wished to be men, though scarcely any boys wished to be women.[31] With
the same tendency may be connected that neglect to
cultivate the emotions,
which, by a mischievously extravagant but inevitable
reaction from the
opposite extreme, has sometimes marked the modern
training of women. In
the finely developed woman, intelligence is
interpenetrated with emotion.
If there is an exaggerated and isolated culture of
intelligence a tendency
shows itself to disharmony which breaks up the character or impairs its
completeness. In this connection Reibmayr has remarked that the American
woman may serve as a warning.[32] Within the emotional sphere itself, it
may be added, there is a tendency to disharmony in women owing to the
contradictory nature of the feelings which are
traditionally impressed
upon her, a contradiction which dates back indeed to the identification of
sacredness and impurity at the dawn of civilization.
"Every girl and
woman," wrote Hellmann, in a pioneering book which pushed a sound
principle to eccentric extremes, "is taught to regard her sexual parts as
a precious and sacred spot, only to be approached by a husband or in
special circumstances a doctor. She is, at the same
time, taught to regard
this spot as a kind of water-closet which she ought to be extremely
ashamed to possess, and the mere mention of which should cause a painful
blush."[33] The average unthinking woman accepts the incongruity of this
opposition without question, and grows accustomed to
adapt herself to each
of the incompatibles according to circumstances. The
more thoughtful woman
works out a private theory of her own. But in very many cases this
mischievous opposition exerts a subtly perverting
influence on the whole
outlook towards Nature and life. In a few cases, also, in women of
sensitive temperament, it even undermines and ruins the psychic
personality.
Thus Boris Sidis has recorded a case illustrating
the disastrous
results of inculcating on a morbidly sensitive girl
the doctrine
of the impurity of women. She was educated in a
convent. "While
there she was impressed with the belief that woman
is a vessel of
vice and impurity. This seemed to have been imbued
in her by one
of the nuns who was very holy and practiced self-
mortification.
With the onset of her periods, and with the
observation of the
same in the other girls, this doctrine of female
impurity was all
the stronger impressed on her sensitive mind." It lapsed,
however, from conscious memory and only came to the
foreground in
subsequent years with the exhaustion and fatigue of
prolonged
office work. Then she married. Now "she has an
extreme abhorrence
of women. Woman, to the patient, is impurity, filth,
the very
incarnation of degradation and vice. The house wash
must not be
given to a laundry where women work. Nothing must be
picked up in
the street, not even the most valuable object,
perchance it might
have been dropped by a woman" (Boris Sidis, "Studies in
Psychopathology," _Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal_, April 4,
1907). That is the logical outcome of much of the
traditional
teaching which is given to girls. Fortunately, the
healthy mind
offers a natural resistance to its complete
acceptation, yet it
usually, in some degree, persists and exerts a
mischievous
influence.
It is, however, not only in her relations to herself and to her sex that a
girl's thoughts and feelings tend to be distorted by the ignorance or the
false traditions by which she is so often carefully
surrounded. Her
happiness in marriage, her whole future career, is put in peril. The
innocent young woman must always risk much in entering the door of
indissoluble marriage; she knows nothing truly of her
husband, she knows
nothing of the great laws of love, she knows nothing of her own
possibilities, and, worse still, she is even ignorant of her ignorance.
She runs the risk of losing the game while she is still only beginning to
learn it. To some extent that is quite inevitable if we are to insist
that a woman should bind herself to marry a man before she has experienced
the nature of the forces that marriage may unloose in
her. A young girl
believes she possesses a certain character; she arranges her future in
accordance with that character; she marries. Then, in a considerable
proportion of cases (five out of six, according to the novelist Bourget),
within a year or even a week, she finds she was
completely mistaken in
herself and in the man she has married; she discovers
within her another
self, and that self detests the man to whom she is
bound. That is a
possible fate against which only the woman who has
already been aroused to
love is entitled to regard herself as fairly protected.
