The average moralist has accordingly refrained from punishing the successful libertine, knowing that God would do it for him. But this conviction is no longer held. God is a much more mysterious being than he used to be, and we have less knowledge of his ways. It may be that he does not exist at all, and in any event the belief that he will do this or that, and, in particular, that he will entertain the same moral views as we do ourselves, is no longer entertained with its old time certainty. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.” Perhaps it is, but it might be visited on the wrong people. In any event it is safer to take no chances, and to make sure that sinners shall suffer in this world the punishment which the eccentricity of God’s views may permit them to forego in the next. For this reason it is to be expected that the herd morality of the future will develop a severer outlook upon derelictions from the standards of behaviour which it regards as moral. What these derelictions are, and what are the reasons for supposing that in spite of this attitude they are likely to increase, I will consider in the next chapter.
CHAPTER III
The New Liberty of Action
Important forces are, however, at work in the contrary direction. If the growing prevalence of herd morality will tend to place a new emphasis on the importance of uniformity, uniformity in the moral sphere is likely to prove more difficult of attainment.
Two factors in particular will militate against it. These are the growth of economic independence among women, and the practice of birth control. Let us consider these factors separately.
I. The basis of the institution of marriage is economic. Theological factors have of course played their part. The early Christian fathers, expecting the immediate end of the world, saw no reason to take steps to ensure the continuance of the race. The Christian hostility to the pleasures of the senses was, therefore, allowed to rage unchecked, and sexual intercourse was denounced as both wicked and unnecessary. As time passed, however, it was found that the world showed no signs of coming to an end, an inconsiderateness which led to the necessity for a change of attitude. The Church met the situation with a complete volte face. It had previously stigmatized the sexual passions as so wicked that no Christian should be permitted to indulge them: it now pronounced them to be so sacred that no Christian should be permitted to indulge them without the sanction of the Church. The sanction of the Church was given in marriage, a device whereby the Fathers sought to control and to regulate the workings of a passion they were unable to ignore. Since then the Church has claimed both the ability and the right to sanctify sex, and has looked with disfavour upon marriages consummated by the State as an infringement of her monopoly.
But the fact that marriage has been instituted by God and cornered by the Church is not sufficient to account for its existence before the Christian epoch or its stability since. These rest upon an economic foundation.
Throughout the recorded history of civilization the only recognized way for a woman to make her living has been through her body. Her body being her one saleable asset, she could employ it in either of two ways. She could sell the use of it to one man for an indefinite period, or she could lease it to a number of men for short and strictly regulated periods. The first method is known as marriage; the second as prostitution. The existence of these two, and of only these two, ways of gaining an economic livelihood has led to the formation of two unofficial women’s Trade Unions, the Trade Union of wives and the Trade Union of prostitutes. The strength of these unions is directly proportional to their monopoly of the economic field, and far exceeds that of any recognized Union in the more strictly industrial sphere.
It is immediately obvious that any woman who was prepared to give for love or for nothing what other women were only prepared to give for maintenance was a blackleg of the most subversive type, and the whole force of organized female opinion has, therefore, been devoted to making her position impossible. The force of female opinion so directed is known as morality, and the bitterness with which the free lover, that is to say, the woman who loves outside the marriage tie or the prostitute’s preserves, is denounced as immoral, is due to woman’s unconscious recognition of the fact that she is cutting at the basis of the economic livelihood of her sex.
It is of course true that the two women’s Unions are to some extent competitive, and that the existence of the prostitute threatens the security of the wife while it guarantees the chastity of the young girl. For this reason there is and always will be hostility between the Unions. The wife’s first commandment is the Deity’s “Thou shalt have none other woman but me”, and she is accordingly accustomed to regard the prostitute with horror, whereas she does not object to the existence of other wives, since this does not, at least in theory, threaten her own. For this reason, too, the method of earning a living adopted by the wife is generally preferred to that adopted by the prostitute, and is esteemed the more honourable by public opinion. So true is this that in most women the belief in the honourableness of wifehood has become second nature, the really nice woman feeling instinctively that the only decent way for her to live is on the earnings of some man. But while this feeling provokes hostility to members of the other Union, it is a hostility which cannot compare in bitterness with the scorn and hatred felt for the free lover. The reason for this is obvious. The number of women a man can have for money is limited by the extent of his income; the number of women he can have for nothing is limited only by the extent of his ability to find them. For this reason it is felt instinctively that the free lover is a greater menace to society than the prostitute. The prostitute, indeed, is and always has been recognized as a social necessity. She guarantees the chastity of nice women by providing a necessary solace for men up to the comparatively late age at which modern economic conditions allow them to marry. Thus in Tsarist Russia the brothel was a State-recognized institution. The new brothel was formally opened by the police officer, and was hallowed by a religious ceremony in the course of which the premises were blessed by a Russian Orthodox priest.[5]