The Glorious Unfolding
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
but more of reverence in us dwell.
TENNYSON.
We are surrounded in this world by processes and transmutations so
amazing that were they not taking place around us hourly they would
be scouted as impossible imaginings.
A mind must be dull and essentially lacking in wonderment which,
without amazement, can learn for the first time that the air we
breathe, apparently so uniform in its invisible unity, is in reality
composed of two principal, and several other, gases. The two gases,
however, are but mixed as wine may be with water, and each gas by
itself is a colourless air, visually like that mixture of the two
which we call the atmosphere.
Much greater is the miracle of the composition of water. It is made
of only two gases, one of them a component of the air we breathe,
and the other similarly invisible and odourless, but far lighter.
These two invisible gases, when linked in a proportion proper to
their natures, fuse and are no longer ethereal and invisible, but
precipitate in a new substance--water.
The waves of the sea with their thundering power, the sparkling
tides of the river buoying the ships, are but the transmuted
resultants of the union of two invisible gases. And this, in its
simplest terms, is a parable of the infinitely complex and amazing
transmutations of married love.
Ellis expresses the strange mystery of one of the physical sides of
love when he says:
What has always baffled men in the contemplation of sexual
love is the seeming inadequacy of its cause, the immense
discrepancy between the necessarily circumscribed regions of
mucous membrane which is the final goal of such love and the
sea of world-embracing emotions to which it seems the door, so
that, as Remy de Gourmont has said, "the mucous membranes, by an
ineffable mystery, enclose in their obscure folds all the riches
of the infinite." It is a mystery before which the thinker and
the artist are alike overcome.
To me, however, the recent discoveries of physiology seem to
afford a key which may unlock a chamber of the mystery and admit
us to one of the halls of the palace of truth. The hormones (see
page 61) in each individual body pour from one organ and affect
another, and thus influence the whole character of the individual's
life processes. The visible secretions and the most subtle essences
which pass during union between man and woman, affect the lives
of each and are essentially vital to each other. As I see them,
the man and the woman are each organs, parts, of the other. And
in the strictest scientific, as well as in a mystical, sense they
_together_ are a single unit, an individual entity. There is a
_physiological_ as well as a spiritual truth in the words "they
twain shall be one flesh."
In love it is not only that the yearning of the bonds of affinity
to be satisfied is met by the linking with another, but that out of
this union there grows a new and unprecedented creation.
In this I am not speaking of the bodily child which springs from
the love of its parents, but of the super-physical entity created
by the perfect union in love of man and woman. Together, united by
the love bonds which hold them, they are a new and wondrous thing
surpassing, and different from, the arithmetical sum of them both
when separate.
So seldom has the perfection of this new creation been experienced,
that we are still far short even of imagining its full potentialities,
but that it must have mighty powers we dimly realise.
Youths and maidens stirred by the attraction of love, feel
hauntingly and inarticulately that there is before them an immense
and beautiful experience: feel as though in union with the beloved
there will be added powers of every sort which have no measure in
terms of the ordinary unmated life.
These prophetic dreams, if they are not true of each individual
life, are yet true of the race as a whole. For in the dreams of
youth to-day is a foreshadowing of the reality of the future.
So accustomed have we recently become to accept one aspect
of organic evolution, that we tend to see in youth only a
recapitulation of our race's history. The well-worn phrase "Ontogeny
repeats Phylogeny" has helped to concentrate our attention on the
fact that the young in their development, in ourselves as in the
animals, go through many phases which resemble the stages through
which the whole race must have passed in the course of its evolution.
While this is true, there is another characteristic of youth: It is
prophetic!
The dreams of youth, which each young heart expects to see fulfilled
in its own life, seem so often to fade unfulfilled. But that is
because the wonderful powers of youth are not supplied with the
necessary tool--knowledge. And so potentialities, which could have
worked miracles, are allowed to atrophy and die.
But as humanity orients itself more truly, more and more will the
knowledge and experience of the whole race be placed at the disposal
of all youth on its entry into life.
Then that glorious upspringing of the racial ideal, which finds its
expression in each unspoiled generation of youth, will at last meet
with a store of knowledge sufficient for its needs, and will find
ready as a tool to its hand the accumulated and sifted wisdom of the
race.
Then youth will be spared the blunders and the pain and the
unconscious self-destruction that to-day leaves scarcely anyone
untouched.
In my own life, comparatively short and therefore lacking in
experience though it be, I have known both personally and
vicariously so much anguish that might have been prevented by
knowledge. This impels me not to wait till my experience and
researches are complete, and my life and vital interest are fading,
but to hand on at once those gleanings of wisdom I have already
accumulated which may help the race to understand itself. Hence I
conclude this little book, for, though incomplete, it contains some
of the vital things youth should be told.
