"All parts of the body which are developed for a definite use are kept in

health, and in the enjoyment of fair growth and of long youth, by the

fulfilment of that use, and by their appropriate exercise in the

employment to which they are accustomed." In that statement, which occurs

in the great Hippocratic treatise "On the Joints," we have the classic

expression of the doctrine which in ever varying forms has been taught by

all those who have protested against sexual abstinence. When we come down

to the sixteenth century outbreak of Protestantism we find that Luther's

revolt against Catholicism was in part a protest against the teaching of

sexual abstinence. "He to whom the gift of continence is not given," he

said in his _Table Talk_, "will not become chaste by fasting and vigils.

For my own part I was not excessively tormented [though elsewhere he

speaks of the great fires of lust by which he had been troubled], but all

the same the more I macerated myself the more I burnt." And three hundred

years later, Bebel, the would-be nineteenth century Luther of a different

Protestantism, took the same attitude towards sexual abstinence, while

Hinton the physician and philosopher, living in a land of rigid sexual

conventionalism and prudery, and moved by keen sympathy for the sufferings

he saw around him, would break into passionate sarcasm when confronted by

the doctrine of sexual abstinence. "There are innumerable ills--terrible

destructions, madness even, the ruin of lives--for which the embrace of

man and woman would be a remedy. No one thinks of questioning it.

Terrible evils and a remedy in a delight and joy! And man has chosen so to

muddle his life that he must say: 'There, that would be a remedy, but I

cannot use it. I _must be virtuous!_'"

If we confine ourselves to modern times and to fairly precise

medical statements, we find in Schurig's _Spermatologia_ (1720,

pp. 274 et seq.), not only a discussion of the advantages of

moderate sexual intercourse in a number of disorders, as

witnessed by famous authorities, but also a list of

results--including anorexia, insanity, impotence, epilepsy, even

death--which were believed to have been due to sexual abstinence.

This extreme view of the possible evils of sexual abstinence

seems to have been part of the Renaissance traditions of medicine

stiffened by a certain opposition between religion and science.

It was still rigorously stated by Lallemand early in the

nineteenth century. Subsequently, the medical statements of the

evil results of sexual abstinence became more temperate and

measured, though still often pronounced. Thus Gyurkovechky

believes that these results may be as serious as those of sexual

excess. Krafft-Ebing showed that sexual abstinence could produce

a state of general nervous excitement (_Jahrbuch für

Psychiatrie_, Bd. viii, Heft 1 and 2). Schrenck-Notzing regards

sexual abstinence as a cause of extreme sexual hyperæsthesia and

of various perversions (in a chapter on sexual abstinence in his

_Kriminalpsychologische und Psychopathologische Studien_, 1902,

pp. 174-178). He records in illustration the case of a man of

thirty-six who had masturbated in moderation as a boy, but

abandoned the practice entirely, on moral grounds, twenty years

ago, and has never had sexual intercourse, feeling proud to enter

marriage a chaste man, but now for years has suffered greatly

from extreme sexual hyperæsthesia and concentration of thought on

sexual subjects, notwithstanding a strong will and the resolve

not to masturbate or indulge in illicit intercourse. In another

case a vigorous and healthy man, not inverted, and with strong

sexual desires, who remained abstinent up to marriage, suffers

from psychic impotence, and his wife remains a virgin

notwithstanding all her affection and caresses. Ord considered

that sexual abstinence might produce many minor evils. "Most of

us," he wrote (_British Medical Journal_, Aug. 2, 1884) "have, no

doubt, been consulted by men, chaste in act, who are tormented by

sexual excitement. They tell one stories of long-continued local

excitement, followed by intense muscular weariness, or by severe

aching pain in the back and legs. In some I have had complaints

of swelling and stiffness in the legs, and of pains in the

joints, particularly in the knees;" he gives the case of a man

who suffered after prolonged chastity from inflammatory

conditions of knees and was only cured by marriage. Pearce

Gould, it may be added, finds that "excessive ungratified sexual

desire" is one of the causes of acute orchitis. Remondino ("Some

Observations on Continence as a Factor in Health and Disease,"

_Pacific Medical Journal_, Jan., 1900) records the case of a

gentleman of nearly seventy who, during the prolonged illness of

his wife, suffered from frequent and extreme priapism, causing

insomnia. He was very certain that his troubles were not due to

his continence, but all treatment failed and there were no

spontaneous emissions. At last Remondino advised him to, as he

expresses it, "imitate Solomon." He did so, and all the symptoms

at once disappeared. This case is of special interest, because

the symptoms were not accompanied by any conscious sexual desire.

It is no longer generally believed that sexual abstinence tends

to produce insanity, and the occasional cases in which prolonged

and intense sexual desire in young women is followed by insanity

will usually be found to occur on a basis of hereditary

degeneration. It is held by many authorities, however, that minor

mental troubles, of a more or less vague character, as well as

neurasthenia and hysteria, are by no means infrequently due to

sexual abstinence. Thus Freud, who has carefully studied

angstneurosis, the obsession of anxiety, finds that it is a

result of sexual abstinence, and may indeed be considered as a

vicarious form of such abstinence (Freud, _Sammlung Kleiner

Schriften zur Neurosenlehre_, 1906, pp. 76 et seq.).

The whole subject of sexual abstinence has been discussed at

length by Nyström, of Stockholm, in _Das Geschlechtsleben und

seine Gesetze_, Ch. III. He concludes that it is desirable that

continence should be preserved as long as possible in order to

strengthen the physical health and to develop the intelligence

and character. The doctrine of permanent sexual abstinence,

however, he regards as entirely false, except in the case of a

small number of religious or philosophic persons. "Complete

abstinence during a long period of years cannot be borne without

producing serious results both on the body and the mind....

Certainly, a young man should repress his sexual impulses as long

as possible and avoid everything that may artificially act as a

sexual stimulant. If, however, he has done so, and still suffers

from unsatisfied normal sexual desires, and if he sees no

possibility of marriage within a reasonable time, no one should

dare to say that he is committing a sin if, with mutual

understanding, he enters into sexual relations with a woman

friend, or forms temporary sexual relationships, provided, that

is, that he takes the honorable precaution of begetting no

children, unless his partner is entirely willing to become a

mother, and he is prepared to accept all the responsibilities of

fatherhood." In an article of later date ("Die Einwirkung der

Sexuellen Abstinenz auf die Gesundheit," _Sexual-Probleme_, July,

1908) Nyström vigorously sums up his views. He includes among the

results of sexual abstinence orchitis, frequent involuntary

seminal emissions, impotence, neurasthenia, depression, and a

great variety of nervous disturbances of vaguer character,

involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life,

sleeplessness, nervousness, and pre-occupation with sexual

desires and imaginations. More especially there is heightened

sexual irritability with erections, or even seminal emissions on

the slightest occasion, as on gazing at an attractive woman or in

social intercourse with her, or in the presence of works of art

representing naked figures. Nyström has had the opportunity of

investigating and recording ninety cases of persons who have

presented these and similar symptoms as the result, he believes,

of sexual abstinence. He has published some of these cases

(_Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_, Oct., 1908), but it may be

added that Rohleder ("Die Abstinentia Sexualis," ib., Nov., 1908)

has criticized these cases, and doubts whether any of them are

conclusive. Rohleder believes that the bad results of sexual

abstinence are never permanent, and also that no anatomically

pathological states (such as orchitis) can be thereby produced.

But he considers, nevertheless, that even incomplete and

temporary sexual abstinence may produce fairly serious results,

and especially neurasthenic disturbances of various kinds, such

as nervous irritability, anxiety, depression, disinclination for

work; also diurnal emissions, premature ejaculations, and even a

state approaching satyriasis; and in women hysteria,

hystero-epilepsy, and nymphomaniacal manifestations; all these

symptoms may, however, he believes, be cured when the abstinence

ceases.

Many advocates of sexual abstinence have attached importance to

the fact that men of great genius have apparently been completely

continent throughout life. This is certainly true (see _ante_, p.

173). But this fact can scarcely be invoked as an argument in

favor of the advantages of sexual abstinence among the ordinary

population. J.F. Scott selects Jesus, Newton, Beethoven, and Kant

as "men of vigor and mental acumen who have lived chastely as

bachelors." It cannot, however, be said that Dr. Scott has been

happy in the four figures whom he has been able to select from

the whole history of human genius as examples of life-long sexual

abstinence. We know little with absolute certainty of Jesus, and

even if we reject the diagnosis which Professor Binet-Sanglé (in

his _Folie de Jesus_) has built up from a minute study of the

Gospels, there are many reasons why we should refrain from

emphasizing the example of his sexual abstinence; Newton, apart

from his stupendous genius in a special field, was an incomplete

and unsatisfactory human being who ultimately reached a condition

very like insanity; Beethoven was a thoroughly morbid and

diseased man, who led an intensely unhappy existence; Kant, from

first to last, was a feeble valetudinarian. It would probably be

difficult to find a healthy normal man who would voluntarily

accept the life led by any of these four, even as the price of

their fame. J.A. Godfrey (_Science of Sex_, pp. 139-147)

discusses at length the question whether sexual abstinence is

favorable to ordinary intellectual vigor, deciding that it is

not, and that we cannot argue from the occasional sexual

abstinence of men of genius, who are often abnormally

constituted, and physically below the average, to the normally

developed man. Sexual abstinence, it may be added, is by no means

always a favorable sign, even in men who stand intellectually

above the average. "I have not obtained the impression," remarks

Freud (_Sexual-Probleme_, March, 1908), "that sexual abstinence

is helpful to energetic and independent men of action or original

thinkers, to courageous liberators or reformers. The sexual

conduct of a man is often symbolic of his whole method of

reaction in the world. The man who energetically grasps the

object of his sexual desire may be trusted to show a similarly

relentless energy in the pursuit of other aims."

