Chapter 6

There is much evidence that the world is rapidly improving in this respect. Sexual vulgarity seems to represent a stage in the evolution of human life from the barbaric to the fully civilized. The sexual vulgarity of primitive peoples, both ancient and modern, has been all too frequently recalled by writers whose pseudo-scientific superficiality leads them to believe that knowledge concerning barbaric and ultra-bestial sensuality will help solve modern sex problems. In the classical days when Venus and Bacchus and other deities of sensuality were worshipped by their devotees, there was sexual vulgarity in action and language such as now exists only among the most ignorant or depraved people in civilized lands. The advent of Christian civilization in Europe left no place for temples and worship of sensuality, but still the age-old tendency towards a crude and barbaric kind of sexual vulgarity and obscenity has continued in folklore, in colloquial language, and in literature. However, there has been a vast change in the attitude of the best people within the last two centuries. Once many English writers, many of them now deservedly obscure, published prose and poetry that would now be criminal. An unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare's "Complete Works," or of Boccaccio's "Decameron," could not be circulated through the United States mails, and there are many good people who are asking how long we shall continue to allow the unexpurgated "Old Testament" the privilege of circulation. It is not simply prose and poetry that has been purified. Scientific literature has shown the influence of the reaction against obscenity. Linnæus and other naturalists of the past were fond of giving scientific names that perpetuated vulgar comparisons with sexual organs, but no naturalist of the present day would dare suggest such designations for unnamed animals and plants. The older medical literature contains abundant obscenities; but scientific dignity, as well as the refinement of modern medical writers, has tended to compel the elimination of vulgarity. However, there are still too many physicians, especially those working with venereal and genito-urinary diseases, who go out of their way to illuminate their conversations, lectures, books, and magazine articles with veiled vulgarity. Even high-class medical journals occasionally contain illustrations of this tendency. However, the medical profession as a class stands for dignified scientific presentation of facts, and obscenity will soon be tabooed in medical and all other reputable literature. Save for occasional emanations privately printed by and for degenerate persons, public obscenity will soon be unknown. Its complete disappearance will have a vast influence upon the problem of sexual attitude.

§ 12. _The Seventh Problem for Sex-instruction: Marriage_

[Sidenote: Physiology and psychology of marriage.]

It is the consensus of opinion of numerous physicians, ministers, and lawyers that a very large proportion of matrimonial disharmonies have their foundation in the common misunderstanding of the physiology and especially of the psychology of sex. In the opinion of many students of sexual problems, this is the strongest reason for sex-instruction. It is certainly a line in which limited spread of information has already given some definite and satisfactory results. Many of my friends and former students have helped me accumulate a long list of cases in which scientific knowledge regarding sex has prevented and corrected matrimonial disagreements; and having easily found so much definite influence of sex-science upon marriage, I am forced to believe that sex-instruction specially organized for people of marriageable age is already giving results of tremendous importance to very many individuals. Large numbers of young people are already awake to the need of scientific guidance in marriage, and there is a great demand for helpful information.

Advanced sex-instruction with reference to the problems of marriage need not wait for general establishment of elementary instruction for children of school ages. Lectures and books are already reaching large numbers of adults. Such enlightenment will help in two ways, by the influence on marriage and by preparing adults to teach children.

[Sidenote: Other knowledge needed.]

There is another side to the problem of marriage that points to need of the larger sex-education. Physiology and psychology of sex are fundamental; but they alone are not sufficient to complete that mutual adjustment and understanding which marriage at the full development of its possibilities involves. Matrimonial harmony cannot be entirely a problem of applied science, as some superficial devotees of science seem to think; for science can never analyze those subtle and ever-varying qualities that go to make up what we call personality, and marriage in its largest outlook is the intimate blending of two personalities. Psychological and physiological knowledge will undoubtedly help the two married individuals in their progress towards the harmonious adjustment of their individualities; but there are many little, but often serious, problems that the physiology and psychology of sex cannot solve. They are problems that involve mutual affection, comradeship, sympathy, unselfishness, coöperation, kindliness, and devotion of husband and wife. Obviously, these can never be developed by any formal instruction.

[Sidenote: Helpful literature.]