In all life activities, house-building, hunting or any other, where
intellectual and oral tradition comes in, as it does with the human
race, "instinct" tends to die out. Thus the human mother is far
less able to manage her baby without instruction than is a cat her
kittens; although the human mother at her best has, in comparison
with the cat, an infinitude of duties toward, and influences over,
her child.
A similar truth holds in relation to marriage. The century-long
following of various "civilised" customs has not only deprived our
young people of most of the instinctive knowledge they might have
possessed, but has given rise to innumerable false and polluting
customs.
Though many write on the art of managing children, few have anything
to say about the art of marriage, save those who have some dogma,
often theological or subversive of natural law, to proclaim.
Any fundamental truth regarding marriage is rendered immeasurably
difficult to ascertain because of the immense ranges of variety in
human beings, even of the same race, many of which result from the
artificial conditions and the unnatural stimuli so prevalent in what
we call civilisation. To attempt anything like a serious study of
marriage in all its varieties would be a monumental work. Those who
have even partially undertaken it have tended to become entangled in
a maze of abnormalities, so that the needs of the normal, healthy,
romantic person have been overlooked.
Each pair, therefore, has tended to repeat the blunders from which
it might have been saved, and to stumble blindly in a maze of
difficulties which are not the essential heritage of humanity, but
are due to the unreasoning folly of our present customs.
I have written this book for those who enter marriage normally and
healthily, and with optimism and hope.
If they learn its lessons they may be saved from some of the
pitfalls in which thousands have wrecked their happiness, but they
must not think that they will thereby easily attain the perfection
of marriage. There are myriad subtleties in the adjustment of any
two individuals.
Each pair must, using the tenderest and most delicate touches, sound
and test each other, learning their way about the intricacies of
each other's hearts.
Sometimes, with all the knowledge and the best will in the world,
two who have married find that they cannot fuse their lives; of this
tragedy I have not here anything to say; but ordinary unhappiness
would be less frequent than it is were the tenderness of _knowledge_
applied to the problem of mutual adjustment from the first day of
marriage.
All the deepest and highest forces within us impel us to evolve an
ever nobler and tenderer form of life-long monogamy as our social
ideal. While the thoughtful and tenderhearted must seek, with ever
greater understanding, to ease and comfort those who miss this
joyful natural development, reformers in their zeal for side-issues
must not forget the main growth of the stock. The beautiful sense
for love in the hearts of the young should be encouraged, and they
should have access to the knowledge of how to cultivate it, instead
of being diverted by the clamour for "freedom" to destroy it.
Disillusioned middle age is apt to look upon the material side of
the marriage relation, to see its solid surface in the cold, dull
light of everyday experience; while youth, irradiated by the glow of
its dreams, is unaware how its aerial and celestial phantasies are
broken and shattered when unsuspectingly brought up against the hard
facts of physical reality.
The transmutation of material facts by celestial phantasies is
to some extent within the power of humanity, even the imperfect
humanity of to-day.
When knowledge and love together go to the making of each marriage,
the joy of _that new unit, the pair_ will reach from the physical
foundations of its bodies to the heavens where its head is crowned
with stars.
_Addition_ 1 (_to page_ 49)
A curious rigidity of mental and physical capacity seems to
characterise some excellent and well-meaning people, and among those
whose marriages unaccountably fail to reach just that height of
perfection in a physical sense which they may intellectually desire,
are those who are either entirely ignorant that sex union may be
accomplished in many various positions, or those who consider any
other position but the most usual one to be wrong.
Yet, curiously enough, it sometimes comes to light that a pair do
not even know the usual position, and in my own experience several
couples who have failed to have children, or have failed to obtain
the complete delight of union, have revealed that the woman did
not know that it is not only her arms which should embrace her
lover. Consequently, entry was to him both difficult and sometimes
impossible.
In addition to this, the encouragement of that spontaneous movement
which comes so naturally to those who are highly stirred, needs
in far too many of our moderns to be cultivated. A pair should,
impelled by the great wave of feeling within them, be as pliable as
the sea-plants moved by the rushing tides, and they should discover
for themselves which of the innumerable possible positions of
equilibrium results in the greatest mutual satisfaction. In this
matter, as in so many others of the more intimate phases of sex
life, there should not harden a routine, but the body should become
at the service of intense feeling a keen and pliable instrument.
