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PSYCHOLOGY AND
SOCIAL SANITY
BY
HUGO MÜNSTERBERG
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
1914
_Copyright, 1914, by_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian_
To
DR. I. ADLER
IN FRIENDSHIP
PREFACE
It has always seemed to me a particular duty of the psychologist from
time to time to leave his laboratory and with his little contribution
to serve the outside interests of the community. Our practical life is
filled with psychological problems which have to be solved somehow,
and if everything is left to commonsense and to unscientific fancies
about the mind, confusion must result, and the psychologist who stands
aloof will be to blame.
Hence I tried in my little book "On the Witness Stand" to discuss for
those interested in law the value of exact psychology for the problems
of the courtroom. In "Psychotherapy" I showed the bearing of a
scientific study of the mind on medicine. In "Psychology and the
Teacher" I outlined its consequences for educational problems. In
"Psychology and Industrial Efficiency" I studied the importance of
exact psychology for commerce and industry. And I continue this series
by the present little volume, which speaks of psychology's possible
service to social sanity. I cannot promise that even this will be the
last, as I have not yet touched on psychology's relation to religion,
to art, and to politics.
The field which I have approached this time demanded a different kind
of treatment from that in the earlier books. There I had aimed at a
certain systematic completeness. When we come to the social questions,
such a method would be misleading, as any systematic study of these
psychological factors is still a hope for the future. Many parts of
the field have never yet been touched by the plow of the psychologist.
The only method which seems possible to-day is to select a few
characteristic topics of social discussion and to outline for each of
them in what sense a psychologist might contribute to the solution or
might at least further the analysis of the problem. The aim is to show
that our social difficulties are ultimately dependent upon mental
conditions which ought to be cleared up with the methods of modern
psychology.
I selected as illustrations those social questions which seemed to me
most significant for our period. A few of them admitted an approach
with experimental methods, others merely a dissection of the
psychological and psychophysiological roots. The problems of sex, of
socialism, and of superstition seemed to me especially important, and
if some may blame me for overlooking the problem of suffrage, I can at
least refer to the chapter on the jury, which comes quite near to this
militant question.
Most of this material appears here for the first time. The chapter on
thought transference, however, was published in shorter form in the
_Metropolitan Magazine_, that on the jury, also abbreviated, in the
_Century Magazine_, and that on naïve psychology in the _Atlantic
Monthly_. The paper on sexual education is an argument, and at the
same time an answer in a vivid discussion. Last summer I published in
the New York _Times_ an article which dealt with the sex problem. It
led to vehement attacks from all over the country. The present long
paper replies to them fully. I hope sincerely that it will be my last
word in the matter. The advocates of sexual talk now have the floor;
from now on I shall stick to the one policy in which I firmly believe,
the policy of silence.
HUGO MÜNSTERBERG.
Cambridge, Mass., January, 1914.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. SEX EDUCATION 3
II. SOCIALISM 71
III. THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERWORLD 113
IV. THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE 141
V. THE MIND OF THE JURYMAN 181
VI. EFFICIENCY ON THE FARM 205
VII. SOCIAL SINS IN ADVERTISING 229
VIII. THE MIND OF THE INVESTOR 253
IX. SOCIETY AND THE DANCE 273
X. NAÏVE PSYCHOLOGY 291
PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SOCIAL SANITY
I
SEX EDUCATION
The time is not long past when the social question was understood to
mean essentially the question of the distribution of profit and wages.
The feeling was that everything would be all right in our society, if
this great problem of labour and property could be solved rightly. But
in recent years the chief meaning of the phrase has shifted. Of all
the social questions the predominant, the fundamentally social one,
seems nowadays the problem of sex, with all its side issues of social
evils and social vice. It is as if society feels instinctively that
these problems touch still deeper layers of the social structure. Even
the fights about socialism and the whole capitalistic order do not any
longer stir the conscience of the community so strongly as the grave
concern about the family. All public life is penetrated by sexual
discussions, magazines and newspapers are overflooded with
considerations of the sexual problem, on the stage one play of sexual
reform is pushed off by the next, the pulpit resounds with sermons on
sex, sex education enters into the schools, legislatures and courts
are drawn into this whirl of sexualized public opinion; the
old-fashioned policy of silence has been crushed by a policy of
thundering outcry, which is heard in every home and every nursery.
