objective character. The individual may exist
without it--the race not. Every object which addresses itself to the
senses or the mind acts with peculiar force upon this function. Either
for right or for wrong, the mind is the controlling power. The right
education of the mind is the central point from which all our efforts
to help the younger generation must arise. It will thus be seen that
the standpoint of education changes in childhood and in youth, the
first period being specially concerned with the childhood of the body
or of the individual, the second period representing more particularly
the childhood of sex or of the race. In neither childhood nor youth
must either of the double elements of our nature--mind and body--be
neglected, but in childhood the body comes first in order, in youth the
mind.
The higher the character of a function and the wider its relations,
the more serious and the more numerous are the dangers to which it is
exposed. A physiologist remarks, ‘In youth the affinity of the tissues
for vital stimuli seems to be greater when the development is less
complete.’ That which the strong adult may endure with comparative
impunity destroys the growing youth, whose nature, from the very
necessities of development, possesses a keener sensitiveness to all
vital stimuli. This important remark is true of mental as well as
physical youth, and applies with especial force to the prevention of
the dangers of premature sexual development. More care is needed to
secure healthy, strengthening influences for the early life of sex than
for any other more simply physical function.
* * * * *
In the preceding considerations, the faculty of sex has been regarded
chiefly in its individual aspect, and the principles laid down by means
of which the largest amount of health and strength can be secured
for each individual. But this half-view is entirely insufficient in
considering those physiological peculiarities of the function of sex,
which must determine the true aim of education. There are two other
physiological facts to be considered--viz., the Duality of Sex, and its
Results.
The power we are now considering enters into a different category from
all other physical functions, as being, _first_, the faculty of two,
not of one only, and, _second_, as resulting in parentage. Directly a
physical function is the property of two, it belongs to a different
class from those faculties which regard solely the individual. That
very fact gives it a stamp, which requires that the relations of the
two factors should be considered. No faculty can be regarded in the
light of simple self-indulgence, which requires two for its proper
exercise. The consideration of such faculty in its imperfect condition
as belonging to one-half only is an essentially false view. It is
unscientific, therefore, to regard this exceptional faculty simply
as a limited individual function, as we regard the other powers of
the human body. Its inevitable relations to man, to woman, and to the
race must always stand forth as a prominent fact in determining the
aim of education. If this be so, the moral education of youth, with
the necessary physiological guidance given to their sexual powers,
must always be influenced by a consideration of these two inevitable
physiological facts--viz., duality and parentage, and the training of
young men and women, should mould them into true relations towards each
other and towards offspring.
The question of the hereditary transmission of qualities, of the
influence of both mind and body in determining the character of
offspring, is a question of such vital importance that it cannot
be disregarded even in the narrowest view of family welfare, and
still less in any rational view of education, which lies at the
base of national progress. This great question is still in its
infancy, collected facts comparatively few, and the immense power
of future development contained in it, hardly suspected by parents
and philanthropists. We know already that various forms of disease,
physical peculiarities, and mental qualities may all become hereditary;
also that the tendency to drunkenness and to sensuality may be
transmitted as surely as the tendency to insanity or to consumption. If
we compare the mental and moral status of women in a Mahommedan country
with the corresponding class of women in our own country, we perceive
the effect which generations of simply sensual unions have produced on
the character of the female population. The Christian idea of womanly
characteristics is entirely reversed. The term ‘woman’ has become a
by-word for untruth, irreligion, unchastity, and folly.[20]
The same observation may be made in so-called Christian countries
under Mahommedan rule, in independent countries in close proximity to
this degrading influence, and wherever the influence of unions whose
key-note is sensuality, prevails. The woman is considered morally
inferior. ‘She is man’s help, but not his helpmate. He guards and
protects her, but it is as a man guards and protects a valuable horse
or dog, getting all the service he can out of her, and rendering her in
turn his half-contemptuous protection. He uncovers her face and lets
her chat with her fellows in the courtyard, but he watches over her
conduct with a jealous conviction that she is unable to guard herself.
It is a modification, yet a development, of the Mussulman idea, and he
seems to think if she has a soul to be saved he must manage to save
it for her.’[21] Everyone who has observed society in Eastern Europe
must be aware of the constant relation existing between the prevalence
of sensuality and this moral degeneration of female character. This
influence on the character is due, not only to the customs, religion,
and circumstances which form the nation, but also to the accumulating
influence of inherited qualities. The hereditary action produces
tendencies in a particular direction in the offspring, which renders
its development easier in that direction. It is only gradually, through
education and the influence of heredity in a different direction, that
the original tendency can be removed. But if all the circumstances of
life favour its development, the individual, the family, and the nation
will certainly display the result of these tendencies in full force.
A striking illustration of this subject has been published in the
report of the New York Prison Association for 1876. An inquiry was
undertaken by one of the members of the association, to ascertain the
causes of crime and pauperism, as exhibited in a particular family or
tribe of offenders called ‘The Jukes,’ which for nearly a century has
inhabited one of the central counties of the State. The investigation
is carried back for some five or six generations, the descendants
numbering at least 1,200, and the number of persons whose biographies
are condensed and collated is not less than 709. The facts in these
criminal lives, which have grown in a century from one family into
hundreds, are arranged in the order of their occurrence and the age
given at which they took place, so that the relative importance of
inherited tendencies and of immediate influences may be measured. The
study of this family shows that the most general and potent cause,
both of crime and pauperism, is the habit of licentiousness, with
its result of bastardy and neglected and miseducated childhood. This
tribe was traced back on the male side to two sons of a hard drinker
named Max, living between 1720 and 1740, who became blind in his old
age, transmitting blindness to some of his legitimate and illegitimate
children. On the female side the race goes back to five sisters of
bad character, two of whom intermarried with the two sons of Max, the
lineage of three other sisters being also traced. In the course of the
century, this family has remained an almost purely American family,
inhabiting the same region of country in one of the finest States of
the Union, largely intermarrying, and presenting an almost unbroken
record of harlotry and crime. ‘The Jukes,’ says the report, ‘are not an
exceptional race; analogous families may be found in every county of
the State.’[22]
Conspicuous facts such as these, display in a striking manner the
indubitable influence of mind in the exercise of the highest--the
parental--function. We see as a positive fact that mental or moral
qualities quite as much as physical peculiarities, tend to reproduce
themselves in children. The mental quality or character of the parent
must then be considered physiologically, as a positive element in
the parental relation; thought, emotion, sensation, are all mental
qualities. In human unions this great fact must be borne in mind. Any
sneer at ‘sentiment’ proceeds from ignorance of facts. Happiness is as
vivifying as sunshine, and is a potent element in the formation of a
child. Hence arises the necessity of love between parents--love, the
mental element, as distinguished from the simple physical instinct.
To understand the true relations of men and women in their bearing upon
the race (relations which must determine the moral aim of education)
the duality of sex and the peculiarity of the womanly organization
must be recognised. Woman, having a special work to perform in family
life, has special requirements and sharpened perceptions in relation
to this work. She demands the constant presence of affection, an
affection which alone can draw forth full response, and she possesses
a perception which is almost a special instinct for detecting coldness
or untruthfulness in the husband’s mental attitude towards her. The
presence of unvarying affection has a real, material, as well as a
moral power on the body and soul of a woman. Indifference or neglect
is instantly felt. Sorrow, loneliness, jealousy, all constantly
depressing emotions, exercise a powerful and injurious effect upon the
sources of vital action. This physiological truth and the necessity
of securing the full assent of the mother in the joint creation of
superior offspring, are important facts bearing on the character and
happiness of one-half of the human race, and influencing through that
half the quality of offspring. These facts have not yet received the
attention which so weighty a subject demands.
In pursuing the physiological inquiry, we are met by one remarkable
fact which it is impossible to ignore, and which remains from age
to age as a guide to the human race. This guide is found in the
physiological fact of the equality in the birth of the sexes. This is a
clear indication of the intention of Providence in relation to sexual
union, a proof of the fundamental nature of the family group. Boys and
girls are born in equal numbers all over the world, wherever our means
of observation have extended, a slight excess of boys alone existing.
Sadler writes: ‘The near equality in the birth of the sexes is an
undoubted fact; it extends throughout Europe and wherever we have the
means of accurate observation, the birth-rate being in the proportion
of twenty-five boys to twenty-four girls.’[23] The injurious inequality
which we so often find in a population is not Nature’s law, but is
evidence of our social stupidity. It proves our sin against God’s
design in the existence of brutal wars and our careless squandering
of human life. All rational efforts for the improvement of society
must be based upon Nature’s true intention--viz., the equality of the
sexes in birth and in duration of life, not upon the false condition
of inequality produced by our own ignorance. It is essential always
to bear in mind this distinction between the permanent fact and the
temporary phenomenon.
* * * * *
The foregoing facts illustrate fundamental physiological truths. They
show the Type of creation towards which the human constitution tends
and the distinctive methods of growth by which that type must be
reached. In brief recapitulation, these truths are the following--viz.,
the slowness of human growth; the successive development of the human
faculties; the injury caused by subverting the natural order of growth;
the necessity of governing this order of growth by the control of
Reason; the influence of Mind--_i.e._, Thought, Emotion, Will--on
the development or condition of our organization; the necessity of
considering the dual character of sex; the transmission of qualities by
parents to their children; the natural equality in the creation of the
sexes.
These truths, which are of universal application to human beings,
furnish a Physiological Guide, showing the true laws of sex, in
relation to human progress. We find that the laws of physiology
point in one practical direction--viz., to the family--as the only
institution which secures their observance; they show the necessity
of the self-control of chastity in the young man and the young woman,
as the only way to secure the strong mental and physical qualities
requisite in the parental relation, whilst they also prove the special
influence exerted by mutual love in the great work of Maternity. The
preparation, therefore, of youth for family life should be the great
aim of their sexual education.
Experience as well as Reason confirms the direct and indirect teaching
of Physiology; they both point to the natural family group as the
element out of which a healthy society grows. It is only in the family
that the necessary conditions for this growth exist. The healthy and
constantly varying development of children naturally constitutes the
warmest interest of parents. Brothers and sisters are invaluable
educators of one another; they are unique associates, creating a
species of companionship that no other relation can supply. To enjoy
this interest, to create this young companionship, to form this healthy
germ of society, marriage must be unitary and permanent. A constantly
deepening satisfaction should exist, arising from the steady growth
together through life, from the identity of interest and from the
strength of habit. Still farther we learn that such union should take
place in the early period of complete adult life. Children should be
the product of the first fresh vigour of parents. Everything that
exhausts force or defers its freshest exercise is injurious to the
Race. Customs of society or incorrect opinions which obstruct the union
of men and women in their early vigour, which impair the happiness of
either partner, or prevent the strong and steady growth of their union,
impair their efficacy as parents, and are fatal to the highest welfare
of our Race.
CHAPTER II
_Social Results of Neglecting these Physiological Laws_
The wide bearing and importance of the truths derived from physiology
will become more and more apparent, as we examine another branch of
the subject, and ascertain from an observation of facts around us, how
far the present relations of men and women in civilized countries, are
based upon sound principles of physiology. It is necessary to know
how far these principles are understood and carried out from infancy
onward, whether efforts for the improvement of the race are moulded
by physiological methods of human growth, and what are the inevitable
consequences which result from departure from these principles.
According to a rational and physiological view of life, the family
should be cherished as the precious centre of national welfare; every
custom, therefore, which tends to support the dignity of the family
and which prepares our youth for this life, is of vital importance
to a nation. Thus the slow development of the sexual faculties by
hygienic regime, by the absence of all unnatural stimulus to these
propensities, by the constant association of boys and girls together,
under adult influence, in habitual and unconscious companionship, the
cultivation in the child’s mind of a true idea of manliness and the
perception that self-command is the distinctive peculiarity of the
human being, are the ordinary and natural conditions which rational
physiology requires. On the contrary, every custom which insults the
family and unfits for its establishment, which degrades the natural
nobility of human sex, which sneers at it and treats this great
principle with flippancy, which tends to kill its Divine essence, all
such influences and such customs are a great crime against society, and
directly opposed to the teaching of rational physiology.
An extended view of social facts, not only in different classes of
our own society, but also in those countries with which we are nearly
related, is of the utmost value to the parent. Physiological knowledge
would be valueless to the mass of mankind, if its direct bearing upon
the character and happiness of a nation could not be shown. So in
considering the sexual education of youth according to the light of
sound physiology, the social influences which affect the natural growth
of the human being are an important part of applied physiology.
The tendencies of civilization must be studied in our chief cities.
The rapid growth of large towns during the last half-century and the
comparatively stationary condition of the country population show
where the full and complete results of those principles which are most
active in our civilization must be sought for. London, Paris, Vienna,
Berlin, New York, are not exceptions, but examples. They show the
mature results towards which smaller towns are tending. Those who live
in quiet country districts often flatter themselves that the rampant
vice of large towns has nothing to do with villages, small communities,
and the country at large. This is a delusion. The condition of large
towns has a direct relation to the country.
In these focal points of civilization we observe, as examples of
sexual relationship, two great institutions existing side by side--two
institutions in direct antagonism--viz., Marriage and Prostitution, the
latter steadily gaining ground over the former.
In examining these two institutions, the larger signification
of licentiousness must be given to prostitution, applicable to
men and women. Marriage is the recognised union of two, sharing
responsibilities, providing for and educating a family. Prostitution
is the indiscriminate union of many, with no object but physical
gratification, with no responsibilities, and no care for offspring. It
is essential to study the effects, both upon men and women and upon
mankind at large, of this great fact of licentiousness, if we are to
appreciate the true laws of sexual union in their full force, and the
aims, importance, and wide bearing of Moral Education. We shall only
here refer to its effects upon the young.
We may justly speak of licentiousness as an institution. It is
considered by a large portion of society as an essential part of
itself. It possesses its code of written and unwritten laws, its
sources of supply, its various resorts, from the poorest hovel to
the gaudiest mansion, its endless grade, from the coarsest and most
ignorant to the refined and cultivated. It has its special amusements
and places of public resort. It has its police, its hospitals, its
prisons, and it has its literature. The organized manner in which
portions of the press are engaged in promoting licentiousness,
reaching, not thousands, but millions of readers, is a fact of weighty
importance. The one item of vicious advertisements falls into distinct
categories of corruption. Growing, therefore, as it does, constantly
and rapidly, licentiousness becomes a fact of primary importance in
society. Its character and origin must be studied by all who take
an interest in the growth of the human race, and who believe in the
maintenance of marriage, and the family, as the foundation of human
progress.
Everyone who has studied life in many civilized countries, and the
literature reflecting that life, will observe the antagonism of these
two institutions: the recognition of the greater influence of the
mistress than the wife, the constant triumph of passion over duty and
deep, steady affection. We see the neglect of the home for the café,
the theatre, the public amusement; the consequent degradation of the
home into a place indispensable as a nursery for children, and for the
transaction of common, every-day matters, a place of resort for the
accidents of life, for growing old in, for continuing the family name,
but too tedious a place to be in much, to spend the evening and really
live in. Enjoyments are sought for elsewhere. The charm of society, the
keener interests of life, no longer centre in the household. It is a
domestic place, more or less quiet, but no home in the true sense of
the word. The true home can only be formed by father and mother, by
their joint influence on one another, on their children, and on their
friends. The narrow, one-sided, diminishing influence of Continental
homes amongst great masses of the population, from absence of due
paternal care, is a painful fact to witness. That there are beautiful
examples of domestic life to be found in every civilized country--homes
where father and mother are one in the indispensable unity of family
life--no one will deny who has closely observed foreign society.
Indeed, any nation is in the stage of rapid dissolution where the
institution of the family is completely and universally degraded; but
the preceding statement is a faithful representation of the general
tone and tendencies of social life in many parts of the Continent. That
the same fatal principles, leading to the like results, are at work
both in England and America will be seen as we proceed. Licentiousness
may be considered as still in its infancy with us, when compared with
its universal prevalence in many parts of the Continent; but it is
growing in our own country with a rapidity which threatens fatal
injury to our most cherished institution, the pure Christian home,
with its far-reaching influences, an institution which has been the
foundation of our national greatness.
