_The Development of the Idea of Chastity_
The most fundamental work which rests upon the medical profession is
the spread of physiological truth in its practical application to
the education of both boys and girls. The sexual instinct, being a
primitive elementary instinct, exists alike in men and women. It is
the necessary impulse leading to parentage, an impulse which the great
Creative Force has laid down as a law of our present human life. But
chastity and continence are not primitive instincts in either sex;
they are the higher growth of reason, and of the religious and legal
guidance by which in every age it has been found indispensable to
direct the impulse of sex.
The way in which this instinct may be exercised to the permanent
advantage of a progressive community is a gradual discovery of the
human race. It is a development or differentiation of the primitive
instinct; but the instinct and the wise method of educating or of
exercising it are separate facts.
In the savage stage, in semi-barbarous countries, and in the slums of
all great towns, both men and women are grossly unchaste.
It is by the growth and expansion of human nature under a knowledge of
providential law, that the necessity of guiding the exercise of the
original instinct is perceived. Thus, varying institutions gradually
arise out of the varied methods employed to guide the sexual impulse.
Different circumstances, different systems of education, law, and
religion, produce varying results. But all these results spring from
a perception that the sexual instinct requires guidance, and cannot,
without danger to society, be left in its primitive ignorance.
In the gradual growth of thought which leads to ever higher forms
of society, the physiologist has very important aid to render. It
is his part to show how the two great forces of Habit and Heredity
are the powerful physiological factors in the growth or degeneracy
of the human race. In these two great facts--viz., the ability to
form habits and the power of transmitting the tendencies produced by
habits--the mind and body are inseparably blended, and through them a
nation becomes chaste or unchaste. Habit can so change the nature as
to make what was difficult easy; it can so strengthen the tendencies
in directly opposite directions as to both govern, and to a great
extent change, the action of the physical organization itself, and the
fact of heredity will transmit these changed tendencies to succeeding
generations.
It is impossible in the long-run to ignore these two facts which
so powerfully govern sexual passion, because Nature has established
them. Short-sighted views may exist as to the trivial character of
the relations prevailing between the sexes. It may be considered of
slight importance whether lust or love rule these relations. The slow
or remote nature of the evils produced by the violation of Nature’s
laws, and the apparent escape of some offenders from immediate penalty,
confuse the short sight of the irreligious. But Nature disregards our
short-sightedness, sweeps away our theories and self-indulgence, and
inexorably avenges the violation of law by gradual but inevitable
degeneration of the race.
The power which habit exercises over human nature depends upon the
physiological character of the nervous system itself, through which our
will and thought act.
It has been well said by Michel Lévy that periodicity is the law of the
nervous system.[4] It is a law which both regulates its physiological
action and controls the course of its diseases.
Impressions made upon the brain by external objects or by internal
sensations modify the condition of the brain. This modification is
slight at first, but increases by repetition. When an impression
is first made upon the brain, it has to overcome the inertia or
unaccustomed state of the organization to receive that kind of
impression. But with each repetition this resistance diminishes and a
habit is formed. Owing to the rule of periodicity which governs the
nervous system, the brain tends to repeat the change which it has once
experienced, to recall sensations, and solicit a repetition of changes
which have been frequently impressed upon it.
Passing impressions may produce little effect in changing the
condition of the brain, but when such impressions are often repeated
and prolonged, when the attention is fixed upon them and the will
engaged in recalling them, then the nervous system itself undergoes
modification, and a new disposition of the organization itself is
acquired from the continuation and frequent repetition of the same
impressions.
It is in this way, through a change in the nervous system itself, that
habit becomes literally a second nature; and in this way habits most
opposite to the natural or rudimentary state are introduced into our
human organization, and ‘nature is dominated by or absorbed in habit.’
The power of habit is seen even in the action of organs withdrawn
from the will, as in the powers of adaptation to all kinds of food,
to various kinds of atmosphere and climate. It is, however, in that
portion of our nature directly connected with and governed by the brain
that the remarkable transforming power of habit is seen, and in the
sexual system this enormous power is most signally displayed.
Habits may become so much a part of our nature that they are exercised
unconsciously, the impression which first excited the brain being no
longer noticed, though still exerting its modifying influence.
But when the attention is constantly aroused, the brain acts with
sustained and increasing energy; the senses are thus strengthened or
perfected, and new and higher powers are developed in the individual,
which through inheritance may be transmitted to a succeeding generation.
It is in this way that the practice of continence or of incontinence
gradually forms a distinctive characteristic of social and national
life.
This distinctive faculty possessed by the nervous system of
modifying its own sensations, and even acquiring new aptitudes, is
the physiological basis of human progress. ‘It is the foundation of
education, of the power of law, of the influence of custom, and the
necessary condition of hygienic improvement.’
Habits, when formed in accordance with physiological law, do not tend
to indifference. By the constant repetition of impressions a new
relation is gradually established between the organs or faculties
affected and the cause which produces the effect. As the keenness
of first sensations producing transitory pleasure diminishes, habit
strengthens the important relation which grows up between faculties
and the objects which modify them. It is the superior power of the
new relation thus established by habit between the individual and the
objects that have modified his nature, that have even caused the Swiss
mountaineer to die of home-sickness, or the bereaved partner in a
lifelong union to follow the beloved object to the grave.