Probably there is no better way to help young people realize the possibilities of matrimonial harmony than by suggesting wholesome literature. Some of this is a part of the world's general treasure of books that in prose and poetry, in history and romance, hold up a high ideal of love with marriage. There is much such literature that gives young people inspiration, but too much of it, like college life, ends with a commencement. "And then they were married and lived happily ever after"--is the familiar closing as the novelist rings down the curtain after reciting only the prologue in the life drama of his two lovers. We need more literature that does not end with the wedding march, but which gives young people the successful solution of the problems after marriage. Some such is available in history and biography; some in essays. As I write there come to my mind several books that have impressed me: Professor Palmer's "Life of Alice Freeman Palmer"; Leonard Huxley's "Life and Letters of T.H. Huxley," which gives many intimate glimpses of the ideal home life which the great biologist centered around Mrs. Huxley; William George Jordan's "Little Problems of Married Life"; Orrin Cock's "Engagement and Marriage"; and that much misunderstood[11] but helpful book "Love and Marriage" by Ellen Key. Many of the stories by Virginia Terhune Van de Water, published in the magazines and collected in a book entitled "Why I Left my Husband" (Moffatt, Yard), deal with real problems of married life.

[Sidenote: Similar education of the sexes.]

The problems of co-education and coördinate education have not a little bearing on the adjustment of the two sexes in marriage. In these days when vocational education is fashionable in theory and is attracting attention in practice, we are told that co-education and coördinate education are mistakes because they provide the same training for both sexes. We are told that girls must be educated for their vocation of home-making, while boys must be educated for business, trades, or professions. Everywhere in this current movement for vocational education we find the emphasis placed on making education for the two sexes just as dissimilar as possible. Fortunately for the educational adjustments of the two sexes to each other, much of the present-day discussion that demands extensive sex specialization of education cannot be made practical and the training of the two sexes will inevitably continue to be quite similar, with at most a limited amount of time spent on application of certain knowledge to practical ends that are chiefly of interest to one sex only. By far the greater part of education from kindergarten through the university is in the nature of the fundamentals of knowledge and will continue to be essentially similar for both sexes. For illustration, the writer happens to be connected with a college which offers a four-year course and graduate work specially arranged with reference to household arts. Surely here is an opportunity for education far different from that of the typical college for men. As a matter of fact, there is great similarity. The greater part of the four years is filled with general courses in English, modern languages, chemistry, biology, physics, sociology, economics, and fine arts, while a minor part of the curriculum consists of courses in cookery, clothing, and household administration. The general courses are in essentials not different from courses in colleges for men. Here and there instructors select materials and in other ways relate the general courses to household arts, but after all a girl who completes these courses has acquired the same educational fundamentals that her brother gets in Columbia College or in any other standard college for men. It is only, then, in the cookery, clothing, and administration that there is sex-differentiated education, and even in these the practice necessary to acquire proficiency in technique is the chief peculiarity. So far as fundamental knowledge is concerned; cookery is chiefly an application of chemistry, physics, and physiology that could easily be made clear to one who had completed courses in these sciences in a college for men; dress design is an application of fine arts and its construction is a mechanical problem. The mental problems involved in dress design and making cannot be far different from house design and construction which are supposed to be primarily adapted to men.

[Sidenote: Little differentiation.]

On the whole, then, there is really little possibility of sex-differentiated education. This, I insist, is a fortunate fact of vast importance in the mutual adjustment of the two sexes in marriage. There could be no adjustment on an intelligent basis if education could be utterly dissimilar. There can be perfect adjustment only when the two individuals are adjusted harmoniously, and that means similar outlooks on life's problems.

[Sidenote: Need of sex-education for feminism.]

Many of the problems of the modern feministic movement are such as to demand rational education of both women and men with reference to sex and marriage. Let me quote C. Gasquoine Hartley, whose suggestive Chapters VIII and IX in her "Truth About Woman" (Dodd, Mead) deserve to live long after the readable but unscientifically applied earlier chapters are consigned to oblivion:

"To hear many women talk it would appear that the new ideal is a one-sexed world. A great army of women have espoused the task of raising their sex out of subjection. For such a duty the strength and energy of passion is required. Can this task be performed if the woman to any extent indulges in sex--otherwise subjection to man? Sexuality debases, even reproduction and birth are regarded as 'nauseating.' Woman is not free, only because she has been the slave to the primitive cycle of emotions which belong to physical love. The renunciation, the conquest of sex--it is this that must be gained. As for man, he has been shown up, women have found him out; his long-worn garments of authority and his mystery and glamour have been torn into shreds--woman will have none of him.

"Now obviously these are over-statements, yet they are the logical outcome of much of the talk that one hears. It is the visible sign of our incoherence and error, and in the measure of these follies we are sent back to seek the truth. Women need a robuster courage in the face of love, a greater faith in their womanhood, and in the scheme of Life. Nothing can be gained from the child's folly in breaking the toys that have momentarily ceased to please. The misogamist type of woman cannot fail to prove as futile as the misogamist man. Not 'Free _from_ man' is the watch-cry of women's emancipation that surely is to be, but 'Free _with_ man.'"

