An Outline of Sexual Morality Part 4

Attraction towards young children is frequently, perhaps almost entirely, s.e.xual. A symptom of this temperament is that romantic attachments are formed towards either s.e.x, because, before p.u.b.erty, the child is bis.e.xual or s.e.xless. This must essentially be a cult; it is a clean and n.o.ble cult, but the penalty of its high standard is that here all physical s.e.x expression must be denied except in the lesser form of embrace.

Here, indeed, the prosecution of the law against s.e.x-acts is justified.

For, not only is the child incapable of giving valid consent, but the commission of the s.e.x-act is physically and morally injurious. It is physically injurious beyond all doubt at a young age, and it is morally injurious, because it introduces s.e.x to an age of development when the consciousness of s.e.x should not have appeared above the horizon. The inevitable result is that if s.e.x-acts take place the child eventually ages rapidly, as can be seen among the child-mothers of India. Maturity is induced far before its time.

The s.e.x consciousness, as distinct from the unconsciousness, can be awakened in the earliest years of childhood. The young boy or girl often shows an extraordinarily intuitive perception that there is a s.e.xual design behind even the apparently harmless overtures. And this is why this cult is particularly dangerous. The lover, in fact, must not only entirely eliminate the morally criminal s.e.x inclinations, but he must take care not to become so sentimental and romantic as really to suggest s.e.x to the child's unconsciousness. It is difficult to draw the line as to what is a lawful and what is an unlawful expression of this s.e.x-temperament. One can only say that the remedy is not to concentrate love on one child, but on children generally. The child must not be treated as an adult; there must be no manifestations of jealousy, or insistence on a return of love expression. The embrace of children must be natural but not too ardent. In fact, the lover must diffuse his love and romp with children as a cla.s.s rather than allow himself to appear emotional over one individual.

Many unthinking people will at once regard this temperament as impure when they have been convinced that scientifically it is s.e.xual. But this is only because they cannot understand that s.e.x is a clean thing and that the physical side of it is an occasional and by no means an inevitable incident. The cult of child-love is in fact one of the purest and n.o.blest of s.e.x-expressions. But it is a difficult path, and he who treads it must beware of many pitfalls.

Again, I quite deny that it is due to thwarted paternal instinct. I believe it to be as natural a variety as any other of the s.e.x-temperaments. We have suffered too long from the superst.i.tion that s.e.x is a uniformity of type.

III

Then there is that strange form of s.e.x-expression known as b.e.s.t.i.a.lity.

To most of us the connexion between man and beast in s.e.x is so revolting that there is a great danger of our prejudice running away with us.

I believe that prejudice against what seems to me so debased a vice, is justifiable. But I am equally sure that to punish such offences by criminal law has no shred of justification, except when the act is done in public so as to be openly indecent. No physical or moral harm can be done to the animal. And were it not tragic, the idea of sentencing the offenders to penal servitude would be itself a travesty.

The practice, which is not so uncommon as many people imagine, is not so much immoral as unnatural. I mean that this can hardly ever be a variety of s.e.x-temperament. Although the love of women for pet dogs is probably a form of perverted s.e.x-outlet, it seems impossible to discover here any actual love going out towards animals rather than to humans. Therefore, the act is almost always due to a desire for mere physical expression, when this happens to have been chosen as the most convenient.

The true remedy, therefore, can only be to take the individual and educate him. He must be shown that it is immoral for man to devolve back to the animal level. He is superior to the beast. He must be reminded that s.e.x must be a result of love, and that s.e.x-love between man and animal would only be possible if it were moral for man to cease to reason, to go down on all fours, and to eat and drink and live like an animal. Even the most primitive man would not wish to do that. And if he feels any sense of abhorrence at such a proposal, then he must learn to extend his abhorrence to any attempt at a similar equality in s.e.x.

IV

The strange and almost endless forms of s.e.x-a.s.sociation need not be considered, since they have no moral problem of their own. The man whose s.e.x-force is stirred into energy by the sight of some inanimate physical object is obviously the victim of a s.e.x-repression. And such diseases must be treated as any other repressions should be. These general considerations must suffice here for all forms of s.e.x perversions, such as sadism and its converse. And it is not difficult to distinguish between the unnaturalness of such practices and the natural character of the main s.e.x-types which we have already mentioned.

Chapter XI: s.e.x Education

It is becoming evident to all students of the s.e.x-problem that the remedy for many of the difficulties arising therefrom is a wholesome and efficient s.e.x-education.

In many cases the parents are not the persons most fitted to give this education. They may not possess the art of imparting knowledge, and often there is a certain reticence between parent and child, which when present creates a bar to the proper handling of this question. The child goes to school to learn, and the school must take its share of this responsibility. Where this is not done the effect is deplorable. In the preparatory school s.e.x has hardly appeared. But in any school where there are older boys or girls, and where s.e.x-education is not given, knowledge is rapidly obtained. Officially s.e.x is ignored until, on rare occasions, it is detected. Severe punishment is then meted out, and perhaps the offender is even expelled, although the school is really penalizing the results of its own system.

