LITTLE ESSAYSOFLOVE AND VIRTUEBYHAVELOCK ELLIS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXSix VolumesPhiladelphia: _F. A. Davis Company_

MAN AND WOMANLondon: _Walter Scott_New York: _Charles Scribners' Sons_

THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENELondon: _Constable and Company_Boston: _Houghton Mifflin Company_

IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTSFirst and Second SeriesLondon: _Constable and Company_Boston: _Houghton Mifflin Company_

BY MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS

THE NEW HORIZON IN LOVE AND LIFEWith a Preface by EDWARD CARPENTERand an Introduction by MARGUERITE TRACYLondon: _A. And C. Black, Ltd. _

LITTLE ESSAYSOFLOVE AND VIRTUEBYHAVELOCK ELLIS

A. & C. BLACK, LTD. 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1 1922

COPYRIGHT 1922_In Great Britain by A. And G. Black, Ltd. , London__In America by George H. Doran Co. , New York_

PREFACE

In these Essays--little, indeed, as I know them to be, compared to themagnitude of their subjects--I have tried to set forth, as clearly as Ican, certain fundamental principles, together with their practicalapplication to the life of our time. Some of these principles were stated, more briefly and technically, in my larger _Studies_ of sex; others weretherein implied but only to be read between the lines. Here I haveexpressed them in simple language and with some detail. It is my hope thatin this way they may more surely come into the hands of young people, youths and girls at the period of adolescence, who have been present to mythoughts in all the studies I have written of sex because I was myself ofthat age when I first vaguely planned them. I would prefer to leave totheir judgment the question as to whether this book is suitable to beplaced in the hands of older people. It might only give them pain. It isin youth that the questions of mature age can alone be settled, if theyever are to be settled, and unless we begin to think about adult problemswhen we are young all our thinking is likely to be in vain. There are butfew people who are able when youth is over either on the one hand tore-mould themselves nearer to those facts of Nature and of Society theyfailed to perceive, or had not the courage to accept, when they wereyoung, or, on the other hand, to mould the facts of the exterior worldnearer to those of their own true interior world. One hesitates to bringhome to them too keenly what they have missed in life. Yet, let usremember, even for those who have missed most, there always remains thefortifying and consoling thought that they may at least help to make theworld better for those who come after them, and the possibilities of humanadjustment easier for others than it has been for themselves. They muststill remain true to their own traditions. We could not wish it to beotherwise. 

The art of making love and the art of being virtuous;--two aspects of thegreat art of living that are, rightly regarded, harmonious and not atvariance--remain, indeed, when we cease to misunderstand them, essentiallythe same in all ages and among all peoples. Yet, always and everywhere, little modifications become necessary, little, yet, like so many littlethings, immense in their significance and results. In this way, if we arereally alive, we flexibly adjust ourselves to the world in which we findourselves, and in so doing simultaneously adjust to ourselves thatever-changing world, ever-changing, though its changes are within suchnarrow limits that it yet remains substantially the same. It is with suchmodification that we are concerned in these Little Essays. 

H. E. 

_London, 1921_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

 I Children and Parents 13 II The Meaning of Purity 37III The Objects of Marriage 63 IV Husbands and Wives 75 V The Love-Rights of Women 102 VI The Play-Function of Sex 116VII The Individual and the Race 134 Index 183

LITTLE ESSAYS OF LOVE AND VIRTUE

CHAPTER I

CHILDREN AND PARENTS

The twentieth century, as we know, has frequently been called "the centuryof the child. " When, however, we turn to the books of Ellen Key, who hasmost largely and sympathetically taken this point of view, one asksoneself whether, after all, the child's century has brought much to thechild. Ellen Key points out, with truth, that, even in our century, parents may for the most part be divided into two classes: those who actas if their children existed only for their benefit, and those who act asif they existed only for their children's benefit, the results, she addsbeing alike deplorable. For the first group of parents tyrannise over thechild, seek to destroy its individuality, exercise an arbitrary disciplinetoo spasmodic to have any of the good effects of discipline and wouldmodel him into a copy of themselves, though really, she adds, it ought topain them very much to see themselves exactly copied. The second group ofparents may wish to model their children not after themselves but aftertheir ideals, yet they differ chiefly from the first class by theirover-indulgence, by their anxiety to pamper the child by yielding to allhis caprices and artificially protecting him from the natural results ofthose caprices, so that instead of learning freedom, he has merelyacquired self-will. These parents do not indeed tyrannise over theirchildren but they do worse; they train their children to be tyrants. Against these two tendencies of our century Ellen Key declares her ownAlpha and Omega of the art of education. Try to leave the child in peace;live your own life beautifully, nobly, temperately, and in so living youwill sufficiently teach your children to live. 

It is not my purpose here to consider how far this conception of the dutyof parents towards children is justified, and whether or not peace is thebest preparation for a world in which struggle dominates. All thesequestions about education are rather idle. There are endless theories ofeducation but no agreement concerning the value of any of them, and thewhole question of education remains open. I am here concerned less withthe duty of parents in relation to their children than with the duty ofchildren in relation to their parents, and that means that I am notconcerned with young children, to whom, that duty still presents noserious problems, since they have not yet developed a personality withself-conscious individual needs. Certainly the one attitude must conditionthe other attitude. The reaction of children against their parents is thenecessary result of the parents' action. So that we have to pay someattention to the character of parental action. 

We cannot expect to find any coherent or uniform action on the part ofparents. But there have been at different historical periods differentgeneral tendencies in the attitude of parents towards their children. Thusif we go back four or five centuries in English social history we seem tofind a general attitude which scarcely corresponds exactly to either ofEllen Key's two groups. It seems usually to have been compounded ofseverity and independence; children were first strictly compelled to gotheir parents' way and then thrust off to their own way. There seems acertain hardness in this method, yet it is doubtful whether it can fairlybe regarded as more unreasonable than either of the two modern methodsdeplored by Ellen Key. On the contrary it had points for admiration. Itwas primarily a discipline, but it was regarded, as any fortifyingdiscipline should be regarded, as a preparation for freedom, and it isprecisely there that the more timid and clinging modern way seems to fail. 

We clearly see the old method at work in the chief source of knowledgeconcerning old English domestic life, the _Paston Letters_. Here we findthat at an early age the sons of knights and gentlemen were sent to servein the houses of other gentlemen: it was here that their education reallytook place, an education not in book knowledge, but in knowledge of life. Such education was considered so necessary for a youth that a father whokept his sons at home was regarded as negligent of his duty to his family. A knowledge of the world was a necessary part, indeed the chief part, of ayouth's training for life. The remarkable thing is that this applied alsoto a large extent to the daughters. They realised in those days, what isonly beginning to be realised in ours, [1] that, after all, women live inthe world just as much, though differently, as men live in the world, andthat it is quite as necessary for the girl as for the boy to be trained tothe meaning of life. Margaret Paston, towards the end of the fifteenthcentury, sent her daughter Ann to live in the house of a gentleman who, alittle later, found that he could not keep her as he was purposing todecrease the size of his household. The mother writes to her son: "I shallbe fain to send for her and with me she shall but lose her time, andwithout she be the better occupied she shall oftentimes move me and put meto great unquietness. Remember what labour I had with your sister, therefore do your best to help her forth"; as a result it was planned tosend her to a relative's house in London. 

[1] This was illustrated in England when women first began to serve onjuries. The pretext was frequently brought forward that there arecertain kinds of cases and of evidence that do not concern women or thatwomen ought not to hear. The pretext would have been more plausible ifit had also been argued that there are certain kinds of cases and ofevidence that men ought not to hear. As a matter of fact, whateverfrontier there may be in these matters is not of a sexual kind. Everything that concerns men ultimately concerns women, and everythingthat concerns women ultimately concerns men. Neither women nor men areentitled to claim dispensation. 

It is evident that in the fifteenth century in England there was a wideprevalence of this method of education, which in France, a century later, was still regarded as desirable by Montaigne. His reason for it is worthnoting; children should be educated away from home, he remarks, in orderto acquire hardness, for the parents will be too tender to them. "It is anopinion accepted by all that it is not right to bring up children in theirparents' laps, for natural love softens and relaxes even the wisest. "[2]

[2] Montaigne, _Essais_, Bk. I. , ch. 25. 

In old France indeed the conditions seem similar to those in England. Thegreat serio-comic novel of Antoine de la Salle, _Petit Jean de Saintré_, shows us in detail the education and the adventures, which certainlyinvolved a very early introduction to life, of a page in a great house inthe fifteenth century. We must not take everything in this fine comedy toosolemnly, but in the fourteenth century _Book of the Knight of theTour-Landry_ we may be sure that we have at its best the then prevailingview of the relation of a father to his tenderly loved daughters. Ofharshness and rigour in the relationship it is not easy to find traces inthis lengthy and elaborate book of paternal counsels. But it is clear thatthe father takes seriously the right of a daughter to govern herself andto decide for herself between right and wrong. It is his object, he tellshis girls, "to enable them to govern themselves. " In this task he assumesthat they are entitled to full knowledge, and we feel that he is notinstructing them in the mysteries of that knowledge; he is taking forgranted, in the advice he gives and the stories he tells them, that his"young and small daughters, not, poor things, overburdened withexperience, " already possess the most precise knowledge of the intimatefacts of life, and that he may tell them, without turning a hair, the mostoutrageous incidents of debauchery. Life already lies naked before them:that he assumes; he is not imparting knowledge, he is giving goodcounsel. [3]

[3] If the Knight went to an extreme in his assumption of his daughters'knowledge, modern fathers often go to the opposite and more foolishextreme of assuming in their daughters an ignorance that would bedangerous even if it really existed. In _A Young Girl's Diary_(translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul), a work that ishighly instructive for parents, and ought to be painful for many, wefind the diarist noting at the age of thirteen that she and a girlfriend of about the same age overheard the father of one of them--bothwell brought up and carefully protected, one Catholic and the otherProtestant--referring to "those innocent children. " "We did laugh so, WEand _innocent children_!!! What our fathers really think of us; weinnocent!!! At dinner we did not dare look at one another or we shouldhave exploded. " It need scarcely be added that, at the same time, theywere more innocent than they knew. 

It is clear that this kind of education and this attitude towardschildren must be regarded as the outcome of the whole mediæval method oflife. In a state of society where roughness and violence, though not, aswe sometimes assume, chronic, were yet always liable to be manifested, itwas necessary for every man and woman to be able to face the crudest factsof the world and to be able to maintain his or her own rights againstthem. The education that best secured that strength and independence wasthe best education and it necessarily involved an element of hardness. Wemust go back earlier than Montaigne's day, when the conditions werebecoming mitigated, to see the system working in all its vigour. 

The lady of the day of the early thirteenth century has been welldescribed by Luchaire in his scholarly study of French Society in the timeof Philip Augustus. She was, he tells us, as indeed she had been in thepreceding feudal centuries, often what we should nowadays call a virago, of violent temperament, with vivid passions, broken in from childhood toall physical exercises, sharing the pleasures and dangers of the knightsaround her. Feudal life, fertile in surprises and in risks, demanded evenin women a vigorous temper of soul and body, a masculine air, and habitsalso that were almost virile. She accompanied her father or her husband tothe chase, while in war-time, if she became a widow or if her husband wasaway at the Crusades, she was ready, if necessary, to direct the defencesof the lordship, and in peace time she was not afraid of the longest andmost dangerous pilgrimages. She might even go to the Crusades on her ownaccount, and, if circumstances required, conduct a war to come outvictoriously. 

We may imagine the robust kind of education required to produce people ofthis quality. But as regards the precise way in which parents conductedthat education, we have, as Luchaire admits, little precise knowledge. Itis for the most part only indirectly, by reading between the lines, thatwe glean something as to what it was considered befitting to inculcate ina good household, and as what we thus learn is mostly from the writings ofChurchmen it is doubtless a little one-sided. Thus Adam de Perseigne, anecclesiastic, writes to the Countess du Perche to advise her how to livein a Christian manner; he counsels her to abstain from playing games ofchance and chess, not to take pleasure in the indecent farces of actors, and to be moderate in dress. Then, as ever, preachers expressed theirhorror of the ruinous extravagance of women, their false hair, theirrouge, and their dresses that were too long or too short. They alsoreprobated their love of flirtation. It was, however, in those days ayoung girl's recognised duty, when a knight arrived in the household, toexercise the rites of hospitality, to disarm him, give him his bath, andif necessary massage him to help him to go to sleep. It is not surprisingthat the young girl sometimes made love to the knight under thesecircumstances, nor is it surprising that he, engaged in an arduous lifeand trained to disdain feminine attractions, often failed to respond. 

It is easy to understand how this state of things gradually becametransformed into the considerably different position of parents and childwe have known, which doubtless attained its climax nearly a century ago. Feudal conditions, with the large households so well adapted to act asseminaries for youth, began to decay, and as education in such seminariesmust have led to frequent mischances both for youths and maidens whoenjoyed the opportunities of education there, the regret for theirdisappearance may often have been tempered for parents. Schools, colleges, and universities began to spring up and develop for one sex, while for theother home life grew more intimate, and domestic ties closer. Montaigne'swarning against the undue tenderness of a narrow family life no longerseemed reasonable, and the family became more self-centred and moreenclosed. Beneath this, and more profoundly influential, there was ageneral softening in social respects, and a greater expansiveness ofaffectional relationships, in reality or in seeming, within the home, compensating, it may be, the more diffused social feeling within a groupwhich characterised the previous period. 

So was cultivated that undue tenderness, deplored by Montaigne, which wenow regard as almost normal in family life, and solemnly label, if wehappen to be psycho-analysts, the Oedipus-complex or the Electra-complex. Sexual love is closely related to parental love; the tender emotion, whichis an intimate part of parental love, is also an intimate part of sexuallove, and two emotions which are each closely related to a third emotioncannot fail to become often closely associated to each other. With alittle thought we might guess beforehand, even while still in completeignorance of the matter, that there could not fail to be frequently asexual tinge in the affection of a father for his daughter, of a motherfor her son, of a son for his mother, or a daughter for her father. Needless to say, that does not mean that there is present any physicaldesire of sex in the narrow sense; that would be a perversity, and a rareperversity. We are here on another plane than that of crude physicaldesire, and are moving within the sphere of the emotions. But suchemotions are often strong, and all the stronger because conscious oftheir own absolute rectitude and often masked under the shape of Duty. Yetwhen prolonged beyond the age of childhood they tend to become a clog ondevelopment, and a hindrance to a wholesome life. The child who cherishessuch emotion is likely to suffer infantile arrest of development, and theparent who is so selfish as to continue to expend such tenderness on achild who has passed the age of childhood, or to demand it, is guilty of aserious offence against that child. 

That the intimate family life which sometimes resulted--especially when, as frequently happened, the seeming mutual devotion was also real--mightoften be regarded as beautiful and almost ideal, it has been customary torepeat with an emphasis that in the end has even become nauseous. For itwas usually overlooked that the self-centred and enclosed family, evenwhen the mutual affection of its members was real enough to bear allexamination, could scarcely be more than partially beautiful, and couldnever be ideal. For the family only represents one aspect, howeverimportant an aspect, of a human being's functions and activities. Hecannot, she cannot, be divorced from the life of the social group, and alife is beautiful and ideal, or the reverse, only when we have taken intoour consideration the social as well as the family relationship. When thefamily claims to prevent the free association of an adult member of itwith the larger social organisation, it is claiming that the part isgreater than the whole, and such a claim cannot fail to be morbid andmischievous. 

The old-world method of treating children, we know, has long ago beendisplaced as containing an element of harsh tyranny. But it was notperceived, and it seems indeed not even yet to be generally recognised, that the system which replaced it, and is only now beginning to pass away, involved another and more subtle tyranny, the more potent because notseemingly harsh. Parents no longer whipped their children even when grownup, or put them in seclusion, or exercised physical force upon them afterthey had passed childhood. They felt that that would not be in harmonywith the social customs of a world in which ancient feudal notions weredead. But they merely replaced the external compulsion by an internalcompulsion which was much more effective. It was based on the moralassumption of claims and duties which were rarely formulated becauseparents found it quite easy and pleasant to avoid formulating them, andchildren, on the rare occasions when they formulated them, usually felt asense of guilt in challenging their validity. It was in the nineteenthcentury that this state of things reached its full development. The sonsof the family were usually able, as they grew up, to escape and elude it, although they thereby often created an undesirable divorce from the home, and often suffered, as well as inflicted, much pain in tearing themselvesloose from the spiritual bonds--especially perhaps in matters ofreligion--woven by long tradition to bind them to their parents. It was onthe daughters that the chief stress fell. For the working class, indeed, there was often the possibility of escape into hard labour, if only thatof marriage. But such escape was not possible, immediately or at all, fora large number. During the nineteenth century many had been so carefullyenclosed in invisible cages, they had been so well drilled in thereticences and the duties and the subserviences that their parentssilently demanded of them, that we can never know all the tragedies thattook place. In exceptional cases, indeed, they gave a sign. When theypossessed unusual power of intellect, or unusual power of character andwill, they succeeded in breaking loose from their cages, or at least ingiving expression to themselves. This is seen in the stories of nearly allthe women eminent in life and literature during the nineteenth century, from the days of Mary Wollstonecraft onwards. The Brontës, almost, yet notquite, strangled by the fetters placed upon them by their stern andnarrow-minded father, and enabled to attain the full stature of theirgenius only by that brief sojourn in Brussels, are representative. Elizabeth Barrett, chained to a couch of invalidism under the eyes of animperiously affectionate father until with Robert Browning's aid shesecretly eloped into the open air of freedom and health, and so attainedcomplete literary expression, is a typical figure. It is only because werecognise that she is a typical figure among the women who attaineddistinction that we are able to guess at the vast number of muteinglorious Elizabeth Barretts who were never able to escape by their ownefforts and never found a Browning to aid them to escape. 

It is sometimes said that those days are long past and that young women, in all the countries which we are pleased to called civilised, are nowemancipated, indeed, rather too much emancipated. Critics come forward tocomplain of their undue freedom, of their irreverent familiarity to theirparents, of their language, of their habits. But there were critics whosaid the very same things, in almost the same words, of the grandmothersof these girls! These incompetent critics are as ignorant of the socialhistory of the past as they are of the social significance of the historyof the present. We read in _Once a Week_ of sixty years ago (10th August, 1861), the very period when the domestic conditions of girls were the mostoppressive in the sense here understood, that these same critics wereabout at that time, and as shocked as they are now at "the young ladieswho talk of 'awful swells' and 'deuced bores, ' who smoke and venture uponfree discourse, and try to be like men. " The writer of this anonymousarticle, who was really (I judge from internal evidence) so distinguishedand so serious a woman as Harriet Martineau, duly snubs these critics, pointing out that such accusations are at least as old as Addison andHorace Walpole; she remarks that there have no doubt been so-called "fastyoung ladies" in every age, "varying their doings and sayings according tothe fopperies of the time. " The question, as she pertinently concludes is, as indeed it still remains to-day: "Have we more than the averageproportion? I do not know. " Nor to-day do we know. 

But while to-day, as ever before, we have a certain proportion of theseemancipated girls, and while to-day, as perhaps never before, we are ableto understand that they have an element of reason on their side, it wouldbe a mistake to suppose that they are more than exceptions. The majorityare unable, and not even anxious, to attain this light-hearted socialemancipation. For the majority, even though they are workers, theanciently subtle ties of the home are still, as they should be, an elementof natural piety, and, also, as they should not be, clinging fetters whichimpede individuality and destroy personal initiative. 

We all know so many happy homes beneath whose calm surface this processis working out. The parents are deeply attached to their children, whostill remain children to them even when they are grown up. They wish toguide them and mould them and cherish them, to protect them from theworld, to enjoy their society and their aid, and they expect that theirchildren shall continue indefinitely to remain children. The children, ontheir side, remain and always will remain, tenderly attached to theirparents, and it would really pain them to feel that they are harbouringany unwillingness to stay in the home even after they have grown up, solong as their parents need their attention. It is, of course, thedaughters who are thus expected to remain in the home and who feel thiscompunction about leaving it. It seems to us--although, as we have seen, so unlike the attitude of former days--a natural, beautiful, and rightfulfeeling on both sides. 

Yet, in the result, all sorts of evils tend to ensue. The parents oftentake as their moral right the services which should only be accepted, ifaccepted at all, as the offering of love and gratitude, and even reach adegree of domineering selfishness in which they refuse to believe thattheir children have any adult rights of their own, absorbing and drying upthat physical and spiritual life-blood of their offspring which it is theparents' part in Nature to feed. If the children are willing there isnothing to mitigate this process; if they are unwilling the result isoften a disastrous conflict. Their time and energy are not their own;their tastes are criticised and so far as possible crushed; theirpolitical ideas, if they have any, are treated as pernicious; and--whichis often on both sides the most painful of all--differences in religiousbelief lead to bitter controversy and humiliating recrimination. Suchdifferences in outlook between youth and age are natural and inevitableand right. The parents themselves, though they may have forgotten it, often in youth similarly revolted against the cherished doctrines of theirown parents; it has ever been so, the only difference being that to-day, probably, the opportunities for variation are greater. So it comes aboutthat what James Hinton said half a century ago is often true to-day: "Ourhappy Christian homes are the real dark places of the earth. "

It is evident that the problem of the relation of the child to the parentis still incompletely solved even in what we consider our highestcivilisation. There is here needed an art in which those who have toexercise it can scarcely possess all the necessary skill and experience. Among trees and birds and beasts the art is surer because it is exercisedunconsciously, on the foundation of a large tradition in which failuremeant death. In the common procreative profusion of those forms of lifethe frequent death of the young was a matter of little concern, butbiologically there was never any sacrifice of the offspring to thewell-being of the parents. Whenever sacrifice is called for it is theparents who are sacrificed to their offspring. In our superior humancivilisation, in which quantity ever tends to give place to quality, thehigher value of the individual involves an effort to avoid sacrifice whichsometimes proves worse than abortive. An avian philosopher would beunlikely to feel called upon to denounce nests as the dark places of theearth, and in laying down our human moral laws we have always to be awareof forgetting the fundamental biological relationship of parent and childto which all such moral laws must conform. To some would-be parents thatnecessity may seem hard. In such a case it is well for them to rememberthat there is no need to become parents and that we live in an age when itis not difficult to avoid becoming a parent. The world is not dying forlack of parents. On the contrary we have far too many of them--ignorantparents, silly parents, unwilling parents, undesirable parents--and thosewho aspire to the high dignity of creating the future race, let them be asfew as they will--and perhaps at the present time the fewer thebetter--must not refuse the responsibilities of that position, its painsas well as its joys. 

In our human world, as we know, the moral duties laid upon us--the dutiesin which, if we fail, we become outcasts in our own eyes or in those ofothers or in both--are of three kinds: the duties to oneself, the dutiesto the small circle of those we love, and the duties to the larger circleof mankind to which ultimately we belong, since out of it we proceed, andto it we owe all that we are. There are no maxims, there is only an artand a difficult art, to harmonise duties which must often conflict. Wehave to be true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. To that extentGeorge Eliot's Maggie Tulliver was undoubtedly right. But the renunciationof the Self is not the routine solution of every conflict, any more thanis the absolute failure to renounce. In a certain sense the duty towardsthe self comes before all others, because it is the condition on whichduties towards others possess any significance and worth. In that sense, it is true according to the familiar saying of Shakespeare, --though it wasonly Polonius, the man of maxims, who voiced it, --that one cannot be trueto others unless one is first true to oneself, and that one can knownothing of giving aught that is worthy to give unless one also knows howto take. 

