Men, Women, and God Part 8

One great Church in Christendom replies, "By continence, and by no other method." And there are many who arrive at the same position because they hold that s.e.xual intimacy is only justified, and is only holy, when the deliberate purpose of producing children enters into it. As I see the matter we come here to the central ethical issue of this whole matter. Is it true that s.e.xual intimacy is only right and beautiful when it is entered upon with a creative purpose, or is it also right and sacramental as an expression of mutual affection?

Or put differently--granting that two persons have allowed their love to lead to parentage, and have loyally accepted the burdens of family life, may they rightly continue to live in intimacy after the point has been reached at which they know they ought not to have any more children? It is at this point that people of unquestionable moral earnestness differ acutely, I am compelled to take my stand with those who believe that s.e.xual intimacy is right and good in itself as an expression of affection. It has, as a matter of fact, a good many other consequences than the production of children. It const.i.tutes a bond of very great worth between two persons. It is in many interesting ways beneficial to a woman's physical system; and it brings to men a general balance and repose of being which is of enormous value. I believe, in fact, that in actual experience it does justify itself as a method of expressing affection.

The alternative for thousands of couples is not merely the cessation of s.e.xual intimacy, but also abstinence from all the endearing intimacies which are natural and spontaneous in married life. They must not only sleep apart, but in many ways live apart. And this not only means pain of heart such as would take a very great deal to justify it, but also often leads to serious nervous trouble because of the strain which it involves. I have insisted again and again in these pages that continence is perfectly possible for unmarried men. But continence for a man living in the same house with a woman whom he loves, and with whom he has had experience of s.e.xual intimacy, is a very different thing. It is possible for some--perhaps for many, and without serious loss. But for many others it is not possible except on terms which lead to serious nervous trouble. And for such persons, and on the terms I have indicated, I believe conception control to be the better way.

As to how that control should be achieved I have no special fitness to speak. I would advise any couple, faced by the problem, to consult some doctor of repute till they understand the matter, and then to find out for themselves what is for them the right course to adopt.

I know that for some people what is called the sublimation of s.e.xual desire provides a successful way of dealing with the situation. They find themselves able without any emotional loss to divert to other directions and uses the energy of their s.e.x natures. But it is a mistake to imagine that what is possible for one couple is necessarily possible for all. Attempts at sublimation often result in mere repression, and on the heels of that come serious troubles.

CHAPTER XI

UNHAPPY MARRIAGES

A good deal has already been said in these pages about the causes of failure in marriage, but I feel that a more definite dealing with the problem of unhappy marriages is called for.

I do not recognize any problem in those cases where marriage has not been based upon love. When a man or a woman marries for financial reasons, or out of a desire for a certain place in society, or because of a mere desire to settle down in life, then he or she runs an enormous risk, and there is nothing to be surprised at if trouble follows. So close an intimacy as marriage involves is really only tolerable when love constantly supplies reasons for patience, generosity and forgiveness. In fact by marrying for any other reason than love men and women only make the permanent and inevitable problems of life a great deal harder to solve. And a human life does always involve a problem either in or out of marriage. Life is a complex and perplexing business.

But if it be true that many marriages begin with intense love and yet after some time turn out unhappily, then a very real problem is presented to our minds, and probably what I have already said about the wonder of s.e.x love, and its harmonizing influence on personalities, has accentuated that problem for some of my readers. There are many wives who once loved their husbands intensely, but who are now laboriously learning to endure them. There are many husbands who felt that they had attained to all that they longed for when they married, but who now are almost giving up in despair the task of living even peaceably with their wives. Many such people are heard declaring that love is the arch deceiver of the world, and that its power only lasts during a few short hours in the morning of life. For many the early and wonderful days of marriage remain only as a tormenting memory, so entirely has the color faded out of their lives. And I know that the pain of such situations is so intense that I would fain speak of them only with consideration and sympathy.

But none the less the broad fact has to be stated that in such cases it is not marriage that has failed but the people involved in marriage.