There is, however, a certain kind of protection which it is possible to
afford the bride, even without departing from our most conventional
conceptions of marriage. We can at least insist that she shall be
accurately informed as to the exact nature of her
physical relations to
her future husband and be safeguarded from the shocks or the disillusions
which marriage might otherwise bring. Notwithstanding
the decay of
prejudices, it is probable that even to-day the majority of women of the
so-called educated class marry with only the vaguest and most inaccurate
notions, picked up more or less clandestinely,
concerning the nature of
the sexual relationships. So highly intelligent a woman as Madame Adam has
stated that she believed herself bound to marry a man
who had kissed her
on the mouth, imagining that to be the supreme act of
sexual union,[34]
and it has frequently happened that women have married sexually inverted
persons of their own sex, not always knowingly, but
believing them to be
men, and never discovering their mistake; it is not long indeed since in
America three women were thus successively married to
the same woman, none
of them apparently ever finding out the real sex of the
"husband." "The
civilized girl," as Edward Carpenter remarks, "is led to the 'altar'
often in uttermost ignorance and misunderstanding of the sacrificial rites
about to be consummated." Certainly more rapes have been effected in
marriage than outside it.[35] The girl is full of vague and romantic faith
in the promises of love, often heightened by the
ecstasies depicted in
sentimental novels from which every touch of wholesome reality has been
carefully omitted. "All the candor of faith is there,"
as Sénancour puts
it in his book _De l'Amour_, "the desires of
inexperience, the needs of a
new life, the hopes of an upright heart. She has all the faculties of
love, she must love; she has all the means of pleasure, she must be loved.
Everything expresses love and demands love: this hand
formed for sweet
caresses, an eye whose resources are unknown if it must not say that it
consents to be loved, a bosom which is motionless and
useless without
love, and will fade without having been worshipped;
these feelings that
are so vast, so tender, so voluptuous, the ambition of the heart, the
heroism of passion! She needs must follow the delicious rule which the law
of the world has dictated. That intoxicating part, which she knows so
well, which everything recalls, which the day inspires and the night
commands, what young, sensitive, loving woman can
imagine that she shall
not play it?" But when the actual drama of love begins to unroll before
her, and she realizes the true nature of the
"intoxicating part" she has
to play, then, it has often happened, the case is
altered; she finds
herself altogether unprepared, and is overcome with
terror and alarm. All
the felicity of her married life may then hang on a few chances, her
husband's skill and consideration, her own presence of mind. Hirschfeld
records the case of an innocent young girl of seventeen-
-in this case, it
eventually proved, an invert--who was persuaded to marry but on
discovering what marriage meant energetically resisted her husband's
sexual approaches. He appealed to her mother to explain to her daughter
the nature of "wifely duties." But the young wife replied to her mother's
expostulations, "If that is my wifely duty then it was your parental duty
to have told me beforehand, for, if I had known, I
should never have
married." The husband in this case, much in love with his wife, sought for
eight years to over-persuade her, but in vain, and a
separation finally
took place.[36] That, no doubt, is an extreme case, but how many innocent
young inverted girls never realize their true nature
until after marriage,
and how many perfectly normal girls are so shocked by
the too sudden
initiation of marriage that their beautiful early dreams of love never
develop slowly and wholesomely into the acceptance of
its still more
beautiful realities?
Before the age of puberty it would seem that the sexual initiation of the
child--apart from such scientific information as would form part of school
courses in botany and zoölogy--should be the exclusive privilege of the
mother, or whomever it may be to whom the mother's
duties are delegated.
At puberty more authoritative and precise advice is
desirable than the
mother may be able or willing to give. It is at this age that she should
put into her son's or daughter's hands some one or other of the very
numerous manuals to which reference has already been
made (page 53),
expounding the physical and moral aspects of the sexual life and the
principles of sexual hygiene. The boy or girl is
already, we may take it,
acquainted with the facts of motherhood, and the origin of babies, as well
as, more or less precisely, with the father's part in
their procreation.
Whatever manual is now placed in his or her hands should at least deal
summarily, but definitely, with the sexual relationship, and should also
comment, warningly but in no alarmist spirit, with the chief auto-erotic
phenomena, and by no means exclusively with
masturbation. Nothing but good
can come of the use of such a manual, if it has been
wisely selected; it
will supplant what the mother has already done, what the teacher may still
be doing, and what later may be done by private
interview with a doctor.
