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An Outline of Sexual Morality
An Outline of
Sexual Morality
Kenneth Ingram
_The Introduction_ by F. W. W. Griffin,
M.A., M.D., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
Jonathan Cape
Eleven Gower Street, London
_First published 1922
All Rights reserved_
Author's Note
I am anxious to take this opportunity of thanking those friends who have
helped me by valuable suggestion and criticism in correcting the proofs of
this small book. In particular I desire to mention Canon Lacey and Dr.
Griffin, and to apologize for the amount of time which I must have stolen
from them.
KENNETH INGRAM
_March 1922_
Introduction
Any honest inquiry into the Primal Instincts of humanity will necessarily
lead to a clearer understanding of their nature, their functions, and
their potentialities, and so will help to pave the way for the appearance
of a healthier and happier race of men. The dictum "Learn to know
yourself," inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, has never been of
more vital importance, both individually and nationally, than it is
to-day, and the various schools of modern psychological thought, which are
steadily opening up those hitherto scarcely explored regions whence flow
the springs of human actions, are gradually clearing away the ignorance
which has been the real cause of so much disease and distress. The
following chapters are to be welcomed particularly as an effort at the
constructional reform of our treatment of one of our deepest and most
powerful instincts. Even those who do not necessarily give assent to all
the details in the line of argument therein pursued must surely approve
the insistence upon the vital necessity of there being love in all sex
relationships.
The word "sexual," though indispensable perhaps in such a book as this,
invariably induces some measure of opposition by reason of the
associations which it calls up, and so is often replaced by the cognate
adjective "racial," which emphasizes the wider aims of Race Preservation
rather than the narrower matter of the reproduction of individuals. It is
not a matter of curing individual immorality, not even of explaining it
only, it is the greater matter of laying a sound foundation for a
practicable social morality that is the object of consideration here. It
is important that any such opposition should be neither hypocritical nor
hyper-critical, for great national issues are at stake. Without the
healthy mind there can be no healthy body, at any rate from the point of
view of the community, and thus such a scientific inquiry as is set forth
in these pages is definitely leading towards the production of a healthier
nation.
The necessity of there being established a balance between an unlimited
self-expression and a rigid self-repression is clearly indicated also, and
the importance of self-control is not ignored here as it has been
elsewhere, unfortunately, both as regards the individual's physical health
and the weal of the community at large; for self-control is a vital
essential in the health of a man just as it is a vital necessity for the
continuance of a nation. The following pages contain information and
suggestions which should tend to the formation of a wiser and more hopeful
outlook over the problems of sexual morality, and should therefore receive
the careful consideration of all who have the interests of humanity at
heart.
F. W. W. GRIFFIN M.A., M.D., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
_March 1922_
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
1. APOLOGIA 7
2. OFFICIAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS SEX 13
3. THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF PURITY 23
4. CELIBACY 31
5. NON-CELIBACY 36
6. DIVORCE 45
7. EUGENICS AND PROSTITUTION 52
8. THE HOMOSEXUAL TEMPERAMENT 60
9. THE SEXLESS CLASS 76
10. SUPER-ABNORMALITIES 78
11. SEX EDUCATION 87
An Outline of Sexual Morality
Chapter 1: Apologia
I have been impelled to attempt this definition of sexual morality for at
least three reasons. The first is that, at this moment particularly,
science is emphasizing the large responsibility which sex assumes in our
lives. We may think that Freud has overestimated this influence;
nevertheless, all psycho-analysis tends to show that the sex-force cannot
be wholly repressed and that even with the most passionless individuals
sex is the unconscious motive in a large percentage of their activities.
It is well therefore that we should have as clear a conception as possible
as to the moral rights of this enormous factor in our lives.
Secondly, a handbook of this kind is perhaps the most convenient medium
for defining my personal attitude towards this problem. My own views are,
of course, unimportant, but it so happens that I have often been asked, in
private conversations, to define them. Now to summarize them to the
extent which a casual conversation must almost necessarily entail, is
difficult; and often, I suspect, I may have given a wholly wrong
impression. I am anxious to set that right.
