It will now be convenient to define the chief collective or official
attitudes towards sex. In a mere outline such as this handbook professes
to be, we may divide these attitudes into three, and label them the
popular attitude, the legal or State attitude, and the religious attitude.
With the popular attitude we have already largely dealt. It is still in a
transitory, confused state, merging at one end into the old Puritan
extreme, and at the other to mere negativism, mere opposition to Puritan
asceticism, and without even an attempt to reconstruct a moral standard.
This perhaps is an inevitable stage in any transition; but it is none the
less unsatisfactory. Man cannot succeed without a standard; and moreover
we know intuitively that all things are not morally permissible. If there
is purity and beauty and divinity in life, there must be impurity and sin.
Will it be considered an exaggeration if I say that it is almost better to
have a Puritan standard than none at all? The Roundhead at least was more
than a match for the Cavalier because he had a positive inspiration.
But there is one common feature in this chaos of evolving popular opinion.
The vulgar mind tends to measure morality by what is usual. The sins which
most men commit are regarded as hardly evil; the acts which may not be
evil, are regarded as sins if they are peculiar. Thus an occasional lapse
from continency on the part of a young man is popularly regarded as not
very reprehensible, whereas the perpetrator of some weird act of
bestiality would be hounded to prison. The flaw in this estimate is not
only that the normal standard varies in race and age, but that there is no
single human sex nature; there are infinite varieties. To condemn variety
_per se_ is, as we shall presently observe, a contradiction of the laws of
nature.
The gradual emancipation of society from the taboo on sex in conversation
is an undoubted gain. We owe such men as Bernard Shaw a debt of gratitude
for the way in which they have forced sex reference into the play, and
therefore on public notice. But if this is to result in eliminating sex
modesty it is creating evils greater than those which it seeks to remove.
I will not here embark upon a consideration of such a theory as that which
has been interestingly propounded by Mr. Westermarck, namely that there is
a relationship between sexual modesty and the feeling against incest.[1]
I will only insist that modesty is natural in all qualities which we
regard as sacred.
If we are modest about sex in our conversation to the extent of placing a
taboo on sex, and allowing sexual problems to remain unsolved, or in
letting our children confuse innocence with ignorance, we are on
indefensible ground; indefensible, I think, because our modesty is based
on the Puritan doctrine that sex is at heart an unclean thing. I wish
especially to defend modesty because sex is so clean. We do not want to
vulgarize by public reference our most spiritual experiences, our sense of
love, our feeling of exaltation in the presence of what is beautiful and
divine. We speak of these things only at more sacred moments, if at all.
We must be careful, too, lest in a reaction from taboo we allow science to
rob sex of its romantic and divine character. We have carefully to
preserve the centre of gravitation between two extremes. We should look
askance at a man who collected in a glass bottle, and analysed, his
mother's tears.
In this connexion it may be well to call attention to the inconsistency of
the male in making the sex-act a subject for humour. Whatever our
religious belief, we know that the sex-act is the means of procreation,
and is, for this reason alone, a sacred function. It seems inconsistent,
therefore, that we should so persistently treat it as a mark for ridicule.
* * * * *
The second general attitude is that of the State, or legislature. Here we
find ourselves in the presence of a consistent motive. The State is
concerned only with the preservation of the birth-rate; any sex behaviour
which defeats this object it regards as immoral and punishable. The State
cannot interfere so far with individual privacy as to punish masturbation
or artificial means of restraint; but it does go to the extent of
punishing "unnatural" acts between husband and wife,[2] and in America,
the State has even penalized the activities of the neo-Malthusian
propaganda. All sex abnormalities are rigidly punished, whereas the
procreation of children outside wedlock is not a legal offence.[3]
This is a consistent attitude, but it suggests one serious flaw. Whatever
may have been the case in early days when an increase of population was
essential, there can be little doubt that to-day that necessity has
diminished. Indeed, without entering into the Malthusian controversy, it
is almost impossible to deny that at the moment we are suffering largely
from over-population. Consequently, whatever opportunist policy may
dictate, we cannot poise our estimate of morality on so shifting a basis
as the needs of population. Instinctively we cannot associate morality in
anything with the legal attitude. There are many acts even outside the sex
sphere which most of us would consider immoral, but which are unpunished
by law, and others which are illegal but are not immoral; it is immoral to
lie, but unless we lie on oath there is no State offence; it is punishable
to ride a bicycle without lights after dark, but we are conscious of no
moral delinquency in so doing.