This loudness of debate is surely an effect of the horror with which
the appalling misery around us is suddenly discovered. All which was
hidden by prudery is disclosed in its viciousness, and this outburst
of indignation is the result. Yet it would never have swollen to this
overwhelming flood if the nation were not convinced that this is the
only way to cause a betterment and a new hope. The evil was the result
of the silence itself. Free speech and public discussion alone can
remove the misery and cleanse the social life. The parents must know,
and the teachers must know, and the boys must know, and the girls must
know, if the abhorrent ills are ever to be removed.
But there are two elements in the situation which ought to be
separated in sober thought. There may be agreement on the one and yet
disagreement on the other. It is hardly possible to disagree on the
one factor of the situation, the existence of horrid calamities, and
of deplorable abuses in the world of sex, evils of which surely the
average person knew rather little, and which were systematically
hidden from society, and above all, from the youth, by the traditional
method of reticence. To recognize these abscesses in the social
organism necessarily means for every decent being the sincere and
enthusiastic hope of removing them. There cannot be any dissent. It is
a holy war, if society fights for clean living, for protection of its
children against sexual ruin and treacherous diseases, against white
slavery and the poisoning of married life. But while there must be
perfect agreement about the moral duty of the social community, there
can be the widest disagreement about the right method of carrying on
this fight. The popular view of the day is distinctly that as these
evils were hidden from sight by the policy of silence, the right
method of removing them from the world must be the opposite scheme,
the policy of unveiled speech. The overwhelming majority has come to
this conclusion as if it were a matter of course. The man on the
street, and what is more surprising, the woman in the home, are
convinced that, if we disapprove of those evils, we must first of all
condemn the silence of our forefathers. They feel as if he who sticks
to the belief in silence must necessarily help the enemies of society,
and become responsible for the alarming increase of sexual affliction
and crime. They refuse to see that on the one side the existing facts
and the burning need for their removal, and on the other side the
question of the best method and best plan for the fight, are entirely
distinct, and that the highest intention for social reform may go
together with the deepest conviction that the popular method of the
present day is doing incalculable harm, is utterly wrong, and is one
of the most dangerous causes of that evil which it hopes to destroy.
The psychologist, I am convinced, must here stand on the unpopular
side. To be sure, he is not unaccustomed to such an unfortunate
position in the camp of the disfavoured minority. Whenever a great
movement sweeps through the civilized world, it generally starts from
the recognition of a great social wrong and from the enthusiasm for a
thorough change. But these wrongs, whether they have political or
social, economic or moral character, are always the products of both
physical and psychical causes. The public thinks first of all of the
physical ones. There are railroad accidents: therefore improve the
physical technique of the signal system; there is drunkenness:
therefore remove the whiskey bottle. The psychical element is by no
means ignored. Yet it is treated as if mere insight into the cause,
mere good will and understanding, are sufficient to take care of the
mental factors involved. The social reformers are therefore always
discussing the existing miseries, the possibilities of improvements in
the world of things, and the necessity of spreading knowledge and
enthusiasm. They do not ask the advice of the psychologist, but only
his jubilant approval, and they always feel surprised if he has to
acknowledge that there seems to him something wrong in the
calculation. The psychologist knows that the mental elements cannot be
brought under such a simple formula according to which good will and
insight are sufficient; he knows that the mental mechanism which is at
work there has its own complicated laws, which must be considered with
the same care for detail as those technical schemes for improvement.
The psychologist is not astonished that though the technical
improvements of the railways are increased, yet one serious accident
follows another, as long as no one gives attention to the study of the
engineer's mind. Nor is he surprised that while the area of
prohibition is expanding rapidly, the consumption of beer and whiskey
is nevertheless growing still more quickly, as long as the psychology
of the drinker is neglected. The trusts and the labour movements,
immigration and the race question, the peace movement and a score of
other social problems show exactly the same picture--everywhere
insight into old evils, everywhere enthusiasm for new goals,
everywhere attention to outside factors, and everywhere negligence of
those functions of the mind which are independent of the mere will of
the individual.
But now since a new great wave of discussion has arisen, and the
sexual problem is stirring the nation, the psychologist's faith in the
unpopular policy puts him into an especially difficult position.
Whenever he brings from his psychological studies arguments which
point to the errors in public prejudices, he can present his facts in
full array. Nothing hinders him from speaking with earnestness against
the follies of hasty and short-sighted methods in every concern of
public life, if he has the courage to oppose the fancies of the day.