_Addition_ 2 (_to page_ 83)
It must be remembered that the parallel of the more primitive
creatures cannot be pressed too far, because in a thousand ways we
highly civilised human beings have developed in fresh directions
away from our ancestral habits. This question, of whether or not it
is right and wise to have sex unions during pregnancy, is one on
which scientific research should be undertaken. Far too few men and
women are clean-minded and frank enough to record their feelings in
this connection, and far too few medical men delicately sympathetic
enough to elicit the facts even from those women who are personally
conscious of them. The little evidence which I have acquired
through direct personal confidences about this subject points in
absolutely conflicting directions, and there is little doubt that
in this particular, even more than in so many others, the health,
needs, and mental condition of women who are bearing children
vary profoundly. From one distinguished medical specialist I have
acquired the interesting suggestion that in one or two cases among
his own patients, where the prospective mother had desired unions
and the husband had denied them thinking it in her interest, the
doctor had observed that the children seemed to grow up restless,
uncontrollable, and with an unduly marked tendency to self-abuse.
On this most suggestive and important idea, I would gladly obtain
evidence from parents and the medical profession, for only from a
large number of cases can reliable conclusions be drawn. But just
as in popular opinion it is good for the child and the woman to
gratify any harmless fancy for food which she may develop, so, in
my opinion, it seems probable that any desire for moderate and
careful sex union between the prospective mother and the father of
the coming child should be gratified in the interests of all three.
But this opinion is expressed merely provisionally, and largely
in response to a number of inquirers who have asked me about this
point. Immoderate and excessive sex union must undoubtedly be looked
upon as an unfavourable symptom, and a practising doctor should be
consulted about it.
A woman who is bearing a child by the man she deeply loves, has an
intense longing that he should share, so far as is possible, in
influencing that child while it is coming, and that he should be
as near and as close to it and to her as is possible. The basis of
this longing we may well imagine may be not only a tender sentiment
of the brain, but may depend on that fine sensual interchange of
ultra-microscopic particles which must take place between skin and
skin during physical contact, the idea of which is so beautifully
foreshadowed in Carpenter's "Love's Coming of Age."
A woman who is bearing a child should not--indeed, she cannot--have
the intensest form of muscular orgasm, but this subtler and
deeper sweetening and harmonising union has not only a romantic
justification, but will, I think, be proved by Science, when Science
becomes sensitive enough to handle such delicate things, to have a
real bio-chemical basis.
As so many people lack a due visualising imagination, perhaps
I should add that the ordinary position of union is not
suitable--indeed, may be very well most harmful--to a woman during
this time; but she and her husband can easily so intertwine
themselves that the weight of both is lying upon the bed or upon
pillows, and so no pressure falls upon the woman.
_Addition_ 3 (_to page_ 85)
Although it is out of the province of this book to give advice about
the more material and better-known details of the general management
of the health of the prospective mother, yet there are one or two
very important points generally overlooked which profoundly affect
both the woman's health and happiness, and may affect also the
child. For instance, leading medical experts are in the habit of
considering the "morning sickness" which is so usual in the early
months of pregnancy as a "physiological process," and to look upon
it complacently as perfectly normal and to be endured as a matter of
course. This marks a deplorably low standard of health. Why should
this comparatively small but nauseating experience accompany what
should be among the most rapturously beautiful months of a woman's
life? In my opinion there is no reason for this at all, except that
medical men have been blind leaders of the blind; accustomed always
to deal with invalids or semi-invalids, they have lost the instinct
to demand of humanity a high and buoyant state of health, while
women so harried by the undue drains of unregulated sex experience,
with vitality so lowered by "civilised" life, have seen one another
suffering on all sides until they too have lost the racial memory of
radiant bodily beauty and health.
Here and there an exceptional woman has gone through the months of
pregnancy with no handicap, with not even morning sickness. Instead
of looking upon her as an enviable exception, as all do now, look
upon her as the normal standard which all should attain! One of the
aids to attaining this standard for every prospective mother would
be the knowledge by all adult women that, directly they know they
are bearing a child, they should instantly discard not only all
corsets, but all clothes of every kind which are heavy and close
or which have any definite bands or tight fastenings. Specialists
are content to say no harm accrues if a woman wears "comfortable"
corsets until the third or fourth month. I denounce this as
misleading folly. The sensitiveness to pressure, often unconscious,
at such a time is extraordinary, and the penalty of even the
lightest pressure is the morning sickness. The standard of clothing
should be so light, so loose, that a butterfly could walk upon the
bare skin beneath the clothes without breaking its wings. This may
seem exaggerated to nearly everyone, but it is a very profound truth.
