{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_11965/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_11965","id":"gutenberg_11965","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11965","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Gender & Sexuality Studies","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Marriage","Sex","Sexual ethics"],"text":"SEX AND COMMON-SENSE\n\nBY\n\nA. MAUDE ROYDEN\nASSISTANT PREACHER AT THE CITY TEMPLE, LONDON\n1918-1920\n\n\n\n\n\nTo MY FRIENDS A.J.S. AND W.H.S.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION\n\n\nTHE NOBILITY OF THE SEX PROBLEM\n\nOf all the problems which the alert and curious mind of modern man is\nconsidering, none occupies him more than that of the relations of the\nsexes. This is natural. It touches us all and we have made rather a mess\nof it! We want to know why, and we want to do better. We resent being the\nsport of circumstance and perhaps we are beginning to understand that this\ninstinct of sex which has been so great a cause of suffering and shame and\nhas been treated as a subject fit only for furtive whispers or silly jokes,\nis in fact one of the greatest powers in human nature, and that its misuse\nis indeed \"the expense of spirit in a waste of shame.\"\n\nIt is not the abnormal or the bizarre that interests most of us to-day. It\nis not into the by-ways of vice that we seek to penetrate. It is the normal\nexercise of a normal instinct by normal people that interests us: and it is\nof this that I have tried to write and speak. The curiosities of depravity\nare for the physician and the psychologist to discuss and cure. Ordinary\nmen and women want first to know how to live ordinary human lives on\na higher level and after a nobler pattern than before. They want, I\nthink,--and I want,--to grow up, but to grow rightly, beautifully,\nhumanely.\n\nAnd I believe the first essential is to realize that the sex-problem, as it\nis called, is the problem of something noble, not something base. It is\nnot a \"disagreeable duty\" to know our own natures and understand our own\ninstincts: it is a joy. The sex-instinct is not \"the Fall of Man\"; neither\nis it an instance of divine wisdom on which moralists could, if they had\nonly been consulted in time, greatly have improved. It is a thing noble in\nessence. It is the development of the higher, not the lower, creation. It\nis the asexual which is the lower, and the sexually differentiated which is\nthe higher organism.\n\nIn the humbler ranks of being there is no sex, and in a sense no death. The\norganism is immortal because--strange paradox--it is not yet alive enough\nto die. But as we pass from the lower to the higher, we pass from the less\nindividual to the more individual; from asexual to sexual. And with this\nchange comes that great rhythm by which life and death succeed each other,\nand death is the _cost_ of life, and to bring life into the world means\nsacrifice; and--as we rise higher still--to sustain life means prolonged\nand altruistic love. This is the history of sex and of procreation, a\nhistory associated with the rising of humanity in the scale of being, a\nhistory not so much of his physical as of his spiritual growth.\n\nBy what an irony have we come to associate the instinct of sex with all\nthat is bestial and shameful!\n\nIt has happened because the corruption of the best is the worst. I always\nwant to remind people of this truism when they have _first_ come into\ncontact with sex in some horrible and shameful way. That is one of the\ngreatest misfortunes that can happen to any of us, and unfortunately it\nhappens to many. Boys and girls are allowed to grow up in ignorance. The\ngirls perhaps know nothing till they have to know all. The boys learn\nfrom grimy sources. I was speaking on this subject at one of our great\nuniversities the other day, and afterwards many of the men came and talked\nto me privately. With hardly a single exception they said to me--\"Our\nparents told us nothing. We have never heard sex spoken of except in a\ndirty way.\"\n\nIt is difficult for us, in such a case, to realize that sex is not a\ndirty thing. It _can_ only be realized, I think, by remembering that\nthe corruption of the best is the worst, and that we can measure by the\nhideousness of debased and depraved sexuality, the greatness and the wonder\nof sex love.\n\nThis is to me the great teaching of Christ about sex. Other great\nreligious teachers--some of them very great indeed--have thought and taught\ncontemptuously of our animal nature. \"He spake of the temple of His\nbody.\" That is sublime! That is the whole secret. And that is why vice is\nhorrible: because it is the desecration, not of a hovel or a shop, of a\nmarketplace or a place of business: but of a temple.\n\nChrist, I am told, told us nothing about sex. He did not need to tell us\nanything but \"Your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.\"\n\nIt is my belief that in appealing to an American public I shall be\nappealing to those who are ready to face the subject of the relations\nof the sexes with perfect frankness and with courage. America is still a\ncountry of experiments--a country adventurous enough to make experiments,\nand to risk making mistakes. That is the only spirit in which it is\npossible to make anything at all; and though the mistakes we may make in a\nmatter which so deeply and tragically affects human life must be serious,\nand we must with corresponding seriousness weigh every word we say, and\ntake the trouble to think harder and more honestly than we have perhaps\never thought before; yet I believe that we must above all have courage.\nHuman nature is sound and men and women do, on the whole, want to do what\nis right. The great impulse of sex is part of our very being, and it is not\nbase. Passion is essentially noble and those who are incapable of it are\nthe weaker, not the stronger. If then we have light to direct our course,\nwe shall learn to direct it wisely, for indeed this is our desire.\n\nSuch is my creed. My prayer is for \"more light.\" And my desire to take my\npart in spreading it.\n\nA. MAUDE ROYDEN.\n\nApril, 1922.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE TO THIRD ENGLISH EDITION\n\nIn the first editions of this book a certain passage on our Lord's humanity\n(see p. 40) has, I find, been misunderstood by some. They have supposed\nit to imply a suggestion that our Lord was not only \"tempted in all things\nlike as we are\"--which I firmly believe--but that He fell--which is to\nme unthinkable. I hope I have made this perfectly clear in the present\nedition.\n\nBeyond this there are few alterations except the correction of some very\nabominable errors of style. The book still bears the impress of the speaker\nrather than the writer, and as such I must leave it.\n\nWith regard to the chapter called \"Common-Sense and Divorce Law Reform,\"\nwhich now has been added to this edition, I wish to express my indebtedness\nto Dr. Jane Walker and the group of \"inquirers\" over which she presided,\nfor the memorandum on Divorce which they drew up and published in the\n_Challenge_, of July, 1918. I am not in complete agreement with their views\non all points, but readers of their memorandum will easily see whence I\nderived my view as a whole.\n\nA.M.R.\n\n_January_, 1922.\n\n\n\n\nFOREWORD\n\nChapters I. to VII. of this book were originally given in the form of\naddresses, in the Kensington Town Hall, on successive Sunday evenings in\n1921. They were taken down _verbatim_, but have been revised and even to\nsome extent rewritten. I do not like reports in print of things spoken, for\nspeaking and writing are two different arts, and what is right when it is\nspoken is almost inevitably wrong when it is written. (I refer, of course,\nto style, not matter.) If I had had time, I should have re-shaped what I\nhave said, though it would have been the manner only and not the substance\nthat would have been changed. This has been impossible, and I can therefore\nonly explain that the defective form and the occasional repetition which\nthe reader cannot fail to mark were forced upon me by the fact that I was\nspeaking--not writing--and that I felt bound to make each address, as far\nas possible, complete and comprehensible in itself.\n\nChapters VIII., IX., and X. were added later to meet various difficulties,\nquestions, or criticisms evoked by the addresses which form the earlier\npart of the book.\n\nI desire to record my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sladen, but for\nwhose active help and encouragement I should hardly have proceeded with the\nbook: to Miss Irene Taylor, who, out of personal friendship for me, took\ndown, Sunday after Sunday, all that I said, with an accuracy which, with a\nconsiderable experience of reporters, I have only once known equalled\nand never surpassed: and to my congregation, whose questions and speeches\nduring the discussion that followed each address greatly helped my work.\n\nA. MAUDE ROYDEN.\n\n_September_, 1921.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\nI.--THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES\n\nII.--A SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE UNMARRIED\n\nIII.--CONSIDERATION OF OTHER SOLUTIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF THE DISPROPORTION\n      OF THE SEXES\n\nIV.--THE TRUE BASIS OF MORALITY\n\nV.--THE MORAL STANDARD OF THE FUTURE: WHAT SHOULD IT BE?\n\nVI.--A PLEA FOR LIGHT\n\nVII.--FRIENDSHIP\n\nVIII.--MISUNDERSTANDINGS\n\nIX.--FURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS: THE NEED FOR SEX CHIVALRY\n\nX.--\"THE SIN OF THE BRIDEGROOM\"\n\nXI.--COMMON-SENSE AND DIVORCE LAW REFORM\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nTHE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES\n\n\n     \"There has arisen in society, a figure which is certainly the\n     most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which\n     the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose\n     very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold\n     heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the\n     passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the\n     vilest of her sex, and doomed for the most part to disease and\n     abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every eye as\n     the perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man.\n     Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most\n     efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged\n     purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a\n     few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her\n     with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of\n     remorse and despair. She remains while creeds and civilisations\n     rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for\n     the sins of the people.\"\n\n     Lecky's _History of European Morals_, Chap. V.\n\n\nOne of the many problems which have been intensified by the war is the\nproblem of the relations of the sexes. Difficult as it has always been,\nthe difficulty inevitably becomes greater when there is a grave\ndisproportion--an excess in numbers of one sex over the other. And in this\ncountry, whereas there was a disproportion of something like a million more\nwomen than men before the war broke out, there is now a disproportion of\nabout one and three-quarter millions.\n\nThis accidental and (I believe) temporary difficulty--a difficulty not\n\"natural\" and necessary to human life, but artificial and peculiar to\ncertain conditions which may be altered--does not, of course, create the\nproblem we have to deal with: but it forces that problem on our attention\nby sheer force of suffering inflicted on so large a scale. It compels us\nto ask ourselves on what we base, and at what we value the moral standard\nwhich, if it is to be preserved, must mean a tremendous sacrifice on the\npart of so large a number of women as is involved in their acceptance of\nlife-long celibacy.\n\nThere is no subject on which it is more difficult to find a common\nground than this. To some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the\nquestion--on what are your moral standards based? To others what we call\nour \"moral standards\" are so obviously absurd and \"unnatural\" that the\nquestion has for them no meaning. And between these extremes there are so\nmany varieties of opinion that one can take nothing as generally accepted\nby men and women.\n\nI want, therefore, to leave aside the ordinary conventions--not because\nthey are necessarily bad, but because they are not to my purpose, which\nis to discover whether there is a real morality which we can justify\nto ourselves without appeal to any authority however great, or to any\ntradition however highly esteemed: a morality which is based on the real\nneeds, the real aspirations of humanity itself.\n\nAnd I begin by calling your attention to the morality of Jesus of Nazareth,\nnot because He is divine, but because He was a great master of the human\nheart, and more than others \"knew what was in man.\"\n\nYou will notice at once the height of His morality--the depth of His mercy.\nHe demands such purity of spirit, such loyalty of heart, that the most\nloyal of His disciples shrank appalled: \"Whosoever shall look upon a woman\nto lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.\"\n... \"Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth\nadultery against her.\" From such a standard Christ's disciples shrank--\"If\nthe case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.\" And\none evangelist almost certainly inserted in this absolute prohibition the\nexception--\"Saving for the cause of fornication\"--feeling that the Master\n_could_ not have meant anything else. But, in fact, there is little doubt\nthat Jesus did both say and mean that marriage demanded lifelong fidelity\non either side; just as He really taught that a lustful thought was\nadultery in the sight of God.\n\nBut if Christendom has been staggered at the austerity of Christ's morality\nnot less has it been shocked at the quality of His mercy. His gentleness to\nthe sensual sinner has been compared, with amazement, to the sternness of\nHis attitude to the sins of the spirit. Not the profligate or the harlot\nbut the Pharisee and the scribe were those who provoked His sternest\nrebukes. And perhaps the most characteristic of all His dealings with such\nmatters was that incident of the woman taken in adultery, when He at once\nreaffirmed the need of absolute chastity for men--demand undreamed of by\nthe woman's accusers--and put aside the right to condemn which in all that\nassembly He alone could claim--\"Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no\nmore.\"\n\nHaving then in mind this most lofty and compassionate of moralists, let us\nturn to the problem of to-day. Here are nearly 2,000,000 women who, if the\naustere demands of faithful monogamy are to be obeyed, will never know\nthe satisfaction of a certain physical need. Now it is the desire of every\nnormal human being to satisfy all his instincts. And this is as true of\nwomen as of men. What I have to say applies indeed to many men to-day, for\nmany men are unable to marry because they have been so broken by war--or\notherwise--so shattered or maimed or impoverished that they do not feel\njustified in marrying. But I want to emphasize with all my power that the\nhardness of enforced celibacy presses as cruelly on women as on men. Women,\ndifficult as some people find it to believe, are human beings; and because\nwomen are so, they want work, and interest, and love--both given and\nreceived--and children, and, in short, the satisfaction of every _human_\nneed. The idea that existence is enough for them--that they need not work,\nand do not suffer if their sex instincts are repressed or starved--is a\nconvenient but most cruel illusion. People often tell me, and nearly always\nunconsciously _assume_, that women have no sex hunger--no sex needs at all\nuntil they marry, and that even then their need is not at all so imperious\nas men's, or so hard to repress. Such people are nearly always either men,\nor women who have married young and happily and borne many children, and\nhad a very full and interesting outside life as well! Such women will\nassure me with the utmost complacency that the sex-instincts of a woman are\nvery easily controllable, and that it is preposterous to speak as if their\nrepression really cost very much. I think with bitterness of that age-long\nrepression, of its unmeasured cost; of the gibe contained in the phrase\n\"old maid,\" with all its implication of a narrowed life, a prudish mind,\nan acrid tongue, an embittered disposition. I think of the imbecilities in\nwhich the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of\nthe adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional\n\"religion,\" the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough\nto sharpen his wit. And all these cramped and stultified lives have not\navailed to make the world understand that women have had to pay for their\ncelibacy!\n\n  \"The toad beneath the harrow knows\n    Exactly where each tooth-point goes.\n  The butterfly beside the road\n    Preaches contentment to that toad.\"\n\nModern psychology is lifting the veil to-day from the suffering which\nrepression causes. It is a pity that its most brilliant exponents should\nascribe to a single instinct--however potent--_all_ the ills that afflict\nmankind, for such one-sidedness defeats its own object; but, at least, the\nmodern psychologist is trying to show us \"exactly where each tooth-point\ngoes\" in the repression of the sex-instinct among women as among men. Nor\ndoes the fact that the _tabu_ of society has actually in many cases enabled\na woman to inhibit the development of her own nature, obviate the fact that\nshe does so at great cost, even when she least understands what she does.\n\nI affirm this, and with insistence, that the normal--the average--woman\nsacrifices a great deal if she accepts life-long celibacy. She sacrifices\nquite as much as a man. In those cases--too frequent even now--where she\nis not educated or expected to earn her own living or to have a career, I\nmaintain that she loses more than a man who is expected to work. I do not\nsay, and I do not believe, that passion in a woman is the same as in a man,\nor that they suffer in precisely the same way. I believe indeed that if men\nand women understood each other a little better they would hurt each other\na good deal less. But I am persuaded that we shall not even begin to reach\na wise morality so long as we persist in basing our demands on the imbecile\nassumption that women suffer nothing or little by the unsatisfaction of the\nsex side of their nature.\n\nI emphasize this point here, because it is involved in the present state\nof affairs. I have reminded you that there are nearly 2,000,000 women\nwhose lives are to be considered. If the number were quite small, it might\ncomfortably be assumed that the women who remained unmarried were those\nwho, in any case, had no vocation for marriage. For it is, of course, true\nthat there are such women, as there are such men. The normal man and woman\ndesire marriage and parenthood, and are fitted for it; but there are always\nexceptions who either do not desire it, or, desiring it, feel bound to\nput it aside at the call of some other vocation, which they feel to\nbe supremely theirs, and which is not compatible with marriage. They\nsacrifice; but they do so joyfully, not for repression, but for a different\nlife, another vocation. And where the number of the unmarried is small,\nit may without essential injustice be supposed that these are the natural\ncelibates.\n\nBut you cannot suppose that of 2,000,000! Among the number how many are\nyoung widows, girls engaged to marry men now dead, and how many whose\n_natural_ vocation was marriage, motherhood, home-making, and all that is\nmeant by such things as these? If this be the normal vocation of the normal\nwoman how many of these have been deprived of all that seemed to them to\nmake life worth living? Is it astonishing if they rebel? If they determine\nto snatch at anything that yet lies in their grasp? If they affirm \"the\nright to motherhood\" when they want children, or the satisfaction of the\nsex-instinct when that need becomes imperious?\n\nIf we are to say to such women--\"The normal life is denied to you, not\nby your fault, or because you do not need it, but because we have\nunfortunately been obliged to sacrifice in war the men who should have been\nyour mates: and we now invite you in the interests of morality to accept as\nyour lot perpetual virginity\"--it is not difficult to imagine their reply:\n\"What is this morality in whose interests you ask so huge a sacrifice? Is\nit worth such a price? Is the whole community willing to pay it, or is it\nexacted from us alone? And on what, in the end, is it based?\"\n\nThe answer to this question is often given to the young, even before the\nquestion arises; and it is given in the lives of men and women. The lives\nof those who are nobly celibate, or nobly married, are in themselves so\nmoving a plea, that few who have been closely in contact with them are left\nuntouched. It is the ideal realized that is the best defence of the ideal.\nBut let us admit that, too often, the actual marriage is a very pitiful\ncomment on our morality, and celibacy either a mere pretence or a very\nmean and pinched reality. What answer then shall we give to the rising\ngeneration which questions us--\"On what do you base your moral standards?\"\n\nI do not doubt that I am voicing the experience of many if I say that when\nI first began to ask such questions I met first of all with extreme horror\nat such a question being put at all; and that, when I persisted, I found\nthat it was almost entirely by women that the cost was to be borne. Women\nwere to conform strictly to the moral standard (whose basis I was not\nquestioning), but men need not and, generally speaking, did not. I reasoned\nthat if men need not be chaste there must exist at least a certain number\nof women who _could_ not be so, and that this reduced \"morality\" to a\nfarce. I soon found that it was not a farce but a tragedy. These women were\nadmittedly necessary but outcast. They were the safeguards of the rest. I\nwish that men would try for a moment to put themselves in the place of a\nyoung girl who learns for the first time that prostitution is the safeguard\nof the virtuous! I think that they would never again wonder at the\nrejection of such \"moral standards\" by the rising generation of women. You\nwould only wonder why women had tolerated such a combination of folly\nand cruelty so long. You would not ask them to accept or to suffer for a\n\"standard\" like that.\n\nAgain, this morality for which (it is affirmed) society is prepared to pay\nso horrible a price--what is it? A physical condition! A state of body,\nwhich any man can destroy! an \"honour\" which lies at the mercy of a\nruffian! A woman raped is a woman \"dishonoured.\" Are her \"morals\" then at\nthe mercy of another person? Is \"morality\" not a state of mind or of will,\na spiritual passion for purity, but a material, physical thing which is\nonly hers as long as no one snatches it from her? How senseless! How false!\n\nWhen you ask a woman to-day to make the great sacrifice \"in the interests\nof morality,\" you must offer her a morality that _is_ moral--a morality\nwhose justice and humanity move her to a response; not a morality which\noffends every instinct of justice and reality the moment the person to whom\nit is offered understands what it means. For what is asked to-day is too\noften that women should sacrifice themselves for the convenience of other\npeople--of a hypocritical society which preaches a morality as senseless as\nit is base.\n\nWhen older people tell me that the young seem to have \"no morals at all,\"\nI ask myself whether the repudiation of much that has been called morality\nwas not, after all, a necessity, if we are to advance at all. When I\nreflect on, for example, Lecky's \"History of European Morals,\" and\nremember that it was not a profligate or a hedonist, but an honourable and\nrespectable member of a civilized society, who proclaimed the prostitute\nthe high priestess of humanity--the protectress of the purity of a thousand\nhomes[A]--I am prepared to say that to have \"no morals at all\" is better\nthan to accept such infamy and _call_ it \"morals\"; as it is better to be an\nagnostic or an atheist than to worship a devil--to have no standard than to\nsay: \"Evil be thou my good.\"\n\n[Footnote A: Lecky's \"History of European Morals.\" Chap. V.]\n\nAnd I believe that the tendency to reject all moral standards is largely\ndue to the refusal of an older generation to examine and to justify its own\nstandard. To refuse to discuss or defend it--to affirm that it is beyond\ndebate and not to be questioned without depravity is merely to produce the\nimpression that it is beyond defence and impossible to justify. It is not\nsurprising that people begin to say: \"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow\nwe die. Let us experience all we desire. Let us act like the normal healthy\ncreatures that we are. Let us ignore the flimsy barriers a corrupt and\nimbecile moral code would erect between us and what we desire.