INTRODUCTION
Age after age brings forward varying phases of thought, when some particular facts of life are thrown into unusual prominence, such special development of thought serving to mould the society of that generation, giving it a special stamp, and thus advancing the progress of humanity one step forward. Of all the ideas gradually worked out and gained as the permanent possession of human society, the slowest in growth is the idea of the true relations of the sexes. The instinct of sex always exists as the indispensable condition of life and the foundation of society. It is the strongest force in human nature. Whatever else disappears, this continues. Undeveloped, no subject of thought, but nevertheless as the central fire of life, Nature guards this inevitable instinct from all possibility of destruction. But as an idea, thought out in all its wide relations, shaped in human practice in all its ennobling influences, it is the latest growth of civilization. In whatever concerns the subject of sex, customs are blindly considered sacred, and evils deemed inevitable. The mass of mankind seems moved with anger, fear, or shame, by any effort made to consider seriously this fundamental idea. It must necessarily come forward, however, in the progress of events, as the subject of primary importance. As society advances, as principles of justice and humanity become firmly established, as science and industry prepare the way for the more perfect command of the material world, it will be found that the time has come for the serious consideration of this first and last question in human welfare, for the subject of sex will then present itself as the great aid or obstacle to further progress. The gradually growing conviction will be felt that, as it is the fundamental principle of all society, so it is its crowning glory. In the relations of men and women will be found the chief cause of past national decline, or the promise of indefinite future progress.
The family, being the first simple element of society—the first natural product of the principle of sex—the whole structure of society must depend upon the character of that element, and the powers that can be unfolded from it. Morality in sex will be found to be the essence of all morality, securing principles of justice, honour, and uprightness in the most influential of all human relations, and as it is all-important in life, so it is all-important in the education which prepares for life. A great social question lies, therefore, at the foundation of the moral education of youth, and influences more or less directly each step of education. It becomes indispensable to consider the relation of this subject to the various stages of education, and the methods by means of which education may guide and strengthen youth in their entrance into wider social life.
The principles which should guide the moral education of our children—our boys and girls—must necessarily depend upon the views which we hold in relation to their adult life, as men and women; these views will unavoidably determine the course of practical education. Two great questions, therefore, naturally present themselves at the outset of every careful consideration of moral sexual education—
1. What is the true standard for the relations of men and women—the type which contains within itself the germ of progress or continual development?
2. How can this standard be attained by human beings?
The endeavour to ascertain the true answer in its bearing upon the growth of the young and the welfare of family life is the object of this essay.
CHAPTER I
Physiological Laws which Influence the Physical and Mental Growth of Sex
The very gradual growth of mankind from lower to higher forms of social life, makes the study of the relation of the sexes a very complicated one; but a sure guide may be found in the great truths of physiology, viewed in their broad relation to human progress, and it is on the solid foundation of these truths that correct principles of education must be based. The tendency of our age, in seeking truth, is to reject theories and study facts—facts, however, on the largest and most comprehensive scale. Every physician knows that nothing is more stupid than routine practice; nothing more unreliable than theories unsupported by well-observed facts; and, at the same time, nothing more misleading than partial facts. The laws of the human constitution itself, as taught by the most comprehensive investigations of science, must be carefully studied. We must learn what reason, observing the facts of physiology, lays down as the true laws which should govern the relations of men and women—laws whose observance will secure the finest development of our race, and serve as a guide in directing the education of our children.
The relations of human beings to each other, depend upon the nature and requirements of individuals. It is, therefore, essential to know what the nature of the individual human being really is; how it grows and how it degenerates. Such knowledge must necessarily form the basis of all true methods of education.
We find throughout Nature, that every creature possesses its peculiar type, towards which it must tend, if it is to accomplish the purpose of its creation. There is a capacity belonging to the original germ, which, if the necessary conditions are presented, will lead it through the various stages of growth and of development, to the complete attainment of this type.
This type or pattern is the true aim of the individual. With the process by which it is reached, it constitutes its nature.
In order to determine the nature of any creature, both the type it should attain and the steps by which alone that type can be attained, must be taken into consideration, or we are led astray in our judgment of the nature of the individual. Thought is often confused by a vague use of the term ‘nature.’ The educated man is more natural than the savage, because he approaches more nearly to the true type of man, and has acquired the power of transmitting increased capacities to his children. What is popularly called a state of nature, is really a state of rudimentary life, which does not display the real nature of man, but only its imperfect condition.
Striking instances of unusual imperfection may often be observed in the physical structure of the individual, for there are blind as well as intelligent forces at work, in the long and elaborate process of forming the complete human being. Thus, sometimes we find that the developmental process of the body goes wrong, and produces six fingers instead of five through successive generations, or the formative power of some organ runs blindly into excess, producing the diseased condition of hypertrophy. Arrest of development, also, may take place at any stage of youthful life as well as before birth, the consequence being deficiency of organic power, or even defective organs, although in such cases growth and repair continue, and even long life may be attained. These conditions are not natural, because, although they exist, they are contrary to the type of man. For the same reason the cannibal must be regarded as unnatural.
In studying the individual human type, we find some points in which it resembles the lower animals, some points in which it differs from all others, and some temporary phases during which it passes from the brute type to the human. If it stop short at any stage of the regular sequence or development, it fails in its essential object, and, although living, it is unnatural.
When we seek for the distinguishing type of the human being—the type for which the slow and careful elaboration of parts is necessary—we find it in the mental, not in the physical, capacity of man. Physical power and the perfection of physical instincts are attained by the lower animals in a higher degree than by man. It is only when we observe the uses and education of which the physical powers are susceptible, and the development of which the mental powers are capable, that we perceive the immense superiority of the human race, and recognise the type—viz., the true nature of man, towards the attainment of which all the elaborate processes of growth are directed. The more carefully we examine the intellectual growth of the lower animals, tracing the reflex movements and instinctive actions of the invertebrata, through the intelligent mental operations of the dog or the elephant, the more clearly we perceive the distinguishing type of Man. This type is that union of truth and good which we name Reason. Reason is the clear perception of the true relation of things, and the love of their harmonious relations. It includes judgment, conscience—all the higher intellectual and moral qualities.
Reason, with the Will to execute its dictates, is the distinguishing type of man. It is towards this end that his faculties tend; in this consists his peculiarity, his charter of existence. Any failure to reach this end, is as much an arrest of development as is a case of spina bifida, or the imperfect closure of the heart’s ventricles. We cannot judge of the Nature of man, without the clear recognition of this distinctive type, and it is impossible to establish sound methods of education, without constantly keeping in view, both the true nature of man and the steps by which it must be reached. These steps—i.e., the method by which man grows towards his distinctive type in creation—constitute the fundamental question in the present inquiry.
One distinguishing feature of human growth is its comparative slowness. No animal is so helpless during its infancy, none remains so long in a state of complete dependence on its parents. During the first few years, the child is quite unable either to procure its own food, or to keep itself from accidents, and it attains neither its complete bodily nor mental development, until it is over twenty years of age. We find this slow growth of faculties to be an essential condition of their excellence. It is observed to be a law of organized existence that the higher the degree of development to be reached, the slower are the processes through which it is attained, and the longer is its period of dependence on parental aid.
The forces employed in the elaboration of the human being, differ in their manifestation at various stages of its growth. There are two marked forces to be noted, often confounded together, but important to distinguish—viz., the power of growth and the power of development, the former possessed throughout life, the latter at certain epochs only. The capacity for growth and nutrition, by means of which the human frame is built up and maintained out of the forces derived from food and other agents, is shown until the last breath of life, by the power of repair, which continues as long as the human being lives. All action of the organism, every employment of muscular or nervous tissue, uses up such tissue. The body is wasted by its own activities, and it is only by the exact counterpoise of these two forces—disintegration and repair—that health and life itself are maintained. In youth, in connection with very rapid waste of tissue, exists a great excess of formative power, which excess enables each complete organ to enlarge and consolidate itself. The reduction of this excess of formative power to a balance with the waste of tissue, marks the strength of adult life. Its diminution below the power of repair marks the decline of life.
The force of development, however, is shown, not in the enlargement and maintenance of existing parts, but in the creation of new tissues or organs or parts of organs, so that quite new powers are added to the individual. After birth these remarkable efforts of creative force belong exclusively to the youth of the individual. They are chiefly marked by dentition, by growth of the skeleton and the brain, and still more by the addition of the generative powers. With this work of development the adult has nothing to do; it is a burden laid especially upon the young: it is a work as important and exclusively theirs, as child-bearing is the exclusive work of the mother.
One of the first lessons, then, that Physiology teaches us in relation to the healthy growth of the human being, is the slow and successive development of the various faculties. Although the complete type of the future man exists potentially in the infant, long time and varying conditions are essential to its establishment, and the type will never be attained, if the necessary time and conditions are not provided.
The second physiological fact to be noted is the order observed in human development. The faculties grow in a certain determined order. First, those which are needed for simple physical existence; next, those which place the child in fuller relations with Nature; and, lastly, those which link him to his fellows. As digestion is perfected before locomotion, so muscular mobility and activity exist before strength, perception before observation, affection and friendship before love. The latest work of Nature in forming the perfect being is the gift of sexual power. This is a work of development, not simply of growth. There are new organs coming into existence, and the same necessary conditions of gradual consolidation and long preparation for special work exist as in the growth of all the organs of animal life. At the age of puberty, when the special life of sex commences, the other organs of relation—skeleton, muscles, brain—are still carrying on their slow process of consolidation. ‘At eighteen the bones and muscles are very immature. Portions of the vertebræ hardly commence to ossify before the sixteenth year. After twenty, the two thin plates on the body of the vertebræ form, completing themselves near the thirtieth year. Consolidation of the sacrum commences in the eighteenth year, completing after the twenty-fifth. The processes of the ribs and of the scapula are completed by the twenty-fifth year; those of the clavicle begin to form between eighteen and twenty; those of the radius and ulna, of the femur, tibia, and fibula, are all unjoined at eighteen, and not completed until twenty-five. The muscles are equally immature; they grow in size and strength in proportion to the bones, and it is not until twenty-five years of age, or even later, that all epiphyses of the bones have united, and that the muscles have attained their full growth.’[16]
As a necessary consequence of this slow order of natural growth, the individual is injured when sufficient time for growth is not allowed, or when faculties which should remain latent, slowly storing up strength for the proper time of unfolding, are unduly stimulated or brought forward too soon. The writer above quoted remarks: ‘It is not only a waste of material, but a positive cruelty, to send lads of eighteen or twenty into the field.’[17] The evil effect of undue stimulation to a new function is twofold. The first effect is to divert Nature’s force from the consolidation of faculties already fully formed, and, second, to injure the substantial growth of the later faculty, which is thus prematurely brought forward. Thus the child compelled to carry heavy burdens will be deformed or stunted; the youth weighed down by intellectual labour will destroy his digestion or injure his brain. So, if the faculty which is bestowed as the last work of development, that which requires the longest time and the most careful preparation for its advent—the sexual power—be brought forward prematurely, a permanent injury is done to the individual, which can never be completely repaired.
The marked distinction which exists between puberty and nubility should here be noted. It is a distinction based upon the important fact that a work of long-continued preparation takes place in the physical and mental nature, before a new faculty enters upon its complete life. Puberty is the age when those changes have taken place in the child’s constitution, which make it physically possible for it to become a parent, but when the actual exercise of such faculty is highly injurious. This change takes place, as a general rule, from fourteen to sixteen years of age. Nubility, on the other hand, is that period of life when marriage may take place, without disadvantage to the individual and to the race. This period is generally reckoned, in temperate climates, in the man at from twenty-three to twenty-five years of age. About the age of twenty-five commences that period of perfect manly vigour, that union of freshness and strength, which enables the individual to become the progenitor of vigorous offspring. The strong constitution transmitted by healthy parents between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five indicates the order of Nature in the growth of the human race. The interval between these two epochs of puberty and confirmed virility, is a most important period of rapid growth and slow consolidation. Not only is the lifelong work of the body going on at this time, with much greater activity than belongs to adult life—i.e., the work of calorification, nutrition, and all that concerns the maintenance of the body during its unceasing expenditure of mechanical and mental force—but the still more powerful actions of development and growth are being carried on to their last and greatest perfection. Although, as will be shown later, the influences brought to bear upon the very young child strongly affect its later growth in good or evil, yet this period between fourteen and twenty-five is the most critical time of preparation for the work of adult life.
Another important fact announced by physiological observation, is the absolute necessity of establishing a proper government of the human faculties, by the growth of intelligent self-control. Reason, not Instinct, is the final guide of our race. We cannot grow, as do the lower animals, by following out the blind promptings of physical nature. From the earliest moment of existence, intelligence must guide the infant. At first this guiding intelligence is that of the mother, and through all the earlier stages of life, a higher outside intelligence must continue to provide the necessary conditions of growth, until the gradual mental development of the child fits it for independent individual guidance. The great difficulty of education lies in the adjustment of intelligence, for there are antagonisms to be encountered. There is first of all to be considered the adaptation of parental intelligence to the large proportion of indispensable physical instinct, with which each child is endowed by Nature. There is next the adjustment of the two intelligences, the parental and filial. These relations are constantly changing, and the true wisdom of education consists in meeting these changes rightly.
It is very important to observe that each new phase of life, each new faculty, begins in the child-like way—that is to say, there is always a large proportion of the blind, instinctive element which absolutely needs a higher guidance. The instinctive life of the body always necessarily exists, and, therefore, constantly strives to make itself felt. This life of sensation will (in many different ways) obtain a complete mastery over the individual, if Reason does not exist, and grow into a controlling force. This danger of an undue predominance of the instinctive force is emphatically true of the life of sex. It begins, child-like, in a tumult of overpowering sensations—sensations and emotions which need as wisely-arranged conditions and as high a guiding influence as does the early life of the child. At this period of life, an adjustment of the parental and filial intelligence is required, quite as wisely planned as in childhood, in order to secure the gradual growth of intelligent self-control in the young life of sex. If we do not recognise this necessity, or fail to exercise this directing influence, we do not perceive the crowning obligation of the older to the younger generation. However much parents may now shrink from this obligation, and, owing to incorrect views of sex, be really unable to exercise the kind of influence required, the necessity for such influence, nevertheless, exists as a law of human nature, unchangeable, rooted in the human constitution. It is Nature’s method, that every new faculty requires intelligent control from the outset, but only gradually can this guidance become self-control.
This necessity is seen more clearly as we continue our physiological inquiry. The preceding considerations refer chiefly to the slow processes by which the various parts of the body must be built up step by step, under the guidance of outside intelligence, which furnishes the proper conditions of physical growth. Equally certain, and within the legitimate scope of true physiology, is the influence which the mind of the individual exercises upon the growth of the body. This difficult half of the subject presents itself in increasing importance as science advances. The particular theory of mind held by individuals does not affect our inquiry. Everyone understands the term, and gives to its influence a certain importance. Our perception of the degree of power exercised by the mind over the body, and the importance of that power, will continually grow as we observe the facts around us. It is a fact of every-day experience, that fright will make the heart beat, that anxiety will disturb digestion, that sorrow will depress all the vital functions, whilst happiness will strengthen them. How often does the physician see the languid, ailing invalid converted from mental causes—through happiness—into a bright, active being! Medical records are full of accumulated facts showing the extent to which such mental or emotional influence may go; how the infant has been killed when the mother has nursed it during a fit of passion, or the hair turned gray in a single night, through grief or fright.
We find that the mind, acting through the nervous system, affects not only the senses and muscles—the organs of animal life, under the direct influence of the cerebro-spinal axis—but that it may also extend its influence to those processes of nutrition and secretion which belong to the vegetative life of the body. Emotion can act where Will is powerless, but a strong Will also can acquire a remarkable power over the body. It has been remarked ‘that men who know that there is any hereditary disease in their family, can contribute to the development of that disease, by closely directing their attention to it, and so throwing their nervous energy in that direction.’ It was a remark of John Hunter ‘that he could direct a sensation to any part of his body.’
