Chapter 3: The General Principles of Purity

In attempting to define these principles I have no desire to enter into a controversy of relatives and absolutes. It is sufficient to meet those who deny that there can be any abstract standard of purity by pointing out that we know the direction in which to look for what is good and pure. Just as we know that certain acts are less worthy than others, so we are aware of the general direction of the nobler activities.

The first principle to be observed is that relatively _purity is comparative_. This is a commonplace of all personal estimates. However much we may adhere to the conception of a moral standard, which is abstract and unvarying, we realize that there are also personal standards which vary very much. We do not, for instance, consider a cat to be guilty of murder when she kills a bird; we do not execute her as we execute men who have taken human life. We do not even condemn lions or tigers as homicidal criminals, though we may kill them in self-defence, thus showing that it is not the distinction between taking animal and human life which constitutes the crime; it is the difference between the killers. Nor is it true that we draw a distinction merely between animal and human responsibility, for even in the human kingdom we apply a comparative moral standard; we do not consider a savage who steals or kills as being guilty to the extent which a civilized European would be who performed a similar act. We are in fact constantly applying a comparative standard to the comparative intelligences of individuals, and quite rightly, for all intelligence and moral sense is graded from brute-beast to savage-man and upwards.

We must be careful not to avoid this standard of comparative values in approaching sex morality. So long as we admit that at least there are acts and principles which, taken in the abstract, approach purity more nearly than others, we must not judge all individuals by the same standard. We must not consider a very ordinary, unintelligent, animal-blooded young man as being excessively sinful for having a vivid sex experience; perhaps he is living right up to the level of his imperfect standard. We must not expect people to be more moral than they can be, though it is the duty of Church and religion to educate them to see that there are better standards.

The second principle is simple, but of the deepest importance.

It consists of the proposition that variety and not uniformity is the fundamental rule of nature, or, as Christians would hold, the intention of God.

I cannot recall any distinctive attribute to which this rule does not apply. There are an infinite species of creatures, and infinite tastes and tendencies. Even if we narrow down our field of investigation to one nation or even a single family, we find that each individual is approaching life by different byways, with different prejudices and different temperaments and different conceptions. But throughout history the majority of the normal type has been inclined to flout this divine principle. The Puritans, for example, were a particular type who did not like the gayer life of the world, and preferred a stern evangelical atmosphere. Consequently they regarded those amusements for which they happened to possess no partiality, as evil, and whenever they had the opportunity they suppressed them; they eliminated Christmas and the mince-pie. Equally we can see that if the normal mechanical Teutonic type had said that it was unnatural for men to be artistic and had suppressed the arts, it would have been a disaster for the world. There is not one vocation, but there are many vocations; all types are the design of intention, and are there, not to be suppressed, but to carry out their particular mission.

This again, is equally true of sex, and we must apply the same conclusions towards the many types which we shall presently meet, abnormal as well as normal. The Protestant, for example, really acknowledges a uniform sex-nature only. You will continually hear a Protestant declaring that it is unnatural for a man to be a celibate: this is, of course, pure nonsense. It might be unnatural for a normal sex-nature to remain celibate, just as it would be unnatural for a natural celibate to marry. The Catholic Church has been far wiser. She can offer the Religious Life to the celibate and the Sacrament of Marriage to the non-celibate. There are few types of individual more unintelligent than that which, while it cannot so interfere with personal liberty as to compel marriage, persists in uttering the convention that "every man ought to do his duty to the State." The truism is true; what is wrong is the failure to conceive that there is no uniform duty for every man.

But the third principle is more complex in character, or, rather, in the considerations which it involves.

It consists, really, of a re-affirmation as to the Catholic condemnation of the heresy of Manichaeism.

The Puritan and the type he has evolved do radically regard the physical as evil. Protestantism, until it became adulterated by the Catholic movement, eliminated as far as possible, the physical medium in religious worship. Not only doctrinally, but liturgically, in the abandonment of ritual and artistic atmosphere, it attempted to limit religion as far as possible to the spiritual level, and it regarded sacramentalism as evil because sacramentalism involves an outward physical sign. In the same way the average Englishman, who has been inculcated, far more than he realizes, with Calvinist dogma, regards sex as immoral only when it is physical. A man may indulge in sexual emotion and thought, but so long as he suppresses any physical act he is not guilty; if this can be regarded as an exaggeration it is certainly true that popular Protestant theology regards a man as more immoral if he commits the physical sex-act than if he thinks of it. It is strange to note how far this theory has departed from the teaching of Christ, Who declared that "he that lusteth against a woman hath committed adultery against her in his heart."

It is obvious the moment we examine this conception that it is utterly indefensible. If the sex-act is evil[7] because it is physical, then it is equally evil to eat or drink. And if an attempt is made to avoid this difficulty by saying that it is evil to debase love by expressing it in a physical act, or that it is better to love spiritually and non-physically, then it is equally evil to debase artistic inspiration by expressing it with paints on a physical canvas, or better to allow melodies to float in one's mind than to reduce them to the level of a physical composition.

Without entering into a highly involved philosophy and therefore at the risk of apparent dogmatism, I wish now to emphasize that there are certain ascending levels, with which man is concerned. We may confine ourselves to the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual levels. The physical level is the lowest, in so far as man functions there in common with the animal. He is more active emotionally than the animal. But what distinguishes him chiefly from the animal, and makes him master over all brute-creation, is his activity on the mental level. Physically he is less powerful than the elephant; but because he can function mentally and the elephant can do so hardly at all, he can employ the elephant as a beast of labour. Here then we have a distinct gradation, a gradation which continues to apply within the human kingdom and makes us able to distinguish a civilised man from a savage.

We should therefore apply this principle to sex. Sex activity is more pure or impure according to the level on which it chiefly functions. A man who traffics with prostitutes is not immoral because he is functioning physically, but because he is functioning almost entirely on the physical level. Purity is really sex emphasis on the highest levels. Ideally the physically sex-act should therefore be a mere expression of spiritual, mental, emotional love; it should just happen. The moment one begins to lay the emphasis on the lower levels, the more one becomes correspondingly less pure. Lust, in fact, is the desire only for physical sex experience--the wrong proportion and balance. A man's stage of moral development is to be discovered by the particular level on which he is most active.

We must not avoid the consequence of this principle. We must be prepared to admit as relatively moral, behaviour which popular philosophy might regard as immoral. We must also be prepared to regard as immoral many marriages in which the physical is the chief incentive. The lowest stage of impurity would seem to be reached in cases, whether between man and harlot, or husband and wife, where the physical function is so emphasized that artificial physical aids are invoked in order to excite the physical passions and make them the cause instead of the result of sex emotion and thought.