there are children to the marriage. The =duties= of the parents to the
children remain in such cases unaltered, without, however, thus
rendering it necessary that the parents should continue to live
together. For the sorrows of such a union, and the harm done thereby to
the children, are greater than those that would result from divorce.
Human love has its phases of development. It does not remain for ever
the same, but it alters _pari passu_ with the evolution of the
individual. Lifelong love is an ideal, but it is not a duty. Such a
demand would as inevitably destroy personality as would the demand for
the unconditional belief in a doctrine, or for the unconditional pursuit
of a profession.
Very interesting is Ellen Key’s description of the numerous disillusions
of love, which become still more perceptible in a coercive marriage.
There is a whole series of “typical unhappy fates” in marriage, often
with no blame properly attaching to either party, dependent merely upon
incompatibility of temperament, but also upon faults of one or both
parties to the marriage.
Frequently a man or a woman of a thoroughly sympathetic temperament
lives with a woman or a man of such faultless excellence that the home
seems filled with icicles. One day the husband or the wife runs away
because the air has become so thin as to be irrespirable. The general
sentiment is one of commiseration for the--superlatively excellent man
or woman!
In the case of earnest, mature human beings, free divorce will not
increase the number of dissolutions of marriage. On the contrary, the
obligations imposed by a free relationship are greater than those of
legal coercive marriage. The fear also that with the granting of free
divorce every one will enter upon numerous free marriages one after
another is groundless. It is precisely those who are united in free love
to whom such a separation, when it does become necessary, is so
profoundly painful, that life itself forbids the frequent repetition of
such unhappiness.
Very beautiful, and based upon lofty ethical conceptions, are the
writer’s views regarding the necessity for divorce precisely in view of
the existence of children. She says:
“Men and women of earlier times went on patching up for ever and ever.
The psychologically developed generation of to-day is more inclined to
let the broken remain broken. For, except in those cases in which
objective misfortunes, or a retarded evolution, gave rise to a
rupture, patched-up marriage, like patched-up engagements, seldom
prove durable. Often it was owing to profound instincts that the
rupture became inevitable; reconciliations fortify these instincts,
and sooner or later they once more find free vent.
“Thus it happens that even an exceptional nature is strained by the
burden it has to bear, and the children are not then witnesses of
their parents living together, but of their dying together.
“Neither religion nor law, neither society nor a family, can determine
what it is that marriage is killing in a man, or what he finds it
possible to rescue in that state--=he himself alone= knows the one and
suspects the other. He alone can delineate the boundaries, can decide
whether he is satisfied to regard his own existence as closed, and to
remain contented in the life of his children; whether he is able so to
endure the sorrows of a continued married life with such fortitude as
to make it increase his own powers and those of his children.”
The conviction of the rights of love, and the consciousness of the
rights of the children, are to-day unmistakably on the increase. There
is no danger that the latter right, the right of the children, will
suffer in comparison with the rights of love. It is, on the contrary,
characteristic, that out of the very same feeling by which the freer
configuration of the amatory life is demanded, there has also arisen a
=new programme of the rights of children=. This same Ellen Key who
proclaims the inalienable rights of free love, speaks also of the
“=century of the child=,” and devotes to this subject an admirable book.
The most important point with regard to free divorce, in respect to the
children, is that the father and the mother must not separate from one
another in hatred, but in friendship, and that, in the interest of the
children, they should continue to meet one another from time to time.
Ellen Key here rightly condemns the conduct of the good friends and
relatives who simply lay down the law that the separated pair must hate
one another, and must in every relationship torment and cheat one
another. It is precisely such “enmity” of the parents after divorce that
is so full of bad consequences in respect of the children.
We also have to consider this point of view, that sometimes the new
husband or the new wife has a better influence over the children than
their own parents, and that in this way divorce may have brought the
children greater happiness, may have been for them a true blessing.
The closing chapter of her work is devoted by Ellen Key to the
formulation of practical recommendations regarding the new marriage
laws. She indicates as a starting-point of her dissertation that the
ideal form of marriage is the perfectly free union between a man and a
woman. But this ideal can in the meanwhile only be attained through
=transitional forms=. In this the opinion of society regarding the
morality of the sexual relationship must find expression, and thus
remain as the support for undeveloped personalities; but at the same
time, these transitional forms must be sufficiently free to favour a
progressive development of the higher erotic consciousness of the
present day.
There always remains, therefore, the necessity for laws, to some extent
limiting individual freedom; but these laws must admit of an advance
towards perfection in respect of the freer gratification of individual
needs. =The sense of solidarity demands a new marriage law adapted to
new modern erotic needs, since the majority are not yet prepared for
complete freedom.= But it is only the needs of modern civilized human
beings, and not abstract theories concerning the idea of the family or
the “historic origin” of marriage, that should be determinative in this
matter.
In the marriage of the future, above all, the economic and legal
subordination of woman must be abolished. Woman must supervise her own
property and arrange her own work, and she must in the main care for
herself in so far as this is compatible with her maternal duties. She
must, however, have this assurance--that =during the first years of the
life of every child she shall be cared for by society=, and this under
the following conditions:
She must be of full age.
She must have performed her feminine “military service” by a one year’s
course of instruction in the care of children, in the general care of
health, and, whenever possible, in sick-nursing.
She must either care for her child herself or provide another thoroughly
competent nurse.
She must bring proof that she does not possess sufficient personal
property, or sufficient income from her work, in order to provide for
her own support and half of her child’s support, or else that the care
for her children compels her to discontinue her professional occupation.
Only in exceptional cases should this support of motherhood be provided
for a longer time than =during the three first and most important years
of the life of the child=.
The funds for this most necessary of all kinds of insurance must be
provided in the form of a graduated income tax, graduated so as to make
the wealthier classes pay the most, and the =unmarried= should pay just
as much as the married.
In every community the central authorities of this insurance should
consist of “=boards for the care of children=.” The members of these
boards should be two-thirds women and one-third men; they should
distribute the funds and supervise the care of the infants and older
children; in cases in which the mother was not properly fulfilling her
duties to the child, they could cut off supplies, or remove the child
from the mother’s care.
The mother should receive yearly the same sum, but, in addition, she
should receive for each child =half of the cost of its support=, as long
as the number of children is not exceeded which the society has laid
down as desirable. Children born in excess of this number would be a
private concern of the parents. Every father must, from the time of
birth until the child attains the age of =eighteen years=, provide
one-half of the money needed for its support.
The existing immoral distinction between legitimate and illegitimate
children is practically equivalent to freeing unmarried fathers from
their natural responsibility, and drives unmarried mothers to death,
prostitution, or infanticide.
All this would be done away with by a law ensuring from the State
support for the mother during the first, most difficult years, and
ensuring the child a right to support from =both= parents, a right also
to the name of both, and to inheritance from both.
Legal expression is also demanded for the right of each member of a
married couple to possess his or her property; those who wish to make
any other arrangement can do so by special contract after a definite
valuation of their property. And in respect of the right of inheritance,
the =domestic work= of the wife (housekeeping and the care of the
children) must receive due economic consideration--a matter hitherto
ignored. Not only in respect of her property, but also in respect of all
civil rights, and of the right of control over her own person, the
married woman must be placed in the same position as the unmarried.
Ellen Key’s remarks on the removal of the =coercion= exercised at
present on husband and wife =in respect of living together= are very
interesting. She writes:
“There are persons who would have continued to love one another
throughout the whole of their life had they not been compelled--day
after day, year after year--to adapt their customs, their volitions,
and their inclinations entirely according to one another’s tastes. So
much unhappiness depends, indeed, upon matters of almost no
importance, difficulties which two human beings endowed with moral
courage and insight would easily have overcome, had it not been that
the instinct towards happiness was overpowered by regard for ordinary
opinion. The more personal freedom a woman (or man) has had before
marriage, the more does she (or he) suffer in a home in which she does
not possess an hour or a corner for her own undisturbed use. And the
more the modern human being gains an increase in his individual
freedom of movement, the more he feels the need for privacy in other
relations, the more also will man and wife need these things in the
married state....
“But at present custom (and law) demand from the married pair that
they should lead a life in common, which often ends in a permanent
separation, merely because conventional considerations prevented them
from living apart!
“Also for those otherwise constituted, the narrow dependence, the
compulsory belonging each to the other, the daily adaptation, the
unceasing mutual consideration, may become oppressive. In continually
increasing numbers people are beginning quietly to transform conjugal
customs, so that they may correspond to the new needs. For instance,
each goes for a journey by himself, when he feels the need for
privacy; one of the pair seeks alone pleasures which the other does
not value; in former times both would have ‘enjoyed’ them together,
against the will of one, or both would have renounced what one could
have genuinely enjoyed. More and more married people have separate
bedrooms, and after a generation, it is probable that =separate
dwelling-houses= for husband and wife will be sufficiently common to
arouse no particular attention.”
With regard to the question of personal freedom in marriage, Ellen Key
takes into account the possibility of marriage being =kept secret= on
urgent grounds; also the introduction of new forms of divorce, the
present procedure giving rise to such detestable practices in the
law-courts--for example, the detailed statement of the grounds for
divorce, or an account of the refusal or the misuse of “conjugal
rights,” or an account of the malicious desertion of one party by the
other.
The author, therefore, makes proposals for a new marriage law and a new
divorce law.
As conditions preliminary to marriage, the new law should insist--
That man and wife should be of full age;
That neither should be more than twenty-five years older than the other;
That neither should be closely related or connected with the other, as
the present law already forbids. The new law must in this respect be
modified in the sense either of greater severity or of relaxation,
according as the scientific knowledge of the future may direct.
Finally, neither party should simultaneously enter upon another
marriage. On both parties will be imposed the duty of providing a
medical certificate regarding the state of their health; a proposed
marriage must be forbidden when either party is suffering from a disease
transmissible to the children (also when suffering from a disease which
would infect the other party?). With regard to other illnesses, the
matter may be left to the free judgment of those wishing to be married.
Marriage will take place before the marriage assessor of the commune,
and before four other witnesses, without any special ceremony; the
contracting parties will enter their names in the register, and their
signatures will be witnessed by those present. When for any reason the
marriage is to be kept secret, the witnesses will, of course, be bound
to secrecy.
This civil marriage is all that the law will direct; the religious
ceremony will be a voluntary affair, and will have no legal force.
In marriage, husband and wife will retain all the =personal= rights
which they had before marriage, over their bodies, their names, their
property, their work, their wages, also the right to choose their own
place of residence, and all other civil rights. For =common= expenses
and debts they will have a common responsibility; whilst each will be
personally responsible for personal expenditure and debts. In case of
divorce, each will retain his or her property. In the event of death,
the widower or widow will inherit half the property, the remainder going
to the children.
For divorce, Ellen Key suggests there should be a “=council of
divorce=,” consisting of four persons, men or women. The first aim of
this council will be, somewhat like that of a court of honour before a
duel, to attempt to reconcile the parties, to adjust any cause of
quarrel. If this attempt fails, the matter must go before the marriage
assessor of the commune; but this cannot take place until the expiration
of =six months= from the time when it was brought before the council of
divorce. The council of divorce must testify before the assessor that
six months before =each party was fully informed regarding the wish of
the other that the marriage should be dissolved, and regarding the
reasons for that wish=. If there are no children, if a division of the
property has been arranged, and if husband and wife have lived
=completely apart= for one year, the divorce will be effected one year
after the commencement of proceedings. When there are children to the
marriage, there will be needed a special “=jury for the care of
children=” to deal with the custody of the children. If either party is
found by the jury and the judge to be =unworthy= for or =incapable= of
the custody of the children, on the ground of his (or her) =morals= or
=character=, he (or she) loses his (or her) rights. If either father or
mother is deprived of the custody of the children, a guardian must be
appointed--a man to represent the father, a woman to represent the
mother--and this guardian will supervise the education of the children
in association with the remaining parent. If both parents are found to
be unfitted for the custody of the children, the education of the latter
must be supervised by a guardian only. If both parents are =equally=
fitted and worthy for the custody of the children, the latter should
remain with the mother until the age of fifteen, and would then have the
right to choose between their parents.
Ellen Key demands severe laws against the seduction and abandonment of
girls =under age=, on the part of unconscientious men; and she considers
that the witting transmission of any infective disorder by means of
sexual intercourse should be punished by imprisonment for a minimum term
of six months. Speaking generally, the law should always come to the
assistance of the weaker party, above all, to the assistance of the
children, and in most cases to the assistance of the mother.
Although the new marriage law is to give to =adult= citizens complete
freedom to arrange their erotic relationships at their own
=responsibility= and risk, =with= or =without= marriage, it remains
necessary that double marriages (bigamy), sexual relationships within
forbidden degrees, or on the part of persons suffering from
transmissible disease, which the law has declared to be a hindrance to
marriage, and also intercourse with persons under eighteen years of age,
should be regarded as punishable offences. The same is true of
homosexual and other perverse manifestations. The =trial= in such cases
will be conducted by a judge, with the assistance of a jury of
=physicians= and =crimino-psychologists=.
