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Title: Manhood
The facts of life presented to men
Author: Clement Wood
Release date: February 10, 2026 [eBook #77903]
Language: English
Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1924
Credits: Tim Miller, chenzw, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANHOOD ***
LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 91
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Manhood: The Facts of Life
Presented to Men
Clement Wood
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1924
Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
MANHOOD: THE FACTS OF LIFE
PRESENTED TO MEN
CONTENTS
Page
1. The Threshold of Manhood 7
Adolescence 7
Education in Life 8
Training of the Adolescent 10
Growth of Sentiment 12
Sex in Life 13
2. The Evolution of Love 15
Primitive Man 15
Natural Love 17
Romantic Love 18
Conjugal Love 19
Freud’s Analysis 20
3. The Ethics of Mating 24
Toward Equality 24
Choice of a Mate 26
As to Children 28
Double and Single Codes 29
Duration of Courtship 30
4. Proper Mating 33
The Purpose of Mating 33
Eugenics 34
Eugenics in the Future 37
Birth Control 39
5. Education for Life 40
In Our Schools 40
In the Home 42
Education in Love 44
6. Penalties of Mistakes 47
Restraint in Youth 47
Over Indulgence 50
Venereal Diseases 52
7. The Purity Ideal 56
Chastity 56
Morality Today and Tomorrow 58
The Ideal of Purity 62
MANHOOD: THE FACTS OF LIFE PRESENTED TO MEN
I.
THE THRESHOLD OF MANHOOD
_Adolescence._--It is usual to say that youth, from its pinnacle,
surveys the promised land of manhood as Moses on the mountain top saw
another promised land. But Moses was old, and was prohibited entry
into the land; youth is young, and, but for premature death, will know
every detail of the valley of manhood for long years. Youth sees the
valley, which has its heights too, not clearly, but through mists of
illusion: especially romantic mists of misconception of love and of
his probability of success, and gross mists due to early perverted
education. This book will aid in clearing away some of these mists,
that the true beauty of the valley may better appear.
The period of adolescence usually occurs between fourteen and sixteen,
although it may be hastened or retarded in exceptional cases. The
altered physical nature is reflected in the mental and spiritual
nature. G. Stanley Hall, in his notable work, “Adolescence,” speaks of
this period as “a new birth,” and proceeds:
“Powers and faculties, essentially non-existent before, are now
born, and of the older instincts and impulses some are reinforced
and greatly developed, while others become subordinate, so that new
relations are established, and the ego finds a new center.”
Heredity has played its chief part; the childish environment,
especially the intricate and often hidden ties between son and
parents, has started the development; now a physical change takes
place in the youth, which slowly lifts him from boyhood to manhood.
Physically, mentally, morally, the man is being slowly shaped; out of
the plastic material of youth, as played upon by the outside world,
the youth himself is shaping what the man will be. A puppy is born
with its eyes closed; the usual youth faces life with his eyes largely
closed. Tactful and skilful handling by others, intelligent direction
by himself, may make a rounded and developed man of him; cramming,
bullying, and ignorance or false teaching concerning the things which
most vitally concern him, may warp and twist him for the rest of his
days.
_Education in Life._--In much of the world, education in sexual
matters is the accepted thing. Savage tribes usually have it.
Oriental civilizations practice it today. Our ancestors, down to
Christianity, knew it. But the pendulum went so far in this direction
that Christianity adopted the opposite extreme. The body, it held,
was worthless, along with all of this world; only the next world was
important. Everything of the body was vile, everything of the soul
sacred. Out of this grew the taboo or prohibition of discussion upon
this vital subject, from which Christian culture has suffered ever
since.
For this teaching is not true; the earth, the body, are not vile. Man
in a wholesale way can not long live a lie; accordingly, the practice
of men from the beginning contradicted the theory, and the excessive
devotion to things of the body wormed its way throughout mankind, and
even to the inmost heights of the church itself. The parent, if he or
she is to aid the son best to face life, must face reality here, and
disregard the taboo; the parent must educate the son about his body.
Suppose the parent keeps silent, as too many do; does this mean that
the son will grow up, a pure and unstained Galahad, until somehow
instinctively, on his marriage night, the truth is revealed to him in a
lightning flash of inspiration? The contrary is usually the case. Boys
will and must learn of sex and their bodies. They learn from chance
hints dropped by their elders; they learn from books, even the Bible
and the dictionary; most of all, they learn from the more corrupt and
less restrained of their companions. Undirected, they are almost sure
to get a gutter conception of sex: masturbation or onanism, relations
with other boys, and relations with women without real love, will be
taught the average boy during grammar school days, if he is not guarded
by the one sure defense, a knowledge of the facts.
This knowledge is the more valuable, if to it be added to a restrained
example on the part of his parents. If the boy has a father whose life
he can admire, if the girl has a mother whose actions are restrained,
this example is a louder preachment than words spoken or read. The
simple mysteries of life can be pointed out in the life-stories of
plants and animals; the mystery of new-hatched birds and animals
becomes a clean and simple symbol of the boy’s own origin, and points
to him the role that he will, in the normal course of nature, fulfil.
_Training of the Adolescent._--The first great essential in training
the adolescent is keeping the body fit. The sexual nature will be
strong enough; have no fear of that. Nature’s method is, in the male,
an insatiable desire; in the female, an almost insatiable receptivity.
A female gnat can create 1,000,000,000 individuals in one month; a
normal woman could have more than thirty children, and a normal man
could be father to many thousands. The conditions of our life have
made this unnecessary and indeed economically impossible; the task
is to rein human reproduction, not to stimulate it. Normal exercise
drains off excess energy, and postpones the boy’s inevitable sexual
insistence. This is even more true of the boy forced to work in office,
workshop, or factory during the day. Beyond the negative restraint thus
bred, there is a positive result in bodily well-being. For the man will
regret to the end of his days if he has let himself develop into a
weakling. Sport is an admirable regimen, both for its self-development
and for its production of social spirit, or team work, which is so
essential to a happy participation in human society.
Keeping the mind fit is almost as important; and that means adequate
education, especially in the facts of the universe; in acquiring a
scientific framework in which to fit the facts, and in cultivating
hobbies of investigation in appropriate places in this frame. Too much
coddling of the ego is incompatible with a real understanding of the
vastness of the universe, and of the relative permanent unimportance
of the individual. Out of this will grow the moral virtues, truth,
straightforwardness, desire for the noble and good, and that temporary
unselfishness which is the highest form of selfishness.
At adolescence, the boy’s organs of generation alter especially.
In addition to the deepening in his voice, the squareness of his
shoulders, the increased firmness in the muscles, there comes the
growth of hair under the arms and elsewhere on the body, and the
increased size of the reproductive organs. The boy who understands
this in advance is forearmed. During the whole adolescent stage, the
seminal fluid is pre-eminently needed by the growing body. The body
secretes it, and reabsorbs it; that which it cannot absorb is rejected
by a natural process, usually during sleep. The boy, unprepared for
this, will surely be worried by it; misinformation from ignorant
companions, the advertisements of quack doctors, will alarm him with
threats of loss of manly vigor and other mainly imaginary ills. If the
boy indulges his sexual nature at this time, in onanism or intercourse,
the body may be and in most cases is permanently weakened and stunted.
There is a time for all things; and the time for sexual reservation is
during the growing period of adolescence.
The growth of sentiment at this period will induce the boy to turn to
the poets, the philosophers, and the nobler forms of literature; for
he is shaping high ideals, which will to some extent control his life
afterwards. All of these are helpful, if contact with them is based
upon a root knowledge of his own body and of the scientific facts of
the universe. Armed with a knowledge of sex, he cannot be too severely
harmed by the smutty gossip of companions, or by pornographic books
and pictures which may come before his attention. The ignorant boy is
unhealthily stimulated by such books; the sting is taken out of them by
a comprehension of the facts of life.
_Growth of Sentiment._--Now begins an alteration in his way of
regarding women. As a child, he has not bothered especially about his
difference from girls; now they become collectively the desired ones,
and he is sure sooner or later to pick out one of them as his beloved
one. As Mantegazza says in his “The Book of Love,” “Rarely is the first
love true love”; the youth fixes his affections on the most convenient
and nearest girl, as a rule; only a process of trial and error will
eliminate those unsuitable as life companions from those suitable.
