Sex--The Unknown Quantity Part 12

The average woman is either almost entirely lacking in s.e.x desire or she is abnormally active in that function. In truth, the same state of affairs prevails here, as in so many other phases of our modern life, namely, there is no balance. We are a civilization of extremes; we are one-sided, abnormal; distorted. We are seeking the pivotal point of our destiny, which is the soul, but few have reached that point. Those who have not, are groping through the jungles of the mental plane of consciousness, upheld on the one hand by the upward trend of their being, which seeks the level of the soul-conscious state; and held back on the other hand by the trammels of the sense-conscious type from which the race has developed to its present condition.

Those instances where women indulge in excesses are comparatively rare in proportion to numbers, and they loom large in perspective because of their very incongruity with our ideals of womanly conduct. The vast majority of women may be safely trusted to use their s.e.x-freedom, when it shall have truly arrived, for the purpose of finding that one and only mate which their souls instinctively know to be our rightful heritage--the proverbial "pearl of great price" which insures immortality in the bliss of union with our Beloved.

Love, when freed from the illusions of sense; from the shackles of commercialism; from the bonds of error regarding the meaning and purpose of marriage; freed from selfishness and licentiousness; will solve the question of s.e.x-promiscuity. This for the obvious reason that Love seeks its own. If left free to seek, it will find.

But, if s.e.x promiscuity is far from being free-love, if the doctrine of s.e.x freedom is fraught with many dangers under our present social system, it must be conceded that no one method of social evolution, thus far devised, can be recommended as ideally perfect. The best that we can hope to do is to emphasize the importance and the sacredness and the innate purity of the s.e.x-relation, while conceding to both s.e.xes all the personal liberty possible.

And above all, we should avoid condemnation of those who claim the right to freedom, lest we cover up a condition which can but be the better for being open to the light. Particularly should we s.h.i.+eld women from the charge of immorality, and licentiousness, when we see them straying down the by-paths of the senses, in their quest for freedom, remembering that the centuries of repression and submission and consequent deception have left their mark upon woman's temperament.

Man has for ages boasted of his s.e.x virility; of his conquests in what he has termed "love." Not infrequently a man's choice of a wife is the result of much seeking in the garden of Life; and much sipping of the honey from the various flowers that grow therein. Often, indeed, a man frankly tells the woman he would marry that he knows he loves her above all other women for the convincing reason that he has tried so many and none have held him. Should a woman make the same confession and draw the same conclusion, he would be horrified.

It must be admitted, then, that the term "free-lovers" is applied only to those who defy Public Opinion and claim their right to respect and morality despite their defiance of Society's false standards of morality. These standards are false because they are based upon criticism and censure of results instead of upon motives.

Society ignores, if it does not actually encourage, frivolous flirtations, and frowns most harshly upon instances of real love. It sets the seal of disapproval and ostracism upon those who, because of circ.u.mstances or possibly because of indifference to man-made laws, take their affairs into their own hands and refuse to exhibit either penitence or shame when the world discovers that they neglected the marriage ceremony. If two persons truly love each other and there is nothing to interfere with their undergoing the publicity of a marriage ceremony, well and good, unless, indeed, it is a matter of principle with them that our social customs are a fetich. But there are innumerable instances where there are obstacles to unions which to overcome would involve hards.h.i.+ps and suffering to others, or where absurd laws prevent marriage, and where two persons loving each other, prefer to pay the price of social ostracism to separation. Such as these lose nothing by Society's disapproval, but Society does lose something by persecuting those who are independent enough and honest enough to act from motive, rather than from custom, and who insist upon maintaining their self-respect, in the face of criticism.

Self-respect is not related to braggadocio.

It must be admitted that as yet there are few persons who have the courage to endure martyrdom for their convictions, which is, perhaps, just as well, because the majority are unable to distinguish between brazen shamelessness and unashamedness. The average woman will stick to the safe habit of dissembling.

Women have learned the lesson of the cat too thoroughly to jump immediately from the back-yard of Deception to the front porch of Truth.

In this one respect at least, however much she may indulge her desire for frankness in other directions, a woman will lie valiantly, self-protectingly, and continually, even though she follow in secret the example of the cat, which (seeing its master come home from the hunt with a string of birds, and displaying, with much pride and satisfaction, the results of his prowess), conceived the idea that it would also be a fine thing for her to go forth and kill the canary.

But to tabby's surprise, her ability was rewarded with chastis.e.m.e.nt; whereupon she pondered the question over and over: "How can it be, that what is virtue in man is vice in a cat?"