‘As in the case of other sensations, the sexual, when moderately excited, may give rise to ideas, emotions, and desires of which the brain is the seat, and these may react on the muscular system through the intelligence and Will. But when inordinately excited, or when not kept in restraint by the Will, they will at once call into play respondent movements, which are then to be regarded as purely automatic. This is the case in some forms of disease in the human subject, and is probably also the ordinary mode of operation in some of the lower animals.... In cases, however, in which this sensation is excited in unusual strength, it may completely over-master all motives to the repression of the propensity, and may even entirely remove the actions from volitional control. A state of a very similar kind exists in many idiots, in whom the sexual propensity exerts a dominant power, not because it is in itself peculiarly strong, but because the intelligence being undeveloped it acts without restraint or direction from the Will.’[18]
The mental power exercised by the Will over the body is strikingly shown in the control exerted by human beings over the strongest of all individual cravings—the craving of hunger. The exigencies of human society have caused this tremendous power of hunger to be kept so completely in check, that the gratification of it, except in accordance with the established laws (of property, etc.), is considered as a crime. In spite of the terrible temptation which the sight of food offers to a starving man, society punishes him if he yield to it. Still stronger than the established laws are those unwritten laws which are enforced by ‘public opinion,’ in obedience to which, countless people in all civilized countries suffer constant deprivation—even starving more or less slowly to death—rather than transgress universally accepted principles, and subject themselves to social condemnation by taking the food which does not belong to them. Another curious and important illustration of mental action is shown in the accumulating instances of self-deception, of contagious hallucination, and of emotional influence acting upon the physical and mental organizations, so strikingly depicted by Hammond and other writers in the accounts of pretended miracles, ecstasies, visions, etc.
Of all the organic functions, that of secretion is the one most strongly and frequently influenced by the mind. The secretion of tears, of bile, of milk, of saliva, may all be powerfully excited by mental stimuli, or lessened by promoting antagonistic secretions. This influence is felt in full force by those of the generative system, ‘which,’ writes a distinguished author, ‘are strongly influenced by the condition of the mind. When it is frequently and strongly directed towards objects of passion, these secretions are increased in amount to a degree which may cause them to be a very injurious drain on the powers of the system. On the other hand, the active employment of the mental and bodily powers on other objects, has a tendency to render less active, or even to check altogether, the processes by which they are elaborated.’[19]
That the mind must possess the power of ruling this highest of the animal functions, is evident, from its uses, and from the nature of man. The faculty of sex comes to perfection when the mind is in full activity, and when all the senses are in their freshest youthful vigour. Its object is no longer confined to the individual, it is the source of social life, it is the creator of the race. Inevitably, then, the human mind (the Emotions, the Will) must control this function more than any other function. It assumes a different aspect from all other functions, through its objective character. The individual may exist without it—the race not. Every object which addresses itself to the senses or the mind acts with peculiar force upon this function. Either for right or for wrong, the mind is the controlling power. The right education of the mind is the central point from which all our efforts to help the younger generation must arise. It will thus be seen that the standpoint of education changes in childhood and in youth, the first period being specially concerned with the childhood of the body or of the individual, the second period representing more particularly the childhood of sex or of the race. In neither childhood nor youth must either of the double elements of our nature—mind and body—be neglected, but in childhood the body comes first in order, in youth the mind.
The higher the character of a function and the wider its relations, the more serious and the more numerous are the dangers to which it is exposed. A physiologist remarks, ‘In youth the affinity of the tissues for vital stimuli seems to be greater when the development is less complete.’ That which the strong adult may endure with comparative impunity destroys the growing youth, whose nature, from the very necessities of development, possesses a keener sensitiveness to all vital stimuli. This important remark is true of mental as well as physical youth, and applies with especial force to the prevention of the dangers of premature sexual development. More care is needed to secure healthy, strengthening influences for the early life of sex than for any other more simply physical function.
In the preceding considerations, the faculty of sex has been regarded chiefly in its individual aspect, and the principles laid down by means of which the largest amount of health and strength can be secured for each individual. But this half-view is entirely insufficient in considering those physiological peculiarities of the function of sex, which must determine the true aim of education. There are two other physiological facts to be considered—viz., the Duality of Sex, and its Results.
The power we are now considering enters into a different category from all other physical functions, as being, first, the faculty of two, not of one only, and, second, as resulting in parentage. Directly a physical function is the property of two, it belongs to a different class from those faculties which regard solely the individual. That very fact gives it a stamp, which requires that the relations of the two factors should be considered. No faculty can be regarded in the light of simple self-indulgence, which requires two for its proper exercise. The consideration of such faculty in its imperfect condition as belonging to one-half only is an essentially false view. It is unscientific, therefore, to regard this exceptional faculty simply as a limited individual function, as we regard the other powers of the human body. Its inevitable relations to man, to woman, and to the race must always stand forth as a prominent fact in determining the aim of education. If this be so, the moral education of youth, with the necessary physiological guidance given to their sexual powers, must always be influenced by a consideration of these two inevitable physiological facts—viz., duality and parentage, and the training of young men and women, should mould them into true relations towards each other and towards offspring.
The question of the hereditary transmission of qualities, of the influence of both mind and body in determining the character of offspring, is a question of such vital importance that it cannot be disregarded even in the narrowest view of family welfare, and still less in any rational view of education, which lies at the base of national progress. This great question is still in its infancy, collected facts comparatively few, and the immense power of future development contained in it, hardly suspected by parents and philanthropists. We know already that various forms of disease, physical peculiarities, and mental qualities may all become hereditary; also that the tendency to drunkenness and to sensuality may be transmitted as surely as the tendency to insanity or to consumption. If we compare the mental and moral status of women in a Mahommedan country with the corresponding class of women in our own country, we perceive the effect which generations of simply sensual unions have produced on the character of the female population. The Christian idea of womanly characteristics is entirely reversed. The term ‘woman’ has become a by-word for untruth, irreligion, unchastity, and folly.[20]
The same observation may be made in so-called Christian countries under Mahommedan rule, in independent countries in close proximity to this degrading influence, and wherever the influence of unions whose key-note is sensuality, prevails. The woman is considered morally inferior. ‘She is man’s help, but not his helpmate. He guards and protects her, but it is as a man guards and protects a valuable horse or dog, getting all the service he can out of her, and rendering her in turn his half-contemptuous protection. He uncovers her face and lets her chat with her fellows in the courtyard, but he watches over her conduct with a jealous conviction that she is unable to guard herself. It is a modification, yet a development, of the Mussulman idea, and he seems to think if she has a soul to be saved he must manage to save it for her.’[21] Everyone who has observed society in Eastern Europe must be aware of the constant relation existing between the prevalence of sensuality and this moral degeneration of female character. This influence on the character is due, not only to the customs, religion, and circumstances which form the nation, but also to the accumulating influence of inherited qualities. The hereditary action produces tendencies in a particular direction in the offspring, which renders its development easier in that direction. It is only gradually, through education and the influence of heredity in a different direction, that the original tendency can be removed. But if all the circumstances of life favour its development, the individual, the family, and the nation will certainly display the result of these tendencies in full force.
A striking illustration of this subject has been published in the report of the New York Prison Association for 1876. An inquiry was undertaken by one of the members of the association, to ascertain the causes of crime and pauperism, as exhibited in a particular family or tribe of offenders called ‘The Jukes,’ which for nearly a century has inhabited one of the central counties of the State. The investigation is carried back for some five or six generations, the descendants numbering at least 1,200, and the number of persons whose biographies are condensed and collated is not less than 709. The facts in these criminal lives, which have grown in a century from one family into hundreds, are arranged in the order of their occurrence and the age given at which they took place, so that the relative importance of inherited tendencies and of immediate influences may be measured. The study of this family shows that the most general and potent cause, both of crime and pauperism, is the habit of licentiousness, with its result of bastardy and neglected and miseducated childhood. This tribe was traced back on the male side to two sons of a hard drinker named Max, living between 1720 and 1740, who became blind in his old age, transmitting blindness to some of his legitimate and illegitimate children. On the female side the race goes back to five sisters of bad character, two of whom intermarried with the two sons of Max, the lineage of three other sisters being also traced. In the course of the century, this family has remained an almost purely American family, inhabiting the same region of country in one of the finest States of the Union, largely intermarrying, and presenting an almost unbroken record of harlotry and crime. ‘The Jukes,’ says the report, ‘are not an exceptional race; analogous families may be found in every county of the State.’[22]
Conspicuous facts such as these, display in a striking manner the indubitable influence of mind in the exercise of the highest—the parental—function. We see as a positive fact that mental or moral qualities quite as much as physical peculiarities, tend to reproduce themselves in children. The mental quality or character of the parent must then be considered physiologically, as a positive element in the parental relation; thought, emotion, sensation, are all mental qualities. In human unions this great fact must be borne in mind. Any sneer at ‘sentiment’ proceeds from ignorance of facts. Happiness is as vivifying as sunshine, and is a potent element in the formation of a child. Hence arises the necessity of love between parents—love, the mental element, as distinguished from the simple physical instinct.
To understand the true relations of men and women in their bearing upon the race (relations which must determine the moral aim of education) the duality of sex and the peculiarity of the womanly organization must be recognised. Woman, having a special work to perform in family life, has special requirements and sharpened perceptions in relation to this work. She demands the constant presence of affection, an affection which alone can draw forth full response, and she possesses a perception which is almost a special instinct for detecting coldness or untruthfulness in the husband’s mental attitude towards her. The presence of unvarying affection has a real, material, as well as a moral power on the body and soul of a woman. Indifference or neglect is instantly felt. Sorrow, loneliness, jealousy, all constantly depressing emotions, exercise a powerful and injurious effect upon the sources of vital action. This physiological truth and the necessity of securing the full assent of the mother in the joint creation of superior offspring, are important facts bearing on the character and happiness of one-half of the human race, and influencing through that half the quality of offspring. These facts have not yet received the attention which so weighty a subject demands.
In pursuing the physiological inquiry, we are met by one remarkable fact which it is impossible to ignore, and which remains from age to age as a guide to the human race. This guide is found in the physiological fact of the equality in the birth of the sexes. This is a clear indication of the intention of Providence in relation to sexual union, a proof of the fundamental nature of the family group. Boys and girls are born in equal numbers all over the world, wherever our means of observation have extended, a slight excess of boys alone existing. Sadler writes: ‘The near equality in the birth of the sexes is an undoubted fact; it extends throughout Europe and wherever we have the means of accurate observation, the birth-rate being in the proportion of twenty-five boys to twenty-four girls.’[23] The injurious inequality which we so often find in a population is not Nature’s law, but is evidence of our social stupidity. It proves our sin against God’s design in the existence of brutal wars and our careless squandering of human life. All rational efforts for the improvement of society must be based upon Nature’s true intention—viz., the equality of the sexes in birth and in duration of life, not upon the false condition of inequality produced by our own ignorance. It is essential always to bear in mind this distinction between the permanent fact and the temporary phenomenon.
The foregoing facts illustrate fundamental physiological truths. They show the Type of creation towards which the human constitution tends and the distinctive methods of growth by which that type must be reached. In brief recapitulation, these truths are the following—viz., the slowness of human growth; the successive development of the human faculties; the injury caused by subverting the natural order of growth; the necessity of governing this order of growth by the control of Reason; the influence of Mind—i.e., Thought, Emotion, Will—on the development or condition of our organization; the necessity of considering the dual character of sex; the transmission of qualities by parents to their children; the natural equality in the creation of the sexes.
These truths, which are of universal application to human beings, furnish a Physiological Guide, showing the true laws of sex, in relation to human progress. We find that the laws of physiology point in one practical direction—viz., to the family—as the only institution which secures their observance; they show the necessity of the self-control of chastity in the young man and the young woman, as the only way to secure the strong mental and physical qualities requisite in the parental relation, whilst they also prove the special influence exerted by mutual love in the great work of Maternity. The preparation, therefore, of youth for family life should be the great aim of their sexual education.
Experience as well as Reason confirms the direct and indirect teaching of Physiology; they both point to the natural family group as the element out of which a healthy society grows. It is only in the family that the necessary conditions for this growth exist. The healthy and constantly varying development of children naturally constitutes the warmest interest of parents. Brothers and sisters are invaluable educators of one another; they are unique associates, creating a species of companionship that no other relation can supply. To enjoy this interest, to create this young companionship, to form this healthy germ of society, marriage must be unitary and permanent. A constantly deepening satisfaction should exist, arising from the steady growth together through life, from the identity of interest and from the strength of habit. Still farther we learn that such union should take place in the early period of complete adult life. Children should be the product of the first fresh vigour of parents. Everything that exhausts force or defers its freshest exercise is injurious to the Race. Customs of society or incorrect opinions which obstruct the union of men and women in their early vigour, which impair the happiness of either partner, or prevent the strong and steady growth of their union, impair their efficacy as parents, and are fatal to the highest welfare of our Race.
CHAPTER II
Social Results of Neglecting these Physiological Laws
The wide bearing and importance of the truths derived from physiology will become more and more apparent, as we examine another branch of the subject, and ascertain from an observation of facts around us, how far the present relations of men and women in civilized countries, are based upon sound principles of physiology. It is necessary to know how far these principles are understood and carried out from infancy onward, whether efforts for the improvement of the race are moulded by physiological methods of human growth, and what are the inevitable consequences which result from departure from these principles.
According to a rational and physiological view of life, the family should be cherished as the precious centre of national welfare; every custom, therefore, which tends to support the dignity of the family and which prepares our youth for this life, is of vital importance to a nation. Thus the slow development of the sexual faculties by hygienic regime, by the absence of all unnatural stimulus to these propensities, by the constant association of boys and girls together, under adult influence, in habitual and unconscious companionship, the cultivation in the child’s mind of a true idea of manliness and the perception that self-command is the distinctive peculiarity of the human being, are the ordinary and natural conditions which rational physiology requires. On the contrary, every custom which insults the family and unfits for its establishment, which degrades the natural nobility of human sex, which sneers at it and treats this great principle with flippancy, which tends to kill its Divine essence, all such influences and such customs are a great crime against society, and directly opposed to the teaching of rational physiology.
An extended view of social facts, not only in different classes of our own society, but also in those countries with which we are nearly related, is of the utmost value to the parent. Physiological knowledge would be valueless to the mass of mankind, if its direct bearing upon the character and happiness of a nation could not be shown. So in considering the sexual education of youth according to the light of sound physiology, the social influences which affect the natural growth of the human being are an important part of applied physiology.
The tendencies of civilization must be studied in our chief cities. The rapid growth of large towns during the last half-century and the comparatively stationary condition of the country population show where the full and complete results of those principles which are most active in our civilization must be sought for. London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, New York, are not exceptions, but examples. They show the mature results towards which smaller towns are tending. Those who live in quiet country districts often flatter themselves that the rampant vice of large towns has nothing to do with villages, small communities, and the country at large. This is a delusion. The condition of large towns has a direct relation to the country.
In these focal points of civilization we observe, as examples of sexual relationship, two great institutions existing side by side—two institutions in direct antagonism—viz., Marriage and Prostitution, the latter steadily gaining ground over the former.
In examining these two institutions, the larger signification of licentiousness must be given to prostitution, applicable to men and women. Marriage is the recognised union of two, sharing responsibilities, providing for and educating a family. Prostitution is the indiscriminate union of many, with no object but physical gratification, with no responsibilities, and no care for offspring. It is essential to study the effects, both upon men and women and upon mankind at large, of this great fact of licentiousness, if we are to appreciate the true laws of sexual union in their full force, and the aims, importance, and wide bearing of Moral Education. We shall only here refer to its effects upon the young.
We may justly speak of licentiousness as an institution. It is considered by a large portion of society as an essential part of itself. It possesses its code of written and unwritten laws, its sources of supply, its various resorts, from the poorest hovel to the gaudiest mansion, its endless grade, from the coarsest and most ignorant to the refined and cultivated. It has its special amusements and places of public resort. It has its police, its hospitals, its prisons, and it has its literature. The organized manner in which portions of the press are engaged in promoting licentiousness, reaching, not thousands, but millions of readers, is a fact of weighty importance. The one item of vicious advertisements falls into distinct categories of corruption. Growing, therefore, as it does, constantly and rapidly, licentiousness becomes a fact of primary importance in society. Its character and origin must be studied by all who take an interest in the growth of the human race, and who believe in the maintenance of marriage, and the family, as the foundation of human progress.
Everyone who has studied life in many civilized countries, and the literature reflecting that life, will observe the antagonism of these two institutions: the recognition of the greater influence of the mistress than the wife, the constant triumph of passion over duty and deep, steady affection. We see the neglect of the home for the café, the theatre, the public amusement; the consequent degradation of the home into a place indispensable as a nursery for children, and for the transaction of common, every-day matters, a place of resort for the accidents of life, for growing old in, for continuing the family name, but too tedious a place to be in much, to spend the evening and really live in. Enjoyments are sought for elsewhere. The charm of society, the keener interests of life, no longer centre in the household. It is a domestic place, more or less quiet, but no home in the true sense of the word. The true home can only be formed by father and mother, by their joint influence on one another, on their children, and on their friends. The narrow, one-sided, diminishing influence of Continental homes amongst great masses of the population, from absence of due paternal care, is a painful fact to witness. That there are beautiful examples of domestic life to be found in every civilized country—homes where father and mother are one in the indispensable unity of family life—no one will deny who has closely observed foreign society. Indeed, any nation is in the stage of rapid dissolution where the institution of the family is completely and universally degraded; but the preceding statement is a faithful representation of the general tone and tendencies of social life in many parts of the Continent. That the same fatal principles, leading to the like results, are at work both in England and America will be seen as we proceed. Licentiousness may be considered as still in its infancy with us, when compared with its universal prevalence in many parts of the Continent; but it is growing in our own country with a rapidity which threatens fatal injury to our most cherished institution, the pure Christian home, with its far-reaching influences, an institution which has been the foundation of our national greatness.