It has indeed been argued that the boy or girl to whom such literature is
presented will merely make it an opportunity for morbid revelry and
sensual enjoyment. It can well be believed that this may sometimes happen
with boys or girls from whom all sexual facts have
always been
mysteriously veiled, and that when at last they find the opportunity of
gratifying their long-repressed and perfectly natural
curiosity they are
overcome by the excitement of the event. It could not
happen to children
who have been naturally and wholesomely brought up. At a later age, during
adolescence, there is doubtless great advantage in the plan, now
frequently adopted, especially in Germany, of giving
lectures, addresses,
or quiet talks to young people of each sex separately.
The speaker is
usually a specially selected teacher, a doctor or other qualified person
who may be brought in for this special purpose.
Stanley Hall, after remarking that sexual education
should be
chiefly from fathers to sons and from mothers to
daughters, adds:
"It may be that in the future this kind of
initiation will again
become an art, and experts will tell us with more
confidence how
to do our duty to the manifold exigencies, types and
stages of
youth, and instead of feeling baffled and defeated,
we shall see
that this age and theme is the supreme opening for
the highest
pedagogy to do its best and most transforming work,
as well as
being the greatest of all opportunities for the
teacher of
religion" (Stanley Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. i, p.
469). "At
Williams College, Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Clark,"
the same
distinguished teacher observes (ib., p. 465), "I
have made it a
duty in my departmental teaching to speak very
briefly, but
plainly to young men under my instruction,
personally if I deemed
it wise, and often, though here only in general
terms, before
student bodies, and I believe I have nowhere done
more good, but
it is a painful duty. It requires tact and some
degree of hard
and strenuous common sense rather than technical
knowledge."
It is scarcely necessary to say that the ordinary
teacher of
either sex is quite incompetent to speak of sexual
hygiene. It is
a task to which all, or some, teachers must be
trained. A
beginning in this direction has been made in Germany
by the
delivery to teachers of courses of lectures on
sexual hygiene in
education. In Prussia the first attempt was made in
Breslau when
the central school authorities requested Dr. Martin
Chotzen to
deliver such a course to one hundred and fifty
teachers who took
the greatest interest in the lectures, which covered
the anatomy
of the sexual organs, the development of the sexual
instinct, its
chief perversions, venereal diseases, and the
importance of the
cultivation of self-control. In _Geschlecht und
Gesellschaft_
(Bd. i, Heft 7) Dr. Fritz Reuther gives the
substance of lectures
which he has delivered to a class of young teachers;
they cover
much the same ground as Chotzen's.
There is no evidence that in England the Minister of
Education
has yet taken any steps to insure the delivery of
lectures on
sexual hygiene to the pupils who are about to leave
school. In
Prussia, however, the Ministry of Education has
taken an active
interest in this matter, and such lectures are
beginning to be
commonly delivered, though attendance at them is not
usually
obligatory. Some years ago (in 1900), when it was
proposed to
deliver a series of lectures on sexual hygiene to
the advanced
pupils in Berlin schools, under the auspices of a
society for the
improvement of morals, the municipal authorities
withdrew their
permission to use the classrooms, on the ground that
"such
lectures would be extremely dangerous to the moral
sense of an
audience of the young." The same objection has been made by
municipal officials in France. In Germany, at all
events,
however, opinion is rapidly growing more
enlightened. In England
little or no progress has yet been made, but in
America steps are
being taken in this direction, as by the Chicago
Society for
Social Hygiene. It must, indeed, be said that those
who oppose
the sexual enlightenment of youth in large cities
are directly
allying themselves, whether or not they know it,
with the
influences that make for vice and immorality.
Such lectures are also given to girls on leaving
school, not only
girls of the well-to-do, but also those of the poor
class, who
need them fully as much, and in some respects more.
Thus Dr. A.
Heidenhain has published a lecture (_Sexuelle
Belehrung der aus
den Volksschule entlassenen Mädchen_, 1907),
accompanied by
anatomical tables, which he has delivered to girls
about to leave
school, and which is intended to be put into their
hands at this
time. Salvat, in a Lyons thesis (_La Dépopulation de
la France_,
1903), insists that the hygiene of pregnancy and the
care of
infants should form part of the subject of such
lectures. These
subjects might well be left, however, to a somewhat
later period.
