to the gratification of sexual impulses, we are on wholesome and natural
ground, and there is no waste of energy in fruitless striving for a
negative end, whether imposed artificially from without, as it usually is,
or voluntarily chosen by the individual himself.

For there is really no complete analogy between sexual desire and hunger,
between abstinence from sexual relations and abstinence from food. When we
put them both on the basis of abstinence we put them on a basis which
covers the impulse for food but only half covers the impulse for sexual
love. We confer no pleasure and no service on our food when we eat it. But
the half of sexual love, perhaps the most important and ennobling half,
lies in what we give and not in what we take. To reduce this question to
the low level of abstinence, is not only to centre it in a merely negative
denial but to make it a solely self-regarding question. Instead of asking:
How can I bring joy and strength to another? we only ask: How can I
preserve my empty virtue?

Therefore it is that from whatever aspect we consider the
question,--whether in view of the flagrant contradiction between the
authorities who have discussed this question, or of the illegitimate
mingling here of moral and physiological considerations, or of the merely
negative and indeed unnatural character of the "virtue" thus set up, or of
the failure involved to grasp the ennoblingly altruistic and mutual side
of sexual love,--from whatever aspect we approach the problem of "sexual
abstinence" we ought only to agree to do so under protest.

If we thus decide to approach it, and if we have reached the
conviction--which, in view of all the evidence we can scarcely
escape--that, while sexual abstinence in so far as it may be recognized as
possible is not incompatible with health, there are yet many adults for
whom it is harmful, and a very much larger number for whom when prolonged
it is undesirable, we encounter a serious problem. It is a problem which
confronts any person, and especially the physician, who may be called upon
to give professional advice to his fellows on this matter. If sexual
relationships are sometimes desirable for unmarried persons, or for
married persons who, for any reason, are debarred from conjugal union, is
a physician justified in recommending such sexual relationships to his
patient? This is a question that has frequently been debated and decided
in opposing senses.

Various distinguished physicians, especially in Germany, have
proclaimed the duty of the doctor to recommend sexual intercourse
to his patient whenever he considers it desirable. Gyurkovechky,
for instance, has fully discussed this question, and answered it
in the affirmative. Nystroem (_Sexual-Probleme_, July, 1908, p.
413) states that it is the physician's duty, in some cases of
sexual weakness, when all other methods of treatment have failed,
to recommend sexual intercourse as the best remedy. Dr. Max
Marcuse stands out as a conspicuous advocate of the unconditional
duty of the physician to advocate sexual intercourse in some
cases, both to men and to women, and has on many occasions argued
in this sense (e.g., _Darf der Arzt zum Ausserehelichen
Geschlechtsverkehr raten?_ 1904). Marcuse is strongly of opinion
that a physician who, allowing himself to be influenced by moral,
sociological, or other considerations, neglects to recommend
sexual intercourse when he considers it desirable for the
patient's health, is unworthy of his profession, and should
either give up medicine or send his patients to other doctors.
This attitude, though not usually so emphatically stated, seems
to be widely accepted. Lederer goes even further when he states
(_Monatsschrift fuer Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1906,
Heft 3) that it is the physician's duty in the case of a woman
who is suffering from her husband's impotence, to advise her to
have intercourse with another man, adding that "whether she does
so with her husband's consent is no affair of the physician's,
for he is not the guardian of morality, but the guardian of
health." The physicians who publicly take this attitude are,
however, a small minority. In England, so far as I am aware, no
physician of eminence has openly proclaimed the duty of the
doctor to advise sexual intercourse outside marriage, although,
it is scarcely necessary to add, in England, as elsewhere, it
happens that doctors, including women doctors, from time to time
privately point out to their unmarried and even married patients,
that sexual intercourse would probably be beneficial.

The duty of the physician to recommend sexual intercourse has
been denied as emphatically as it has been affirmed. Thus
Eulenburg (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 43), would by no means
advise extra-conjugal relations to his patient; "such advice is
quite outside the physician's competence." It is, of course,
denied by those who regard sexual abstinence as always harmless,
if not beneficial. But it is also denied by many who consider
that, under some circumstances, sexual intercourse would do good.

