_On the Abuses of Sex_--II. _Fornication_
The second abuse of sex to be dwelt on by the Christian physiologist
is the practice of fornication. One broad distinction separates this
form of vice from masturbation--viz., that it necessarily affects two
persons instead of only one. Its effects upon the mental and physical
development of both the male and female must therefore engage the
attention of the physiologist. This necessity of considering the
effects produced by a joint act upon two separate individualities
greatly complicates the inquiry.
It is so much easier for the popular mind to regard any act performed
by an individual or by one sex as exclusively affecting one particular
individual or sex engaged in its performance that it is extremely
difficult for most persons to fix their minds steadily upon the
inseparable double character of this exceptional human act. It requires
a certain amount of generalizing power to do this; and the power of
generalization, which leads to the recognition of abstract truth and
to the perception that a true principle is of far higher value than
any number of phenomena, is an advanced attainment of human beings.
Abstract truth commonly seems vague as compared with a material fact.
We are also so accustomed in using all our other senses, sight,
hearing, etc., to regard them as individual possessions, that it
is difficult to separate the sexual sense from all others. Yet it
distinctly belongs to a different class from all our other senses,
because its ultimate expression is not a simple individual performance,
but is a social act of vital importance to the race. The imperfection
of our intelligence, which makes it easier to consider a joint act in
its diversity than in its unity, has led to very imperfect observation
of physiological facts and many false deductions from such imperfect
observation. Very grave social errors, leading even to the general
debasement and ultimate destruction of national life, flow from the
hitherto rudimentary condition of our human intelligence in relation to
the sexual powers.
Fornication is the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. It is the
yielding to the domination of the simple physical impulse of sex, with
no perception or acceptance of the mutual responsibility involved
in the relation, and with no regard to a fundamental aspect of this
relation--viz., the well-being of offspring. Fornication is the attempt
to divorce the moral and physical elements of human nature, and to
ignore the inseparable results of joint action.
In considering this subject from a medical point of view, we are at
once brought face to face with a conflict nineteen hundred years old.
Christianity, springing up when the Roman Empire was perishing through
its vices, stamped fornication as the gravest of social crimes. There
is nothing more strongly marked in the earlier records of this religion
than the stern, even awful, condemnation of whore-mongers. The sin of
sexual impurity is denounced as the essence of hatred and fraud. We
observe that wherever the Christian Church becomes hypocritical and
cowardly, and fails to reprobate this sin alike in men and women, in
high and low, in the State and in the family, or fails to be the leader
of the people against organized evil, there the Christian Church begins
to fall into contempt, and the _vox populi_ condemns it.
The Christian physiologist, pondering the inexorable law of purity
as shown by history, is compelled to re-examine the physical and
moral facts of the human constitution, on which the rise and fall
of races depend. The question distinctly arises, Is Christianity a
superstition, dying out in the nineteenth century of science and
material development; or does it contain within itself a principle
whose transforming power has been hitherto unrecognised, but which
will now come into play, and lead the nations into renewed and more
permanent vigour of life?
One of the first subjects to be investigated by the Christian
physiologist is the truth or error of the assertion so widely made,
that sexual passion is a much stronger force in men than in women.
Very remarkable results have flowed from the attempts to mould society
upon this assertion. A simple Christian might reply, ‘Our religion
makes no such distinction; male and female are as one under guidance
and judgment of the Divine law.’ But the physiologist must go farther,
and use the light of principles underlying physical truth in order
to understand the meaning of facts which arraign and would destroy
Christianity.
It is necessary, therefore, to determine what is meant by strength
and what is meant by passion. In one sense a bull is stronger than a
man, and many of the inferior animals are superior in muscular force
or keenness of special sense to human beings, yet man is more powerful
than the animal world which he dominates to his will. Any assertion
that the animal is stronger than the human being fails to recognise the
very essence of humanity--viz., mental or moral strength.
Again, in one sense, the whirlwind or the earthquake is stronger
than the creative action of Nature; their rapid devastation strikes
the terrified imagination, yet at the very moment of their ravage
reparative and creative force is being exerted all over the world with
immeasurably more power than any sudden outbreak of destruction.
In determining the strength of races and the strength of individuals,
the various elements which constitute vital power must be considered.
Endurance, longevity, special aptitudes with the proportionate amount
of vital force given to their fulfilment--these are all elements of
relative strength.
