Abstinence
How intoxicating indeed, how penetrating--like a most precious
wine--is that love which is the sexual transformed by the magic
of the will into the emotional and spiritual! And what a loss
on the merest grounds of prudence and the economy of pleasure
is its unbridled waste along physical channels! So nothing
is so much to be dreaded between lovers as just this--the
vulgarisation of love--and this is the rock upon which marriage
so often splits.--EDWARD CARPENTER.
And because marriage so often splits upon this rock, or because men
and women have in all ages yearned for spiritual beauty, there have
been those who shut themselves off from all the sweet usages of the
body. In the struggle of man to gain command over his body, and in
the slow and often backsliding evolution of the higher love, there
is no doubt that humanity owes much to the ascetic. But this debt
is in the past. We are now gaining control of the lower forces, we
are winning knowledge of the complex meanings and the spiritual
transformations of our physical reactions, and in the _future_ the
highest social unit will be recognised to be the pair, fused in love
so that all human potentialities are theirs, as well as the higher
potentialities which only perfect love can originate.
Yet, as we live to-day, with still so many remnants of the older
standards within and upon us, we must endeavour to understand the
ascetic. He (less often she) is by no means seldom one of the
products of marriage. It not infrequently happens that after a
love-marriage and some years of what is considered happiness, the
man or woman may withdraw from the sex life, often looking down upon
it, and considering that they have reached a higher plane by so
doing. But such people seldom ask themselves if, while they lived
it, they reached the highest possible level of the sex-life.
One of the most famous instances of the married ascetic is Tolstoy,
whose later opinion was that the _highest_ human being completely
inhibits his sex-desires and lives a celibate life. Ascetics,
however, seldom have much knowledge of human physiology, and it
seems to me that, with all their fine and religious fervour, they
often lack the mysticism necessary for the full realisation of
the meaning and potentialities of the new creation resulting from
man's and woman's highest union. Doubtless if for an hour we were
to take the place of the individual chemical atoms of Oxygen or of
Hydrogen, we could have no inkling of the physical properties of the
water-drop they together form.
Christianity, like most religions, had a strong wave of asceticism
early in its history. While there was, as there still is, a harsh
asceticism which is hostile to the other sex, it is of much interest
to see that there was also a romantic asceticism which, while
revolting from the sensuality of the pagan contemporaries, did not
entirely prohibit the charms and pleasures of mutual companionship.
Thus, in a mutilated form, it seems these early Christian ascetics
gained some of the immaterial benefits of marriage. Ellis (Vol.
6, "Sex and Society," 1913) gives an interesting account of these
ascetic love-unions:
"Our fathers," Chrysostom begins ("Against those who keep
Virgins in their Houses"), "only knew two forms of sexual
intimacy, marriage and fornication. Now a third form has
appeared: men introduce young girls into their houses and keep
them there permanently, respecting their virginity. What,"
Chrysotom asks, "is the reason? It seems to me that life in
common with a woman is sweet, even outside conjugal union and
fleshly commerce. That is my feeling; and perhaps it is not my
feeling alone; it may also be that of these men. They would not
hold their honour so cheap nor give rise to such scandals if
this pleasure were not violent and tyrannical.... That there
should really be a pleasure in this which produces a love more
ardent than conjugal union may surprise you at first. But when I
give you the proofs you will agree that it is so." The absence
of restraint to desire in marriage, he continues, often leads to
speedy disgust, and even apart from this, sexual intercourse,
pregnancy, delivery, lactation, the bringing up of children, and
all the pains and anxieties that accompany these things, soon
destroy youth and dull the point of pleasure. The virgin is free
from these burdens. She retains her vigour and her youthfulness,
and even at the age of forty may rival the young nubile girl. "A
double ardour thus burns in the heart of him who lives with her,
and the gratification of desire never extinguishes the bright
flame which ever continues to increase in strength." Chrysostom
describes minutely all the little cares and attentions which the
modern girls of his time required, and which these men delighted
to expend on their virginal sweethearts whether in public or
in private. He cannot help thinking, however, that the man who
lavishes kisses and caresses on a woman whose virginity he
retains is putting himself somewhat in the position of Tantalus.
But this new refinement of tender chastity, which came as a
delicious discovery to the early Christians who resolutely
thrust away the licentiousness of the pagan world, was deeply
rooted, as we discover from the frequency with which the grave
Fathers of the Church, apprehensive of scandal, felt called
upon to reprove it, though their condemnation is sometimes not
without a trace of secret sympathy.
Thus Jerome, in his letter to Eustochium, refers to those
couples who "share the same room," often even the same bed, and
call us suspicious if we draw any conclusions; while Cyprian
(_Epistola_, 86) is unable to approve of those men he hears of,
one a deacon, who live in familiar intercourse with virgins,
even sleeping in the same bed with them, for, he declares, the
feminine sex is weak and youth is wanton.
The harsh ascetic, however, is the one the word ascetic most
generally conjures up. Even if he accomplishes miracles of
self-restraint, and subdues desire, he is often weakened rather
than strengthened by his determination to flout nature. Save only
in the truly great, there is a warping and narrowing which results
from coercing beyond the limits of reason the desires which were
implanted in Adam and Eve when they were told to be fruitful and
multiply.
As Ellen Key says ("Love and Marriage"):
Those ascetics who recommend only self-control as a remedy for
the mastery of sexual instinct, even when such control becomes
merely obstructive to life, are like the physician who tried
only to drive the fever out of his patient: it was nothing to
him that the sick man died of the cure.
But these ascetics may have arrived at their fanaticism by
two different paths. One group--which includes most of the
female ascetics--hates Cupid because he has never shown to them
any favour. The other group--embracing the majority of male
ascetics--curse him because he never leaves them in peace.
Approaching the subject in a more modern and scientific attitude of
impartial inquiry, the medical man can produce an imposing list of
diseases more or less directly caused by abstinence both in men and
in women. These diseases range from neuralgia and "nerves" to (in
women) fibroid growths. And it is well worthy of remark that these
diseases may be present when the patient (as have many unmarried
women) has no idea that the sex-impulse exists unmastered.
Thus the ascetic and the profligate (whether or not in _legal_
marriage) have both to run the gauntlet of disease. There is,
however, no disease I know of which is caused by the normal and
mutually happy marriage relation--a relation which, certainly to
most, has positive healing and vitalising power.
The profound truth which is perceived by the ascetics is that the
creative energy of sex can be _transformed_ into other activities.
This truth should never be lost sight of in marriage; where between
the times of natural, happy, and also stimulating exercise of
the sex-functions, the periods of complete abstinence should be
opportunities for transmuting the healthy sex-power into work of
every sort.