\"\n\nThat is the point of view of many men and women to-day. That is what the\nabsence of a just and reasoned moral code has led to. And I am prepared,\nin spite of all protests, to affirm that it is not a step backward, but\nforward; that promiscuity is not as vile as prostitution--a prostitution\nwhich has been accepted, which has been _defended_ by Christian people! It\nis less horrible for a human being to have the morals of an animal than the\nmorals of a devil. We have to begin by rejecting the morality of fiends,\nand we begin, even if the immediate effect is more terrifying to the\nmoralist than the old hidden-up devilry that lent itself to an easier\ndisguise.\n\nSo I believe. And so the present chaos, though it has its elements of\nanxiety and its obvious dangers, leaves me unafraid. I am utterly persuaded\nthat we shall win through to solid ground.\n\nI believe that the long groping of humanity after a sex-relationship which\nshall be stable, equal, passionate, disciplined, pure, is the groping of a\nright instinct, the hunger of a real need; and that we must--we shall--find\nits answer. With many failures, with many reactions, it can, I think, be\nseen, as history unrolls its record and civilizations rise and fall,\nthat the movement of humanity has been towards a more stable, a more\nresponsible, a more disciplined, but not less passionate form of\nrelationship between men and women. Let us not forget that great and\npregnant fact when we reject the immoral arguments, the cruelties and\ninjustices, with which society has sought either to justify its ideals or\nto conceal its horrible failures. For if we can thus distinguish, and go\nforward, this generation will not have suffered in vain. It will, on the\ncontrary, make of its suffering the spur which shall force us all onward\nand upward. It will by its courage and its honesty give to the world a\ntruer and a nobler moral standard than the world has ever accepted yet.\n\n\n\nII\n\n\nA SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE UNMARRIED\n\n\n     Jesus said, \"the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air\n     have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.\"\n     (St. Luke ix. 58.)\n\n\nIn the last chapter I tried to deal with the actual problem created in\nthis country by the disproportion of the sexes--the fact that there are,\nroughly, one and three-quarters to two million more women than men in this\ncountry; and I was obliged to confine myself simply to stating the problem,\nwhich, to my mind, is very greatly intensified by the fact, generally\nignored, that the sex needs of a woman are just as imperative, their\nsuppression just as hard to bear, as a man's; that woman is fully as human\nas man, and that parenthood and loverhood and all that the satisfaction of\nthe sex instinct means to him, it means also to her. I do not affirm that\nthe difficulty of self-control or the suffering of abstinence presents\nitself to men and women in just the same way; I am sure it does not. I do\nnot under-estimate the difference. But I do emphasize the fact that, as far\nas I am able to judge, the suffering is _equal_, although it is different\nin character. Therefore, the denial of marriage to a very large number\nof women means that, although some women, like some men, are naturally\ncelibate, when so great a number of women are denied the possibility of\nmarriage, we must take it for granted that among them the average will not\nbe natural celibates, but women who suffer a very great loss if they do not\nmarry.\n\nNow I want to add that this disproportion of the sexes is quite artificial,\nand, therefore, should be temporary. From some of the letters I have\nreceived I gather that people imagine that there has always been a very\nmuch larger number of women than men, and not only in this country, but\nthroughout the world; and that, therefore, we ought to shape our customs\nand our moral standards with this disproportion in mind as a permanent\nfact. I want to point out that this is not the case. The causes of the\npresent excess of women over men in this country are quite artificial. As a\nmatter of fact, there are more boys born in this country than girls--about\n107 to 100 is the ratio--but the boys die in very much larger numbers\nduring the first twelve months of their life, because they are more\ndifficult to rear in bad conditions. But bad conditions are not inevitable!\nThese babies die from preventable causes. It is not within the Providence\nof God that these children _must_ die, nor is it a necessity of human\nnature. It is due to preventable causes, and is, therefore, as I say,\nartificial. Again, we have a very large empire, stretching out to the\nremoter parts of the world, and to that empire men go out in very much\nlarger numbers than women, so that the disproportion here is, in part, the\nreverse side of the disproportion in the great Overseas Dominions, where\nthere are more men than women. But that, too, is a purely artificial and\ntemporary state of things, which has nothing to do with the fundamental\nconditions of human society. Finally, of course, there is the war, which\nagain creates an artificial state of affairs, by killing enormous numbers\nof young men, just at the age--between twenty and forty or forty-five--when\nthey should be growing into manhood, and becoming husbands and fathers.\nThat again is artificial.\n\nThe reason why I emphasize this is because I feel very strongly that we\nmust not remodel our whole society, and recreate our moral standards, to\nmeet a passing and an artificial state of affairs. That is my answer to\nthose who seem to think the solution of all our difficulties is to be\nfound in the adoption of polygamy. Now polygamy is a perfectly respectable\ninstitution in a large number of countries. It is quite an old idea. It has\nnot occurred to people for the first time between last Sunday and to-day.\nIt has been discussed in the Sunday newspapers, which are the most widely\nread of any papers issued by the press. My answer to it is that such an\nexpedient would be just an instance of this remodelling of your whole moral\nstandard to meet an entirely artificial state of affairs. Polygamy is not\npossible and never has been possible on a great scale, because in hardly\nany country, certainly not in the world as a whole, is there a great\ndisproportion of the sexes under ordinary circumstances. The idea most\npeople appear to have about it is that in some parts of the world, like\nIndia and China, every man is blessed with three or four wives. It is a\nperfectly fantastic picture. The balance of the sexes--on the whole--is\nequal. It is, therefore, a physical impossibility for polygamy to be a\nuniversal custom. It cannot be practised, and has never been practised,\nexcept among the rich--a small class always. Now that surely makes\nit obvious that it is not a real solution. It might meet a temporary\ndifficulty; but is it reasonable, is it statesmanlike, to alter our entire\nmoral standard merely to tide over a temporary difficulty; to meet a state\nof affairs which is purely artificial? I think that morals go deeper,\nand should be based on some fundamental need, rather than on a purely\nartificial need created by a passing difficulty, however great that\ndifficulty may be at the time. I do not, therefore, wish to dwell on other\nbetter but temporary solutions, such as emigration. I do think that this is\na solution which would ease the situation to some extent, and in a normal\nand right way, because the disproportion in the Overseas Dominions, where\nthe balance is the other way, and there are more men than women, is every\nwhit as unwholesome and as disastrous as is the disproportion of women in\nthis country. Consequently, from the point of view of both men and women,\nI think that emigration is a thing that ought to be considered and helped\nforward very much more than it is; but there, again, this is only a\ntemporary solution. We are trying to arrive at some moral position which is\nbased on the permanent needs and the real nature of human beings.\n\nIt has become almost a habit with me to feel that the real solution of\nevery problem can be found, by those people who are hurt by it, if they\nwill take hold of life _where it hurts_, and find out, not how they\nthemselves can escape from that hurt, but how they can prevent that\nhurt from becoming a permanent factor in the lives of their brothers and\nsisters. Now, the point at which this problem hurts many of us lies in\nthis, that women have been taught, by a curious paradox, first of all that\nthey ought not to have any sexual feeling, any hunger, any appetite at all\non that side of their natures; and secondly, that they exist solely to meet\nthat particular physical need in men. The idea that woman was created, not\nlike man, for the glory of God, but for the convenience of man, has greatly\nembittered and poisoned public opinion on this subject. Women are taught,\nalmost from the moment they come into the world, that their chief end in\nexistence is to be, in some way or other, a \"helpmeet\" for man. I remember,\nin the early days of the Suffrage struggle, hearing people, and women quite\nas often as men--more often I think--urging certain rights and principles\nfor women, on the ground that they were meant to be the helpmeets of man.\nThey used to quote the earlier chapters of the Book of Genesis to show that\nwomen were created for that purpose; and it was considered a very lofty\nkind of appeal. I think it never failed to evoke the applause of those whom\nyou will forgive my calling a little sentimental. I do not think it ever\nfailed to arouse in myself a deep sense of resentment. The writer of the\n_first_ chapter of the Book of Genesis speaks of humanity as being created\nin the image and likeness of God, \"_male and female created He them_\";\nthere is no suggestion here that one sex was simply to be the servant of\nthe other. That occurs in the second chapter. The idea is persistent; it\nis, of course, much older than the Old Testament. And it persists right\ninto the New Testament, where you hear a man of the intellectual and\nspiritual calibre of St. Paul affirm that man was made for God, but woman\nwas made for man. Down the ages this message has come, and women have\nbeen taught to consider themselves, and men to consider them, as primarily\ninstruments of sex, of marriage and motherhood, or of other forms of\nserving men's needs. You do not find that feeling in Christ's attitude\ntowards women. When people speak as though it were one of the weaknesses\nof Christianity that it appeals, or seems to appeal, more to women than\nto men, I ask you to believe that sometimes consciously, often quite\nunconsciously, women respond with passionate gratitude to Christ, because\nof His sublime teaching that every human soul was made for God, and that no\npart or section of society, no race, no class, and no sex, was made for the\nconvenience of another.\n\nI want then to combat with all my power this ancient but un-Christlike\nbelief that women miss their object in life if they are not wives and\nmothers. It may seem something of a contradiction that I should in a\nprevious chapter so have emphasized the need of women for the satisfaction\nof their sexual nature, and now be arguing that we must not assume\nthat they have no right to exist if they do _not_ meet this particular\nsatisfaction; but I think you will realize that it is not a paradox when I\nask you to consider for a moment what your attitude to men on this subject\nis. Many people hold that a man's passions are a tremendous factor in his\nexistence, so strong that he must always be forgiven if he cannot control\nthem; so strong that, on the whole, it is hardly to be expected that he\nshould control them. But yet, if a man does not marry, or if there are more\nmen than women in a certain country--as, for instance, in Australia, or\nWestern Canada to-day--nobody speaks of those men as though they were\n\"superfluous,\" as though they had ceased to have any real object for\nexistence. People will realize that it is a hardship--a very great\nhardship--in their lives; they will be apt to excuse them for taking what\nthey can get if they cannot get everything; but no human being talks of the\n\"superfluous men\" in any of our great Dominions. People always realize that\na man has a _human_ value, and that, however great the urgency of the\nsex side of him, he still is a human being, he still has his value in the\nworld, even supposing that he should live and die celibate. If you will try\nto put your mind into that attitude towards women, you will, I think, see\nthat it is not a paradox to say that a woman may and does suffer if she\ndoes not fulfil the whole of her nature, and yet that it is a monstrous\nfallacy to affirm that, because of that, she ceases to have any reason for\nexistence; that she is a futile life, a person who does not really \"count.\"\nSex is a great and a mighty power, but it is something more than the mere\nsatisfaction of a physical need. It is part of the great rhythm of life,\nrunning through all the higher creation; it is the instinct to create,\ngoing forth in the power of love, proving to us day by day that only love\ncan create, bringing us nearer to the Divine Power, Who is Love, and Who\ncreated the heaven and the earth. In spite of our horrible thoughts about\nsex, our hideous sins against it, I do not think that in anything God has\nmade man more \"in His image and likeness\" than when He gave him the power,\nthrough love, to create life. That is a power that makes us akin to God\nHimself, and the instinct of sex is not a grimy secret between two rather\nshamed human beings, but a great impulse of life and love--yes, even, at\nthe height of it, an instinct to sacrifice in order that life may come\ninto the world; it is a great bond of union between human beings; it is the\nsecret of existence, the secret of the meaning of life; that which is to\nthe nature of man like the sense of music to the musician, of beauty to the\nartist, of insight to the poet. A man may have no ear for music, and yet be\na good and noble man; but who will deny that he lacks something because he\nhas it not? A man may have no sense of beauty, but he is not, therefore, a\ndepraved, immoral person; yet does he not stand outside some of the great\nsecrets of life? So, when this still deeper instinct of creative love is\nnot yours, do not congratulate yourselves, or pride yourselves that you\nhave never felt it. For it means that you stand outside the great communion\nof the life of the world; it means that for you some of the music of the\nuniverse is dumb, and some of the beauty of the universe dark.\n\nYet how long have women been taught that this divine impulse of creation\nis something base! Base even in a man, belonging to his lower nature; still\nmore deplorable in a woman, a thing to be ashamed of, a thing to crush down\nand suppress, a thing you would not confess to your nearest friends, or\ndiscuss with your physician. To speak of it even to your own mother would\nbe to be met with the averted look and word of disapproval. If, as a\nconsequence of this, women have inhibited their own nature, so that\nmany women have created in their minds a kind of tone-deafness, a\ncolour-blindness to this side of life, does that not seem to you a tragedy?\nTo have so great and wonderful a thing in your nature and to suppress it as\nthough it were something shameful and weak? Do you wonder if the term\n\"old maid\" has become synonym for everything that is narrow, and hard, and\nprudish and repressive? Do you wonder that the girls of this generation,\nconfronted with the choice between such an attitude towards life as that,\nand its opposite--willingness to give oneself to anyone, to take all that\none can get, because life refuses so much that one had hoped for--do you\nwonder that they often choose the second alternative? Does it seem to you\nso astonishing that girls, who think more than they used to, who feel that\nthere is nothing to be ashamed of in the divine impulse of their creative\nwomanhood, should rather take what they can get than accept that cruel,\ncramped attitude of sheer repression which has been all too often their\nonly choice in the past? Is it really fair to say to them that their\nmoral standards are going down, that they have no sense now of morality\nor self-respect? I tell you that if one has to make a choice between the\nsuppression of one half--and that so beautiful a half--of human nature, and\nits degradation, I would not sit in judgment on those who chose either way.\n\nBut there is another possibility. You can repress, and God knows how many\nboys and young men, how many young women and girls have struggled to do so,\nand are trying to do so to-day, with a sense always of guilt and shame\nin their minds, laying up mental difficulties for themselves, the\npsychologists tell us, by this repression. You know the type; you know the\nkind of person who becomes hard and narrow and uncomprehending. That is\none type. You can read it in their faces. The pinched look, the cramped\nmentality reflects itself in the body and in the face. And then there is\nthe other type, those who have rejected this attitude towards life, denying\nthat there is anything to be ashamed of in the natural impulse of their\nsex, or cause for regret if they give rein to that whose repression does\nso much harm, who frankly fling away the idea of self-control, because\nrepression has seemed such a disastrous method of self-control. You can see\nit in their faces also; in the gradual demoralization of their nature.\nThe rake on one hand, the prude on the other, represent the ultimate\nconsequence of the process I am trying to describe. Many people have marked\non their souls, if not on their faces, one or other of these ways of life.\nThey have not, perhaps, gone far, they may have gone but a little way in\none direction or the other; but the mark on the soul remains all the same.\nAnd when you see the extreme result, the prude on one side, the rake on\nthe other, do you not begin to desire a better way? To ask yourself whether\nthere is not a third choice before you?\n\nI believe there is; and the choice is this: It is neither the repression\nnor the degradation, but _transformation_ of the sex side of our nature.\nI will take as the supreme example of that transformation the figure of\nChrist Himself--Christ who had neither wife nor child--St. Francis of\nAssisi, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Theresa of Spain. Four of the greatest\nfigures--One of them supreme--who were not \"natural celibates\" in the sense\nthat implies that they did not have surging through them the divine impulse\nof creative love; for these are the greatest lovers the world has ever\nseen, and compared with theirs even the great love of one man for one\nwoman, one woman for one man, is the lesser thing. But these great figures\nin human history are those on whose hearts Humanity itself made such a\nclaim that it became impossible for them to give to one what was claimed by\nall the world. You will see that this is not a denial of creative love, for\nno one in the world has so loved the world as these. They are the beacons\nof humanity in this matter of love, and how are they, shall we say, how\nare they not fathers and mothers, whose spiritual children are all over the\nworld? Have they not born into the world with travail of soul, the souls of\nmen and women? These great Lovers of Humanity were not lacking in passion;\nhad they been they could not have moved the world; but their passion was\ntransmuted to the service of Humanity itself, for nothing else was great\nor wide enough for such a love. Does anyone suppose that it was a mere\ninstinct of asceticism that drove St. Francis to make out of snow, cold\nimages of wife and child? Was it not rather the sudden resurgent desire of\nthe greatest of the saints for some more humanly warm affection, something\nmore individual, something that nestles more closely to the heart, than\nthis great service of Humanity? And in a savage irony he mocks his pain.\n\"There are thy children, there is thy wife,\" says St. Francis, and his cry\nis not the answer of the spirit to a lustful temptation: it was the cry of\na lonely human heart for the human happiness of wife and children and home.\nAye, and I would claim that Our Lord Himself had this desire. For I cannot\ndoubt that in that glorious young manhood of His, so full of power and\nsympathy and love, this agony of longing sometimes swept over Him. He whose\nvitality and power were such that He hardly knew fatigue, who was so close\na friend, so much loved and sought by women, so tender to little children,\nso young, so strong--is it not certain that He was indeed \"tempted in all\nthings like as we are\"? How could one so physically vital, so humanly and\ndivinely full of love, escape the conflict? That He conquered we know; that\nHe suffered we cannot doubt. All His perfect humanity speaks to us in that\nlonely cry: \"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but\nthe Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.\" Do not dream, those of you\nwho may have to struggle with your own nature, do not dream that Christ\nhas not been there with you, that He had nothing to feel or to suffer. How\nwould He have developed that spiritual power, how would He have become so\ngreat a Lover of the world if He knew nothing of that side of life? But He,\nand His greatest followers--St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine and St.\nTheresa, and countless others who have followed them--learned to transmute\nthat great creative force, disdained both choices which I set before you,\nfinding a nobler and more glorious way. These would neither repress this\ngreat impulse, nor dissipate it, but so used it for the service of man that\nthere is in all the history of man no life more rich, more human, more full\nof love, more full of creation, or more full of power, than the lives of\nthese celibate men and women, who learned from Christ how they could live\nand love.\n\nIt is not easy for men and women this way, but it is possible. It is\npossible, and it is glorious; and, in its degree, the need for it comes to\neveryone. Do not imagine that it is not needed in marriage as well as\nout of marriage. Every married lover will tell you that if his love is to\nremain what it was in the beginning--if it is rather to grow in power and\nbeauty--he also must be able gradually to transmute his love in such a way\nthat the spirit dominates the flesh more and more, and that the physical\nside of marriage becomes simply an expression of the love of the spirit,\nthe perfect final expression, the sacrament of love. Do not imagine that\nthis is not needed, this effort, and this power, by every human being who\ndesires to be human in his love, and not something less than human. And to\nthose to whom the need comes in its sternest form, I will not pretend for\na moment that it is not hard. Nay, I will prophesy to you that if you do so\nchoose to serve the world, it will to all of you sometimes seem too hard.\nWith Christ, with St. Francis, your human nature will sometimes assert\nitself. \"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the\nSon of Man\"--the Servant of Humanity--has no such joy. But of whatever life\nyou choose, that is sometimes true. To the finest spirit in marriage there\ncomes sometimes the thought that, but for this great claim, he might have\nundertaken some adventure, might have answered some call, which now he\ncannot answer. Does that mean that he regrets his choice? No, not for\na moment! It only means that human nature is so rich and so varied that\nwhatever life you forego will sometimes seem to you the better choice. You\nwill think, for a moment, that you might have chosen differently. If that\nhappened to St. Francis, believe me, it will happen to you. But yet, is it\nnot a heroic path that I point out to you? Is it not possible that to this\ngeneration heroism may be possible in such a way, on such a scale, that you\nwill leave this world nobler in moral stature because of the hardness\nwhich you endured, the choice that you made? Women, to whom this comes home\nspecially at this time, may it not be that you, by taking this way, will\nbecome the mothers in spirit of women in a happier generation, on whom will\nnever again be imposed our cramped, stifling, sub-human conception of what\nwomen ought to be? You will show to the world not only that the individual\nwoman of genius may have a value to Humanity beyond her sex, but that every\nwoman has that value. In solving your own problem, and taking hold of life\nwhere most it hurts you, you will end by making a moral standard nobler, a\nhumanity richer and more human, a womanhood freer, greater, more Christlike\nthan it was. And future generations shall rise up and call you blessed.\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nCONSIDERATION OF OTHER SOLUTIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF THE DISPROPORTION OF THE\nSEXES\n\n\n       \"My spirit's bark is driven\n     Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng\n     Whose sails were never to the tempest given.