[46] Hundreds of people, doctors included, will declare that this is wrong; that an all-too-long wait does not necessarily impair health or beauty. As if not being used, not being made to function, could possibly be a good thing, or at least a thing that does no harm! Make a child sit still for years, and see how its health will be affected! It is absurd to argue that when an equipment is normal and healthy, it does not do it and the body containing it considerable damage not to use it! But in this matter, I do not ask you to believe me! Ask the positive girls themselves! Ask them (if they remained virgins) whether they felt the same at twenty-five as they did at nineteen! Ask them whether they have not learnt from sad experience that an elaborate mechanism when it is not used gets out of order! Get them into your confidence, and you will hear the truth for once on this matter.
[47] Paradoxical as it may seem at first sight, it is however only too true that the worst kind of spinster is precisely this “perfectly cheerful, engaging, companionable and even thoroughly good-natured old maid,” because, like the cheerful cripple or the happy invalid, she is a living mockery of Life, passion and instinct thwarted. Her very adaptedness to her unnatural lot seems to the unwary an argument in favour of an unnatural lot, or at least not an argument against it. See chapter [IX].
[48] By violent sports I mean any form of jumping, hockey, football, lawn tennis, golf and lacrosse. In all these games the movements of the body are too jerky and too jarring, and muscular effort is too long sustained. Even for men football is very bad, for women it is barbarous. In young girls Nature makes an effort to compensate the excessive demands made by violent sports on the muscles and bony structure of the legs and pelvis, by proceeding to a premature stiffening of the fleshy, and a premature ossification of the bony parts—both of which processes not only arrest full subsequent development, but also make for unnecessary rigidity in the pelvic and upper femoral regions—effects which are heavily paid for later on unless the girls remain unmarried. The fact that even among males, sailors show smaller hip measurements than soldiers—the former being habituated from earliest youth to much more violent bodily exertions than soldiers—shows what a difference this natural compensation for early muscular strain makes in a sex in which pelvic development is neither as vital nor as characteristic as it is among girls. Another danger arising from violent sports for young women, which is not mentioned in the text, consists in the jerking and jarring of the spine, small and imperceptible sprains of which, particularly near the ilium, often lead to very obscure but severe nervous disorders in later life. The fact that young girls enjoy violent sports is often adduced as an argument in favour of their adoption at school and elsewhere. But surely young people, as I have shown, are so catholic in their positiveness, that their mere liking for an occupation or amusement should not constitute in itself, and without further inquiry, a sufficient ground for allowing them to pursue it. Neither should parents allow themselves to be influenced by the fact that a conclave of women doctors has recently decided in favour of violent sports for girls. The decisions come to by middle-aged matrons or middle-aged spinsters concerning the care and discipline of young girls, should never be trusted. It is always difficult to be quite certain about the motives, whether conscious or unconscious, that have animated women of this age in their dealings with young girls. On the whole, unless it be her mother, the advice of any middle-aged woman concerning a young girl ought to be treated with suspicion. See p. [246] (footnote).
[49] With regard to the effects of diet on constipation, I give some useful hints in chapter V of A Defence of Aristocracy.
Part II
INFERENCES FROM PART I
CHAPTER VII
The Marriage of the Positive Girl
and the Positive Man
The multiplication of life in human society involves certain burdens and responsibilities. A normal, positive young man could easily fertilize a hundred women a year, without departing even for one instant from his usual habits of industry and useful productivity. Could he, however, undertake to provide for, protect, and rear a hundred children in the ensuing year? He might if he were a millionaire; but all men are not millionaires.
Although, therefore, the mere carnal union of two young positive people is the normal and natural consummation of their desire, it is bound to be interfered with by the State, or by the community, in order that the burdens and responsibilities resulting from Life’s multiplication may be delimited, defined, fairly apportioned and allotted as far as possible to those who ought properly to bear them. And since a man cannot procreate a hundred children a year without in the vast majority of cases imposing grave burdens and responsibilities upon his fellows, the State or the community officially refuses to recognize, or to offer legal status, to any offspring that are the outcome of multiplication that takes place outside the monogamic union. Thus although marriage and its forms and limitations—particularly the monogamic limitation—may frequently have a religious ceremonial, it is society, or the community, that ultimately favours it, because society as a whole cannot undertake to pay for the promiscuous indulgence of every man’s lust.
Hence, despite the fact that the carnal union of our positive couple is all that the multiplication of Life requires, and all that the conscious or unconscious desire of the two young people demands, the State interposes its jurisdiction and declares that the multiplication of life that will follow the union, in fact the union itself, will only be legally recognized provided that it take place along certain specified lines.
Thus marriage is not a natural state, nor is it even the logical outcome of the “love” of a positive couple; it is an artificially imposed condition devised for the purpose of safeguarding the community. And, being unnatural and gratuitously imposed upon the simple relationship that Nature requires, it complicates that relationship, and necessarily possesses all the disadvantages that any unnatural[50] solution of a natural problem must involve.