Sex and Common-Sense Part 1

s.e.x And Common-Sense.

by A. Maude Royden.

PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION

THE n.o.bILITY OF THE s.e.x PROBLEM

Of all the problems which the alert and curious mind of modern man is considering, none occupies him more than that of the relations of the s.e.xes. This is natural. It touches us all and we have made rather a mess of it! We want to know why, and we want to do better. We resent being the sport of circ.u.mstance and perhaps we are beginning to understand that this instinct of s.e.x which has been so great a cause of suffering and shame and has been treated as a subject fit only for furtive whispers or silly jokes, is in fact one of the greatest powers in human nature, and that its misuse is indeed "the expense of spirit in a waste of shame."

It is not the abnormal or the bizarre that interests most of us to-day. It is not into the by-ways of vice that we seek to penetrate. It is the normal exercise of a normal instinct by normal people that interests us: and it is of this that I have tried to write and speak. The curiosities of depravity are for the physician and the psychologist to discuss and cure. Ordinary men and women want first to know how to live ordinary human lives on a higher level and after a n.o.bler pattern than before. They want, I think,--and I want,--to grow up, but to grow rightly, beautifully, humanely.

And I believe the first essential is to realize that the s.e.x-problem, as it is called, is the problem of something n.o.ble, not something base. It is not a "disagreeable duty" to know our own natures and understand our own instincts: it is a joy. The s.e.x-instinct is not "the Fall of Man"; neither is it an instance of divine wisdom on which moralists could, if they had only been consulted in time, greatly have improved. It is a thing n.o.ble in essence. It is the development of the higher, not the lower, creation. It is the as.e.xual which is the lower, and the s.e.xually differentiated which is the higher organism.

In the humbler ranks of being there is no s.e.x, and in a sense no death. The organism is immortal because--strange paradox--it is not yet alive enough to die. But as we pa.s.s from the lower to the higher, we pa.s.s from the less individual to the more individual; from as.e.xual to s.e.xual. And with this change comes that great rhythm by which life and death succeed each other, and death is the _cost_ of life, and to bring life into the world means sacrifice; and--as we rise higher still--to sustain life means prolonged and altruistic love. This is the history of s.e.x and of procreation, a history a.s.sociated with the rising of humanity in the scale of being, a history not so much of his physical as of his spiritual growth.

By what an irony have we come to a.s.sociate the instinct of s.e.x with all that is b.e.s.t.i.a.l and shameful!

It has happened because the corruption of the best is the worst. I always want to remind people of this truism when they have _first_ come into contact with s.e.x in some horrible and shameful way. That is one of the greatest misfortunes that can happen to any of us, and unfortunately it happens to many. Boys and girls are allowed to grow up in ignorance. The girls perhaps know nothing till they have to know all. The boys learn from grimy sources. I was speaking on this subject at one of our great universities the other day, and afterwards many of the men came and talked to me privately. With hardly a single exception they said to me--"Our parents told us nothing. We have never heard s.e.x spoken of except in a dirty way."

It is difficult for us, in such a case, to realize that s.e.x is not a dirty thing. It _can_ only be realized, I think, by remembering that the corruption of the best is the worst, and that we can measure by the hideousness of debased and depraved s.e.xuality, the greatness and the wonder of s.e.x love.

This is to me the great teaching of Christ about s.e.x. Other great religious teachers--some of them very great indeed--have thought and taught contemptuously of our animal nature. "He spake of the temple of His body." That is sublime! That is the whole secret. And that is why vice is horrible: because it is the desecration, not of a hovel or a shop, of a marketplace or a place of business: but of a temple.

Christ, I am told, told us nothing about s.e.x. He did not need to tell us anything but "Your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit."