The writer does not believe that marriage will be transformed by legal
changes in the way outlined above, but she is of opinion that what will
happen is that “men and women will refuse to submit themselves to the
unworthy forms of marriage, which will remain established by law, and
will form free unions, the so-called ‘=marriage of conscience=,’” such
as those which the Belgian sociologist Mesnil has recommended in his
work, “Le Libre Mariage.”
It is, in fact, in Sweden, Ellen Key’s fatherland, in which these free
marriages of conscience appear to have first obtained adherents. She
records the free union of the professor of national economics at Lund,
Knut Wicksell. Additional reports of free marriages in Sweden are given
by the Swedish physician Anton Nyström.[204] He mentions among those who
have formed free unions, without legal or ecclesiastical ceremony, but
simply by public notification, in addition to the already mentioned
university professor, also the editor of a leading newspaper, a
physician and doctor of philosophy, and a candidate of philosophy. The
latter is engaged in study with his wife at the high school at Göteborg.
In February, 1904, they made a public announcement in the newspaper that
they were entering on a “marriage of conscience,” since they had a
conscientious objection to the ecclesiastical form of marriage. The
principal of the college wrote an address to the young couple, stating
that, although this union was not entered upon on immoral grounds, and
therefore could not be regarded as a punishable offence, still, such a
free union, unrecognized by the State, between man and woman, was not
compatible with the good order of society, that it was injurious to the
general ethical conception of the sacramental character of marriage, and
also constituted a dangerous example, which others might be led to
imitate. The principal therefore urged the young people most earnestly
“to place their union as soon as possible on a legitimate footing.” This
exhortation, however, led to no result.
Moreover, the University of Upsala was more free-thinking than that of
Göteborg, for the above-mentioned professor and his wife were, for a
long time =after= they had become united in free love, matriculated
students at the University of Upsala, and the university authorities
favoured them with no attention with regard to this matter.
In recent years, the public declaration of “free marriages” has also
found observance in other European countries. Thus, not long ago the
author who writes under the pseudonym of “Roda-Roda” announced in the
newspapers his free union with the Baroness von Zeppelin; and in the
_Vossische Zeitung_, No. 410, September 2, 1906, we find the following
announcement:
“Dr. Alfred Rahmer
Wilhelmine Ruth Rahmer
geb. Prinz-Flohr
Frei-Vermählte”
(Free-Wedlock).
Similar public announcements are reported from Holland. Moreover,
according to Nyström, it has since 1734 been legally established in
Sweden, that in certain cases engagement is =equivalent to
marriage=--namely, when the engaged woman becomes pregnant. “When a man
impregnates his fiancée, =the engagement becomes a marriage.... If the
man refuse to go through the ceremony of marriage=, and wishes to break
off the engagement, the woman is legally declared to be his wife, and
enjoys full conjugal rights in his house.” So runs this law.
We can predict with certainty that the adherents of free marriage, the
number of “marriage protestants,” as Ellen Key happily calls them, will
continue to increase. To such will belong all those who have an equal
antipathy to coercive marriage, to the debasing intercourse with
prostitutes, and to the transient casual love, such as is experienced in
ordinary extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, the true “wild” love.
“It is only a question of time”--thus Ellen Key concludes her remarks
on marriage reform--“when the respect felt by society for the sexual
union will not depend upon the form of the life in common, by which
two human beings become parents, but only on the worth of the children
which these two are producing as new links in the chain of the
generations. Men and women will then devote to their spiritual and
physical preparation for sexual intercourse the same religious
earnestness that the Christians devote to the welfare of their souls.
No longer will divine laws regarding the morality of sexual
relationships be considered the mainstay of morality; in place of
these the desire to elevate the human race and a sense of personal
responsibility will be the safeguards of conduct. But the conviction
on the part of the parents =that the purpose of life is also their own
proper life--that is, that they do not exist only for the sake of
children=--should free them from certain other duties of conscience
which at present bind them in respect of children--above all, from the
duty of maintaining a union in which they themselves are perishing.
The home will perhaps become more than it is at present; something at
unity with the mother, something which--far from excluding the
father--carries within itself the germ of a new and higher ‘family
right.’...
“A greater and healthier will-to-live in respect of erotic feelings
and demands--this it is that our time needs! Here from the feminine
side real dangers threaten; and one of several ways in which these
dangers must be averted is by the construction of new forms of
marriage.
“Human material of ever higher worth and capable of higher
evolution--it is this which in the first place we have to create. If
we preserve coercive forms of the sexual life, the possibility of
doing this is a diminishing one; if we adopt free forms of the sexual
life, the possibility of doing it will increase. Not only because the
present time asks for more freedom are its demands full of promise,
but because those demands approximate ever more closely to the central
point of the problem--to the conviction that love is the principal
condition upon which depends the vital advance of the individual and
of humanity at large.”
I have given such a lengthy analysis of Ellen Key’s book because, in the
first place, in no other work do we find so lucid an exposition of all
the points needed for the consideration of the question of free love--an
exposition based upon the richest experience of life and a really
astonishing psychical knowledge of mankind, combined with the finest
understanding of the subtle activities and sentiments of the loving
soul; and, in the second place, because as an actual fact--at any rate,
in Germany--this book has formed the true starting-point of all
endeavours towards the reform of sexual morality. Ellen Key’s “Ueber
Liebe und Ehe” (“Love and Marriage”) is a demonstration of human rights
in the matter of love; it is the evangel for those who have determined
to harmonize love with all the changes and advances attendant on the
evolution of civilization, and have resolved not to allow the forcible
retardation of progress by conditions which were perhaps still tolerable
one hundred or two hundred years ago, but to-day are unconditionally
=hostile to civilization=.
In Germany these endeavours have been centralized in the Bund für
Mutterschutz (the Association for the Protection of Mothers), founded in
the beginning of 1906, whose purpose it is to protect unmarried mothers
and their children from economic and moral dangers, to counteract the
dominant condemnation of such mothers, and thereby also indirectly to
bring about the reform of the existing views on sexual morality. Those
who initiated this most important movement were indeed high-minded
women. I mention, among many, only the names of Ruth Bré, Helene
Stöcker, Maria Lischnewska, Adele Schreiber, Gabriele Reuter, and
Henriette Fürth.
By the preparatory committee to which Maria Lischnewska, Dr. Borgius,
Dr. Max Marcuse, Ruth Bré, and Dr. Helene Stöcker belonged, a committee
meeting was called on January 5, 1905, and the Association for the
Protection of Mothers was founded, its programme having already received
the support of a number of leading personalities from all parts of the
German Empire.
In addition to this committee, to which, besides the above-named members
of the preparatory committee, there belonged Lily Braun, Georg Hirth,
and Werner Sombart, a further committee was formed, the members of which
were: Alfred Blaschko, Iwan Bloch, Hugo Böttger, Lily Braun, Gräfin
Gertrud Bülow von Dennewitz, M. G. Conrad, A. Damaschke, Hedwig Dohm,
Frieda Duensing, Chr. v. Ehrenfels, A. Erkelenz, W. Erb, A. Eulenburg,
Max Flesch, Flechsig, A. Forel, E. Francke, Henriette Fürth, Agnes
Hacker, Hegar, Willy Hellpach, Clara Hirschberg, Georg Hirth, Graf Paul
von Hoensbroech, Bianca Israel, Josef Kohler, Landmann, Hans Leuss,
Maria Lischnewska, R. von Liszt, Lucas, Max Marcuse, Mensinga, Bruno
Meyer, H. Meyer, Metta Meinken, Klara Muche, Moesta, A. Moll, Müller,
Friedrich Naumann, A. Neisser, Franz Oppenheimer, Pelman, Alfred Ploetz,
Heinrich Potthoff, Lydia Rabinowitsch, Gabriele Reuter, Karl Ries, Adele
Schreiber, Heinrich Sohnrey, Werner Sombart, Helene Stöcker, Marie
Stritt, Irma von Troll-Borostyani, Max Weber, Bruno Wille, L. Wilser, L.
Woltmann.
In the programme which the newly founded Association for the Protection
of Mothers speedily published, we are told:
One hundred and eighty thousand illegitimate children are born in
Germany every year, approximately one-tenth of all births. This
important source of our strength as a people, children who at the time
of birth are usually endowed with powerful vitality (for their parents
are commonly in the bloom of youth and health), we allow to go to ruin
because a rigorous moral view bans unmarried mothers, undermines their
economic existence, and compels them to entrust their children for
payment to strange hands.
The momentous consequences of this state of affairs are shown by the
fact that the average number of still-births, in the case of
illegitimate children, amounts to 5 per cent., as compared with 3 per
cent. of still-births among the total number of births; the mortality
of illegitimate children during the first year of life is 28·5 per
cent., as compared with 16·7 per cent. for the mortality of all
children born. And whilst only a diminishing percentage of
illegitimate children ever become fitted for military service, the
world of criminals, prostitutes, and vagabonds, is recruited to an
alarming extent from their ranks. Thus, by unfounded moral prejudices,
we produce artificially an army of enemies to society. At the same
time the birth-rate of Germany is relatively declining. In the year
1876 the number of births per 1,000 living was 41; in the year 1900 it
was only 35-1/2!
To put an end to this robbery of the strength of our people is the aim
of the
ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROTECTION OF MOTHERS.
The attempt has already been made by means of crèches, foundling
institutions, and the like, to deal with this matter. =But the
protection of children without the protection of mothers is, and must
remain, no more than patchwork=; for the mother is the principal
source of life for the child, and is indispensable to the child’s
prosperity. Whatever ensures rest and care to the mother in her most
difficult hours, whatever secures her economic existence for the
future, and protects her from the contempt of her fellow-beings, by
which her health is endangered and her life embittered, will serve to
provide a secure foundation for the bodily and mental prosperity of
the child, and will simultaneously give the mother herself a stronger
moral hold. Therefore the Association for the Protection of Mothers
will, above all, make the mothers’ position safe, by assisting them
to the attainment of
ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE
--especially such as are prepared to bring up their own children--by
the formation in country and in town of
HOMES FOR MOTHERS,
in which, in addition, arrangements will be made for the necessary
care and upbringing of the children, the granting of legal protection,
and the provision of medical aid. Experience has shown that such
provision also corresponds to the wish of many of the fathers, and
assists in retaining their help and interest for mother and child.
The Association will, however, above all, close the sources from which
the present poverty of unmarried mothers arises, and these are more
especially the moral prejudices which at the present day defame them
socially, and the legal regulations which burden them almost
exclusively with the economic care and responsibility for the child,
and which entail on the father not at all, or in a quite insufficient
degree, his contribution to the burden.
THE MORAL DEFAMATION
of unmarried mothers would, perhaps, be comprehensible if we lived in
economic and social conditions rendering it possible for every one to
marry soon after attaining sexual maturity, so that the involuntary
celibacy of adult persons was an abnormal state. In such a time as
ours, however, in which no less than 45 per cent. of all women
competent to bear children are unmarried, and those who actually marry
do so for the most part at a comparatively late age, we must regard as
untenable the view which considers the unmarried woman giving birth to
a child to be an outcast, thrusts her out of society like the basest
criminal, and gives her up to despair. Equally untenable appears
THE PRESENT-DAY LEGAL VIEW,
which, when the actual father has not gone through the forms
prescribed by the State for a marriage, does not regard him as father
in the legal sense, ascribes to him no relationship with the child
procreated by him, and imposes on him no responsibility for the child
or its mother, although in the majority of cases the mother is
economically the weaker, and he himself economically the stronger
party. There must, therefore, be a legal reform in the direction of
equalizing as far as possible the position of the illegitimate and the
legitimate child in relation to the father.
Finally, however, motherhood--legitimate and illegitimate alike--is a
factor of such profound importance to society, that it appears
urgently desirable not to leave it exclusively to private care, with
all the results that private care entails. In the interest of the
community it is desirable that there should be
A GENERAL INSURANCE OF MOTHERHOOD,
the cost of which should be defrayed by contributions from both sexes,
as well as supplemented by grants from public sources. This assurance
must not only suffice to provide for every woman sufficient medical
assistance and skilled care during pregnancy and delivery, but should
also furnish a provision for the education of the child until it is of
an age to earn its own living.
In order to propagate these views and endeavours methodically and upon
the widest possible foundation, the active assistance and
participation of every class in the population is indispensable. We
therefore urge on all those who share our views the pressing demand
TO JOIN THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE PROTECTION OF MOTHERS,
and thus to assist in securing and accelerating the attainment of
these ends.
As the official organ of the Association, was chosen the monthly
magazine, edited by Dr. Phil. Helene Stöcker, _Mutterschutz: Zeitschrift
zur Reform der Sexuellen Ethik_ (_The Protection of Mothers: a Journal
for the Reform of Sexual Ethics_)--hitherto published in the year 1905
twelve numbers, in the year 1906 twelve numbers, and in the year 1907
three numbers.