We see that the problem of the place of parents in life, after theirfunction of parenthood has been adequately fulfilled, a problem whichoffers no difficulties among most forms of life, has been found hard tosolve by Man. At some places and periods it has been considered mostmerciful to put them, to death; at others they have been almost or quitedeified and allowed to regulate the whole lives of their descendants. Thusin New Caledonia aged parents, it is said by Mrs. Hadfield, were formerlytaken up to a high mountain and left with enough food to last a few days;there was at the same time great regard for the aged, as also among theHottentots who asked: "Can you see a parent or a relative shaking andfreezing under a cold, dreary, heavy, useless old age, and not think, inpity of them, of putting an end to their misery?" It was generally theopinion of the parents themselves, but in some countries the parents havedominated and overawed their children to the time of their natural deathand even beyond, up to the point of ancestor worship, as in China, whereno man of any age can act for himself in the chief matters of life duringhis parents' life-time, and to some extent in ancient Rome, whence aninfluence in this direction which still exists in the laws and customs ofFrance. [4] Both extremes have proved compatible with a beautifully humanlife. To steer midway between them seems to-day, however, the wisestcourse. There ought to be no reason, and under happy conditions there isno reason, why the relationship between parent and child, as one of mutualaffection and care, should ever cease to exist. But that the relationshipshould continue to exist as a tie is unnatural and tends to be harmful. Ata certain stage in the development of the child the physical tie with theparent is severed, and the umbilical cord cut. At a later stage indevelopment, when puberty is attained and adolescence is feeling its waytowards a complete adult maturity, the spiritual tie must be severed. Itis absolutely essential that the young spirit should begin to essay itsown wings. If its energy is not equal to this adventure, then it is thepart of a truly loving parent to push it over the edge of the nest. Ofcourse there are dangers and risks. But the worst dangers and risks comeof the failure to adventure, of the refusal to face the tasks of the worldand to assume the full function of life. All that Freud has told of theparalysing and maiming influence of infantile arrest or regression is hereprofitable to consider. In order, moreover, that the relationship betweenparents and children may retain its early beauty and love, it is essentialthat it shall adapt itself to adult conditions and the absence of ties sorendered necessary. Otherwise there is little likelihood of anything butfriction and pain on one side or the other, and perhaps on both sides. 

[4] The varying customs of different peoples in this matter are setforth by Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, Ch. XXV. 

The parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equalimportance that they should train themselves. It is desirable thatchildren, as they grow up, should be alive to this necessity, andconsciously assist in the process, since they are in closer touch with anew world of activities to which their more lethargic parents are oftenblind and deaf. For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresheducation, and there is no stage for which so little educationalpreparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period. Yet atno time--especially in women, who present all the various stages of thesexual life in so emphatic a form--would education be more valuable. Thegreat burden of reproduction, with all its absorbing responsibilities, hassuddenly been lifted; at the same time the perpetually recurring rhythm ofphysical sex manifestations, so often disturbing in its effect, finallyceases; with that cessation, very often, after a brief period ofperturbation, there is an increase both in physical and mental energy. Yet, too often, all that one can see is that a vacuum has been created, and that there is nothing to fill it. The result is that the mother--forit is most often of the mother that complaint is made--devotes her own newfound energies to the never-ending task of hampering and crushing herchildren's developing energies. How many mothers there are who bring toour minds that ancient and almost inspired statement concerning those forwhom "Satan finds some mischief still"! They are wasting, worse thanwasting, energies that might be profitably applied to all sorts of socialservice in the world. There is nothing that is so much needed as the"maternal in politics, " or in all sorts of non-political channels ofsocial service, and none can be better fitted for such service than thosewho have had an actual experience of motherhood and acquired the variedknowledge that such experience should give. There are numberless otherways, besides social service, in which mothers who have passed the age offorty, providing they possess the necessary aptitudes, can more profitablyapply themselves than in hampering, or pampering, their adult children. Itis by wisely cultivating their activities in a larger sphere that womenwhose chief duties in the narrower domestic sphere are over may betterensure their own happiness and the welfare of others than either byfretting and obstructing, or by worrying over, their own children who areno longer children. It is quite true that the children may go astray evenwhen they have ceased to be children. But the time to implant the seeds ofvirtue, the time to convey a knowledge of life, was when they were small. If it was done well, it only remains to exercise faith and trust. If itwas done ill, nothing done later will compensate, for it is merely foolishfor a mother who could not educate her children when they were small toimagine that she is able to educate them when they are big. 

So it is that the problem of the attitude of the child to its parentscircles round again to that of the parents to the child. The wise parentrealises that childhood is simply a preparation for the free activities oflater life, that the parents exist in order to equip children for life andnot to shelter and protect them from the world into which they must becast. Education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be aninoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment inknowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life. Beyond that, and nodoubt in the largest part, it is a natural growth and takes place ofitself. 

CHAPTER II

THE MEANING OF PURITY

I

We live in a world in which, as we nowadays begin to realise, we find twoantagonistic streams of traditional platitude concerning the question ofsexual purity, both flowing from the far past. 

The people who embody one of these streams of tradition, basing themselveson old-fashioned physiology, assume, though they may not always assert, that the sexual products are excretions, to be dealt with summarily likeother excretions. That is an ancient view and it was accepted by such wisephilosophers of old times as Montaigne and Sir Thomas More. It had, moreover, the hearty support of so eminent a theological authority asLuther, who on this ground preached early marriage to men and women alike. It is still a popular view, sometimes expressed in the crudest terms, andoften by people who, not following Luther's example, use it to defendprostitution, though they generally exclude women from its operation, as asex to whom it fails to apply and by whom it is not required. 

But on the other hand we have another stream of platitude. On this sidethere is usually little attempt either to deny or to affirm the theory ofthe opposing party, though they would contradict its conclusions. Theirtheory, if they have one, would usually seem to be that sexual activity isa response to stimulation from without or from within, so that if there isno stimulation there will be no sexual manifestation. They would preach, they tell us, a strenuous ideal; they would set up a wholesome dictate ofhygiene. The formula put forward on this basis usually runs: Continence isnot only harmless but beneficial. It is a formula which, in one form oranother, has received apparently enthusiastic approval in many quarters, even from distinguished physicians. We need not be surprised. Aproposition so large and general is not easy to deny, and is still moredifficult to reverse; therefore it proves welcome to thepeople--especially the people occupying public and professionalpositions--who wish to find the path of least resistance, under pressureof a vigorous section of public opinion. Yet in its vagueness theproposition is a little disingenuous; it condescends to no definitions andno qualifications; it fails even to make clear how it is to be reconciledwith any enthusiastic approval of marriage, for if continence is beautifulhow can marriage make it cease to be so?

Both these streams of feeling, it may be noted, sprang from a commonsource far back in the primitive human world. All the emanations of thehuman body, all the spontaneous manifestations of its activities, weremysterious and ominous to early man, pregnant with terror unless met withimmense precautions and surrounded by careful ritual. The manifestationsof sex were the least intelligible and the most spontaneous. Therefore thethings of sex were those that most lent themselves to feelings of horrorand awe, of impurity and of purity. They seemed so highly charged withmagic potency that there were no things that men more sought to avoid, yetnone to which they were impelled to give more thought. The manifold echoesof that primitive conception of sex, and all the violent reactions thatwere thus evolved and eventually bound up with the original impulse, compose the streams of tradition that feed our modern world in this matterand determine the ideas of purity that surround us. 

At the present day the crude theory of the sexual impulse held on oneside, and the ignorant rejection of theory altogether on the other side, are beginning to be seen as both alike unjustified. We begin to find thegrounds for a sounder theory. Not indeed that the problems of sex, whichgo so deeply into the whole personal and social life, can ever be settledexclusively upon physiological grounds. But we have done much to prepareeven the loftiest Building of Love when we have attained a clear view ofits biological basis. 

The progress of chemico-physiological research during recent years has nowbrought us to new ground for our building. Indeed the image might well bechanged altogether, and it might be said that science has entirelytransferred the drama of reproduction to a new stage with new actors. Therewith the immense emphasis placed on excretion, and the inevitablereaction that emphasis aroused, both alike disappear. The sexualprotagonists are no longer at the surface but within the most secretrecesses of the organism, and they appear to science under the name ofHormones or Internal Secretions, always at work within and neverthemselves condescending to appear at all. Those products of the sexualglands which in both sexes are cast out of the body, and at an immaturestage of knowledge appeared to be excretions, are of primary reproductiveimportance, but, as regards the sexual constitution of the individual, they are of far less importance than the internal secretions of these verysame glands. It is, however, by no means only the specifically sexualglands which thus exert a sexual influence within the organism. Otherglands in the brain, the throat, and the abdomen, --such as the thyroid andthe adrenals, --are also elaborating fermentative secretions to throw intothe system. Their mutual play is so elaborate that it is only beginningto be understood. Some internal secretions stimulate, others inhibit, andthe same secretions may under different conditions do either. This fact isthe source of many degrees and varieties of energy and formative power inthe organism. Taken altogether, the internal secretions are the forceswhich build up the man's and woman's distinctively sexual constitution:the special disposition and growth of hair, the relative development ofbreasts and pelvis, the characteristic differences in motor activity, thevarying emotional desires and needs. It is in the complex play of thesesecretions that we now seek the explanation of all the peculiarities ofsexual constitution, imperfect or one-sided physical and psychicdevelopment, the various approximations of the male to female bodily andemotional disposition, of the female to the male, all the numerousgradations that occur, naturally as we now see, between the complete manand the complete woman. 

When we turn the light of this new conception on to our old ideas ofpurity, --to the virtue or the vice, accordingly as we may have beenpleased to consider it, of sexual abstinence, --we begin to see that thoseideas need radical revision. They appear in a new light, their wholemeaning is changed. No doubt it may be said they never had the validitythey appeared to possess, even when we judge them by the crudestcriterion, that of practice. Thus, while it is the rule for physicians toproclaim the advantages of sexual continence, there is no good reason tobelieve that they have themselves practised it in any eminent degree. Afew years ago an inquiry among thirty-five distinguished physicians, chiefly German and Russian, showed that they were nearly all of opinionthat continence is harmless, if not beneficial. But Meirowsky found byinquiry of eighty-six physicians, of much the same nationalities, thatonly one had himself been sexually abstinent before marriage. There seemto be no similar statistics for the English-speaking countries, wherethere exists a greater modesty--though not perhaps notably less need forit--in the making of such confessions. But if we turn to the alliedprofession which is strongly on the side of sexual abstinence, we findthat among theological students, as has been shown in the United States, while prostitution may be infrequent, no temptation is so frequent or sopotent, and in most cases so irresistible, as that to solitary sexualindulgence. Such is the actual attitude towards the two least ideal formsof sexual practice--as distinguished from mere theory--on the part of thetwo professions which most definitely pronounce in favour of continence. 

It is necessary, however, as will now be clearer, to set our net morewidely. We must take into consideration every form and degree of sexualmanifestation, normal and abnormal, gross and ethereal. When we do this, even cautiously and without going far afield, sexual abstinence is foundto be singularly elusive. Rohleder, a careful and conscientiousinvestigator, has asserted that such abstinence, in the true and completesense, is absolutely non-existent, the genuine cases in which sexualphenomena of some kind or other fail to manifest themselves being simplycases of inborn lack of sexual sensibility. He met, indeed, a few peoplewho seemed exceptions to the general rule, but, on better knowledge, hefound that he was mistaken, and that so far from being absent in thesepeople the sexual instinct was present even in its crudest shapes. Theactivity of sex is an activity that on the physical side is generated bythe complex mechanism of the ductless glands and displayed in the wholeorganism, physical and psychic, of the individual, who cannot abolish thatactivity, although to some extent able to regulate the forms in which itis manifested, so that purity cannot be the abolition or even theindefinite suspension of sexual manifestations; it must be the wise andbeautiful control of them. 

It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve ourknowledge. 

II

We have seen that various popular beliefs and conventional assumptionsconcerning the sexual impulse can no longer be maintained. The sexualactivities of the organism are not mere responses to stimulation, absentif we choose to apply no stimulus, never troubling us if we run away fromthem, harmless if we enclose them within a high wall. Nor do theyconstitute a mere excretion, or a mere appetite, which we can control by acrude system of hygiene and dietetics. We better understand thepsycho-sexual constitution if we regard the motive power behind it as adynamic energy, produced and maintained by a complex mechanism at certaininner foci of the body, and realise that whatever periodic explosivemanifestations may take place at the surface, the primary motive sourcelies in the intimate recesses of the organism, while the outcome is thewhole physical and spiritual energy of our being under those aspects whichare most forcible and most aspiring and even most ethereal. 

This conception, we find, is now receiving an admirable and beautifullyadequate physical basis in the researches of distinguished physiologistsin various lands concerning the parts played by the ductless glands of thebody, in sensitive equilibrium with each other, pouring out into thesystem stimulating and inhibiting hormones, which not only confer on theman's or woman's body those specific sexual characters which we admire butat the same time impart the special tone and fibre and polarity ofmasculinity or femininity to the psychic disposition. Yet, even beforeBrown-Séquard's first epoch-making suggestion had set physiologists tosearch for internal secretions, the insight of certain physicians on themedico-psychological side was independently leading towards the samedynamic conception. In the middle of the last century Anstie, an acuteLondon physician, more or less vaguely realised the transformations ofsexual energy into nervous disease and into artistic energy. James Hinton, whose genius rendered him the precursor of many modern ideas, haddefinitely grasped the dynamic nature of sexual activity, and daringlyproposed to utilise it, not only as a solution of the difficulties of thepersonal life but for the revolutionary transformation of morality. [5] Itwas the wish to group together all the far-flung manifestations of theinner irresistible process of sexual activity that underlay my ownconception of _auto-erotism_, or the spontaneous erotic impulse whicharises from the organism apart from all definite external stimulation, tobe manifested, or it may be transformed, in mere solitary physical sexactivity, in dreams of the night, in day-dreams, in shapes of literatureand art, in symptoms of nervous disorder such as some forms of hysteria, and even in the most exalted phases of mystical devotion. Since then, amore elaborate attempt to develop a similar dynamic conception of sexualactivity has been made by Freud; and the psycho-analysts who have followedhim, or sometimes diverged, have with endless subtlety, and courageousthoroughness, traced the long and sinuous paths of sexual energy inpersonality and in life, indeed in all the main manifestations of humanactivity. 

[5] "The man who separated the thought of chastity from Service and madeit revolve round Self, " wrote Hinton half a century ago in hisunpublished MSS. , "betrayed the human race. " "The rule of Self, " hewrote again, "has two forms: Self-indulgence and Self-virtue; and Naturehas two weapons against it: pain and pleasure. . . . A restraint mustalways be put away when another's need can be served by putting it away;for so is restored to us the force by which Life is made. . . . How curiousit seems! the true evil things are our _good_ things. Our thoughts ofduty and goodness and chastity, those are the things that need to bealtered and put aside; these are the barriers to true goodness. . . . Iforesee the positive denial of _all_ positive morals, the removal of_all_ restrictions. I feel I do not know what 'license, ' as we shouldterm it, may not truly belong to the perfect state of Man. When there isno self surely there is no restriction; as we see there is none inNature. . . . May we not say of marriage as St. Augustine said of God:'Rather would I, not finding, find Thee, than finding, not findThee'?. . . 'Because we like' is the sole legitimate and perfect motive ofhuman action. . . . If this is what Nature affirms then it will be what Ibelieve. " This dynamic conception of the sexual impulse, as a forcethat, under natural conditions, may be trusted to build up a newmorality, obviously belongs to an indefinitely remote future. It is aforce whose blade is two-edged, for while it strikes at unselfishness italso strikes at selfishness, and at present we cannot easily conceive atime when "there is no self"; we should be more disposed to regard it asa time when there is much humbug. Yet for the individual this conceptionof the constructive power of love retains much enlightenment andinspiration. 

It is important for us to note about this dynamic sexual energy in theconstitution that while it is very firmly and organically rooted, andquite indestructible, it assumes very various shapes. On the physical sideall the characters of sexual distinction and all the beauties of sexualadornment are wrought by the power furnished by the co-operating furnacesof the glands, and so also, on the psychic side, are emotions and impulseswhich range from the simplest longings for sensual contact to the mostexalted rapture of union with the Infinite. Moreover, there is a certaindegree of correlation between the physical and the psychic manifestationof sexual energy, and, to some extent, transformation is possible in theembodiment of that energy. 

A vague belief in the transformation of sexual energy has long beenwidespread. It is apparently shown in the idea that continence, as aneconomy in the expenditure of sexual force, may be practised to aid thephysical and mental development, while folklore reveals various sayings inregard to the supposed influence of sexual abstinence in the causation ofinsanity. There is a certain underlying basis of reason in such beliefs, though in an unqualified form they cannot be accepted, for they take noaccount of the complexity of the factors involved, of the difficulty andoften impossibility of effecting any complete transformation, either in adesirable or undesirable direction, and of the serious conflict which theprocess often involves. The psycho-analysts have helped us here. Whetheror not we accept their elaborate and often shifting conceptions, they haveemphasised and developed a psychological conception of sexual energy andits transformations, before only vaguely apprehended, which is now seen toharmonise with the modern physiological view. 

The old notion that sexual activity is merely a matter of the voluntaryexercise, or abstinence from exercise, of the reproductive functions ofadult persons has too long obstructed any clear vision of the fact thatsexuality, in the wide and deep sense, is independent of the developmentsof puberty. This has long been accepted as an occasional and thereforeabnormal fact, but we have to recognise that it is true, almost or quitenormally, even of early childhood. No doubt we must here extend the word"sexuality"[6]--in what may well be considered an illegitimate way--tocover manifestations which in the usual sense are not sexual or are atmost called "sexual perversions. " But this extension has a certainjustification in view of the fact that these manifestations can be seen tobe definitely related to the ordinary adult forms of sexuality. Howeverwe define it, we have to recognise that the child takes the same kind ofpleasure in those functions which are natural to his age as the adult iscapable of taking in localised sexual functions, that he may weave ideasaround such functions, sometimes cultivate their exercise from love ofluxury, make them the basis of day-dreams which at puberty, when theideals of adult life are ready to capture his sexual energy, he begins togrow ashamed of. 

[6] Perhaps, as applied to the period below puberty, it would be moreexact to say "pseudo-sexuality. " Matsumato has lately pointed out thesignificance of the fact that the interstitial testicular tissue, essential to the hormonic function of the testes, only becomes active atpuberty. 

At this stage, indeed, we reach a crucial point, though it has usuallybeen overlooked, in the lives of boys and girls, more especially thosewhose heredity may have been a little tainted or their upbringing a littletwisted. For it is here that the transformation of energy and theresulting possibilities of conflict are wont to enter. In the harmoniouslydeveloping organism, one may say, there is at this period a gradual andeasy transmutation of the childish pleasurable activities into adultactivities, accompanied perhaps by a feeling of shame for the earlierfeelings, though this quickly passes into a forgetfulness which oftenleads the adult far astray when he attempts to understand the psychic lifeof the child. The childish manifestations, it must be remarked, are notnecessarily unwholesome; they probably perform a valuable function anddevelop budding sexual emotions, just as the petals of flowers aredeveloped in pale and contorted shapes beneath the enveloping sheaths. 

But in our human life the transmutation is often not so easy as inflowers. Normally, indeed, the adolescent transformations of sex are sourgent and so manifold--now definite sensual desire, now muscular impulsesof adventure, now emotional aspirations in the sphere of art orreligion--that they easily overwhelm and absorb all its vaguer and moretwisted manifestations in childhood. Yet it may happen that by someaberration of internal development or of external influence thisconversion of energy may at one point or another fail to be completelyeffected. Then some fragment of infantile sexuality survives, in rarecases to turn all the adult faculties to its service and become recklessand triumphant, in minor and more frequent cases to be subordinated andmore or less repressed into the subconscious sphere by voluntary or eveninvoluntary and unconscious effort. Then we may have conflict, which, whenit works happily, exerts a fortifying and ennobling influence oncharacter, when more unhappily a disturbing influence which may even leadto conditions of definite nervous disorder. 

The process by which this fundamental sexual energy is elevated fromelementary and primitive forms into complex and developed forms is termedsublimation, a term, originally used for the process of raising by heat asolid substance to the state of vapour, which was applied even by suchearly writers as Drayton and Davies in a metaphorical and spiritualsense. [7] In the sexual sphere sublimation is of vital importance becauseit comes into question throughout the whole of life, and our relation toit must intimately affect our conception of morality. The element ofathletic asceticism which is a part of all virility, and is foundeven--indeed often in a high degree--among savages, has its main moraljustification as one aid to sublimation. Throughout life sublimation actsby transforming some part at all events of the creative sexual energy fromits elementary animal manifestations into more highly individual andsocial manifestations, or at all events into finer forms of sexualactivity, forms that seem to us more beautiful and satisfy us more widely. Purity, we thus come to see is, in one aspect, the action of sublimation, not abolishing sexual activity, but lifting it into forms of which ourbest judgment may approve. 

[7] We may gather the history of the term from the _Oxford Dictionary_. Bodies, said Davies, are transformed to spirit "by sublimation strange, "and Ben Jonson in _Cynthia's Revels_ spoke of a being "sublimated andrefined"; Purchas and Jackson, early in the same seventeenth century, referred to religion as "sublimating" human nature, and Jeremy Taylor, alittle later, to "subliming" marriage into a sacrament; Shaftesbury, early in the eighteenth century, spoke of human nature being "sublimatedby a sort of spiritual chemists" and Welton, a little later, of "a lovesublimate and refined, " while, finally, and altogether in our modernsense, Peacock in 1816 in his _Headlong Hall_ referred to "thatenthusiastic sublimation which is the source of greatness and energy. "

We must not suppose--as is too often assumed--that sublimation can becarried out easily, completely, or even with unmixed advantage. If it wereso, certainly the old-fashioned moralist would be confronted by fewdifficulties, but we have ample reason to believe that it is not so. It iswith sexual energy, well observes Freud, who yet attaches great importanceto sublimation, as it is with heat in our machines: only a certainproportion can be transformed into work. Or, as it is put by Löwenfeld, who is not a constructive philosopher but a careful and cautious medicalinvestigator, the advantages of sublimation are not received in speciallyhigh degree by those who permanently deny to their sexual impulse everynatural direct relief. The celibate Catholic clergy, notwithstanding theirheroic achievements in individual cases, can scarcely be said to display aconspicuous excess of intellectual energy, on the whole, over thenon-celibate Protestant clergy; or, if we compare the English clergybefore and after the Protestant Reformation, though the earlier period mayreveal more daring and brilliant personages, the whole intellectual outputof the later Church may claim comparison with that of the earlier Church. There are clearly other factors at work besides sublimation, and evensublimation may act most potently, not when the sexual activities sink orare driven into a tame and monotonous subordination, but rather when theyassume a splendid energy which surges into many channels. Yet sublimationis a very real influence, not only in its more unconscious and profoundoperations, but in its more immediate and temporary applications, as partof an athletic discipline, acting best perhaps when it acts mostautomatically, to utilise the motor energy of the organism in theattainment of any high physical or psychic achievement. 

We have to realise, however, that these transmutations do not only takeplace by way of a sublimation of sexual energy, but also by way of adegradation of that energy. The new form of energy produced, that is tosay, may not be of a beneficial kind; it may be of a mischievous kind, aform of perversion or disease. Sexual self-denial, instead of leading tosublimation, may lead to nervous disorder when the erotic tension, failingto find a natural outlet and not sublimated to higher erotic or non-eroticends in the real world, is transmuted into an unreal dreamland, thusundergoing what Jung terms introversion; while there are also the peoplealready referred to, in whom immature childish sexuality persists into anadult stage of development it is no longer altogether in accord with, sothat conflict, with various possible trains of nervous symptoms, mayresult. Disturbances and conflicts in the emotional sexual field may, weknow, in these and similar ways become transformed into physical symptomsof disorder which can be seen to have a precise symbolic relationship todefinite events in the patient's emotional history, while fits of nervousterror, or anxiety-neurosis, may frequently be regarded as a degradationof thwarted or disturbed sexual energy, manifesting its origin bypresenting a picture of sexual excitation transposed into a non-sexualshape of an entirely useless or mischievous character. 