The results of licentiousness should be especially considered in their effects upon the youth of both sexes, of both the richer and poorer classes; also in their bearing upon the institution of marriage and upon the race. In all these aspects it enters into direct relation with the family, and no one who values the family, with the education which it should secure, can any longer afford to ignore what so intimately affects its best interests. It is to the first branch of the subject that reference will here be chiefly made.
The first consideration is the influence exerted by social arrangements and tone of thought upon our boys and young men as they pass out of the family circle into the wider circles of the world, into school, college, business, society. What are the ideas about women that have been gradually formed in the mind of the lad of sixteen, by all that he has seen, heard, and read during his short but most important period of life? What opinions and habits, in relation to his own physical and moral nature, have been impressed upon him? How have our poorer classes of boys been trained in respect to their own well-being, and to association with girls of their own class? What has been the influence of the habits and companionships of that great middle-class multitude, clerks, shopkeepers, mechanics, farmers, soldiers, etc.? What books and newspapers do these boys read, what talk do they hear, what interests or amusements do they find in the theatre, the tavern, the streets, the home, and the church? What has been the training of the lad of the upper class—that class, small in number but great in influence, which, being lifted above any sordid pressure of material care, should be the spiritual leader of the classes below them—a class which has ten talents committed to it, and which inherits the grand old maxim, Noblesse oblige? How have all these lads been taught to regard womanhood and manhood? What is their standard of manliness? What habits of self-respect and of the noble uses of sex have been impressed upon their minds? Throughout all classes, abundant temptation to the abuse of sex exists. Increasing activity is displayed in the exercise of human ingenuity for the extension and refinement of vice. Shrewdness, large capital, business enterprise, are all enlisted in the lawless stimulation of this mighty instinct of sex. Immense provision is made for facilitating fornication; what direct efforts are made for encouraging chastity?
It is of vital importance to realize how small at present is the formative influence of the individual home and of the weekly discourse of the preacher, compared with the mighty social influences which spread with corrupting force around the great bulk of our youth. We find, as a matter of fact, that complete moral confusion too often meets the young man at the outset of life. Society presents him with no fixed standard of right or wrong in relation to sex, no clear ideal to be held steadily before him and striven for. Religious teaching points in one direction, but practical life points in quite a different way. The youth who has grown up from childhood under the guardianship of really wise parents, in a true home, with all its ennobling influences, and has been strengthened by enlightened religious instruction, has gradually grown towards the natural human type. He may have met the evils of life as they came to him from boyhood onwards, first of all with the blindness of innocence, which does not realize evil, and then with the repulsion of virtue, which is clear-sighted to the hideous results of vice. Such a one will either pass with healthy strength through life, or he may prove himself the grandest of heroes if beset with tremendous temptations; or, again, he may fall, after long and terrible struggles with his early virtue. But in the vast majority of cases the early training through innocence into virtue is wanting. Evil influences are at work unknown to or disregarded by the family, and a gradual process of moral and physical deterioration in the natural growth of sex corrupts the very young. In by far the larger ranks of life, before the lad has grown into the young man, his notions of right and wrong are too often obscured. He retains a vague notion that virtue is right, but as he perceives that his friends, his relations, his widening circle of acquaintance, live according to a different standard, his idea of virtue recedes into a vague abstraction, and he begins to think that vice is also right—in a certain way! He is too young to understand consequences, to realize the fearful chain of events in the ever-widening influence of evil acts—results which, if clearly seen, would frighten the innocent mind by the hideousness of evil, and make the first step towards it a crime. No one ventures to lift up a warning voice. The parent dares not, or knows not how to enter upon this subject of vital importance. There are no safeguards to his natural modesty; there is no wise help to strengthen his innocence into virtue.
Here is the testimony in relation to one important class, drawn from experience by our great English satirist: ‘And by the way, ye tender mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing that theory of life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why, if you could hear those boys of fourteen, who blush before mothers and sneak off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among each other, it would be the woman’s turn to blush then. Before he was twelve years old, and while his mother fancied him an angel of candour, little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain points; and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked son, who is coming home from school for the ensuing Christmas holidays. I don’t say that the boy is lost, so that the innocence has left him which he had from “Heaven which is our home,” but the shades of the prison-house are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping as much as possible to corrupt him.’ ‘Few boys,’ says the Headmaster of a large school, ‘ever remain a month in any school, public or private, without learning all the salient points in the physical relation of the sexes. There are two grave evils in this unlicensed instruction: first, the lessons are learned surreptitiously; second, the knowledge is gained from the vicious experiences of the corrupted older boys, and the traditions handed down by them.’
Temptations meet the lad at every step. From childhood onward, an unnatural forcing process is at work, and he is too often mentally corrupted, whilst physically unformed. This mental condition tends to hasten the functions of adult life into premature activity. As already stated, an important period exists between the establishment of puberty and confirmed virility. In the unperverted youth, this space of time, marked by the rush of new life, is invaluable as a period for storing up the new forces needed to confirm young manhood and fit it for the healthy exercise of its important social functions. The very indications of Nature’s abundant forces at the outset of life, are warnings that this new force must not be stimulated, that there is danger of excessive and hasty growth in one direction, danger of hindering that gradual development which alone insures strength. If at an early age, thought and feeling have been set in the right direction, and aids to virtue and to health surround the young man, then this period of time, before his twenty-fifth year, will lead him into a strong and vigorous manhood. But where the mind is corrupted, the imagination heated, and no strong love of virtue planted in the soul, the individual loses the power of self-control, and becomes the victim of physical sensation and suggestion. When this condition of mental and physical deterioration has been produced, it is no longer possible for him to resist surrounding temptations. There are dangers within and without, but he does not recognise the danger. He is young, eager, filled with that excess of activity in blood and nerve, with which Nature always nourishes her fresh creative efforts.
At this important stage of life, when self-control, hygiene, mental and moral influence, are of vital importance, the fatal results of his weakened will and a corrupt society, ensue. Opportunity tempts his wavering innocence, thoughtless or vicious companions undertake to ‘form’ him, laugh at his scruples, sneer at his conscience, excite him with allurements. Or a deadly counsel meets him—meets him from those he is bound to respect. The most powerful morbid stimulant that exists—a stimulant to every drop of his seething young blood—is advised viz., the resort to prostitutes. When this fatal step has been taken, when the natural modesty of youth and the respect for womanhood is broken down, when he has broken with the restraints of family life, with the voice of Conscience, with the dictates of religion, a return to virtue is indeed difficult—nay, often impossible. He has tasted the physical delights of sex, separated from its more exquisite spiritual joys. This unnatural divorce degrades whilst it intoxicates him. Having tasted these physical pleasures, often he can no more do without them than the drunkard without his dram. He ignorantly tramples under foot his birthright of rich, compound, infinite human love, enthralled by the simple limited animal passion. His Will is no longer free. He has destroyed that grand endowment of Man, that freedom of the youthful Will, which is the priceless possession of innocence and of virtue, and has subjected himself to the slavery of lust. He is no longer his own master; he is the servant of his passions. Those whose interest it is to retain their victim employ every art of drink, of dress, of excess, to urge him on. The youthful eagerness of his own nature lends itself to these arts. The power of resistance is gradually lost, until one glance of a prostitute’s eye passing in the street, one token of allurement, will often overturn his best resolutions and outweigh the wisest counsel of friends! The physiological ignorance and moral blindness which actually lead some parents to provide a mistress for their sons, in the hope of keeping them from houses of public debauchery, is an effort as unavailing as it is corrupt. Place a youth on the wrong course instead of on the right one, lead him into the career of sensual indulgence and selfish disregard for womanhood instead of into manly self-control, and the parent has, by his own act, launched his child into the current of vice, which rapidly hurries him beyond his control.
The evils resulting from a violation of Nature’s method of growth by a life of early dissipation are both physical and mental or moral. In some organizations the former, in some the latter, are observable in the most marked degree; but no one can escape either the physical deterioration or the mental degradation which results from the irrational and unhuman exercise of the great endowment of sex.
Amongst the physical evils the following may be particularly noted. The loss of self-control, reacting upon the body, produces a morbid irritability (always a sign of weakness) which is a real disease, subjecting the individual to constant excitement and exhaustion from slight causes. The resulting physical evils may be slow in revealing themselves, because they only gradually undermine the constitution. They do not herald themselves in the alarming manner of a fever or a convulsion, but they are not to be less dreaded from their masked approach. The chief forms of physical deterioration are nervous exhaustion, impaired power of resistance to epidemics or other injurious influences, and the development of those germs of disease, or tendencies to some particular form of disease, which exist in the majority of constitutions. The brain and spinal marrow and the lungs are the vital organs most frequently injured by loose life. But whatever be the weak point of the constitution, from inherited or acquired morbid tendencies, that will probably be the point through which disease or death will enter.
One of the most distinguished hygienists of our age writes thus: ‘The pathological results of venereal excess are now well known. The gradual derangements of health experienced by its victims are not at first recognised by them, and physicians may take the symptoms to be the beginning of very different diseases. How often symptoms are considered as cases of hypochondria or chronic gastritis, or the commencement of heart disease, which are really the results of generative abuse! A general exhaustion of the whole physical force, symptoms of cerebral congestion, or paralysis, attributed to some cerebrospinal lesion, are often due to the same causes. The same may be said of some of the severest forms of insanity. Many cases of consumption appearing in young men who suffer from no hereditary tendency to the disease enter into the same category. So many diseases are vainly treated by medicine or regime which are really caused by abuse of these important functions.’[24] Another of our oldest surgeons writes: ‘Among the passions of the future man which at this period should be strictly restrained is that of physical love, for none wars so completely against the principles which have been already laid down as the most conducive to long life; no excess so thoroughly lessens the sum of the vital power, none so much weakens and softens the organs of life, none is more active in hastening vital consumption, and none so totally prohibits restoration. I might, if it were necessary, draw a painful—nay, a frightful—picture of the results of these melancholy excesses, etc.’[25] Volumes might be filled with similar medical testimony on the destructive character of early licentiousness.
Striking testimony to the destructive effects of vice in early manhood is derived from a very different source—viz., the strictly business calculation of the chances of life, furnished by Life Insurance Companies. These tables show the rapid fall in viability during the earlier years of adult life. Dr. Carpenter has reproduced a striking diagram[26] from the well-known statistician Quetelet, showing the comparative viability of men and women at different ages, and its rapid diminution in the male from the age of eighteen to twenty-five. He remarks: ‘The mortality is much greater in males from about the age of eighteen to twenty-eight, being at its maximum at twenty-five, when the viability is only half what it is at puberty. This fact is a very striking one, and shows most forcibly that the indulgence of the passions not only weakens the health, but in a great number of instances is the cause of a very premature death.’[27] Dr. Bertillon (a well-known French statistician) has shown by the statistics of several European countries that the irregularities of unmarried life produce disease, crime, and suicide; that the rate of mortality in bachelors of twenty-five is equal to that of married men at forty-five; that the immoral life of the unmarried and the widowed, whether male or female, ages them by twenty years and more.
Many of the foreign health resorts are filled with young men of the richer classes of society, seeking to restore the health destroyed by dissipation. Could the simple truth be recorded on the tombstones of multitudes of precious youth, from imperial families downward, who are mourned as victims of consumption, softening of the brain, etc., all lovers of the race would stand appalled at the endless record of these wasted lives. ‘Died from the effects of fornication’ would be the true warning voice from these premature graves.
The moral results of early dissipation are quite as marked as the physical evils. The lower animal nature gains ever-increasing dominion over the moral life of the individual. The limited nature of all animal enjoyments produces its natural effects. First there is the eager search after fresh stimulants, and as the boundaries of physical enjoyment are necessarily reached, come in common sequence, disappointment, disgust, restlessness, dreariness, or bitterness. The character of the mental deterioration differs with the difference of original character in the individual, as in the nation. In some we observe an increasing hardness of character, growing contempt for women, with low material views of life. In others there is a frivolity of mind induced, a constant restlessness and search for new pleasures. The frankness, heartiness, and truthfulness of youth gradually disappear under the withering influence.[28]
The moral influence of vice upon social character has very wide ramifications. This is illustrated by the immense difficulties which women encountered in the rational endeavour to obtain a complete medical education. Licentiousness, with all its attendant results, is the great social cause of these difficulties.
The dominion of lust is necessarily short-sighted, selfish, or cruel. Its action is directly opposed to the qualities of truth, trust, self-command, and sympathy, thus sapping the foundations of personal morality. But apart from the individual evils above referred to, licentiousness inevitably degrades society, firstly, from the disproportion of vital force which is thus thrown into one direction, and, secondly, from the essentially selfish and ungenerous tendency of vice, which, seeking its own limited gratification at the expense of others, is incapable of embracing large views of life or feeling enthusiasm for progress. The direction into which this disproportionate vital force is thrown is a degrading one, always tending to evil results. Thus the noble enthusiasm of youth, its precious tide of fresh life, without which no nation can grow—life whose leisure hours should be given to science and art, to social good, to ennobling recreation—is squandered and worse than wasted in degrading dissipation.
This dissipation, which is ruin to man, is also a curse to woman, for, in judging the effects of licentiousness upon society, it must never be forgotten that this is a vice of two, not a vice of one. Injurious as is its influence upon the young man, that is only one-half of its effect. What is its influence upon the young woman? This question has a direct bearing on the Moral Aim of Education. The preceding details of physical and moral evils resulting to young men from licentiousness will apply with equal force to young women subjected to similar influences. One sex may experience more physical evil, the other more mental degradation, from similar vicious habits; but the evil, if not identical, is entirely parallel, and a loss of truthfulness, honour, and generosity accompanies the loss of purity.
The women more directly involved in this widespread evil of licentiousness are the women of the poorer classes of society. The poorer classes constitute in every country the great majority of the people; they form its solid strength and determine its character. The extreme danger of moral degradation in those classes of young women who constitute such an immense preponderance of the female population is at once evident. These women are everywhere, interlinked with every class of society. They form an important part (often the larger female portion) of every well-to-do household. They are the companions and inevitable teachers of infancy and childhood. They often form the chief or only female influence which meets the young man in early professional, business, or even college life. They meet him in every place of public amusement, in his walks at night, in his travels at home and abroad. By day and by night the young man away from home is brought into free intercourse, not with women of his own class, but with poor working girls and women, who form the numerical bulk of the female population, who are found in every place and ready for every service. Educated girls are watched and guarded. The young man meets them in rare moments only, under supervision, and generally under unnatural restraint; but the poor girl he meets constantly, freely, at any time and place. Any clear-sighted person who will quietly observe the way in which female servants, for instance, regard very young men who are their superiors in station, can easily comprehend the dangers of such association. The injustice of the common practical view of life is only equalled by its folly. This practical view utterly ignores the fact of the social influence and value of this portion of society. The customs of civilized nations practically consider poor women as subjects for a life so dishonourable, that a rich man feels justified in ostracizing wife, sister, or daughter who is guilty of the slightest approach to such life. It is the great mass of poor women who are regarded as (and sometimes brutally stated to be) the subjects to be used for the benefit of the upper classes. Young and innocent men, it is true, fall into vice, or are led into it, or are tempted into it by older women, and are not deliberate betrayers. But the rubicon of chastity once passed, the moral descent is rapid, and the preying upon the poor soon commences. The miserable slaves in houses of prostitution are the outcasts of the poor. The young girls followed at night in the streets are the honest working girl, the young servant seeking a short outdoor relief to her dreary life, as well as the unhappy fallen girl, who has become in her turn the seducer. If fearful of health, the individual leaves the licensed slaves of sin and the chance associations of the streets, it is amongst the poor and unprotected that he seeks his mistress:—the young seamstress, the pretty shop girl, the girl with some honest employment, but poor, undefended, needing relief in her hard-working life. It is always the poor girl that he seeks. She has no pleasures, he offers them; her virtue is weak, he undermines it; he gains her affection and betrays it, changes her for another and another, leaving each mistress worse than he found her, farther on in the downward road, with the guilt of fresh injury from the strong to the weak on his soul. Any reproach of conscience—conscience which will speak when an innocent girl has been betrayed, or one not yet fully corrupted has been led farther on in evil life—is quieted by the frivolous answer: ‘They will soon marry in their own class.’ If, however, this sin be regarded in its inevitable consequences, its effects upon the life of both man and woman in relation to society, the nature of this sophistry will appear in its hideous reality. Is chastity really a virtue, something precious in womanhood? Then, the poor man’s home should be blessed by the presence of a pure woman. Does it improve a woman’s character to be virtuous? Has she more self-respect in consequence? Does she care more for her children, for their respectability and welfare, when she is conscious of her own honest past life? Does she love her husband more, and will she strive to make his home brighter and more attractive to him, exercising patience in the trials of her humble life, being industrious, frugal, sober, with tastes that centre in her home? These are vital questions for the welfare of the great mass of the people, and consequently of society and of the nation.