If he has been properly aided in his thinking, he will neither make
the mistake of shrining woman as a deity, or of debasing her as a mere
sex vehicle; or, worse yet, combining these two false notions into a
morality which isolates a few women as angels, and lowers others into
demons. The truth is that they are neither essentially lower nor higher
than he himself; they are shoulder to shoulder with him, in a relative
equality. A father can do much here, in the way in which he treats his
own wife. Children insensibly absorb the real home attitude of their
parents; if this be vicious, all the moral platitudes in the world
cannot school the boy.
Along with this attitude at home, the wise parent will keep an eye
upon his son’s companions. He will not look for fine clothes or the
reverse, but for straightforward manly boys and decent girls, the more
intelligent the better.
_Sex in Life._--Early in the history of life, at about the stage of
the barnacles, the primitive female gave birth to a male separate
from herself, and the long procession of the males had commenced.
The influence of female sexual selection, which controlled down to
the time of man, slowly evolved the male from his diminutive size
and limited functions to a being as large as herself, or larger; and
the development of an artistic sense in her gave what is called male
efflorescence, or the gorgeous colors of male birds, the beards and
manes of goats, men, lions, and horses, the branching antlers of stags,
and many another ornamental sex differentiation. When the stage of
man is reached, sex has assumed an importance which cannot easily be
over-estimated. On the obvious side, it concerns much of the contact
during the period of adolescent and young maturity, in all of the
details connected with the selection and winning of a mate. After
the mate is obtained, it plays its important part in controlling the
whole love life of the man and woman. Underneath all this, it is the
driving force that impels to many of life’s activities. A man makes and
increases a competency or a fortune, builds a house, succeeds in his
private or public business, to earn the good will and continued love
of some woman; tunnels are driven through mountains, oceans united by
great canals, hills levelled and deserts watered into rose gardens,
largely for the same motive.
Reproduction is one of the primary tendencies of life; to prohibit it
is a perversion. Enforced celibacy of a priesthood or brotherhood or
sisterhood of religious persons is contrary to the obvious tendency
of life, and is a serious biological blunder. Below the stage of
man, throughout all the plant and animal kingdoms, this omnipresent
reproductive instinct, supplemented by the later mating instinct, is
exercised without conscious volition. In man, the instincts are still
present, but the conscious will has taken hold of the reins, and
guides toward the consummation desired. These instincts are essential
to life and its continuity; they are normal, clean, universal. They
are not shameful things, but splendid things. The shame lies in man’s
mis-vision of them as things vile; the splendor lies in their conscious
and intelligent voluntary use.
II.
THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE
_Primitive Man._--The modern world accepts the fact of man’s evolution
from the animal world, without understanding things that necessarily
flow from this. Among animals, sexual relations take place at proper
times and places, in such unions as have proven most valuable to
the particular species; we attach no blame to these. Among animals,
moreover, there is no conception of any relationship between coitus
or mating, and parturition or the birth of the child. The fact of
paternity is unknown.
One of the secondary sexual characteristics developed by female
selection was increased brain mass, evincing greater shrewdness. Thus
female choice developed in the higher mammals, and especially in man,
a reasoning power; and this in the end dethroned her. Among primitive
races, paternity is unknown; there are races existing today which do
not understand it. An African chief was asked by a puzzled Christian
missionary, “But have you no children?” In good-natured tolerance
he corrected his inquisitor; “Among us, men do not have children.”
When the idea slowly dawned on man’s mind that he was related to his
child, we may be sure that the promiscuity, widespread among races,
of early sexual matings had been broadened to include at least some
mating pairs. For, in a state of promiscuity, fatherhood could not be
established; any one of a number of males might be the father of the
child. With a mating couple, the thing was different; and the idea
came, and came again.
Savage reasoning is a slow and tortuous thing. When the man protested,
“But I am kin to the child!” the wise ones of the tribe would
answer, “But you were not sick!” In their minds childbirth (and
hence relationship to the child) was always accompanied by sickness.
Accordingly, the awkward savage mind invented a queer custom known as
the _couvade_, still found among certain backward tribes. By means of
this, when the wife became ill in childbirth, the husband took to his
bed, and was nursed just as assiduously by the medicine men as the wife
was. He could now answer, triumphant, “I have been sick! This proves
that I am kin to my child.”
This idea, once gaining ground, completely overturned the former
status of women and men, which had been largely a matriarchate, or
mother-rule. Up to this time, woman had had the sole choice of mates,
and the leading place in the tribe; for the young were hers, and
fatherhood was unknown. Now, with paternity acknowledged, the man, part
kin to the child, thereby had the right to part control over it. His
wishes conflicted with the mother’s; this led, for the first time in
the history of life, to a conflict between the male and the female.
No male animal ever fights or abuses his female; it is left for man,
made, he confesses, in the image of his creator, to oppress his mate.
The male was stronger; and he soon reduced to subjection not only
the child, but his wife as well. The patriarchal period, or age of
father-rule, commenced; the subjection of women started, the blackest
period in human history.
_Natural Love._--Love, the innate interest in male and female to secure
fertilization and cross-reproduction, appears first as natural love,
or sheer animal passion. Religion itself has one of its roots deep in
the erotic nature of man; the widespread primitive worship of the love
force and of sexual symbols is evidence of this. The phallic origin
of such symbols as the cross and the trinity, the yonic derivation of
the sacred seven-branched candlestick, are instances known to every
anthropologist.
It must not be forgotten that, in its natural state, natural love is
worthy to be called pure and noble. It embraced both monogamy and
polygamy, depending upon the wishes of the parties concerned. It must
never be overlooked that monogamy has developed as a female ideal, not
a male one. For the compulsion on the male is: Fertilize! That on the
female: Select! The male’s biological imperative is to fertilize as
many females as he can; that of the female, is to select only the best
and finest male as her mate. Monogamy spread as a property right, to
insure that the sons of a man should be legitimate, in order that they
might inherit his property. But this meant monogamy for the wife only;
the husband was still at liberty to have concubines and harlots.
There are those who state that the coming of Christianity elevated
woman, especially in the worship of the Virgin Mary. After all, she is
distinctly inferior in power to the great mother goddesses, Demeter
(dea-mater, goddess-mother), Cybele, Astarte, Ashtoreth, who sprang
up during the matriarchate. In fact, early Christianity definitely
lowered pagan conceptions of womanhood. Christ himself said, “there
be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of
heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”
This lifted the mutilated man above the man who was mate of a woman.
Paul praised celibacy above mating. Early Christian authorities were
even more outspoken. Tertullian exclaims, “Woman, you are the gate to
hell!” Again, “Celibacy must be chosen, even though the human race
should perish.” Hieronymus says, “Matrimony is always a vice.” Origines
declares, “Matrimony is impure and unholy; a means of sensual passion.”
Christianity; then, had swung the pendulum too far toward giving all
worth to things of the next world, and holding things of this world
as vile. The growth of common intelligence has altered this, and the
purity and nobility of natural love is now generally recognized.
_Romantic Love._--The savage had no conception of romantic love, and
neither did the classical world. It grew amid the unnatural conditions
of the age of roving knighthood, with its long separation of mated
couples, and the danger to isolated highborn women from attacks.
Romantic love was a sublimation, or emotional substitute, for the
intense sexual need grown during such absences; it grew in proportion
to the greater equality and independence of women during the period.
It differs from natural love in one thing: natural love requires the
possession of the person of the beloved; romantic love is satisfied
with the presence of the beloved.
There was often the touch of outlawed love in romantic matings. At the
Court of Viscountess Ermengarde of Narbonne it was stated and approved
that:
“Nature and custom have erected an insuperable barrier between
conjugal affection and the love which unites two lovers. It would
be absurd to draw comparisons between two things which have neither
resemblance nor connection.”
Here it is assumed that the love between two lovers must be an outlawed
thing, apart from the love of wife and husband, or conjugal love. The
romances of great geniuses, Abelard and Heloise, Dante and Beatrice,
Petrarch and Laura, Tasso and Eleanora, and a hundred others, go to
indicate, with the romantic literature of the whole world, that love is
a higher law, that will and should prevail over the laws of men and the
conventions of society. In this it is in harmony with the teachings of
biology and a sound sociology.