The results of licentiousness should be especially considered in their
effects upon the youth of both sexes, of both the richer and poorer
classes; also in their bearing upon the institution of marriage and
upon the race. In all these aspects it enters into direct relation with
the family, and no one who values the family, with the education which
it should secure, can any longer afford to ignore what so intimately
affects its best interests. It is to the first branch of the subject
that reference will here be chiefly made.
The first consideration is the influence exerted by social arrangements
and tone of thought upon our boys and young men as they pass out of
the family circle into the wider circles of the world, into school,
college, business, society. What are the ideas about women that have
been gradually formed in the mind of the lad of sixteen, by all that he
has seen, heard, and read during his short but most important period
of life? What opinions and habits, in relation to his own physical
and moral nature, have been impressed upon him? How have our poorer
classes of boys been trained in respect to their own well-being,
and to association with girls of their own class? What has been the
influence of the habits and companionships of that great middle-class
multitude, clerks, shopkeepers, mechanics, farmers, soldiers, etc.?
What books and newspapers do these boys read, what talk do they hear,
what interests or amusements do they find in the theatre, the tavern,
the streets, the home, and the church? What has been the training of
the lad of the upper class--that class, small in number but great in
influence, which, being lifted above any sordid pressure of material
care, should be the spiritual leader of the classes below them--a class
which has ten talents committed to it, and which inherits the grand
old maxim, _Noblesse oblige_? How have all these lads been taught to
regard womanhood and manhood? What is their standard of manliness?
What habits of self-respect and of the noble uses of sex have been
impressed upon their minds? Throughout all classes, abundant temptation
to the abuse of sex exists. Increasing activity is displayed in the
exercise of human ingenuity for the extension and refinement of vice.
Shrewdness, large capital, business enterprise, are all enlisted in the
lawless stimulation of this mighty instinct of sex. Immense provision
is made for facilitating fornication; what direct efforts are made for
encouraging chastity?
It is of vital importance to realize how small at present is the
formative influence of the individual home and of the weekly discourse
of the preacher, compared with the mighty social influences which
spread with corrupting force around the great bulk of our youth. We
find, as a matter of fact, that complete moral confusion too often
meets the young man at the outset of life. Society presents him with
no fixed standard of right or wrong in relation to sex, no clear
ideal to be held steadily before him and striven for. Religious
teaching points in one direction, but practical life points in quite
a different way. The youth who has grown up from childhood under
the guardianship of really wise parents, in a true home, with all
its ennobling influences, and has been strengthened by enlightened
religious instruction, has gradually grown towards the natural human
type. He may have met the evils of life as they came to him from
boyhood onwards, first of all with the blindness of innocence, which
does not realize evil, and then with the repulsion of virtue, which is
clear-sighted to the hideous results of vice. Such a one will either
pass with healthy strength through life, or he may prove himself the
grandest of heroes if beset with tremendous temptations; or, again,
he may fall, after long and terrible struggles with his early virtue.
But in the vast majority of cases the early training through innocence
into virtue is wanting. Evil influences are at work unknown to or
disregarded by the family, and a gradual process of moral and physical
deterioration in the natural growth of sex corrupts the very young.
In by far the larger ranks of life, before the lad has grown into the
young man, his notions of right and wrong are too often obscured. He
retains a vague notion that virtue is right, but as he perceives that
his friends, his relations, his widening circle of acquaintance, live
according to a different standard, his idea of virtue recedes into a
vague abstraction, and he begins to think that vice is also right--in
a certain way! He is too young to understand consequences, to realize
the fearful chain of events in the ever-widening influence of evil
acts--results which, if clearly seen, would frighten the innocent mind
by the hideousness of evil, and make the first step towards it a crime.
No one ventures to lift up a warning voice. The parent dares not, or
knows not how to enter upon this subject of vital importance. There
are no safeguards to his natural modesty; there is no wise help to
strengthen his innocence into virtue.
Here is the testimony in relation to one important class, drawn from
experience by our great English satirist: ‘And by the way, ye tender
mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing
that theory of life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why,
if you could hear those boys of fourteen, who blush before mothers and
sneak off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among
each other, it would be the woman’s turn to blush then. Before he was
twelve years old, and while his mother fancied him an angel of candour,
little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon
certain points; and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked son,
who is coming home from school for the ensuing Christmas holidays. I
don’t say that the boy is lost, so that the innocence has left him
which he had from “Heaven which is our home,” but the shades of the
prison-house are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping as
much as possible to corrupt him.’ ‘Few boys,’ says the Headmaster of a
large school, ‘ever remain a month in any school, public or private,
without learning all the salient points in the physical relation of
the sexes. There are two grave evils in this unlicensed instruction:
first, the lessons are learned surreptitiously; second, the knowledge
is gained from the vicious experiences of the corrupted older boys, and
the traditions handed down by them.’
Temptations meet the lad at every step. From childhood onward, an
unnatural forcing process is at work, and he is too often mentally
corrupted, whilst physically unformed. This mental condition tends
to hasten the functions of adult life into premature activity. As
already stated, an important period exists between the establishment of
puberty and confirmed virility. In the unperverted youth, this space
of time, marked by the rush of new life, is invaluable as a period
for storing up the new forces needed to confirm young manhood and fit
it for the healthy exercise of its important social functions. The
very indications of Nature’s abundant forces at the outset of life,
are warnings that this new force must not be stimulated, that there
is danger of excessive and hasty growth in one direction, danger of
hindering that gradual development which alone insures strength. If at
an early age, thought and feeling have been set in the right direction,
and aids to virtue and to health surround the young man, then this
period of time, before his twenty-fifth year, will lead him into a
strong and vigorous manhood. But where the mind is corrupted, the
imagination heated, and no strong love of virtue planted in the soul,
the individual loses the power of self-control, and becomes the victim
of physical sensation and suggestion. When this condition of mental
and physical deterioration has been produced, it is no longer possible
for him to resist surrounding temptations. There are dangers within
and without, but he does not recognise the danger. He is young, eager,
filled with that excess of activity in blood and nerve, with which
Nature always nourishes her fresh creative efforts.
At this important stage of life, when self-control, hygiene, mental
and moral influence, are of vital importance, the fatal results of
his weakened will and a corrupt society, ensue. Opportunity tempts
his wavering innocence, thoughtless or vicious companions undertake
to ‘form’ him, laugh at his scruples, sneer at his conscience, excite
him with allurements. Or a deadly counsel meets him--meets him from
those he is bound to respect. The most powerful morbid stimulant that
exists--a stimulant to every drop of his seething young blood--is
advised viz., the resort to prostitutes. When this fatal step has been
taken, when the natural modesty of youth and the respect for womanhood
is broken down, when he has broken with the restraints of family life,
with the voice of Conscience, with the dictates of religion, a return
to virtue is indeed difficult--nay, often impossible. He has tasted the
physical delights of sex, separated from its more exquisite spiritual
joys. This unnatural divorce degrades whilst it intoxicates him. Having
tasted these physical pleasures, often he can no more do without them
than the drunkard without his dram. He ignorantly tramples under foot
his birthright of rich, compound, infinite human love, enthralled by
the simple limited animal passion. His Will is no longer free. He has
destroyed that grand endowment of Man, that freedom of the youthful
Will, which is the priceless possession of innocence and of virtue,
and has subjected himself to the slavery of lust. He is no longer his
own master; he is the servant of his passions. Those whose interest
it is to retain their victim employ every art of drink, of dress,
of excess, to urge him on. The youthful eagerness of his own nature
lends itself to these arts. The power of resistance is gradually
lost, until one glance of a prostitute’s eye passing in the street,
one token of allurement, will often overturn his best resolutions and
outweigh the wisest counsel of friends! The physiological ignorance
and moral blindness which actually lead some parents to provide a
mistress for their sons, in the hope of keeping them from houses of
public debauchery, is an effort as unavailing as it is corrupt. Place
a youth on the wrong course instead of on the right one, lead him into
the career of sensual indulgence and selfish disregard for womanhood
instead of into manly self-control, and the parent has, by his own act,
launched his child into the current of vice, which rapidly hurries him
beyond his control.
The evils resulting from a violation of Nature’s method of growth by
a life of early dissipation are both physical and mental or moral.
In some organizations the former, in some the latter, are observable
in the most marked degree; but no one can escape either the physical
deterioration or the mental degradation which results from the
irrational and unhuman exercise of the great endowment of sex.
Amongst the physical evils the following may be particularly noted.
The loss of self-control, reacting upon the body, produces a morbid
irritability (always a sign of weakness) which is a real disease,
subjecting the individual to constant excitement and exhaustion from
slight causes. The resulting physical evils may be slow in revealing
themselves, because they only gradually undermine the constitution.
They do not herald themselves in the alarming manner of a fever or
a convulsion, but they are not to be less dreaded from their masked
approach. The chief forms of physical deterioration are nervous
exhaustion, impaired power of resistance to epidemics or other
injurious influences, and the development of those germs of disease,
or tendencies to some particular form of disease, which exist in
the majority of constitutions. The brain and spinal marrow and the
lungs are the vital organs most frequently injured by loose life. But
whatever be the weak point of the constitution, from inherited or
acquired morbid tendencies, that will probably be the point through
which disease or death will enter.
One of the most distinguished hygienists of our age writes thus: ‘The
pathological results of venereal excess are now well known. The gradual
derangements of health experienced by its victims are not at first
recognised by them, and physicians may take the symptoms to be the
beginning of very different diseases. How often symptoms are considered
as cases of hypochondria or chronic gastritis, or the commencement of
heart disease, which are really the results of generative abuse! A
general exhaustion of the whole physical force, symptoms of cerebral
congestion, or paralysis, attributed to some cerebrospinal lesion,
are often due to the same causes. The same may be said of some of
the severest forms of insanity. Many cases of consumption appearing
in young men who suffer from no hereditary tendency to the disease
enter into the same category. So many diseases are vainly treated by
medicine or regime which are really caused by abuse of these important
functions.’[24] Another of our oldest surgeons writes: ‘Among the
passions of the future man which at this period should be strictly
restrained is that of physical love, for none wars so completely
against the principles which have been already laid down as the most
conducive to long life; no excess so thoroughly lessens the sum of
the vital power, none so much weakens and softens the organs of life,
none is more active in hastening vital consumption, and none so
totally prohibits restoration. I might, if it were necessary, draw a
painful--nay, a frightful--picture of the results of these melancholy
excesses, etc.’[25] Volumes might be filled with similar medical
testimony on the destructive character of early licentiousness.
Striking testimony to the destructive effects of vice in early manhood
is derived from a very different source--viz., the strictly business
calculation of the chances of life, furnished by Life Insurance
Companies. These tables show the rapid fall in viability during the
earlier years of adult life. Dr. Carpenter has reproduced a striking
diagram[26] from the well-known statistician Quetelet, showing the
comparative viability of men and women at different ages, and its
rapid diminution in the male from the age of eighteen to twenty-five.
He remarks: ‘The mortality is much greater in males from about the
age of eighteen to twenty-eight, being at its maximum at twenty-five,
when the viability is only half what it is at puberty. This fact is
a very striking one, and shows most forcibly that the indulgence of
the passions not only weakens the health, but in a great number of
instances is the cause of a very premature death.’[27] Dr. Bertillon (a
well-known French statistician) has shown by the statistics of several
European countries that the irregularities of unmarried life produce
disease, crime, and suicide; that the rate of mortality in bachelors
of twenty-five is equal to that of married men at forty-five; that the
immoral life of the unmarried and the widowed, whether male or female,
ages them by twenty years and more.
Many of the foreign health resorts are filled with young men of the
richer classes of society, seeking to restore the health destroyed by
dissipation. Could the simple truth be recorded on the tombstones of
multitudes of precious youth, from imperial families downward, who are
mourned as victims of consumption, softening of the brain, etc., all
lovers of the race would stand appalled at the endless record of these
wasted lives. ‘Died from the effects of fornication’ would be the true
warning voice from these premature graves.
The moral results of early dissipation are quite as marked as the
physical evils. The lower animal nature gains ever-increasing
dominion over the moral life of the individual. The limited nature
of all animal enjoyments produces its natural effects. First there
is the eager search after fresh stimulants, and as the boundaries of
physical enjoyment are necessarily reached, come in common sequence,
disappointment, disgust, restlessness, dreariness, or bitterness. The
character of the mental deterioration differs with the difference of
original character in the individual, as in the nation. In some we
observe an increasing hardness of character, growing contempt for
women, with low material views of life. In others there is a frivolity
of mind induced, a constant restlessness and search for new pleasures.
The frankness, heartiness, and truthfulness of youth gradually
disappear under the withering influence.[28]
The moral influence of vice upon social character has very wide
ramifications. This is illustrated by the immense difficulties which
women encountered in the rational endeavour to obtain a complete
medical education. Licentiousness, with all its attendant results, is
the great social cause of these difficulties.
The dominion of lust is necessarily short-sighted, selfish, or
cruel. Its action is directly opposed to the qualities of truth,
trust, self-command, and sympathy, thus sapping the foundations of
personal morality. But apart from the individual evils above referred
to, licentiousness inevitably degrades society, firstly, from the
disproportion of vital force which is thus thrown into one direction,
and, secondly, from the essentially selfish and ungenerous tendency
of vice, which, seeking its own limited gratification at the expense
of others, is incapable of embracing large views of life or feeling
enthusiasm for progress. The direction into which this disproportionate
vital force is thrown is a degrading one, always tending to evil
results. Thus the noble enthusiasm of youth, its precious tide of
fresh life, without which no nation can grow--life whose leisure hours
should be given to science and art, to social good, to ennobling
recreation--is squandered and worse than wasted in degrading
dissipation.
This dissipation, which is ruin to man, is also a curse to woman, for,
in judging the effects of licentiousness upon society, it must never
be forgotten that this is a vice of two, not a vice of one. Injurious
as is its influence upon the young man, that is only one-half of its
effect. What is its influence upon the young woman? This question has
a direct bearing on the Moral Aim of Education. The preceding details
of physical and moral evils resulting to young men from licentiousness
will apply with equal force to young women subjected to similar
influences. One sex may experience more physical evil, the other more
mental degradation, from similar vicious habits; but the evil, if not
identical, is entirely parallel, and a loss of truthfulness, honour,
and generosity accompanies the loss of purity.
The women more directly involved in this widespread evil of
licentiousness are the women of the poorer classes of society. The
poorer classes constitute in every country the great majority of the
people; they form its solid strength and determine its character. The
extreme danger of moral degradation in those classes of young women
who constitute such an immense preponderance of the female population
is at once evident. These women are everywhere, interlinked with every
class of society. They form an important part (often the larger female
portion) of every well-to-do household. They are the companions and
inevitable teachers of infancy and childhood. They often form the
chief or only female influence which meets the young man in early
professional, business, or even college life. They meet him in every
place of public amusement, in his walks at night, in his travels at
home and abroad. By day and by night the young man away from home is
brought into free intercourse, not with women of his own class, but
with poor working girls and women, who form the numerical bulk of the
female population, who are found in every place and ready for every
service. Educated girls are watched and guarded. The young man meets
them in rare moments only, under supervision, and generally under
unnatural restraint; but the poor girl he meets constantly, freely,
at any time and place. Any clear-sighted person who will quietly
observe the way in which female servants, for instance, regard very
young men who are their superiors in station, can easily comprehend
the dangers of such association. The injustice of the common practical
view of life is only equalled by its folly. This practical view utterly
ignores the fact of the social influence and value of this portion of
society. The customs of civilized nations practically consider poor
women as subjects for a life so dishonourable, that a rich man feels
justified in ostracizing wife, sister, or daughter who is guilty of
the slightest approach to such life. It is the great mass of poor
women who are regarded as (and sometimes brutally stated to be) the
subjects to be used for the benefit of the upper classes. Young and
innocent men, it is true, fall into vice, or are led into it, or are
tempted into it by older women, and are not deliberate betrayers. But
the rubicon of chastity once passed, the moral descent is rapid, and
the preying upon the poor soon commences. The miserable slaves in
houses of prostitution are the outcasts of the poor. The young girls
followed at night in the streets are the honest working girl, the young
servant seeking a short outdoor relief to her dreary life, as well as
the unhappy fallen girl, who has become in her turn the seducer. If
fearful of health, the individual leaves the licensed slaves of sin
and the chance associations of the streets, it is amongst the poor
and unprotected that he seeks his mistress:--the young seamstress,
the pretty shop girl, the girl with some honest employment, but poor,
undefended, needing relief in her hard-working life. It is always the
poor girl that he seeks. She has no pleasures, he offers them; her
virtue is weak, he undermines it; he gains her affection and betrays
it, changes her for another and another, leaving each mistress worse
than he found her, farther on in the downward road, with the guilt of
fresh injury from the strong to the weak on his soul. Any reproach
of conscience--conscience which will speak when an innocent girl has
been betrayed, or one not yet fully corrupted has been led farther
on in evil life--is quieted by the frivolous answer: ‘They will soon
marry in their own class.’ If, however, this sin be regarded in its
inevitable consequences, its effects upon the life of both man and
woman in relation to society, the nature of this sophistry will appear
in its hideous reality. Is chastity really a virtue, something
precious in womanhood? Then, the poor man’s home should be blessed by
the presence of a pure woman. Does it improve a woman’s character to
be virtuous? Has she more self-respect in consequence? Does she care
more for her children, for their respectability and welfare, when she
is conscious of her own honest past life? Does she love her husband
more, and will she strive to make his home brighter and more attractive
to him, exercising patience in the trials of her humble life, being
industrious, frugal, sober, with tastes that centre in her home? These
are vital questions for the welfare of the great mass of the people,
and consequently of society and of the nation.