We are not told in the story what conclusion she arrived at, but we can imagine that her conclusion was that which women have arrived at, in a similar situation, to wit: man is unjust and unreasonable, but he is also stronger than I am, and therefore, while I shall follow his example, I shall take good care to hide the feathers.

In the meantime, we are crossing the bridge that leads from the jungles of our animal nature, where prowl the beasts of deceit; greed; selfishness; sensuality; vanity; avarice; and domination; to the Heights, illumined by Love set free.

Let us not jostle and crowd each other too harshly, while we are en route.

But, of course, we are confronted with the pertinent query as to what, if any, absolute standard of morality there can be in matters of the s.e.x relation. Freedom is so easily misconstrued into implying s.e.x-promiscuity; and monogamy, the final survival of the various systems of marriage, has in its modern as well as in its ancient aspect so much of coercion; and coercion is cited as the insuperable obstacle to attainment of the supreme state of spiritual s.e.x-union, that the would-be initiate becomes confused, and is lost in a maze of paradoxes.

Moral distinctions are too fine for the undeveloped man-animal, and that is the reason why man-made laws have been necessary. The objection to them is not in their original intention, but in their failure to die after they have become senile.

Moral standards are as unstable as the s.h.i.+fting sands of the sea.

"Our moral sentiments," say Letourneau, "are simply habits incarnate in our brain, or instincts artificially created; and thus an act reputed culpable at Paris, or at London, may be, and frequently is, held innocent at Calcutta or at Pekin."

And Emerson, the intellectual Seer, says: "There is a soul at the centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe."

It is a colossal piece of impudent presumption, when we come to think about it, for Man to ask the Supreme, Absolute, Infinite Power to forgive him. But, if we cannot wrong the universe, we can and we do wrong ourselves and each other as mortals.

That is the whole gist of the story. We are constantly wronging ourselves and each other and calling upon G.o.d to support us in our strife when G.o.d cannot know aught save the call of Love.

The growing, evolving race, has found it necessary to establish certain loosely defined codes of morals and of social ethics, in the same way that man has bridled the horse that he may control him; incidentally, we may observe that where this bridle formerly included "blinders," it now permits the horse to see whither he is going.

Perhaps a brief survey of the standards of s.e.xual morality which have upheld (or down-held, just as we look at it) the human race until now, may be illuminating.

It has been disputed, if, under the matriarchal system of polygamy, the moral condition of the people was higher than under the patriarchal system, and probably no satisfactory conclusion can be reached upon this point, save and except that any condition, however primitive, which permitted to the female freedom of choice, must be better than that in which she is the object of coercion. This is evident, because the degree of coercion can never, under any circ.u.mstances, be as great with the male as with the female.

Therefore, matriarchal polygamy is comparatively more nearly moral than is patriarchal polygamy, and when all is said and done, historic morality is comparative.

But from the standpoint of modern idealism matriarchal polygamy seems to be a very low estimate of moral conduct; and from the standpoint of s.e.xual idealism it is a low standard; a standard only a degree higher than that of patriarchal polygamy--a standard which is the lineal descendant of the ethics of the marriage-by-capture period of human evolution, and from which we are today by no means free, owing to economic, religious, and ethical conditions.

There is a tacit acknowledgement on the part of the unorganized brotherhood of the Enlightened, that laws are made for the guidance of the ma.s.ses. Unbridled ignorance is a dangerous force; as dangerous as an unbridled horse, unless it be that the horse exhibits intelligence enough to know where it is headed for and how to avoid obstacles en route.

And even as the laws of a community are made for the intellectually undeveloped, so the commandments were compiled for the spiritual guidance of the uninitiated.

We trust that it will not shock the sensibilities of the "pious" when we affirm and maintain and insist that the ten commandments are not "from G.o.d" in the letter of the statements, as postulated by Theology.

They bear all the earmarks of the ancient Hebrew race-mind, which placed a man's "neighbor's wife" in the same category with "his ox and his a.s.s and his house" and his other property and possessions.

There is but one commandment of the Most High G.o.d, alias Eros, and that is so interwoven into the fabric of creation that we cannot break it if we would, although we may and do break ourselves in trying to live in defiance of its immutability.

"We cannot wrong the universe!"