The foundation of the Association was followed on February 26, 1905, by
the holding of its first public meeting, in the Architektenhaus, under
the presidency of Helene Stöcker; and the meeting was extensively
attended by the general population of Berlin. The aims and endeavours of
the new union were explained, in longer and shorter speeches, by Ruth
Bré, Max Marcuse, Maria Lischnewska, Justizrat Sello, Helene Stöcker,
Ellen Key, Lily Braun, Adele Schreiber, Iwan Bloch, and Bruno Meyer; and
from the standpoint of the advocates of woman’s rights, of jurists, of
physicians, of sociologists, and of moralists, in equal degree, a
radical transformation and reform of the present untenable conditions
was demanded.[205]
Soon afterwards, the Association proceeded to form local groups. The
first was formed in Munich, where on March 28, 1905, the first local
meeting took place. Frau Schönfliess, Margarethe Joachimsen-Böhm, Alfred
Scheel, and Friedrich Bauer belonged to this committee. Further local
groups were founded in Berlin (May 20, 1905--members of this committee,
as distinct from the committee of the general Association: Finkelstein,
Galli, Agnes Hacker, Albert Kohn, Bruno Meyer, Adele Schreiber), and in
Hamburg (president, Regina Ruben).[206]
The first general meeting (_cf._ Helene Stöcker, “Our First General
Meeting,” published in _Mutterschutz_, 1907, No. 2) took place in
Berlin, January 12 to 14. After speeches on the practical protection of
mothers (Maria Lischnewska), the present-day form of marriage (Helene
Stöcker), prostitution and illegitimacy (Max Flesch), limitation of
marriages by economic conditions (Adele Schreiber), limitation of
marriage by hygienic factors (Max Marcuse), the position of the
illegitimate child (Böhmert and Ottmar Spann), the insurance of
motherhood (Mayet), there followed animated discussions, and various
important resolutions were passed, dealing with the equality of husband
and wife in married life, the legal recognition of free marriages, and
of the offspring of such marriages, the necessity for the provision of
certificates of health before the conclusion of marriage, the means to
be employed in the care of illegitimate children, and the insurance of
motherhood. Especially noteworthy was the address of the leading medical
statistician, Professor Mayet, regarding the introduction and management
of the insurance of motherhood. At his suggestion, proposals followed
regarding the enrolling of working-class members in the societies for
insurance against illness and for the insurance of motherhood, the
necessity for contributions on the part of the State, the inclusion of
the agricultural and forest labourers, and of domestic servants of all
kinds, in the schemes of insurance against illness and the insurance of
motherhood, the possibility of a voluntary insurance of all women, what
could be effected by the insurance of motherhood (free provision of
midwives and medical assistance, free lodging in case of need, the
provision of premiums for mothers suckling their own children, the
institution of places where advice could be given to mothers, of homes
for women during pregnancy and child-birth, and homes for women and
infants), and the further development of factory legislation with regard
to nursing mothers. The committee for 1907 was chosen: it consisted of
Helene Stöcker, Maria Lischnewska, Adele Schreiber, Wilhelm Brandt, Iwan
Bloch, Max Marcuse, Heinrich Finkelstein.
In the end of January, 1907, an Austrian Association for the Protection
of Mothers was founded in Vienna, under the presidency of Dr. Hugo
Klein. To the committee of this Society there belong, Siegmund Freud,
Rosa Mayreder, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, Professor Schauta, and about
forty other well-known persons, physicians, lawyers, schoolmasters, and
many women. In the meeting at which the Association was founded, Dr.
Ofner spoke regarding the legal rights of illegitimate mothers and
children, and Dr. Friedjung regarding the protection of nursing infants.
In the United States also an Association for sexual reform has been
founded, the so-called “Umwertungsgesellschaft” (Revaluation Society),
the principal aim of which is the complete re-estimation of all values
in the amatory life, and the introduction of a more ideal view of love.
The President of this American Association is Emil F. Ruedebusch; the
secretary, Mrs. Lina Janssen; the meeting-place of the society is
Mayville, in the State of Wisconsin. Regular evenings of discussion are
fixed, on which questions of especial interest are debated.
[In Holland also an Association for the Protection of Mothers has been
founded; its name is “Vereeniging Onderlinge Vrouwenbescherming.”]
In the newspaper _Mutterschutz_ (1905, No. 9, pp. 375, 376), we find a
report of the meeting of the American Association held on October 8,
1905, when the topic of discussion was:
=What is the true nature of marriage?=
The answer ran as follows:
Is it the family (parental) relationship?--No; for a married couple
may have no children, may not desire to have children, and can, none
the less, be thoroughly married.
Is it the common home, domestic life?--No; for husband and wife may
live their whole life in a hotel, and, none the less, be thoroughly
married.
Is it the lifelong community of material interests?--No; for man and
wife can keep their property separate, if they wish to do so.
Is it mutual assistance and a state of comradeship throughout
life?--No. When a conjugal union is the exact opposite to this, we
speak of a bad husband and a bad wife; they are, none the less, man
and wife.
Does it signify a contract for a lifelong exclusive love?--Certainly
not; if marriage signified that, all Christians would be opposed to
this institution. And yet these are the things which, according to the
common estimation, make up the nature of marriage, whenever the
question is discussed in a manner which is regarded as “respectable”
and “decent.”--As a matter of fact, there is nothing respectable or
decent in this mystification.
What is it, then, in which the true nature of marriage is to be
found?--It is the possession of a human being for lifelong exclusive
sexual service.
Very various views have prevailed on the question how many human
beings it is legitimate for one human being to employ for his
exclusive sexual gratification, and among different nations, and at
various times, the most widely divergent rules and regulations have
prevailed regarding the mode of sexual possession, and, on the other
hand, regarding the duties towards this sexual property; but wherever
marriage has existed, it has signified a right of property in respect
of sexual utilization.
If we oppose marriage, =we mean that we oppose that which actually
constitutes marriage according to morality, and according to written
law, that which even the most enthusiastic advocates of this
institution regard as so debasing that they are ashamed to name it
openly=.
But, with the exception of the matters relating to sexual service, =we
hold fast to and defend everything which is publicly considered as
marriage=, and we expect that in this case we shall be “=faithful=,”
“=constant=,” and “=trustworthy=” in all circumstances. For, according
to our view, these most important imponderabilia, and these intimate
associations of interest between husband and wife, are not the
inevitable result of the longing for physical enjoyment in common, but
are the much-to-be-desired result of a well-considered longing for any
one or all of the relations entering into the question. According to
our view, however, the duration of this union, and constancy while it
lasted, would not be dependent upon the activity of sexual desires.
A special =Association for Sexual Reform= was founded in Berlin in the
year 1906, at the instance of the editor of the _Die Schönheit_, Karl
Vanselow. It is an Association of cultured men and women who also have
in view the formation of local groups, and the delivery of artistic and
scientific lectures in furtherance of their movement for reform.
In the above-mentioned monthly magazine, _Mutterschutz_, edited by
Helene Stöcker, all the modern problems of love, marriage, friendship,
parentage, prostitution, and all the associated problems of morality,
and of the entire sexual life, are discussed from their philosophical,
historical, legal, medical, social, and ethical aspects.
The editor herself, a talented disciple of Nietzsche, has since the year
1893 been chiefly occupied in the study of the psychological and ethical
aspects of the problems of higher love, and has recently published her
collected writings on this subject in a single volume.[207]
It is an interesting literary physiognomy which is offered to us in this
book; we encounter here a lofty, free, and pure conception of the love
of the future. After the first spiritual wanderings and confusions,
which no one in emotional pursuit of the ideal can escape, we see this
courageous and undismayed advocate of the eternal, inalienable rights of
love, ultimately insisting on the recognition of the lofty mission of
love, in accordance with the saying of Nietzsche, which she lovingly
quotes: “Ye shall not propagate onwards, but upwards!” (“Nicht fort
sollt Ihr Euch pflanzen, sondern hinauf!”). She especially insists on
the =duty= and =responsibility= of individual love. No one can take a
more earnest view of love than is taken here. Helene Stöcker is
throughout no radical revolutionist, but an evolutionist and reformer.
She sees quite clearly that to-day there is no panacea, no unfailing
solution of sexual problems. While she energetically contests the old
sexual morality, and demands its replacement by a new freer conception
of sexual relationships, she, none the less, recognizes throughout the
significance and the value of self-command, of relative asceticism, the
wonderful influence of which, in the deepening of emotional life, she
has most rightly emphasized. Especially the soul of woman, she believes,
has by the asceticism imposed on women by conventional morality, gained
in a high degree, depth, fulness, and comprehensiveness. The inward
development of woman will be greatly advantaged by the newer valuation
of love. This will be characterized, neither by an arid renunciation and
denial of life, nor by a coarse, egoistic search for pleasure, but by a
joyful affirmation of life and all its healthy powers and impulses.
Whilst Helene Stocker has laid especial stress upon the psychological
and ethical relationships of free love, its equal importance from
economical and social points of view has been discussed by Friedrich
Naumann,[208] W. Borgius,[209] Lily Braun,[210] Maria Lischnewska,[211]
and Henriette Fürth.[212]
Naumann rightly draws attention to the fact that our purely monetary
economic system is favourable to the production of sterility, for the
reason that in this system motherhood is equivalent to loss of money,
because the wife ceases to earn money in a degree proportionate to the
extent to which she becomes a mother. The burden of the upbringing of
children must be made an affair of the community. At the present time,
on the contrary, the producer of human beings is burdened upon all
sides. He who has children has more rent to pay, and increased school
expenses. Therefore, Naumann demands, as a first step to the recognition
of the fact that it is a public duty to educate children, that school
expenses shall no longer be demanded from the individual parent. Above
all, however, it must be made easier to the wife to be a mother.
The wife as a personality demands her right to work, and her right to
motherhood. The fact of the compulsory celibacy of an ever-increasing
number of women competent to become mothers is the problem which here
demands solution. According to the census of 1900, there were in Germany
no less than 4,210,955 women between the ages of eighteen and forty
years unmarried, the total number of women of corresponding age being
9,568,659--that is, 44 per cent. were unmarried. Among these there were
2,830,538 between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years, the period
most suitable to child-bearing, the total number of women of
corresponding age being 3,593,644--that is, no less than 78 per cent.
According to Lily Braun, there remain from 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 German
women permanently unmarried; and we may expect the number of female
celibates to increase. The economic conditions, the previously described
unhealthy conditions of coercive marriage, and the efforts of women for
emancipation, have a combined influence hostile to marriage. On the
other hand, law and conventional morality co-operate in making life a
martyrdom for the unmarried mother and for the illegitimate child.[213]
The woman who becomes a mother, when united only in the bonds of free
love, is at the present day defamed, despised, a being without rights.
The question of “=maintenance=” is a scandal of our time! It is the
proof of the degree to which most men are devoid of conscience. An
experienced lawyer has very forcibly described the intolerable
conditions which at present obtain in this matter.[214] He published the
following characteristic letter from a young master-butcher, which shows
how meanly even a simple-minded man may endeavour to escape the duty of
maintenance. The letter runs:
“DEAR DORA,
“I wanted to come round to-day, and wished to deal with the matter by
word of mouth, but I can’t do it, and so I must write to tell you that
we cannot marry, for, in fact, I have now less money even than when I
was a journeyman. The few hundred marks that I had I have put into the
business; and, in fact, I really cannot marry; if I did, I couldn’t
exist at all. I should have to shut up the shop. What should we do
then? I shouldn’t be able to show my face in H---- again; besides, at
best, the business is not worth very much. So, my dear Dora, write to
me now how we can settle matters; you mustn’t draw the string too
tight, or ask too much; if you do, you see, you will have to find your
own way out of the trouble. Of course, I shall be glad enough to do
what’s right, because I am as much to blame as you are. If after a
while I get on as well as my brothers have done, I can do more for
you. =But just now I can’t help you much.= Let’s hope you may find
some other man with whom you may live more happily than you have lived
with me. Dear Dora, don’t make such a fuss about it: there are plenty
more in the same case, up and down the world; you are not the only
one. Now, write to me directly what you want to do; let’s get the
matter settled quietly; that’ll be better for you. Your mother won’t
leave you in the lurch, and you will find it will all come right.
“Best love.
“FRITZ H.
“P.S.--Write soon.”
Let us imagine the state of mind of the young woman who receives this
letter, characterized as it is by such crafty heartlessness! And yet
this heartlessness is no greater than that of modern European society,
which =simultaneously= makes fun of the “old maid” and condemns the
unmarried mother to infamy. This double-faced, putrescent “morality” is
profoundly =immoral=, it is =radically evil=. It is moral and good to
contest it with all our energy, to enter the lists on behalf of the
right to free love, to “unmarried” motherhood. Let us make a clearance
of this medieval bugbear of coercive marriage morality, which is a
disgrace in respect of our state of civilization and economical
development. Two million women in a condition of =compulsory= celibacy
and--coercive marriage morality. It is merely necessary to place these
two facts side by side, in order to display before our eyes the complete
ethical bankruptcy of our time in the province of sexual morality.
In addition to this necessity for a radical alteration in sexual
morality, we must, in the second place, enunciate the demand for a
general =insurance of motherhood=, for =the foundation of homes for
pregnant women, for women in child-birth, and for infants=. The
fulfilment of these demands alone will bring us a great step forward in
the restoration to health of our sexual life, and in the preparation of
a more beautiful future.[215]
If it be true, as W. B. Stevenson reports,[216] that King Charles IV.
decreed that all foundling children in Spanish America were to be
regarded as of noble birth, in order that all professions might be open
to them, we cannot but consider that this mode of thought and action, on
the part of a ruler in the country of the Inquisition, was a shining
example for our own time.
