In this lecture I shall set forth the proposition that a definitely
organized scheme of education should aim directly at making young
people strict adherents of the established code of sexual morality. For
brevity, I shall occasionally speak of morality and immorality,
omitting the qualifying word "sexual."
[Sidenote: Definition of sexual morality.]
This lecture, in fact this entire series of lectures on sex-education,
is based on the fundamental proposition that sexual morality demands
that sexual union be restricted to monogamic marriage, and conversely,
that such sexual relation outside of marriage is immoral. Such a
definition of sexual morality is accepted by church and state and the
chief citizens in every civilized country. It is the only practical
definition which is satisfactory to the vast majority of educated
American men and women, even to those who believe in freedom of divorce
and in forgiveness for youthful transgressions of the accepted moral
code. Sexual morality has had changeable standards, and in other times
and countries custom has made polygamy and promiscuity acceptable as
moral; but the monogamic ideal of morality now prevails in the world's
best life.
[Sidenote: Morality in America and Europe.]
Monogamic morality as a protection for family life means much more in
America than in Europe. It is true that there is an astounding amount
of prostitution in America, but we should be grateful that our ideals
of the monogamic family have not been seriously influenced and seem to
be slowly but surely improving among our best people. As illustrations
of our adherence to monogamic law, let me give some facts for
comparison of America and continental Europe. In America, illegitimate
births are not accurately reported but are probably less than five per
cent of the total number for the whole country. Locally the proportion
is often very much higher. Thus in Washington, D.C., where (1914) over
ten thousand, chiefly negroes, live in alleys between the streets and
under extremely unhygienic and immoral conditions, fifty per cent of
the children are illegitimate, while but twenty per cent of the colored
children born of mothers living outside the alleys, and less than
eleven per cent of the total born of all races in the city are
illegitimate. In various small American regions with a white population
the proportion of illegitimacy is astoundingly high, but the average
for the entire country is hopefully low. In many German towns
statistics show above twenty-five per cent, and in the whole empire,
more than half the legitimate first-born children are conceived before
marriage. All writers, the German ones included, seem to agree that the
majority of Teutonic men and women enter into free unions before
marriage and public opinion does not severely condemn.
In many rural districts of England, France, and Sweden, and even in
London and Paris, a large percentage of the marriages are simply
legalization of free unions. In short, in all these countries the
monogamic ideal is not followed by a large percentage of people. It
must be remembered that the great majority of people involved in the
above figures are of the peasant and laboring classes; conditions are
quite different among women of the educated classes. These must
ultimately set the moral standards for the masses.
Our American conditions are quite different, especially outside of the
large cosmopolitan cities. It is impossible not to believe in the moral
integrity of the great majority of unmarried women in America.
Certainly even in our worst communities we have no such general
immorality of women as above European figures suggest. Perhaps
wholesale prostitution in which one public woman may be the mistress of
ten, twenty, or even fifty men, may tend to protect any equal number of
American women; whereas in Europe a peasant woman would probably be for
a time the paramour of one man, thus tending to make equal numbers of
immoral men and women.
However, it matters nothing for our present purposes what may be the
explanation of conditions of sexual promiscuity here or abroad. The one
great fact is that our national code of morality is a monogamic one,
approved as ideal even by many of those who fail to live strictly in
harmony with its dictates. Hence, all Americans who are prominently
interested in sex-education believe that it should aim to make our
young people more ready to accept and understand morality according to
the monogamic ideal.
Those who are interested in this problem of morality as related to
marriage should read Foerster's "Marriage and the Sex Problem."
[Sidenote: Relation of sex-hygiene and ethics.]
Among those who see the need of teaching sex-ethics as a part of the
larger outlook of sex-education, there are two points of view: (1)
those who favor the teaching of sex-ethics with the hope of preventing
the hygienic problems arising from immorality, and (2) those who
believe in sexual morality for its own sake or as an accepted code of
conduct.
The founders of the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis
placed sanitation first in the name and stated in the constitution that
"the object of this Society is to limit the spread of diseases which
have their origin in the Social Evil. It proposes to study every means,
sanitary, moral, and administrative, which promise to be most effective
for this purpose." Most of the papers that have been read at the
meetings of the Society have emphasized the sanitary aim as primary,
and the moral aim as a means to the hygienic end; but in the past three
years there has been a decided tendency towards placing emphasis upon
morality, and recently the executive committee of the Society voted to
propose the following revised statement: "The aim of this Society is to
promote the appreciation of the sacredness of human sexual relation,
and thereby to minimize the moral and physical evils resulting from
ignorance and vice." This change of emphasis is well expressed in
President Keyes's report to the Society (_Journal_, Vol. V, No. 1).
As to the relation between sex-hygiene and sex-ethics as phases of the
larger sex-education, there has been much discussion. Several writers
have contended that there is some conflict between sanitary and moral
ends, but have failed to convince most readers that hygiene and ethics
should not be associated in teaching. In fact, the most impressive
sex-hygiene is that relating to social disease, and its value is
chiefly in the ethical appeal for protection of innocent wives and
children.
[Sidenote: Dr. Cabot's view.]