Thus, to sum up, we may say that the sexual energy of the organism is amighty force, automatically generated throughout life. Under healthyconditions that force is transmuted in more or less degree, but neverentirely, into forms that further the development of the individual andthe general ends of life. These transformations are to some extentautomatic, to some extent within the control of personal guidance. Butthere are limits to such guidance, for the primitive human personality cannever be altogether rendered an artificial creature of civilisation. Whenthese limits are reached the transmutation of sexual energy may becomeuseless or even dangerous, and we fail to attain the exquisite flower ofPurity. 

III

It may seem that in setting forth the nature of the sexual impulse in thelight of modern biology and psychology, I have said but little of purityand less of morality. Yet that is as it should be. We must first becontent to see how the machine works and watch the wheels go round. Wemust understand before we can pretend to control; in the natural world, asBacon long ago said, we can only command by obeying. Moreover, in thisfield Nature's order is far older and more firmly established than ourcivilised human morality. In our arrogance we often assume that Moralityis the master of Nature. Yet except when it is so elementary orfundamental as to be part of Nature, it is but a guide, and a guide thatis only a child, so young, so capricious, that in every age its waywardhand has sought to pull Nature in a different direction. Even only inorder to guide we must first see and know. 

We realise that never more than when we observe the distinction whichconventional sex-morals so often makes between men and women. Failing tofind in women exactly the same kind of sexual emotions, as they find inthemselves, men have concluded that there are none there at all. So manhas regarded himself as the sexual animal, and woman as either the passiveobject of his adoring love or the helpless victim of his degrading lust, in either case as a being who, unlike man, possessed an innocent "purity"by nature, without any need for the trouble of acquiring it. Of woman as areal human being, with sexual needs and sexual responsibilities, moralityhas often known nothing. It has been content to preach restraint to man, an abstract and meaningless restraint even if it were possible. But whenwe have regard to the actual facts of life, we can no longer place virtuein a vacuum. Women are just as apt as men to be afflicted by the pettyjealousies and narrownesses of the crude sexual impulse; women just asmuch as men need the perpetual sublimation of erotic desire into forms ofmore sincere purity, of larger harmony, in gaining which ends all theessential ends of morality are alone gained. The delicate adjustment ofthe needs of each sex to the needs of the other sex to the end of whatChaucer called fine loving, the adjustment of the needs of both sexes tothe larger ends of fine living, may well furnish a perpetual moraldiscipline which extends its fortifying influence to men and women alike. 

It is this universality of sexual emotion, blending in its own mightystream, as is now realised, many other currents of emotion, even theparental and the filial, and traceable even in childhood, --the wideefflorescence of an energy constantly generated by a vital internalmechanism, --which renders vain all attempts either to suppress or toignore the problem of sex, however immensely urgent we might foolishlyimagine such attempts to be. Even the history of the early Christianascetics in Egypt, as recorded in the contemporary _Paradise_ ofPalladius, illustrates the futility of seeking to quench the unquenchable, the flame of fire which is life itself. These "athletes of the Lord" wereunder the best possible conditions for the conquest of lust; they had beendriven into the solitude of the desert by a genuine deeply-felt impulse, they could regulate their lives as they would, and they possessed analmost inconceivable energy of resolution. They were prepared to live onherbs, even to eat grass, and to undertake any labour of self-denial. Theywere so scrupulous that we hear of a holy man who would even efface awoman's footprints in the sand lest a brother might thereby be led intothoughts of evil. Yet they were perpetually tempted to seductive visionsand desires, even after a monastic life of forty years, and the women seemto have been not less liable to yield to temptation than the men. 

It may be noted that in the most perfect saints there has not always beena complete suppression of the sexual impulse even on the normal plane, noreven, in some cases, the attempt at such complete suppression. In theearly days of Christianity the exercise of chastity was frequentlycombined with a close and romantic intimacy of affection between thesexes which shocked austere moralists. Even in the eleventh century wefind that the charming and saintly Robert of Arbrissel, founder of theorder of Fontevrault, would often sleep with his nuns, notwithstanding theremonstrances of pious friends who thought he was displaying too heroic amanifestation of continence, failing to understand that he was effecting asweet compromise with continence. If, moreover, we consider the rarest andfinest of the saints we usually find that in their early lives there was aperiod of full expansion of the organic activities in which all thenatural impulses had full play. This was the case with the two greatestand most influential saints of the Christian Church, St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi, absolutely unlike as they were in most other respects. Sublimation, we see again and again, is limited, and the best developmentsof the spiritual life are not likely to come about by the rigid attempt toobtain a complete transmutation of sexual energy. 

The old notion that any strict attempt to adhere to sexual abstinence isbeset by terrible risks, insanity and so forth, has no foundation, at allevents where we are concerned with reasonably sound and healthy people. But it is a very serious error to suppose that the effort to achievecomplete and prolonged sexual abstinence is without any bad results atall, physical or psychic, either in men or women who are normal andhealthy. This is now generally recognised everywhere, except in theEnglish-speaking countries, where the supposed interests of a prudishmorality often lead to a refusal to look facts in the face. As ProfessorNäcke, a careful and cautious physician, stated shortly before his death, a few years ago, the opinion that sexual abstinence has no bad effects isnot to-day held by a single authority on questions of sex; the fight isonly concerned with the nature and degree of the bad effects which, inNäcke's belief--and he was doubtless right--are never of a gravely seriouscharacter. 

Yet we have also to remember that not only, as we have seen, is the effortto achieve complete abstinence--which we ignorantly term "purity"--futile, since we are concerned with a force which is being constantly generatedwithin the organism, but in the effort to achieve it we are abusing agreat source of beneficent energy. We lose more than half of what we mightgain when we cover it up, and try to push it back, to produce, it may be, not harmonious activity in the world, but merely internal confusion anddistortion, and perhaps the paralysis of half the soul's energy. Thesexual activities of the organism, we cannot too often repeat, constitutea mighty source of energy which we can never altogether repress though bywise guidance we may render it an aid not only to personal developmentand well-being but to the moral betterment of the world. The attraction ofsex, according to a superstition which reaches far back into antiquity, isa baleful comet pointing to destruction, rather than a mighty star towhich we may harness our chariot. It may certainly be either, and which itis likely to become depends largely on our knowledge and our power ofself-guidance. 

In old days when, as we have seen, tradition, aided by the most fantasticsuperstitions, insisted on the baleful aspects of sex, the whole emphasiswas placed against passion. Since knowledge and self-guidance, withoutwhich passion is likely to be in fact pernicious, were then usuallyabsent, the emphasis was needed, and when Böhme, the old mystic, declaredthat the art of living is to "harness our fiery energies to the service ofthe light, " it has recently been even maintained that he was the solitarypioneer of our modern doctrines. But the ages in which ill-regulatedpassion exceeded--ages at least full of vitality and energy--gave place toa more anæmic society. To-day the conditions are changed, even reversed. Moral maxims that were wholesome in feudal days are deadly now. We are inno danger of suffering from too much vitality, from too much energy in theexplosive splendour of our social life. We possess, moreover, knowledgein plenty and self-restraint in plenty, even in excess, however wronglythey may sometimes be applied. It is passion, more passion and fuller, that we need. The moralist who bans passion is not of our time; his placethese many years is with the dead. For we know what happens in a worldwhen those who ban passion have triumphed. When Love is suppressed Hatetakes its place. The least regulated orgies of Love grow innocent besidethe orgies of Hate. When nations that might well worship one another cutone another's throats, when Cruelty and Self-righteousness and Lying andInjustice and all the Powers of Destruction rule the human heart, theworld is devastated, the fibre of the whole organism, of society growsflaccid, and all the ideals of civilisation are debased. If the world isnot now sick of Hate we may be sure it never will be; so whatever mayhappen to the world let us remember that the individual is still left, tocarry on the tasks of Love, to do good even in an evil world. 

It is more passion and ever more that we need if we are to undo the workof Hate, if we are to add to the gaiety and splendour of life, to the sumof human achievement, to the aspiration of human ecstasy. The things thatfill men and women with beauty and exhilaration, and spur them to actionsbeyond themselves, are the things that are now needed. The entireintrinsic purification of the soul, it was held by the great SpanishJesuit theologian, Suarez, takes place at the moment when, provided thesoul is of good disposition, it sees God; he meant after death, but for usthe saying is symbolic of the living truth. It is only in the passion offacing the naked beauty of the world and its naked truth that we can winintrinsic purity. Not all, indeed, who look upon the face of God can live. It is not well that they should live. It is only the metals that can bewelded in the fire of passion to finer services that the world needs. Itwould be well that the rest should be lost in those flames. That indeedwere a world fit to perish, wherein the moralist had set up the ignoblemaxim: Safety first. 

CHAPTER III

THE OBJECTS OF MARRIAGE

What are the legitimate objects of marriage? We know that many people seekto marry for ends that can scarcely be called legitimate, that men maymarry to obtain a cheap domestic drudge or nurse, and that women may marryto be kept when they are tired of keeping themselves. These objects inmarriage may or may not be moral, but in any case they are scarcely itslegitimate ends. We are here concerned to ascertain those ends of marriagewhich are legitimate when we take the highest ground as moral andcivilised men and women living in an advanced state of society andseeking, if we can, to advance that state of society still further. 

The primary end of marriage is to beget and bear offspring, and to rearthem until they are able to take care of themselves. On that basis Man isat one with all the mammals and most of the birds. If, indeed, wedisregard the originally less essential part of this end--that is to say, the care and tending of the young--this end of marriage is not only theprimary but usually the sole end of sexual intercourse in the wholemammal world. As a natural instinct, its achievement involvesgratification and well-being, but this bait of gratification is merely adevice of Nature's and not in itself an end having any useful function atthe periods when conception is not possible. This is clearly indicated bythe fact that among animals the female only experiences sexual desire atthe season of impregnation, and that desire ceases as soon as impregnationtakes place, though this is only in a few species true of the male, obviously because, if his sexual desire and aptitude were confined to sobrief a period, the chances of the female meeting the right male at theright moment would be too seriously diminished; so that the attentive andinquisitive attitude towards the female by the male animal--which we mayoften think we see still traceable in the human species--is not theoutcome of lustfulness for personal gratification ("wantonly to satisfycarnal lusts and appetites like brute beasts, " as the Anglican Prayer Bookincorrectly puts it) but implanted by Nature for the benefit of the femaleand the attainment of the primary object of procreation. This primaryobject we may term the animal end of marriage. 

This object remains not only the primary but even the sole end of marriageamong the lower races of mankind generally. The erotic idea, in its deepersense, that is to say the element of love, arose very slowly in mankind. It is found, it is true, among some lower races, and it appears that sometribes possess a word for the joy of love in a purely psychic sense. Buteven among European races the evolution was late. The Greek poets, exceptthe latest, showed little recognition of love as an element of marriage. Theognis compared marriage with cattle-breeding. The Romans of theRepublic took much the same view. Greeks and Romans alike regardedbreeding as the one recognisable object of marriage; any other object wasmere wantonness and had better, they thought, be carried on outsidemarriage. Religion, which preserves so many ancient and primitiveconceptions of life, has consecrated this conception also, andChristianity--though, as I will point out later, it has tended to enlargethe conception--at the outset only offered the choice between celibacy onthe one hand and on the other marriage for the production of offspring. 

Yet, from, an early period in human history, a secondary function ofsexual intercourse had been slowly growing up to become one of the greatobjects of marriage. Among animals, it may be said, and even sometimes inman, the sexual impulse, when once aroused, makes but a short and swiftcircuit through the brain to reach its consummation. But as the brain andits faculties develop, powerfully aided indeed by the very difficultiesof the sexual life, the impulse for sexual union has to traverse everlonger, slower, more painful paths, before it reaches--and sometimes itnever reaches--its ultimate object. This means that sex gradually becomesintertwined with all the highest and subtlest human emotions andactivities, with the refinements of social intercourse, with highadventure in every sphere, with art, with religion. The primitive animalinstinct, having the sole end of procreation, becomes on its way to thatend the inspiring stimulus to all those psychic energies which incivilisation we count most precious. This function is thus, we see, aby-product. But, as we know, even in our human factories, the by-productis sometimes more valuable than the product. That is so as regards thefunctional products of human evolution. The hand was produced out of theanimal forelimb with the primary end of grasping the things we materiallyneed, but as a by-product the hand has developed the function of makingand playing the piano and the violin, and that secondary functionalby-product of the hand we account, even as measured by the rough test ofmoney, more precious, however less materially necessary, than its primaryfunction. It is, however, only in rare and gifted natures that transformedsexual energy becomes of supreme value for its own sake without everattaining the normal physical outlet. For the most part the by-productaccompanies the product, throughout, thus adding a secondary, yetpeculiarly sacred and specially human, object of marriage to its primaryanimal object. This may be termed the spiritual object of marriage. 

By the term "spiritual" we are not to understand any mysterious andsupernatural qualities. It is simply a convenient name, in distinctionfrom animal, to cover all those higher mental and emotional processeswhich in human evolution are ever gaining greater power. It is needless toenumerate the constituents of this spiritual end of sexual intercourse, for everyone is entitled to enumerate them differently and in differentorder. They include not only all that makes love a gracious and beautifulerotic art, but the whole element of pleasure in so far as pleasure ismore than a mere animal gratification. Our ancient ascetic traditionsoften make us blind to the meaning of pleasure. We see only itspossibilities of evil and not its mightiness for good. We forget that, asRomain Rolland says, "Joy is as holy as Pain. " No one has insisted so muchon the supreme importance of the element of pleasure in the spiritual endsof sex as James Hinton. Rightly used, he declares, Pleasure is "the Childof God, " to be recognised as a "mighty storehouse of force, " and hepointed out the significant fact that in the course of human progress itsimportance increases rather than diminishes. [8] While it is perfectly truethat sexual energy may be in large degree arrested, and transformed intointellectual and moral forms, yet it is also true that pleasure itself, and above all, sexual pleasure, wisely used and not abused, may prove thestimulus and liberator of our finest and most exalted activities. It islargely this remarkable function of sexual pleasure which is decisive insettling the argument of those who claim that continence is the onlyalternative to the animal end of marriage. That argument ignores theliberating and harmonising influences, giving wholesome balance and sanityto the whole organism, imparted by a sexual union which is the outcome ofthe psychic as well as physical needs. There is, further, in theattainment of the spiritual end of marriage, much more than the benefit ofeach individual separately. There is, that is to say, the effect on theunion itself. For through harmonious sex relationships a deeper spiritualunity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence in or out ofmarriage, and the marriage association becomes an apter instrument in theservice of the world. Apart from any sexual craving, the completespiritual contact of two persons who love each other can only be attainedthrough some act of rare intimacy. No act can be quite so intimate as thesexual embrace. In its accomplishment, for all who have reached areasonably human degree of development, the communion of bodies becomesthe communion of souls. The outward and visible sign has been theconsummation of an inward and spiritual grace. "I would base all my sexteaching to children and young people on the beauty and sacredness ofsex, " wrote a distinguished woman; "sex intercourse is the great sacramentof life, he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh hisown damnation; but it may be the most beautiful sacrament between twosouls who have no thought of children. "[9] To many the idea of a sacramentseems merely ecclesiastical, but that is a misunderstanding. The word"sacrament" is the ancient Roman name of a soldier's oath of militaryallegiance, and the idea, in the deeper sense, existed long beforeChristianity, and has ever been regarded as the physical sign of theclosest possible union with some great spiritual reality. From our modernstandpoint we may say, with James Hinton, that the sexual embrace, worthily understood, can only be compared with music and with prayer. "Every true lover, " it has been well said by a woman, "knows this, and theworth of any and every relationship can be judged by its success inreaching, or failing to reach, this standpoint. "[10]

[8] Mrs. Havelock Ellis, _James Hinton: A Sketch_, Ch. IV. 

[9] Olive Schreiner in a personal letter. 

[10] Mrs. Havelock Ellis, _James Hinton_, p. 180. 

I have mentioned how the Church--in part influenced by that clinging toprimitive conceptions which always marks religions and in part by itsancient traditions of asceticism--tended to insist mainly, if notexclusively, on the animal object of marriage. It sought to reduce sex toa minimum because the pagans magnified sex; it banned pleasure because theChristian's path on earth was the way of the Cross; and even iftheologians accepted the idea of a "Sacrament of Nature" they could onlyallow it to operate when the active interference of the priest wasimpossible, though it must in justice be said that, before the Council ofTrent, the Western Church recognised that the sacrament of marriage waseffected entirely by the act of the two celebrants themselves and not bythe priest. Gradually, however, a more reasonable and humane opinion creptinto the Church. Intercourse outside the animal end of marriage was indeeda sin, but it became merely a venial sin. The great influence of St. Augustine was on the side of allowing much freedom to intercourse outsidethe aim of procreation. At the Reformation, John à Lasco, a CatholicBishop who became a Protestant and settled in England, laid it down, following various earlier theologians, that the object of marriage, besides offspring, was to serve as a "sacrament of consolation" to theunited couple, and that view was more or less accepted by the founders ofthe Protestant churches. It is the generally accepted Protestant viewto-day. [11] The importance of the spiritual end of intercourse inmarriage, alike for the higher development of each member of the coupleand for the intimacy and stability of their union, is still moreemphatically set forth by the more advanced thinkers of to-day. 

[11] It is well set forth by the Rev. H. Northcote in his excellentbook, _Christianity and Sex Problems_. 

There is something pathetic in the spectacle of those among us who arestill only able to recognise the animal end of marriage, and who point tothe example of the lower animals--among whom the biological conditions areentirely different--as worthy of our imitation. It has taken God--orNature, if we will--unknown millions of years of painful struggle toevolve Man, and to raise the human species above that helpless bondage toreproduction which marks the lower animals. But on these people it has allbeen wasted. They are at the animal stage still. They have yet to learnthe A. B. C. Of love. A representative of these people in the person of anAnglican bishop, the Bishop of Southwark, appeared as a witness before theNational Birth-Rate Commission which, a few years ago, met in London toinvestigate the decline of the birth-rate. He declared that procreation isthe sole legitimate object of marriage and that intercourse for any otherend was a degrading act of mere "self-gratification. " This declarationhad the interesting result of evoking the comments of many members of theCommission, formed of representative men and women with variousstand-points--Protestant, Catholic, and other--and it is notable thatwhile not one identified himself with the Bishop's opinion, severaldecisively opposed that opinion, as contrary to the best beliefs of bothancient and modern times, as representing a low and not a high moralstandpoint, and as involving the notion that the whole sexual activity ofan individual should be reduced to perhaps two or three effective acts ofintercourse in a lifetime. Such a notion obviously cannot be carried intogeneral practice, putting aside the question as to whether it would bedesirable, and it may be added that it would have the further result ofshutting out from the life of love altogether all those persons who, forwhatever reason, feel that it is their duty to refrain from havingchildren at all. It is the attitude of a handful of Pharisees seeking tothrust the bulk of mankind into Hell. All this confusion and evil comes ofthe blindness which cannot know that, beyond the primary animal end ofpropagation in marriage, there is a secondary but more exalted spiritualend. 

It is needless to insist how intimately that secondary end of marriage isbound up with the practice of birth-control. Without birth-control, indeed, it could frequently have no existence at all, and even at thebest seldom be free from disconcerting possibilities fatal to its veryessence. Against these disconcerting possibilities is often placed, on theother side, the un-æsthetic nature of the contraceptives associated withbirth-control. Yet, it must be remembered, they are of a part with thewhole of our civilised human life. We at no point enter the spiritual savethrough the material. Forel has in this connection compared the use ofcontraceptives to the use of eye-glasses. Eye-glasses are equallyun-æsthetic, yet they are devices, based on Nature, wherewith tosupplement the deficiencies of Nature. However in themselves un-æsthetic, for those who need them they make the æsthetic possible. Eye-glasses andcontraceptives alike are a portal to the spiritual world for many who, without them, would find that world largely a closed book. 

Birth-control is effecting, and promising to effect, many functions in oursocial life. By furnishing the means to limit the size of families, whichwould otherwise be excessive, it confers the greatest benefit on thefamily and especially on the mother. By rendering easily possible aselection in parentage and the choice of the right time and circumstancesfor conception it is, again, the chief key to the eugenic improvement ofthe race. There are many other benefits, as is now generally becomingclear, which will be derived from the rightly applied practice ofbirth-control. To many of us it is not the least of these thatbirth-control effects finally the complete liberation of the spiritualobject of marriage. 

CHAPTER IV

HUSBANDS AND WIVES

It has always been common to discuss the psychology of women. Thepsychology of men has usually been passed over, whether because it is toosimple or too complicated. But the marriage question to-day is much lessthe wife-problem than the husband-problem. Women in their personal andsocial activities have been slowly expanding along lines which are nowgenerally accepted. But there has been no marked change of responsivecharacter in the activities of men. Hence a defective adjustment of menand women, felt in all sorts of subtle as well as grosser ways, most feltwhen they are husband and wife, and sometimes becoming acute. 

It is necessary to make clear that, as is here assumed at the outset, "man" and "husband" are not quite the same thing, even when they refer tothe same person. No doubt that is also true of "woman" and "wife. " A womanin her quality as woman may be a different kind of person from what she isin her function as wife. But in the case of a man the distinction is moremarked. One may know a man well in the world as a man and not know him atall in his home as a husband; not necessarily that he is unfavourablyrevealed in the latter capacity. It is simply that he is different. 

The explanation is not really far to seek. A man in the world is in vitalresponse to the influences around him. But a husband in the home isplaying a part which was created for him long centuries before he wasborn. He is falling into a convention, which, indeed, was moulded to fitmany masculine human needs but has become rigidly traditionalised. Thusthe part no longer corresponds accurately to the player's nature nor tothe circumstances under which it has to be played. 

In the marriage system which has prevailed in our world for severalthousand years, a certain hierarchy, or sacred order in authority, hasthroughout been recognised. The family has been regarded as a small Stateof which the husband and father is head. Classic paganism and Christianitydiffered on many points, but they were completely at one on this. TheRoman system was on a patriarchal basis and continued to be sotheoretically even when in practise it came to allow great independence tothe wife. Christianity, although it allowed complete spiritual freedom tothe individual, introduced no fundamentally new theory of the family, and, indeed, re-inforced the old theory by regarding the family as a littlechurch of which the husband was the head. Just as Christ is the head ofthe Church, St. Paul repeatedly asserted, so the husband is the head ofthe wife; therefore, as it was constantly argued during the Middle Ages, aman is bound to rule his wife. St. Augustine, the most influential ofChristian Fathers, even said that a wife should be proud to considerherself as the servant of her husband, his _ancilla_, a word that had init the suggestion of slave. That was the underlying assumption throughoutthe Middle Ages, for the Northern Germanic peoples, having always beenaccustomed to wife-purchase before their conversion, had found it quiteeasy to assimilate the Christian view. Protestantism, even Puritanism withits associations of spiritual revolt, so far from modifying the acceptedattitude, strengthened it, for they found authority for all socialorganisation in the Bible, and the Bible revealed an emphatic predominanceof the Jewish husband, who possessed essential rights to which the wifehad no claim. Milton, who had the poet's sensitiveness to the lovelinessof woman, and the lonely man's feeling for the solace of her society, wasyet firmly assured of the husband's superiority over his wife. He hasindeed furnished the classical picture of it in Adam and Eve, "He for God only, she for God in him, "

and to that God she owed "subjection, " even though she might qualify itby "sweet reluctant amorous delay. " This was completely in harmony withthe legal position of the wife. As a subject she was naturally insubjection; she owed her husband the same loyalty as a subject owes thesovereign; her disloyalty to him was termed a minor form of treason; ifshe murdered him the crime was legally worse than murder and she renderedherself liable to be burnt. 

