MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PHASES
_By Norman Frank Coleman_
Personal and social hygiene in matters of sex are, in very important ways,
dependent upon moral and religious training. On the other hand, morals and
religion are in important ways dependent upon forces set free by the
growth and activity of sex instincts and powers. One of the most
significant facts in modern social progress is its recognition of this
interdependence of mind and body. We have learned that physical health
depends upon peace of mind, hopefulness, courage, and many other things
that have seemed in the past to be purely mental or spiritual; and we have
learned also that the character of people and the spirit in which they do
their work depend upon their health, upon conditions of food and warmth
and shelter, things which in the past have been regarded as affecting only
the physical man. It is now somewhat out of date to set physical
conditions over against moral and religious; every great human problem is
more and more clearly seen in this day to involve all these conditions in
its rise, and to require thoughtful consideration of them all for its
solution. As we face the problems of sex, we must recognize the importance
of fresh air, exercise, wholesome food, clean cups and clean towels, and
we must also recognize the importance of clean thoughts and high purposes.
We must know clearly the facts of biological and medical science, and with
them in mind we must touch the springs of conduct in affection and
imagination. Our aim must be to achieve that mastery over the forces of
life finely expressed by Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra: "Nor soul helps flesh
more, now, than flesh helps soul."
We may consider, first, how, in matters of sex, flesh helps soul; second,
how soul helps flesh; and third, how in normal childhood and youth soul
and flesh grow together in mutual help.
The first great outstanding fact is that the physical powers of sex reach
maturity in the same years in which the moral and religious instincts are
greatly quickened. If we recall our youth, we must realize that, in the
years between twelve and twenty, our lives were greatly disturbed and
perplexed, and also greatly exalted and inspired by desires and impulses
partly toward the opposite sex and partly toward the service of God and
our fellows. In the normal adolescent boy or girl there is a powerful
expanding and enriching of sex thoughts and desires and purposes. There is
also a rapid development of social sympathy and passion; the revolutionary
movements of all lands are recruited from those who like Shelley have in
their youth vowed,--
"I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power, for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check."
And there is a wonderful flowering of the young life in religious feeling
and aspiration; a large majority of religious conversions take place in
adolescence.
We can scarcely escape the conviction that these are not different
awakenings, but rather different phases of the one great awakening of the
young life as it prepares for the tasks and responsibilities of manhood
and womanhood. The part that sex development plays in this awakening has
been variously stressed by different special students of the physiology
and psychology of adolescence. Some scientists have not hesitated to give
it first place and to treat social passion and religious enthusiasm as
secondary manifestations of sex energy.[59] However that may be, we know
that each speaks naturally in terms of the other. The religious mystic of
the Middle Ages was devoted to the Divine Lover or the Heavenly Lady, and
the modern revolutionary is _wedded_ to the Cause. On the other hand, the
lover naturally adopts the language of religion to express his devotion to
the lady of his heart. The water-tight compartment theory of life is in
these days thoroughly discredited. We know that the various powers of soul
and body are related and interdependent, and we feel sure that the
developing powers of sex do have very vital relation to developing powers
of moral purpose and religious aspiration. In support of this relation we
recall the unfortunate effects upon the character of those who by chance
or the barbarity of men have been desexed in childhood. We must allow for
other factors at work here, yet the clearly established facts of the
stunting of mental and moral growth in desexed children reinforce our own
experience and observation, and indicate that the energies that are
developed with sex and maturity are largely available for moral and
religious growth. The youth with full sex consciousness and impulse is
normally the youth of abundant energy for moral and religious activity. It
seems, therefore, quite fundamental to the right understanding of sex that
we consider the body, not the enemy of the soul, but its friend; not a
clog upon the spiritual growth of boy and girl advancing into manhood and
womanhood, but an important source of energy for the upward climb.
When we turn to the second part of our discussion and ask how in matters
of sex soul helps flesh, the need and the fact are clearer and perhaps
more urgent. Dante found the souls of the lustful in the second circle of
hell, driven hither and thither by warring winds,--
"The stormy blast of hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on,
Whirled round and dashed amain with sore annoy."
Here we have clear recognition of the two great characters of sex impulse,
its violence and its fitfulness. In the one character it needs to be
subdued that it may not destroy; in the other it needs to be directed that
it may build up.
As we look back through history, and as we look abroad through our land
and through all civilized lands, one of the most conspicuous facts
concerning the powers of sex is their frightful destructiveness. The
spectacle of wasted manhood and womanhood, of depleted powers in body,
mind, and soul, is in history and in present society appalling. It is so
oppressive that it has driven many thoughtful men and women to despair.
Men otherwise hopeful and purposeful here become gloomy and fatalistic;
they have no hope that lust will ever be effectively controlled.
