Chapter 5

Monogamic morality as a protection for family life means much more in America than in Europe. It is true that there is an astounding amount of prostitution in America, but we should be grateful that our ideals of the monogamic family have not been seriously influenced and seem to be slowly but surely improving among our best people. As illustrations of our adherence to monogamic law, let me give some facts for comparison of America and continental Europe. In America, illegitimate births are not accurately reported but are probably less than five per cent of the total number for the whole country. Locally the proportion is often very much higher. Thus in Washington, D.C., where (1914) over ten thousand, chiefly negroes, live in alleys between the streets and under extremely unhygienic and immoral conditions, fifty per cent of the children are illegitimate, while but twenty per cent of the colored children born of mothers living outside the alleys, and less than eleven per cent of the total born of all races in the city are illegitimate. In various small American regions with a white population the proportion of illegitimacy is astoundingly high, but the average for the entire country is hopefully low. In many German towns statistics show above twenty-five per cent, and in the whole empire, more than half the legitimate first-born children are conceived before marriage. All writers, the German ones included, seem to agree that the majority of Teutonic men and women enter into free unions before marriage and public opinion does not severely condemn.

In many rural districts of England, France, and Sweden, and even in London and Paris, a large percentage of the marriages are simply legalization of free unions. In short, in all these countries the monogamic ideal is not followed by a large percentage of people. It must be remembered that the great majority of people involved in the above figures are of the peasant and laboring classes; conditions are quite different among women of the educated classes. These must ultimately set the moral standards for the masses.

Our American conditions are quite different, especially outside of the large cosmopolitan cities. It is impossible not to believe in the moral integrity of the great majority of unmarried women in America. Certainly even in our worst communities we have no such general immorality of women as above European figures suggest. Perhaps wholesale prostitution in which one public woman may be the mistress of ten, twenty, or even fifty men, may tend to protect any equal number of American women; whereas in Europe a peasant woman would probably be for a time the paramour of one man, thus tending to make equal numbers of immoral men and women.

However, it matters nothing for our present purposes what may be the explanation of conditions of sexual promiscuity here or abroad. The one great fact is that our national code of morality is a monogamic one, approved as ideal even by many of those who fail to live strictly in harmony with its dictates. Hence, all Americans who are prominently interested in sex-education believe that it should aim to make our young people more ready to accept and understand morality according to the monogamic ideal.

Those who are interested in this problem of morality as related to marriage should read Foerster's "Marriage and the Sex Problem."

[Sidenote: Relation of sex-hygiene and ethics.]

Among those who see the need of teaching sex-ethics as a part of the larger outlook of sex-education, there are two points of view: (1) those who favor the teaching of sex-ethics with the hope of preventing the hygienic problems arising from immorality, and (2) those who believe in sexual morality for its own sake or as an accepted code of conduct.

The founders of the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis placed sanitation first in the name and stated in the constitution that "the object of this Society is to limit the spread of diseases which have their origin in the Social Evil. It proposes to study every means, sanitary, moral, and administrative, which promise to be most effective for this purpose." Most of the papers that have been read at the meetings of the Society have emphasized the sanitary aim as primary, and the moral aim as a means to the hygienic end; but in the past three years there has been a decided tendency towards placing emphasis upon morality, and recently the executive committee of the Society voted to propose the following revised statement: "The aim of this Society is to promote the appreciation of the sacredness of human sexual relation, and thereby to minimize the moral and physical evils resulting from ignorance and vice." This change of emphasis is well expressed in President Keyes's report to the Society (_Journal_, Vol. V, No. 1).

As to the relation between sex-hygiene and sex-ethics as phases of the larger sex-education, there has been much discussion. Several writers have contended that there is some conflict between sanitary and moral ends, but have failed to convince most readers that hygiene and ethics should not be associated in teaching. In fact, the most impressive sex-hygiene is that relating to social disease, and its value is chiefly in the ethical appeal for protection of innocent wives and children.

[Sidenote: Dr. Cabot's view.]

Most prominent of those who have declared that hygienic and moral teaching should be dissociated is Dr. Richard C. Cabot, of Boston. I shall discuss his point of view in connection with a later lecture on "Criticisms of Sex-education" (§ 46). In the present discussion of sexual morality as an important reason for sex-education, it is sufficient to say that Dr. Cabot seems to disagree with other teachers on the question of the influence of formal instruction on the morals of people.

[Sidenote: Moral and hygienic problems.]

