2. The medical advocates of relative temporary continence, until it becomes possible to enjoy permanent hygienic intercourse, free from all objections.
3. The advocates of “duplex sexual morality,” who demand from woman sexual abstinence until she marries, but who regard this as impossible in the case of man.
4. The “Vera”[687] enthusiasts, who on moral grounds demand abstinence for both sexes until marriage.
5. Those who doubt the possibility of abstinence of any kind for either sex, whether absolute or relative.
Regarding those mentioned under the first heading, who demand absolute, life-long sexual abstinence, it is hardly necessary to say a word. It is nonsense, a pious superstition, a Utopia contrary alike to nature and to civilization, born of the belief in the “sinfulness” of sexual intercourse.
The normal sexual impulse is a natural phenomenon; it is pure and thoroughly ethical; and it is only in an insane confusion and in a morally reprehensible falsification of his own nature that man has come to regard it as a “sin,” as an “evil.” Man has a natural, inborn right to the gratification of the sexual impulse. Absolute asceticism must be rejected as a thoroughly immoral doctrine.
The same is true of the duplex sexual morality, alluded to under the third heading, by which that is justified to man which is denied to woman. This “morality” (lucus a non lucendo) presupposes for man a natural impulse, and demands for him a right to gratify it, whilst the existence of such an impulse and of such a right is denied to woman. We have shown that this view is an inevitable consequence of coercive marriage morality.[688]
The standpoint of the sceptics alluded to under § 5 is one which denies the possibility of any abstinence, even merely temporary abstinence; but this view is equally to be rejected. Man is a natural being; his sexual impulse is a natural instinct, and as such one whose existence is justified; but at the same time man is a civilized being. Civilization is an elevation, an ennoblement, a transfiguration of nature, whose unduly powerful impulses and powers must be tamed and harmonized by civilization. The right to sexual gratification is therefore opposed by the duty to set bounds to the sexual impulse, to conduct it into such paths that no harm can result from its exercise, either to the individual or to society; and in order that, like all other impulses, it may subserve the purposes of the evolution of civilization. To this end, however, a relative abstinence is of great importance (this is a matter which has not hitherto been sufficiently recognized); but this course it is only possible to follow when, at the same time, we emphatically affirm the rightness of sexuality, and when it is our desire to utilize it as a civilizing factor of the first rank. The “individualization” of the sexual impulse has been described in detail in an earlier chapter of this work, to which I may refer the reader. If we fail to recognize the value of temporary abstinence, and the importance of the storing up of sexual energy which is thereby effected, and the transformation of this energy into other energies of a spiritual nature, such an individualization becomes impossible.
Alike the medical advocates (§ 2) and the moral advocates (§ 4) of a relative temporary abstinence for both sexes have, from their respective standpoints, made a just demand. This is, in fact, in both cases an “ideal standpoint,” to use the phrase of F. A. Lange; but it is also an ideal most desirable to set before youth, and more especially before our German youth. We cannot repeat too often, or insist with too much emphasis, what an endless blessing results from the endeavour towards, and from the realization of, temporary sexual abstinence, more especially in the years of preparation for life, but also in the years of independent creative work.
The importance of relative sexual abstinence was first recognized by the ancient Israelites. Numerous wise prescriptions and utterances prove this. Julius Preuss, the most celebrated student of ancient Jewish medicine, has recently, in an interesting study of “Sexual Matters in the Bible and the Talmud” (Allgemeine Medizinische Central-Zeitung, 1906, No. 30 et seq.), collected the following facts bearing on the matter: