A Problem in Modern Ethics Part 1

A Problem in Modern Ethics.

by John Addington Symonds.

INTRODUCTION.

There is a pa.s.sion, or a perversion of appet.i.te, which, like all human pa.s.sions, has played a considerable part in the world's history for good or evil; but which has hardly yet received the philosophical attention and the scientific investigation it deserves. The reason of this may be that in all Christian societies the pa.s.sion under consideration has been condemned to pariahdom; consequently, philosophy and science have not deigned to make it the subject of special enquiry. Only one great race in past ages, the Greek race, to whom we owe the inheritance of our ideas, succeeded in raising it to the level of chivalrous enthusiasm.

Nevertheless, we find it present everywhere and in all periods of history. We cannot take up the religious books, the legal codes, the annals, the descriptions of the manners of any nation, whether large or small, powerful or feeble, civilised or savage, without meeting with this pa.s.sion in one form or other. Sometimes it a.s.sumes the calm and dignified att.i.tude of conscious merit, as in Sparta, Athens, Thebes.

Sometimes it skulks in holes and corners, hiding an abashed head and shrinking from the light of day, as in the capitals of modern Europe.

It confronts us on the steppes of Asia, where hordes of nomads drink the milk of mares; in the bivouac of Keltish warriors, lying wrapped in wolves' skins round their camp-fires; upon the sands of Arabia, where the Bedaween raise desert dust in flying squadrons. We discern it among the palm-groves of the South Sea Islands, in the card-houses and temple-gardens of j.a.pan, under Esquimaux snow-huts, beneath the sultry vegetation of Peru, beside the streams of Shiraz and the waters of the Ganges, in the cold clear air of Scandinavian winters. It throbs in our huge cities. The pulse of it can be felt in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, no less than in Constantinople, Naples, Teheran, and Moscow. It finds a home in Alpine valleys, Albanian ravines, Californian canyons, and gorges of Caucasian mountains. It once sat, clothed in Imperial purple, on the throne of the Roman Caesars, crowned with the tiara on the chair of St. Peter. It has flaunted, emblazoned with the heraldries of France and England, in coronation ceremonies at Rheims and Westminster. The royal palaces of Madrid and Aranjuez tell their tales of it. So do the ruined courtyards of Granada and the castle-keep of Avignon. It shone with clear radiance in the gymnasium of h.e.l.las, and nerved the dying heroes of Greek freedom for their last forlorn hope upon the plains of Chaeronea. Endowed with inextinguishable life, in spite of all that has been done to suppress it, this pa.s.sion survives at large in modern states and towns, penetrates society, makes itself felt in every quarter of the globe where men are brought into communion with men.

Yet no one dares to speak of it; or if they do, they bate their breath, and preface their remarks with maledictions.

Those who read these lines will hardly doubt what pa.s.sion it is that I am hinting at. _Quod semper ubique et ab omnibus_--surely it deserves a name. Yet I can hardly find a name which will not seem to soil this paper. The accomplished languages of Europe in the nineteenth century supply no term for this persistent feature of human psychology, without importing some implication of disgust, disgrace, vituperation. Science, however, has recently--within the last twenty years in fact--invented a convenient phrase, which does not prejudice the matter under consideration. She speaks of the "inverted s.e.xual instinct"; and with this neutral nomenclature the investigator has good reason to be satisfied.

Inverted s.e.xuality, the s.e.xual instinct diverted from its normal channel, directed (in the case of males) to males, forms the topic of the following discourse. The study will be confined to modern times, and to those nations which regard the phenomenon with religious detestation.

This renders the enquiry peculiarly difficult, and exposes the enquirer, unless he be a professed expert in diseases of the mind and nervous centres, to almost certain misconstruction. Still, there is no valid reason why the task of statement and a.n.a.lysis should not be undertaken.

Indeed, one might rather wonder why candid and curious observers of humanity have not attempted to fathom a problem which faces them at every turn in their historical researches and in daily life. Doubtless their neglect is due to natural or acquired repugnance, to feelings of disgust and hatred, derived from immemorial tradition, and destructive of the sympathies which animate a really zealous pioneer. Nevertheless, what is human is alien to no human being. What the law punishes, but what, in spite of law, persists and energises, ought to arrest attention. We are all of us responsible to some extent for the maintenance and enforcement of our laws. We are all of us, as evolutionary science surely teaches, interested in the facts of anthropology, however repellant some of these may be to our own feelings. We cannot evade the conditions of _atavism_ and _heredity_.

