Chapter 4

Some sober spectators argue that as things have gone to this extent, it might be wise to try the new policy as an experiment, because matters cannot become worse than they are to-day. But those who yield to the new advice so readily ought again to look into the pages of history, or ought at least to study the situation in some other countries before they proclaim that the climax has been reached. It may be true that it would not be possible to transform still more New York hotels into dancing halls, since the innovation of this fashion, which suggests the dancing epidemics of mediaeval times, has reached practically every fashionable hostelry. Yet we may be only at the beginning, as in this vicious circle of craving for sensual life and talking about sexual problems the erotic transformation of the whole social behaviour is usually a rapid one. The Rococo age reached many subtleties, which we do not dream of as yet, but to which the conspiracy against silence may boldly push us. Read the memoirs of Casanova, the Italian of the eighteenth century, whose biography gives a vivid picture of a time in which certainly no one was silent on sexual affairs and in which life was essentially a chain of gallant adventures; even the sexual diseases figured as gallant diseases. In the select American circles it is already noticeable that the favourites of rich men get a certain social acknowledgment. The great masses have not reached this stage at present, which is, of course, very familiar in France. But if we proceed in that rapid rhythm with which we have changed in the last ten years, ten years hence we may have substituted the influence of mistresses for the influence of Tammany grafters, and twenty years hence a Madame Pompadour may be dwelling not far from the White House and controlling the fate of the nation with her small hands, as she did for two decades when Louis XV was king. History has sufficiently shown that these are the logical consequences of the sensualization of a rich people, whose mind is filled with sexual problems. Are we to wait, too, until a great revolution or a great war shakes the nation to its depths and hammers new ideas of morality into its conscience? Even our literature might sink still deeper and deeper. If we begin with the sexual problem, it lies in its very nature that that which is interesting to-day is to-morrow stale, and new regions of sexuality must be opened. The fiction of Germany in the last few years shows the whole pathetic decadence which results. The most abstruse perversions, the ugliest degenerations of sexual sinfulness, have become the favourite topics, and the best sellers are books which in the previous age would have been crushed by police and public opinion alike, but which in the present time are excused under scientific and sociological pretences, although they are more corrupt and carry more infection than any diseases against which they warn.

VII

What is to be done? In one point we all agree: Those who are called to do so must bend their utmost energy toward the purification of the outer forms of community life and of the public institutions. Certain eugenic ideas must be carried through relentlessly; above all, the sexual segregation of the feeble-minded, whose progeny fills the houses of disorder and the ranks of the prostitutes. The hospitals must be wide open for every sexual disease, and all discrimination against diseases which may be acquired by sexual intercourse must be utterly given up in order to stamp out this scourge of mankind, as far as possible, with the medical knowledge of our day. Every effort must be made to suppress places through which unclean temptations are influencing the youth. Parents and doctors should speak in the intimacy of private talk earnest words of warning. The fight against police corruption and graft must be relentlessly carried on so as to have the violation of the laws really punished.

Many means may still seem debatable among those who know the social and medical facts. Certainly some of the eugenic postulates go too far. It is, for instance, extremely difficult to say where the limit is to be set for permissible marriages. There may be no doubt that feeble-mindedness ought not to be transmitted to the next generation, but have we really a right to prevent the marriage of epileptics or psychasthenics? Can we be surprised then that others already begin to demand that neurasthenics shall not marry? Even the health certificate at the wedding may give only an illusion of safety, as the health of too many marriages is destroyed by the escapades of the husband, and it may, on the other hand, lead to a narrowing down under the pressure of arbitrary theories, producing a true race suicide. The question whether the healthy man is the only desirable element of the community is one which allows different answers. Much of the greatest work for the world's progress has been created by men with faulty animal constitutions whose parents would never have received permission to marry from a rigorous eugenic board.