There is nothing in the whole of life so beautiful or so holy but that it can be spoilt when mishandled, and love is no exception to this. I believe love is always felt as a call to unselfishness, but it is a call that can be resisted. And when it is resisted and two selfish people find themselves tied together for life, all the conditions of misery are present. Selfish people are nearly always unhappy people, and two unhappy people certainly cannot make a happy marriage.

And yet these generalities do not carry us very far. Unless we can discover in further detail why marriages fail, these things were better left unsaid. I believe, however, we can discover many of the reasons.

To begin with, a good many unhappy husbands are idle men. Having no hard work to which they must give themselves daily, they have to try to find interest in life in some other way. And because there is no other way they inevitably find themselves threatened with boredom. While their love was new it seemed to them that it would fill life for ever with romance and joy, but so soon as the first early stages of marriage were past they found it failing them. Such men almost always become moody or restless or irritable, and if they are much at home their wives have to try to humor them through their troubles. It is more than any woman ought to be asked to do, and more than any woman can continuously accomplish. If such men came home in the evening honestly tired through trying to do something worth doing they would find their homes a delightful solace. But life's problem cannot be solved by an idle man, whether he be married or unmarried.

And the same is true for idle wives, though there are not so many of them. When a woman has turned over to her servants all household cares and even the care of her children that she may run after pleasure she has chosen to live on terms which never yet made anybody lastingly happy. We are by nature too big for that way of life, and sooner or later it fails to make us even content. Love will light up with a wonderful color lives that are given to honest work, but even love cannot make idleness other than a wearisome career. Then there are couples who have refused to have children. If the reason be that some possibility of disease has made it seem wrong to have children, it may be that both will learn to adapt themselves to this limitation and to achieve happiness in spite of it. Thousands of couples who are childless against their own wills have learnt none the less to live together in lasting happiness. But when childlessness is the result of a mere selfish policy, it often revenges itself upon the couple concerned. They have deliberately refused satisfaction to one of the deepest instincts within them, and though they may not realize it, those suppressed instincts destroy their harmony of being. They do not face the fact that they have such instincts, because they could not meet them with any adequate reason for suppressing them. They try to deceive themselves into believing that the instincts are not there, or they repress them from selfish causes, and life does not let them off.

Love remains unsatisfied. Its august claims have been refused. And therefore it does not and cannot continue to bring them joy.

Another reason for unhappy marriages I have already spoken of in a previous chapter. Sometimes they were marriages of pa.s.sion and not of love. Sometimes men and women allow themselves to be hurried into union by the driving force of an almost impersonal thing that is purely physical in nature, and though they think they are acting out of love, they are leaving out the larger part of their natures. Mind and spirit may have had no part at all in the transaction. And after such a step there is bound to come a painful awakening. After a while he or she will find that in the most intimate part of married life only the body is acting, and then two people who have got very close to one another in one respect may yet find that they are still in many ways strangers to each other. That must always be a most critical situation. I believe that a successful way out of it might almost always be found, if only the two concerned would use much patience and would learn mutual accommodation. But patience is not a universal possession either among men or women, and often rash and foolish things are said or done at such times which seem to break hopelessly the house of dreams which up till then had seemed so beautiful and so permanent.

If only men and women could learn that the love which makes happy marriages is _not_ mere pa.s.sion, though it involves pa.s.sion, a world of troubles might be avoided.

The plain though unpalatable truth about a great many marriages is that, though there was love in them at the beginning, there was not enough of it. Often there was enough to make the man eager and delighted to enjoy his wife when she was happy, but not enough of it to make him able and willing to help her when she was depressed. There was enough to make each able to take delight in the charms of the other, but not enough to make either willing to forgive the faults in the other, and help him or her to conquer them. There was enough for sunny days but not enough for foggy ones--enough to produce laughter but not enough to beget patience--enough for admiration but not enough for understanding--enough for joy in the other's successes but not enough for helpfulness after the other had failed. Perhaps a woman will always seem in some ways a queer creature to a man. It is certain that no man has always understood any woman. And I suppose a man always seems at times a strange, childish, and primitive being to a woman, so that she also fails to achieve understanding. But when understanding has failed love is put to one great test. Nothing can get a couple through times when understanding has failed, except love. But love can do it when there is enough of it.