\"\n\n     Shelley: \"Adonais.\"\n\n\nLet us now move away from that aspect of the moral problem which\nhas concerned us hitherto--that of the difficulties created by the\ndisproportion of the sexes at this time and in this country--and consider\nthe problem as it presents itself under more normal conditions. For even\nin ages and in countries where there are an equal number of men and women\nthere are difficulties in their relations with one another, and a \"moral\nproblem.\"\n\nPeople ask, for example, whether sex-relationships should be governed by\nlaw at all; whether they should continue in any given case when passion has\ndied, or when love (which is more than passion) has gone. Should love ever\nbe other than perfectly free, and is not the attempt to bind it essentially\n\"immoral\"? Should it ever be exclusive or proprietary? Is not the \"moral\nproblem\" really created, not by human nature, but by the attempt to bind\nwhat cannot be bound and to coerce what should be free?\n\nThe answer given to such questions is often to-day on the side of what is\ncalled, mistakenly, I think, \"free love.\" And in considering this answer,\nI want to remind you that it is often given by people who are most sincere,\nmost idealistic, in their own lives and in their own love. Indeed it has\noften been pointed out that it is at times of great spiritual exaltation\nand fervour that the cult of \"free love\" is most likely to find adherents.\nThe great principle that \"love is the fulfilling of the law\" is held with\na fervour which makes any question as to what love is, and how much it\ninvolves, seem half-hearted and cold. Those who preach this doctrine remind\nus--and very justly--of the weakness and insincerity of the \"orthodox\"\nmoral standard, whether it is enforced by law or by custom. They revolt\nagainst the proprietary and possessive view of marriage as giving a\nwoman \"a hold over her husband\" when he has \"grown tired of her,\" or as\njustifying a man in enforcing upon his wife the rights which only love\nmakes right, when she has grown tired of him. I appeal, therefore, to those\nto whom the dispassionate discussion of \"free love\" seems quite outrageous,\nto remember that there are those to whom this teaching is _not_ a mere\nexcuse for licence, but an attempt to reach something lovelier and nobler\nthan the present moral code, whose failures and insincerities no thinking\nperson can ignore.\n\nIn considering this view, I want first to point out that although to have\nno legal or enforceable tie in sex-relationships seems on the surface much\nthe simplest and easiest way to arrange life, although permanent monogamous\nmarriage is exceedingly difficult and inconvenient, yet the movement of\nhumanity does seem to have been on the whole in that direction. It is, of\ncourse, untrue to say that among primitive peoples there is anything that\ncan fairly be called promiscuity. Historians and anthropologists have\ntaught us that among all peoples, however barbarous, there are conventions,\nsanctions, tabus, by which the relations of men and women are regulated.\nThe customs of such people may seem to us mere licence; but they are not\nso. And some of the customs of more \"civilized\" countries are at least as\nhorrifying to the \"savage\" as his can be to us. Nevertheless, it is true\nto say that as civilization advances, and especially where the position of\nwomen improves, the movement has been towards a more stable and exclusive\nform of marriage. We grope uncertainly towards it: we fail atrociously. Yet\nwe do not abandon an ideal which asks so much of human nature that human\nnature is continually invoked to prove its impossibility.\n\nWhy have we persisted? It is idle to speak of monogamy as though it were\na senseless rule imposed on unfortunate humanity by some all-powerful\nSuperman. We have imposed it on ourselves. It is our doing. Why have we\ndone it? Surely because, in spite of its alleged \"impossibility,\" its\nobvious inconveniences, there is some need in human nature which demands a\npermanent and a stable sex relationship to meet it.\n\nI believe that there is something in our human nature which desires\nstability in its relations with other human beings. It is perhaps a\nrecognition of the fact that, though we live in time and suffer its\nconditions, we are immortal also and chafe under too strict a bondage to\ntime. Our relations with other human beings ought not to be evanescent!\nThere is something cheap and shoddy in the giving and taking of human\npersonality on such easy soon-forgotten terms. It is not only in sexual\nrelations that this is true. It is true of all human intercourse. The\nlonger care and devotion of human parents for their offspring is not a\nphysical only, but a spiritual necessity: and it is bound up with the\ngreater faithfulness of human lovers. In parenthood, in loverhood, in\nfriendship, those who take their obligations lightly are not the finer\nsort of men and women, but the slighter, cheaper make. It is not a love of\nfreedom but a certain inferiority and shoddiness that makes it possible\nfor us to give ourselves, and take others, lightly. For in all human\nrelationships it is \"ourselves\" that we give and take. It is not what your\nfriend does for you or gives to you that makes him your friend; but what\nhe _is_ to you. It is his personality that you have shared. And so there\nis something rather repulsive in quickly forgetting or throwing it away.\nPeople who make friends and lose them as the trees put out their leaves\nin spring to shed them in the autumn, are not quite human. The capacity to\nmake friends--to make many friends--is a great power: the capacity to lose\nthem not so admirable. Yet there are people who always have a bosom-friend,\nevery time you meet them; only it is never the same friend. And this is a\npoor sort of friendship, for it _is_ poor to give and take so little that\nyou easily cease or forget to give at all.\n\nIf this is true of friends, it is not less true of lovers: it is more\ntrue. For sex-love includes more of one's personality, it more completely\ninvolves body, soul and spirit, is the most perfect form of union that\nhuman beings know. How strange, then, to argue that one may treat a lover\nas one would not treat a friend! Make one and lose one so lightly, and\ndisavow all the responsibility of a love in which so much is given, so much\ninvolved! It is true that all human love has a physical element, even if\nit is only the desire for the physical presence of the beloved one. We\nall want sometimes to see and to touch our friends. But in sex-love that\nphysical element becomes a desire for perfect union, expressing a spiritual\nharmony. Can one take such a gift lightly, and pass from one relationship\nto another with a readiness which would seem contemptible in a friend?\n\nIt is this holding of human personality cheap that is really immoral,\nreally dishonest: for it is not cheap. It is this which makes prostitution\na horror, and prostitutes the Ishmaels of their race. They \"sell cheap what\nis most dear,\" and, knowing this, rage against their buyers. The hideously\ndemoralizing effect of a life of prostitution on the soul is a commonplace.\n\"These women,\" it has been said, \"sink so low that they cease to know what\nlove is, they cease to be able to give. They can only cheat and steal and\nsell.\" It is true. Whatever virtues of kindliness and pity the prostitute\nmay (and often does) have for other unfortunates and outcasts, her attitude\nin general does become that of the parasite, the swindler, the vampire.\nWhy? Because on her the deepest outrage against human personality is\ncommitted. Without a shadow of claim, without a pretence of offering its\nequivalent, that, in her, is bought and sold which is beyond price. Why\nshould she not cheat and thieve? Take all she can, she cannot get the true\nvalue of what has been bought from her. Does she reason all that out? More\noften than we think. But whether she reasons consciously or not, she knows\nshe has been defrauded: and she defrauds.\n\nBut it is the buying and selling, I shall be told, that makes her so vile:\nbetween such a sale and the free gift of lovers lies the whole difference\nbetween morality and immorality. I do not think so. It is the contemptuous\nuse of another which is immoral, and though actually to buy and sell the\nperson is the lowest depth of immorality, because it is the lowest and\nmost brutal expression of such contempt, any lightness or irreverence\nis \"immoral\" in its degree; so therefore is conduct which makes love an\nevanescent thing, or the giving of personality which love involves, a\npassing emotion.\n\nIf we feel this to be so in friendship, surely it is more and not less\ntrue of a union so complete on every plane as that of sex. Can you take\nthat--and give it--and pass on, as though it were a light thing?\n\nThe desire for permanence, for stability, for trustworthiness lies very\ndeep in human nature. We may--we do--rebel against it, and speak with\nrapture of an unfettered existence without material ties: but even in\nmaterial things the nomad is the least creative, the least civilized of his\nkind. His existence is neither so picturesque nor so human as we imagine.\nOne has only to read history to see how little he has contributed to\nhumanity--and how little he has helped to raise the human level above the\nanimal. It is not for nothing that we find the home imposed upon human kind\nby the necessities of human infancy. It is the helplessness of the child\nthat has humanized our species by creating the home which its helplessness\ndemanded, and though a great deal that is sentimental is said about homes,\nthis remains a fact. The nomadic, the homeless race gives little to the\nworld; it is by nature and circumstances an exploiter of resources for\nwhich it feels no responsibility, from which it is content to take without\ngiving. Reading in a pamphlet of Professor Toynbee's the other day, I found\nthis description of the Eastern world in the 15th and 16th centuries of our\nera:--\"Even when the East began to recover and comparatively stable Moslem\nstates arose again in Turkey and Persia and Hindustan, _the nomadic taint\nwas in them and condemned them to sterility_.... One gets the impression\nnot of a government administering a country, but of _a horde of nomads\nexploiting it_.\"[B]\n\n[Footnote B: The italics are mine.--A.M.R.]\n\nEven so is it with human love. These nomads of the affections give and take\nso little as they pass from hand to hand that they become cheap and have\nlittle left to give at last: nor do they really get what they would take.\nMen and women claim the right to \"experience,\" but experience of what? We\ndo not live by bread alone, and the physical experience is not really\nall we seek. It is something, however? Yes--certainly something: but by\na paradox familiar enough in human affairs, to snatch the lesser is to\nsacrifice the greater. The experimental lover, the giver whose small and\ncareful gift is for a time, claims in the name of \"experience,\" of the\n\"fulfilment of his nature,\" what really belongs only to a greater giving.\nSuch lovers are like a rich man who sets out tramping with nothing in his\npocket. He may suffer temporary inconvenience, but is within safe distance\nof his banking account. He plays with a risk he can never really know,\nsince knowledge and experience are not for those \"whose sails were never\nto the tempest given.\" The prudent lover whose love is lightly given for\nas long as it lasts is as wise--and as futile.\n\nI think, too, that those who offer this little price for so great a thing\nhave nothing left at last. To taste love, to _use_ the great passion of sex\nis on a par with the exploitation of genius on a series of \"pot-boilers.\"\nGenius may outlast a few such meannesses, but they will murder it at last,\nand the man who by pot-boiling has gained the opportunity to create a real\nwork of art finds there is no more art left in him. He has now the leisure,\nthe opportunity, the public: but not the power. So is it with those who\nlightly use so great a thing as sex. Yielded to every impulse, given\nto each \"new-hatched, unfledged companion,\" it loses its capacity for\ngreatness, and the experience desired passes for ever from the grasp.\n\nIt is this which, to my mind, rules out the \"experimental marriage.\"\nMuch may be said for it--and has been, and is being said by people whose\njudgment must command respect. But love is impatient of lending. If it\nis not given outright in the belief that the gift is final, can the\n\"experiment\" be valid? Is not this very sense of finality--this desire\nto give and burn one's ships--of the very essence of love? One cannot\nexperiment in finality.\n\nIt is true that many marriages would not have taken place, and had much\nbetter not have taken place, if there had been greater knowledge: but we\nhave yet to learn what greater knowledge can do even without experiment.\nHitherto we have gone to the opposite extreme and buried all that belongs\nto sex not in a fog of ignorance only, but under a mountain of hypocrisy\nand lies. Let in the light, and see if we cannot do better! And though it\nis true that some things cannot be known by any amount of teaching,\nand wait upon experience, yet I submit that the essential experience\nis realized only when it is believed to be the expression of an undying\nlove--a gift and not a loan.\n\nLet me say one last word on the solution to our moral difficulties proposed\nby those who affirm for every woman \"the right to motherhood.\" This\nclaim is based on the belief that the creative impulse is more, or more\nconsciously, present in the sexual nature of a woman than of a man, and\nthat, in consequence, the satisfaction of that impulse is to a great extent\nthe satisfaction of a need which makes the disproportionate number of women\nin any country a real tragedy. It is impossible to generalize with any\ndegree of confidence about the sexual nature of either man or woman in our\npresent state of crude and barbarous ignorance; but I am inclined--very\ntentatively--to agree that this generalization is correct, and that the\ncreative impulse is an even stronger factor in the sexual life of women\nthan of men. I realize the cruelty of a civilization in which war and\nits accessories create an artificial excess of women over men, and in\nconsequence deprive hundreds of thousands of women of motherhood. I do not\nthink I underestimate that cruelty or its tragic consequences. I admit the\n\"right\" of women to the exercise of their vocation and the fulfilment of\ntheir nature.\n\nBut I affirm that those who base upon this claim the right to bring\nchildren into the world, where society has made marriage impossible, are\nnot moved to do so by the instinct of motherhood. No, no, for motherhood is\nmore than a physical act; it is a spiritual power. Its first thought is\nnot for the right of the mother but of the child. And what are a child's\nrights? A home--two parents--all that makes complete the spiritual as well\nas the material meaning of \"home.\" I do not believe that there is any\nwoman who is the mother of young children, and a widow, who does not\ndaily realize how irreparable is the loss sustained by the fatherless. War\nperhaps has inflicted that loss upon them; it is one of the iniquities of\nwar. And though the mother tries all she can--yes, and works miracles of\nlove to make herself all she _can_ be to her child, that loss cannot wholly\nbe made up. I speak with intensity of conviction on this point, for I have\nmyself a little adopted child--orphaned of both parents--in my home. I\nnever see other children with their parents without realizing what she has\nlost not only in her mother but her father. There is needed the different\npoint of view, the different relationship, bringing with it a fuller and a\nricher experience of life. What woman that hast lost her husband does not\nrealize the truth of what I say?\n\nIt is beside the mark to say that a bad father is worse than no father, or\nthat accident may take the father even from happily circumstanced homes.\nThis is true. But a woman does not deliberately _choose_ a bad father for\nher children, or _choose_ that he shall be taken away from them by death.\nIt is the deliberate infliction beforehand of this great loss upon a child\nthat seems to me the very negation of that motherhood in whose name this\n\"right\" is enforced. And for what purpose is a child to be brought into the\nworld under conditions so imperfect? To \"fulfil the nature\" of its mother;\nto complete her experience; to meet her need. Is there any mockery of\nmotherhood more complete than this sacrifice of the child to the mother?\nWhy, our physical nature itself is less selfish! When a woman conceives,\nher child receives _first_ all the nourishment it needs; whatever it does\nnot demand, the mother has. A woman herself undernourished can, if the\nprocess has not gone too far, bear a well-nourished and a healthy child,\nbecause she has given all to that child. It is the epitome of motherhood!\nAnd now it is affirmed that a woman, to satisfy her own need, has a right\nto bring into the world a child on whom she--its mother--has deliberately\ninflicted a grave disadvantage. I do not speak of such lesser disadvantages\nas may be involved in illegitimacy. I trust the time is at hand when\nwe shall cease to brand any child as \"illegitimate\" or despise one for\nanother's defect. But though children are never illegitimate, parents may\nbe so; and none more than the woman who sacrifices her child to herself.\n\nFor this disadvantage is not a mere cruelty of society which may be\n\"civilized\" away; it is inherent in the case. A child should have a father\nand a mother and a home.\n\nIt is no defence to say that the unmarried mother proposes to give her\nchild a better home than many a child of married parents has. If her\nconcern is for the child, there are, alas! only too many waifs already in\nthe world to whom such a home, though imperfect, would be a paradise to\nwhat it has. Real motherhood could and often does rescue such children with\njoy. That so few children are adopted in a world of women clamouring for\nmotherhood proves the essential selfishness of the claim. It is not the\nchild--it is herself--that the woman who demands motherhood as a \"right\" is\nconcerned with. What an irony! For to satisfy herself first is the negation\nof motherhood.\n\nWe have heard much of late years--and rightly--of the exploitation of\nwomen by men. Let us not celebrate our growing enfranchisement by becoming\nourselves the exploiters; and that, not of men, but of babes.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nTHE TRUE BASIS OF MORALITY\n\n\n     \"Let me not to the marriage of true minds\n     Admit impediments. Love is not love\n     Which alters when it alteration finds,\n     Or bends with the remover to remove:\n     O no! it is an ever fixed mark\n     That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;\n     It is the star to every wandering bark,\n     Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.\n     Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks\n     Within his bending sickle's compass come;\n     Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,\n     But bears it out ev'n to the edge of doom:--\n     If this be error, and upon me proved,\n     I never writ, nor no man ever loved.\"\n\n     W. Shakespeare.\n\n\n     \"He that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.\n     What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy\n     Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not\n     your own?\" (I. Cor. vi., 18-19.)\n\n\nI said in an earlier chapter that I wanted to find a moral standard which\nshould be based on the realities of human nature, and in order to do that\nwe must first have a clear idea of what human nature really is, and by what\nlaw it lives. We have been passing during the last generation from an idea\nof law which belonged to our forefathers to a new idea of law which has\nbeen given to us by modern science; and in transition we still talk in\nambiguous terms about \"law\"--moral \"law,\" for instance--confusing ourselves\nbetween a law that is imposed on us from outside, a law that is passed by\nParliament, for instance, or a law that has been the common custom of\nthe country through its judges, and that kind of \"law\" which science has\nrevealed to us. Scientific \"law\" is not imposed from without; it is the law\nof our being. When you talk of the \"law\" of gravitation, you do not mean\nthat somebody outside has laid it down that mass shall act in a certain\nway with regard to other masses; you mean that mass-material--being what it\nis--behaves in a certain way. That is to say, a scientific law is _the law\nof being_ of that which obeys the law. It obeys it because it is its\nnature to do so. If we could get a firm, hold of that idea of law, our own\nlegislation would not be so senseless as it often is; for we should try to\ndiscover what is the nature of human beings--their real nature, about which\nwe are often deceived--and we should try to make our laws, including our\nmoral laws, those to which human nature, at its best, would most naturally\nand fully respond. That is the conception that is at the back of the great\nphrase which sounds like a paradox in one of the Collects of the English\nPrayer Book: \"Whose service is perfect freedom.\" \"Whose service is perfect\nfreedom\"; that is to say, when you obey God, you find perfect freedom\nbecause you are doing what it is your true nature to do. And that is why I\nwant to base our moral law, our moral standard, on the realities of human\nnature. But, you will reply, when people are free to act as they choose\nthey sometimes choose to violate their own nature. I cannot say how that\nhappens; it involves the entire problem of evil; and I do not propose even\nto attempt to deal with it in this book. I will only say that our confusion\nhas arisen, as I think, out of the very fact that instead of obeying the\nlaw of our being we have violated it; and now are so confused that we\nhardly know what \"human nature\" really is, or of what it is capable. That\nis why we get such extraordinarily different ideas about morals, and why,\nas I think, we get such arbitrary judgments on human beings.\n\nBefore, then, we can rightly establish our moral standard we have to decide\nwhat human nature really is, and when we have done that we shall know what\nis really moral. I suppose that sounds like a paradox to many, because they\nthink that morality is always \"going against\" human nature. If people do\nanything that is generally called \"immoral,\" they will excuse themselves on\nthe grounds of human nature; they will say: \"After all, _human nature being\nwhat it is_, you must expect this, that and the other kind of licence and\nimmorality\"; and to say that morality, real morality, can only be based\non the realities of human nature will therefore sound to many of you the\nwildest kind of paradox. But I want to pursue it just as though it were\ntrue, because I believe it is true.\n\nWhat, then, are the realities of our nature? Here is one: a human being is\nnot and never can be cut off from other human beings. He is not alone. He\ncannot consider himself only. If he does so he violates his own nature,\nbecause it is not his nature to be alone, and he cannot act without his\nactions affecting other people. He cannot think, he cannot feel, he cannot\nact or speak without affecting other people, and it is futile for anyone\nto say: \"It does not matter to others what I do; nobody knows; it concerns\nonly myself.\" Your innermost thought affects the whole world in which you\nlive, and whatever moral standard you are going to adopt, you must take\nit for granted that your standard will affect other people, and that it is\nabsolutely impossible for you to act or think alone.\n\nAnd then human beings are three-fold in nature. They have a body, a\nmind--or what St. Paul calls a \"soul\"--and a spirit. \"Soul\" is a word whose\nmeaning we have altered so much that I must define what I mean by it and\nwhat I think St. Paul meant by it. The soul includes the emotions and the\nintellect, that part of a man which is not wholly physical and which is not\nentirely spiritual. Everyone has a soul. And every one of you, however\nmuch you ignore your body, however much you may tell me your body does not\nreally exist, have got a body too. You have to eat and drink and sleep,\njust like the most material alderman, though you may eat less. And you\ncannot base a real moral standard on the pretence that you have not got a\nbody. You are, on one side of your nature, physical, material, animal; but\nyou have got a mind and emotions or \"soul\"; and you have got a spirit. To\nact as though you had not is just as futile as to pretend that you have\nnot got a body. \"Where there is no vision the people perish.\" \"Mankind\nis incurably religious.\" \"All the world seeks after God.