We know, on the contrary, as a fundamental truth, that unchastity
unfits a woman for these natural duties. It fosters her vanity, it
makes her slothful or reckless, it gives her tastes at variance with
home life, it makes her see nothing in men but their baser passions,
and it converts her into a constant tempter of those passions--a
corrupter of the young. We know that drunkenness, quarrels, and
crimes have their origin in the wretched homes of the poor, and the
centre of those unhappy homes is the unchaste woman, who has lost the
restraining influence of her own self-respect, her respect for others,
and her love of home. When a pretty, vain girl is tempted to sin, a
wife and mother is being ruined, discord and misery are being prepared
for a poor man’s home, and the circumstances created out of which
criminals grow. Nor does the evil stop there. It returns to the upper
classes. Nurses, servants, bring back to the respectable home the evil
associations of their own lives. The children of the upper classes
are thus corrupted, and the path of youth is surrounded at every step
with coarse temptations. These consequences may not be foreseen when
the individual follows the course of evil customs, but the sequence of
events is inevitable, and every man gives birth to a fresh series of
vice and misery when he takes a mistress instead of a wife.[29]
The deterioration of character amongst the women of the working
classes is known to all employers of labour, to all who visit
amongst the poor, to every housekeeper. The increasing difficulty of
obtaining trustworthy domestic servants is now the common experience
of civilized countries. In England, France, Germany, and the larger
towns of America, it is a fact of widespread observation, and has
become a source of serious difficulty in the management of family
life. The deepest source of this evil lies in the deterioration of
womanly character produced by the increasing spread of habits of
licentiousness. The action of sex, though taking different directions,
is as powerful in the young woman as in the young man; it needs
as careful education, direction, and restraint. This important
physiological truth, at present quite overlooked, must nevertheless
be distinctly recognised. This strong mental instinct, if yielded to
in a degrading way (as is so commonly the case in the poorer classes
of society), becomes an absorbing influence. Pride and pleasure in
work, the desire to excel, loyalty to duty, and the love of truth in
its wide significance, are all subordinated, and gradually weakened,
by the irresistible mastery of this new faculty. In all large towns
the lax tone of companions, the difficulty in finding employment, the
horrible cupidity of those who pander to corrupt social sentiment and
ensnare the young--all these circumstances combined render vice much
easier than virtue--a state of society in which vice must necessarily
extend and virtue diminish. We thus find an immense mass of young women
gradually corrupted from childhood, rendered coarse and reckless, the
modesty of girlhood destroyed, the reserve of maidenhood changed to
bold, often indecent, behaviour. No one accustomed to walk freely about
our streets, to watch children at play, to observe the amusements and
free gatherings of the poorer classes, can fail to see the signs of
degraded sex. The testimony of home missionaries, of those experienced
in Benevolent Societies and long engaged in various ways in helping
women, as well as the Reports of Rescue Societies, all testify to the
dangerous increase and lamentable results of unchastity amongst the
female population.
We observe in all countries a constant relation also between the
prevalence of licentiousness and degradation of female labour; the
action and reaction of these two evil facts is invariable. In Paris
we see the complete result of these tendencies of modern civilization
in relation to the condition of working women--tendencies which are
seen in London and Berlin, in Liverpool, Glasgow--_i.e._, in all large
towns. The revelations made by writers and speakers in relation to the
condition of the working women of Paris, are of very serious import
to England. Such terrible facts as the following, brought to light by
those who have carefully investigated the state of this portion of the
population, must arrest attention. In relation to vast numbers of women
it is stated[30]: ‘In Paris a woman can no longer live by the work of
her own hands; the returns of her labour are so small that prostitution
is the only resource against slow starvation. The population is
bastardized to such an extent that thousands of poor girls know not of
any relation that they ever possessed. Orphans and outcasts, their
life, if virtuous, is one terrible struggle from the cradle to the
grave; but by far the greater number of them are drilled, whilst yet
children, in the public service of debauchery.’ The great mass of
working women are placed by the present state of society in a position
in which there are the strongest temptations to vice, when to lead a
virtuous life often requires the possession of moral heroism.
Of the multitude of those who fall into vice, many ultimately marry,
and, with injured moral qualities and corrupted tastes, become the
creators of poor men’s homes. The rest drift into a permanent life
of vice. The injurious effects of unchastity upon womanly character
already noted, can be studied step by step, to their complete
development in that great class of the population--the recognised
prostitutes. Their marked characteristics are recklessness, sloth, and
drunkenness. This recklessness and utter disregard of consequences
and appearances, a quarrelsome, violent disposition, the dislike to
all labour and all regular occupation and life, the necessity for
stimulants and drink, with a bold address to the lower passions of
men--such are the effects of this life upon the character of women.
Unchaste women become a most dangerous class of the community. To these
bad qualities is added another, wherever, as in France, this evil
life is accepted as a part of society, provided for, organized, or
legalized; this last result of confirmed licentiousness is a hardness
of character so complete, so resistant of all improving influences,
that the wisest and gentlest efforts to restore are often utterly
hopeless before the confirmed and hardened prostitute.[31]
The growth of habits of licentiousness amongst us exerts the most
direct and injurious influence on the lives of virtuous young women of
the middle and upper classes of society. The mode of this influence
demands very serious consideration on the part of parents. It is
natural that young women should wish to please. They possess the true
instinct which would guide them to their noble position in society, as
the centres of pure and happy homes. How do our social customs meet
this want? All the young women of the middle and upper classes of
society, no matter how pure and innocent their natures, are brought
by these customs of society into direct competition with prostitutes!
The modest grace of pure young womanhood, its simple, refined tastes,
its love of home pleasures, its instinctive admiration of true and
noble sentiments and actions, although refreshing as a contrast, will
not compare for a moment with the force of attraction which sensual
indulgence and the excitement of debauch exert upon the youth who
is habituated to such intoxications. The virtuous girl exercises a
certain amount of attraction for a passing moment, but the intense
craving awakened in the youth for something far more exciting than she
can offer, leads him ever farther from her, in the direction where
this morbid craving can be freely indulged. This result is inevitable
if licentiousness is to be accepted as a necessary part of society.
Physical passion is not in itself evil; on the contrary, it is an
essential part of our nature. It is an endowment which, like every
other _human_ faculty, has the power of high growth. It possesses that
distinctive human characteristic--receptivity to mental impressions.
These impressions blend so completely with itself as to change its
whole character and effect, and it thus becomes an ennobling or a
degrading agent in our lives. In either case, for good or for evil, sex
takes a first place as a motive power in human education. The young
man inexperienced in life and necessarily crude in thought, but fallen
into vice, is mastered by this downward force, and the good girl loses
more and more her power over the strong natural attraction of sex which
would otherwise draw him to her. The influence which corrupt young men,
on the other hand, exercise upon the young women of their own standing
in society, is both strong and often injurious. It being natural that
young women should seek to attract and retain them, they unconsciously
endeavour to adapt themselves to their taste. These tastes are formed
by uneducated girls and by society of which the respectable young woman
feels the effects, and of which she has a vague suspicion, although,
happily, she cannot measure the depth of the evil. The tastes and
desires of her young male acquaintance, moulded by coarse material
enjoyments, act directly upon the respectable girl, who gives herself
up with natural impulse to the influence of her male companion. We
thus witness a widespread and inevitable deterioration in manners,
dress, thought, and habits amongst the respectable classes of young
women. This result leads eventually, as on the Continent, to the entire
separation of young men and women in the middle and upper ranks of
life, to the arrangement of marriage as a business affair, and to the
union of the young with the old.
The faults now so often charged upon young women, their love of dress,
luxury, and pleasure, their neglect of economy and dislike of steady
home duties, may be traced directly to the injurious influence which
habits of licentiousness are exercising directly and indirectly upon
marriage, the home, and society. The subject of dress is one of serious
importance, for it is a source of extravagance in all classes, and one
of the strongest temptations to vice among poor girls. The creation of
this morbid excess in dress by licentiousness is evident. If physical
attraction is the sole or chief force which draws young men to young
women, then everything which either enhances physical charms, which
brings them more prominently forward, or which supplies the lack of
physical beauty, must necessarily be resorted to by women, whose nature
it is to draw men to them. The stronger the general domination of
physical sensation--over character, sympathy, companionship, mutual
help, and social growth--becomes amongst men, the more exclusive,
intense, and competitive must grow this morbid devotion to dress on the
part of women. Did young men seriously long for a virtuous wife and
happy home, and fit themselves to secure those blessings, young women
would naturally cultivate the domestic qualities which insure a bright,
attractive home. The young man, however, is now discouraged from early
marriage; the question soon presents itself to him: ‘Why should I
marry and burden myself with a wife and family? I am very well off
as I am; I can spend my money as I like on personal pleasures; I can
get all that I want from women without losing my liberty or assuming
responsibilities!’ The respectable girl is thus forced into a most
degrading and utterly unavailing competition with the prostitute or the
mistress. Marriage is indefinitely postponed by the young man; at first
it may be from necessity, later from choice. The young woman, unable to
obtain the husband suited to her in age, must either lead a single life
or accept the unnatural union with a rich elderly man.
The grave physiological error of promoting marriage between the young
and the old cannot be dwelt on here. It is productive of very grave
evils, both to the health and happiness of the individual and to
the growth of the Race. The steady decrease of marriage, and at the
same time the late date at which it is contracted as licentiousness
increases, is shown by a comparison of the statistics of Belgium and
France with those of England. We find also that the character of
the population deteriorates with the spread of vice--the standard
of recruiting for the army is lowered, an ever-increasing mass of
fatherless children die or become criminals, and, finally, the natural
growth of the population of the country constantly decreases.
The records of History confirm the teaching of Physiology and
Observation in relation to the fundamental character of sexual virtue,
as the secret of durable national greatness. The decline of all the
great nations of antiquity is marked by the prevalence of gross social
corruption. The complex effects of the same cause are strikingly
observed in the condition of the Mohammedan and other Eastern races and
in all the tribes subject to them. We find amongst these races, as the
result of their sexual customs, a want of human charity. This is shown
in the absence of benevolent institutions and other modes of expressing
sympathy. A great gulf separates the rich and poor, bridged over by
no offices of kindness, no sense of the sacred oneness of humanity,
which is deeper than all separations of caste or condition. There is
no respect shown for human life, which is lightly and remorselessly
sacrificed, and punishment degenerates into torture. There is also
an incapacity for understanding the fundamental value of truth and
honesty, and a consequent impossibility of creating a good government.
We observe that bravery degenerates into fierceness and cruelty, and
that the apathy of the masses keeps them victims of oppression. It is
the exhibition of a race where there is no development of the Moral
Element in human nature. These general characteristics and their cause
were well described by the celebrated surgeon Lallemand, who says: ‘The
contrast between the polygamous and sensual East and the monogamous
and intellectual West displays on a large scale the different results
produced by the different exercise of the sexual powers. On one side,
Polygamy, harems, seraglios--the source of venereal excesses--barbarous
mutilations, revolting and unnatural vice, with the population
scanty, inactive, indolent, sunk in ignorance, and consequently the
victim of misery and of every kind of despotism. On the other side,
Monogamy, Christian austerity, more equal distribution of domestic
happiness, increase of intelligence, liberty, and general well-being;
rapid increase of an active, laborious, and enterprising population,
necessarily spreading and dominating.’
The great moral element of society, which contains the power of
self-renewal and continual growth, must necessarily be wanting in all
nations where one-half of the people--the centre of the family, out of
which society must grow--remains in a stunted or perverted condition.
Women, as well as men, create society. Their share is a silent one. It
has not the glitter of gold and purple, the noise of drums and marching
armies, the smoke and clank of furnaces and machinery. All the splendid
din of external life is wanting in the quiet realm of distinctive
woman’s work; therefore it is often overlooked, misunderstood, or
despised. Nevertheless, it is of vital importance. It preserves the
only germ of society which is capable of permanent growth--the germ of
unselfish human love and innate righteousness--in distinction to which
all dazzling material splendour and intellectual ability, divorced from
the love of Right, is but sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. It is for
this reason that no polygamous or licentious customs, which destroy the
woman’s nature and dry up the deepest source of human sympathy, can
possibly produce a durable or a noble and happy nation. The value of
a nation, its position in the scale of humanity, its durability, must
always be judged by the condition of its masses, and the test of that
condition is the strength and purity of home virtues--the character of
the women of the nation.
No reference to the lessons of History, however brief, should omit
the effect produced by religious teaching. The influence exercised
by the Christian religion in relation to sex is of the most striking
character. Christian teaching is distinguished from other religious
teaching by its justice to women, its tender reverence for childhood,
and by the laying down of that great corner-stone, Inward Holiness, as
the indispensable foundation of true life. This is all summed up in
its establishment of unitary marriage, through the emphatic adoption
of the original Law, ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his
mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.’
The development of this Law by Jesus Christ into its high significance
of spiritual purity, whilst it has been a principle of growth in the
past, is the great hope of the future. The study of this Christian
type, in its radical effect upon national life, is full of interest
and instruction, but is also a study of great difficulty. This teaching
of our Lord has never been adopted as the universal rule of practical
life by any nation. The results of this law of union can only be judged
on a large scale by comparing the condition of so-called Christian
countries--where a certain amount of this high teaching has been
diffused through the community--with the condition of nations where
no such teaching has existed. The great battle between Christianity
and Paganism still continues in our midst. The actual practical
type prevailing in all civilized nations is not Christian. In these
nations the Christian idea of unitary sexual relations is accepted
theoretically, as conducive to the best interests of the family and
binding upon the higher classes of women; but it is entirely set
aside as a practical life for the majority of the community. Christ’s
Law is considered either as a vague command, applicable only to some
indefinite future, or as a theory which it would be positively unwise
to put into practice in daily life. The statement is distinctly made,
and widely believed, that the nature of men and women differs so
radically that the same moral law is not applicable to the two sexes.
The great lesson derived from History, however, is always this--viz.,
that moral development must keep pace with the intellectual, or the
race degenerates. This moral element is especially embodied by woman,
and purity in woman cannot exist without purity in man, this weighty
fact being shown by the facts already stated--viz., the action of
licentiousness upon the great mass of unprotected women, its reaction
upon other classes, and the accumulating influence of hereditary
sensuality.
In the indisputable principles brought forward in the preceding pages,
and the mass of facts and daily observation which support them, is
found the answer to the first question proposed as a guide to the moral
education of youth--viz.: What is the true standard for the relations
of men and women, the type which contains within itself the germ of
progress and indefinite development?
We see that the early and faithful union of one man with one woman is
the true Ideal of Society. It secures the health and purity of the
family relation, and is the foundation of social and national welfare.