“Society,” says Eduard Reich, “as well as the Church, =sins against
the laws of morality, as long as= it stands in the way of the
advancement of illegitimate children, either by the maintenance of
miserable prejudices against these poor beings, or by positive
decrees. We shall never be able, even should the human race enter
Paradise, to make it impossible for extra-conjugal procreation to
occur: love-children will always exist. Since, then, it is not the
fault of the latter that their parents have brought them into the
world; and, further, since, even if =all= men were married, one could
not impute it to a man as a moral transgression, if he, in the
plenitude of his procreative powers, had intercourse with a beautiful
girl, instead of with his wife (suffering, for example, from cancer,
or some other serious disease); and since, on the other hand, a wife
still in the full bloom of youth could not be blamed for
unfaithfulness if, her elderly husband having been impotent for
several years, she now has intercourse with a vigorous and healthy
young man--for such reasons, let us throw the veil of forgetfulness
over all well-intentioned human weaknesses, and no longer ask whether
a citizen of the world has been engendered in the marriage-bed, or has
sprung from the well-spring of love. To the reasonable being it is the
man himself who is of value; and only blockheads, simpletons, and
donkeys will inquire as to his origin.”[217]
And yet one more question I will address in conclusion to the adherents
of coercive marriage morality. =How many= free-love relationships, how
many illegitimate children have there not been at all times among the
cultured classes, even among the pillars of the throne and the altar,
=precisely among those= who, on account of their higher spiritual
development, ought to possess a stronger ethical sensibility (_nota
bene_, from the standpoint of coercive marriage morality). It would be
an interesting task to collect =statistics relating to such free unions,
and the resulting= “illegitimate” offspring, in the case of notable men
and women! The marriage fanatics would be horrified! Quite apart from
the =innumerable secret relationships= of this nature, and their
consequences, a short observation and enumeration of the illegitimate
loves and parentage of men and women of high standing, alike spiritual
and moral, would alone suffice to illuminate the actual conditions, and
would enable us to draw remarkable conclusions regarding coercive
marriage. It is my intention, as soon as possible, to represent in a
brief work the rôle of free love in the history of civilization, and to
adduce proofs that free love is very well compatible with a moral life.
Who would venture to reproach with immorality a Bürger, a Jean Paul, a
Gutzkow, a Karoline Schlegel, a George Sand, or even a Goethe?[218]
It is a simple evolutionary necessity that free love, in association
with progressive differentiation and with the reshaping of economic
conditions, will find its moral justification also for those who at
present judge and condemn it from the point of view of long outworn
social conditions.
[186] M. Nordau, “The Conventional Lies of Our Civilization.” See also
P. Näcke, “Einiges zur Frauenfrage und zur sexuellen Abstinenz”--“A
Contribution to the Woman’s Question and to the Question of Sexual
Abstinence.” Näcke condemns this duplex morality, and demands for the
woman in principle the same sexual freedom that is granted to the man.
[187] One of the most remarkable instances of free love as a popular
institution was the “island custom” of the (so-called) Isle of
Portland. Here, until well on into the nineteenth century,
experimental cohabitation was universal, and marriage did not take
place until the woman became pregnant. But if, as a result of this
experimental cohabitation, “the woman does not prove with child, after
a competent time of courtship, they conclude they are not destined by
Providence for each other; they therefore separate; and =as it is an
established maxim=, which the Portland women observe with great
strictness, =never to admit a plurality of lovers at one time=, their
honour is in no way tarnished. She just as soon gets another suitor
(after the affair is declared to be broken off) as if she had been
left a widow, or that nothing had ever happened, but that she had
remained an immaculate virgin” (Hutchins, “History and Antiquities of
the County of Dorset,” vol. ii., p. 820, 1868). So faithfully was this
“island custom” observed that, on the one hand, during a long period
no single bastard was born on the “island,” and, on the other, every
marriage was fertile. But when, for the further development of the
Portland stone trade, workmen from London, with the “wild love” habits
of the large town, came to reside in Portland, these men took
advantage of the “island custom,” and then refused to marry the girls
with whom they had cohabited. Thus, in consequence of freer
intercourse with the “civilized” world, the “Portland custom” has
gradually fallen into desuetude. But the words I have emphasized in
the quotation show how faithfully the conditions of “free love,” as
defined in this work, were observed in Portland. An account of
Portland, with allusions to the local practice of “free love,” will be
found in Thomas Hardy’s novel, “The Well Beloved.”--TRANSLATOR.
[188] A. Blaschko, “Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 12
(Berlin, 1902).
[189] _Cf._ Helen Zimmern, “Mary Wollstonecraft” in _Deutsche
Rundschau_, 1889, vol. xv., Heft 11, pp. 259-263. Consult also C.
Kegan Paul, “William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries,” 2 vols.
(London, 1876).
[190] “Shelley’s Poetical Works,” edited by Edward Dowden, p. 42
(Macmillan, 1891).
[191] _Ibid._, p. 44.
[192] _Cf._ the admirable critical investigation by Georg Hirth,
“Goethe’s Christiane,” published in “Ways to Love,” pp. 323-366,
containing new and valuable aids to our judgment of this relationship.
[193] A. Wernich, “Geographical and Medical Studies, based upon
Experiences obtained in a Journey Round the World,” p. 137 (Berlin,
1878). Among the Malays of the Dutch Indies divorce is very easy; it
costs only a few gulden, and is often carried out “very much to the
advantage of husband and wife who are not held together by love. =But
it is by no means rare for a divorced couple to remarry after a
certain time=” (Ernst Haeckel, “Aus Insulinde, Malayische
Reisebriefe”--“From the Indian Archipelago, Malay Letters of Travel”),
p. 242 (Bonn, 1901).
[194] Kuno Fischer, “History of Recent Philosophy,” vol. vii., p. 135
(Heidelberg, 1898).
[195] _Cf._ in this connexion my pseudonymous work, “Rétif de la
Bretonne: the Man, the Author, and the Reformer,” p. 500 (Berlin,
1906).
[196] _Cf._ George Gissing’s powerful novel, “The Odd
Women.”--TRANSLATOR.
[197] A brief sketch of tetragamy is also given by Schopenhauer in the
fragments of his “Lecture on Philosophy” (“Schopenhauer’s Legacy,” ed.
Grisebach, vol. iv., pp. 405, 406), also in the manuscript books,
“Pandektä” and “Spicilegia” (_op. cit._, pp. 418, 419).
[198] Charles Albert, “Free Love.”--We may also allude to the more
generally philosophic work by Armand Charpentier, “L’Évangile du
Bonheur. Mariage. Union Libre. Amour Libre” (Paris, 1898).
[199] L. Gumplowicz, “Marriage and Free Love” (Berlin, 1902, second
edition).
[200] In this connexion English readers will do well to consult Karl
Pearson’s admirable “The Ethic of Freethought.” In the third or
sociological section of that book there are numerous references to the
subject of free love in relation to the economic structure of society.
One of these will, however, for the present, suffice for quotation:
“The economic independence of women will, for the first time, render
it possible for the highest human relationship to become again a
matter of pure affection, raised above every suspicion of restraint
and every taint of commercialism.” It will be seen that Karl Pearson,
like Albert, Gumplowicz, Bebel, and Socialists in general, believes
that collectivism and the economic independence of women are
indispensable preliminaries to a far-reaching reform of our sex
relationships in the direction of free love.--TRANSLATOR.
[201] I must here call attention to the fact that the celebrated
philosopher Eugen Dühring, in his notable work, “The Value of Life,”
pp. 155-158 (Leipzig, 1881, third edition), made a violent attack on
the coercive marriage system, and demanded on ethical grounds a
transformation of our amatory life in the direction of freedom and of
personal love.
[202] Edward Carpenter, “Love’s Coming-of-Age,” third edition, London,
1902.
[203] Ellen Key, “Love and Marriage,” translated into German by
Francis Maro (Berlin, 1904).
[204] Anton Nyström, “The Sexual Life and its Laws,” pp. 244-247
(Berlin, 1904).
[205] The speeches on this occasion were published by Helene Stöcker
in her pamphlet, “The Association for the Protection of Mothers” (No.
4 of “Modern Questions of the Day,” edited by Dr. Hans Landsberg;
Berlin, 1905).
[206] Unfortunately, Ruth Bré, who has played such a leading part in
the history of the movement for the protection of mothers and for
sexual reform, has recently gone her own way, and has founded an
association of her own for the protection of mothers, which we may
hope will soon be reabsorbed into the general Association. Above all,
in such a province of reform as this, open as it is to attacks of
every kind, unity is essential.
[207] Helene Stöcker, “Die Liebe und die Frauen”--“Love and Women”
(Minden, 1906).
[208] Fr. Naumann, “Women in the New Economic Life,” published in
_Mutterschutz_, 1906, No. 4, pp. 133-149.
[209] W. Borgius, “Mutterschafts-Rentenversicherung,” _ibid._, pp.
149-154.
[210] Lily Braun, “Die Mutterschaftsversicherung,” _ibid._, 1906, Nos.
1-3, pp. 18-24, 69-76, 110-124.
[211] M. Lischnewska, “The Economic Reform of Marriage,” _ibid._, No.
6, pp. 215-236.
[212] H. Fürth, “Motherhood and Marriage,” _ibid._, 1905, Nos. 7,
10-12, pp. 165-169, 389-395, 427-435, 483-489.
[213] The facts to which we have alluded throw a peculiar light upon
the ever-renewed attack, made by certain writers who will not see,
_against_ the emancipation of women, whilst at the same time they
_advocate_ motherhood! A typical example of this is the book written
by the gynecologist Max Runge, “Woman in her Sexual Individuality”
(Berlin, 1896), the objectivity of which, in comparison with other
hostile writings, must, however, be expressly recognized.
[214] “Office Consultations of a Solicitor,” by Severserenus, p. 70
_et seq._ (Hanover, 1902).
[215] The question of _unmarried motherhood_, sociologically of such
profound importance, has recently been treated by Max Marcuse in an
admirable monograph, “Unmarried Mothers” (Berlin, 1907, vol. xxvii. of
the “Documents of Great Towns,” edited by Hans Ostwald). Herein we
find exact data regarding the number, religion, position, profession,
and characteristics of unmarried mothers, also the social and
psychological causes of unmarried motherhood, and the existing and
future means of caring for women in this position. The same author, in
the newspaper _Soziale Medizin und Hygiene_, 1906, vol. i., pp.
657-667, discusses the important question of the =adoption= of
illegitimate children. Valuable monographs concerning =illegitimate
children= are those of Hugo Neumann, “The Illegitimate Children of
Berlin,” Jena, 1900; Ottomar Spann, “Investigations Regarding the
Illegitimate Population of Frankfurt-on-the-Main,” Dresden, 1906;
Frieda Duensing, “The Legal Position of Illegitimate Children,” and
Taube, “Illegitimate Children,” published in “The Book of the Child,”
edited by Adele Schreiber, vol. ii., div. 2, pp. 57-61, 62-69
(Leipzig, 1907); the practical work hitherto effected--already
extensive, but still far less than we could wish--by the Association
for the Protection of Mothers has been detailed by Maria Lischnewska,
in her excellent pamphlet, “The Practical Protection of Mothers”
(Berlin, 1907).
[216] W. B. Stevenson, “Travels in Arauco, Chile, Peru, and Columbia,
in the years 1804-1823,” vol. i., p. 174 (Weimar, 1826).
[217] Eduard Reich, “Immorality and Excess, from the Point of View of
the Medical, Hygienic, Political, and Moral Sciences,” p. 127 (Neuwied
and Leipzig, 1866).
[218] Apart from the study of the numerous free-love relationships of
the poet Goethe, it would be interesting to make an investigation
regarding his illegitimate children. Only a few years ago there died
in Stützerbach one of the last illegitimate grandchildren of Goethe, a
wood-cutter, a man of tall stature and proud gait, resembling in
appearance and demeanour the beloved of all women. _Cf._ A. Trinius,
“From the Mountain-World of Goethe,” published in the _Berliner
Lokal-Anzeiger_, No. 453, of September 6, 1906.