Most prominent of those who have declared that hygienic and moral
teaching should be dissociated is Dr. Richard C. Cabot, of Boston. I
shall discuss his point of view in connection with a later lecture on
"Criticisms of Sex-education" (Sec. 46). In the present discussion of
sexual morality as an important reason for sex-education, it is
sufficient to say that Dr. Cabot seems to disagree with other teachers
on the question of the influence of formal instruction on the morals of
people.
[Sidenote: Moral and hygienic problems.]
Sex-education is now commonly understood to be attempting to solve the
moral as well as the hygienic problems of sex. As suggested before,
these two lines of problems are clearly related but not coincident; for
sexual health and morals are not entirely coordinated. We must not
overlook the possibility that the marvellous progress of
bacteriological and medical science may some day largely reduce the
health problems of sex without improving morality. In fact, sexual
immorality that is hygienic does actually exist to a limited extent.
Such facts indicate that while sex-education was first planned to solve
health problems, the ultimate sex-education must attempt to guide
sexual conduct by moral principles. This coming need of more emphasis
on the moral problems of sex should be clearly foreseen by those who
are interested in sex-education.
[Sidenote: Super-morality desirable.]
Now, while sexual morality as commonly understood is a direct aim of
sex-education, it is not, in the opinion of many people, the ideal and
ultimate goal of sex-education in its broadest outlook. There is
something higher than conventional morality for the reason that, while
natural sexual union in monogamic marriage is never legally or
ecclesiastically immoral, it is very often far from ideal. It is not
ideal if it is unethical, unhygienic, or unaesthetic. It is unethical,
if it is not a bi-personal desideratum (_i.e._, based on mutual
love[9]); it is unhygienic when not promotive and conservative of
health; and it is unaesthetic if the concomitant psychical reactions are
not in harmony with the beautiful in nature and life. In all these
ways, morality as commonly and legally and ecclesiastically understood
may fall very far short of the ideal sexual relationships. Such an
ideal is now held by many men and women who wish that morality might
mean to all the world not simply the limitation of sexual union to
monogamic marriage, but also that it might be made to mean an
all-satisfying monogamic affection and comradeship based on certain
physiological, psychical, aesthetic, and ethical laws that underlie
human sexual potentialities. Such would be a morality so far beyond
the accepted standards that for convenience we may call it
super-morality, or the new morality. This, I sincerely believe, is the
ultimate goal of sex-education in its largest outlook.
[Sidenote: Super-morality deserves emphasis.]
Among those who have contributed to the sex-education movement there
are none who have properly emphasized this super-morality, which, I
believe, is the ultimate goal of the larger sex-education for the most
enlightened people. The definition that sex-education means all
instruction which aims to help young people prepare to solve for
themselves the sexual problems that inevitably come to every normal
individual, is broad enough to include all questions of hygiene,
morality, and super-morality that may come into one's life. The third
aim of sex-education (Sec. 16) which refers to the "social, ethical, and
psychical aspects of sex as affecting the individual life in relation
to other individuals," should be understood as meaning first a stand
for morality and then, this having been attained, super-morality is an
easy stage forward. The same idea was touched by the writer in a paper
on "Biology in Sex-Instruction" (_Journal of Society of Sanitary and
Moral Prophylaxis_, October, 1911) in these words: "If the great
questions of sex relationship are ever satisfactorily solved, it must
be through the direct application of the four sciences which are
centered around human life, namely, psychology, ethics, sociology, and
last, but far from least, aesthetics. As we have seen, biology teaches
much directly bearing on the purely physical aspects of the
perpetuation of human life, and its study is absolutely necessary for
mental attitude and basal facts; but the keystone of the arch of
sex-education must be contributed by these four sciences which touch
human life much deeper than the merely physical, to which the science
of biology is limited. Above all we must look to these sciences for the
solution of the problems of sex in relation to society, which more than
any physical ills have led to our present problems concerning sexual
disharmonies."
[Sidenote: Super-morality not for the masses.]
But while there is something attractive in this larger interpretation
of sex-education as looking forward to the highest adaptation of sex
and life, I realize that as a practical matter we must first of all
work with young people for sexual morality as defined by the accepted
code. We must remember that the vast majority of people are not yet
ready, and will not soon be ready, for a code of super-morality.
Confusion might result from an attempt at wholesale teaching of such
idealism of sex relationship. Certainly, so far as sex-education aims
to help immature young people, there is nothing to do but hold up
monogamic marriage as the basis of our accepted morality; but the
higher view of super-morality should be promulgated as rapidly as
possible among people who are advanced enough to understand that
morality as defined by church and state is not the best interpretation
of life's possibilities. To many it is a significant fact that we now
find numerous young men and women ready to stand for super-morality as
a foundation for monogamic marriage. Fortunately, such individuals need
not wait for the world to grasp the idea of super-morals; and already
there is many a home in which the higher view of life and sex prevails.
[Sidenote: Cautious teaching concerning immorality.]
Immorality in sexual lines should not be overstressed when teaching
young people. Rather should there be emphasis on the moral, the normal,
the healthful, the helpful, and the aesthetic processes in human life.
We should emphasize sexual health and morals, not disease and
immorality. Concerning immoral living in general, young people should
know only enough for necessary warning. Curiosity derived from
extensive knowledge of immorality has drawn many a young man into the
whirlpool of sexual depravity. It is beyond question that in sexual
lines there is the danger that Pope saw when he declared that vice is a
monster that seen too oft, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Sex-education should guard against such dangerous familiarity with
vice.