In attempting to define these principles I have no desire to enter into a
controversy of relatives and absolutes. It is sufficient to meet those who
deny that there can be any abstract standard of purity by pointing out
that we know the direction in which to look for what is good and pure.
Just as we know that certain acts are less worthy than others, so we are
aware of the general direction of the nobler activities.
The first principle to be observed is that relatively _purity is
comparative_. This is a commonplace of all personal estimates. However
much we may adhere to the conception of a moral standard, which is
abstract and unvarying, we realize that there are also personal standards
which vary very much. We do not, for instance, consider a cat to be guilty
of murder when she kills a bird; we do not execute her as we execute men
who have taken human life. We do not even condemn lions or tigers as
homicidal criminals, though we may kill them in self-defence, thus showing
that it is not the distinction between taking animal and human life
which constitutes the crime; it is the difference between the killers. Nor
is it true that we draw a distinction merely between animal and human
responsibility, for even in the human kingdom we apply a comparative moral
standard; we do not consider a savage who steals or kills as being guilty
to the extent which a civilized European would be who performed a similar
act. We are in fact constantly applying a comparative standard to the
comparative intelligences of individuals, and quite rightly, for all
intelligence and moral sense is graded from brute-beast to savage-man and
upwards.
We must be careful not to avoid this standard of comparative values in
approaching sex morality. So long as we admit that at least there are acts
and principles which, taken in the abstract, approach purity more nearly
than others, we must not judge all individuals by the same standard. We
must not consider a very ordinary, unintelligent, animal-blooded young man
as being excessively sinful for having a vivid sex experience; perhaps he
is living right up to the level of his imperfect standard. We must not
expect people to be more moral than they can be, though it is the duty of
Church and religion to educate them to see that there are better
standards.
The second principle is simple, but of the deepest importance.
It consists of the proposition that variety and not uniformity is the
fundamental rule of nature, or, as Christians would hold, the intention of
God.
I cannot recall any distinctive attribute to which this rule does not
apply. There are an infinite species of creatures, and infinite tastes and
tendencies. Even if we narrow down our field of investigation to one
nation or even a single family, we find that each individual is
approaching life by different byways, with different prejudices and
different temperaments and different conceptions. But throughout history
the majority of the normal type has been inclined to flout this divine
principle. The Puritans, for example, were a particular type who did not
like the gayer life of the world, and preferred a stern evangelical
atmosphere. Consequently they regarded those amusements for which they
happened to possess no partiality, as evil, and whenever they had the
opportunity they suppressed them; they eliminated Christmas and the
mince-pie. Equally we can see that if the normal mechanical Teutonic type
had said that it was unnatural for men to be artistic and had suppressed
the arts, it would have been a disaster for the world. There is not one
vocation, but there are many vocations; all types are the design of
intention, and are there, not to be suppressed, but to carry out their
particular mission.
This again, is equally true of sex, and we must apply the same conclusions
towards the many types which we shall presently meet, abnormal as well as
normal. The Protestant, for example, really acknowledges a uniform
sex-nature only. You will continually hear a Protestant declaring that it
is unnatural for a man to be a celibate: this is, of course, pure
nonsense. It might be unnatural for a normal sex-nature to remain
celibate, just as it would be unnatural for a natural celibate to marry.
The Catholic Church has been far wiser. She can offer the Religious Life
to the celibate and the Sacrament of Marriage to the non-celibate. There
are few types of individual more unintelligent than that which, while it
cannot so interfere with personal liberty as to compel marriage, persists
in uttering the convention that "every man ought to do his duty to the
State." The truism is true; what is wrong is the failure to conceive that
there is no uniform duty for every man.
But the third principle is more complex in character, or, rather, in the
considerations which it involves.
It consists, really, of a re-affirmation as to the Catholic condemnation
of the heresy of Manichaeism.
The Puritan and the type he has evolved do radically regard the physical
as evil. Protestantism, until it became adulterated by the Catholic
movement, eliminated as far as possible, the physical medium in religious
worship. Not only doctrinally, but liturgically, in the abandonment of
ritual and artistic atmosphere, it attempted to limit religion as far as
possible to the spiritual level, and it regarded sacramentalism as evil
because sacramentalism involves an outward physical sign. In the same way
the average Englishman, who has been inculcated, far more than he
realizes, with Calvinist dogma, regards sex as immoral only when it is
physical. A man may indulge in sexual emotion and thought, but so long as
he suppresses any physical act he is not guilty; if this can be regarded
as an exaggeration it is certainly true that popular Protestant theology
regards a man as more immoral if he commits the physical sex-act than if
he thinks of it. It is strange to note how far this theory has departed
from the teaching of Christ, Who declared that "he that lusteth against a
woman hath committed adultery against her in his heart."
It is obvious the moment we examine this conception that it is utterly
indefensible. If the sex-act is evil[7] because it is physical, then it
is equally evil to eat or drink. And if an attempt is made to avoid this
difficulty by saying that it is evil to debase love by expressing it in a
physical act, or that it is better to love spiritually and non-physically,
then it is equally evil to debase artistic inspiration by expressing it
with paints on a physical canvas, or better to allow melodies to float in
one's mind than to reduce them to the level of a physical composition.
Without entering into a highly involved philosophy and therefore at the
risk of apparent dogmatism, I wish now to emphasize that there are certain
ascending levels, with which man is concerned. We may confine ourselves to
the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual levels. The
physical level is the lowest, in so far as man functions there in common
with the animal. He is more active emotionally than the animal. But what
distinguishes him chiefly from the animal, and makes him master over all
brute-creation, is his activity on the mental level. Physically he is less
powerful than the elephant; but because he can function mentally and the
elephant can do so hardly at all, he can employ the elephant as a beast of
labour. Here then we have a distinct gradation, a gradation which
continues to apply within the human kingdom and makes us able to
distinguish a civilised man from a savage.
We should therefore apply this principle to sex. Sex activity is more pure
or impure according to the level on which it chiefly functions. A man who
traffics with prostitutes is not immoral because he is functioning
physically, but because he is functioning almost entirely on the physical
level. Purity is really sex emphasis on the highest levels. Ideally the
physically sex-act should therefore be a mere expression of spiritual,
mental, emotional love; it should just happen. The moment one begins to
lay the emphasis on the lower levels, the more one becomes correspondingly
less pure. Lust, in fact, is the desire only for physical sex
experience--the wrong proportion and balance. A man's stage of moral
development is to be discovered by the particular level on which he is
most active.
We must not avoid the consequence of this principle. We must be prepared
to admit as relatively moral, behaviour which popular philosophy might
regard as immoral. We must also be prepared to regard as immoral many
marriages in which the physical is the chief incentive. The lowest stage
of impurity would seem to be reached in cases, whether between man and
harlot, or husband and wife, where the physical function is so emphasized
that artificial physical aids are invoked in order to excite the physical
passions and make them the cause instead of the result of sex emotion and
thought.