It will thus be seen how the idea and the practice of chastity have
grown up from a physiological basis, and may be inseparably interwoven
with the essential structure of our physical organization. Chastity
is the government of the sexual instinct by the higher reason or
wisdom--_i.e._, by our perception of the providential law which governs
our human nature. Customs, and the laws concerning marriage and the
relations of the sexes which represent them, are checks or guides
imposed upon the blind sexual impulse by the enlightened common-sense
of mankind. These customs and laws, acting slowly but persistently upon
society, generation after generation, modify the habits of thought in
the adult, and the methods of education in the child. It is thus that
the idea of chastity arises, and its practice becomes possible and
easy. It springs as a physiological habit from the effects for good
and evil which are produced by the modifications of our nervous system
through education and custom.
The universal experience of the world has proved that directly human
beings join in societies, they are compelled to impose guides upon
the exercise of the sexual powers, in the interest of society itself.
This check upon the blind, unrestrained use of the sexual impulse is a
necessity imposed by our physiological structure for the well-being and
continuance of the race.
The most important practical results flow from obedience to the
physiological law of chastity thus imposed upon our sexual nature. The
necessary mutual aid and respect of the sexes, procreative vigour and
the production of a fine race, and the extirpation of the loathsome
disease caused by promiscuous intercourse, are all subject to the
guidance of chastity.
The tremendous power of creative law, which is quite beyond our reach,
demands that the blind instinct of sex be governed and enlightened by
this inevitable higher control, and that human law be moulded upon
Divine law.
The mighty and transforming physiological power of habit, with its
tendencies transmitted by both men and women to their offspring, shows
the method by which the law of chastity must gradually extend its sway
over the human race. The choice between inevitable degeneracy and sure
improvement is left to our relatively free will, but the law which
governs results is beyond our reach. Race after race has perished from
blind or wilful ignorance, or neglect of the inexorable moral law bound
up with our physiological structure.
The importance of the truths now insisted on can be more fully realized
in their wide bearings by experienced and religious physicians than by
any other class in the community. If they will learn to trust to the
sacredness of the maternal instinct, and instruct mothers, as well as
fathers, in these vital truths concerning our sexual structures, they
will exercise a mighty influence in the elevation of our race.
To the younger members of the profession I wish to offer some farther
hints on the direct practical bearing of the foregoing truths. The
facts of our human organization should not only guide the medical
advice given in the consultation-room, but caution us respecting
the methods to be adopted in dealing with the poor, and suggest the
direction in which national sanitary measures should proceed.
The immense power of this passion of sex in the human race must never
be ignored in relation to either men or women. The beneficent control
which the human mind can exercise over the passion points out that item
in the human _materia medica_, which more than any other the physician
must strive to secure for the benefit of his patient, viz.--force of
will. He is bound to declare the sovereign efficacy of this natural
specific, and enforce the methods of securing it. All physical and
hygienic means must be called upon to develop and support that power
of will and that mental purity which alone can govern wisely the human
sexual nature.
There is another point which cannot be too strongly insisted on. The
personal modesty of patients--that elementary virtue in Christian
civilization--must be carefully cherished by the physician, who, more
than any other, is acquainted with its influence on the sexual nature.
The common resort to sexual examination is an evil grown up in medical
practice of comparatively modern date. The use of the speculum should
be strictly limited by absolute necessity. Its reckless use amongst the
poor is a serious national injury. I know from fifty years’ medical
experience amongst the poor, as well as the rich, that this custom
is a real and growing evil. It should be a last resort of medical
necessity, and it is so regarded by thoughtful physicians. That it is
sometimes necessary is unhappily true; and when a poor sufferer learns
from her trusted adviser that such investigation is quite unavoidable,
acceptance of such judgment is the part of wisdom and true modesty.
But it is essential that the medical judgment thus rendered should be
final--the result of age and special experience. The wise custom of
many physicians to decline practice in which a very special training
has not given them the positive knowledge of an expert should be a
universal rule. It is a social wrong when the serious character of this
branch of medicine is not conscientiously acknowledged. The natural
sentiment of personal modesty is seriously injured amongst respectable
people by the resort to a succession of incompetent advisers.
A really serious and national evil results from the thoughtless
treatment of the poor. In dispensary and hospital, and wherever medical
assistance is rendered to the exposed and helpless classes, the first
duty of the physician is to respect personal modesty, or to instil it
if the habit has been lost. Every physician, man or woman, is bound to
cherish with reverence the great conservative principle of society,
personal modesty and self-respect. This is a point on which the medical
practitioner cannot avoid a moral responsibility. Physicians are the
special guardians of health from infancy onward. They possess the means
of acquiring the fullest knowledge of the double elements of human
nature--the interaction of mind and body. From their culture, their
social position, and the authority which they legitimately exercise,
the weighty responsibility of rightly guarding the human faculties
rests chiefly upon them. In all those points where the physical health
of a nation is inseparably connected with its moral health, they are
more responsible than any other class of the community for the moral
condition of their country.
All medical advice and all medical measures must, therefore, be
guided by the positive fact that human sex differs from brute sex in
the possession of a mental element which is capable of elevating and
controlling it, and which must never be lost sight of in dealing with
human beings.
To the rising members of our noble profession I earnestly present
the foregoing facts for their Christian and patriotic consideration,
believing that when they fully realize these great truths they will
embrace them with the generous enthusiasm of youth. Thus, while guiding
their future practice by sound principles in relation to the care of
our human organization, they will enforce these truths by the strongest
of all arguments--the true manliness of their own lives.