Moll has especially, and on many occasions, discussed the duty of
the physician in relation to the question of advising sexual
intercourse outside marriage (e.g., in his comprehensive work,
_Aerztliche Ethik_, 1902; also _Zeitschrift fuer Aerztliche
Fortbildung_, 1905, Nos. 12-15; _Mutterschutz_, 1905, Heft 3;
_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, vol. ii, Heft 8). At the outset
Moll had been disposed to assert the right of the physician to
recommend sexual intercourse under some circumstances; "so long
as marriage is unduly delayed and sexual intercourse outside
marriage exists," he wrote (_Die Contraere Sexualempfindung_,
second edition, p. 287), "so long, I think, we may use such
intercourse therapeutically, provided that the rights of no third
person (husband or wife) are injured." In all his later writings,
however, Moll ranges himself clearly and decisively on the
opposite side. He considers that the physician has no right to
overlook the possible results of his advice in inflicting
venereal disease, or, in the case of a woman, pregnancy, on his
patient, and he believes that these serious results are far more
likely to happen than is always admitted by those who defend the
legitimacy of such advice. Nor will Moll admit that the physician
is entitled to overlook the moral aspects of the question. A
physician may know that a poor man could obtain many things good
for his health by stealing, but he cannot advise him to steal.
Moll takes the case of a Catholic priest who is suffering from
neurasthenia due to sexual abstinence. Even although the
physician feels certain that the priest may be able to avoid all
the risks of disease as well as of publicity, he is not entitled
to urge him to sexual intercourse. He has to remember that in
thus causing a priest to break his vows of chastity he may induce
a mental conflict and a bitter remorse which may lead to the
worst results, even on his patient's physical health. Similar
results, Moll remarks, may follow such advice when given to a
married man or woman, to say nothing of possible divorce
proceedings and accompanying evils.

Rohleder (_Vorlesungen ueber Geschlechtstrieb und Gesamtes
Geschlechtsleben der Menschen_) adopts a somewhat qualified
attitude in this matter. As a general rule he is decidedly
against recommending sexual intercourse outside marriage to those
who are suffering from partial or temporary abstinence (the only
form of abstinence he recognizes), partly on the ground that the
evils of abstinence are not serious or permanent, and partly
because the patient is fairly certain to exercise his own
judgment in the matter. But in some classes of cases he
recommends such intercourse, and notably to bisexual persons, on
the ground that he is thus preserving his patient from the
criminal risks of homosexual practices.

It seems to me that there should be no doubt whatever as to the correct
professional attitude of the physician in relation to this question of
advice concerning sexual intercourse. The physician is never entitled to
advise his patient to adopt sexual intercourse outside marriage nor any
method of relief which is commonly regarded as illegitimate. It is said
that the physician has nothing to do with considerations of conventional
morality. If he considers that champagne would be good for a poor patient
he ought to recommend him to take champagne; he is not called upon to
consider whether the patient will beg, borrow, or steal the champagne.
But, after all, even if that be admitted, it must still be said that the
physician knows that the champagne, however obtained, is not likely to be
poisonous. When, however, he prescribes sexual intercourse, with the same
lofty indifference to practical considerations, he has no such knowledge.
In giving such a prescription the physician has in fact not the slightest
knowledge of what he may be prescribing. He may be giving his patient a
venereal disease; he may be giving the anxieties and responsibilities of
an illegitimate child; the prescriber is quite in the dark. He is in the
same position as if he had prescribed a quack medicine of which the
composition was unknown to him, with the added disadvantage that the
medicine may turn out to be far more potently explosive than is the case
with the usually innocuous patent medicine. The utmost that a physician
can properly permit himself to do is to put the case impartially before
his patient and to present to him all the risks. The solution must be for
the patient himself to work out, as best he can, for it involves social
and other considerations which, while they are indeed by no means outside
the sphere of medicine, are certainly entirely outside the control of the
individual private practitioner of medicine.

Moll also is of opinion that this impartial presentation of the
case for and against sexual intercourse corresponds to the
physician's duty in the matter. It is, indeed, a duty which can
scarcely be escaped by the physician in many cases. Moll points
out that it can by no means be assimilated, as some have
supposed, with the recommendation of sexual intercourse. It is,
on the contrary, he remarks, much more analogous to the
physician's duty in reference to operations. He puts before the
patient the nature of the operation, its advantages and its
risks, but he leaves it to the patient's judgment to accept or
reject the operation. Lewitt also (_Geschlechtliche
Enthaltsamkeit und Gesundheitsstoerungen_, 1905), after discussing
the various opinions on this question, comes to the conclusion
that the physician, if he thinks that intercourse outside
marriage might be beneficial, should explain the difficulties and
leave the patient himself to decide.

