only in cities is sexuality rampant and conspicuous.
This is by
no means true, and in some respects it is the
reverse of the
truth. Certainly, hard work, a natural and simple
life, and a
lack of alert intelligence often combine to keep the
rural lad
chaste in thought and act until the period of
adolescence is
completed. Ammon, for instance, states, though
without giving
definite evidence, that this is common among the
Baden
conscripts. Certainly, also, all the multiple
sensory excitements
of urban life tend to arouse the nervous and
cerebral
excitability of the young at a comparatively early
age in the
sexual as in other fields, and promote premature
desires and
curiosities. But, on the other hand, urban life
offers the young
no gratification for their desires and curiosities.
The publicity
of a city, the universal surveillance, the studied
decorum of a
population conscious that it is continually exposed
to the gaze
of strangers, combine to spread a veil over the
esoteric side of
life, which, even when at last it fails to conceal
from the young
the urban stimuli of that life, effectually
conceals, for the
most part, the gratifications of those stimuli. In
the country,
however, these restraints do not exist in any
corresponding
degree; animals render the elemental facts of sexual
life clear
to all; there is less need or regard for decorum;
speech is
plainer; supervision is impossible, and the amplest
opportunities
for sexual intimacy are at hand. If the city may
perhaps be said
to favor unchastity of thought in the young, the
country may
certainly be said to favor unchastity of act.
The elaborate investigations of the Committee of
Lutheran pastors
into sexual morality (_Die Geschlechtich-sittliche
Verhältnisse
im Deutschen Reiche_), published a few years ago,
demonstrate
amply the sexual freedom in rural Germany, and Moll,
who is
decidedly of opinion that the country enjoys no
relative freedom
from sexuality, states (op. cit., pp. 137-139, 239)
that even the
circulation of obscene books and pictures among
school-children
seems to be more frequent in small towns and the
country than in
large cities. In Russia, where it might be thought
that urban and
rural conditions offered less contrast than in many
countries,
the same difference has been observed. "I do not
know," a Russian
correspondent writes, "whether Zola in _La Terre_
correctly
describes the life of French villages. But the ways
of a Russian
village, where I passed part of my childhood, fairly
resemble
those described by Zola. In the life of the rural
population into
which I was plunged everything was impregnated with
erotism. One
was surrounded by animal lubricity in all its
immodesty. Contrary
to the generally received opinion, I believe that a
child may
preserve his sexual innocence more easily in a town
than in the
country. There are, no doubt, many exceptions to
this rule. But
the functions of the sexual life are generally more
concealed in
the towns than in the fields. Modesty (whether or
not of the
merely superficial and exterior kind) is more
developed among
urban populations. In speaking of sexual things in
the towns
people veil their thought more; even the lower class
in towns
employ more restraint, more euphemisms, than
peasants. Thus in
the towns a child may easily fail to comprehend when
risky
subjects are talked of in his presence. It may be
said that the
corruption of towns, though more concealed, is all
the deeper.
Maybe, but that concealment preserves children from
it. The town
child sees prostitutes in the street every day
without
distinguishing them from other people. In the
country he would
every day hear it stated in the crudest terms that
such and such
a girl has been found at night in a barn or a ditch
making love
with such and such a youth, or that the servant girl
slips every
night into the coachman's bed, the facts of sexual
intercourse,
pregnancy, and childbirth being spoken of in the
plainest terms.
In towns the child's attention is solicited by a
thousand
different objects; in the country, except fieldwork,
which fails
to interest him, he hears only of the reproduction
of animals and
the erotic exploits of girls and youths. When we say
that the
urban environment is more exciting we are thinking
of adults, but
the things which excite the adult have usually no
erotic effect
on the child, who cannot, however, long remain
asexual when he
sees the great peasant girls, as ardent as mares in
heat,
abandoning themselves to the arms of robust youths.