It is my belief that in appealing to an American public I shall be appealing to those who are ready to face the subject of the relations of the s.e.xes with perfect frankness and with courage. America is still a country of experiments--a country adventurous enough to make experiments, and to risk making mistakes. That is the only spirit in which it is possible to make anything at all; and though the mistakes we may make in a matter which so deeply and tragically affects human life must be serious, and we must with corresponding seriousness weigh every word we say, and take the trouble to think harder and more honestly than we have perhaps ever thought before; yet I believe that we must above all have courage.

Human nature is sound and men and women do, on the whole, want to do what is right. The great impulse of s.e.x is part of our very being, and it is not base. Pa.s.sion is essentially n.o.ble and those who are incapable of it are the weaker, not the stronger. If then we have light to direct our course, we shall learn to direct it wisely, for indeed this is our desire.

Such is my creed. My prayer is for "more light." And my desire to take my part in spreading it.

A. MAUDE ROYDEN.

April, 1922.

PREFACE TO THIRD ENGLISH EDITION

In the first editions of this book a certain pa.s.sage on our Lord's humanity (see p. 40) has, I find, been misunderstood by some. They have supposed it to imply a suggestion that our Lord was not only "tempted in all things like as we are"--which I firmly believe--but that He fell--which is to me unthinkable. I hope I have made this perfectly clear in the present edition.

Beyond this there are few alterations except the correction of some very abominable errors of style. The book still bears the impress of the speaker rather than the writer, and as such I must leave it.

With regard to the chapter called "Common-Sense and Divorce Law Reform,"

which now has been added to this edition, I wish to express my indebtedness to Dr. Jane Walker and the group of "inquirers" over which she presided, for the memorandum on Divorce which they drew up and published in the _Challenge_, of July, 1918. I am not in complete agreement with their views on all points, but readers of their memorandum will easily see whence I derived my view as a whole.

A.M.R.

_January_, 1922.

FOREWORD

Chapters I. to VII. of this book were originally given in the form of addresses, in the Kensington Town Hall, on successive Sunday evenings in 1921. They were taken down _verbatim_, but have been revised and even to some extent rewritten. I do not like reports in print of things spoken, for speaking and writing are two different arts, and what is right when it is spoken is almost inevitably wrong when it is written. (I refer, of course, to style, not matter.) If I had had time, I should have re-shaped what I have said, though it would have been the manner only and not the substance that would have been changed. This has been impossible, and I can therefore only explain that the defective form and the occasional repet.i.tion which the reader cannot fail to mark were forced upon me by the fact that I was speaking--not writing--and that I felt bound to make each address, as far as possible, complete and comprehensible in itself.

Chapters VIII., IX., and X. were added later to meet various difficulties, questions, or criticisms evoked by the addresses which form the earlier part of the book.

I desire to record my grat.i.tude to Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sladen, but for whose active help and encouragement I should hardly have proceeded with the book: to Miss Irene Taylor, who, out of personal friendship for me, took down, Sunday after Sunday, all that I said, with an accuracy which, with a considerable experience of reporters, I have only once known equalled and never surpa.s.sed: and to my congregation, whose questions and speeches during the discussion that followed each address greatly helped my work.

A. MAUDE ROYDEN.

_September_, 1921.

I

THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE s.e.xES

"There has arisen in society, a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the pa.s.sive instrument of l.u.s.t; who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of her s.e.x, and doomed for the most part to disease and abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every eye as the perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man.

Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chast.i.ty, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. She remains while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."

Lecky's _History of European Morals_, Chap. V.

One of the many problems which have been intensified by the war is the problem of the relations of the s.e.xes. Difficult as it has always been, the difficulty inevitably becomes greater when there is a grave disproportion--an excess in numbers of one s.e.x over the other. And in this country, whereas there was a disproportion of something like a million more women than men before the war broke out, there is now a disproportion of about one and three-quarter millions.

This accidental and (I believe) temporary difficulty--a difficulty not "natural" and necessary to human life, but artificial and peculiar to certain conditions which may be altered--does not, of course, create the problem we have to deal with: but it forces that problem on our attention by sheer force of suffering inflicted on so large a scale. It compels us to ask ourselves on what we base, and at what we value the moral standard which, if it is to be preserved, must mean a tremendous sacrifice on the part of so large a number of women as is involved in their acceptance of life-long celibacy.