It is supported by sound principles of Physiology, by the history of
the rise and fall of nations, and by a consideration of the evils of
our present age. The lessons of the past and present, our clearer
knowledge of cause and effect, alike prove the wisdom of the highest
religious teaching--viz., that the faithful union of strong and pure
young manhood and womanhood is the only element out of which a strong
and durable nation can grow.
CHAPTER III
_The Hygienic Advantage of Sexual Morality_
The present subject may be summed up in two great questions--viz.,
First, is Virtue desirable? Secondly, is Virtue practicable?
We have shown in the preceding investigation that the control of the
sexual passion and its guidance by Reason--which we name Virtue--is of
fundamental importance; that it is essential to individual health, to
the happiness of the family, to the purity of Society, and the growth
of a strong nation. Virtue, therefore, is desirable. It remains to
consider whether it be practicable. No vagueness or doubt should exist
in relation to fundamental principles of education. Methods may change;
no inflexible rule can be laid down. Enlarging experience, enlightened
by love, will vary infinitely the adaptations needed in the education
of infinitely varied children, but the aim of education should not
vary. Sound knowledge, as well as a steadfast faith and hope, must
guide every intelligent parent from the beginning of family life, or
confusion, perplexity, and endless difficulties will be added to the
inevitable difficulties of education.
One of the most serious questions to be understood and practically
answered by parents in the education of their sons is this: If in
relation to sex Chastity be the true moral aim of a young man’s
education, can it be secured without injury to his health? Is morality
an advantage to the health of young men?[32] It is impossible to
over-estimate the importance of this question, both to men and women.
It touches the most vital interests of both. The family, the relations
of husband and wife, the education of children, the rules and customs
of society, and the arrangements of practical life will directly depend
upon, or be affected by, the answer which we give to the question, Is
virtue an advantage to all human beings? Can one moral law exist for
all?
Truth must always be accepted. No personal prejudice, no habit of
education, must stand in the way of clearly established truth. It is
the greatest sin we can commit to try to believe a lie because the
truth seems unpleasant, difficult, or contrary to prejudices. If it be
true that chastity is a right thing for women, but a wrong thing for
men, then the truth, with all its consequences, must be accepted. If,
however, this statement be false--if it be a prejudice of education,
a result of evil customs, the most fruitful source of misery to the
human race--then the truth, with all its consequences, must equally
be accepted. In seeking truth on this subject it is indispensable to
examine its practical aspect closely, to study the facts on which
existing customs are based, and disentangle the confused web of truth
and falsehood, out of which has grown the present widespread belief
that a young man cannot lead a chaste life to the age of twenty-five
without injury to his health.
That _some_ limit to the indulgence of natural instinct is necessary
in both sexes will be evident from the early age at which the sexual
movement commences, as well as from the length of time required for
its completion. It is not only in children of twelve and fourteen
that this instinct is already strongly marked, it may be observed at
a much earlier age. Numberless instances of juvenile depravity come
under the observation of the physician, and such gross cases are
only exaggerations of the refined instincts veiled by modesty and
self-respect, which are gradually growing in all healthy children.
That this mental instinct tends to express itself in the unformed
bodies of children corrupted by evil example, we have only too abundant
proof. A chronic evil of boarding-schools, of asylums, and of all
places where masses of children are thrown together without wise moral
supervision, is the early habit of self-abuse. Long before the boy or
girl is capable of becoming a parent, this dangerous habit may be
formed. It is not necessarily the indication of a coarse nature. It is
observable in refined, intellectual, and even pious persons, as a habit
carried on from childhood, when it was begun in ignorance, or taught,
perhaps, by servants, or caught from companions. Many a fine nature in
both man and woman has been wrecked, by the insidious growth of this
natural temptation, into an inveterate habit. The more common result,
however, of this vicious practice is a premature stimulation of the
sexual nature, which throws youth of both sexes either into habits of
early licentiousness or into a morbid condition of mental impurity. An
experienced physician[33] writes: ‘The earliest and most frequent cause
of disorder of the generative apparatus is the practice of self-abuse,
the tendency to which is strongest about the age of puberty....
Excitement is increased by the conversation and thoughts which are
indulged in, and it is apt to be unchecked by the moral control which
has not yet acquired its proper influence. Moreover, lads are often
induced to the pernicious practice by their companions, who may be as
ignorant as themselves of the wrong and mischief they are doing. It
would be a very good thing if those who have the charge of boys were
less scrupulous in giving warning upon this matter. Much trouble and
anxiety might be spared by timely advice seriously and kindly given....
An extensive acquaintance, through years with those who have just come
from our schools, has impressed the importance of this matter upon me.’
Dangers thus existing which may threaten the youngest child, the
necessity of guidance, the formation of good habits, and the
inculcation of self-respect even in childhood is evident. At an
early age self-control can be taught. It is a principle which grows
by exercise. The more the brain asserts its power of Will over the
automatic actions of the body, the stronger may become the control of
reason over sensations and instincts.
The neglect of children at this early age is a direct cause of the
corruption of the next stage of life. The lad of sixteen or seventeen
is in the first flush of early manhood. He is physically capable
of becoming a father, although entirely unfit to be so. Some years
are required to strengthen his physical powers. The advantage of
the self-control of absolute chastity at this period of life is
unquestionable; every physiologist will confirm this statement. But
chastity is of the mind as well as of the body. The corruption of the
mind at this early age is the most fruitful source of social evil in
later life. The years from sixteen to twenty-one are critical years for
youth. If purity of life and the strength of complete self-control can
then be secured, there is every hope for the future. Every additional
year will enlarge the mental capacity, and may confirm the power of
Will. The strong man is able to take the large views of sex, its uses,
aims, and duties, which are considerations too abstract for the
child-man, impelled by bewildering sensations. If at this early age
he falls, he is too often lost. Physical passion, which reaches its
maximum (roughly speaking) at twenty-seven, can only be controlled and
exalted if, at the age when chastity is a positive physical benefit,
the great mental principle of self-control has gained mastery over the
nature. If at this period the power of Will has been gained to retain
self-respect and resist temptation, such habit of self-government is
the safeguard of youth. It is the only foundation on which the early
years of life can be safely based, the only way by which those habits
of virtue can be established which strengthen the constitution and
enable it to grow into the fullest vigour of manhood. If, however,
the child has been injured by habits or associations which produce
precocity and irritability of function, he will inevitably fall into
vice in the earliest years of manhood; his power of resistance is gone,
and every temptation drags him down.
One of our ablest surgeons has left on record the following weighty
advice:[34] ‘The boy has to learn that to his immature frame every
sexual indulgence is unmitigated evil. Every illicit pleasure is a
degradation to be bitterly regretted hereafter.... If a boy is once
fully impressed that _all_ such indulgences are dirty and mean, and,
with the whole force of his unimpaired energy, determines he _will_
not disgrace himself by yielding, a very bright and happy future is
before him.... Where, as is the case with a very large number, a young
man’s education has been properly watched, and his mind has not been
debased by vile practices, it is usually a comparatively easy task to
be continent, and requires no great or extraordinary effort, and every
year of voluntary chastity renders the task easier by the mere force
of habit.... It is of vital importance that boys and young men should
know, not only the guilt of an illicit indulgence of their dawning
passions, but also the _danger_ of straining an immature power, and the
solemn truth that the _want_ will be an irresistible tyrant only to
those who have lent it strength by yielding; that _the only true safety
lies in keeping even the thoughts pure_.... It is easier to abstain
altogether than to be occasionally incontinent, and then continent
for a period.... If a young man wished to undergo the acutest sexual
suffering he could adopt no more certain method than to propose to be
incontinent, with the avowed intention of becoming continent again when
he had “sown his wild oats.” The agony of breaking off a habit which
so rapidly entwines itself with every fibre of the human frame is such
that it would not be too much to say to any youth commencing a career
of vice: “You are going a road on which you will _never_ turn back.
However much you may wish it the struggle will be too much for you. You
had better stop now. It is your last chance.”’
Our early neglect of youth is, then, one of the great causes of social
immorality. The most earnest thought of parents should be given to the
means of securing influences which will strengthen and purify their
children in the early years of life. Evil outward temptations abound,
but they must not be allowed to exercise their effects unchecked; they
must be counteracted by more powerful influences for good.
The physical growth of youth, the new powers, the various symptoms
which mark the transition from childhood into young manhood and
womanhood, are often alarming to the individual. Yet this important
period of life is entered upon, strange to say, as a general rule,
without parental guidance. Parents shrink from their duty. They have
failed to become their children’s confidential friends. In every other
respect the physical and mental wants of their children are attended
to. Suitable food is provided, and the various functions of digestion
and assimilation carefully watched; the healthy condition of the skin,
of the muscles, of all the various functions of the body provided for,
and intellectual education carried on, but the highest physical and
mental function committed to the human being, whose guidance requires
the wisest foresight, the most delicate supervision, is left to the
chances of accident or the counsels of a stranger. Measureless evil
results from the neglect of parents to fortify their children at this
age.
Although direct and impressive instruction and guidance in relation to
sex is not only required by the young, but is indispensable to their
physical and moral welfare, yet the utmost caution is necessary in
giving such guidance, in order that the natural susceptibilities of the
nature be not wounded. It is a point on which youth of both sexes are
keenly sensitive, and any want of tact in addressing the individual, or
any forcible introduction of the subject where the previous relations
of parent and child have not produced the trust and affectionate mutual
respect which would render communication on all serious subjects of
life a rational sequence in their relations, may do harm instead of
good. Where the conscience of the parent has only been awakened late
in life to this high duty to the child, the attempt to approach the
subject with the young adult is often deeply resented by both boy and
girl. In such cases the necessary counsel may be better given by a
stranger--by the physician, who will speak with acknowledged authority,
or by some book of impressive character, when such a one (much needed)
shall have been prepared. That this is a very imperfect fulfilment of
parental duty is true, but it is often all that the parent can attempt
where the high and important character of sex has not been understood
at the outset of family life, and thus not guided the past education of
the children.
It is important to recognise the parallelism which exists throughout
the physical organization of the two sexes, making them equal parts
of complete human nature--a parallelism which is too often lost sight
of, at this period of a young man’s life. In each of the two halves
of humanity, the sexual functions are adapted to the higher nature of
the human being. Provision is made in each sex for their control by
reason, this provision being made with greater or lesser elaborate
preparation in proportion to the relative importance of these functions
in each sex. This provision secures their conversion into a human
social force, instead of allowing them to remain a blind instinct,
as in the lower animals; for everything in humanity is subject to
the law of progress and higher growth. The generative function in
both sexes must be kept in a state of readiness for use. It has,
therefore, its special activity of production, maintaining its tissues
in healthy vigour throughout adult life. It is also marked with a
certain periodicity, which is stamped on all the more important vital
functions. It must, however, at the same time be subjected to reason
and converted into a human faculty. To secure this end, it contains
within itself natural provisions for its own independent well-being,
Nature having established the power of physical self-balance in this
important function by the natural, gradual, and healthy removal of
unemployed secretions in each individual. It thus becomes the subject
of reason, adapted to the higher aims of life, instead of a blind force
enslaving the human being.
An important illustration of this subjection of these functions to
reason, is referred to by the experienced surgeon, Mr. Acton, who
writes: ‘There exists no _greater error_, or one more opposed to
physiological truth, than the fear that atrophy or impotence might be
the result of chastity. I have never, after many years’ experience,
seen a single instance of atrophy from this cause. It is not a fact
that power is annihilated in well-formed adults leading a healthy life
and yet remaining continent. The function goes on to old age, sometimes
slowly, sometimes quickly, but very frequently only under the influence
of the will. No person need be deterred by this apocryphal fear from
living a chaste life. It is a device of the unchaste--a lame excuse
for their own incontinence, not founded on any physiological law. The
organs will take care that their action is not interfered with.’[35]
The very signs, however, of Nature’s provision for raising the lower
instinct into a human faculty, often create great uneasiness in the
young mind. It is at this important crisis that the delicate and
respectful counsel of the wise parent or physician is indispensable
to both boys and girls. The youth should be told that Nature will
help, not injure him at this important crisis of life, if he will be
true to his own higher nature. The young of both sexes should realize
that self-control of thought and action is essential. Every means of
hygienic, intellectual, and religious influence should be used to
direct and strengthen both mind and body. For both young men and young
women it is hygiene in its largest sense that should be prescribed and
enforced--viz., the guidance of the early vital forces, both physical
and mental, into natural beneficial directions. The youth who has been
saved from habits of self-abuse in childhood can now be saved from
habits of vice in manhood, and helped forward in that life of virtue
which alone will strengthen all his powers and make him worthy of
marriage.
That this view of the sexual function as a human force, to be governed
by reason, is the truth, and the modern theory of its being a blind
instinct enslaving the individual a falsehood, is proved in many
ways. We have the medical opinion of physicians in large practice,
the private and public testimony of individuals, the observation of
well-managed schools and colleges, of prisons, of communities, and the
social customs of various classes and different races. Let us glance at
some of these facts.
In rigid training for athletic sports, for boat-racing, prize-fighting,
etc., chastity is enforced as one of the means for attaining the
greatest possible amount of physical vigour and endurance. This fact,
observed in ancient times, is confirmed by modern experience.
When the health is seriously impaired, the same rule of sexual
abstinence is laid down. In a large proportion of these cases the power
of sex is not lost; the physical craving may even be increased, from
the irritability which often accompanies disturbed health. But the
fear of death acts as a counter force on the young mind, and rouses
it to unwonted efforts at self-command. No sacrifice is too great to
escape death, to regain health, and take part once more in ordinary
life. Temptations are avoided, healthy regime adopted, and the young
man, taking a great deal of outdoor exercise, leads for months an
absolutely chaste life, with the greatest possible advantage to his
health. Such cases may be constantly noted in foreign health resorts,
and amongst a class of cases the most difficult to reform--viz.,
dissipated young men who have been perverted from childhood by a state
of society so universally corrupt that it cannot happily be paralleled
yet, in England or America.
It is well known that the early ancestors of our vigorous German race
guarded the chastity of their youth until the age of twenty-five, as
the true method of increasing their strength, enlarging their stature,
and enabling them to become the progenitors of a vigorous race.
The opportunity of wide observation enjoyed by the headmasters of
public schools, and all engaged in education, lends great weight to
their testimony. The master of over 800 boys and young men states: ‘The
result of my personal observation, extending over a great many years,
is, that hard exercise in the open air is, in most cases, an efficient
remedy against vicious propensities. A large number of our young men
thus make a law unto themselves, and pass the period of their youth in
temperance and purity till they have realized a position that enables
them to marry.’ Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, has given similar testimony.[36]
In primitive Christian communities, and many country and village
populations uncorrupted by the stimulants of luxury, we observe the
advantage of chastity to the health of youth. In these simple, healthy
societies the strong public sentiment of the village, combined with
outdoor life, preserves the honesty of the young men until the time of
early marriage. The result is the growth of a vigorous, healthy race.
Our recognition of the possibility, as well as advantage, of chastity
to the young is further strengthened by a knowledge of the healthy
self-control exercised by men in the prime of life. After the age of
thirty, the unnatural life of celibacy is a difficult exercise of mind
and body, far more difficult than it is to uncorrupted youth. The
intimate experience, however, of every observant man and woman can
recall constant instances of the honourable fidelity of husbands to
their marriage vow during the protracted illness of their wives; and
the majority of our countrymen would consider it an insult to suppose
that when a new-born child is laid in their arms, and the wife leans
for support during her period of weakness upon her husband’s love, that
he betrays her love and trust during those solemn epochs of family life.
To private knowledge is added the weight of solemn public testimony
from men of ardent temperament who have reached the full vigour of
life in the practice of entire chastity. Every one who listened to
the weighty words of Père Hyacinthe, spoken in St. James’s Hall
before a crowded audience a few years ago, received the proof of
the co-existence of vigorous health with stainless virtue. Similar
testimony, called forth by the false teaching and dangerous tendencies
of the present time, has been given by many others, proving the
principle that the human sexual passion when uncorrupted, does not
enslave the man; that the possibility of perfect health and perfect
virtue is the natural endowment of every human being.