But the fight in favour of the policy of silence is different. If he
begins to shout his arguments, he himself breaks that rôle of silence
which he recommends. He speaks for a conviction, which demands from
him first of all that he shall not speak. The more eagerly he spreads
his science, the more he must put himself in the wrong before his own
conscience. He is thus thrown into an unavoidable conflict. If he is
silent, the cause of his opponents will prosper, and if he objects
with full arguments, his adversaries have a perfect right to claim
that he himself sets a poor example and that his psychology helps
still more to increase that noisy discussion which he denounces as
ruinous to the community. But in this contradictory situation the
circle must be broken somewhere, and even at the risk of adding to the
dangerous tumult which he condemns, the psychologist must break his
silence in order to plead for silence. I shall have to go into all the
obnoxious detail, for if I yielded to my feeling of disgust, my
reticence would not help the cause while all others are shouting. I
break silence in order to convince others that if they were silent,
too, our common social hopes and wishes would be nearer to actual
fulfilment.
But let us acknowledge from the start that we stand before an
extremely complicated question, in which no routine formula can do
justice to the manifoldness of problems. Most of these discussions are
misshaped from the beginning by the effort to deal with the whole
social sex problem, while only one or another feature is seriously
considered. Now it is white slavery, and now the venereal diseases;
now the demands of eugenics, and now the dissipation of boys; now the
influence of literature and drama, and now the effect of sexual
education in home and school; now the medical situation and the
demands of hygiene, and now the moral situation and the demands of
religion; now the influence on the feministic movement, and now on art
and social life; now the situation in the educated middle classes, and
now in the life of the millions. We ought to disentangle the various
threads in this confusing social tissue and follow each by itself. We
shall see soon enough that not only the various elements of the
situation awake very different demands, but that often any single
feature may lead to social postulates which interfere with each other.
Any regulation prescription falsifies the picture of the true needs of
the time.
II
We certainly follow the present trend of the discussion if we single
out first of all the care for the girls who are in danger of becoming
victims of private or professional misuse as the result of their
ignorance of the world of erotics. This type of alarming news most
often reaches the imagination of the newspaper reader nowadays, and
this is the appeal of the most sensational plays. The spectre of the
white slavery danger threatens the whole nation, and the gigantic
number of illegitimate births seems fit to shake the most indifferent
citizen. Every naïve girl appears a possible victim of man's lust,
and all seem to agree that every girl should be acquainted with the
treacherous dangers which threaten her chastity. The new programme
along this line centres in one remedy: the girls of all classes ought
to be informed about the real conditions before they have an
opportunity to come into any bodily contact with men. How far the
school is to spread this helpful knowledge, how far the wisdom of
parents is to fill these blanks of information, how far serious
literature is to furnish such science, and how far the stage or even
the film is to bring it to the masses, remains a secondary feature of
the scheme, however much it is discussed among the social reformers.
The whole new wisdom proceeds according to the simple principle which
has proved its value in the field of popular hygiene. The health of
the nation has indeed been greatly improved since the alarming
ignorance in the matters of prophylaxis in disease has been
systematically fought by popular information. If the mosquito or the
hookworm or the fly is responsible for diseases from which hundreds of
thousands have to suffer, there can be no wiser and straighter policy
than to spread this knowledge to every corner of the country. The
teachers in the schoolroom and the writers in the popular magazines
cannot do better than to repeat the message, until every adult and
every child knows where the enemy may be found and helps to destroy
the insects and to avoid the dangers of contact. This is the formula
after which those reformers want to work who hold the old-fashioned
policy of silence in sexual matters to be obsolete. Of course they aim
toward a mild beginning. It may start with beautiful descriptions of
blossoms and of fruits, of eggs and of hens, before it comes to the
account of sexual intercourse and human embryos, but if the talking is
to have any effect superior to not talking, the concrete sexual
relations must be impressed upon the imagination of the girl before
she becomes sixteen years of age.
Here is the real place for the psychological objection. It is not true
that you can bring such sexual knowledge into the mind of a girl in
the period of her development with the same detachment with which you
can deposit in her mind the knowledge about mosquitoes and houseflies.
That prophylactic information concerning the influence of the insects
on diseases remains an isolated group of ideas, which has no other
influence on the mind than the intended one, the influence of guiding
the actions in a reasonable direction. The information about her
sexual organs and the effects on the sexual organism of men may also
have as one of its results a certain theoretical willingness to avoid
social dangers. But the far stronger immediate effect is the
psychophysiological reverberation in the whole youthful organism with
strong reactions on its blood vessels and on its nerves. The
individual differences are extremely great here. On every social level
we find cool natures whose frigidity would inhibit strong influences
in these organic directions. But they are the girls who have least to
fear anyhow. With a much larger number the information, however slowly
and tactfully imparted, must mean a breaking down of inhibitions which
held sexual feelings and sexual curiosity in check.