_Conjugal Love._--Also a late growth is the love of husband and
wife, or conjugal love. This requires monogamy, and a certain strong
self-control. It is, as has been indicated, often at war with romantic
love. In certain lands, as generally in France today, the two are
separated, and wife and mistress are rarely united in the same person.
Anglo-Saxon custom is the reverse of this, and there is a strong
tendency here to unite the love for a lover with the love for a wedded
mate. There is no doubt but that this is the higher, although the more
difficult, solution of the conflict. More will be said on this subject
later.
_Freud’s Analysis of Love Development._--Freud, who with his disciple
Jung has delved deeply into the hidden origins of the love force, has
divided the normal development of love in the human being into three
stages:
1. Auto-eroticism, or self love.
2. Homosexuality, or love of the same sex.
3. Heterosexuality, or love of the opposite sex.
The infant at first secures its erotic pleasure through the practice of
sucking to obtain its food. The instincts have not yet been separated;
the same act that satisfies hunger also satisfies love and other
primitive instincts. Soon the child begins to recognize the pleasure
in suckling apart from obtaining food, and, even after he has had
enough to eat, he will continue the motions of suckling, because of the
satisfaction that this gives to the erotic instinct. Then the child
discovers his own body, and passes into the stage of auto-eroticism,
narcissism, or self-love. He obtains a pleasure from handling his
genitals and other parts of his body--a pleasure for which he is soon
punished, by his elders, as something naughty. Normally he will grow
out of this stage into the next; but he may become fixed erotically at
this stage, and continue for life an auto-erotic. Such rare cases find
their sole sexual pleasure in onanism; and some vestiges of the stage
persist throughout life.
The second stage is when the child realizes that there are other people
in the world, children especially, and that he can obtain erotic
pleasure from contact with genitals similar to his own. Of course, he
does not yet know that the opposite sex has differing organs; and he
attributes to every child organs the same as his own. This gives rise
to the period of homosexuality. In its lowest manifestation, this is
put into physical practice. It should normally be sublimated; that is,
the child should develop as an emotional substitute a strong affection
for members of his own sex. Strong friendships between boys and boys,
boys and men, and men and men, as well as between females of various
ages, are the ways in which this force is drained off constructively.
For, despite the opinion of Edward Carpenter and others among moderns,
and Sappho, Socrates and others among ancients, that this is a high
form of love, whose disciples are called Urnings or heaven-creatures,
it is clear that those who never pass beyond homosexuality are
instances of development arrested at the second stage. In the normal
development of the child today, this is entirely sublimated into
friendships.
At the same time, it should be emphasized here that childish practices
of onanism or homosexuality, even when carried over into adolescence,
are not what they are painted by medical quacks and superficial
thinkers. They are not vicious sins, or even sins at all; they are
merely preliminary and sterile steps in love. The reason that they
are not high forms of love is that they are contrary to the tendency
of life itself, which has developed the reproductive organs, not for
sterile stimulation, but for reproduction. Both onanism and homosexual
love are barren. The normal human love life must go beyond them.
The third stage is heterosexuality, or love for members of the opposite
sex. Here the bodily organism comes into harmony with the tendency
of life itself; this is the highest stage of bodily usage in contact
with other human beings. The rest of this study will be devoted to an
elaboration of its proper development.
Bousfield, in his “The Elements of Practical Psycho-Analysis,” has
indicated statistically the evolution of the sexual components of the
normal child in the following table:
_Infant_
Autosexuality 100%
_Child of 12_
Autosexuality 40%
Homosexuality 50%
Heterosexuality 10%
_Normal Individual at Puberty_
Autosexuality 20%
Homosexuality 30%
Heterosexuality 50%
From this it will be seen that vestiges of the lower stages persist in
the higher. These do no harm, if the individual flowers well in his
environment. Any serious obstacle in life, which cannot be overcome or
passed, may dam up the flow of the life source, and cause a regression
to one of the earlier stages. And, of course, in abnormal cases, there
may be fixations at either of the earlier stages. But these are sterile
stages, and the normal boy will soon step out of them into the third
stage, which means manhood.
III.
THE ETHICS OF MATING
_Toward Equality._--The whole course of woman, for the last hundred
years, has been toward a relative equality with man. It will be
recalled that the first situation was a female superiority, in all
essential matters; she had sole choice of her mate, as among animals,
and was in charge of all important tribal matters. This was followed
by man’s dominance, and the subject of women. Now the scales are
swinging back toward justice, toward a situation in which the peculiar
merits and abilities of each sex will complement the other, and in
which mankind can go forward, man and woman hand in hand, toward a
realization of the noblest dreams yet dreamed by the race.
There can never be more than a relative equality; for absolute equality
is unknown in nature. Woman, by the very essence of her purpose as
mother of posterity and keeper of the home, is now, and may forever
be, bound to deal with lesser and more intimate affairs than men; that
is, to think more personally and concretely, and less impersonally and
abstractly, than men. Many women have shown a tendency to negative
this; yet even in the works of such brilliant women as George Sand,
George Eliot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Wolstonescraft, and
others, the typical woman’s note is not wanting, of brilliant detail
rather than lofty generalization. Men have made our civilization,
such as it is. They have made a government and a social system which
judges by dollars, and not by persons; a government which spends vast
sums yearly for better pigs, and nothing, or comparatively nothing,
for better babies. The influence of woman in our politics and our body
social will be to counterbalance this by an emphasis upon persons
rather than dollars. Prostitution will largely be ended; wars will be
lessened and perhaps abolished; the conservation of human life and
happiness will rank higher than the conservation of cotton plants and
oil wells.
The struggle has, in the main, already been won. A hundred years ago,
a woman could not vote or hold office. We have seen women in state
legislatures; in the national legislature; upon the state and federal
bench; and seated in the capitol of the largest state in the union.
We may yet see a woman in the president’s chair. A hundred years ago,
woman could not receive a general education, or engage in industry,
professional, or artistic life, on the same terms as man. Today,
there is no field in which she is not seen; no important institution
of learning which withholds from her the human heritage of the rich
achievements of men. A hundred years ago, she was dependent upon a man
for a meal-ticket; he held the purse strings. Her choice lay between
wife of a man who would feed and house her; mistress of a man who would
feed and house her; or harlot of many men who would feed and house her.
Today, she has conquered the economic field, and can afford to buy
her will of the world. She does not need to marry for a meal-ticket;
she has control of her own purse-strings. She is still incapacitated
temporarily by child-bearing; but motherhood pensions by the state
are a step toward removing this disability, which is so vitally
helpful to the state. She can afford, let it be said again with all
impressiveness, to buy her will of the world; and she will do so.
What the standpatters and regressives, who oppose woman’s entry into
the world of affairs, fail to take into account, is the difference
between sex and human affairs. Man is fitted to be a mate, a husband, a
father; that is his sex business. Woman is fitted to be a mate, a wife,
a mother; that is her sex business. Men and women both are fitted to
go beyond this, into spheres neither male nor female, but human. Such
matters as industry and business, in all of its phases; as professional
life, in all of its ramifications; as the world of art and literature,
in all of its beauties,--these are all human concerns, and not sex
affairs. They are neither male nor female: they are human. In them both
the man and the woman of the future will find themselves at home.
_Choice of a Mate._--The standpatters and regressives are especially
exercised over the fear that the woman will seek to wrest from man the
right to select a mate. Having lost everything else, they still cling
to the idea that it is immodest for a woman to propose, and proper for
a man to propose. During all the matriarchate, woman did the choosing;
as she does throughout the animal kingdom. There was nothing immodest
here. Indirectly, match-making mammas and designing daughters do much
of the actual choosing here; when this is covered over with a veil of
hypocrisy, a pretense that the male victims are really the choosers,
the standpatters find nothing immodest here.
There is an essential difference between male choice and female choice.
The man, following the biological imperative to fertilize at all costs,
starts out after a group of women, determined to capture one of them
for his mate. Which does he capture? Of course, the one he catches up
with first; and that means, the slowest of the group, the one least
fleet of foot, the one least fit to be the mother of his children and
of the future. When a woman is wooed by a number of men, which does she
choose for her mate? Not the weakest, the slowest, the one least fit to
be the father of her children; but, to the very contrary, she chooses
normally the finest, strongest, best, wisest, of all of her suitors.
