Under this head I have included a number of characteristics, which have no
connective bearing upon one another. It seemed the most convenient
classification.
Perhaps it will be best to take as the first example a sex tendency which
can hardly be described as super-abnormal, for among single men, and
especially among boys, it is extremely common.
Auto-eroticism in the form of self-abuse is not an easy problem to tackle.
The usual policy adopted towards boys is most immoral. Well-meaning but
hopelessly vicious purists, write terrifying pamphlets or deliver lectures
in which they declare that this practice will inevitably lead to lunacy,
paralysis or even death. The result is that the boy is scared into an
ineffectual attempt at repression, which, so far as it is successful, sets
the sex-impulse at work into morose channels and makes him a liar or a
thief. Or he may be impelled to inquire for himself. He finds that, so
long as self-abuse occurs infrequently, it does not bring about these dire
evils, and accordingly he assumes that all moral doctrine is hypocrisy
and often falls into the opposite extreme of constant self-abuse, with the
result that actual physical and mental deterioration sets in.
What is really the truth?
The first consideration is that frequent and unregulated abuse does cause
physical harm. The margin of frequency which will escape this harm varies
with the individual. But, with growing boys, the practice is perhaps more
dangerous than after physical maturity. The whole reserve of the physical
constitution appears to be needed while the body is developing.
The difficulty of this problem is its complications. There are several
entirely conflicting influences which must be weighed one against the
other.
We have seen the physical danger, and, since morality must not be founded
on a lie, we must freely admit that the physical danger may be eliminated
by limiting the frequency of the practice. It may then be physically
harmless. There remain, however, at least two causes which make for a
misuse of the sex-force, that is--for immorality. The first is that it is
usually the result of mental weakness, sheer inability to overcome the
inclination. The mind, the will, _must_ be supreme in its own house. Until
that is done little else matters. And it comes, therefore, to this, so far
as this particular consideration is concerned, that it is better for a
man deliberately to regulate himself by programme to certain times, than
to keep up an ineffectual struggle, or to obey whenever the inclination
arises.
For, in both these cases, remorse follows. And this is as great an evil as
the failure of will; indeed, it _is_ failure of will. Remorse is not
penitence. It is useless thereby to regret what has been done. A man must
simply own to himself that he has failed, make a resolution to be stronger
next time, and then sweep the recollection from his mind, switching off on
to other mental channels.
The second influence which makes for impurity is that by this practice the
sex-force becomes literally selfish. Now, sex is fundamentally a movement
towards union through love, whether it be physical or super-physical. This
practice is merely a vicious circle, in which the love element, save in
the perverted form of narcissism, is absent. Accordingly, there must,
almost always, be evil mental results from this abuse. And, once again, we
see that the real evil is not in the physical act but in the realm of
thought, whether the act occurs or not.
On the other hand, we must not become such abstract moralists as to deny
that in many individuals the sex-force is so strong as to press almost
irresistibly towards physical expression. Even dreams, which are the
normal outlet, may not be sufficient. A man who for some reason, cannot
marry, will therefore argue that his only alternative is recourse to
prostitution, and that self-abuse, so long as it is regulated, is morally
preferable. One remedy is, as we have already seen, the transfer of the
sex-force to higher channels, so that all the glow and energy of sex is
energized in devotion to a group of persons, or to a religious or
humanitarian ideal in concrete labour. For sex is primarily creative, and
if it is not creating physical children it may have, and should have, a
spiritual progeny--as in art and literature.
The truth is that each individual case must be treated according to its
particular state of development. General rules in this instance are
particularly dangerous. We can only repeat that the repression is worse
than commission, that a seething mass of sexual thought is worse when it
has no physical outlet; that the ideal, when there may be no legitimate
outlet--and, indeed, to some extent, in all cases--is to find an emotional
outlet, to dig thought and emotional channels along which the sex-force
may flow, but the physical expression of which is, in the ordinary sense
of the term, non-sexual.[20]
And this is quite possible.
