_Sympathy._--Another great step in advance has been made by the dawn of

the Co-operative movement amongst us. As Abolition set a limit to the

subjects of trade, so Co-operation is setting a limit to its methods.

True co-operators clearly see that to arrest the slave-owner and the

slave-dealer by the strong arm of the law, is but a first step to human

progress; it is only compelling a necessary condition, not insuring a

good end.

But co-operation will secure gradually the third necessary basis of

progressive and durable human industry--viz., sympathy.

Doubtless this statement will at once bring to mind not only the

selfish combinations of Civil Service supply, but the multifarious

quarrels and departure from principle, in the great body of working

people distinctively called co-operators.

Nevertheless, the statement is true that co-operation is a new

development of practical Christianity, which can introduce that

essential element of true political economy, sympathy, the hitherto

missing guide of human industry.

The few friends who met in a small chamber in 1828 and initiated the

Manchester and Salford Co-operative Schools were fired by enthusiasm.

The poor weavers of Toad Lane, who saved their hard-earned pence and

divided their first chest of tea, were filled with pity for their

suffering brethren, and eagerly gave the poor room, the precious

time, the exhausting thought--all they had to give--to establish the

brotherly principle of mutual help. And the large-hearted leaders

of the movement, who changed the name of Christian Socialist to

Co-operator--Maurice, Kingsley, Ludlow, Hughes, and many another of the

first noble little band--laid down a spiritual basis as the essential

foundation of durable material success.

It has been said of the labouring classes ‘that they are unfit for any

order of things which would make any considerable demand on either

their intellect or their virtue.’ The enlightened co-operator perceives

that this is true of all classes of men, rich or poor, in a state of

things where industry is ruled by unlimited competition, and trade

subjects everything to the domination of money. Where all restrictions

are removed, but no sympathy developed, new forms of oppression and

revenge arise.

Co-operation, therefore, announces a fundamental law of durable

political economy. It adopts mutual aid instead of antagonism in

industry, extends a share of the results of labour in equitable

proportion to all who produce them, and replaces competition in

money-getting by emulation in superiority of production.

Thus sympathy, the first necessary foundation of industry and social

union, is being slowly evolved by the trials, the failures, but the

ultimately assured success of the Co-operative movement.

This gradual recognition of the necessary basis of progressive

political economy--trust, freedom, and sympathy (here slightly

hinted at)--is itself founded upon a rock--viz., the immutability of

the Creator’s law of Moral Government, the adaptation of the human

constitution to its surroundings, the only method by which steady

growth can be secured. The waves of selfishness and false theories dash

themselves vainly against this rock, and race after race perishes in

the foolish attempt to set aside the Moral Law.

The hopeful light thrown upon the future by the revelation of freedom

and co-operative sympathy, as fundamental laws of true political

economy, can only be fully perceived by those who have measured the

evils of slavery and sounded the fearful depths of misery produced by

unlimited competition. The revelations of the results of this phase of

competition in which we are living are all around us, in every class of

society, in every quarter of the globe. The mercantile system, which

makes wealth and money synonymous, and reduces every interest to a

subject of trade, spares no relation of life, and desecrates every rank

of society. We need not go back to the crimes which Warren Hastings

committed to fill his treasury. The same methods of crushing the weak

for money, of bartering honour and conscience in the lust of gain,

are going on at this moment in Asia and Africa, in the islands of the

Pacific, in uncontrolled America, and enchained Russia. Its effects are

seen in the Legislature and the courts of law, in all professions and

trades, in the mansion and the lodging-house. Corruption and cruelty

inevitably resulting from a false system of political economy, are

barring the progress of the human race.

In the present day we prostitute the superior strength gained by

us from the principles of Christianity, to the debasement of human

beings. Money being considered identical with wealth, sensuality

reigns supreme. Money having under this system become the great means

of gratifying material desires, the strife to obtain it becomes

ever fiercer. The statesman regards it as a highest duty to open

new channels of commerce for national activity, quite regardless of

the conditions of mutual freedom and sympathy which make commerce

legitimate. Whisky, opium, and gunpowder bring rich returns from the

ignorant peoples to whom their use was hitherto unknown, and this

wicked abuse of our superior intelligence is in strict accord with the

short-sighted teaching of the political economy accepted by trade.[14]

This species of trade, carried on without limitation, without the

large intelligence of religious insight, must produce a fall of any

race equal to the height of its development; for although ‘religion

without science is a purblind angel, science without religion is a

full-blown devil.’

It is into the last possible phase of limitless competition in buying

and selling, that our nineteenth century has entered, by permitting

one-half the race to become the merchandise of the other half.

Under a specious hypocrisy, falsely styled freedom of contract, a

modern phase of slavery is still exercising its influence in our midst;

for the slave-holding principle that the human body may be an article

of merchandise is still applied to women, and conscience is still dead

to the essential principle of freedom--viz., the sacredness of the

human body, through which the soul must grow.

CHAPTER II

_Trade in Women_

It is necessary to define clearly the practical form of evil which is

now under consideration, and to the effects of which the consciences

of men and women must be roused. Ordinary immorality is not the

demoralization of the slums--that horrible result of monopoly and

speculation in land, where human beings are herded together like

pigs--a condition into which the bargains of trade hardly enter.

Neither is it the practice of free lust--a practice where unlimited

liberty is claimed by both men and women to indulge the impulses

of sexual caprice. Ordinary immorality is the distinct, deliberate

application to women of the trading system of money values governed

by unlimited competition. In this system activity, opportunity, and

cleverness carry the day; conscientiousness and spiritual aspiration

are out of place; innocence and ignorance constitute weakness, and, of

course, go to the wall.

Ordinary immorality or fornication, assuming the female body to be an

article of merchandise, necessarily subjects this merchandise to those

fluctuations of the market, those variations in demand and supply, and

that tyranny of capital over labour which destroy freedom of contract.

It may be urged that women ‘consent’ to be purchased, and that

therefore there is a radical difference between the purchase of the

bodies of men and women, which the anti-slavery movement has pronounced

illegal, and the purchase of women by men which we are now considering.

The sophistry of such evasion will be apparent if the question of

‘consent’ and the specious hypocrisy generally involved in freedom of

contract be closely examined. Freedom of contract can only take place

between those who in certain essential particulars are equals. The

parties to any contract must be so far equals in intelligence, that

they can equally understand any risks that may be run, and clearly

foresee the probable results of the bargain; and they must be so far

equals in social position, that neither party is compelled by the

pressure of circumstances or the fear of want, to accept conditions

which are unjust or unwise. No freedom of contract is possible where

this degree of intellectual and practical equality does not exist.

Freedom implies responsibility. There is no freedom if both parties

are not free. Any insistence upon consent to a bargain ignorantly

or forcibly made is fraud. It is fraud darkened by varying degrees

of cruelty, proportioned to the superiority of intelligence and

independence possessed by the stronger party in the bargain.

The grave error of excusing purchase by the plea of consent, is fully

shown when the relations of capital to labour in the present system

of competitive industry are understood. We are now so far removed

from the primitive trade of barter, where values were determined

by necessities, that first principles are commonly lost sight of.

Generations have passed, during which ideas about wealth have become

confused through complicated exchanges, stored-up labour inherited by

those who no longer labour, violent seizures in the past or cunning

ones in the present, with constantly changing standards or ideals. The

quite new standard of converting everything into a money value, and

measuring its value by money, has taken the place of older methods. As

a result, money has become the autocrat of industry. Character, talent,

activity still possess their uses, but only as the servants of money

or capital, which have practically become interchangeable terms. The

weaker portions of the human race are ever more and more deeply crushed

down by the misery of a limitless competitive system, which is not

based on the legitimate foundations of trust, freedom, and sympathy,

and which consequently, by placing money as the irresponsible governor

of the industrial world, makes the hypocrisy of so-called ‘freedom of

contract’ the most bitter mockery.

It is necessary to realize the overwhelming and illegitimate power of

money in the present day, if the condition of any grade is to be justly

judged, and the responsibilities for the evils of a vicious trade

rightly apportioned. In the terrible trade which converts the human

body into a marketable commodity, it is no figure of speech, but a very

weighty fact, that vicious men are the capitalists. The responsibility

of that position must be recognised.

In judging either of the parties concerned in the trade, the question,

‘Who are the capitalists or paymasters?’ is the point to be insisted

on. This is the fundamental fact to be steadily borne in mind--whether

we consider the demoralized women who consent to the conversion of

their bodies into merchandise; or the wholesale traders who organize

to meet a demand increasing beyond the power of individuals to supply;

or the State which connives at the trade; or society which condones

it--the capital on which this nefarious traffic rests is supplied by

licentious men. This is the great economic fact on which the whole

system rests. All legislation and all benevolent effort that do

not recognise this fundamental fact, will hopelessly wander in the

labyrinth of evil trade, with no clue to direct their energies aright.

From this unnatural employment of capital, two other economic evils

directly arise--viz., first, the discouragement of honest industry;

second, an unfair competition with male labour.

The discouragement of honest industry is a very serious economic evil.

Any discouragement to patient industry, thrift, and self-control is

direct encouragement to reckless improvidence, vicious indulgence, and

the creation of a dangerously increasing predatory horde. Through

obstacles to honest labour, our prisons are now filled with criminals,

our streets with the vicious, and our work-houses with paupers.

The industrious workers are taxed beyond endurance to support the

institutions rendered necessary by the suicidal policy of degrading

labour.

The discouraging difficulties which now surround all honest industry

press with increased force upon women’s labour, and compel a moral

heroism to resist the special temptation which crowds upon them.

It is now a fact that in every large city, no woman with any pretension

to natural attractiveness can fail to meet a purchaser. There are

men who think it neither shame nor wrong to purchase for shillings

or pounds, as the case may be, a temporary physical gratification,

without reflection upon the inevitable results, individual and social,

of their temporary action. The knowledge that money may be gained so

easily, spreads from woman to woman. The contrast between the ease with

which the wages of sin may be gained, and the laborious, even crushing

methods of honest industry, becomes an ever present and burning

temptation to working women.

It is undoubtedly true that the numerical excess of women in Great

Britain, with other economic facts, intensifies most heavily upon woman

the grinding pressure of our present industrial system. All rescue

workers seeking to help their fallen sisters are constantly confronted

with the appalling answer, ‘Give me work; I cannot starve.’ The awful

extent of woman’s industrial misery would now be more fully realized,

had not well-meant benevolent efforts called in the harsh hand of the

police to suppress begging, and thus crush it out of sight.

The increasing and perplexing flood of women in the streets, begging

to be bought, is a strange commentary on the effect of the stern

repression of begging for alms. If in the future, in addition to

the suppression of ordinary begging by men and women, another edict

goes forth forbidding women to present themselves for sale, but not

forbidding men to purchase them, gross injustice to women will be

added to a cruel abuse of power, and fresh impulse given to male vice.