Woman marries upward; man, downward. So it will be a good thing for
the race when the choice is no longer, in public esteem, essentially a
male prerogative; but is at least a matter of mutual agreement. There
is nothing immodest, and everything modest, in a woman’s letting a
man know, in all seriousness, that she is willing to marry him. The
proposal, as well as the acceptance, would ideally be a mutual thing.
_As to Children._--The tendency of life, and the purpose of mating,
is to have children. Economic organization today makes children a
hardship, and indeed a luxury, in all but the very poorest homes. The
very poor, at times impelled onward by their religion (which subserves
the ruling economic class, ever desirous of a large number of the
working class), proceed to have many more children than they can raise
even with the bleakest necessities of life. The educated classes, with
more background of culture, adjudge that they cannot afford to have any
children at all, or can have only one, two, or three. Statistics not so
long ago indicated that half of the children born in this country died
before reaching manhood; which means that the educated and cultured
classes do not even replace themselves, while the country and the world
is populated with the haphazard offspring, children born in filth
and poverty, and yanked up rather than reared, of the poorest, most
inefficient, least intelligent and least cultured of the community.
More than this, the very wealthy, through their wealth-disease and
natural inertia, elect to have few or no children, as a rule. If men
had deliberately set about framing a system of reproduction which would
breed down the human stock, they could not have arrived at a better one
than the present system.
The intelligent co-operation of men and women in politics and social
planning will inevitably alter this condition; lifting the poor, and
seeing to the continuation of the species by the most fit. In fact, the
despised poor, the past few decades, in various countries, have shown
a commendable ability to lift themselves; it may ultimately be their
efforts that raise the social level. The wise couple, having educated
themselves as well as possible, and with some of the economic load of
today removed, will mutually decide to have a normal family, of four
or five children. Fewer is unfair to the children themselves; and the
fact of parenthood is one of the great helpful shaping influences on
the life of any adult man or woman. It is an indispensable experience
toward complete manhood or womanhood.
_Double and Single Codes._--Down to the last two decades, men have
insisted upon a double code of morality. By this, men were expected,
as adolescents, to sow their wild oats, to enjoy women sexually; and
then to marry a pure woman, and after marriage to have the right to
continue their varied sexual experiences. Meanwhile, women were to be
absolutely pure, if they were to be on the market as wives; and, if
these were proposed to by no man, they were to gratefully accept the
lot of spinster or old maid, and wither into a vinegary sterile branch,
diseased with ingrown sex. The woman who took one step aside from the
narrow path, who sowed one smallest oatling, was thereafter damned,
outlawed, a social pariah, the prey of every man. Needless to say,
any woman who could be seduced by a man was at once lowered into the
level of the prostitute; and virtuous women and ordinary men united in
casting stones upon her in the daytime, while the men visited her at
night. Saintly old Augustine phrased the vicious teaching:
“Take the prostitutes out of human things, and you will disturb the
whole world with lust.”
The prostitute, then, was to be kept in a living hell, to render the
lot of the virtuous women the easier; not that men eased up in their
attempts on the honors of wives and maidens. Needless to say, with
the altered status of woman, with her economic ability today to buy
her will of the world, she will not buy the iniquitous old double
standard of morality. She may essay to buy a single standard for
both, a standard of monogamy, pure and simple. It is doubtful if she
could compel men to follow this, even if she had sole control of the
purse-strings, which she has not. But her actions, since her financial
liberation, have not indicated that this is her universal desire. She
will probably achieve a single standard for men and women, more elastic
than the one mentioned: a standard by which men and women can select
monogamy, a limited promiscuity, or whatever arrangement they prefer,
so long as it is voluntary, and no advantage be taken of the young and
the untaught.
_Duration of Courtship._--It is obvious that true mating must be
contemporaneous with true love; true conjugal love, with as much of
the element of the romantic as the parties can acquire. When love
ends, mating becomes immoral. Yet it should not be lightly surrendered
by either party. Any love relationship is a social thing, affecting
parents and relatives, and properly including the production of
children, in most cases. All this should be soberly considered; it
does not make love, but it should cause parties to consider carefully,
in order not to give up love for a light or frivolous cause. Marriage
is a difficult matter of readjustments, on both sides. Friction is
inevitable, as in any human association. There must be a mutual give
and take, a tolerance and forbearance on both sides.
One of the soundest methods of prolonging normal love is a continuation
of the courtship, on the part of both men and women. Wives are too
prone, having become married, to assume that their chase (the sole
object of their life being, they are taught, to marry a meal-ticket)
is over; and that the husband, tied to them for life, can not escape.
Accordingly, they neglect him, give all their attention to clubs,
social affairs, and what not, or, more commonly and seriously, give
an inordinate amount of attention to their children, shutting their
husbands out from the love and attention they are entitled to. This is
one of the surest methods of killing conjugal love. Men, on their part,
too often regard the winning of the woman as the completion of their
chase; they have her, have her locked and tied with a marriage ring and
license, and can now stray and play outside the marriage fence with
impunity. Or they may remain sexually faithful, while discontinuing
their courtship, and substituting their business affairs for the former
important matter of courtship. This is just as sure a method of ending
conjugal love.
The ideal arrangement means a continuance of the period of courtship as
long as the mating lasts. Each party must make the effort--a pleasant
one, with rich rewards--of keeping the desire of the mated partner
alive and eager. At times there is an advantage in a similarity of
interests without the house, as well as concerning their joint home
affairs. Husband and wife who can collaborate in any work are, as a
rule, in a more advantageous position to retain their conjugal interest
in each other. Each mating is an experiment, with the odds somewhat
against continuing happiness, as life develops today. Only a fine and
consistent attempt, a constant sight of the other’s needs and wishes, a
genuine sympathy or feeling with the partner, will preserve the average
marriage. Yet the gain is no slight thing; there is perhaps no human
gain, in the love field, as high.
IV.
PROPER MATING
_The Purpose of Mating._--Even from the individual standpoint, mating
has more purpose than merely satisfying the love instinct. It is one of
the two undisputed methods of human immortality. Even after death, a
man or woman lives on in the lives of others who have been affected by
what he has been, or done, or said, or written. As Samuel Butler words
it,
Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again,
Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.
But more than this, men and women live on in their children. There
is an actual continuity of life here, in the germ passed on from the
parents to the child. In the race, we have been alive since life began;
in the race we shall live as long as our human strain persists, which
may be as long as life exists. Since this is one of our conscious
purposes, it lies upon us to make sure that our children have parents
fit in every way to bear the future. This brings up the matter of the
selection of the mate, from a broader angle.
If this is our conscious purpose, there is a deeper unconscious,
instinctive purpose which is the same as the tendency of the social
body, the race, itself: namely, the perpetuity of the race. It can only
reproduce itself through its individual members; each man or woman is
an outpost in the eternal struggle of the living organisms to continue
to alter as much as possible of the lifeless into the living. From the
standpoint of the race, the choice of fit mates to give birth to the
future generations of men is all essential.
Our matings, it must be remembered, are largely haphazard. Accidents of
propinquity, property-determined provisions of our parents, sentiments
of pity or anger at another woman or man, these often determine a
life mate. There is little opportunity granted today for the young
man or woman to know truly the proposed mate, although this situation
is clearing; there is no methodical investigation as to whether the
mate in mind is unfitted physically or otherwise. This demands more
attention than man has yet given it. Marriages are not made in heaven,
despite the wide belief; they are blundered into on earth, in the
majority of cases. Mere desire, mere animal passion or natural love,
comes easily; unfortunately or fortunately, it often goes as easily;
and if, in the meantime, marriage has been entered into, a wreckage of
happiness is inevitable. It is not easy for man or woman to develop
an abiding conjugal love. Marry at leisure, and do not repent, is no
fool’s counsel.
_Eugenics._--The young man, then, is confronted with the question,
what sort of woman should I mate with? His own deepest instincts will
aid here; but they are far from enough. In general, the greatest
happiness comes from a union of opposites, in appearance, temperament,
and all. Yet individual needs often run counter to this. Nor, from the
standpoint of the future, should an immense and overpowering love
always control, unless the man is willing to forfeit in some cases
all chances of having children. The racial aspect of the question is
gradually being studied by the science and practice of eugenics.
