spontaneous growth, to modify them. This action is
diverse, according as
we are dealing with one or the other of the strongly
marked divisions of
theoretical morality: traditional and posterior
morality, retarding the
vital growth of moral practice, or ideal and anterior
morality,
stimulating the vital growth of moral practice.
Practical morality, or
morals proper, may be said to stand between these two
divisions of
theoretical morality. Practice is perpetually following after anterior
theoretical morality, in so far of course as ideal
morality really is
anterior and not, as so often happens, astray up a blind alley. Posterior
or traditional morality always follows after practice.
The result is that
while the actual morality, in practice at any time or
place, is always
closely related to theoretical morality, it can never
exactly correspond
to either of its forms. It always fails to catch up with ideal morality;
it is always outgrowing traditional morality.
It has been necessary at this point to formulate
definitely the three
chief forms in which the word "moral" is used, although under one shape or
another they cannot but be familiar to the reader. In
the discussion of
prostitution it has indeed been easily possible to
follow the usual custom
of allowing the special sense in which the word was used to be determined
by the context. But now, when we are, for the moment,
directly concerned
with the specific question of the evolution of sexual
morality, it is
necessary to be more precise in formulating the terms we use. In this
chapter, except when it is otherwise stated, we are
concerned primarily
with morals proper, with actual conduct as it develops among the masses of
a community, and only secondarily with anterior morality or with posterior
morality.
Sexual morality, like all other kinds of morality, is
necessarily
constituted by inherited traditions modified by new
adaptations to the
changing social environment. If the influence of
tradition becomes unduly
pronounced the moral life tends to decay and lose its
vital adaptability.
If adaptability becomes too facile the moral life tends to become unstable
and to lose authority. It is only by a reasonable
synthesis of structure
and function--of what is called the traditional with
what is called the
ideal--that the moral life can retain its authority
without losing its
reality. Many, even among those who call themselves
moralists, have found
this hard to understand. In a vain desire for an
impossible logicality
they have over-emphasized either the ideal influence on practical morals
or, still more frequently, the traditional influence,
which has appealed
to them because of the impressive authority its _dicta_
seem to convey.
The results in the sphere we are here concerned with
have often been
unfortunate, for no social impulse is so rebellious to decayed traditions,
so volcanically eruptive, as that of sex.
We are accustomed to identify our present marriage
system with "morality"
in the abstract, and for many people, perhaps for most, it is difficult to
realize that the slow and insensible movement which is always affecting
social life at the present time, as at every other time, is profoundly
affecting our sexual morality. A transference of values is constantly
taking place; what was once the very standard of
morality becomes immoral,
what was once without question immoral becomes a new
standard. Such a
process is almost as bewildering as for the European
world two thousand
years ago was the great struggle between the Roman city and the Christian
Church, when it became necessary to realize that what
Marcus Aurelius, the
great pattern of morality, had sought to crush as
without question
immoral,[265] was becoming regarded as the supreme
standard of morality.
The classic world considered love and pity and self-
sacrifice as little
better than weakness and sometimes worse; the Christian world not only
regarded them as moralities but incarnated them in a
god. Our sexual
morality has likewise disregarded natural human
emotions, and is incapable
of understanding those who declare that to retain unduly traditional laws
that are opposed to the vital needs of human societies is not a morality
but an immorality.
