The Task of Social Hygiene

by Havelock Ellis

Largely, no doubt, from anxiety to counterbalance these dangers, there has been a tendency to emphasize, or rather to over-emphasize, the moral aspects of sexual hygiene. Rightly considered, indeed, it is not easy to over-value its moral significance. But in the actual teaching of such hygiene it is quite easy, and the error is often found, to make statements and to affirm doctrines—all in the interests of good morals and with the object of exhibiting to the utmost the beneficial tendencies of this teaching—which are dubious at the best and often at variance with actual experience. In such cases we seem to see that the sexual hygienist has indeed broken with the conventional conspiracy of silence in these matters, but he has not broken with the conventional morality which grew out of that ignorant silence. With the best intention in the world he sets forth, dogmatically and without qualification, ancient half-truths which to become truly moral need to be squarely faced with their complementary half-truths. The inevitable danger is that the pupil sooner or later grasps the one-sided exaggeration of this teaching, and the credit of the sexual hygienist is gone. Life is an art, and love, which lies at the heart of life, is an art; they are not science; they cannot be converted into clear-cut formulæ and taught as the multiplication table is taught. Example here counts for more than precept, and practice teaches more than either, provided it is carried on in the light of precept and example. The rash and unqualified statements concerning the immense benefits of continence, or the awful results of self-abuse, etc., frequently found in books for young people will occur to every one. Stated with wise moderation they would have been helpful. Pushed to harsh extravagance they are not only useless to aid the young in their practical difficulties, but become mischievous by the injury they inflict on over-sensitive consciences, fearful of falling short of high-strung ideals. This consideration brings us, indeed, to what is perhaps the chief danger in the introduction of any teaching of sexual hygiene: the fact that our teachers are themselves untaught. Sexual hygiene in the full sense—in so far as it concerns individual action and not the regulative or legislative action of communities—is the art of imparting such knowledge as is needed at successive stages by the child, the youth and maiden, the young man and woman, in order to enable them to deal rightly, and so far as possible without injury either to themselves or to others, with all those sexual events to which every one is naturally liable. To fulfil his functions adequately the master in the art of teaching sexual hygiene must answer to three requirements: (1) he must have a sufficing knowledge of the facts of sexual psychology, sexual physiology, and sexual pathology, knowledge which, in many important respects, hardly existed at all until recently, and is only now beginning to become generally accessible; (2) he must have a wise and broad moral outlook, with a sane idealism which refrains from demanding impossibilities, and resolutely thrusts aside not only the vulgar platitudes of worldliness, but the equally mischievous platitudes of an outworn and insincere asceticism, for the wise sexual hygienist knows, with Pascal, that "he who tries to be an angel becomes a beast," and is less anxious to make his pupils ineffective angels than effective men and women, content to say with Browning, "I may put forth angels' pinions, once unmanned, but not before"; (3) in addition to sound knowledge and a wise moral outlook, the sexual hygienist must possess, finally, a genuine sympathy with the young, an insight into their sensitive shyness, a comprehension of their personal difficulties, and the skill to speak to them simply, frankly, and humanly. If we ask ourselves how many of the apostles of sexual hygiene combine these three essential qualities, we shall probably not be able to name many, while we may suspect that some do not even possess one of the three qualifications. If we further consider that the work of sexual hygiene, to be carried out on a really national scale, demands the more or less active co-operation of parents, teachers, and doctors, and that parents, teachers, and doctors are in these matters at present all alike untrained, and usually prejudiced, we shall realize some of the dangers through which sexual hygiene must at first pass.

It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to say that, in thus pointing out some of the difficulties and the risks which must assail every attempt to introduce an element of effective sexual hygiene into life, I am far from wishing to argue that it is better to leave things as they are. That is impossible, not only because we are realizing that our system of incomplete silence is mischievous, but because it is based on a confusion which contains within itself the elements of disruption. We have to remember, however, that the creation of a new tradition cannot be effected in a day. Before we begin to teach sexual hygiene the teachers must themselves be taught.

There are many who have insisted, and not without reason, on the right of the parent to control the education of the child. Sexual hygiene introduces us to another right, the right of the child to control the education of the parents. For few parents to-day are fitted to exercise the duty of training and guiding the child in the difficult field of sex without preliminary education, and such education, to be real and effective, must begin at an early age in the parents' life. [187]

The school teacher, again, on whom so many rely for the initial stage in sexual hygiene, is at present often in almost exactly the same stage of ignorance or prejudice in these matters as his or her pupils. The teacher has seldom been trained to impart even the most elementary scientific knowledge of the facts of sex, of reproduction, and of sexual hygiene, and is more often than not without that personal experience of life in its various aspects which is required in order to teach wisely in such a difficult field as that of sex, even if the principle is admitted that the teacher in class, equally whether addressing one sex or both sexes, is not called upon to go beyond the scientific, abstract, and objective aspects of sex.