Many, though not all, who deny that prolonged sexual abstinence is

harmless, include women in this statement. There are some authorities

indeed who believe that, whether or not any conscious sexual desire is

present, sexual abstinence is less easily tolerated by women than by

men.[94]

Cabanis, in his famous and pioneering work, _Rapports du Physique

et du Moral_, said in 1802, that women not only bear sexual

excess more easily than men, but sexual privations with more

difficulty, and a cautious and experienced observer of to-day,

Löwenfeld (_Sexualleben und Nervenleiden_, 1899, p. 53), while

not considering that normal women bear sexual abstinence less

easily than men, adds that this is not the case with women of

neuropathic disposition, who suffer much more from this cause,

and either masturbate when sexual intercourse is impossible or

fall into hystero-neurasthenic states. Busch stated (_Das

Geschlechtsleben des Weibes_, 1839, vol. i, pp. 69, 71) that not

only is the working of the sexual functions in the organism

stronger in women than in men, but that the bad results of sexual

abstinence are more marked in women. Sir Benjamin Brodie said

long ago that the evils of continence to women are perhaps

greater than those of incontinence, and to-day Hammer (_Die

Gesundheitlichen Gefahren der Geschlechtlichen Enthaltsamkeit_,

1904) states that, so far as reasons of health are concerned,

sexual abstinence is no more to be recommended to women than to

men. Nyström is of the same opinion, though he thinks that women

bear sexual abstinence better than men, and has discussed this

special question at length in a section of his _Geschlechtsleben

und seine Gesetze_. He agrees with the experienced Erb that a

large number of completely chaste women of high character, and

possessing distinguished qualities of mind and heart, are more or

less disordered through their sexual abstinence; this is

specially often the case with women married to impotent men,

though it is frequently not until they approach the age of

thirty, Nyström remarks, that women definitely realize their

sexual needs.

A great many women who are healthy, chaste, and modest, feel at

times such powerful sexual desire that they can scarcely resist

the temptation to go into the street and solicit the first man

they meet. Not a few such women, often of good breeding, do

actually offer themselves to men with whom they may have perhaps

only the slightest acquaintance. Routh records such cases

(_British Gynæcological Journal_, Feb., 1887), and most men have

met with them at some time. When a woman of high moral character

and strong passions is subjected for a very long period to the

perpetual strain of such sexual craving, especially if combined

with love for a definite individual, a chain of evil results,

physical and moral, may be set up, and numerous distinguished

physicians have recorded such cases, which terminated at once in

complete recovery as soon as the passion was gratified. Lauvergne

long since described a case. A fairly typical case of this kind

was reported in detail by Brachet (_De l'Hypochondrie_, p. 69)

and embodied by Griesinger in his classic work on "Mental

Pathology." It concerned a healthy married lady, twenty-six years

old, having three children. A visiting acquaintance completely

gained her affections, but she strenuously resisted the seducing

influence, and concealed the violent passion that he had aroused

in her. Various serious symptoms, physical and mental, slowly

began to appear, and she developed what seemed to be signs of

consumption. Six months' stay in the south of France produced no

improvement, either in the bodily or mental symptoms. On

returning home she became still worse. Then she again met the

object of her passion, succumbed, abandoned her husband and

children, and fled with him. Six months later she was scarcely

recognizable; beauty, freshness and plumpness had taken the place

of emaciation; while the symptoms of consumption and all other

troubles had entirely disappeared. A somewhat similar case is

recorded by Camill Lederer, of Vienna (_Monatsschrift für

Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1906, Heft 3). A widow, a

few months after her husband's death, began to cough, with

symptoms of bronchial catarrh, but no definite signs of lung

disease. Treatment and change of climate proved entirely

unavailing to effect a cure. Two years later, as no signs of

disease had appeared in the lungs, though the symptoms continued,

she married again. Within a very few weeks all symptoms had

disappeared, and she was entirely fresh and well.

Numerous distinguished gynæcologists have recorded their belief

that sexual excitement is a remedy for various disorders of the

sexual system in women, and that abstinence is a cause of such

disorders. Matthews Duncan said that sexual excitement is the

only remedy for amenorrhoea; "the only emmenagogue medicine that

I know of," he wrote (_Medical Times_, Feb. 2, 1884), "is not to

be found in the Pharmacopoeia: it is erotic excitement. Of the

value of erotic excitement there is no doubt." Anstie, in his

work on _Neuralgia_, refers to the beneficial effect of sexual

intercourse on dysmenorrhoea, remarking that the necessity of the

full natural exercise of the sexual function is shown by the

great improvement in such cases after marriage, and especially

after childbirth. (It may be remarked that not all authorities

find dysmenorrhoea benefited by marriage, and some consider that

the disease is often thereby aggravated; see, e.g., Wythe Cook,

_American Journal Obstetrics_, Dec., 1893.) The distinguished

gynæcologist, Tilt, at a somewhat earlier date (_On Uterine and

Ovarian Inflammation_, 1862, p. 309), insisted on the evil

results of sexual abstinence in producing ovarian irritation, and

perhaps subacute ovaritis, remarking that this was specially

pronounced in young widows, and in prostitutes placed in

penitentiaries. Intense desire, he pointed out, determines

organic movements resembling those required for the gratification

of the desire. These burning desires, which can only be quenched

by their legitimate satisfaction, are still further heightened by

the erotic influence of thoughts, books, pictures, music, which

are often even more sexually stimulating than social intercourse

with men, but the excitement thus produced is not relieved by

that natural collapse which should follow a state of vital

turgescence. After referring to the biological facts which show

the effect of psychic influences on the formative powers of the

ovario-uterine organs in animals, Tilt continues: "I may fairly

infer that similar incitements on the mind of females may have a

stimulating effect on the organs of ovulation. I have frequently

known menstruation to be irregular, profuse, or abnormal in type

during courtship in women in whom nothing similar had previously

occurred, and that this protracted the treatment of chronic

ovaritis and of uterine inflammation." Bonnifield, of Cincinnati

(_Medical Standard_, Dec., 1896), considers that unsatisfied

sexual desire is an important cause of catarrhal endometritis. It

is well known that uterine fibroids bear a definite relation to

organic sexual activity, and that sexual abstinence, more

especially the long-continued deprivation of pregnancy, is a very

important cause of the disease. This is well shown by an analysis

by A.E. Giles (_Lancet_, March 2, 1907) of one hundred and fifty

cases. As many as fifty-six of these cases, more than a third,

were unmarried women, though nearly all were over thirty years of

age. Of the ninety-four married women, thirty-four had never been

pregnant; of those who had been pregnant, thirty-six had not been

so for at least ten years. Thus eighty-four per cent, had either

not been pregnant at all, or had had no pregnancy for at least

ten years. It is, therefore, evident that deprivation of sexual

function, whether or not involving abstinence from sexual

intercourse, is an important cause of uterine fibroid tumors.

Balls-Headley, of Victoria (_Evolution of the Diseases of Women_,

1894, and "Etiology of Diseases of Female Genital Organs,"

Allbutt and Playfair, _System of Gynæcology_,) believes that

unsatisfied sexual desire is a factor in very many disorders of

the sexual organs in women. "My views," he writes in a private

letter, "are founded on a really special gynæcological practice

of twenty years, during which I have myself taken about seven

thousand most careful records. The normal woman is sexually

well-formed and her sexual feelings require satisfaction in the

direction of the production of the next generation, but under the

restrictive and now especially abnormal conditions of

civilization some women undergo hereditary atrophy, and the

uterus and sexual feelings are feeble; in others of good average

local development the feeling is in restraint; in others the

feelings, as well as the organs, are strong, and if normal use be

withheld evils ensue. Bearing in mind these varieties of

congenital development in relation to the respective condition of

virginity, or sterile or parous married life, the mode of

occurrence and of progress of disease grows on the physician's

mind, and there is no more occasion for bewilderment than to the

mathematician studying conic sections, when his knowledge has

grown from the basis of the science. The problem is suggested:

Has a crowd of unassociated diseases fallen as through a sieve on

woman, or have these affections almost necessarily ensued from

the circumstances of her unnatural environment?" It may be added

that Kisch (_Sexual Life of Woman_), while protesting against any

exaggerated estimate of the effects of sexual abstinence,

considers that in women it may result, not only in numerous local

disorders, but also in nervous disturbance, hysteria, and even

insanity, while in neurasthenic women "regulated sexual

intercourse has an actively beneficial effect which is often

striking."

It is important to remark that the evil results of sexual

abstinence in women, in the opinion of many of those who insist

upon their importance, are by no means merely due to unsatisfied

sexual desire. They may be pronounced even when the woman herself

has not the slightest consciousness of sexual needs. This was

clearly pointed out forty years ago by the sagacious Anstie (_op.

cit._) In women, especially, he remarks, "a certain restless

hyperactivity of mind, and perhaps of body also, seems to be the

expression of Nature's unconscious resentment of the _neglect of

sexual functions_." Such women, he adds, have kept themselves

free from masturbation "at the expense of a perpetual and almost

fierce activity of mind and muscle." Anstie had found that some

of the worst cases of the form of nervosity and neurasthenia

which he termed "spinal irritation," often accompanied by

irritable stomach and anæmia, get well on marriage. "There can be

no question," he continues, "that a very large proportion of

these cases in single women (who form by far the greater number

of subjects of spinal irritation) are due to this conscious or

unconscious irritation kept up by an unsatisfied sexual want. It

is certain that very many young persons (women more especially)

are tormented by the irritability of the sexual organs without

having the least consciousness of sexual desire, and present the

sad spectacle of a _vie manquée_ without ever knowing the true

source of the misery which incapacitates them for all the active

duties of life. It is a singular fact that in occasional

instances one may even see two sisters, inheriting the same kind

of nervous organization, both tormented with the symptoms of

spinal irritation and both probably suffering from repressed

sexual functions, but of whom one shall be pure-minded and

entirely unconscious of the real source of her troubles, while

the other is a victim to conscious and fruitless sexual

irritation." In this matter Anstie may be regarded as a

forerunner of Freud, who has developed with great subtlety and

analytic power the doctrine of the transformation of repressed

sexual instinct in women into morbid forms. He considers that the

nervosity of to-day is largely due to the injurious action on the

sexual life of that repression of natural instincts on which our

civilization is built up. (Perhaps the clearest brief statement

of Freud's views on the matter is to be found in a very

suggestive article, "Die 'Kulturelle' Sexualmoral und die Moderne

Nervosität," in _Sexual-Probleme_, March, 1908, reprinted in the

second series of Freud's _Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur

Neurosenlehre_, 1909). We possess the aptitude, he says, of

sublimating and transforming our sexual activities into other

activities of a psychically related character, but non-sexual.