Such pessimism, however, contradicts the history as well as the instincts
of the race. In the face of great evils there have always been those who
would sit down in discouragement despair; every great destructive force in
human history has daunted some men to the point of inactivity. Yet the
evils have been controlled. Ignorant and fearful people have said, "This
thing is beyond human power; it is useless for us to struggle against
fate." Yet men of vision and of courage have struggled and won. No man of
moral passion and religious purpose can adopt an attitude of passive
submission to the forces of destruction. We can admit no necessary evil,
or the battle of human progress is lost. We ask ourselves soberly,
therefore, how this tremendous outrush of destructive energy may be
controlled. The answer is plain. Men have by the agency of fire itself
constructed the means by which fire is controlled and domesticated; they
have turned disease against itself, and by the agency of antitoxins have
conquered it; they are learning to arouse and organize the fighting spirit
of men against its own most ancient and fearful expression and are
enlisting soldiers of peace in a war against war. Even so the race depends
upon the higher affections for control of the lower, and lust is
controlled by love. I talked once to a young man in college who had given
himself to sexual vice when he had been in high school; until a year
before I spoke with him, he had supposed that virtually all men were and
must be sexually indulgent. For twelve months he had kept himself clean. I
inquired why and how. He replied simply that he had fallen in love with a
young woman and wished to marry her. His former course now seemed to him
shameful and unmanly. Lust yielding to love! In one of his sonnets to the
woman who afterward became his wife, Edmund Spenser says:--
"You frame my thoughts and fashion me within:
You stop my tongue and teach my heart to speak:
You calm the storm that passion did begin:
Strong through your cause, but by your virtue weak."
In our own experience, as far as we have achieved victory in our own
bodies and minds over our baser passions, we have achieved it by the power
of the higher affections. It is a fact of common experience that love
calms the storm that passion did begin. So Spenser's lady strengthened
passion by her charm, but weakened it by her virtue.
Nor is this the only higher affection that, in the practical experience of
men, has controlled and transformed animal passion. Thousands of fully
sexed men have, through the centuries, turned their bodily and mental
energies so fully to devoted service for God and their fellows as to rise
above the clamoring demands of physical appetite, in the vigorous terms of
the New Testament making themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God's sake.
This is a hard saying, and the experience it treats of must always be
confined to a small number of men; yet it goes far toward demonstrating a
general possibility, and it should effectively dispose of the "necessity"
argument, by which men often excuse their vicious practices.
One thing more should be said on this subject of control. Not only are the
higher, more spiritual affections the most effective masters of the lower;
they are the _only_ effective masters. Public reprobation can do much, but
it is ineffectual with large numbers of relatively unattached members of
society, and it is impotent against secret vice. Motives of cautious fear
are always weak with full-blooded and generous youth, and they are likely
to become weaker with all men as medical science discovers ways to prevent
or escape the most obviously fearful consequences of sexual license.
A familiar phrase comes to my mind, as no doubt it comes to yours: "The
expulsive power of the higher affections"; yet I think that phrase is not
quite suitable. It is not a question of expulsion. It is not wholly a
question of control; it is mainly a question of direction. What we need
to-day with boys and girls for the solving of the sex problems is to
direct those energies, which in their false direction are destructive,
into right and healthful ways; that is, we need to socialize and elevate
that affection, which in baser forms has aspects of ugly animalism.
As one of the solutions of the problem of control it has been proposed to
separate the sexes in the adolescent years. From my point of view, this
would defeat our object. In the association of boys and girls during the
adolescent period, we may enlist the higher affections for the control and
the direction of the powers that are set free by sex impulses developed in
that very period of life.
What happens in the experience of the normal boy? In this period of early
adolescence he finds within himself a wonderful quickening of
mind,--impulses, feelings, longings that he does not understand. These
impulses, feelings, longings, perplex him, it may be for years. They reach
out vaguely, blindly toward the opposite sex, sometimes in a perverted
way, but oftener naturally and honestly. Then the young man falls in love.
At once his more or less vague, cloudy, incoherent, formless feelings and
purposes are concentrated, directed, and fixed in devotion to a young
woman whom he idealizes, almost deifies. That is the first stage in the
natural directing and forming of sex powers and impulses toward social,
moral, and religious ends. Of course the young man may discover, after a
while, that the first object of his fancy is not so angelic as he thought.
By and by his fancy changes and may rove to several other maidens before
he reaches maturity; but each successive experience, if he is true to his
better self, concentrates his affections and directs them, until, if he is
fortunate, in the course of time he finds his true mate and enters upon
marriage. He is now fairly equipped for what most of us know to be a long
course in the discipline of the selfish, the personal, the more or less
brute desires and ambitions of man. Here he learns to subject himself,
his own comfort, his own ends, his own ambitions, to the good of his wife
and her happiness, to the good of his children and the satisfaction of
their needs. Then, more and more, after having concentrated the powers of
his spirit through faithful courtship and through happy marriage and
fatherhood, the man is able to diffuse these same energies through many
channels, for the protection of all sorts and conditions of women and
children. The man is now a citizen, a member of society, with developed
powers of social sympathy, of social energy. How has he developed these
powers? Not by any supposition that the early sex instincts he felt in his
boyhood were wholly animal and must be atrophied by disuse, but by
gathering and directing them into the right channels. Direction, like
control, depends upon enlightened, purposeful, persistent love.