* * * * *
The third attitude is that of religion. We have already discussed the
Puritan attitude and the manner in which it has permeated our unconscious
religious thought. In the Anglican marriage-service there appears at first
sight to be some endorsement of the theory that the sex-act is unclean and
is only permitted in marriage as a concession to human weakness.[4] This
doctrine owes its derivation to St. Paul, although it is important to
notice that St. Paul specially emphasizes that he is not speaking
ex-cathedra: "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows it is good for
them to remain even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for
it is better to marry than to burn."[5]
These words will probably be used as an argument against the statement
that it is a specifically Puritan doctrine to regard the sex-act as
unclean. It will be urged that the early Christian Church, as shown by the
writings of the Fathers, discouraged marriage and upheld celibacy as the
ideal. I hope, in a moment, to differentiate between the Catholic and the
Puritan doctrine. But more immediately we will consider what I have
broadly defined as the Puritan attitude.
The flaw in the argument that the sex-act is by nature unclean and must be
suppressed, even though in marriage it may be legitimized, is that it is
the ordained means of procreation. Further than this, we have the
inevitable fact to face that the sex-instinct in normal persons is so
strong that it can only with great difficulty be suppressed, and then
results in an outflow of sex activity in what we usually know as
non-sexual channels. Often this suppression will find its vent in mental
dislocation and general nervous irritability. But without analysing these
complex symptoms, it is sufficient to ask those who admit the control of
God, why God created the sex impulse in order that it should be
obliterated.
Directly we move away from this strict doctrine to the modified popular
expression of it, we find that the position is becoming more intelligible
but less logical. It is consistent to regard all sex as evil. But when the
average Christian, while denouncing adultery as a sin, insists on
copulation in marriage as its consummation, a difficulty arises which must
not be ignored. Here, in adultery, is a sin which is so serious in the
eyes of Christian men, that it can never be redeemed; the stigma of
impurity remains for ever on the offender. Yet this same act, if only
committed under the regulation of marriage becomes not merely something
permissible, but the essential act of consummation, the divine method of
procreation. One can understand how an act, good in itself, can become a
sin because it is performed under impermissible circumstances. But it is
difficult to conceive of an act changing its integral nature, so that at
one moment it is a necessary virtue, and at another the basest vice. It
is, for instance, legal for a soldier to kill an enemy in battle, while it
is a crime for one civilian to kill another; but the act of killing is
_per se_ an evil thing, even in the case of a soldier. It never becomes so
exalted as is the sex-act in marriage.
The Catholic doctrine, however, while at first sight it appears to be
identical with the Puritan, is actually quite distinct.
For one thing there is a difference of attitude towards sin. Puritanism
seems to suggest that those who have been "converted" are actually
perfect. It insists that they shall keep up this outward appearance, and
consequently ensures that their sins must be committed secretly. They are
then sufficiently perfect to ascend, after death, direct to Heaven.
Catholicism, however, is continually recognizing that man is normally a
sinner; the confessional is a public recognition of this fact. Catholicism
therefore approaches the question of sex with the expectation that man
will sin, that the probability of his fall is so great as to make it
unnecessary and undesirable to hide all traces of his sin from public
view. The Puritan attitude towards sex is really that of the prude. The
Catholic Church is so ready to talk about sex in a decent manner that she
provides the confessional as a permanent institution.
When we turn to the Catholic attitude towards sex we are faced indeed with
two significant dogmas which make up a position fundamentally distinct
from that of Puritanism. The first of these is the doctrine that marriage
is a sacrament, and the second that the _esse_ of the marriage is the
consent of the parties.
The significance of the first is that marriage is not merely a licence
whereby an unclean act is permitted as a sop to human weakness. The sex
function, as the integral part of marriage, is acknowledged to be an
actual objective of divine grace.
The significance of the second doctrine is that wherever two people
eligible to give consent, give it, there is the essence of marriage. Few
non-Catholics realize that though the Church normally requires the
ecclesiastical and civil regulations to be observed, she does not profess
to marry the two persons; she merely pronounces a blessing on their
marriage. She may make conditions before she will give her blessing or
even her witness to the validity of the marriage; but she recognizes that
a marriage may be just as valid on a desert island as in a cathedral.[6]
And hence she really regards adultery, not as does the Puritan, but as an
act which should be sacramental but has been prostituted by the absence of
the love-motive, or by becoming promiscuous rather than constant. Sexual
union may even itself be of the nature of a marriage, and it is
significant that the Church has always insisted on the right of parents
subsequently to legitimize children born out of wedlock; it is the English
law which has forbidden that privilege.
This is the official Catholic doctrine, however much it has been
assimilated to the Puritan conception by the personnel of the Church.
Yet the Church has consistently upheld the celibate life as the higher
vocation. She has represented a celibate priesthood as a greater ideal
than a married priesthood. She has exalted Our Lady as a Virgin. She has
insisted on the Virgin Birth. But she has done this, not because sex is
evil, but because celibacy is better. And, as we shall see, religious
celibacy is entirely distinct from a condition in which the sex impulse is
merely repressed.