Every family runs the risk of producing a boy or a girl whose life will be embittered by inverted s.e.xuality, but who in all other respects will be no worse or better than the normal members of the home. Surely, then, it is our duty and our interest to learn what we can about its nature, and to arrive through comprehension at some rational method of dealing with it.

I.

CHRISTIAN OPINION.

Since this enquiry is limited to actual conditions of contemporary life, we need not discuss the various ways in which the phenomenon of s.e.xual inversion has been practically treated by races with whose habits and religions we have no affinity.

On the other hand, it is of the highest importance to obtain a correct conception of the steps whereby the Christian nations, separating themselves from ancient paganism, introduced a new and stringent morality into their opinion on this topic, and enforced their ethical views by legal prohibitions of a very formidable kind.

Without prejudging or prejudicing this new morality, now almost universally regarded as a great advance upon the ethics of the earlier pagan world, we must observe that it arose when science was non-existent, when the study of humanity had not emerged from the cradle, and when theology was in the ascendant. We have therefore to expect from it no delicate distinctions, no anthropological investigations, no psychological a.n.a.lysis, and no spirit of toleration.

It simply decreed that what had hitherto been viewed as immorality at worst should henceforth be cla.s.sed among crimes against G.o.d, nature, humanity, the state.

Opening the Bible, we find severe penalties attached to s.e.xual inversion by the Mosaic law, in the interests of population and in harmony with the Jewish theory of abominations. The lesson is driven home by the legend of two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, overwhelmed with fire because of their addiction to abnormal s.e.xual indulgences. Here the _vindices flammae_ of the Roman code appear for the first time--the stake and the flames, which mediaeval legislation appointed for offenders of this sort.

St. Paul, penetrated with Hebrew ethics, denounced the corruption of the Gentiles in these words: "For this cause G.o.d gave them up into vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their l.u.s.t one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet."

Christ uttered no opinion upon what we now call s.e.xual inversion.

Neither light nor leading comes from Him, except such as may be indirectly derived from his treatment of the woman taken in adultery.

When the Empire adopted Christianity, it had therefore the traditions of the Mosaic law and the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans to guide its legislators on this topic. The Emperors felt obscurely that the main pulses of human energy were slackening; population all tended to dwindle; the territory of the empire shrank slowly year by year before their eyes. As the depositaries of a higher religion and a n.o.bler morality, they felt it their duty to stamp out pagan customs, and to unfurl the banner of social purity. The corruption of the Roman cities had become abominable. The laziness and cowardice of Roman citizens threatened the commonwealth with ruin. To repress s.e.xual appet.i.tes was not the ruler's object. It was only too apparent that these natural desires no longer prompted the people to sufficient procreation or fertility. The brood begotten upon Roman soil was inadequate to cope with the inrushing tide of barbarians. Wisdom lay in attempting to rehabilitate marriage, the family domestic life. Meanwhile a certain vice ran riot through society, a vice for which Jehovah had rained fire and brimstone upon Sodom, a vice which the Mosaic code punished with death, a vice threatened by St. Paul with "that recompence of their error which was meet."

Justinian, in 538 A.D., seems to have been terrified by famines, earthquakes and pestilences. He saw, or professed to see, in these visitations the avenging hand of Jehovah, the "recompence which was meet" mysteriously prophesied by St. Paul. Thereupon he fulminated his edict against unnatural sinners, whereby they were condemned to torments and the supreme penalty of death. The preamble to his famous Novella 77 sets forth the principles on which it has been framed: "Lest as the result of these impious acts whole cities should perish together with their inhabitants; for we are taught by Holy Scripture, to wit that through these acts cities have perished with the men in them.... It is on account of such crimes that famines and earthquakes take place, and also pestilences."

Before Justinian, both Constantine and Theodosius pa.s.sed laws against s.e.xual inversion, committing the offenders to "avenging flames." But these statutes were not rigidly enforced, and modern opinion on the subject may be said to flow from Justinian's legislation. Opinion, in matters of custom and manners, always follows law. Though Imperial edicts could not eradicate a pa.s.sion which is inherent in human nature, they had the effect of stereotyping extreme punishments in all the codes of Christian nations, and of creating a permanent social antipathy.

II.

VULGAR ERRORS.

