There is a prudery which is not proper reticence that is cultivated by some people who happen incidentally to be religiously inclined. They would not call a spade a spade for the world. They would not hint at the fact that conjugation is always the origin of life for worlds. They would not use certain plain words that must be used in order to express very definite ideas without the feeling that they had smirched themselves by saying such things. If they had gone through Europe in the old days and seen the public comfort arrangements, they would have collapsed then and there. All this is sheer prudery and when applied to sex matters represents really a neurosis of excessive precaution and inhibition with regard to some of the most natural things in the world.
Any one who understands even a little of the religious attitude toward marriage will appreciate readily that such a state of mind is as far as possible from being that of the Church. Marriage is termed holy and blessed, and the ministers of the sacrament are the married persons themselves. Only those who fail to comprehend religious teaching in these matters have suggested that religious reticence with its conservation of that supreme reverence which even the great pagan teacher Quintilian recognized as due to youth represented an unfortunate cultivation of harmful ignorance. On the contrary, it is a part of that great tradition of age-long reticence which represents the highest wisdom of humanity. Hence the reversion to that mode of dealing with the question which has characterized the teaching of conservative psychologists in the last few years.
The greatest safeguard of purity with all that it means for the preservation of health and strength is the practice of self-denial with regard to the luxuries of life. No element in life has emphasized that and encouraged its practice so much or so constantly, and so persistently tried to train her children in it from youth as religion. It is almost impossible, for young people particularly, to keep right in this matter if they constantly indulge in luxuries. The very word luxury has come to be defined as "lust and lasciviousness and indulgence in lust", because there is such an almost inevitable connection between the exuberance of animal spirits which develops in connection with indulgence in luxuries of various kinds that the two words have almost necessarily come to have an intimate association. The word is applied to the friskiness or wantonness of animals, and it is very easy to understand its application. Men as well as animals who take more food than their occupations in life enable them to dispose of properly become similarly wanton or out of control. In Scriptural words they "wax fat and kick."
Religion has encouraged innocent enjoyment of every worthy sort as a distraction of mind and an outlet for youthful energy, but has discouraged in every way possible that complete gratification of the senses or of bodily desires which is so likely to be fatal to such strength of will as will enable people to control themselves. Clarke says, "Luxury does not consist in the innocent enjoyment of any of the good things which God has created to be received with thankfulness, but in the wasteful abuse of them to vicious purposes in ways inconsistent with sobriety, justice or charity."
Professor Foerster, whose books on the subject of the [{198}] training of youth and especially on sex matters in youth attracted so much attention shortly before the war, faced frankly this problem of the necessity for the practice of mortification, or as he did not hesitate to call it, genuine asceticism, the exercise of the virtues of self-control and self-denial as the most important factor for the protection of youth. He said: "All solutions of the sex problem which tend to emancipate sex feeling from the control of moral and spiritual law (instead of making it the chief aim to place the spirit in a position of mastery over the sex nature) are essentially hostile, not only to our whole social evolution and to the development of individual character, but to actual physical health in the sphere of sex. To secure the mastery of man's higher self over the whole world of animal desire is a task, however, which demands a more systematic development of will-power and the cultivation of a deeper faith in the spiritual destiny of humanity than are to be found in the superficial intellectualistic civilization of to-day. To achieve such a result it will be necessary not only to have recourse to new methods and new ideals, but to make sure that we do not allow what is valuable and in any way worthy of imitation, in the old, to be forgotten. The ascetic principle in particular is to-day in danger of being undervalued."
The cult of the body which has become so much the occupation of the present generation, which refuses to make the necessary effort of mind to secure intellectual pleasures, has always been the special deprecation of the Church. A great many of the words in the language show the effect of that religious attitude very clearly. Sensuousness, while its original meaning is only anything connected with the senses, has come to mean the quality [{199}] of being particularly alive to the pleasure that is received through the senses and therefore by implication, at least, not particularly intellectual. The Edinburgh Quarterly reviewer long ago, in the famous article which Byron suggested as having snuffed out the "fiery particle" of Keats' soul, hurt him most by suggesting his lack of intellectuality and declaring that he was "too soft and sensuous by nature to be exhilarated by the conflict of modern opinions", hence "he found an opiate for his despondency in the old tales of Greek mythology." Sensuality even more than sensuousness has come to mean under the sway of the senses and the bodily desires rather than of the mind. Pope spoke of men "sensualized by pleasure" like those who were "changed into brutes by Circe."
There is probably no epithet that a man of intelligence resents more than to be called a sensualist. Goldsmith summed it up when he spoke of "the vulgar satisfaction of soliciting happiness from sensual enjoyment alone." Religion has particularly emphasized the danger and the actual degradation of human nature which this brought about. Bishop Atterbury declared that "No small part of virtue consists in abstaining from that in which sensual men place their felicity." Longer ago Shakespeare summed up the degeneration of the sensualist when he said
"Those pampered animals
That rage in savage sensuality."
This is quite literal degeneracy, for as man is both animal and rational, overindulgence in the pleasures of the senses drags him down toward his animal nature, that is, toward the genus below the genus homo to which man belongs. No wonder men resent the epithet "degenerate."