He cannot
fail to remark these frank manifestations of
sexuality, though
the subtle and perverse refinements of the town
would escape his
notice. I know that in the countries of exaggerated
prudery there
is much hidden corruption, more, one is sometimes
inclined to
think, than in less hypocritical countries. But I
believe that
that is a false impression, and am persuaded that
precisely
because of all these little concealments which
excite the
malicious amusement of foreigners, there are really
many more
young people in England who remain chaste than in
the countries
which treat sexual relations more frankly. At all
events, if I
have known Englishmen who were very debauched and
very refined in
vice, I have also known young men of the same
nation, over
twenty, who were as innocent as children, but never
a young
Frenchman, Italian, or Spaniard of whom this could
be said."
There is undoubtedly truth in this statement, though
it must be
remembered that, excellent as chastity is, if it is
based on mere
ignorance, its possessor is exposed to terrible
dangers.
The question of sexual hygiene, more especially in its special aspect of
sexual enlightenment, is not, however, dependent on the fact that in some
children the psychic and nervous manifestation of sex
appears at an
earlier age than in others. It rests upon the larger
general fact that in
all children the activity of intelligence begins to work at a very early
age, and that this activity tends to manifest itself in an inquisitive
desire to know many elementary facts of life which are really dependent on
sex. The primary and most universal of these desires is the desire to know
where children come from. No question could be more
natural; the question
of origins is necessarily a fundamental one in childish philosophies as,
in more ultimate shapes, it is in adult philosophies.
Most children,
either guided by the statements, usually the
misstatements, of their
elders, or by their own intelligence working amid such indications as are
open to them, are in possession of a theory of the
origin of babies.
Stanley Hall ("Contents of Children's Minds on
Entering School,"
_Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891) has collected
some of the
beliefs of young children as to the origin of
babies. "God makes
babies in heaven, though the Holy Mother and even
Santa Claus
make some. He lets them down and drops them, and the
women or
doctors catch them, or He leaves them on the
sidewalk, or brings
them down a wooden ladder backwards and pulls it up
again, or
mamma or the doctor or the nurse go up and fetch
them, sometimes
in a balloon, or they fly down and lose off their
wings in some
place or other and forget it, and jump down to
Jesus, who gives
them around. They were also often said to be found
in
flour-barrels, and the flour sticks ever so long,
you know, or
they grew in cabbages, or God puts them in water,
perhaps in the
sewer, and the doctor gets them out and takes them
to sick folks
that want them, or the milkman brings them early in
the morning;
they are dug out of the ground, or bought at the
baby store."
In England and America the inquisitive child is
often told that
the baby was found in the garden, under a gooseberry
bush or
elsewhere; or more commonly it is said, with what is
doubtless
felt to be a nearer approach to the truth, that the
doctor
brought it. In Germany the common story told to
children is that
the stork brings the baby. Various theories, mostly
based on
folk-lore, have been put forward to explain this
story, but none
of them seem quite convincing (see, e.g., G. Herman,
"Sexual-Mythen," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, vol.
i, Heft 5,
1906, p. 176, and P. Näcke, _Neurologische
Centralblatt_, No. 17,
1907). Näcke thinks there is some plausibility in
Professor
Petermann's suggestion that a frog writhing in a
stork's bill
resembles a tiny human creature.
In Iceland, according to Max Bartels ("Isländischer Brauch und
Volksglaube," etc., _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1900, Heft 2
and 3) we find a transition between the natural and
the fanciful
in the stories told to children of the origin of
babies (the
stork is here precluded, for it only extends to the
southern
border of Scandinavian lands). In North Iceland it
is said that
God made the baby and the mother bore it, and on
that account is
now ill. In the northwest it is said that God made
the baby and
gave it to the mother. Elsewhere it is said that God
sent the
baby and the midwife brought it, the mother only
being in bed to
be near the baby (which is seldom placed in a
cradle). It is also
sometimes said that a lamb or a bird brought the
baby. Again it
is said to have entered during the night through the
window.
Sometimes, however, the child is told that the baby
came out of
the mother's breasts, or from below her breasts, and
that is why
she is not well.