We see that all the influences on our civilisation, religious and secular, southern and northern, have combined to mould the underlying bonystructure of our family system in such a way that, however it may appearsoftened and disguised on the surface, the husband is the head and thewife subject to him. We must not be supposed hereby to deny that the wifehas had much authority, many privileges, considerable freedom, and inindividual cases much opportunity to domineer, whatever superiority customor brute strength may have given the husband. There are henpeckedhusbands, it has been remarked, even in aboriginal Australia. It isnecessary to avoid the error of those enthusiasts for the emancipation ofwomen who, out of their eager faith in the future of women, used todescribe her past as one of scarcely mitigated servitude and hardship. Ifwomen had not constantly succeeded in overcoming or eluding thedifficulties that beset them in the past, it would be foolish to cherishany faith in their future. It must, moreover, be remembered that the veryconstitution of that ecclesiastico-feudal hierarchy which made the husbandsupreme over the wife, also made the wife jointly with her husband supremeover their children and over their servants. The Middle Ages, alike inEngland and in France, as doubtless in Christendom generally, accepted therule laid down in Gratian's _Decretum_, the great mediæval text-book ofCanon Law, that "the husband may chastise his wife temperately, for she isof his household, " but the wife might chastise her daughters and herservants, and she sometimes exercised that right in ways that we shouldnowadays think scarcely temperate. 

If we seek to observe how the system worked some five hundred years agowhen it had not yet become, as it is to-day, both weakened and disguised, we cannot do better than turn to the _Paston Letters_, the mostinstructive documents we possess concerning the domestic life of excellentyet fairly average people of the upper middle class in England in thefifteenth century. Marriage was still frankly and fundamentally (as it wasin the following century and less frankly later) a commercial transaction. The wooer, when he had a wife in view, stated as a matter of course thathe proposed to "deal" in the matter; it was quite recognised on both sidesthat love and courtship must depend on whether the "deal" came offsatisfactorily. John Paston approached Sir Thomas Brews, through a thirdperson, with a view to negotiate a marriage with his daughter Margery. Shewas willing, even eager, and while the matter was still uncertain shewrote him a letter on Valentine's Day, addressing him as "Right reverentand worshipful and my right well-beloved Valentine, " to tell him that itwas impossible for her father to offer a larger dowry than he had alreadypromised. "If that you could be content with that good, and my poorperson, I would be the merriest maiden on ground. " In his firstletter--boldly written, he says, without her knowledge or license--headdresses her simply as "Mistress, " and assures her that "I am and will beyours and at your commandment in every wise during my life. " A few weekslater, addressing him as "Right worshipful master, " she calls him "mineown sweetheart, " and ends up, as she frequently does, "your servant andbedeswoman. " Some months later, a few weeks after marriage, she addressesher husband in the correct manner of the time as "Right reverent andworshipful husband, " asking him to buy her a gown as she is weary ofwearing her present one, it is so cumbrous. Five years later she refers to"all" the babies, and writes in haste: "Right reverent and worshipful Sir, in my most humble wise I recommend me unto you as lowly as I can, " etc. , though she adds in a postscript: "Please you to send for me for I thinklong since I lay in your arms. " If we turn to another wife of the Pastonfamily, a little earlier in the century, Margaret Paston, whose husband'sname also was John, we find the same attitude even more distinctlyexpressed. She always addressed him in her most familiar letters, showingaffectionate concern for his welfare, as "Right reverent and worshipfulhusband" or "Right worshipful master. " It is seldom that he writes to herat all, but when he writes the superscription is simply "To my mistressPaston, " or "my cousin, " with little greeting at either beginning or end. Once only, with unexampled effusion, he writes to her as "My own dearsovereign lady" and signs himself "Your true and trusting husband. "[12]

[12] We see just the same formulas in the fifteenth century letters ofthe Stonor family (_Stonor Letters and Papers_, Camden Society), thoughin these letters we seem often to find a lighter and more playful touchthan was common among the Pastons. I may refer here to Dr. Powell'slearned and well written book (with which I was not acquainted when Iwrote this chapter), _English Domestic Relations 1487-1653_ (ColumbiaUniversity Press). 

If we turn to France the relation of the wife to her husband was the same, or even more definitely dependent, for he occupied the place of father toher as well as of husband and sovereign, in this respect carrying on atradition of Roman Law. She was her husband's "wife and subject"; shesigned herself "Vostre humble obéissante fille et amye. " If also we turnto the _Book of the Chevalier de la Tour-Landry_ in Anjou, written at theend of the fourteenth century, we find a picture of the relations of womento men in marriage comparable to that presented in the _Paston Letters_, though of a different order. This book was, as we know, written for theinstruction of his daughters by a Knight who seems to have been a fairlyaverage man of his time in his beliefs, and in character, as he has beendescribed, probably above it, "a man of the world, a Christian, a parent, and a gentleman. " His book is full of interesting light on the customs andmanners of his day, though it is mainly a picture of what the writerthought ought to be rather than what always was. Herein the Knight issagacious and moderate, much of his advice is admirably sound for everyage. He is less concerned with affirming the authority of husbands thanwith assuring the happiness and well-being of his dearly loved daughters. But he clearly finds this bound up with the recognition of the authorityof the husband, and the demands he makes are fairly concordant with therelationships we see established among the Pastons. The Knight abounds inillustrations, from Lot's daughters down to his own time, for the exampleor the warning of his daughters. The ideal he holds up to them is strictlydomestic and in a sense conventional. He puts the matter on practicalrather than religious or legal grounds, and his fundamental assumption is"that no woman ought ever to thwart or refuse to obey the ordinance of herlord; that is, if she is either desirous to be mistress of his affectionsor to have peace and understanding in the house. For very evident reasonssubmission should begin on her part. " One would like to know what dutiesthe Knight inculcated on husbands, but the corresponding book he wrote forthe guidance of his sons appears no longer to be extant. 

On the whole, the fundamental traditions of our western world concerningthe duties of husbands and wives are well summed up in what Pollock andMaitland term "that curious cabinet of antiquities, the marriage ritual ofthe English Church. " Here we find that the husband promises to love andcherish the wife, but she promises not only to love and cherish but alsoto obey him, though, it may be noted, this point was not introduced intoEnglish marriage rites until the fourteenth century, when the wifepromised to be "buxom" (which then meant submissive) and "bonair"(courteous and kind), while in some French and Spanish rites it has neverbeen introduced at all. But we may take it to be generally implied. In thefinal address to the married couple the priest admonishes the bride thatthe husband is the head of the wife, and that her part is submission. Insome more ancient and local rituals this point was further driven home, and on the delivery of the ring the bride knelt and kissed thebridegroom's right foot. In course of time this was modified, at allevents in France, and she simply dropped the ring, so that her motion ofstooping was regarded as for the purpose of picking it up. I note thatchange for it is significant of the ways in which we modify the traditionsof the past, not quite abandoning them but pretending that they have otherthan the fundamental original motives. We see just the same thing in theuse of the ring, which was in the first place a part of the bride-price, frequently accompanied by money, proof that the wife had been dulypurchased. It was thus made easy to regard the ring as really a goldenfetter. That idea soon became offensive, and the new idea was originatedthat the ring was a pledge of affection; thus, quite early in somecountries, the husband, also wore a wedding ring. 

The marriage order illustrated by the _Paston Letters_ and the _Book ofthe Chevalier de la Tour-Landry_ before the Reformation, and the AnglicanBook of Common Prayer afterwards, has never been definitely broken; it isa part of our living tradition to-day. But during recent centuries it hasbeen overlaid by the growth of new fashions and sentiments which havesoftened its hard outlines to the view. It has been disguised, notablyduring the eighteenth century, by the development of a new feeling ofsocial equality, chiefly initiated in France, which, in an atmosphere ofpublic intercourse largely regulated by women, made the ostentatiousassertion of the husband's headship over his wife displeasing and evenridiculous. Then, especially in the nineteenth century, there begananother movement, chiefly initiated in England and carried further inAmerica, which affected the foundations of the husband's position frombeneath. This movement consisted in a great number of legislative measuresand judicial pronouncements and administrative orders--each small initself and never co-ordinated--which taken altogether have had acumulative effect in immensely increasing the rights of the wifeindependently of her husband or even in opposition to him. Thus at thepresent time the husband's authority has been overlaid by new socialconventions from above and undermined by new legal regulations from below. 

Yet, it is important to realise, although the husband's domestic thronehas been in appearance elegantly re-covered and in substance has becomeworm-eaten, it still stands and still retains its ancient shape andstructure. There has never been a French Revolution in the home, and thatRevolution itself, which modified society so extensively, scarcelymodified the legal supremacy of the husband at all, even in France underthe Code Napoléon and still less anywhere else. Interwoven with all thenew developments, and however less obtrusive it may have become, the oldtradition still continues among us. Since, also, the husband is, conventionally and in large measure really, the economic support of thehome, --the work of the wife and even actual financial contributionsbrought by her not being supposed to affect that convention, --this stateof things is held to be justified. 

Thus when a man enters the home as a husband, to seat himself on theantique domestic throne and to play the part assigned to him of old, he isinvoluntarily, even unconsciously, following an ancient tradition andtaking his place in a procession of husbands which began long ages beforehe was born. It thus comes about that a man, even after he is married, anda husband are two different persons, so that his wife who mainly knows himas a husband may be unable to form any just idea of what he is like as aman. As a husband he has stepped out of the path that belongs to him inthe world, and taken on another part which has called out altogetherdifferent reactions, so he is sometimes a much more admirable person inone of these spheres--whichever it may be--than in the other. 

We must not be surprised if the husband's position has sometimes developedthose qualities which from the modern point of view are the lessadmirable. In this respect the sovereign husband resembles the SovereignState. The Sovereign State, as it has survived from Renaissance days inour modern world, may be made up of admirable people, yet as a State theyare forced into an attitude of helpless egoism which nowadays fails tocommend itself to the outside world, and the tendency of scientificjurists to-day is to deal very critically with the old conception of theSovereign State. It is so with the husband in the home. He was thrust byancient tradition into a position of sovereignty which impelled him toplay a part of helpless egoism. He was a celestial body in the home aroundwhich all the other inmates were revolving satellites. The hours of risingand retiring, the times of meals and their nature and substance, all theactivities of the household--in which he himself takes little or nopart--are still arranged primarily to suit his work, his play, and histastes. This is an accepted matter of course, and not the result of anyviolent self-assertion on his part. It is equally an accepted matter ofcourse that the wife should be constantly occupied in keeping this littlesolar system in easy harmonious movement, evolving from it, if she has theskill, the music of the spheres. She has no recognised independentpersonality of her own, nor even any right to go away by herself for alittle change and recreation. Any work of her own, play of her own, tastes of her own, must be strictly subordinated, if not suppressedaltogether. 

In the old days, from which our domestic traditions proceed, littlehardship was thus inflicted on the wife. Her rights and privileges were, indeed, far less than those of the modern woman, but for that very reasonthe home offered her a larger field; beneath the shelter of her husbandthe irresponsible wife might exert a maximum of influential activity witha minimum of rights and privileges of her own. To many men, even to-day, that state of things seems the realisation of an ideal. 

Yet to women it seems increasingly less so, and of necessity since thecleavage between the position of woman in society and law, and theposition of the wife in the sacramental bonds of wedlock, is dailybecoming greater. To-day a woman, who possibly for ten years has beenleading her own life of independent work, earning her own living, choosingher own conditions in accordance with her own needs, and selecting her ownperiods of recreation in accordance with her own tastes, whether or notthis may have included the society of a man-friend--such a woman suddenlyfinds on marriage, and without any assertion of authority on her husband'spart, that all the outward circumstances of her life are reversed and allher inner spontaneous movements arrested. There may be no signs of thison the surface of her conduct. She loves her husband too much to wish tohurt his feelings by explaining the situation, and she values domesticpeace too much to risk friction by making unexpected claims. But beneaththe surface there is often a profound discontent, and even in women whothought they had gained an insight into life, a sense of disillusion. Everyone knows this who is privileged to catch a glimpse into the heartsof women--often women of most distinguished intelligence as well as womenof quite ordinary nature--who leave a life of spontaneous activity in theworld to enter the home. [13]

[13] While this condition of things is sometimes to be found in the moredistinguished minority and in well-to-do families, it is, of course, among the great labouring majority that it is most conspicuous. Mrs. Will Crooks, of Poplar, speaking to a newspaper reporter (_DailyChronicle_, 17 Feb. , 1919), truly remarked: "At present the averagemarried woman's working day is a flagrant contradiction of alltrade-union ideals. The poor thing is slaving all the time! What sheneeds--what she longs for--is just a little break or change now andagain, an opportunity to get her mind off her work and its worries. Ifher husband's hours are reduced to eight, well that gives her a chance, doesn't it? The home and the children are, after all, as much his ashers. With his enlarged leisure he will now be able to take a fair sharein home duties. I suggest that they take it turn and turn about--onenight he goes out and she looks after the house and the children; thenext night she goes out and he takes charge of things at home. She cansometimes go to the cinema, sometimes call on friends. Then, say once aweek, they can both go out together, taking the children with them. Thatwill be a little change and treat for everybody. "

It is not to be supposed that in this presentation of the situation in thehome, as it is to-day visible to those who are privileged to see beneaththe surface, any accusation is brought against the husband. He is no moreguilty of an unreasonable conservatism than the wife is guilty of anunreasonable radicalism. Each of them is the outcome of a tradition. Thepoint is that the events of the past hundred years have produced adiscrepancy in the two lines of tradition, with a resultant lack ofharmony, independent of the goodwill of either husband or wife. 

Olive Schreiner, in her _Woman and Labour_, has eloquently set forth thetendency to parasitism which civilisation produces in women; they nolonger exercise the arts and industries which were theirs in former ages, and so they become economically dependent on men, losing their energiesand aptitudes, and becoming like those dull parasitic animals which liveas blood-suckers of their host. That picture, which was of course nevertrue of all women, is now ceasing to be true of any but a negligibleminority; it presents, moreover, a parasitism limited to the economic sideof life. For if the wife has often been a lazy gold-sucking parasite onher husband in the world, the husband has yet oftener been a helplessservice-absorbing parasite on his wife in the home. There is, that is tosay, not only an economic parasitism, with no adequate return forfinancial support, but a still more prevalent domestic parasitism, with anabsorption of services for which no return would be adequate. There aremany helpful husbands in the home, but there are a larger number who arehelpless and have never been trained to be anything else but helpless, even by their wives, who would often detest a rival in household work andmanagement. The average husband enjoys the total effect of his home but isusually unable to contribute any of the details of work and organisationthat make it enjoyable. He cannot keep it in order and cleanliness andregulated movement, he seldom knows how to buy the things that are neededfor its upkeep, nor how to prepare and cook and present a decent meal; hecannot even attend to his own domestic needs. It is the wife's consolationthat most husbands are not always at home. 

"In ministering to the wants of the family, the woman has reduced man to astate of considerable dependency on her in all domestic affairs, just asshe is dependent on him for bodily protection. In the course of ages thishas gone so far as to foster a peculiar helplessness on the part of theman, which manifests itself in a somewhat childlike reliance of thehusband on the wife. In fact it may be said that the husband is, to allintents and purposes, incapable of maintaining himself without the aid ofa woman. " This passage will probably seem to many readers to apply quitefairly well to men as they exist to-day in most of those lands which weconsider at the summit of our civilisation. Yet it was not written ofcivilisation, or of white men, but of the Bantu tribes of EastAfrica, [14] complete Negroes who, while far from being among the lowestsavages, belong to a culture which is only just emerging from cannibalism, witchcraft, and customary bloodshed. So close a resemblance between theEuropean husband and the Negro husband significantly suggests howremarkable has been the arrest of development in the husband's customarystatus during a vast period of the world's history. 

[14] Hon. C. Dundas, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, Vol. 45, 1915, p. 302. 

It is in the considerable group of couples where the husband's workseparates him but little from the home that the pressure on the wife ismost severe, and without the relief and variety secured by his frequentabsence. She has perhaps led a life of her own before marriage, she knowshow to be economically independent; now they occupy a small dwelling, theyhave, maybe, one or two small children, they can only afford one helper inthe work or none at all, and in this busy little hive the husband and wifeare constantly tumbling over each other. It is small wonder if the wifefeels a deep discontent beneath her willing ministrations and misses thedevotion of the lover in the perpetual claims of the husband. 

But the difficulty is not settled if she persuades him to take a roomoutside. He is devoted to his wife and his home, with good reason, for thewife makes the home and he is incapable of making a home. His newdomestic arrangements sink into careless and sordid disorder, and he isconscious of profound discomfort. His wife soon realises that it is achoice between his return to the home and complete separation. Most wivesnever get even as far as this attempt at solution of the difficulty andhide their secret discontent. 

This is the situation which to-day is becoming intensified and extended ona vast scale. The habit and the taste for freedom, adventure, and economicindependence is becoming generated among millions of women who once meeklytrod the ancient beaten paths, and we must not be so foolish as to supposethat they can suddenly renounce those habits and tastes at the thresholdof marriage. Moreover, it is becoming clear to men and to women alike, andfor the first time, that the world can be remoulded, and that the claimsfor better conditions of work, for a higher standard of life, and for theattainment of leisure, which previously had only feebly been put forward, may now be asserted drastically. We see therefore to-day a greatrevolutionary movement, mainly on the part of men in the world of Labour, and we see a corresponding movement, however less ostentatious, mainly onthe part of women, in the world of the Home. 

It may seem to some that this new movement of upheaval in the sphere ofthe Home is merely destructive. Timid souls have felt the like in everyperiod of transition, and with as little reason. Just as we realise thatthe movement now in progress in the world of Labour for a higher standardof life and for, as it has been termed, a larger "leisure-ration, "represents a wholesome revolt against the crushing conditions of prolongedmonotonous work--the most deadening of all work--and a real advancetowards those ideals of democracy which are still so remote, so it is withthe movement in the Home. That also is the claim for a new and fairerallotment of responsibility, of larger opportunities for freedom andleisure. If in the home the husband is still to be regarded as thecapitalist and the wife as the labourer, then at all events it has to berecognised that he owes her not only the satisfaction of her physicalneeds of food and shelter and clothing, but the opportunity to satisfy thepersonal spontaneous claims of her own individual nature. Just as thereadjustment of Labour is really only an approach to the long recognisedideals of Democracy, so the readjustment of the Home, far from beingsubversive or revolutionary, is merely an approximation to the longrecognised ideals of marriage. 

How in practice, one may finally ask, is this readjustment of the homelikely to be carried out?

In the first place we are justified in believing that in the future homemen will no longer be so helpless, so domestically parasitic, as in thepast. This change is indeed already coming about. It is an inestimablebenefit throughout life for a man to have been forcibly lifted out of theroutine comforts and feminine services of the old-fashioned home and to bethrown into an alien and solitary environment, face to face with Natureand the essential domestic human needs (in my own case I owe aninestimable debt to the chance that thus flung me into the Australian bushin early life), and one may note that the Great War has had, directly andindirectly, a remarkable influence in this direction, for it not onlycompelled women to exercise many enlarging and fortifying functionscommonly counted as pertaining to men, it also compelled men, deprived ofaccustomed feminine services, to develop a new independent ability fororganising domesticity, and that ability, even though it is notpermanently exercised in rendering domestic services, must yet always makeclear the nature of domestic problems and tend to prevent the demand forunnecessary domestic services. 

But there is another quite different and more general line along which wemay expect this problem to be largely solved. That is by thesimplification and organisation of domestic life. If that process werecarried to the full extent that is now becoming possible a large part ofthe problem before us would be at once solved. A great promise for thefuture of domestic life is held out by the growing adoption ofbirth-control, by which the wife and mother is relieved from that burdenof unduly frequent and unwanted maternity which in the past so oftencrushed her vitality and destroyed her freshness. But many minor agenciesare helpful. To supply heat, light, and motive power even to smallhouseholds, to replace the wasteful, extravagant, and often inefficienthome-cookery by meals cooked outside, as well as to facilitate the growingsocial habit of taking meals in spacious public restaurants, under moreattractive, economical, and wholesome conditions than can usually besecured within the narrow confines of the home, to contract with speciallytrained workers from outside for all those routines of domestic drudgerywhich are often so inefficiently and laboriously carried on by thehousehold-worker, whether mistress or servant, and to seek perpetually bynew devices to simplify, which often means to beautify, all the everydayprocesses of life--to effect this in any comprehensive degree is totransform the home from the intolerable burden it is sometimes felt to beinto a possible haven of peace and joy. [15] The trouble in the past, andeven to-day, has been, not in any difficulty in providing the facilitiesbut in prevailing people to adopt them. Thus in England, even under thestress of the Great War, there was among the working population aconsiderable disinclination--founded on stupid conservatism and ameaningless pride--to take advantage of National Kitchens and NationalRestaurants, notwithstanding the superiority of the meals in quality, cheapness, and convenience, to the workers' home meals, so that many ofthese establishments, even while still fostered by the Government, hadspeedily to close their doors. Ancient traditions, that have now becomenot only empty but mischievous, in these matters still fetter the wifeeven more than the husband. We cannot regulate even the material side oflife without cultivating that intelligence in the development of whichcivilisation so largely consists. 

[15] This aspect of the future of domesticity was often set forth byMrs. Havelock Ellis, _The New Horizon in Love and Life_, 1921. 

Intelligence, and even something more than intelligence, is needed alongthe third line of progress towards the modernised home. Simplification andorganisation can effect nothing in the desired transformation if theymerely end in themselves. They are only helpful in so far as theyeconomise energy, offer a more ample leisure, and extend the opportunitiesfor that play of the intellect, that liberation of the emotions withaccompanying discipline of the primitive instincts, which are needed notonly for the development of civilisation in general, but in particular ofthe home. Domineering egotism, the assertion of greedy possessive rights, are out of place in the modern home. They are just as mischievous whenexhibited by the wife as by the husband. We have seen, as we look back, the futility in the end of the ancient structure of the home, howeverreasonable it was at the beginning, under our different modern socialconditions, and for women to attempt nowadays to reintroduce the samestructure, merely reversed would be not only mischievous but silly. Thatspirit of narrow exclusiveness and self centred egoism--even if it weresometimes an _égoisme à deux_--evoked, half a century ago, the scathingsarcasm of James Hinton, who never wearied of denouncing the "virtuous andhappy homes" which he saw as "floating blotches of verdure on a sea offilth. " Such outbursts seem extravagant, but they were the extravagance ofan idealist at the vision which, as a physician in touch with realities, he had, seen beneath the surface of the home. 

It is well to insist on the organisation of the mechanical and materialside of life. Some leaders of women movements feel this so strongly thatthey insist on nothing else. In old days it was conventionally supposedthat women's sphere was that of the feelings; the result has been thatwomen now often take ostentatious pleasure in washing their hands offeelings and accusing men of "sentiment. " But that wrongly debased wordstands for the whole superstructure of life on the basis of materialorganisation, for all the finer and higher parts of our nature, for thegreater part of civilisation. [16] The elaboration of the mechanical sideof life by itself may merely serve to speed up the pace of life instead ofexpanding leisure, to pile up the weary burden of luxury, and stillfurther to dissipate the energy of life in petty or frivolouschannels. [17] To bring order into the region of soulless machinery runningat random, to raise the super-structure of a genuinely human civilisation, is not a task which either men or women can afford to fling contemptuouslyto the opposite sex. It concerns them both equally and can only be carriedout by both equally, working side by side in the most intimate spirit ofmutual comprehension, confiding trust, and the goodwill to conquer thedemon of jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence ofkeeping it alive. 

