of touching the things of sex with hands that remember their aptness for
all the fine ends of life. Upon the doorway of entrance to the inmost
sanctuary of love there is thus the same inscription as on the doorway to
the Epidaurian Sanctuary of Aesculapius: "None but the pure shall enter
here."
It will be seen that the definition of chastity
remains somewhat
lacking in precision. That is inevitable. We cannot
grasp purity
tightly, for, like snow, it will merely melt in our
hands.
"Purity itself forbids too minute a system of rules for the
observance of purity," well says Sidgwick (_Methods of Ethics_,
Bk. iii, Ch. IX). Elsewhere (op. cit., Bk. iii, Ch.
XI) he
attempts to answer the question: What sexual
relations are
essentially impure? and concludes that no answer is
possible.
"There appears to be no distinct principle, having any claim to
self-evidence, upon which the question can be
answered so as to
command general assent." Even what is called "Free Love," he
adds, "in so far as it is earnestly advocated as a means to a
completer harmony of sentiment between men and
women, cannot be
condemned as impure, for it seems paradoxical to
distinguish
purity from impurity merely by less rapidity of
transition."
Moll, from the standpoint of medical psychology,
reaches the same
conclusion as Sidgwick from that of ethics. In a
report on the
"Value of Chastity for Men," published as an appendix to the
third edition (1899) of his _Konträre
Sexualempfindung_, the
distinguished Berlin physician discusses the matter
with much
vigorous common sense, insisting that "chaste and unchaste are
_relative ideas_." We must not, he states, as is so often done,
identify "chaste" with "sexually abstinent." He adds that we are
not justified in describing all extra-marital sexual
intercourse
as unchaste, for, if we do so, we shall be compelled
to regard
nearly all men, and some very estimable women, as
unchaste. He
rightly insists that in this matter we must apply
the same rule
to women as to men, and he points out that even when
it involves
what may be technically adultery sexual intercourse
is not
necessarily unchaste. He takes the case of a girl
who, at
eighteen, when still mentally immature, is married
to a man with
whom she finds it impossible to live and a
separation
consequently occurs, although a divorce may be
impossible to
obtain. If she now falls passionately in love with a
man her love
may be entirely chaste, though it involves what is
technically
adultery.
In thus understanding asceticism and chastity, and their beneficial
functions in life, we see that they occupy a place
midway between the
artificially exaggerated position they once held and
that to which they
were degraded by the inevitable reaction of total
indifference or actual
hostility which followed. Asceticism and chastity are
not rigid
categorical imperatives; they are useful means to
desirable ends; they are
wise and beautiful arts. They demand our estimation, but not our
over-estimation. For in over-estimating them, it is too often forgotten,
we over-estimate the sexual instinct. The instinct of
sex is indeed
extremely important. Yet it has not that all-embracing and supereminent
importance which some, even of those who fight against it, are accustomed
to believe. That artificially magnified conception of
the sexual impulse
is fortified by the artificial emphasis placed upon
asceticism. We may
learn the real place of the sexual impulse in learning how we may
reasonably and naturally view the restraints on that
impulse.
FOOTNOTES:
[69] For Blake and for Shelley, as well as, it may be
added, for Hinton,
chastity, as Todhunter remarks in his _Study of
Shelley_, is "a type of
submission to the actual, a renunciation of the
infinite, and is therefore
hated by them. The chaste man, i.e., the man of prudence and self-control,
is the man who has lost the nakedness of his primitive innocence."
[70] For evidence of the practices of savages in this
matter, see Appendix
_A_ to the third volume of these _Studies_, "The Sexual Instinct in
Savages." Cf. also Chs. IV and VII of Westermarck's _History of Human
Marriage_, and also Chs. XXXVIII and XLI of the same
author's _Origin and
Development of the Moral Ideas_, vol. ii; Frazer's
_Golden Bough_ contains
much bearing on this subject, as also Crawley's _Mystic Rose_.
[71] See, e.g., Westermarck, _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_,
vol. ii, pp. 412 et seq.
[72] Thus an old Maori declared, a few years ago, that the decline of his
race has been entirely due to the loss of the ancient
religious faith in
the _tabu_. "For," said he (I quote from an Auckland newspaper), "in the
olden-time our _tapu_ ramified the whole social system.
The head, the
hair, spots where apparitions appeared, places which the _tohungas_
proclaimed as sacred, we have forgotten and disregarded.