It is unnecessary to labour the apology that the absence of s.e.x-education ensures innocence. In no school is this the case. If it were, with growing boys and girls, it would be unnatural. s.e.x-instinct is bound to grow as the physical body grows, and to ignore this fact is to create the conception that s.e.x-instinct is immoral. We then obtain the usual att.i.tude adopted in public schools--that s.e.x is to be indulged behind closed doors and s.e.x literature sn.i.g.g.e.red at in dark corners. The boy grows up with a totally unclean view of s.e.x. He becomes either an intolerable prude, or else he approaches s.e.x-experience with an entirely twisted conception of s.e.x-morality. One is continually meeting instances of this perverted imagination. Not only boys, but men, will regard an outspoken book on s.e.x, perhaps written with the purest of motives, as "hot stuff," something to be greedily devoured when the eye of respectable authority is conveniently removed. Recently, a man was told that a certain clergyman was a member of a group of students studying s.e.x-psychology. He expressed the opinion, with a knowing leer, that "some parsons are not such fools after all."

These crude examples of the result of driving s.e.x into a dark corner exactly represent what one is up against in school, and in the world, when one begins to deal with s.e.x openly and cleanly as a natural and non-repressible instinct. Really these people are a type of prude, much as they would resent this cla.s.sification, for they persist in regarding s.e.x as something which is rather naughty. They even imagine that to take away from it the cloak of unnaturalness with which they have surrounded it is to rob it of all its attraction. This is ridiculously untrue. s.e.x is attractive because it is romantic, and, so long as one does not go to the opposite extreme of regarding it merely through the musty gla.s.ses of scientific cla.s.sification, it becomes no less attractive when it is open and natural, and ceases to be the cause of giggling asides.

Before any moral sense in the s.e.x-problem can be established there must be a fundamental cleaning of this cess-pool, this strange medley of official silence, unnatural repression, and unclean secretiveness. The main road to a moral sense is s.e.x-education. And it is necessary, therefore, to conclude this outline of principles by suggesting some conditions which should govern such instruction.

It is obvious that s.e.x-education must be advanced on the process of a sliding scale. Before p.u.b.erty s.e.x should not appear on the horizon of the child's consciousness. The precocious child must of course be specially dealt with, but usually the first lessons in s.e.x should commence with the period of mental p.u.b.erty. Before that time the small child jokes only about the normal excretory functions, and this can be adjusted by emphasizing the unmanly and unnecessary character of such forms of humour.

A child has usually an exaggerated impression of the value of the adult standard, an impression which it must be confessed is too often subject to subsequent disillusionment. While it remains, however, it can be used, and it can be pointed out that "grown-ups" do not consider the excretory system has any more claim to ridicule than the process of digestion or sleep. Vulgarity and coa.r.s.eness are not symptoms even of immoral s.e.xuality.

The problem commences, then, with p.u.b.erty. And here a warning should be uttered against that school of reformers which tends to the view that s.e.x can be regarded as naturally and as publicly as natural history or chemistry. This att.i.tude ignores the fact that there is such a quality as s.e.xual appet.i.te. And consequently, s.e.x education should be rather a matter for individuals than for public instruction. We have remarked that the parent may not infrequently be an unfortunate educator. But where these objections do not arise, the home is an admirable atmosphere for sensible teaching. The Catholic Church possesses the invaluable medium of the Confessional, and where the Confessor can give sound s.e.x instruction no better opportunity can be imagined. There remains the school, but even here better work will be done in the study than the cla.s.sroom.

The immediate problem in the early post-p.u.b.erty age is the tendency towards solitary practices. It must be recognized that this is usual with all children, and that there is no evidence to show that, save in extreme exceptions, physical harm results. All attempt at _alarmist prudism_ must be abandoned. Sane instruction will tend rather to emphasize that s.e.x abuse is due to a weakness of will-power, and that man is most manly, i.e.

most removed from the animal, in the exercise of will-power. All education should contain that subject which is at present consistently ignored, namely, the art of thought-control. The child will be interested to follow certain simple rules of mental exercise, and where this is followed the liability to indulge in s.e.x-acts diminishes. It is this element which must be emphasized, the fact, that is, that solitary practices are usually the result of an inability to exercise the will and control the mind.