Eugenics is the science of good breeding; of having children well born.
Its formulator, Francis Galton, defined it as “the science which deals
with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race.” In
another work Galton expanded this, saying that the aim of eugenics is
“to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them
to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish
prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by
furthering productivity of the Fit, by early marriages and healthful
rearing of their children.”
There is matter for investigation here, rather than wholesale
acceptance. This cuts right across the personal aspect of selection for
marriage; it comes perilously close to being an unwarrantable attempt
to interfere with human freedom. Yet to an increasing extent this
science is coming into the world’s legislation; and, while it will work
some hardships, even unnecessary ones, the aim is no hardship.
Saleeby, pupil of Galton, divided eugenics unnecessarily into
(1) positive, or encouraging worthy parenthood; (2) negative, or
discouraging unworthy parenthood, and (3) preventive, “efforts made
to stand between parenthood and racial poisons, that is, substances
which are liable to originate degeneracy in healthy stocks.” His (3)
is really a subhead of (2). Extreme advocates of eugenics say flatly
that “we should rather bring the propagation of the race to the level
of the stud farm, than that it should go on in the old haphazard way
which surely leads to catastrophe.” Luckily, mankind will hardly
follow this demagogic platform, even though we recall the legislative
enactment of prohibition and the creation of the statutory crime of
teaching Darwinism in an American college or school. It is true that
we do not want science for domestic animals, and chance for men;
but there is such a thing as attractive legislation, as opposed to
prohibitive legislation; legislation offering an inducement to conduct
held socially desirable, rather than legislation affixing a penalty to
conduct held socially undesirable.
Scientifically, such legislation is based upon the Mendelian
conception of heredity. And there are extreme cases where science
should, tentatively at least, insist upon the enactment of statutory
prohibitions, not of mating, but of child-bearing. A simple operation
today alters man or woman so as to render them incapable of having
children; in the cases suggested below, this may have to be applied.
Switzerland, in ten years, largely abolished a particular type of
cretin, or feeble-minded, that had flourished there, by negative
eugenics. It is a matter for scientific investigation as to whether
such traits as feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, dipsomania,
and syphilis are inheritable in such proportion that prohibition of
offspring should be applied. Science, which once held consumption
inheritable, has reversed its position today; on any of these questions
it may reverse itself, thereby requiring an alteration in the eugenics
law.
_Eugenics in the Future._--There are shrewd observers who do not view
eugenics as tolerantly as we have done. Bertrand Russell, in his
“Icarus,” says the eugenics will undoubtedly be adopted.
“This power will be used, at first, to diminish imbecility, a most
desirable object. But probably, in time, opposition to the government
will be taken to prove imbecility, so that rebels of all kinds will
be sterilized. Epileptics, consumptives, dipsomaniacs and so on
will gradually be included; in the end, there will be a tendency to
include all who fail to pass the usual school examinations.”
The result, he says, will be to increase the average intelligence, and
to decrease really exceptional intelligence. With charming impertinence
he proceeds to the alteration that may take place in moral standards,
by which one man may be permitted to be the sire of a vast progeny by
many different mothers. Yet such reforms, he mourns, will be handed
over to the average official to administer; it will not be the type
desired by the modern eugenist who may be selected as the father of the
future, but Prime Ministers and Bishops may be picked to be the fathers
of half the next generation. His serious point is that government
control of the matter will probably be used to produce a servile
population, convenient to rulers but incapable of initiative.
Viscount Haldane, a greater scientist (at least in biological fields)
and a more brilliant critic, indicates that eugenics may come in by a
pleasanter though more startling route. By 1950, he anticipates the
production of the first ectogenetic child, or child born from a womb
withdrawn from the mother’s body, for all of the embryonic period. By
a simple operation, he prophecies that science will be able to remove
an ovary from a woman, and keep it growing in a suitable fluid for as
long as twenty years, producing a fresh ovum every month, of which
90 per cent can be fertilized, the embryos grown successfully for
nine months, and then brought out into the air. The falling birthrate
among many nations will be a strong argument for the adoption of this
ectogenesis, and birth from the woman’s body may become as antiquated
as the horse-buggy in an era of motor cars. This total separation of
sexual love and reproduction will, he holds, profoundly affect current
morality. The choice of superior parents for the next generation will
advance each generation,
“from the increased output of first-class music to the decreased
convictions for theft,”
as he wittily summarizes.
So the foremost thinkers of today deal with eugenics. What the
scientists will offer is suggested here; what the state and national
legislatures may do with scientific discoveries is a far different
matter. Things may not move as briskly as Russell and Haldane
anticipate. But the individual should favor all positive eugenics,
that is, adequate medical inspection of each prospective party to a
mating, and mating only with the physically and mentally fit, in the
widest sense.
_Birth Control._--The question of birth control, disputed as it is,
should be mentioned here. Knowledge of methods of artificial prevention
of conception is now widely known among the rich, and largely among
the well-to-do. It is in many localities a crime to furnish this
information; even a doctor may not disseminate it. The poor, who need
the information most, do not generally possess it; and at least one
great religion teaches that it is immoral.
Any form of abortion, or killing the growing embryo still in the
womb, has aspects resembling murder. Its morality is a matter for
investigation. But the prevention of conception is on another footing
entirely. Continued continence is impractical and contrary to the
best interests of the individuals who compose the social group;
contra-conceptual devices are harmless, and economically and physically
necessary in many instances. The laws on the subject will be repealed
by an enlightened community.
V.
EDUCATION FOR LIFE
_In Our Schools._--The conventional taboo upon all matters connected
with sex is nowhere more strikingly illustrated, than in the vast
dumbness upon the subject in our ordinary system of education. Great
strides have been made in some subjects taught; methods and matter
taught concerning the physical universe, ancient and later times,
languages, and mathematics, have improved amazingly in recent years.
But, after all, our happiness or unhappiness in life depends more
upon our sex life than upon all of these subjects put together. What
do our schools teach upon this vital subject? To answer concisely and
succinctly, Nothing.
There is often a course in personal hygiene; but this avoids
all matters connected with sex. Human physiology is taught only
descriptively: that is, the child is taught to distinguish between his
cerebellum and his small toe. But the important generative organs,
their normal functions, their use and abuse, is left an immense gap
in our pedagogic systems. This is based upon ideas which any educator
will at once denounce: namely, that the body is vile, that it is nasty,
that it is shameful, that it is wrong to talk about it, that it will
stimulate undesirable conduct to have scientific information imparted
about it. Meanwhile, we have the conduct without the stimulus. Yet the
very educators who see that these root-ideas of the taboo are wrong,
hem and haw when it comes to advocating proper sexual education.
Surreptitiously the matter is being partially remedied by subjects
known vaguely as nature study: especially botany, zoology, and
physiology. Here we have the proper introduction to the study of human
sexual organs and their development. The world of botany, with its
flowers and trees constantly around us, does not provoke our sense of
shame; the promiscuity of a pine tree, with its manifold wind-scattered
pollen, does not shock even a ladies’ club. The strange development
of sex in the plant kingdom is a good start for the subject. Below
the comparatively simple fertilization of the flowering plants, we
have the lower forms, with their queer complicated matings. Ferns and
club mosses, to take objects easily observable, contain many a lesson,
with their sex-producing thallic stage, and the tiny male fertilizer
wiggling itself upward toward the female ovum in a drop of water. Among
the flowering plants, the elaborate devices of nature to secure cross
fertilization, by flower arrangement and adaptations to insects, are
amazing and thought-provoking. The presence of hermaphroditic flowers
will loosen something of the rooted taboo idea that so-called sexual
perversions are innately shameful things. The development of the young
from the fertilizated ovum to the production of the seed and of the
plant gives a symbolic picture to the learning mind of what he is to
expect in the human world.
Zoology offers the next step; and here the sense of shame comes in.
There is ordinarily held to be something shameful in observing a cock
treading a hen, or any sexual act among animals. Yet the slow hatching
of the eggs by a hen is not regarded as shameful; and the pet cat’s
production of a litter of kittens, or the dog’s bringing forth puppies,
or the cow’s calving, are simple steps that lead the way directly
toward an understanding of human sexual nature. The sense of shame
connected with seeing the mating of chickens or animals is a thing
which may with benefit be lost; it is no more unclean than the opening
of a flower, or the sight of a rainbow after a storm. From zoology
may be gathered a direct sense of sexual functions, organs, and their
products; the second main step in the school of education of the young.