There is another reason why, having regard to the prevailing moral
opinions at all events among the middle classes, a physician should
refrain from advising extra-conjugal intercourse: he places himself in a
false relation to his social environment. He is recommending a remedy the
nature of which he could not publicly avow, and so destroying the public
confidence in himself. The only physician who is morally entitled to
advise his patients to enter into extra-conjugal relationships is one who
openly acknowledges that he is prepared to give such advice. The doctor
who is openly working for social reform has perhaps won the moral right to
give advice in accordance with the tendency of his public activity, but
even then his advice may be very dubiously judicious, and he would be
better advised to confine his efforts at social reform to his public
activities. The voice of the physician, as Professor Max Flesch of
Frankfort observes, is more and more heard in the development and new
growth of social institutions; he is a natural leaders in such movements,
and proposals for reform properly come from him. "But," as Flesch
continues, "publicly to accept the excellence of existing institutions and
in the privacy of the consulting-room to give advice which assumes the
imperfection of those institutions is illogical and confusing. It is the
physician's business to give advice which is in accordance with the
interests of the community as a whole, and those interests require that
sexual relationships should be entered into between healthy men and women
who are able and willing to accept the results of their union. That should
be the physician's rule of conduct. Only so can he become, what to-day he
is often proclaimed to be, the leader of the nation."[98] This view is
not, as we see, entirely in accord with that which assumes that the
physician's duty is solely and entirely to his patient, without regard to
the bearing of his advice on social conduct. The patient's interests are
primary, but they are not entitled to be placed in antagonism to the
interests of society. The advice given by the wise physician must always
be in harmony with the social and moral tone of his age. Thus it is that
the tendency among the younger generation of physicians to-day to take an
active interest in raising that tone and in promoting social reform--a
tendency which exists not only in Germany where such interests have long
been acute, but also in so conservative a land as England--is full of
promise for the future.

The physician is usually content to consider his duty to his patient in
relationship to sexual abstinence as sufficiently fulfilled when he
attempts to allay sexual hyperaesthesia by medical or hygienic treatment.
It can scarcely be claimed, however, that the results of such treatment
are usually satisfactory, and sometimes indeed the treatment has a result
which is the reverse of that intended. The difficulty generally is that in
order to be efficacious the treatment must be carried to an extreme which
exhausts or inhibits not only the genital activities alone but the
activities of the whole organism, and short of that it may prove a
stimulant rather than a sedative. It is difficult and usually impossible
to separate out a man's sexual activities and bring influence to bear on
these activities alone. Sexual activity is so closely intertwined with the
other organic activities, erotic exuberance is so much a flower which is
rooted in the whole organism, that the blow which crushes it may strike
down the whole man. The bromides are universally recognized as powerful
sexual sedatives, but their influence in this respect only makes itself
felt when they have dulled all the finest energies of the organism.
Physical exercise is universally recommended to sexually hyperaesthetic
patients. Yet most people, men and women, find that physical exercise is a
positive stimulus to sexual activity. This is notably so as regards
walking, and exuberantly energetic young women who are troubled by the
irritant activity of their healthy sexual emotions sometimes spend a large
part of their time in the vain attempt to lull their activity by long
walks. Physical exercise only proves efficacious in this respect when it
is carried to an extent which produces general exhaustion. Then indeed the
sexual activity is lulled; but so are all the mental and physical
activities. It is undoubtedly true that exercises and games of all sorts
for young people of both sexes have a sexually hygienic as well as a
generally hygienic influence which is undoubtedly beneficial. They are, on
all grounds, to be preferred to prolonged sedentary occupations. But it is
idle to suppose that games and exercises will suppress the sexual
impulses, for in so far as they favor health, they favor all the impulses
that are the result of health. The most that can be expected is that they
may tend to restrain the manifestations of sex by dispersing the energy
they generate.

There are many physical rules and precautions which are advocated, not
without reason, as tending to inhibit or diminish sexual activity. The
avoidance of heat and the cultivation of cold is one of the most important
of these. Hot climates, a close atmosphere, heavy bed-clothing, hot baths,
all tend powerfully to excite the sexual system, for that system is a
peripheral sensory organ, and whatever stimulates the skin generally,
stimulates the sexual system.[99] Cold, which contracts the skin, also
deadens the sexual feelings, a fact which the ascetics of old knew and
acted upon. The garments and the posture of the body are not without
influence. Constriction or pressure in the neighborhood of the sexual
region, even tight corsets, as well as internal pressure, as from a
distended bladder, are sources of sexual irritation. Sleeping on the back,
which congests the spinal centres, also acts in the same way, as has long
been known by those who attend to sexual hygiene; thus it is stated that
in the Franciscan order it is prohibited to lie on the back. Food and
drink are, further, powerful sexual stimulants. This is true even of the
simplest and most wholesome nourishment, but it is more especially true of
flesh meat, and, above all, of alcohol in its stronger forms such as
spirits, liqueurs, sparkling and heavy wines, and even many English beers.
This has always been clearly realized by those who cultivate asceticism,
and it is one of the powerful reasons why alcohol should not be given in
early youth. As St. Jerome wrote, when telling Eustochium that she must
avoid wine like poison, "wine and youth are the two fires of lust. Why
add oil to the flame?"[100] Idleness, again, especially when combined with
rich living, promotes sexual activity, as Burton sets forth at length in
his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and constant occupation, on the other hand,
concentrates the wandering activities.