\" Those proverbs,\nthose sayings, which are familiar to all, crystallize the world's\nexperience that human beings are spiritual beings. If there is any person\nwho thinks that he is merely an intellect and a body, I will direct the\nattention of that intellect of his away from himself to the race, and\nI will remind him that practically no race in the world has ever been\nentirely without the sense of God; that, however hard men try, they have\nnever been able to cure humanity of its spiritual hunger; that though our\ngods are often gross and earthy, even diabolical, yet they are spiritual,\nand they are the proof that man is spiritually aware; that he is a spirit\nas well as a body and a soul. Now I say that anyone who tries to base his\nmorality on the assumption that he is only a body, or only an intelligence,\nor only a spirit, has got a false standard, and his morality is a dishonest\nkind of morality. The body will avenge itself on those who ignore it.\nPsychologists are teaching us that the mind will avenge itself on those who\nignore it. And this is just as true of the spirit. Where there is no vision\nthe people do perish. Your spiritual nature avenges itself on those who try\nto rule it out. Base your morality either on the exclusion of any part of\nyour being, or on the assumption that what you do concerns yourself alone;\nand you will find that you are violating human nature. It is useless for\nyou to act wrongly and to affirm that you do it \"because human nature is\nwhat it is.\" When you do so, you are assuming that human nature is _not_\nwhat it is; that is to say you assume that it is purely physical, when, in\nfact, it is three-fold--body, soul and spirit. You can see for yourselves,\nI think, how this violation of human nature works itself out. For animals\npromiscuity is not wrong. When they treat themselves as purely animals\nthey are basing their moral standard, if I may put it so, on bed-rock; they\n_are_ animals, and therefore they behave as animals without violating any\nlaw of their being. As they rise higher in the scale of evolution their\nmorals become nobler. There are moral standards among the lower animals,\nbut they remain at a certain level, and rightly so. No animal is harmed by\nbehaving like an animal, for in doing so he obeys the law of his being; but\nif human beings behave as though they were animals, what happens? They find\nto their horror that they have let loose upon the world detestable, hideous\nand devastating diseases. Do you think that medicine will ever be able\nto rid the world of what are called the diseases of immorality as long as\nimmorality remains? I do not believe it. I know that you can do much for\nindividual sufferers, though you cannot do one-tenth part of what doctors\nthought they were going to be able to do, eight or nine years ago. And, of\ncourse, whatever we can do, we must and ought to do. But we do not reach\nthe root of the matter by medicine.\n\nNo scientist can tell us how small-pox or tuberculosis or rheumatism first\nentered the world; but any scientist can tell us that by wrong living,\nwrong housing, wrong feeding, we can breed and spread and perpetuate\ndisease. In other words, we are diseased not because we obey the laws\nof our nature but because we violate them: and though we can take the\nindividual sufferer and (sometimes) cure him, we shall not get rid of the\ndisease until we have learnt to obey those laws and to live rightly.\n\nIn just the same way the diseases of vice, though no one can say how they\nfirst came into the world, continue and flourish, not because of human\nnature, but because we violate some law of our own nature in what we do. We\nmay even cure the individual; we may see a thousand struck and a thousand\nguilty escape; the fact remains that these diseases are bred in the swamp\nof immorality, just as certainly as malaria is bred in the mosquito-haunted\npools of the malaria swamp. Drain the swamp, and you get rid of the\nmalaria, for there is no longer any place for the malaria-bearing mosquito\nto breed. Drain the swamp of immorality, and you get rid of venereal\ndisease, because there is no longer a place where these diseases can breed.\nLive rightly, and your nature will respond in health. When human beings\nelect to make their relations with one another promiscuous--when, that is\nto say, they treat themselves as animals--they are not obeying, they are\nviolating the law of their own being; for they are not animals only, and\nto treat themselves as such is to disobey the law of their own nature. And\ndisobedience reacts in disease.\n\nSo again, the relations of men and women are of the mind as well as of the\nbody and the spirit. You cannot rule out your mind, and I think that those\nwho believe, as many do today, not indeed in a merely animal promiscuity,\nbut in rather casual relations between men and women--experiments, if you\nlike, men and women passing from one union to another--rule out the fact\nthat a human being has a mind, a memory and foresight; that our being\nincludes a past, and, in a sense, includes a future also; and when you try\nto divorce your physical experience from your intellectual and emotional\nbeing you are again violating the law of your own nature.\n\nI remember asking one of the most happily married women that I know to put\ninto words, if she could, the reason why she believed that married people,\nmarried lovers, should not have gone through other relationships with other\npeople before they gave themselves to one another. I asked her to express\nin words what seemed to her immoral. She wrote this: \"In the ideal union\nbetween God and man, we know that man must give the fulness of his being,\nbody, mind and spirit, throughout his whole life, to God, and that anything\nless than this, though it may be fine and noble, does fall short of\nperfection. It is the same with the human love of men and women. The\n'fulness of our being' which we desire to give to our lover consists not\nonly in what we are at any given moment but in what we have been in the\npast, what we may become in the future. And so in the formation of\nmerely temporary unions the highest and deepest unity can never be fully\nachieved.\" She went on to say: \"When we have passed beyond the physical\nsphere we shall be able, like God, to give ourselves equally to all; but\nwhile we are in the flesh we cannot share ourselves equally with all, and\nany attempt to do so lowers the standard of perfect human love.\" I like\nthat, because it is based again on a loyal acceptance of human nature. We\nare not yet as God in the sense that, being wholly spirit, we can share\nourselves equally with all. We do still live in bodies, and we have in this\nlife memory and prevision, and surely that is indeed an ideal union, if we\nare looking for the highest, which is able to give its past and its future\nas well as its present, so that the whole personality is involved, in\nthat act of union, and that anything short of that is at least not quite\nperfect. Human beings are still in the body, and are yet soul and spirit in\nthat body, and must take both into account. Divorce the physical from the\nspiritual in yourself, and you are violating yourself. Divorce the physical\nfrom the spiritual in someone else--you who perhaps say: \"I myself love\nsuch a man, such a woman, with the best part of myself; what I do with\nanother is of no importance\"--you violate the nature of that other from\nwhom you take what is physical, and leave what is spiritual as though it\nwere not there.\n\nYour life, like your body, is too highly organized, too sensitive, too knit\ntogether by memories and prevision for you to leave behind you anything\nthat has really entered into your life. It is a shoddy and superficial\nnature that passes easily from experience to experience, and when you look\nat such you can see how shallower still it becomes. It is the deeper and\nthe loftier nature that cannot enter into any human relationship and then\npass away from it altogether unchanged. And even that shoddy, that poor,\nthat mean little soul which seems to pass so lightly from one experience to\nanother does not really altogether escape. Some mark is left upon the soul,\nsome association remains in the memory; and again and again marriages have\nbeen wrecked because a man has taken the associations of the gutter into\nthe sanctuary of his home. Unwillingly, with an imagination that fain would\nreject the stain, he has injured, he has insulted the love that has now\ncome to him, the most precious thing on earth, because he has not known how\nto do otherwise; because all the associations of passion have been to him\ndegraded, smirched, treated frivolously in the past. It is true of men; it\nis also true of women. I do not know of anything that makes understanding\nharder between two people than the fact that one has had experiences and\nassociations which the other has not had and does not understand, because\nthey are on an entirely different level. These create between them,\nwith all the desire for understanding in the world, a barrier of\nmisunderstanding and incomprehension, which is all the more fatal because\nit is so intangible, so obscure, so hard to put into words, so often\nactually unconscious or subconscious in the mind of one or of the other.\n\nAgain, you must not think that you are altogether spirit, and here perhaps\nit is the woman who is more apt to sin than the man. How often have I\ntalked to women who speak of the physical side of love as though it were\nsomething base and unworthy! Such a conception of passion is inhuman, and\ntherefore it is not really moral. A woman who thinks of this sacrament of\nlove, for which perhaps the man who loves her has kept himself clean all\nhis life, as a base thing, and who treats it as though it were a concession\nto something base in a man's nature, instead of being the very consecration\nof body and soul at once, the sacrament of union, one of the loveliest\nthings in human nature--such a woman gives as great a shock to what is\nsacred and lovely in her husband's nature as he when he brings with him\ninto his marriage the associations of the street. It is as hard, it is as\ninsulting, it makes marriage as difficult in understanding, one way as the\nother. For it is not true that our bodies are vile and base; they are the\ntemples of the Holy Spirit.\n\nOr if you think that you can stand alone, that what you do is the concern\nof no one else, that your life is a solitary thing, so solitary that no man\nor woman is concerned, no one but yourself, and you may sin alone--there\nagain you misunderstand. You cannot stand alone, and nothing that you say\nor think or do leaves the world unchanged. Is that difficult to believe in\nthese days, when psychology is teaching us how all-important thought is?\nOught you to find it hard to believe that what you do in the utmost secrecy\naffects others, since it affects you, and no man lives to himself alone?\nI do not wish to exaggerate. I have a horror of those books and people who\nspeak in exaggerated terms of any kind of sexual lapse. I am persuaded that\nhuman beings can rise from such mistakes, and rise much more easily than\nfrom the subtler spiritual sins which have so much more respectable an air.\nBut yet do not sin under the impression that what you do concerns yourself\nalone. Do not use, for your own satisfaction only, powers which were given\nyou for creation and for the world.\n\nBut this, you may say, is not the accepted standard of morality. That is a\nmatter rather of laws and ceremonies. And people begin to ask; \"What real\ndifference can a mere ceremony make?\" It does not make any difference to\nthe morality of your relationships with your fellow men and women. Nothing\nthat is immoral becomes moral because it has been done under a legal\ncontract, or consecrated by a rite. There, I think, is where the world has\ngone so wrong. The idea that a relation that is selfish, cruel, mercenary,\nbecomes moral because someone has said some words over you, and you have\nsigned a register--what a farcical idea! How on earth does that change\nanything at all? The morality of all civil or religious ceremony lies, I\nthink, in this--that by accepting and going through it, you accept the fact\nthat your love does concern others besides yourself; it will concern your\nchildren; and beyond that, it concerns the world. You are right when you\nask your friends to come and rejoice with you at your wedding. It is the\nconcern of all the world when people love each other, and it is the failure\nof _love_ that concerns them when marriage is a failure. Such failure\nchills the atmosphere; it shakes our faith in love as the supreme power in\nthe universe; it makes us all waver in our allegiance to constancy and\nlove when love fails. It is a joyful thing when people love. \"All the\nworld loves a lover.\" It is an old saying, but what a true one! It _is_ our\nconcern when people nobly and loyally love each other, it is the concern of\nthe community, and those who take upon themselves these public vows seem to\nme to have a more truly moral conception of love than those who say: \"This\nis our affair only; it is not the affair of the State or the affair of the\nChurch.\" But the actual ceremony must be the expression of a moral feeling\nsuch as that. It cannot in itself make moral what is immoral! The old\nidea that if a woman was seduced by a man she was \"made honest\" by the man\nmarrying her is essentially immoral. Very likely all that she knew about\nthe man was that she could not trust him, and to suppose that we can set\nright what is wrong by tying them together for the rest of their lives is\nto imagine an absurdity and to establish a lie.\n\nOr take the case from another point of view. I have two in my mind at this\nmoment, who for some reason (a reason not very far to seek if you read our\nEnglish marriage laws) came to the conclusion that it is not right to place\noneself in such a position as a married woman is in under English law. I am\nnot discussing whether they were right or wrong; I say that quite sincere\nand moral people do come to that conclusion sometimes, and so did these\ntwo. They lived together, therefore, without being legally married. They\nwere absolutely faithful to each other; their love was as responsible, as\ndignified, as true as any such relation could be. It lacked to my mind one\nthing--the sense of a wider responsibility--but then it had very much that\nmany legal marriages have not. Those two people are put outside society;\nit is made almost impossible for them to earn their living; and at last\nin despair they go to the registry office, and sign their names in a book.\nWhat difference has been made in their relation to each other? Absolutely\nnone. They are no more convinced of the right and duty of the community\nto be concerned with marriage than they were before. They have yielded\nto coercion. Their moral standard, good or bad, is precisely what it was;\ntheir relation to each other wholly unchanged. But in the eyes of the world\nthey have become respectable, they are \"moral,\" they can be received\nback into the bosom of society. And why? Because they have gone through a\nceremony in which they do not believe!\n\nEvery marriage in the world probably lacks something of perfection. There\nare no perfect human beings, and, therefore, hardly, perhaps, a perfect\nmarriage; and to my mind those who do not admit the concern of the\ncommunity in their marriage do lack something. But to suppose that those\npeople are immoral, when others who live together, legally licensed to do\nso, in selfishness, in infidelity, for financial reasons, or for social\nreasons, are moral is fundamentally dishonest. When a woman sells her body\nfor money, do you think that it makes it moral that she does it in a church\nor in a registry office? Is there one whit of difference, morally, between\nthe prostitution that has no legal recognition and the prostitution that\nhas? Is it anything but prostitution to sell yourself for money, whether\nyou are a man or a woman? Do you imagine that because you have a contract\nto protect you while you do it, you are doing what is moral? If you marry\nfor any reason but love--for experience, to \"complete your nature\"--without\nmuch regard to the man or woman you marry, or to the children you bring\ninto the world, are you not exploiting human nature just as certainly,\nthough not so brutally, as a man who buys a woman in the street? It is not\nso base a form of exploitation, God knows; that I admit; but when there\nis _any_ element of exploitation in the bargain it is not made more truly\nmoral because it happens to be blessed in a church or registered in an\noffice. The legal ceremony must be the outcome of a morality which makes\nyou realize that what you do affects other people, that what you do\nmost profoundly affects the children that you hope to have, and that the\ncommunity has both an interest and a responsibility in all this. That is\n\"moral.\" But if the relationship thus to be legalized is not moral, it is\ndishonest to pretend that it can be made so by any ceremony which those\nconcerned may undergo.\n\nBut, you will say, we cannot peer into other people's lives and judge them\nin this kind of way. How are we to know? How are we, who have many friends,\nmany neighbours, on whom our standards must react, to judge their lives?\nWe can tell who has gone through a legal ceremony and who refuses to do\nso. That is a nice convenient rule by which we can judge and condemn such\npeople. But we cannot go poking into people's lives and studying their\nmotives and judging their fundamental moral standards! No, you cannot. Why\nshould you? This little set of iron rules makes it very easy to judge, does\nit not? But why do you desire it to be easy to judge? You and I know how\ninfinite are the gradations between the most noble kind of chastity and\nthe most ignoble kind of immorality; but which of us is to create a rigid\nstandard and measure our friends and acquaintances against it? We do not\ndo it with the other virtues: why do we desire to do it with this one?\nTake such a virtue as truth. Conceive the crystalline sincerity of some\ntruth-loving minds, realize that some have such a devotion to truth that\nthe faintest shadow of insincerity--not a lie, but the merest shadow of\ninsincerity in the depths of their hearts--is abhorrent to them. Consider\nthe infinite gradations between that mind and the mind which takes a lie\nfor truth, a mind that is rotten with corruption, that does not know how to\nthink straight, let alone care to speak straight. You do not draw up your\nlittle set of rules and say: \"I do not call on that person because he does\nnot speak the truth; and I won't have anything to do with that one--such\npersons are outside the social pale altogether because their conception of\ntruth is different from mine!\"\n\nNo, you keep your admiration for the truth-loving and the sincere. You\nrecognize that people have different standards about what is truth. One\nperson will never tell a lie under any circumstances: another will reckon\nhimself free to tell a lie to save a third, or to preserve a confidence;\nwill you judge which is the more honourable of the two? Where is your\nlittle set of rules? You cannot have one. You shrink from the person who\nis morally dishonest and corrupt; you worship the person who loves truth as\nDarwin loved it. But between those two extremes what an infinite variety of\nattainment! Who can say: \"These people are moral because they are married,\nand those are immoral, they are not married?\" It is not true, it is not\nhonest, to make these rules our measure. They do not meet the realities\nof human nature, and I contend that we, who have known souls so chaste\nand lovely that they make us in love with virtue, do far more to raise\nthe moral standard of humanity by seeking to imitate such people than by\nsetting up our little codes of rules and condemning or justifying all men\nby them. Let us treat this virtue as we do every other virtue, not fitting\nit to a set of rules which everyone knows do not fit the realities, but\ntaking our courage in our hands and judging human beings (if we must\njudge them) by their real sincerity, their real unselfishness, their real\nunwillingness to exploit others--the measure of the chastity of their\nsouls.\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nTHE MORAL STANDARD OF THE FUTURE: WHAT SHOULD IT BE?\n\n\n     \"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt\n     not commit adultery: but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh\n     on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her\n     already in his heart. It hath been said, Whosoever shall put\n     away his wife let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I\n     say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for\n     the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and\n     whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.\n\n     \"Again ye have heard that it has been said by them of old time,\n     Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shall perform unto the\n     Lord thine oaths: but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither\n     by heaven; for it is God's throne; nor by the earth; for it is\n     his footstool; neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the\n     great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou\n     canst not make one hair white or black. But let your\n     communications be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more\n     than these cometh from evil.\" (Matthew v., 27-28; 31-37.)\n\n\nI have tried to reach those realities of human nature on which human\nmorality must be based. I believe that the fundamental things which we\nmust take into account are, first, the complex nature of human beings,\nwho having body, soul, and spirit to reckon with cannot neglect any one of\nthese without insincerity; and, secondly, the solidarity of the human race,\nwhich makes it futile to act as though the \"morals\" of any one of us could\nbe his own affair alone.\n\nIt is because of this solidarity that marriage has always been regarded as\na matter of public interest, to be recognized by law, celebrated by some\npublic ceremony, protected by a legal contract. All are concerned in this\nmatter, for it affects the race itself, through the children that may be\nborn.\n\nHuman children need what animals do not, or not to the same extent. They\nneed two parents: they need a stable and permanent home: they need a\nspiritual marriage, a real harmony between their parents, as well as a\nphysical one. A child is not provided for when you have given it a home\nand food and clothing, since it is a spirit as well as a body--a soul and\na spirit, a being craving for love, and needing to live in an atmosphere\nof love. The young of no other species need this as children do, and\ntherefore, it is the concern of the community to see that the rights of\nthese most helpless and most precious little ones are safeguarded. I cannot\nbelieve that any State calling itself civilized can ever disregard the\nduty of safeguarding the human rights of the child, and I repeat its\nhuman rights are not sufficiently met when its physical necessities are\nguaranteed. But I go further. I claim that it is really the concern of all\nof us that people who love should do so honestly, faithfully, responsibly.\nMarriage should be permanent; that is true in a sense that makes it\nimportant to all of us that it should succeed. Those who have loved and\nceased to love have not failed for themselves only but for all. They have\nshaken the faith of the world. They have inclined us to the false belief\nthat love is not eternal. They have, so far as they could, destroyed\na great ideal, injured a great faith. People--and some of these are my\npersonal friends, and people for whom I have a very great respect--who\naffirm that a legal or religious marriage is not necessary because their\nrelations to one another are not the concern of the community, may have, it\nseems to me, a morality that is lofty, but not one that is broad, not one\nthat is truly human. It is not true (and, therefore, it is not moral) to\nsay that marriage is not the concern of other people. No one can fail in\nlove, no one can take on himself so great a responsibility and fail to\nfulfil it, without all of us being concerned. Humanity is _solidaire_.\nThe community is and must be concerned in the love of men and women in\nmarriage. But what should be the nature of that concern? What should\nwe--the community--hold up as the right standard of sex-relationship, and\nwhat methods should we use to impose it on others? I think you will have\ngathered from what I have said already that, to my mind, marriage should\nbe a union that looks forward to being permanent, faithful, monogamous. It\nshould be the expression of a union of spirit so perfect that the union\nof the bodies of those who love follows as a kind of natural necessity. It\nshould be the sacrament of love, \"the outward and visible sign of an inward\nand spiritual grace.