Certainly, if it were in the nature of women to become murderous

criminals, any increasingly harsh and unjust attempts to crush their

misery and degradation out of sight, would drive them into violent

crime.

But it is not the seamstress slowly starving in her garret, nor the

mass of struggling poverty that is alone, or even chiefly, beset by

the fiery temptations of gain, and the enticing pleasures which money

can provide. The deterioration of character, which is the gravest

result of a false system of political economy, extends to much wider

circles of society. This serious fact is sufficient to prove the error

of those who look to the industrial independence of women, as the

chief means of destroying licentiousness. Although freedom to obtain

decent remunerative employment will secure an important condition for

checking social evil, it will be a means only, it can never attain the

end.

The great army of domestic servants, whether in public or private

dwellings, are surrounded by constant temptations to supplement their

wages or relieve their monotonous labour by selling themselves. When

we remember the conditions under which the vast mass of servants

have grown up, the exposures and privations of their homes, their

undeveloped mental state in relation to social duties, the exhausting

work upon which the majority of them enter in hotels, lodging-houses,

struggling households, or the special danger of rich, careless

establishments, and realize both the condition under which their

service drags on and the natural instincts of the human being, then

it is easy to understand why to a frightfully increasing extent

they yield to the solicitations to which they are exposed. The five

shillings secretly gained at night becomes an important addition to

scanty wages, the stolen pleasures an intoxicating relief to drudgery.

The economic effect of thus bringing the lightly-earned wages of

vice into competition with the hard-earned wages of honest industry

is to discredit the latter, and to produce discontent and careless,

unwilling service in industries for which women are naturally better

fitted than men; for the same state of things that is injuring domestic

service, exists in dress-making, millinery, and all peculiarly feminine

industries.

If we take the wider range of labour in which women compete more

directly with men in the labour market, it will be found that

this practice of purchasing women introduces an unfair element in

remuneration of labour. The introduction of the slave principle

(the purchase of the human body) in cheapening women’s labour, has

a formidable effect in depressing the wages of working-men. In all

systems of industry carried on by slaves the cost of maintenance is, as

a rule, the limit of expenditure, the equivalent of wages. Also in the

industrial systems of so-called free industry, the maintenance of the

labourer again forms a limit beyond which profit cannot be extracted,

for no man will consent to labour for less wages than will keep him

alive. But this is not the case in regard to women’s labour. As was

proved a generation ago in France, and can be amply verified in other

civilized countries, women’s wages are forced down below subsistence

point.

This important fact, with its cause, has evidently not been fully

realized even by so close and impartial an observer as Mill. He says:

‘The wages at least of single women must be equal to their support, but

need not be more than equal to it; the minimum in their case is the

pittance absolutely requisite for the sustenance of one human being.

Now, the lowest point to which the most superabundant competition

can permanently depress the wages of a man is always somewhat more

than this. The _ne plus ultra_ of low wages can hardly occur in any

occupation which the person employed has to live by, except the

occupation of a woman.’ Mill is evidently uncertain as to the causes

of the under-payment of women in cases of equal efficiency with men,

and is inclined to attribute it to injustice and to overcrowding in

a few employments. He remarks: ‘When the efficiency is equal but the

pay unequal, the only explanation that can be given is custom, which,

making almost every woman an appendage of some man, enables men to take

the lion’s share of whatever belongs to both.’

But in this generation, which has thrown open the broad gates of

education to women, and which has enormously extended the range of

employments into which they are invited to enter, the causes which

Mill suggests (overcrowding, injustice, etc.) do not seem to give

a sufficient economic reason. One powerful and growing cause of

derangement in the natural rewards of labour has been overlooked--viz.,

the unequal competition with male labour which must result, when the

wages given by vice are allowed to supplement the under-payment for

honest work, and the street-door key makes up for the deficient salary.

Whilst this phase of human slavery exists, and the female body remains

an article of merchandise, the increasing competition with male labour

will make itself more severely felt as wider fields of industry are

extended to women and they develop increasing ability to enter them.

The wages of women can never permanently rise to a just scale of

labour value, until this slavish principle is eliminated, because this

purchase introduces an uneconomical element into the remuneration of

labour which destroys any legitimate effect of demand and supply. It

enables competitive employers solely intent on profit to beat down

the price of male as well as female labour indefinitely. Indeed, we

have by no means reached the limits of this injustice. The practice of

purchase is still more dangerous in an economic point of view, because

whilst the labour of all women tends to sink to the lowest point of

remuneration, this lowest point can be reached in the labour of the

young and strong, who are most eagerly sought for as merchandise.

The increasing employment of less remunerated female labour while male

labour stands idle, is an alarming fact. The family is barely held

together by the earnings, of a daughter, whilst father and brother

lounge about the pot-house. The results of any sudden stoppage of a

factory where large amounts of this cheap labour has been employed (as

in the Barking jute factory, where 800 girls were suddenly thrown out

of employment) is an object-lesson in the suicidal policy of degrading

women.

The natural order of industry by which the man is the chief material

support of the family, is disturbed and destroyed by this unnatural

practice.

The purchase of young women adds cruelty to fraud. Youth must always

fail to realize results which are only known through the experience of

age. No amount of cautious or theoretic teaching given to the young can

ever place them on an equality with the experienced adult. Moreover,

it is Nature’s law for youth that sexual attraction is quite out of

proportion to intellectual development. The fact of this great natural

law of slower mental growth is the Creator’s imperative command laid

upon the older generation, to protect and guide the youth of both

sexes. The corruption of the young by the adult is not only fraud, it

is dastardly cruelty.

Moreover, Nature has laid upon woman the more important share in

the great work of continuing the race. It is not therefore pity,

but justice which requires that reverent and grateful aid should be

rendered by men, in the grand duty of creating an ever nobler race.

Trust, freedom, and sympathy form the bases of true relations between

men and women, as they are also the moral foundations of political

economy.

The depth of that sin against human nature--fornication or purchase--is

seen in the results which follow from tempting women away from the

paths of honest industry. These effects necessarily extend to the whole

position and character of one-half the race, when any portion of women

are turned into human merchandise. They are seen, by a careful study of

those reckless or hardened ones who have become so direful a problem

in all our large towns. How is that growing army of shameless women

created who, with their companions, so fearfully avenge all social

injustice on our boys and girls and our young men and maidens?

It is well known that there are thousands of ‘fallen women’ in London.

What does this general statement in relation to women mean in detail?

What is involved in living by the sale of the human body? The woman,

however ‘fallen,’ is still a human being with its desperate clinging to

life. Let it be realized what is involved in thousands of women living

to the age of three-score years and ten, who must feed themselves

three times a day, and provide lodging, clothing, and the satisfaction

of all human needs by the repeated sale of their bodies--thousands

of women, with all the craving and ever active necessities of the

human being, bodies and souls to be kept alive by the money of their

buyers, and who are compelled to use every art of corruption to find

the fresh purchasers through whom they have learned to live--women

to whom lust and drink rapidly become a second nature, and sloth and

falsehood habitual; women driven on by ceaseless material needs to

lower and lower phases of misery and vice, in whom a bitterness is

engendered that revenges itself on the weakness and innocence of youth,

tempting the lad when the adult ceases to purchase; women who--terrible

fact--finally losing their own marketable value, and scourged by their

own daily recurring needs, throw away the last remnants of womanly

instinct, and drag down young girls into their hell of life.

The grave fact must be borne in mind that each one of these thousands

of marketable women--although once an innocent infant--now forms a

centre of ever-widening corrupt influence in the varied relations of

life. Each one, with father and mother, brothers and sisters, friends

and acquaintances, servants and tradespeople, is exercising a fatal

influence, desecrating the sanctity of sexual relations, proving

the ease with which the rewards of vice are gained, bewildering the

conscience of the innocent, and transmitting sensual tendencies to

their descendants.

From these bought women come those enemies of social progress, who

enslave our young men of the higher classes, our future statesmen,

those who should be the leaders of the nation. From Skittles to Cora

Pearl, our generation has witnessed the enslaving power of these

tyrants of lust. They have dried up the generous enthusiasm of our

youth, and destroyed those principles of trust, freedom, and sympathy

which should guide our domestic and foreign policy.

Who is guilty of this appalling conversion of women into demons, this

contagion of evil which in ever-widening circles is destroying our

moral health, and injuring the modesty, freedom, and dignity of all

womanhood? The immediate cause is the man, whether prince or peasant,

who purchases a woman for the gratification of lust. It is this

purchase which draws women into the clutches of a godless, money-making

machine, which never loosens its hold of the feeble creature until the

essential features of womanhood are crushed out of recognition. The

irresponsible polyandry of prostitution, with its logical acceptance

and regulation of brothels, has replaced in the West the polygamy

of the East. In both, degradation, discouragement of marriage, and

injustice to women create a fatal barrier to permanent national

progress. But there is a more insidious source of evil than the direct

purchaser. The conversion of women into merchandise, whilst it produces

a dangerous deterioration of female character, unavoidably reacts upon

male character. This evil tends in women to produce the vices of the

slave--deceit, falsehood, and servility; in men it tends to foster the

vices of the slave-holder--arrogance, selfishness, and cruelty. In both

it engenders that deadly sin--hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the vice which, above all others, our Lord denounces with

the most awful condemnation, raising the drunkard and the harlot,

with His far-seeing, merciful purity, and thrusting the Scribe and

Pharisee--secret fornicators--into their place. ‘He that is without

sin, let him cast the first stone.’ Hypocrisy is the vice which

distinguishes in the most marked degree those nations which dare to

call themselves Christian, but who practically deny every principle

of Christ’s teaching in the conduct of public and, to a great extent,

private affairs. It is under this reign of hypocrisy that a more

dangerous condition of sexual evil has grown up amongst us than has

ever existed amongst heathen nations. When a savage tribe enslaves

its enemies and trades in human flesh it does not trade against its

conscience. In its rudimentary condition of slow emergence from brutish

ignorance it knows no higher standard than a savage display of muscular

force. When a polygamous nation buys both men and women, or endeavours

to enforce the physical chastity of women by harem imprisonment, it

obeys the highest authority it knows of, its religion, believed in,

although erroneous in its teaching. The bitterest hatred and undying

hostility felt by Mohammedan as well as savage communities to their

Western invaders is due to the violation of their women, and the

treatment of those women according to the hypocritical customs of

their lustful conquerors. However false the standard of the savage

or semi-barbarous peoples may be, they possess one, and strive to

realize it. But the corruption which the latest and intensest phase

of competitive money values has introduced into the most enlightened

nations, is unexampled in the history of the race. The deliberate

reasoning out and justification of the conversion of women into

things is the abuse of our highest faculties, our power of reason and

conscience.