[16] "The growth of the sentiments, " remarks an influential psychologistof our own time (W. McDougall, _Social Psychology_, p. 160), "is of theutmost importance for the character and conduct of individuals and ofsocieties; it is the organisation of the affective and conative life. Inthe absence of sentiments our emotional life would be a mere chaos, without order, consistency, or continuity of any kind; and all oursocial relations and conduct, being based on the emotions and theirimpulses would be correspondingly chaotic, unpredictable, andunstable. . . . Again, our judgments of value and of merit are rooted inour sentiments; and our moral principles have the same source, for theyare formed by our judgments of moral value. "

[17] The destructive effects of the mechanisation of modern life havelately been admirably set forth, and with much precise illustration, byDr. Austin Freeman, _Social Decay and Regeneration_. 

This task, it may finally be added, is always an adventure. However wellorganised the foundations of life may be, life must always be full ofrisks. We may smile, therefore, when it is remarked that the futuredevelopments of the home are risky. Birds in the air and fishes in thesea, quite as much as our own ancestors on the earth, have always foundlife full of risks. It was the greatest risk of all when they insisted oncontinuing on the old outworn ways and so became extinct. If the home isan experiment and a risky experiment, one can only say that life is alwayslike that. We have to see to it that in this central experiment, on whichour happiness so largely depends, all our finest qualities are mobilised. Even the smallest homes under the new conditions cannot be built to lastwith small minds and small hearts. Indeed the discipline of the homedemands not only the best intellectual qualities that are available, butoften involves--and in men as well as in women--a spiritual training fitto make sweeter and more generous saints than any cloister. The greaterthe freedom, the more complete the equality of husband and wife, thegreater the possibilities of discipline and development. In view of therigidities and injustices of the law, many couples nowadays dispense withlegal marriage, and form their own private contract; that method hassometimes proved more favourable to the fidelity and permanence of lovethan external compulsion; it assists the husband to remain the lover, andit is often the lover more than the husband that the modern woman needs;but it has always to be remembered that in the present condition of lawand social opinion a slur is cast on the children of such unions. Nodoubt, however, marriage and the home will undergo modifications, whichwill tend to make these ancient institutions a little more flexible and topermit a greater degree of variation to meet special circumstances. We canoccupy ourselves with no more essential task, whether as regards ourselvesor the race, than to make more beautiful the House of Life for thedwelling of Love. 

CHAPTER V

THE LOVE-RIGHTS OF WOMEN

What is the part of woman, one is sometimes asked, in the sex act? Must itbe the wife's concern in the marital embrace to sacrifice her own wishesfrom a sense of love and duty towards her husband? Or is the wife entitledto an equal mutual interest and joy in this act with her husband? It seemsa simple problem. In so fundamental a relationship, which goes back to thebeginning of sex in the dawn of life, it might appear that we could leaveNature to decide. Yet it is not so. Throughout the history ofcivilisation, wherever we can trace the feelings and ideas which haveprevailed on this matter and the resultant conduct, the problem hasexisted, often to produce discord, conflict, and misery. The problem stillexists to-day and with as important results as in the past. 

In Nature, before the arrival of Man, it can scarcely be said indeed thatany difficulty existed. It was taken for granted at that time that thefemale had both the right to her own body, and the right to a certainamount of enjoyment in the use of it. It often cost the male a seriousamount of trouble--though he never failed to find it worth while--toexplain to her the point where he may be allowed to come in, and topersuade her that he can contribute to her enjoyment. So it generally isthroughout Nature, before we reach Man, and, though it is not invariablyobvious, we often find it even among the unlikeliest animals. As is wellknown, it is most pronounced among the birds, who have in some speciescarried the erotic art, --and the faithful devotion which properlyaccompanied the erotic art as being an essential part of it, --to thehighest point. We have here the great natural fact of courtship. Throughout Nature, wherever we meet with animals of a high type, oftenindeed when they are of a lowly type--provided they have not been renderedunnatural by domestication--every act of sexual union is preceded by aprocess of courtship. There is a sound physiological reason for thiscourtship, for in the act of wooing and being wooed the psychic excitementgradually generated in the brains of the two partners acts as a stimulantto arouse into full activity the mechanism which ensures sexual union andaids ultimate impregnation. Such courtship is thus a fundamental naturalfact. 

It is as a natural fact that we still find it in full development among alarge number of peoples of the lower races whom we are accustomed toregard as more primitive than ourselves. New conditions, it is true, soonenter to complicate the picture presented by savage courtship. Theeconomic element of bargaining, destined to prove so important, comes inat an early stage. And among peoples leading a violent life, andconstantly fighting, it has sometimes happened, though not always, thatcourtship also has been violent. This is not so frequent as was oncesupposed. With better knowledge it was found that the seeming brutalityonce thought to take the place of courtship among various peoples in a lowstate of culture was really itself courtship, a rough kind of playagreeable to both parties and not depriving the feminine partner of herown freedom of choice. This was notably the case as regards so-called"marriage by capture. " While this is sometimes a real capture, it is moreoften a mock capture; the lover perhaps pursues the beloved on horseback, but she is as fleet and as skilful as he is, cannot be captured unless shewishes to be captured, and in addition, as among the Kirghiz, she may bearmed with a formidable whip; so that "marriage by capture, " far frombeing a hardship imposed on women is largely a concession to their modestyand a gratification of their erotic impulses. Even when the chief part ofthe decision rests with masculine force courtship is still not necessarilyor usually excluded, for the exhibition of force by a lover, --and this istrue for civilised as well as for savage women, --is itself a source ofpleasurable stimulation, and when that is so the essence of courtship maybe attained even more successfully by the forceful than by the humblelover. 

The evolution of society, however, tended to overlay and sometimes even tosuppress those fundamental natural tendencies. The position of the man asthe sole and uncontested head of the family, the insistence on paternityand male descent, the accompanying economic developments, and the tendencyto view a woman less as a self-disposing individual than as an object ofbarter belonging to her father, the consequent rigidity of the marriagebond and the stern insistence on wifely fidelity--all these conditions ofdeveloping civilisation, while still leaving courtship possible, diminished its significance and even abolished its necessity. Moreover, onthe basis of the social, economic, and legal developments thusestablished, new moral, spiritual, and religious forces were slowlygenerated, which worked on these rules of merely exterior order, andinteriorised them, thus giving them power over the souls as well as overthe bodies of women. 

The result was that, directly and indirectly, the legal, economic, anderotic rights of women were all diminished. It is with the erotic rightsonly that we are here concerned. 

No doubt in its erotic aspects, as well as in its legal and economicaspects, the social order thus established was described, and in goodfaith, as beneficial to women, and even as maintained in their interests. Monogamy and the home, it was claimed, alike existed for the benefit andprotection of women. It was not so often explained that they greatlybenefited and protected men, with, moreover, this additional advantagethat while women were absolutely confined to the home, men were free toexercise their activities outside the home, even, with tacit generalconsent, on the erotic side. 

Whatever the real benefits, and there is no occasion for questioning them, of the sexual order thus established, it becomes clear that in certainimportant respects it had an unnatural and repressive influence on theerotic aspect of woman's sexual life. It fostered the reproductive side ofwoman's sexual life, but it rendered difficult for her the satisfaction ofthe instinct for that courtship which is the natural preliminary ofreproductive activity, an instinct even more highly developed in thefemale than in the male, and the more insistent because in the order ofNature the burden of maternity is preceded by the reward of pleasure. Butthe marriage order which had become established led to the indirectresult of banning pleasure in women, or at all events in wives. It wasregarded as too dangerous, and even as degrading. The women who wantedpleasure were not considered fit for the home, but more suited to bedevoted to an exclusive "life of pleasure, " which soon turned out to benot their own pleasure but men's. A "life of pleasure, " in that sense orin any other sense, was not what more than a small minority of women everdesired. The desire of women for courtship is not a thing by itself, andwas not implanted for gratification by itself. It is naturallyintertwined--and to a much greater degree than the corresponding desire inmen--with her deepest personal, family, and social instincts, so that ifthese are desecrated and lost its charm soon fades. 

The practices and the ideals of this established morality were both due tomen, and both were so thoroughly fashioned that they subjugated alike theactions and the feelings of women. There is no sphere which we regard asso peculiarly women's sphere as that of love. Yet there is no sphere whichin civilisation women have so far had so small a part in regulating. Theirdeepest impulses--their modesty, their maternity, their devotion, theiremotional receptivity--were used, with no conscious and deliberateMachiavellism, against themselves, to mould a moral world for theirhabitation which they would not themselves have moulded. It is not ofmodern creation, nor by any means due, as some have supposed, to theasceticism of Christianity, however much Christianity may have reinforcedit. Indeed one may say that in course of time Christianity had aninfluence in weakening it, for Christianity discovered a new reservoir oftender emotion, and such emotion may be transferred, and, as a matter offact, was transferred, from its first religious channel into eroticchannels which were thereby deepened and extended, and without referenceto any design of Christianity. For the ends we achieve are often by nomeans those which we set out to accomplish. In ancient classic days thismoral order was even more severely established than in the Middle Ages. Montaigne, in the sixteenth century, declared that "marriage is a devoutand religious relationship, the pleasures derived from it should berestrained and serious, mixed with some severity. " But in this matter hewas not merely expressing the Christian standpoint but even more that ofpaganism, and he thoroughly agreed with the old Greek moralist that a manshould approach his wife "prudently and severely" for fear of inciting herto lasciviousness; he thought that marriage was best arranged by a thirdparty, and was inclined to think, with the ancients, that women are notfitted to make friends of. Montaigne has elsewhere spoken with insight ofwomen's instinctive knowledge of the art and discipline of love and haspointed out how men have imposed their own ideals and rules of action onwomen from whom they have demanded opposite and contradictory virtues;yet, we see, he approves of this state of things and never suggests thatwomen have any right to opinions of their own or feelings of their ownwhen the sacred institution of marriage is in question. 

Montaigne represents the more exalted aspects of the Pagan-Christianconception of morality in marriage which still largely prevails. But thatconception lent itself to deductions, frankly accepted even by Montaignehimself, which were by no means exalted. "I find, " said Montaigne, "thatVenus, after all, is nothing more than the pleasure of discharging ourvessels, just as nature renders pleasurable the discharges from otherparts. " Sir Thomas More among Catholics, and Luther among Protestants, said exactly the same thing in other and even clearer words, while untoldmillions of husbands in Christendom down to to-day, whether or not theyhave had the wit to put their theory into a phrase, have regularly put itinto practice, at all events within the consecrated pale of marriage, andtreated their wives, "severely and prudently, " as convenient utensils forthe reception of a natural excretion. 

Obviously, in this view of marriage, sexual activity was regarded as anexclusively masculine function, in the exercise of which women had merelya passive part to play. Any active participation on her side thus seemedunnecessary, and even unbefitting, finally, though only in comparativelymodern times, disgusting and actually degrading. Thus Acton, who wasregarded half a century ago as the chief English authority on sexualmatters, declared that, "happily for society, " the supposition that womenpossess sexual feelings could be put aside as "a vile aspersion, " whileanother medical authority of the same period stated in regard to the mostsimple physical sign of healthy sexual emotion that it "only happens inlascivious women. " This final triumph of the masculine ideals and rule oflife was, however, only achieved slowly. It was the culmination of anelaborate process of training. At the outset men had found it impossibleto speak too strongly of the "wantonness" of women. This attitude waspronounced among the ancient Greeks and prominent in their dramatists. Christianity again, which ended by making women into the chief pillars ofthe Church, began by regarding them as the "Gate of Hell. " Again, later, when in the Middle Ages this masculine moral order approached the task ofsubjugating the barbarians of Northern Europe, men were horrified at thelicentiousness of those northern women at whose coldness they are nowshocked. 

That, indeed, was, as Montaigne had seen, the central core of conflict inthe rule of life imposed by men on woman. Men were perpetually striving, by ways the most methodical, the most subtle, the most far-reaching, toachieve a result in women, which, when achieved, men themselves viewedwith dismay. They may be said to be moved in this sphere by two passions, the passion for virtue and the passion for vice. But it so happens thatboth these streams of passion have to be directed at the same fascinatingobject: Woman. No doubt nothing is more admirable than the skill withwhich women have acquired the duplicity necessary to play the twocontradictory parts thus imposed upon them. But in that requirement theplay of their natural reactions tended to become paralysed, and thedelicate mechanism of their instincts often disturbed. They wereforbidden, except in a few carefully etiquetted forms, the free play ofcourtship, without which they could not perform their part in the eroticlife with full satisfaction either to themselves or their partners. Theywere reduced to an artificial simulation of coldness or of warmth, according to the particular stage of the dominating masculine ideal ofwoman which their partner chanced to have reached. But that is an attitudeequally unsatisfactory to themselves and to their lovers, even when thelatter have not sufficient insight to see through its unreality. It is anattitude so unnatural and artificial that it inevitably tends to produce areal coldness which nothing can disguise. It is true that women whoseinstincts are not perverted at the roots do not desire to be cold. Farfrom it. But to dispel that coldness the right atmosphere is needed, andthe insight and skill of the right man. In the erotic sphere a woman asksnothing better of a man than to be lifted above her coldness, to thehigher plane where there is reciprocal interest and mutual joy in the actof love. Therein her silent demand is one with Nature's. For thebiological order of the world involves those claims which, in the humanrange, are the erotic rights of women. 

The social claims of women, their economic claims, their political claims, have long been before the world. Women themselves have actively assertedthem, and they are all in process of realisation. The erotic claims ofwomen, which are at least as fundamental, are not publicly voiced, andwomen themselves would be the last to assert them. It is easy tounderstand why that should be so. The natural and acquired qualities ofwomen, even the qualities developed in the art of courtship, have all beenutilised in building up the masculine ideal of sexual morality; it is onfeminine characteristics that this masculine ideal has been based, sothat women have been helpless to protest against it. Moreover, even ifthat were not so, to formulate such rights is to raise the questionwhether there so much as exists anything that can be called "eroticrights. " The right to joy cannot be claimed in the same way as one claimsthe right to put a voting paper in a ballot box. A human being's eroticaptitudes can only be developed where the right atmosphere for themexists, and where the attitudes of both persons concerned are inharmonious sympathy. That is why the erotic rights of women have been thelast of all to be attained. 

Yet to-day we see a change here. The change required is, it has been said, a change of attitude and a resultant change in the atmosphere in which thesexual impulses are manifested. It involves no necessary change in theexternal order of our marriage system, for, as has already been pointedout, it was a coincident and not designed part of that order. Variousrecent lines of tendency have converged to produce this change of attitudeand of atmosphere. In part the men of to-day are far more ready than themen of former days to look upon women as their comrades in the every daywork of the world, instead of as beings who were ideally on a level abovethemselves and practically on a level considerably below themselves. Inpart there is the growing recognition that women have conquered manyelementary human rights of which before they were deprived, and are moreand more taking the position of citizens, with the same kinds of duties, privileges, and responsibilities as men. In part, also, it may be added, there is a growing diffusion among educated people of a knowledge of theprimary facts of life in the two sexes, slowly dissipating and dissolvingmany foolish and often mischievous superstitions. The result is that, asmany competent observers have noted, the young men of to-day show a newattitude towards women and towards marriage, an attitude of simplicity andfrankness, a desire for mutual confidence, a readiness to discussdifficulties, an appeal to understand and to be understood. Such anattitude, which had hitherto been hard to attain, at once creates theatmosphere in which alone the free spontaneous erotic activities of womencan breathe and live. 

This consummation, we have seen, may be regarded as the attainment ofcertain rights, the corollary of other rights in the social field whichwomen are slowly achieving as human beings on the same human level as men. It opens to women, on whom is always laid the chief burden of sex, theright to the joy and exaltation of sex, to the uplifting of the soulwhich, when the right conditions are fulfilled, is the outcome of theintimate approach and union of two human beings. Yet while we may findconvenient so to formulate it, we need to remember that that is only afashion of speech, for there are no rights in Nature. If we take a broadersweep, what we may choose to call an erotic right is simply the perfectpoise of the conflicting forces of life, the rhythmic harmony in whichgeneration is achieved with the highest degree of perfection compatiblewith the make of the world. It is our part to transform Nature's largeconception into our own smaller organic mould, not otherwise than theplants, to whom we are far back akin, who dig their flexible roots deepinto the moist and fruitful earth, and so are able to lift up gloriousheads toward the sky. 

CHAPTER VI

THE PLAY-FUNCTION OF SEX

When we hear the sexual functions spoken of we commonly understand theperformance of an act which normally tends to the propagation of the race. When we see the question of sexual abstinence discussed, when thedesirability of sexual gratification is asserted or denied, when the ideaarises of the erotic rights and needs of woman, it is always the same actwith its physical results that is chiefly in mind. Such a conception isquite adequate for practical working purposes in the social world. Itenables us to deal with all our established human institutions in thesphere of sex, as the arbitrary assumptions of Euclid enable us totraverse the field of elementary geometry. But beyond these usefulpurposes it is inadequate and even inexact. The functions of sex on thepsychic and erotic side are of far greater extension than any act ofprocreation, they may even exclude it altogether, and when we areconcerned with the welfare of the individual human being we must enlargeour outlook and deepen our insight. 

There are, we know, two main functions in the sexual relationship, orwhat in the biological sense we term "marriage, " among civilised humanbeings, the primary physiological function of begetting and bearingoffspring and the secondary spiritual function of furthering the highermental and emotional processes. These are the main functions of the sexualimpulse, and in order to understand any further object of the sexualrelationship--or even in order to understand all that is involved in thesecondary object of marriage--we must go beyond conscious motives andconsider the nature of the sexual impulse, physical and psychic, as rootedin the human organism. 

The human organism, as we know, is a machine on which excitations fromwithout, streaming through the nerves and brain, effect internal work, and, notably, stimulate the glandular system. In recent years theglandular system, and especially that of the ductless glands, has taken onan altogether new significance. These ductless glands, as we know, liberate into the blood what are termed "hormones, " or chemicalmessengers, which have a complex but precise action in exciting anddeveloping all those physical and psychic activities which make up a fulllife alike on the general side and the reproductive side, so that theirbalanced functions are essential to wholesome and complete existence. Ina rudimentary form these functions may be traced back to our earliestancestors who possessed brains. In those times the predominant sense forarousing the internal mental and emotional faculties was that of smell, the other senses being gradually evolved subsequently, and it issignificant that the pituitary, one of the chief ductless glands active inourselves to-day, was developed out of the nervous centre for smell inconjunction with the membrane of the mouth. The energies of the wholeorganism were set in action through stimuli arising from the outside worldby way of the sense of smell. In process of time the mechanism has becomeimmensely elaborated, yet its healthy activity is ultimately dependent ona rich and varied action and reaction with the external world. It isbecoming recognised that the tendency to pluri-glandular insufficiency, with its resulting lack of organic harmony and equilibrium, can becounteracted by the physical and psychic stimuli of intimate contacts withthe external world. In this action and reaction, moreover, we cannotdistinguish between sexual ends and general ends. The activities of theductless glands and their hormones equally serve both ends in ways thatcannot be distinguished. "The individual metabolism, " as a distinguishedauthority in this field has expressed it, "is the reproductivemetabolism. "[18] Thus the establishment of our complete activities ashuman beings in the world is aided by, if not indeed ultimately dependentupon, a perpetual and many-sided play with our environment. 

[18] W. Blair Bell, _The Sex-Complex, _ 1920, p. 108. This book is acautious and precise statement of the present state of knowledge on thissubject, although some of the author's psychological deductions must betreated with circumspection. 

It is thus that we arrive at the importance of the play-function, andthus, also, we realise that while it extends beyond the sexual sphere ityet definitely includes that sphere. There are at least three differentways of understanding the biological function of play. There is theconception of play, on which Groos has elaborately insisted, aseducation: the cat "plays" with the mouse and is thereby educatingitself in the skill necessary to catch mice; all our human games are atraining in qualities that are required in life, and that is why inEngland we continue to attribute to the Duke of Wellington the sayingthat "the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. "Then there is the conception of play as the utilisation in art of thesuperfluous energies left unemployed in the practical work of life; thisenlarging and harmonising function of play, while in the lower ranges itmay be spent trivially, leads in the higher ranges to the production ofthe most magnificent human achievements. But there is yet a thirdconception of play, according to which it exerts a direct internalinfluence--health-giving, developmental, and balancing--on the wholeorganism of the player himself. This conception is related to the othertwo, and yet distinct, for it is not primarily a definite education inspecific kinds of life-conserving skill, although it may involve theacquisition of such skill, and it is not concerned with the constructionof objective works of art, although--by means of contact in humanrelationship--it attains the wholesome organic effects which may beindirectly achieved by artistic activities. It is in this sense that weare here concerned with what we may perhaps best call the play-functionof sex. [19]

[19] The term seems to have been devised by Professor Maurice Parmelee, _Personality and Conduct_, 1918, pp. 104, 107, 113. But it is understoodby Parmelee in a much vaguer and more extended sense than I have usedit. 

As thus understood, the play-function of sex is at once in an inseparableway both physical and psychic. It stimulates to wholesome activity all thecomplex and inter-related systems of the organism. At the same time itsatisfies the most profound emotional impulses, controlling in harmoniouspoise the various mental instincts. Along these lines it necessarily tendsin the end to go beyond its own sphere and to embrace and introduce intothe sphere of sex the other two more objective fields of play, that ofplay as education, and that of play as artistic creation. It may not betrue, as was said of old time, "most of our arts and sciences wereinvented for love's sake. " But it is certainly true that, in proportion aswe truly and wisely exercise the play-function of sex, we are at the sametime training our personality on the erotic side and acquiring a masteryof the art of love. 

The longer I live the more I realise the immense importance for theindividual of the development through the play-function of eroticpersonality, and for human society of the acquirement of the art of love. At the same time I am ever more astonished at the rarity of eroticpersonality and the ignorance of the art of love even among those men andwomen, experienced in the exercise of procreation, in whom we might mostconfidently expect to find such development and such art. At times onefeels hopeless at the thought that civilisation in this supremely intimatefield of life has yet achieved so little. For until it is generallypossible to acquire erotic personality and to master the art of loving, the development of the individual man or woman is marred, the acquirementof human happiness and harmony remains impossible. 

In entering this field, indeed, we not only have to gain true knowledgebut to cast off false knowledge, and, above all, to purify our hearts fromsuperstitions which have no connection with any kind of existingknowledge. We have to cease to regard as admirable the man who regardsthe accomplishment of the procreative act, with the pleasurable relief itaffords to himself, as the whole code of love. We have to treat withcontempt the woman who abjectly accepts the act, and her own passivitytherein, as the whole duty of love. We have to understand that the art oflove has nothing to do with vice, and the acquirement of eroticpersonality nothing to do with sensuality. But we have also to realisethat the art of love is far from being the attainment of a refined andluxurious self-indulgence, and the acquirement of erotic personality oflittle worth unless it fortifies and enlarges the whole personality in allits aspects. Now all this is difficult, and for some people even painful;to root up is a more serious matter than to sow; it cannot all be done ina day. 