We know, on the contrary, as a fundamental truth, that unchastity unfits a woman for these natural duties. It fosters her vanity, it makes her slothful or reckless, it gives her tastes at variance with home life, it makes her see nothing in men but their baser passions, and it converts her into a constant tempter of those passions—a corrupter of the young. We know that drunkenness, quarrels, and crimes have their origin in the wretched homes of the poor, and the centre of those unhappy homes is the unchaste woman, who has lost the restraining influence of her own self-respect, her respect for others, and her love of home. When a pretty, vain girl is tempted to sin, a wife and mother is being ruined, discord and misery are being prepared for a poor man’s home, and the circumstances created out of which criminals grow. Nor does the evil stop there. It returns to the upper classes. Nurses, servants, bring back to the respectable home the evil associations of their own lives. The children of the upper classes are thus corrupted, and the path of youth is surrounded at every step with coarse temptations. These consequences may not be foreseen when the individual follows the course of evil customs, but the sequence of events is inevitable, and every man gives birth to a fresh series of vice and misery when he takes a mistress instead of a wife.[29]
The deterioration of character amongst the women of the working classes is known to all employers of labour, to all who visit amongst the poor, to every housekeeper. The increasing difficulty of obtaining trustworthy domestic servants is now the common experience of civilized countries. In England, France, Germany, and the larger towns of America, it is a fact of widespread observation, and has become a source of serious difficulty in the management of family life. The deepest source of this evil lies in the deterioration of womanly character produced by the increasing spread of habits of licentiousness. The action of sex, though taking different directions, is as powerful in the young woman as in the young man; it needs as careful education, direction, and restraint. This important physiological truth, at present quite overlooked, must nevertheless be distinctly recognised. This strong mental instinct, if yielded to in a degrading way (as is so commonly the case in the poorer classes of society), becomes an absorbing influence. Pride and pleasure in work, the desire to excel, loyalty to duty, and the love of truth in its wide significance, are all subordinated, and gradually weakened, by the irresistible mastery of this new faculty. In all large towns the lax tone of companions, the difficulty in finding employment, the horrible cupidity of those who pander to corrupt social sentiment and ensnare the young—all these circumstances combined render vice much easier than virtue—a state of society in which vice must necessarily extend and virtue diminish. We thus find an immense mass of young women gradually corrupted from childhood, rendered coarse and reckless, the modesty of girlhood destroyed, the reserve of maidenhood changed to bold, often indecent, behaviour. No one accustomed to walk freely about our streets, to watch children at play, to observe the amusements and free gatherings of the poorer classes, can fail to see the signs of degraded sex. The testimony of home missionaries, of those experienced in Benevolent Societies and long engaged in various ways in helping women, as well as the Reports of Rescue Societies, all testify to the dangerous increase and lamentable results of unchastity amongst the female population.
We observe in all countries a constant relation also between the prevalence of licentiousness and degradation of female labour; the action and reaction of these two evil facts is invariable. In Paris we see the complete result of these tendencies of modern civilization in relation to the condition of working women—tendencies which are seen in London and Berlin, in Liverpool, Glasgow—i.e., in all large towns. The revelations made by writers and speakers in relation to the condition of the working women of Paris, are of very serious import to England. Such terrible facts as the following, brought to light by those who have carefully investigated the state of this portion of the population, must arrest attention. In relation to vast numbers of women it is stated[30]: ‘In Paris a woman can no longer live by the work of her own hands; the returns of her labour are so small that prostitution is the only resource against slow starvation. The population is bastardized to such an extent that thousands of poor girls know not of any relation that they ever possessed. Orphans and outcasts, their life, if virtuous, is one terrible struggle from the cradle to the grave; but by far the greater number of them are drilled, whilst yet children, in the public service of debauchery.’ The great mass of working women are placed by the present state of society in a position in which there are the strongest temptations to vice, when to lead a virtuous life often requires the possession of moral heroism.
Of the multitude of those who fall into vice, many ultimately marry, and, with injured moral qualities and corrupted tastes, become the creators of poor men’s homes. The rest drift into a permanent life of vice. The injurious effects of unchastity upon womanly character already noted, can be studied step by step, to their complete development in that great class of the population—the recognised prostitutes. Their marked characteristics are recklessness, sloth, and drunkenness. This recklessness and utter disregard of consequences and appearances, a quarrelsome, violent disposition, the dislike to all labour and all regular occupation and life, the necessity for stimulants and drink, with a bold address to the lower passions of men—such are the effects of this life upon the character of women. Unchaste women become a most dangerous class of the community. To these bad qualities is added another, wherever, as in France, this evil life is accepted as a part of society, provided for, organized, or legalized; this last result of confirmed licentiousness is a hardness of character so complete, so resistant of all improving influences, that the wisest and gentlest efforts to restore are often utterly hopeless before the confirmed and hardened prostitute.[31]
The growth of habits of licentiousness amongst us exerts the most direct and injurious influence on the lives of virtuous young women of the middle and upper classes of society. The mode of this influence demands very serious consideration on the part of parents. It is natural that young women should wish to please. They possess the true instinct which would guide them to their noble position in society, as the centres of pure and happy homes. How do our social customs meet this want? All the young women of the middle and upper classes of society, no matter how pure and innocent their natures, are brought by these customs of society into direct competition with prostitutes! The modest grace of pure young womanhood, its simple, refined tastes, its love of home pleasures, its instinctive admiration of true and noble sentiments and actions, although refreshing as a contrast, will not compare for a moment with the force of attraction which sensual indulgence and the excitement of debauch exert upon the youth who is habituated to such intoxications. The virtuous girl exercises a certain amount of attraction for a passing moment, but the intense craving awakened in the youth for something far more exciting than she can offer, leads him ever farther from her, in the direction where this morbid craving can be freely indulged. This result is inevitable if licentiousness is to be accepted as a necessary part of society. Physical passion is not in itself evil; on the contrary, it is an essential part of our nature. It is an endowment which, like every other human faculty, has the power of high growth. It possesses that distinctive human characteristic—receptivity to mental impressions. These impressions blend so completely with itself as to change its whole character and effect, and it thus becomes an ennobling or a degrading agent in our lives. In either case, for good or for evil, sex takes a first place as a motive power in human education. The young man inexperienced in life and necessarily crude in thought, but fallen into vice, is mastered by this downward force, and the good girl loses more and more her power over the strong natural attraction of sex which would otherwise draw him to her. The influence which corrupt young men, on the other hand, exercise upon the young women of their own standing in society, is both strong and often injurious. It being natural that young women should seek to attract and retain them, they unconsciously endeavour to adapt themselves to their taste. These tastes are formed by uneducated girls and by society of which the respectable young woman feels the effects, and of which she has a vague suspicion, although, happily, she cannot measure the depth of the evil. The tastes and desires of her young male acquaintance, moulded by coarse material enjoyments, act directly upon the respectable girl, who gives herself up with natural impulse to the influence of her male companion. We thus witness a widespread and inevitable deterioration in manners, dress, thought, and habits amongst the respectable classes of young women. This result leads eventually, as on the Continent, to the entire separation of young men and women in the middle and upper ranks of life, to the arrangement of marriage as a business affair, and to the union of the young with the old.
The faults now so often charged upon young women, their love of dress, luxury, and pleasure, their neglect of economy and dislike of steady home duties, may be traced directly to the injurious influence which habits of licentiousness are exercising directly and indirectly upon marriage, the home, and society. The subject of dress is one of serious importance, for it is a source of extravagance in all classes, and one of the strongest temptations to vice among poor girls. The creation of this morbid excess in dress by licentiousness is evident. If physical attraction is the sole or chief force which draws young men to young women, then everything which either enhances physical charms, which brings them more prominently forward, or which supplies the lack of physical beauty, must necessarily be resorted to by women, whose nature it is to draw men to them. The stronger the general domination of physical sensation—over character, sympathy, companionship, mutual help, and social growth—becomes amongst men, the more exclusive, intense, and competitive must grow this morbid devotion to dress on the part of women. Did young men seriously long for a virtuous wife and happy home, and fit themselves to secure those blessings, young women would naturally cultivate the domestic qualities which insure a bright, attractive home. The young man, however, is now discouraged from early marriage; the question soon presents itself to him: ‘Why should I marry and burden myself with a wife and family? I am very well off as I am; I can spend my money as I like on personal pleasures; I can get all that I want from women without losing my liberty or assuming responsibilities!’ The respectable girl is thus forced into a most degrading and utterly unavailing competition with the prostitute or the mistress. Marriage is indefinitely postponed by the young man; at first it may be from necessity, later from choice. The young woman, unable to obtain the husband suited to her in age, must either lead a single life or accept the unnatural union with a rich elderly man.
The grave physiological error of promoting marriage between the young and the old cannot be dwelt on here. It is productive of very grave evils, both to the health and happiness of the individual and to the growth of the Race. The steady decrease of marriage, and at the same time the late date at which it is contracted as licentiousness increases, is shown by a comparison of the statistics of Belgium and France with those of England. We find also that the character of the population deteriorates with the spread of vice—the standard of recruiting for the army is lowered, an ever-increasing mass of fatherless children die or become criminals, and, finally, the natural growth of the population of the country constantly decreases.
The records of History confirm the teaching of Physiology and Observation in relation to the fundamental character of sexual virtue, as the secret of durable national greatness. The decline of all the great nations of antiquity is marked by the prevalence of gross social corruption. The complex effects of the same cause are strikingly observed in the condition of the Mohammedan and other Eastern races and in all the tribes subject to them. We find amongst these races, as the result of their sexual customs, a want of human charity. This is shown in the absence of benevolent institutions and other modes of expressing sympathy. A great gulf separates the rich and poor, bridged over by no offices of kindness, no sense of the sacred oneness of humanity, which is deeper than all separations of caste or condition. There is no respect shown for human life, which is lightly and remorselessly sacrificed, and punishment degenerates into torture. There is also an incapacity for understanding the fundamental value of truth and honesty, and a consequent impossibility of creating a good government. We observe that bravery degenerates into fierceness and cruelty, and that the apathy of the masses keeps them victims of oppression. It is the exhibition of a race where there is no development of the Moral Element in human nature. These general characteristics and their cause were well described by the celebrated surgeon Lallemand, who says: ‘The contrast between the polygamous and sensual East and the monogamous and intellectual West displays on a large scale the different results produced by the different exercise of the sexual powers. On one side, Polygamy, harems, seraglios—the source of venereal excesses—barbarous mutilations, revolting and unnatural vice, with the population scanty, inactive, indolent, sunk in ignorance, and consequently the victim of misery and of every kind of despotism. On the other side, Monogamy, Christian austerity, more equal distribution of domestic happiness, increase of intelligence, liberty, and general well-being; rapid increase of an active, laborious, and enterprising population, necessarily spreading and dominating.’
The great moral element of society, which contains the power of self-renewal and continual growth, must necessarily be wanting in all nations where one-half of the people—the centre of the family, out of which society must grow—remains in a stunted or perverted condition. Women, as well as men, create society. Their share is a silent one. It has not the glitter of gold and purple, the noise of drums and marching armies, the smoke and clank of furnaces and machinery. All the splendid din of external life is wanting in the quiet realm of distinctive woman’s work; therefore it is often overlooked, misunderstood, or despised. Nevertheless, it is of vital importance. It preserves the only germ of society which is capable of permanent growth—the germ of unselfish human love and innate righteousness—in distinction to which all dazzling material splendour and intellectual ability, divorced from the love of Right, is but sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. It is for this reason that no polygamous or licentious customs, which destroy the woman’s nature and dry up the deepest source of human sympathy, can possibly produce a durable or a noble and happy nation. The value of a nation, its position in the scale of humanity, its durability, must always be judged by the condition of its masses, and the test of that condition is the strength and purity of home virtues—the character of the women of the nation.
No reference to the lessons of History, however brief, should omit the effect produced by religious teaching. The influence exercised by the Christian religion in relation to sex is of the most striking character. Christian teaching is distinguished from other religious teaching by its justice to women, its tender reverence for childhood, and by the laying down of that great corner-stone, Inward Holiness, as the indispensable foundation of true life. This is all summed up in its establishment of unitary marriage, through the emphatic adoption of the original Law, ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.’ The development of this Law by Jesus Christ into its high significance of spiritual purity, whilst it has been a principle of growth in the past, is the great hope of the future. The study of this Christian type, in its radical effect upon national life, is full of interest and instruction, but is also a study of great difficulty. This teaching of our Lord has never been adopted as the universal rule of practical life by any nation. The results of this law of union can only be judged on a large scale by comparing the condition of so-called Christian countries—where a certain amount of this high teaching has been diffused through the community—with the condition of nations where no such teaching has existed. The great battle between Christianity and Paganism still continues in our midst. The actual practical type prevailing in all civilized nations is not Christian. In these nations the Christian idea of unitary sexual relations is accepted theoretically, as conducive to the best interests of the family and binding upon the higher classes of women; but it is entirely set aside as a practical life for the majority of the community. Christ’s Law is considered either as a vague command, applicable only to some indefinite future, or as a theory which it would be positively unwise to put into practice in daily life. The statement is distinctly made, and widely believed, that the nature of men and women differs so radically that the same moral law is not applicable to the two sexes.
The great lesson derived from History, however, is always this—viz., that moral development must keep pace with the intellectual, or the race degenerates. This moral element is especially embodied by woman, and purity in woman cannot exist without purity in man, this weighty fact being shown by the facts already stated—viz., the action of licentiousness upon the great mass of unprotected women, its reaction upon other classes, and the accumulating influence of hereditary sensuality.
In the indisputable principles brought forward in the preceding pages, and the mass of facts and daily observation which support them, is found the answer to the first question proposed as a guide to the moral education of youth—viz.: What is the true standard for the relations of men and women, the type which contains within itself the germ of progress and indefinite development?
We see that the early and faithful union of one man with one woman is the true Ideal of Society. It secures the health and purity of the family relation, and is the foundation of social and national welfare. It is supported by sound principles of Physiology, by the history of the rise and fall of nations, and by a consideration of the evils of our present age. The lessons of the past and present, our clearer knowledge of cause and effect, alike prove the wisdom of the highest religious teaching—viz., that the faithful union of strong and pure young manhood and womanhood is the only element out of which a strong and durable nation can grow.
CHAPTER III
The Hygienic Advantage of Sexual Morality
The present subject may be summed up in two great questions—viz., First, is Virtue desirable? Secondly, is Virtue practicable?
We have shown in the preceding investigation that the control of the sexual passion and its guidance by Reason—which we name Virtue—is of fundamental importance; that it is essential to individual health, to the happiness of the family, to the purity of Society, and the growth of a strong nation. Virtue, therefore, is desirable. It remains to consider whether it be practicable. No vagueness or doubt should exist in relation to fundamental principles of education. Methods may change; no inflexible rule can be laid down. Enlarging experience, enlightened by love, will vary infinitely the adaptations needed in the education of infinitely varied children, but the aim of education should not vary. Sound knowledge, as well as a steadfast faith and hope, must guide every intelligent parent from the beginning of family life, or confusion, perplexity, and endless difficulties will be added to the inevitable difficulties of education.
One of the most serious questions to be understood and practically answered by parents in the education of their sons is this: If in relation to sex Chastity be the true moral aim of a young man’s education, can it be secured without injury to his health? Is morality an advantage to the health of young men?[32] It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of this question, both to men and women. It touches the most vital interests of both. The family, the relations of husband and wife, the education of children, the rules and customs of society, and the arrangements of practical life will directly depend upon, or be affected by, the answer which we give to the question, Is virtue an advantage to all human beings? Can one moral law exist for all?
Truth must always be accepted. No personal prejudice, no habit of education, must stand in the way of clearly established truth. It is the greatest sin we can commit to try to believe a lie because the truth seems unpleasant, difficult, or contrary to prejudices. If it be true that chastity is a right thing for women, but a wrong thing for men, then the truth, with all its consequences, must be accepted. If, however, this statement be false—if it be a prejudice of education, a result of evil customs, the most fruitful source of misery to the human race—then the truth, with all its consequences, must equally be accepted. In seeking truth on this subject it is indispensable to examine its practical aspect closely, to study the facts on which existing customs are based, and disentangle the confused web of truth and falsehood, out of which has grown the present widespread belief that a young man cannot lead a chaste life to the age of twenty-five without injury to his health.
