Neither for prostitution, nor for the wild extra-conjugal sexual intercourse of our time, can any justification be found from the point of view of medicine, racial hygiene, or sociology. In their nature both lead to the same end: the death and destruction of all individual love, of all the finer activities of love, by which the spiritual nature of man is so greatly enriched; and they both give rise to a continuous increase and rapid diffusion of venereal diseases.
The salvation of our people is not to be found in the “recommendation” of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse for all those who are not in a position to marry—and the number of these grows from day to day—but it is to be found in the reform of marriage, in a freer configuration of the amatory life, in connexion with which we can confidently trust Ibsen’s saying in the “Lady from the Sea”:
“We can’t get away from this—that a voluntary promise is to the full as binding as a marriage.”
There shall not and must not be “sexual freedom,”[242] but there must be “freedom of love.”
When anyone asks me whether I should advise him to indulge in “extra-conjugal sexual intercourse,” as a physician and a man of science I am compelled to answer with a bald “No,” because I cannot undertake the responsibility of the consequences of such advice.
Fortunately, alike in the world of women and in the world of men, there manifests itself an increasing disapproval of wild love as it exhibits itself in the modern “intimacies.” There are already numerous intimacies which closely resemble free love, and in which all the conditions of free love are fulfilled, in respect of duration, of a profound spiritual relationship, a sense of sexual responsibility alike physical and moral, and in the joyful acceptance of the consequences in respect of offspring.
We must, however, continually keep up the fight against wild love as the enduring associate of prostitution, to which it constitutes the bridge or stage of transition. Therein lies its greatest danger. This we shall recognize more clearly in the ensuing chapter, in which we turn to consider the subject of prostitution.
[219] In the titular heading to this chapter, throughout the chapter, and in most cases throughout the book, the German word Verführung has been translated as seduction. Verführung means “leading astray,” and one of the commonest uses of the term is to denote sexual leading astray—the seduction of a woman by a man. But in some cases Verführung, like the English seduction, is used in its more primitive and wider signification. The context will suffice to show the sense in which the word is employed.—Translator.
[220] Thus, at the present day, in quite small country towns, we find variety theatres and low music-halls; and with these, prostitutes are commonly introduced into the town, so that the wild love, which was previously free from danger, now becomes a focus of venereal infection.