In any attempt to settle the comparative strength of man and woman,
therefore, all these elements must be weighed. Thus the powers of
endurance which are demanded by each kind of life must be accurately
measured; the care of a sick child must be balanced against the anxiety
of business, the ceaseless cares of indoor life against the changes of
outdoor life, etc. The impossibility of so weighing the burden which
each sex bears in the various trials and difficulties of practical life
shows the futility of attempting to measure the amount of vital power
possessed by men or by women separately.
Any attempt at a comparison of absolute sexual power between men and
women will be found to be equally futile. The varying manifestations
of the sexual faculties, as exhibited in their male and female phases,
make the relative measurement of this vital force in men and women
quite impossible. Considering, however, the enormous practical edifice
of law and custom which has been built up on the very sandy foundation
of the supposed stronger character of male sexual passion, it is
necessary to examine closely the facts of human nature, and challenge
many erroneous conclusions. Any theory which proposes two methods
of judgment or two measures of law, in consequence of a supposed
difference of vital power, is emphatically uncertain, and lays itself
open to just suspicion of dangerous error.
The equal numbers of men and women, their equal longevity, and
consequently equal power of enduring the wear and tear of life, prove
the equal general vital power of the sexes.
In considering further the special sexual manifestations of the two
sexes, we observe that the power of reproduction commences at an
earlier age in women than in men. The physical life of the sexual
faculties at the same early age is more vigorous in the female than in
the male, and all those social interests which centre round sex in the
human race are in the young woman stronger; whilst at the same age the
experience and intellectual development which should give dignity and
profundity to the noble object of sex--parentage--are not yet attained.
The ‘eagerness for a romance’ and the unconscious impulse towards
parentage are developed earlier, and absorb a larger proportion of
vital force in the girl than in the boy.
At a later age, when physical sex is fully developed in the young
adult, we are still struck by the greater proportion of vital force
demanded from or given by women to all that is involved in sexual
life. The physical functions of sex weigh more imperiously upon the
woman than the man, compel more thought and care, and necessitate more
enlightened intelligence in the general arrangements of life. Physical
sex is a larger factor in the life of the woman, unmarried or married,
than in the life of the man, and this is the case at every period of
the full vigour of life. In order to secure the perfect health and
independent freedom which is the birthright of every rational human
being, larger wisdom is required for the maintenance of perfect
physical health in the woman than in the man, this function being a
more important element in the one than in the other.
If this be true of the physical element of sex, it is equally true of
the mental element. No careful observer can fail to remark the larger
proportionate amount of thought and feeling, as compared with the total
vital force of the individual, which we find given by women to all that
concerns the subject of sex. Words spoken, slight courtesies rendered,
excite a more permanent interest in women. That which may be the
mere passing thought or action of the man, at once forgotten by him,
obliterated by a thousand other intellectual or practical interests in
his life, often make a quite undue impression upon the woman. Incidents
are thought of over and over again, and are supposed to mean much more
than they do mean. A romance or a scandal, a tale of true or false
love, will always excite interest, where business, politics, science,
or philosophy will fall upon deaf ears. All that concerns the mental
aspect of sex, the special attraction which draws one sex towards the
other, is exhibited in greater proportionate force by women, is more
steady and enduring, and occupies a larger amount of their thought and
interest.
The frivolity and ephemeral character of the seducer’s impulses,
as compared with the earnestness of the seduced, illustrates the
profounder character of sexual passion in woman.
Wide-spread unhappiness, social disturbance, and degradation
continually arise from the vital force of human sex in woman,
unguarded, unguided, and unemployed.
Passion and appetite are not identical. The term ‘passion,’ it should
always be remembered, necessarily implies a mental element. For this
reason it is employed exclusively in relation to the powers of the
human being, not to those of the brute. Passion rises into a higher
rank than instinct or physical impulse, because it involves the soul
of man. In sexual passion this mental, moral, or emotional principle
is as emphatically sex as any physical instinct, and it grows with the
proportional development of the nervous system.
This mental element of human sex exists in major proportion in the
vital force of women, and justifies the statement that the compound
faculty of sex is as strong in woman as in man. Those who deny sexual
feeling to women, or consider it so light a thing as hardly to be taken
into account in social arrangements, confound appetite and passion;
they quite lose sight of this immense spiritual force of attraction,
which is distinctly human sexual power, and which exists in so very
large a proportion in the womanly nature. The impulse towards maternity
is an inexorable but beneficent law of woman’s nature, and it is a law
of sex.