The third step will be a study of human physiology, including the
generative organs. These will not be emphasized; and the initial
tendency to giggle at this part of the subject will disappear in the
cool detachment of the teacher’s presentation. If thought best, this
subject may be taught independently to boys and girls. The teaching
should be comprehensive both as to the organs and their use and abuse.
_In the Home._--Pending a wholesale adoption of this in our schools,
and even after such adoption, these subjects should be taught to the
growing child, as soon as he manifests curiosity about them, in the
home. The normal child asks quite early, “Where did I come from?” The
conventional answer about the stork or the rosebush is soon enough
corrected, by the child’s reading or his companions; the result of
parental deception will be to shake the child’s faith in his parents.
The simple truth is best: just as the flower holds its little egg,
which the bee quickens to life by bringing a gift from the father
flower; just as the mother hen has her egg, fertilized, in her body,
and brings it forth, sets on it, and produces her young; just as the
mother cat carries her egg, duly fertilized, in her body, and brings
out the kittens; just so the mother carried baby in a little egg just
under her heart, and at the proper time brought her out. It need not
all be taught at once; but without evasion the story ought to be filled
in.
This will call first, of course, for education of the parents. You who
are a parent or a prospective parent, make it your business to acquaint
yourself thoroughly with the whole history and evolution of sex and
its practices; all knowledge gained will aid you in directing your own
life, as well as holding a torch to those who come after you.
As the child approaches and undergoes adolescence, it is even more
necessary that, preferably both parents, and certainly the one of his
own sex, should deal fully, frankly, and without shame, with all the
details of the child’s sexual development. Knowledge is the surest
protection the child can have. The duty of the wise teacher is to
enlighten his pupils thoroughly about the possible ways before him,
and what good or ill will be gained by following each. With this
information thoroughly comprehended, the child may be depended upon,
in the majority of cases, to decide far more correctly and helpfully
problems connected with the sexual urge, than the child who grows up
in darkness, as far as his parents are concerned, and receives his
information from doubtful sources, with the slime of the nasty mind
upon the clean theme.
_Education in Love._--Yet all of this is too elementary, to be enough
for the adolescent, and for the young man and woman. For love is more
than a matter of human psychology and its functioning: love is an
art. There must be education, ultimately, in the art of love. Savage
races usually have such education; the great initiation ceremonies and
dances, at the time of puberty of the young men and women, are merely
the culmination of an education in love-making that is given frankly
and openly to all in the tribe.
The average man or woman, barring such stray and often fouled hints
as he receives from friends and companions no wiser than he in the
subject, enters upon mating or the marriage state with no understanding
of what he is called upon to do. In the usual marriage today, the
girl is presumptively at least virginal, and the young man is not.
He has had his contact, perhaps, with prostitutes, who have mastered
the technique of stimulating passion in the man and of suppressing
it in themselves, until they desire to release it in themselves. He
has no understanding of the needs of the virginal nature before him.
Frequently he is profoundly disappointed in the fact that his shy
and embarrassed young wife, who looks to him for the enlightenment
he cannot give, does not stimulate him as the prostitute did. The
prostitute regarded him as a matter of business, and did not call upon
him to put forth his best efforts to see that she was physiologically
satisfied. The wife’s ideas are a vague blank upon this subject; but
her physiological need is there.
This poem is a concentrated statement of the usual outstanding
differences:
Love, to man, is leaping fire,
Dying with his fed desire.
But in woman it will glow
Most, when man would have it go.
Hope no more of man than this,
Maiden, when you take his kiss,--
That his loving will be done
When its victory is won.
Do not scold her drowsy ardor,
Lover; she will cling the harder,
Taught that your love, even at ending,
Lights a life for her long tending.
The life lit at the end is her own life, as well as the generated
child’s. In other words, there is a profound physiological difference
in man and woman, in the practice of love. The average man comes to his
passion quickly; and, after his orgasm, it dies as quickly. The average
woman mounts far more slowly toward the crest of her passion; and long
after the man’s normal passion is gone, she is desirous. Maidenly shame
will make her incapable of explaining this, even if she understands it.
The duty is on the man to understand the delicate human instrument, and
to see that the chords are not jangled.
For love, it must be repeated, is an art. It should never be a hurried
routine on the man’s part, which leaves the woman unsatisfied; least
of all, should it be a hastened satisfaction of his own desire, upon
an inexperienced woman, who may thereby suffer a shock that renders
her frigid for life. Medical records contain case after case where the
experiences of the nuptial night have wrecked the whole subsequent
content of the woman, or, indeed, her reason itself. Young wives
who commit suicide on the honeymoon are often impelled by the man’s
initial and sometimes unconscious brutality. Love is an art, calling
for infinite tact and understanding on the part of the man, as well
as the woman. Both lovers may go into it timidly at first; there will
come soon enough, if love develops normally, when it will be splendid
and wholesome and naked and unashamed. In the matured love, there is
all consideration for the wellbeing of the beloved one, and a complete
giving on both parts, with no withholding.
It will require an immense change in popular conceptions before any
wholesale education in the art of love can be given in this country,
indispensable though it may be to a right living and a happy loving.
But the wise individual will educate himself, by extensive reading
of literature upon the subject, and by personal contact with those
in position to know. It is Utopian to expect such education now; the
general history of Utopian ideas, however, has been that they were
proposed, cried down and persecuted, and ultimately adopted.
VI.
PENALTIES OF MISTAKES
_Restraint in Youth._--There is no more common gossip, at the time the
young man reaches puberty, than that sexual intercourse is at once
necessary to him. This is a false teaching that not only reaches him
from his companions, but is also spread by many of the old-fashioned
medical men and more up-to-date quack doctors. The youth man is told
that, if he does not indulge, his organs will wither and atrophy; that
he will suffer that largely imaginary ill, “loss of manly vigor” or
“loss of manhood,” and will, by his restraint render himself thereafter
unable to be a father.
This is, luckily for the race, a stupid falsehood. Until full physical
growth is reached, the body needs to reabsorb the seminal fluid,
and use it for growth. The young adolescent who proceeds at once to
gratification of his awakening desires in many cases never reaches
his possible physical height and size, but remains to some extent a
stunted weakling. The case is similar to excessive practice of smoking
or drinking before growth is fully attained; the body is at time
stunted permanently. The same thing is true of the adolescent girl who
marries and has a child too young, or has a child without marriage.
Such children are proverbially weaklings; Macbeth can think of no
lower phrase to apply to himself, if he fails to meet the ghost of
Banquo in some terrible form, than that he be called “the baby of a
girl.” The offspring of immature men and women are more than immature;
self-restraint, during the body-forming period of adolescence, is the
only way of securing a rounded flowering into manhood.
The matter of sexual restraint for life, however, is on a vastly
different footing. A certain misguided medical backing can be found
to support the idea that a man or woman can abstain for life, without
damage to them. There are occasional high bloodless ascetics, who
can change the suppressed sexual desire into a mysticism soothing
to themselves and to others of the human race. But for the ordinary
man and woman, a life of abstinence is a physiological crime. Such
people are warped, and twisted out of normal humanness; they are
afflicted with ingrowing sex, as unnatural as an ingrowing nail. A
life of abstinence runs counter to the deep physiological demands
implanted in every individual; it is, on a large scale, suicidal to
the race; in an individual case, it is destructive of a rounded normal
development. The woman, denied for life, becomes the thing caricatured
as the “old maid,” bitter against the slightest sexual failing in
another woman; she is often the waspish school teacher, who teaches
successive generations of young people that anything connected with
the body is nasty. The man becomes the unnatural old grouch. Not the
typical bachelor: for he is an example, as a rule, not of lifelong
abstinence, but of furtive indulgences, without permanence, and without
a development of the higher forms of romantic and conjugal love. In
both man and woman, a life of abstinence is worse than a mistake: it
is, in the truest sense, a perversion.