The new ideas become the centre of attention, the whole world begins
to appear in a new light, everything which was harmless becomes full
of meaning and suggestion, new problems awake, and the new ideas
irradiate over the whole mental mechanism. The new problems again
demand their answers. Just the type of girl to whom the lure might
become dangerous will be pushed to ever new inquiries, and if the
policy of information is accepted in principle, it would be only wise
to furnish her with all the supplementary knowledge which covers the
multitude of sexual perversions and social malpractices of which
to-day many a clean married woman has not the faintest idea. But to
such a girl who knows all, the surroundings appear in the new
glamour. She understands now how her body is the object of desire, she
learns to feel her power, and all this works backward on her sexual
irritation, which soon overaccentuates everything which stands in
relation to sex. Soon she lives in an atmosphere of high sexual
tension in which the sound and healthy interests of a young life have
to suffer by the hysterical emphasis on sexuality. The Freudian
psychoanalysis, which threatens to become the fad of the American
neurologists, probably goes too far when it seeks the cause for all
neurasthenic and hysteric disturbances in repressed sexual ideas of
youth. But no psychotherapist can doubt that the havoc which secret
sexual thoughts may bring to the neural life, especially of the
unbalanced, is tremendous. Broken health and a distorted view of the
social world with an unsound, unclean, and ultimately immoral emphasis
on the sexual relations may thus be the sad result for millions of
girls, whose girlhood under the policy of the past would have remained
untainted by the sordid ideas of man as an animal.
Yet the calamity would not be so threatening if the effect of sexual
instruction were really confined to the putrid influence on the young
imagination. The real outcome is not only such a revolution in the
thoughts, but the power which it gains over action. We have only to
consider the mechanism which nature has provided. The sexual desire
belongs to the same group of human instincts as the desire for food or
the desire for sleep, all of which aim toward a certain biological
end, which must be fulfilled in order to secure life. The desire for
food and sleep serves the individual himself, the desire for the
sexual act serves the race. In every one of these cases nature has
furnished the body with a wonderful psychophysical mechanism which
enforces the outcome automatically. In every case we have a kind of
circulatory process into which mental excitements and physiological
changes enter, and these are so subtly related to each other that one
always increases the other, until the maximum desire is reached, to
which the will must surrender. Nature needs this automatic function;
otherwise the vital needs of individual and race might be suppressed
by other interests, and neglected. In the case of the sexual instinct,
the mutual relations between the various parts of this circulatory
process are especially complicated. Here it must be sufficient to say
that the idea of sexual processes produces dilation of blood vessels
in the sexual sphere, and that this physiological change itself
becomes the source and stimulus for more vivid sexual feelings, which
associate themselves with more complex sexual thoughts. These in their
turn reinforce again the physiological effect on the sexual organ, and
so the play goes on until the irritation of the whole sexual apparatus
and the corresponding sexual mental emotions reach a height at which
the desire for satisfaction becomes stronger than any ordinary motives
of sober reason.
This is the great trick of nature in its incessant service to the
conservation of the animal race. Monogamic civilization strives to
regulate and organize these race instincts and to raise culture above
the mere lure of nature. But that surely cannot be done by merely
ignoring that automatic mechanism of nature. On the contrary, the
first demand of civilization must be to make use of this inborn
psychophysical apparatus for its own ideal human purposes, and to
adjust the social behaviour most delicately to the unchangeable
mechanism. The first demand, accordingly, ought to be that we excite
no one of these mutually reinforcing parts of the system, neither the
organs nor the thoughts nor the feelings, as each one would heighten
the activities of the others, and would thus become the starting point
of an irrepressible demand for sexual satisfaction. The average boy or
girl cannot give theoretical attention to the thoughts concerning
sexuality without the whole mechanism for reinforcement automatically
entering into action. We may instruct with the best intention to
suppress, and yet our instruction itself must become a source of
stimulation, which necessarily creates the desire for improper
conduct. The policy of silence showed an instinctive understanding of
this fundamental situation. Even if that traditional policy had had no
positive purpose, its negative function, its leaving at rest the
explosive sexual system of the youth, must be acknowledged as one of
those wonderful instinctive procedures by which society protects
itself.
The reformer might object that he gives not only information, but
depicts the dangers and warns against the ruinous effects. He
evidently fancies that such a black frame around the luring picture
will be a strong enough countermotive to suppress the sensual desire.
But while the faint normal longing can well be balanced by the trained
respect for the mysterious unknown, the strongly accentuated craving
of the girl who knows may ill be balanced by any thought of possible
disagreeable consequences. Still more important, however, is a second
aspect. The girl to whom the world sex is the great taboo is really
held back from lascivious life by an instinctive respect and anxiety.