This process cannot, however, be carried out to an unlimited

extent any more than can the conversion of heat into mechanical

work in our machines. A certain amount of direct sexual

satisfaction is for most organizations indispensable, and the

renunciation of this individually varying amount is punished by

manifestations which we are compelled to regard as morbid. The

process of sublimation, under the influence of civilization,

leads both to sexual perversions and to psycho-neuroses. These

two conditions are closely related, as Freud views the process of

their development; they stand to each other as positive and

negative, sexual perversions being the positive pole and

psycho-neuroses the negative. It often happens, he remarks, that

a brother may be sexually perverse, while his sister, with a

weaker sexual temperament, is a neurotic whose symptoms are a

transformation of her brother's perversion; while in many

families the men are immoral, the women pure and refined but

highly nervous. In the case of women who have no defect of sexual

impulse there is yet the same pressure of civilized morality

pushing them into neurotic states. It is a terribly serious

injustice, Freud remarks, that the civilized standard of sexual

life is the same for all persons, because though some, by their

organization, may easily accept it, for others it involves the

most difficult psychic sacrifices. The unmarried girl, who has

become nervously weak, cannot be advised to seek relief in

marriage, for she must be strong in order to "bear" marriage,

while we urge a man on no account to marry a girl who is not

strong. The married woman who has experienced the deceptions of

marriage has usually no way of relief left but by abandoning her

virtue. "The more strenuously she has been educated, and the more

completely she has been subjected to the demands of civilization,

the more she fears this way of escape, and in the conflict

between her desires and her sense of duty, she also seeks

refuge--in neurosis. Nothing protects her virtue so surely as

disease." Taking a still wider view of the influence of the

narrow "civilized" conception of sexual morality on women, Freud

finds that it is not limited to the production of neurotic

conditions; it affects the whole intellectual aptitude of women.

Their education denies them any occupation with sexual problems,

although such problems are so full of interest to them, for it

inculcates the ancient prejudice that any curiosity in such

matters is unwomanly and a proof of wicked inclinations. They are

thus terrified from thinking, and knowledge is deprived of worth.

The prohibition to think extends, automatically and inevitably,

far beyond the sexual sphere. "I do not believe," Freud

concludes, "that there is any opposition between intellectual

work and sexual activity such as was supposed by Möbius. I am of

opinion that the unquestionable fact of the intellectual

inferiority of so many women is due to the inhibition of thought

imposed upon them for the purpose of sexual repression."

It is only of recent years that this problem has been realized

and faced, though solitary thinkers, like Hinton, have been

keenly conscious of its existence; for "sorrowing virtue," as

Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox puts it, "is more ashamed of its woes

than unhappy sin, because the world has tears for the latter and

only ridicule for the former." "It is an almost cynical trait of

our age," Hellpach wrote a few years ago, "that it is constantly

discussing the theme of prostitution, of police control, of the

age of consent, of the 'white slavery,' and passes over the moral

struggle of woman's soul without an attempt to answer her burning

questions."

On the other hand we find medical writers not only asserting with much

moral fervor that sexual intercourse outside marriage is always and

altogether unnecessary, but declaring, moreover, the harmlessness or even

the advantages of sexual abstinence.

Ribbing, the Swedish professor, in his _Hygiène Sexuelle_,

advocates sexual abstinence outside marriage, and asserts its

harmlessness. Gilles de la Tourette, Féré, and Augagneur in

France agree. In Germany Fürbringer (Senator and Kaminer, _Health

and Disease in Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 228) asserts

that continence is possible and necessary, though admitting that

it may, however, mean serious mischief in exceptional cases.

Eulenburg (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 14) doubts whether anyone,

who otherwise lived a reasonable life, ever became ill, or more

precisely neurasthenic, through sexual abstinence. Hegar,

replying to the arguments of Bebel in his well-known book on

women, denies that sexual abstinence can ever produce satyriasis

or nymphomania. Näcke, who has frequently discussed the problem

of sexual abstinence (e.g., _Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie_,

1903, Heft 1, and _Sexual-Probleme_, June, 1908), maintains that

sexual abstinence can, at most, produce rare and slight

unfavorable results, and that it is no more likely to produce

insanity, even in predisposed individuals, than are the opposite

extremes of sexual excess and masturbation. He adds that, so far

as his own observations are concerned, the patients in asylums

suffer scarcely at all from their compulsory sexual abstinence.

It is in England, however, that the virtues of sexual abstinence

have been most loudly and emphatically proclaimed, sometimes

indeed with considerable lack of cautious qualification. Acton,

in his _Reproductive Organs_, sets forth the traditional English

view, as well as Beale in his _Morality and the Moral Question_.

A more distinguished representative of the same view was Paget,

who, in his lecture on "Sexual Hypochondriasis," coupled sexual

intercourse with "theft or lying." Sir William Gowers (_Syphilis

and the Nervous System_, 1892, p. 126) also proclaims the

advantages of "unbroken chastity," more especially as a method of

avoiding syphilis. He is not hopeful, however, even as regards

his own remedy, for he adds: "We can trace small ground for hope

that the disease will thus be materially reduced." He would

still, however, preach chastity to the individual, and he does so

with all the ascetic ardor of a mediæval monk. "With all the

force that any knowledge I possess, and any authority I have, can

give, I assert that no man ever yet was in the slightest degree

or way the worse for continence or better for incontinence. From

the latter all are worse morally; a clear majority are worse

physically; and in no small number the result is, and ever will

be, utter physical shipwreck on one of the many rocks, sharp,

jagged-edged, which beset the way, or on one of the many beds of

festering slime which no care can possibly avoid." In America the

same view widely prevails, and Dr. J.F. Scott, in his

_Sexual-Instinct_ (second edition, 1908, Ch. III), argues very

vigorously and at great length in favor of sexual abstinence. He

will not even admit that there are two sides to the question,

though if that were the case, the length and the energy of his

arguments would be unnecessary.

Among medical authorities who have discussed the question of

sexual abstinence at length it is not, indeed, usually possible

to find such unqualified opinions in its favor as those I have

quoted. There can be no doubt, however, that a large proportion

of physicians, not excluding prominent and distinguished

authorities, when casually confronted with the question whether

sexual abstinence is harmless, will at once adopt the obvious

path of least resistance and reply: Yes. In only a few cases will

they even make any qualification of this affirmative answer. This

tendency is very well illustrated by an inquiry made by Dr.

Ludwig Jacobsohn, of St. Petersburgh ("Die Sexuelle

Enthaltsamkeit im Lichte der Medizin," _St. Petersburger

Medicinische Wochenschrift_, March 17, 1907). He wrote to over

two hundred distinguished Russian and German professors of

physiology, neurology, psychiatry, etc., asking them if they

regarded sexual abstinence as harmless. The majority returned no

answer; eleven Russian and twenty-eight Germans replied, but four

of them merely said that "they had no personal experience," etc.;

there thus remained thirty-five. Of these E. Pflüger, of Bonn,

was skeptical of the advantage of any propaganda of abstinence:

"if all the authorities in the world declared the harmlessness of

abstinence that would have no influence on youth. Forces are here

in play that break through all obstacles." The harmlessness of

abstinence was affirmed by Kräpelin, Cramer, Gärtner, Tuczek,

Schottelius, Gaffky, Finkler, Selenew, Lassar, Seifert, Gruber;

the last, however, added that he knew very few abstinent young

men, and himself only considered abstinence good before full

development, and intercourse not dangerous in moderation even

before then. Brieger knew cases of abstinence without harmful

results, but himself thought that no general opinion could be

given. Jürgensen said that abstinence _in itself_ is not harmful,

but that in some cases intercourse exerts a more beneficial

influence. Hoffmann said that abstinence is harmless, adding that

though it certainly leads to masturbation, that is better than

gonorrhoea, to say nothing of syphilis, and is easily kept within

bounds. Strümpell replied that sexual abstinence is harmless, and

indirectly useful as preserving from the risk of venereal

disease, but that sexual intercourse, being normal, is always

more desirable. Hensen said that abstinence is not to be

unconditionally approved. Rumpf replied that abstinence was not

harmful for most before the age of thirty, but after that age

there was a tendency to mental obsessions, and marriage should

take place at twenty-five. Leyden also considered abstinence

harmless until towards thirty, when it leads to psychic

anomalies, especially states of anxiety, and a certain

affectation. Hein replied that abstinence is harmless for most,

but in some leads to hysterical manifestations and indirectly to

bad results from masturbation, while for the normal man

abstinence cannot be directly beneficial, since intercourse is

natural. Grützner thought that abstinence is almost never

harmful. Nescheda said it is harmless in itself, but harmful in

so far as it leads to unnatural modes of gratification. Neisser

believes that more prolonged abstinence than is now usual would

be beneficial, but admitted the sexual excitations of our

civilization; he added that of course he saw no harm for healthy

men in intercourse. Hoche replied that abstinence is quite

harmless in normal persons, but not always so in abnormal

persons. Weber thought it had a useful influence in increasing

will-power. Tarnowsky said it is good in early manhood, but

likely to be unfavorable after twenty-five. Orlow replied that,

especially in youth, it is harmless, and a man should be as

chaste as his wife. Popow said that abstinence is good at all

ages and preserves the energy. Blumenau said that in adult age

abstinence is neither normal nor beneficial, and generally leads

to masturbation, though not generally to nervous disorders; but

that even masturbation is better than syphilis. Tschiriew saw no

harm in abstinence up to thirty, and thought sexual weakness more

likely to follow excess than abstinence. Tschish regarded

abstinence as beneficial rather than harmful up to twenty-five or

twenty-eight, but thought it difficult to decide after that age

when nervous alterations seem to be caused. Darkschewitcz

regarded abstinence as harmless up to twenty-five. Fränkel said

it was harmless for most, but that for a considerable proportion

of people intercourse is a necessity. Erb's opinion is regarded

by Jacobsohn as standing alone; he placed the age below which

abstinence is harmless at twenty; after that age he regarded it

as injurious to health, seriously impeding work and capacity,

while in neurotic persons it leads to still more serious results.

Jacobsohn concludes that the general opinion of those answering

the inquiry may thus be expressed: "Youth should be abstinent.

Abstinence can in no way injure them; on the contrary, it is

beneficial. If our young people will remain abstinent and avoid

extra-conjugal intercourse they will maintain a high ideal of

love and preserve themselves from venereal diseases."

The harmlessness of sexual abstinence was likewise affirmed in

America in a resolution passed by the American Medical

Association in 1906. The proposition thus formally accepted was

thus worded: "Continence is not incompatible with health." It

ought to be generally realized that abstract propositions of this

kind are worthless, because they mean nothing. Every sane person,

when confronted by the demand to boldly affirm or deny the

proposition, "Continence is not incompatible with health," is

bound to affirm it. He might firmly believe that continence is

incompatible with the health of most people, and that prolonged

continence is incompatible with anyone's health, and yet, if he

is to be honest in the use of language, it would be impossible

for him to deny the vague and abstract proposition that

"Continence is not incompatible with health." Such propositions

are therefore not only without value, but actually misleading.

It is obvious that the more extreme and unqualified opinions in

favor of sexual abstinence are based not on medical, but on what

the writers regard as moral considerations. Moreover, as the same

writers are usually equally emphatic in regard to the advantages

of sexual intercourse in marriage, it is clear that they have

committed themselves to a contradiction. The same act, as Näcke

rightly points out, cannot become good or bad according as it is

performed in or out of marriage. There is no magic efficacy in a

few words pronounced by a priest or a government official.