In the third place, we may consider how, in matters of sex, the flesh and
the soul may grow together in mutual help. The essential facts and the
vital importance of the sex life appeal to the developing boy or girl in
four great relations, in relation to father and mother, in relation to
the strength and grace of his or her own body and mind, in relation to his
or her future family, and in relation to society in general. These appeals
come in successive periods and open the way to healthful instruction and
guidance from childhood up to manhood and womanhood.
Sex questions first arise in the child's mind in connection with
parenthood. The first thing a little boy or girl needs to know is that the
young life is sheltered and fed during long months in the mother's body,
and that the father had a share in that life. Is it not amazing that in
this twentieth century we find many girls twelve years old and over who do
not know that their father had any share in starting their lives? I knew
of a girl nineteen years old, a student in college, who did not know that
a man had any essential part in bringing children into the world, but
supposed, when any question of illegitimate childbirth was raised, that
possibly God punished a bad woman by sending her a baby before she was
married. It is little short of criminal that many girls are allowed to
reach adolescence with no sex thought or image clearly in their minds
except such as they have received directly or indirectly from animals. If
boys and girls knew from the beginning that a part of the father's life
and a part of the mother's life united to form the beginning of their
lives, the question of sex would begin on a plane where there were
religious, moral, and spiritual associations, and an atmosphere of love
and holiness. These young people could then see the facts of sex clearly
instead of through the mists of prurient fancy and suggestion as they see
them now.[60] The boy and girl who know these two tremendous facts of the
nurturing care of the mother before birth, and the coöperation of the
father and mother in the beginning of life, are fortified against the
principal moral and spiritual dangers that they are to face in the future.
The next information and guidance needed by our boys and girls concerns
the influence of sex upon their own development. The objection is
continually raised that it is not well for little children to have sex
thoughts emphasized in their minds. But at present no boy or girl grows up
and plays among other children, or hears talk on the streets, or goes to
work in factory or store, without hearing these facts emphasized day by
day, emphasized unhealthily and distorted shamefully. We propose simply to
have the emphasis shifted and lightened for it will be lightened if the
facts are given truly and in right relations. Boys and girls should learn,
at the same time they are learning facts of nutrition, excretion,
respiration, and circulation of the blood, those facts regarding sex which
are most important for healthy growth of mind and body. They should know
that the organs of reproduction have a definite relation to the natural
and healthful development of the full powers of their bodies in future
years; that internal secretions of these organs coming into the blood help
to build up bones and muscles, help to make their nerve fibers active and
vigorous, help to form their brains, and help to equip them for manly
strength and womanly grace in the years that are to come. These are very
simple matters. These facts of sex can be conveyed by just a few sentences
of clear, considerate, wise information at the right time, in relation to
the other facts of bodily development.
Considering now the period of puberty, we find additional needs, for no
boy or girl reaches puberty, under ordinary conditions, without knowing
that it brings the possibility of fatherhood and motherhood, brings the
possibility of that process that we call fertilization, in which the life
of plants and animals begins. The boy or girl who reaches this age has a
right to know what fertilization means, and what fertilization implies;
has a right to the simple biological facts which will tell him the
relation between the life of the parents and the life of the child, the
mysterious relation in body and mind that we call heredity. The beginning
of the socializing of sex energy and sex power depends upon recognition of
the fact that this power that develops in the young man and young woman at
puberty is not to be used for selfish gratification, is not primarily a
source of pleasure, but has a very direct relation to the health,
intelligence, and happiness of others. This relation may be enforced by a
simple study of succeeding generations of flowers and the ways in which
forms, colors, and sizes originate and are handed down from generation to
generation in wonderful variety. Or it may be illustrated from an
observation of the beginnings of sex in infusoria; how tiny animals in
stagnant water grow to full size and each divides simply into two to form
a new generation; how this simple asexual process continuing for several
generations results in growing weakness and old age, steadily decreasing
size, steadily decreasing vitality until there comes a time when one
infusorian unites with another. There sex begins. That union of two
individuals is required to restore youth, to refresh vitality and energy,
and to produce greater variety in the forms of life. When a boy or girl
knows these simple facts, he is better able to understand the power of
reproduction than he can possibly be if they are not before him, or if all
he has heard has been ceaseless reiteration of the pleasures of selfish
indulgence of sex appetite.