Who nowadays
thinks of the sacredness of the head? See when the
kettle boils, the young
man jumps up, whips the cap off his head, and uses it
for a kettle-holder.
Who nowadays but looks on with indifference when the
barber of the
village, if he be near the fire, shakes the loose hair off his cloth into
it, and the joke and the laughter goes on as if no
sacred operation had
just been concluded. Food is consumed on places which, in bygone days, it
dared not even be carried over."
[73] Thus, long before Christian monks arose, the
ascetic life of the
cloister on very similar lines existed in Egypt in the worship of Serapis
(Dill, _Roman Society_, p. 79).
[74] At night, in the baptistry, with lamps dimly
burning, the women were
stripped even of their tunics, plunged three times in
the pool, then
anointed, dressed in white, and kissed.
[75] Thus Jerome, in his letter to Eustochium, refers to those couples who
"share the same room, often even the same bed, and call us suspicious if
we draw any conclusions," while Cyprian (_Epistola_, 86) is unable to
approve of those men he hears of, one a deacon, who live in familiar
intercourse with virgins, even sleeping in the same bed with them, for, he
declares, the feminine sex is weak and youth is wanton.
[76] Perpetua (_Acta Sanctorum_, March 7) is termed by Hort and Mayor
"that fairest flower in the garden of post-Apostolic Christendom." She was
not, however, a virgin, but a young mother with a baby at her breast.
[77] The strength of early Christian asceticism lay in its spontaneous and
voluntary character. When, in the ninth century, the
Carlovingians
attempted to enforce monastic and clerical celibacy, the result was a
great outburst of unchastity and crime; nunneries became brothels, nuns
were frequently guilty of infanticide, monks committed unspeakable
abominations, the regular clergy formed incestuous
relations with their
nearest female relatives (Lea, _History of Sacerdotal
Celibacy_, vol. i,
pp, 155 et seq.).
[78] Sénancour, _De l'Amour_, vol. ii, p. 233. Islam has placed much less
stress on chastity than Christianity, but practically, it would appear,
there is often more regard for chastity under Mohammedan rule than under
Christian rule. Thus it is stated by "Viator"
(_Fortnightly Review_, Dec.,
1908) that formerly, under Turkish Moslem rule, it was impossible to buy
the virtue of women in Bosnia, but that now, under the Christian rule of
Austria, it is everywhere possible to buy women near the Austrian
frontier.
[79] The basis of this feeling was strengthened when it was shown by
scholars that the physical virtue of "virginity" had been masquerading
under a false name. To remain a virgin seems to have
meant at the first,
among peoples of early Aryan culture, by no means to
take a vow of
chastity, but to refuse to submit to the yoke of
patriarchal marriage. The
women who preferred to stand outside marriage were
"virgins," even though
mothers of large families, and Æschylus speaks of the
Amazons as
"virgins," while in Greek the child of an unmarried girl was always "the
virgin's son." The history of Artemis, the most
primitive of Greek
deities, is instructive from this point of view. She was originally only
virginal in the sense that she rejected marriage, being the goddess of a
nomadic and matriarchal hunting people who had not yet adopted marriage,
and she was the goddess of childbirth, worshipped with orgiastic dances
and phallic emblems. It was by a late transformation
that Artemis became
the goddess of chastity (Farnell, _Cults of the Greek
States_, vol. ii,
pp. 442 et seq.; Sir W.M. Ramsay, _Cities of Phrygia_, vol. i, p. 96; Paul
Lafargue, "Les Mythes Historiques," _Revue des Idées_, Dec., 1904).
[80] See, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. iii, Ch. XIII.
[81] _De Civitate Dei_, lib. xv, cap. XX. A little
further on (lib. xvi,
cap. XXV) he refers to Abraham as a man able to use
women as a man should,
his wife temperately, his concubine compliantly, neither immoderately.
[82] _Summa_, Migne's edition, vol. iii, qu. 154, art.
I.
[83] See the Study of Modesty in the first volume of
these _Studies_.
[84] The majority of chaste youths, remarks an acute
critic of modern life
(Hellpach, _Nervosität und Kultur_, p. 175), are merely actuated by
traditional principles, or by shyness, fear of venereal infections, lack
of self-confidence, want of money, very seldom by any
consideration for a
future wife, and that indeed would be a tragi-comic
error, for a woman
lays no importance on intact masculinity. Moreover, he adds, the chaste
man is unable to choose a wife wisely, and it is among teachers and
clergymen--the chastest class--that most unhappy
marriages are made.
Milton had already made this fact an argument for
facility of divorce.