Remondino (loc. cit.) remarks that the authorities who have

committed themselves to declarations in favor of the

unconditional advantages of sexual abstinence tend to fall into

three errors: (1) they generalize unduly, instead of considering

each case individually, on its own merits; (2) they fail to

realize that human nature is influenced by highly mixed and

complex motives and cannot be assumed to be amenable only to

motives of abstract morality; (3) they ignore the great army of

masturbators and sexual perverts who make no complaint of sexual

suffering, but by maintaining a rigid sexual abstinence, so far

as normal relationships are concerned, gradually drift into

currents whence there is no return.

Between those who unconditionally affirm or deny the harmlessness of

sexual abstinence we find an intermediate party of authorities whose

opinions are more qualified. Many of those who occupy this more guarded

position are men whose opinions carry much weight, and it is probable that

with them rather than with the more extreme advocates on either side the

greater measure of reason lies. So complex a question as this cannot be

adequately investigated merely in the abstract, and settled by an

unqualified negative or affirmative. It is a matter in which every case

requires its own special and personal consideration.

"Where there is such a marked opposition of opinion truth is not

exclusively on one side," remarks Löwenfeld (_Sexualleben und

Nervenleiden_, second edition, p. 40). Sexual abstinence is

certainly often injurious to neuropathic persons. (This is now

believed by a large number of authorities, and was perhaps first

decisively stated by Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber Neurosen durch

Abstinenz," _Jahrbuch für Psychiatrie_, 1889, p. 1). Löwenfeld

finds no special proclivity to neurasthenia among the Catholic

clergy, and when it does occur, there is no reason to suppose a

sexual causation. "In healthy and not hereditarily neuropathic

men complete abstinence is possible without injury to the nervous

system." Injurious effects, he continues, when they appear,

seldom occur until between twenty-four and thirty-six years of

age, and even then are not usually serious enough to lead to a

visit to a doctor, consisting mainly in frequency of nocturnal

emissions, pain in testes or rectum, hyperæsthesia in the

presence of women or of sexual ideas. If, however, conditions

arise which specially stimulate the sexual emotions, neurasthenia

may be produced. Löwenfeld agrees with Freud and Gattel that the

neurosis of anxiety tends to occur in the abstinent, careful

examination showing that the abstinence is a factor in its

production in both sexes. It is common among young women married

to much older men, often appearing during the first years of

marriage. Under special circumstances, therefore, abstinence can

be injurious, but on the whole the difficulties due to such

abstinence are not severe, and they only exceptionally call forth

actual disturbance in the nervous or psychic spheres. Moll takes

a similar temperate and discriminating view. He regards sexual

abstinence before marriage as the ideal, but points out that we

must avoid any doctrinal extremes in preaching sexual abstinence,

for such preaching will merely lead to hypocrisy. Intercourse

with prostitutes, and the tendency to change a woman like a

garment, induce loss of sensitiveness to the spiritual and

personal element in woman, while the dangers of sexual abstinence

must no more be exaggerated than the dangers of sexual

intercourse (Moll, _Libido Sexualis_, 1898, vol. i, p. 848; id.,

_Konträre Sexualempfindung_, 1899, p. 588). Bloch also (in a

chapter on the question of sexual abstinence in his _Sexualleben

unserer Zeit_, 1908) takes a similar standpoint. He advocates

abstention during early life and temporary abstention in adult

life, such abstention being valuable, not only for the

conservation and transformation of energy, but also to emphasize

the fact that life contains other matters to strive for beyond

the ends of sex. Redlich (_Medizinische Klinik_, 1908, No. 7)

also, in a careful study of the medical aspects of the question,

takes an intermediate standpoint in relation to the relative

advantages and disadvantages of sexual abstinence. "We may say

that sexual abstinence is not a condition which must, under all

circumstances and at any price, be avoided, though it is true

that for the majority of healthy adult persons regular sexual

intercourse is advantageous, and sometimes is even to be

recommended."

It may be added that from the standpoint of Christian religious

morality this same attitude, between the extremes of either

party, recognizing the advantages of sexual abstinence, but not

insisting that they shall be purchased at any price, has also

found representation. Thus, in England, an Anglican clergyman,

the Rev. H. Northcote (_Christianity and Sex Problems_, pp. 58,

60) deals temperately and sympathetically with the difficulties

of sexual abstinence, and is by no means convinced that such

abstinence is always an unmixed advantage; while in Germany a

Catholic priest, Karl Jentsch (_Sexualethik, Sexualjustiz,

Sexualpolizei_, 1900) sets himself to oppose the rigorous and

unqualified assertions of Ribbing in favor of sexual abstinence.

Jentsch thus expresses what he conceives ought to be the attitude

of fathers, of public opinion, of the State and the Church

towards the young man in this matter: "Endeavor to be abstinent

until marriage. Many succeed in this. If you can succeed, it is

good. But, if you cannot succeed, it is unnecessary to cast

reproaches on yourself and to regard yourself as a scoundrel or a

lost sinner. Provided that you do not abandon yourself to mere

enjoyment or wantonness, but are content with what is necessary

to restore your peace of mind, self-possession, and cheerful

capacity for work, and also that you observe the precautions

which physicians or experienced friends impress upon you."

When we thus analyze and investigate the the three main streams of expert

opinions in regard to this question of sexual abstinence--the opinions in

favor of it, the opinions in opposition to it, and the opinions which take

an intermediate course--we can scarcely fail to conclude how

unsatisfactory the whole discussion is. The state of "sexual abstinence"

is a completely vague and indefinite state. The indefinite and even

meaningless character of the expression "sexual abstinence" is shown by

the frequency with which those who argue about it assume that it can, may,

or even must, involve masturbation. That fact alone largely deprives it of

value as morality and altogether as abstinence. At this point, indeed, we

reach the most fundamental criticism to which the conception of "sexual

abstinence" lies open. Rohleder, an experienced physician and a recognized

authority on questions of sexual pathology, has submitted the current

views on "sexual abstinence" to a searching criticism in a lengthy and

important paper.[95] He denies altogether that strict sexual abstinence

exists at all. "Sexual abstinence," he points out, in any strict scenes of

the term, must involve abstinence not merely from sexual intercourse but

from auto-erotic manifestations, from masturbation, from homosexual acts,

from all sexually perverse practices. It must further involve a permanent

abstention from indulgence in erotic imaginations and voluptuous reverie.

When, however, it is possible thus to render the whole psychic field a

_tabula rasa_ so far as sexual activity is concerned--and if it fails to

be so constantly and consistently there is no strict sexual

abstinence--then, Rohleder points out, we have to consider whether we are

not in presence of a case of sexual anæsthesia, of _anaphrodisia

sexualis_. That is a question which is rarely, if ever, faced by those who

discuss sexual abstinence. It is, however, an extremely pertinent

question, because, as Rohleder insists, if sexual anæsthesia exists the

question of sexual abstinence falls to the ground, for we can only

"abstain" from actions that are in our power. Complete sexual anæsthesia

is, however, so rare a state that it may be practically left out of

consideration, and as the sexual impulse, if it exists, must by

physiological necessity sometimes become active in some shape--even if

only, according to Freud's view, by transformation into some morbid

neurotic condition--we reach the conclusion that "sexual abstinence" is

strictly impossible. Rohleder has met with a few cases in which there

seemed to him no escape from the conclusion that sexual abstinence

existed, but in all of these he subsequently found that he was mistaken,

usually owing to the practice of masturbation, which he believes to be

extremely common and very frequently accompanied by a persistent attempt

to deceive the physician concerning its existence. The only kind of

"sexual abstinence" that exists is a partial and temporary abstinence.

Instead of saying, as some say, "Permanent abstinence is unnatural and

cannot exist without physical and mental injury," we ought to say,

Rohleder believes, "Permanent abstinence is unnatural and has never

existed."

It is impossible not to feel as we contemplate this chaotic mass of

opinions, that the whole discussion is revolving round a purely negative

idea, and that fundamental fact is responsible for what at first seem to

be startling conflicts of statement. If indeed we were to eliminate what

is commonly regarded as the religious and moral aspect of the matter--an

aspect, be it remembered, which has no bearing on the essential natural

facts of the question--we cannot fail to perceive that these ostentatious

differences of conviction would be reduced within very narrow and trifling

limits.

We cannot strictly coordinate the impulse of reproduction with the impulse

of nutrition. There are very important differences between them, more

especially the fundamental difference that while the satisfaction of the

one impulse is absolutely necessary both to the life of the individual and

of the race, the satisfaction of the other is absolutely necessary only to

the life of the race. But when we reduce this question to one of "sexual

abstinence" we are obviously placing it on the same basis as that of

abstinence from food, that is to say at the very opposite pole to which we

place it when (as in the previous chapter) we consider it from the point

of view of asceticism and chastity. It thus comes about that on this

negative basis there really is an interesting analogy between nutritive

abstinence, though necessarily only maintained incompletely and for a

short time, and sexual abstinence, maintained more completely and for a

longer time. A patient of Janet's seems to bring out clearly this

resemblance. Nadia, whom Janet was able to study during five years, was a

young woman of twenty-seven, healthy and intelligent, not suffering from

hysteria nor from anorexia, for she had a normal appetite. But she had an

idea; she was anxious to be slim and to attain this end she cut down her

meals to the smallest size, merely a little soup and a few eggs. She

suffered much from the abstinence she thus imposed on herself, and was

always hungry, though sometimes her hunger was masked by the inevitable

stomach trouble caused by so long a persistence in this _régime_. At

times, indeed, she had been so hungry that she had devoured greedily

whatever she could lay her hands on, and not infrequently she could not

resist the temptation to eat a few biscuits in secret. Such actions caused

her horrible remorse, but, all the same, she would be guilty of them

again. She realized the great efforts demanded by her way of life, and

indeed looked upon herself as a heroine for resisting so long.

"Sometimes," she told Janet, "I passed whole hours in thinking about food,

I was so hungry. I swallowed my saliva, I bit my handkerchief, I rolled

on the ground, I wanted to eat so badly. I searched books for descriptions

of meals and feasts, I tried to deceive my hunger by imagining that I too

was enjoying all these good things. I was really famished, and in spite of

a few weaknesses for biscuits I know that I showed much courage."[96]

Nadia's motive idea, that she wished to be slim, corresponds to the

abstinent man's idea that he wishes to be "moral," and only differs from

it by having the advantage of being somewhat more positive and personal,

for the idea of the person who wishes to avoid sexual indulgence because

it is "not right" is often not merely negative but impersonal and imposed

by the social and religious environment. Nadia's occasional outbursts of

reckless greediness correspond to the sudden impulses to resort to

prostitution, and her secret weaknesses for biscuits, followed by keen

remorse, to lapses into the habit of masturbation. Her fits of struggling

and rolling on the ground are precisely like the outbursts of futile

desire which occasionally occur to young abstinent men and women in health

and strength. The absorption in thoughts about meals and in literary

descriptions of meals is clearly analogous to the abstinent man's

absorption in wanton thoughts and erotic books. Finally, Nadia's

conviction that she is a heroine corresponds exactly to the attitude of

self-righteousness which often marks the sexually abstinent.