Sex-education is now commonly understood to be attempting to solve the moral as well as the hygienic problems of sex. As suggested before, these two lines of problems are clearly related but not coincident; for sexual health and morals are not entirely coördinated. We must not overlook the possibility that the marvellous progress of bacteriological and medical science may some day largely reduce the health problems of sex without improving morality. In fact, sexual immorality that is hygienic does actually exist to a limited extent. Such facts indicate that while sex-education was first planned to solve health problems, the ultimate sex-education must attempt to guide sexual conduct by moral principles. This coming need of more emphasis on the moral problems of sex should be clearly foreseen by those who are interested in sex-education.

[Sidenote: Super-morality desirable.]

Now, while sexual morality as commonly understood is a direct aim of sex-education, it is not, in the opinion of many people, the ideal and ultimate goal of sex-education in its broadest outlook. There is something higher than conventional morality for the reason that, while natural sexual union in monogamic marriage is never legally or ecclesiastically immoral, it is very often far from ideal. It is not ideal if it is unethical, unhygienic, or unæsthetic. It is unethical, if it is not a bi-personal desideratum (_i.e._, based on mutual love[9]); it is unhygienic when not promotive and conservative of health; and it is unæsthetic if the concomitant psychical reactions are not in harmony with the beautiful in nature and life. In all these ways, morality as commonly and legally and ecclesiastically understood may fall very far short of the ideal sexual relationships. Such an ideal is now held by many men and women who wish that morality might mean to all the world not simply the limitation of sexual union to monogamic marriage, but also that it might be made to mean an all-satisfying monogamic affection and comradeship based on certain physiological, psychical, æsthetic, and ethical laws that underlie human sexual potentialities. Such would be a morality so far beyond the accepted standards that for convenience we may call it super-morality, or the new morality. This, I sincerely believe, is the ultimate goal of sex-education in its largest outlook.

[Sidenote: Super-morality deserves emphasis.]

Among those who have contributed to the sex-education movement there are none who have properly emphasized this super-morality, which, I believe, is the ultimate goal of the larger sex-education for the most enlightened people. The definition that sex-education means all instruction which aims to help young people prepare to solve for themselves the sexual problems that inevitably come to every normal individual, is broad enough to include all questions of hygiene, morality, and super-morality that may come into one's life. The third aim of sex-education (§ 16) which refers to the "social, ethical, and psychical aspects of sex as affecting the individual life in relation to other individuals," should be understood as meaning first a stand for morality and then, this having been attained, super-morality is an easy stage forward. The same idea was touched by the writer in a paper on "Biology in Sex-Instruction" (_Journal of Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis_, October, 1911) in these words: "If the great questions of sex relationship are ever satisfactorily solved, it must be through the direct application of the four sciences which are centered around human life, namely, psychology, ethics, sociology, and last, but far from least, æsthetics. As we have seen, biology teaches much directly bearing on the purely physical aspects of the perpetuation of human life, and its study is absolutely necessary for mental attitude and basal facts; but the keystone of the arch of sex-education must be contributed by these four sciences which touch human life much deeper than the merely physical, to which the science of biology is limited. Above all we must look to these sciences for the solution of the problems of sex in relation to society, which more than any physical ills have led to our present problems concerning sexual disharmonies."

[Sidenote: Super-morality not for the masses.]

But while there is something attractive in this larger interpretation of sex-education as looking forward to the highest adaptation of sex and life, I realize that as a practical matter we must first of all work with young people for sexual morality as defined by the accepted code. We must remember that the vast majority of people are not yet ready, and will not soon be ready, for a code of super-morality. Confusion might result from an attempt at wholesale teaching of such idealism of sex relationship. Certainly, so far as sex-education aims to help immature young people, there is nothing to do but hold up monogamic marriage as the basis of our accepted morality; but the higher view of super-morality should be promulgated as rapidly as possible among people who are advanced enough to understand that morality as defined by church and state is not the best interpretation of life's possibilities. To many it is a significant fact that we now find numerous young men and women ready to stand for super-morality as a foundation for monogamic marriage. Fortunately, such individuals need not wait for the world to grasp the idea of super-morals; and already there is many a home in which the higher view of life and sex prevails.

[Sidenote: Cautious teaching concerning immorality.]

Immorality in sexual lines should not be overstressed when teaching young people. Rather should there be emphasis on the moral, the normal, the healthful, the helpful, and the æsthetic processes in human life. We should emphasize sexual health and morals, not disease and immorality. Concerning immoral living in general, young people should know only enough for necessary warning. Curiosity derived from extensive knowledge of immorality has drawn many a young man into the whirlpool of sexual depravity. It is beyond question that in sexual lines there is the danger that Pope saw when he declared that vice is a monster that seen too oft, we first endure, then pity, then embrace. Sex-education should guard against such dangerous familiarity with vice.