Something is clearly needed beyond lectures on these
matters. It should be
the business of the parents or other guardians of every adolescent youth
and girl to arrange that, once at least at this period of life, there
should be a private, personal interview with a medical man to afford an
opportunity for a friendly and confidential talk
concerning the main
points of sexual hygiene. The family doctor would be the best for this
duty because he would be familiar with the personal
temperament of the
youth and the family tendencies.[37] In the case of
girls a woman doctor
would often be preferred. Sex is properly a mystery; and to the unspoilt
youth, it is instinctively so; except in an abstract and technical form it
cannot properly form the subject of lectures. In a
private and
individualized conversation between the novice in life and the expert, it
is possible to say many necessary things that could not be said in public,
and it is possible, moreover, for the youth to ask
questions which shyness
and reserve make it impossible to put to parents, while the convenient
opportunity of putting them naturally to the expert
otherwise seldom or
never occurs. Most youths have their own special
ignorances, their own
special difficulties, difficulties and ignorances that could sometimes be
resolved by a word. Yet it by no means infrequently
happens that they
carry them far on into adult life because they have
lacked the
opportunity, or the skill and assurance to create the
opportunity, of
obtaining enlightenment.
It must be clearly understood that these talks are of
medical, hygienic,
and physiological character; they are not to be used for retailing moral
platitudes. To make them that would be a fatal mistake.
The young are
often very hostile to merely conventional moral maxims, and suspect their
hollowness, not always without reason. The end to be
aimed at here is
enlightenment. Certainly knowledge can never be immoral, but nothing is
gained by jumbling up knowledge and morality together.
In emphasizing the nature of the physician's task in
this matter as purely
and simply that of wise practical enlightenment, nothing is implied
against the advantages, and indeed the immense value in sexual hygiene, of
the moral, religious, ideal elements of life. It is not the primary
business of the physician to inspire these, but they
have a very intimate
relation with the sexual life, and every boy and girl at puberty, and
never before puberty, should be granted the privilege--
and not the duty or
the task--of initiation into those elements of the
world's life which are,
at the same time, natural functions of the adolescent
soul. Here, however,
is the sphere of the religious or ethical teacher. At
puberty he has his
great opportunity, the greatest he can ever obtain. The flower of sex that
blossoms in the body at puberty has its spiritual
counterpart which at the
same moment blossoms in the soul. The churches from of old have recognized
the religious significance of this moment, for it is
this period of life
that they have appointed as the time of confirmation and similar rites.
With the progress of the ages, it is true, such rites
become merely formal
and apparently meaningless fossils. But they have a
meaning nevertheless,
and are capable of being again vitalized. Nor in their spirit and essence
should they be confined to those who accept
supernaturally revealed
religion. They concern all ethical teachers, who must
realize that it is
at puberty that they are called upon to inspire or to
fortify the great
ideal aspirations which at this period tend
spontaneously to arise in the
youth's or maiden's soul.[38]
The age of puberty, I have said, marks the period at
which this new kind
of sexual initiation is called for. Before puberty,
although the psychic
emotion of love frequently develops, as well as
sometimes physical sexual
emotions that are mostly vague and diffused, definite
and localized sexual
sensations are rare. For the normal boy or girl love is usually an
unspecialized emotion; it is in Guyau's words "a state in which the body
has but the smallest place." At the first rising of the sun of sex the
boy or girl sees, as Blake said he saw at sunrise, not a round yellow body
emerging above the horizon, or any other physical
manifestation, but a
great company of singing angels. With the definite
eruption of physical
sexual manifestation and desire, whether at puberty or later in
adolescence, a new turbulent disturbing influence
appears. Against the
force of this influence, mere intellectual
enlightenment, or even loving
maternal counsel--the agencies we have so far been
concerned with--may be
powerless. In gaining control of it we must find our
auxiliary in the fact
that puberty is the efflorescence not only of a new
physical but a new
psychic force. The ideal world naturally unfolds itself to the boy or girl
at puberty. The magic of beauty, the instinct of
modesty, the naturalness
of self-restraint, the idea of unselfish love, the
meaning of duty, the
feeling for art and poetry, the craving for religious
conceptions and
emotions--all these things awake spontaneously in the
unspoiled boy or
girl at puberty. I say "unspoiled," for if these things have been thrust
on the child before puberty when they have yet no
meaning for him--as is
unfortunately far too often done, more especially as