\" And something of this perfection is to be found in\nmany marriages that seem (and are) far from complete. I often hear of the\nlives of married people where there has been very much to overcome, where\nperhaps the marriage has been entered into in ignorance and error; where\nthe passion that brought the two together has been very evanescent; where\nit has soon become evident that their temperaments do not \"fit\"; where it\nmight easily be said that they were not really \"married\" at all: yet\nthere has been in these two such a stubborn loyalty to responsibilities\nundertaken, such a magnificent sense of faithfulness, such a determination\nto make the best out of what they have rather lightly undertaken; sometimes\neven only on one side, there has been such faith, such honour, such\nloyalty, such a refusal to admit a final failure, that a relationship poor\nin promise has become beautiful and sacred. In face of such loyalty, the\ntheory that sex-relationships can rightly be brief, evanescent, thrown\naside as soon as passion has gone, seems to me very cheap and shoddy, very\nunworthy of human beings. Marriage should be all that--shall I say?--the\nBrownings made of it. But when it is not, there is still often much that is\nleft. Men and women, you cannot enter into one another's lives in this deep\nand intimate way and go on your way as though nothing had happened. You\ncannot tear asunder people so united without bleeding. You cannot make a\nfailure of it without immeasurable loss.\n\n  \"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.\n  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height\n  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight\n  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.\n  I love thee to the level of everyday's\n  Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.\"\n\nWho that has once heard this can easily take anything less? Or who, having\nloved in any of these ways, will lightly break the bond? I think that one\nof the most profoundly moral relationships I have ever met between a\nman and a woman was, in spite of all that I have said up till now, the\nrelationship of a man to a woman to whom at first he was not legally\nmarried. It was her wish, not his, but they were not legally married. They\nhad no children, and she was unfaithful to him more than once, and yet this\nman--and he did not call himself a Christian--this man felt that he had\ntaken the responsibility of that woman's life, and though he could easily\nhave put her away, and though, at last, she killed in him all that you\nwould normally call love between a man and woman, and he learned to care\nfor another woman, yet he would not abandon her because now she had grown\nto need him, and he felt he could not take so great a human responsibility\nas the life of another person and then cast it away as though it had never\nbeen. That is morality. To such a sense of what human relationships demand\nmy whole soul gives homage. That seems to me a perfectly humane and,\ntherefore, truly moral idea of what love involves. Such a sense of\nresponsibility should go with all love. Passion cannot last, in the nature\nof things, and, therefore, those who marry do so, if they know anything\nat all of love--and, God help them, many of them do not--but if they know\nanything at all of love, they know that it is physically impossible for\nthis particular bond always to unite them. They must be aware that there\nis something more than that, something that must in the end transcend that\nphysical union.\n\nLooking at marriage from that point of view, can one desire that it should\nbe anything less than permanent, indissoluble? That which God made, and,\ntherefore, which no man should put asunder? Let the community--both Church\nand State--teach this. Let us make it clear that men and women should not\nmarry unless they do sincerely believe that their love for each other is\nof this character. Let them understand that physical union should be\nthe expression of a spiritual union. Let them learn that love, though it\nincludes passion, is more than passion, and must transcend and outlive\npassion. And let us insist that all should learn the truth about\nthemselves--about their own bodies and about their own natures--so that\nthey may understand what they do, and may have all the help that knowledge\ncan give in doing it. I hold that on such knowledge and such understanding\nthe community should insist, if it is to uphold the high and difficult\nstandard of indissoluble monogamous marriage. So only _can_ it be rightly\nupheld.\n\nI urge also that when a marriage takes place the State has a right and a\nduty with regard to it. For the sake of every citizen, and most of all for\nthe sake of the children, it should \"solemnize\" marriage, and should do so\non the understanding--clearly expressed--that those who come to be married\nintend to be faithful to each other \"as long as they both shall live.\"\n\nIn doing this I believe the State does all--or nearly all--that it usefully\ncan to uphold the dignity of marriage and a high standard of morality. I do\nnot believe that it should seek to penalize those whose sex-relationships\nare not of this character, except so far as legislation for the protection\nof the immature or the helpless is concerned. And I do not think it should\ncompel--or seek to compel, for compulsion is, in fact, impossible--the\nobservance of a marriage which has lost or never had the elements of\nreality.\n\nIs this to abandon the ideal I have been upholding? I do not think so.\nLet us refer again to the greatest of Teachers and the loftiest of\nIdealists--Jesus Christ. See what He teaches in the Sermon on the Mount and\nelsewhere. Everywhere He emphasizes the spiritual character of virtue\nand of sin. To be a murderer it is not necessary to kill: to hate is,\nin itself, enough. If you hate you are essentially a murderer. To be\nan adulterer it is not necessary to commit adultery: to look on a woman\nlustfully is already to have committed adultery with her in your heart. It\nis the spirit that sins. So keep your spirit pure. It is not enough to keep\nyour oaths: you should be so utterly and transparently sincere that there\nis no need and no sense in supporting your words by great oaths. \"Yea\" and\n\"Nay\" should be sufficient.\n\nYou will notice that the Sermon on the Mount has been divided in this\nchapter into a number of paragraphs, each of which begins by a reference\nto the old external law of conduct, and goes on to demand a more searching,\nmore spiritual and interior virtue. \"Ye have heard that it was said by them\nof old time.... But I say unto you.\"\n\n\"Ye have heard that it was said: 'Thou shalt not kill' ... but I say unto\nyou that whosoever is angry shall be in danger of the judgment. Ye have\nheard that it was said: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' but I say unto\nyou that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed\nadultery with her already in his heart.... Ye have heard that it was said:\n'Thou shalt not forswear thyself,' but I say unto you: 'Swear not at all.'\"\n\nWhat is the significance of such teaching? Surely that we are not to be\nsatisfied with keeping the letter of the law, but are to keep it in our\nhearts. So clear is this that the Church has completely abandoned the\nletter of the last precept. No one except a Quaker refuses to take an oath.\nEvery bishop on the bench has done so, and every incumbent of a living.\nNowhere throughout the Sermon on the Mount have Christians felt themselves\nbound to a literal or legal interpretation of its teaching. No one wants\na man to be tried for murder and hanged for hating his brother. No judge\ngrants a divorce because a man or woman has \"committed adultery in his\nheart.\" Christ Himself did not _literally_ \"turn the other cheek\" when\nstruck by a soldier. His disciples everywhere pray in places quite as\npublic as the street-corners forbidden in the next chapter of St. Matthew,\nand give their alms publicly or in secret as seems to them best.\n\nIt may be contended that in this spiritual interpretation of Christ's\ncommands it is very easy to go too far and \"interpret\" all the meaning out\nof them. It is certain, however, that the danger must be incurred, since\nnothing could make sense out of an absolutely _literal_ interpretation. It\nwould mean a _reductio ad absurdum_.\n\nApply such a literalism, for example, to the point at which for centuries\nthe Church has sought to apply it--the indissolubility of marriage. It is\nadmitted that since a phrase, of however doubtful authority, does make an\nexception in favour of divorce for adultery, the Church can recognize a\nlaw in this sense. But if we are to be literalists, it seems that a lustful\nwish is adultery! Is this to be a cause for divorce? And if not, why not?\nObviously because we can no more apply such spiritual teaching literally\nthan we can take a man out and hang him because he hates his brother!\nThere we cease to be literal: how then can we fall back on a literal\ninterpretation at another point?\n\nI claim that there is no ground whatever for a more rigid and legal\ninterpretation of our Lord's teaching about marriage than about taking\noaths or praying in public. I believe that Christ held that marriage should\nbe permanent and indissoluble, that only those people should marry who\nloved each other with a love so pure, so true, so fine as to be regarded\nrightly as a gift from God, who accepted their union as a great trust as\nwell as a great joy, whose marriage might indeed be said to be \"made in\nheaven\" before it was solemnized on earth; but that He should insist on a\nlegal contract from which all reality had departed, or regard as a marriage\na union of which the most cynical could only say that it was made in hell,\nmerely because the Church or the State had chosen to bless or register it,\nseems to me as unlike the whole of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount and\nas far from the spirit of Christ as east is from west. It surely is not\nconceivable that He to Whom marriage meant so much that He spoke of it as\nbeing made by God, Who conceived of the union of a man and woman as being\nthe work of God Himself \"Those whom God has joined together\"--would have\ncared for the shell out of which the kernel had gone, for the mere legal\nbond out of which all the spirit had fled. Marriage should be indissoluble;\nbut what is marriage? I heard a little while ago of a girl of 19 who was\nmarried to a man of 56. He was immoral in mind and diseased in body, and\nat the end of a year she left him with another man. He divorced her, and\nshe is now married to that other man, and there are people who say that\nthis marriage, which, so far as one can judge, is a moral, faithful, and\na responsible union, blest with children who are growing up in a good\nhome, is no marriage because the wife went through a ceremony with this\nother man before, and marriage is indissoluble. Marriage is indissoluble:\n\"Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder.\" Did God join\nthose two together? They were married in a church. It is the Church that\nshould repent in sackcloth and ashes for permitting such a mockery of\nmarriage. Let the Church by all means do what it has so long failed to do,\nemphasize the sanctity of human relationships, make men and women realize\nhow deep a responsibility they take in marriage, how sacred a thing is this\ncreative love, from which future generations will spring, which brings into\nthe world human bodies and immortal souls; which, even if it is childless,\nis still the very sacrament of human love. Let the Church teach all that\nit can to make marriage sacred and divine, but when it preaches that such a\nmarriage as that is a marriage at all it does not uphold our moral standard\nbut degrades it.\n\nI have said enough before, I hope, to make you realize that I do not think\nthat when passion has gone marriage is dead. I have seen marriages which\nseemed unequal, difficult, unblest, made into something lovely and sacred\nby the deep patience and loyalty of human nature, and believe it is the\nknowledge of such possibilities which makes Christian people, and even\nthose who would not call themselves Christians, generally desire some\nreligious ceremony when they are married. They know that for such love\nhuman nature itself is hardly great enough. They desire the grace of God\nto inspire their love for each other with something of that eternal quality\nwhich belongs to the love of God. I have seen husbands love their wives,\nand wives their husbands, with a divine compassion, an inexhaustible pity,\nwhich goes out to the most unworthy and degraded. Yes, I would even go\nso far as to say that unless you feel that you are able to face the\npossibility of change in the one you love, that you can love so well that\neven if they alter for the worse your love would no more disappear than the\nlove of God for you would disappear when you change or fail, you have not\nattained to the perfect love which justifies marriage. But this is a\nhard saying, and, therefore, those of us who believe in God in any sense\ninstinctively desire the blessing of God to rest on the undertaking of\nso great a responsibility. We want our love to be divine before we can\nundertake the whole happiness of another human being. Let the Church by all\nmeans teach this, and I believe that future generations will conceive more\nnobly and more responsibly of marriage for her teaching. But do not seek\nto hold together those between whom there is no real marriage at all. When\nseriously and persistently a man and a woman believe that their marriage\nnever was or has now ceased to be real, surely their persistent and\nconsidered opinion ought to be enough for the State to act upon. Let no\none be allowed to give up in haste. Let no one fling responsibility aside\neasily. Let it always be a question of long consideration, of advice from\nfriends, perhaps even from judges. But I cannot help feeling that when\nthrough years this conviction that there is no reality in a marriage\npersists, this is the one really decent and sufficient reason for declaring\nthat that marriage is dissolved. Let us have done with the infamous system\nnow in force, by which a man and woman must commit adultery or perjury\nbefore they can get us to admit the patent fact that their marriage no\nlonger exists as a reality. Let us have done with a system which makes a\nmockery of our divorce courts. I have the utmost sympathy with those who\ndenounce the light way in which men and women perjure themselves to obtain\nrelease, but I affirm that the whole system is, in the main, so based on\nlegalisms, so divorced from morality, that the resultant adulteries and\nperjuries are what every student of human nature must inevitably expect,\nhowever much he may regret and hate them. It will be in vain that laws are\ndevised to prevent divorce by collusion, in vain that King's proctors\nor judges detect and penalize here and there the less wary and ingenious\noffenders. The law will continue to be evaded or defied. And the reason is\nfundamental: it is that the law is not based on reality. It affirms that a\nmarriage still exists when it does _not_ exist. It demands that two human\nbeings should give to each other what they cannot give. And--the essence\nof marriage being consent--it makes the fact that both parties desire its\ndissolution the final reason for denying them! To force a woman to demand\nthe \"restitution of conjugal rights\" when such \"rights\" have become a\nhorrible wrong; to compel a man to commit, or perjure himself by pretending\nhe has committed, adultery, before he can get the State to face the fact\nthat his marriage is no longer a reality--is this to uphold morality? Is\nthis the ideal of the Sermon on the Mount? Let us once for all abandon\nthe pretence that _all_ the marriages made in churches or in registrars'\noffices are, therefore, necessarily made in heaven. Let us get to work\ninstead to see that the marriages of the future shall be made in heaven,\nand, above all, let us abolish the idea that a marriage is a real marriage\nwhich is based on ignorance, on fraud, on exploitation, on selfishness. Let\nus not dream that we can raise our standard of morals, by affirming that\nevery mistake that men and women make in a matter in which mistaking is\nso tragically easy ought to imprison them in a lie for the rest of their\nlives. But let us take the ideal of Christ, in all its grandeur and all\nits reality, with our eyes fixed upon the ideal, but with that respect\nfor human personality, that respect for reality and truth, which makes us\nrefuse to accept the pretence that all the marriages we have known have\nbeen made by God. Let us, at least, in perpetuating such blasphemies as\nare some of the marriages on which we have seen the blessing of the Church\ninvoked, cease to drag in the name of Christ to the defence of a system\nwhich has laid all its weight upon a legal contract, and kept a conspiracy\nof silence about the sacred union of body and soul by which God makes man\nand woman one.\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\nA PLEA FOR LIGHT\n\n\n     Jesus said: \"If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not,\n     because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in\n     the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.\"\n\n\nMy last address for the present[C] on the difficult questions that we have\nbeen considering here, Sunday after Sunday, is a plea for light.\n\n[Footnote C: Another address was added a few weeks later in response to\nurgent requests.]\n\n\"Walking in darkness\" has been, in sexual matters, the experience of most\nof us. Even now, in the twentieth century, it is not too much to say that\nmost of us have had to fight our battle in almost complete darkness and\nsomething very near to complete isolation.\n\nThere are two great passions connected with the bodies of men and women,\nso fundamental that they have moulded the histories of nations and the\ndevelopment of the human race. They are the hunger for food and the\ninstinct of sex. There is no other passion connected with our bodies so\nfundamental, so powerful, as these two; and yet, with regard to the second,\nmost of us are expected to manage our lives and to grow up into maturity\nwithout any real knowledge at all, and with such advice as we get wrapped\nup in a jargon that we do not understand. We have been as those who set out\nto sea without a chart; as soldiers who fight a campaign without a map. I\ndo not think this is too much to say of the way in which a large number of\nthe men and women that I know--even those of this generation--have been\nexpected to tackle one of the greatest problems that the human race has\nto solve.\n\nMay I sketch what I imagine is the experience of most people? At some point\nin our lives we begin to be curious; we ask a question; we are met with a\njest or a lie, or with a rebuke, or with some evasion that conveys to\nus, quite successfully, that we ought not to have asked the question. The\nquestion generally has to do with the matter of birth--the birth of babies,\nor kittens, or chickens; some point of curiosity connected with the birth\nof young creatures is generally the first thing that awakens our interest.\nWhen we meet with evasion, lies, or reproof, we naturally conclude that\nthere is something about the birth of life into the world that we ought not\nto know, and since it is apparently wrong of us even to wish to know it,\nit is presumably disgusting. We seek to learn from other and more grimy\nsources what our parents might have told us, and, learning, arrive at the\nconclusion that in the relations of men and women there is also something\nthat is repulsive. And since, in spite of this, our interest does not cease\nbut becomes furtive curiosity, we also conclude that there is something\ndepraved and disgusting about ourselves.\n\nNow, all of these three conclusions are lies; and, therefore, we set out in\nlife equipped with a lie in our souls. It is not a good beginning. It means\nthat almost at once those of us who persist in our desire to know are in\ndanger of losing our self-respect. We learn that there is something in sex\nthat is base--so base that even our own parents will not speak to us about\nit; and because of that, and because a child instinctively does accept,\nduring the first few years of its existence, what its parents or guardians\nsay, we assume that there must be something bad in us, since we so\npersistently desire to know what is so evil that nobody will speak of it at\nall. Or if anyone does allude to it, it is with unwholesome furtiveness and\na rather silly kind of mirth, so as to increase in the minds of many of us\nthe sense that there must be something in our nature that we cannot respect\nbecause nobody else finds it beautiful or respectable.\n\nOur next step, especially if we are conscientious people, is to repress\nthat something. And here I want to say a word in answer to a number of\nletters that I have had on the point which I raised early in this book,\nwhen I claimed that women have to pay as great a tax and suffer as great\na hardship from repression as men do. People--both men and women--have\nwritten to say that this is not true, and to such I wish to make my point\nquite clear. I did not say that men and women suffered _in the same way_. I\nsaid that they suffered _equally_; and since the question has been raised,\nI should like just to answer it here. To me it seems, judging as far as I\ncan, from the people that I know, that--speaking very generally--passion\ncomes to a man with greater violence, and is more liable to leave him in\npeace at other times. Passion is to a man who is of strong temperament like\na storm at sea. It seems the very embodiment of violence and force. The\nmere sight of the sea angry almost terrifies one, even if one is perfectly\nsafe from the violence of the storm; but the depths are not stirred. And in\nthe case of a woman I would take a different figure of speech altogether,\nand say that very often the strain on her is much less dramatic, much less\nviolent, and more persistent. I think of the strain as something like that\nsilent, uninterrupted thrust of an arch against the wall, of a dome on the\nwalls that support it. There is no sign of stress. But it is so difficult\nto build a dome rightly that Italy, the land of domes, is covered with the\nruins of those churches whose domes gradually, slowly, thrust outwards till\nthe walls on which they rested gave way and the church was in ruins. That\nkind of strain is easily denied by the very people who are enduring it. It\nis so customary, so much a part of their life, that they are unconscious of\nit.\n\nNo one who studies psychology to-day can fail to realize how unconscious\npeople often are of the seat and the nature of their own troubles. It is\ntrue that the tendency to _exaggerate_ the importance of sex seems likely\nto vitiate to some extent the conclusions of psychologists like Freud and\nhis disciples. But that they have revealed to us a mass of hitherto unknown\nand un-understood suffering in the minds of both women and men, arising\nfrom the continual repression of a passion whose strength may be measured\nby the disastrous consequences caused by repressing it, no one who knows\nanything at all of modern psychology can deny. Those who do not understand\ntheir own trouble will often deny that the trouble exists, and deny it\nquite honestly. But those who have become the physicians of the mind are\njust beginning to learn how tremendous a sacrifice the world has asked of\nwomen in the past while denying that it was a sacrifice at all!\n\nNow, this repression follows, in many women and in a considerable number\nof men, on the assumption that there is something in sex too shameful to\nbe spoken about or looked at in the light. We set out, I repeat, on our\ncampaign without a map of the country and with our compasses pointing the\nwrong way. And this, above all, is true when repression has caused some\nactual perversion in the mind, some arrested development, some abnormal\ncondition. This is not always the consequence of deliberate repression on\nthe part of the individual, but it is, I believe, often the consequence\nof an artificial state of civilization; an attitude towards a great and\nwonderful impulse which has perverted our whole view of what is divine and\nlovely in human nature. Whatever the cause, the result is abnormality of\nsome kind, and to people who have suffered so, I want, above all, to say\nthis: light and understanding are needed more by you, perhaps, than by\nanyone else, and to you, above all, they have been denied. Loneliness,\nisolation, the loss of self-respect, the darkness of ignorance have\nsurrounded those to whom the sacrifice has been hardest, and, therefore,\nthe repression, whether racial or individual, most disastrous. You can,\nif you choose, leave the world a nobler place because you let light in on\nthese dark places. Do not say to yourselves that your suffering is useless\nand purposeless because it is no good to anyone: no one knows of it: no\none understands it: and, therefore, it has all the additional bitterness of\nbeing to no purpose. That need not be true. Ignorance need not continue.\nIf you will try to make your suffering of service to the world, it is not\ndifficult to measure how great may be our advance in fundamental morality\nin this present generation.