[Sidenote: Sex and intellectualism.]

And further on the same author, considering the problem of the women of the common type that are classified as a "third sex," that of temperamental neuter, says:

"Economic conditions are compelling women to enter with men into the fierce competition of our disordered social state. Partly due to this reason, though much more, as I think, to the strong stirring in woman of her newly-discovered self, there has arisen what I should like to call an over-emphasized Intellectualism. Where sex is ignored there is bound to lurk danger. Every one recognizes the significance of the advance in particular cases of women towards a higher intellectual individuation, and the social utility of those women who have been truly the pioneers of the new freedom; but this does not lessen at all the disastrous influence of an ideal which holds up the renunciation of the natural rights of love and activities of women, and thus involves an irreparable loss to the race by the barrenness of many of its finest types. The significance of such Intellectuals must be limited, because for them the possibility of transmission by inheritance of their valuable qualities is cut off, and hence the way is closed to a further progress. And, thus, we are brought back to that simple truth from which we started; there are two sexes, the female and the male, on their specific differences and resemblances blended together in union every true advance in progress depends--on the perfected woman and the perfected man."

[Sidenote: Young women misled by sexual pessimists.]

One who studies carefully the various aspects of the extreme feministic movement must admit that there are many signs of the dangers which the above quotations point out so clearly. Of course, we cannot believe in the sincerity of all of the numerous women of thirty-five to fifty years who pretend to ignore sex completely. Probably most of them have discovered that they have misunderstood themselves; but it is also probable that they have discovered too late for making a readjustment in their own lives. However, it matters little whether such women have really succeeded in ignoring sex. The real problem for educational attack lies in the fact that such women often succeed in proselyting young women under twenty-five, and these in turn may not come to see the real truth about sex and life until ten or fifteen years later. Clearly, organized education must protect young women against such influences.

[Sidenote: The greatest good in sex-education.]

The greatest good which may come from the sex-education movement is not prevention or elimination of social diseases, it is not improved health, it is not general acceptance of the moral law of sex, it is not one or all these that are devoutly to be hoped for; but far greater than such possible results from sex-education, it will bring to many a man and woman a deeper, nobler, and purer knowledge of what sex means for the coming race and of what it means now to each individual who realizes life's fullest possibilities in conjugal affection which culminates in new life and new motives for more affection. Such an understanding of sex in relation to home life will help this old world more than anything else which sex-education may accomplish.

[Sidenote: The greatest sex problem.]

The problems of sex and marriage deserve far more attention than can be given in this lecture. I am convinced that knowledge of sex in its physical, psychical, social, and æsthetic aspects is the only sure foundation for harmonious marriage under modern conditions. Therefore, I believe this to be the greatest sex problem open to educational attack.

§ 13. _The Eighth Problem for Sex-instruction: Eugenics_

[Sidenote: Meaning of eugenics.]

Eugenics, or the science of human good breeding, is just now the most popular of the problems concerning human sex and reproduction. In recent years, the biological investigators of heredity have published some startling facts which show that the human race must soon check its reckless propagation of the unfit and encourage reproduction by the best types of men and women. This is not the place for a review of the eugenic propositions. Those interested will find them in non-technical form in many books (see the bibliographical chapter of this book, page 248).

[Sidenote: Eugenics in biology.]

Some of the chief facts of eugenics should be a part of every well-organized scheme of sex-instruction, and taught through biology (§ 17). Probably no other topic in biology is so likely to make an ethical-social appeal, for the central point of eugenics is the responsibility of the individual whose uncontrolled sexual actions may transmit undesirable and heritable qualities and bring a train of disaster to generations of descendants.

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

At this point we digress to correct the widespread error in confusing sex-hygiene and eugenics. Many people who ought to know better use the two terms synonymously, perhaps because they are afraid of that comparatively novel but frank prefix in "sex-hygiene." The fact is that eugenics and sex-hygiene have little in common. Eugenics is the science of reproducing better humans by applying the established laws of genetics or heredity. In brief, it means, on the positive side, selecting desirable people as parents; and, negatively, preventing propagation by the undesirables. This is the sum total of the task of eugenics in the accurate sense of the term.

[Sidenote: Facts of heredity.]