Another aid to buoyant health during this time is to add to the diet
the largest possible amount of uncooked fruit, particularly oranges,
plums, and apples.
Various books have been written on the health in pregnancy, though
few of these are enlightened. Although one must deplore the many
mistakes in elementary chemistry which are made therein, by far
the best of the books on this subject known to me is Dr. Alice
Stockham's "Tokology." In this book it is only such comparative
trifles as the calling of carbonaceous material _carbonates_ which,
though sufficient to prejudice the scientific mind against the rest
of her work, does not really affect the profound truth of the gist
of her message--a message which was first given to the public by a
wise old Englishman long ago.
_Addition_ 4 (_to page_ 85)
Owing partly to the incredible ignorance of our bodily structure
in which it is possible for a grown man or woman not only to enter
marriage but to be married for years, sometimes apparently childless
unions are not in any sense due to the incapacity of either partner
for parenthood, but are due sometimes to trifling impediments which
can easily be removed, or to trifling peculiarities of construction
which can very simply be overcome.
While the great majority of married couples are actually suffering,
or would suffer, without the exertion of definite control, from
too many pregnancies there are still--particularly in the middle
and upper classes--many would-be parents who long for children
but seem to be mysteriously deprived of them. Doctors may have
examined both the man and the woman, and pronounced them perfectly
normal, perfectly healthy, and perfectly capable of having children
together, and yet children do not come. Sometimes this is caused
by an undue activity of a slightly acid secretion on the part of
the woman, a secretion doing her no harm and of which she is quite
unconscious, but which may be sufficient to render the active
sperm impotent. Sometimes, therefore, it is sufficient to ensure
conception for the woman to syringe the vagina with a little weak
neutralising solution such as sodium carbonate shortly before sex
union. Another cause which sometimes operates against the vital
sperm penetrating to the waiting ovum is an excess of mucus at the
mouth of the womb. In such a case it is important that a really
complete and muscularly energetic orgasm should be achieved by the
woman, not before but coincident with or after the sperm has been
ejaculated. It is often argued that it makes no difference whether
or not the woman has a complete orgasm, for so many cases are
recorded in which women who have never experienced an orgasm have
had many children; but it is generally forgotten that women are of
many different types, and while one type of woman, the very fruitful
mother with a wide vagina and but slight internal mucus, may
conceive a dozen times without an orgasm, the more highly nervous,
equally perfect, woman may only conceive on the occasion when she
experiences an orgasm whilst the sperm are actually in the vagina.
Another slight obstacle to conception on the part of a woman which
is not infrequent is the position of the mouth of the womb and the
relation of the vaginal canal, which may be such that the spermatic
fluid tends to be lost without any of it penetrating the orifice of
the womb itself. To overcome this it is often sufficient for the
woman to turn over directly the act of union is complete and lie
face downwards for a few hours.
Without any question, all women have times of greater or less
reproductive vitality, but in some women this is less marked than
in others, and with some conception may take place at almost any
date in the menstrual month; but with other women there is a group
of days ranging from three or four to a dozen or more, in which
conception seems to be impossible; while, on the other side of this
group of neutral days, the days grade upwards towards a date of
greater reproductive potency. Therefore, a woman and her husband who
desire children, but have not after some years of marriage had the
good fortune to attain parenthood, should choose for their acts of
union those days on which conception is most likely. It is generally
found that the most certain date for conception is--with very few
exceptions--about the last day of the monthly period, or the day or
two immediately after it; so that the husband who ardently desires
his wife to conceive should, with her consent, concentrate their
unions so far as possible on such dates.
On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that the effect on the
whole nervous system of the desire to conceive is very great. A too
frantic desire, which leads to too frequently repeated unions, will
probably defeat itself, because it is not the mere coalescence of
the sperm with the ovum which completes conception, it is also the
attachment of that impregnated ovum to the wall of the womb, and
intense nervous excitement may prevent that. Indeed, it has been
stated by a medical man of considerable weight in the last century
that there are women among those races to whom sex-knowledge is not
taboo who can voluntarily control conception at will and consciously
expel an impregnated ovum by mere exercise of nervous force. A
woman in modern society who is in a highly nervous condition,
which may find expression in her constant need of cigarettes or
excitement, may be (though this is by no means universally true)
frequently impregnated and at the same time continually throwing off
the impregnated ovum before the settling down of that ovum, which
results in true conception, can take place. If, therefore, the
woman who urgently desires to be a mother finds herself continuously
smoking, or notes in herself any other indication of a lack of
placidity in her nerves, she would do well--not merely to restrict
her smoking, which is nothing but a symptom of a deeper need--but
she would do well to restore so far as possible a calm poise to her
whole system by longer sleep, more country air, plenty of fresh
butter, or whatever simple remedy it may be that will supply her
nerves with something lacking, and for which she is unconsciously
craving.