As soon as girl and boy are knowers, all becomes a matter of naked
calculation. What they have learned from their instruction in home and
school and literature and drama is that the unmarried woman must avoid
becoming a mother. Far from enforcing a less sensuous life, this only
teaches them to avoid the social opprobrium by going skilfully to
work. The old-fashioned morality sermon kept the youth on the paths of
clean life; the new-fashioned sexual instruction stimulates not only
their sensual longings, but also makes it entirely clear to the young
that they have nothing whatever to fear if they yield to their
voluptuousness but make careful use of their new physiological
knowledge. From my psychotherapeutic activity, I know too well how
much vileness and perversity are gently covered by the term flirtation
nowadays in the circle of those who have learned early to conceal the
traces. The French type of the demi-vierge is just beginning to play
its rôle in the new world. The new policy will bring in the great day
for her, and with it a moral poisoning which must be felt in the whole
social atmosphere.
III
We have not as yet stopped to examine whether at least the propaganda
for the girl's sexual education starts rightly when it takes for
granted that ignorance is the chief source for the fall of women. The
sociological student cannot possibly admit this as a silent
presupposition. In many a pathetic confession we have read as to the
past of fallen girls that they were not aware of the consequences. But
it would be utterly arbitrary to construe even such statements as
proofs that they were unaware of the limits which society demanded
from them. If a man breaks into a neighbour's garden by night to
steal, he may have been ignorant of the fact that shooting traps were
laid there for thieves, but that does not make him worthy of the pity
which we may offer to him who suffers by ignorance only. The
melodramatic idea that a straightforward girl with honest intent is
abducted by strangers and held by physical force in places of
degradation can simply be dismissed from a discussion of the general
situation. The chances that any decent man or woman will be killed by
a burglar are a hundred times larger than that a decent girl without
fault of her own will become the victim of a white slavery system
which depends upon physical force. Since the new policy of antisilence
has filled the newspapers with the most filthy gossip about such
imaginary horrors, it is not surprising that frivolous girls who elope
with their lovers later invent stories of criminal detention, first by
half poisoning and afterward by handcuffing. Of all the systematic,
thorough investigations, that of the Vice Commission of Philadelphia
seems so far the most instructive and most helpful. It shows the
picture of a shameful and scandalous social situation, and yet, in
spite of years of most insistent search by the best specialists, it
says in plain words that "no instances of actual physical slavery have
been specifically brought to our attention."
This does not contradict in the least the indubitable fact that in all
large cities white slavery exists in the wider sense of the word--that
is, that many girls are kept in a life of shame because the escape
from it is purposely made difficult to them. They are held constantly
in debt and are made to believe that their immunity from arrest
depends upon their keeping on good terms with the owners of disorderly
houses. But the decisive point for us is that while they are held back
at a time when they know too much, they are not brought there by force
at a time when they know too little. The Philadelphia Vice Report
analyzes carefully the conditions and motives which have brought the
prostitutes to their life of shame. The results of those hundreds of
interviews point nowhere to ignorance. The list of reasons for
entering upon such a life brings information like this: "She liked
the man," "Wanted to see what immoral life was like," "Sneaked out for
pleasure, got into bad company," "Would not go to school, frequented
picture shows, got into bad company," "Thought she would have a better
time," "Envied girls with fine clothes and gay time," "Wanted to go to
dances and theatres," "Went with girls who drank, influenced by them,"
"Liked to go to moving picture shows," "Did not care what happened
when forbidden to marry." With these personal reasons go the economic
ones: "Heard immorality was an easy way to make money, which she
needed," "Decided that this was the easiest way of earning money,"
"Wanted pretty clothes," "Never liked hard work," "Tired of drudgery
at home," "Could make more money this way than in a factory." Only
once is it reported: "Chloroformed at a party, taken to man's house
and ruined by him." If that is true, we have there simply a case of
actual crime, against which nobody can be protected by mere knowledge.
In short, a thorough study indicates clearly that the girl who falls
is not pushed passively into her misery.
Surely it is alarming to read that last year in one single large city
of the Middle West two hundred school girls have become mothers, but
whoever studies the real sociological material cannot doubt that every
one of those two hundred knew very clearly that she was doing
something which she ought not to do. Every one of them had knowledge
enough, and if the knowledge was often vague and dirty, the effect
would not have been improved by substituting for it more knowledge,
even if it were clearer and scientifically more correct. What every
one of those two hundred girls needed was less knowledge--that is,
less familiarity of the mind with this whole group of erotic ideas,
and through this a greater respect for and fear of the unknown. Nobody
who really understands the facts of the sexual world with the insight
of the physician will deny that nevertheless treacherous dangers and
sources of misfortune may be near to any girl, and that they might be
avoided if she knew the truth. But then it is no longer a question of
a general truth, which can be implanted by any education, but a
specific truth concerning the special man. The husband whom she
marries may be a scoundrel who infects her with ruinous disease, but
even if she had read all the medical books beforehand it would not
have helped her.