It is not easy to form a clear picture of the erotic life of the averageman in our society. To the best informed among us knowledge in this fieldonly comes slowly. Even when we have decided what may or may not be termed"average" the sources of approach to this intimate sphere remain few andmisleading; at the best the women a man loves remain far more illuminatingsources of information than the man himself. The more one knows about him, however, the more one is convinced that, quite independently of the placewe may feel inclined to afford to him in the scale of virtue, hisconception of erotic personality, his ideas on the art of love, if theyhave any existence at all, are of a humble character. As to the notion ofplay in the sphere of sex, even if he makes blundering attempts topractice it, that is for him something quite low down, something to beashamed of, and he would not dream of associating it with anything he hasbeen taught to regard as belonging to the spiritual sphere. The conceptionof "divine play" is meaningless to him. His fundamental ideas, hischerished ideals, in the erotic sphere, seem to be reducible to two: (1)He wishes to prove that he is "a man, " and he experiences what seems tohim the pride of virility in the successful attainment of that proof; (2)he finds in the same act the most satisfactory method of removing sexualtension and in the ensuing relief one of the chief pleasures of life. Itcannot be said that either of these ideals is absolutely unsound; each ispart of the truth; it is only as a complete statement of the truth thatthey become pathetically inadequate. It is to be noted that both of themare based solely on the physical act of sexual conjunction, and that theyare both exclusively self-regarding. So that they are, after all, althoughthe nearest approach to the erotic sphere he may be able to find, yetstill not really erotic. For love is not primarily self-regarding. It isthe intimate, harmonious, combined play--the play in the wide as well asin the more narrow sense we are here concerned with--of two personalities. It would not be love if it were primarily self-regarding, and the act ofintercourse, however essential to secure the propagation of the race, isonly an incident, and not an essential in love. 

Let us turn to the average woman. Here the picture must usually be stillmore unsatisfactory. The man at least, crude as we may find his twofundamental notions to be, has at all events attained mental pride andphysical satisfaction. The woman often attains neither, and since the man, by instinct or tradition, has maintained a self-regarding attitude, thatis not surprising. The husband--by primitive instinct partly, certainly byancient tradition--regards himself as the active partner in matters oflove and his own pleasure as legitimately the prime motive for activity. His wife consequently falls into the complementary position, and regardsherself as the passive partner and her pleasure as negligible, if notindeed as a thing to be rather ashamed of, should she by chance experienceit. So that, while the husband is content with a mere simulacrum andpretence of the erotic life, the wife has often had none at all. 

Few people realise--few indeed have the knowledge or the opportunity torealise--how much women thus lose, alike in the means to fulfill theirown lives and in the power to help others. A woman has a husband, she hasmarital relationships, she has children, she has all the usual domestictroubles--it seems to the casual observer that she has everything thatconstitutes a fully developed matron fit to play her proper part in thehome and in the world. Yet with all these experiences, which undoubtedlyare an important part of life, she may yet remain on the emotionalside--and, as a matter of fact, frequently remains--quite virginal, asimmature as a school-girl. She has not acquired an erotic personality, shehas not mastered the art of love, with the result that her whole natureremains ill-developed and unharmonised, and that she is incapable ofbringing her personality--having indeed no achieved personality tobring--to bear effectively on the problems of society and the world aroundher. 

That alone is a great misfortune, all the more tragic since underfavourable conditions, which it should have been natural to attain, itmight so easily be avoided. But there is this further result, full of thepossibilities of domestic tragedy, that the wife so situated, howeverinnocent, however virtuous, may at any time find her virginally sensitiveemotional nature fertilised by the touch of some other man than herhusband. 

It happens so often. A girl who has been carefully guarded in the home, preserved from evil companions, preserved also from what her friendsregarded as the contamination of sexual knowledge, a girl of high ideals, yet healthy and robust, is married to a man of whom she probably haslittle more than a conventional knowledge. Yet he may by good chance bethe masculine counterpart of herself, well brought up, without sexualexperience and ignorant of all but the elementary facts of sex, loyal andhonourable, prepared to be, fitted to be, a devoted husband. The unionseems to be of the happiest kind; no one detects that anything is lackingto this perfect marriage; in course of time one or more children are born. But during all this time the husband has never really made love to hiswife; he has not even understood what courtship in the intimate sensemeans; love as an art has no existence for him; he has loved his wifeaccording to his imperfect knowledge, but he has never so much as realisedthat his knowledge was imperfect. She on her side loves her husband; shecomes in time indeed to have a sort of tender maternal feeling for him. Possibly she feels a little pleasure in intercourse with him. But she hasnever once been profoundly aroused, and she has never once been utterlysatisfied. The deep fountains of her nature have never been unsealed; shehas never been fertilised throughout her whole nature by their liberatinginfluence; her erotic personality has never been developed. Thensomething happens. Perhaps the husband is called away, it may have been totake part in the Great War. The wife, whatever her tender solicitude forher absent partner, feels her solitude and is drawn nearer to friends, perhaps her husband's friends. Some man among them becomes congenial toher. There need be no conscious or overt love-making on either side, andif there were the wife's loyalty might be aroused and the friendshipbrought to an end. Love-making is not indeed necessary. The wife's latenterotic needs, while still remaining unconscious, have come nearer to thesurface; now that she has grown mature and that they have been stimulatedyet unsatisfied for so long, they have, unknown to herself, becomeinsistent and sensitive to a sympathetic touch. The friends may indeedgrow into lovers, and then some sort of solution, by divorce orintrigue--scarcely however a desirable kind of solution--becomes possible. But we are here taking the highest ground and assuming that honourablefeeling, domestic affection, or a stern sense of moral duty, renders suchsolution unacceptable. In due course the husband returns, and then, to herutter dismay, the wife discovers, if she has not discovered it before, that during his absence, and for the first time in her life, she hasfallen in love. She loyally confesses the situation to her husband, forwhom her affection and attachment remain the same as before, for what hashappened to her is the coming of a totally new kind of love and not anychange in her old love. The situation which arises is one of torturinganxiety for all concerned, and it is not less so when all concerned areanimated by noble and self-sacrificing impulses. The husband in hisdevotion to his wife may even be willing that her new impulses should begratified. She, on her side, will not think of yielding to desires whichseem both unfair to her husband and opposed to all her moral traditions. We are not here concerned to consider the most likely, or the mostdesirable, exit from this unfortunate situation. The points to note arethat it is a situation which to-day actually occurs; that it causes acuteunhappiness to at least two people who may be of the finest physical andintellectual type and the noblest character, and that it might be avoidedif there were at the outset a proper understanding of the married stateand of the part which the art of love plays in married happiness and thedevelopment of personality. 

A woman may have been married once, she may have been married twice, shemay have had children by both husbands, and yet it may not be until she ispast the age of thirty and is united to a third man that she attains thedevelopment of erotic personality and all that it involves in the fullflowering of her whole nature. Up to then she had to all appearance hadall the essential experiences of life. Yet she had remained spirituallyvirginal, with conventionally prim ideas of life, narrow in hersympathies, with the finest and noblest functions of her soul helpless andbound, at heart unhappy even if not clearly realising that she wasunhappy. Now she has become another person. The new liberated forces fromwithin have not only enabled her to become sensitive to the richcomplexities of intimate personal relationship, they have enlarged andharmonised her realisation of all relationships. Her new erotic experiencehas not only stimulated all her energies, but her new knowledge hasquickened all her sympathies. She feels, at the same time, more mentallyalert, and she finds that she is more alive than before to the influencesof nature and of art. Moreover, as others observe, however they mayexplain it, a new beauty has come into her face, a new radiancy into herexpression, a new force into all her activities. Such is the exquisiteflowering of love which some of us who may penetrate beneath the surfaceof life are now and then privileged to see. The sad part of it is that wesee it so seldom and then often so late. 

It must not be supposed that there is any direct or speedy way ofintroducing into life a wider and deeper conception of the eroticplay-function, and all that it means for the development of theindividual, the enrichment of the marriage relationship, and the moralharmony of society. Such a supposition would merely be to vulgarise and tostultify the divine and elusive mystery. It is only slowly and indirectlythat we can bring about the revolution which in this direction would renewlife. We may prepare the way for it by undermining and destroying thosedegrading traditional conceptions which have persisted so long that theyare instilled into us almost from birth, to work like a virus in theheart, and to become almost a disease of the soul. To make way for thetrue and beautiful revelation, we can at least seek to cast out thoseancient growths, which may once have been true and beautiful, but now arefalse and poisonous. By casting out from us the conception of love as vileand unclean we shall purify the chambers of our hearts for the receptionof love as something unspeakably holy. 

In this matter we may learn a lesson from the psycho-analysts of to-daywithout any implication that psycho-analysis is necessarily a desirable oreven possible way of attaining the revelation of love. The wiserpsycho-analysts insist that the process of liberating the individual fromouter and inner influences that repress or deform his energies andimpulses is effected by removing the inhibitions on the free-play of hisnature. It is a process of education in the true sense, not of thesuppression of natural impulses nor even of the instillation of soundrules and maxims for their control, not of the pressing in but of theleading out of the individual's special tendencies. [20] It removesinhibitions, even inhibitions that were placed upon the individual, orthat he consciously or unconsciously placed upon himself, with the bestmoral intentions, and by so doing it allows a larger and freer and morenatively spontaneous morality to come into play. It has this influenceabove all in the sphere of sex, where such inhibitions have been mostpowerfully laid on the native impulses, where the natural tendencies havebeen most surrounded by taboos and terrors, most tinged with artificialstains of impurity and degradation derived from alien and antiquatedtraditions. Thus the therapeutical experience of the psycho-analystsreinforces the lessons we learn from physiology and psychology and theintimate experiences of life. 

[20] See, for instance, H. W. Frink, _Morbid Fears and Compulsions_, 1918, Ch. X. 

Sexual activity, we see, is not merely a bald propagative act, nor, whenpropagation is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended vessels. Itis something more even than the foundation of great social institutions. It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic, may be developed and satisfied. Nothing, it hasbeen said, is so serious as lust--to use the beautiful term which has beendegraded into the expression of the lowest forms of sensual pleasure--andwe have now to add that nothing is so full of play as love. Play isprimarily the instinctive work of the brain, but it is brain activityunited in the subtlest way to bodily activity. In the play-function of sextwo forms of activity, physical and psychic, are most exquisitely andvariously and harmoniously blended. We here understand best how it is thatthe brain organs and the sexual organs are, from the physiologicalstandpoint, of equal importance and equal dignity. Thus the adrenalglands, among the most influential of all the ductless glands, arespecially and intimately associated alike with the brain and the sexorgans. As we rise in the animal series, brain and adrenal glands marchside by side in developmental increase of size, and at the same time, sexual activity and adrenal activity equally correspond. 

Lovers in their play--when they have been liberated from the traditionswhich bound them to the trivial or the gross conception of play inlove--are thus moving amongst the highest human activities, alike of thebody and of the soul. They are passing to each other the sacramentalchalice of that wine which imparts the deepest joy that men and women canknow. They are subtly weaving the invisible cords that bind husband andwife together more truly and more firmly than the priest of any church. And if in the end--as may or may not be--they attain the climax of freeand complete union, then their human play has become one with that divineplay of creation in which old poets fabled that, out of the dust of theground and in his own image, some God of Chaos once created Man. 

CHAPTER VII

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE RACE

I

The relation of the individual person to the species he belongs to is themost intimate of all relations. It is a relation which almost amounts toidentity. Yet it somehow seems so vague, so abstract, as scarcely toconcern us at all. It is only lately indeed that there has been formulatedeven so much as a science to discuss this relationship, and the dutieswhich, when properly understood, it throws upon the individual. Even yetthe word "Eugenics, " the name of this science, and this art, sometimesarouses a smile. It seems to stand for a modern fad, which the superiorperson, or even the ordinary plebeian democrat, may pass by on the otherside with his nose raised towards the sky. Modern the science and art ofEugenics certainly seem, though the term is ancient, and the Greeks ofclassic days, as well as their successors to-day, used the word Eugeneiafor nobility or good birth. It was chosen by Francis Galton, less thanfifty years ago, to express "the effort of Man to improve his own breed. "But the thing the term stands for is, in reality, also far from modern. Itis indeed ancient and may even be nearly as old as Man himself. Consciously or unconsciously, sometimes under pretexts that have disguisedhis motives even from himself, Man has always been attempting to improvehis own quality or at least to maintain it. When he slackens that effort, when he allows his attention to be too exclusively drawn to other ends, hesuffers, he becomes decadent, he even tends to die out. 

Primitive eugenics had seldom anything to do with what we call"birth-control. " One must not say that it never had. Even the mysteriousmika operation of so primitive a race as the Australians has been supposedto be a method of controlling conception. But the usual method, even ofpeople highly advanced in culture, has been simpler. They preferred to seethe new-born infant before deciding whether it was likely to prove acredit to its parents or to the human race generally, and if it seemed notup to the standard they dealt with it accordingly. At one time that wasregarded as a cruel and even inhuman method. To-day, when the mostcivilised nations of the world have devoted all their best energies tocompetitive slaughter, we may have learnt to view the matter differently. If we can tolerate the wholesale murder and mutilation of the finestspecimens of our race in the adult possession of all their aptitudes wecannot easily find anything to disapprove in the merciful disposal of thepoorest specimens before they have even attained conscious possession oftheir senses. But in any case, and whatever we may ourselves be pleased tothink or not to think, it is certain that some of the most highlydeveloped peoples of the world have practised infanticide. It is equallycertain that the practise has not proved destructive to the emotions ofhumanity and affection. Even some of the lowest human races, --as wecommonly estimate them, --while finding it necessary to put aside a certainproportion of their new-born infants, expend a degree of love and evenindulgence on the children they bring up which is rarely found amongso-called civilised nations. 

There is no need, however, to consider whether or not infanticide ishumane. We are all agreed that it is altogether unnecessary, and that itis seldom that even that incipient form of infanticide called abortion, still so popular among us, need be resorted to. Our aim now--so far at allevents as mere ideals go--is not to destroy life but to preserve it; weseek to improve the conditions of life and to render unnecessary thepremature death of any human creature that has once drawn breath. 

It is indeed just here that we find a certain clash between the modernview of life and the view of earlier civilisations. The ancients wereless careful than we claim to be of the individual, but they were morecareful of the race. They cultivated eugenics after their manner, thoughit was a manner which we reprobate. [21] We pride ourselves, rightly orwrongly, on our care for the individual; during all the past century weclaim to have been strenuously working for an amelioration of theenvironment which will make life healthier and pleasanter for theindividual. But in the concentration of our attention on this altogetherdesirable end, which we are still far from having adequately attained, wehave lost sight of that larger end, the well-being of the race and theamelioration of life itself, not merely of the conditions of life. Themost we hope is that somehow the improvement of the conditions of theindividual will incidentally improve the stock. These our practicalideals, which have flourished for a century past, arose out of the greatFrench Revolution and were inspired by the maxim of that Revolution, asformulated by Rousseau, that "All men are born equal. " That maxim, wasoverthrown half a century ago; the great biological movement of science, initiated by Darwin, showed that it was untenable. All men are not bornequal. Everyone agrees about that now, but nevertheless the momentum ofthe earlier movement was so powerful that we still go on acting as thoughall men are, and always will be, born equal, and that we need not troubleourselves about heredity but only about the environment. 

[21] But this statement must not be left without importantqualification. Thus the ancient Greeks (as Moïssidès has shown in_Janus_, 1913), not only their philosophers and statesmen, but alsotheir women, often took the most enlightened interest in eugenics, and, moreover, showed it in practice. They were in many respects far inadvance of us. They clearly realised, for instance, the need of a properinterval between conceptions, not only to ensure the health of women, but also the vigour of the offspring. It is natural that among everyfine race eugenics should be almost an instinct or they would cease tobe a fine race. It is equally natural that among our modern degenerateseugenics is an unspeakable horror, however much, as the psycho-analystswould put it, they rationalise that horror. 

The way out of this clash of ideals--which has compelled us to hopeimpossibilities from the environment because we dreaded what seemed theonly alternative--is, as we know, furnished by birth-control. Anunqualified reliance on the environment, making it ever easier and easierfor the feeblest and most defective to be born and survive, could only, inthe long run, lead to the degeneration of the whole race. The knowledge ofthe practice of birth-control gives us the mastery of all that theancients gained by infanticide, while yet enabling us to cherish thatideal of the sacredness of human life which we profess to honour sohighly. The main difficulty is that it demands a degree of scientificprecision which the ancients could not possess and might dispense with, solong as they were able to decide the eugenic claims of the infant byactual inspection. We have to be content to determine not what the infantis but when it be likely to be, and that involves a knowledge of the lawsof heredity which we are only learning slowly to acquire. We may all inour humble ways help to increase that knowledge by giving it greaterextension and more precision through the observations we are able to makeon our own families. To such observations Galton attached great importanceand strove in various ways to further them. Detailed records, physical andmental, beginning from birth, are still far from being as common as isdesirable, although it is obvious that they possess a permanent personaland family private interest in addition to their more public scientificvalue. We do not need, and it would indeed be undesirable, to emulate inhuman breeding the achievements of a Luther Burbank. We have no right toattempt to impose on any human creature an exaggerated and one-sideddevelopment. But it is not only our right, it is our duty, or rather onemay say, the natural impulse of every rational and humane person, to seekthat only such children may be born as will be able to go through lifewith a reasonable prospect that they will not be heavily handicapped byinborn defect or special liability to some incapacitating disease. What iscalled "positive" eugenics--the attempt, that is, to breed specialqualities--may well be viewed with hesitation. But so-called "negative"eugenics--the effort to clear all inborn obstacles out of the path of thecoming generation--demands our heartiest sympathy and our bestco-operation, for as Galton, the founder of modern Eugenics, wrote towardsthe end of his life of this new science: "Its first object is to check thebirth-rate of the unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. " We can seldom beabsolutely sure what stocks should not propagate, and what two stocksshould on no account be blended, but we can attain reasonable probability, and it is on such probabilities in every department of life that we arealways called upon to act. 

It is often said--I have said it myself--that birth-control when practisedmerely as a limitation of the family, scarcely suffices to further theeugenic progress of the race. If it is not deliberately directed towardsthe elimination of the worst stocks or the worst possibilities in theblending of stocks, it may even tend to diminish the better stocks sinceit is the better stocks that are least likely to propagate at random. Thisis true if other conditions remain equal. It is evident, however, that theother conditions will not remain equal, for no evidence has yet beenbrought forward to show that birth-control, even when practised withoutregard to eugenic considerations--doubtless the usual rule up to thepresent--has produced any degeneration of the race. On the contrary, theevidence seems to show that it has improved the race. The example ofHolland is often brought forward as evidence in favour of such a tendencyof birth-control, since in that country the wide-spread practise ofbirth-control has been accompanied by an increase in the health andstature of the people, as well as an increase in their numbers to aremarkable degree, for the fall in the birth-rate has been far more thancompensated by the fall in the death-rate, while it is said that theaverage height of the population has increased by four inches. It is, indeed, quite possible to see why, although theoretically a randomapplication of birth-control cannot affect the germinal possibilities of acommunity, in practise it may improve the somatic conditions under whichthe germinal elements develop. There will probably be a longer intervalbetween the births of the children, which has been demonstrated by Ewartand others to be an important factor not only in preserving the health ofthe mother but in increasing the health and size of the child. Thediminution in the number of the children renders it possible to bestow agreater amount of care on each child. Moreover, the better economicposition of the father, due to the smaller number of individuals he has tosupport, makes it possible for the family to live under improvedconditions as regards nourishment, hygiene, and comfort. The observance ofbirth-control is thus a far more effective lever for raising the state ofthe social environment and improving the conditions of breeding, than isdirect action on the part of the community in its collective capacity toattain the same end. For however energetic such collective action may bein striving to improve general social conditions by municipalising orState-supporting public utilities, it can never adequately counter-balancethe excessive burden and wasteful expenditure of force placed on a familyby undue child-production. It can only palliate them. 

When, however, we have found reason to believe that, even if practisedwithout regard to eugenic considerations, birth-control may yet actbeneficially to promote good breeding, we begin to realise how great apower it may possess when consciously and deliberately directed towardsthat end. In eugenics, as already pointed out, there are two objects thatmay be aimed at: one called positive eugenics, that seeks to promote theincrease of the best stocks amongst us; the other, called negativeeugenics, which seeks to promote the decrease of the worst stocks. Ourknowledge is still too imperfect to enable us to pursue either of theseobjects with complete certainty. This is especially so as regards positiveeugenics, and since it seems highly undesirable to attempt to breed humanbeings, as we do animals, for points, when we are in the presence of whatseem to us our finest human stocks, physically, morally, andintellectually, it is our wisest course just to leave them alone as muchas we can. The best stocks will probably be also those best able to helpthemselves and in so doing to help others. But that is obviously not so asregards the worst stocks. It is, therefore, fortunate that the aim hereseems a little clearer. There are still many abnormal conditions of whichwe cannot say positively that they are injurious to the race and that weshould therefore seek to breed them out. But there are other conditions soobviously of evil import alike to the subjects themselves and to theirdescendants that we cannot have any reasonable doubt about them. There is, for instance, epilepsy, which is known to be transformed by heredity intovarious abnormalities dangerous alike to their possessors and to society. There are also the pronounced degrees of feeble-mindedness, which aredefinitely heritable and not only condemn those who reveal them to apermanent inaptitude for full life, but constitute a subtle poison workingthrough the social atmosphere in all directions and lowering the level ofcivilisation in the community. Nowhere has this been so thoroughly studiedand so clearly proved as in the United States. It is only necessary tomention Dr. C. B. Davenport of the Department of Experimental Evolution atCold Spring Harbor (New York) who has carried on so much research inregard to the heredity of epilepsy and other inheritable abnormalconditions, and Dr. Goddard of Vineland (New Jersey) whose work hasillustrated so fully the hereditary relationships of feeble-mindedness. The United States, moreover, has seen the development of the system ofsocial field-work which has rendered possible a more complete knowledge offamily heredity than has ever before been possible on a large scale. 

It is along such lines as these that our knowledge of the eugenicconditions of life will grow adequate and precise enough to form aneffective guide to social conduct. Nature, and a due attention to laws ofheredity in life, will then rank in equal honour to our eyes with nurtureor that attention to the environmental conditions of life which we alreadyregard as so important. A regard to nurture has led us to spend thegreatest care on the preservation not only of the fit but the unfit, whilemeantime it has wisely suggested to us the desirability of segregating oreven of sterilising the unfit. But the study of Nature leads us furtherand, as Galton said, "Eugenics rests on bringing no more individuals intothe world than can be properly cared for, and these only of the beststocks. " That is to say that the only instrument by which eugenics can bemade practically effective in the modern world is birth-control. 

It is not scientific research alone, nor even the wide popular diffusionof knowledge, that will suffice to bring eugenics and birth-control, singly or in their due combination, into the course of our daily lives. They need to be embodied in our instinctive impulses. Galton consideredthat eugenics must become a factor of religion and be regarded as a sacredand virile creed, while Ellen Key holds that the religions of the pastmust be superseded by a new religion which will be the awakening of thewhole of humanity to a consciousness of the "holiness of generation. " Formy own part, I scarcely consider that either eugenics or birth-control canbe regarded as properly a part of religion. Being of virtue and not ofgrace they belong more naturally to the sphere of morals. But here theycertainly need to go far deeper than the mere intelligence of the mind cantake them. They cannot become guides to conduct until their injunctionshave been printed on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. The demands of therace must speak from within us, in the voice of conscience which wedisobey at our peril. When that happens with regard to ascertained laws ofracial well-being we may know that we are truly following, even though notin the letter, those great spirits, like Galton with his intellectualvision and Ellen Key with her inspired enthusiasm, who have pointed outnew roads for the ennoblement of the race. 

