But in efforts to teach chastity, sex itself must not be made to appear an evil thing. This is a grave mistake and all too common since the rise of the sex-hygiene movement. Undoubtedly a considerable amount of the celibacy in sensitive women may be traced to ill-balanced mothers and teachers who, in word and attitude, build up an impression that sex is indecent and bestial, and engender in general a damaging suspicion of men.[115]
Level heads are necessary in the sex ethics campaign. Whereas the venereal diseases will probably, with a continuation of present progress in treatment and prophylaxis, be brought under control in the course of a century, the problem of differential mating will exist as long as the race does, which can hardly be less than tens of millions of years. Lurid presentation, by drama, novel, or magazine-story, of dramatic and highly-colored individual sex histories, is to be avoided. These often impress an abnormal situation on sensitive girls so strongly that aversion to marriage, or sex antagonism, is aroused. Every effort should be made to permeate art—dramatic, plastic, or literary—with the highest ideals of sex and parenthood. A glorification of motherhood and fatherhood in these ways would have a portentous influence on public opinion.
"The true, intimate chronicle of an everyday married life has not been written. Here is a theme for genius; for only genius can divine and reveal the beauty, the pathos, and the wonder of the normal or the commonplace. A felicitous marriage has its comedy, its complexities, its element, too, of tragedy and grief, as well as its serenity and fealty. Matrimony, whether the pair fare well or ill, is always a great adventure, a play of deep instincts and powerful emotions, a drama of two psyches. Every marriage provides a theme for the literary artist. No lives are free from enigmas."[116]
More "temperance" in work would probably promote marriage of able and ambitious young people. Walter Gallichan complains that "we do not even recognize love as a finer passion than money greed. It is a kind of luxury, or pleasant pastime, for the sentimentally minded. Love is so undervalued as a source of happiness, a means of grace, and a completion of being, that many men would sooner work to keep a motor car than to marry."
Men should be taught greater respect for the individuality of women, so that no high-minded girl will shrink from marriage with the idea that it means a surrender of her personality and a state of domestic servitude. A more discriminating idea of sex-equality is desirable, and a recognition by men that women are not necessarily creatures of inferior mentality. It would be an advantage if men's education included some instruction along these lines. It would be a great gain, also if intelligent women had more knowledge of domestic economy and mothercraft, because one of the reasons why the well-educated girl is handicapped in seeking a mate is the belief all too frequently well founded of many young men that she is a luxury which he can not afford.
Higher education in general needs to be reoriented. It has too much glorified individualism, and put a premium on "white collar" work. The trend toward industrial education will help to correct this situation.
Professor Sprague[117] points out another very important fault, when he says: "More strong men are needed on the staffs of public schools and women's colleges, and in all of these institutions more married instructors of both sexes are desirable. The catalogue of one of the [women's] colleges referred to above shows 114 professors and instructors, of whom 100 are women, of whom only two have ever married. Is it to be expected that the curriculum created by such a staff would idealize and prepare for family and home life as the greatest work of the world and the highest goal of woman, and teach race survival as a patriotic duty? Or, would it be expected that these bachelor staffs would glorify the independent vocation and life for women and create employment bureaus to enable their graduates to get into the offices, schools and other lucrative jobs? The latter seems to be what occurs."
Increase of opportunity for superior young people to meet each other, as discussed in our chapter on sexual selection, will play a very large part in raising the marriage rate. And finally, the delayed or avoided marriage of the intellectual classes is in large part a reflection of public opinion, which has wrongly represented other things as being more worth while than marriage.
"The promotion of marriage in early adult life, as a part of social hygiene, must begin with a new canonization of marriage," Mr. Gallichan declares. "This is equally the task of the fervent poet and the scientific thinker, whose respective labors for humanity are never at variance in essentials.... The sentiment for marriage can be deepened by a rational understanding of the passion that attracts and unites the sexes. We need an apotheosis of conjugal love as a basis for a new appreciation of marriage. Reverence for love should be fostered from the outset of the adolescent period by parents and pedagogues."
If, in addition to this "diffusion of healthier views of the conjugal relation," some of the economic changes suggested in later chapters are put in effect, it seems probable that the present racially disastrous tendency of the most superior young men and women to postpone or avoid marriage would be checked.