[85] "In eating," said Hinton, "we have achieved the task of combining
pleasure with an absence of 'lust.' The problem for man and woman is so to
use and possess the sexual passion as to make it the
minister to higher
things, with no restraint on it but that. It is
essentially connected with
things of the spiritual order, and would naturally
revolve round them. To
think of it as merely bodily is a mistake."
[86] See "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," and Appendix,
"The Sexual
Instinct in Savages," in vol. iii of these _Studies_.
[87] I have elsewhere discussed more at length the need in modern
civilized life of a natural and sincere asceticism (see _Affirmations_,
1898) "St. Francis and Others."
[88] _Der Wille zur Macht_, p. 392.
[89] At the age of twenty-five, when he had already
produced much fine
work, Mozart wrote in his letters that he had never
touched a woman,
though he longed for love and marriage. He could not
afford to marry, he
would not seduce an innocent girl, a venial relation was repulsive to him.
[90] Reibmayr, _Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies._, Bd.
i, p. 437.
[91] We may exclude altogether, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, the
quality of virginity--that is to say, the possession of an intact
hymen--since this is a merely physical quality with no necessary ethical
relationships. The demand for virginity in women is, for the most part,
either the demand for a better marketable article, or
for a more powerful
stimulant to masculine desire. Virginity involves no
moral qualities in
its possessor. Chastity and asceticism, on the other
hand, are meaningless
terms, except as demands made by the spirit on itself or on the body it
controls.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL ABSTINENCE.
The Influence of Tradition--The Theological Conception of Lust--Tendency
of These Influences to Degrade Sexual Morality--Their
Result in Creating
the Problem of Sexual Abstinence--The Protests Against Sexual
Abstinence--Sexual Abstinence and Genius--Sexual
Abstinence in Women--The
Advocates of Sexual Abstinence--Intermediate Attitude--
Unsatisfactory
Nature of the Whole Discussion--Criticism of the
Conception of Sexual
Abstinence--Sexual Abstinence as Compared to Abstinence from Food--No
Complete Analogy--The Morality of Sexual Abstinence
Entirely Negative--Is
It the Physician's Duty to Advise Extra-Conjugal Sexual Intercourse?--Opinions of Those Who Affirm or Deny This Duty--The
Conclusion Against Such Advice--The Physician Bound by the Social and
Moral Ideas of His Age--The Physician as Reformer--
Sexual Abstinence and
Sexual Hygiene--Alcohol--The Influence of Physical and Mental
Exercise--The Inadequacy of Sexual Hygiene in This
Field--The Unreal
Nature of the Conception of Sexual Abstinence--The
Necessity of Replacing
It by a More Positive Ideal.
When we look at the matter from a purely abstract or
even purely
biological point of view, it might seem that in deciding that asceticism
and chastity are of high value for the personal life we have said all that
is necessary to say. That, however, is very far from
being the case. We
soon realize here, as at every point in the practical
application of
sexual psychology, that it is not sufficient to
determine the abstractly
right course along biological lines. We have to
harmonize our biological
demands with social demands. We are ruled not only by
natural instincts
but by inherited traditions, that in the far past were solidly based on
intelligible grounds, and that even still, by the mere fact of their
existence, exert a force which we cannot and ought not to ignore.
In discussing the valuation of the sexual impulse we
found that we had
good ground for making a very high estimate of love. In discussing
chastity and asceticism we found that they also are
highly to be valued.
And we found that, so far from any contradiction being here involved,
love and chastity are intertwined in all their finest
developments, and
that there is thus a perfect harmony in apparent
opposition. But when we
come to consider the matter in detail, in its particular personal
applications, we find that a new factor asserts itself.
We find that our
inherited social and religious traditions exert a
pressure, all on one
side, which makes it impossible to place the relations of love and
chastity simply on the basis of biology and reason. We are confronted at
the outset by our traditions. On the one side these
traditions have
weighted the word "lust"--considered as expressing all the manifestations
of the sexual impulse which are outside marriage or
which fail to have
marriage as their direct and ostentatious end--with
deprecatory and
sinister meanings. And on the other side these
traditions have created the
problem of "sexual abstinence," which has nothing to do with either
asceticism or chastity as these have been defined in the previous chapter,
but merely with the purely negative pressure on the
sexual impulse,
exerted, independently of the individual's wishes, by
his religious and
social environment.