The cruel vice of fornication, protected by hypocrisy, is sowing

moral scrofula broadcast, and, like an insidious poison, producing

generations of feeble, rickety wills and maniacal monsters. It is

the degeneracy of the race. The palliation of this vice is shaking

the foundation of our civilization, by destroying the moral basis on

which alone progressive society can rest. The purchaser of a woman

is directly guilty, but a deeper source of evil influence is the man

or the woman who excuses and sanctions the purchase of women, by

upholding a double standard of morality for the sexes. In the present

age, while the actively licentious are following evil customs like

sheep, some of their intellectual and spiritual leaders are throwing

a veil of hypocrisy over these customs. The God-given faculties for

creating literature, investigating science, and promoting religion are

being perverted to the justification or palliation of lust.

Our brothers have hitherto been the rough and active pioneers of human

progress, first moulding the material framework of society, then

becoming its leaders and teachers--teachers of those fundamental moral

relations on which human society rests.

But a time has come in the development of the race, when much of the

teaching and judgment formed by one-half the race alone, is seen to be

liable to error, and requires to be weighed and approved by the other

half of mankind.

The women half is necessarily slower in development, from being

appointed to bear that great altruistic burden, maternity. But the

very shackles or sufferings thus undergone for the sake of the race

tend gradually to produce in women special adaptations to the higher

spiritual ends of creation.

When we now inquire into and weigh the value of the teachings offered

to women as the guide of their human relationship to men, we are

struck with its amazing contradictions. All classes and sections

bring forth their varying opinions. The scientist and the theologian,

the physician, the lawyer and the journalist, the literary and the

business man, the official and the man of leisure, are all seen

carrying their load of heterogeneous materials to help build up the

Babel of advice to women. All assert their knowledge of ‘Nature and

Instinct,’ of ‘Science and History,’ or ‘the tragical plea of material

necessity,’ to justify opinions founded on misunderstood data. But the

sectional opinions of a portion of the race must necessarily be either

imperfect, arrogant, or sentimental, and God confounds the Tower which

foolish mortals strive to raise to heaven. All those, both men and

women, who retain their reverence for sex, turn away from this unseemly

Babel of conceit and short-sightedness, and ponder these things in

hearts earnestly seeking truth.

The great question now at issue is the Unity of the Moral Law. This

unity is being attacked by the intellectual short-sightedness or

unconscious intellectual dishonesty of those who should be its most

enlightened upholders.

One of our leading family journals has lately stated that ‘the modern

notion of equality impairs the responsibility of special classes for

special virtues.’ There is a sense in which special classes may be said

to hold special responsibility. Women who are so vitally affected by

the relations of the sexes are especially called on to strengthen and

guide the sexual virtue of a people. They must consider the conditions

essential to such virtue, and when they clearly see the truth, an army

of noble men will zealously help in shaping truth in practice. The

great truth which women are now learning is the necessity that every

man should be chaste. This is the truth so long unrecognised, but at

last discovered as the solution of the great social problem. Without

male chastity, female chastity is impossible.

Virtue is not self-righteousness. It is unconscious of self, because

it has become a mode of individual existence, and it maintains its

vitality by care for others. A chaste woman does not think of her own

purity; she thinks of the poor girl drudging in cellars, or hurrying

at night, waylaid by tempters, to her poor home, or ‘drilled’ in the

rich man’s shop; she thinks of her cherished sons with their noble

and innocent young manhood exposed to the influence of the corrupt

adult. Women’s responsibility for the purity of society commands her

to announce the conditions of purity, and unmask with a relentless

justice--which is now the truest mercy--those destroyers of national

purity, the upholders of a double standard of sexual morality. The fact

that so many cultivated intellects resort to fallacy or metaphysical

abstraction to palliate the destructive abuse of our sexual powers, is

a direct call on women to help in spreading truth.

There cannot be one moral law for human beings, which is at the same

time of unequal application to them. Moral law is not the creation of

mediæval art, which, substituting a symbol for entity, represents the

Great Creator as an aged man with long gray beard seated upon clouds.

The moral law is not the arbitrary dictum of a man. The authority of

the moral law springs from its adaptation by the Creator, to the nature

of the beings subjected to it. It is the guide to the highest end of

that nature, the necessary method by which its welfare is secured.

Its authority is absolute, not relative, because it is the method of

highest growth. Divine law admits of no exception, it cannot contradict

itself. It is equally binding on the weakest as on the strongest, on

the man as on the woman, or it is not law. If men are so constituted

that they can grow to the full stature of manhood without obedience

to the law of purity, then the moral law of purity does not exist for

them, because it is not a necessary method of growth to their highest

human development; their nature is not adapted by the Creator to the

moral law; its influence over them is thus weakened, its absolute

authority destroyed.

To profess to accept the unity of the moral law, but at the same time

seek to avoid its consequences, is hypocrisy. The moral law cannot be

evaded by any metaphysical creation of ‘noble moral paradoxes.’[15] Any

attempt to define purity as unequally binding on the sexes by being

‘more for women, but not less for men,’ is worse than nonsense, it is

dangerous sophistry. It is a confusion of right and wrong, placing men

and women on diverging paths which will lead them ever farther apart.

It is a strange spectacle, the nineteenth-century Adam cowering under

the overpowering justice of the moral law, seeking refuge behind a

paradox! But the weak and erring children of one Great Creator, bound

to live together and help or injure one another, must not be turned

away from each other by the arrogance or ignorance of any portion of

the race. What mortal can determine the varying kind and quality of

temptations which assail another mortal life? Who shall dare to say

to another, You are not tempted as I am? Who can measure the weakness

or the strength of another soul, and measure out judgment by shifting

standards of right and wrong? Only by humility can we gain wisdom. Only

by doing the will of the Creator shall we learn the doctrine of truth.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] ‘At a meeting of the British Association, held September 7, 1886,

the eminent African explorer, Mr. Joseph Thompson, spoke boldly of

the evil influence of Europeans in Africa, remarking that it has been

terrible, and that for one negro influenced for good by missionaries

there were a thousand who had been driven to deeper degradation. We

supplied them still with an incredible quantity of gin, rum, gunpowder,

and guns.’

[15] See the _Spectator_, July 31, 1886.

THE MORAL EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG IN RELATION TO SEX

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 177

CHAPTER I

PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS WHICH INFLUENCE THE PHYSICAL AND

MENTAL GROWTH OF SEX 180

CHAPTER II

SOCIAL RESULTS OF NEGLECTING THESE PHYSIOLOGICAL LAWS 206

CHAPTER III

THE HYGIENIC ADVANTAGE OF SEXUAL MORALITY 240

CHAPTER IV

METHODS BY WHICH SEXUAL MORALITY MAY BE PROMOTED 259

APPENDIX I 306

APPENDIX II 308

INTRODUCTION

Age after age brings forward varying phases of thought, when some

particular facts of life are thrown into unusual prominence, such

special development of thought serving to mould the society of that

generation, giving it a special stamp, and thus advancing the progress

of humanity one step forward. Of all the ideas gradually worked out

and gained as the permanent possession of human society, the slowest

in growth is the idea of the true relations of the sexes. The instinct

of sex always exists as the indispensable condition of life and the

foundation of society. It is the strongest force in human nature.

Whatever else disappears, this continues. Undeveloped, no subject of

thought, but nevertheless as the central fire of life, Nature guards

this inevitable instinct from all possibility of destruction. But

as an idea, thought out in all its wide relations, shaped in human

practice in all its ennobling influences, it is the latest growth of

civilization. In whatever concerns the subject of sex, customs are

blindly considered sacred, and evils deemed inevitable. The mass of

mankind seems moved with anger, fear, or shame, by any effort made

to consider seriously this fundamental idea. It must necessarily come

forward, however, in the progress of events, as the subject of primary

importance. As society advances, as principles of justice and humanity

become firmly established, as science and industry prepare the way for

the more perfect command of the material world, it will be found that

the time has come for the serious consideration of this first and last

question in human welfare, for the subject of sex will then present

itself as the great aid or obstacle to further progress. The gradually

growing conviction will be felt that, as it is the fundamental

principle of all society, so it is its crowning glory. In the relations

of men and women will be found the chief cause of past national

decline, or the promise of indefinite future progress.

The family, being the first simple element of society--the first

natural product of the principle of sex--the whole structure of society

must depend upon the character of that element, and the powers that

can be unfolded from it. Morality in sex will be found to be the

essence of all morality, securing principles of justice, honour, and

uprightness in the most influential of all human relations, and as it

is all-important in life, so it is all-important in the education which

prepares for life. A great social question lies, therefore, at the

foundation of the moral education of youth, and influences more or less

directly each step of education. It becomes indispensable to consider

the relation of this subject to the various stages of education, and

the methods by means of which education may guide and strengthen youth

in their entrance into wider social life.

The principles which should guide the moral education of our

children--our boys and girls--must necessarily depend upon the views

which we hold in relation to their adult life, as men and women; these

views will unavoidably determine the course of practical education. Two

great questions, therefore, naturally present themselves at the outset

of every careful consideration of moral sexual education--

1. What is the true standard for the relations of men and women--the

type which contains within itself the germ of progress or continual

development?

2. How can this standard be attained by human beings?

The endeavour to ascertain the true answer in its bearing upon the

growth of the young and the welfare of family life is the object of

this essay.

CHAPTER I

_Physiological Laws which Influence the Physical and Mental Growth of

Sex_

The very gradual growth of mankind from lower to higher forms of social

life, makes the study of the relation of the sexes a very complicated

one; but a sure guide may be found in the great truths of physiology,

viewed in their broad relation to human progress, and it is on the

solid foundation of these truths that correct principles of education

must be based. The tendency of our age, in seeking truth, is to

reject theories and study facts--facts, however, on the largest and

most comprehensive scale. Every physician knows that nothing is more

stupid than routine practice; nothing more unreliable than theories

unsupported by well-observed facts; and, at the same time, nothing

more misleading than partial facts. The laws of the human constitution

itself, as taught by the most comprehensive investigations of science,

must be carefully studied. We must learn what reason, observing the

facts of physiology, lays down as the true laws which should govern

the relations of men and women--laws whose observance will secure the

finest development of our race, and serve as a guide in directing the

education of our children.

The relations of human beings to each other, depend upon the nature and

requirements of individuals. It is, therefore, essential to know what

the nature of the individual human being really is; how it grows and

how it degenerates. Such knowledge must necessarily form the basis of

all true methods of education.

We find throughout Nature, that every creature possesses its peculiar

type, towards which it must tend, if it is to accomplish the purpose

of its creation. There is a capacity belonging to the original germ,

which, if the necessary conditions are presented, will lead it through

the various stages of growth and of development, to the complete

attainment of this type.

This type or pattern is the true aim of the individual. With the

process by which it is reached, it constitutes its nature.

In order to determine the nature of any creature, both the type it

should attain and the steps by which alone that type can be attained,

must be taken into consideration, or we are led astray in our judgment

of the nature of the individual. Thought is often confused by a vague

use of the term ‘nature.’ The educated man is more natural than the

savage, because he approaches more nearly to the true type of man, and

has acquired the power of transmitting increased capacities to his

children. What is popularly called a state of nature, is really a

state of rudimentary life, which does not display the real nature of

man, but only its imperfect condition.