If we turn to Freud's penetrating and suggestive study of the problem of

sexual abstinence in relation to "civilized" sexual morality, we find

that, though he makes no reference to the analogy with abstinence from

food, his words would for the most part have an equal application to both

cases. "The task of subduing so powerful an instinct as the sexual

impulse, otherwise than by giving it satisfaction," he writes, "is one

which may employ the whole strength of a man. Subjugation through

sublimation, by guiding the sexual forces into higher civilizational

paths, may succeed with a minority, and even with these only for a time,

least easily during the years of ardent youthful energy. Most others

become neurotic or otherwise come to grief. Experience shows that the

majority of people constituting our society are constitutionally unequal

to the task of abstinence. We say, indeed, that the struggle with this

powerful impulse and the emphasis the struggle involves on the ethical and

æsthetic forces in the soul's life 'steels' the character, and for a few

favorably organized natures this is true; it must also be acknowledged

that the differentiation of individual character so marked in our time

only becomes possible through sexual limitations. But in by far the

majority of cases the struggle with sensuality uses up the available

energy of character, and this at the very time when the young man needs

all his strength in order to win his place in the world."[97]

When we have put the problem on this negative basis of abstinence it is

difficult to see how we can dispute the justice of Freud's conclusions.

They hold good equally for abstinence from food and abstinence from sexual

love. When we have placed the problem on a more positive basis, and are

able to invoke the more active and fruitful motives of asceticism and

chastity this unfortunate fight against a natural impulse is abolished. If

chastity is an ideal of the harmonious play of all the organic impulses of

the soul and body, if asceticism, properly understood, is the athletic

striving for a worthy object which causes, for the time, an indifference

to the gratification of sexual impulses, we are on wholesome and natural

ground, and there is no waste of energy in fruitless striving for a

negative end, whether imposed artificially from without, as it usually is,

or voluntarily chosen by the individual himself.

For there is really no complete analogy between sexual desire and hunger,

between abstinence from sexual relations and abstinence from food. When we

put them both on the basis of abstinence we put them on a basis which

covers the impulse for food but only half covers the impulse for sexual

love. We confer no pleasure and no service on our food when we eat it. But

the half of sexual love, perhaps the most important and ennobling half,

lies in what we give and not in what we take. To reduce this question to

the low level of abstinence, is not only to centre it in a merely negative

denial but to make it a solely self-regarding question. Instead of asking:

How can I bring joy and strength to another? we only ask: How can I

preserve my empty virtue?

Therefore it is that from whatever aspect we consider the

question,--whether in view of the flagrant contradiction between the

authorities who have discussed this question, or of the illegitimate

mingling here of moral and physiological considerations, or of the merely

negative and indeed unnatural character of the "virtue" thus set up, or of

the failure involved to grasp the ennoblingly altruistic and mutual side

of sexual love,--from whatever aspect we approach the problem of "sexual

abstinence" we ought only to agree to do so under protest.

If we thus decide to approach it, and if we have reached the

conviction--which, in view of all the evidence we can scarcely

escape--that, while sexual abstinence in so far as it may be recognized as

possible is not incompatible with health, there are yet many adults for

whom it is harmful, and a very much larger number for whom when prolonged

it is undesirable, we encounter a serious problem. It is a problem which

confronts any person, and especially the physician, who may be called upon

to give professional advice to his fellows on this matter. If sexual

relationships are sometimes desirable for unmarried persons, or for

married persons who, for any reason, are debarred from conjugal union, is

a physician justified in recommending such sexual relationships to his

patient? This is a question that has frequently been debated and decided

in opposing senses.

Various distinguished physicians, especially in Germany, have

proclaimed the duty of the doctor to recommend sexual intercourse

to his patient whenever he considers it desirable. Gyurkovechky,

for instance, has fully discussed this question, and answered it

in the affirmative. Nyström (_Sexual-Probleme_, July, 1908, p.

413) states that it is the physician's duty, in some cases of

sexual weakness, when all other methods of treatment have failed,

to recommend sexual intercourse as the best remedy. Dr. Max

Marcuse stands out as a conspicuous advocate of the unconditional

duty of the physician to advocate sexual intercourse in some

cases, both to men and to women, and has on many occasions argued

in this sense (e.g., _Darf der Arzt zum Ausserehelichen

Geschlechtsverkehr raten?_ 1904). Marcuse is strongly of opinion

that a physician who, allowing himself to be influenced by moral,

sociological, or other considerations, neglects to recommend

sexual intercourse when he considers it desirable for the

patient's health, is unworthy of his profession, and should

either give up medicine or send his patients to other doctors.

This attitude, though not usually so emphatically stated, seems

to be widely accepted. Lederer goes even further when he states

(_Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und Sexuelle Hygiene_, 1906,

Heft 3) that it is the physician's duty in the case of a woman

who is suffering from her husband's impotence, to advise her to

have intercourse with another man, adding that "whether she does

so with her husband's consent is no affair of the physician's,

for he is not the guardian of morality, but the guardian of

health." The physicians who publicly take this attitude are,

however, a small minority. In England, so far as I am aware, no

physician of eminence has openly proclaimed the duty of the

doctor to advise sexual intercourse outside marriage, although,

it is scarcely necessary to add, in England, as elsewhere, it

happens that doctors, including women doctors, from time to time

privately point out to their unmarried and even married patients,

that sexual intercourse would probably be beneficial.

The duty of the physician to recommend sexual intercourse has

been denied as emphatically as it has been affirmed. Thus

Eulenburg (_Sexuale Neuropathie_, p. 43), would by no means

advise extra-conjugal relations to his patient; "such advice is

quite outside the physician's competence." It is, of course,

denied by those who regard sexual abstinence as always harmless,

if not beneficial. But it is also denied by many who consider

that, under some circumstances, sexual intercourse would do good.

Moll has especially, and on many occasions, discussed the duty of

the physician in relation to the question of advising sexual

intercourse outside marriage (e.g., in his comprehensive work,

_Aerztliche Ethik_, 1902; also _Zeitschrift für Aerztliche

Fortbildung_, 1905, Nos. 12-15; _Mutterschutz_, 1905, Heft 3;

_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, vol. ii, Heft 8). At the outset

Moll had been disposed to assert the right of the physician to

recommend sexual intercourse under some circumstances; "so long

as marriage is unduly delayed and sexual intercourse outside

marriage exists," he wrote (_Die Conträre Sexualempfindung_,

second edition, p. 287), "so long, I think, we may use such

intercourse therapeutically, provided that the rights of no third

person (husband or wife) are injured." In all his later writings,

however, Moll ranges himself clearly and decisively on the

opposite side. He considers that the physician has no right to

overlook the possible results of his advice in inflicting

venereal disease, or, in the case of a woman, pregnancy, on his

patient, and he believes that these serious results are far more

likely to happen than is always admitted by those who defend the

legitimacy of such advice. Nor will Moll admit that the physician

is entitled to overlook the moral aspects of the question. A

physician may know that a poor man could obtain many things good

for his health by stealing, but he cannot advise him to steal.

Moll takes the case of a Catholic priest who is suffering from

neurasthenia due to sexual abstinence. Even although the

physician feels certain that the priest may be able to avoid all

the risks of disease as well as of publicity, he is not entitled

to urge him to sexual intercourse. He has to remember that in

thus causing a priest to break his vows of chastity he may induce

a mental conflict and a bitter remorse which may lead to the

worst results, even on his patient's physical health. Similar

results, Moll remarks, may follow such advice when given to a

married man or woman, to say nothing of possible divorce

proceedings and accompanying evils.

Rohleder (_Vorlesungen über Geschlechtstrieb und Gesamtes

Geschlechtsleben der Menschen_) adopts a somewhat qualified

attitude in this matter. As a general rule he is decidedly

against recommending sexual intercourse outside marriage to those

who are suffering from partial or temporary abstinence (the only

form of abstinence he recognizes), partly on the ground that the

evils of abstinence are not serious or permanent, and partly

because the patient is fairly certain to exercise his own

judgment in the matter. But in some classes of cases he

recommends such intercourse, and notably to bisexual persons, on

the ground that he is thus preserving his patient from the

criminal risks of homosexual practices.

It seems to me that there should be no doubt whatever as to the correct

professional attitude of the physician in relation to this question of

advice concerning sexual intercourse. The physician is never entitled to

advise his patient to adopt sexual intercourse outside marriage nor any

method of relief which is commonly regarded as illegitimate. It is said

that the physician has nothing to do with considerations of conventional

morality. If he considers that champagne would be good for a poor patient

he ought to recommend him to take champagne; he is not called upon to

consider whether the patient will beg, borrow, or steal the champagne.

But, after all, even if that be admitted, it must still be said that the

physician knows that the champagne, however obtained, is not likely to be

poisonous. When, however, he prescribes sexual intercourse, with the same

lofty indifference to practical considerations, he has no such knowledge.

In giving such a prescription the physician has in fact not the slightest

knowledge of what he may be prescribing. He may be giving his patient a

venereal disease; he may be giving the anxieties and responsibilities of

an illegitimate child; the prescriber is quite in the dark. He is in the

same position as if he had prescribed a quack medicine of which the

composition was unknown to him, with the added disadvantage that the

medicine may turn out to be far more potently explosive than is the case

with the usually innocuous patent medicine. The utmost that a physician

can properly permit himself to do is to put the case impartially before

his patient and to present to him all the risks. The solution must be for

the patient himself to work out, as best he can, for it involves social

and other considerations which, while they are indeed by no means outside

the sphere of medicine, are certainly entirely outside the control of the

individual private practitioner of medicine.

Moll also is of opinion that this impartial presentation of the

case for and against sexual intercourse corresponds to the

physician's duty in the matter. It is, indeed, a duty which can

scarcely be escaped by the physician in many cases. Moll points

out that it can by no means be assimilated, as some have

supposed, with the recommendation of sexual intercourse. It is,

on the contrary, he remarks, much more analogous to the

physician's duty in reference to operations. He puts before the

patient the nature of the operation, its advantages and its

risks, but he leaves it to the patient's judgment to accept or

reject the operation. Lewitt also (_Geschlechtliche

Enthaltsamkeit und Gesundheitsstörungen_, 1905), after discussing

the various opinions on this question, comes to the conclusion

that the physician, if he thinks that intercourse outside

marriage might be beneficial, should explain the difficulties and

leave the patient himself to decide.