The theological conception of "lust," or "libido," as sin, followed
logically the early Christian conception of "the flesh,"
and became
inevitable as soon as that conception was firmly
established. Not only,
indeed, had early Christian ideals a degrading influence on the estimation
of sexual desire _per se_, but they tended to depreciate generally the
dignity of the sexual relationship. If a man made sexual advances to a
woman outside marriage, and thus brought her within the despised circle of
"lust," he was injuring her because he was impairing her religious and
moral value.[92] The only way he could repair the damage done was by
paying her money or by entering into a forced and
therefore probably
unfortunate marriage with her. That is to say that
sexual relationships
were, by the ecclesiastical traditions, placed on a
pecuniary basis, on
the same level as prostitution. By its well-meant
intentions to support
the theological morality which had developed on an
ascetic basis, the
Church was thus really undermining even that form of
sexual relationship
which it sanctified.
Gregory the Great ordered that the seducer of a
virgin shall
marry her, or, in case of refusal, be severely
punished
corporally and shut up in a monastery to perform
penance.
According to other ecclesiastical rules, the seducer
of a virgin,
though held to no responsibility by the civil forum,
was required
to marry her, or to find a husband and furnish a
dowry for her.
Such rules had their good side, and were especially
equitable
when seduction had been accomplished by deceit. But
they largely
tended in practice to subordinate all questions of
sexual
morality to a money question. The reparation to the
woman, also,
largely became necessary because the ecclesiastical
conception of
lust caused her value to be depreciated by contact
with lust, and
the reparation might be said to constitute a part of
penance.
Aquinas held that lust, in however slight a degree,
is a mortal
sin, and most of the more influential theologians
took a view
nearly or quite as rigid. Some, however, held that a
certain
degree of delectation is possible in these matters
without mortal
sin, or asserted, for instance, that to feel the
touch of a soft
and warm hand is not mortal sin so long as no sexual
feeling is
thereby aroused. Others, however, held that such
distinctions are
impossible, and that all pleasures of this kind are
sinful. Tomás
Sanchez endeavored at much length to establish rules
for the
complicated problems of delectation that thus arose,
but he was
constrained to admit that no rules are really
possible, and that
such matters must be left to the judgment of a
prudent man. At
that point casuistry dissolves and the modern point
of view
emerges (see, e.g., Lea, _History of Auricular
Confession_, vol.
ii, pp. 57, 115, 246, etc.).
Even to-day the influence of the old traditions of the Church still
unconsciously survives among us. That is inevitable as regards religious
teachers, but it is found also in men of science, even in Protestant
countries. The result is that quite contradictory dogmas are found side by
side, even in the same writer. On the one hand, the
manifestations of the
sexual impulse are emphatically condemned as both
unnecessary and evil; on
the other hand, marriage, which is fundamentally
(whatever else it may
also be) a manifestation of the sexual impulse, receives equally emphatic
approval as the only proper and moral form of
living.[93] There can be no
reasonable doubt whatever that it is to the surviving
and pervading
influence of the ancient traditional theological
conception of _libido_
that we must largely attribute the sharp difference of opinions among
physicians on the question of sexual abstinence and the otherwise
unnecessary acrimony with which these opinions have
sometimes been stated.
On the one side, we find the emphatic statement that
sexual intercourse is
necessary and that health cannot be maintained unless
the sexual
activities are regularly exercised.
"All parts of the body which are developed for a
definite use are kept in
health, and in the enjoyment of fair growth and of long youth, by the
fulfilment of that use, and by their appropriate
exercise in the
employment to which they are accustomed." In that statement, which occurs
in the great Hippocratic treatise "On the Joints," we have the classic
expression of the doctrine which in ever varying forms has been taught by
all those who have protested against sexual abstinence.
When we come down
to the sixteenth century outbreak of Protestantism we
find that Luther's
revolt against Catholicism was in part a protest against the teaching of
sexual abstinence. "He to whom the gift of continence is not given," he
said in his _Table Talk_, "will not become chaste by fasting and vigils.
For my own part I was not excessively tormented [though elsewhere he
speaks of the great fires of lust by which he had been troubled], but all
the same the more I macerated myself the more I burnt."
And three hundred
years later, Bebel, the would-be nineteenth century
Luther of a different
Protestantism, took the same attitude towards sexual
abstinence, while
Hinton the physician and philosopher, living in a land of rigid sexual
conventionalism and prudery, and moved by keen sympathy for the sufferings
he saw around him, would break into passionate sarcasm when confronted by
the doctrine of sexual abstinence. "There are
innumerable ills--terrible