\n\nWe do not know yet of what human nature is capable, and those who are\nstudying the human mind are perhaps the greatest of all pioneers at the\npresent moment. Some of you have trusted me, and by your trust have enabled\nme to help other people. Others of you, perhaps, have yourselves become or\nwill become students of psychology. You will advance a little further in a\nscience which is as yet only making its first uncertain steps. Even if you\ndo none of these things, yet if you will try to understand yourselves, by\nthe mere fact that you understand, you will find that you are able to help\nother people--other people whose condition is most tragic, most lonely--to\nface with courage the problem they share with you.[D] Try to solve it, as\nyou can. You will gain in understanding and strength, so that those in yet\ngreater need will instinctively come to you for help. Base your own moral\nstandard on all that is noble, and wise and human, and you will find that\nin you the spiritual begins so to dominate the physical that others will\nsee its power and come to you for help.\n\n[Footnote D: This subject is more fully dealt with in the next chapter.]\n\n  \"With aching hands and bleeding feet,\n  We toil and toil; lay stone on stone.\n  Not till the light of day return\n  All we have built shall we discern.\"\n\nNow let us turn to the other side of the problem--the more normal relations\nof men and women who are lovers, who are husbands and wives. May I again\nrecapitulate what appears to be the history of many married people, even in\n1921.\n\nLet me remind you first that this contract of marriage is the most\nimportant, probably, in the whole life of the man and woman who undertake\nit; that it concerns human personality as perhaps no other relation in the\nworld does, so deeply, so closely, so intimately, that those who enter into\nit are very near either to heaven or hell. The nearer you come to any\nother human personality, the nearer you get to the supreme happiness or the\nsupreme failure. And when people enter on this relationship, how are they\nprepared? Many of them are ignorant--and in the case of women often wholly\nso--of what marriage actually involves. I find it difficult to speak in\nmeasured terms of those parents who deliberately allow their daughters to\ntake a step which involves the whole of their future life and happiness,\nand that of another human being also, in ignorance of what they are doing.\nThis relationship, which requires all the love and all the wisdom of men\nand women--so much so that even those who do not call themselves Christians\noften desire to go to a church and ask for the grace of God to enable\nthem to carry out so great an undertaking--is entered upon by people who\nliterally do not know what, from the very nature of marriage, is required\nof them. I suppose many people will say that I speak of a state of things\nwhich passed a generation ago. No, I do not. I speak of a state of things\nthat is only too common at this present time. I have known marriage after\nmarriage wrecked by the almost unbelievable ignorance that has been present\non both sides. I say both sides. First of all, there is the girl. To her,\nmarriage comes sometimes as so great a shock that her whole temperament is\nwarped and embittered by it. Then there is the man, equally ignorant--very\noften, probably less ignorant of himself, but equally ignorant of her--not\nrealizing how she should be treated. They are often quite ignorant of each\nother's views on marriage; of what sort of claims they are going to make\non each other; what each thinks about the duty of having children. These\nelementary facts of human life, which must confront those who marry, are\nfaced by them without any kind of preparation, without the most rudimentary\nknowledge of each other's point of view. And that there are so many happy\nmarriages in spite of all this makes one realize how extraordinarily loyal,\nfine and courageous, on the whole, human nature is.\n\nOnly the other day I was speaking in a town in the north of England on this\nvery subject, and I got a letter afterwards to say that the writer had very\ngreatly enjoyed my address at the time. She had found it, she assured me,\ninspiring and elevating. But she felt bound to write and tell me afterwards\n(what she was sure would both shock and distress me) that she had found\nthat some of the people in my audience were actually acting on what I\nsaid! I suppose every public speaker comes up against that sort of thing\nsometimes--the calm assurance that you are merely talking in the air and\nhave not the slightest desire that anyone should act on what you say.\nSo this lady wrote to say that, though she and her husband had both been\ngreatly impressed by what I said, they were horrified to find that, as\na result, people were actually discussing with one another, before they\nmarried, certain points which she mentioned to me and which she said they\nought never to discuss until they _were_ married. Is it not amazing\nthat anyone should seriously contend that it is better to arrive at an\nunderstanding with the person he or she is about to marry _after_ marriage\nthan before? That people who would not dream of betraying anyone into any\nkind of contract about which they were not satisfied that its terms were\nunderstood should be willing to betray others--I deliberately call it\na betrayal--into a contract of such infinite importance, and positively\ndesire that they shall be ignorant of its nature?\n\nIt really seems sometimes as if pains were positively taken to mislead\nthose who are going to be married. One of the most amazing statements on\nthis subject, for instance, is contained in the marriage service of the\nChurch of England, where the bride and bridegroom are told that marriage\nwas ordained that \"such persons as have not the gift of continency might\nmarry and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body.\" That there\nshould be anyone in the twentieth century who does not know that a man or\na woman who has not the gift of continency is totally unfit for marriage is\nreally rather startling. What such a person requires is both a divine and a\nphysician; but that he should be told that he is fit for marriage and\nthat marriage was expressly designed for him is not only misleading, it is\nabsolutely horrifying. It explains the tragic wreck which so many marriages\nbecome after a comparatively short time.\n\nI would urge, then, for the future, that we should not concentrate all\nour moral, ethical, religious, and social force on perpetuating the tragic\nfailure of an empty marriage, but, rather, should concentrate our efforts\non trying to make people understand what marriage is; what their own\nnatures are; what marriage is going to demand from them; what they need in\norder to make it noble. I urge, moreover, that the same principle should\napply to those who do not marry--that they also should learn in the\nlight what their difficulties are going to be; how to face their\nown temperaments; how to deal with their own minds and bodies. Your\ntemperament, men and women, does not decide your destiny; it does decide\nyour trials. To know how to deal with it and how to make it your servant,\nhow so to enthrone spiritual power in your nature that it shall dominate\nall that is physical, not as something base, but as a sacred and a\nconsecrated thing--it is on this that the teachers of to-day should\nconcentrate with all their power. It is true that when we have learnt\nall that is possible from teaching, there is still something to learn. In\nmarriage is it possible to know finally until the final step is taken?\nNo, I do not think so. But when you consider how we have struggled against\nignorance, how many pitfalls have been put in the path of those who\ndesired knowledge, how we have, as it seems, done our best to make this\nrelationship a failure, surely it is worth while, at least, to try what\nknowledge, and understanding, and education, and training _can_ do. We\ncannot know all. That is no reason why we should not know all that we can.\n\nSurely marriage must be a divine institution, since we have done so much\nto make it a failure, and yet one sees again and again such splendid love,\nsuch magnificent loyalty and faith! \"You advocate,\" someone wrote to me the\nother day, \"you advocate that people should leave each other when they are\ntired of each other.\" No, I do not advocate that anyone should accept\na failure. I advocate that every human being should do all that is\npossible--more perhaps than is possible without the grace of God--to\nmake marriage the noble and lovely thing it should be. I think those are\nfaint-hearted who easily accept the fact that it is difficult, and from\nthat drift swiftly to the conclusion that for them it is impossible. I\nadvocate that the greatest faith and loyalty should be practised. I believe\nin my heart that there is perhaps no relationship which cannot be redeemed\nby the love and devotion and the grace of God in the hearts of those who\nseek to make it redeemable. What I do say is that in Church and State we\nshould concentrate all our efforts on helping men and women to a wise,\nenlightened, noble conception of marriage before they enter upon it, and\nnot on a futile and immoral attempt to hold them together by a mere legal\ncontract when all that made it valid has fled.\n\nI believe that the more one knows of human nature the more one reverences\nit. I believe that the vast majority of human beings strain every nerve\nrather than fail in so great a responsibility. Do you remember reading in\nMr. Bertrand Russell's book, \"Principles of Social Reconstruction,\" of\na little church of which it was discovered, not, I think, very long\nago, that, owing to some defect in its title, marriages which had been\ncelebrated there were not legal? Mr. Bertrand Russell says that there were\nat that time I forget how many couples still living who had been married\nin that church, who found that, by this legal defect, they were not legally\nbound. Do you know how many of those married people seized the opportunity\nto desert each other and go and marry somebody else? Not a single one!\nEvery one of those couples went quietly away to church and got married\nagain!\n\nReligious people do sometimes think such mean things of human nature, and\nhuman nature is, for the most part, so much nobler, so much more loyal, so\nmuch more loving than we imagine. \"Lift up your eyes unto the hills from\nwhence cometh your help.\" \"He that walketh in the light, stumbleth not, for\nhe seeth the light of the world.\"\n\nLet us face the future courageously, with great reverence for other\npeople's opinions and views. Let us not join that mob of shouters who are\nprepared to howl at everyone who desires to say something that is not quite\northodox, but which is their serious and considered contribution to a great\nand difficult problem. Let us greet them with respect, however much we may\ndiffer from them. Let us look forward without fear. Believe me, below all\nthe froth and scum of which we make so much, human nature is very noble.\n\nLet us give that example to the world which is worth a thousand\narguments--the example of a noble married life, the example of a noble\nsingle life. Those of you who are alone can do infinitely more for virtue\nby being full of gentleness, wisdom, sanity, and love than by any harsh\nrepression of yourselves. It is by what you can make of celibacy that the\nworld will judge celibacy. And so of married lovers. Believe me, it is not\nthe children of married lovers who are rebels against a lofty standard.\nThose who have seen with their eyes a lovely, faithful and unwavering love\nare not easily satisfied with anything that is less. \"Lift up your eyes\nunto the hills. From whence cometh your strength.\" And in the light of a\ngreat ideal, in the light of knowledge, sincerity and truth, in the light\nof what I know of human nature, I, for one, am not afraid for the future\nmoral standard of this country.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nFRIENDSHIP\n\n\n     \"Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and\n     in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than\n     eagles, they were stronger than lions. Ye daughters of Israel,\n     weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other\n     delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How\n     are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Oh Jonathan,\n     thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee,\n     my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy\n     love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How are\n     the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!\" (II. Sam.\n     i. 23-27.)\n\n     \"And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law; but Ruth clave unto her.\n     And she said, Behold thy sister-in-law has gone back unto her\n     people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister-in-law.\n     And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from\n     following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and\n     where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my\n     people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and\n     there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if\n     ought but death part me and thee.\" (Ruth i. 14-17.)\n\n\nPeople have sometimes discussed with me whether it is right to have as\nintense and absorbing a love for a friend of one's own sex as exists\nbetween lovers. The word \"absorbing\" is perhaps the difficulty in their\nminds. All love is essentially the same, and it has been pointed out that\nthe great classic instances of great love have been almost as often between\nfriends as between lovers. But the test of love's nobility remains\nthe same. If it is in the strict sense \"absorbing\"--if, that is, it is\nexclusive, if it narrows one's interests instead of enlarging them, if it\ninvolves a failure in love or sympathy with other people, it is wrong--it\nis not in the true sense \"love\"; but if it enriches the understanding,\nwidens interest, deepens sympathy--if, in a word, to love one teaches us to\nlove others better, then it is good, it is love indeed. A friendship which\nis of such character that no one outside it is of any interest, a maternal\nlove which not only concentrates on its own but wholly excludes all other\nchildren, even a marriage which ultimately narrows rather than widens and\nis exclusive in its interests, is a poor caricature of love. A young mother\nmay, in the first rapture of her motherhood, seem wholly absorbed; but,\nas a matter of fact, she generally ends by caring more for _all_ children\nbecause she loves one so deeply. Even lovers, after the first absorption of\nnewly-discovered joy, must learn to share their happiness and the happiness\nof their home with others if it is not to grow hard and dull. And friends\nmay easily estimate the worth of their friendship by the measure with which\nit has humanized their relations to all other human beings.\n\nThere is another test also for love: Does it express itself naturally and\nrightly? This test is much more difficult to apply. One may believe\nthat all love is essentially the same, but it is certain that all human\nrelationships are not the same, and, therefore, love cannot always be\nexpressed in the same way; but it is not possible to lay down any exact\nrule between the sort of \"expression\" legitimate to each. Everyone\nmust have suffered sometimes from a sense of having forced undesired\ndemonstrations on other people, or having them forced on oneself. One's\nsuffering in the first instance is intensified by the knowledge of the\nextremity of revolt created by the second. There is nothing, I suppose,\nmore acutely painful than the sense of being compelled to accept\ndemonstrations of affection to which one cannot in the same way respond.\nI believe that this shrinking from expressions which seem unnatural,\nis rightly intensified a hundredfold when the sense of wrongness or\n\"unnaturalness\" is due not to the individual but to the relationship\nitself.\n\nThe love which unites the soul to God, children to their parents, mothers\nand fathers to sons and daughters, lovers to one another, friend to friend,\nthe disciple to his master, is all one. You cannot divide Love. But to each\nbelongs its right and natural expression, and to parody the love of lovers\nbetween friends revolts the growing sense of humankind. The very horrors\nof prostitution create a less shuddering disgust than the debauching of\na young boy by an older man, though with a tragically common injustice\nsociety is more apt to be disgusted by the unfortunate victim, bearing\nall the marks of his moral and physical perversion, than by the more\nresponsible older man who profits by or even creates it.\n\nYet it is, as I have said, only by the _growing_ sense of humanity that\nsuch things are condemned. They were not always so in every case. On the\ncontrary it has sometimes been maintained that friendship between men was\nso much nobler than the love of men and women that even when it demanded\nphysical expression it was still the finest of all human relationship. This\nidea was, of course, widely held by the Greeks during the noblest epochs\nof their history, and Plato, though he does not, as is commonly believed,\njustify such expression as good in itself, evidently regards it as\npractically inevitable and, therefore, to be condoned. And though from this\nindulgent attitude there has been a very general revolt in modern times,\nthe reaction has not always been very discriminating in its condemnation\nor very just in its reprisals. Now--in consequence, no doubt, of this\ninjustice--there has arisen another attempt to assert the superior nobility\nof friendship over love,[E] and even to claim a superior humanity for\npeople who are more attracted by members of their own sex.\n\n[Footnote E: I am using the terms \"friendship\" and \"love\" in their\nordinarily accepted and narrow sense, as meaning respectively the love of\nfriends and the love of lovers. This is arbitrary, but I cannot find other\nwords except by using long phrases.]\n\nThere is not in this any question of the bestial depravity which\ndeliberately debauches the young and innocent: it is a question of the\nkind of friendship glorified by Plato. And those who uphold the Platonic\nview are not always debauchees but sometimes men and women who, however\nincomprehensibly, still sincerely believe that they and not we who oppose\nthem are the true idealists. This is why it is worth while to state our\nreasons for our profound disagreement, and to do so as intelligently and\nfairly as possible. It is also worth while because no one has suffered more\ncruelly or more hopelessly than those whose temperament or abnormality has\nbeen treated by most of us as though it were _in itself_, and without\nactual wrong-doing, a crime worthy of denunciation and scorn.\n\nFirst, then, let it be remembered that the highest types humanity has\nevolved have been men and women who are really \"human,\" that is to say\nwho have not only those qualities which are generally regarded as\ncharacteristic of their sex, but have had some share of the other sex's\nqualities also. A man who is (if such a thing could be) wholly and\nexclusively male in all his qualities would be repulsive; so would a woman\nwholly and exclusively female. One has only to look at history to realize\nit. Compared with the exquisite tenderness and joy of a St. Francis\nof Assisi, the courage and determination of a St. Joan of Arc, the\nintellectual power of a St. Catherine of Siena or St. Theresa of Spain,\nthe \"brute male\" who is wholly male, the \"eternal feminine\" with her\nsuffocating sexuality seem on the one hand inhuman, on the other subhuman.\nIt is not the absence of the masculine qualities in a man, or of the\nfeminine qualities in a woman which raises them above the mass; it is the\npresence in power of both; and no man is truly human who has not something\nof the woman in him--no woman who has not something of the man. Here is a\ncertain truth. And its supreme example is Christ Himself--Christ in Whom\npower and tenderness, strength and insight, courage and compassion were\nequally present--Christ Who is in truth the ideal of all humanity without\ndistinction of race, class or sex.\n\nThis is true. But its truth has been misunderstood by teachers like Edward\nCarpenter. Beauty and strength in human nature as elsewhere depend on\nharmony, and in such characters as I have cited that harmony is found. For,\nin fact, there is no instance in nature of a male wholly male or a female\nentirely female. Even physically the elements are shared. And if we say\nwith confidence that where these elements are most fully shared there is\nfound the fullest humanity, we are not committed to adding that where\nthe body has one predominating character and the spirit another there is\nsomething finer still!\n\nFor harmony of life and temperament the body should be the perfect\ninstrument and expression of the spirit. When you have the temperament\nof one sex in the body of another, this cannot be. There is at once a\ndisharmony, a dislocation, a disorder--in fact, a less perfect not a more\nperfect type. Humanity does, I believe, progress towards a fuller element\nof the woman in the man, the man in the woman, and the best we have\nproduced so far confirm the truth of this. But it is not an advance to\nproduce a type in which the temperament and the body are at odds. This is\nnot progress but perversion.\n\nIt is the same consciousness of dislocation which makes us condemn\nhomosexual practices. Here it is a dislocation between the means and\nthe end. The instinct of sex, to whatever use it may have been put, is\nfundamentally the creative instinct. It is not by an accident, it is not as\na side-issue, that it is through sexual attraction that children are born.\nAnd however sublimated, however enriched, restrained and conditioned, the\ncreative power of physical passion remains at once its justification and\nits consecration. To use it in a relationship which must for ever be barren\nis \"unnatural\" and in the deepest sense immoral. It is not easy to define\n\"immorality,\" because morality is one of the fundamentals which defy\ndefinition; but though it is not easy to define, it is not hard to\nrecognize. All the world knows that it is immoral to prostitute the\ncreative power of genius to mere commercialism, for money or for fame. No\none can draw a hard and fast line. No one will quarrel with a great artist\nbecause he lives by his art, or because he will sometimes turn aside to\namuse himself, his public, or his friends. Michaelangelo is not blamed\nbecause, one winter's afternoon, he made a snow-statue for Lorenzo de\nMedici! Yet all will admit that _merely_ to amuse, _merely_ to make money,\n_merely_ to gain popularity is a prostitution of genius. Why? Because it\nis to put to another than its real purpose the creative power of a great\nartist.\n\nIn the same way, to use the power of another great creative impulse--that\nof sex--in a way which divorces it wholly from its end--creation on\nthe physical as well as the spiritual plane--is immoral because it is\n\"unnatural.\" Again and again it will be found to lead to a violent reaction\nof feeling--a repulsion which is as intense and violent as the devotion\nwhich was its prelude.\n\nWhat then should those do who have this temperament? No one, perhaps, can\nwisely counsel them but themselves. They alone can find out the way by\nwhich the disharmony of their being can be transcended. That it can be so\nI am persuaded. That modern psychology has already made strides in the\nknowledge of this problem we all know. What is due to arrested development\nor to repression can be set right or liberated: what is temperamental\ntransmuted. But I appeal to those who know this, but who have suffered and\ndo still suffer under this difficulty, to make it their business to let in\nthe light, to help others, to know themselves, to learn how to win harmony\nout of disharmony and to transcend their own limitations. Let them take\nhold of life there where it has hurt them most cruelly, and wrest from\ntheir own suffering the means by which others shall be saved from suffering\nand humanity brought a little further into the light. Who knows yet of what\nit is capable? Who knows what is our ultimate goal? It may be that out of\na nature so complex and so difficult may come the noblest yet, when the\nspirit has subdued the warring temperament wholly to itself.\n\nAnd to the others I would say this. If the homosexual is still the most\nmisunderstood, maltreated, and suffering of our race, it is due to our\nignorance and brutal contempt. How many have even tried to understand? How\nmany have refrained from scorn? Other troubles have been mitigated, other\ngriefs respected if not understood. But this we refuse even to discuss.\nWe are content to condemn in ignorance, boasting that we are too good\nto understand. In consequence, though a few here and there have preached\nhomosexuality as a kind of gospel, far more have suffered an agony of\nshame, a self-loathing which makes life a hell.\n\nTo be led to believe that one is naturally depraved!