Our moral standards, in so far as they relate to the s.e.xes, are at present the logical descent of Hebrew adherence to phallic wors.h.i.+p, engrafted into the Roman outgrowth of the G.o.d-idea. Both the Hebrew and the Roman customs maintained the inferiority and the consequent subjugation of woman, despite the fact that the Roman Church exalted the Virgin as a personality; but the postulate of the Church that Mary was so exalted by a miracle, which never could be repeated, killed any forlorn hope which might have lurked within the female breast regarding a possible emulation of her example. No other woman might do more than cringe and crawl and beg and whine; or cajole and wheedle and buy the Holy Mother's intercession, which intercession, even if successful, could at best but secure her an eternal job in the Heavenly hierarchy, where, s.e.xless, companionless, mateless, anaemic, she could look all day at a male G.o.d whom she could never presume to reach.

Rather a lonesome outlook for eternity, and it is small wonder that woman got discouraged at the prospect. The miracle is rather that she endured it so long.

But the Roman system had at least one virtue. It instilled into the mortal mind of its people a sub-conscious realization of the ideal of monogamy; not an ideal monogamy by a long way, but a monogamic ideal.

They are quite different; but inasmuch as it is an outward semblance of a more spiritual conception of marriage than that of polygamy, it is the highest ideal yet realized for the many, and does duty in our present day and age, as consistent with our superior civilization.

Monogamy at least pretends to be a marriage by mutual consent; and even in the pretense there is the germ of a hope; but it would be folly to deny that underneath this appearance of marriage by mutual consent we see the remnants of the traditional idea of the right by purchase, and therefore we have the jealousy that arises by virtue of our property rights.

The right by purchase a.s.suredly underlies our present-day marriage system, although it is disguised as economic necessity; as a religious sacrament; and as a suitable or a brilliant "catch"--a type of marriage by capture which forms the ideal of our own upper-cla.s.s women and which the housemaid copies in her limited way.

Viewed from the surface evidence, the average woman of today is, as Kipling says, far "more deadly than the male." She is more unscrupulous in her methods; more unreasonable in her demands; more devoid of sentiment or sympathy; more fickle in her desires and more nagging in her complaints. But, when all is said and done, we must admit that woman is only expressing her inheritance. When she becomes balanced, the s.e.xes will meet on common ground.

Woman's demand for better physical environment; for more comfort, and more justice; presages, after all, a higher and a more satisfactory idea of the marriage relations.h.i.+p. Underneath this materialistic demand, there is the silent voice of the soul calling for a more ideal marriage relation. It is the materialistic expression of a spiritual urge and will in time rise to higher ground. It is a demand for a better state than that which our grandmothers enjoyed, or endured.

We have seen in the history of marriage, that the estimate of s.e.xual immorality has been based, all too frequently, upon woman's disregard for the rights of her husband in her person.

For centuries the burden of sustaining a s.e.xual moral standard has rested almost wholly upon the shoulders of the women; and it is therefore natural that the present-day defiant att.i.tude of many women toward the traditional standard should be viewed with alarm; and there is more in this thought of alarm than the mere anxiety on the part of man to hold woman to her appointed task of guardian of marital morality.

Although men may wander from the home and fireside, it is a peculiar fact that they generally hold to a mental string by which they may find their way back again, very frequently the more contented to be there for their wanderings. But with a woman it is different. Once a woman has broken loose from the ties that have bound her to her inherited post of morality-preserver, she seldom goes back again, but keeps on her way until she finds that for which she seeks, or gives up the search of her own volition.

Is this, then, evidence that it is a woman's first duty to "stay put"

when matrimonial exigencies have placed her in a specific "pocket" of the matrimonial billiard-table?

We believe not; and this belief is founded upon the fact that the female principle, which is, we admit, the centralizing, centripetal force in the cosmos, is not always manifested in the form of woman.

The balanced individual is bi-s.e.xual, even as the balanced "twain-one"

is bi-s.e.xual. If man was all male principle, and woman all female principle they would not be complementary, but ant.i.thetical. Each must be balanced within himself and herself before they can merge into each other.

Affinities are numerous, but mates are found but once; otherwise, the problems that are being discussed here would never have arisen.

If, then, as has been shown in the fact that only counterpartal unions are real, eternal and spiritually indissoluble; and that only true mates can thus unite, and when thus united have no desire to wander, what becomes of our ideas of s.e.xual infidelity?

Since the very law of the Cosmos has seen to it that we cannot be untrue to the only one who seemingly has a right to our fidelity in the s.e.x relation and since this union can become general only by freeing love from bondage, what becomes of the laboriously built up ethics of our social intercourse?

Are they to be abandoned as of no value?