The reason why the gradual evolution of moral ideals,
which is always
taking place, tends in the sexual sphere, at all events among ourselves,
to reach a stage in which there seems to be an
opposition between
different standards lies in the fact that as yet we
really have no
specific sexual morality at all.[266] That may seem
surprising at first to
one who reflects on the immense weight which is usually attached to
"sexual morality." And it is undoubtedly true that we have a morality
which we apply to the sphere of sex. But that morality is one which
belongs mainly to the sphere of property and was very
largely developed on
a property basis. All the historians of morals in
general, and of marriage
in particular, have set forth this fact, and illustrated it with a wealth
of historical material. We have as yet no generally
recognized sexual
morality which has been based on the specific sexual
facts of life. That
becomes clear at once when we realize the central fact that the sexual
relationship is based on love, at the very least on
sexual desire, and
that that basis is so deep as to be even physiological, for in the absence
of such sexual desire it is physiologically impossible for a man to effect
intercourse with a woman. Any specific sexual morality must be based on
that fact. But our so-called "sexual morality," so far from being based on
that fact, attempts to ignore it altogether. It makes
contracts, it
arranges sexual relationships beforehand, it offers to guarantee
permanency of sexual inclinations. It introduces, that is, considerations
of a kind that is perfectly sound in the economic sphere to which such
considerations rightly belong, but ridiculously
incongruous in the sphere
of sex to which they have solemnly been applied. The
economic
relationships of life, in the large sense, are, as we
shall see, extremely
important in the evolution of any sound sexual morality, but they belong
to the conditions of its development and do not
constitute its basis.[267]
The fact that, from the legal point of view,
marriage is
primarily an arrangement for securing the rights of
property and
inheritance is well illustrated by the English
divorce law
to-day. According to this law, if a woman has sexual
intercourse
with any man beside her husband, he is entitled to
divorce her;
if, however, the husband has intercourse with
another woman
beside his wife, she is not entitled to a divorce;
that is only
accorded if, in addition, he has also been cruel to
her, or
deserted her, and from any standpoint of ideal
morality such a
law is obviously unjust, and it has now been
discarded in nearly
all civilized lands except England.
But from the standpoint of property and inheritance
it is quite
intelligible, and on that ground it is still
supported by the
majority of Englishmen. If the wife has intercourse
with other
men there is a risk that the husband's property will
be inherited
by a child who is not his own. But the sexual
intercourse of the
husband with other women is followed by no such
risk. The
infidelity of the wife is a serious offence against
property; the
infidelity of the husband is no offence against
property, and
cannot possibly, therefore, be regarded as a ground
for divorce
from our legal point of view. The fact that his
adultery
complicated by cruelty is such a ground, is simply a
concession
to modern feeling. Yet, as Helena Stöcker truly
points out
("Verschiedenheit im Liebesleben des Weibes und des Mannes,"
_Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Dec., 1908), a
married man
who has an unacknowledged child with a woman outside
of marriage,
has committed an act as seriously anti-social as a
married woman
who has a child without acknowledging that the
father is not her
husband. In the first case, the husband, and in the
second case,
the wife, have placed an undue amount of
responsibility on
another person. (The same point is brought forward
by the author
of _The Question of English Divorce_, p. 56.)
I insist here on the economic element in our sexual
morality,
because that is the element which has given it a
kind of
stability and become established in law. But if we
take a wider
view of our sexual morality, we cannot ignore the
ancient element
of asceticism, which has given religious passion and
sanction to
it. Our sexual morality is thus, in reality, a
bastard born of
the union of property-morality with primitive
ascetic morality,
neither in true relationship to the vital facts of
the sexual
life. It is, indeed, the property element which,
with a few
inconsistencies, has become finally the main concern
of our law,
but the ascetic element (with, in the past, a
wavering
relationship to law) has had an important part in
moulding
popular sentiment and in creating an attitude of
reprobation
towards sexual intercourse _per se_, although such
intercourse is
regarded as an essential part of the property-based
and
religiously sanctified institution of legal
marriage.
The glorification of virginity led by imperceptible
stages to the
formulation of "fornication" as a deadly sin, and finally as an
actual secular "crime." It is sometimes stated that it was not
until the Council of Trent that the Church formally
anathematized
those who held that the state of marriage was higher
than that of
virginity, but the opinion had been more or less
formally held
from almost the earliest ages of Christianity, and
is clear in
the epistles of Paul. All the theologians agree that
fornication
is a mortal sin. Caramuel, indeed, the distinguished
Spanish
theologian, who made unusual concessions to the
demands of reason
and nature, held that fornication is only evil
because it is
forbidden, but Innocent XI formally condemned that
proposition.