IV
The situation of the boys seems in many respects different. They are
on the aggressive side. There is no danger that by their lack of
knowledge they will be lured into a life of humiliation, but the
danger of their ruin is more imminent and the risk which parents run
with them is far worse. Any hour of reckless fun may bring them a life
of cruel suffering. The havoc which venereal diseases bring to the men
of all social classes is tremendous. The Report of the Surgeon-General
of the Army for 1911 states that with the mean strength of about
seventy-three thousand men in the army, the admissions to the
hospitals on account of venereal diseases were over thirteen thousand.
That is, of any hundred men at least eighteen were ill from sexual
infection. The New York County Hospital Society reports two hundred
and forty-three thousand cases of venereal disease treated in one
year, as compared with forty-one thousand five hundred and eighty-five
cases of all other communicable diseases. This horrible sapping of the
physical energies of the nation, with the devastating results in the
family, with the poisoning of the germs for the next generation, and
with the disastrous diseases of brain and spinal cord, is surely the
gravest material danger which exists. How small compared with that the
thousands of deaths from crime and accidents and wrecks! how
insignificant the harvest of human life which any war may reap! And
all this can ultimately be avoided, not only by abstinence, but by
strict hygiene and rigorous social reorganization. At this moment we
have only to ask how much of a change for the better can be expected
from a mere sexual education of the boys.
From a psychological point of view, this situation appears much more
difficult than that of the girls. All psychological motives speak for
a policy of silence in the girls' cases. For the boys, on the other
hand, the importance of some hygienic instruction cannot be denied. A
knowledge of the disastrous consequences of sexual diseases must have
a certain influence for good, and the grave difficulty lies only in
the fact that nevertheless all the arguments which speak against the
sexual education of the girls hold for the boys, too. The harm to the
youthful imagination, the starting of erotic thoughts with sensual
excitement in consequence of any kind of sexual instruction must be
still greater for the young man than for the young woman, as he is
more easily able to satisfy his desires. We must thus undoubtedly
expect most evil consequences from the instruction of the boys; and
yet we cannot deny the possible advantages. Their hygienic
consciousness may be enriched and their moral consciousness tainted by
the same hour of well-meant instruction. With the girls an energetic
no is the only sane answer; with the boys the social reformer may well
hesitate between the no and the yes. The balance between fear and hope
may be very even there. Yet, however depressing such a decision may
be, the psychologist must acknowledge that even here the loss by frank
discussion is greater than the gain.
A serious warning lies in the well-known fact that of all professional
students, the young medical men have the worst reputation for their
reckless indulgence in an erotic life. They know most, and it is
psychologically not surprising that just on that account they are most
reckless. The instinctive fear of the half knower has left them; they
live in an illusory safety, the danger has become familiar to them,
and they deceive themselves with the idea that the particular case is
harmless. If the steps to be taken were to be worked out at the
writing desk in cool mood and sober deliberation, the knowledge would
at least often be a certain help, but when the passionate desire has
taken hold of the mind and the organic tension of the irritated body
works on the mind, there is no longer a fair fight with those sober
reasons. The action of the glands controls the psychophysical
reactions, so that the ideas which would lead to opposite response are
inhibited. Alcohol and the imitative mood of social gayety may help to
dull those hygienic fears, but on the whole the mere sexual longing
is sufficient to break down the reminiscence of medical warning. The
situation for the boy is then ultimately this: A full knowledge of the
chances of disease will start in hours of sexual coolness on the one
side a certain resolution to abstain from sexual intercourse, and on
the other side a certain intention to use protective means for the
prevention of venereal diseases. As soon as the sexual desire awakes,
the decision of the first kind will become the less effective, and
will be the more easily overrun the more firmly the idea is fixed that
such preventive means are at his disposal. At the same time the
discussion of all these sexual matters, even with their gruesome
background, will force on the mind a stronger engagement with sexual
thought than had ever before occurred, and this will find its
discharge in an increased sexual tension. On the other hand, this new
knowledge of means of safety will greatly increase the playing with
danger. Of course it may be said that the education ought not to refer
only to sexual hygiene, but that it ought to be a moral education.