The different form which physical sensation necessarily takes in the
two sexes, and its intimate connection with and development through the
mind (love) in women’s nature, serve often to blind even thoughtful
and painstaking persons as to the immense power of sexual attraction
felt by women. Such one-sided views show a misconception of the meaning
of human sex in its entirety.
The affectionate husbands of refined women often remark that their
wives do not regard the distinctively sexual act with the same
intoxicating physical enjoyment that they themselves feel, and they
draw the conclusion that the wife possesses no sexual passion. A
delicate wife will often confide to her medical adviser (who may be
treating her for some special suffering) that at the very time when
marriage love seems to unite them most closely, when her husband’s
welcome kisses and caresses seem to bring them into profound union,
comes an act which mentally separates them, and which may be either
indifferent or repugnant to her. But it must be understood that it is
not the special act necessary for parentage which is the measure of the
compound moral and physical power of sexual passion; it is the profound
attraction of one nature to the other which marks passion, and delight
in kiss and caress--the love-touch--is physical sexual expression as
much as the special act of the male.
It is well known that terror or pain in either sex will temporarily
destroy all physical pleasure. In married life, injury from childbirth,
or brutal or awkward conjugal approaches, may cause unavoidable
shrinking from sexual congress, often wrongly attributed to absence of
sexual passion. But the severe and compound suffering experienced by
many widows who were strongly attached to their lost partners is also
well known to the physician, and this is not simply a mental loss that
they feel, but an immense physical deprivation. It is a loss which all
the senses suffer by the physical as well as moral void which death has
created.
Although physical sexual pleasure is not attached exclusively, or in
woman chiefly, to the act of coition, it is also a well-established
fact that in healthy, loving women, uninjured by the too frequent
lesions which result from childbirth, increasing physical satisfaction
attaches to the ultimate physical expression of love. A repose and
general well-being results from this natural occasional intercourse,
whilst the total deprivation of it produces irritability.
On the other hand, the growth in men of the mental element in sexual
passion, from mighty wifely love, often comes like a revelation to
the husband. The dying words of a man to the wife who, sending away
children, friends, every distraction, had bent the whole force of her
passionate nature to holding the beloved object in life--‘I never knew
before what love meant’--indicates the revelation which the higher
element of sexual passion should bring to the lower phase. It is an
illustration of the parallelism and natural harmony between the sexes.
The prevalent fallacy that sexual passion is the almost exclusive
attribute of men, and attached exclusively to the act of coition--a
fallacy which exercises so disastrous an effect upon our social
arrangements--arises from ignorance of the distinctive character of
human sex--viz., its powerful mental element. A tortured girl, done to
death by brutal soldiers, may possess a stronger power of human sexual
passion than her destroyers.
The comparison so often drawn between the physical development of the
comparatively small class of refined and guarded women, and the men of
worldly experience whom they marry, is a false comparison. These women
have been taught to regard sexual passion as lust and as sin--a sin
which it would be a shame for a pure woman to feel, and which she would
die rather than confess. She has not been taught that sexual passion is
love, even more than lust, and that its ennobling work in humanity is
to educate and transfigure the lower by the higher element. The growth
and indications of her own nature she is taught to condemn, instead of
to respect them as foreshadowing that mighty impulse towards maternity
which will place her nearest to the Creator if reverently accepted.
But if the comparison be made between men and women of loose lives--not
women who are allowed and encouraged by money to carry on a trade in
vice, but men and women of similar unrestrained and loose life--the
unbridled impulse of physical lust is as remarkable in the latter as in
the former. The astounding lust and cruelty of women uncontrolled by
spiritual principle is a historical fact.
The most destructive phase of fornication is promiscuous intercourse.
This riotous debauchery introduced the devastating scourge of syphilis
into Western Europe in the fourteenth century. Promiscuous intercourse
can never be made ‘safe.’ The resort of many men to one woman, with its
results, is against nature.
The special structures of the female body, which are endowed with the
elasticity necessary for the passage of a child, rich in secreting
glands, in folds, in power of absorption, cannot be treated as a plane
surface, to be washed out and labelled ‘safe.’ Physical danger will
always be connected with unnatural use of the body; neither party
engaged in promiscuous intercourse can be pronounced clean.
This is not the place to speak of the moral danger inseparable from a
corrupt bargain which debases the highest function, the creative, to
the low status of trade competition, but the Christian physician is
bound to consider this.