If abstinence for life is unnatural, abstinence during adolescence is
valuable for more than the reason given, namely, that the seminal fluid
is needed for reabsorption into the growing body. A further reason
comes from the necessary conditions of adolescent sexual experience. It
is rarely practicable for the youth or young girl to marry this early;
it is certainly not wise, for usually the normal youth goes through a
series of tentative love illusions before one of the opposite sex is
encountered who is especially fitted to become a life partner of more
rather than less permanence. Since the young man or woman will hardly
marry at this time, the intercourse enjoyed must be socially illicit.
If both parties to the intercourse are untried in love, there is no
actual danger of disease; although, with such untried lovers, ignorant
of contra-conceptual methods as a rule, the danger of unintended
pregnancies is great, which will result either in an unwise marriage,
or in a heavy social burden on the girl.
The more usual method is for the young man to go to a prostitute,
or to a more or less private mistress. Here the danger of venereal
disease, to be elaborated hereafter, comes with especial force. All the
medical inspection in the world cannot keep a prostitute clean. The
very customer preceding the young man in question may have transmitted
to her the germs of syphilis, gonorrhea, or some other affliction;
and on many occasions the first sexual experience has cost the young
man one of the diseases, whose influence and poisons plague him not
infrequently for life, and may reappear as a hideous blight upon his
descendants. The same is true of the woman not a regular prostitute;
there is no medical inspection as a rule for such a woman, and the
young man must take the heavy risk.
Self control during adolescence can be acquired by various contributory
methods. A hearty indulgence in all forms of athletics and field
sports goes a long way toward draining off the erotic energy crying
elsewhere for direct liberation. A devotion to any branch of learning,
a hobby of any kind, acquaintance with the world of nature, all these
keep the mind in safer channels. On the other side of the fence are
excessive attendance at burlesque shows, over-stimulating movies,
typical gang-life with premature smoking, drinking, and sophisticated
gossip, and reading which tends to inflame the erotic nature. The
wise young man will avoid these, not in a panicky way, but calmly and
intelligently, until he has stored his body with the wealth of physical
strength, and his mind with the wealth of counter-irritating knowledge.
_Over Indulgence._--Over indulgence in anything is the chief sin,
from the standpoint of the individual. Too much ice cream is no less
costly than too much sexual intercourse. We have mentioned onanism,
which is almost universal among the young of both sexes, as a first
experiment in erotic experiences. This habit, if abandoned soon or
rigorously controlled, does not do any of the dreadful things the
medical quacks assert of it: it does not, physiologically, weaken the
spinal cord, cause lost manly vigor, or bring about insanity. These
may follow excessive indulgence in onanism, not because the onanism
causes them--its result is merely an intensification of the unsocial
side of one’s nature, and a punishing weakness or general debility;
but because, in the weakened state, other ills find easy lodgment; and
because, being told that these things will follow, the individual of
little intelligence self-induces the ills by a sort of auto-suggestion
or self-hypnotism. The cleanest course is to avoid onanism altogether;
the next best thing is to go in vigorously for physical and mental
distractions, and rigorously control it or end it.
Over-indulgence in heterosexual intercourse, that is, intercourse
with members of the opposite sex, is just as costly. This may either
be socially illicit intercourse, or intercourse in the marital
state. At times a married couple contains one or both members with
a tendency toward nymphomania, or excessive desire for men, in the
woman, or toward satyriasis, or excessive desire for women, in the
man. If the tendency is too powerful, society is saved, because the
parties so weaken themselves that reproduction is impossible, and
death or complete physical or mental incapacity results. If it is
merely a tendency, it should be and must be controlled. Every man and
every woman must determine for themselves the frequency of sexual
intercourse, including that in the married state, which satisfies
the erotic desires, while maintaining the individual at the peak of
his powers as man or woman. The average man does not need sexual
intercourse more than twice a week; once is enough, in many cases.
During the woman’s monthly incapacity, this should be restrained.
If this rule of common sense is disregarded, the bodies will be so
weakened that any sort of disease may secure a foothold.
_Veneral Diseases._--Many medical authorities who speak loosely, and
many lay purists, say flatly that any illicit intercourse is attended
with punishment in the shape of venereal disease. A typical phrasing
of this was Bryan’s, in a recent popular magazine of over a million
circulation. This is, of course, untrue. If both parties to the
intercourse are healthy, and it be not excessively promiscuous, there
is no more danger of venereal infection than with one’s married mate.
We have not considered the ethics of what is commonly called seduction;
that is, the intercourse of an older man or woman with a younger
woman or man, the latter being either married or unmarried. It is of
course inethical, in such cases, to take advantage of the young woman
or man. Ideally, in all such cases the younger party should be well
over legal age, of at least average intelligence, and with a definite
understanding of the course she or he is about to enter upon. Any
intercourse achieved by deceit or trickery, or taking advantage of the
other person, is inethical. The matter should be faced squarely, and
the responsibility should be a joint one.
The two chief venereal diseases are gonorrhea and syphilis. This book
has been permeated with an outcry against popular lies concerning the
sexual organs and their functions, lies which secure their chance to
become widespread through the harmful social taboo upon intelligent
discussion of the subject. Now we come to another of these lies, as
harmful as any of the previous ones: namely, that gonorrhea is “no
worse than a cold.” This is common gossip among men and some women, and
many a good-hearted old family medico will reassure the troubled young
man or woman with the same poisonous mental soothing syrup. Gonorrhea,
once contracted, is extremely difficult to eradicate. It is easily
communicated to the party with whom one has sexual intercourse; many a
man, acquiring it from a prostitute or general woman, has infected his
innocent wife; many a man has infected an otherwise clean prostitute
or general woman. Medical inspection of prostitutes answers only half
of the need. There should at least be medical inspection of each male
customer of the prostitute, before the intercourse.
There is more penalty than this to gonorrhea. The germs of the disease,
or _gonococci_, often attack the eyes of children of parents, one or
both of whom are afflicted with the disease. Twenty-five per cent of
all cases of blindness are attributed to gonorrhea; for blindness to
children is one of the byproducts of this disease mis-ranked as “no
worse than a cold.”
Syphilis, the other chief venereal disease, has been called by
eugenists one of the racial poisons. Any competent medical treatise
will go into details concerning its three stages, its powerful hold,
once contracted, and the details of symptoms and the long, painful,
and expensive method of cure. Enough to say here that it causes
general debility, affects every tissue and organ, causes skin and
bone diseases, as well as arterial diseases. In its later stages it
produces paralysis, blindness, deafness, disorders of speech, mental
enfeeblement, and locomotor ataxia (a wasting disease of the spinal
cord). And this does not exhaust the list. The penalty of careless
pleasure is heavy.
The British Royal Commission engaged in the study of venereal diseases
reported, for the year 1912, the following:
Personnel. Working Days Lost.
Home Army 107,582 216,445
Navy 119,520 269,210
Men in the army and navy are required to live frequently an unnatural
life, remote from their wives and regular mates; this stimulates
the so-called sexual perversions, and all forms of illicit sexual
intercourse. Yet the figures for civil life, acquired by many
authoritative commissions, are almost as high.
Worse than the physical ills, in both cases, are the mental ills that
follow the acquiring and gradual development of these diseases. The man
or woman becomes imbued with the idea of his physical unworthiness,
luckily for mankind, but destructively to himself or herself. If
intercourse is indulged in while the disease is in the system, this
requires a brutalizing and hardening of the moral nature, sufficient
to allow the man or woman to run the risk of infecting another woman
or man with the horrible diseases and their attendant evils. The
governments of the world are now stepping into this tabooed field, and
doing much toward eradicating the diseases. In their first stages, a
cure is comparatively sure; in the latter stages, the case is often
hopeless. It is well, therefore, to act promptly, on any suspicion of
having acquired the disease. Go, not to some medical quack, but to
a reputable physician; and sooner or later you may be able to clean
yourself of the serious mistake in your sex life. Having once passed
through the living hell of venereal affection, it is a safe bet that
you will not willingly undergo it again.
VII.
THE PURITY IDEAL
_Chastity._--The average mind defined chastity as abstinence; in this
sense lifelong chastity is, in most cases, a perversion. The dictionary
defines it as “pure from all unlawful sexual intercourse.” This brings
up at once the question of what is unlawful. If by “unlawful” is meant
“contrary to statute law,” this definition is inaccurate; and there is
not always virtue in such chastity. For there is a higher law, of which
the statutory law is merely a tardy crystallization. The actual law
changes before the limping legislature alters the statute. One State,
South Carolina, denies divorce for any cause whatever. Yet parties
legally divorced and re-married outside that State, who return to it
and live in the second mating, are certainly not unchaste. If love
has left a married couple, their intercourse thereafter may be called
unchaste; and if one or both of the parties find love elsewhere, and
live it, this is chaste in the better sense.