CHAPTER XII
SEDUCTION, THE SENSUAL LIFE (GENUSSLEBEN), AND WILD LOVE (WILDE LIEBE)
“_In the sensual life, imponderabilia play a leading part, and many an
effort towards improvement, many a reform, has been shattered against
them, simply because the would-be reformer has overlooked the finer
threads which connect the human soul with the institutions and customs
of the material world._”--WILLY HELLPACH.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XII
Difference between free love and wild love -- The danger of wild love
-- Forms the bridge to prostitution -- Its connexion with the sensual
life and with seduction -- The peculiarities of modern epicureanism --
Restless character of the sensual life -- The life of “amusement” --
The erotic aim of this life -- Sexual excesses of the present day --
Heedlessness of wild love -- Influence of large towns on the sensual
life -- Nocturnal life -- Character of the pleasures of large towns --
Increase of sexual tension -- Pursuit of pleasure among the common
people -- The increasing number of young embezzlers -- Public
seduction -- Professional seduction -- History of the art of love --
Its gradual spiritualization -- Seducer types -- Don Juan and Casanova
-- British Don-Juanism -- The domineering erotic, and the erotic
genius -- Kierkegaarde, “Diary of a Seducer” -- Pseudo Don-Juanism --
Printed guide-books to the sensual life for the modern man of pleasure
-- Influence of the mode of life upon the sexual life -- Alcohol as
the incorporation of evil in this respect -- Analysis of its influence
on the _vita sexualis_ -- Its peculiar duplex influence -- Utilization
of this influence by prostitutes and seducers -- Alcoholism and
venereal diseases -- Absinthe in France -- Share of alcohol in
producing offences against morality -- Encouragement of wild love by
alcohol -- Connexion of illegitimate births with alcoholic excess --
Increase of wild love at the present day -- “Intimacy” (“das
Verhältnis”) -- Its gradual degeneration -- History of the origination
of the “intimacy,” and psychological explanations thereof --
Increasing similarity between the nature of the “intimacy” and the
conditions of prostitution -- Causes -- Frequent changes of
“intimates” -- The diffusion of venereal diseases by means of wild
love -- Rôle of lies, mistrust, and hatred therein -- Produces
disbelief in love -- Wild love and coercive marriage -- Causes of
sexual corruption -- Need for the campaign against wild love and
sexual libertinism -- Hellmann’s book on sexual libertinism --
Attitude of the medical man towards “extra-conjugal” sexual
intercourse -- Increasing aversion to wild love -- The increase in
free ideal love unions -- Wild love as the transitional stage to
prostitution.
CHAPTER XII
In the previous chapter we repeatedly drew attention to the fact that
free love is not identical with the sexual promiscuity indulged in at
the present day to such an alarming extent and with such disastrous
consequences--sexual promiscuity in the form of extra-conjugal sexual
intercourse, irregular in character, and dependent almost entirely upon
chance.
I am an ardent advocate of “free love,” by which I understand sexual
union based upon intimate love, personal harmony, and spiritual
affinity, entered on by the free resolve of both parties, involving the
assumption of all the duties entailed by such free unions, and with
satisfactory mutual assurances regarding health. But with corresponding
emphasis I must condemn, from the standpoint of the physician and from
that of public hygiene, and also on ethical grounds, the now so widely
diffused “extra-conjugal” sexual intercourse, for which, in order to
distinguish it from the entirely different extra-conjugal “free” love, I
suggest the term “=wild love=.”
This wild love is the true cancer of our society, for its chief
characteristic is that it constitutes =an enduring connexion and means
of transition= between hygienically and ethically unexceptionable sexual
intercourse and prostitution, and thus involves the unceasing risk of
transferring to the former =all the dangers= of the latter. In this
sense, wild love can really be regarded as a kind of =irradiation= of
the whole nature of prostitution into the entirety of sexual relations
in general. Thus, it remains a powerful hindrance to all ennoblement and
resanation of the amatory life, and it is an invincible source of the
moral and physical degeneration and the infective contamination of the
nation.
Wild love is intimately connected with the artificial sensual life of
our time, and with the manifold varieties of seduction[219] arising from
that life. Wild love, the sensual life, and seduction, form, as it were,
a triad, each member of which is the principal predisposing condition of
the others.
He who wishes to characterize in a few words the European civilization
of the present day may say that its nature consists in =epicureanism=,
mitigated by =toil= and the =struggle for life=; but this epicureanism
is of a very peculiar kind. It is no longer the unqualified sensual life
of the eighteenth century, in which sensual lusts and epicurean
refinements were to many the whole object of life, nor is it the
comfortable enjoyment of “the good old times”; it is a quite peculiar
=concentrated= enjoyment of the moment, =in the midst of the hard work
of life=. The _carpe diem_ of Horace has to-day become _carpe horam_!
The forced labour which the fierce struggle for existence at present
entails upon the majority of men leaves no more time for a simple
undisturbed enjoyment of existence, for the inward deep =experience= of
reality, and for a quiet joy therein. No, our sensual life of to-day
bears in it the sting of =pain=, because the will to live, which,
according to Schopenhauer, continually strives for an “=increase of
life=,” has now degenerated into a convulsive search for =the most
violent sensations possible=, into a wild hunt after the strongest
possible and most frequent enjoyments, because the time is lacking for a
peaceful, harmonious existence. Each man asks himself anxiously whether
he may not have “missed” this or that possibility of objective pleasure;
and forgets in doing so that the true happiness of life lies =within
himself=, and that the greatest possible sum of outward enjoyments
cannot procure him this happiness.
The signature of our time is “=amuse oneself=,” a phrase which conveys
the idea of all our modern superficial pleasures, and of our sensual and
spiritual sensations, which must chase one another in rapid succession
in order to enable the modern civilized man to feel that he “lives.”
For the majority of those living in great towns, amusement is equivalent
to a =continued succession of superficial sensual pleasures, as
preparatory stimuli for an equally fugitive and debasing sexual act=.
The frequently heard and favourite phrases “to go through with it,” “to
live one’s life,” “to sow one’s wild oats,” etc., have all the same
significance, in the sense of preparation for sexual indulgence by means
of such stimuli.
From beer-saloons and public-houses of all kinds, especially those at
which the attendants are women, from the cabarets and variety theatres,
the low-class music-halls and dancing-saloons, also, however, from
better-class balls, soirées, and luxurious dinners, the road is open to
the prostitute, or to the arms of a girl excited by similar sensual
stimuli to a similarly transitory sexual desire.
A great physician has said: “We eat three times too much.” I might add,
in amplification of this saying, Not only do we eat three times too
much, but we look for all other sensual pleasures in excess, and for
this reason =we love also three times too much=, or rather, we indulge
=too often= in sexual intercourse.
One of our most talented psychologists, Willy Hellpach, has described
these relationships with great insight:
“To the enormous majority of our young men sexual indulgence is a
matter of course, like their card-parties, their evenings at the club,
their glass of beer; and of the few who live otherwise, a considerable
proportion do so simply from timidity, or from poverty of spirit (they
would like to, but they cannot screw their courage up). Another
portion is honourably continent, but does not dare to make any display
of this adhesion to principle, and rather pretends not to be
distinguished in any way from the majority; and the very few young men
who openly set their faces against the custom may be counted on the
fingers of one hand. It is obvious that in this way the extra-conjugal
sexual act loses the distinction of the unaccustomed; it is effected
continually in a more heedless, light-hearted, frivolous
manner--until, finally, the very idea of danger connected with
indiscriminate sexual indulgence is forgotten; the preventive is
thrown aside with an easy “Nothing has ever happened to me.” Indeed,
many a man goes to his fate in the shape of infection with his eyes
open, and with the most light-hearted confidence: if he is infected,
there will be plenty of time before his marriage to be thoroughly
cured.
“This factor comes the more readily into play in proportion to the
degree in which the whole arrangement of the sensual life culminates
in the stimulation of erotic activities. Such a tendency is inevitably
associated with the development of the modern large town; and there
ensues an imitation of the sensual life of large towns in smaller
towns, and even in country villages.[220]
“Every large town provides the means for a much more extensive
stimulation of the senses than country life; and the alternate
stimulation and deadening of the senses, characteristic of town life,
has in the very large towns of our time reached an unheard-of degree
of intensity. The town is the typical habitat of that sensual and
nervous condition of irritability which historically characterizes our
own generation; the townsman is the typical representative of
“nervousness” in its modern form. The verbal connexion between
“senses” and “sensuality” represents an actual transition; and in
ordinary parlance, by the “sensual” we understand the “erotic.” Where
the senses are more strongly stimulated, there erotic desire grows,
there it loses its periodical course in favour of a continuous
wakefulness, or, at any rate, in favour of a light slumber, which the
slightest stimulus will disturb. And the townsman is more easily
impelled to the sexual act, not merely because the town offers him
prostitutes, “intimates,” etc., in much greater numbers, but also
because his over-stimulated nervous system impels him much more
powerfully to search for these objects, and makes it much more
difficult for him to safeguard himself against their allurements.
“And town life is nocturnal life! The more so, the larger the town;
and we see the extreme form of this in the great capitals of Europe.
The consequences in regard to the opportunities for and incitations to
sexual enjoyment are not lacking. First of all, nocturnal life gives
rise to a summation of stimuli, to an incredible variety of nervous
titillation, and this induces an increasing sensuality; and once the
sensual life has become habitually nocturnal, now, by a vicious
circle, all enjoyment is unavoidably fettered to the town. Natural
recuperation has become a secondary consideration, and in place of the
relief of tension, we have apparent restoration by means of variety.
All, all, tends in favour of a sharpening of sensual stimuli, of
arousing the wish for erotic pleasures. And the town is untiring,
inexhaustible, in its discovery of means for the gratification of
these instincts. Variety theatres, gin-palaces, low music-halls, and
all the amusements of similar kind, are simply unthinkable without the
sensual note; and even where they maintain themselves to be free from
that note, it will be unconsciously sought by the audience, will be
easily found, and if it were absent, its absence would be angrily
resented. The same is true, more or less, of entertainments of a
higher æsthetic rank. With very few exceptions, our theatres are
compelled to take into consideration the instincts of the public, and
the instincts of the population of our large towns are chiefly
concerned with eroticism. Even where sexual questions are elevated
into the sphere of the highest art, and by the artist himself the
common is detested, the audience will, after their kind, merely
extract erotic stimulation; and that the opera and the stage are
sought by many merely on account of these accessory influences, is too
well known to need proof--not to say a word regarding the pantomime
and the ballet.
“Perhaps the worst of all is yet to come. In his public dinners, his
parties, his clubs, his balls, etc., the man of the upper classes, and
also the man of the middle classes, does not find the
much-to-be-desired ethical counterpoise to this characteristic sensual
life of our young men; but rather finds the prolongation of it in a
somewhat more masked and artificial form. From the outset, the
relationship between the sexes is of so suggestive, so purposive a
character, that this exercises a gentle, stimulating influence upon
desire; and a man is thrown into a state of tension for which he often
finds only one outlet, sexual gratification--which he must either buy
or obtain by cunning--and thus he passes straightway from the
influences of the public sensual life, to become the customer of the
prostitute, the partner in the “intimacy,” the seducer in the
nocturnal life of the great town. He then either runs the danger of
infection with venereal diseases, or he occupies himself with their
dissemination; for the man suffering from venereal disease is not
merely a victim: he is commonly also a focus of infection, one who
finds new victims in the shape of girls hitherto uninfected.
“To this evil a remarkable trait in the sensual life of the simpler
woman extends ready assistance--I mean that servility, that erotic
obsequiousness which finds expression already in the gossip, and in
the favourite reading of the lower classes, and which makes them feel
to some extent flattered if they are treated as means of enjoyment by
a man of good position. It is well known that the prostitute in her
talk gladly makes her lover a baron; but, unfortunately, a similar
tendency characterizes the feminine half of the lower classes
throughout, and to our regret, this is more especially true of the
German people. Our commercial-traveller nature, to which, according to
Sombart, we owe a portion of our ascendancy in the markets of the
world, finds its most regrettable and disastrous seamy side in the
readiness with which the masses forget their pride and self-respect,
when it is a question of snatching a pleasure. This characteristic
has, in recent lustra, unfortunately become not better, but rather
worse; the desire to look well at any cost, with which the simple girl
so often makes herself laughable, inspires also her longing to ‘walk
out’ with a distinguished admirer.”[221]
But not only does the simple girl of the people sacrifice her life and
health in this pursuit of pleasure; the young men also are not
behindhand in the pursuit, which they regard as “gentlemanlike,” of
enjoyment and of women. It is astonishing what an increase in recent
times there has been in the number of youthful embezzlers, learners and
clerks in merchants’ offices, whose offences have been committed simply
in order to provide funds for the gratification of their pothouse
pleasures. Among them one meets lads between the ages of fourteen and
eighteen years, a symptom of the earlier sexual maturity of the present
day. When, as usually happens, they are arrested after a few days, it
comes out in evidence that the embezzled money was squandered in the
society of prostitutes, but we learn that the tendency to such excess
had existed in the embezzler long before he actually committed a crime.
If the heads of businesses were to keep themselves better informed
regarding the mode of life of their employees, many a disillusion and
many a loss would be spared them.
Sexual seduction is at the present time effected less by individuals
than by the environment. =The sensual life as such=, the entire
stimulating sensual atmosphere of that life, plays to-day a rôle which
at an earlier time, when our social life and pleasures were less fully
developed, fell to the “seducer,” the _galant homme_ and Don Juan of
earlier days. Our young people are subjected rather to the general
influences of the pursuit of amusement, which fascinates all circles,
than to the allurements of the habitual seducer. =To-day, the victims
of public seduction, by means of the sensual life characteristic of our
time, are far more numerous= than those seduced by isolated individuals,
though such there have been, and will be, at all times.
Before I pass to the consideration of the individual influences of the
modern sensual life, those by which wild love is especially favoured,
and before I describe the general seduction of the present day, I
propose to touch upon the interesting question of “=professional
seduction=,” to consider Don-Juanism and the practice of the “_ars
amandi_.”