Striking instances of unusual imperfection may often be observed in

the physical structure of the individual, for there are blind as well

as intelligent forces at work, in the long and elaborate process of

forming the complete human being. Thus, sometimes we find that the

developmental process of the body goes wrong, and produces six fingers

instead of five through successive generations, or the formative

power of some organ runs blindly into excess, producing the diseased

condition of hypertrophy. Arrest of development, also, may take place

at any stage of youthful life as well as before birth, the consequence

being deficiency of organic power, or even defective organs, although

in such cases growth and repair continue, and even long life may be

attained. These conditions are not natural, because, although they

exist, they are contrary to the type of man. For the same reason the

cannibal must be regarded as unnatural.

In studying the individual human type, we find some points in which

it resembles the lower animals, some points in which it differs from

all others, and some temporary phases during which it passes from the

brute type to the human. If it stop short at any stage of the regular

sequence or development, it fails in its essential object, and,

although living, it is unnatural.

When we seek for the distinguishing type of the human being--the type

for which the slow and careful elaboration of parts is necessary--we

find it in the mental, not in the physical, capacity of man. Physical

power and the perfection of physical instincts are attained by the

lower animals in a higher degree than by man. It is only when we

observe the uses and education of which the physical powers are

susceptible, and the development of which the mental powers are

capable, that we perceive the immense superiority of the human race,

and recognise the type--viz., the true nature of man, towards the

attainment of which all the elaborate processes of growth are directed.

The more carefully we examine the intellectual growth of the lower

animals, tracing the reflex movements and instinctive actions of the

invertebrata, through the intelligent mental operations of the dog

or the elephant, the more clearly we perceive the distinguishing

type of Man. This type is that union of truth and good which we name

Reason. Reason is the clear perception of the true relation of things,

and the love of their harmonious relations. It includes judgment,

conscience--all the higher intellectual and moral qualities.

Reason, with the Will to execute its dictates, is the distinguishing

type of man. It is towards this end that his faculties tend; in this

consists his peculiarity, his charter of existence. Any failure to

reach this end, is as much an arrest of development as is a case of

spina bifida, or the imperfect closure of the heart’s ventricles. We

cannot judge of the Nature of man, without the clear recognition of

this distinctive type, and it is impossible to establish sound methods

of education, without constantly keeping in view, both the true nature

of man and the steps by which it must be reached. These steps--_i.e._,

the method by which man grows towards his distinctive type in

creation--constitute the fundamental question in the present inquiry.

One distinguishing feature of human growth is its comparative slowness.

No animal is so helpless during its infancy, none remains so long in

a state of complete dependence on its parents. During the first few

years, the child is quite unable either to procure its own food, or to

keep itself from accidents, and it attains neither its complete bodily

nor mental development, until it is over twenty years of age. We find

this slow growth of faculties to be an essential condition of their

excellence. It is observed to be a law of organized existence that the

higher the degree of development to be reached, the slower are the

processes through which it is attained, and the longer is its period of

dependence on parental aid.

The forces employed in the elaboration of the human being, differ in

their manifestation at various stages of its growth. There are two

marked forces to be noted, often confounded together, but important to

distinguish--viz., the power of growth and the power of development,

the former possessed throughout life, the latter at certain epochs

only. The capacity for _growth_ and nutrition, by means of which the

human frame is built up and maintained out of the forces derived from

food and other agents, is shown until the last breath of life, by the

power of repair, which continues as long as the human being lives. All

action of the organism, every employment of muscular or nervous tissue,

uses up such tissue. The body is wasted by its own activities, and it

is only by the exact counterpoise of these two forces--disintegration

and repair--that health and life itself are maintained. In youth, in

connection with very rapid waste of tissue, exists a great excess of

formative power, which excess enables each complete organ to enlarge

and consolidate itself. The reduction of this excess of formative power

to a balance with the waste of tissue, marks the strength of adult

life. Its diminution below the power of repair marks the decline of

life.

The force of _development_, however, is shown, not in the enlargement

and maintenance of existing parts, but in the creation of new tissues

or organs or parts of organs, so that quite new powers are added to

the individual. After birth these remarkable efforts of creative force

belong exclusively to the youth of the individual. They are chiefly

marked by dentition, by growth of the skeleton and the brain, and

still more by the addition of the generative powers. With this work of

development the adult has nothing to do; it is a burden laid especially

upon the young: it is a work as important and exclusively theirs, as

child-bearing is the exclusive work of the mother.

One of the first lessons, then, that Physiology teaches us in relation

to the healthy growth of the human being, is the slow and successive

development of the various faculties. Although the complete type of

the future man exists potentially in the infant, long time and varying

conditions are essential to its establishment, and the type will never

be attained, if the necessary time and conditions are not provided.

The second physiological fact to be noted is the order observed in

human development. The faculties grow in a certain determined order.

First, those which are needed for simple physical existence; next,

those which place the child in fuller relations with Nature; and,

lastly, those which link him to his fellows. As digestion is perfected

before locomotion, so muscular mobility and activity exist before

strength, perception before observation, affection and friendship

before love. The latest work of Nature in forming the perfect being is

the gift of sexual power. This is a work of development, not simply

of growth. There are new organs coming into existence, and the same

necessary conditions of gradual consolidation and long preparation for

special work exist as in the growth of all the organs of animal life.

At the age of puberty, when the special life of sex commences, the

other organs of relation--skeleton, muscles, brain--are still carrying

on their slow process of consolidation. ‘At eighteen the bones and

muscles are very immature. Portions of the vertebræ hardly commence to

ossify before the sixteenth year. After twenty, the two thin plates on

the body of the vertebræ form, completing themselves near the thirtieth

year. Consolidation of the sacrum commences in the eighteenth year,

completing after the twenty-fifth. The processes of the ribs and of the

scapula are completed by the twenty-fifth year; those of the clavicle

begin to form between eighteen and twenty; those of the radius and

ulna, of the femur, tibia, and fibula, are all unjoined at eighteen,

and not completed until twenty-five. The muscles are equally immature;

they grow in size and strength in proportion to the bones, and it is

not until twenty-five years of age, or even later, that all epiphyses

of the bones have united, and that the muscles have attained their full

growth.’[16]

As a necessary consequence of this slow order of natural growth,

the individual is injured when sufficient time for growth is not

allowed, or when faculties which should remain latent, slowly storing

up strength for the proper time of unfolding, are unduly stimulated

or brought forward too soon. The writer above quoted remarks: ‘It is

not only a waste of material, but a positive cruelty, to send lads

of eighteen or twenty into the field.’[17] The evil effect of undue

stimulation to a new function is twofold. The first effect is to divert

Nature’s force from the consolidation of faculties already fully

formed, and, second, to injure the substantial growth of the later

faculty, which is thus prematurely brought forward. Thus the child

compelled to carry heavy burdens will be deformed or stunted; the

youth weighed down by intellectual labour will destroy his digestion

or injure his brain. So, if the faculty which is bestowed as the last

work of development, that which requires the longest time and the

most careful preparation for its advent--the sexual power--be brought

forward prematurely, a permanent injury is done to the individual,

which can never be completely repaired.

The marked distinction which exists between puberty and nubility

should here be noted. It is a distinction based upon the important

fact that a work of long-continued preparation takes place in the

physical and mental nature, before a new faculty enters upon its

complete life. Puberty is the age when those changes have taken place

in the child’s constitution, which make it physically possible for it

to become a parent, but when the actual exercise of such faculty is

highly injurious. This change takes place, as a general rule, from

fourteen to sixteen years of age. Nubility, on the other hand, is that

period of life when marriage may take place, without disadvantage to

the individual and to the race. This period is generally reckoned, in

temperate climates, in the man at from twenty-three to twenty-five

years of age. About the age of twenty-five commences that period of

perfect manly vigour, that union of freshness and strength, which

enables the individual to become the progenitor of vigorous offspring.

The strong constitution transmitted by healthy parents between the

ages of twenty-five and thirty-five indicates the order of Nature in

the growth of the human race. The interval between these two epochs of

puberty and confirmed virility, is a most important period of rapid

growth and slow consolidation. Not only is the lifelong work of the

body going on at this time, with much greater activity than belongs to

adult life--_i.e._, the work of calorification, nutrition, and all that

concerns the maintenance of the body during its unceasing expenditure

of mechanical and mental force--but the still more powerful actions of

development and growth are being carried on to their last and greatest

perfection. Although, as will be shown later, the influences brought to

bear upon the very young child strongly affect its later growth in good

or evil, yet this period between fourteen and twenty-five is the most

critical time of preparation for the work of adult life.

Another important fact announced by physiological observation, is

the absolute necessity of establishing a proper government of the

human faculties, by the growth of intelligent self-control. Reason,

not Instinct, is the final guide of our race. We cannot grow, as do

the lower animals, by following out the blind promptings of physical

nature. From the earliest moment of existence, intelligence must

guide the infant. At first this guiding intelligence is that of the

mother, and through all the earlier stages of life, a higher outside

intelligence must continue to provide the necessary conditions of

growth, until the gradual mental development of the child fits it for

independent individual guidance. The great difficulty of education

lies in the adjustment of intelligence, for there are antagonisms to be

encountered. There is first of all to be considered the adaptation of

parental intelligence to the large proportion of indispensable physical

instinct, with which each child is endowed by Nature. There is next the

adjustment of the two intelligences, the parental and filial. These

relations are constantly changing, and the true wisdom of education

consists in meeting these changes rightly.

It is very important to observe that each new phase of life, each new

faculty, begins in the child-like way--that is to say, there is always

a large proportion of the blind, instinctive element which absolutely

needs a higher guidance. The instinctive life of the body always

necessarily exists, and, therefore, constantly strives to make itself

felt. This life of sensation will (in many different ways) obtain a

complete mastery over the individual, if Reason does not exist, and

grow into a controlling force. This danger of an undue predominance

of the instinctive force is emphatically true of the life of sex. It

begins, child-like, in a tumult of overpowering sensations--sensations

and emotions which need as wisely-arranged conditions and as high a

guiding influence as does the early life of the child. At this period

of life, an adjustment of the parental and filial intelligence is

required, quite as wisely planned as in childhood, in order to secure

the gradual growth of intelligent self-control in the young life of

sex. If we do not recognise this necessity, or fail to exercise this

directing influence, we do not perceive the crowning obligation of the

older to the younger generation. However much parents may now shrink

from this obligation, and, owing to incorrect views of sex, be really

unable to exercise the kind of influence required, the necessity

for such influence, nevertheless, exists as a law of human nature,

unchangeable, rooted in the human constitution. It is Nature’s method,

that every new faculty requires intelligent control from the outset,

but only gradually can this guidance become self-control.

