In the nineteenth century the evolution of morals took a strange turn. Neither clergy nor laity had before that time, speaking generally, observed chastity in practice, but the rise of non-Christian critics in the eighteenth century had compelled the clergy to be more faithful to their own precepts. This (and the growth of such movements as Wesleyanism) led to more concern about virtue, and when the English Agnostic school arose its leaders were taunted by the clergy with a wish to rationalise or alter morality. By a natural reaction they cultivated a particular zeal for virtue, and accepted the old code in its entirety. Those moralists who appealed to a “categorical imperative” or an “intuition” had no difficulty in doing this. Indeed, any man who to-day accepts the Stoic idea of morality, or the æsthetic idea (that virtue is so beautiful that we must cultivate it), has as much right as the Christian to profess a regard for chastity. There ensued a kind of rivalry of virtue between the clergy and the new pagans. It has ended in the curious spectacle of our modern clergy, whose historical knowledge is both slender and peculiar, claiming that their Churches are the most faithful preachers of purity the world has ever known, while Agnostic moralists indignantly dispute their supposed monopoly.
The extreme complexity of this evolution, and the fact that few of us reflect critically at all on our moral sentiments, must excuse me for making this lengthy analysis. It shows that our conception of chastity still contains a large amount of the old non-rational tradition, and that any man or woman who declines (as so many do to-day) to bow to mystic and obscure commands has a right to examine it closely. In one of my works (Life of G. J. Holyoake, ii. 65) I have shown that so sensitive a moralist as J. S. Mill admitted this. Obviously, the precept of purity or chastity has a totally different basis from all the other recognised moral precepts. These others are invariably social laws, and the transgression of them is invariably a social hurt. Life itself furnishes the reply if a man asks why he ought to be just, kind, and truthful: the answer is not so obvious when he asks why he ought to be chaste.
This will become very much clearer if we examine our resentment of “immoral” actions. In the majority of cases we condemn them on moral principles quite apart from chastity. Europe has in this respect been lamentably misled by its professional moralists, and we can hardly be surprised that in practice it so largely ignored them. It is quite plain that a man or woman who has married on the usual terms—mutual fidelity—and they remain unaltered, is bound by honour and justice to observe the contract. Adultery is in such a case (the usual case) condemned by moral principles which have a very much clearer basis than chastity. Again, justice sternly forbids a man to inflict, or run the risk of inflicting, grave injury on a woman by causing her to have a child in a social order which will heavily punish her for doing so. Here also there is a firm reason, apart from chastity, for moral resentment. When we eliminate these other moral sentiments from our condemnation of immoral acts, there is certainly no social ground of resentment left; and, as I said, I am not arguing against a Stoic or æsthetic or theological view. Socially, it would be an enormous improvement if we kept this analysis in mind. If moralists talked less about “vice,” which has an academic sound, and more about “crime” and honour, there would be less suffering in the world. The experience of two thousand years has not commended the Church’s practice of denouncing vice when it ought to have appealed to a man’s sense of honour or justice. It put the accent on the wrong syllable. Many a man will shrink from an act which is unjust, or may involve cruelty, if he is accustomed to regard it as such. He is not so effectively intimidated by terms like virtue and vice, which require a whole moral philosophy or theology to invalidate them.
But I am not for a moment contending that this removal of the accent from one syllable to another leaves the law as it was. It is, on the contrary, the very essence of my contention that the law must, in the real interest of men and women, be altered and that a large amount of ethical tyranny, which has no justification, must be abandoned. Let me first put, with entire candour, what seems to me to be the only rational reconstruction of sex-morality on a social basis, and then we may regard the reasons for advocating it.
It is, as I said, clear that if a man or woman marries on a strict monogamous contract, and holds his or her partner to that contract, there is a plain obligation of justice to adhere to it. If, on the other hand, a man and woman choose to marry on any other understanding, or choose to grant each other (as is now frequently done) a greater liberty than the contract implies, their behaviour is entirely their own concern, and no moralist who takes his stand on purely social grounds has anything to say to it. In regard to unmarried intercourse, it is further plain that a man commits an immoral or anti-social act who entails on an unmarried woman the grave injury which child-bearing does entail in our social order generally. It must, however, be recognised that guilt is in this case entirely relative to circumstances. Where public opinion does not make a pariah of such a woman, where no risk of suffering is involved, such an act of “free love” is no concern of the social moralist. Hence, if two people of mature intelligence, making a just provision for possible children, choose to live together without marriage, it is entirely their own concern; and if any woman, strong and judicious enough to take the responsibility of her acts, chooses love without marriage, it is her own concern.
