The sexual question

by Auguste Forel

In the relatively moral circles of society, our description would no doubt be taxed with exaggeration, because natures a little more refined have the habit of acting like the ostrich who hides his head in the sand, that is to say of turning their eyes away from the pornographic swamp with disgust so as not to see it, and thus avoid it instinctively. But this maneuver serves no purpose: the facts remain as they are.

Eroticism is no more a vice than sexual anæsthesia is a virtue. Even when they are chaste, men of libidinous nature require a strong will to resist all the artificial seductions which excite their sensuality. This is why the bog of debauchery engulfs so many men of a naturally good nature. In this sense, cold natures are better off; they can cover themselves with the glory of a "virtue" the resplendent rays of which become lost in a penumbra of defects and weaknesses from which these natures suffer in other domains.

Sexual Hypocrisy.—Hypocrisy is a peculiarity deeply rooted in the human mind. We can affirm that whoever pretends never to have been a hypocrite lies, quite as much as one who swears he has never lied. But nowhere, save perhaps in the domain of religion, does hypocrisy play a greater part than in the sexual domain. Nowhere is there so much falsehood, and men who are most honest on other points make no scruple of deceiving their wives in this respect. I do not speak here of the simulation of sentiments of love, for it is too banal, and there is no need to be too exacting over this point, for there are strong attenuating circumstances.

First of all, erotic feelings are capable of blinding man for the moment, as far as persuading him of the eternal duration of love and fidelity which he promises the object of his appetites, as well as of the reality of the celestial qualities under which this object appears to him, or with which it pleases him to adorn it. Two persons mutually excited by sexual passion are fascinated by the illusions of a mirage, which often vanishes soon afterward, so that it is not rare to see them on the following day hurling the most violent abuse at each other.

Those who have not been witnesses of such events may hardly believe them. It is sufficient, however, to be a magistrate or to read the reports of lawsuits between debased persons as the result of love quarrels, broken engagements or marriages, seductions, etc., to study the letters that the two parties have written before and after their quarrel, in order to be convinced of the correctness of what we have said above. In the first letters the lovers adulate each other and adorn each other with the most hyperbolic epithets, swearing eternal love and fidelity, and deluding each other in the most absurd manner. In letters written sometimes only a few days later we are astonished to see the same individuals grossly insulting each other and mutually covering themselves with ignoble calumnies. This is how passion without reason passes through the furnaces of love and hatred, dragging after it all the artificial scaffolding of what man imagines to be his right based on logic, but which is in reality only a tissue of ridiculous contradictions, the automatic and inept product of his emotional state. Such contrasts are so frequent that we can easily recognize the expression of a psychological law, due to the mirages of the amorous passions on the one hand and the inverse reaction on the other.

Nevertheless hypocrisy has its good side. It has been said not without reason that "hypocrisy is a concession which vice makes to virtue." In their nakedness human thoughts are often so sadly vulgar and so offensive that a little varnish improves them. In this sense, and when it comes from a feeling of shame or good-will, hypocrisy deserves a good deal of the eulogy which Mark Twain has heaped on it in his charming satire, "The Decadence of the Art of Lying."

In the sexual question hypocrisy is directly provoked by the tyranny and barbarism of what are called good manners, often even by the law. In this sense it constitutes a response of human nature to the forms and customs derived from the right of the stronger or from religious superstitions, as well as from the dogmas resulting from them.

By the term sexual hypocrisy I do not mean the repugnant forms of hypocrisy pure and simple, in which man only exploits love indirectly for an interested end, for instance when he simulates love to obtain a rich wife. I only speak of the forms of hypocrisy which are directly evolved from the sexual appetite or from love.

It is from this point of view that we must judge sexual hypocrisy, and if I have laid special stress on its good points, it is in view of marriage, where it assists the education of noble and elevated sentiments even in the hypocrite. By praising the virtues of his helpmate with a little exaggeration, these are made to appear more noble. If the time is spent in saying disagreeable truths, love is soon stifled and killed. On the contrary, if each conjoint attributes to the other as fine qualities as possible, each is finally persuaded that the other really possesses them, and then realizes them himself, at any rate in part.

The worst of hypocrisies is that which is the product of base pecuniary interests, or of a gross sexual appetite without love, or lastly by the pressure of conventional or religious customs. Good hypocrisy consists in the repression of all that is base in the sentiments, inclinations and passions; in the fact that one strives to hide it from others, even from one's self, and to suggest in its place as many amiable qualities as possible, so as to strengthen in a disinterested manner the object of one's love in noble sentiments. This kind of hypocrisy is in reality an indirect product of altruistic sentiments. One perceives with pain on reflecting, either the absence of spontaneous sentiments of sympathy, or the presence of disgust and bad temper, and one strives to hide the thing by sympathetic expressions for which one seeks an object, and to which one would wish to give a durable character. Loyal efforts made in this direction often succeed in correcting the egoistic humor with which one is affected, and in giving rise to the sentiments one desires to experience. One must not, however, by only looking at one side of the question, allow such efforts to degenerate into maladroit blindness, which will only have the effect of spoiling the person one loves.