Nor is that the hardest thing love has to do. There come times when, because n.o.body is always good, and most of us are often bad, love has to face the plain fact of sin in the loved object. At such times to approve is impossible, and would be a real disloyalty. To break out into mere reproaches is futile and irritating. To do nothing is to let a seed of separation sink into the common life. Yet the situation can be met. It can be met by real love, because love can forgive.

Forgiveness does not mean condoning wrong. It does not mean blindness, which is never a helpful thing. It means loving the person who has stumbled in spite of the fact, and even perhaps just because of it. It is at such times that one who has failed most needs love, and when therefore love gets a supreme chance. But if a husband or a wife has not enough love to take that chance, then marriage may fail.

And here I am not talking about exceptional cases. Whoever you are, if you marry you are going to marry a sinner--a man or a woman who will some day fall below his best self or her best self. And just because you love it will bring you acute pain. You would do well to ask yourself beforehand what you are going to do about it. And if you cannot feel that you could forgive and go on loving all the same, you would do well to think again. The whole story of some unhappy marriages is told in one sentence. There was love in them, but not enough to produce forgiveness. Yet the ultimate proof that true love is divine in origin lies just in the fact that true love _can_ forgive.

All of which leads me on to the real reason why I write this chapter.

Marriages often fail because people often fail, and people fail ultimately for one central reason--that they have not G.o.d in their lives. I have read as much modern fiction as most people. And while I have plodded through elaborately told tales of the sufferings of married people, my amazement has grown that these tales are almost without exception the stories of people who had no conscious relation to G.o.d. Their authors seem to think it a most interesting thing that such lives should go wrong, and they base upon that fact the suggestion that life is essentially a tragic and rather disappointing matter. To me nothing seems more inevitable and more entirely explicable than that on such terms life should fail, and should fail alike for the married and the unmarried. What could be more simple!

The essential greatness of man lies in the fact that he is capable of fellowship with G.o.d. It is in realizing that fellowship that he truly comes to himself. In nothing less than that can he ultimately find satisfaction. The reason why all lesser experiences fail him is just that he was made for something greater still. These lesser experiences will carry him through the morning of life and past the usual time for marriage. But later on the unalterable facts about his nature begin to a.s.sert themselves. Though he does not always know it--often indeed does not know it--he begins to need his G.o.d. And till he finds G.o.d he is wrongly related to the whole universe. Though he will generally fight against it a certain sadness threatens to settle on his spirit. He will try all the old joys; and though he may p.r.o.nounce them still good, a quiet voice within will p.r.o.nounce them not good enough. He cannot live even on human love, and a disturbing force will begin to trouble him even when he is with the wife he has loved so well. And so marriage begins to fail.

I find the psychologists saying this with their peculiar vocabulary.

They tell us that the individual has to achieve certain adaptations if he is to find his harmonious and balanced life. One of these is the adaptation to society; another is the adaptation to s.e.x, and a third is the adaptation to the infinite. If for "adaptation to the infinite" we put the time-honored phrase "reconciliation with G.o.d," then psychologists and religious teachers will be found saying identically the same thing. And all three adaptations are necessary. Adaptation to s.e.x alone is not enough. For those who do know G.o.d it turns out that their human fellowship based on love becomes so entirely at one with the divine fellowship, that the two almost cease to be felt as two and certainly the human fellowship is enormously enriched. But where the divine fellowship is a thing unknown a certain deep-seated weariness and loneliness will possess the man, let his human love be never so wonderful.