There is another reason why, having regard to the prevailing moral

opinions at all events among the middle classes, a physician should

refrain from advising extra-conjugal intercourse: he places himself in a

false relation to his social environment. He is recommending a remedy the

nature of which he could not publicly avow, and so destroying the public

confidence in himself. The only physician who is morally entitled to

advise his patients to enter into extra-conjugal relationships is one who

openly acknowledges that he is prepared to give such advice. The doctor

who is openly working for social reform has perhaps won the moral right to

give advice in accordance with the tendency of his public activity, but

even then his advice may be very dubiously judicious, and he would be

better advised to confine his efforts at social reform to his public

activities. The voice of the physician, as Professor Max Flesch of

Frankfort observes, is more and more heard in the development and new

growth of social institutions; he is a natural leaders in such movements,

and proposals for reform properly come from him. "But," as Flesch

continues, "publicly to accept the excellence of existing institutions and

in the privacy of the consulting-room to give advice which assumes the

imperfection of those institutions is illogical and confusing. It is the

physician's business to give advice which is in accordance with the

interests of the community as a whole, and those interests require that

sexual relationships should be entered into between healthy men and women

who are able and willing to accept the results of their union. That should

be the physician's rule of conduct. Only so can he become, what to-day he

is often proclaimed to be, the leader of the nation."[98] This view is

not, as we see, entirely in accord with that which assumes that the

physician's duty is solely and entirely to his patient, without regard to

the bearing of his advice on social conduct. The patient's interests are

primary, but they are not entitled to be placed in antagonism to the

interests of society. The advice given by the wise physician must always

be in harmony with the social and moral tone of his age. Thus it is that

the tendency among the younger generation of physicians to-day to take an

active interest in raising that tone and in promoting social reform--a

tendency which exists not only in Germany where such interests have long

been acute, but also in so conservative a land as England--is full of

promise for the future.

The physician is usually content to consider his duty to his patient in

relationship to sexual abstinence as sufficiently fulfilled when he

attempts to allay sexual hyperæsthesia by medical or hygienic treatment.

It can scarcely be claimed, however, that the results of such treatment

are usually satisfactory, and sometimes indeed the treatment has a result

which is the reverse of that intended. The difficulty generally is that in

order to be efficacious the treatment must be carried to an extreme which

exhausts or inhibits not only the genital activities alone but the

activities of the whole organism, and short of that it may prove a

stimulant rather than a sedative. It is difficult and usually impossible

to separate out a man's sexual activities and bring influence to bear on

these activities alone. Sexual activity is so closely intertwined with the

other organic activities, erotic exuberance is so much a flower which is

rooted in the whole organism, that the blow which crushes it may strike

down the whole man. The bromides are universally recognized as powerful

sexual sedatives, but their influence in this respect only makes itself

felt when they have dulled all the finest energies of the organism.

Physical exercise is universally recommended to sexually hyperæsthetic

patients. Yet most people, men and women, find that physical exercise is a

positive stimulus to sexual activity. This is notably so as regards

walking, and exuberantly energetic young women who are troubled by the

irritant activity of their healthy sexual emotions sometimes spend a large

part of their time in the vain attempt to lull their activity by long

walks. Physical exercise only proves efficacious in this respect when it

is carried to an extent which produces general exhaustion. Then indeed the

sexual activity is lulled; but so are all the mental and physical

activities. It is undoubtedly true that exercises and games of all sorts

for young people of both sexes have a sexually hygienic as well as a

generally hygienic influence which is undoubtedly beneficial. They are, on

all grounds, to be preferred to prolonged sedentary occupations. But it is

idle to suppose that games and exercises will suppress the sexual

impulses, for in so far as they favor health, they favor all the impulses

that are the result of health. The most that can be expected is that they

may tend to restrain the manifestations of sex by dispersing the energy

they generate.

There are many physical rules and precautions which are advocated, not

without reason, as tending to inhibit or diminish sexual activity. The

avoidance of heat and the cultivation of cold is one of the most important

of these. Hot climates, a close atmosphere, heavy bed-clothing, hot baths,

all tend powerfully to excite the sexual system, for that system is a

peripheral sensory organ, and whatever stimulates the skin generally,

stimulates the sexual system.[99] Cold, which contracts the skin, also

deadens the sexual feelings, a fact which the ascetics of old knew and

acted upon. The garments and the posture of the body are not without

influence. Constriction or pressure in the neighborhood of the sexual

region, even tight corsets, as well as internal pressure, as from a

distended bladder, are sources of sexual irritation. Sleeping on the back,

which congests the spinal centres, also acts in the same way, as has long

been known by those who attend to sexual hygiene; thus it is stated that

in the Franciscan order it is prohibited to lie on the back. Food and

drink are, further, powerful sexual stimulants. This is true even of the

simplest and most wholesome nourishment, but it is more especially true of

flesh meat, and, above all, of alcohol in its stronger forms such as

spirits, liqueurs, sparkling and heavy wines, and even many English beers.

This has always been clearly realized by those who cultivate asceticism,

and it is one of the powerful reasons why alcohol should not be given in

early youth. As St. Jerome wrote, when telling Eustochium that she must

avoid wine like poison, "wine and youth are the two fires of lust. Why

add oil to the flame?"[100] Idleness, again, especially when combined with

rich living, promotes sexual activity, as Burton sets forth at length in

his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and constant occupation, on the other hand,

concentrates the wandering activities.

Mental exercise, like physical exercise, has sometimes been advocated as a

method of calming sexual excitement, but it seems to be equally equivocal

in its action. If it is profoundly interesting and exciting it may stir up

rather than lull the sexual emotions. If it arouses little interest it is

unable to exert any kind of influence. This is true even of mathematical

occupations which have been advocated by various authorities, including

Broussais, as aids to sexual hygiene.[101] "I have tried mechanical mental

work," a lady writes, "such as solving arithmetical or algebraic problems,

but it does no good; in fact it seems only to increase the excitement." "I

studied and especially turned my attention to mathematics," a clergyman

writes, "with a view to check my sexual tendencies. To a certain extent I

was successful. But at the approach of an old friend, a voice or a touch,

these tendencies came back again with renewed strength. I found

mathematics, however, the best thing on the whole to take off my attention

from women, better than religious exercises which I tried when younger

(twenty-two to thirty)." At the best, however, such devices are of merely

temporary efficacy.

It is easier to avoid arousing the sexual impulses than to impose silence

on them by hygienic measures when once they are aroused. It is,

therefore, in childhood and youth that all these measures may be most

reasonably observed in order to avoid any premature sexual excitement. In

one group of stolidly normal children influences that might be expected to

act sexually pass away unperceived. At the other extreme, another group of

children are so neurotically and precociously sensitive that no

precautions will preserve them from such influences. But between these

groups there is another, probably much the largest, who resist slight

sexual suggestions but may succumb to stronger or longer influences, and

on these the cares of sexual hygiene may profitably be bestowed.[102]

After puberty, when the spontaneous and inner voice of sex may at any

moment suddenly make itself heard, all hygienic precautions are liable to

be flung to the winds, and even the youth or maiden most anxious to retain

the ideals of chastity can often do little but wait till the storm has

passed. It sometimes happens that a prolonged period of sexual storm and

stress occurs soon after puberty, and then dies away although there has

been little or no sexual gratification, to be succeeded by a period of

comparative calm. It must be remembered that in many, and perhaps most,

individuals, men and women, the sexual appetite, unlike hunger or thirst,

can after a prolonged struggle, be reduced to a more or less quiescent

state which, far from injuring, may even benefit the physical and psychic

vigor generally. This may happen whether or not sexual gratification has

been obtained. If there has never been any such gratification, the

struggle is less severe and sooner over, unless the individual is of

highly erotic temperament. If there has been gratification, if the mind

is filled not merely with desires but with joyous experience to which the

body also has grown accustomed, then the struggle is longer and more

painfully absorbing. The succeeding relief, however, if it comes, is

sometimes more complete and is more likely to be associated with a state

of psychic health. For the fundamental experiences of life, under normal

conditions, bring not only intellectual sanity, but emotional

pacification. A conquest of the sexual appetites which has never at any

period involved a gratification of these appetites seldom produces results

that commend themselves as rich and beautiful.

In these combats there are, however, no permanent conquests. For a very

large number of people, indeed, though there may be emotional changes and

fluctuations dependent on a variety of circumstances, there can scarcely

be said to be any conquest at all. They are either always yielding to the

impulses that assail them, or always resisting those impulses, in the

first case with remorse, in the second with dissatisfaction. In either

case much of their lives, at the time when life is most vigorous, is

wasted. With women, if they happen to be of strong passions and reckless

impulses to abandonment, the results may be highly enervating, if not

disastrous to the general psychic life. It is to this cause, indeed, that

some have been inclined to attribute the frequent mediocrity of women's

work in artistic and intellectual fields. Women of intellectual force are

frequently if not generally women of strong passions, and if they resist

the tendency to merge themselves in the duties of maternity their lives

are often wasted in emotional conflict and their psychic natures

impoverished.[103]

The extent to which sexual abstinence and the struggles it

involves may hamper and absorb the individual throughout life is

well illustrated in the following case. A lady, vigorous, robust,

and generally healthy, of great intelligence and high character,

has reached middle life without marrying, or ever having sexual

relationships. She was an only child, and when between three and

four years of age, a playmate some six years older, initiated her

into the habit of playing with her sexual parts. She was,

however, at this age quite devoid of sexual feelings, and the

habit dropped naturally, without any bad effects, as soon as she

left the neighborhood of this girl a year or so later. Her health

was good and even brilliant, and she developed vigorously at

puberty. At the age of sixteen, however, a mental shock caused

menstruation to diminish in amount during some years, and

simultaneously with this diminution persistent sexual excitement

appeared spontaneously, for the first time. She regarded such

feelings as abnormal and unhealthy, and exerted all her powers of

self-control in resisting them. But will power had no effect in

diminishing the feelings. There was constant and imperious

excitement, with the sense of vibration, tension, pressure,

dilatation and tickling, accompanied, it may be, by some ovarian

congestion, for she felt that on the left side there was a

network of sexual nerves, and retroversion of the uterus was

detected some years later. Her life was strenuous with many

duties, but no occupation could be pursued without this

undercurrent of sexual hyperæsthesia involving perpetual

self-control. This continued more or less acutely for many years,

when menstruation suddenly stopped altogether, much before the

usual period of the climacteric. At the same time the sexual

excitement ceased, and she became calm, peaceful, and happy.