That some limit to the indulgence of natural instinct is necessary in both sexes will be evident from the early age at which the sexual movement commences, as well as from the length of time required for its completion. It is not only in children of twelve and fourteen that this instinct is already strongly marked, it may be observed at a much earlier age. Numberless instances of juvenile depravity come under the observation of the physician, and such gross cases are only exaggerations of the refined instincts veiled by modesty and self-respect, which are gradually growing in all healthy children. That this mental instinct tends to express itself in the unformed bodies of children corrupted by evil example, we have only too abundant proof. A chronic evil of boarding-schools, of asylums, and of all places where masses of children are thrown together without wise moral supervision, is the early habit of self-abuse. Long before the boy or girl is capable of becoming a parent, this dangerous habit may be formed. It is not necessarily the indication of a coarse nature. It is observable in refined, intellectual, and even pious persons, as a habit carried on from childhood, when it was begun in ignorance, or taught, perhaps, by servants, or caught from companions. Many a fine nature in both man and woman has been wrecked, by the insidious growth of this natural temptation, into an inveterate habit. The more common result, however, of this vicious practice is a premature stimulation of the sexual nature, which throws youth of both sexes either into habits of early licentiousness or into a morbid condition of mental impurity. An experienced physician[33] writes: ‘The earliest and most frequent cause of disorder of the generative apparatus is the practice of self-abuse, the tendency to which is strongest about the age of puberty.... Excitement is increased by the conversation and thoughts which are indulged in, and it is apt to be unchecked by the moral control which has not yet acquired its proper influence. Moreover, lads are often induced to the pernicious practice by their companions, who may be as ignorant as themselves of the wrong and mischief they are doing. It would be a very good thing if those who have the charge of boys were less scrupulous in giving warning upon this matter. Much trouble and anxiety might be spared by timely advice seriously and kindly given.... An extensive acquaintance, through years with those who have just come from our schools, has impressed the importance of this matter upon me.’
Dangers thus existing which may threaten the youngest child, the necessity of guidance, the formation of good habits, and the inculcation of self-respect even in childhood is evident. At an early age self-control can be taught. It is a principle which grows by exercise. The more the brain asserts its power of Will over the automatic actions of the body, the stronger may become the control of reason over sensations and instincts.
The neglect of children at this early age is a direct cause of the corruption of the next stage of life. The lad of sixteen or seventeen is in the first flush of early manhood. He is physically capable of becoming a father, although entirely unfit to be so. Some years are required to strengthen his physical powers. The advantage of the self-control of absolute chastity at this period of life is unquestionable; every physiologist will confirm this statement. But chastity is of the mind as well as of the body. The corruption of the mind at this early age is the most fruitful source of social evil in later life. The years from sixteen to twenty-one are critical years for youth. If purity of life and the strength of complete self-control can then be secured, there is every hope for the future. Every additional year will enlarge the mental capacity, and may confirm the power of Will. The strong man is able to take the large views of sex, its uses, aims, and duties, which are considerations too abstract for the child-man, impelled by bewildering sensations. If at this early age he falls, he is too often lost. Physical passion, which reaches its maximum (roughly speaking) at twenty-seven, can only be controlled and exalted if, at the age when chastity is a positive physical benefit, the great mental principle of self-control has gained mastery over the nature. If at this period the power of Will has been gained to retain self-respect and resist temptation, such habit of self-government is the safeguard of youth. It is the only foundation on which the early years of life can be safely based, the only way by which those habits of virtue can be established which strengthen the constitution and enable it to grow into the fullest vigour of manhood. If, however, the child has been injured by habits or associations which produce precocity and irritability of function, he will inevitably fall into vice in the earliest years of manhood; his power of resistance is gone, and every temptation drags him down.
One of our ablest surgeons has left on record the following weighty advice:[34] ‘The boy has to learn that to his immature frame every sexual indulgence is unmitigated evil. Every illicit pleasure is a degradation to be bitterly regretted hereafter.... If a boy is once fully impressed that all such indulgences are dirty and mean, and, with the whole force of his unimpaired energy, determines he will not disgrace himself by yielding, a very bright and happy future is before him.... Where, as is the case with a very large number, a young man’s education has been properly watched, and his mind has not been debased by vile practices, it is usually a comparatively easy task to be continent, and requires no great or extraordinary effort, and every year of voluntary chastity renders the task easier by the mere force of habit.... It is of vital importance that boys and young men should know, not only the guilt of an illicit indulgence of their dawning passions, but also the danger of straining an immature power, and the solemn truth that the want will be an irresistible tyrant only to those who have lent it strength by yielding; that the only true safety lies in keeping even the thoughts pure.... It is easier to abstain altogether than to be occasionally incontinent, and then continent for a period.... If a young man wished to undergo the acutest sexual suffering he could adopt no more certain method than to propose to be incontinent, with the avowed intention of becoming continent again when he had “sown his wild oats.” The agony of breaking off a habit which so rapidly entwines itself with every fibre of the human frame is such that it would not be too much to say to any youth commencing a career of vice: “You are going a road on which you will never turn back. However much you may wish it the struggle will be too much for you. You had better stop now. It is your last chance.”’
Our early neglect of youth is, then, one of the great causes of social immorality. The most earnest thought of parents should be given to the means of securing influences which will strengthen and purify their children in the early years of life. Evil outward temptations abound, but they must not be allowed to exercise their effects unchecked; they must be counteracted by more powerful influences for good.
The physical growth of youth, the new powers, the various symptoms which mark the transition from childhood into young manhood and womanhood, are often alarming to the individual. Yet this important period of life is entered upon, strange to say, as a general rule, without parental guidance. Parents shrink from their duty. They have failed to become their children’s confidential friends. In every other respect the physical and mental wants of their children are attended to. Suitable food is provided, and the various functions of digestion and assimilation carefully watched; the healthy condition of the skin, of the muscles, of all the various functions of the body provided for, and intellectual education carried on, but the highest physical and mental function committed to the human being, whose guidance requires the wisest foresight, the most delicate supervision, is left to the chances of accident or the counsels of a stranger. Measureless evil results from the neglect of parents to fortify their children at this age.
Although direct and impressive instruction and guidance in relation to sex is not only required by the young, but is indispensable to their physical and moral welfare, yet the utmost caution is necessary in giving such guidance, in order that the natural susceptibilities of the nature be not wounded. It is a point on which youth of both sexes are keenly sensitive, and any want of tact in addressing the individual, or any forcible introduction of the subject where the previous relations of parent and child have not produced the trust and affectionate mutual respect which would render communication on all serious subjects of life a rational sequence in their relations, may do harm instead of good. Where the conscience of the parent has only been awakened late in life to this high duty to the child, the attempt to approach the subject with the young adult is often deeply resented by both boy and girl. In such cases the necessary counsel may be better given by a stranger—by the physician, who will speak with acknowledged authority, or by some book of impressive character, when such a one (much needed) shall have been prepared. That this is a very imperfect fulfilment of parental duty is true, but it is often all that the parent can attempt where the high and important character of sex has not been understood at the outset of family life, and thus not guided the past education of the children.
It is important to recognise the parallelism which exists throughout the physical organization of the two sexes, making them equal parts of complete human nature—a parallelism which is too often lost sight of, at this period of a young man’s life. In each of the two halves of humanity, the sexual functions are adapted to the higher nature of the human being. Provision is made in each sex for their control by reason, this provision being made with greater or lesser elaborate preparation in proportion to the relative importance of these functions in each sex. This provision secures their conversion into a human social force, instead of allowing them to remain a blind instinct, as in the lower animals; for everything in humanity is subject to the law of progress and higher growth. The generative function in both sexes must be kept in a state of readiness for use. It has, therefore, its special activity of production, maintaining its tissues in healthy vigour throughout adult life. It is also marked with a certain periodicity, which is stamped on all the more important vital functions. It must, however, at the same time be subjected to reason and converted into a human faculty. To secure this end, it contains within itself natural provisions for its own independent well-being, Nature having established the power of physical self-balance in this important function by the natural, gradual, and healthy removal of unemployed secretions in each individual. It thus becomes the subject of reason, adapted to the higher aims of life, instead of a blind force enslaving the human being.
An important illustration of this subjection of these functions to reason, is referred to by the experienced surgeon, Mr. Acton, who writes: ‘There exists no greater error, or one more opposed to physiological truth, than the fear that atrophy or impotence might be the result of chastity. I have never, after many years’ experience, seen a single instance of atrophy from this cause. It is not a fact that power is annihilated in well-formed adults leading a healthy life and yet remaining continent. The function goes on to old age, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, but very frequently only under the influence of the will. No person need be deterred by this apocryphal fear from living a chaste life. It is a device of the unchaste—a lame excuse for their own incontinence, not founded on any physiological law. The organs will take care that their action is not interfered with.’[35]
The very signs, however, of Nature’s provision for raising the lower instinct into a human faculty, often create great uneasiness in the young mind. It is at this important crisis that the delicate and respectful counsel of the wise parent or physician is indispensable to both boys and girls. The youth should be told that Nature will help, not injure him at this important crisis of life, if he will be true to his own higher nature. The young of both sexes should realize that self-control of thought and action is essential. Every means of hygienic, intellectual, and religious influence should be used to direct and strengthen both mind and body. For both young men and young women it is hygiene in its largest sense that should be prescribed and enforced—viz., the guidance of the early vital forces, both physical and mental, into natural beneficial directions. The youth who has been saved from habits of self-abuse in childhood can now be saved from habits of vice in manhood, and helped forward in that life of virtue which alone will strengthen all his powers and make him worthy of marriage.
That this view of the sexual function as a human force, to be governed by reason, is the truth, and the modern theory of its being a blind instinct enslaving the individual a falsehood, is proved in many ways. We have the medical opinion of physicians in large practice, the private and public testimony of individuals, the observation of well-managed schools and colleges, of prisons, of communities, and the social customs of various classes and different races. Let us glance at some of these facts.
In rigid training for athletic sports, for boat-racing, prize-fighting, etc., chastity is enforced as one of the means for attaining the greatest possible amount of physical vigour and endurance. This fact, observed in ancient times, is confirmed by modern experience.
When the health is seriously impaired, the same rule of sexual abstinence is laid down. In a large proportion of these cases the power of sex is not lost; the physical craving may even be increased, from the irritability which often accompanies disturbed health. But the fear of death acts as a counter force on the young mind, and rouses it to unwonted efforts at self-command. No sacrifice is too great to escape death, to regain health, and take part once more in ordinary life. Temptations are avoided, healthy regime adopted, and the young man, taking a great deal of outdoor exercise, leads for months an absolutely chaste life, with the greatest possible advantage to his health. Such cases may be constantly noted in foreign health resorts, and amongst a class of cases the most difficult to reform—viz., dissipated young men who have been perverted from childhood by a state of society so universally corrupt that it cannot happily be paralleled yet, in England or America.
It is well known that the early ancestors of our vigorous German race guarded the chastity of their youth until the age of twenty-five, as the true method of increasing their strength, enlarging their stature, and enabling them to become the progenitors of a vigorous race.
The opportunity of wide observation enjoyed by the headmasters of public schools, and all engaged in education, lends great weight to their testimony. The master of over 800 boys and young men states: ‘The result of my personal observation, extending over a great many years, is, that hard exercise in the open air is, in most cases, an efficient remedy against vicious propensities. A large number of our young men thus make a law unto themselves, and pass the period of their youth in temperance and purity till they have realized a position that enables them to marry.’ Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, has given similar testimony.[36]
In primitive Christian communities, and many country and village populations uncorrupted by the stimulants of luxury, we observe the advantage of chastity to the health of youth. In these simple, healthy societies the strong public sentiment of the village, combined with outdoor life, preserves the honesty of the young men until the time of early marriage. The result is the growth of a vigorous, healthy race.
Our recognition of the possibility, as well as advantage, of chastity to the young is further strengthened by a knowledge of the healthy self-control exercised by men in the prime of life. After the age of thirty, the unnatural life of celibacy is a difficult exercise of mind and body, far more difficult than it is to uncorrupted youth. The intimate experience, however, of every observant man and woman can recall constant instances of the honourable fidelity of husbands to their marriage vow during the protracted illness of their wives; and the majority of our countrymen would consider it an insult to suppose that when a new-born child is laid in their arms, and the wife leans for support during her period of weakness upon her husband’s love, that he betrays her love and trust during those solemn epochs of family life.
To private knowledge is added the weight of solemn public testimony from men of ardent temperament who have reached the full vigour of life in the practice of entire chastity. Every one who listened to the weighty words of Père Hyacinthe, spoken in St. James’s Hall before a crowded audience a few years ago, received the proof of the co-existence of vigorous health with stainless virtue. Similar testimony, called forth by the false teaching and dangerous tendencies of the present time, has been given by many others, proving the principle that the human sexual passion when uncorrupted, does not enslave the man; that the possibility of perfect health and perfect virtue is the natural endowment of every human being.
A modern writer of unsurpassed genius, Honoré de Balzac (whose writings are injurious because they are such wonderfully vivid representations of horrible social disease) was himself a man of singularly chaste life, and attributes his power to that fact. Brought up by his father in strict self-control, his power of Will was not destroyed; he preserved his respect for women, his belief in noble love. His intimate friend thus writes of him: ‘Above all he insisted on the necessity of absolute purity of life, such as the Church prescribes for monks. “That,” said he, “develops the powers of the mind to the highest degree, and imparts to those who practise it unknown faculties. For myself, I accepted all the monastic conditions necessary for workers. One only passion carried me out of my studious habits—it was a passion for outdoor observation of the manners and morals of the faubourg where I lived.”’
Strong testimony as to the compatibility of chastity and health is furnished by the Catholic priesthood. Although it is well known that there are large numbers of men who break their vow, and men who should never have entered the priesthood, it is also well known as a positive fact that vast numbers of men are found in every age and country who honestly maintain their vow, and who, by avoidance of temptation, by direction of the mind to intellectual pursuits and devotion to great humanitarian objects, pass long lives in health and vigour. The effect on the world of enforced celibacy is, of course, disastrous; but the power that has been gained by the institution of the priesthood is indubitable, and the one object here insisted on—viz., the compatibility of physical health with the observance of chastity—is proved by it on a large scale.
The Shaker communities of New Lebanon and other settlements contain a large number of middle-aged as well as elderly men, who live an absolutely celibate life and enjoy excellent health.[37] The same is true of Moravians, etc.
The possibility of controlling this great human instinct is further shown by the experience of women. We see that under the effect of training to a moral life and the action of public opinion a great body of women in our own country constantly lead a virtuous life, frequently in spite of physical instincts as strong as those of men, and always in spite of mental instincts still more powerful. That the feeling of sex regarded as a mental passion is even stronger in women than in men must be evident to all who give to the word ‘strength’ its true signification—the signification of mental as well as physical phenomena in proportion to the powers of the individual. The demands of women are greater than those of men; they desire more and more the thought and devotion of those they love. They often display a persistent fidelity, terrible in its earnestness, when they have had the misfortune to become attached to an unworthy object. The weak virtue of the mass of women, exposed to constant temptation, indicates the insatiable craving of the woman’s heart for love. It is never at rest; it always needs its objects, and when these affections are degraded from their high purpose and defrauded of their legitimate objects, they become the greatest obstacle to human progress. No solution of the difficult problem of sexual relationships is possible, until the complete parallelism (not identity) of the sexual nature in the two sexes is recognised, and the significance of woman’s mental necessities understood. Women themselves must learn the meaning of the high nature that God has given them, and perceive how great a responsibility rests upon them in the mighty work of raising the human race out of the old thraldom of lust into the reign of love. That large numbers of women, so richly endowed with the high principle of sex, retain their health whilst leading celibate lives, is one more proof of that adaptation of this principle to the higher character of our nature, which transforms a simple brute instinct into a grand human force.
The foregoing facts distinctly prove that the exercise of the sexual powers is not indispensable to the health of human beings; that men of all ages can live in full vigorous health without such exercise; and that to the young it is an immense physical advantage that they should so live. This is the important principle to be first established. The subjects of temptation, of customs, of artificial wants, etc., are other questions, to be considered by themselves. Thought will be inevitably confused, and the important practical arrangements of the future hopelessly perplexed, if all sorts of questions are jumbled together; if practical difficulties, social phases, temporary phenomena, are allowed to obscure or completely hide the great guide of humanity—Eternal Truth. A principle clearly established is that portion of truth needed for present guidance. It must be thoroughly understood and resolutely held to, as the only clue which can guide us slowly through the dark labyrinth of error, vice, and misery. Such a guiding principle is found in the essential nature of the human sexual faculty—its distinctive power of self-control. The more this principle is considered, understood, and valued, the more it will be found that it contains the power of purifying society, enlightening legislation, and raising our status as a nation.