§ 11. _The Sixth Problem for Sex-education: Sexual Vulgarity_

[Sidenote: Present attitude.]

Even a limited study of the prevailing attitude towards sex and reproduction convinces one that back of the greatest sexual problems of our times is the almost universal secrecy, disrespect, vulgarity, and irreverence concerning every aspect of sex and reproduction. Even expectant motherhood is commonly concealed as long as possible, and all reference to the developing new life is usually accompanied with blushes and tones suggestive of some great shame. Nothing sexual is commonly regarded as sacred. Love and marriage, motherhood and birth, are all freely selected as themes for sexual jests, many of them so vulgar that no printed dictionary supplies the necessary words. And I am not simply referring to the great masses of uneducated people, for the saddest fact is that a very large proportion of intelligent people have not an open-minded and respectful attitude concerning sex and reproduction.

[Sidenote: Vast change of attitude needed.]

Now, unless we can devise some way to counteract the prevailing narrow, vulgar, disrespectful, and irreverent attitude towards all aspects of sex and reproduction; unless we can make people see sexual processes in all their normal aspects as noble, beautiful, and splendid steps in the great plan of nature; unless we can substitute a philosophical and æsthetic view of sex relationship for the time-worn interpretation of everything sexual as inherently vulgar, base, ignoble, and demanding asceticism for those who would reach the highest spiritual development; unless we can begin to make these changes in the prevailing attitude towards sex and reproduction, we cannot make any decided advance in the attempt to help solve sexual problems by special instruction.

First of all, sex-education must work for a purified and dignified attitude which sees vulgarity and impurity only when the functions of sex have been voluntarily and knowingly misused and thereby debased. Sex-education must work against the idea that sexual processes are inherently vulgar, degraded, base, and impure. Such an interpretation is correct only when sexual instincts are uncontrolled and thereby out of harmony with the highest ideals of life. But control does not mean asceticism which aims at complete subjugation of sexual instincts and would annihilate them if that were biologically possible. The early Christians, disgusted with the sexual degradation of the paganistic and materialistic Romans, preached a doctrine of sexual asceticism as the ideal for those who would rise to the heights of spiritual life. This pessimistic interpretation of the relation of sex and life has persisted even in some ecclesiastical teachings of the twentieth century, and probably has had not a little responsibility for the widely accepted and depressing view that sex is a necessary but regrettable fact of human life.

[Sidenote: Attitude changing.]

Fortunately, the old ascetic point of view is passing rapidly. Nineteenth-century science has given us a nobler view of the physical world. Scientifically considered, matter is no longer base and degraded. Especially has the biological science of the past fifty years made _living_ matter and its activities profoundly impressive. And of the life-activities none are so significant and so all-important as those relating to the perpetuation of the human species. Biological science has taught this emphatically, and the processes connected with sex have been lifted to a place of dignity and purity.

[Sidenote: Æsthetic attitude desirable.]

The old asceticism, with its uniformly dark outlook on life, has no lessons worth while in our modern problems relating to sex.[10] We need severe control and not annihilation of our most powerful instincts. The bright outlook of æsthetics rather than the dark one of asceticism should prevail, for sex-instincts and processes are essentially pure and beautiful phases of that wonderful something we call "life." Sex-education should aim to give this attitude by presenting life as fundamentally free from the degradation arising from misuse and misunderstanding of sex.

[Sidenote: Not a new ideal.]

The æsthetic interpretation of sex is no new ideal. Canon Lyttleton, formerly Head Master of Eton College and later Canon of Westminster, believed that "viewed rightly, the subject of sex, the ever-recurring miracle of generation and birth, is full of nobleness, purity, and health." The late Dr. Prince A. Morrow wrote, "the sex function is intimately connected with the physical, mental, and moral development. Its right use is the surest basis of individual health, happiness and usefulness in life, as well as of racial permanence and prosperity. Its abuse and misuse is the cause of a vast deal of disease and misery." And finally, we may quote President-Emeritus Eliot of Harvard University: "Society must be relieved by sound instruction of the horrible doctrine that the begetting and bearing of children are in the slightest degree sinful or foul processes. That doctrine lies at the root of the feeling of shame in connection with these processes and of the desire for secrecy. The plain fact is that there is nothing so sacred and propitious on earth as the bringing of another normal child into the world in marriage. There is nothing staining or defiling about it, and therefore there is no need for shame or secrecy, but only for pride and joy. This doctrine should be part of the instruction given to all young people."