So far as we know, each coming generation will inherit only qualities that the parents inherited from their parents. It is a well-known principle of biology that changes in the bodies of human beings during their lifetime (dating from the fertilized egg that produces the individual) are never in any noticeable degree inherited by descendants. In short, acquired characteristics of the body tissues do not influence the germ plasm, the living matter concerned with heredity and reproduction, but the germ plasm that determines what the next generation will inherit is fixed at birth. Thus tuberculosis, alcoholism, gonorrhea, and syphilis may be acquired during the life of an individual, but do not become fixed in the germ plasm. If the infants show effects of any of these diseases, it is not because of true heredity but because they were infected or influenced before birth. Rarely does this happen to children of a tuberculous mother, but often to those of a syphilitic mother. In a gonorrheal ophthalmia neonatorum (specific inflammation of infants' eyes) it is a case of infection _during_ birth.

[Sidenote: Sex-hygiene and eugenics parallel.]

Thus, it appears that sex-hygiene either personal or social (concerned with venereal diseases) is not a part of eugenics. It is, however, a phase of euthenics, which deals with the environmental factors that affect the individual life. It is clear, then, that sex-hygiene (in the strict medical sense) and eugenics are parallel and not conflicting. Eugenics aims to select better parents who will transmit their own qualities genetically. Sex-hygiene in its personal and social aspects will make healthier parents able to give their offspring a healthier start in life, especially because the offspring is free from the prenatal effects of disease.

The teaching of heredity and eugenics is intended to develop a sense of individual responsibility for the transmission of one's good or bad inherited qualities to offspring. The teaching of sex-hygiene, either personal or social, looks towards improving personal health and preventing infection and injurious influence on the unborn next generation. Obviously, we need both sex-hygiene and eugenics as part of the larger sex-instruction.

§ 14. _Summary of Lectures on Sex Problems_

[Sidenote: Problems of health, attitude, and morals.]

We have made a general survey of the problems that offer reasons for sex-instruction. We have noted that some of the problems are concerned with health and, hence, lie within the scope of sex-hygiene in the strict sense of that term; but some of them have only the remotest relation to health and hygiene. On the contrary, they relate to the ethical, social, and æsthetic attitude of individuals towards sex and reproduction. Obviously, these touch problems not of sex health, but of sex morality. In their educational importance I believe them as great, perhaps even greater, than those of sex-hygiene. In fact, I have come to believe that many individuals can best solve all their own sexual problems on the basis of moral and æsthetic attitude.

[Sidenote: Many-sided instruction needed.]

Considering, as we have done, the sex problems in their many aspects, we are forced to the conclusion that sex-education will prove adequate only when it combines instruction from the several points of view. It must be much more than the sex-hygiene with which the sex-instruction movement started. We need sexual knowledge that will conserve health, that will develop social and ethical and eugenic responsibility for sexual actions, that will lead to increased happiness as well as to improved health, and that will give a nobler and purer view of life's possibilities. In all these lines in which sex influences human life profoundly, sex-education holds out the hope of help towards a better life for all who receive and apply its lessons.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In the _American Journal of Public Health_ for July, 1913, Dr. John S. Fulton, Director General of the XV International Congress on Hygiene and Demography, criticized severely the extremely radical statistics that were presented on charts at the sex-hygiene exhibit of the Congress, and were later published in Wilson's "Education of the Young in Sex-hygiene."

[2] There is danger in quoting to young men the estimates as to prevalence of social diseases and, therefore, of promiscuity. Fear of consequences will not control one who is led to believe that he is doing what most men do. (See Parkinson in _Educational Review_, Jan. 1911, pp. 44-46.)

[3] Many writers have discounted the value of warnings involved in sex-instruction concerning social disease (see especially Cabot's papers referred to in § 46, and Parkinson in _Educational Review_, January, 1911).

[4] Louise Creighton, in her excellent little book on "The Social Disease and How to Fight It" (Longmans), has well presented the problems of social impurity from woman's point of view.

Dr. W.S. Hall, in "Life's Problems," has given in a few pages the necessary protective knowledge.

[5] See "The Sexual Necessity," by Drs. Howell and Keyes.

[6] See also, Henderson's "Education with Reference to Sex."

[7] See chapter on "Motherhood and Marriage" in Foerster's "Marriage and the Sex Problem."

[8] As an illustration of this fact, out of 558 Pittsburgh professional prostitutes, 406 had never had children. Of the 152 who were mothers, only 24 had two or more children.

[9] Many thinking men and women now agree with Ellen Key that "marriage is immoral without mutual love," that "love is the sole decisive point of view in questions concerning this relationship," that "it will come to pass that no finely sensitive woman will become a mother except through mutual love," that "everything which is exchanged between husband and wife in their life together can only be the free gift of love, can never be demanded by one or the other as a right." (Key--"The Morality of Woman.")