The aim, therefore, of all wise parents should be to secure those influences which will preserve the purity of their sons until the age of twenty-five, when marriage, as a rule, should be made possible and encouraged. This is the wise practice, derived from experience, applicable to all nations living in temperate climes. Earlier marriage may sometimes be wise, but it is not the broad rule. That the individual may remain in health until a later period and throughout life has been proved, but it is a national loss that the best years of vigorous manhood should not stamp themselves upon the future generation.
The unmarried life after thirty years of age is often injured in mind or body. The exceptions arising from character or occupation, from religious enthusiasm or devotion to some great work, do not refute the general statement. It must necessarily be so. As sex is a natural and most powerful human force, there is risk of injury in permanently stifling it. Marriage being its true method of expression and education, the character is injured through want of this development. It is only through honourable marriage that the beneficial growth of manly character of mind and body can be attained. The illegitimate exercise of the sexual powers is a source of direful social and national evil, and requires those strong restraints of both law and custom which help to educate a nation. No fear that some individuals, unable to marry, may suffer in their private lives, can for one moment justify the establishment of practices or the sanctioning of customs which are destructive to the general welfare. Far more evil, mental and physical, arises to the race from the effects of licentiousness than from any effects of abstinence.
CHAPTER IV
Methods by which Sexual Morality may be Promoted
The important question will present itself to everyone who realizes the gravity of the dangers which we have now exposed: What practical steps can be taken to secure the truer standard of morality which will remodel the education of youth? This weighty question can only gradually receive a complete answer, as the intelligence of our age awakens to the fact that the attainment of true sexual morality is the fundamental principle of national growth. The first indispensable basis of all efforts for practical reform is the acceptance of a true principle of action. The great guiding principle now laid down is this: that Vice—that is, the illegitimate exercise of the sexual faculty, regardless of religious conscience and the welfare of others—is not essential to the constitution of the human being, but is the result of removable conditions. The importance of this truth is immense. Its acceptance or denial produces two diametrically opposite courses of action—action in education, in society, and in legislation. It is one of those abstract truths which are stronger than all facts, being eternal instead of temporary, moulding practical action instead of depending on it. The belief or denial of this truth may express itself in varying forms, according to the age or country, according to the more or less logical workings of a nation’s mind; but whether clearly recognised in all its bearings, or blindly acted on in a confused and near-sighted way, the results will always follow in the same direction. The acceptance of this truth will always tend to diminish and gradually destroy evil; its denial must inevitably intensify and extend evil.
It is the essential nature of truth or falsehood to express itself in practical action. This tendency is overlooked by the majority of human beings engaged in the eager pursuits of daily life, in business, in household duties, in amusements, and the logical results of false theories are, in practical life, often modified by the happy instincts which blindly turn aside the inevitable tendencies of logical error; but the truth or falsehood always remains as a great permanent force at work from age to age. In considering the means of attaining to a truer practice of morality, therefore, the spread of truth is a first indispensable necessity and condition of future improvement. The great truth to be recognised is the fact that male as well as female purity is a necessary foundation of progressive human society. This important subject must no longer be ignored. The time has come for its acceptance by all experienced men and women. The necessity of upholding one moral standard as the aim to be striven for, must become a fundamental article of religious faith. Above all, Parents must realize the tremendous responsibility which rests upon them to provide for the healthy growth of the principles of sex in their children.
It will be seen, the more closely this subject is investigated, that the thought and action of women as well as men, is indispensable to social regeneration. On women of all classes rests a full measure of responsibility for the present evil condition of sexual relations. No class can throw off this responsibility. Women are equally responsible with men for the deep corruptions of society. This is pre-eminently a parents’ question, affecting the vital interests of the family and the future of children in every relation of life; woman, from her central position in the family as wife and mother, must know how to use her immense influence wisely. To be wise, knowledge of truth is essential, and the adult woman, the centre of home influence, must acquire correct knowledge on every subject that concerns family life. The nature and requirements of men and women is a subject on which a woman needs correct knowledge, not only as a guide to the education of the young child, but as a guide in the various duties of life. A woman is mother always, not only of the infant, but of the growing and grown man. A mother who has been able to secure the friendship of her son as well as her daughter, can exercise a beneficial influence from youth onwards which will be recognised with ceaseless gratitude in later life.[38] The higher influence which women are intended to infuse into sex makes the subject a holy one to the wise mother. She can approach it in moments of sacred confidence with her children with a delicacy and tender earnestness that wounds no natural reserve, but excites a grateful reverence in the youth’s mind. The first falsehood, therefore, that must disappear is the belief that the higher classes of women—the cultivated, the refined, the virtuous—have nothing to do with sexual vice; that they must remain ignorant of facts, and see nothing but what it is pleasant to see. It is on this class of women, perhaps, more than on any other one class of society that its future welfare depends.[39] They are capable of broad views of truth, of insight, of ceaseless devotion to the highest welfare of the race, to God, when once they have learned to know what truth is; when they have realized the actual facts of every-day life and observed the effects of prevalent customs upon women as well as upon men. The task of regenerating society by securing the healthy growth of the faculty of sex in their children being, therefore, laid upon both parents, the indispensable co-operation of the mother in this work is seen more clearly, as the causes of sexual precocity and the triumph of the material nature over love are studied more deeply.
The fact being established that the human being is not designed by Providence to be the slave of passion, what are the causes which produce that disease of licentiousness—as truly disease as drunkenness or opium-eating—which we find to be more completely organized and more audaciously justifying itself than at any previous time, the dangerous peculiarity of the present age being that customs and habits, formerly blindly followed, are now defended or legalized?
We shall find, on considering the influence at work on the human being from childhood upward (laying aside for the moment the question of heredity), obvious sources of corruption that help us to the solution of this difficult problem. ‘The temptations of life’ to which our youth succumb are no fixed things essential to human nature. They vary in every age and country. They are changeable facts, removable evils, perversions of natural tastes. The human race can grow out of license into order, out of prostitution into marriage, out of lust into love, as certainly as typhoid fever can be exterminated by pure water and pure air. It is from childhood that the strong man is moulded gradually into the hero—or the criminal. If the superior standard of morality which is still to be found amongst us, be compared with the customs widely diffused in many other countries, it will be seen how variable the standard of morality is, and how dependent it is on social circumstance—i.e., on removable conditions.[40] These corrupting circumstances of life surround the individual at every stage of growth from youth onwards. They are found in early habits and influences; in mischievous school companions and studies; in vile literature, books, advertisements, pictures; in indecent theatre, ballet, public amusements; in opportunity and temptation; in drink and dissipated companions; in perverted social sentiment, false medical advice, delayed or unhappy marriage—these are the snares which meet the human being, and which may gradually pervert the nature. Now, there is not one of these facts that is an essential part of human nature. There is not one that cannot be changed to good. Each one of the evils above named is an evil to be attacked and vanquished, and the wise method of doing this, is a distinct command and work of practical religion.
The following points bearing on the moral education of childhood and youth must be considered by all parents who are convinced of the saving value of sexual morality—viz., observation of the child during infancy, acquirement of the child’s confidence, selection of young companions, care in the choice of a school and of studies which will not injure the mind, the formation of tastes, outdoor exercise, companionship of brothers and sisters, the choice of physician, social intercourse, and amusements. These various points require careful consideration.
The earliest duty of the parent is to watch over the infant child. Few parents are aware how very early evil habits may be formed, nor how injurious the influence of the nurse often is to the child.[41] The mother’s eye, full of tenderness and respect, must always watch over her children. Self-respect cannot be too early inculcated. The keynote of moral education is respect for the human body. The mother should caution the child plainly not to touch or meddle with himself more than is necessary; that his body is a wonderful and sacred thing, intended for important and noble ends; that it must not be played or trifled with, or in any way injured. Every thoughtless breach of delicacy should be checked with a gentle gravity which will not repel or abash, but impress the child.
This watchfulness over the young child, by day and night, is the first duty to be universally inculcated. Two things are necessary in order to fulfil it—viz., a clear knowledge of the evils to which the child may be exposed, and tact to interpret the faintest indication of danger and to guard from it without allowing the child to be aware of the danger. Evils should never be presented to the young child’s mind. Habits must be formed from earliest infancy, but reasons for those habits should only be given much later. It is the parent’s intelligence which must act for the child during very early life. This unavoidable necessity is, at the same time, a cause of frequent failure in education, for the reason that parents, through ignorance or egotism, fail to see that they must study the nature of the child. The strong adult too often fails in insight, and imposes its own methods and conclusions upon a nature not susceptible of those methods and often not adapted to those conclusions. This is really spiritual tyranny, and destroys the providential relation which should exist between child and adult. The parent should become the first and truest friend of the child. This possibility and duty is a great parents’ privilege, too often unknown, and yet it affects the whole future of the child. It is through the love and confidence that exist between them that durable influence is exerted. If the child naturally confides its little joys and sorrows to the ever-ready and intelligent sympathy of the mother, if it grows up in the habit of turning to this warm and helpful influence, the youth will come as naturally with his experiences and plans to the parent as did the little child; the evils of life, which must be gradually known, will then be encountered with the aid of experience. The form of the relation between parent and child changes, not its essence. The essence of the relationship is trust: the fact that the parent’s presence will always be welcomed by the child; that in work or in play, in infancy or youth, the parent shall be the first natural friend. It is only then that wise, permanent influence can be exerted. It is not dogmatism, nor rigid laws, nor formal instruction, that is needed, but the formative power of loving insight and sympathy. It is only when this providential relation exists that the parent can understand the life of the child and exercise influence without harshness. With every step in life the child’s horizon enlarges, and opportunities of good or temptations to evil increase. The experiences of school-life, the companions selected, the studies pursued, and the books read, introduce the child into the wide world of practical life in miniature. All the circumstances of school-life are of serious importance—an importance not sufficiently realized in their bearing upon character, and in the responsibility which rests with parents themselves, to mould those circumstances. The child’s entrance upon school-life is his first plunge into the great world beyond the family circle, his first serious contact with new thoughts, customs, and standards—with a new code of morality; not the formal morality of his professors, but the confused practical morality of his school companions. Here he may meet with every kind of evil, of which he had previously no conception, carried on in a crude, practical form by those whom he naturally looks up to—his elder companions, who are perhaps rich and clever, and whom he regards as ‘men.’ How is the child strengthened to meet this grand new life, as it seems to him, which entrances him with its novelty, its variety, and its vigour, and which very often produces a feeling of kindly contempt for the narrow home life?
Full confidence between parent and child is necessary in order that all the child is learning may be known. This school world, unlike the larger world, is directly under the possibility of parental control. What parents, as a body, require, the teacher will endeavour to provide. The material arrangements and regulations, as well as the moral tone of any school to which a child is sent, must be considered. It being remembered that the great vices of self-abuse and fornication are the curse of our schools and colleges, all the direct and indirect means must be sought for by which these vices can be as rigidly excluded from our educational establishments as the vice of thieving. School and college sentiment should be trained to regard them as equally dishonourable and unmanly. They must be overcome chiefly by moral means in connection with hygienic arrangements. The views of the principal on the subject of sexual training, the character of assistant-teachers, the water-closet and sleeping arrangements, the amount of outdoor exercise secured, should all be studied by the conscientious parent.
Some direct hygienic instruction and warning, suited to the age of the child, should be given. It is a false and cruel delicacy which ignores the great danger of schools, and sends an innocent child utterly unprepared into a school society where corruption exists. ‘I believe,’ writes an experienced teacher of lads, ‘that ninety-nine hundredths of the immorality that prevails amongst young men originates primarily in ignorance and perverted curiosity.’ He therefore lays down the following practical rules for the hygienic instruction which he deems indispensable: First, that the physiology of sex should be carefully subordinated to general physiology and hygiene, and that it should always be treated comparatively. Secondly, that all instruction and examination should be oral and in class, no text-books being given to the pupils, the utmost simplicity and plainness of speech being employed, and only outline diagrams used as pictorial illustrations.[42]
The rational view of education—viz., the formation of character and the establishment of well-balanced health, as fundamental objects to which other things should be added—require such a revision of our school system as will secure correct physical habits, and, above all, mental purity. This sound basis of education must be insured in all places where children congregate together. Careful arrangements to promote these ends are equally necessary in boys’ and girls’ schools. They promote alike true manliness and true womanliness.
The nature of the studies given to the young and the way in which classical literature is taught require to be considered by parents. The corrupt literature of antiquity tends to corrupt the youthful mind as unavoidably as licentious modern literature. Its bearing on the healthy growth of youth must be considered. The advantages of classical education should be secured without employing works whose tendency is to degrade the young mind. The contrary opinion is the prejudice of custom. Our Catholic brethren have fully recognised the suicidal policy of imbuing unformed minds with licentious literature, and the Church has held more than one General Conference on the subject. No one can doubt the excellence of their scholarship, and it is much to be desired that a careful study of their methods in this respect should be required from all instructors of youth. The impulse to such a change should come from parents.
The dangers arising from vicious literature of any kind cannot be overestimated by parents. Whether sensuality be taught by police reports, or by Greek and Latin literature, by novels, plays, songs, penny papers, or any species of the corrupt literature now sent forth broadcast, and which finds its way into the hands of the young of all classes and both sexes, the danger is equally real. It is storing the susceptible mind of youth with words, images, and suggestions of vice which remain permanently in the mind, springing up day and night in unguarded moments, weakening the power of resistance, and accustoming the thoughts to an atmosphere of vice. No amount of simple caution given by parents or instructors suffices to guard the young mind from the influence of evil literature. It must be remembered that hatred of evil will never be learned by intellectual warning. The permanent and incalculable injury which is done to the young mind by vicious reading is proved by all that we now know about the structure and methods of growth of the human mind. Physiological inquiry is constantly throwing more light upon our mental as well as physical organization. We learn that nutritive changes take place in the human brain by the effect of objects which produce ideas; that permanent traces of these changes continue through life, so that states or changes connected with certain ideas remain stored up in the brain, capable of recall, or presenting themselves in the most unexpected way. We see the importance of the last impressions made on the brain at night, indicating the activity and fixity of the cerebral changes of nutrition during the quiescence of sleep. All that we observe of these processes shows us that different physical changes are produced in the brain by different classes of ideas, and that the moral sense itself may be affected by the constant exercise of the brain in one direction or another, so that the actual individual standard of what is right or what is wrong will be quite changed, according to whether low or high ideas have been constantly recorded in the retentive substance of the brain.
These important facts have a wide and constant bearing on education, showing the really poisonous character of all licentious literature, whether ancient or modern, and its destructive effect on the quality of the brain. It is necessary, therefore, to prepare the young mind to shrink repelled from the debasing literature with which society is flooded, and which is one of the greatest dangers to be encountered. The great help towards this object is the cultivation of strong intellectual and moral tastes in children, the preoccupation of the mind with what is good. Truth should be in the field before falsehood. All children and youth are fascinated by narratives of adventure, endurance, heroism, and noble deeds. The home library should be selected in order to brace the mind and character, and enlist the interest of the child or youth in what is manly and true. Every child also has some special taste or tendency which can be found out, if carefully looked for. It may be for art, for science, for construction, for investigation, adventure, or beneficence; but whatever it be, it may be made the means of intellectual and moral growth. The special youthful tendency is of extreme value, as indicating the direction in which a taste, even if slightly marked, may be cultivated into a serious interest and become a powerful help in the formation of character. The study of natural science and of all pursuits which develop a love and observation of Nature are of great value in education. Such pursuits have the additional advantage of promoting life in the open air. The weighty testimony in favour of the beneficial influence of outdoor exercises and amusements has already been noted. All experience shows us that the calling of the great muscular apparatus of the human body into constant vigorous life is an indispensable means for securing the healthy, well-balanced growth of the frame, and for preventing the premature development of the sexual faculty. It is a subject worthy of the especial study of parents in relation to the education of both sexes. Abundant exercise in the fresh air, with total abstinence from alcoholic drink, may be considered the two great physical aids to morality in youth.
The companions chosen by the child at school or the youth at college are of extreme importance to the growth of character, and the exercise of influence over this choice, without interfering with the freedom of the child, is one of the greatest aids that a parent can render it. The intimacy between those who are entering upon life together, and who have the same future before them, must necessarily increase and become a great fact in the young life; but it is essential that the parent should know who these companions are, and the character of the influence that will be exerted. If the parent be the friend of his child, he can also be the friend of his friend. Tact and sympathy are of the utmost value in welcoming and attracting the youthful friends, and the wise parental care thus exercised towards offspring, extends necessarily beyond the individual home.