Even when children learn that babies come out of the
mother's
body this knowledge often remains very vague and
inaccurate. It
very commonly happens, for instance, in all
civilized countries
that the navel is regarded as the baby's point of
exit from the
body. This is a natural conclusion, since the navel
is seemingly
a channel into the body, and a channel for which
there is no
obvious use, while the pudendal cleft would not
suggest itself to
girls (and still less to boys) as the gate of birth,
since it
already appears to be monopolized by the urinary
excretion. This
belief concerning the navel is sometimes preserved
through the
whole period of adolescence, especially in girls of
the so-called
educated class, who are too well-bred to discuss the
matter with
their married friends, and believe indeed that they
are already
sufficiently well informed. At this age the belief
may not be
altogether harmless, in so far as it leads to the
real gate of
sex being left unguarded. In Elsass where girls
commonly believe,
and are taught, that babies come through the navel,
popular
folk-tales are current (_Anthropophyteia_, vol. iii,
p. 89)
which represent the mistakes resulting from this
belief as
leading to the loss of virginity.
Freud, who believes that children give little credit
to the stork
fable and similar stories invented for their
mystification, has
made an interesting psychological investigation into
the real
theories which children themselves, as the result of
observation
and thought, reach concerning the sexual facts of
life (S. Freud,
"Ueber Infantile Sexualtheorien," _Sexual-Probleme_, Dec., 1908).
Such theories, he remarks, correspond to the
brilliant, but
defective hypotheses which primitive peoples arrive
at concerning
the nature and origin of the world. There are three
theories,
which, as Freud quite truly concludes, are very
commonly formed
by children. The first, and the most widely
disseminated, is that
there is no real anatomical difference between boys
and girls; if
the boy notices that his little sister has no
obvious penis he
even concludes that it is because she is too young,
and the
little girl herself takes the same view. The fact
that in early
life the clitoris is relatively larger and more
penis-like helps
to confirm this view which Freud connects with the
tendency in
later life to erotic dream of women furnished with a
penis. This
theory, as Freud also remarks, favors the growth of
homosexuality
when its germs are present. The second theory is the
fæcal theory
of the origin of babies. The child, who perhaps
thinks his mother
has a penis, and is in any case ignorant of the
vagina, concludes
that the baby is brought into the world by an action
analogous to
the action of the bowels. The third theory, which is
perhaps less
prevalent than the others, Freud terms the sadistic
theory of
coitus. The child realizes that his father must have
taken some
sort of part in his production. The theory that
sexual
intercourse consists in violence has in it a trace
of truth, but
seems to be arrived at rather obscurely. The child's
own sexual
feelings are often aroused for the first time when
wrestling or
struggling with a companion; he may see his mother,
also,
resisting more or less playfully a sudden caress
from his father,
and if a real quarrel takes place, the impression
may be
fortified. As to what the state of marriage consists
in, Freud
finds that it is usually regarded as a state which
abolishes
modesty; the most prevalent theory being that
marriage means that
people can make water before each other, while
another common
childish theory is that marriage is when people can
show each
other their private parts.
Thus it is that at a very early stage of the child's
life we are brought
face to face with the question how we may most wisely
begin his initiation
into the knowledge of the great central facts of sex. It is perhaps a
little late in the day to regard it as a question, but so it is among us,
although three thousand five hundred years ago, the
Egyptian father spoke
to his child: "I have given you a mother who has carried you within her, a
heavy burden, for your sake, and without resting on me.
When at last you
were born, she indeed submitted herself to the yoke, for during three
years were her nipples in your mouth. Your excrements
never turned her
stomach, nor made her say, 'What am I doing?' When you were sent to school
she went regularly every day to carry the household
bread and beer to your
master. When in your turn you marry and have a child,
bring up your child
as your mother brought you up."[20]
I take it for granted, however, that--whatever doubt
there may be as to
the how or the when--no doubt is any longer possible as to the absolute
necessity of taking deliberate and active part in this sexual initiation,
instead of leaving it to the chance revelation of
ignorant and perhaps
vicious companions or servants. It is becoming more and more widely felt
that the risks of ignorant innocence are too great.