--to be condemned as\nthe worst of sinners before one has committed even a single sin! Is that\nnot the height and depth of cruelty? Do you wonder if here and there one\nof the stronger spirits among these condemned ones reacts in a fierce,\nunconscious egotism and proclaims himself the true type of humanity, the\ntruly \"civilized\" man? How shall they see clearly whom we have clothed in\ndarkness, or judge truly who are so terribly alone?\n\nTo have a temperament is not in itself a sin! To find in your nature a\ndisharmony which you must transcend, a dislocation you have to restore\nto order, is not a sin! Whose nature is all harmony? Whose temperament\nguarantees him from temptation? Is there one here who is not conscious of\nsome dislocation in his life that he must combat? Not one!\n\nIt is a disharmony to have an active spirit in a sickly body. It is a\ndisharmony to have, like one of the very greatest of Christ's disciples, \"a\nthorn in the flesh to buffet him.\" Who shall deliver us from this body of\ndeath? When you hear of a Beethoven deaf or of a Robert Louis Stevenson\nspitting blood, are you not conscious of disharmony? Where there is perfect\nharmony--_perfect_, I say--such a dislocation could not be. Epilepsy has\nbeen called \"la maladie des grands,\" because some great ones have suffered\nfrom it. Perhaps St. Paul did. It is not possible to imagine Christ doing\nso. In Him there existed so perfect a harmony of being that one can no more\nassociate Him with ill-health than with any other disorder or defect.\nYet we do not speak (or think) with horrified contempt of the disharmony\npresent in St. Paul or in Beethoven. Rather we reverence the glorious\nconquest of the spirit over the weakness and limitations of the flesh. Some\nof us have even rushed to the opposite extreme and preached ill-health as a\nkind of sanctity, in our just admiration for those who have battled against\nit and shown us the spirit dominant over the flesh.\n\nBut, it will be urged, ill-health is quite another kind of disharmony than\nvice. We are not responsible for it, and cannot be blamed.\n\nI am not prepared to admit that this is altogether true, but I will not\ndiscuss it now. The point I want to make clear, if I make nothing else\nclear, is that to be born with a certain temperament is not in itself a\nsin nor does it compel you to be a sinner. \"Your temperament decides your\ntrials; it does not decide your destiny.\" It is no more \"wicked\" to have\nthe temperament of a homosexual than to have the weakness of an invalid. It\nis difficult for the spirit to dominate and to bring into a healthy harmony\na body predisposed to illness and disorder. The greater the glory to those\nwho succeed! Let us confess with shame that in this other and far harder\ncase we have not only ignored the difficulty and despised the struggler,\nbut--God forgive us--have, so far as in us lay, made impossible the\nvictory.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nMISUNDERSTANDINGS\n\n\n     \"If there is one result or conclusion that we may pick out from\n     the science of sex which has developed so rapidly of recent\n     years, as thoroughly established and permanently accepted, it\n     is that the old notion of the sinfulness of the sex process,\n     _in se_, is superstitious, not religious; and must be discarded\n     before ethical religion can assert its full sway over\n     humanity's sex life. And, most assuredly, the conception\n     narratives [of the New Testament], by retaining the sex process\n     to the important extent of normal pregnancy and parturition,\n     foreshadowed and hallowed this development of ethical thought.\n     They make it clear that the Spirit of God and the spirit of\n     woman, in conscious union, refuse to justify superstitious and\n     paralyzing fears, refuse to allow that the sex process is\n     irredeemable; they render possible and imperative the working\n     out of the ethical problems directly concerned with sex.\"\n\n     _Northcute: Christianity and Sex Problems_, _pp._ 415, 416.\n\n\nDuring the course of these addresses I have more than once, and with more\nthan common urgency, pleaded for the light of knowledge, that we may\nin future not make so many disastrous mistakes from sheer ignorance\nand misunderstanding. I have been asked to say more definitely what\n\"misunderstandings\" I had in mind, and to discuss them with at least as\nmuch courage as I have so pressingly demanded from others.\n\nThe demand is just; and I feel the less able to disregard it because I have\ndiscussed these very difficulties with people whose lives have been wrecked\nby the ignorance in which they were brought up, or saved by knowledge\nwisely imparted before the difficulties arose. Knowledge cannot save us\nfrom hardship or difficulty; it cannot make us invulnerable to attack, or\nlift us above the ordinary temptations of ordinary mortals; but it can show\nus where we are going; it can guide us when we wish to be guided; it can\nsave us, when we wish to be saved, from mistakes cruel to ourselves and\noften far more cruel to other people.\n\nFor instance: it is very generally believed that the struggle for\ncontinence is greatly eased by continual and even exhausting physical\nactivity. To work hard--to work even to exhaustion--is believed by some\nto be a panacea. At our great public schools the craze for athleticism\nis justified on the ground that, even at the expense of the things of the\nmind, it does at least keep the boys from moral evil.\n\nI believe this to be a mistake, and a mistake which is due to our looking\nat sex from a too purely physical point of view. It is, of course, imbecile\nto forget the physical, and deal with sex simply as a \"sin\"; but it is no\nless stupid to forget that our bodies and souls are intimately bound\ntogether, and that there is much more in passion than a merely physical\ninstinct. As a matter of fact, a tired person is not immune from\nsex-hunger, and even an exhausted person is likely to find that, far from\nsexual feeling being exhausted too, it turns out to be the only sensation\nthat will respond to stimulus at all. The exploitation of sexuality by our\ntheatres and Press is not successful only in the case of the idle and the\noverfed; it finds its patrons also among those who are too tired to put\ntheir minds into anything really interesting from an intellectual or\nartistic point of view, but whose attention can be distracted and whose\ninterest held by a more or less open appeal to the primitive instincts of\nsex. Tired people want to be amused and interested if possible; but they\nare not easily amused by anything that appeals to the mind, because they\nare tired. They want a sensation other than the customary one of fatigue,\nand the easiest sensation to excite is a sexual one. They get it thinly\ndisguised, in a theatre or music-hall, more thickly disguised in the\nform of cheap fiction, or quite undisguised elsewhere. But the idea that\nsexuality is destroyed by fatigue is a very mischievous illusion which\nhas misled and helped to destroy some of the most honest strivers after\nself-control. Such people will, with a touching belief in saws, seek to\nfind in exhaustion relief from temptation. But it is not amusing always\nto feel tired. One desires at last something else--some other kind of\nfeeling--and one is too tired to make an effort. But sexual sensation is\neasily excited, and in the end the unfortunate finds that he has yielded\nagain. His hard fight has only ended in defeat, and he either abandons the\nadvice as mistaken, or himself as hopelessly and uniquely depraved.\n\nThe truth is, of course, that what is needed is not physical exhaustion\nany more than physical idleness and overfeeding. What is wanted is hard\nand _interesting_ work--work that absorbs one's mental as well as physical\nstrength. A boy at a public school who really cares for games can pour\nhis energies into them and appear a fine example of the system; a boy who,\nthough games are compulsory, cannot interest himself in them at all, is not\nhelped by being physically exhausted. If, then, he yields to a temptation\nthe other has escaped, this need not be because he is more wicked or more\nweak. It may quite well be because the insistence on athleticism, which has\nbeen elevated into a cult, in our public schools, has supplied a real and\nabsorbing interest for the one, but has merely used the physical capacity\nof the other without touching his mind or his spirit at all. When shall\nwe learn that every human being is a unity, and that to ignore any part of\nit--body, mind or spirit--is idiotic? The muscular Christian who believes\nthat continence is achieved by physical fatigue is as short-sighted as he\nwho would treat the whole matter as a purely ethical problem. But the man\nor woman who works hard at some congenial and absorbing task--especially if\nit be creative work--finds the virtue of continence well within his grasp\nwithout exhaustion and without asceticism. It is because sex is essentially\na creative--the creative--power in humanity that we have to direct its\nforce into some more spiritual channel than mere physical labour, if we are\nto make ourselves its master.\n\nAgain, an increasing number of us believe that to master our physical\nimpulses is possible; and that it has seemed impossible--at least,\nfor men--in the past largely because so little knowledge and so little\ncommon-sense has been used in achieving mastery. Naturally, it was simpler\nto assume that it was impossible to control oneself than to find out how\nto make it possible, but as we grow more civilized we cease to be perfectly\ncontent with this simple plan, and begin to perceive its extraordinary\ninjustices and brutalities. It has been said that the civilization of any\npeople or period may be judged by the position of its women, and though\nthis is too simple to be quite true, it is far more true than false. If,\nhowever, civilization does raise the position of women, and assign to them\na greater freedom of action and a wider scope for their lives than\nwas theirs before, it must be clearly understood that women in these\ncircumstances and of this type will take a quite different line on the\nquestion of sex morals than their great-grandmothers did. It is, for\nexample, still urged that women must not do this, that or the other\nwork, because it involves working with men whose sex instincts may be\nuncontrollably aroused by such collaboration. Sir Almroth Wright has\npleaded this, and it is being urged to-day against the entrance of women\ninto what is now almost the only sphere still closed to them--the spiritual\nwork of the Churches. It is urged that some men are afraid of being\nsexually excited if they are addressed by a woman-preacher, and that others\ncannot be within the sanctuary, with a woman near them, without similar\ndanger. The misunderstanding that arises here is, surely, that the cause of\nthis abnormal excitement is in the woman, whereas (in the cases cited)\nit is in the man. There are, of course, women who find an exactly similar\ndifficulty in working with men: women who are transformed by the mere\npresence of men, as there are men who cannot enter a room full of women\nwithout physical disturbance. Such men, such women, are not necessarily\ndepraved or immoral persons, their temperament may be a source of genuine\ndistress to them. It may be most admirably controlled, and in thousands of\ncases it is so, especially when the sufferer understands himself or--more\nrarely--understands herself. All the help that psychology and medical\nscience can give (and it is much) should be given to and accepted by such\npeople. The one thing that should _not_ be yielded is the ridiculous claim\nthat men and women who are not so susceptible (and who are in the vast\nmajority) should rule their lives according to the standards of those who\nare sexually over-developed or one-sidedly developed. It cannot be too\nstrongly insisted that this problem is the problem of the individual. He\n(or she) has got to settle it. He must learn to manage himself in such a\nway that he ceases to be abnormally excitable, or he must arrange his life\nso that he avoids, as far as possible, the causes of excitement. He must\nnot expect others to cramp their lives to fit him; he must not expect\ncivilization to be perverted or arrested in order to avoid a difficulty\nwhich is his own.\n\nThe only alternative to this is to revert to a form of civilization in\nwhich it was frankly admitted that sex-impulses could not be controlled,\neither by men or by women, and society was therefore organized on a basis\nwhich, quite logically, provided for the restraint of women in a bondage\nwhich prevented them from satisfying their impulses as they chose, and at\nthe same time protected them from attack by other men than their lawful\nowners; and which, further, provided conveniences for the equally\nuncontrollable instincts of men.\n\nThis system is quite logical; so is the one here advocated, of assuming\nthat the sexual instincts of both sexes can be controlled. What is not\nlogical is the assumption that they _can_ be controlled, but that such\ncontrol is to be exercised not by each one mastering himself, but by\nthe removal of all possibility of temptation! This demand is really\nincompatible with our civilization, and those who make it should try to\nunderstand that what they ask is, in fact, the reversal of all advance in\nreal self-control in matters of sex.\n\nLet us abandon the pretence that it is \"wicked\" for either a man or a woman\nto have strongly-developed sex-instincts. When we do this, we shall be\non the high way to learning how to manage ourselves without making\npreposterous demands upon our neighbours or inroads upon their individual\nfreedom.\n\nWe shall also, I believe, get rid of those perversions which darken\nunderstanding as well as joy. One need not go all the way with Freud--one\nmay, indeed, suspect him of suffering from a severe \"repression\"\nhimself--while admitting, nevertheless, that much of the folly that\nsurrounds our treatment of sex-questions is due to the pathetic\ndetermination of highly respectable people to have no sex nature or\nimpulses at all. Certainly this accounts for much that is called \"prudery\"\nin women, whose repressed and starved instincts revenge themselves in a\nmorbid (mental) preoccupation with the details of vice. I am forced to the\nconclusion that it has also something to do with the quite extraordinary\ndescription that certain ecclesiastics give of their own inability to\ncontrol their imaginations even at the most solemn moments. A narrow and\ndishonest moral standard has been foisted upon women in these matters, and\ninstead of knowing themselves and learning to control their natures, they\nhave been given a false idea of their own natures, and taught instead\nmerely to repress them. So, very often, a curiously artificial code\nof manners has been accepted by the clergyman--a code which has been\ncrystallized in a phrase by calling the clergy \"the third sex\"--and he,\nlike the women, should be in revolt against it if he is to be saved.\nIndeed, we are or should be allies, not foes. Let the priest or minister\nwear the same kind of collar as other people, mix with them on equal terms,\nand then, if he has a higher moral standard than they, it will be his\nown standard, accepted by him because it commands his homage, and not a\nstandard imposed on him merely because he belongs to a certain caste. It\nis always the code of morals imposed from without that does mischief, and\nresults in the repressions and perversions about which modern psychology\nhas taught us so much.\n\nIt will perhaps be urged that the peculiar dangers of which ecclesiastics\nare conscious are due to the psychological fact that the erotic and\nreligious emotions are closely allied. That this is a fact will hardly be\ndoubted. But again the problem is either an individual one, _or_ it must\nbe solved by abandoning our present position and reverting to that of an\nearlier and cruder civilization. It is possible to argue that eroticism and\nreligion are so nearly allied and so easily mistaken for one another, that\nsafety and sincerity alike demand separate worship for men and women.[F] It\nis also possible to leave it to the individual to manage himself, conquer\nwhere he can and flee where he cannot. But it is not possible, on grounds\nof religious eroticism, to protect men from listening to a woman preaching,\nat the cost of compelling women to listen to no one but a man; or insist on\nthe intolerable cruelty of compelling a man-priest to celebrate mass with a\nwoman server, while forcing the woman to make her confession to a man.\n\n[Footnote F: As, _e.g._, among the Mahometans and, to a less extent, the\nJews.]\n\nI am convinced that when religious people learn to refrain from cheap\n\"religion\" based on emotional preaching and sentimental or rowdy music,\nthey will find that, though eroticism and religion are nearly allied and\ncan easily be mistaken, it is not impossible to distinguish between them.\nThe effort to do so should be made by our spiritual leaders, and when made\nwill result in a sturdier and more thoughtful religion. While for those,\nwhether men or women, who are honestly aware that for them certain things\nare impossible there will be an obvious alternative. The man who cannot\nforget the woman in the priest or preacher will not attend her church; the\nwoman, of whom the same is sometimes true, will avoid the ministrations of\nmen. There will then be less of that eroticism in religion which some of\nthose who--by a curious perversion of logic--oppose the ministry of women\nactually quote as a reason for compelling women to go to men-priests\nbecause there is no one else for them to go to.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nFURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS: THE NEED FOR SEX CHIVALRY\n\n\n     \"Men venerated and even feared women--particularly in their\n     specifically sexual aspect--even while they bullied them; and\n     even in corrupt and superstitious times, when the ideal of\n     womanhood was lost sight of, women tended to get back as\n     witches the spiritual eminence they had failed to retain as\n     saints, matrons and saviours of society.\"\n\n     _Northcote: Christianity and Sex Problems, p_. 326.\n\n\nChivalry is the courtesy of strength to weakness. Yet women who pride\nthemselves on their superior moral strength in regard to sex rarely feel\nbound to show any chivalry towards the weak. I do not myself believe that\nwomen are _as a whole_ stronger than men, or that men are _as a whole_\nstronger than women; but I am sure that the sexes are relatively stronger\nin certain respects and at certain points, and that where one is stronger\nthan the other, that one should feel the chivalrous obligation of strength\nwhether man or woman. Chivalry is not and ought not to be a masculine\nvirtue solely.\n\nFor example, it is quite common to be told of (or by) some girl who is an\nartist in flirtation that she is \"quite able to take care of herself.\" This\nappears to mean that whoever suffers, she will not; and whatever is given,\nshe will not be the giver. It is possible to go further and say that\nwhatever she buys she will certainly not pay for.\n\nWhat does she buy? Well, it depends, of course, on what she wants and what\nis her social class. But, roughly speaking, she wants both pleasure and\nhomage--not only theatres and cinemas, ice-creams or chocolates, but the\nincense that goes with such things--the demonstration of her triumphant\nsexual charm, which evokes such offerings.\n\nOf course, in a great deal of this there is no harm. People who like each\nother will like to please each other, to give pleasure, and to enjoy it\ntogether. But there is something beyond this which is not harmless but\ndetestable, and that is the deliberate playing on sexual attraction in\norder to extract homage and to demonstrate power. A girl will sometimes\nplay on a man as a pianist on his instrument, put a strain on him that\nis intolerable, fray his nerves and destroy his self-control, while she\nherself, protected not by virtue but frigidity, complacently affirms that\nshe \"can take care of herself.\" The blatant dishonesty of the business\nnever strikes her for a moment. She takes all she wants and gives nothing\nin return, and honestly believes that this is because she is \"virtuous.\"\nThat she is a thief--and one who combines theft with torture--never occurs\nto her; yet it is true.\n\nObserve--I do not suggest that it would be creditable if she did \"pay.\" It\nwould be no more so than Herod's payment of John the Baptist's head. But\nalthough it is wrong to take something you want and give in return what you\nought not to give, it would be a curious sort of morality that would go on\nto argue that it is right to take all and give nothing. Both transactions\nare immoral and one is dishonest.\n\nOn the other hand, it must be remembered that a parasite _must_ take all\nand give nothing or as little as possible. That is the law of its being.\nAnd so long as men resent the independence of women, and enjoy the position\nof perpetual paymaster, so long will many women be driven to use the only\nweapon they have left. Moreover, it is fair to say--and this is why I plead\nfor light--that many of them are genuinely ignorant that they are playing\nwith fire. The more frigid they are themselves, the less are they able to\ngauge the forces they are arousing; the more ignorant they are, the less\npossible is it for them to be chivalrous to those whose strength and\nweakness they alike misunderstand. The half-knowledge, the instinctive\narts, which girls sometimes display continually mislead men into thinking\nthem a great deal cleverer than they are. Each is ignorant of the other's\nweakness, and each puts the other in danger because of that ignorance.\n\nI once spoke to a big meeting of girls in the neighbourhood of a big camp,\nduring the war; and reflecting on the difficult position of the men--their\nsegregation from ordinary feminine society, their distance from their\nhomes, their unoccupied hours, and the inevitable nervous and emotional\nstrain of preparing for the front--I tried to make the girls realize how\nhard they could make it for the men to keep straight, if they were ignorant\nor foolish themselves. I knew--and said so--that the girls were in a\ndifficult position too; but, after all, they prided themselves on being the\nmore \"moral\" (_i.e._ the stronger) sex, and should be chivalrous.\n\nAfterwards I got a reproachful letter from a woman-patrol, who assured me\nthat if anything went wrong, it was not the fault of the girls. \"They are a\nrough lot,\" she wrote, \"and, of course, they like to have a soldier to walk\nout with. They like to romp with the men, and to kiss them, and perhaps\nthey do go rather far in letting the men pull them about. But they have no\nintention whatever of going any further. If things do go further, it is the\nmen's fault, not the girls'.\"\n\nI could hardly have a better instance of the sort of thing I mean. The\ngirls want to have \"fun\" up to a certain point, and there stop. It does\nnot occur to them that there may be a difference in the point at which they\npropose--or wish--to stop, and that at which the man can. That there is\nany physiological or psychological factor in the case which makes stopping\npossible at one moment and next-door to impossible at another, and that\nthese factors may differ between the sexes, so that one cannot stop just\nwhere the other can, is quite a new idea not only to factory girls but to\nwomen-patrols--at least to some of them. A girl will cheerfully start a\nman rushing down an inclined plane and then complain because he continues\nrushing till he reaches the bottom. Well, in a sense, we ought not to\ncomplain of either of them: we ought to challenge the senseless way in\nwhich they are kept in the dark about each other.\n\nIn these days, when so much greater liberty is accorded to boys and girls\nthan was given in the past, the friends of liberty should insist with\nobstinacy on the need for knowledge. For if liberty is unaccompanied and\nunguided by knowledge, its degeneration into licence will be triumphantly\nused by the lovers of bondage as an argument against liberty itself. Let me\nthen say boldly that I am all for liberty. I want boys and girls, men and\nwomen, to see far more of each other and get to know each other much\nbetter than in the past. I believe in co-education, and in _real_\nco-education--not the sham that is practised in some of our universities\nand colleges. I see the risks and I want to take them. I know there will be\n\"disasters,\" and I think them much less disastrous than those attending the\nmethods of obscurantism and restraint. I think the idea that a boy and girl\nmay not touch each other introduces a silly atmosphere of unreal \"romance\"\nwhere commonplace friendship is what is wanted. But with all this, and\n_because_ of all this, I want a girl to know that a boy's body and mind\nare not _exactly_ like hers; and perhaps a boy to know that a girl's is not\ntotally _unlike_ his!