Fornication as a mortal sin became gradually
secularized into
fornication as a crime. Fornication was a crime in
France even as
late as the eighteenth century, as Tarde found in
his historical
investigations of criminal procedure in Périgord;
adultery was
also a crime and severely punished quite
independently of any
complaint from either of the parties (Tarde,
"Archéologie
Criminelle en Périgord," _Archives de
l'Anthropologie
Criminelle_, Nov. 15, 1898).
The Puritans of the Commonwealth days in England
(like the
Puritans of Geneva) followed the Catholic example
and adopted
ecclesiastical offences against chastity into the
secular law. By
an Act passed in 1653 fornication became punishable
by three
months' imprisonment inflicted on both parties. By
the same Act
the adultery of a wife (nothing is said of a
husband) was made
felony, both for her and her partner in guilt, and
therefore
punishable by death (Scobell, _Acts and Ordinances_,
p. 121).
The action of a pseudo-morality, such as our sexual
morality has been, is
double-edged. On the one side it induces a secret and
shamefaced laxity,
on the other it upholds a rigid and uninspiring
theoretical code which so
few can consistently follow that theoretical morality is thereby degraded
into a more or less empty form. "The human race would gain much," said the
wise Sénancour, "if virtue were made less laborious. The merit would not
be so great, but what is the use of an elevation which can rarely be
sustained?"[268] At present, as a more recent moralist, Ellen Key, puts
it, we only have an immorality which favors vice and
makes virtue
irrealizable, and, as she exclaims with pardonable
extravagance, to preach
a sounder morality to the young, without at the same
time condemning the
society which encourages the prevailing immorality, is
"worse than folly,
it is crime."
It is on the lines along which Sénancour a century ago and Ellen Key
to-day are great pioneers that the new forms of anterior or ideal
theoretical morality are now moving, in advance,
according to the general
tendency in morals, of traditional morality and even of practice.
There is one great modern movement of a definite kind
which will serve to
show how clearly sexual morality is to-day moving
towards a new
standpoint. This is the changing attitude of the bulk of the community
towards both State marriage and religious marriage, and the growing
tendency to disallow State interference with sexual
relationships, apart
from the production of children.
There has no doubt always been a tendency among the
masses of the
population in Europe to dispense with the official
sanction of sexual
relationships until such relationships have been well
established and the
hope of offspring has become justifiable. This tendency has been
crystallized into recognized customs among numberless
rural communities
little touched either by the disturbing influences of
the outside world or
the controlling influences of theological Christian
conceptions. But at
the present day this tendency is not confined to the
more primitive and
isolated communities of Europe among whom, on the
contrary, it has tended
to die out. It is an unquestionable fact, says Professor Bruno Meyer, that
far more than the half of sexual intercourse now takes place outside legal
marriage.[269] It is among the intelligent classes and in prosperous and
progressive communities that this movement is chiefly
marked. We see
throughout the world the practical common sense of the people shaping
itself in the direction which has been pioneered by the ideal moralists
who invariably precede the new growth of practical
morality.
The voluntary childless marriages of to-day have served to show the
possibility of such unions outside legal marriage, and such free unions
are becoming, as Mrs. Parsons points out, "a progressive substitute for
marriage."[270] The gradual but steady rise in the age for entering on
legal marriage also points in the same direction, though it indicates not
merely an increase of free unions but an increase of all forms of normal
and abnormal sexuality outside marriage. Thus in England and Wales, in
1906, only 43 per 1,000 husbands and 146 per 1,000 wives were under age,
while the average age for husbands was 28.6 years and
for wives 26.4
years. For men the age has gone up some eight months
during the past forty
years, for women more than this. In the large cities,
like London, where
the possibilities of extra-matrimonial relationships are greater, the age
for legal marriage is higher than in the country.
If we are to regard the age of legal marriage as, on
the whole,
the age at which the population enters into sexual
unions, it is
undoubtedly too late. Beyer, a leading German
neurologist, finds
that there are evils alike in early and in late
marriage, and
comes to the conclusion that in temperate zones the
best age for
women to marry is the twenty-first year, and for men
the
twenty-fifth year.
