In common daily events of this kind lies the secret of the slow progress of every social reform. Men who are momentarily enthusiastic nearly always expect everything to progress according to their imagination, and when they see that it will be some time before any obvious result is attained, they become discouraged, because they have neither the personal courage nor the perseverance to remain in a minority and wait. The same want of perseverance, courage and judgment is found in the education of children, and it will take a long time to enlighten people on this subject.
It would seem that we have lost sight of our subject in occupying ourselves with the irradiation of love, which forms the object of social sentiments or ethics (vide Chapter V). But it is by exactly understanding and realizing this irradiation of love that we shall gradually suppress the unhealthy social aberrations of the sexual appetite, and prevent them doing harm, by guiding them in the path of a healthy morality. It is not the severe external constraint of so-called moral laws, it is not by the threats or punishments of hell, nor the promise of paradise, nor the moral preachings of the priests, parents or pedagogues, nor an exalted asceticism, which can ever construct a healthy, just and lasting sexual ethics. It is not by words that we recognize the value of moral precepts, but by their results. It is quite certain that the sexual life of man can never rise above its present state without being freed from the bonds of mysticism and religious dogma, and based on a loyal and unequivocal human morality which will recognize the normal wants of humanity, always having as its principal object the welfare of posterity.
Marriage should be considered as a means of satisfying the sexual appetite, and at the same time a moral and social school of life; not as a refuge for egoism. Division of duties, absolute equality of rights and social work in common, will solidify more and more the sexual bonds of two conjoints. By the aid of a better understanding of the wants of human society, the conjoints will learn how to overcome their egoistic sentiments, their polygamous inclinations, and their jealousy, etc.
In striving for happiness, and especially for the sexual happiness of others, such conjoints will learn better how to excuse and pardon the sexual failings of other men. They will cease to despise the poor man's household, the girl-mother, the divorced wife, the concubine, even the poor invert, and other failings in their fellow beings. On the contrary, they will do their utmost to make their lot a happier one, by helping all those for whom help may be efficacious. They will find their greatest pleasure in this work, and if one of them becomes himself the victim of some sexual failing, he will be pardoned all the more easily, and will master it all the more quickly.
There will then be no time to make life bitter by bad temper, slander, acrimony, sulking and other conjugal disputes. The husband will no longer behave with the despotism of a lord and master, and the wife will no longer think it her duty to humble herself. Religious dogmas will no longer separate man from woman. Priests will no longer be required in marriage. Lastly, there will be no more fear of death; this will be regarded as a welcome rest after the long labor and duty fulfilled of a well-spent life.
I cannot help taxing with narrow-mindedness, and even unintelligence, persons who consider such an ideal of life as a fantasy impossible to realize, or as the product of exalted dreamers who do not know the world. No doubt this ideal cannot be attained by ill-constructed, unnatural beings, tainted by a morbid heredity, or depraved by idleness, vice and passion for pleasure, who have lost their elasticity and plasticity of brain or have never possessed them. It has, however, been often realized already by men and women of better quality. It is, therefore, necessary to act on the children, both by education and selection, in order to obtain a youth of superior quality.
Let us not abandon the future of our race to the fatalism of Allah; let us create it ourselves!
FOOTNOTES:
[10] It is true that the friendly union of individuals of the same sex is often fundamentally derived from the phylogenetic development of animal or human societies. But the sentiments of sympathy, on the sole basis of which such friendly unions may be developed, are only themselves the derivatives of the more primitive sentiments of sympathy of one individual for another, and these latter have originated in sexual attraction.