A modern writer of unsurpassed genius, Honoré de Balzac (whose writings
are injurious because they are such wonderfully vivid representations
of horrible social disease) was himself a man of singularly chaste
life, and attributes his power to that fact. Brought up by his father
in strict self-control, his power of Will was not destroyed; he
preserved his respect for women, his belief in noble love. His intimate
friend thus writes of him: ‘Above all he insisted on the necessity
of absolute purity of life, such as the Church prescribes for monks.
“That,” said he, “develops the powers of the mind to the highest
degree, and imparts to those who practise it unknown faculties. For
myself, I accepted all the monastic conditions necessary for workers.
One only passion carried me out of my studious habits--it was a passion
for outdoor observation of the manners and morals of the _faubourg_
where I lived.”’
Strong testimony as to the compatibility of chastity and health is
furnished by the Catholic priesthood. Although it is well known that
there are large numbers of men who break their vow, and men who should
never have entered the priesthood, it is also well known as a positive
fact that vast numbers of men are found in every age and country who
honestly maintain their vow, and who, by avoidance of temptation, by
direction of the mind to intellectual pursuits and devotion to great
humanitarian objects, pass long lives in health and vigour. The effect
on the world of enforced celibacy is, of course, disastrous; but
the power that has been gained by the institution of the priesthood
is indubitable, and the one object here insisted on--viz., the
compatibility of physical health with the observance of chastity--is
proved by it on a large scale.
The Shaker communities of New Lebanon and other settlements contain
a large number of middle-aged as well as elderly men, who live an
absolutely celibate life and enjoy excellent health.[37] The same is
true of Moravians, etc.
The possibility of controlling this great human instinct is further
shown by the experience of women. We see that under the effect of
training to a moral life and the action of public opinion a great
body of women in our own country constantly lead a virtuous life,
frequently in spite of physical instincts as strong as those of men,
and always in spite of mental instincts still more powerful. That the
feeling of sex regarded as a mental passion is even stronger in women
than in men must be evident to all who give to the word ‘strength’ its
true signification--the signification of mental as well as physical
phenomena in proportion to the powers of the individual. The demands
of women are greater than those of men; they desire more and more
the thought and devotion of those they love. They often display a
persistent fidelity, terrible in its earnestness, when they have had
the misfortune to become attached to an unworthy object. The weak
virtue of the mass of women, exposed to constant temptation, indicates
the insatiable craving of the woman’s heart for love. It is never
at rest; it always needs its objects, and when these affections are
degraded from their high purpose and defrauded of their legitimate
objects, they become the greatest obstacle to human progress. No
solution of the difficult problem of sexual relationships is possible,
until the complete parallelism (not identity) of the sexual nature in
the two sexes is recognised, and the significance of woman’s mental
necessities understood. Women themselves must learn the meaning of
the high nature that God has given them, and perceive how great a
responsibility rests upon them in the mighty work of raising the human
race out of the old thraldom of lust into the reign of love. That large
numbers of women, so richly endowed with the high principle of sex,
retain their health whilst leading celibate lives, is one more proof
of that adaptation of this principle to the higher character of our
nature, which transforms a simple brute instinct into a grand human
force.
The foregoing facts distinctly prove that the exercise of the sexual
powers is not indispensable to the health of human beings; that men of
all ages can live in full vigorous health without such exercise; and
that to the young it is an immense physical advantage that they should
so live. This is the important principle to be first established.
The subjects of temptation, of customs, of artificial wants, etc.,
are other questions, to be considered by themselves. Thought will
be inevitably confused, and the important practical arrangements
of the future hopelessly perplexed, if all sorts of questions are
jumbled together; if practical difficulties, social phases, temporary
phenomena, are allowed to obscure or completely hide the great guide
of humanity--Eternal Truth. A principle clearly established is that
portion of truth needed for present guidance. It must be thoroughly
understood and resolutely held to, as the only clue which can guide us
slowly through the dark labyrinth of error, vice, and misery. Such a
guiding principle is found in the essential nature of the human sexual
faculty--its distinctive power of self-control. The more this principle
is considered, understood, and valued, the more it will be found that
it contains the power of purifying society, enlightening legislation,
and raising our status as a nation.
The aim, therefore, of all wise parents should be to secure those
influences which will preserve the purity of their sons until the age
of twenty-five, when marriage, as a rule, should be made possible
and encouraged. This is the wise practice, derived from experience,
applicable to all nations living in temperate climes. Earlier marriage
may sometimes be wise, but it is not the broad rule. That the
individual may remain in health until a later period and throughout
life has been proved, but it is a national loss that the best years of
vigorous manhood should not stamp themselves upon the future generation.
The unmarried life after thirty years of age is often injured in mind
or body. The exceptions arising from character or occupation, from
religious enthusiasm or devotion to some great work, do not refute
the general statement. It must necessarily be so. As sex is a natural
and most powerful human force, there is risk of injury in permanently
stifling it. Marriage being its true method of expression and
education, the character is injured through want of this development.
It is only through honourable marriage that the beneficial growth of
manly character of mind and body can be attained. The illegitimate
exercise of the sexual powers is a source of direful social and
national evil, and requires those strong restraints of both law and
custom which help to educate a nation. No fear that some individuals,
unable to marry, may suffer in their private lives, can for one moment
justify the establishment of practices or the sanctioning of customs
which are destructive to the general welfare. Far more evil, mental and
physical, arises to the race from the effects of licentiousness than
from any effects of abstinence.
CHAPTER IV
_Methods by which Sexual Morality may be Promoted_
The important question will present itself to everyone who realizes
the gravity of the dangers which we have now exposed: What practical
steps can be taken to secure the truer standard of morality which
will remodel the education of youth? This weighty question can only
gradually receive a complete answer, as the intelligence of our age
awakens to the fact that the attainment of true sexual morality is
the fundamental principle of national growth. The first indispensable
basis of all efforts for practical reform is the acceptance of a true
principle of action. The great guiding principle now laid down is this:
that Vice--that is, the illegitimate exercise of the sexual faculty,
regardless of religious conscience and the welfare of others--is not
essential to the constitution of the human being, but is the result
of removable conditions. The importance of this truth is immense. Its
acceptance or denial produces two diametrically opposite courses of
action--action in education, in society, and in legislation. It is
one of those abstract truths which are stronger than all facts, being
eternal instead of temporary, moulding practical action instead of
depending on it. The belief or denial of this truth may express itself
in varying forms, according to the age or country, according to the
more or less logical workings of a nation’s mind; but whether clearly
recognised in all its bearings, or blindly acted on in a confused and
near-sighted way, the results will always follow in the same direction.
The acceptance of this truth will always tend to diminish and gradually
destroy evil; its denial must inevitably intensify and extend evil.
It is the essential nature of truth or falsehood to express itself
in practical action. This tendency is overlooked by the majority of
human beings engaged in the eager pursuits of daily life, in business,
in household duties, in amusements, and the logical results of false
theories are, in practical life, often modified by the happy instincts
which blindly turn aside the inevitable tendencies of logical error;
but the truth or falsehood always remains as a great permanent force
at work from age to age. In considering the means of attaining to a
truer practice of morality, therefore, the spread of truth is a first
indispensable necessity and condition of future improvement. The great
truth to be recognised is the fact that male as well as female purity
is a necessary foundation of progressive human society. This important
subject must no longer be ignored. The time has come for its acceptance
by all experienced men and women. The necessity of upholding one
moral standard as the aim to be striven for, must become a fundamental
article of religious faith. Above all, Parents must realize the
tremendous responsibility which rests upon them to provide for the
healthy growth of the principles of sex in their children.
It will be seen, the more closely this subject is investigated, that
the thought and action of women as well as men, is indispensable to
social regeneration. On women of all classes rests a full measure of
responsibility for the present evil condition of sexual relations. No
class can throw off this responsibility. Women are equally responsible
with men for the deep corruptions of society. This is pre-eminently
a parents’ question, affecting the vital interests of the family and
the future of children in every relation of life; woman, from her
central position in the family as wife and mother, must know how to
use her immense influence wisely. To be wise, knowledge of truth is
essential, and the adult woman, the centre of home influence, must
acquire correct knowledge on every subject that concerns family life.
The nature and requirements of men and women is a subject on which a
woman needs correct knowledge, not only as a guide to the education of
the young child, but as a guide in the various duties of life. A woman
is mother always, not only of the infant, but of the growing and grown
man. A mother who has been able to secure the friendship of her son as
well as her daughter, can exercise a beneficial influence from youth
onwards which will be recognised with ceaseless gratitude in later
life.[38] The higher influence which women are intended to infuse into
sex makes the subject a holy one to the wise mother. She can approach
it in moments of sacred confidence with her children with a delicacy
and tender earnestness that wounds no natural reserve, but excites a
grateful reverence in the youth’s mind. The first falsehood, therefore,
that must disappear is the belief that the higher classes of women--the
cultivated, the refined, the virtuous--have nothing to do with sexual
vice; that they must remain ignorant of facts, and see nothing but what
it is pleasant to see. It is on this class of women, perhaps, more than
on any other one class of society that its future welfare depends.[39]
They are capable of broad views of truth, of insight, of ceaseless
devotion to the highest welfare of the race, to God, when once they
have learned to know what truth is; when they have realized the
actual facts of every-day life and observed the effects of prevalent
customs upon women as well as upon men. The task of regenerating
society by securing the healthy growth of the faculty of sex in their
children being, therefore, laid upon both parents, the indispensable
co-operation of the mother in this work is seen more clearly, as the
causes of sexual precocity and the triumph of the material nature over
love are studied more deeply.
The fact being established that the human being is not designed by
Providence to be the slave of passion, what are the causes which
produce that disease of licentiousness--as truly disease as drunkenness
or opium-eating--which we find to be more completely organized and more
audaciously justifying itself than at any previous time, the dangerous
peculiarity of the present age being that customs and habits, formerly
blindly followed, are now defended or legalized?
We shall find, on considering the influence at work on the human being
from childhood upward (laying aside for the moment the question of
heredity), obvious sources of corruption that help us to the solution
of this difficult problem. ‘The temptations of life’ to which our youth
succumb are no fixed things essential to human nature. They vary in
every age and country. They are changeable facts, removable evils,
perversions of natural tastes. The human race can grow out of license
into order, out of prostitution into marriage, out of lust into love,
as certainly as typhoid fever can be exterminated by pure water and
pure air. It is from childhood that the strong man is moulded gradually
into the hero--or the criminal. If the superior standard of morality
which is still to be found amongst us, be compared with the customs
widely diffused in many other countries, it will be seen how variable
the standard of morality is, and how dependent it is on social
circumstance--_i.e._, on removable conditions.[40] These corrupting
circumstances of life surround the individual at every stage of growth
from youth onwards. They are found in early habits and influences;
in mischievous school companions and studies; in vile literature,
books, advertisements, pictures; in indecent theatre, ballet, public
amusements; in opportunity and temptation; in drink and dissipated
companions; in perverted social sentiment, false medical advice,
delayed or unhappy marriage--these are the snares which meet the human
being, and which may gradually pervert the nature. Now, there is not
one of these facts that is an essential part of human nature. There is
not one that cannot be changed to good. Each one of the evils above
named is an evil to be attacked and vanquished, and the wise method of
doing this, is a distinct command and work of practical religion.
The following points bearing on the moral education of childhood
and youth must be considered by all parents who are convinced of
the saving value of sexual morality--viz., observation of the child
during infancy, acquirement of the child’s confidence, selection of
young companions, care in the choice of a school and of studies which
will not injure the mind, the formation of tastes, outdoor exercise,
companionship of brothers and sisters, the choice of physician, social
intercourse, and amusements. These various points require careful
consideration.
The earliest duty of the parent is to watch over the infant child. Few
parents are aware how very early evil habits may be formed, nor how
injurious the influence of the nurse often is to the child.[41] The
mother’s eye, full of tenderness and respect, must always watch over
her children. Self-respect cannot be too early inculcated. The keynote
of moral education is respect for the human body. The mother should
caution the child plainly not to touch or meddle with himself more than
is necessary; that his body is a wonderful and sacred thing, intended
for important and noble ends; that it must not be played or trifled
with, or in any way injured. Every thoughtless breach of delicacy
should be checked with a gentle gravity which will not repel or abash,
but impress the child.
This watchfulness over the young child, by day and night, is the first
duty to be universally inculcated. Two things are necessary in order to
fulfil it--viz., a clear knowledge of the evils to which the child may
be exposed, and tact to interpret the faintest indication of danger and
to guard from it without allowing the child to be aware of the danger.
Evils should never be presented to the young child’s mind. Habits must
be formed from earliest infancy, but reasons for those habits should
only be given much later. It is the parent’s intelligence which must
act for the child during very early life. This unavoidable necessity
is, at the same time, a cause of frequent failure in education, for
the reason that parents, through ignorance or egotism, fail to see
that they must study the nature of the child. The strong adult too
often fails in insight, and imposes its own methods and conclusions
upon a nature not susceptible of those methods and often not adapted
to those conclusions. This is really spiritual tyranny, and destroys
the providential relation which should exist between child and adult.
The parent should become the first and truest friend of the child. This
possibility and duty is a great parents’ privilege, too often unknown,
and yet it affects the whole future of the child. It is through the
love and confidence that exist between them that durable influence is
exerted. If the child naturally confides its little joys and sorrows to
the ever-ready and intelligent sympathy of the mother, if it grows up
in the habit of turning to this warm and helpful influence, the youth
will come as naturally with his experiences and plans to the parent as
did the little child; the evils of life, which must be gradually known,
will then be encountered with the aid of experience. The form of the
relation between parent and child changes, not its essence. The essence
of the relationship is trust: the fact that the parent’s presence will
always be welcomed by the child; that in work or in play, in infancy or
youth, the parent shall be the first natural friend. It is only then
that wise, permanent influence can be exerted. It is not dogmatism, nor
rigid laws, nor formal instruction, that is needed, but the formative
power of loving insight and sympathy. It is only when this providential
relation exists that the parent can understand the life of the child
and exercise influence without harshness. With every step in life the
child’s horizon enlarges, and opportunities of good or temptations to
evil increase. The experiences of school-life, the companions selected,
the studies pursued, and the books read, introduce the child into the
wide world of practical life in miniature. All the circumstances of
school-life are of serious importance--an importance not sufficiently
realized in their bearing upon character, and in the responsibility
which rests with parents themselves, to mould those circumstances. The
child’s entrance upon school-life is his first plunge into the great
world beyond the family circle, his first serious contact with new
thoughts, customs, and standards--with a new code of morality; not the
formal morality of his professors, but the confused practical morality
of his school companions. Here he may meet with every kind of evil, of
which he had previously no conception, carried on in a crude, practical
form by those whom he naturally looks up to--his elder companions, who
are perhaps rich and clever, and whom he regards as ‘men.’ How is the
child strengthened to meet this grand new life, as it seems to him,
which entrances him with its novelty, its variety, and its vigour, and
which very often produces a feeling of kindly contempt for the narrow
home life?
Full confidence between parent and child is necessary in order that
all the child is learning may be known. This school world, unlike
the larger world, is directly under the possibility of parental
control. What parents, as a body, require, the teacher will endeavour
to provide. The material arrangements and regulations, as well as
the moral tone of any school to which a child is sent, must be
considered. It being remembered that the great vices of self-abuse and
fornication are the curse of our schools and colleges, all the direct
and indirect means must be sought for by which these vices can be as
rigidly excluded from our educational establishments as the vice of
thieving. School and college sentiment should be trained to regard them
as equally dishonourable and unmanly. They must be overcome chiefly
by moral means in connection with hygienic arrangements. The views
of the principal on the subject of sexual training, the character
of assistant-teachers, the water-closet and sleeping arrangements,
the amount of outdoor exercise secured, should all be studied by the
conscientious parent.