More than this, a female animal, even living in a state of promiscuity,
as some by their natures do, is never unchaste. For she has always the
power of selecting her mate or mates. Charlotte Perkins Gilman follows
the best thought when she defines chastity, “not as abstinence, but as
selection.” In this higher sense, chastity is a virtue.
It may just as well be recognized that the moral standards of our
culture are changing, at a greater rate than for the last thousand
years. It has taken that long and much longer for woman to acquire
enough inner power to set on foot the forces that could liberate
her from her world-wide subjection to man. Now the forces have been
liberated, and for better or for worse the woman of the future will be
a freer, finer, and better rounded human being than the woman of the
past was. She has acquired education, a share in the knowledge of the
universe in which she lives. She has acquired a sound body, fit to bear
strong children. She has acquired a strong and well-functioning mind,
thereby giving a better heritage of mental aptitude to her children,
and thereby making herself more fit as a mother to direct them in their
formative years. She has acquired a part control over the essential
purse-strings, the pocket-book, the economic power; she can no longer
be bought and sold as a horse or a plough, but can herself buy her will
of the world.
The old double standard of morality, of wild oats, marriage, and
post-marital indulgence for men, and strict monogamy or prostitution
for women, has already been thrown overboard by the new woman. She
can dictate to her prospective husband now: “Come to me with a clean
body, or do not come at all. Do not expect, either before marriage or
afterwards, to indulge in sexual wanderings that I may not share.”
She is not insisting, shrewd observers say, in an absolute monogamy,
which runs counter to the sexual nature of the race; she is, instead,
lifting man higher toward the strict monogamy enforced upon her, and at
the same time is stepping consciously and intelligently a little lower
than this strict monogamy into a world that will permit intelligent and
regulated erotic experiments and experiences. For the sexual morality
of the future will not be handed down in a ready-made decalog by some
future Moses from a White House Sinai, but will gradually evolve and
crystallize out of sober and intelligent experimentation. It will never
be a hard-and-fast series of “Thou-shalt-nots”; it will be much more
liberal, offering more than one way of allowed love life.
_Sexual Morality, Today and Tomorrow._--The keynote of the new sexual
morality is freedom, on both sides. This means, first, freedom from
financial considerations. Love is a deep-rooted instinct, whose
fruition means years or a lifetime of happiness or unhappiness for the
individuals concerned, and the creation, in progeny, of the men and
women of the future. None of these things can be purchased ready-made
in the market for cash. A man can not buy a woman’s love, or a child
to do him honor; neither can woman or man sell these things. Yet under
the present system, as a hangover of the past, these things must
be bought. A woman, contemplating marriage, had to consider almost
primarily whether her prospective husband could feed and house her
and her children satisfactorily. All three, wife, kept woman, and
prostitute, had to consider the financial: all three were lowered by
the consideration. This element has been and is being taken out of the
love life entirely. The result of this elimination will be wholesome
all along the line. Love will be experienced for love, and not for
money.
Second is the realization that marriages are not made in heaven, but on
earth, and are, accordingly, human relationships, of a contractual or
quasi-contractual nature, which may be terminated like any other human
relationship. Our whole method of mating is haphazard in the extreme;
there is no provision for adequate knowledge of the proposed partner;
there is the reverse of a certainty that this woman or man, thrown in
contact with man or woman through proximity or unplanned causes, is a
human organism so sensitive physically, mentally, and spiritually that
it can co-operate helpfully with our own. Men and woman make mistakes,
in love choice as elsewhere. The new morality will propose a dignified
way of terminating such mistakes. At the present time, the divorce laws
hold in practice that the man and woman who realize their unfitness for
each other, and determine to secure a divorce, are criminals, guilty
of collusion; this, at least, is the law in many states and nations.
Divorce laws in harmony with the new morality will permit a man and
woman, who have erred in their love choice to part as friends, rather
than as enemies.
Thirdly, the new morality will by no means insist that all mating be
within the strict palings of monogamous marriage. If a man or a woman,
having carefully considered what will be lost and what gained by a
wider type of love relationships, determines to risk the experiment,
without taking advantage of other women or men, this is an individual
choice; and the new morality in all matters is giving the individual as
much intelligent choice as it can, consonant with social safety. Such
relationships are like laboratory experiments in eugenics for the good
of the race; they may result in unhappiness, but the very discovery
that unhappiness has resulted is a social fact which may aid future
decisions. If, to the contrary, happiness results, this is also a
social fact which may aid future decisions.
The question of the home and the children is linked with this. Neither
of these, as at present conducted, are matters of great human glory;
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s extended studies of each should be read, to
get a new and intelligent slant upon our homes and our child-rearing.
Motherhood is a great benefit to society; motherhood pensions and
similar remedies are steps toward a social repayment for this benefit.
More than this, if Haldane is at all correct, reproduction and sexual
union may be separated in fact in the future; in which case, much
greater liberality of union will be the usual thing. These matters
are all experimental; the important thing is to look at them with
something of a scientific detachment, rather than with a bitter bias
and prejudice, based upon what Moses reported was said to him out of
the thunders above a South Arabian mountain, or what the English common
law or the Latin ecclesiastical law provided a thousand years ago. We
are tending toward efficiency in all human concerns upon the industrial
field; we are tending, more slowly but no less certainly, upon the
extension of efficiency to matters connected with the home.
Woman’s labor, or rather, the labor in the home, will not always remain
upon the low domestic stage: man’s labor moved out of the domestic
stage into the stage of factory and commercial house several centuries
ago. Scientific information and the care of experts are invaluable
in home management and child rearing, no less than in the rotation
of crops and the development of fatter hogs or slimmer dahlia stems.
Child rearing will slowly be included in matters where efficiency and
modern methods will prevail; and, if this involves in the end some
form of institutional raising, in greater or less degree, it should
be understood in advance that this will date from a period where our
culture is determined by human beings as well as by money; and that the
institutions of the future will be administered by those who today make
a success of their individual establishments, rather than by those who
today make a failure of the institutions committed to their care. The
fact that institutions for the feeble-minded today are a failure is no
proof that institutions for the sound-minded tomorrow will be failures.
No one recommends that the business of the U. S. Steel Company or the
great railroad lines be taken out of the office, and put back in the
individual homes. No one, in a more enlightened age, will desire to see
the anarchic and haphazard era of domestic rearing of children and of
domestic home management, by paid or unpaid domestics, ever return to
a world that has known a better system.
_The Ideal of Purity._--To the man facing the future, these things may
be said in conclusion. First, guard well your youth; it is your day of
growth, and not your day for sexual indulgence. Second, guard well your
mating period. It is not an hour for excessive indulgence. It is an
hour for engendering mutual happiness and satisfaction in yourself and
your mate; and an hour for intelligent direction of the upbringing of
your children, so that they may be free from the poisonous and vicious
ignorance that may have blighted or come near blighting your own life.
Third, broaden yourself constantly. Keep your body at the peak of its
physical fitness, and your mind at the peak of its mental fitness.
Bodily fitness will go far toward preparing you for mental fitness;
if you will feed your mind as carefully as you feed your body, with
the food of man’s best knowledge of the facts concerning the whole
universe, and his highest dreams as embodied in art and literature, you
will thereby make your soul or spirit fit as well.
You will, if you are wise, elect an ideal of purity. Purity means a
recognition that love is a matter, not of barter and sale, but of
desire permeating body and mind and spirit. Love looks backward, around
it, and forward: it is built upon the past, it controls today, it
builds for the future. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see god, said a great ancient teacher. It may well be that the pure
in heart will be blessed, because they shall see god within. Only by
a life fit in every particular shall man attain to a development of
that inner light, that innate godhead, that contribution toward the
development of the race’s highest idealism in practice and thought,
which is perhaps man’s highest achievement on this dusty planet.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Typos silently corrected, but inconsistencies in hyphenation have been
left unchanged.
Missing word “are” added to page 60: “Neither of these, as at present
conducted, are matters of ...”
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