\n\nIn what way do they differ? The male, I think, is more liable to sudden\ngusts of passion, of violence so great as to be almost uncontrollable--at\nleast so nearly so as to make it both cruel and stupid to arouse them. A\nwoman's nature is not (generally) so quickly stirred. She takes longer to\nmove (hence the universal fact of courtship). Or rather it might be more\naccurate to say that he and she may both start at the same time from the\nsame point, but she takes longer to reach the end, and because this is so,\nis more capable of stopping before the end is reached. This she does not\nunderstand, and expects that if _she_ can pause, so can _he_; while he also\nmisunderstands, and does not know that there is for her, just as much as\nfor him, a moment when self-control becomes impossible.\n\nI have said so much about the lack of chivalry shown by women to men that\nit is only reasonable to point out that the reverse is true, and that men\nare often extraordinarily unchivalrous towards women. The cause is, of\ncourse, the same: they do not realize what a strain they are putting on\nthem. There is still a very general assumption, even by those who really\nknow better, that women have no passions and are untempted from within. I\nhave often been assured by \"men of the world\" that \"a woman can always stop\na man if she wants to.\" No doubt she can--some men. She can \"stop them if\nshe wants to.\" The trouble is that a time comes when she cannot want to.\nThe bland assumption that a man has a perfect right to play on a woman's\nsex-instincts till they are beyond control, and then call her the\nguilty one because they _are_ beyond control, is based on the age-old\ndetermination not to recognize the full humanity of women. They are\n\"different\" from men. So they are. I have admitted it. But the likeness\nis much greater than the difference. And neither the likeness nor the\ndifference makes self-control an easy thing for her. It is easier up to\na certain point, because she is more slowly moved; it is harder when that\npoint is reached because her whole nature is involved. She has never\nlearnt to say that she can give her body to one while remaining spiritually\nfaithful to another, and perhaps she never will learn. I at least suspect\nso. She may be as fickle as a man, but it will be in a different way.\n\nOf course, in all this I generalize very rashly from a very narrow\nexperience. My excuse is that these things must be discussed if we are ever\nto generalize more safely, or to learn that we must not generalize at all.\nAnd I have come to the conclusion that it is perhaps as possible to know\nsomething of what is or is not true when one is unmarried as when one is\nmarried. At least one escapes the snare into which so many married people\nsurprisingly fall, of generalizing from an experience which is not merely\nas narrow as everyone's must be, but actually unique; which enables them to\npronounce with stupefying confidence that all men are as this man is; all\nwomen as his wife; and all marriages as his marriage. When one has had the\nhonour of receiving the confidence of a succession of such prophets and\nheard them pronounce in turn, but in an entirely different sense, upon\nthe difficulties or easinesses of sex-relationships, always with a full\nassurance that they are right, not only in their own case but universally,\none begins to make a few tentative generalizations oneself in the hope that\nthey will at least provoke discussion and engender light.\n\n\n\nX\n\n\n\"THE SIN OF THE BRIDEGROOM\"\n\n\n     \"A deathless bubble from the fresh lips blown\n     Of Cherubim at play about God's throne\n     Seemed her virginity. She dreamed alone\n     Dreams round and sparkling as some sea-washed stone.\n     Then an oaf saw and lusted at the sight.\n     They smashed the thing upon their wedding night.\"\n\n     _Dunch,\n     Susan Miles._\n\n\nSomething has been said by others of one of the most fruitful sources of\nmisunderstanding between men and women, where misunderstanding is likely to\nhave the most disastrous results--what has been called by Rosegger \"the sin\nof the bridegroom.\" Perhaps \"sin\" is a mistaken word. If irreparable harm\nis often done on the wedding night, it is quite as much due to ignorance\nas to cruelty. Nothing is more astonishing than the widespread ignorance of\nmen _and women_ of the fact that courtship is not a mere convention, or a\nmeans of flattering the vanity of women, but a physiological necessity\nif there is to be any difference at all between the union of lovers and a\nrape.\n\nIt is all, I suppose, part of the old possessive idea which, making of\na woman something less than a human personality with wishes, desires and\ntemperament of her own, forbade the man to realize or even to know that\nher body has its needs as well as his, and that to regard it merely as an\ninstrument is to be in danger of real cruelty.\n\nYou can bargain for the possession of a violin and the moment it is yours,\nmay play upon it. It is yours. If you are in the mood to play, it must be\nready for you. If it is not, then tune it, and it will be.[G] But a human\nbeing cannot be treated so in any human relationship. It needs mutual\npatience and mutual respect to make a relationship human.\n\n[Footnote G: But even a violin will need to be tuned.]\n\nThis simple fact, however, has been so little understood of lovers, that\nhusbands have, in genuine ignorance of the cruelty they were committing,\nraped their wives on their wedding night. Judging by what one knows of\nwedding-days, it could hardly be supposed that there could be a more\nunpropitious moment for the consummation of marriage. And when to the\nfatigue and strain of the day is added--_as is still quite often the\ncase_--blank though uneasy ignorance as to what marriage involves, or the\nthunderbolt of knowledge (_sic_) launched by the bride's mother the night\nbefore, or the morning of the day itself, it would be difficult with the\nutmost deliberation and skill better to ensure absolute repulsion and\nhorror on the part of the bride. I think that any man who would consider\nthis from the bride's point of view would see that she need not necessarily\nbe cold or unresponsive because, in such circumstances, she needs rest and\nconsideration more than passion. But I wish men could know a little more\nthan this, and understand that to enforce physical union when a woman's\npsychical and emotional nature does not desire it, is definitely and\nphysically cruel. Woman is not a passive instrument, and to treat her as\nsuch is to injure her.\n\nPerhaps I may be forgiven for labouring this point because, in fact,\nmisunderstanding here is so disastrous. Marriage, after all, is a relation\ninto which the question of physical union enters, and if there is no\nequality of desire, marriage will be much less than it might be. Women\nare--idiotically--taught to believe that passion is a characteristic of the\ndepraved woman and of the normal man, who is shown by this fact to be on a\nlower spiritual level than (normal) woman. This senseless pride in what\nis merely a defect of temperament where it exists has poisoned the marital\nrelations of many men and women, and has led women into marrying when they\nwere temperamentally unfitted for such a relation, and quite unable to make\nanyone happy in it. Nor ought they to be too much blamed, since they are\noften unaware of what they ought to be prepared to give in marriage and\nfirmly convinced that their preposterous ignorance is in some inexplicable\nway a virtue. Why it should be admirable, or even commonly honest, to\nundertake duties of whose nature you are ignorant, neither men nor women\nseem ever to have decided, and the illusion is beginning to pass. But it is\nstill not understood that the woman who is not temperamentally asexual may\neasily be made so by being forced when she is not ready, and physically\nhurt when a little patience and tenderness would have saved her. Forel,\nHavelock, Ellis and others have insisted on this, but their books are\nunfortunately not easily accessible to the general public; and something\nmay be added to the more widely read productions of Dr. Stopes.[H] Not\nonly the physiological but the psychological side of the problem has to be\nconsidered, and it would be hard to decide which is the more important or\nwhich the _vera causa_ of the other's reaction. Scientists may perhaps tell\nus some day: here I want only to point out that there is a spiritual factor\nin the case which needs at least to be recognized.\n\n[Footnote H: _Married Love_, _Wise Parenthood_, and _Radiant Motherhood_.\nBy Marie Carmichael Stopes.]\n\nIs passion a cause or an effect? In other words, should physical union be\nthe expression of spiritual union? Is it the \"outward and visible sign of\nan inward and spiritual grace?\" Or is it a means by which that grace is\nachieved? I think the first instinct of most women would be to say that\nspiritual union should be _expressed_ by physical union, and that unless\nthis spiritual union exists the physical union is \"wrong.\" And yet everyone\nwho stops to think will admit that the expression of an emotion deepens\nit. One can \"work oneself up into a rage\" by shouting and swearing. One can\ndeepen love by expressing love. It is noticeable that the whole case for\nbirth control has repeatedly been argued from the ground that the act of\nphysical union not only expresses but intensifies and increases love.\n\nMarriage is the most difficult of human relations, because it is the most\nintimate and the most permanent. To live so close to another--who, in\nspite of all, _remains_ another--to be brought so near, to associate so\nintimately with another personality, without jarring or wounding--that\nis hard. No wonder it is not invariably a success! But passion makes\nit possible to many to whom, without this, it would not be possible.\nUltimately passion should be transcended since in any case it must be left\nbehind. Yet it has served its end, in deepening and intensifying the love\nof two people for one another.\n\nWhere then lies the difficulty, since probably men and women alike would\nagree that what I have said is true?\n\nThe difference of view is perhaps more in practice than in theory; yet it\nis all the harder of adjustment for that. In theory, both men and women\nwould agree that physical union, ideally, should express a spiritual\nunion; and that in doing so, it deepens and intensifies it. But it is still\npossible to disagree as to which of these two aspects of an admitted truth\nis the more vital and fundamental.\n\nIt may be, as I have already suggested, that the woman's point of view is\ndue to her physiology; or it may at least be influenced by it. At least,\nI am convinced that to the woman the sense that physical union is _only_\njustified by already existent spiritual union, is the normal one. I believe\nthat, however incapable she may be of explaining it, and however her power\nof reasoning may be vitiated by wrong ideas about the sexual relation, she\ndoes instinctively recoil from its use when its reason for existence is not\nthere. She may attribute her reluctance to the fact that she is too womanly\n(_sic_), too spiritually minded to have any desire for sexual relations at\nall; her husband may attribute it to coldness of temperament or \"modesty.\"\nIn fact, it is due to the cause I have stated, and if she had never been\ncalled upon to give her body except when her own desire for the \"outward\nand visible sign\" of an \"inward and spiritual grace\" demanded it, her\nhusband would have found that she was not temperamentally defective, but as\ngood a lover as he.\n\nNo one who lives in the world at all can fail to understand that in every\nhuman relationship, and supremely in this one, there must be much mutual\naccommodation, much give and take, a great gentleness to every claim made\nin the name of love. All I am concerned to do here is to help to clear up\nmisunderstandings. It is no claim that I put forward that the woman's point\nof view is superior to the man's: merely that they seem to me a little\ndifferent.\n\nA man who is conscious of jarring, who finds himself a little at\ncross-purposes with the woman he loves, and yet knows that the jarring is\nmerely superficial and the love profound, may easily feel that to ask and\noffer once more the supreme expression of that love is the best way to\ntranscend the temporary lack of sympathy and restore love to its right\nplace and true proportion. Who shall say that he is wrong? Is it not\ncertain that the expression of love does intensify and deepen love? Is not\na sacrament the means of grace as well as its symbol.\n\nYet let him be warned. He may easily seem to his wife to be contenting\nhimself with the symbol without the reality, the body without the soul. If\nshe understands him, she may go with him. If she does not, no yielding on\nher part--no physical passion that he may arouse--will quite stifle the\nprotest which tells her that she suffers spiritual violation. Do you\nremember the cry of Julie in \"The Three Daughters of M. Dupont\"? \"_It is a\nnightly warfare in which I am always defeated_.\" That her physical nature\nis suborned to aid in the conquest only increases for her the sense of\ndegradation.\n\nThis difference in point of view affects the relations of men and women\nfar more widely than is realized, since it is apt to arise wherever the\nphysical comes in at all--and where does it not? Not a touch only, or a\ncaress, but all deliberate appeal to sexual feeling becomes more difficult\nto women as they grow more civilized. It is perhaps difficult for a man\nto realize, in the atmosphere of giggles and whispers with which sex\nis surrounded in the theatre, the novel and the press, how revolting it\nbecomes to modern women to be expected to use such means for \"holding\" a\nlover, or extorting concessions from one who is \"held.\" It was much easier,\nI suppose, when women did not understand what they were about. One sees\nthat to such women it is comparatively easy to-day. And the position\nis complicated by inheritance of the age-old conviction that a woman is\nsupremely woman when she can bend a man by precisely these means. But the\nrevolt is here. And--for the sake of clearness--what I am concerned to show\nis that a woman is not necessarily asexual or cold because she will not use\nan appeal to sexuality in order to get what she wants. She may have all the\n\"temperament\" in the world, but she has also self-respect, and she revolts\nfrom the idea of exploiting for advantage what should be sacramental.\n\nI believe that a better understanding on this point would save not only\ngreat disasters but an infinity of small jars and strains, and if I\nhave put the woman's point of view at some length it is partly because I\nunderstand it better, but chiefly because it is comparatively \"modern\" to\nadmit that she has a point of view to put.\n\nOnce understood, it becomes easier to understand also the startling\nsuccesses and disastrous failures which attend the remarkable practice of\n\"teaching a woman to love after she is married.\" The extent to which social\ntabus and prudery may actually inhibit a woman's natural sexual development\nmakes it possible, as we have seen, for her to marry in ignorance of what\nmarriage implies. When this happens, her love, though it may be noble,\naltruistic and spiritual, does not involve her whole nature. Her husband,\nif he respects her sufficiently, will be able to awaken that which sleeps,\nand in accordance with the undoubted truth that expression intensifies\nlove, he does \"teach her to love\" him not only in one sense but in all.\n\nOn the other hand, if she does not already love him, he will not succeed\nin \"teaching\" her anything but disgust if he dreams that by compelling\nphysical union he can create spiritual union.\n\nEvidently it is a singularly dangerous attempt! It is to be hoped that in\nfuture no woman will run such risks out of ignorance, but that lovers will,\nbefore they marry, understand what each expects, what each desires to give,\nand at least _start_ fair.\n\nThis is no less important with regard to other matters in which marriages\nare often wrecked. Surely people who propose to spend their lives together\nought to know (for example) whether children are desired and whether many\nor few; and what the attitude of either is on the vexed subject of birth\ncontrol. Imagine the case of a husband who thinks the use of contraceptives\nright and wishes to use them; and a wife who thinks them absolutely wrong\nand, being warned by the doctor that she must not have more children,\ncheerfully, and with perfect conviction that she is acting nobly, invites\nher husband to run the risk of causing her death! Yet I have known such\ncases.\n\nI do not enter into the question of birth control, because it has been and\nis being discussed much more freely than in the past, and by married people\nwho are much better able to estimate the difficulties and advantages on\neither side of the question than any unmarried person can possibly be.\nSince, however, I am continually asked at least to give my personal\nopinion, for what it is worth, and since it is true that I have heard a\ngood deal (on both sides) from those who _are_ married, I will say briefly\nthat it seems to me of supreme importance (1) that every child that is born\nshould be _desired_, and (2) that no mother's time and strength should be\nso far overtaxed as to prevent her giving to each child all the love and\nindividual care that it requires.\n\nThis necessitates control of the birth-rate, for a baby every year means\na too-hurried emptying of the mother's arms. But I disagree--very\ndiffidently--with the majority of my friends and acquaintances who hold\nthat the right and best method is the use of contraceptives. I do not think\nit the best; I do not think it ideal. Unlike some authorities who must be\nheard with respect, I can say with confidence that some of the noblest,\nhappiest and most romantic marriages I know base their control of\nconception not on contraceptives but on abstinence. They are not prigs,\nthey are not asexual, they do not drift apart, and they have no harsh\ncriticism to make on those who have decided otherwise. These are facts, and\nit is useless to ignore them.\n\nOn the other hand, it is equally true that sometimes such an attempt at\nself-control leads to nervous strain, irritability and alienation. These\nalso are facts.\n\nPersonally, I would submit marital relations to the two tests I have\nproposed, and add that we have succeeded in oversexing ourselves to an\nextent which cannot be ignored; that we have \"repressed\" till we are\nobsessed; and that, before we right ourselves, we shall have to make many\nexperiments, try many roads, and suffer many things. It is then above all\nnecessary that we be very gentle to one another and even a little patient\nwith ourselves. I conceive it much better to use contraceptives than to\nbear unwanted children; I conceive it also better to use them than to be\ncruel to others or become neurotic oneself; but that it is the ideal I do\nnot believe.\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nCOMMON-SENSE AND DIVORCE LAW REFORM\n\n\n     \"Those whom _God_ hath joined together let no man put asunder.\"\n\n\nIn view of what I have said[I] about our marriage and divorce laws, several\npeople have asked what I should actually propose in the way of reform, and\nI am glad to take the opportunity of a new edition briefly to answer this\nquestion.\n\n[Footnote I: See Chapter V.]\n\nI do not wish to see reform take the line of a longer list of \"causes\"\nfor divorce, such, for example, as drunkenness, insanity, imprisonment for\nlife, and so on. I should prefer to abolish these lists altogether, and to\nbring all divorce cases under some form of \"equitable jurisdiction,\" each\ncase being decided on its merits.\n\nIt should be the business of the court to decide whether the marriage\ndesired to be invalidated has _in actual fact_ any validity or reality at\nall; and to declare the couple divorced if it has not. In such courts men\nand women (or a man and a woman) should act together as judges.\n\nIt will be urged that to decide such a question is beyond the power of any\nhuman judgment; but I submit that in fact such decisions are being given\nevery day. A judge who grants a judicial separation is deciding that _a\nmarriage has ceased to be real or valid_, and he divorces the couple _a\nmensa et thoro_, though leaving them without the power to marry again. He\nactually \"puts them asunder\" more rigidly than a divorced couple. Since\nthis is possible, it cannot be impossible for him to decide that the\nmarriage must be wholly dissolved, with freedom of re-marriage to other\npartners; though such a decision, being even more grave, should not be\nreached without certain safeguards.\n\nThese safeguards should include that teaching about marriage on which I\nhave insisted throughout the whole of this book. Young people should know\nwhat sex is and involves: what marriage is: how necessary to the welfare of\nthe race, their children and themselves are fidelity and love. They should\nknow that unless they believe that their love is indeed for life they ought\nnot to marry. They should understand that to fail here is to fail most\ntragically.\n\nIf, nevertheless, a man and woman believe that their marriage is a complete\nand hopeless failure, their claim to be released from it should not be\ngranted in haste. A period of years should in any case elapse before\ndivorce can be obtained, and every effort should be used to reconcile the\ntwo, to remove any removable cause of difficulty, to convince them of the\npossibility of making good, by loyalty, unselfishness and a deep sense of\nresponsibility, even an incomplete and desecrated bond.\n\nIf, however, it is clear that for no worthy consideration can they be\ninduced to take up again the duties and responsibilities of marriage--if\nthey remain immovably and rationally convinced that their marriage is not\na real marriage--they should be released. And this because it is not moral\nbut immoral, not Christian, but unChristian, to pretend that a marriage is\nreal and sacred _when it is not_.\n\nIf there is one quality more striking than another in the teaching of\nChrist, it is His emphasis on reality. It is in this that the height and\ndepth of His morality stand revealed. We do no service--we do a profound\ndis-service--to morals when we admit that a marriage is so utterly devoid\nof reality that the best thing we can do for a \"married couple\" is to\nseparate them from each other altogether--set them apart--free them from\neach other's \"rights\"--break up their home--and yet maintain the legal lie\nthat they are still a married couple.\n\nIt will be asked how the interests of the children can be safeguarded.\nThe interests of children are best safeguarded by the education and\nenlightenment of parents. They cannot be wholly saved if, after all, their\nparents have ceased to love or respect one another, for nothing the law can\ndo will make up to them for that which is every child's right--a home ruled\nby love and full of happiness. The best that can then be done is to rescue\nthem from the misery of a home full of unhappiness and hatred, and to\nassign them to the parent who, in the judgment of the court, is best fitted\nto care for them.\n\nLet me add that, while I hold that the persistent and unconquerable\nconviction of two people that they ought to be divorced ought ultimately to\nentitle them to it, this should not be the case if one only of two married\npeople seeks release. In this case, the decision should be entirely with\nthe court.\n\nTo those who feel that not only our Lord's words but also the\ninterpretation put upon those words by the Church is of supreme importance,\nthe following statement will be of interest: \"It is quite arguable that\nrelief may be granted on the grounds that what is impossible cannot be\ndone. It may be shown on the one hand that to such and such a person it is\nmorally impossible to live with such and such another person, and on the\nother hand that it is morally impossible to live without marriage. In such\ninstances there is room for the exercise of our 'dispensation from the\nimpediment of the legamen' (bond). This is the practice of the Eastern\nChurch, which allows the innocent party to re-marry, and also grants relief\nin cases of incurable insanity.\"\n\nWith regard to the Western Church, \"Divorce and subsequent re-marriage\nin pre-Reformation days were only allowed on grounds existing before the\ncontract was entered into. (There seems good reason for the belief that our\nLord's words as recorded by St. Matthew refer to prenuptial unchastity.)\nBut in spite of this apparently narrow restriction there were fourteen\ngrounds on which a marriage could be declared null and void before the\nReformation, and it was constantly being done. Canonists and Theologians\ntaught that the full and _free_ consent of parties was essential to\nmarriage--which teaching obviously would enable a very wide view of the\nsubject to be taken.\"[J]\n\n[Footnote J: From a \"Memorandum on Divorce,\" published in _The Challenge_,\nJuly 5, 1918.]","title":"Sex and Common-Sense","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":35839}