Yet, under bad economic conditions and with a rigid
marriage law,
early marriages are in every respect disastrous.
They are among
the poor a sign of destitution. The very poorest
marry first, and
they do so through the feeling that their condition
cannot be
worse. (Dr. Michael Ryan brought together much
interesting
evidence concerning the causes of early marriage in
Ireland in
his _Philosophy of Marriage_, 1837, pp. 58-72).
Among the poor,
therefore, early marriage is always a misfortune.
"Many good
people," says Mr. Thomas Holmes, Secretary of the Howard
Association and missionary at police courts (in an
interview,
_Daily Chronicle_, Sept. 8, 1906), "advise boys and girls to get
married in order to prevent what they call a
'disgrace.' This I
consider to be absolutely wicked, and it leads to
far greater
evils than it can possibly avert."
Early marriages are one of the commonest causes both
of
prostitution and divorce. They lead to prostitution
in
innumerable cases, even when no outward separation
takes place.
The fact that they lead to divorce is shown by the
significant
circumstance that in England, although only 146 per
1,000 women
are under twenty-one at marriage, of the wives
concerned in
divorce cases, 280 per 1,000 were under twenty-one
at marriage,
and this discrepancy is even greater than it
appears, for in the
well-to-do class, which can alone afford the luxury
of divorce,
the normal age at marriage is much higher than for
the population
generally. Inexperience, as was long ago pointed out
by Milton
(who had learnt this lesson to his cost), leads to
shipwreck in
marriage. "They who have lived most loosely," he wrote, "prove
most successful in their matches, because their wild
affections,
unsettling at will, have been so many divorces to
teach them
experience."
Miss Clapperton, referring to the educated classes,
advocates
very early marriage, even during student life, which
might then
be to some extent carried on side by side
(_Scientific
Meliorism_, Ch. XVII). Ellen Key, also, advocates
early marriage.
But she wisely adds that it involves the necessity
for easy
divorce. That, indeed, is the only condition which
can render
early marriage generally desirable. Young people--
unless they
possess very simple and inert natures--can neither
foretell the
course of their own development and their own
strongest needs,
nor estimate accurately the nature and quality of
another
personality. A marriage formed at an early age very
speedily
ceases to be a marriage in anything but name.
Sometimes a young
girl applies for a separation from her husband even
on the very
day after marriage.
The more or less permanent free unions formed among us in Europe are
usually to be regarded merely as trial-marriages. That is to say they are
a precaution rendered desirable both by uncertainty as to either the
harmony or the fruitfulness of union until actual
experiment has been
made, and by the practical impossibility of otherwise
rectifying any
mistake in consequence of the antiquated rigidity of
most European divorce
laws. Such trial marriages are therefore demanded by
prudence and caution,
and as foresight increases with the development of
civilization, and
constantly grows among us, we may expect that there will be a parallel
development in the frequency of trial marriage and in
the social attitude
towards such unions. The only alternative--that a
radical reform in
European marriage laws should render the divorce of a
legal marriage as
economical and as convenient as the divorce of a free
marriage--cannot yet
be expected, for law always lags behind public opinion and public
practice.
If, however, we take a wider historical view, we find
that we are in
presence of a phenomenon which, though favored by modern conditions, is
very ancient and widespread, dating, so far as Europe is concerned, from
the time when the Church first sought to impose
ecclesiastical marriage,
so that it is practically a continuation of the ancient European custom of
private marriage.
Trial-marriages pass by imperceptible gradations
into the group
of courtship customs which, while allowing the young
couple to
spend the night together, in a position of more or
less intimacy,
exclude, as a rule, actual sexual intercourse.
Night-courtship
flourishes in stable and well-knit European
communities not
liable to disorganization by contact with strangers.
It seems to
be specially common in Teutonic and Celtic lands,
and is known by
various names, as _Probenächte, fensterln, Kiltgang,
hand-fasting, bundling, sitting-up, courting on the
bed, etc_. It
is well known in Wales; it is found in various
E