CHASTITY.
A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.
The manifestations of the sexual instinct are guided by the plain and emphatic monitions of a physical conscience, developed partly with the primordial evolution of our organism, partly by the hereditary experience transmitted during the social development of our species. The guardians of our prevailing system of ethics, too, have enforced the regulations of their added supervision with a zeal apparently justified by the importance of its purpose; but an analysis of those regulations strikingly illustrates the perils of abandoning the plain path of Nature, to follow the vagaries of hyper-physical dogmatists. The Nature-guided bias of sexual intuitions refers to time, selection, and circumstantial restrictions. The control of our clerical moralists ignores the first and second law of modification, while their recognition of [[46]]the third involves a large number of irrelevant and irrational precepts.
In a state of nature, instinct and circumstances coöperate in the prevention of sexual precocity. Active exercise furnishes a vent to those potential energies which physical sloth forces to explode in sensual excesses. The adult males of all species of vertebrate animals fiercely resent the encroachments of immature rivals. Savages postpone their nuptials to a period of life when the possession of property or prestige enables them to undertake the adequate support of a family. In countries where both sexes spend a large portion of their time in outdoor occupations, precocious prurience is very rare. In the pastoral highlands of the Austrian Alps (Styria, Salzburg, and the Tyrol), boys and girls meet only at church festivals, but enjoy their amusements apart, the girls in dances and singing-picnics; the boys in shooting-matches, foot-races, and mountain excursions. A lad under eighteen caught in flirtations is at once laughed back to manlier pastimes, while girls even more jealously guard the exclusiveness of their festivals, and would chase away an intrusive bachelor as promptly as a trespassing boy. Lycurgus fixes the marriageable age of a groom at thirty years, of a bride at twenty. Among the martial Visigoths thirty and twenty-five years were the respective minima.
The importance of limiting the license of precocious passion has never been directly denied, but the significance of the instinct of sexual selection seems to have been unaccountably misunderstood. Marriages [[47]]without the sanction, and even against the direct protest, of that instinct are constantly encouraged. “Love matches,” in the opinion of thousands of Christian parents, seem to be thought fit only for the characters of a sentimental romance, or the heroes of the stage. The overpowering sway of a passion which asserts its claims against all other claims whatever ought sufficiently to proclaim the importance of its purpose and the absurdity of the mistake which treats its appeals as a matter of frivolous fancy.
And, in fact, only the universality of that passion transcends the importance of its direction. For, while the sexual instinct, per se, guarantees the perpetuation of the species, the instinct of selection refers to the composition of the next generation, of which it thus determines the quality as the other determines the quantity. And just as the vital powers of the individual organism strive back from disease to health, the genius of the species seeks to reëstablish the perfection of the type, and to neutralize the effects of degenerating influences. We accordingly find that the individuals of each sex seek the complement of their own defects. Small women prefer tall men; fickle men worship strong-minded women; dark grooms select fair brides; practical business men are attracted by romantic girls; city belles admire a rustic Hercules, and vice versa. Exceptional intensity of mutual passion denotes exceptional fitness of the contemplated union, or rather the results of that union; for, here as elsewhere, Nature, in a choice of consequences, will sacrifice [[48]]the interests of individuals to the interests of the species. Passionate love, accordingly, is ever ready to attain its purpose at the price of the temporary advantages of life, nay, of life itself; and the voluntary renunciation of such advantage is, therefore, in the truest sense a self-sacrifice for the benefit of posterity, a surrender of personal interests to the welfare of the species. In spite of the far-gone perversion of our ethical standards, we accordingly find an instinctive recognition of such truth in the popular verdict that applauds heroic loyalty to a higher law when lovers break the fetters of sordid interest or caste restrictions. In their hearts, the very flatterers condemn the decision of a bride who has sacrificed love to wealth, even in obedience to a parental mandate, or the monitions of Nature-estranged moralists.
In extremes of adverse circumstances, love itself, however, will often voluntarily withdraw its claim. Hopeless inequality of station, disease, and irremediable disabilities will extinguish the flame of a passion that would have defied time and torture. A lover struck with a cureless malady will shrink from transmitting his affliction; a proud barbarian will refuse to make a refined bride the witness of his humiliations. The perils of consanguinity may reveal themselves to a sort of hereditary (if not aboriginal) instinct; and the discovery of an unsuspected relationship has more than once deadened desire as if by magic, and turned love into self-possessed friendship. [[49]]