Gibbon's remarks upon the legislation of Constantine, Theodosius, and Justinian supply a fair example of the way in which men of learning and open mind have hitherto regarded what, after all, is a phenomenon worthy of cold and calm consideration. "I touch," he says, "with reluctance, and despatch with impatience, a more odious vice, of which modesty rejects the name, and nature abominates the idea." After briefly alluding to the morals of Etruria, Greece, and Rome, he proceeds to the enactments of Constantine: "Adultery was first declared to be a capital offence ... the same penalties were inflicted on the pa.s.sive and active guilt of paederasty; and all criminals, of free or servile condition, were either drowned, or beheaded, or cast alive into the avenging flames."[1] Then, without further comment, he observes: "The adulterers were spared by the common sympathy of mankind; but the lovers of their own s.e.x were pursued by general and pious indignation." "Justinian relaxed the punishment at least of female infidelity: the guilty spouse was only condemned to solitude and penance, and at the end of two years she might be recalled to the arms of a forgiving husband. But the same Emperor declared himself the implacable enemy of unmanly l.u.s.t, and the cruelty of his persecution can scarcely be excused by the purity of his motives. In defiance of every principle of justice he stretched to past as well as future offences the operations of his edicts, with the previous allowance of a short respite for confession and pardon. A painful death was inflicted by the amputation of the sinful instrument, or the insertion of sharp reeds into the pores and tubes of most exquisite sensibility." One consequence of such legislation may be easily foreseen. "A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt of the green faction, of the rich, and of the enemies of Theodora, was presumed by the judges, and paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed."

This state of things has prevailed wherever the edicts of Justinian have been adopted into the laws of nations. The Cathari, the Paterini, the heretics of Provence, the Templars, the Fraticelli, were all accused of unnatural crimes, tortured into confession, and put to death. Where nothing else could be adduced against an unpopular sect, a political antagonist, a wealthy corporation, a rival in literature, a powerful party-leader, unnatural crime was insinuated, and a cry of "Down with the pests of society" prepared the populace for a crusade.

It is the common belief that all subjects of s.e.xual inversion have originally loved women, but that, through monstrous debauchery and superfluity of naughtiness, tiring of normal pleasure, they have wilfully turned their appet.i.tes into other channels. This is true about a certain number. But the sequel of this Essay will prove that it does not meet by far the larger proportion of cases, in whom such instincts are inborn, and a considerable percentage in whom they are also inconvertible. Medical jurists and physicians have recently agreed to accept this as a fact.

It is the common belief that a male who loves his own s.e.x must be despicable, degraded, depraved, vicious, and incapable of humane or generous sentiments. If Greek history did not contradict this supposition, a little patient enquiry into contemporary manners would suffice to remove it. But people will not take this trouble about a matter, which, like Gibbon, they "touch with reluctance and despatch with impatience." Those who are obliged to do so find to their surprise that "among the men who are subject to this deplorable vice there are even quite intelligent, talented, and highly-placed persons, of excellent and even n.o.ble character."[2] The vulgar expect to discover the objects of their outraged animosity in the sc.u.m of humanity. But these may be met with every day in drawing-rooms, law-courts, banks, universities, mess-rooms; on the bench, the throne, the chair of the professor; under the blouse of the workman, the ca.s.sock of the priest, the epaulettes of the officer, the smock-frock of the ploughman, the wig of the barrister, the mantle of the peer, the costume of the actor, the tights of the athlete, the gown of the academician.

It is the common belief that one, and only one, unmentionable act is what the lovers seek as the source of their unnatural gratification, and that this produces spinal disease, epilepsy, consumption, dropsy, and the like.[3] Nothing can be more mistaken, as the scientifically reported cases of avowed and adult sinners amply demonstrate. Neither do they invariably or even usually prefer the _aversa Venus_; nor, when this happens, do they exhibit peculiar signs of suffering in health.[4]

Excess in any venereal pleasure will produce diseases of nervous exhaustion and imperfect nutrition. But the indulgence of inverted s.e.xual instincts within due limits, cannot be proved to be especially pernicious. Were it so, the Dorians and Athenians, including Sophocles, Pindar, aeschines, Epaminondas, all the Spartan kings and generals, the Theban legion, Pheidias, Plato, would have been one nation of rickety, phthisical, dropsical paralytics. The grain of truth contained in this vulgar error is that, under the prevalent laws and hostilities of modern society, the inverted pa.s.sion has to be indulged furtively, spasmodically, hysterically; that the repression of it through fear and shame frequently leads to habits of self-abuse; and that its unconquerable solicitations sometimes convert it from a healthy outlet of the s.e.xual nature into a morbid monomania.[5] It is also true that professional male prost.i.tutes, like their female counterparts, suffer from local and const.i.tutional disorders, as is only natural.[6]

It is the common belief that boys under age are specially liable to corruption. This error need not be confuted here. Anyone who chooses to read the cases recorded by Casper-Liman, Casper in his Novellen, Krafft-Ebing, and Ulrichs, or to follow the developments of the present treatise, or to watch the manners of London after dark, will be convicted of its absurdity. Young boys are less exposed to dangers from abnormal than young girls from normal voluptuaries.