What thousands of people are demanding of the universe is that there should be some way of solving life's problems without religion. And life in every century has gone on demonstrating that there is no way of solving them except through religion. I am using religion in the largest sense, which is also the truest sense. I am not here concerned with the dogmas of any particular church, nor with the question of the ways in which religion shall express itself. The truth I am emphasizing is that without some conscious relation to his G.o.d man remains a stranger in the world and an exile from his spiritual peace; and that such men cannot be happy or satisfying husbands. And of course all that I have written as if thinking only of husbands is equally true for wives.

I have been the perplexed and sympathetic confidant of a number of people who with dismay and sorrow were finding out that marriage was failing them. In almost all these cases religion had been simply pa.s.sed by as a thing hardly relevant to real life, and it has been plain beyond all question that the trouble in the sphere of marriage could not be mended till something had happened to the persons concerned--in other words, till they had learnt to seek and use the help of G.o.d. And often they know it for themselves. "I think what I really need is G.o.d,"

said one very troubled wife to me a few years ago. But she had begun with a long and moving story about her marriage. She indeed went on to ask how G.o.d can be found, and it may be that some of my readers will at once want to ask that question, I cannot attempt to deal with it here and now. The first great step towards finding Him is to realize that we need Him, and so to begin to seek Him. And for the rest I can only add that thousands upon thousands have proved in life the truth of what Jesus claimed when He announced "I am the Way." I have written this book largely because I have with reason and out of experience so great a faith in the possibilities of the love that is consummated in marriage that I would fain testify to others concerning it. But I would none the less like to warn any man or any woman lest he or she should imagine that by human love alone life's problem can be solved. Without G.o.d we fail in life, and the bitterest part of the failure for many is that even that beautiful and delicate thing marriage fails with the rest. "We are restless till we rest in Thee," and two restless hearts cannot be happy hearts even though they be joined together in the bonds of love.

CHAPTER XII

THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS

Let me begin this chapter with a query. Is not all the trouble in the modern world over the s.e.xual element in life the evidence of something abnormal and distorted in the very const.i.tution of modern society? Or put differently, would it not turn out that if only men and women were set in just and healthy conditions, given real education and sufficient means of self-expression, the s.e.xual problem would be found very largely to have solved itself? I cannot offer any dogmatic answer to that query, though I have my own conviction that history will one day answer it with an unmistakable affirmative. What we can do even now is to notice that every maladjustment in our present social life tends to increase the amount of failure in true s.e.x morality. All our callousness about social evils revenges itself upon us by confronting us with an increasingly menacing problem in this connection, and all honest service devoted to the increase of social health of any sort is also helping our moral progress.

And I wish to amplify this point because I hope some at least of the readers of this book will find themselves asking eagerly what can be done in view of the seriousness of s.e.xual evil. If those who go wrong in s.e.x matters are spoiling their lives at the core, which of us would not like to do something to guard the young from wandering, and to help to clean the modern world! Therefore it is a real satisfaction to be able to reply, as I do with complete conviction, "Anything you do to help to bring social justice and general health any nearer is also helping towards the solution of this one problem."

Let us consider some of the outstanding social evils from this point of view.

I turn first to the matter of _education_ because it is the primary issue in every connection. Now education that stops at fourteen is hardly worthy to be called education at all. It is after that age that those interests awaken which provide absorbing life for boys and girls, and ensure them against the pains and dangers of empty-mindedness.

It is also after that age that most young folks learn the ways and means of self-expression. Probably also, at least in the case of boys, the years between fourteen and sixteen are just the years when the discipline of school life is most valuable, and it is certain that during that period healthy games, played under the discipline of sternly enforced rules, do most to put boys into possession of themselves, and to provide a wise outlet for their abundant energies.

Consider then what happens so long as we continue to send boys out of school at the age of fourteen. They go with minds unawakened and therefore empty. They face adolescence in almost complete freedom from control. They very often have far too little opportunity for invigorating games, and they do not know how to express themselves, though vital energies are vibrant within them. It is only natural that they should find orderly ways of life very dull, and that in pursuit of excitement they should take to hooliganism. Not having learnt to appreciate either literature or art, they either read nothing or read stories that are neither true nor decent. They respond only to what is highly spiced and have nothing in their minds to counter balance the meretricious attractions of suggestive stories and undesirable films.