Although to many it may seem incredible, yet it is not so rare as
might be supposed, that the adult pair may be married for years,
and the wife still physically a virgin owing to neither of the
pair knowing that penetration must be effected. Amazing as it
may seem, four or five such cases, all of intelligent apparently
average people, have come to my direct knowledge in the course of
one year alone. Another cause, less extreme, is due to the woman
making full entry difficult or impossible by not taking up a proper
position during union. (See also p. 114.) In such cases a knowledge
of the true details involved may speedily bring the desired
conception.
These very simple suggestions are of the kind often overlooked by
the medical specialist, to whom a woman goes tremblingly asking if
she is abnormally formed in any way, because she does not get the
children she so much longs for. Such advice, of course, will apply
only to people who are essentially normal and without deformity. For
more serious obstructions to parenthood, the pair, and not the woman
only, should seek medical advice.
Appendix
NOTE 1.--(See p. 24.)
For suffering and even death of unmated females, see _e.g._
MARSHALL, in _Quarterly Journal Microscopical Society_, Vol. 48,
1904, p. 323.
PARSONS, in _British Medical Journal_, October, 1904.
NOTE 2.--(See p. 31.)
A frequent mistake (made even by gynæcologists) is to confuse
menstruation with the "period of desire," which is generally
called "heat" in animals. Even in the most authoritative recent
text books, such phrases as "heat and menstruation" are very
common, thus coupling heat and menstruation as though they were
equivalents, while the older books quite explicitly look on the
menstrual period in women as corresponding to desire of "heat"
in animals. This error has even been repeated very recently in
the _Proceedings_ of the Royal Society of Medicine.[13]
[13] See Dr. Raymond Crawfurd's mistaken statement that "the
identity of oestrus, or 'heat' in the lower animals and of
menstruation in the human female, admits of no doubt." P. 62
_Proc._ Roy. Soc. Medicine, vol. 9., 1916.
Some physiologists have studied this subject in several of the
higher animals, and now realise that the time of desire is
physiologically distinct from the phase which is represented by
menstruation in women. It seems to be fairly well established
that in women menstruation is caused by an internal secretion of
the ovaries (_c.f._ p. 61), and is not directly due to ovulation,
though it must have some connection with it.[14]
[14] The best modern account of these complex subjects will
be found in the advanced text-book, "The Physiology of
Reproduction," pp. xvii., 706, by F. H. A. Marshall. Reference
may be made to original papers by J. Beard in the _Anat.
Anzeiger_ for 1897; and by Heape in the _Philosophical Trans._
Royal Society, 1894, 97.
The most that modern science appears to have attained is briefly
summarised in the following quotation from Marshall ("The
Physiology of Reproduction," p. 69): "According to Martin and
certain other writers, the human, female often experiences a
distinct post-menstrual oestrus [Modern research has recognised
a period when the female animal is ready for impregnation, which
is called the oestrus, and a preparatory series of physiological
changes called the pro-estrous phase.--M.C.S.], at which sexual
desire is greater than at other times; so that, although
conception can occur throughout the intermenstrual periods, it
would seem probable that originally coition was restricted to
definite periods of oestrus following menstrual or pro-estrous
periods in women, as in females of other mammalia. On this point
Heape writes as follows: 'This special time for oestrus in the
human female has very frequently been denied, and, no doubt,
modern civilisation and modern social life do much to check
the natural sexual instinct where there is undue strain on the
constitution, or to stimulate it at other times where extreme
vigour is the result. For these reasons a definite period of
oestrus may readily be interfered with, but the instinct is, I
am convinced, still marked.'"
In nearly all wild animals there is a definite period for sexual
excitement, very commonly just at that time of the year which
fits into the span of gestation, so that the young are born
at the season which gives them the best chance to grow up. In
animals the period of desire, the ovulation (or setting free of
the female germ or unfertilised egg-cell) and the time of the
birth of the young, are all co-related harmoniously. The male
animal is only allowed to approach the female when the natural
longing for union is upon her. Among human beings, the only race
which seems to have long periods of sexual quiescence at all
comparable with those natural to the animals are the Esquimaux,
who appear to pass many months without any unions of the men and
women.
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* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The footnote on page 17 says "The italics are mine.--M. C. S.",
however, there are no italics found in the designated paragraph.
Minor typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected
without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have
been retained as printed.
The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the
transcriber and is placed in the public domain.