There is no subject on which it is more difficult to find a common ground than this. To some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the question--on what are your moral standards based? To others what we call our "moral standards" are so obviously absurd and "unnatural" that the question has for them no meaning. And between these extremes there are so many varieties of opinion that one can take nothing as generally accepted by men and women.

I want, therefore, to leave aside the ordinary conventions--not because they are necessarily bad, but because they are not to my purpose, which is to discover whether there is a real morality which we can justify to ourselves without appeal to any authority however great, or to any tradition however highly esteemed: a morality which is based on the real needs, the real aspirations of humanity itself.

And I begin by calling your attention to the morality of Jesus of Nazareth, not because He is divine, but because He was a great master of the human heart, and more than others "knew what was in man."

You will notice at once the height of His morality--the depth of His mercy.

He demands such purity of spirit, such loyalty of heart, that the most loyal of His disciples shrank appalled: "Whosoever shall look upon a woman to l.u.s.t after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."

... "Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her." From such a standard Christ's disciples shrank--"If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry." And one evangelist almost certainly inserted in this absolute prohibition the exception--"Saving for the cause of fornication"--feeling that the Master _could_ not have meant anything else. But, in fact, there is little doubt that Jesus did both say and mean that marriage demanded lifelong fidelity on either side; just as He really taught that a l.u.s.tful thought was adultery in the sight of G.o.d.

But if Christendom has been staggered at the austerity of Christ's morality not less has it been shocked at the quality of His mercy. His gentleness to the sensual sinner has been compared, with amazement, to the sternness of His att.i.tude to the sins of the spirit. Not the profligate or the harlot but the Pharisee and the scribe were those who provoked His sternest rebukes. And perhaps the most characteristic of all His dealings with such matters was that incident of the woman taken in adultery, when He at once reaffirmed the need of absolute chast.i.ty for men--demand undreamed of by the woman's accusers--and put aside the right to condemn which in all that a.s.sembly He alone could claim--"Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more."

Having then in mind this most lofty and compa.s.sionate of moralists, let us turn to the problem of to-day. Here are nearly 2,000,000 women who, if the austere demands of faithful monogamy are to be obeyed, will never know the satisfaction of a certain physical need. Now it is the desire of every normal human being to satisfy all his instincts. And this is as true of women as of men. What I have to say applies indeed to many men to-day, for many men are unable to marry because they have been so broken by war--or otherwise--so shattered or maimed or impoverished that they do not feel justified in marrying. But I want to emphasize with all my power that the hardness of enforced celibacy presses as cruelly on women as on men. Women, difficult as some people find it to believe, are human beings; and because women are so, they want work, and interest, and love--both given and received--and children, and, in short, the satisfaction of every _human_ need. The idea that existence is enough for them--that they need not work, and do not suffer if their s.e.x instincts are repressed or starved--is a convenient but most cruel illusion. People often tell me, and nearly always unconsciously _a.s.sume_, that women have no s.e.x hunger--no s.e.x needs at all until they marry, and that even then their need is not at all so imperious as men's, or so hard to repress. Such people are nearly always either men, or women who have married young and happily and borne many children, and had a very full and interesting outside life as well! Such women will a.s.sure me with the utmost complacency that the s.e.x-instincts of a woman are very easily controllable, and that it is preposterous to speak as if their repression really cost very much. I think with bitterness of that age-long repression, of its unmeasured cost; of the gibe contained in the phrase "old maid," with all its implication of a narrowed life, a prudish mind, an acrid tongue, an embittered disposition. I think of the imbecilities in which the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of the adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional "religion," the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough to sharpen his wit. And all these cramped and stultified lives have not availed to make the world understand that women have had to pay for their celibacy!