Some medical writers have considered that women are more tyrannically
governed than men by the impulses of physical sex. They have dwelt upon
the greater proportion of work laid upon women in the reproduction of
the race, the prolonged changes and burden of maternity, and the fixed
and marked periodical action needed to maintain the aptitude of the
physical frame for maternity. They have drawn the conclusion that sex
dominates the life of women, and limits them in the power of perfect
human growth. This would undoubtedly be the case were sex simply a
physical function.
The fact in human nature which explains, guides, and should elevate the
sexual nature of woman, and mark the beneficence of Creative Force,
is this very mental element which distinguishes human from brute sex.
This element, gradually expanding under religious teaching and the
development of true religious sentiment, becomes the ennobling power of
love. Love between the sexes is the highest and mightiest form of human
sexual passion.
The mental element in human sex, although as distinctly a part of
sexual passion as the physical element, does not necessarily imply good
use. The woman who employs the arts of dress to bring the physical
peculiarities of sex into prominence, and uses every method of coquetry
and flirtation to excite the attention and awaken the physical impulses
of men, is abusing her sexual power. The degree in which she employs
these arts, measures the extent to which her own nature is dominated
by brute sexual instinct, and the unworthiness of the use to which she
puts this instinct.
This power of sex in women is strikingly shown in the enormous
influence which they exert upon men for evil. It is not the cold
beauty of a statue which enthrals and holds so many men in terrible
fascination; it is the living, active power of sexual life embodied
in its separate overpowering female phase. The immeasurable depth
of degradation into which those women fall, whose sex is thoroughly
debased, who have intensified the physical instincts of the brute by
the mental power for evil possessed by the human being, indicates
the mighty character of sexual power over the nature of woman for
corruption. It is also a measure of what the ennobling power of
passion may be.
Happily, in all civilized countries there is a natural reserve in
relation to sexual matters which indicates the reverence with which
this high social power of our human nature should be regarded. It is
a sign of something wrong in education, or in the social state, when
matters which concern the subject of sex are discussed with the same
freedom and boldness as other matters. This subject should neither
be a topic of idle gossip, of unreserved publicity, nor of cynical
display. This natural and beneficial instinct of reserve, springing
from unconscious reverence, renders it difficult for one sex to measure
and judge the vital power of the other. The independent thought and
large observation of each sex is needed in order to arrive at truth.
Unhappily, however, women are often falsely instructed by men, for
a licentious husband inevitably depraves the sentiment of his wife,
because vicious habits have falsified his nature and blinded his
perception of the moral law which dominates sexual growth.
Each sex has its own stern battle to fight in resisting temptation,
in walking resolutely towards the higher aim of life. It is equally
foolish and misleading to attempt to weigh the vital qualities of the
sexes, and measure justice and mercy, law and custom, by the supposed
results. It is difficult for the child to comprehend that a pound of
feathers can weigh as much as a pound of lead. Much of our thought
concerning men and women is as rudimentary as the child’s. Vast errors
of law and custom have arisen in the slow unfolding of human nature
from failure to realize the extent of the injury produced by that abuse
of sex--fornication. We have not hitherto perceived that, on account
of the moral degradation and physical disease which it inevitably
produces, lustful trade in the human body is a grave social crime.
In forming a wiser judgment for future guidance, it must be distinctly
recognised that the assertion that sexual passion commands more of the
vital force of men than of women is a false assertion, based upon a
perverted or superficial view of the facts of human nature. Any custom,
law, or religious teaching based upon this superficial and essentially
false assertion, must necessarily be swept away with the prevalence of
sounder physiological views.
It is a fact that the brain and nervous system are the media of
sensation, and that pleasure, physical or mental, in whatever way it
may be aroused, must be measured by the keenness of nervous life in
both sexes, not by any special act of one sex.
It has also been shown that the secretion of semen does not necessitate
a resort to sexual congress, but that there is a distinct and healthy
provision for the removal of unneeded secretions in each sex which
leaves the individual the power of self-guidance. Physiology condemns
fornication by showing the physical arrangements which support the
moral law. There is no justification in the physiological structure
of humanity for the destructive practice of fornication. We thus
see by the light of sound physiology, and the advanced thought of
the nineteenth century, the profound insight of the founders of
Christianity, who denounced in one equal and awful condemnation the
whoremonger and the whore.