II

It may be well, before we go further, to look a little more closely intothe suspicion and dislike which eugenics still arouses in many worthyold-fashioned people. To some extent that attitude is excused, not only bythe mistakes which in a new and complex science must inevitably be madeeven by painstaking students, but also by the rash and extravagantproposals of irresponsible and eccentric persons claiming without warrantto speak in the name of eugenics. Two thousand years ago the wild excessesof some early Christians furnished an excuse for the ancient world to viewChristianity with contempt, although the extreme absence of such excesseshas furnished still better ground for the modern world to maintain thesame view. To-day such a work as _Le Haras Humain_ ("The Human Stud-farm")of Dr. Binet-Sanglé, putting forward proposals which, whether beneficialor not, will certainly find no one to carry them out, similarly furnishesan excuse to those who would reject eugenics altogether. Utopian schemeshave their value; we should be able to find inspiration in the most modernof them, just as we still do in Plato's immortal _Republic_. But in this, as in other matters, we must exercise a little intelligence. We must notconfuse the brilliant excursion of some solitary thinker with thewell-grounded proposals of those who are concerned with the soberpossibilities of actual life in our own time. People who are incapable ofexercising a little shrewd commonsense in the affairs of life, and are inthe habit of emptying out the baby with the bath, had better avoidtouching the delicate problems connected with practical eugenics. 

There is one prejudice already mentioned, due to lack of clear thinking, which deserves more special consideration because it is widespread amongthe socialistic democracy of several countries as well as among socialreformers, and is directed alike against eugenics and birth-control. Thisprejudice is based on the ground that bad economic conditions and anunwholesome environment are the source of all social evils, and that abetter distribution of wealth, or a vast scheme of social welfare, is theone thing necessary, when that is achieved all other things being addedunto us, without any further trouble on our part. It is certainlyimpossible to over-rate the importance of the economic factor in society, or of a good environment. And it is true that eugenics alone, likebirth-control alone, can effect little if the economic basis of society isunsound. But it is equally certain that the economic factor can never initself suffice for fine living or even as a cure-all of social and racialdiseases. Its value is not that it can effect these things but that itfurnishes the favourable conditions for effecting them. He would befoolish indeed who went to the rich to find the example of good breedingand, as is well known, it is not with the rich that the future of the racelies. The fact is that under any economic system the responsible personaldirection of the individual and the family remain equally necessary, andno progress is possible so long as the individual casts all responsibilityaway from himself on to the social group he forms part of. The socialgroup, after all, is merely himself and the likes of himself. He is merelyshifting the burden from his individual self to his collective self, andin so doing he loses more than he gains. 

Thus there is always a sound core in that Individualism which has beenpreached so long and practised so energetically, especially inEnglish-speaking lands, however great the abuse involved in its excesses. It is still in the name of Individualism that the most brilliantantagonists of eugenics and of birth-control are wont to direct theirattacks. The counsel of self-control and foresight in procreation, therestriction necessary to purify and raise the standard of the race, seemto the narrow and short-sighted advocates of a great principle anunwarrantable violation of the sacred rights of their individual liberty. They have not yet grasped the elementary fact that the rights of theindividual are the rights of all individuals, and that Individualismitself calls for a limitation of the freedom of the individual. 

That is why even the most uncompromising Individualist must recognise anelement of altruism, call it whatever name you will, Collectivism, Socialism, Communism, or merely the vague and long-suffering term, Democracy. One cannot assume Individualism for oneself unless one assumesit for the many. That is a great truth which goes to the heart of thewhole complex problem of eugenics and birth-control. As Perrycoste haswell argued, [22] biology is altogether against the narrow Individualismwhich seeks to oppose Collective Individualism. For if, in accordance withthe most careful modern investigations, we recognise that heredity issupreme, that the qualities we have inherited from our ancestors count formore in our lives than anything we have acquired by our own personalefforts, then we have to admit that the capable man's wealth is more thecommunity's property than his own, and, similarly, the incapable man'spoverty is more the community's concern than his own. So that neither thecapable nor the incapable are entitled to an unqualified power of freedom, and neither, likewise, are justly liable to be burdened by an unqualifiedresponsibility. It is the duty of the community to draw on the powers ofthe fit and equally its duty to care for the unfit. In this way, Perrycoste, whose attitude is that of the Rationalist, is led by scienceto a conclusion which is that of the Christian. We are all members each ofthe other, and still more are we members of those who went before us. Thegenerations preceding us have not died to themselves but live in us, andwe, whom they produced, live in each other and in those who will comeafter us. The problems of eugenics and of birth-control affect us all. Inthe face of these problems it is the voice of Man that speaks: "Inasmuchas ye did it not unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it not untome. " However firmly we base ourselves on the principles of Individualismwe are inevitably brought to the fundamental facts of eugenics which, ifwe fail to recognise, our Individualism becomes of no effect. 

[22] F. H. Perrycoste, "Politics and Science, " _Science Progress_, Jan. , 1920. 

But it is the same with Socialism, or by whatever name we chose to callthe Collectivist activities of the community in social reform. Socialismalso brings us up against the hard rock of eugenic fact which, if weneglect it, will dash our most beautiful social construction to fragments. It is the more necessary to point this out since it is on the Socialistand Democratic side, much more frequently than on the Individualist side, that we find an indifferent or positively hostile attitude towards eugenicconsiderations. Put social conditions on a sound basis, the people onthis side often say, let all receive an adequate economic return for theirwork and be recognised as having a claim for an adequate share in theproducts of society, and there is no need to worry about the race or aboutthe need for birth-control, all will go well of itself. There is not theslightest ground for any such comfortable belief. 

This has been well shown by Dr. Eden Paul, himself a Socialist and even insympathy with the extreme Left. [23] After setting forth the presentconditions, with our excessive elimination of higher types, and unduemultiplication of lower types, the racial degeneration caused by thefaulty and anti-selective working of the marriage system in moderncapitalist society, so that in our existing civilisation unconsciousnatural selection has largely ceased to work towards the improvement ofthe human breed, he proceeds to consider the possible remedies. Thefrequent impatience of the Socialist, and Social Reformers generally, witheugenic proposals has a certain degree of justification in the fact thatmany evils thoughtlessly attributed to inferiority of stock are really dueto bad environment. But when the environment has been so far improved thatall defects due to its badness are removed, we shall be face to face, without possibility of doubt, with bad inheritance as the sole remainingfactor in the production of inefficient and anti-social members of thecommunity. A socialist community must recognise the right to work and tomaintenance of all its members, Eden Paul points out, but, he adds, acommunity which allowed this right to all defectives without imposing anyrestrictions in their perpetuation of themselves would deserve all theevils that would fall upon it. It is quite clear how intolerable theburden of these evils would be. A State that provided an adequatesubsistence for all alike, the inefficient as well as the efficient, wouldencourage a racial degeneration, from excessive multiplication of theunfit, far more dangerous even than that of to-day. [24] Ability to earnthe minimum wage, Eden Paul argues in agreement with H. G. Wells, must bethe condition of the right to become a parent. "Unless the socialist is aeugenist as well, the socialist state will speedily perish from racialdegradation. "

[23] In an essay on "Eugenics, Birth Control, and Socialism" in_Population and Birth-Control: A Symposium_, edited by Eden and CedarPaul. 

[24] This is here and there beginning to be recognised. Thus, not longago, the Hereford War Pensions Committee resolved not to issue amaternal grant for children born during a prolonged period of treatmentallowance. Such a measure of course fails to meet the situation, for itis obvious that, when born, the children must be cared for. But it showsa glimmering recognition of the facts, and the people capable of such arecognition will, in time, come to see that the right way of meeting thesituation is, not to neglect the children, but to prevent theirconception. Mothers' Clinics for instruction in such prevention are nowbeing established in England, through the advocacy of Mrs. MargaretSanger and the actual initiative of Dr. Marie Stopes. 

Thus it is essential that the eugenist, dealing with the hereditaryfactor of life, and the social reformer or socialist, dealing with theenvironmental factor, should supplement each other's work. Neither canattain his end without the other's help, for the eugenist alone cannotovercome the environmental factor, even perhaps increases it if he is anindividualist in the narrow sense, and the socialist alone cannot overcomethe bad hereditary factor, and will even increase it if he is no more thana socialist. The more socialist our State becomes the more essentialbecomes at the same time the adoption of eugenic practices as a workingpart of the State. "Socialism and eugenics must go hand in hand. "

Perrycoste from his own point of view has independently reached the sameconclusions. He is not, indeed, concerned with any "Socialist" communityof the future but with the dangerous results which must inevitably followthe already established methods of social reform in our modern civilisedStates unless they are speedily checked by effective action based oneugenic knowledge. "If, " he observes, "the community is to shoulder halfor three-quarters of the burden of sustaining those degenerates who, through no fault of their own, are congenitally incompetent to maintainthemselves in decent comfort, and is to render the life-pilgrimage ofthese unfortunates tolerable instead of a dreary nightmare, if it is toassume paternal charge of all the tens or hundreds of thousands ofchildren whose parents cannot or will not provide adequately for them andis to guarantee to all such children as much education as they are capableof receiving, and a really fair start in life: then in sheerself-preservation the community must insist on, and rigidly enforce, itsabsolute claim to secure that no degeneracy or inheritable congenitaldefects shall persist beyond the present generation of degenerates, andthat the community of fifty or seventy years hence shall have no incubusof mentally, or morally, or even physically, degenerate members--none buta few occasional sporadic morbid 'sports' from the normal, which it, inturn, may effectively prevent from handing on their like. " Unless theproblem is squarely faced, Perrycoste concludes, national deteriorationmust increase and a permanently successful collectivist society isinherently impossible. 

We are not now concerned with the details of any policy of eugenics and ofbirth-control, which I couple together because although a randombirth-control by no means involves much, if any, eugenic progress, it isnot easy under modern conditions to conceive any practical or effectivepolicy of eugenics except through the instrumentation of birth-control. Wehere take it for granted that in this field the slow progress ofscientific knowledge must be our guide. Premature legislation, rash anduninstructed action, will not lead to progress but are more likely todelay it. Yet even with imperfect knowledge, it is already of the firstimportance to evoke interest in the great issue here at stake and to doall that we can to arouse the individual conscience of every man and womanto his or her personal responsibility in this matter. That is here alltaken for granted. 

It seems necessary to consider the political aspect of eugenics becausethat aspect is frequently invoked, and a man's attitude towards thisquestion is frequently determined beforehand by what he considers thatIndividualism or Socialism demands. We see that when the question isdriven home our political attitude makes no difference. It is only ashallow Individualism, it is only a still more shallow Socialism, whichimagines that under modern social conditions the fundamental racialquestions can be left to answer themselves. 

III

Many years before the Great War, in all the most civilised countries ofthe World, there were those who raised the cry of "Race-Suicide!" InAmerica this cry was more especially popularised by the powerful voice ofTheodore Roosevelt, but in European countries there were similar voicesraised in tones of virtuous indignation to denounce the same crime. Sincethe war other voices have been raised in even more high-pitched andfeverish tones, but now they are less weighty and responsible voices, since to those who realise that at present there is not food enough tokeep the population of the world from starvation it seems hardlycompatible with sanity to advocate an increased rate of human production. 

Now, though it is easy to do so, we must not belittle this cry of"Race-Suicide!" It is not usually accompanied by definite argument, but itassumes that birth-control is the method of such suicide, and that thefirst and most immediately dangerous result is that one's own nation, whichever that may be, is placed in a position of alarming militaryinferiority to other nations, as a step towards the final extinction. Itis useless to deny that it really is a serious matter if there is dangerof the speedy disappearance of the human race from the earth by its ownvoluntary and deliberate action, and that within a measurable period oftime--for if it were an immeasurable period there would be no occasion forany acute anxiety--the last man will perish from the world. This is what"Race-Suicide" means, and we must face the fact squarely. 

It can scarcely be said, however, that the meaning of "Race-Suicide" hasactually been squarely faced by those who have most vehemently raisedthat cry. Translated into more definite and precise terms this cry means, and is intended to mean: "We want more births. " That is what it definitelymeans, and sometimes in the minds of those who make this demand it seemsalso to imply nothing more. Yet it implies a great number of other things. It implies certain strain and probable ill-health on the mothers, itimplies distress and disorder in the family, it implies, even if theadditional child survives, a more acute industrial struggle, and itfurther involves in this case, by the stimulus it gives toover-population, the perpetual menace of militarism and war. What, however, even at the outset, more births most distinctly and mostunquestionably imply is more deaths. It is nowadays so well known that ahigh birth-rate is accompanied by a high death-rate--the exceptions aretoo few to need attention--that it is unnecessary to adduce furtherevidence. It is only the intoxicated enthusiasts of the "Race-Suicide" crywho are able to overlook a fact of which they can hardly be ignorant. Themodel which they hold up for the public's inspiration has on the obverse"More Births!" But on the reverse it bears "More Deaths!" It would behelpful to the public, and might even be wholesome for our enthusiasts'own enlightenment, if they would occasionally turn the medal round andslightly vary the monotony of their propaganda by changing its form andcrying out for "More Deaths!" "It is a hard thing, " said Johnny Dunn, "fora man that has a house full of children to be left to the mercy ofAlmighty God. "

If, however, we wish to consider the real significance of the facts, without regard for the wild cries of ignorant cranks, it is scarcelynecessary to point out here that neither the birth-rate taken by itself, nor the death-rate taken by itself, will suffice to give us any measureeven of the growth of the population, to say nothing of the progress ofcivilisation or the happiness of humanity. It is obvious that we mustconsider both gains and losses, and put one against the other, if we wishto ascertain the net result. We may roughly get a notion of what thatresult is by deducting the death-rate from the birth-rate and calling theremainder the survival-rate. If we are really concerned with the questionof the alleged suicide of the race, and do not wish to be befooled, wemust pay little attention to the birth-rate, for that by itself meansnothing: we must concentrate on the survival-rate. Then we may soonconvince ourselves, not only that the human race is not committingsuicide, but that not even a single one of the so-called civilised nationsof which it is mainly composed is committing suicide. Quite the contrary!Every one of them, even France, where this peculiar "suicide" is supposedto be most actively at work, is yearly increasing in numbers. 

It is interesting to note, moreover, that the French have been increasingfaster, that is to say the survival-rate has been higher in recent yearsjust before the war, when the birth-rate was at its lowest, than they weretwenty years earlier, with a higher birth-rate. And if we take a widersweep and consider the growth of the French population towards the end ofthe eighteenth century, we find the birth-rate estimated at the very highfigure of 40. But the death-rate was nearly as high, the average durationof life was only half what it is now. So that the survival-rate in Franceat that time, with widely different rates of birth and death, was not muchunlike it is now. The recent French birth-rate of 19 and less, whichautomatically causes the "Race-Suicide" marionette to dance with rage, isproducing not far from the same result in growth of the population--we arenot here concerned with the enormous difference in well being andhappiness--as the extremely high rate of 40 which sends our marionettesleaping to the sky with joy. In war-time England, in 1917, the birth-ratesank to 17. 8, yet the death-rate was at 14 and the increase of thepopulation continued. The more the human race commits this kind ofsuicide, one is tempted to exclaim, the faster it grows!

It is, however, in the New World--as in Canada, Australia, and NewZealand--that we find the most impressive evidence of the real criteria ofthe growth in population set up for judgment on the racial suicide cranks. Canadian statistics bring out many points instructive even in theirvariation. Here we see not only unusual curves of rise and fall, but alsopronounced differences, due to the special peculiarities of the Frenchpopulation, most clearly in the Province of Quebec but also in some partsof the Province of Ontario. In Quebec the birth-rate some years ago was35, and the death-rate 21, both rates high, and the survival-rate high at14; recently the birth-rate has risen to 37 and the death-rate fallen to17, with the result that the survival-rate of 20 is the highest in theworld, though it must be noted that the high birth-rate is not likely tolast long, since in Quebec, as elsewhere in the world, increasingurbanisation causes a decreasing birth-rate. In mainly English-speakingOntario the birth-rate is much lower, about 24, but the death-rate is alsolower, about 14, so that the fairly considerable survival-rate of 10 isobtained. But we note the highly significant fact that some thirty yearsor more ago the birth-rate was much lower, about 19, and yet thesurvival-rate was almost 9, nearly as high as to-day! The death-rate wasthen at 10, and nothing could be more instructive as to the realrelationship that holds in this matter. There has been a great rise inthe birth-rate and the only result, as someone has remarked, is a greatincrease in the population of the grave-yards. Equally instructive is itto compare various cities in this same Province, living under the samelaws, and fairly similar social conditions. In the report of theRegistrar-General of Ontario for 1916 I find that highest in birth-rate ofcities in the Province stands Ottawa with a very considerable Frenchpopulation. But first also stands the same city for infant mortality, which is three times greater than in some other cities in the Provincewith a low birth-rate. Sault Ste. Marie, again with an enormousbirth-rate, stands third for infant mortality. Canada shows us that, evenif we regard the crude desire for a large growth of population asreasonable--and that is a considerable assumption--a high birth-rate is anuncertain prop to rest on. 

Canada is an instructive example because we have some ground for believingthat the difference between the English-speaking and French-speakingpopulations--the greater care of the former in procreation and the morerecklessly destructive methods of the latter in attaining the sameends--are due to their different attitudes towards the use of methods ofbirth-control. What the result of a general use of such methods is we knowfrom the example already mentioned of Holland, where they are taught, officially recognised, and in general use, not only among the rich butamong the poor. The result is that the birth-rate has been falling slowlyand steadily for forty years. But the death-rate has also been falling andat a greater rate. So that the more the birth-rate has fallen the higherhas been the rate of increase among the population. 

It is perhaps in Australia and New Zealand that we find the mostsatisfactory proofs of the benefits of a falling birth-rate in relation to"Race-Suicide. " The evidence may well appeal to us the more since it isprecisely here that the race-suicide fanatic finds freest scope for hiswrath. He looks gleefully at China with its prolific women, at Russia withits magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania withits birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsenseabout birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties ofperpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness anddesires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres ofprosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice ischoked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of "Race-Suicide"nearly in sight and the spectre of the Last Man rising before him. Forthere is no doubt about it, Australia and New Zealand contain a populationwhich is gradually reaching the highest point yet known of democraticorganisation and general social well-being, and the birth-rate has beenfalling with terrific speed. Sixty-years ago in the AustralianCommonwealth it was nearly 44, only forty years ago in New Zealand it was42. Now it is only about 26 in both lands. Yet the survival-rate, theactual growth of the population, is not so very much less with this lowbirth-rate than it was with the high birth-rate. For the death-rate hasalso fallen in both lands to about 10 (in New Zealand to 9) which is lowerthan any other country in the world. The result is that Australia and NewZealand, where (so it is claimed) preventives of conception are hawkedfrom door to door, instead of being awful examples of "Race-Suicide, "actually present the highest rate of race-increase in the world (onlyexcepting Canada, where it is less firmly and less healthily based), nearly twice that of Great Britain and able at the present rate to doubleitself every 44 years. So much for "Race-Suicide. "

The outcry about "Race-Suicide" is so far away from the real facts of lifethat it is not easy to take it seriously, however solemn one's naturaltemperament may be. We are concerned with people who arrogantly claim todirect the moral affairs of the world, even in the most intimately privatematters, and who are yet ignorant of the most elementary facts of theworld, unable to think, not even able to count! We can only greet themwith a smile. But this question has, nevertheless, a genuinely seriousaspect, and I should be sorry even to touch on the question ofbirth-control in relation to "Race-Suicide" without making that seriousaspect clear. 

"Race-Suicide, " we know, has no existence. Not only is the race as a wholeincreasing in number, especially its White branches, but even among theseparate national groups there is not even one civilised people anywherein the world that is decreasing in number. On the contrary they are all, even France, increasing at a more or less rapid rate. In England andWales, for example, where the birth-rate has steadily fallen during thelast forty years from 36 to 23 (I disregard the abnormal rates ofWar-time) the population is still increasing, and even if the presentfalls in birth-rate and death-rate continue, it will for years still go onincreasing by an excess of over 1, 000 births a day. When we realise thatthis is merely what goes on in one corner of the world and must bemultiplied enormously to represent the whole, we shall find it impossibleeven to conceive the prodigious flow of excess babies which is beingconstantly poured over the earth. If we are capable of realising all theproblems which thereby arise we must be forced to ask ourselves: _Is thisstate of things desirable_?

"Be ye fruitful and multiply. " That command was, according to the oldstory, delivered to a world inhabited by eight people. It has been handeddown to a world in which it has long been ridiculously out of place, andhas become merely the excuse for criminal recklessness among a race whichhas chosen to forget that the command was qualified by a solemnadmonition: "At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. " The high birth-rate has meant a vastslaughter of infants, it has meant, moreover, a perpetual oppression ofthe workers, disease, starvation, and death among the adult population; ithas meant, further, a blood-thirsty economic competition, militarism, warfare. It has meant that all civilisation has from time to time become athin crust over a volcano of revolution, and the human race has gone onlightly dancing there, striving to forget that ancient warning from a soulof things even deeper than the voice of Jehovah: "At the hand of man willI require the life of man. " Men have recklessly followed the Will o' theWisp which represented mere multiplication of their inefficient selves asthe ideal of progress, quantity before quality, the notion that in an orgyof universal procreation could consist the highest good of humanity. 

The Great War, that is scarcely yet merged into an only less war-likePeace, has brought at least the small compensation that it has led men tolook in the face this insane ideal of human progress. We see to-day whathas come of it, and the further evils yet to come of it are being embodiedbeneath our eyes. So that at last the voice of Jehovah has here and therebeen faintly heard, even where nowadays we had grown least accustomed tohear it, in the Churches. It is Dr. Inge, the Dean of London's Cathedralof St. Paul's, a distinguished Churchman and at the same time a foremostchampion of eugenics, who lately expressed the hope that the world, especially the European world, would one day realise the advantages of astationary population. [25] Such a recognition, such an aspiration, indicates that a new hope is dawning on the world's horizon, and a higherideal growing within the human soul. The mad competition of the industrialworld during the past century, with the sordid gloom and wretchedness ofit for all who were able to see beneath the surface, has shown for everwhat comes of the effort to produce a growing population by highbirth-rates in peace-time. The Great War of a later day has shown, let ushope in an equally decisive manner, what comes to a world where men havebeen for long generations produced so copiously and so cheaply that it isnatural to regard them as only fit to sweep off the earth with machineguns. And the whole world of to-day--with its starving millions strugglingin vain to feed themselves, with most of its natural beauty swept away bythe ravages of man, and many of its most exquisite animals finallyexterminated--is likely to become merely the monument to an ideal thatfailed. It was time, however late in the day, for a return tocommon-sense. It was time to realise that the ideal of mere propagationcould lead us nowhere but to destruction. On that level we cannot competeeven with the lowest of organised things, not even with the bacteria, which in number and in rapidity of multiplication are inconceivable to us. "All hope abandon, ye that enter here" is written over the portal of thispath of "Progress. "

[25] This has long been recognised by men of science. Even anyone withthe slightest knowledge of biology, Professor Bateson remarked in aBritish Association Presidential address in 1914, is aware that apopulation need not be declining because it is not increasing; "innormal stable conditions population is stationary. " Major LeonardDarwin, the thoughtful and cautious President of the Eugenics EducationSociety, has lately stated his considered belief ("Population andCivilisation, " _Economic Journal_, June, 1921) that increase in numbersmeans, ultimately, relative reduction of wealth per head, withconsequent lowering of the standard of civilisation; that it also, underexisting conditions, involves the production of a smaller proportion ofmen of ability; and, further, a depreciation of our traditions; heconcludes that, whatever element in civilisation we regard--wealth, orstock, or traditions--"any increase in the population _such as that nowtaking place_ will be accompanied by a lowering in the standard of ourcivilisation. "

There are definite reasons why real progress in the supreme tasks ofcivilisation can best be made by a more or less stationary population, whether the population is large or small, and it need scarcely be addedthat, so far as the history of mankind is yet legible, the great advancesin civilisation have been made by small, even very small populations. Where the population is rapidly growing, even if it is growing under thefavourable conditions that hardly ever accompany such growth, all itsenergy is absorbed in adjusting its perpetually shifting equilibrium. Itcannot succeed in securing the right conditions of growth, because itsgrowth is never ceasing to demand new conditions. The structure of itscivilisation never rises above the foundations because these foundationshave perpetually to be laid afresh, and there is never time to getfurther. It is a process, moreover, accompanied by unending friction anddisorder, by strains and stresses of all kinds, which are fatal to anyfull, harmonious, and democratic civilisation. The "population question, "with the endlessly mischievous readjustment it demands, must be eliminatedbefore the great House of Life can be built up on a strong solid humanfoundation, to lift its soaring pinnacles towards the skies. That is whatmany bitter experiences are beginning to teach us. In the future we arelikely to be much less concerned about "race-suicide, " though we can neverbe too concerned about race-murder. 