Diminished menstruation was associated with sexual excitement,

but abundant menstruation and its complete absence were both

accompanied by the relief of excitement. This lasted for two

years. Then, for the treatment of a trifling degree of anæmia,

she was subjected to a long, and, in her case, injudicious course

of hypodermic injections of strychnia. From that time, five years

ago, up to the present, there has been constant sexual

excitement, and she has always to be on guard lest she should be

overtaken by a sexual spasm. Her torture is increased by the fact

that her traditions make it impossible for her (except under very

exceptional circumstances) to allude to the cause of her

sufferings. "A woman is handicapped," she writes. "She may never

speak to anyone on such a subject. She must live her tragedy

alone, smiling as much as she can under the strain of her

terrible burden." To add to her trouble, two years ago, she felt

impelled to resort to masturbation, and has done so about once a

month since; this not only brings no real relief, and leaves

irritability, wakefulness, and dark marks under the eyes, but is

a cause of remorse to her, for she regards masturbation as

entirely abnormal and unnatural. She has tried to gain benefit,

not merely by the usual methods of physical hygiene, but by

suggestion, Christian Science, etc., but all in vain. "I may

say," she writes, "that it is the most passionate desire of my

heart to be freed from this bondage, that I may relax the

terrible years-long tension of resistance, and be happy in my own

way. If I had this affliction once a month, once a week, even

twice a week, to stand against it would be child's play. I should

scorn to resort to unnatural means, however moderately. But

self-control itself has its revenges, and I sometimes feel as if

it is no longer to be borne."

Thus while it is an immense benefit in physical and psychic development if

the eruption of the disturbing sexual emotions can be delayed until

puberty or adolescence, and while it is a very great advantage, after that

eruption has occurred, to be able to gain control of these emotions, to

crush altogether the sexual nature would be a barren, if not, indeed, a

perilous victory, bringing with it no satisfaction. "If I had only had

three weeks' happiness," said a woman, "I would not quarrel with Fate, but

to have one's whole life so absolutely empty is horrible." If such vacuous

self-restraint may, by courtesy, be termed a virtue, it is but a negative

virtue. The persons who achieve it, as the result of congenitally feeble

sexual aptitudes, merely (as Gyurkovechky, Fürbringer, and Löwenfeld have

all alike remarked) made a virtue of their weakness. Many others, whose

instincts were less weak, when they disdainfully put to flight the desires

of sex in early life, have found that in later life that foe returns in

tenfold force and perhaps in unnatural shapes.[104]

The conception of "sexual abstinence" is, we see, an entirely false and

artificial conception. It is not only ill-adjusted to the hygienic facts

of the case but it fails even to invoke any genuinely moral motive, for it

is exclusively self-regarding and self-centred. It only becomes genuinely

moral, and truly inspiring, when we transform it into the altruistic

virtue of self-sacrifice. When we have done so we see that the element of

abstinence in it ceases to be essential, "Self-sacrifice," writes the

author of a thoughtful book on the sexual life, "is acknowledged to be the

basis of virtue; the noblest instances of self-sacrifice are those

dictated by sexual affection. Sympathy is the secret of altruism; nowhere

is sympathy more real and complete than in love. Courage, both moral and

physical, the love of truth and honor, the spirit of enterprise, and the

admiration of moral worth, are all inspired by love as by nothing else in

human nature. Celibacy denies itself that inspiration or restricts its

influence, according to the measure of its denial of sexual intimacy. Thus

the deliberate adoption of a consistently celibate life implies the

narrowing down of emotional and moral experience to a degree which is,

from the broad scientific standpoint, unjustified by any of the advantages

piously supposed to accrue from it."[105]

In a sane natural order all the impulses are centred in the fulfilment of

needs and not in their denial. Moreover, in this special matter of sex, it

is inevitable that the needs of others, and not merely the needs of the

individual himself, should determine action. It is more especially the

needs of the female which are the determining factor; for those needs are

more various, complex and elusive, and in his attentiveness to their

gratification the male finds a source of endless erotic satisfaction. It

might be thought that the introduction of an altruistic motive here is

merely the claim of theoretical morality insisting that there shall be a

firm curb on animal instinct. But, as we have again and again seen

throughout the long course of these _Studies_, it is not so. The animal

instinct itself makes this demand. It is a biological law that rules

throughout the zoölogical world and has involved the universality of

courtship. In man it is only modified because in man sexual needs are not

entirely concentrated in reproduction, but more or less penetrate the

whole of life.

While from the point of view of society, as from that of Nature, the end

and object of the sexual impulse is procreation, and nothing beyond

procreation, that is by no means true for the individual, whose main

object it must be to fulfil himself harmoniously with that due regard for

others which the art of living demands. Even if sexual relationships had

no connection with procreation whatever--as some Central Australian tribes

believe--they would still be justifiable, and are, indeed, an

indispensable aid to the best moral development of the individual, for it

is only in so intimate a relationship as that of sex that the finest

graces and aptitudes of life have full scope. Even the saints cannot

forego the sexual side of life. The best and most accomplished saints from

Jerome to Tolstoy--even the exquisite Francis of Assisi--had stored up in

their past all the experiences that go to the complete realization of

life, and if it were not so they would have been the less saints.

The element of positive virtue thus only enters when the control of the

sexual impulse has passed beyond the stage of rigid and sterile abstinence

and has become not merely a deliberate refusal of what is evil in sex, but

a deliberate acceptance of what is good. It is only at that moment that

such control becomes a real part of the great art of living. For the art

of living, like any other art, is not compatible with rigidity, but lies

in the weaving of a perpetual harmony between refusing and accepting,

between giving and taking.[106]

The future, it is clear, belongs ultimately to those who are slowly

building up sounder traditions into the structure of life. The "problem of

sexual abstinence" will more and more sink into insignificance. There

remain the great solid fact of love, the great solid fact of chastity.

Those are eternal. Between them there is nothing but harmony. The

development of one involves the development of the other.

It has been necessary to treat seriously this problem of "sexual

abstinence" because we have behind us the traditions of two thousand years

based on certain ideals of sexual law and sexual license, together with

the long effort to build up practices more or less conditioned by those

ideals. We cannot immediately escape from these traditions even when we

question their validity for ourselves. We have not only to recognize their

existence, but also to accept the fact that for some time to come they

must still to a considerable extent control the thoughts and even in some

degree the actions of existing communities.

It is undoubtedly deplorable. It involves the introduction of an

artificiality into a real natural order. Love is real and positive;

chastity is real and positive. But sexual abstinence is unreal and

negative, in the strict sense perhaps impossible. The underlying feelings

of all those who have emphasized its importance is that a physiological

process can be good or bad according as it is or is not carried out under

certain arbitrary external conditions, which render it licit or illicit.

An act of sexual intercourse under the name of "marriage" is beneficial;

the very same act, under the name of "incontinence," is pernicious. No

physiological process, and still less any spiritual process, can bear such

restriction. It is as much as to say that a meal becomes good or bad,

digestible or indigestible, according as a grace is or is not pronounced

before the eating of it.

It is deplorable because, such a conception being essentially unreal, an

element of unreality is thus introduced into a matter of the gravest

concern alike to the individual and to society. Artificial disputes have

been introduced where no matter of real dispute need exist. A contest has

been carried on marked by all the ferocity which marks contests about

metaphysical or pseudo-metaphysical differences having no concrete basis

in the actual world. As will happen in such cases, there has, after all,

been no real difference between the disputants because the point they

quarreled over was unreal. In truth each side was right and each side was

wrong.

It is necessary, we see, that the balance should be held even. An absolute

license is bad; an absolute abstinence--even though some by nature or

circumstances are urgently called to adopt it--is also bad. They are both

alike away from the gracious equilibrium of Nature. And the force, we see,

which naturally holds this balance even is the biological fact that the

act of sexual union is the satisfaction of the erotic needs, not of one

person, but of two persons.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] This view was an ambiguous improvement on the view, universally

prevalent, as Westermarck has shown, among primitive peoples, that the

sexual act involves indignity to a woman or depreciation of her only in so

far as she is the property of another person who is the really injured

party.

[93] This implicit contradiction has been acutely pointed out from the

religious side by the Rev. H. Northcote, _Christianity and Sex Problems_,

p. 53.

[94] It has already been necessary to discuss this point briefly in "The

Sexual Impulse in Women," vol. iii of these _Studies_.

[95] "Die Abstinentia Sexualis," _Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft_,

Nov., 1908.

[96] P. Janet, "La Maladie du Scrupule," _Revue Philosophique_, May, 1901.

[97] S. Freud, _Sexual-Probleme_, March, 1908. As Adele Schreiber also

points out (_Mutterschutz_, Jan., 1907, p. 30), it is not enough to prove

that abstinence is not dangerous; we have to remember that the spiritual

and physical energy used up in repressing this mighty instinct often

reduces a joyous and energetic nature to a weary and faded shadow.

Similarly, Helene Stöcker (_Die Liebe und die Frauen_, p. 105) says: "The

question whether abstinence is harmful is, to say the truth, a ridiculous

question. One needs to be no nervous specialist to know, as a matter of

course, that a life of happy love and marriage is the healthy life, and

its complete absence cannot fail to lead to severe psychic depression,

even if no direct physiological disturbances can be demonstrated."

[98] Max Flesch, "Ehe, Hygine und Sexuelle Moral," _Mutterschutz_, 1905,

Heft 7.

[99] See the Section on Touch in the fourth volume of these _Studies_.

[100] "I have had two years' close experience and connexion with the

Trappists," wrote Dr. Butterfield, of Natal (_British Medical Journal_,

Sept. 15, 1906, p. 668), "both as medical attendant and as being a

Catholic in creed myself. I have studied them and investigated their life,

habits and diet, and though I should be very backward in adopting it

myself, as not suited to me individually, the great bulk of them are in

absolute ideal health and strength, seldom ailing, capable of vast work,

mental and physical. Their life is very simple and very regular. A

healthier body of men and women, with perfect equanimity of temper--this

latter I lay great stress on--it would be difficult to find. Health beams

in their eyes and countenance and actions. Only in sickness or prolonged

journeys are they allowed any strong foods--meats, eggs, etc.--or any

alcohol."

[101] Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, p. 332.

[102] Rural life, as we have seen when discussing its relation to sexual

precocity, _is_ on one side the reverse of a safeguard against sexual

influences. But, on the other hand, in so far as it involves hard work and

simple living under conditions that are not nervously stimulating, it is

favorable to a considerably delayed sexual activity in youth and to a

relative continence. Ammon, in the course of his anthropological

investigations of Baden conscripts, found that sexual intercourse was rare

in the country before twenty, and even sexual emissions during sleep rare

before nineteen or twenty. It is said, also, he repeats, that no one has a

right to run after girls who does not yet carry a gun, and the elder lads

sometimes brutally ill-treat any younger boy found going about with a

girl. No doubt this is often preliminary to much license later.