That, however, is an entirely different story. We shall speak about
it; we shall put our faith in it, but at present we are talking of
that specific sexual education which is the fad of the day.
V
Sexual education, to be sure, does not necessarily mean education of
young people only. The adults who know, the married men and women of
the community, may not know enough to protect their sons and
daughters. And the need for their full information may stretch far
beyond their personal family interests. They are to form the public
opinion which must stand behind every real reform, their consciences
must be stirred, the hidden misery must be brought before them. Thus
they need sexual education as much as the youngsters, only they need
it in a form which appeals to them and makes them willing to listen;
and our reformers have at last discovered the form. The public must be
taught from the stage of the theatre. The magazine with its short
stories on sex incidents, the newspaper with its sensational court
reports, may help to carry the gruesome information to the masses, but
the deepest impression will always be made when actual human beings
are shown on the stage in their appealing distress, as living
accusations against the rotten foundations of society. The stage is
overcrowded with sexual drama and the social community inundated with
discussions about it.
It is not easy to find the right attitude toward this red-light
literature. Many different interests are concerned, and it is often
extremely difficult to disentangle them. Three such interests stand
out very clearly: the true æsthetic one, the purely commercial one,
and the sociological one. It would be wonderful if the æsthetic
culture of our community had reached a development at which the
æsthetic attitude toward a play would be absolutely controlling. If we
could trust this æsthetic instinct, no other question would be
admissible but the one whether the play is a good work of art or not.
The social inquiry whether the human fates which the poet shows us
suggests legislative reforms or hygienic improvements would be
entirely inhibited in the truly artistic consciousness. It would make
no difference to the spectator whether the action played in Chicago or
Petersburg, whether it dealt with men and women of to-day or of two
thousand years ago. The human element would absorb our interest, and
as far as the joys and the miseries of sexual life entered into the
drama, they would be accepted as a social background, just as the
landscape is the natural background. A community which is æsthetically
mature enough to appreciate Ibsen does not leave "The Ghosts" with
eugenic reform ideas. The inherited paralysis on a luetic basis is
accepted there as a tragic element of human fate. On the height of
true art the question of decency or indecency has disappeared, too.
The nude marble statue is an inspiration, and not a possible stimulus
to frivolous sensuality, if the mind is æsthetically cultivated. The
nakedness of erotic passion in the drama of high æsthetic intent
before a truly educated audience has not the slightest similarity to
the half-draped chorus of sensual operetta before a gallery which
wants to be tickled. But who would claim that the dramatic literature
of the sexual problems with which the last seasons have filled the
theatres from the orchestra to the second balcony has that sublime
æsthetic intent, or that it was brought to a public which even posed
in an æsthetic attitude! As far as any high aim was involved, it was
the antiæsthetic moral value. The plays presented themselves as
appeals to the social conscience, and yet this idealistic
interpretation would falsify the true motives on both sides. The crowd
went because it found the satisfaction of sexual curiosity and erotic
tension through the unveiled discussion of social perversities. And
the managers produced the plays because the lurid subjects with their
appeal to the low instincts, and therefore with their sure commercial
success, could here escape the condemnation of police and decent
public as they were covered by the pretence of social reform. How far
the writers of the play of prostitution prostituted art in order to
share the commercial profits in this wave of sexual reform may better
remain undiscussed.
What do these plays really teach us? I think I have seen almost all of
them, and the composite picture in my mind is one of an absurdly
distorted, exaggerated, and misleading view of actual social
surroundings, suggesting wrong problems, wrong complaints, and wrong
remedies. When I studied the reports of the vice commissions of the
large American and European cities, the combined image in my
consciousness was surely a stirring and alarming one, but it had no
similarity with the character of those melodramatic vagaries. Even the
best and most famous of these fabrications throw wrong sidelights on
the social problems, and by a false emphasis inhibit the feeling for
the proportions of life. If in "The Fight" the father, a senator,
visits a disorderly house, unlocks the room in which the freshest
fruit is promised him, and finds there his young daughter who has just
been abducted by force, the facts themselves are just as absurd as the
following scenes, in which this father shows that the little episode
did not make the slightest impression on him. He coolly continues to
fight against those politicians who want to remove such places from
the town. In "Bought and Paid For" marriage itself is presented as
white slavery. The woman has to tolerate the caresses of her husband,
even when he has drunk more champagne than is wise for him. The play
makes us believe that she must suffer his love because she was poor
before she married and he has paid her with a life of luxury. Where
are we to end if such logic in questions of sexual intercourse is to
benumb common sense? England brought us "The Blindness of Virtue," the
story of a boy and a girl whom we are to believe to be constantly in
grave danger because they are ignorant, while in reality nothing
happens, and everything suggests that the moral danger for this
particular girl would have been much greater if she had known how to
enjoy love without consequences.