It is the common belief that all subjects from inverted instinct carry their l.u.s.ts written in their faces; that they are pale, languid, scented, effeminate, painted, timid, oblique in expression. This vulgar error rests upon imperfect observation. A certain cla.s.s of such people are undoubtedly feminine. From their earliest youth they have shown marked inclination for the habits and the dress of women; and when they are adult, they do everything in their power to obliterate their manhood. It is equally true that such uns.e.xed males possess a strong attraction for some abnormal individuals. But it is a gross mistake to suppose that all the tribe betray these attributes. The majority differ in no detail of their outward appearance, their physique, or their dress from normal men. They are athletic, masculine in habits, frank in manner, pa.s.sing through society year after year without arousing a suspicion of their inner temperament. Were it not so, society would long ago have had its eyes opened to the amount of perverted s.e.xuality it harbours.

The upshot of this discourse on vulgar errors is that popular opinion is made up of a number of contradictory misconceptions and confusions.

Moreover, it has been taken for granted that "to investigate the depraved instincts of humanity is unprofitable and disgusting."

Consequently the subject has been imperfectly studied; and individuals belonging to radically different species are confounded in one vague sentiment of reprobation. a.s.suming that they are all abominable, society is content to punish them indiscriminately. The depraved debauchee who abuses boys receives the same treatment as the young man who loves a comrade. The male prost.i.tute who earns his money by extortion is scarcely more contemned than a man of birth and breeding who has been seen walking with soldiers.

III.

LITERATURE--DESCRIPTIVE.

s.e.xual inversion can boast a voluminous modern literature, little known to general readers. A considerable part of this is p.o.r.nographic, and need not arrest our attention.[7] A good deal is descriptive, scientific, historical, anthropological, apologetical and polemical.

With a few books in each of these kinds I propose to deal now.

The first which falls under my hand is written by a French official, who was formerly Chief of the Police Department for Morals in Paris.[8] M.

Carlier, during ten years, had excellent opportunities for studying the habits of professional male prost.i.tutes and their frequenters. He had condensed the results of his experience in seven very disagreeable chapters, which offer a revolting picture of vice and systematised extortion in the great metropolis.

"In the numerous books," says M. Carlier, "which treat of prost.i.tution, the antiphysical pa.s.sions have hitherto been always deliberately omitted. Officially, public opinion does not recognise them, the legislature will take no notice of them. The police are left alone to react against them; and the unequal combat may some day cease, since it is supported by no text of the code and no regulation of the state. When that happens, paederasty will become a calamity far more dangerous, more scandalous, than female prost.i.tution, the organisation of which it shares in full. A magistrate once declared that 'in Paris it is the school where the cleverest and boldest criminals are formed; and as a matter of fact, it produces a.s.sociations of special scoundrels, who use it as the means of theft and _chantage_, not stopping short of murder in the execution of their plots.'"

It will be seen from this exordium that M. Carlier regards the subject wholly from the point of view of prost.i.tution. He has proved abundantly that male prost.i.tution is organised in Paris upon the same system as its female counterpart, and he has demonstrated that this system is attended with the same dangers to society.

A violent animus against antiphysical pa.s.sions makes him exaggerate these dangers, for it is clear that normal vice is no less free from sordid demoralisation and crimes of violence than its abnormal twin-brother. Both are fornication; and everywhere, in Corinth as in Sodom, the prost.i.tute goes hand in hand with the bully, the robber, and the cut-throat.

With reference to the legal position of these pa.s.sions in France, he says: "Paederasty is not punished by our laws. It can only come within the reach of the code by virtue of circ.u.mstances under which it may be practised. If the facts take place in the presence of witnesses, or in a place open to public observation, there will be an outrage to decency.

If minors are seduced, there may be proof of the habitual incitement of minors to debauch, corruption, or even rape. But the pa.s.sion itself is not subject to penalty; it is only a vice arising from one of the seven deadly sins. We have no intention of a.n.a.lysing this perverted instinct.