The truth about the people who are fond of "blue" stories is often (though not always) that those stories accurately indicate their intellectual level. And the uneducated modern boy is often at that level through no fault of his own. It actually is hard for men to whom the wonder and the splendor of life have been revealed to find room in their mental life for indecent trash. But till we really educate our boys we are sending them out into life unarmed against some of its worst features.

And if the general failure of education has this deplorable effect, what shall we say of the complete lack of any special education relating to s.e.x in at least a majority of modern schools? I know that that is a very difficult matter. I know that disaster may follow from any attempt to do it in a general way through cla.s.s teaching. I know too that it ought to be done by parents. But it is not done, and both boys and girls go out to face the dangers of life in town and country without the knowledge of physical facts which might guide them into safety. Actual immorality is indeed uncommon between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, but those years are often spent in a way that is the worst possible preparation for the struggle that is to come.

I have put my main stress on the fact that education stops at fourteen, because to my mind that is the outstanding defect of our system. But even the education we do give is ill fitted to attain its true end. It is not the fault of the teachers. Many of them do wonderful work, and long to be allowed to do better work. But with cla.s.ses of from fifty to seventy the most heaven-born teacher in the world cannot achieve his purposes. It is certain that lovers of purity who really understand human nature cannot be among the panic-stricken economists who want to starve education.

_Housing_

Housing evils are mainly of two kinds. Houses are often dark, damp, and evil-smelling, which means ill-health. And houses are often too small, which means that human beings are packed so closely that privacy is impossible. Both results affect morality. A man below par in general health is far more susceptible to the lure of evil than a really healthy one. And the same is true of girls. There are to be found in some corners of our towns lewd and unwholesome-looking youths whose talk and whose actions are unclean and sordid. We perhaps shudder as we pa.s.s by and sense what is their moral condition, but if we knew the houses from which they come we might hardly wonder. Then plainly it is hostile to wholesome living when husband and wife cannot have a sleeping-place separate from the rest of the family, and when growing boys and girls share the same room, so that natural modesty is confronted with constant obstacles to its normal development. When I wrote some pages back about the disciplinary value of the daily cold bath, I could hardly forbear stopping at that point to comment on the fact that that primary condition for bodily and moral health is beyond the reach of millions. Our housing has not yet reached the bathroom standard for the majority of our people.

All these considerations are perfectly obvious and have often been urged before. But though I have known of many cases where moral evil has followed from bad housing conditions, I have known so many instances where in spite of bad housing conditions morality has been perfectly preserved, that I do not make so much of this point as some.

I have yet to learn that morality is made safe by the most elaborate and healthy housing conditions. It is true that the level of morality is very low indeed in really overcrowded slums, but it also is true that the section of the population among which real purity is most common is the artisan section, and many of them have to contend with very poor housing conditions. The Royal Commission on Venereal Disease reported that while the cla.s.s of casual laborers is the worst in the country, the next in the scale is the one described as "middle and upper cla.s.ses". Traveling west in our cities does not mean traveling towards morality.

_Sweating_

There are three main directions in which sweating tends to increase immorality. In the first place low wages paid to men make marriage very difficult, and sometimes impossible. And nothing could be worse for any community than that healthy and robust men should be debarred from marriage after twenty-one by purely material considerations. It is not impossible for a man to remain chaste through a lifetime of celibacy, but for all that a society that enforces celibacy on men against their will is making immorality a practical certainty.

A particularly mean form of this evil occurs in connection with the living-in system which is imposed by a good many big shops on their employees. I used to know a number of young men of marriageable age who were housed in a great and bare sort of barracks and given in addition a wage that was only enough to provide dress and necessary etceteras.