This necessity is seen more clearly as we continue our physiological

inquiry. The preceding considerations refer chiefly to the slow

processes by which the various parts of the body must be built up step

by step, under the guidance of outside intelligence, which furnishes

the proper conditions of physical growth. Equally certain, and within

the legitimate scope of true physiology, is the influence which the

mind of the individual exercises upon the growth of the body. This

difficult half of the subject presents itself in increasing importance

as science advances. The particular theory of mind held by individuals

does not affect our inquiry. Everyone understands the term, and gives

to its influence a certain importance. Our perception of the degree of

power exercised by the mind over the body, and the importance of that

power, will continually grow as we observe the facts around us. It is

a fact of every-day experience, that fright will make the heart beat,

that anxiety will disturb digestion, that sorrow will depress all the

vital functions, whilst happiness will strengthen them. How often does

the physician see the languid, ailing invalid converted from mental

causes--through happiness--into a bright, active being! Medical records

are full of accumulated facts showing the extent to which such mental

or emotional influence may go; how the infant has been killed when the

mother has nursed it during a fit of passion, or the hair turned gray

in a single night, through grief or fright.

We find that the mind, acting through the nervous system, affects not

only the senses and muscles--the organs of animal life, under the

direct influence of the cerebro-spinal axis--but that it may also

extend its influence to those processes of nutrition and secretion

which belong to the vegetative life of the body. Emotion can act where

Will is powerless, but a strong Will also can acquire a remarkable

power over the body. It has been remarked ‘that men who know that

there is any hereditary disease in their family, can contribute to the

development of that disease, by closely directing their attention to

it, and so throwing their nervous energy in that direction.’ It was a

remark of John Hunter ‘that he could direct a sensation to any part of

his body.’

‘As in the case of other sensations, the sexual, when moderately

excited, may give rise to ideas, emotions, and desires of which

the brain is the seat, and these may react on the muscular system

through the intelligence and Will. But when inordinately excited, or

when not kept in restraint by the Will, they will at once call into

play respondent movements, which are then to be regarded as purely

automatic. This is the case in some forms of disease in the human

subject, and is probably also the ordinary mode of operation in some

of the lower animals.... In cases, however, in which this sensation is

excited in unusual strength, it may completely over-master all motives

to the repression of the propensity, and may even entirely remove

the actions from volitional control. A state of a very similar kind

exists in many idiots, in whom the sexual propensity exerts a dominant

power, not because it is in itself peculiarly strong, but because the

intelligence being undeveloped it acts without restraint or direction

from the Will.’[18]

The mental power exercised by the Will over the body is strikingly

shown in the control exerted by human beings over the strongest of all

individual cravings--the craving of hunger. The exigencies of human

society have caused this tremendous power of hunger to be kept so

completely in check, that the gratification of it, except in accordance

with the established laws (of property, etc.), is considered as a

crime. In spite of the terrible temptation which the sight of food

offers to a starving man, society punishes him if he yield to it. Still

stronger than the established laws are those unwritten laws which are

enforced by ‘public opinion,’ in obedience to which, countless people

in all civilized countries suffer constant deprivation--even starving

more or less slowly to death--rather than transgress universally

accepted principles, and subject themselves to social condemnation by

taking the food which does not belong to them. Another curious and

important illustration of mental action is shown in the accumulating

instances of self-deception, of contagious hallucination, and of

emotional influence acting upon the physical and mental organizations,

so strikingly depicted by Hammond and other writers in the accounts of

pretended miracles, ecstasies, visions, etc.

Of all the organic functions, that of secretion is the one most

strongly and frequently influenced by the mind. The secretion of

tears, of bile, of milk, of saliva, may all be powerfully excited by

mental stimuli, or lessened by promoting antagonistic secretions. This

influence is felt in full force by those of the generative system,

‘which,’ writes a distinguished author, ‘are strongly influenced by

the condition of the mind. When it is frequently and strongly directed

towards objects of passion, these secretions are increased in amount

to a degree which may cause them to be a very injurious drain on the

powers of the system. On the other hand, the active employment of the

mental and bodily powers on other objects, has a tendency to render

less active, or even to check altogether, the processes by which they

are elaborated.’[19]

That the mind must possess the power of ruling this highest of the

animal functions, is evident, from its uses, and from the nature of

man. The faculty of sex comes to perfection when the mind is in full

activity, and when all the senses are in their freshest youthful

vigour. Its object is no longer confined to the individual, it is the

source of social life, it is the creator of the race. Inevitably, then,

the human mind (the Emotions, the Will) must control this function more

than any other function. It assumes a different aspect from all other

functions, through its objective character. The individual may exist

without it--the race not. Every object which addresses itself to the

senses or the mind acts with peculiar force upon this function. Either

for right or for wrong, the mind is the controlling power. The right

education of the mind is the central point from which all our efforts

to help the younger generation must arise. It will thus be seen that

the standpoint of education changes in childhood and in youth, the

first period being specially concerned with the childhood of the body

or of the individual, the second period representing more particularly

the childhood of sex or of the race. In neither childhood nor youth

must either of the double elements of our nature--mind and body--be

neglected, but in childhood the body comes first in order, in youth the

mind.

The higher the character of a function and the wider its relations,

the more serious and the more numerous are the dangers to which it is

exposed. A physiologist remarks, ‘In youth the affinity of the tissues

for vital stimuli seems to be greater when the development is less

complete.’ That which the strong adult may endure with comparative

impunity destroys the growing youth, whose nature, from the very

necessities of development, possesses a keener sensitiveness to all

vital stimuli. This important remark is true of mental as well as

physical youth, and applies with especial force to the prevention of

the dangers of premature sexual development. More care is needed to

secure healthy, strengthening influences for the early life of sex than

for any other more simply physical function.

* * * * *

In the preceding considerations, the faculty of sex has been regarded

chiefly in its individual aspect, and the principles laid down by means

of which the largest amount of health and strength can be secured

for each individual. But this half-view is entirely insufficient in

considering those physiological peculiarities of the function of sex,

which must determine the true aim of education. There are two other

physiological facts to be considered--viz., the Duality of Sex, and its

Results.

The power we are now considering enters into a different category from

all other physical functions, as being, _first_, the faculty of two,

not of one only, and, _second_, as resulting in parentage. Directly a

physical function is the property of two, it belongs to a different

class from those faculties which regard solely the individual. That

very fact gives it a stamp, which requires that the relations of the

two factors should be considered. No faculty can be regarded in the

light of simple self-indulgence, which requires two for its proper

exercise. The consideration of such faculty in its imperfect condition

as belonging to one-half only is an essentially false view. It is

unscientific, therefore, to regard this exceptional faculty simply

as a limited individual function, as we regard the other powers of

the human body. Its inevitable relations to man, to woman, and to the

race must always stand forth as a prominent fact in determining the

aim of education. If this be so, the moral education of youth, with

the necessary physiological guidance given to their sexual powers,

must always be influenced by a consideration of these two inevitable

physiological facts--viz., duality and parentage, and the training of

young men and women, should mould them into true relations towards each

other and towards offspring.

The question of the hereditary transmission of qualities, of the

influence of both mind and body in determining the character of

offspring, is a question of such vital importance that it cannot

be disregarded even in the narrowest view of family welfare, and

still less in any rational view of education, which lies at the

base of national progress. This great question is still in its

infancy, collected facts comparatively few, and the immense power

of future development contained in it, hardly suspected by parents

and philanthropists. We know already that various forms of disease,

physical peculiarities, and mental qualities may all become hereditary;

also that the tendency to drunkenness and to sensuality may be

transmitted as surely as the tendency to insanity or to consumption. If

we compare the mental and moral status of women in a Mahommedan country

with the corresponding class of women in our own country, we perceive

the effect which generations of simply sensual unions have produced on

the character of the female population. The Christian idea of womanly

characteristics is entirely reversed. The term ‘woman’ has become a

by-word for untruth, irreligion, unchastity, and folly.[20]

The same observation may be made in so-called Christian countries

under Mahommedan rule, in independent countries in close proximity to

this degrading influence, and wherever the influence of unions whose

key-note is sensuality, prevails. The woman is considered morally

inferior. ‘She is man’s help, but not his helpmate. He guards and

protects her, but it is as a man guards and protects a valuable horse

or dog, getting all the service he can out of her, and rendering her in

turn his half-contemptuous protection. He uncovers her face and lets

her chat with her fellows in the courtyard, but he watches over her

conduct with a jealous conviction that she is unable to guard herself.

It is a modification, yet a development, of the Mussulman idea, and he

seems to think if she has a soul to be saved he must manage to save

it for her.’[21] Everyone who has observed society in Eastern Europe

must be aware of the constant relation existing between the prevalence

of sensuality and this moral degeneration of female character. This

influence on the character is due, not only to the customs, religion,

and circumstances which form the nation, but also to the accumulating

influence of inherited qualities. The hereditary action produces

tendencies in a particular direction in the offspring, which renders

its development easier in that direction. It is only gradually, through

education and the influence of heredity in a different direction, that

the original tendency can be removed. But if all the circumstances of

life favour its development, the individual, the family, and the nation

will certainly display the result of these tendencies in full force.

A striking illustration of this subject has been published in the

report of the New York Prison Association for 1876. An inquiry was

undertaken by one of the members of the association, to ascertain the

causes of crime and pauperism, as exhibited in a particular family or

tribe of offenders called ‘The Jukes,’ which for nearly a century has

inhabited one of the central counties of the State. The investigation

is carried back for some five or six generations, the descendants

numbering at least 1,200, and the number of persons whose biographies

are condensed and collated is not less than 709. The facts in these

criminal lives, which have grown in a century from one family into

hundreds, are arranged in the order of their occurrence and the age

given at which they took place, so that the relative importance of

inherited tendencies and of immediate influences may be measured. The

study of this family shows that the most general and potent cause,

both of crime and pauperism, is the habit of licentiousness, with

its result of bastardy and neglected and miseducated childhood. This

tribe was traced back on the male side to two sons of a hard drinker

named Max, living between 1720 and 1740, who became blind in his old

age, transmitting blindness to some of his legitimate and illegitimate

children. On the female side the race goes back to five sisters of

bad character, two of whom intermarried with the two sons of Max, the

lineage of three other sisters being also traced. In the course of the

century, this family has remained an almost purely American family,

inhabiting the same region of country in one of the finest States of

the Union, largely intermarrying, and presenting an almost unbroken

record of harlotry and crime. ‘The Jukes,’ says the report, ‘are not an

exceptional race; analogous families may be found in every county of

the State.’[22]

Conspicuous facts such as these, display in a striking manner the

indubitable influence of mind in the exercise of the highest--the

parental--function. We see as a positive fact that mental or moral

qualities quite as much as physical peculiarities, tend to reproduce

themselves in children. The mental quality or character of the parent

must then be considered physiologically, as a positive element in

the parental relation; thought, emotion, sensation, are all mental

qualities. In human unions this great fact must be borne in mind. Any

sneer at ‘sentiment’ proceeds from ignorance of facts. Happiness is as

vivifying as sunshine, and is a potent element in the formation of a

child. Hence arises the necessity of love between parents--love, the

mental element, as distinguished from the simple physical instinct.