Mental exercise, like physical exercise, has sometimes been advocated as a
method of calming sexual excitement, but it seems to be equally equivocal
in its action. If it is profoundly interesting and exciting it may stir up
rather than lull the sexual emotions. If it arouses little interest it is
unable to exert any kind of influence. This is true even of mathematical
occupations which have been advocated by various authorities, including
Broussais, as aids to sexual hygiene.[101] "I have tried mechanical mental
work," a lady writes, "such as solving arithmetical or algebraic problems,
but it does no good; in fact it seems only to increase the excitement." "I
studied and especially turned my attention to mathematics," a clergyman
writes, "with a view to check my sexual tendencies. To a certain extent I
was successful. But at the approach of an old friend, a voice or a touch,
these tendencies came back again with renewed strength. I found
mathematics, however, the best thing on the whole to take off my attention
from women, better than religious exercises which I tried when younger
(twenty-two to thirty)." At the best, however, such devices are of merely
temporary efficacy.

It is easier to avoid arousing the sexual impulses than to impose silence
on them by hygienic measures when once they are aroused. It is,
therefore, in childhood and youth that all these measures may be most
reasonably observed in order to avoid any premature sexual excitement. In
one group of stolidly normal children influences that might be expected to
act sexually pass away unperceived. At the other extreme, another group of
children are so neurotically and precociously sensitive that no
precautions will preserve them from such influences. But between these
groups there is another, probably much the largest, who resist slight
sexual suggestions but may succumb to stronger or longer influences, and
on these the cares of sexual hygiene may profitably be bestowed.[102]

After puberty, when the spontaneous and inner voice of sex may at any
moment suddenly make itself heard, all hygienic precautions are liable to
be flung to the winds, and even the youth or maiden most anxious to retain
the ideals of chastity can often do little but wait till the storm has
passed. It sometimes happens that a prolonged period of sexual storm and
stress occurs soon after puberty, and then dies away although there has
been little or no sexual gratification, to be succeeded by a period of
comparative calm. It must be remembered that in many, and perhaps most,
individuals, men and women, the sexual appetite, unlike hunger or thirst,
can after a prolonged struggle, be reduced to a more or less quiescent
state which, far from injuring, may even benefit the physical and psychic
vigor generally. This may happen whether or not sexual gratification has
been obtained. If there has never been any such gratification, the
struggle is less severe and sooner over, unless the individual is of
highly erotic temperament. If there has been gratification, if the mind
is filled not merely with desires but with joyous experience to which the
body also has grown accustomed, then the struggle is longer and more
painfully absorbing. The succeeding relief, however, if it comes, is
sometimes more complete and is more likely to be associated with a state
of psychic health. For the fundamental experiences of life, under normal
conditions, bring not only intellectual sanity, but emotional
pacification. A conquest of the sexual appetites which has never at any
period involved a gratification of these appetites seldom produces results
that commend themselves as rich and beautiful.

In these combats there are, however, no permanent conquests. For a very
large number of people, indeed, though there may be emotional changes and
fluctuations dependent on a variety of circumstances, there can scarcely
be said to be any conquest at all. They are either always yielding to the
impulses that assail them, or always resisting those impulses, in the
first case with remorse, in the second with dissatisfaction. In either
case much of their lives, at the time when life is most vigorous, is
wasted. With women, if they happen to be of strong passions and reckless
impulses to abandonment, the results may be highly enervating, if not
disastrous to the general psychic life. It is to this cause, indeed, that
some have been inclined to attribute the frequent mediocrity of women's
work in artistic and intellectual fields. Women of intellectual force are
frequently if not generally women of strong passions, and if they resist
the tendency to merge themselves in the duties of maternity their lives
are often wasted in emotional conflict and their psychic natures
impoverished.[103]