This difficulty of the lack of suitable teachers is not, indeed, insuperable. It would be largely settled, no doubt, if a wise and thorough course of sexual hygiene and puericulture formed part of the training of all school teachers, as, in France, Pinard has proposed for the Normal schools for young women. Dr. W.O. Henry, in a paper read before the Nebraska State Medical Association in May, 1911, put forward the proposal: "Let each State have one or more competent physicians whose duty it shall be to teach these things to the children in all the public schools of the State from the time they are eight years of age. The boys and girls should be given the instruction separately by means of charts, pictures, and stereopticon views, beginning with the lower forms of life, flowers, plants, and then closing with the organs in man. These lectures and illustrations should be given every year to all the boys and girls separately, having those from eight to ten together at one time, and those from ten to twelve, and those from over twelve to sixteen." Dr. Henry was evidently not aware that the principle of a special teacher appointed by Government to give special instruction in matters of sex in all State schools had already been adopted in Canada, in the province of Ontario; the teacher thus appointed goes from school to school and teaches the elements of sexual physiology and anatomy, and the duty of treating sexual matters with reverence, to classes of boys and of girls from the age of ten. The course is not compulsory, but any School Board may call upon the special teacher to deliver the lectures. This appointment has met with so much approval that it is proposed to appoint further teachers on the same lines, women as well as men.

It is not necessary that the school teacher of sex should be a physician. For personal and particular advice on the concrete difficulties of sex, however, as well as for the more special and detailed hygiene of the sexual relationship and the precautions demanded by eugenics, we must call in the physician. Yet none of these things so far enter the curriculum through which the physician passes to reach his profession; he is often only a layman in relation to them. Even if we are assured that these subjects form part of his scientific equipment, that fact by no means guarantees his tact, sympathy, and insight in addressing the young, whether by general lectures or individual interviews, both these being forms of imparting sexual hygiene for which we may properly call upon the physician, especially towards the end of the school or college course, and at the outset of any career in the world. [188]

Undoubtedly we have amongst us many mothers, teachers, and physicians who are admirably equipped to fulfil their respective parts—elementary, secondary, and advanced—in the work of sexual hygiene. But so long as they are few and far apart their influence is negatived, if it is not even rendered harmful.

It must often be useless for a mother to instil into her little boy respect for his own body, reverence for the channel of motherhood through which he entered the world, any sense of the purity of natural functions or the beauty of natural organs, if outside his home the little boy finds that all other little boys and girls regard these things as only an occasion for sniggering. It is idle for the teacher to describe plainly the scientific facts of sex as a marvellous culmination in the natural unfolding of the world if, outside the schoolroom, the pupil finds that, in the newspapers and in the general conversation of adults, this sacred temple is treated as a common sewer, too filthy to be spoken of, and that the books which contain even the most necessary descriptions of it are liable to be condemned as "obscene" in the law courts. [189] It is vain for the physician to explain to young men and women the subtle and terrible nature of venereal poisons, to declare the right and the duty of both partners in marriage to know, authoritatively and beforehand, the state of each other's health, or to warn them that a proper sense of responsibility towards the race must prevent some ill-born persons from marrying, or at all events from procreating, if the young man and woman find, on leaving the physician, that their acquaintances are prepared to accept all these risks, light-heartedly, in the dark, in a heedless dream from which they somehow hope there will be no awful awakening.

The moral to which these observations point is fairly clear. Sex penetrates the whole of life. It is not a branch of mathematics, or a period of ancient history, which we can elect to teach, or not to teach, as may seem best to us, which if we teach we may teach as we choose, and if we neglect to teach it will never trouble us. Love and Hunger are the foundations of life, and the impulse of sex is just as fundamental as the impulse of nutrition. It will not remain absent because we refuse to call for its presence, it will not depart because we find its presence inconvenient. At the most it will only change its shape, and mock at us from beneath masks so degraded, and sometimes so exalted, that we are no longer able to recognize it.

"People are always writing about education," said Chamfort more than a century ago, "and their writings have led to some valuable methods. But what is the use, unless side by side with the introduction of such methods, corresponding reforms are not introduced in legislation, in religion, in public opinion? The only object of education is to conform the child's reason to that of the community. But if there is no corresponding reform in the community, by training the child to reason you are merely training him to see the absurdity of opinions and customs consecrated by the seal of sacred authority, public or legislative, and you are inspiring him with contempt of them." [190] We cannot too often meditate on these wise words.