It is remarkable how strongly the history of the art of seduction
reflects the general tendency of the evolution of love from purely
physical impulses to spiritual love. This we learn simply from the study
of the numerous =text-books of the art of love=, the so-called “_ars
amandi_.”
Whereas in the earlier text-books of this subject, from Ovid’s “Ars
Amandi,”[222] widely celebrated in antiquity, to the “Practica Artis
Amandi,”[223] the “Morale Galante, ou l’Art de Bien Aimer,”[224] of the
seventeenth century, and Gentil Bernard’s “L’Art d’Aimer,”[225] of the
eighteenth century, the principal stress was laid upon all the possible
sensual stimuli, and upon the superficial gallantry associated with
this; in the modern text-books, in that of Manso[226] (still belonging
to the eighteenth century), but especially in the more recent works by
Stendhal,[227] Paul Bourget,[228] A. Silvestre,[229] Catulle
Mendés,[230] Robert Hessen,[231] and Hjalmar Kjölenson,[232] we find
much more stress laid on all the =spiritual= influences of the art of
love. In this way it is possible to follow in these works the whole
course of the enrichment of the spiritual and emotional life in
love.[233]
The same process of development can be recognized also in the figure of
Don Juan. His type has undergone gradual alteration, always becoming
more and more intellectual. The =purely sensual= Don Juan, as Lord
Chesterfield, for example, characterizes and embodies him, is to-day
quite out of date even among sensual men of the ordinary type; whereas
though Kierkegaard’s “Diary of a Seducer” describes an extreme type,
that of the purely reflective libertine, yet in this extreme, the author
has very rightly recognized the general tendency of evolution.
Recently, Oscar A. H. Schmitz has published an extremely original and
thoughtful study of “Don Juan, Casanova, and other Erotic Characters”
(Stuttgart, 1906), in which he distinguishes very sharply the seducer
type of a Casanova from the seducer-type of a Don Juan. Don Juan is a
deceitful, cunning seducer, to whom the =sense of possession= associated
with the attainment of his aim, the =danger=, the activity of his
=desires for power and dominance=, are the principal matters, but who is
in himself =unerotic=; whereas Casanova is pre-eminently the erotic,
also crafty and deceitful, not, however, for the gratification of his
need for power, but rather for the agreeable satisfaction of his need
for sensual love. Don Juan knows only “women”; for Casanova each one is
“the woman.” Don Juan is demoniacal, devilish he goes on to the complete
destruction of the women seduced by him, deliberately he ensures their
unhappiness; Casanova is human, cares always for the happiness of the
women he loves, and devotes to them a tender reflection. Don Juan
=despises= women, he is of the type of the misogynist, of the satanic
woman-hater; Casanova is the typical feminist, he possesses a profound
understanding of woman’s soul, is not disappointed by love, and needs
for his life’s happiness continuous contact with feminine natures. Don
Juan seduces by means of his own elemental nature, by the attractive
power of brutal wild force; Casanova does so by means of the sensual
atmosphere which surrounds him.
With an accurate psychological insight, Schmitz remarks:
“It seems as if the love of one, or, where possible, of several, women
inoculates the man, as it were, with a vital fluid, and gives his
glance a fire which at times makes him irresistible. Men of pleasure
declare that after the most fortunate nights, when, exhausted, they
were returning home to sleep, on the way the most eager and meaning
glances were cast upon them by the women whom they passed.”
This distinction between the two types of seducer, which Schmitz makes
in his original book, containing excellent observations on the
psychology of love, is indeed not new. Stendhal, in the chapter
“Werther and Don Juan” of his book, “Ueber die Liebe,” pp. 241-251
(German edition, Leipzig, 1903), points out the same types. “The genuine
Don Juans,” he says, “ultimately come to regard women as their enemies,
and find actual pleasure in their manifold unhappiness”; whereas
Werther, the equivalent of Casanova, regards all women as entrancing
beings, towards whom we are far too unjust. The love of Don Juan is “a
similar feeling to the love of the chase”; Werther’s love is gentle,
idealizes the reality, is full of tender and romantic impressions. Don
Juan is the conqueror; Werther is the erotic.
I myself also, in my work on “Sexual Life in England,” vol. ii., p. 159
(Berlin, 1903), have, earlier than Schmitz, clearly distinguished from
one another these two seducer types, in a passage in which I depict the
British Don Juan, in contrast to the French and Italian Don Juan.
The passage runs:
“The principal characteristic of the British Don Juans, who are
completely distinct from the libertines of the Latin and of the other
Teutonic countries, is the =cold, brazen= quietude with which they
indulge in the sensual pleasures of life; =love is much less to them
an affair of passion than one of pride and of the gratification of
their consciousness of power=. The French, the Italian Don Juan is
driven by ardent sensuality from conquest to conquest. This is the
=principal motive= of their actions and of their mode of life. The
English Don Juan seduces on principle, for the sake of experiment; he
pursues love as a sport. Sensuality plays a part only in the second
degree, and in the midst of his sensual enjoyment the coldness of his
heart is still painfully apparent.
“This is the =rake=, the type of =Lovelace=, which Richardson, in his
‘Clarissa Harlowe,’ has described with incomparable mastery.”
Taine, also, in his “History of English Literature,” has described this
British Don-Juanism, which hates rather than loves.
Finally, we find these types also in Rosa Mayreder’s book, “Zur Kritik
der Weiblicheit” (“Critique of Femininity,” Leipzig, 1905), especially
in the chapter, “A Few Words on the Powerful Faust” (pp. 210-243). Her
type of the “=masterful erotic=” closely resembles the Don Juan type of
Schmitz, and my own British seducer type.
“Erotic excitement,” says Rosa Mayreder, “gives rise in these men to
the lust of dominion; to them the relationship with women signifies a
grasping possession, an enjoyment of power, and they are unable to
think of women except as subject and dependent. Only in so far as
woman adapts herself to them as a means do they know her; as a
personality, with individual aims, she does not exist for them.”
This masterful eroticism exists among men of quite low social position,
just as much as among men of high position.[234] Their diametrical
opposite is the love-perception of delicately sensitive, erotical,
highly differentiated men, whose highest type constitutes the “=erotic
genius=.” Rosa Mayreder characterizes this latter type in the following
terms:
“The increasing differentiation of erotic perception brings with it a
new faculty, which extinguishes the consciousness of superiority and
transforms the need for contrast into the need for community, for
reciprocity--the capacity for devotion. Thus comes to pass the most
remarkable phenomenon in the masculine psyche, the great miracle,
which effects a complete transformation of the primitive mode of
perception, a transformation of the teleological sexual nature.
“The erotic genius grasps the nature of the opposite sex with
intuitive understanding, and is capable of assimilating it completely.
The other sex is to him the primevally akin and primevally allied; his
love-relationships are accompanied by ideas of enlargement,
fulfilment, liberation of his own essential nature, or even by the
idea of a mystical union. To him sexuality does not denote an
annulment or limitation of personality, but rather an enlargement and
enrichment by means of the individuals with which, in this way, his
personality is associated.”
As an erotic genius of such a kind, Rosa Mayreder points to Richard
Wagner, as he manifests himself in his letters to Mathilde Wesendonk.
The sensibility and refinement of the modern woman, her emergence as a
personality, must continually repel the masterful type of
erotic--although doubtless that type will never be entirely eliminated.
I do not believe in a complete transformation of the teleological sexual
nature of man, which has always assigned to him the active aggressive
rôle. But it is true that the possibilities of existence for the
masterful erotic, the Don Juan type, have become limited. He must, as
Schmitz rightly insists, intellectualize himself if he wishes to
continue to exist. This psychological satanism of the modern Don Juan is
wonderfully described by Kierkegaard, in his “Diary of a Seducer.”[235]
The hero of this book learns best from the girls themselves how they can
be betrayed; he develops in them “spiritual eroticism,” in order then
suddenly to abandon them, but =they themselves= must loosen the tie.
Woman and love are not to him in themselves the principal need; what is
important to him is, as he says at the conclusion, that he has been
able to enrich himself with numerous erotic perceptions. The modern Don
Juan is, therefore, nothing more than a =cold psychological
experimenter=. It is in this way that, with prophetic insight, Choderlos
de Laclos has described him in the Vicomte de Valmont, the hero of his
“Liaisons Dangereuses.”
Yet another interesting Don Juan type of our time has to be considered,
one which indeed is not a genuine Don Juan, but a =pseudo= Don Juan, or
rather a pseudo Casanova; and this type makes its appearance also in the
female sex.
Like Rétif de la Bretonne, it is the man or woman seeking eternally for
the ideal, for true love; a type which only, in consequence of the
ever-repeated disillusions and errors, assumes a Don Juanesque
character. At the present day, we meet this type very often. It is only
the expression of the increasing difficulty of the proper love choice,
owing to the progressive differentiation of our time; and it is not
originated by the desire for sensual lust, but rather by the eternally
disillusioned yearning for genuine individual love.
But we must return after this excursion to the consideration of the
commonest type of public seduction by means of the sensual life of our
time. It is significant that this also possesses its literary guides and
course of instruction, in the form of the numerous printed =handbooks
for the world of pleasure=. Among these we may mention, “Guides du
Viveur,” “Guides de Plaisir,” “Führer durch das Nächtliche Berlin”
(“Guide to Berlin by Night”), “New London Guide to the Night Houses,”
“Die Geheimnisse der Berliner Passage” (“Secrets of the ‘Passage’ of
Berlin”), “Paris by Night,” “The Swell’s Night Guide through the
Metropolis,” “Bruxelles la Nuit, Physiologie des Établissements
Nocturnes de Bruxelles” (for Englishmen of pleasure, published under the
title of “Brussels by Gas-light”), “Paris and Brussels after Dark,” “The
Gentleman’s Night Guide,” “Hamburgs galante Häuser bei Nacht und Nebel”
(“Hamburg’s Fast Houses by Night and Cloud”), “Das Galante Berlin,”
“Naturgeschichte der galanten Frauen in Berlin” (“Natural History of the
Fast Women of Berlin”), “Paris Intime et Mystérieux,” “Guide des
Plaisirs Mondains et des Plaisirs Secrets à Paris.” All these have
appeared during the last thirty years, some of them in several editions.
For Vienna, Buda-Pesth, St. Petersburg, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid,
Marseilles, Rotterdam, and New York, there also exist such guides to all
open and secret enjoyments.
In order to give an idea of the contents of such a guide to the sensual
life, I need merely enumerate the chapter headings of a book published
in 1905, and, as the Paris bookseller from whom I obtained it informed
me, immediately confiscated, but =none the less= still openly sold in
the bookshops of the Boulevards and the Rue de Rivoli. It bears the
title, “=Pour s’Amuser=. Guide du Viveur à Paris, par Victor Leca”
(Paris, 1905). In his versified dedication, the compiler writes:
“Nous connaissons la Capitale,
Et nous l’aimons avec ferveur;
Ma science expérimentale
A fait ce ‘Guide du Viveur.’”
[“We know the Capital,
And we love it with fervour;
My experimental science
Has made this Guide for the Man about Town.”]
And he states in the preface that all the various pleasures of Paris,
for the eye, the ear, and the sense of taste, lead ultimately to--woman,
in complete agreement with the definition which I gave above of the
sensual life of our time. All these pleasures concur in leading to
sexual indulgence--that is the end, the climax of every “amusement,” the
true _punctum saliens_ of the life of pleasure of our large towns. Thus
Leca, in his comprehensive and elaborate guide for men of pleasure, lays
the principal stress on announcements regarding eroticism and on
opportunities for erotic adventures in the individual places of
pleasure. He enumerates these in series: the theatre, especially the
“théâtres très légers,” the “cafés-concerts,” the dancing-saloons, the
hippodromes, and circuses, the cabarets of Montmartre, the Quartier
Latin, the women’s cafés, the boulevards, the halls of the central
market, the brothels (with an exact indication of the streets, and with
the numbers of the houses!!), the houses of accommodation (_maisons de
rendezvous_), the likenesses of a few “ladies of pleasure,” the arcades,
the parks and public gardens, the popular festivals, the races,
drives, public bathing establishments, cemeteries, museums, and
exhibitions--all, always, in relation to the feminine element.
These handbooks of the art of enjoyment are existing proofs, from the
point of view of the history of civilization, of the fact =that the
sexual impulse is, in every possible way, influenced, increased,
elaborated, and complicated, by the civilization of the present day=.
Especially the life of great towns, where the essence of modern
civilization is found in its most concentrated form, is a sexual
stimulant in the highest degree, with its haste and hunting, its
“nocturnal life,”[236] with its multiplicity of enjoyments for all the
senses, with its gastronomic and alcoholic excesses--in short, with its
new device that after work comes =pleasure=, and not repose.
In my “Sexual Life in England” (vol. ii., p. 261 _et seq._) I have
described the momentous influence of the mode of life upon sexuality,
and have proved how both in the old England and in the new the excessive
consumption of meat and of alcoholic beverages has unnaturally
stimulated the sexual impulse, and has conducted it into devious paths.
