artificiality into a real natural order. Love is real
and positive;
chastity is real and positive. But sexual abstinence is unreal and
negative, in the strict sense perhaps impossible. The
underlying feelings
of all those who have emphasized its importance is that a physiological
process can be good or bad according as it is or is not carried out under
certain arbitrary external conditions, which render it licit or illicit.
An act of sexual intercourse under the name of
"marriage" is beneficial;
the very same act, under the name of "incontinence," is pernicious. No
physiological process, and still less any spiritual
process, can bear such
restriction. It is as much as to say that a meal becomes good or bad,
digestible or indigestible, according as a grace is or is not pronounced
before the eating of it.
It is deplorable because, such a conception being
essentially unreal, an
element of unreality is thus introduced into a matter of the gravest
concern alike to the individual and to society.
Artificial disputes have
been introduced where no matter of real dispute need
exist. A contest has
been carried on marked by all the ferocity which marks contests about
metaphysical or pseudo-metaphysical differences having no concrete basis
in the actual world. As will happen in such cases, there has, after all,
been no real difference between the disputants because the point they
quarreled over was unreal. In truth each side was right and each side was
wrong.
It is necessary, we see, that the balance should be held even. An absolute
license is bad; an absolute abstinence--even though some by nature or
circumstances are urgently called to adopt it--is also bad. They are both
alike away from the gracious equilibrium of Nature. And the force, we see,
which naturally holds this balance even is the
biological fact that the
act of sexual union is the satisfaction of the erotic
needs, not of one
person, but of two persons.
FOOTNOTES:
[92] This view was an ambiguous improvement on the view, universally
prevalent, as Westermarck has shown, among primitive
peoples, that the
sexual act involves indignity to a woman or depreciation of her only in so
far as she is the property of another person who is the really injured
party.
[93] This implicit contradiction has been acutely
pointed out from the
religious side by the Rev. H. Northcote, _Christianity and Sex Problems_,
p. 53.
[94] It has already been necessary to discuss this point briefly in "The
Sexual Impulse in Women," vol. iii of these _Studies_.
[95] "Die Abstinentia Sexualis," _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_,
Nov., 1908.
[96] P. Janet, "La Maladie du Scrupule," _Revue Philosophique_, May, 1901.
[97] S. Freud, _Sexual-Probleme_, March, 1908. As Adele Schreiber also
points out (_Mutterschutz_, Jan., 1907, p. 30), it is
not enough to prove
that abstinence is not dangerous; we have to remember
that the spiritual
and physical energy used up in repressing this mighty
instinct often
reduces a joyous and energetic nature to a weary and
faded shadow.
Similarly, Helene Stöcker (_Die Liebe und die Frauen_, p. 105) says: "The
question whether abstinence is harmful is, to say the
truth, a ridiculous
question. One needs to be no nervous specialist to know, as a matter of
course, that a life of happy love and marriage is the
healthy life, and
its complete absence cannot fail to lead to severe
psychic depression,
even if no direct physiological disturbances can be
demonstrated."
[98] Max Flesch, "Ehe, Hygine und Sexuelle Moral,"
_Mutterschutz_, 1905,
Heft 7.
[99] See the Section on Touch in the fourth volume of
these _Studies_.
[100] "I have had two years' close experience and connexion with the
Trappists," wrote Dr. Butterfield, of Natal (_British Medical Journal_,
Sept. 15, 1906, p. 668), "both as medical attendant and as being a
Catholic in creed myself. I have studied them and
investigated their life,
habits and diet, and though I should be very backward in adopting it
myself, as not suited to me individually, the great bulk of them are in
absolute ideal health and strength, seldom ailing,
capable of vast work,
mental and physical. Their life is very simple and very regular. A
healthier body of men and women, with perfect equanimity of temper--this
latter I lay great stress on--it would be difficult to find. Health beams
in their eyes and countenance and actions. Only in
sickness or prolonged
journeys are they allowed any strong foods--meats, eggs, etc.--or any
alcohol."
[101] Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 332.
[102] Rural life, as we have seen when discussing its
relation to sexual
precocity, _is_ on one side the reverse of a safeguard against sexual
influences. But, on the other hand, in so far as it
involves hard work and
simple living under conditions that are not nervously
stimulating, it is
favorable to a considerably delayed sexual activity in youth and to a
relative continence. Ammon, in the course of his
anthropological
investigations of Baden conscripts, found that sexual
intercourse was rare
in the country before twenty, and even sexual emissions during sleep rare
before nineteen or twenty. It is said, also, he repeats, that no one has a
right to run after girls who does not yet carry a gun, and the elder lads
sometimes brutally ill-treat any younger boy found going about with a
girl. No doubt this is often preliminary to much license later.
[103] The numerical preponderance which celibate women teachers have now
gained in the American school system has caused much
misgiving among many
sagacious observers, and is said to be unsatisfactory in its results on
the pupils of both sexes. A distinguished authority,
Professor McKeen
Cattell ("The School and the Family," _Popular Science Monthly_, Jan.,
1909), referring to this preponderance of "devitalized and unsexed
spinsters," goes so far as to say that "the ultimate result of letting the
celibate female be the usual teacher has been such as to make it a
question whether it would not be an advantage to the
country if the whole
school plant could be scrapped."
[104] Corre (_Les Criminels_, p. 351) mentions that of thirteen priests
convicted of crime, six were guilty of sexual attempts on children, and of
eighty-three convicted lay teachers, forty-eight had
committed similar
offenses. This was at a time when lay teachers were in practice almost
compelled to live a celibate life; altered conditions
have greatly
diminished this class of offense among them. Without
going so far as
crime, many moral and religious men, clergymen and
others, who have led
severely abstinent lives in youth, sometimes experience in middle age or
later the eruption of almost uncontrollable sexual
impulses, normal or
abnormal. In women such manifestations are apt to take the form of
obsessional thoughts of sexual character, as e.g., the case
(_Comptes-Rendus Congrès International de Médecine_,
Moscow, 1897, vol.
iv, p. 27) of a chaste woman who was compelled to think about and look at
the sexual organs of men.
[105] J.A. Godfrey, _The Science of Sex_, p. 138.
[106] See, e.g., Havelock Ellis, "St. Francis and Others," _Affirmations_.
CHAPTER VII.
PROSTITUTION.
I. _The Orgy:_--The Religious Origin of the Orgy--The
Feast of
Fools--Recognition of the Orgy by the Greeks and Romans-
-The Orgy Among
Savages--The Drama--The Object Subserved by the Orgy.
II. _The Origin and Development of Prostitution:_--The Definition of
Prostitution--Prostitution Among Savages--The Conditions Under Which
Professional Prostitution Arises--Sacred Prostitution--
The Rite of
Mylitta--The Practice of Prostitution to Obtain a
Marriage Portion--The
Rise of Secular Prostitution in Greece--Prostitution in the East--India,
China, Japan, etc.--Prostitution in Rome--The Influence of Christianity on
Prostitution--The Effort to Combat Prostitution--The
Mediæval Brothel--The
Appearance of the Courtesan--Tullia D'Aragona--Veronica Franco--Ninon de
Lenclos--Later Attempts to Eradicate Prostitution--The Regulation of
Prostitution--Its Futility Becoming Recognized.
III. _The Causes of Prostitution:_--Prostitution as a