Some direct hygienic instruction and warning, suited to the age of
the child, should be given. It is a false and cruel delicacy which
ignores the great danger of schools, and sends an innocent child
utterly unprepared into a school society where corruption exists. ‘I
believe,’ writes an experienced teacher of lads, ‘that ninety-nine
hundredths of the immorality that prevails amongst young men originates
primarily in ignorance and perverted curiosity.’ He therefore lays
down the following practical rules for the hygienic instruction which
he deems indispensable: First, that the physiology of sex should be
carefully subordinated to general physiology and hygiene, and that it
should always be treated comparatively. Secondly, that all instruction
and examination should be oral and in class, no text-books being given
to the pupils, the utmost simplicity and plainness of speech being
employed, and only outline diagrams used as pictorial illustrations.[42]
The rational view of education--viz., the formation of character and
the establishment of well-balanced health, as fundamental objects to
which other things should be added--require such a revision of our
school system as will secure correct physical habits, and, above all,
mental purity. This sound basis of education must be insured in all
places where children congregate together. Careful arrangements to
promote these ends are equally necessary in boys’ and girls’ schools.
They promote alike true manliness and true womanliness.
The nature of the studies given to the young and the way in which
classical literature is taught require to be considered by parents. The
corrupt literature of antiquity tends to corrupt the youthful mind
as unavoidably as licentious modern literature. Its bearing on the
healthy growth of youth must be considered. The advantages of classical
education should be secured without employing works whose tendency
is to degrade the young mind. The contrary opinion is the prejudice
of custom. Our Catholic brethren have fully recognised the suicidal
policy of imbuing unformed minds with licentious literature, and the
Church has held more than one General Conference on the subject. No one
can doubt the excellence of their scholarship, and it is much to be
desired that a careful study of their methods in this respect should be
required from all instructors of youth. The impulse to such a change
should come from parents.
The dangers arising from vicious literature of any kind cannot be
overestimated by parents. Whether sensuality be taught by police
reports, or by Greek and Latin literature, by novels, plays, songs,
penny papers, or any species of the corrupt literature now sent forth
broadcast, and which finds its way into the hands of the young of all
classes and both sexes, the danger is equally real. It is storing the
susceptible mind of youth with words, images, and suggestions of vice
which remain permanently in the mind, springing up day and night in
unguarded moments, weakening the power of resistance, and accustoming
the thoughts to an atmosphere of vice. No amount of simple caution
given by parents or instructors suffices to guard the young mind from
the influence of evil literature. It must be remembered that hatred of
evil will never be learned by intellectual warning. The permanent and
incalculable injury which is done to the young mind by vicious reading
is proved by all that we now know about the structure and methods of
growth of the human mind. Physiological inquiry is constantly throwing
more light upon our mental as well as physical organization. We learn
that nutritive changes take place in the human brain by the effect of
objects which produce ideas; that permanent traces of these changes
continue through life, so that states or changes connected with
certain ideas remain stored up in the brain, capable of recall, or
presenting themselves in the most unexpected way. We see the importance
of the last impressions made on the brain at night, indicating the
activity and fixity of the cerebral changes of nutrition during the
quiescence of sleep. All that we observe of these processes shows us
that different physical changes are produced in the brain by different
classes of ideas, and that the moral sense itself may be affected by
the constant exercise of the brain in one direction or another, so that
the actual individual standard of what is right or what is wrong will
be quite changed, according to whether low or high ideas have been
constantly recorded in the retentive substance of the brain.
These important facts have a wide and constant bearing on education,
showing the really poisonous character of all licentious literature,
whether ancient or modern, and its destructive effect on the quality
of the brain. It is necessary, therefore, to prepare the young
mind to shrink repelled from the debasing literature with which
society is flooded, and which is one of the greatest dangers to be
encountered. The great help towards this object is the cultivation of
strong intellectual and moral tastes in children, the preoccupation
of the mind with what is good. Truth should be in the field before
falsehood. All children and youth are fascinated by narratives of
adventure, endurance, heroism, and noble deeds. The home library
should be selected in order to brace the mind and character, and
enlist the interest of the child or youth in what is manly and true.
Every child also has some special taste or tendency which can be
found out, if carefully looked for. It may be for art, for science,
for construction, for investigation, adventure, or beneficence;
but whatever it be, it may be made the means of intellectual and
moral growth. The special youthful tendency is of extreme value, as
indicating the direction in which a taste, even if slightly marked,
may be cultivated into a serious interest and become a powerful help
in the formation of character. The study of natural science and of all
pursuits which develop a love and observation of Nature are of great
value in education. Such pursuits have the additional advantage of
promoting life in the open air. The weighty testimony in favour of the
beneficial influence of outdoor exercises and amusements has already
been noted. All experience shows us that the calling of the great
muscular apparatus of the human body into constant vigorous life is an
indispensable means for securing the healthy, well-balanced growth of
the frame, and for preventing the premature development of the sexual
faculty. It is a subject worthy of the especial study of parents in
relation to the education of both sexes. Abundant exercise in the fresh
air, with total abstinence from alcoholic drink, may be considered the
two great physical aids to morality in youth.
The companions chosen by the child at school or the youth at college
are of extreme importance to the growth of character, and the exercise
of influence over this choice, without interfering with the freedom of
the child, is one of the greatest aids that a parent can render it.
The intimacy between those who are entering upon life together, and
who have the same future before them, must necessarily increase and
become a great fact in the young life; but it is essential that the
parent should know who these companions are, and the character of the
influence that will be exerted. If the parent be the friend of his
child, he can also be the friend of his friend. Tact and sympathy are
of the utmost value in welcoming and attracting the youthful friends,
and the wise parental care thus exercised towards offspring, extends
necessarily beyond the individual home.
The attention of the parent must always be ready to observe the signs
of growing sex in sons as well as daughters. Numberless indications,
which none but the mother can note, warn her of that approaching
crisis of early manhood, now so fatal to our youth. No wise mother
observes this change without a deepening of respect and tenderness,
and of infinite maternal yearning to strengthen, guide, and ennoble
her man-child. At this epoch is often thrown upon her an immense
responsibility--a responsibility so grave that it may involve the
ruin or salvation of her son--viz., the choice of his physician. The
importance of this choice cannot be over-estimated by the parent. The
young are easily alarmed about their health; they are at the same time
utterly unable to judge of their own condition; they have no knowledge
to guide them, no experience by which to measure their symptoms.
They place absolute confidence in their medical adviser; his opinion
and advice outweigh all other considerations and supersede all other
counsel. The parent must therefore realize that when a physician is
selected for the growing lad, an authority is placed over him which
may become stronger than the parental influence, and be henceforth the
most powerful support or antagonist in the moral as well as physical
guidance of the son.
If medical science were a positive science, as is mathematics, and
its professors able to apply its principles to daily life with the
certainty of geometrical propositions, it would be folly to do
otherwise than accept any medical opinion of established authority with
entire confidence. This, however, is not the case, and the members of
the medical profession would themselves be the last persons to lay
claim to the possession of absolute truth. As centuries roll on, one
medical school of opinion succeeds another, and theory after theory
is exploded by accumulating facts. It is therefore no new thing and
no subject of reproach to the self-sacrificing members of a noble
profession, that different opinions should exist amongst them, in
relation to subjects which affect that complex problem--human life.
Indeed, it would be an exception to a general rule did not such
difference exist. But we are now considering a subject so fundamental
in human welfare, so much wider than any class interest, that any
variety of opinion respecting it, is of vital importance to be noted,
and must be recognised by all intelligent persons. It must therefore be
thoroughly understood by all parents that there are now two distinct
classes of medical opinion existing amongst physicians. Each class
embraces men of high medical repute, but men who hold diametrically
opposite views in relation to the guidance of the sexual powers, the
one class considering Virtue, the other Vice, a necessity. Each class
of physicians is honest in opinion, clear-sighted, wishing well to
society; but the one class is far-sighted, the other near-sighted; the
one knows the omnipotence of Good, the other sees the triumph of Evil.
This diversity of opinion cannot remain as an abstract proposition,
but, like all opinion, it expresses itself in action. In medical advice
given to a youth, the slightest bias in one or another direction at
the starting-point of life will set him on one of two paths constantly
diverging to the right or wrong. One path leads to self-control,
enlarged mental and physical hygiene, chastity; the other to doubt,
yielding, fornication.
At this period of life, no uncertain advice should be given by the
physician. Support and guidance are required from him, and his counsel
must be strong, positive, and clear. The patient must be taught that
chastity, properly understood, is health. He must learn that the
indications of sex in early manhood are a notice that the new faculties
must be restrained--not exercised; that they give a warning to guard
against self-abuse and abuse of the other sex; that the great danger
to be dreaded is stimulation; that everything that can excite, whether
external or internal, must be studiously avoided. The vital fact must
be announced and powerfully brought home to him--that if he will keep
the mind pure, Nature will keep the body healthy. This mental strength
is his one great concern, to be secured in every possible way. There
must be no doubt in medical advice; it must ring like the words of
true science spoken by our distinguished surgeon to his students:[43]
‘Many of your patients will ask you about sexual intercourse, and
some will expect you to prescribe fornication. I would just as soon
prescribe theft or lying or anything else that God has forbidden....
Chastity does no harm to mind or body; its discipline is excellent;
marriage can be safely waited for, and among the many nervous and
hypochondriacal patients who have talked to me about fornication, I
have never heard one say that he was better or happier for it.’[44] The
radical importance of the medical advice given to youth will therefore
be evident to all parents who perceive the full bearing of the truths
contained in the preceding pages. No lesser consideration, no false
feeling of reserve, should ever prevent the parent from knowing to
which class of physicians the medical guidance of his son be intrusted.
An invaluable provision for the education of the principle of
sex, exists in the companionship of brothers and sisters. This
companionship, established by Nature, should be carefully promoted,
not thwarted. It is one of those provisions which make family life
the type of wider relationships, the true germ of society from which
national purity and strength should grow. Indeed, the more we study
the capabilities of the family in each of its varied aspects, the
more potent we perceive its influence to be, the greater the national
importance of maintaining the family in its proper power and dignity.
This natural grouping of boys and girls is Nature’s indication of the
right method of education, and the time will undoubtedly come when the
present monastic system of general education may be given up without
incurring grave disadvantages. That the familiar intercourse of boys
and girls in the kindly presence of their elders is of very great
advantage is an observation based upon wide experience. Isolation,
mystery, obstacles, produce craving curiosity, excitement--in fact,
morbid stimulus--instead of matter-of-fact acquaintance and natural
familiarity. Two opposite extremes tend to produce the precocity and
morbid condition of sentiment which now prevail--viz., either throwing
youth into the companionship of the vicious or rigidly separating
the sexes. Each extreme is against Nature, each is injurious to the
individual. The former practice is based upon the theory that sex is
an uncontrollable instinct which must run riot. The latter practice
proceeds from the theory that sex is a great evil, a temptation of
the devil, and as far as possible to be destroyed. The true principle,
however, consists in a recognition of the nobility of sex, and the
necessity--1st, of its slow development; 2nd, of its honourable
satisfaction.
Now, in the young and growing nature, sex may be richly satisfied by
spiritual refreshment and refined companionship. Conjugal relations
are not necessary to the very young in attaining true delight in
sex. On the contrary, false relations are an outrage. They violently
destroy the gradual unfolding of mental and physical joys, which alone
produces exquisite and lasting delight. A large amount of honourable
companionship between young men and women is of the utmost advantage in
strengthening and ennobling young manhood and womanhood. This valuable
result is only possible, however, as springing from the practice of
chastity; in connection with fornication it is impossible. Parents
are now justly afraid of the influences that may be brought to bear
on their children. Nevertheless, abundant honourable companionship
between the sexes is an important principle of future reform. Provide
the necessary condition of adult sympathy and influence, and the wider
the range of acquaintance can be made between boys and girls, between
uncorrupted young men and women, the better, the more valuable, will
be the results of such acquaintance. The possibility and practice of
natural familiar acquaintance between unmarried young men and women in
any society may be considered a test of the healthy human condition
of such society. Any society where it is considered necessary to keep
young people rigidly apart is a corrupt society, based upon principles
of national degeneracy instead of natural development.
The companionship of brothers and sisters is now early falsified by the
failure of parents to perceive its inestimable value, by separation
in studies and amusements, by false theories or corrupt habits,
through the influence of which the tie is weakened or perverted. The
friendship and affection, however, of these natural associates should
be sedulously promoted by companionship in studies, in music, in
outdoor pursuits and amusements. Into a family circle where brothers
and sisters were friends and companions, other boys and girls, other
young men and women, would naturally enter, the ennobling educational
influence would extend indefinitely, and those genuine sympathies which
should lead to marriage union, would gradually display themselves.
There is peculiar value in the influence of sisters. It is a special
mission of young women to make virtue lovely. As the mother realizes
all that such a high calling implies, as she fully understands the
meaning of Virtue--as distinguished from Innocence--and the methods
of clothing it in loveliness, the more she will perceive the noble
character of a daughter’s influence and its vital importance. In this
aspect small things become great through their uses. The principles of
dress become worthy of study; health, grace, liveliness and serenity,
sympathy, intelligence, conversational ability, accomplishments,
receive a new meaning--a consecration to the welfare of the human race.
To make brothers love virtue, to make all men love purity, through
its incarnation in virtuous daughters, is a grand work to accomplish!
The failure of young women in any country, to embody the beauty and
strength of virtue is one of the most serious evils that can befall a
State. The necessity of cultivating mental purity and respect for the
principle of sex exists as strongly in relation to girls as to boys,
and it is only by securing this mental purity that young women will
unconsciously address themselves to the higher rather than to the lower
instincts of their male companions.
The family home, carrying on its proper work, is no narrow circle of
selfish exclusiveness, but a living centre, attracting to itself and
widely radiating healthy social life. The moral influence of parents,
and particularly of the mother, as the centre of the household, extends
itself in two opposite directions--viz., in intercourse with the poorer
classes, through servants, tradespeople, benevolence, etc.; with the
richer, through social intercourse with equals. In both directions, her
influence will exert a direct bearing upon the moral education of the
young. The first and most important connection with the poorer classes
is through domestic servants. It is essential, from the outset of
family life, to select servants who will not injure the atmosphere of
home. The difficulty of doing this should be a warning voice to every
parent, and compel a careful search into the cause of this great and
growing difficulty. What does it mean--a widespread corruption through
the foundation of society, through the ranks of working women, so that
virtue, truth, fidelity, are hard to find? If so, what are the causes,
and what will be the influence exerted on the children of the family,
both at home and when they go out into the world, and are thrown into
unavoidable intercourse with this class of women? The more carefully
this problem is considered, the more intimate will the relations of
rich and poor be seen to be, the more vital their relations in respect
to the great question of morality, the more imperative the duty of
every mother to take a personal interest in her servants, to exert an
ennobling influence upon them, and to consider the children of her
poorer neighbours as well as her own, if only for the sake of her
own children. The family is a centre of affection, and every servant
should share in this life. It is wrong to retain a young servant
in a household without entering into her joys and sorrows, being
acquainted with her family and friends, providing her with honourable
amusements, and helping her to grow. In connection with this branch of
our subject there are two important principles that should be acted
on by intelligent women. The first is the necessity of educating the
sentiment of sex in girls into a self-controlling force, conscious of
the weighty responsibility which its great influence involves. The
second principle is the resolute abolition of an outcast class of
women. Christian civilization can acknowledge no pariah class, but
only erring individuals of either sex to be helped to a nobler life.
Equally important is the influence exerted by parents as members of
society on their own class, thus helping to form public opinion,
which is the foundation of law as well as custom. The moral tone of
general society at present is a source of great injury to the young.
The wilful ignoring of right and wrong in sex; the theory that it is a
subject not to be considered; the custom of allowing riches, talents,
agreeable manners, to atone for any amount of moral corruption; the
arrangement of marriage on a commercial basis, material, not spiritual,
considerations being of chief importance; and the deplorable delay
of marriage in men until the period of maximum physical vigour is
past--all contribute inevitably to the formation of a corrupt social
atmosphere, equally injurious to the moral health of men and women. The
purest family influence contends with difficulty against this general
corruption. After the period of childhood, society becomes a powerful
educator of young men and women. The seductions exercised by women and
by men bear upon our youth of both sexes in various ways, under widely
different aspects, but always with the same degrading tendencies,
with the same unequal contest between inexperienced innocence and
practised vice. Seeing how the highest aims of parental education
are constantly shipwrecked by the influence of society, it becomes a
necessity on the part of parents to change the tone of society. In
this great work women quite as much as men must think and act. Two
fundamental principles must be steadily held in view in this great aim:
First, the discouragement of licentiousness; second, the promotion of
early marriage. The methods of discouraging licentiousness in society
require the gravest consideration of all parents, and emphatically of
all married women. It is a subject so delicate, and yet so vital, that
it must be treated with equal care and firmness, and the problem can
only be solved by combined action. To admit men or women of licentious
lives or impure inclinations to the home circle, or to receive them
with welcome honour or cordiality in society, is a direct encouragement
to vice and an equal discouragement to virtue.[45] Confirmed Vice
must not be brought into intimate relations with young Virtue. It is
a crime, a stupidity, to do so. On the other hand, no inquisitorial
investigation of private life is desirable or permissible. A great duty
also exists towards the erring and the vicious, towards all those who
have oftentimes fallen into vice rather than voluntarily chosen it, who
are the victims of circumstances, of gradual unforeseen deterioration.