The attention of the parent must always be ready to observe the signs of growing sex in sons as well as daughters. Numberless indications, which none but the mother can note, warn her of that approaching crisis of early manhood, now so fatal to our youth. No wise mother observes this change without a deepening of respect and tenderness, and of infinite maternal yearning to strengthen, guide, and ennoble her man-child. At this epoch is often thrown upon her an immense responsibility—a responsibility so grave that it may involve the ruin or salvation of her son—viz., the choice of his physician. The importance of this choice cannot be over-estimated by the parent. The young are easily alarmed about their health; they are at the same time utterly unable to judge of their own condition; they have no knowledge to guide them, no experience by which to measure their symptoms. They place absolute confidence in their medical adviser; his opinion and advice outweigh all other considerations and supersede all other counsel. The parent must therefore realize that when a physician is selected for the growing lad, an authority is placed over him which may become stronger than the parental influence, and be henceforth the most powerful support or antagonist in the moral as well as physical guidance of the son.
If medical science were a positive science, as is mathematics, and its professors able to apply its principles to daily life with the certainty of geometrical propositions, it would be folly to do otherwise than accept any medical opinion of established authority with entire confidence. This, however, is not the case, and the members of the medical profession would themselves be the last persons to lay claim to the possession of absolute truth. As centuries roll on, one medical school of opinion succeeds another, and theory after theory is exploded by accumulating facts. It is therefore no new thing and no subject of reproach to the self-sacrificing members of a noble profession, that different opinions should exist amongst them, in relation to subjects which affect that complex problem—human life. Indeed, it would be an exception to a general rule did not such difference exist. But we are now considering a subject so fundamental in human welfare, so much wider than any class interest, that any variety of opinion respecting it, is of vital importance to be noted, and must be recognised by all intelligent persons. It must therefore be thoroughly understood by all parents that there are now two distinct classes of medical opinion existing amongst physicians. Each class embraces men of high medical repute, but men who hold diametrically opposite views in relation to the guidance of the sexual powers, the one class considering Virtue, the other Vice, a necessity. Each class of physicians is honest in opinion, clear-sighted, wishing well to society; but the one class is far-sighted, the other near-sighted; the one knows the omnipotence of Good, the other sees the triumph of Evil. This diversity of opinion cannot remain as an abstract proposition, but, like all opinion, it expresses itself in action. In medical advice given to a youth, the slightest bias in one or another direction at the starting-point of life will set him on one of two paths constantly diverging to the right or wrong. One path leads to self-control, enlarged mental and physical hygiene, chastity; the other to doubt, yielding, fornication.
At this period of life, no uncertain advice should be given by the physician. Support and guidance are required from him, and his counsel must be strong, positive, and clear. The patient must be taught that chastity, properly understood, is health. He must learn that the indications of sex in early manhood are a notice that the new faculties must be restrained—not exercised; that they give a warning to guard against self-abuse and abuse of the other sex; that the great danger to be dreaded is stimulation; that everything that can excite, whether external or internal, must be studiously avoided. The vital fact must be announced and powerfully brought home to him—that if he will keep the mind pure, Nature will keep the body healthy. This mental strength is his one great concern, to be secured in every possible way. There must be no doubt in medical advice; it must ring like the words of true science spoken by our distinguished surgeon to his students:[43] ‘Many of your patients will ask you about sexual intercourse, and some will expect you to prescribe fornication. I would just as soon prescribe theft or lying or anything else that God has forbidden.... Chastity does no harm to mind or body; its discipline is excellent; marriage can be safely waited for, and among the many nervous and hypochondriacal patients who have talked to me about fornication, I have never heard one say that he was better or happier for it.’[44] The radical importance of the medical advice given to youth will therefore be evident to all parents who perceive the full bearing of the truths contained in the preceding pages. No lesser consideration, no false feeling of reserve, should ever prevent the parent from knowing to which class of physicians the medical guidance of his son be intrusted.
An invaluable provision for the education of the principle of sex, exists in the companionship of brothers and sisters. This companionship, established by Nature, should be carefully promoted, not thwarted. It is one of those provisions which make family life the type of wider relationships, the true germ of society from which national purity and strength should grow. Indeed, the more we study the capabilities of the family in each of its varied aspects, the more potent we perceive its influence to be, the greater the national importance of maintaining the family in its proper power and dignity. This natural grouping of boys and girls is Nature’s indication of the right method of education, and the time will undoubtedly come when the present monastic system of general education may be given up without incurring grave disadvantages. That the familiar intercourse of boys and girls in the kindly presence of their elders is of very great advantage is an observation based upon wide experience. Isolation, mystery, obstacles, produce craving curiosity, excitement—in fact, morbid stimulus—instead of matter-of-fact acquaintance and natural familiarity. Two opposite extremes tend to produce the precocity and morbid condition of sentiment which now prevail—viz., either throwing youth into the companionship of the vicious or rigidly separating the sexes. Each extreme is against Nature, each is injurious to the individual. The former practice is based upon the theory that sex is an uncontrollable instinct which must run riot. The latter practice proceeds from the theory that sex is a great evil, a temptation of the devil, and as far as possible to be destroyed. The true principle, however, consists in a recognition of the nobility of sex, and the necessity—1st, of its slow development; 2nd, of its honourable satisfaction.
Now, in the young and growing nature, sex may be richly satisfied by spiritual refreshment and refined companionship. Conjugal relations are not necessary to the very young in attaining true delight in sex. On the contrary, false relations are an outrage. They violently destroy the gradual unfolding of mental and physical joys, which alone produces exquisite and lasting delight. A large amount of honourable companionship between young men and women is of the utmost advantage in strengthening and ennobling young manhood and womanhood. This valuable result is only possible, however, as springing from the practice of chastity; in connection with fornication it is impossible. Parents are now justly afraid of the influences that may be brought to bear on their children. Nevertheless, abundant honourable companionship between the sexes is an important principle of future reform. Provide the necessary condition of adult sympathy and influence, and the wider the range of acquaintance can be made between boys and girls, between uncorrupted young men and women, the better, the more valuable, will be the results of such acquaintance. The possibility and practice of natural familiar acquaintance between unmarried young men and women in any society may be considered a test of the healthy human condition of such society. Any society where it is considered necessary to keep young people rigidly apart is a corrupt society, based upon principles of national degeneracy instead of natural development.
The companionship of brothers and sisters is now early falsified by the failure of parents to perceive its inestimable value, by separation in studies and amusements, by false theories or corrupt habits, through the influence of which the tie is weakened or perverted. The friendship and affection, however, of these natural associates should be sedulously promoted by companionship in studies, in music, in outdoor pursuits and amusements. Into a family circle where brothers and sisters were friends and companions, other boys and girls, other young men and women, would naturally enter, the ennobling educational influence would extend indefinitely, and those genuine sympathies which should lead to marriage union, would gradually display themselves.
There is peculiar value in the influence of sisters. It is a special mission of young women to make virtue lovely. As the mother realizes all that such a high calling implies, as she fully understands the meaning of Virtue—as distinguished from Innocence—and the methods of clothing it in loveliness, the more she will perceive the noble character of a daughter’s influence and its vital importance. In this aspect small things become great through their uses. The principles of dress become worthy of study; health, grace, liveliness and serenity, sympathy, intelligence, conversational ability, accomplishments, receive a new meaning—a consecration to the welfare of the human race. To make brothers love virtue, to make all men love purity, through its incarnation in virtuous daughters, is a grand work to accomplish! The failure of young women in any country, to embody the beauty and strength of virtue is one of the most serious evils that can befall a State. The necessity of cultivating mental purity and respect for the principle of sex exists as strongly in relation to girls as to boys, and it is only by securing this mental purity that young women will unconsciously address themselves to the higher rather than to the lower instincts of their male companions.
The family home, carrying on its proper work, is no narrow circle of selfish exclusiveness, but a living centre, attracting to itself and widely radiating healthy social life. The moral influence of parents, and particularly of the mother, as the centre of the household, extends itself in two opposite directions—viz., in intercourse with the poorer classes, through servants, tradespeople, benevolence, etc.; with the richer, through social intercourse with equals. In both directions, her influence will exert a direct bearing upon the moral education of the young. The first and most important connection with the poorer classes is through domestic servants. It is essential, from the outset of family life, to select servants who will not injure the atmosphere of home. The difficulty of doing this should be a warning voice to every parent, and compel a careful search into the cause of this great and growing difficulty. What does it mean—a widespread corruption through the foundation of society, through the ranks of working women, so that virtue, truth, fidelity, are hard to find? If so, what are the causes, and what will be the influence exerted on the children of the family, both at home and when they go out into the world, and are thrown into unavoidable intercourse with this class of women? The more carefully this problem is considered, the more intimate will the relations of rich and poor be seen to be, the more vital their relations in respect to the great question of morality, the more imperative the duty of every mother to take a personal interest in her servants, to exert an ennobling influence upon them, and to consider the children of her poorer neighbours as well as her own, if only for the sake of her own children. The family is a centre of affection, and every servant should share in this life. It is wrong to retain a young servant in a household without entering into her joys and sorrows, being acquainted with her family and friends, providing her with honourable amusements, and helping her to grow. In connection with this branch of our subject there are two important principles that should be acted on by intelligent women. The first is the necessity of educating the sentiment of sex in girls into a self-controlling force, conscious of the weighty responsibility which its great influence involves. The second principle is the resolute abolition of an outcast class of women. Christian civilization can acknowledge no pariah class, but only erring individuals of either sex to be helped to a nobler life.
Equally important is the influence exerted by parents as members of society on their own class, thus helping to form public opinion, which is the foundation of law as well as custom. The moral tone of general society at present is a source of great injury to the young. The wilful ignoring of right and wrong in sex; the theory that it is a subject not to be considered; the custom of allowing riches, talents, agreeable manners, to atone for any amount of moral corruption; the arrangement of marriage on a commercial basis, material, not spiritual, considerations being of chief importance; and the deplorable delay of marriage in men until the period of maximum physical vigour is past—all contribute inevitably to the formation of a corrupt social atmosphere, equally injurious to the moral health of men and women. The purest family influence contends with difficulty against this general corruption. After the period of childhood, society becomes a powerful educator of young men and women. The seductions exercised by women and by men bear upon our youth of both sexes in various ways, under widely different aspects, but always with the same degrading tendencies, with the same unequal contest between inexperienced innocence and practised vice. Seeing how the highest aims of parental education are constantly shipwrecked by the influence of society, it becomes a necessity on the part of parents to change the tone of society. In this great work women quite as much as men must think and act. Two fundamental principles must be steadily held in view in this great aim: First, the discouragement of licentiousness; second, the promotion of early marriage. The methods of discouraging licentiousness in society require the gravest consideration of all parents, and emphatically of all married women. It is a subject so delicate, and yet so vital, that it must be treated with equal care and firmness, and the problem can only be solved by combined action. To admit men or women of licentious lives or impure inclinations to the home circle, or to receive them with welcome honour or cordiality in society, is a direct encouragement to vice and an equal discouragement to virtue.[45] Confirmed Vice must not be brought into intimate relations with young Virtue. It is a crime, a stupidity, to do so. On the other hand, no inquisitorial investigation of private life is desirable or permissible. A great duty also exists towards the erring and the vicious, towards all those who have oftentimes fallen into vice rather than voluntarily chosen it, who are the victims of circumstances, of gradual unforeseen deterioration. These fellow-beings demand the tenderest pity, the strongest sympathy, the wisest help. Clever or frivolous, unstable or hardened, charming or repellent, they are still precious human creatures, and the insight of large sympathy—that most powerful influence which Providence has intrusted to us—should be extended to all; but such sympathy can only be exerted by the experienced, the strong, and the right way of doing this must be sought for. One duty is perfectly clear: No persons of acknowledged licentious life should be admitted to the intimacy of home; no such persons should be welcomed with honour in society, no matter what lower material or intellectual advantages may be possessed. Their acquaintance is even more to be dreaded for sons than for daughters. The corrupt conversation so general amongst immoral men is a source of great evil to the young. As the perusal of licentious books marks the first step in mental degradation, vicious talk is often the second decided advance downward.
The moral meanness of enslavement to passion, of selfish disregard to one’s weaker fellow-creatures exhibited by the profligate, should always be recognised by the parent. Consent should never be given to the union of an innocent child with a profligate. This plain dictate of parental love, this evident duty of the experienced and virtuous to the young and innocent, is strangely disregarded. Material advantages in such cases are allowed to outweigh all other considerations. Parents fail to recognise that the only source of permanent happiness must arise from within, from spiritual qualifications; they fail to recognise the inevitable effect of a corrupt nature upon a fresh young creature linked to it in the closest companionship. Thus, in the most solemn crisis of human life, the parent may betray the child. It is not only the individual child that is betrayed, but the rising generation also. On a previous page, the numerous external corrupting circumstances have been mentioned which gradually degrade the individual, but the subject of inherited qualities, of the inherited tendency to sensuality, was not then dwelt upon. The transmission of this tendency in a race is, however, a weighty fact, which must be distinctly noted in this connection. Change in the tendencies of a race can only be slowly wrought out in the course of generations. A most important step in this direction is the union of virtuous daughters with men of upright—or in the present day, it may be said, of heroic—moral life. The effect upon offspring produced by the noble and intense love of one man for one woman, with resulting circumstances, would in the course of generations produce an hereditary tendency to virtue instead of to sensuality. The known resolve of parents never to consent to the union of their children with men of licentious habits would of itself prove a valuable aid in regenerating society. Honour to virtue, expressed in this sacred and at the same time most practical manner, would be an encouragement, a reward, an incitement to all that is noblest in human nature; it would be a standard to guide youth, a real disinfectant of corrupt society.
The second principle to be kept steadily in view is the encouragement of early marriage. A statesman, writing a generation ago on the causes in the past, which have contributed to the prosperity of England, says: ‘The lower and working classes are an early and universally marrying people; this sacred habit is one which, while it has secured the virtue and promoted the happiness of the country, has multiplied its means and extended its power, and constituted Britain the most powerful and prosperous Empire of the world.’[46] A quaint old writer has said: ‘The forbidding to marry is the doctrine of devils.’ The universal testimony of experience may be summed up in the words of Montesquieu: ‘Who can be silent when the sexes, corrupting each other even by the natural sensations themselves, fly from a union that ought to make them better, to live in that that always renders them worse? It is a rule drawn from nature, that the more the number of marriages is diminished, the more corrupt are those who have entered into that state; the fewer married men, the less fidelity is there in marriage.’ All short-sighted Governments that impose unnatural restrictions upon marriage are compelled, by the increase of bastardy and its attendant evils, to repeal such restrictions. Grohman, speaking of the causes of the present immorality of the Tyrolese, says: ‘Very lately only has the Austrian Government annulled the law which compelled a man desirous of marriage to prove a certain income, and, further, to be the owner of a house or homestead of some kind, before the license was granted. Next in importance is the lax way in which the Church deals with licentious misconduct, it being in her eyes a minor iniquity expiated by confession.’ The obstacles to marriage in the military German Empire must be regarded as one of the causes of that moral corruption which we now observe in a country once so distinguished for home virtues—a corruption which threatens to shake the foundations of the great German race.
Early marriage, however, without previous habits of self-control, is unavailing to raise the tone of society. Marriage is no cure for diseased sex, and early licentiousness is really (as has been shown) disease. In those parts of the Continent where the lowest sexual morality exists, marriage is regarded as the opportunity for constant and unlimited license. The young man, therefore, is not allowed to marry (by the law of social custom) until he is over thirty years of age. If his health has been impaired by licentiousness, he is enjoined to resort less frequently to prostitutes, or to take a mistress; but marriage is positively forbidden by his medical advisers and discouraged by his relations. By the age of thirty his health is either completely broken down, and marriage, therefore, out of the question, or, having passed the most dangerous age of passion without breaking down, it is judged that his physical health will hold out under the opportunities of married life. The result of this system is inevitable. Marriage, being regarded as the legalization of uncontrolled passion, is so exercised until satiety ensues. Satiety is the inevitable boundary of all simply material enjoyments. Self-control being entirely wanting, the spiritual possibilities of marriage are unknown; social duty in respect to sex is a vague dream, not a reality. Physical satiety can only be met by variety; hence universal infidelity—destruction of the highest ends of marriage, the dethronement of the mother, the deterioration of the father, and the failure of the family influence as the first element in the growth of the nation.
The same important truth is exemplified in the social condition of our great Indian Empire. There the custom of early, even infantine, marriage co-exists with a licentiousness truly appalling in its strength and character.[47] Lads of sixteen, thoroughly corrupted in childhood, become the fathers of a degenerate race, the girl-mothers being the hopeless slaves of simple physical instincts. Early marriage is the safeguard of society only when the self-control of chastity exists, a self-government which is essential to the formation of manly character as well as conducive to vigorous health. With the acceptance of this essential condition, the aim of all wise parents will be to secure for their children the great blessing of early marriage, to provide for them opportunities of choice, and to promote the design of Providence that the young man and young woman suited to each other shall together gain the wider experience of life.