To understand the true relations of men and women in their bearing upon

the race (relations which must determine the moral aim of education)

the duality of sex and the peculiarity of the womanly organization

must be recognised. Woman, having a special work to perform in family

life, has special requirements and sharpened perceptions in relation

to this work. She demands the constant presence of affection, an

affection which alone can draw forth full response, and she possesses

a perception which is almost a special instinct for detecting coldness

or untruthfulness in the husband’s mental attitude towards her. The

presence of unvarying affection has a real, material, as well as a

moral power on the body and soul of a woman. Indifference or neglect

is instantly felt. Sorrow, loneliness, jealousy, all constantly

depressing emotions, exercise a powerful and injurious effect upon the

sources of vital action. This physiological truth and the necessity

of securing the full assent of the mother in the joint creation of

superior offspring, are important facts bearing on the character and

happiness of one-half of the human race, and influencing through that

half the quality of offspring. These facts have not yet received the

attention which so weighty a subject demands.

In pursuing the physiological inquiry, we are met by one remarkable

fact which it is impossible to ignore, and which remains from age

to age as a guide to the human race. This guide is found in the

physiological fact of the equality in the birth of the sexes. This is a

clear indication of the intention of Providence in relation to sexual

union, a proof of the fundamental nature of the family group. Boys and

girls are born in equal numbers all over the world, wherever our means

of observation have extended, a slight excess of boys alone existing.

Sadler writes: ‘The near equality in the birth of the sexes is an

undoubted fact; it extends throughout Europe and wherever we have the

means of accurate observation, the birth-rate being in the proportion

of twenty-five boys to twenty-four girls.’[23] The injurious inequality

which we so often find in a population is not Nature’s law, but is

evidence of our social stupidity. It proves our sin against God’s

design in the existence of brutal wars and our careless squandering

of human life. All rational efforts for the improvement of society

must be based upon Nature’s true intention--viz., the equality of the

sexes in birth and in duration of life, not upon the false condition

of inequality produced by our own ignorance. It is essential always

to bear in mind this distinction between the permanent fact and the

temporary phenomenon.

* * * * *

The foregoing facts illustrate fundamental physiological truths. They

show the Type of creation towards which the human constitution tends

and the distinctive methods of growth by which that type must be

reached. In brief recapitulation, these truths are the following--viz.,

the slowness of human growth; the successive development of the human

faculties; the injury caused by subverting the natural order of growth;

the necessity of governing this order of growth by the control of

Reason; the influence of Mind--_i.e._, Thought, Emotion, Will--on

the development or condition of our organization; the necessity of

considering the dual character of sex; the transmission of qualities by

parents to their children; the natural equality in the creation of the

sexes.

These truths, which are of universal application to human beings,

furnish a Physiological Guide, showing the true laws of sex, in

relation to human progress. We find that the laws of physiology

point in one practical direction--viz., to the family--as the only

institution which secures their observance; they show the necessity

of the self-control of chastity in the young man and the young woman,

as the only way to secure the strong mental and physical qualities

requisite in the parental relation, whilst they also prove the special

influence exerted by mutual love in the great work of Maternity. The

preparation, therefore, of youth for family life should be the great

aim of their sexual education.

Experience as well as Reason confirms the direct and indirect teaching

of Physiology; they both point to the natural family group as the

element out of which a healthy society grows. It is only in the family

that the necessary conditions for this growth exist. The healthy and

constantly varying development of children naturally constitutes the

warmest interest of parents. Brothers and sisters are invaluable

educators of one another; they are unique associates, creating a

species of companionship that no other relation can supply. To enjoy

this interest, to create this young companionship, to form this healthy

germ of society, marriage must be unitary and permanent. A constantly

deepening satisfaction should exist, arising from the steady growth

together through life, from the identity of interest and from the

strength of habit. Still farther we learn that such union should take

place in the early period of complete adult life. Children should be

the product of the first fresh vigour of parents. Everything that

exhausts force or defers its freshest exercise is injurious to the

Race. Customs of society or incorrect opinions which obstruct the union

of men and women in their early vigour, which impair the happiness of

either partner, or prevent the strong and steady growth of their union,

impair their efficacy as parents, and are fatal to the highest welfare

of our Race.

CHAPTER II

_Social Results of Neglecting these Physiological Laws_

The wide bearing and importance of the truths derived from physiology

will become more and more apparent, as we examine another branch of

the subject, and ascertain from an observation of facts around us, how

far the present relations of men and women in civilized countries, are

based upon sound principles of physiology. It is necessary to know

how far these principles are understood and carried out from infancy

onward, whether efforts for the improvement of the race are moulded

by physiological methods of human growth, and what are the inevitable

consequences which result from departure from these principles.

According to a rational and physiological view of life, the family

should be cherished as the precious centre of national welfare; every

custom, therefore, which tends to support the dignity of the family

and which prepares our youth for this life, is of vital importance

to a nation. Thus the slow development of the sexual faculties by

hygienic regime, by the absence of all unnatural stimulus to these

propensities, by the constant association of boys and girls together,

under adult influence, in habitual and unconscious companionship, the

cultivation in the child’s mind of a true idea of manliness and the

perception that self-command is the distinctive peculiarity of the

human being, are the ordinary and natural conditions which rational

physiology requires. On the contrary, every custom which insults the

family and unfits for its establishment, which degrades the natural

nobility of human sex, which sneers at it and treats this great

principle with flippancy, which tends to kill its Divine essence, all

such influences and such customs are a great crime against society, and

directly opposed to the teaching of rational physiology.

An extended view of social facts, not only in different classes of

our own society, but also in those countries with which we are nearly

related, is of the utmost value to the parent. Physiological knowledge

would be valueless to the mass of mankind, if its direct bearing upon

the character and happiness of a nation could not be shown. So in

considering the sexual education of youth according to the light of

sound physiology, the social influences which affect the natural growth

of the human being are an important part of applied physiology.

The tendencies of civilization must be studied in our chief cities.

The rapid growth of large towns during the last half-century and the

comparatively stationary condition of the country population show

where the full and complete results of those principles which are most

active in our civilization must be sought for. London, Paris, Vienna,

Berlin, New York, are not exceptions, but examples. They show the

mature results towards which smaller towns are tending. Those who live

in quiet country districts often flatter themselves that the rampant

vice of large towns has nothing to do with villages, small communities,

and the country at large. This is a delusion. The condition of large

towns has a direct relation to the country.

In these focal points of civilization we observe, as examples of

sexual relationship, two great institutions existing side by side--two

institutions in direct antagonism--viz., Marriage and Prostitution, the

latter steadily gaining ground over the former.

In examining these two institutions, the larger signification

of licentiousness must be given to prostitution, applicable to

men and women. Marriage is the recognised union of two, sharing

responsibilities, providing for and educating a family. Prostitution

is the indiscriminate union of many, with no object but physical

gratification, with no responsibilities, and no care for offspring. It

is essential to study the effects, both upon men and women and upon

mankind at large, of this great fact of licentiousness, if we are to

appreciate the true laws of sexual union in their full force, and the

aims, importance, and wide bearing of Moral Education. We shall only

here refer to its effects upon the young.

We may justly speak of licentiousness as an institution. It is

considered by a large portion of society as an essential part of

itself. It possesses its code of written and unwritten laws, its

sources of supply, its various resorts, from the poorest hovel to

the gaudiest mansion, its endless grade, from the coarsest and most

ignorant to the refined and cultivated. It has its special amusements

and places of public resort. It has its police, its hospitals, its

prisons, and it has its literature. The organized manner in which

portions of the press are engaged in promoting licentiousness,

reaching, not thousands, but millions of readers, is a fact of weighty

importance. The one item of vicious advertisements falls into distinct

categories of corruption. Growing, therefore, as it does, constantly

and rapidly, licentiousness becomes a fact of primary importance in

society. Its character and origin must be studied by all who take

an interest in the growth of the human race, and who believe in the

maintenance of marriage, and the family, as the foundation of human

progress.

Everyone who has studied life in many civilized countries, and the

literature reflecting that life, will observe the antagonism of these

two institutions: the recognition of the greater influence of the

mistress than the wife, the constant triumph of passion over duty and

deep, steady affection. We see the neglect of the home for the café,

the theatre, the public amusement; the consequent degradation of the

home into a place indispensable as a nursery for children, and for the

transaction of common, every-day matters, a place of resort for the

accidents of life, for growing old in, for continuing the family name,

but too tedious a place to be in much, to spend the evening and really

live in. Enjoyments are sought for elsewhere. The charm of society, the

keener interests of life, no longer centre in the household. It is a

domestic place, more or less quiet, but no home in the true sense of

the word. The true home can only be formed by father and mother, by

their joint influence on one another, on their children, and on their

friends. The narrow, one-sided, diminishing influence of Continental

homes amongst great masses of the population, from absence of due

paternal care, is a painful fact to witness. That there are beautiful

examples of domestic life to be found in every civilized country--homes

where father and mother are one in the indispensable unity of family

life--no one will deny who has closely observed foreign society.

Indeed, any nation is in the stage of rapid dissolution where the

institution of the family is completely and universally degraded; but

the preceding statement is a faithful representation of the general

tone and tendencies of social life in many parts of the Continent. That

the same fatal principles, leading to the like results, are at work

both in England and America will be seen as we proceed. Licentiousness

may be considered as still in its infancy with us, when compared with

its universal prevalence in many parts of the Continent; but it is

growing in our own country with a rapidity which threatens fatal

injury to our most cherished institution, the pure Christian home,

with its far-reaching influences, an institution which has been the

foundation of our national greatness.

The results of licentiousness should be especially considered in their

effects upon the youth of both sexes, of both the richer and poorer

classes; also in their bearing upon the institution of marriage and

upon the race. In all these aspects it enters into direct relation with

the family, and no one who values the family, with the education which

it should secure, can any longer afford to ignore what so intimately

affects its best interests. It is to the first branch of the subject

that reference will here be chiefly made.

The first consideration is the influence exerted by social arrangements

and tone of thought upon our boys and young men as they pass out of

the family circle into the wider circles of the world, into school,

college, business, society. What are the ideas about women that have

been gradually formed in the mind of the lad of sixteen, by all that he

has seen, heard, and read during his short but most important period

of life? What opinions and habits, in relation to his own physical

and moral nature, have been impressed upon him? How have our poorer

classes of boys been trained in respect to their own well-being,

and to association with girls of their own class? What has been the

influence of the habits and companionships of that great middle-class

multitude, clerks, shopkeepers, mechanics, farmers, soldiers, etc.?