These fellow-beings demand the tenderest pity, the strongest sympathy,
the wisest help. Clever or frivolous, unstable or hardened, charming
or repellent, they are still precious human creatures, and the insight
of large sympathy--that most powerful influence which Providence has
intrusted to us--should be extended to all; but such sympathy can only
be exerted by the experienced, the strong, and the right way of doing
this must be sought for. One duty is perfectly clear: No persons of
acknowledged licentious life should be admitted to the intimacy of
home; no such persons should be welcomed with honour in society, no
matter what lower material or intellectual advantages may be possessed.
Their acquaintance is even more to be dreaded for sons than for
daughters. The corrupt conversation so general amongst immoral men is a
source of great evil to the young. As the perusal of licentious books
marks the first step in mental degradation, vicious talk is often the
second decided advance downward.
The moral meanness of enslavement to passion, of selfish disregard
to one’s weaker fellow-creatures exhibited by the profligate, should
always be recognised by the parent. Consent should never be given to
the union of an innocent child with a profligate. This plain dictate
of parental love, this evident duty of the experienced and virtuous to
the young and innocent, is strangely disregarded. Material advantages
in such cases are allowed to outweigh all other considerations.
Parents fail to recognise that the only source of permanent happiness
must arise from within, from spiritual qualifications; they fail to
recognise the inevitable effect of a corrupt nature upon a fresh young
creature linked to it in the closest companionship. Thus, in the
most solemn crisis of human life, the parent may betray the child.
It is not only the individual child that is betrayed, but the rising
generation also. On a previous page, the numerous external corrupting
circumstances have been mentioned which gradually degrade the
individual, but the subject of inherited qualities, of the inherited
tendency to sensuality, was not then dwelt upon. The transmission of
this tendency in a race is, however, a weighty fact, which must be
distinctly noted in this connection. Change in the tendencies of a race
can only be slowly wrought out in the course of generations. A most
important step in this direction is the union of virtuous daughters
with men of upright--or in the present day, it may be said, of
heroic--moral life. The effect upon offspring produced by the noble and
intense love of one man for one woman, with resulting circumstances,
would in the course of generations produce an hereditary tendency to
virtue instead of to sensuality. The known resolve of parents never to
consent to the union of their children with men of licentious habits
would of itself prove a valuable aid in regenerating society. Honour to
virtue, expressed in this sacred and at the same time most practical
manner, would be an encouragement, a reward, an incitement to all that
is noblest in human nature; it would be a standard to guide youth, a
real disinfectant of corrupt society.
The second principle to be kept steadily in view is the encouragement
of early marriage. A statesman, writing a generation ago on the causes
in the past, which have contributed to the prosperity of England,
says: ‘The lower and working classes are an early and universally
marrying people; this sacred habit is one which, while it has secured
the virtue and promoted the happiness of the country, has multiplied
its means and extended its power, and constituted Britain the most
powerful and prosperous Empire of the world.’[46] A quaint old writer
has said: ‘The forbidding to marry is the doctrine of devils.’ The
universal testimony of experience may be summed up in the words of
Montesquieu: ‘Who can be silent when the sexes, corrupting each other
even by the natural sensations themselves, fly from a union that ought
to make them better, to live in that that always renders them worse?
It is a rule drawn from nature, that the more the number of marriages
is diminished, the more corrupt are those who have entered into that
state; the fewer married men, the less fidelity is there in marriage.’
All short-sighted Governments that impose unnatural restrictions upon
marriage are compelled, by the increase of bastardy and its attendant
evils, to repeal such restrictions. Grohman, speaking of the causes of
the present immorality of the Tyrolese, says: ‘Very lately only has the
Austrian Government annulled the law which compelled a man desirous
of marriage to prove a certain income, and, further, to be the owner
of a house or homestead of some kind, before the license was granted.
Next in importance is the lax way in which the Church deals with
licentious misconduct, it being in her eyes a minor iniquity expiated
by confession.’ The obstacles to marriage in the military German Empire
must be regarded as one of the causes of that moral corruption which
we now observe in a country once so distinguished for home virtues--a
corruption which threatens to shake the foundations of the great German
race.
Early marriage, however, without previous habits of self-control,
is unavailing to raise the tone of society. Marriage is no cure
for diseased sex, and early licentiousness is really (as has been
shown) disease. In those parts of the Continent where the lowest
sexual morality exists, marriage is regarded as the opportunity for
constant and unlimited license. The young man, therefore, is not
allowed to marry (by the law of social custom) until he is over thirty
years of age. If his health has been impaired by licentiousness, he
is enjoined to resort less frequently to prostitutes, or to take a
mistress; but marriage is positively forbidden by his medical advisers
and discouraged by his relations. By the age of thirty his health
is either completely broken down, and marriage, therefore, out of
the question, or, having passed the most dangerous age of passion
without breaking down, it is judged that his physical health will
hold out under the opportunities of married life. The result of this
system is inevitable. Marriage, being regarded as the legalization
of uncontrolled passion, is so exercised until satiety ensues.
Satiety is the inevitable boundary of all simply material enjoyments.
Self-control being entirely wanting, the spiritual possibilities of
marriage are unknown; social duty in respect to sex is a vague dream,
not a reality. Physical satiety can only be met by variety; hence
universal infidelity--destruction of the highest ends of marriage, the
dethronement of the mother, the deterioration of the father, and the
failure of the family influence as the first element in the growth of
the nation.
The same important truth is exemplified in the social condition of
our great Indian Empire. There the custom of early, even infantine,
marriage co-exists with a licentiousness truly appalling in its
strength and character.[47] Lads of sixteen, thoroughly corrupted in
childhood, become the fathers of a degenerate race, the girl-mothers
being the hopeless slaves of simple physical instincts. Early marriage
is the safeguard of society only when the self-control of chastity
exists, a self-government which is essential to the formation of manly
character as well as conducive to vigorous health. With the acceptance
of this essential condition, the aim of all wise parents will be to
secure for their children the great blessing of early marriage, to
provide for them opportunities of choice, and to promote the design
of Providence that the young man and young woman suited to each other
shall together gain the wider experience of life.
This proposition is always met by a host of social difficulties which
perplex the inquirer, and finally quiet the conscience of society into
a passive acquiescence in evil customs. These difficulties, however,
must be met and overcome. It is cowardly not to face them, and weak not
to vanquish them. Wise early marriage is the natural and true way out
of disorder and license into the providential order of human existence.
The first condition of improvement is to accept this plan as a living
faith, not an abstract ideal; to consider how difficulties can be
removed, not be cowed by them; and to study the possibilities, not the
impossibilities. It leads to diametrically opposite practical action,
whether we dwell upon the advantages of a certain course of life and
strive in every way to attain it, or whether we lose ourselves in
doubts and discouragements. ‘Put your shoulder to the wheel, and call
upon Hercules to help,’ is the only true plan now, as in the days of
Æsop. It is a matter of every-day experience that if we resolutely
determine to do a thing, and steadily apply the common-sense and
intelligence (the germs of which exist in every human being) to its
accomplishment, success will follow.
The difficulties urged are the foolishness of first love; the
impossibility of providing for a family; the craving for wild
adventure, excitement, change. These are the spectres which bar the
entrance to the right way of life. But such arguments are all false.
They are founded on the sandy basis of removable conditions--on
false methods of education, narrow family exclusiveness, on lack
of self-control, vicious customs, and perverted tastes. All sound
argument, based on the permanent facts of human nature, enjoins us to
provide for early marriage as the basis of social good. The young man
accustomed from boyhood to mix freely with young women under honourable
conditions, is no longer bewildered by the first woman he meets, whilst
the free, friendly companionship, secured by the family circle with its
wide connections, has supplied a want that his growing nature craves;
his taste and judgment have grown and strengthened, and he is no longer
the victim of baseless fantasies. Accustomed to free association with
young women of his own class, he is able at an early age to know his
own mind and make a wise selection of his future partner. To the young
woman an early marriage is the natural course of life; to this end she
tends, and, consciously or unconsciously, prepares herself to secure it
according to the requirements of society. Her unperverted taste is for
the young man a little older than herself--a companion she can admire,
respect, and, love--but still a companion, not a father. If taught
by the silent though still powerful voice of society that harmony of
character, of aims, of temperament--_i.e._, mental attraction--is the
indispensable foundation of great and lasting happiness in marriage;
that material advantages are secondary to this unspeakable blessing;
that thrift, knowledge of household economy, power of creating an
attractive home, are essential to the attainment of this great good,
then her instincts, by an inevitable law of nature, will tend to the
acquirement of these qualifications. If, on the contrary, she feels,
through the influence of society (still unexpressed), that physical
effects are the things chiefly sought for, that physical charm or
the power exercised by corporeal sex is the chief or only possession
that draws attention to her, then, by the same inevitable law, she
will strive to exercise this physical power, and the means of doing
so will become the all-absorbing occupation of an ever-increasing
number of young women. As already stated, the direct result of the
mastery of young men by irresistible physical instinct will be to
create a necessity in young women for dress which will bring physical
attractions into prominence or supply their deficiency. The craving
for riches and luxury, the ignorance of economy, so often urged as an
obstacle to marriage, are the inevitable results of licentiousness,
which strengthens and cultivates exclusively material desires and
necessities. Children should look forward to beginning life as simply
as their parents began it, but with the added advantages of education.
It is a totally false principle that they should expect to begin where
their parents left off. Filial honour for their parents’ lives and
inherited vigour would alike lead them to commence life with extreme
simplicity. The power of rendering such simplicity attractive would
prove that they had acquired the refinement and breadth of view which
is the result of true culture instead of being enervated by luxury.
They would thus, whilst beginning life as did their parents, begin
it, nevertheless, from a vantage-ground, the result of their parents’
labours. Each generation would thus make a solid gain in life instead
of encountering the destructive results which always attend the strife
for material luxury.
There are many important points bearing on this vital question of early
marriage--such as the exercise of self-control in married life and the
teaching of sound physiology, which is needed to reconcile marriage
with foresight--whose discussion would be out of place in the present
essay. But that the topic must be thoroughly and wisely considered by
parents resolved to aid one another in securing this inevitable reform,
is certain. The increasing tendency to delay marriage is so serious
an evil, that methods for checking this tendency must be found if our
worth as a nation is to continue. The early and solemn betrothal of
young people is an old custom now fallen into disuse. The possibility
of its readoption as a beneficial social practice, with its duration,
duties, and privileges, is worthy of serious consideration.
We have seen that the careful guidance of youth in relation to the
faculty of sex, an improvement in the tone of society, and provision
for early marriage, are fundamental points which should engage the
earnest thought of every mother. It would be, however, a most serious
mistake to suppose that the methods of carrying out these principles
devolve upon the mother only. It is too frequently the case that the
father, absorbed in outdoor pursuits, regards the indoor life as
exclusively the business of his wife, and takes little or no part in
the education of his children; but no true home can ever be formed
without the mutual aid of father and mother. The division of labour
may be different, but the joint influence should ever be felt in
this closest of partnerships. As the wise wife is the most trusty
confidant of the general business life of the husband, so he is the
natural counsellor and support in all that concerns the occupations,
amusements, society, and influence of his home. No home can be a happy
one, if the father’s keenest interest and enjoyment do not centre in
his family life. There are, however, special duties to the family
required from the father, owing to his position as a citizen, and
these hold an intimate relation to the future of his children. A large
view of home duty must necessarily lead to a fulfilment of citizen
duty. There are few men who, in their special business or occupation,
do not possess large opportunities for encouraging a nobler idea
respecting the relations of men and women than now prevails; few
who cannot show their respect for virtue and in some way discourage
vice. Men, not only as fathers, but as educators of youth--clergymen,
physicians, employers of labour--hold an immense power in their hands
for raising the tone of a community into which their sons and daughters
must soon enter, and through the ceaseless temptations of which the
effects of the most careful family education may be destroyed. No
occupation can stand isolated from the rest of life; the interlinkings
are innumerable. The man who throws a temptation in the way of a weaker
neighbour, or ignores the struggles of his dependents, or fails to
speak the encouraging word to those whom he influences, may be placing
a pitfall in the way of his own son and daughter.
A mighty power which fathers hold in trust for the future of their
children, is the character of the legislation which they establish or
sanction. It is almost inconceivable how intelligent and well-meaning
individuals, knowing the weakness of human nature and its inevitable
growth towards good or evil through circumstances, can fail to see
the immense moral bearing of legislation. The laws of a country are
powerful educators of the rising generation. They reach all classes;
their influence is a national one, silently exercising a never-ceasing
effect on the community. Every new act of legislation is a power
which will work much more strongly upon the young than the old. The
adult who makes the law has grown up to complete manhood under other
influences; he is moulded by the laws of a previous generation, and no
new legislative action can change his fixed character. It is the young
and unformed who will grow in the direction made easiest to them by our
laws. Whether the subject of legislation be the increase of standing
armies, the promotion of the liquor traffic, the regulation of factory
labour, the arrangement of national education, or the establishment of
railways--these subjects affect the moral condition of a people. It
would be difficult to find a subject of legislation which has not some
moral issue, more or less directly connected with it, and which will
not influence the rising generation more powerfully than the generation
that establishes the law. Legislation, therefore, has an inevitable
and most important bearing upon the welfare of the family, and must
be considered in relation to its effect upon the youth of the nation.
Every mother has a right to ask this from the legislators of a country.
No parental legislator should ever lose sight of the central family
point of view in legislation--viz., How can good conquer evil? How can
it be made easier for children to grow up virtuous than vicious?
The power of the human race to place itself under any restrictions
which its welfare requires, has already been shown in the control which
society exercises over the intense craving of hunger. Strong as the
faculty of sex is, its abnegation does not destroy the individual as
does starvation from lack of food. This instinct, therefore, cannot
be considered more imperative than that of hunger; it must be as
susceptible of restraint. Indeed, the relations of sex have already
been placed under a certain amount of restriction by both law and
custom, only these restrictions are not nearly of such severity or
universal application as those which govern the instinct of hunger,
showing that the human race, in their present stage of development,
have not felt that it was such a pressing question. Society has not
hitherto recognised such restraint as essential to its own existence
and welfare. This conviction, however, is now awakened, and when once
established, it will be found that the dominion of law is as powerful
in one direction as in the other. Every great question of society
is a necessary subject of legislation. The necessity of protecting
property and the ability to do so, even against the terrible power of
slow starvation, is shown by every civilized nation. This experience
conclusively proves that chastity also may be protected by legislation,
as soon as the growing common-sense of a community awakes to the fact
that it also is a property--the most valuable property that a great
nation can possess--and that licentiousness is a growing evil that
may be checked by legislation. The true principle to be held to, in
legislating for the evils that afflict society, cannot be too often
insisted on. In legislating for any evil, it is necessary to seek out
the deepest source of the evil, and check that source. Attention must
not be limited to the effects of the evil. This is eminently true of
all legislation which deals with the evils caused by licentiousness--a
branch of legislation which, more than any other, has a direct and
powerful bearing upon the welfare of the family.
The subject of licentiousness is justly attracting the attention of
legislators of the present day to an extent which has never been
witnessed before. This is a sign of dawning promise, for the worst
condition of a nation is that where gross evils remain uncared for.
This great evil has crept on uncared for, or referred to with hushed
breath, until it bids fair to ruin our most valued institutions.