The extent to which sexual abstinence and the struggles it
involves may hamper and absorb the individual throughout life is
well illustrated in the following case. A lady, vigorous, robust,
and generally healthy, of great intelligence and high character,
has reached middle life without marrying, or ever having sexual
relationships. She was an only child, and when between three and
four years of age, a playmate some six years older, initiated her
into the habit of playing with her sexual parts. She was,
however, at this age quite devoid of sexual feelings, and the
habit dropped naturally, without any bad effects, as soon as she
left the neighborhood of this girl a year or so later. Her health
was good and even brilliant, and she developed vigorously at
puberty. At the age of sixteen, however, a mental shock caused
menstruation to diminish in amount during some years, and
simultaneously with this diminution persistent sexual excitement
appeared spontaneously, for the first time. She regarded such
feelings as abnormal and unhealthy, and exerted all her powers of
self-control in resisting them. But will power had no effect in
diminishing the feelings. There was constant and imperious
excitement, with the sense of vibration, tension, pressure,
dilatation and tickling, accompanied, it may be, by some ovarian
congestion, for she felt that on the left side there was a
network of sexual nerves, and retroversion of the uterus was
detected some years later. Her life was strenuous with many
duties, but no occupation could be pursued without this
undercurrent of sexual hyperaesthesia involving perpetual
self-control. This continued more or less acutely for many years,
when menstruation suddenly stopped altogether, much before the
usual period of the climacteric. At the same time the sexual
excitement ceased, and she became calm, peaceful, and happy.
Diminished menstruation was associated with sexual excitement,
but abundant menstruation and its complete absence were both
accompanied by the relief of excitement. This lasted for two
years. Then, for the treatment of a trifling degree of anaemia,
she was subjected to a long, and, in her case, injudicious course
of hypodermic injections of strychnia. From that time, five years
ago, up to the present, there has been constant sexual
excitement, and she has always to be on guard lest she should be
overtaken by a sexual spasm. Her torture is increased by the fact
that her traditions make it impossible for her (except under very
exceptional circumstances) to allude to the cause of her
sufferings. "A woman is handicapped," she writes. "She may never
speak to anyone on such a subject. She must live her tragedy
alone, smiling as much as she can under the strain of her
terrible burden." To add to her trouble, two years ago, she felt
impelled to resort to masturbation, and has done so about once a
month since; this not only brings no real relief, and leaves
irritability, wakefulness, and dark marks under the eyes, but is
a cause of remorse to her, for she regards masturbation as
entirely abnormal and unnatural. She has tried to gain benefit,
not merely by the usual methods of physical hygiene, but by
suggestion, Christian Science, etc., but all in vain. "I may
say," she writes, "that it is the most passionate desire of my
heart to be freed from this bondage, that I may relax the
terrible years-long tension of resistance, and be happy in my own
way. If I had this affliction once a month, once a week, even
twice a week, to stand against it would be child's play. I should
scorn to resort to unnatural means, however moderately. But
self-control itself has its revenges, and I sometimes feel as if
it is no longer to be borne."

Thus while it is an immense benefit in physical and psychic development if
the eruption of the disturbing sexual emotions can be delayed until
puberty or adolescence, and while it is a very great advantage, after that
eruption has occurred, to be able to gain control of these emotions, to
crush altogether the sexual nature would be a barren, if not, indeed, a
perilous victory, bringing with it no satisfaction. "If I had only had
three weeks' happiness," said a woman, "I would not quarrel with Fate, but
to have one's whole life so absolutely empty is horrible." If such vacuous
self-restraint may, by courtesy, be termed a virtue, it is but a negative
virtue. The persons who achieve it, as the result of congenitally feeble
sexual aptitudes, merely (as Gyurkovechky, Fuerbringer, and Loewenfeld have
all alike remarked) made a virtue of their weakness. Many others, whose
instincts were less weak, when they disdainfully put to flight the desires
of sex in early life, have found that in later life that foe returns in
tenfold force and perhaps in unnatural shapes.[104]

The conception of "sexual abstinence" is, we see, an entirely false and
artificial conception. It is not only ill-adjusted to the hygienic facts
of the case but it fails even to invoke any genuinely moral motive, for it
is exclusively self-regarding and self-centred. It only becomes genuinely
moral, and truly inspiring, when we transform it into the altruistic
virtue of self-sacrifice. When we have done so we see that the element of
abstinence in it ceases to be essential, "Self-sacrifice," writes the
author of a thoughtful book on the sexual life, "is acknowledged to be the
basis of virtue; the noblest instances of self-sacrifice are those
dictated by sexual affection. Sympathy is the secret of altruism; nowhere
is sympathy more real and complete than in love. Courage, both moral and
physical, the love of truth and honor, the spirit of enterprise, and the
admiration of moral worth, are all inspired by love as by nothing else in
human nature. Celibacy denies itself that inspiration or restricts its
influence, according to the measure of its denial of sexual intimacy. Thus
the deliberate adoption of a consistently celibate life implies the
narrowing down of emotional and moral experience to a degree which is,
from the broad scientific standpoint, unjustified by any of the advantages
piously supposed to accrue from it."[105]

In a sane natural order all the impulses are centred in the fulfilment of
needs and not in their denial. Moreover, in this special matter of sex, it
is inevitable that the needs of others, and not merely the needs of the
individual himself, should determine action. It is more especially the
needs of the female which are the determining factor; for those needs are
more various, complex and elusive, and in his attentiveness to their
gratification the male finds a source of endless erotic satisfaction. It
might be thought that the introduction of an altruistic motive here is
merely the claim of theoretical morality insisting that there shall be a
firm curb on animal instinct. But, as we have again and again seen
throughout the long course of these _Studies_, it is not so. The animal
instinct itself makes this demand. It is a biological law that rules
throughout the zooelogical world and has involved the universality of
courtship. In man it is only modified because in man sexual needs are not
entirely concentrated in reproduction, but more or less penetrate the
whole of life.