II
Attraction towards young children is frequently, perhaps almost entirely,
sexual. A symptom of this temperament is that romantic attachments are
formed towards either sex, because, before puberty, the child is bisexual
or sexless. This must essentially be a cult; it is a clean and noble cult,
but the penalty of its high standard is that here all physical sex
expression must be denied except in the lesser form of embrace.
Here, indeed, the prosecution of the law against sex-acts is justified.
For, not only is the child incapable of giving valid consent, but the
commission of the sex-act is physically and morally injurious. It is
physically injurious beyond all doubt at a young age, and it is morally
injurious, because it introduces sex to an age of development when the
consciousness of sex should not have appeared above the horizon. The
inevitable result is that if sex-acts take place the child eventually ages
rapidly, as can be seen among the child-mothers of India. Maturity is
induced far before its time.
The sex consciousness, as distinct from the unconsciousness, can be
awakened in the earliest years of childhood. The young boy or girl often
shows an extraordinarily intuitive perception that there is a sexual
design behind even the apparently harmless overtures. And this is why this
cult is particularly dangerous. The lover, in fact, must not only entirely
eliminate the morally criminal sex inclinations, but he must take care not
to become so sentimental and romantic as really to suggest sex to the
child's unconsciousness. It is difficult to draw the line as to what is a
lawful and what is an unlawful expression of this sex-temperament. One can
only say that the remedy is not to concentrate love on one child, but on
children generally. The child must not be treated as an adult; there must
be no manifestations of jealousy, or insistence on a return of love
expression. The embrace of children must be natural but not too ardent. In
fact, the lover must diffuse his love and romp with children as a class
rather than allow himself to appear emotional over one individual.
Many unthinking people will at once regard this temperament as impure when
they have been convinced that scientifically it is sexual. But this is
only because they cannot understand that sex is a clean thing and that the
physical side of it is an occasional and by no means an inevitable
incident. The cult of child-love is in fact one of the purest and noblest
of sex-expressions. But it is a difficult path, and he who treads it must
beware of many pitfalls.
Again, I quite deny that it is due to thwarted paternal instinct. I
believe it to be as natural a variety as any other of the
sex-temperaments. We have suffered too long from the superstition that sex
is a uniformity of type.
III
Then there is that strange form of sex-expression known as bestiality.
To most of us the connexion between man and beast in sex is so revolting
that there is a great danger of our prejudice running away with us.
I believe that prejudice against what seems to me so debased a vice, is
justifiable. But I am equally sure that to punish such offences by
criminal law has no shred of justification, except when the act is done in
public so as to be openly indecent. No physical or moral harm can be done
to the animal. And were it not tragic, the idea of sentencing the
offenders to penal servitude would be itself a travesty.
The practice, which is not so uncommon as many people imagine, is not so
much immoral as unnatural. I mean that this can hardly ever be a variety
of sex-temperament. Although the love of women for pet dogs is probably a
form of perverted sex-outlet, it seems impossible to discover here any
actual love going out towards animals rather than to humans. Therefore,
the act is almost always due to a desire for mere physical expression,
when this happens to have been chosen as the most convenient.
The true remedy, therefore, can only be to take the individual and educate
him. He must be shown that it is immoral for man to devolve back to the
animal level. He is superior to the beast. He must be reminded that sex
must be a result of love, and that sex-love between man and animal would
only be possible if it were moral for man to cease to reason, to go down
on all fours, and to eat and drink and live like an animal. Even the most
primitive man would not wish to do that. And if he feels any sense of
abhorrence at such a proposal, then he must learn to extend his abhorrence
to any attempt at a similar equality in sex.
IV
The strange and almost endless forms of sex-association need not be
considered, since they have no moral problem of their own. The man whose
sex-force is stirred into energy by the sight of some inanimate physical
object is obviously the victim of a sex-repression. And such diseases must
be treated as any other repressions should be. These general
considerations must suffice here for all forms of sex perversions, such as
sadism and its converse. And it is not difficult to distinguish between
the unnaturalness of such practices and the natural character of the main
sex-types which we have already mentioned.