When we think, however, of the desirability of a more or less stationarypopulation, in order to insure real social progress, as distinct from thatvain struggle of meaningless movement to and fro which the history of thepast reveals, we have to be clear in our minds that it may be far fromdesirable that the present overgrown population of the world should bestationary. That might indeed be better than further increase in numbers, it would arrest the growth of our present evils; it might open the way tomethods by which they would be diminished or eliminated. But the processwould be infinitely difficult, and almost infinitely slow, as we mayeasily realise when we consider that, with a population even smaller thanat present, the human race has not only ravished the world's beauty almostout of existence, but so ravaged its own vital spirit that, as was foundwith some consternation during the Great War, a large proportion of themale population of every country is unfit for military service. 

So often we hear it assumed, or even asserted, that greatness meansquantity, so that to look forward to the replacement of the presentteeming insignificant human myriads by a rarer and more truly greater raceis to be a pessimist! Oh, these "optimists"! To revel in a world whichmore and more closely resembles all that the poets ever imagined of Hell, is to be an "optimist"! One wonders how it is that in no brief moment oflucidity it occurs to these people that the lower we descend in the scaleof life the greater the quantity in a species and the poorer the quality, so that to reach what such people should really regard as the world'speriod of supreme greatness in life we must go back to the days, beforeanimal life appeared, when the earth was merely a teeming mass ofbacteria. [26]

[26] See, for instance, H. F. Osborn, _The Origin and Evolution of Life_, 1918, Chapter III. 

To-day, we are often told, the majority of human beings belong either tothe Undesired Class or the Undesirable Class. To realise that this is so, we are bidden to read the newspapers or to walk along the streets of thecities--whichever they may be--wherein dwell the highest products of ourcivilisation. In the better class quarters it is indeed the UndesirableClass that seems to predominate, and in the poor quarters, the Undesired. Yet, viewing our species as a whole, the two classes may be seen to walkhand in hand along the same road, and in proportion as our noblerinstincts germinate and develop, we must doubtless admit that it ought tobe our active aim to make that road for both of them--socially though notindividually--the Road to Destruction. 

To stem the devastating tide of human procreativeness, however, easy as itmay seem in theory, is by no means so easy as some think, especially asthose think who believe that the human race stands on the brink ofsuicide. For there is this about it that we must never forget: themajority of those born to-day die before their time, so that bydiminishing the production of the unfit, as well as by the progressiveimprovement of the environment that automatically accompanies suchdiminution, we may make an imposing difference in the appearance of thebirth-rate, whilst yet the population goes on increasing rapidly, probablyeven more rapidly than before. It needs a most radical and thorough attackon the birth-rate before we can make any real impression on the rate ofincrease of the population, to say nothing of its real reduction. There isstill an arduous road before us. 

True it is that we have two opposing schools of thought which both saythat we need not, or that we cannot, make any difference by our efforts toregulate the earth's human population. According to one view thedevelopment of population, together with the necessity for war which isinextricably mixed up with a developing population, cannot be effectedwithout, as one champion of the doctrine is pleased to put it, "shatteringboth the structure of Euclidean space and the psychological laws uponwhich the existence of self-consciousness and human society areconditional. "[27] In simpler words, populations tend to become too largefor their territories, so that war ensues, and birth-control can donothing because "it is doubtful whether a group in the plenitude of vigourand self-consciousness can deliberately stop its own growth. " The otherschool proclaims human impotence on exactly opposite grounds. There is notthe slightest reason, it declares, to believe that birth-control has hadany but a completely negligible influence on population. This is a naturalprocess and fertility is automatically adjusted to the death-rate. Whenever a population reaches a certain stage of civilisation and nervousdevelopment its procreativeness, quite apart from any effort of the will, tends to diminish. The seeming effect of birth-control is illusory. It isNature, not human effort, which is at work. [28]

[27] B. A. G. Fuller, "The Mechanical Basis of War, " _Hibbert Journal_, 1921. 

[28] Sir Shirley Murphy some years ago (_Lancet_, 10 Aug. 1912) arguedthat the fall of the birth-rate, as also that of the death-rate, hasbeen largely effected by natural causes, independent of man's action. Mr. G. Udney Yule (_The Fall in the Birth-rate_, 1920) also believesthat birth-control counts for little, the chief factor being naturalfluctuations, probably of economic nature. Recently Mr. C. E. Pell, inhis book, _The Law of Births and Deaths_ (1921), has made a moreelaborate and systematic attempt to show that the rise and fall of thebirth-rate has hitherto been independent of human effort. 

These two opposing councils of despair, each proclaiming, though in acontrary sense, the vanity of human wishes in the matter of procreation, might well, some may think, be left to neutralise each other and evaporatein air. But it seems worth while to point out that, with properlimitations and qualifications, there is an element of truth in each ofthem, while, without such limitations and qualifications, both are alikeobviously absurd and wrong-headed. Undoubtedly, as the one school holds, in certain stages of civilisation, even at a fairly advanced stage, nations tend to break out over their frontiers with resulting war; but theperiod when they reach "the plenitude of vigour and self-consciousness" isexactly the period when the birth-rate begins to decline, and thepopulation, deliberately or instinctively, controls its own increase. Thathas, for instance, been the history of France since the great expansion ofpopulation, roughly associated with the Napoleonic epopee, --whichdoubtless covered a web of causes, sanitary, political, industrial, favourable to a real numerical increase of the nation--had died downslowly to the level we witness to-day. [29] Similarly, with regard to theopposing school, we must undoubtedly accept a natural fall in thebirth-rate with a rising civilisation; that has always been visible inhighly civilised individual couples, and it is an easily ascertainablezoological fact that throughout the evolution of life procreativeness hasdecreased with the increased development of species. We may agree that anatural factor comes into the recent fall in the human birth-rate. But toargue that because a natural decline in birth-rate is the essential factorin the slowing down of procreative activity with all higher evolution, therefore deliberate birth-control counts for nothing, since exactly thesame result follows when voluntary prevention is adopted and when it isnot, seems highly absurd. We must at least admit that voluntarybirth-control is an important contributory cause, in some sense indeed, ofsupreme importance, because it is within man's own power and because manis thus enabled to guide and mould processes of Nature which mightotherwise work disastrously. How disastrously is shown by the history ofEurope, and in a notable degree France, during the four or five centuriespreceding the end of the eighteenth century when various new influencesbegan to operate. During all these centuries there was undoubtedly a veryhigh birth-rate, yet infant mortality, war, famine, insanitation, contagious diseases of many and virulent kinds, tended, as far as we cansee, to keep the population almost or quite stationary, [30] and so ruinousa method of maintaining a stationary population necessarily used up mostof the energy which might otherwise have been available for socialprogress, although the stationary population, even thus maintained, stillplaced France at the head of European civilisation. The more firmly webelieve that the diminution of the population is a natural process, themore strenuously, surely, we ought to guide it, so that it shall workwithout friction, and, so far as possible, tend to eliminate theundesirable stocks of man and preserve the desirable. Clearly, the theoryitself calls for much effort, since it is obvious that along natural linesthe decline, if it is the result of high evolution, will affect the fitmore easily than the unfit. 

[29] The reader may point to the renewal of Militarism and Imperialismin France since the Great War. That, however, has been an artificialproduct (in so far as it exists among the people themselves) directlyfostered from outside by the policy of England and the United States, just as the same spirit in Germany before the war, in the face of afalling birth-rate, was artificially fostered from above by a militaryand Imperialistic caste. 

[30] See especially Mathorez, _Histoire de la Formation de la PopulationFrançaise_, Vol. I, 1920, _Les Étrangers en France_. The fecundity ofFrench families, even among the aristocracy, till towards the end of theeighteenth century, was fabulous; in the third quarter of theseventeenth century the average number of children was five in Paris. But the mortality was extremely high; under the age of sixteen, Mathorezestimates, it was 51 per cent. , and infant mortality was terrible in allclasses, small-pox being specially fatal. Then there were the variousdiseases termed plagues, with famine sometimes added, while war, emigration, and religious celibacy all counteracted the excessivefecundity, so that from the thirteenth century to the third quarter ofthe eighteenth the population seems to have been stationary, abouttwenty-two millions. Then the size of the family fell in Paris to 3. 9and in France generally to 4. 3, while also there were fewer marriages. Therewith there was an increase of prosperity. 

Thus there seems, on a wide survey of the matter, no reason whatever toquarrel with that conviction, which is gradually over-spreading allclasses of human society in all parts of the world, and ever more widelyleading to practical action, that the welfare of the individual, thefamily, the community, and the race is bound up with the purposive anddeliberate practice of birth-control, whether we advocate that policy onthe ground that we are thereby furthering Nature, or on the opposite, andno doubt equally excellent, ground that we are thereby correcting Nature. 

Along this road, as along any other road, we shall not reach Utopia; andsince the Utopia of every person who possesses one is unique that perhapsneed not be regretted. We shall not even, within any measurable period oftime, reach a sanely free and human life fit to satisfy quite moderateaspirations. The wise birth-controller will not (like the deliciouslyabsurd suffragette of old-time) imagine that birth-control for all means aNew Heaven and a New Earth, but will, rather, appreciate the delightfulirony of the Biblical legend which represented a world with only fourpeople in it, yet one of them a murderer. Still, it may be pointed out, that was a state of things much better than we can show now. The worldwould count itself happier if, during the Great War, only twenty-five percent of the population of belligerent lands had been murderers, virtuallyor in fact. There is something to be gained, and that something is wellworth while. 

Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease ofthe human population becomes increasingly urgent. [31] To many of ourUndesirables it may seem, mere sentiment to trouble about the ravishing ofthe world's beauty or the ravaging of the world's humanity. But certainhard facts, even to-day, have to be faced. The process of mechanicalinvention continues every day on an ever increasing scale of magnitude. Now that process, however necessary, however beneficial, involves some ofthe chief evils of our present phase of what we call civilisation, partlybecause it has deteriorated the quality of all human products and partlybecause it has enslaved mankind, and in so doing deteriorated also hisquality. [32] Now we cannot abolish machinery, because machinery lies inthe very essence of life and we ourselves are machines. But, as thelargest part of history shows, there is no need whatever for man to becomethe slave of machinery, or even for machinery to injure the quality of hisown work; rightly used it may improve it. The greatest task beforecivilisation at present is to make machines what they ought to be, theslaves, instead of the masters of men; and if civilisation fails at thetask, then without doubt it and its makers will go down to a commondestruction. It is a task inextricably bound up with the task of mouldingthe human race for which birth-control is the elected instrument. Indeedthey are but two aspects of the same task. We have to accept the ruggedfact that every step to render more nearly perfect the mechanical side oflife correspondingly abolishes the need for men. Thus it is calculatedto-day that whenever, in accordance with a growing tendency, coal issuperseded by oil in industry two men are enabled to do the work oftwelve. That is merely typical of what is taking place generally in ourmodern system of civilisation. Everywhere a small number of men are beingenabled to replace a large number of men. Not to avoid looking ahead, wemay say that of every twelve millions of our population, ten millions willbe unwanted. Let them do something else! we cheerfully exclaim. But what?No doubt there are always art and science, infinite in their possibilitiesfor joy and enlightenment, infinite also, as we know, in theirpossibilities of mischief and shallowness and boredom. Let it only be truescience and great art, and one man is better than ten millions. To saythat is only to echo unconsciously the ancient saying of Heraclitus, "Oneis ten thousand if he be the best. "

[31] Professor E. M. East, a distinguished biologist and lately Presidentof the American Society of Naturalists (_Nature_, 23 Sept. , 1920), hasestimated that, for all the fall in the birth-rate, the present rate ofincrease in the population of the world, chiefly of whites, who areincreasing most rapidly, will, in the lives of our grandchildren, leadto a struggle for existence more terrible than imagination can conceive. 

[32] This has been set forth with admirable lucidity and wealth ofillustration by Dr. Austin Freeman in his _Social Decay andRegeneration_ (1921), already mentioned. 

The vistas that are opened up when we realise the direction in which thehuman race is travelling may seem to be endless; and so in a sense theyare. Man has replaced the gods he once dreamed of; he has found that he ishimself a god, who, however realistic he seeks to make his philosophy, himself created the world as he sees it and now has even acquired thepower of creating himself, or, rather, of re-creating himself. For herecognises that, at present, he is rather a poor sort of god, so much aninferior god that he is hardly, if at all, to be distinguished from theLords of Hell. 

The divine creative task of man extends into the future far beyond thepresent, and we cannot too often meditate on the words of the wisest andnoblest forerunner of that future: "The whole world still lies before uslike a quarry before the master-builder, who is only then worthy of thename when out of this casual mass of natural material he has embodied withall his best economy, adaptability to the end, and firmness, the imagewhich has arisen in his mind. Everything outside us is only the means forthis constructing process, yes, I would even dare to say, also everythinginside us; deep within lies the creative force which is able to form whatit will, and gives us no rest until, without us or within us, in one orthe other way, we have finally given it representation. " The future, withall its possibilities, is still a future infinitely far away, however wellit may be to fix our eyes on the constellation towards which our solarsystem may seem to be moving across the sky. 

Meanwhile, every well-directed step, while it brings us but ever so littlenearer to the far goal around which our dreams may play, is at once abeautiful process and an invigorating effort, and thereby becomes initself a desirable end. It is the little things of life which give us mostsatisfaction and the smallest things in our path that may seem most worthwhile. 

INDEX

Abstinence, sexual, 59. Acton, 110. Adrenal glands, 132. Anstie, 45. Art of love, 121. Asceticism and sexuality, 57. Augustine, St. , 58, 77. Australian birth-rate, 162. Auto-erotism, 46. 

Bantu, marriage among the, 92. Bateson, 166. Bell, W. Blair, 119. Binet-Sanglé, 146. Birth-control, 72, 138 _et seq. _Birth-rate, in France, 159, 174. In Australia, 162. In Canada, 160. In England, 159, 164. Book of the Knight of the Tour-Landry, 18, 82. Brontës, the, 25. Browning, Mrs. , 26. Brown-Séquard, 45. Burbank, Luther, 139. 

Canada, birth-rate in, 160. Chastity, 57. Chaucer, 56. Children, to parents, relation of, 13 _et seq. _ in modern life, 24 _et seq. _ sex in, 48. China, parents in, 32. Christianity, 57, 65, 70, 76, 108, 110. Continence, the value of, 38, 42. Courtship in Nature, 103. Crooks, Mrs. Will, 89. 

Davenport, C. B. , 143. Darwin, Major Leonard, 166. Davies, 51. Drayton, 51. Dundas, C, 92. 

East, E. M. , 176. Education, 14. In Old England, 16. In Old France, 17, 19. Electra-complex, 22. Eliot, George, 31. Ellis, Mrs. Havelock, 68, 69, 96. English social history, 15, 16, 79, 159, 164. Erotic claims of women, 112. Erotic personality, 121. Eugenics, 134 _et seq. _Ewart, 141. 

Family, sex in life of, 22 _et seq. _, 78. Feeblemindedness, 143. Feudal education, 19. Francis of Assisi, St. , 58. Freeman, Austin, 99, 177. French social history, 17, 19, 81, 159, 173. Freud, 33, 46, 52. Frink, H. W. , 131. Fuller, B. A. G. , 171. 

Galton, Sir Francis, 134, 139, 140, 144, 145. Girls, emancipated, 27. Goddard, 143. Goethe, 179. Gratian, 79. Greeks, eugenics amongst ancient, 137. Groos, 119. 

Hadfield, Mrs. , 32. Heraclitus, 178. Hinton, James, 29, 45, 67, 68, 69, 98. Home, revolution in the, 93. Hormones, 40, 117. Husbands, 75 _et seq. _

Individualism and eugenics, 148. Infanticide, ancient, 135. Infantile arrest, 33. Inge, Dr. , 166. Internal secretions, 40, 117. 

Jonson, Ben, 51. Juries, women on, 16. 

Key, Ellen, 13, 14, 15, 145. Lasco, John à, 70. Löwenfeld, 52. Luchaire, 19. Luther, 109. 

Machinery and civilisation, 177. Magic and sex, 39. Marriage, 63 _et seq. _, 76 _et seq. _, 108 _et seq. _, 117 _et seq. _Martineau, Harriet, 27. Mathorez, 174. Matsumato, 48. McDougall, W. , 99. Meirowsky, 42. Milton, 77. Moïssidès, 137. Monogamy, 106. Montaigne, 17, 21, 37, 108, 109. Morality, and nature, 55. In marriage, 109. More, Sir Thomas, 37, 109. Murphy, Sir Shirley, 172. 

Näcke, 59. Nature and morality, 55. New Caledonia, treatment of parents in, 32. Northcote, H. , 71. 

Oedipus-complex, 22. Osborn, H. F. , 170. 

Palladius, 57. Parasitism in the home, 90. Parents, merciful destruction of, 32. Relation of children to, 13 _et seq. _, 24. Training of, 34. Veneration of, 32. Parmelee, 120. Paston Letters, 16, 79. Paul, Eden & Cedar, 18, 151. Paul, St. , 77. Peacock, 51. Pell, C. E. , 172. Perrycoste, F. H. , 149, 153. Perseigne, Adam de, 20. Pituitary gland, 118. Play-function of sex, 116 _et seq. _Pleasure, the function of, 67. Polonius, 31. Powell, Dr. , 81. Protestantism and marriage, 77. Psycho-analysis, 22, 130. Purity, 37 _et seq. _

Race-suicide, 155 _et seq. _Ring in marriage, 84. Rite, the marriage, 83. Robert of Arbrissel, 58. Rohleder, 43. Rolland, Romain, 67. 

Sacrament, sex as a, 69. Salle, Antoine de la, 17. Sanger, Margaret, 152. Schreiner, Olive, 69, 90. And asceticism, 57. Sex, and magic, 39. As a sacrament, 69. Evolution in, 66. Nature of impulse of, 44. Play-function of, 116 _et seq. _ spiritual element in, 66. Sublimation of, 47, 50. Shaftesbury, 51. Socialism and eugenics, 150. _Stonor Letters_, 81. Stopes, Marie, 152. Suarez, 62. Sublimation, 47, 50. 

Theognis, 65. 

Wells, H. G. , 152. Westermarck, 32. Wives, 75 _et seq. _ love rights of, 102 _et seq. _Wollstonecraft, Mary, 25. Women, erotic claims of, 112. Erotic ideas of average, 124, in Crusades, 20. In marriage, 75, 78. In old France, 19 _et seq. _ in subjection to men, 111. Love rights of, 102 _et seq. _ on juries, 16. 

Yule, G. Udney, 172. 

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BILLING AND SONS, LTD. , GUILDFORD AND ESHER. 

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Transcriber's Notes:

in the index, Wollstonecroft was changed to Wollstonecraftalso in the index, á was changed to à in: Lasco, John àsome punctuation normalizedeverything else was left as found in the original

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49 Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. 7s. 6d. Net (by post, 8s. 1d. ). 

 This fills a gap in the literature of sex. It gathers together for the general reader a vast array of facts about sex, mating and reproduction which have never before been so clearly and directly stated. 

"For a simple statement, expressed in language as far as possible freefrom technicalities, of the principal phenomena of generation, Dr. Herbert's book is the best that we have seen. "--_Cambridge Review. _

"It is therefore a real satisfaction to find a sex manual which may beplaced with confidence in the hands of any educated person. . . . He hascertainly produced the best little manual which we yet possess in thisfield. "--HAVELOCK ELLIS in _Eugenics Review. _

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BY MRS. HERBERT. 

SEX LORE. A Primer on Courtship, Marriage and Parenthood. 55 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 7s. 6d. Net (by post, 8s. 1d. ). 

"The author in simple, non-technical language expounds the main facts ofsex, especially with regard to biology and physiology, and she treats thisdelicate subject in a tactful manner. A special feature of the book is thelarge number of illustrations. The volume is intended for the 'youngergeneration, ' but parents and teachers would be well advised to peruse thebook, which should prove invaluable for educative purposes. '--_MedicalTimes. _

". . . May be left with confidence in the hands of any educated person whois attaining to manhood or womanhood. "--_Aberdeen Daily Journal. _

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PUBLISHED BYA. & C. BLACK, LTD. , 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1

THE HERBERT BOOKS

SEXUAL LIFEOF PRIMITIVE PEOPLE

BY HANS FEHLINGER

Translated by DR. S. HERBERT AND MRS. HERBERT

Large Crown 8vo. Cloth, 6s. Net (by post, 6s. 6d. ). 

"A concise survey of the beliefs and customs of primitive peoples in suchmatters as modesty, conjugal fidelity, courtship, marriage, birth andfeticide. "--_The Times. _

"If anyone doubts that the world is progressing, we commend to hisattention this book of Mr. Fehlinger. "--_Dublin Evening Mail. _

"In this translation Dr. And Mrs. Herbert present clearly and fairly allthe more important facts which recent research has brought tolight. "--_Times of India. _

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FUNDAMENTALS INSEXUAL ETHICSAN ENQUIRY INTO MODERN TENDENCIES

BY S. HERBERT, M. D. , M. R. C. S. , L. R. C. P. 

Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. Price 12s. 6d. Net (by post, 13s. 3d. ). 

CONTENTS:

Part I. --THE BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF SEX. Part II. --SEX RELATIONSHIPS: Sex Morality. Sex Vice and Disease. Sex Aberration and Abnormality. Auto Eroticism. Sexual Inversion. Part III. --MARITAL RELATIONSHIP: Factors; Moral, Biotic, Eugenic, Economic, Social. Part IV. --SEX AND EDUCATION: Sex Education. Co-Education. 

OPINIONS:

"He treats with knowledge all the urgent sexual questions and sexualphenomena, normal and abnormal. "--_The Times. _

"A very valuable book dealing with a vastly importantsubject. "--_Justice. _

"What we want is the best that is known and thought in the world on amatter that vitally concerns us. We need also intelligent, sympatheticcommon-sense guidance amid the opposing extremes of a narrow materialismand a narrow spiritualism. Dr. Herbert supplies both these needs . . . Andwe could not well ask more of him. "--HAVELOCK ELLIS in _Daily Herald_. 

"We may congratulate him on the success of his undertaking. "--_ManchesterGuardian. _

"Wide knowledge, conscientious thoroughness, sincere conviction, sympathetic understanding and, even more, spiritual aspirations. . . . Asplendid feminist. "

EDITH BETHUNE BAKER in _Woman's Leader_. 

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PUBLISHED BYA. & C. BLACK, LTD. , 4, 5 & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. 1