Legislation has broken the spell, and will continue its work until
it has aroused the conscience of the nation. The execution of wise
measures can only be secured by the support of an enlightened,
conscientious community. No legislation can be efficient which does
not represent the best average sentiment of the country. In regard
to this great question, no wise legislation is possible for any evil
of licentiousness until the subject has been thoroughly considered
by those who are most keenly interested in it--viz., the fathers
and mothers of the nation. No specialists, of whatever class, can
suggest wise measures, as specialists, in a matter which so intimately
concerns the family. Only a large view of what is needed for the
purity and dignity of the family, for the good of its children, for its
influence in society, can secure wise laws. Anything which tends to
encourage the lowest passions of human nature, either by the acceptance
of base customs, by the legalization of vice, or by fostering in
any other way the animal tendencies of men, must produce hereditary
as well as social effects on daughters as well as sons. Customs and
institutions which injure the character of women, which weaken their
virtue and crush out the germs of higher life, must be the source
of deadliest evil to any nation. It behoves the legislators of the
present generation to be careful in their social and legal sanction of
vice amongst males, lest they be blindly undermining the whole social
fabric, amongst women as well as men, in a way which they would least
wish to do, if they knew what they were doing.
* * * * *
The first step towards the moral education of the youth of a nation is
a clear perception on the part of parents of the true aim of education,
with the individual action to which such perception leads. The second
step is combination--_i.e._, the determination to secure this end by
the strength of union. It is true that individual efforts are the
foundation on which any power must rest that wishes to lift society
to a higher level, and we find at present innumerable individuals
keenly alive to the evils in which we are involved, and earnest in
seeking a remedy. There are very many families where father and mother
work together with unwearied effort to ennoble home life, but these
individual efforts, these aspirations and patient endeavours, although
indispensable as a foundation, are isolated and scattered; they are
continually overpowered by the evil influences existing outside the
family. Organized effort is needed--resolute and united action--to
meet the organized dangers of the present age. The condensed review
in the preceding pages of the causes which produce the present low or
diseased condition of the humanizing principle of sex, indicates the
immense range of subjects which its consideration and guidance involve.
No isolated individual, no single family, can work out for itself a
solution of the present problem, or command the means for securing the
moral welfare of the most cherished child. Change in the conditions of
life may be wrought by united effort; it cannot be attained by isolated
effort. When we consider the innumerable objects for which strength is
gained by association, and that this rational principle is constantly
extending its operation in the present age, it is evident that any
strong leading principle capable of enlisting devotion and steady
enthusiasm affords sound basis for combination and organization. Such
a leading principle is found in the clear conviction of the nobility
of the spiritual principle of sex in the human being, the binding
obligation of one moral law for all, and the regenerating power of
this law upon the human race. It is a principle capable of enlisting
religious devotion and embodying itself in the most valuable practical
action. Methods of combination inspired by this principle are clearly
conceivable which would be susceptible of the widest application.
Indications of such combination are already visible, and these must
constantly extend themselves as this great idea of the present
age--_the true view of Sex_--grows into complete development.
All existing efforts which tend to destroy the causes of
licentiousness--such as temperance, increase of occupation and wages
for women, improvement of poor dwellings, facilities for rational
amusement, the abolition of enforced celibacy, and the regeneration
of the army--demand and should receive the special recognition and
aid of parents. These movements are all invaluable and cannot be too
actively supported, being founded on true principles of growth; but
something more is needed--viz., distinct open acknowledgment of the
fundamental principle here laid down, and organization growing out of
it. In this work the natural leader of a nation is the Church--_i.e._,
that great body of all religious teachers and persons who believe that
man cannot live by bread alone, but that the Divine instinct that urges
him onwards and upwards must be expressed in the forms of our daily
life. When the Church recognises that one of its difficult but glorious
duties is to teach men how to carry out religious principles in
practical life, it will perceive that the foundation of all righteous
life is reverence for the noble human principle of sex. It will no
longer shrink from enforcing this regenerating principle. The undue
proportion of thought and effort now given to forms and ceremonies,
to metaphysical disquisitions and subtle distinctions, will then give
place to earnest united efforts to enable men to lead righteous lives.
No Church performs its duty to the young that fails to raise this
fundamental subject of sex into its proper human level. It is bound to
rouse every young man and woman of its congregation to the perception
that respect for the principle of sex, with fidelity to purity, is a
fundamental condition of religious life.
The truths which have been set forth in the preceding pages may be
briefly summed up in the following propositions--viz:
Early chastity strengthens the physical nature, creates force of Will,
and concentrates the intellectual powers on the nobler ends of human
life.
Continence is indispensable to the physical welfare of a young man
until the age of twenty-one; it is advantageous until twenty-five; it
is possible without physical injury throughout life.
The passion of sex can only be safely and healthily gratified
by marriage; illegal relations produce physical danger, mental
degradation, and social misery.
The family is the indispensable foundation of a progressive nation,
and the permanent union of one man with one woman is essential to the
welfare of the family.
Marriage during matured early vigour is essential to the production of
a strong race.
Individual morality can only be secured by the prevalence of early
purity, and national morality by the cumulative effects of heredity.
In Moral Education the first step to secure is the slow development
of sex; the second, its legitimate satisfaction through honourable
companionship, followed by marriage.
There are special duties which devolve upon women as mother, sister,
ruler of a household, and member of society for securing the
conditions necessary for the attainment of early purity in sons and
daughters.
There are special duties laid upon men, not only as parents, but as
citizens, for the attainment of national morality.
The fact must be clearly perceived and accepted, that male purity is a
fundamental virtue in a State; that it secures the purity of women, on
which the moral qualities of fidelity, humanity, and trustworthiness
depend; and that it secures the strength and truth of men, on which
the intellectual vigour and wise government of a State depend.
Whether it be regarded in relation to the physical and mental status
of Man, or the position and welfare of Woman, there is no social evil
so great as the substitution of Fornication and Celibacy for Chastity
and Marriage.
These are fundamental truths. But in those grown old in watching the
spread of evil, despair often takes possession of the mind, and the
question arises, Can evil ever be overcome with good? Can we hope to
change this widespread perversion of human faculties? When we observe
the raging lust of invading armies, more cruel than the ferocity of
the most savage beasts; when we study the tumultuous passions of
early youth, the rush for excitement, for every kind of gratification
that the impulse of the moment demands, can we believe that there are
forces at our command strong enough to quell the tumult, to guide the
multitude, to sustain the weak, to change the fierce brutishness into
noble manhood and womanhood?
There is a force more powerful than tempest or whirlwind, more
irresistible than the fiercest brutal passion, a power which works in
nature unseen but ceaselessly, repairing all destruction, accomplishing
a mighty plan; a power which works in the human soul, enabling it to
learn truth, to understand principles, to love justice and humanity,
and to reach steadily onward to the attainment of the highest ideal.
It is the creative and regenerating force of Wisdom, gradually but
irresistibly penetrating the mind of Humanity. This mighty governing
Power, call it by what name we may--Religion, Truth, Spiritual
Christianity, Jehovah--uses human means, and works through the changing
phenomena of daily life. It is our part to make the forms of human life
exponents of this Divine force.
The principles here laid down are true. They rest upon the firm
foundation of physiological law, and are confirmed by facts of
universal experience. Let the younger generation of parents accept
them in their great significance, making them the guiding influence
in all social relations. Then will human life at once begin to shape
itself according to God’s Truth; the law of inheritance will strengthen
each generation into nobler tendencies; and our nation, renewing its
strength, will grow into a humble but glorious exponent of the Divine
Idea.
APPENDIX I. (PAGE 262)
_Christian Duty in regard to Vice_
Cruelty and Lust are the twin evils that now most seriously afflict
our race, and which women--the mothers of the race--are especially
called on to fight. Women must act. No one not partially blind can fail
to see that the onward movement of events is carrying women forward
into positions of active influence in social life that they have not
hitherto occupied. Whether we welcome or dread this change, it goes
on irresistibly, based upon industrial activity, and extending into
every other department of life. The command of wisdom is to accept this
advance, recognise its responsibilities, and bravely rise to meet them.
Women, by the endowment of Motherhood, are created with special powers.
This endowment, which is a mighty spiritual as well as a physical
force, indicates their distinctive line of active influence, and will
show why they are especially called on to combat cruelty and lust,
which kill motherhood.
In this special subject, women must initiate their own lines of
action, for they are called on by the constitution of Humanity to
lead in this moral warfare, not be led. Equal justice to all, with
protection for the most defenceless, is the only foundation on which
both custom and legislation can safely rest in any attempt to improve
the relations of the sexes or to remedy the direful evils which these
relations at present engender.
APPENDIX II. (PAGE 265)
Terrible instances of this may be seen in Trélat’s medical work, _La
Folie Lucide_, etc. Lallemand and other French surgeons report numerous
cases of fatal injury done even to nursing infants by the wicked
actions of unprincipled nurses. I have myself traced the ill-health of
children in wealthy families to the habits practised by confidential
nurses, apparently quiet, respectable women! Abundant medical testimony
confirms these observations.
It is not the plan of the present essay to enter into minute details
and suggestions relative to every step of family life which bears upon
our subject; such details are more suited to the private and familiar
conferences of those who are resolved to ennoble the life of sex. When
this high resolve has become a guiding principle, it will throw light
upon every practical arrangement from infancy onward. It will then be
seen that no details are insignificant to the watchful mother; that the
shape of the child’s nightdress, made in the form of loose drawers; the
manner of washing and of attending to its natural wants; the nightly
prayer; simple and respectful answers to the questions of awakening
curiosity--all endless applications will flow from a perception of the
necessity of securing the slow and healthy development of sex.
Dr. Acton has called attention to the necessity of securing local
cleanliness, and to the evil arising from worms and from the habit of
wetting the bed.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Parkes’ _Manual of Practical Hygiene_, 4th edition, p. 493.
[17] _Ibid._, p. 493.
[18] W. B. Carpenter’s _Principles of Human Physiology_, 7th edition,
p. 631.
[19] W. B. Carpenter’s _Principles of Human Physiology_, 7th edition,
p. 812.
[20] The unhealthiness and indecency of harem life, with its effect
upon the boys and girls, its encouragement of abortion, and the unhappy
and degraded condition of the women, are sketched with the painful
truth of close observation in _The People of Turkey_, edited by S.
Lane Poole--a book worthy of careful consideration. See also Lane’s
_Egyptians_, etc.
[21] _Bulgaria and the Bulgarians._
[22] Abstract from the _Sun_. See _Thirtieth Annual Report of the
Prison Association of New York_.
[23] See Sadler on _Population_ for many curious facts tending to show
how strictly Nature guards this equality.
[24] See Michel Lévy’s _Traité d’Hygiène_, 5th edition, vol. i., p. 145.
[25] Hufeland’s _Art of Prolonging Life_, edited by Erasmus Wilson. 2nd
edition, Part II., p. 138.
[26] See W. B. Carpenter’s _Principles of Human Physiology_, 7th
edition, p. 909.
[27] _Ibid._, p. 909.
[28] One of the most powerful causes of the growth of pessimism in
Germany is the increasing licentiousness of a race created with a high
ideal of virtue and cherishing a love of home.
[29] The frequent opinion that a limited amount of fornication is
a very trivial matter, that the individual may become an excellent
father of a family and good citizen in spite of such indulgence, is
based on the grave error of regarding sexual relations as the act
of one instead of two individuals, and limited in their effects to
the moment of occurrence. The moral character of such indulgence is,
however, determined by its effects upon the after-life of two human
beings--viz., its effect on the citizen, whose judgment becomes injured
in relation to this great subject of national welfare, through early
experience, and on the partner in vice whose life is one of growing
degradation. These two inevitable facts remain through life.
[30] See Debates of Working Men’s Congress, Paris, October, 1876. Also
_La Femme Pauvre_, a work crowned by the French Academy some years ago.
Also the writings of Le Clerc, Guizot, etc.
[31] See Reports of Rescue Society, London.
[32] This question is now anxiously asked by intelligent mothers, who,
resolved to do what is right for their children, are yet bewildered
by the contradiction of authorities and the customs of society. It is
the necessity in my own medical practice of answering this question
truthfully, which is one of the reasons that has compelled me to write
these pages.
[33] G. M. Humphrey, M.D., F.R.S., in Holme’s _System of Surgery_, 3rd
edition, vol. iii., p. 550.
[34] See Acton’s _Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs_,
6th edition, p. 12 _et seq._
[35] Acton’s _Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs_, 6th
Ed., pp. 37, 38.
[36] See also a very interesting account of schools in Thackeray’s
_Irish Sketch-Book_.
[37] I can speak from personal observation of these upright
communities, where the health of the men was far better than that of
the women; the former leading an outdoor, the latter an indoor life.
[38] Numerous instances of wise maternal influence over sons have come
under my own observation, where in mature life they have thanked these
true friends, their mothers, for the wise counsels given at the right
time.
[39] See Appendix I., p. 306.
[40] In earnest conversation with a gentleman of wide connections,
resident in Vienna, he stated that he did not know a single young man
who led a virtuous life. So completely was the idea of sexual control
lost, that he said frankly he should consider any man a hypocrite who
pretended to be virtuous. A Protestant pastor in a small University
town in the South of France told me that the public sentiment of
both men and women in that town was so false that a man who had no
inclination to vice would be ashamed to acknowledge a virtuous life.
[41] See Appendix II., p. 308.
[42] See a valuable article in the _Westminster Review_, July, 1879,
‘An Unrecognised Element in our Educational Systems.’
[43] Sir James Paget, _Clinical Lectures and Essays_, second edition,
p. 293.
[44] There is a class of persons, the illogical, whose conscience
will not allow them to counsel vice, who state that it is a habit
that can be avoided as the use of opium can be avoided, but who in
the same breath declare prostitution to be a necessity, and that the
greater part of young men away from home will resort to it. Now, if
prostitution be a necessity, it must be because fornication is a
necessity. What is a necessity? It is something inevitable, because
it is rooted in the constitution; it is an unavoidable development
of human nature itself. If so, fornication is not a habit like
opium-eating, but the form in which human nature is shaped--God’s
work. In that case fornication would not be wrong; it should not be
condemned, and neither the man nor the woman who practises it should be
blamed. There is no avoiding this direct conclusion, and everyone who
asserts that prostitution is a necessity must be prepared to accept it.
This grave error and the confusion of thought and practice which arises
from it proceed from a wrong use of the word ‘Necessity.’ It is the
existence of the sexual passion which is a necessary part of nature,
not prostitution. This necessary passion may either be controlled or
it may be satisfied in two ways--by marriage, or by fornication. It
is only the passion which is a necessity, not the way in which it is
gratified. It is thus a positive falsehood to state that prostitution
is a necessity, and, considered in all its bearings, a most dangerous
falsehood.
[45] Whilst travelling in Italy I met a very intelligent Austrian
gentleman, who, as a citizen of the United States, had brought up his
family in New York. Conversing on the various customs of society, he
said to me: ‘I have always endeavoured to respect women, and to live
an upright, moral life, but I have never met with any appreciation
of this fact by the families of my acquaintance. On the contrary,
no mother that I have known has banished a man of position from her
society, no matter how notoriously immoral his life may be. I have
known respectable mothers, moving in what is called the best society,
allowing a man of wealth to continue visiting the family after gross
impropriety of behaviour to a daughter. My own little Rosa there (and
he pointed to a charming little creature of sixteen who was travelling
with the party) will not give the slightest discouragement to a clever
or amusing man, although I may warn her against the notorious character
of the man. I go to Paris, and observe the night assemblies after the
theatres close. I find brilliant salons filled with young girls as
lovely as my own daughter, often gentle in manner, elegant in dress,
refined, accomplished; I should not know from observation merely that
they were fallen women. “What does it all mean?” I ask myself again and
again. Surely women in society have much to do in this matter.’
[46] Sadler on _Population_, who states the average age of marriage
amongst the labouring population at twenty-three years.
[47] See Professor Monier Williams’ _Indian Travels_.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
Transcriber’s Notes
Errors in punctuation have been fixed.
Page 120: “sexual moralty” changed to “sexual morality”
Page 168: “deady sin” changed to “deadly sin”
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