Some of them find it thoroughly disagreeable. They believe that old laws were born of old desires and find their sanctions in the emotions of men. They seek for new and rational ways back to the sort of stability provided by the traditional relationships of men and women. Others find in contemporary manners merely the disorder incident to reconstruction; they find there tentative beginnings rather than ruinous endings. They see chaos as an interesting laboratory, filled with strange ferments and the pungent odors of new compounds. None of these writers offers dogmatic conclusions—and in this they differ delightfully from our most popular novelists and preachers. They present facts, they analyze and interpret; they suggest directions, they even prophesy. But they never announce or warn or reprove. When these chapters first appeared as articles in The Nation it became evident that this exercise of thought was itself commonly held to be a simple blasphemy. Letters from readers came in scores charging the articles with the sin of intelligence where only faith and conformity were tolerable. Dogma is so deep in the bone of even the more enlightened and adult members of our modern world that the most modest doubt regarding the success of monogamy or the virtue of chastity becomes in some way an insult to Moses or Saint Paul.
It is interesting to see how many of the authors of this group of articles find a connection between the changing standards of sex behavior and the increasing freedom of women. Are women forcing this change? Or does freedom itself make change inevitable? Possibly only the woman in the isolation of the home is able to sustain the double load of her own virtue and her husband’s ideals. Out in the world, in contact and competition with men, she is forced to discriminate; questions are thrust upon her. The old rules fail to work; bewildering inconsistencies confront her. Things that were sure become unsure. And slowly, clumsily, she is trying to construct a way out to a new sort of certainty in life; she is seeking something to take the place of the burden of solemn ideals and reverential attitudes that rolled off her shoulders when she emerged. That some such process may be going on is hinted at in more than one of these articles. Certainly, of the factors involved in modern sex relations, women and economic conditions are the two that have suffered the most revolutionary change; and men’s morals must largely shape themselves to the patterns laid down by these two masters of life.
Much has been said about sex—and everything remains to be said. Largely, new conclusions will be reached through new processes of living. People will act—and then a new code will grow up. But along the way guidance and interpretation are deeply needed, if only to take the place of the pious imprecations of those who fear life and hate the dangers and uncertainties of thought and emotion.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
|---|---|---|
| [Introduction] | [v] | |
| By Freda Kirchwey | ||
| [Styles in Ethics] | [3] | |
| By Bertrand Russell | ||
| [Modern Marriage] | [19] | |
| By Arthur Garfield Hays | ||
| [Changes in Sex Relations] | [37] | |
| By Elsie Clews Parsons | ||
| [Toward Monogamy] | [53] | |
| By Charlotte Perkins Gilman | ||
| [Women—Free for What?] | [69] | |
| By Edwin Muir | ||
| [Virtue and Women] | [85] | |
| By Isabel Leavenworth | ||
| [Where Are the Female Geniuses?] | [107] | |
| By Sylvia Kopald | ||
| [Man and Woman as Creators] | [129] | |
| By Alexander Goldenweiser | ||
| [Dominant Sexes] | [147] | |
| By M. Vaerting | ||
| [Modern Love and Modern Fiction] | [167] | |
| By J. W. Krutch | ||
| [Can Men and Women Be Friends?] | [183] | |
| By Floyd Dell | ||
| [Love and Marriage] | [197] | |
| By Ludwig Lewisohn | ||
| [Communist Puritans] | [207] | |
| By Louis Fischer | ||
| [Stereotypes] | [219] | |
| By Florence Guy Seabury | ||
| [Women and the New Morality] | [235] | |
| By Beatrice M. Hinkle | ||
Styles in Ethics
By Bertrand Russell
Hon. Bertrand Arthur William Russell
is a mathematician, writer, and lecturer on international affairs and problems of government. Born at Trellech, England, May 18th, 1872. F.R.S. 1908; Late Lecturer and Fellow Trinity College, Cambridge. Heir presumptive to 2nd Earl Russell. Author of “German Social Democracy,” 1896; “Essay on the Foundation of Geometry,” 1897; “Philosophy of Leibnitz,” 1900; “Principles of Mathematics,” 1903; with D. A. N. Whitehead, “Principia Mathematica,” 1910; “Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy,” 1914; “Principles of Social Reconstruction,” 1917; “Why Men Fight,” 1917; “Mysticism and Logic,” 1918; “Roads to Freedom,” 1918; “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy,” 1919; “The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism,” 1920; “The Analysis of the Mind,” 1921; “The Problem of China,” 1922; “The A. B. C. of Atoms,” 1923; “Icarus, or the Future of Science,” 1924.
OUR
CHANGING MORALITY