Finally, when the boy and the girl come into later adolescence and face
manhood and womanhood, they are ready to know some of the larger social
aspects of sex. They are ready to know of the diseases brought on by
perverted sex habits; of the frightful waste of those who give themselves
to licentiousness, the frightful waste of strength and youthful energy
not only in those that actually go down, but in those that survive. More
than that, seeking right relations of themselves to society, they need to
know the social aspects of sex. The young man needs to know what it means
for a woman to bear a child; he needs to know the social and economic
dependence of the pregnant woman and of the young mother, so that he may
realize what the power of fatherhood means in the actual work of society.
I cannot imagine any man talking glibly of the necessary evil, or of man's
inability to control sex passions, if he knows the social facts of sex.
Any young man who knows even a part of the burden his mother bore for him,
if he has a spark of manhood in his being, is surely fortified against
temptation to selfish indulgence. If, beyond that, he can see the relation
of the home to society, the relative steadiness and dependability of a
worker with a wife and children, who bears the home burdens in a man's
way, as compared with the floating, homeless wanderer who walks our
streets; if he knows these central facts and the dependence of the home
upon the faithfulness of the man and the presence of the man, if he has a
spark of patriotism in his heart, he must realize in his thought and in
his practice the necessity for the socialization of that passion which,
though it begin in individual and selfish forms, issues in such fateful
social consequences.
The solution of this great, urgent, pressing problem, which we are feeling
the weight of more and more in these years of careful investigation of our
social conditions, will come in frankly recognizing the beginnings upon
which the whole sex life in mind and body is based, and in transforming
fundamentally important animal instincts and desires into higher
affections, humanizing them for the sake of the loved one, for the sake of
family, for the sake of the social brotherhood and sisterhood in which we
are members.
My closing word is one which seems to me most significant of the true, the
beautiful, the victorious way out of so much discouragement and so much
crime,--that is the word "consecration." That word includes two essential
ideas, the ideas of sacredness and coöperation. The problems of sex will
never be solved until the sacredness of sex is recognized, for sex is
vitally and indissolubly bound up with the two greatest facts that you
and I know. The greatest fact of the organized world around us is life,
the greatest fact of the spiritual world into which we lift our souls is
love, and the beginnings of life and the beginnings of love are in sex. No
boy or girl will readily understand what life means except as he has some
clear, wise teaching about sex; no boy or girl will fully understand what
love means except through recognition of the dignity and worth and purity
of the fundamental facts and powers of sex.
Who shall give this enlightenment? I think it must be clear that this
enlightenment cannot be given by the very young and inexperienced person,
that the facts can be rightly given only by some person who knows their
sacredness for himself or herself. They can be given best by a mature
person who has seen and felt what they mean. In the long run, I have no
doubt that our boys and girls will get the information that they must have
from their parents, for the father and the mother are the best qualified
to give it. I have named both the father and the mother, for the solution
of our problem is not only in knowing the sacredness of sex, it is also
in working together for the elevation of sex life. We shall not be able,
we men, in the future, to sit down and say, "Oh, well, John will learn
from his mother"; "Mary's mother will make that clear to her"; "Their
mother does these things." It will not be possible for the socializing of
the sex instincts and the ripening of the sex powers to be made clear to
young people except as men and women both recognize the sacredness of the
sex relation and undertake to make things clear to boys and girls. Men
must give up their selfish indifference to evil conditions, and
women--some women--must give up the bitterness and hardness that come into
their hearts and their faces when they think of the suffering that their
sex has endured at the hands of man. This is not a problem for one sex. It
cannot be solved by either half of the great whole of humanity. We know
this to be true in our personal life; it is equally true in our social
life. It is only by the girding-up of the whole spirit of man to go forth
and meet his duty as a lover, as a husband, as a father, and it is only by
the girding-up of all the powers of the woman to lead and to help, that
the family is organized. In this great human family of ours the man and
the woman in days that are coming will coöperate to remove from our midst
the blackest and most fearful perversion of the natural powers of our
race. We do not believe in sitting down idly before this problem and
saying, "It has always been, it always will be." In this great day of
moral and spiritual progress, with powers that we have inherited from our
forefathers in this land and other lands, we know that there is no
necessary evil. We are learning what the evil of sex is, and how it
arises, and we are beginning to use the forces at hand for its
destruction. Conscience is kindling and determination is hardening among
our people that this thing shall cease to be. The ape and the tiger shall
yet die from our midst, and man's spirit shall triumph in his flesh.
FOOTNOTES:
[59] A. Forel, _The Sexual Question_, chap. XII, "Religion and Sexual
Life"; William James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_, chap. I;
especially the first footnote.
[60] F.W. Foerster, _Marriage and the Sex Problem_, chap. IV; especially
section (d), "The Educational Significance of Monogamy."