This proposition is always met by a host of social difficulties which perplex the inquirer, and finally quiet the conscience of society into a passive acquiescence in evil customs. These difficulties, however, must be met and overcome. It is cowardly not to face them, and weak not to vanquish them. Wise early marriage is the natural and true way out of disorder and license into the providential order of human existence. The first condition of improvement is to accept this plan as a living faith, not an abstract ideal; to consider how difficulties can be removed, not be cowed by them; and to study the possibilities, not the impossibilities. It leads to diametrically opposite practical action, whether we dwell upon the advantages of a certain course of life and strive in every way to attain it, or whether we lose ourselves in doubts and discouragements. ‘Put your shoulder to the wheel, and call upon Hercules to help,’ is the only true plan now, as in the days of Æsop. It is a matter of every-day experience that if we resolutely determine to do a thing, and steadily apply the common-sense and intelligence (the germs of which exist in every human being) to its accomplishment, success will follow.
The difficulties urged are the foolishness of first love; the impossibility of providing for a family; the craving for wild adventure, excitement, change. These are the spectres which bar the entrance to the right way of life. But such arguments are all false. They are founded on the sandy basis of removable conditions—on false methods of education, narrow family exclusiveness, on lack of self-control, vicious customs, and perverted tastes. All sound argument, based on the permanent facts of human nature, enjoins us to provide for early marriage as the basis of social good. The young man accustomed from boyhood to mix freely with young women under honourable conditions, is no longer bewildered by the first woman he meets, whilst the free, friendly companionship, secured by the family circle with its wide connections, has supplied a want that his growing nature craves; his taste and judgment have grown and strengthened, and he is no longer the victim of baseless fantasies. Accustomed to free association with young women of his own class, he is able at an early age to know his own mind and make a wise selection of his future partner. To the young woman an early marriage is the natural course of life; to this end she tends, and, consciously or unconsciously, prepares herself to secure it according to the requirements of society. Her unperverted taste is for the young man a little older than herself—a companion she can admire, respect, and, love—but still a companion, not a father. If taught by the silent though still powerful voice of society that harmony of character, of aims, of temperament—i.e., mental attraction—is the indispensable foundation of great and lasting happiness in marriage; that material advantages are secondary to this unspeakable blessing; that thrift, knowledge of household economy, power of creating an attractive home, are essential to the attainment of this great good, then her instincts, by an inevitable law of nature, will tend to the acquirement of these qualifications. If, on the contrary, she feels, through the influence of society (still unexpressed), that physical effects are the things chiefly sought for, that physical charm or the power exercised by corporeal sex is the chief or only possession that draws attention to her, then, by the same inevitable law, she will strive to exercise this physical power, and the means of doing so will become the all-absorbing occupation of an ever-increasing number of young women. As already stated, the direct result of the mastery of young men by irresistible physical instinct will be to create a necessity in young women for dress which will bring physical attractions into prominence or supply their deficiency. The craving for riches and luxury, the ignorance of economy, so often urged as an obstacle to marriage, are the inevitable results of licentiousness, which strengthens and cultivates exclusively material desires and necessities. Children should look forward to beginning life as simply as their parents began it, but with the added advantages of education. It is a totally false principle that they should expect to begin where their parents left off. Filial honour for their parents’ lives and inherited vigour would alike lead them to commence life with extreme simplicity. The power of rendering such simplicity attractive would prove that they had acquired the refinement and breadth of view which is the result of true culture instead of being enervated by luxury. They would thus, whilst beginning life as did their parents, begin it, nevertheless, from a vantage-ground, the result of their parents’ labours. Each generation would thus make a solid gain in life instead of encountering the destructive results which always attend the strife for material luxury.
There are many important points bearing on this vital question of early marriage—such as the exercise of self-control in married life and the teaching of sound physiology, which is needed to reconcile marriage with foresight—whose discussion would be out of place in the present essay. But that the topic must be thoroughly and wisely considered by parents resolved to aid one another in securing this inevitable reform, is certain. The increasing tendency to delay marriage is so serious an evil, that methods for checking this tendency must be found if our worth as a nation is to continue. The early and solemn betrothal of young people is an old custom now fallen into disuse. The possibility of its readoption as a beneficial social practice, with its duration, duties, and privileges, is worthy of serious consideration.
We have seen that the careful guidance of youth in relation to the faculty of sex, an improvement in the tone of society, and provision for early marriage, are fundamental points which should engage the earnest thought of every mother. It would be, however, a most serious mistake to suppose that the methods of carrying out these principles devolve upon the mother only. It is too frequently the case that the father, absorbed in outdoor pursuits, regards the indoor life as exclusively the business of his wife, and takes little or no part in the education of his children; but no true home can ever be formed without the mutual aid of father and mother. The division of labour may be different, but the joint influence should ever be felt in this closest of partnerships. As the wise wife is the most trusty confidant of the general business life of the husband, so he is the natural counsellor and support in all that concerns the occupations, amusements, society, and influence of his home. No home can be a happy one, if the father’s keenest interest and enjoyment do not centre in his family life. There are, however, special duties to the family required from the father, owing to his position as a citizen, and these hold an intimate relation to the future of his children. A large view of home duty must necessarily lead to a fulfilment of citizen duty. There are few men who, in their special business or occupation, do not possess large opportunities for encouraging a nobler idea respecting the relations of men and women than now prevails; few who cannot show their respect for virtue and in some way discourage vice. Men, not only as fathers, but as educators of youth—clergymen, physicians, employers of labour—hold an immense power in their hands for raising the tone of a community into which their sons and daughters must soon enter, and through the ceaseless temptations of which the effects of the most careful family education may be destroyed. No occupation can stand isolated from the rest of life; the interlinkings are innumerable. The man who throws a temptation in the way of a weaker neighbour, or ignores the struggles of his dependents, or fails to speak the encouraging word to those whom he influences, may be placing a pitfall in the way of his own son and daughter.
A mighty power which fathers hold in trust for the future of their children, is the character of the legislation which they establish or sanction. It is almost inconceivable how intelligent and well-meaning individuals, knowing the weakness of human nature and its inevitable growth towards good or evil through circumstances, can fail to see the immense moral bearing of legislation. The laws of a country are powerful educators of the rising generation. They reach all classes; their influence is a national one, silently exercising a never-ceasing effect on the community. Every new act of legislation is a power which will work much more strongly upon the young than the old. The adult who makes the law has grown up to complete manhood under other influences; he is moulded by the laws of a previous generation, and no new legislative action can change his fixed character. It is the young and unformed who will grow in the direction made easiest to them by our laws. Whether the subject of legislation be the increase of standing armies, the promotion of the liquor traffic, the regulation of factory labour, the arrangement of national education, or the establishment of railways—these subjects affect the moral condition of a people. It would be difficult to find a subject of legislation which has not some moral issue, more or less directly connected with it, and which will not influence the rising generation more powerfully than the generation that establishes the law. Legislation, therefore, has an inevitable and most important bearing upon the welfare of the family, and must be considered in relation to its effect upon the youth of the nation. Every mother has a right to ask this from the legislators of a country. No parental legislator should ever lose sight of the central family point of view in legislation—viz., How can good conquer evil? How can it be made easier for children to grow up virtuous than vicious?
The power of the human race to place itself under any restrictions which its welfare requires, has already been shown in the control which society exercises over the intense craving of hunger. Strong as the faculty of sex is, its abnegation does not destroy the individual as does starvation from lack of food. This instinct, therefore, cannot be considered more imperative than that of hunger; it must be as susceptible of restraint. Indeed, the relations of sex have already been placed under a certain amount of restriction by both law and custom, only these restrictions are not nearly of such severity or universal application as those which govern the instinct of hunger, showing that the human race, in their present stage of development, have not felt that it was such a pressing question. Society has not hitherto recognised such restraint as essential to its own existence and welfare. This conviction, however, is now awakened, and when once established, it will be found that the dominion of law is as powerful in one direction as in the other. Every great question of society is a necessary subject of legislation. The necessity of protecting property and the ability to do so, even against the terrible power of slow starvation, is shown by every civilized nation. This experience conclusively proves that chastity also may be protected by legislation, as soon as the growing common-sense of a community awakes to the fact that it also is a property—the most valuable property that a great nation can possess—and that licentiousness is a growing evil that may be checked by legislation. The true principle to be held to, in legislating for the evils that afflict society, cannot be too often insisted on. In legislating for any evil, it is necessary to seek out the deepest source of the evil, and check that source. Attention must not be limited to the effects of the evil. This is eminently true of all legislation which deals with the evils caused by licentiousness—a branch of legislation which, more than any other, has a direct and powerful bearing upon the welfare of the family.
The subject of licentiousness is justly attracting the attention of legislators of the present day to an extent which has never been witnessed before. This is a sign of dawning promise, for the worst condition of a nation is that where gross evils remain uncared for. This great evil has crept on uncared for, or referred to with hushed breath, until it bids fair to ruin our most valued institutions. Legislation has broken the spell, and will continue its work until it has aroused the conscience of the nation. The execution of wise measures can only be secured by the support of an enlightened, conscientious community. No legislation can be efficient which does not represent the best average sentiment of the country. In regard to this great question, no wise legislation is possible for any evil of licentiousness until the subject has been thoroughly considered by those who are most keenly interested in it—viz., the fathers and mothers of the nation. No specialists, of whatever class, can suggest wise measures, as specialists, in a matter which so intimately concerns the family. Only a large view of what is needed for the purity and dignity of the family, for the good of its children, for its influence in society, can secure wise laws. Anything which tends to encourage the lowest passions of human nature, either by the acceptance of base customs, by the legalization of vice, or by fostering in any other way the animal tendencies of men, must produce hereditary as well as social effects on daughters as well as sons. Customs and institutions which injure the character of women, which weaken their virtue and crush out the germs of higher life, must be the source of deadliest evil to any nation. It behoves the legislators of the present generation to be careful in their social and legal sanction of vice amongst males, lest they be blindly undermining the whole social fabric, amongst women as well as men, in a way which they would least wish to do, if they knew what they were doing.
The first step towards the moral education of the youth of a nation is a clear perception on the part of parents of the true aim of education, with the individual action to which such perception leads. The second step is combination—i.e., the determination to secure this end by the strength of union. It is true that individual efforts are the foundation on which any power must rest that wishes to lift society to a higher level, and we find at present innumerable individuals keenly alive to the evils in which we are involved, and earnest in seeking a remedy. There are very many families where father and mother work together with unwearied effort to ennoble home life, but these individual efforts, these aspirations and patient endeavours, although indispensable as a foundation, are isolated and scattered; they are continually overpowered by the evil influences existing outside the family. Organized effort is needed—resolute and united action—to meet the organized dangers of the present age. The condensed review in the preceding pages of the causes which produce the present low or diseased condition of the humanizing principle of sex, indicates the immense range of subjects which its consideration and guidance involve. No isolated individual, no single family, can work out for itself a solution of the present problem, or command the means for securing the moral welfare of the most cherished child. Change in the conditions of life may be wrought by united effort; it cannot be attained by isolated effort. When we consider the innumerable objects for which strength is gained by association, and that this rational principle is constantly extending its operation in the present age, it is evident that any strong leading principle capable of enlisting devotion and steady enthusiasm affords sound basis for combination and organization. Such a leading principle is found in the clear conviction of the nobility of the spiritual principle of sex in the human being, the binding obligation of one moral law for all, and the regenerating power of this law upon the human race. It is a principle capable of enlisting religious devotion and embodying itself in the most valuable practical action. Methods of combination inspired by this principle are clearly conceivable which would be susceptible of the widest application. Indications of such combination are already visible, and these must constantly extend themselves as this great idea of the present age—the true view of Sex—grows into complete development.
All existing efforts which tend to destroy the causes of licentiousness—such as temperance, increase of occupation and wages for women, improvement of poor dwellings, facilities for rational amusement, the abolition of enforced celibacy, and the regeneration of the army—demand and should receive the special recognition and aid of parents. These movements are all invaluable and cannot be too actively supported, being founded on true principles of growth; but something more is needed—viz., distinct open acknowledgment of the fundamental principle here laid down, and organization growing out of it. In this work the natural leader of a nation is the Church—i.e., that great body of all religious teachers and persons who believe that man cannot live by bread alone, but that the Divine instinct that urges him onwards and upwards must be expressed in the forms of our daily life. When the Church recognises that one of its difficult but glorious duties is to teach men how to carry out religious principles in practical life, it will perceive that the foundation of all righteous life is reverence for the noble human principle of sex. It will no longer shrink from enforcing this regenerating principle. The undue proportion of thought and effort now given to forms and ceremonies, to metaphysical disquisitions and subtle distinctions, will then give place to earnest united efforts to enable men to lead righteous lives. No Church performs its duty to the young that fails to raise this fundamental subject of sex into its proper human level. It is bound to rouse every young man and woman of its congregation to the perception that respect for the principle of sex, with fidelity to purity, is a fundamental condition of religious life.
The truths which have been set forth in the preceding pages may be briefly summed up in the following propositions—viz:
Early chastity strengthens the physical nature, creates force of Will, and concentrates the intellectual powers on the nobler ends of human life.
Continence is indispensable to the physical welfare of a young man until the age of twenty-one; it is advantageous until twenty-five; it is possible without physical injury throughout life.
The passion of sex can only be safely and healthily gratified by marriage; illegal relations produce physical danger, mental degradation, and social misery.
The family is the indispensable foundation of a progressive nation, and the permanent union of one man with one woman is essential to the welfare of the family.
Marriage during matured early vigour is essential to the production of a strong race.
Individual morality can only be secured by the prevalence of early purity, and national morality by the cumulative effects of heredity.
In Moral Education the first step to secure is the slow development of sex; the second, its legitimate satisfaction through honourable companionship, followed by marriage.
There are special duties which devolve upon women as mother, sister, ruler of a household, and member of society for securing the conditions necessary for the attainment of early purity in sons and daughters.
There are special duties laid upon men, not only as parents, but as citizens, for the attainment of national morality.
The fact must be clearly perceived and accepted, that male purity is a fundamental virtue in a State; that it secures the purity of women, on which the moral qualities of fidelity, humanity, and trustworthiness depend; and that it secures the strength and truth of men, on which the intellectual vigour and wise government of a State depend.
Whether it be regarded in relation to the physical and mental status of Man, or the position and welfare of Woman, there is no social evil so great as the substitution of Fornication and Celibacy for Chastity and Marriage.
These are fundamental truths. But in those grown old in watching the spread of evil, despair often takes possession of the mind, and the question arises, Can evil ever be overcome with good? Can we hope to change this widespread perversion of human faculties? When we observe the raging lust of invading armies, more cruel than the ferocity of the most savage beasts; when we study the tumultuous passions of early youth, the rush for excitement, for every kind of gratification that the impulse of the moment demands, can we believe that there are forces at our command strong enough to quell the tumult, to guide the multitude, to sustain the weak, to change the fierce brutishness into noble manhood and womanhood?
There is a force more powerful than tempest or whirlwind, more irresistible than the fiercest brutal passion, a power which works in nature unseen but ceaselessly, repairing all destruction, accomplishing a mighty plan; a power which works in the human soul, enabling it to learn truth, to understand principles, to love justice and humanity, and to reach steadily onward to the attainment of the highest ideal. It is the creative and regenerating force of Wisdom, gradually but irresistibly penetrating the mind of Humanity. This mighty governing Power, call it by what name we may—Religion, Truth, Spiritual Christianity, Jehovah—uses human means, and works through the changing phenomena of daily life. It is our part to make the forms of human life exponents of this Divine force.
The principles here laid down are true. They rest upon the firm foundation of physiological law, and are confirmed by facts of universal experience. Let the younger generation of parents accept them in their great significance, making them the guiding influence in all social relations. Then will human life at once begin to shape itself according to God’s Truth; the law of inheritance will strengthen each generation into nobler tendencies; and our nation, renewing its strength, will grow into a humble but glorious exponent of the Divine Idea.
APPENDIX I. (Page 262)
Christian Duty in regard to Vice
Cruelty and Lust are the twin evils that now most seriously afflict our race, and which women—the mothers of the race—are especially called on to fight. Women must act. No one not partially blind can fail to see that the onward movement of events is carrying women forward into positions of active influence in social life that they have not hitherto occupied. Whether we welcome or dread this change, it goes on irresistibly, based upon industrial activity, and extending into every other department of life. The command of wisdom is to accept this advance, recognise its responsibilities, and bravely rise to meet them. Women, by the endowment of Motherhood, are created with special powers. This endowment, which is a mighty spiritual as well as a physical force, indicates their distinctive line of active influence, and will show why they are especially called on to combat cruelty and lust, which kill motherhood.
In this special subject, women must initiate their own lines of action, for they are called on by the constitution of Humanity to lead in this moral warfare, not be led. Equal justice to all, with protection for the most defenceless, is the only foundation on which both custom and legislation can safely rest in any attempt to improve the relations of the sexes or to remedy the direful evils which these relations at present engender.