If there seems to be an unfamiliar coldness and deliberation about this defence of “licence,” it is enough to recall the familiar circumstances. One cannot, as a rule, inquire dispassionately into this subject without raising an hysterical storm. The clergy and other puritans accuse a man of the basest and most selfish motives; they seem, indeed, so incapable of understanding that a man may plead for this moral reconstruction on motives at least as unselfish and elevated as their own that their obtuseness does little credit to their own moral physiognomy. They make fanatical appeals to undiscriminating prejudice, repeat silly phrases about “passion” and “farmyard morals,” and rely on intimidation. The consequence is, that ordinary folk openly bow to their rhetoric and secretly ignore it. Any properly observant person can find out in a week to what extent London observes the virtue of purity. It is then left to rebellious poets and novelists and other artists to make fiery onslaughts on the tyranny: to speak of virtue as “the ash of a burnt-out fire,” to chant “the roses and raptures of vice,” or to say scornfully with Blake:
“And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.”
Therefore I have chosen to apply to the issue the cold deductive processes with which experience as a professor of moral philosophy has made me familiar. As I said, the Christian is free to observe his supposed divine command, the Stoic may bow to a mystic and inscrutable law, the moral æsthete may enthuse over the charm of virtue; but I maintain that the sociological or utilitarian view of morals, which is now generally accepted by the vast number of people who have ceased to be Christian, cannot control sex-relations in any other sense than this. A man must avoid injustice and hardship: a woman must use her discretion. Indeed, as the clergy and the puritans now take their stand commonly on social grounds, these social considerations are effective against them.
But the question is not merely academic. These cold and severe deductions are very properly opposed to the heated phraseology and sentimentality of Conservatives, who profess to be concerned about our social welfare, but I am really pleading for the greater happiness of the race, the lessening of hypocrisy, the curtailment of a system of prostitution which makes the lives of so many women end in horror. With all their talk about our “social welfare,” the clergy and their puritan supporters are in this respect the gravest disturbers and restricters of our social welfare; and the insolence with which they assail every attempt at reform is ludicrous in view of their own record and gravely prejudicial to the advance of human happiness. It is not a question of abolishing marriage, or of interfering with the liberty of any. At one moment the clergy represent marriage as so beneficent, so solidly established in the hearts of our people, that only a morbid sensualist ever assails it; and the next moment they suggest, in effect, that if we relax our coercion, people will abandon marriage in such numbers that the social order will be overwhelmed. Let us have sincerity and liberty.
But neither is it a question of spreading a gospel of “free love,” in the perverse sense in which the clergy conceive such a gospel. The considerations I have given above should make this plain enough. It is a question of securing freedom and love for the hundreds of thousands of mature women who cannot marry, or who do not choose to enter upon the very precarious experiment of surrendering their privacy and independence: a question of breaking the tyranny of an old superstition which, by means of public opinion, forbids so many women to have the child they desire to have, or the share of happiness from which they are excluded: a question of putting an end to a vast amount of needless suffering and privation and hypocrisy. The State would gain rather than lose by this freedom: it is the Church only that would suffer. Thousands of women already hold these views, as the open circulation of the Freewoman (a few years ago) and of our bolder novelists shows. The feeling gains ground yearly, and the time is approaching when that seal of ignominy which our priest-made law puts on the “illegitimate” child will be removed, and men and women will cease to speak of “lust.” Sex-pleasure has no more taint than any other, and the notion that it is justified only as an accompaniment to the begetting of children, or to lessen the risk of adultery, is childishly irrational and generally insincere. Laws there must be: but the laws must be made for men, not men for the laws. It is time that Europe shook off the conceptions of conduct which were imposed on it by impotent monks like Gregory VII., and framed its own rules in accordance with the new and healthier attitude toward life. Asceticism is a commercial speculation—the sacrifice of earth for a double share of heaven—which we have no longer reason to appreciate.