What books and newspapers do these boys read, what talk do they hear,

what interests or amusements do they find in the theatre, the tavern,

the streets, the home, and the church? What has been the training of

the lad of the upper class--that class, small in number but great in

influence, which, being lifted above any sordid pressure of material

care, should be the spiritual leader of the classes below them--a class

which has ten talents committed to it, and which inherits the grand

old maxim, _Noblesse oblige_? How have all these lads been taught to

regard womanhood and manhood? What is their standard of manliness?

What habits of self-respect and of the noble uses of sex have been

impressed upon their minds? Throughout all classes, abundant temptation

to the abuse of sex exists. Increasing activity is displayed in the

exercise of human ingenuity for the extension and refinement of vice.

Shrewdness, large capital, business enterprise, are all enlisted in the

lawless stimulation of this mighty instinct of sex. Immense provision

is made for facilitating fornication; what direct efforts are made for

encouraging chastity?

It is of vital importance to realize how small at present is the

formative influence of the individual home and of the weekly discourse

of the preacher, compared with the mighty social influences which

spread with corrupting force around the great bulk of our youth. We

find, as a matter of fact, that complete moral confusion too often

meets the young man at the outset of life. Society presents him with

no fixed standard of right or wrong in relation to sex, no clear

ideal to be held steadily before him and striven for. Religious

teaching points in one direction, but practical life points in quite

a different way. The youth who has grown up from childhood under

the guardianship of really wise parents, in a true home, with all

its ennobling influences, and has been strengthened by enlightened

religious instruction, has gradually grown towards the natural human

type. He may have met the evils of life as they came to him from

boyhood onwards, first of all with the blindness of innocence, which

does not realize evil, and then with the repulsion of virtue, which is

clear-sighted to the hideous results of vice. Such a one will either

pass with healthy strength through life, or he may prove himself the

grandest of heroes if beset with tremendous temptations; or, again,

he may fall, after long and terrible struggles with his early virtue.

But in the vast majority of cases the early training through innocence

into virtue is wanting. Evil influences are at work unknown to or

disregarded by the family, and a gradual process of moral and physical

deterioration in the natural growth of sex corrupts the very young.

In by far the larger ranks of life, before the lad has grown into the

young man, his notions of right and wrong are too often obscured. He

retains a vague notion that virtue is right, but as he perceives that

his friends, his relations, his widening circle of acquaintance, live

according to a different standard, his idea of virtue recedes into a

vague abstraction, and he begins to think that vice is also right--in

a certain way! He is too young to understand consequences, to realize

the fearful chain of events in the ever-widening influence of evil

acts--results which, if clearly seen, would frighten the innocent mind

by the hideousness of evil, and make the first step towards it a crime.

No one ventures to lift up a warning voice. The parent dares not, or

knows not how to enter upon this subject of vital importance. There

are no safeguards to his natural modesty; there is no wise help to

strengthen his innocence into virtue.

Here is the testimony in relation to one important class, drawn from

experience by our great English satirist: ‘And by the way, ye tender

mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing

that theory of life is as orally learned at a great public school. Why,

if you could hear those boys of fourteen, who blush before mothers and

sneak off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among

each other, it would be the woman’s turn to blush then. Before he was

twelve years old, and while his mother fancied him an angel of candour,

little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon

certain points; and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked son,

who is coming home from school for the ensuing Christmas holidays. I

don’t say that the boy is lost, so that the innocence has left him

which he had from “Heaven which is our home,” but the shades of the

prison-house are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping as

much as possible to corrupt him.’ ‘Few boys,’ says the Headmaster of a

large school, ‘ever remain a month in any school, public or private,

without learning all the salient points in the physical relation of

the sexes. There are two grave evils in this unlicensed instruction:

first, the lessons are learned surreptitiously; second, the knowledge

is gained from the vicious experiences of the corrupted older boys, and

the traditions handed down by them.’

Temptations meet the lad at every step. From childhood onward, an

unnatural forcing process is at work, and he is too often mentally

corrupted, whilst physically unformed. This mental condition tends

to hasten the functions of adult life into premature activity. As

already stated, an important period exists between the establishment of

puberty and confirmed virility. In the unperverted youth, this space

of time, marked by the rush of new life, is invaluable as a period

for storing up the new forces needed to confirm young manhood and fit

it for the healthy exercise of its important social functions. The

very indications of Nature’s abundant forces at the outset of life,

are warnings that this new force must not be stimulated, that there

is danger of excessive and hasty growth in one direction, danger of

hindering that gradual development which alone insures strength. If at

an early age, thought and feeling have been set in the right direction,

and aids to virtue and to health surround the young man, then this

period of time, before his twenty-fifth year, will lead him into a

strong and vigorous manhood. But where the mind is corrupted, the

imagination heated, and no strong love of virtue planted in the soul,

the individual loses the power of self-control, and becomes the victim

of physical sensation and suggestion. When this condition of mental

and physical deterioration has been produced, it is no longer possible

for him to resist surrounding temptations. There are dangers within

and without, but he does not recognise the danger. He is young, eager,

filled with that excess of activity in blood and nerve, with which

Nature always nourishes her fresh creative efforts.

At this important stage of life, when self-control, hygiene, mental

and moral influence, are of vital importance, the fatal results of

his weakened will and a corrupt society, ensue. Opportunity tempts

his wavering innocence, thoughtless or vicious companions undertake

to ‘form’ him, laugh at his scruples, sneer at his conscience, excite

him with allurements. Or a deadly counsel meets him--meets him from

those he is bound to respect. The most powerful morbid stimulant that

exists--a stimulant to every drop of his seething young blood--is

advised viz., the resort to prostitutes. When this fatal step has been

taken, when the natural modesty of youth and the respect for womanhood

is broken down, when he has broken with the restraints of family life,

with the voice of Conscience, with the dictates of religion, a return

to virtue is indeed difficult--nay, often impossible. He has tasted the

physical delights of sex, separated from its more exquisite spiritual

joys. This unnatural divorce degrades whilst it intoxicates him. Having

tasted these physical pleasures, often he can no more do without them

than the drunkard without his dram. He ignorantly tramples under foot

his birthright of rich, compound, infinite human love, enthralled by

the simple limited animal passion. His Will is no longer free. He has

destroyed that grand endowment of Man, that freedom of the youthful

Will, which is the priceless possession of innocence and of virtue,

and has subjected himself to the slavery of lust. He is no longer his

own master; he is the servant of his passions. Those whose interest

it is to retain their victim employ every art of drink, of dress,

of excess, to urge him on. The youthful eagerness of his own nature

lends itself to these arts. The power of resistance is gradually

lost, until one glance of a prostitute’s eye passing in the street,

one token of allurement, will often overturn his best resolutions and

outweigh the wisest counsel of friends! The physiological ignorance

and moral blindness which actually lead some parents to provide a

mistress for their sons, in the hope of keeping them from houses of

public debauchery, is an effort as unavailing as it is corrupt. Place

a youth on the wrong course instead of on the right one, lead him into

the career of sensual indulgence and selfish disregard for womanhood

instead of into manly self-control, and the parent has, by his own act,

launched his child into the current of vice, which rapidly hurries him

beyond his control.

The evils resulting from a violation of Nature’s method of growth by

a life of early dissipation are both physical and mental or moral.

In some organizations the former, in some the latter, are observable

in the most marked degree; but no one can escape either the physical

deterioration or the mental degradation which results from the

irrational and unhuman exercise of the great endowment of sex.

Amongst the physical evils the following may be particularly noted.

The loss of self-control, reacting upon the body, produces a morbid

irritability (always a sign of weakness) which is a real disease,

subjecting the individual to constant excitement and exhaustion from

slight causes. The resulting physical evils may be slow in revealing

themselves, because they only gradually undermine the constitution.

They do not herald themselves in the alarming manner of a fever or

a convulsion, but they are not to be less dreaded from their masked

approach. The chief forms of physical deterioration are nervous

exhaustion, impaired power of resistance to epidemics or other

injurious influences, and the development of those germs of disease,

or tendencies to some particular form of disease, which exist in

the majority of constitutions. The brain and spinal marrow and the

lungs are the vital organs most frequently injured by loose life. But

whatever be the weak point of the constitution, from inherited or

acquired morbid tendencies, that will probably be the point through

which disease or death will enter.

One of the most distinguished hygienists of our age writes thus: ‘The

pathological results of venereal excess are now well known. The gradual

derangements of health experienced by its victims are not at first

recognised by them, and physicians may take the symptoms to be the

beginning of very different diseases. How often symptoms are considered

as cases of hypochondria or chronic gastritis, or the commencement of

heart disease, which are really the results of generative abuse! A

general exhaustion of the whole physical force, symptoms of cerebral

congestion, or paralysis, attributed to some cerebrospinal lesion,

are often due to the same causes. The same may be said of some of

the severest forms of insanity. Many cases of consumption appearing

in young men who suffer from no hereditary tendency to the disease

enter into the same category. So many diseases are vainly treated by

medicine or regime which are really caused by abuse of these important

functions.’[24] Another of our oldest surgeons writes: ‘Among the

passions of the future man which at this period should be strictly

restrained is that of physical love, for none wars so completely

against the principles which have been already laid down as the most

conducive to long life; no excess so thoroughly lessens the sum of

the vital power, none so much weakens and softens the organs of life,

none is more active in hastening vital consumption, and none so

totally prohibits restoration. I might, if it were necessary, draw a

painful--nay, a frightful--picture of the results of these melancholy

excesses, etc.’[25] Volumes might be filled with similar medical

testimony on the destructive character of early licentiousness.

Striking testimony to the destructive effects of vice in early manhood

is derived from a very different source--viz., the strictly business

calculation of the chances of life, furnished by Life Insurance

Companies. These tables show the rapid fall in viability during the

earlier years of adult life. Dr. Carpenter has reproduced a striking

diagram[26] from the well-known statistician Quetelet, showing the

comparative viability of men and women at different ages, and its

rapid diminution in the male from the age of eighteen to twenty-five.

He remarks: ‘The mortality is much greater in males from about the

age of eighteen to twenty-eight, being at its maximum at twenty-five,

when the viability is only half what it is at puberty. This fact is

a very striking one, and shows most forcibly that the indulgence of

the passions not only weakens the health, but in a great number of

instances is the cause of a very premature death.’[27] Dr. Bertillon (a

well-known French statistician) has shown by the statistics of several

European countries that the irregularities of unmarried life produce

disease, crime, and suicide; that the rate of mortality in bachelors

of twenty-five is equal to that of married men at forty-five; that the

immoral life of the unmarried and the widowed, whether male or female,

ages them by twenty years and more.

Many of the foreign health resorts are filled with young men of the

richer classes of society, seeking to restore the health destroyed by

dissipation. Could the simple truth be recorded on the tombstones of

multitudes of precious youth, from imperial families downward, who are

mourned as victims of consumption, softening of the brain, etc., all

lovers of the race would stand appalled at the endless record of these

wasted lives. ‘Died from the effects of fornication’ would be the true

warning voice from these premature graves.