But whatever the sociological reasons for hesitation may be, the state legislators and physicians, the police officers and social workers have no right to stop. They must push forward and force the public life into paths of less injurious and less dangerous sexual habits and customs. Their success will depend upon the energy with which they keep themselves independent of the control of those who do not count with realities. The hope that men will become sexually abstinent outside married life is fantastic, and the book of history ought not to have been written in vain. Any counting on this imaginary overcoming of selfish desire for sexual satisfaction decreases the chances of real hygienic reform. It would even be an inexcusable hypocrisy of the medical profession if, with its consent, one group of specialists behave as if sexual abstinence were the bodily ideal, while thousands of no less conscientious physicians in the world, especially those concerned with nervous diseases, feel again and again obliged to advise sexual intercourse for their patients. We know to-day, even much better than ten years ago, how many serious disturbances result from the suppression of normal sexual life. The past has shown, moreover, that when society succeeded in spreading alarm and in decreasing prostitution by fear, the result was such a rapid increase of perversion and nerve-racking self-abuse that after a short while the normal ways were again preferred as the lesser evil.

And the reformers will need a second limitation of their efforts. They cannot hope for success as long as they fancy that reasoning and calculation and sober balancing of dangers and joys, of injuries and advantages, can ever be the decisive factor of progress. They ought not to forget that as soon as this whole problem is brought down to a mere considering of consequences by the individual, their eugenic hopes may be cruelly shaken. However distressing it is to say it frankly, by mere appeal to reason we shall not turn many girls from the way which leads to prostitution, nor many boys from the anticipation of married life. The girl in the factory, who hesitates between the hard work at the machine for the smallest pay, without pleasures, and the easy money of the street, with an abundance of fun, may in the regrettable life of prosaic reality balance the consequences very differently from the moralist. She has discovered that the ideal of virtue is not so highly valued in her circles as in the middle classes. The loss of her virtue is not such a severe hindrance in her life, and even if she yields for a while to earn her extra money in indecent ways, the chances are great that she may remain more attractive to a possible future husband from her set than if she lived the depressing life of grief and deprivation. The probability of her marrying and becoming the mother in a decent family home may be greater than on the straighter path. It is, of course, extremely sad that reality takes such an immoral way, but just here is the field where the reformers ought to keep their eyes wide open, instead of basing their appeals on illusory constructions about social conditions which do not exist. And if the boys begin to reason, their calculations may count on a still greater probability of good outcome, if they indulge in their pleasures. More than that, the fate of certain European countries shows that when it comes to this clear reasoning, the great turn of the selfish man is from the dangerous prostitute to the clean girl or married woman, to the sisters and wives of his friends, and that means the true ruin of home life.

What is the consequence of all? That the fight ought to be given up? Surely not. But that instead of relying on physical conditions, on fear of diseases, on merely eugenic improvements and on clever reasoning, the reform must come from within, must be one of education and morality, must be controlled, not by bacteriology, but by ethics, must find its strength not from horror of skin diseases, but in the reverence for the ideal values of humanity.

VIII

We must not deceive ourselves as to the gravity of the problem. It is not one of the passing questions which are replaced next season by new ones. State laws and interstate laws may and ought to continue to round off some of the sharp edges, institutions and associations may and ought to succeed in diminishing some of the misery, but the central problem of national policy in the treatment of the youth will stay with us until it has been solved rightly; illustrative instruction cannot be such a solution. We must see with open eyes where we are standing. The American nation of to-day is no longer the America of yesterday. The puritanism which certainly was a spirit of restraint has gone and cannot be brought back. The new wealth and power, the influx of sensuous South European and East European elements, the general trend of our age all over the civilized world, with its technical comfort and its inexpensive luxuries, the receding of religion and many more factors, have given a new face to America in the last fifteen years. A desire for the satisfaction of the senses, a longing for amusements, has become predominant in thousandfold shades from the refined to the vulgar. In such self-seeking periods the sexual desire in its masked and its unmasked forms gains steadily in importance and fascination.