But my chief reason is the chaos of public opinion on this question. One
is continually having this fact forced on one. Largely this is the result
of transition and reaction. In England, the country to which I shall
almost entirely confine myself, we have been enormously affected by that
presentation of religion which has been called Puritanism. We have been
steeped in the theology of Milton. All forms of religion--Catholic as well
as Protestant--have been comparatively infected. When we speak of the
"religious attitude" towards any question, we find ourselves irresistibly
considering the Puritan attitude.
It is not, I think, unfair to define the influence of Puritanism as a
tendency to regard all amusement with disfavour. The original Puritans
were notoriously dour in their manner and their dress. It has been said
that they attacked the sport of bear-baiting, because it gave pleasure to
the onlookers, and not because it was painful to the bears. Sunday, on
which the outward observance of religion was necessarily concentrated,
became a day of complete abstention from worldly recreation. Puritanism
might supply spiritual compensation, but anything which gave pleasure to
the senses was essentially evil. Thus art and beauty were banished from
religious services and sacred buildings. Not only was the stage an
entrance to hell, but a consistent Puritan like Bunyan prayed God to
forgive him the sin of having played a game of hockey.
Puritanism had reached its zenith, not of intensity but of universality,
by the latter half of the last century. Those of us who are old enough to
have been Victorians were brought up on comparative doses of the Puritan
medicine. Especially among the middle-classes the history of every English
family from the eighties till the War is extraordinarily similar; it
consists of a series of emancipations. Our grandparents were almost
entirely Puritan in their manner of living, our parents had compromised
and extricated themselves to some degree, and our children have become
almost wholly free. How many of us realize that up to the seventies it was
quite improper for a lady to ride on the top of an omnibus?
In no instance was the effect of Puritanism stronger than on sex. For sex
is pre-eminently inspired by a desire for pleasure, whether it be
spiritual, emotional, or carnal. On this score alone it would have been
marked out as a deadly evil. But there was a further indictment in the
Puritan creed. According to the Miltonian interpretation Paradise had been
lost on account of the sex impulse; "original sin" was nothing more or
less than the sense of sex--the loss of sexual ignorance. Accordingly the
whole sex-nature was regarded as evil, and sex generally became a taboo, a
closed subject to which no reference could be made. Victorian Puritanism
often, indeed, suggests the ostrich burying his head in the sand--the
attempt to remedy evil by pretending that it does not exist.
The effect of Puritanism on the Victorian was precisely this conformity of
outward behaviour. It assumed that all men and women were innocent, and
that, except in marriage, sex played no part in life. It pretended they
were innocent, and it made them only respectable. Parents would often
refrain, on the plea that innocence must not be disturbed, from teaching
their children anything about sex. So impure and evil a subject must not
be referred to. Such unpleasant problems as venereal disease must be
hidden out of sight, although prostitution and venereal disease continue
to flourish. The Victorian, in fact, carried out the Puritan doctrine that
all sex is evil, by outwardly pretending that, unless married, he
possessed no sexual instinct. Actually he was no more inclined to
abstention than any other human generation has been.
Indeed, we do not find any evidence that Puritanism succeeds in carrying
its anti-sex theories into practice. In South Wales, for example, where
Puritanism has established a particular stronghold, sexual laxity is
peculiarly marked.
The reaction from Puritanism, especially in regard to sex, has been
precipitated and exaggerated by the Great War. We have therefore in modern
society two opposing policies. Among those who have thrown over all
"religious" observance and have freed themselves entirely from Puritanism,
there seems to be a complete absence of any moral sex-standard. We can
appreciate that impasse if we consider the inability of the sex-novel or
play to suggest any form of conduct which is immoral. Those who still
adhere to organized religion continue to look at sex largely through
Puritan spectacles. The "fallen woman" or the convicted clergyman is
genuinely regarded as being guilty of the most damning of all offences.
The sexual laxity of the neo-Georgian is used as a convincing argument
that once the Puritan view is abandoned, complete anarchy is the only
alternative. Religious teachers continue to preach what many of them would
deny to be Puritan doctrine, but what I hope to prove belongs peculiarly
to that aspect of Christianity. And meanwhile the "non-religious world"
pronounces the opposite extreme.
It is because I believe both these attitudes to contain error, that I am
anxious to contribute the foundation for some principle in the current
deadlock.