The moral results of early dissipation are quite as marked as the

physical evils. The lower animal nature gains ever-increasing

dominion over the moral life of the individual. The limited nature

of all animal enjoyments produces its natural effects. First there

is the eager search after fresh stimulants, and as the boundaries of

physical enjoyment are necessarily reached, come in common sequence,

disappointment, disgust, restlessness, dreariness, or bitterness. The

character of the mental deterioration differs with the difference of

original character in the individual, as in the nation. In some we

observe an increasing hardness of character, growing contempt for

women, with low material views of life. In others there is a frivolity

of mind induced, a constant restlessness and search for new pleasures.

The frankness, heartiness, and truthfulness of youth gradually

disappear under the withering influence.[28]

The moral influence of vice upon social character has very wide

ramifications. This is illustrated by the immense difficulties which

women encountered in the rational endeavour to obtain a complete

medical education. Licentiousness, with all its attendant results, is

the great social cause of these difficulties.

The dominion of lust is necessarily short-sighted, selfish, or

cruel. Its action is directly opposed to the qualities of truth,

trust, self-command, and sympathy, thus sapping the foundations of

personal morality. But apart from the individual evils above referred

to, licentiousness inevitably degrades society, firstly, from the

disproportion of vital force which is thus thrown into one direction,

and, secondly, from the essentially selfish and ungenerous tendency

of vice, which, seeking its own limited gratification at the expense

of others, is incapable of embracing large views of life or feeling

enthusiasm for progress. The direction into which this disproportionate

vital force is thrown is a degrading one, always tending to evil

results. Thus the noble enthusiasm of youth, its precious tide of

fresh life, without which no nation can grow--life whose leisure hours

should be given to science and art, to social good, to ennobling

recreation--is squandered and worse than wasted in degrading

dissipation.

This dissipation, which is ruin to man, is also a curse to woman, for,

in judging the effects of licentiousness upon society, it must never

be forgotten that this is a vice of two, not a vice of one. Injurious

as is its influence upon the young man, that is only one-half of its

effect. What is its influence upon the young woman? This question has

a direct bearing on the Moral Aim of Education. The preceding details

of physical and moral evils resulting to young men from licentiousness

will apply with equal force to young women subjected to similar

influences. One sex may experience more physical evil, the other more

mental degradation, from similar vicious habits; but the evil, if not

identical, is entirely parallel, and a loss of truthfulness, honour,

and generosity accompanies the loss of purity.

The women more directly involved in this widespread evil of

licentiousness are the women of the poorer classes of society. The

poorer classes constitute in every country the great majority of the

people; they form its solid strength and determine its character. The

extreme danger of moral degradation in those classes of young women

who constitute such an immense preponderance of the female population

is at once evident. These women are everywhere, interlinked with every

class of society. They form an important part (often the larger female

portion) of every well-to-do household. They are the companions and

inevitable teachers of infancy and childhood. They often form the

chief or only female influence which meets the young man in early

professional, business, or even college life. They meet him in every

place of public amusement, in his walks at night, in his travels at

home and abroad. By day and by night the young man away from home is

brought into free intercourse, not with women of his own class, but

with poor working girls and women, who form the numerical bulk of the

female population, who are found in every place and ready for every

service. Educated girls are watched and guarded. The young man meets

them in rare moments only, under supervision, and generally under

unnatural restraint; but the poor girl he meets constantly, freely,

at any time and place. Any clear-sighted person who will quietly

observe the way in which female servants, for instance, regard very

young men who are their superiors in station, can easily comprehend

the dangers of such association. The injustice of the common practical

view of life is only equalled by its folly. This practical view utterly

ignores the fact of the social influence and value of this portion of

society. The customs of civilized nations practically consider poor

women as subjects for a life so dishonourable, that a rich man feels

justified in ostracizing wife, sister, or daughter who is guilty of

the slightest approach to such life. It is the great mass of poor

women who are regarded as (and sometimes brutally stated to be) the

subjects to be used for the benefit of the upper classes. Young and

innocent men, it is true, fall into vice, or are led into it, or are

tempted into it by older women, and are not deliberate betrayers. But

the rubicon of chastity once passed, the moral descent is rapid, and

the preying upon the poor soon commences. The miserable slaves in

houses of prostitution are the outcasts of the poor. The young girls

followed at night in the streets are the honest working girl, the young

servant seeking a short outdoor relief to her dreary life, as well as

the unhappy fallen girl, who has become in her turn the seducer. If

fearful of health, the individual leaves the licensed slaves of sin

and the chance associations of the streets, it is amongst the poor

and unprotected that he seeks his mistress:--the young seamstress,

the pretty shop girl, the girl with some honest employment, but poor,

undefended, needing relief in her hard-working life. It is always the

poor girl that he seeks. She has no pleasures, he offers them; her

virtue is weak, he undermines it; he gains her affection and betrays

it, changes her for another and another, leaving each mistress worse

than he found her, farther on in the downward road, with the guilt of

fresh injury from the strong to the weak on his soul. Any reproach

of conscience--conscience which will speak when an innocent girl has

been betrayed, or one not yet fully corrupted has been led farther

on in evil life--is quieted by the frivolous answer: ‘They will soon

marry in their own class.’ If, however, this sin be regarded in its

inevitable consequences, its effects upon the life of both man and

woman in relation to society, the nature of this sophistry will appear

in its hideous reality. Is chastity really a virtue, something

precious in womanhood? Then, the poor man’s home should be blessed by

the presence of a pure woman. Does it improve a woman’s character to

be virtuous? Has she more self-respect in consequence? Does she care

more for her children, for their respectability and welfare, when she

is conscious of her own honest past life? Does she love her husband

more, and will she strive to make his home brighter and more attractive

to him, exercising patience in the trials of her humble life, being

industrious, frugal, sober, with tastes that centre in her home? These

are vital questions for the welfare of the great mass of the people,

and consequently of society and of the nation.

We know, on the contrary, as a fundamental truth, that unchastity

unfits a woman for these natural duties. It fosters her vanity, it

makes her slothful or reckless, it gives her tastes at variance with

home life, it makes her see nothing in men but their baser passions,

and it converts her into a constant tempter of those passions--a

corrupter of the young. We know that drunkenness, quarrels, and

crimes have their origin in the wretched homes of the poor, and the

centre of those unhappy homes is the unchaste woman, who has lost the

restraining influence of her own self-respect, her respect for others,

and her love of home. When a pretty, vain girl is tempted to sin, a

wife and mother is being ruined, discord and misery are being prepared

for a poor man’s home, and the circumstances created out of which

criminals grow. Nor does the evil stop there. It returns to the upper

classes. Nurses, servants, bring back to the respectable home the evil

associations of their own lives. The children of the upper classes

are thus corrupted, and the path of youth is surrounded at every step

with coarse temptations. These consequences may not be foreseen when

the individual follows the course of evil customs, but the sequence of

events is inevitable, and every man gives birth to a fresh series of

vice and misery when he takes a mistress instead of a wife.[29]

The deterioration of character amongst the women of the working

classes is known to all employers of labour, to all who visit

amongst the poor, to every housekeeper. The increasing difficulty of

obtaining trustworthy domestic servants is now the common experience

of civilized countries. In England, France, Germany, and the larger

towns of America, it is a fact of widespread observation, and has

become a source of serious difficulty in the management of family

life. The deepest source of this evil lies in the deterioration of

womanly character produced by the increasing spread of habits of

licentiousness. The action of sex, though taking different directions,

is as powerful in the young woman as in the young man; it needs

as careful education, direction, and restraint. This important

physiological truth, at present quite overlooked, must nevertheless

be distinctly recognised. This strong mental instinct, if yielded to

in a degrading way (as is so commonly the case in the poorer classes

of society), becomes an absorbing influence. Pride and pleasure in

work, the desire to excel, loyalty to duty, and the love of truth in

its wide significance, are all subordinated, and gradually weakened,

by the irresistible mastery of this new faculty. In all large towns

the lax tone of companions, the difficulty in finding employment, the

horrible cupidity of those who pander to corrupt social sentiment and

ensnare the young--all these circumstances combined render vice much

easier than virtue--a state of society in which vice must necessarily

extend and virtue diminish. We thus find an immense mass of young women

gradually corrupted from childhood, rendered coarse and reckless, the

modesty of girlhood destroyed, the reserve of maidenhood changed to

bold, often indecent, behaviour. No one accustomed to walk freely about

our streets, to watch children at play, to observe the amusements and

free gatherings of the poorer classes, can fail to see the signs of

degraded sex. The testimony of home missionaries, of those experienced

in Benevolent Societies and long engaged in various ways in helping

women, as well as the Reports of Rescue Societies, all testify to the

dangerous increase and lamentable results of unchastity amongst the

female population.

We observe in all countries a constant relation also between the

prevalence of licentiousness and degradation of female labour; the

action and reaction of these two evil facts is invariable. In Paris

we see the complete result of these tendencies of modern civilization

in relation to the condition of working women--tendencies which are

seen in London and Berlin, in Liverpool, Glasgow--_i.e._, in all large

towns. The revelations made by writers and speakers in relation to the

condition of the working women of Paris, are of very serious import

to England. Such terrible facts as the following, brought to light by

those who have carefully investigated the state of this portion of the

population, must arrest attention. In relation to vast numbers of women

it is stated[30]: ‘In Paris a woman can no longer live by the work of

her own hands; the returns of her labour are so small that prostitution

is the only resource against slow starvation. The population is

bastardized to such an extent that thousands of poor girls know not of

any relation that they ever possessed. Orphans and outcasts, their

life, if virtuous, is one terrible struggle from the cradle to the

grave; but by far the greater number of them are drilled, whilst yet

children, in the public service of debauchery.’ The great mass of

working women are placed by the present state of society in a position

in which there are the strongest temptations to vice, when to lead a

virtuous life often requires the possession of moral heroism.

Of the multitude of those who fall into vice, many ultimately marry,

and, with injured moral qualities and corrupted tastes, become the

creators of poor men’s homes. The rest drift into a permanent life

of vice. The injurious effects of unchastity upon womanly character

already noted, can be studied step by step, to their complete

development in that great class of the population--the recognised

prostitutes. Their marked characteristics are recklessness, sloth, and

drunkenness. This recklessness and utter disregard of consequences

and appearances, a quarrelsome, violent disposition, the dislike to

all labour and all regular occupation and life, the necessity for

stimulants and drink, with a bold address to the lower passions of

men--such are the effects of this life upon the character of women.

Unchaste women become a most dangerous class of the community. To these

bad qualities is added another, wherever, as in France, this evil

life is accepted as a part of society, provided for, organized, or

legalized; this last result of confirmed licentiousness is a hardness

of character so complete, so resistant of all improving influences,

that the wisest and gentlest efforts to restore are often utterly

hopeless before the confirmed and hardened prostitute.[31]