America, moreover, is in a particularly difficult situation. This new longing for joy, even with its erotic touch, brings with it many valuable enrichments of every national life, not least among them the spreading of the sense of beauty. But what is needed is a wholesome national self-control by which an antisocial growth of these emotions will be suppressed. Our present-day American life so far lacks these conditions for the truly harmonious organization of the new tendencies. There are many causes for it. The long puritanic past did not allow that slow European training in aesthetic and harmless social enjoyments. Moreover, the widespread wealth, the feeling of democratic equality, the faintness of truly artistic interests in the masses, all reinforce the craving for the mere tickling of the senses, for amusement of the body, for vaudeville on the stage and in life. The sexual element in this wave of enjoyment becomes reinforced by the American position of the woman outside of the family circle. Her contact with men has been multiplied, her right to seek joy in every possible way has become the corollary of her new independence, her position has become more exposed and more dangerous. And in addition to all this, the chief factor, which alone would be sufficient to give to the situation a threatening aspect: American educationalists do not believe in discipline. As long as the community was controlled by the moral influence of puritanism, the lack of training in subordination under social authority and obedient discipline was without danger, while it strengthened the spirit of political liberty. But to-day, in the period of the new antipuritanic life, the lack of discipline in education means an actual threat to the social safety.

In such a situation what can be more fraught with dangers than to abolish the policy of silence and to uphold the policy of talking and talking about sexual matters with those whose minds were still untouched by the lure. It means to fill the atmosphere in which the growing adolescent moves with sultry ideas, it means to distort the view of the social surroundings, it means to stir up the sexual desires and to teach children how to indulge in them without immediate punishment. Just as in a community of graft and corruption the individual soon loses the finer feeling for honesty, and crime flourishes simply because every one knows that nobody expects anything better, so in a community in which sexual problems are the lessons of the youth and the dinner talk of the adult, the feeling of respect for man's deepest emotions fades away. Man and woman lose the instinctive shyness in touching on this sacred ground, and as the organic desires push and push toward it, the youth soon discovers that the barriers to the forbidden ground are removed and that in their place stands a simple signal with a suggestive word of warning against some easily avoided traps.

From a psychological point of view the right policy would be to reduce the external temptations, above all, the opportunities for contact. Coeducation, for instance, was morally without difficulties twenty years ago, but it is unfit in high schools and colleges for the eastern part of the nation in the atmosphere of to-day. Moreover, the aesthetic spirit ought to be educated systematically, and above all, the whole education of the youth ought to be built on discipline; the lesson by which the youth learns to overcome the desire and to inhibit the will is the most essential for the young American of to-morrow. The policy of silence has never meant that a girl should grow up without the consciousness that the field of sexual facts exists in our social world; on the contrary, those feelings of shame and decency which belong to the steady learning of a clean child from the days of the nursery have strongly impressed on the young soul that such regions are real, but that they must not be approached by curiosity or self-seeking wilfulness. This instinct itself brought something of ideal value, of respect and even of reverence into the most trivial life, however often it became ruined by foul companionship. To strengthen this instinctive emotion of mysterious respect, which makes the young mind shrink from brutal intrusion, will remain the wisest policy, as long as we cannot change that automatic mechanism of human nature by which the sexual thought stimulates the sexual organs. The masses are, of course, in favour of the opposite programme, which is in itself only another symptom of the erotic atmosphere into which the new antipuritanic nation has come. That mechanism of the nervous system furnishes them a pleasant excitement when they read and hear the discussions and plays which bristle with sexual instruction. The magazines which, with the best intentions, fight for the new policy, easily find millions of readers; the plays with their erotic overflow and the moral ending are crowded, and mostly by those who hardly need the instruction any longer. A nation which tries to lift its sexual morality by dragging the sexual problems to the street for the inspection of the crowd, without shyness and without shame, and which wilfully makes them objects of gossip and stage entertainment, is doing worse than Munchausen when he tried to lift himself by his scalp. It seems less important that the youth learn the secrets of sexual intercourse than that their teachers and guardians learn the elements of physiological psychology; the sexual sins of the youth start from the educational sins of the elders.

