The world has become large, alluring, and confusing. Social evolution has been so rapid that no agency has been developed in the larger community of the state for regulating behavior which would replace the failing influence of the community and correspond completely with present activities. There is no universally accepted body of doctrines or practices. The churchman, for example, and the scientist, educator, or radical leader are so far apart that they cannot talk together. They are, as the Greeks expressed it, in different “universes of discourse.”
41. Dr. Austin O’Malley writes rather passionately about the control of births, in the Catholic weekly, “America.” Says Dr. O’Malley: “The most helpless idiot is as far above a non-existent child as St. Bridget is above a committee on birth control.” Let us pause over the idiot and the non-existent child. Must we say that all potential children should be born? Are we to take a firm stand against celibacy, which denies to so many possible children the right to be baptized? And will Dr. O’Malley tell us which is the greater virtue, to bear children that they may be baptized, or to have no children for the glory of one’s own soul? This solicitude over the non-existent child has certain drawbacks. How large a family, in fact, does Dr. O’Malley desire a woman to bear? May she stop after the fourteenth infant, or must she say to herself: “There are still non-existent children, some of them helpless idiots; perhaps I will bear them that they may be baptized.”[[43]]
Or, if we should submit any series of behavior problems to a set of men selected as most competent to give an opinion we should find no such unanimity as prevailed in a village community. One set of opinions would be rigoristic and hold that conformity with the existing code is advisable under all circumstances; another pragmatic, holding that the code may sometimes be violated. For example, in 1919, the United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board authorized the Psychological Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University to make an investigation of the “informational and educative effect upon the public of certain motion-picture films”, and in this connection a questionnaire was sent to “medical men and women who have had most to do with problems in sex education and the actual treatment of venereal infections.” From the manuscript of this investigation I give below some of the replies received to question 13.
42. Question 13. Do you consider that absolute continence is always to be insisted upon? Or may it be taught that under certain conditions intercourse in the unmarried is harmless or beneficial?
Dr. A. I know of no harm from absolute continence. Intercourse in the unmarried cannot be justified on any grounds of health or morals.
Dr. B. No. For some absolute continence would be easy, for others, impossible. It is an individual problem to be decided by the individual, with or without advice.
Under certain conditions in the unmarried, male or female, intercourse is harmless or beneficial; under other conditions it is harmful and injurious (irrespective of venereal disease).
Dr. C. I think it is harmless and beneficial. But our standards are against it. And who could possibly conscientiously teach such a thing, no matter what he thought?
Dr. D. Certainly not. It is probably well to teach young people that continence before marriage is in general very desirable, as contrasted with the results of incontinence.
Dr. E. It is best to teach conformity to custom.