"All the love and solicitude parental yearning can bestow,"
writes Dr. G.F. Butler, of Chicago (_Love and its
Affinities_,
1899, p. 83), "all that the most refined religious influence can
offer, all that the most cultivated associations can
accomplish,
in one fatal moment may be obliterated. There is no
room for
ethical reasoning, indeed oftentimes no
consciousness of wrong,
but only Margaret's 'Es war so süss'." The same
writer adds (as
had been previously remarked by Mrs. Craik and
others) that among
church members it is the finer and more sensitive
organizations
that are the most susceptible to sexual emotions. So
far as boys
are concerned, we leave instruction in matters of
sex, the most
sacred and central fact in the world, as Canon
Lyttelton remarks,
to "dirty-minded school-boys, grooms, garden-boys, anyone, in
short, who at an early age may be sufficiently
defiled and
sufficiently reckless to talk of them." And, so far as girls are
concerned, as Balzac long ago remarked, "a mother may bring up
her daughter severely, and cover her beneath her
wings for
seventeen years; but a servant-girl can destroy that
long work by
a word, even by a gesture."
The great part played by servant-girls of the lower
class in the
sexual initiation of the children of the middle
class has been
illustrated in dealing with "The Sexual Impulse in Women" in vol.
iii, of these _Studies_, and need not now be further
discussed.
I would only here say a word, in passing, on the
other side.
Often as servant-girls take this part, we must not
go so far as
to say that it is the case with the majority. As
regards Germany,
Dr. Alfred Kind has lately put on record his
experience: "I have
_never_, in youth, heard a bad or improper word on
sex-relationships from a servant-girl, although
servant-girls
followed one another in our house like sunshine and
showers in
April, and there was always a relation of
comradeship between us
children and the servants." As regards England, I can add that my
own youthful experiences correspond to Dr. Kind's.
This is not
surprising, for one may say that in the ordinary
well-conditioned
girl, though her virtue may not be developed to
heroic
proportions, there is yet usually a natural respect
for the
innocence of children, a natural sexual indifference
to them, and
a natural expectation that the male should take the
active part
when a sexual situation arises.
It is also beginning to be felt that, especially as
regards women,
ignorant innocence is not merely too fragile a
possession to be worth
preservation, but that it is positively mischievous,
since it involves the
lack of necessary knowledge. "It is little short of criminal," writes Dr.
F.M. Goodchild,[21] "to send our young people into the midst of the
excitements and temptations of a great city with no more preparation than
if they were going to live in Paradise." In the case of women, ignorance
has the further disadvantage that it deprives them of
the knowledge
necessary for intelligent sympathy with other women. The unsympathetic
attitude of women towards women is often largely due to sheer ignorance of
the facts of life. "Why," writes in a private letter a married lady who
keenly realizes this, "are women brought up with such a profound ignorance
of their own and especially other women's natures? They do not know half
as much about other women as a man of the most average capacity learns in
his day's march." We try to make up for our failure to educate women in
the essential matters of sex by imposing upon the police and other
guardians of public order the duty of protecting women and morals. But, as
Moll insists, the real problem of chastity lies, not in the multiplication
of laws and policemen, but largely in women's knowledge of the dangers of
sex and in the cultivation of their sense of
responsibility.[22] We are
always making laws for the protection of children and
setting the police
on guard. But laws and the police, whether their
activities are good or
bad, are in either case alike ineffectual. They can for the most part only
be invoked when the damage is already done. We have to learn to go to the
root of the matter. We have to teach children to be a
law to themselves.
We have to give them that knowledge which will enable
them to guard their
own personalities.[23] There is an authentic story of a lady who had
learned to swim, much to the horror of her clergyman,
who thought that
swimming was unfeminine. "But," she said, "suppose I was drowning." "In
that case," he replied, "you ought to wait until a man comes along and
saves you." There we have the two methods of salvation which have been
preached to women, the old method and the new. In no sea have women been
mo