It is easy to say, as the social reformers and the vice commissioners and the sex instructors and many others have repeated in ever new forms, that "all children's questions should be answered truthfully," and to work up the whole sermon to the final trumpet call, "The truth shall make you free." Yet this is entirely useless as long as we have not defined what we mean by freedom, and above all what we mean by truth. If the child enjoys the beautiful softness of the butterfly's coloured wing, it is surely a truth, if we teach him that seen under the microscope in reality there is no softness there, but large ugly bumps and hollows and that the beautiful impression is nothing but an illusion. But is this truth of the microscope the only truth, and is science the only truth, and is there ever only one truth about the concrete facts of reality? Does truth in this sense not simply mean a certain order into which we bring our experience in the service of certain purposes of thought? We may approach the chaos of life experience with different purposes, and led by any one of them we may reach that consistent unity of ideas for the limited outlook which we call truth. The chemist has a right to consider everything in the world as chemical substances, and the mathematician may take the same things as geometric objects. And yet he who seeks a meaning in these things and a value and an inner development may come to another kind of truth. Only a general philosophy of life can ultimately grade and organize those various relative truths and combine them in an all-embracing unity.

No doubt the physician's scientific discoveries and observations are perfectly true. Man is an animal, and anatomical and physiological conditions control his existence, and if we want to understand this animal's life and want to keep it healthy, we have to ask for the truth of the physician. But shame upon him who wants to educate youth toward the view that man as an animal is the true man! If we educate at all, we educate in the service of culture and civilization. All building up of the youthful mind is itself service to human progress. But this human progress is not a mere growth of the animal race. It has its total meaning in the understanding of man as a soul, determined by purposes and ideals. Not the laws of physiology, but the demands of logic, ethics, aesthetics, and religion control the man who makes history and who serves civilization. He who says that the child's questions ought to be answered truthfully means in this connection that lowest truth of all, the truth of physiology, and forgets that when he opens too early the mind of the boy and the girl to this materialistic truth he at the same time closes it, and closes it perhaps forever, to that richer truth in which man is understood as historic being, as agent for the good and true and beautiful and eternal.

Give to the child the truth, but that truth which makes life worth living, that truth which teaches him that life is a task and a duty, and that his true health and soundness and value will depend upon the energy with which he makes the world and his own body with its selfish desires subservient to unselfish ideals. If you mean by the truth that half-truth of man as a sexual creature of flesh and nerves, the child to whom you offer it will be led to ever new questions, and if you go on answering them truthfully as the new fashion suggests, your reservoir will soon be emptied, even if the six volumes of Havelock Ellis' "Psychology of Sex" are fully at your disposal. But the more this species of truth is given out, the more life itself, for which you educate the child, will appear to him unworthy and meaningless. If the truth of civilized life is merely that which natural science can analyze, then life has lost its honour and its loyalty, its enthusiasm and its value. He who sees the truth in the idealistic aspect of man will not necessarily evade the curious question of the child who is puzzled about the naturalistic processes around him. But instead of whetting his appetite for unsavoury knowledge, he will seriously influence the young mind to turn the attention into the opposite direction. He will speak to him about the fact that there is something animal-like in the human being, but will add that the true values of life lie just in overcoming the low instincts in the interest of high aims. He will point to those hidden naturalistic realities as something not overimportant, but as something which a clean boy and girl do not ask about and with which only the imagination of bad companions is engaged. An instinctive indifference and aversion to the contact with anything low and impure can easily be developed in every healthy child amid clean surroundings. Why is the boy to live and to die for the honour of his country? Why is he to devote himself to the search for knowledge? Why is he to fight for the growth of morality? Why does he not confine himself to mere seeking for comfort and ease and satisfaction of the senses? All which really creates civilization and human progress depends upon symbols and belief. As soon as we make all those symbols of the historic community, all the ideals of honour and devotion, righteousness and beauty, glory and faithfulness, mere matters of scientific calculation, they stare us in the face as sheer absurdities; and yet we might again misname that as truth. Then it is the untruth which makes us free, it is the non-scientific, humanistic aspect which liberates us from the slavery of our low desires.