The human species, with all its immense advantages, has made many conspicuous missteps. Its eating habits are such as to have induced a wide assortment of wholly unnecessary diseases; its drinking habits are glaringly injurious; and its excessive indulgence in sex-waste has imperiled the life of the race.
Domestic morality vaguely recognized some duty to society and sought through religion to limit masculine desires or at least to restrict their indulgence to marriage. But the desires of a vigorous polygamist are not easily restricted to one wife; and our polygamous period was far longer than that of the recently established monogamy. It is a most reassuring fact in social evolution that monogamy, naturally belonging to our species, has persisted among the common people and in popular ideals: even in “The Arabian Nights” the love story is always about one man and one woman, never of the mad passion for a harem! So with the accelerated progress of recent centuries monogamous union becomes accepted, and is carefully buttressed by the law, while religion, with commandments and ceremonies, does its best to establish “the sanctity of marriage.” But as religion, law, and family authority were all in the hands of men, they naturally interpreted that sanctity to suit themselves, ignored the religious restrictions, and so handled the law as to apply its penalties to but one party in a dual offense.
Social morality requires the promotion of such lines of conduct as are beneficial to the maintenance and improvement of society. It will demand of both man and woman the full development of personal health and vigor, careful selection of the best mate by both, with recognition on her side of special responsibility as the natural arbiter. It will encourage such sex relations as are proved advantageous both to individual happiness and to the race. We are as yet so hag-ridden by domestic morality, with its arbitrary restrictions, and by the threats and punishments of law and religion, that we shrink from the broader biological judgment as if it involved blame, punishment, compulsory reform. Not at all. Men and women are no more to blame for being oversexed than a prize hog for being over-fat. The portly pig is not sick or wicked, he is merely overdeveloped in adipose tissue. Our condition does not call for condemnation, nor can we expect any sudden and violent change in our behavior resting on foolish ideals of celibacy, of self-denial, or of “sublimated sex.” It will take several generations of progressive selection, with widely different cultural influences, to reëstablish a normal sex development in genus homo, with its consequences in happier marriage, better children, and wide improvement in the public health.
It is to this end, with all its widening range of racial progress, that social morality tends.
Women—Free for What?
By Edwin Muir
Edwin Muir,
poet and essayist, has been assistant editor of the New Age (London) as well as dramatic critic for the Scotsman and the Athenæum. He was a frequent contributor to The Freeman.
WOMEN—FREE FOR WHAT?
BY EDWIN MUIR