But of Germany also we may say that, apart from the times of “meat
famine,” we eat =too much meat= and drink =too much alcohol=, the former
especially among the higher classes, the latter among all classes of
society.
The sexually stimulating influence of luxurious feeding, which, for
example, Gabriele d’Annunzio describes in the early part of his romance
“Lust,” and which Tolstoi, in the “Kreutzer Sonata,” describes as the
principal cause of incitation to lasciviousness, is indeed a well-known
fact of experience; and the =later= in the day these heavy meals are
consumed, the more dangerous are they in respect of their influence on
the sexual impulse. I am fully convinced that the good old German custom
of taking the principal meal of the day at noon =is greatly preferable=
to the so-called “English dinner,” when the principal meal is deferred
to four or six o’clock. Luxurious suppers, or even midnight dinners,
such as at the present day are quite customary, must be definitely
regarded as aphrodisiac.
A far more momentous rôle is played by =alcohol= in the modern sensual
life. A writer who is not himself a strict teetotaller may yet feel it
his duty to lay all possible stress on this fact. Indeed, from the
standpoint of medical experience and observation, I am prepared to term
alcohol the =evil genius= of the modern sexual life, because in a
malicious and underhand manner it delivers its victim to sexual
misleading and corruption, to venereal infection, and to all the
consequences of casual sexual intercourse.[237]
This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the drink question,
or for stating the reasons for my own opinion, that complete abstinence
is a Utopian idea, and that the =moderate= and careful use of alcohol,
in quantities suited to the particular individuality, and at =suitable=
times, does no harm worth mentioning. Though this be so, I cannot fail
to recognize the deeply tragic rôle which the customary abuse of alcohol
plays in the sexual corruption of our time. As to the connexion between
alcohol and the sexual life, I must therefore speak at greater
length.[238]
The influence of alcohol upon the sexual life and upon the psyche is a
very peculiar one. Beer or wine, taken in =very moderate= quantities,
unquestionably give rise, in addition to their general psychical
stimulating influence, to sexual excitement of greater or less degree.
This sexual excitement, if more alcohol is now taken, endures =longer=
than the psychical excitement, which soon gives place to psychical
paralysis, to a discontinuance of the inhibitory influences proceeding
from the brain. It is in this unequal influence exercised upon the
purely sensual-sexual and upon the psychical processes, that the
peculiar danger of alcoholic excesses appears to me to depend. The
sexual stimulation produced by the first draught of alcohol continues at
a time when the man has already lost all control over reason and will,
and thus he becomes an easy prey to sexual seduction.
It is only in this way that we can explain the momentous influence of
alcohol, for we know, generally speaking, it is not a means for the
increase of sexual power. On the contrary, it increases voluptuousness
and sexual desire, but almost always hinders erection and delays the
sexual orgasm.
=Thus, a man under the influence of alcohol requires a longer time for
the completion of the act of sexual intercourse than a sober man=, and
in this way the danger of venereal infection is notably increased, for
the contact with the infecting person is considerably longer. I have
inquired of many patients who were infected during intercourse with
prostitutes after alcoholic excess, and was almost always informed that
the act of intercourse, owing to the well-known relative impotence
produced by alcohol, was exceptionally long in duration, and this
naturally gave more opportunity for excessive contact, for mechanical
injuries dependent upon increased friction, etc., and thus brought about
infection.
In medical literature, numerous cases are reported in which two men have
completed intercourse with an infected prostitute, shortly after one
another, and, remarkable to relate, one only became infected, whilst the
other remained healthy. More exact inquiry would show without doubt in
many such cases that the uninfected man was sober, in comparison with
the infected man, who must have been under the influence of alcohol.
In the case of women, with regard to whom there can be no question of
any specific effect upon sexual “potency,” the influence of alcohol in
exciting libido, in association with its withdrawal of all psychical
inhibitions, makes itself all the more manifest. Thus, to woman, who,
speaking generally, is far more intolerant of the drug than man, very
moderate enjoyment of alcohol entails dangers.[239]
The seducer, the procuress, and the prostitute are all familiar with the
above-described peculiar influence of alcohol upon the libido sexualis
and upon the psyche, and it is precisely this discriminative duplex
influence which is utilized by them. Not only in the so-called
“Animierkneipen”--that is, the drinking-saloons with women
attendants--and in the brothels does alcohol subserve this purpose, but
the street-walkers also await their victims by preference outside the
doors of the great restaurants, or after festival dinners, and keep an
eye especially on drunken men, because in the case of these, in whom all
self-command has been lost, they have, in every respect, an easy
prey.[240]
A man under the influence of alcohol is as easily led and as devoid of
will-power as a child. He is not particular in his choice: he generally
fails to notice whether the prostitute who accosts him is young or old,
pretty or ugly, clean or dirty; he follows her blindly, and in most
cases with results disastrous to his pocket and to his health. The
following case illustrates very clearly this loss of will produced in a
man by indulgence in alcohol:
An officer of high rank, a married man, in general a man of solid
repute, left the officers’ casino after a banquet late at night, very
tipsy, to seek his house. Suddenly he felt an arm thrust into his; it
was a prostitute who had noticed his condition, and she had turned it to
her own advantage. Without reflection and without exercise of will, he
allowed her to lead him to her dwelling, and there, still in a quite
apathetic condition, had intercourse with her, without taking any
precautions whatever. It was not until afterwards that he saw, being
then somewhat sobered, that he was in the company of an elderly
prostitute of the lowest class. His dread of venereal infection was
justified a few days later by the appearance of a urethral discharge. In
great alarm he consulted me. Microscopic examination of the urethral
secretion, and the cure which ensued in a few days, showed me that he
was suffering from a simple urethral catarrh, and not from gonorrhœa.
Such cases as this, however, do not always end so fortunately. It is
notorious, and has been proved by the researches of leading physicians
and medical statisticians, that the majority of venereal infections take
place under the influence of alcohol.
For this reason, =the continued increase in the consumption of alcohol
leads to a further diffusion of venereal diseases=. While our ancestors
consumed alcoholic beverages to excess only on Sundays and festival
days, at the present time spirits are freely consumed on weekdays--above
all, during the evenings. Brandy and beer have become everyday
beverages, especially beer, whose consumption increases year by year, so
that in the year 1898 the beer drunk in Germany was valued at
£100,000,000! Strümpell showed that labourers earning three marks a day
are accustomed to spend eighty pfennige--that is, more than one-third of
their income--on beer; these are by no means notorious drinkers, but
steady fellows who only follow the general “custom.” The part played by
beer in Germany is played by absinthe in France; the well-known
“apéritif” to which prostitutes of Paris so often invite their male
clients is in most cases absinthe. Wine, as the experienced Fiaux says,
is merely an “ideal drink” in the dreams of the ordinary Parisian
prostitute.
We shall return in subsequent chapters of this work to the consideration
of alcohol in its relations to the sexual life in general, and to
abnormal sexual manifestations in particular. We shall also have
occasion to speak of the momentous rôle played by alcohol in the
causation of offences against morality. Baer goes so far as to assert
that alcohol is the cause in 77 per cent. of such offences.
Here we shall only once more insist upon the high degree to which the
excessive enjoyment of alcohol assists in seduction and favours wild
love--that is, sexual intercourse free from all choice and all
regulation. This is to be seen with especial clearness at popular
festivals and other occasions giving rise to alcoholic excesses; and the
effects are later shown by the resulting increase in the number of
illegitimate births.
Magnus Hirschfeld relates that when he was a student he spent one
Christmas Eve in the company of a professor of medicine in Breslau.
Among the guests were two of the maternity assistants, and first one,
then the other, was called away to attend confinements. An old physician
who was present thereupon remarked: “Yes, yes; these are the children of
the Emperor’s birthday.” Hirschfeld, who asked for an explanation of
this incomprehensible phrase, was told that on Christmas Night the lying
in hospitals were overcrowded, because then the illegitimate children
were born which had been procreated nine months earlier, on March 22,
the birthday of the old Emperor, celebrated as a popular holiday.
The increase in wild love, in sexual intercourse dependent upon the
inclination of the moment and upon chance, with a rapid succession of
different individuals--this increase, which is associated in the way
above described with the sensual life, is a characteristic of our own
time.
In addition to prostitution, which we shall treat in a separate chapter,
the so-called “=intimacy=” constitutes the true nucleus of wild love.
When those who support coercive marriage speak of free love, they do not
mean the free love, the higher individual love, which we have described
in the previous chapter, but they always refer to the latter-day
“intimacy,” which, in fact, does involve the most serious dangers, alike
from the physical and from the moral point of view; for, on the one
hand, the “intimacy” forms the principal intermediate agent in the wider
diffusion of venereal diseases, and, on the other hand, this new form
of sexual relationship has above all introduced the element of
hypocrisy, lying, and mistrust, which poisons love to-day, separates the
sexes continually more each from the other, and gives rise to that
tragic =sexual hate=, enmity of men on the part of women, and misogyny
on the part of men, which is also peculiarly characteristic of our own
time.
The gradual differentiation of the originally ideal intimacy, to the
wild love of the present day, has been admirably described and
psychologically elucidated by Hellpach in his short work on “Love and
Amatory Life in the Nineteenth Century.”
In this admirable characterization of the “intimacy,” the fact is first
established, that it is above all and through and through a product of
great towns, and consequently that it is closely connected with the
capitalistic evolution which compels thousands of young girls to earn
their own living, so that from them are especially recruited the great
human class of shop-girls, and all the allied varieties, so typical of
large towns. This is the soil in which the “intimacy” naturally
develops. [Hellpach writes first of conditions of a generation ago, and
then passes on thirty years to our own day.]
“By day these girls were occupied. When the evening came, bringing
with it the greatly desired closing of the shop, the prospect opened
to them of going home to poor surroundings, often enough of taking
part in painful family scenes, then going to bed, and the next morning
early returning to business. This was their life, day in, day out.
Here was no very pleasant calendar, especially when the way from the
places of business to their home led through streets crowded with
brilliantly lighted beer saloons, cafes, theatres, and concert-halls.
And all this during the years of sexual blossoming, when the ardent
sensual desire for the first time ran through all the nerves! Who can
wonder that the longing became absolutely fiery, after all the work of
the day, to enjoy a little share of all the glories of the great town
which lay extended before their gaze? After the confinement of the
shop, not to return straightway to the confinement of the family, but
to learn to know a little about the freedom of pleasure--and this
under the most entrancing form of a little love affair?
“And the social conditions were such as to make it possible for this
yearning to be fulfilled. Were there not thousands of young shopmen,
hundreds of students, clerks, non-commissioned officers, who would
rather walk about in the evening with a girl on their arm than alone?
Prostitutes would be little suited for such companionship. Besides, it
would not be always the young man’s intention to proceed to an
extremity, to have a night of love following the evening of amusement;
the young man simply was in the mood to walk about with the girl, to
gossip, perhaps to embrace and kiss her a little.
“Here was the beginning. The young man accosted a shop-girl,
accompanied her a little way, made an appointment for the following
evening; then he went a little further; he saw how pleased the little
one was; the _tutoyer_ and the kiss followed. So it went on for a few
evenings, and the young man felt that the happy girl was quite as
eager as he himself was to take the last step; and when this was done,
there was the “intimacy” complete. And in all respects it appeared
preferable to prostitution; it was inexpensive, unassuming, very
pleasant, and--involved no risk to health. Moreover, to both this
amatory life did not seem a ‘necessary evil’ on the contrary, it was a
glorious pleasure, and there were only two little shadows in the
bright picture: the fear of having a child, and the thought of
separation. Moreover, this cloud troubled the man only; girls then, as
to-day, thought very little about matters so remote.
“In the development of the ‘intimacy’ during the last thirty years,
many details have undergone change, but the picture as a whole has
been but little affected. The young shop-girl of to-day does not need
a long courting; she enters her business already fully aware that she
will soon be ‘intimate’ with some one. At first she will always prefer
to choose a man of whom it is possible to assume that he may marry
her. A young shopman, a non-commissioned officer, will, therefore, be
most in demand. It is not till later, when resignation comes, and the
only remaining wish is for amusement, that University students have
the preference; they are jollier, more entertaining, and the girl is
vain about their position. That has all remained just as it used to
be; only thirty years ago there were many shop-girls who,
notwithstanding all their desire, remained untouched. For the girl
brought up in the atmosphere of the lower middle classes there was a
certain ill-odour about free sexual intercourse. =This has completely
passed away.= The girls of this stratum, who, with open eyes,
withstand all allurements, might be counted on the fingers. At the
present day, these ‘intimacies’ extend deeply into the middle classes
of society.
“As regards the men, there has certainly been one marked change. The
illusion that sexual intercourse with an ‘intimate’ offered any
guarantee against the danger of venereal disease has now long been
dispelled. We are to-day confronted with the fact that the intimacy is
the focus of venereal infection to a far greater extent[241] than is
actual prostitution. In order to understand this, we must glance at
the dissolution of the intimacy.