While from the point of view of society, as from that of Nature, the end
and object of the sexual impulse is procreation, and nothing beyond
procreation, that is by no means true for the individual, whose main
object it must be to fulfil himself harmoniously with that due regard for
others which the art of living demands. Even if sexual relationships had
no connection with procreation whatever--as some Central Australian tribes
believe--they would still be justifiable, and are, indeed, an
indispensable aid to the best moral development of the individual, for it
is only in so intimate a relationship as that of sex that the finest
graces and aptitudes of life have full scope. Even the saints cannot
forego the sexual side of life. The best and most accomplished saints from
Jerome to Tolstoy--even the exquisite Francis of Assisi--had stored up in
their past all the experiences that go to the complete realization of
life, and if it were not so they would have been the less saints.

The element of positive virtue thus only enters when the control of the
sexual impulse has passed beyond the stage of rigid and sterile abstinence
and has become not merely a deliberate refusal of what is evil in sex, but
a deliberate acceptance of what is good. It is only at that moment that
such control becomes a real part of the great art of living. For the art
of living, like any other art, is not compatible with rigidity, but lies
in the weaving of a perpetual harmony between refusing and accepting,
between giving and taking.[106]

The future, it is clear, belongs ultimately to those who are slowly
building up sounder traditions into the structure of life. The "problem of
sexual abstinence" will more and more sink into insignificance. There
remain the great solid fact of love, the great solid fact of chastity.
Those are eternal. Between them there is nothing but harmony. The
development of one involves the development of the other.

It has been necessary to treat seriously this problem of "sexual
abstinence" because we have behind us the traditions of two thousand years
based on certain ideals of sexual law and sexual license, together with
the long effort to build up practices more or less conditioned by those
ideals. We cannot immediately escape from these traditions even when we
question their validity for ourselves. We have not only to recognize their
existence, but also to accept the fact that for some time to come they
must still to a considerable extent control the thoughts and even in some
degree the actions of existing communities.

It is undoubtedly deplorable. It involves the introduction of an
artificiality into a real natural order. Love is real and positive;
chastity is real and positive. But sexual abstinence is unreal and
negative, in the strict sense perhaps impossible. The underlying feelings
of all those who have emphasized its importance is that a physiological
process can be good or bad according as it is or is not carried out under
certain arbitrary external conditions, which render it licit or illicit.
An act of sexual intercourse under the name of "marriage" is beneficial;
the very same act, under the name of "incontinence," is pernicious. No
physiological process, and still less any spiritual process, can bear such
restriction. It is as much as to say that a meal becomes good or bad,
digestible or indigestible, according as a grace is or is not pronounced
before the eating of it.

It is deplorable because, such a conception being essentially unreal, an
element of unreality is thus introduced into a matter of the gravest
concern alike to the individual and to society. Artificial disputes have
been introduced where no matter of real dispute need exist. A contest has
been carried on marked by all the ferocity which marks contests about
metaphysical or pseudo-metaphysical differences having no concrete basis
in the actual world. As will happen in such cases, there has, after all,
been no real difference between the disputants because the point they
quarreled over was unreal. In truth each side was right and each side was
wrong.

It is necessary, we see, that the balance should be held even. An absolute
license is bad; an absolute abstinence--even though some by nature or
circumstances are urgently called to adopt it--is also bad. They are both
alike away from the gracious equilibrium of Nature. And the force, we see,
which naturally holds this balance even is the biological fact that the
act of sexual union is the satisfaction of the erotic needs, not of one
person, but of two persons.


FOOTNOTES:

[92] This view was an ambiguous improvement on the view, universally
prevalent, as Westermarck has shown, among primitive peoples, that the
sexual act involves indignity to a woman or depreciation of her only in so
far as she is the property of another person who is the really injured
party.

[93] This implicit contradiction has been acutely pointed out from the
religious side by the Rev. H. Northcote, _Christianity and Sex Problems_,
p. 53.

[94] It has already been necessary to discuss this point briefly in "The
Sexual Impulse in Women," vol. iii of these _Studies_.

[95] "Die Abstinentia Sexualis," _Zeitschrift fuer Sexualwissenschaft_,
Nov., 1908.

[96] P. Janet, "La Maladie du Scrupule," _Revue Philosophique_, May, 1901.