The most sensational specimen of the group was "The Lure." It would be
absurd to face this production from any æsthetic point of view. It
would be unthinkable that a work of such crudeness could satisfy a
metropolitan public, even if some of the most marked faults of
construction were acknowledged as the results of the forceful
expurgation of the police. Nevertheless, the only significance of the
play lies outside of its artistic sphere, and belongs entirely to its
effort to help in this great social reform. The only strong applause,
which probably repeats itself every evening, broke out when the old,
good-natured physician said that as soon as women have the vote the
white slavers will be sent to the electric chair. But it is worth
while to examine the sermon which a play of this type really preaches,
and to become aware of the illusions with which the thoughtless public
receives this message. All which we see there on the stage is taken by
the masses as a remonstrance against the old, cowardly policy of
silence, and the play is to work as a great proof that complete
frankness and clear insight can help the daughters of the community.
The whole play contains the sad story of two girls. There is Nell.
What happened to her? She is the daughter of a respectable banker in a
small town. A scoundrel, a commercial white slaver, a typical Broadway
"cadet" with luring manners, goes to the small town, finds access to
the church parlours, is introduced to the girl, and after some
courtship he elopes with her and makes her believe that they are
correctly married. After the fraudulent marriage with a falsified
license he brings her into a metropolitan disorderly house and holds
her there by force. Of course this is brutal stage exaggeration, but
even if this impossibility were true, what conclusion are we to draw,
and what advice are we to give? Does it mean that in future a young
girl who meets a nice chap in the church socials of her native town
ought to keep away from him, because she ought all the time to think
that he might be a delegate of a Broadway brothel? To fill a girl with
suspicions in a case like that of Nell would be no wiser than to tell
the ordinary man that he ought not to deposit his earnings in any
bank, because the cashier might run away with it. To be sure, it would
have been better if Nell had not eloped, but is there any knowledge of
sexual questions which would have helped her to a wiser decision? On
the contrary, she said she did elope because her life in the small
town was so uninteresting, and she felt so lonely and was longing for
the life of love. She knew all which was to be known then, and if
there had been any power to hold her back from the foolish elopement
it could have been only a kind of instinctive respect for the
traditional demands of society, that kind of respect which grows up
from the policy of silence and is trampled to the ground by the policy
of loud talk.
The other girl in the play is Sylvia. Her fate is very different. She
needs melodramatic money for her sick mother. Her earnings in the
department store are not enough. The sly owner of a treacherous
employment agency has given her a card over the counter, advising her
to come there, when she needs extra employment. The agency keeps open
in the evening. She tells her mother that she will seek some extra
work there. The mother warns her that there are so many traps for
decent girls, and she answers that she is not afraid and that she will
be on the lookout. She goes there, and the skilful owner of the agency
shows her how miserable the pay would be for any decent evening work,
and how easily she can earn all the money she needs for her mother if
she is willing to be paid by men. At first she refuses with pathos,
but under the suggestive pressure of luring arguments she slowly
weakens, and finally consents to exchange her street gown for a
fantastic costume of half-nakedness. The feelings of the audience are
saved by the detective who breaks in at the decisive moment, but the
arguments of the advocates of sexual education cannot possibly be
saved after that voluntary yielding. Sylvia knows what she has to
expect, and no more intense perusal of literature on the subject of
prostitution would have changed her mind. What else in the world could
have helped her in such an hour but a still stronger feeling of
instinctive repugnance? If Sylvia was actually to put her fate on a
mere calculation, with a full knowledge of all the sociological facts
involved, she probably reasoned wrongly in dealing with this
particular employment agency, but was on the whole not so wrong in
deciding that a frivolous life would be the most reasonable way out of
her financial difficulties, as her sexual education would include, of
course, a sufficient knowledge of all which is needed to avoid
conception and infection. She would therefore know that after a little
while of serving the lust of men she would be just as intact and just
as attractive. If society has the wish to force Sylvia to a decision
in the opposite direction, only one way is open: to make the belief in
the sacred value of virtue so deep and powerful that any mere
reasoning and calculation loses its strength. But that is possible
only through an education which relies on the instinctive respect and
mystical belief. Only a policy of silence could have saved Sylvia,
because that alone would have implanted in her mind an ineffable idea
of unknown horrors which would await her when she broke the sacred
ring of chastity.