These facts do not excuse pornography, but they refute the assertion that pornography and true artistic perception are incompatible. As Schopenhauer truly says, many contrasts can exist side by side in the same human being. This is even more clearly manifest in pictorial art. Anyone who turns over the leaves of Eduard Fuchs’ book upon the erotic element in caricature will learn that the greatest painters have occasionally painted deliberately improper, obscene pictures. I need mention only the names of Lucas Cranach, Annibale Carracci, H. S. Beham, Rembrandt, G. Aldegrever, Adrian van Ostade, Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Vivan-Denon, Gillray, Lawrence, Rowlandson, Heinrich Ramberg, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Schadow, Otto Greiner, Willette, Kubin, Julius Pascin,[788] Beardsley, etc.[789]
Side by side with these higher pornographic works there exists also a lower kind—obscene garbage writings and pornographic pictures of the worst possible kind, such as picture postcards, “act-photographs,” etc., in which all possible sexual perversities are represented, either in printed matter or by pictures (masturbation, poses lubriques, representations of nude portions of the body, copralagnistic and urolagnistic acts, bestiality, sadism, masochism, pæderasty, incest, fornicatory acts with children, orgies, obscene paraphrases of proverbs, rape, etc.). Kemmer (op. cit., pp. 31-45) gives a detailed account of the sale of these obscenities, and of the way in which they are advertised in catalogues, etc. They are manufactured in France, Germany, Belgium, and Spain (especially in Barcelona). The dangerous character of these articles is indisputable; they have a suggestive influence, and stimulate those who look at them to imitative acts. They may thus directly give rise to sexual perversities.[790] But they are not so dangerous as the true hawkers’ literature[791] and popular garbage writings about “secret sins.” These inflame the imagination, and thus lead to crime and sexual infamies. This is an old experience. In the year 1901, at the trial of the boy murderers Thärigen and Kroft (Vossische Zeitung, No. 161, April 5, 1901), the two murderers confessed that they had been incited to the commission of crime by backstairs romances, and by tales of Indians and robbers. The same cause was alleged, in December, 1906, in Kottbus, by a boy fourteen years of age, who was accused of murder.
How are we to counteract the moral harm done by such literature? I consider all the efforts of societies for the suppression of immorality to be illusory and two-edged, for they always fail to attain their end; and in addition, unfortunately—a matter of which there is no doubt—they endanger the freedom of art and science.[792] All measures calculated to keep away from children and immature persons books which might serve to give rise to sexual stimulation are worthy of support; and it must be remembered that for children and immature persons scientific books, religious writings—as, for example, the unexpurgated Bible—and also illustrated comic papers, etc., may be dangerous. But, for the most part, all prohibitions, and the whole campaign against immorality, serve only to favour pornography. The stricter the measures taken against it, the wider becomes its diffusion. This is a very old experience, an incontrovertible fact. Tacitus (“Ann.,” XIV., c. 50) rightly explained this peculiar phenomenon: “Libros exuri jussit, conquisitos lectitatosque, donec cum periculo parabantur: mox licentia habendi oblivionem attulit” (“He issued a decree that the books were to be burned; but as long as it was dangerous to publish them they were in great request, and were eagerly read: whereas as soon as people were permitted to possess them they passed into oblivion”). The pornographic books which during the last five hundred years have been burned by the public executioner, which have been confiscated, and which have been repeatedly destroyed to the last copy, the obscene engravings of which the plates have been destroyed—have all these disappeared from the surface of the earth, have all these confiscations and condemnations[793] of livres défendus been of any use whatever? No. All the pornographic writings, confiscated and destroyed a thousand times over, reappear again and again; indeed, they become more numerous the more the attempt is made to suppress them. The campaign against them has always been a campaign against a hydra, a labour of the Danaïdes, which has no object, and only entails the disadvantage that, in the general zeal to put an end to immoral literature, scientific and artistic interests are most seriously endangered. Happily, this campaign is to-day less vigorous than it was of yore. In proportion to the population, immoral literature in Germany was before 1870 far more widely diffused than it is at the present day. During the sixth and seventh decades of the nineteenth century it flourished more luxuriantly; even during the time of the war of liberation numerous original obscene books were printed in Germany. To-day the interest in social, scientific, technical, and philosophic questions, and in sport, has become so great, and the interest in sexual questions has become so much more profound, that an overgrowth of pornography is no longer to be feared. From these facts we recognize at once the only way, and the right way, which we must follow in order to paralyze the evil influences of pornography. This is to take a proper care for genuine popular culture, to increase educational opportunities, and to reduce the price of books. A single undertaking such as that of A. Reimann, who, in his Deutsche Bücherei, publishes for threepence a volume a collection of choice literature, containing not only the best fiction, but also popularly written scientific works from the pens of leading men of science and essayists—such an enterprise is far more effective in the suppression of garbage literature than all the Unions for the Promotion of Morality.
Supplementary Note to Chapter XXX.—In connexion with the questions discussed in this chapter, the reader may profitably consult the recently published book of Willy Schindler (written, however, from an unduly subjective standpoint), “The Erotic Element in Literature and Art” (Berlin, 1907).
[English readers interested in the question of the dangers of pornographic literature and art in relation to that “liberty of unlicensed printing” which is so essential to the welfare of the modern social democratic State, should read the thoughtful and luminous discussion of the topic by H. G. Wells, in one of the later chapters of his admirable “Mankind in the Making.”—Translator.]
[776] Johannes David Schreber (of Meissen), “De libris obscoenis” (Leipzig, 1688, quarto).
[777] Cf. Iwan Bloch, “The Lex Heinze and Medical Authorship,” published in Die Medizinsche Woche, No. 9, March 12, 1900.
[778] Cf., regarding this matter, the Aerztlicher Zentral-Anzeiger, No. 24, June 10, 1901.
[779] Unfortunately, I was mistaken in this optimistic assumption. In the Journal of the German Book Trade, No. 77, April 3, 1906, I find among the list of confiscated works “Means for the Prevention of Conception”—a separate impression of the Deutsche Medizinische Presse, Berlin, No. 7, April 5, 1899. By the decision of one of the Berlin courts the further issue of this work, and the further use of the stereotype forms from which it was printed, were forbidden.