[97] S. Freud, _Sexual-Probleme_, March, 1908. As Adele Schreiber also
points out (_Mutterschutz_, Jan., 1907, p. 30), it is not enough to prove
that abstinence is not dangerous; we have to remember that the spiritual
and physical energy used up in repressing this mighty instinct often
reduces a joyous and energetic nature to a weary and faded shadow.
Similarly, Helene Stoecker (_Die Liebe und die Frauen_, p. 105) says: "The
question whether abstinence is harmful is, to say the truth, a ridiculous
question. One needs to be no nervous specialist to know, as a matter of
course, that a life of happy love and marriage is the healthy life, and
its complete absence cannot fail to lead to severe psychic depression,
even if no direct physiological disturbances can be demonstrated."

[98] Max Flesch, "Ehe, Hygine und Sexuelle Moral," _Mutterschutz_, 1905,
Heft 7.

[99] See the Section on Touch in the fourth volume of these _Studies_.

[100] "I have had two years' close experience and connexion with the
Trappists," wrote Dr. Butterfield, of Natal (_British Medical Journal_,
Sept. 15, 1906, p. 668), "both as medical attendant and as being a
Catholic in creed myself. I have studied them and investigated their life,
habits and diet, and though I should be very backward in adopting it
myself, as not suited to me individually, the great bulk of them are in
absolute ideal health and strength, seldom ailing, capable of vast work,
mental and physical. Their life is very simple and very regular. A
healthier body of men and women, with perfect equanimity of temper--this
latter I lay great stress on--it would be difficult to find. Health beams
in their eyes and countenance and actions. Only in sickness or prolonged
journeys are they allowed any strong foods--meats, eggs, etc.--or any
alcohol."

[101] Fere, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 332.

[102] Rural life, as we have seen when discussing its relation to sexual
precocity, _is_ on one side the reverse of a safeguard against sexual
influences. But, on the other hand, in so far as it involves hard work and
simple living under conditions that are not nervously stimulating, it is
favorable to a considerably delayed sexual activity in youth and to a
relative continence. Ammon, in the course of his anthropological
investigations of Baden conscripts, found that sexual intercourse was rare
in the country before twenty, and even sexual emissions during sleep rare
before nineteen or twenty. It is said, also, he repeats, that no one has a
right to run after girls who does not yet carry a gun, and the elder lads
sometimes brutally ill-treat any younger boy found going about with a
girl. No doubt this is often preliminary to much license later.

[103] The numerical preponderance which celibate women teachers have now
gained in the American school system has caused much misgiving among many
sagacious observers, and is said to be unsatisfactory in its results on
the pupils of both sexes. A distinguished authority, Professor McKeen
Cattell ("The School and the Family," _Popular Science Monthly_, Jan.,
1909), referring to this preponderance of "devitalized and unsexed
spinsters," goes so far as to say that "the ultimate result of letting the
celibate female be the usual teacher has been such as to make it a
question whether it would not be an advantage to the country if the whole
school plant could be scrapped."

[104] Corre (_Les Criminels_, p. 351) mentions that of thirteen priests
convicted of crime, six were guilty of sexual attempts on children, and of
eighty-three convicted lay teachers, forty-eight had committed similar
offenses. This was at a time when lay teachers were in practice almost
compelled to live a celibate life; altered conditions have greatly
diminished this class of offense among them. Without going so far as
crime, many moral and religious men, clergymen and others, who have led
severely abstinent lives in youth, sometimes experience in middle age or
later the eruption of almost uncontrollable sexual impulses, normal or
abnormal. In women such manifestations are apt to take the form of
obsessional thoughts of sexual character, as e.g., the case
(_Comptes-Rendus Congres International de Medecine_, Moscow, 1897, vol.
iv, p. 27) of a chaste woman who was compelled to think about and look at
the sexual organs of men.

[105] J.A. Godfrey, _The Science of Sex_, p. 138.

[106] See, e.g., Havelock Ellis, "St. Francis and Others," _Affirmations_.




CHAPTER VII.

PROSTITUTION.

I. _The Orgy:_--The Religious Origin of the Orgy--The Feast of
Fools--Recognition of the Orgy by the Greeks and Romans--The Orgy Among
Savages--The Drama--The Object Subserved by the Orgy.

II. _The Origin and Development of Prostitution:_--The Definition of
Prostitution--Prostitution Among Savages--The Conditions Under Which
Professional Prostitution Arises--Sacred Prostitution--The Rite of
Mylitta--The Practice of Prostitution to Obtain a Marriage Portion--The
Rise of Secular Prostitution in Greece--Prostitution in the East--India,
China, Japan, etc.--Prostitution in Rome--The Influence of Christianity on
Prostitution--The Effort to Combat Prostitution--The Mediaeval Brothel--The
Appearance of the Courtesan--Tullia D'Aragona--Veronica Franco--Ninon de
Lenclos--Later Attempts to Eradicate Prostitution--The Regulation of
Prostitution--Its Futility Becoming Recognized.