[Sidenote: Attitude all-important in sex-education.]

If sex-education succeeds in giving young people this enlightened attitude, there will be little difficulty in solving most of the ethical and hygienic problems of sex. A young man who has caught a glimpse of the highest interpretation of sex in its relation to human life, in short a young man to whom all natural sexual processes are essentially pure and noble and beautiful, is not one who will make grave hygienic mistakes in his own life, and he will not be personally connected with the social evil and its diseases, and he will avoid almost intuitively the physiologic and psychologic mistakes that most often cause matrimonial disaster. Everything, then, in successful sex-education depends upon the attitude formed in the minds of learners; and towards this our major efforts should be directed.

[Sidenote: Comparison with animals not helpful.]

The prevailing vulgar attitude towards sex will not be greatly improved by repeated emphasis upon the animal nature of reproduction in attempts at supporting the thesis that propagation is the sole function of sexual processes in human life. Such an interpretation of human sexuality as purely animalistic in function is implied, if not expressed, by some workers for the "purity" movement. I sincerely believe that such a view will inevitably tend to increase the feeling that sexual processes are heritages from the beasts which unfortunately must be tolerated because nature has provided no other way for perpetuating human life.

[Sidenote: Sexual pessimism.]

An intelligent woman, a happy wife and mother, who had accepted this ascetic and pessimistic view of sex, said the other day: "Oh, love and marriage and motherhood would be so beautiful were it possible to escape the unspeakably vulgar facts of physical life!" Poor woman! It must have been some fiend incarnate who in the guise of a prophet of purity preached to her the animalistic interpretation of sex, which made her overlook the fact that the very beauty which she could not quite grasp had its origin in her emotions arising from the despised sexual nature.

This is not an isolated case. Several young women who have graduated from college within ten years vouch for the statement that many thoughtful students are strong in the belief that ideal marriage is platonic friendship and that it is a sad fact of life that husband and wife must lay aside their high ideals in order to become parents.

Such depressing interpretations of life are bound to come from the radical type of "purity" preaching based on the sexual mistakes of the past and on the lives of animals. A similar pessimistic view regarding the function of eating might be based on mistakes of drunkards and gluttons and on the habits of the porcine family. If these are to guide our conduct, then food-taking is to be regarded as a necessary but vulgar habit inherited from our animal ancestors; and if we are to be logical and attempt to rise to ideal purity in eating, we must hasten to dispense with the culinary science and all the æsthetics which have made civilized eating a fine art. Of course, this is just what the strict ascetic does; but such radical disbelievers in the pleasures that we have associated with eating would be declared lunatics in any civilized country.

[Sidenote: Two kinds of hunger.]

I have chosen eating for illustrating my point, for the demands for food and for sexual activity are the two primal and necessary forms of hunger. The hunger for food has led to the refinements of civilized dining, but there has been great evolution. The animals feed (German, fressen) in order to satisfy hunger only; civilized humans eat (essen) not only to satisfy the hunger appetite inherited from the animals, but also for the sake of the concomitant social æsthetic pleasures that add much to the joy of living. Now, if we are logical, we must interpret on parallel lines the sexual hunger that is necessary for the perpetuation of human life. Like eating, it is a necessary function inherited from the animals; but there has been an evolution of greater significance. In the animal world, sexual activity has only one function, reproduction; but human life at its highest has superadded psychical and social meaning to sexual relationships, and the result has been affection and the human family. If we reject this higher view of the double significance of sexuality in human life, and insist that only the necessary propagative function is worthy of recognition, it is almost inevitable that most people will continue to accept the hopeless view that human sexuality is on the same vulgar plane as that of the animals; in short, that it is only an animal function. This, I insist, is a depressing interpretation that will never help overcome the prevailing vulgar attitude toward sex.

[Sidenote: Human sexuality more than animal.]

It is only by frankly recognizing and developing the psychical and æsthetic meanings that are distinctly human and superadded to the merely propagative function of the animals, that people can be led far away from the vulgar outlook on sex and reproduction in human life.

[Sidenote: Relation of attitude and morality.]

There is no question that wholesome attitude towards sex and reproduction is closely associated with the problems of sexual morality, and especially so far as educational procedure is concerned. It is true that large numbers of moral people hold the vulgar attitude towards sex and reproduction; but for people who do not accept the moral code without question there is probably no better way of teaching sexual morality than by influencing the individual's attitude. There are many people who stand for sexual morality for no other reason than that they have a dignified and æsthetic attitude towards sex.

[Sidenote: Sexual vulgarity a stage in evolution.]