At a slightly later period, the public-school age, there emerges the tendency, in addition to onanism, for promiscuous practices, usually of a h.o.m.ogenic nature. A further stage of s.e.x-education must now be opened out, namely the principle that physical s.e.x expression must be the expression only of love. The problem now becomes necessarily more acute, but there is this element which tends to lessen the difficulties of the instructor's task. The individual is always interested about himself; he is naturally egotistical. The youth will gladly listen to what can be told him of his own nature. He must be shown the immense superiority of mind both over the emotional and physical natures. This may involve a slight dethronement of the public school appreciation of sport. So long as it is slight such a dethronement will be a reform in itself. The boy in his middle teens must be taught that man is greater in his mental than in his physical activity; he must be reminded that he is inferior to many animals on the physical level. The application of this doctrine to s.e.x is that s.e.x-expression for the purpose of physical curiosity or excitement is a denial of the monopoly of love, which belongs to the emotional and mental capacities.

The young man and the girl, who has left school, will be ready to receive the whole standard of s.e.x-morality as has been outlined in this manual.

The chief trouble now becomes over-sentimentality, the tendency to develop emotionally at the expense of the mind. And it becomes, therefore, essential to remind the pupil that where there are continual pa.s.sing and promiscuous s.e.xual or love affairs, the mind is being shut out from its natural functions. To be attracted s.e.xually towards any pretty girl, to develop s.e.xual relations with different women from week to week, is simply a form of mental unbalance. The emotions are in the saddle. For directly the mind begins to operate there is introduced the element of permanency and constancy. The deepest and most real pleasures only begin in the realm of mentality. The man who hears music only to beat time or remember a catchy tune is shut out of the immense joy of the intellectual love of music. So the young man who lives in a fever of hot-house s.e.xuality, of absorbing intrigues in the dance-room, or the morbid atmosphere of the street corner, is shut out of all the exquisite joys of love. He does not know this, any more than the irreligious man knows what he loses through an absence of the spiritual sense. But he must be told.

The basic principle of s.e.x values is that s.e.x is immoral so far as the physical side outweighs in proportion the emotional and mental--so far indeed, as the act becomes the motive and not the incident. s.e.x may be dedicated only to love; divorced from love, it is an abuse. There can be no exceptions to this rule, and we can only clarify our ideas as to what is and what is not love. Perhaps this maxim, which we learn by gradual experience, will help us. s.e.x pa.s.sion quickly burns itself out. The pleasures derived from pa.s.sion will be of a purely temporary nature, without the satisfaction which alone comes from permanence. All physical things are less permanent than the mental. There is no joy, no divine nature in s.e.x, save where from the ashes of pa.s.sion rises the phoenix of the "s.e.xual" but the super-pa.s.sionate attachment. And this permanent possession can only come, whether in marriage or outside, where the mind, healthily developed and exercised, is taking its true place in the expression of pure love.

_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._

Footnotes:

[1] _The Origin of s.e.xual Modesty_, by Edward Westermarck.

[2] _Vide_ R. V. Jellyman (1838) 8 C and P, 604.

[3] Until recently incest was not a civil offence.

[4] The second object of marriage is declared to be "a remedy against sin...; that such persons as have not the gift of continency marry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body."

[5] 1 Cor. vii. 8, 9. "Burn" means s.e.x-obsession as mentioned on page 38.

[6] "Where the decree Tametsi of the Council of Trent has not been proclaimed, marriage is const.i.tuted by mere consent freely exchanged between persons who are by natural and canonical law competent and able to intermarry."--Geary's _Marriage and Family Relations_. (Now altered by _Ne temere_-decree, but the principle remains.)

[7] We have already commented on the strange inconsistency of regarding the s.e.x-act as evil _per se_ outside marriage, and as a virtue in marriage.

[8] I am using "celibacy" to imply complete physical chast.i.ty.

[9] With the curious inconsistency, already referred to, that in marriage non-celibacy is a virtue.

[10] Except by Act of Parliament.

[11] The Majority Report of the Divorce Commission is a good instance of the unnecessary hards.h.i.+p which results from half-hearted proposals of this kind. Divorce is to be allowed, for example, after desertion for three years; why not for two? Or again, the wife of an incurable drunkard is to be free to obtain divorce, while the unhappy wife of a man who suffers from violent fits of intermittent drunkenness is to be denied this relief.

[12] I refrain from adding "economic" reasons, for I believe that the State should remove, as far as possible, all such obstacles against healthy parents begetting children.

[13] Procuration for the purpose of prost.i.tution is of course an entirely different matter.

[14] No actual physical harm need result from an incestuous union. The only effect which seems to be caused is that the characteristics to be hereditarily transmitted are doubled. Thus with only a small grain of insanity in a family the chances of aggravated insanity appearing in the offspring of a brother and sister would be considerable.

[15] Spiritual affinity was a bar, so that not only could not G.o.dparents marry each other, but there could be no valid unions between a G.o.dparent and the child's father or mother. (Geary's _Marriage and Family Relations_.)

[16] Some apology must be made for the use of this hybrid term. The unwarrantable confusion of Greek and Latin terminology must, however, be laid at the door of popular use.