III. _The Causes of Prostitution:_--Prostitution as a Part of the Marriage
System--The Complex Causation of Prostitution--The Motives Assigned by
Prostitutes--(1) Economic Factor of Prostitution--Poverty Seldom the Chief
Motive for Prostitution--But Economic Pressure Exerts a Real
Influence--The Large Proportion of Prostitutes Recruited from Domestic
Service--Significance of This Fact--(2) The Biological Factor of
Prostitution--The So-called Born-Prostitute--Alleged Identity with the
Born-Criminal--The Sexual Instinct in Prostitutes--The Physical and
Psychic Characters of Prostitutes--(3) Moral Necessity as a Factor in the
Existence of Prostitution--The Moral Advocates of Prostitution--The Moral
Attitude of Christianity Towards Prostitution--The Attitude of
Protestantism--Recent Advocates of the Moral Necessity of
Prostitution--(4) Civilizational Value as a Factor of Prostitution--The
Influence of Urban Life--The Craving for Excitement--Why Servant-girls
so Often Turn to Prostitution--The Small Part Played by
Seduction--Prostitutes Come Largely from the Country--The Appeal of
Civilization Attracts Women to Prostitution--The Corresponding Attraction
Felt by Men--The Prostitute as Artist and Leader of Fashion--The Charm of
Vulgarity.

IV. _The Present Social Attitude Towards Prostitution:_--The Decay of the
Brothel--The Tendency to the Humanization of Prostitution--The Monetary
Aspects of Prostitution--The Geisha--The Hetaira--The Moral Revolt
Against Prostitution--Squalid Vice Based on Luxurious Virtue--The Ordinary
Attitude Towards Prostitutes--Its Cruelty Absurd--The Need of Reforming
Prostitution--The Need of Reforming Marriage--These These Two Needs
Closely Correlated--The Dynamic Relationships Involved.


_I. The Orgy_.

Traditional morality, religion, and established convention combine to
promote not only the extreme of rigid abstinence but also that of reckless
license. They preach and idealize the one extreme; they drive those who
cannot accept it to adopt the opposite extreme. In the great ages of
religion it even happens that the severity of the rule of abstinence is
more or less deliberately tempered by the permission for occasional
outbursts of license. We thus have the orgy, which flourished in mediaeval
days and is, indeed, in its largest sense, a universal manifestation,
having a function to fulfil in every orderly and laborious civilization,
built up on natural energies that are bound by more or less inevitable
restraints.

The consideration of the orgy, it may be said, lifts us beyond the merely
sexual sphere, into a higher and wider region which belongs to religion.
The Greek _orgeia_ referred originally to ritual things done with a
religious purpose, though later, when dances of Bacchanals and the like
lost their sacred and inspiring character, the idea was fostered by
Christianity that such things were immoral.[107] Yet Christianity was
itself in its origin an orgy of the higher spiritual activities released
from the uncongenial servitude of classic civilization, a great festival
of the poor and the humble, of the slave and the sinner. And when, with
the necessity for orderly social organization, Christianity had ceased to
be this it still recognized, as Paganism had done, the need for an
occasional orgy. It appears that in 743 at a Synod held in Hainault
reference was made to the February debauch (_de Spurcalibus in februario_)
as a pagan practice; yet it was precisely this pagan festival which was
embodied in the accepted customs of the Christian Church as the chief orgy
of the ecclesiastical year, the great Carnival prefixed to the long fast
of Lent. The celebration on Shrove Tuesday and the previous Sunday
constituted a Christian Bacchanalian festival in which all classes joined.
The greatest freedom and activity of physical movement was encouraged;
"some go about naked without shame, some crawl on all fours, some on
stilts, some imitate animals."[108] As time went on the Carnival lost its
most strongly marked Bacchanalian features, but it still retains its
essential character as a permitted and temporary relaxation of the tension
of customary restraints and conventions. The Mediaeval Feast of Fools--a
New Year's Revel well established by the twelfth century, mainly in
France--presented an expressive picture of a Christian orgy in its extreme
form, for here the most sacred ceremonies of the Church became the subject
of fantastic parody. The Church, according to Nietzsche's saying, like all
wise legislators, recognized that where great impulses and habits have to
be cultivated, intercalary days must be appointed in which these impulses
and habits may be denied, and so learn to hunger anew.[109] The clergy
took the leading part in these folk-festivals, for to the men of that age,
as Meray remarks, "the temple offered the complete notes of the human
gamut; they found there the teaching of all duties, the consolation of all
sorrows, the satisfaction of all joys. The sacred festivals of mediaeval
Christianity were not a survival from Roman times; they leapt from the
very heart of Christian society."[110] But, as Meray admits, all great and
vigorous peoples, of the East and the West, have found it necessary
sometimes to play with their sacred things.

Among the Greeks and Romans this need is everywhere visible, not only in
their comedy and their literature generally, but in everyday life. As