“We have already pointed out that in the German ‘intimacy’ there has
never occurred a thorough development of a life like that of the
Parisian ‘grisette’; and there will be no change in this respect
within a time which we can at present foresee. Even in Berlin there
are not many dwellings in which the landlord would tolerate the visits
of ladies of doubtful reputation on any account whatever. But even
those who let quarters on easy terms, or, as the student calls them,
‘storm-free’ rooms, would never allow their lodger to entertain a
woman day after day, and could not do so without running the risk of
being suspected by the police of procurement. Thus, the only thing
that unites the two parties in the intimacy is in almost all cases
sexual intercourse. The characteristic of grisette-love, the prose of
the life in common, day after day, is hardly ever experienced in the
‘intimacy.’ =In consequence of this, on the man’s side satiety very
readily ensues.= New impressions enchain and stimulate him. He breaks
off the intimacy, and this is not usually done with tenderness. The
possibilities are numerous, but the only decent way, the open verbal
communication of the fact, is probably the rarest. He breaks off the
intimacy without a word, and as far as he is concerned the matter is
at an end; he is richer by an agreeable experience, and after a while
begins to look round once more.
“The girl also. But for her, this dissolution of the intimacy is very
often the first step upon a very steep downward path. At first there
perhaps ensues a short period of bitterness, but the sexual impulse
makes light of all other activities; a new intimacy begins. And now,
gradually, the idea gains ground in her mind that a change in love is,
after all, not such a bad thing. The second breach is borne with
equanimity; =and very soon it is by no means rare for the girl to
limit her love associations to a few days, and ultimately, as a matter
of daily custom, to seek fresh gratification with a new associate=. It
is not yet professional prostitution; psychologically also there is
still a difference. There is still sensual perception at the root of
her actions, and of such a strength, increasing owing to excess in
sexual intercourse, that the personality of the partner in the sexual
act becomes almost a matter of indifference. But now an economic
difficulty commonly intervenes: discharge from her position, expulsion
from her parents’ house, either or both being due to her dissipated
life, with its heedlessness and the resulting dislike to hard
work--and then the avalanche falls. Hunger drives her to do that for
payment which hitherto she has done only for the gratification of her
own desires. Prostitution has one victim the more.
“But the whole period between the beginning of the second intimacy and
her enrolment in the list of prostitutes by the police offers to all
her lovers the greatest possible danger of venereal infection. =For
the majority of girls actually become infected in their very first
intimacy.= The explanation of this goes back to the time in which the
intimacy first began to become fashionable, and in which the control
of prostitutes with regard to their condition of health was even more
defective, and the safeguarding against the danger of venereal
infection was even less understood than at the present day. In the
majority of cases the young men of the large towns were infected in
their very first experience of love; for it was with prostitutes that
they always sought their first sexual gratification, as is still
customary at the present day. For the inexperienced youth this course
is easier, making, as it does, fewer demands on his adroitness, and
none at all on his seductive skill; whereas in the formation of an
‘intimacy’ these qualities are somewhat in demand. Later, when he had
had enough of prostitution, he sought an ‘intimate,’ and since at that
time the treatment of gonorrhœa was still extremely defective, he
promptly infected his partner in the intimacy. =In this manner the
girls engaged in intimacies, since they first became fashionable, have
been systematically infected.=”
Next to =prostitution=, the =intimacy= is the great focus of sexual
infection; and wild love, from the psychological and ethical points of
view, involves the same danger as prostitution. The frequent changes,
the multiplicity of sexual intercourse in intimacies, allows no deeper
spiritual relationships to be formed; thus, the girls are debased to
become the simple objects of physical sensuality, and they are forced
more and more to depend on the financially stronger men; thus, they
rapidly become partial or complete prostitutes. To them now the sensual
life, the pursuit of pleasure, is the principal thing, not love.
Venereal infection is soon superadded, to deprave them more thoroughly.
Still worse is the corruption of the world of men, who transfer to the
intimacy the practices they have learned in their association with
prostitutes; but, above all, they come finally to seek and to desire the
rude sexual act solely for its own sake, without feeling the need for
any deeper spiritual association. Hence results the fugitive character
of these sexual relationships, the frequent changes on both sides, and
the end--=lies, mistrust, hatred=.
Belief in and hope for true love disappear for ever; there remains only
the cold, desolate, unspeakably embittered disillusionment, the
=distrust= of the other sex which is so characteristic of our time.
Never before were there so many woman-haters and man-haters on
principle. In the intercourse between the sexes, neither believes the
other any longer; and on both sides the “intimacy” is entered on without
any illusions, the sole aim of both parties being to satisfy in the
intensest possible way their desire for enjoyment and their sensual
lusts.
Prostitution can destroy no illusions, for its true character is
manifest at the first glance; but the modern intimacy has become the
grave of love, and has given rise to a new corruption of the sexual
life, which appears almost more dangerous than the old corruption
dependent on prostitution. It has, moreover, become a second, and not
less dangerous, focus of venereal infection, to the diffusion of which
it is extraordinarily favourable.
He, therefore, who wishes to take part in the fight against the moral
degeneration of our amatory life, and to assist in the campaign against
venereal diseases, =must attack and endeavour to suppress the modern
development of the life of “intimacy” just as energetically as he
attacks prostitution=.
The =wild love= of the present day, “extra-conjugal” sexual intercourse
(which, as I cannot too often repeat, has nothing whatever to do with
“free love”), and =coercive marriage=, are the true causes of sexual
corruption. They are intimately associated one with the other. The
social, economic, and spiritual civilization of the present day demands
free love, with which neither coercive marriage nor wild love is
compatible.
Neither for prostitution, nor for the wild extra-conjugal sexual
intercourse of our time, can any justification be found from the point
of view of medicine, racial hygiene, or sociology. In their nature both
lead to the same end: the death and destruction of all individual love,
of all the finer activities of love, by which the spiritual nature of
man is so greatly enriched; and they both give rise to a continuous
increase and rapid diffusion of venereal diseases.
The salvation of our people is not to be found in the “recommendation”
of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse for all those who are not in a
position to marry--and the number of these grows from day to day--but it
is to be found in the =reform of marriage=, in a =freer= configuration
of the amatory life, in connexion with which we can confidently trust
Ibsen’s saying in the “Lady from the Sea”:
“We can’t get away from this--that a voluntary promise is to the full
as binding as a marriage.”
There shall not and must not be “=sexual freedom=,”[242] but there must
be “freedom of love.”
When anyone asks me whether I should advise him to indulge in
“extra-conjugal sexual intercourse,” as a physician and a man of science
I am compelled to answer with a bald “No,” because I cannot undertake
the responsibility of the consequences of such advice.
Fortunately, alike in the world of women and in the world of men, there
manifests itself an increasing disapproval of wild love as it exhibits
itself in the modern “intimacies.” There are already numerous intimacies
which closely resemble free love, and in which all the conditions of
free love are fulfilled, in respect of duration, of a profound spiritual
relationship, a sense of sexual responsibility alike physical and
moral, and in the joyful acceptance of the consequences in respect of
offspring.
We must, however, continually keep up the fight against wild love as the
enduring associate of prostitution, to which it constitutes the bridge
or stage of transition. Therein lies its greatest danger. This we shall
recognize more clearly in the ensuing chapter, in which we turn to
consider the subject of =prostitution=.
[219] In the titular heading to this chapter, throughout the chapter,
and in most cases throughout the book, the German word _Verführung_
has been translated as _seduction_. _Verführung_ means “leading
astray,” and one of the commonest uses of the term is to denote
_sexual_ leading astray--the _seduction_ of a woman by a man. But in
some cases _Verführung_, like the English _seduction_, is used in its
more primitive and wider signification. The context will suffice to
show the sense in which the word is employed.--TRANSLATOR.
[220] Thus, at the present day, in quite small country towns, we find
variety theatres and low music-halls; and with these, prostitutes are
commonly introduced into the town, so that the wild love, which was
previously free from danger, now becomes a focus of venereal
infection.
[221] Willy Hellpach, “Our Sensual Life and Venereal Diseases,”
published in the “Reports of the German Society for the Suppression of
Venereal Diseases,” 1905, vol. iii., Nos. 5 and 6, pp. 103-105.
[222] Of this work there recently appeared an excellent German
translation, admirably modernized in blank verse by Karl Ettlinger,
“Ovid’s Art of Love: a Modern Translation.” (An English translation of
Ovid’s “Art of Love,” revised by Charles W. Ryle, was published in
1907 by Sisley.--TRANSLATOR.)
[223] Hilarii Drudonis, “Practica Artis Amandi” (Amsterdam, 1652).
[224] Paris, 1659.
[225] Paris, 1775.
[226] J. F. C. Manso, “Die Kunst zu Lieben” (Berlin, 1794).
[227] Henry Beyle (Stendhal), “On Love.”
[228] Paul Bourget, “Physiologie de l’Amour Moderne.”
[229] Armand Silvestre, “Le Petit Art d’Aimer” (Paris, 1897).
[230] Catulle Mendés, “L’Art d’Aimer” (Paris).
[231] Robert Hessen, “Das Glück in der Liebe: Eine technische Studie”
(Stuttgart, 1899).
[232] Hjalmar Kjölenson, “Die Erschliessung des Liebesglückes”
(Leipzig, 1905).
[233] An exhaustive study of the history and literature of the _ars
amandi_, by the author of the present work, is in course of
preparation, and will appear shortly.
[234] _Cf._ regarding masterful erotics, also the exposition of Georg
Hirth in “The Ways to Love,” p. 563.
[235] S. Kierkegaard, “Entweder--Oder. Ein Lebensfragment,” pp.
221-311. German translation by O. Gleib (Dresden and Leipzig, 1904).
[236] “The sun,” says Grillparzer in his “Diary,” “is hostile to
voluptuousness. But the artificial sun of our nocturnal illumination
in our large town, has the opposite effect.”
[237] The old proverb says: “From the two V’s, Vinum (wine) and Venus
(woman), there arises a big W, Weh (woe or pain).”
[238] _Cf._, in addition to the great works on the subject of alcohol,
the special monograph by B. Laquer, “A Lecture on Alcohol and Sexual
Hygiene,” published in the “Reports of the German Society for the
Suppression of Venereal Diseases,” 1904, vol. ii., Nos. 3 and 4, pp.
56-63; W. Hellpach, _op. cit._, pp. 100-102; Magnus Hirschfeld, “The
Influence of Alcohol on the Sexual Life,” Berlin, 1905; Magnus
Hirschfeld, “Alcohol and Family Life,” Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1906;
Otto Lang, “Alcohol and Crime,” Basel; Oscar Rosenthal, “Alcohol and
Prostitution,” Berlin, 1906; G. Rosenfeld, “Alcohol and the Sexual
Life,” published in the _Journal for the Suppression of Venereal
Diseases_, 1905, pp. 321-335.
[239] It has been established by Bonhoeffer, Hoppe, A. H. Hübner, and
others, that chronic alcoholism constitutes an important cause of
prostitution in the case of the so-called “late prostitutes”--that is
to say, in those women who do not commence a life of professional
prostitution at puberty, but usually after the age of twenty-five
years. _Cf._ Artur Hermann Hübner, “Prostitutes in Relation to
Criminal Jurisdiction,” published in _Monatsschr. für
Kriminalpsychologie_, edited by G. Aschaffenburg, 1907, p. 5.
[240] At the great public dinner which, in 1890, the town of Berlin
gave in the Rathaus to the members of the International Medical
Congress, and at which 4,000 persons consumed 15,382 bottles of wine,
22 hectolitres (484 gallons) of beer, and 300 bottles of brandy, there
were witnessed in and outside the Rathaus the most disgusting scenes
of drunkenness. “As the blowflies gather round a piece of carrion, so
in the street in front of the Rathaus there had gathered a swarm of
prostitutes, who found a rich booty among the drunken, staggering
guests” (_cf._ Rosenfeld, _op. cit._, p. 325).--A striking example of
the manner in which alcohol sometimes completely annihilates every
æsthetic perception is reported by E. Kraepelin (“The Psychiatric
Duties of the State,” p. 6; Jena, 1900): “A number of students were
infected by a prostitute, who from early youth had been weak-minded,
and who was suffering from both lupus of the nose and recent
syphilis.”
[241] It is not yet quite so bad as this. But the number of venereal
infections that occur in consequence of wild love, and of free sexual
intercourse in these relations of “intimacy,” is continually on the
increase.
[242] Sexual freedom--that is to say, the formal organization of
sexual promiscuity--was demanded by a certain Dr. Roderich Hellmann in
a book which has now become very rare, because it was confiscated
immediately after publication. Its title was “Sexual Freedom: a
Philosophic Attempt to Increase Human Happiness” (Berlin, 1878). The
author demands that immediately after puberty “the sexual organs shall
have the opportunity of a regulated activity,” and that it shall now
be allowed to persons of both sexes “to indulge in sexual intercourse
as much as they please,” of course, with the avoidance of injury to
health and of pregnancy. This remarkable freak proceeds to demand that
public lavatories shall be done away with, so that persons of both
sexes shall relieve themselves freely in one another’s presence in the
open street, and, with equal freedom, shall display their sexual
organs to one another for the purpose of sexual allurement!!
CHAPTER XIII
PROSTITUTION
“_On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions
that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds
and civilizations arise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity,
blasted for the sins of the people._”--LECKY.