[103] The numerical preponderance which celibate women teachers have now

gained in the American school system has caused much misgiving among many

sagacious observers, and is said to be unsatisfactory in its results on

the pupils of both sexes. A distinguished authority, Professor McKeen

Cattell ("The School and the Family," _Popular Science Monthly_, Jan.,

1909), referring to this preponderance of "devitalized and unsexed

spinsters," goes so far as to say that "the ultimate result of letting the

celibate female be the usual teacher has been such as to make it a

question whether it would not be an advantage to the country if the whole

school plant could be scrapped."

[104] Corre (_Les Criminels_, p. 351) mentions that of thirteen priests

convicted of crime, six were guilty of sexual attempts on children, and of

eighty-three convicted lay teachers, forty-eight had committed similar

offenses. This was at a time when lay teachers were in practice almost

compelled to live a celibate life; altered conditions have greatly

diminished this class of offense among them. Without going so far as

crime, many moral and religious men, clergymen and others, who have led

severely abstinent lives in youth, sometimes experience in middle age or

later the eruption of almost uncontrollable sexual impulses, normal or

abnormal. In women such manifestations are apt to take the form of

obsessional thoughts of sexual character, as e.g., the case

(_Comptes-Rendus Congrès International de Médecine_, Moscow, 1897, vol.

iv, p. 27) of a chaste woman who was compelled to think about and look at

the sexual organs of men.

[105] J.A. Godfrey, _The Science of Sex_, p. 138.

[106] See, e.g., Havelock Ellis, "St. Francis and Others," _Affirmations_.

CHAPTER VII.

PROSTITUTION.

I. _The Orgy:_--The Religious Origin of the Orgy--The Feast of

Fools--Recognition of the Orgy by the Greeks and Romans--The Orgy Among

Savages--The Drama--The Object Subserved by the Orgy.

II. _The Origin and Development of Prostitution:_--The Definition of

Prostitution--Prostitution Among Savages--The Conditions Under Which

Professional Prostitution Arises--Sacred Prostitution--The Rite of

Mylitta--The Practice of Prostitution to Obtain a Marriage Portion--The

Rise of Secular Prostitution in Greece--Prostitution in the East--India,

China, Japan, etc.--Prostitution in Rome--The Influence of Christianity on

Prostitution--The Effort to Combat Prostitution--The Mediæval Brothel--The

Appearance of the Courtesan--Tullia D'Aragona--Veronica Franco--Ninon de

Lenclos--Later Attempts to Eradicate Prostitution--The Regulation of

Prostitution--Its Futility Becoming Recognized.

III. _The Causes of Prostitution:_--Prostitution as a Part of the Marriage

System--The Complex Causation of Prostitution--The Motives Assigned by

Prostitutes--(1) Economic Factor of Prostitution--Poverty Seldom the Chief

Motive for Prostitution--But Economic Pressure Exerts a Real

Influence--The Large Proportion of Prostitutes Recruited from Domestic

Service--Significance of This Fact--(2) The Biological Factor of

Prostitution--The So-called Born-Prostitute--Alleged Identity with the

Born-Criminal--The Sexual Instinct in Prostitutes--The Physical and

Psychic Characters of Prostitutes--(3) Moral Necessity as a Factor in the

Existence of Prostitution--The Moral Advocates of Prostitution--The Moral

Attitude of Christianity Towards Prostitution--The Attitude of

Protestantism--Recent Advocates of the Moral Necessity of

Prostitution--(4) Civilizational Value as a Factor of Prostitution--The

Influence of Urban Life--The Craving for Excitement--Why Servant-girls

so Often Turn to Prostitution--The Small Part Played by

Seduction--Prostitutes Come Largely from the Country--The Appeal of

Civilization Attracts Women to Prostitution--The Corresponding Attraction

Felt by Men--The Prostitute as Artist and Leader of Fashion--The Charm of

Vulgarity.

IV. _The Present Social Attitude Towards Prostitution:_--The Decay of the

Brothel--The Tendency to the Humanization of Prostitution--The Monetary

Aspects of Prostitution--The Geisha--The Hetaira--The Moral Revolt

Against Prostitution--Squalid Vice Based on Luxurious Virtue--The Ordinary

Attitude Towards Prostitutes--Its Cruelty Absurd--The Need of Reforming

Prostitution--The Need of Reforming Marriage--These These Two Needs

Closely Correlated--The Dynamic Relationships Involved.

_I. The Orgy_.

Traditional morality, religion, and established convention combine to

promote not only the extreme of rigid abstinence but also that of reckless

license. They preach and idealize the one extreme; they drive those who

cannot accept it to adopt the opposite extreme. In the great ages of

religion it even happens that the severity of the rule of abstinence is

more or less deliberately tempered by the permission for occasional

outbursts of license. We thus have the orgy, which flourished in mediæval

days and is, indeed, in its largest sense, a universal manifestation,

having a function to fulfil in every orderly and laborious civilization,

built up on natural energies that are bound by more or less inevitable

restraints.

The consideration of the orgy, it may be said, lifts us beyond the merely

sexual sphere, into a higher and wider region which belongs to religion.

The Greek _orgeia_ referred originally to ritual things done with a

religious purpose, though later, when dances of Bacchanals and the like

lost their sacred and inspiring character, the idea was fostered by

Christianity that such things were immoral.[107] Yet Christianity was

itself in its origin an orgy of the higher spiritual activities released

from the uncongenial servitude of classic civilization, a great festival

of the poor and the humble, of the slave and the sinner. And when, with

the necessity for orderly social organization, Christianity had ceased to

be this it still recognized, as Paganism had done, the need for an

occasional orgy. It appears that in 743 at a Synod held in Hainault

reference was made to the February debauch (_de Spurcalibus in februario_)

as a pagan practice; yet it was precisely this pagan festival which was

embodied in the accepted customs of the Christian Church as the chief orgy

of the ecclesiastical year, the great Carnival prefixed to the long fast

of Lent. The celebration on Shrove Tuesday and the previous Sunday

constituted a Christian Bacchanalian festival in which all classes joined.

The greatest freedom and activity of physical movement was encouraged;

"some go about naked without shame, some crawl on all fours, some on

stilts, some imitate animals."[108] As time went on the Carnival lost its

most strongly marked Bacchanalian features, but it still retains its

essential character as a permitted and temporary relaxation of the tension

of customary restraints and conventions. The Mediæval Feast of Fools--a

New Year's Revel well established by the twelfth century, mainly in

France--presented an expressive picture of a Christian orgy in its extreme

form, for here the most sacred ceremonies of the Church became the subject

of fantastic parody. The Church, according to Nietzsche's saying, like all

wise legislators, recognized that where great impulses and habits have to

be cultivated, intercalary days must be appointed in which these impulses

and habits may be denied, and so learn to hunger anew.[109] The clergy

took the leading part in these folk-festivals, for to the men of that age,

as Méray remarks, "the temple offered the complete notes of the human

gamut; they found there the teaching of all duties, the consolation of all

sorrows, the satisfaction of all joys. The sacred festivals of mediæval

Christianity were not a survival from Roman times; they leapt from the

very heart of Christian society."[110] But, as Méray admits, all great and

vigorous peoples, of the East and the West, have found it necessary

sometimes to play with their sacred things.

Among the Greeks and Romans this need is everywhere visible, not only in

their comedy and their literature generally, but in everyday life. As

Nietzsche truly remarks (in his _Geburt der Tragödie_) the Greeks

recognized all natural impulses, even those that are seemingly unworthy,

and safeguarded them from working mischief by providing channels into

which, on special days and in special rites, the surplus of wild energy

might harmlessly flow. Plutarch, the last and most influential of the

Greek moralists, well says, when advocating festivals (in his essay "On

the Training of Children"), that "even in bows and harps we loosen their

strings that we may bend and wind them up again." Seneca, perhaps the most

influential of Roman if not of European moralists, even recommended

occasional drunkenness. "Sometimes," he wrote in his _De Tranquillilate_,

"we ought to come even to the point of intoxication, not for the purpose

of drowning ourselves but of sinking ourselves deep in wine. For it washes

away cares and raises our spirits from the lowest depths. The inventor of

wine is called _Liber_ because he frees the soul from the servitude of

care, releases it from slavery, quickens it, and makes it bolder for all

undertakings." The Romans were a sterner and more serious people than the

Greeks, but on that very account they recognized the necessity of

occasionally relaxing their moral fibres in order to preserve their tone,

and encouraged the prevalence of festivals which were marked by much more

abandonment than those of Greece. When these festivals began to lose

their moral sanction and to fall into decay the decadence of Rome had

begun.

All over the world, and not excepting the most primitive savages--for even

savage life is built up on systematic constraints which sometimes need

relaxation--the principle of the orgy is recognized and accepted. Thus

Spencer and Gillen describe[111] the Nathagura or fire-ceremony of the

Warramunga tribe of Central Australia, a festival taken part in by both

sexes, in which all the ordinary rules of social life are broken, a kind

of Saturnalia in which, however, there is no sexual license, for sexual

license is, it need scarcely be said, no essential part of the orgy, even

when the orgy lightens the burden of sexual constraints. In a widely

different part of the world, in British Columbia, the Salish Indians,

according to Hill Tout,[112] believed that, long before the whites came,

their ancestors observed a Sabbath or seventh day ceremony for dancing and

praying, assembling at sunrise and dancing till noon. The Sabbath, or

periodically recurring orgy,--not a day of tension and constraint but a

festival of joy, a rest from all the duties of everyday life,--has, as we

know, formed an essential part of many of the orderly ancient

civilizations on which our own has been built;[113] it is highly probable

that the stability of these ancient civilizations was intimately

associated with their recognition of the need of a Sabbath orgy. Such

festivals are, indeed, as Crawley observes, processes of purification and

reinvigoration, the effort to put off "the old man" and put on "the new

man," to enter with fresh energy on the path of everyday life.[114]

The orgy is an institution which by no means has its significance only for

the past. On the contrary, the high tension, the rigid routine, the gray

monotony of modern life insistently call for moments of organic relief,

though the precise form that that orgiastic relief takes must necessarily

change with other social changes. As Wilhelm von Humboldt said, "just as

men need suffering in order to become strong so they need joy in order to

become good." Charles Wagner, insisting more recently (in his _Jeunesse_)

on the same need of joy in our modern life, regrets that dancing in the

old, free, and natural manner has gone out of fashion or become

unwholesome. Dancing is indeed the most fundamental and primitive form of

the orgy, and that which most completely and healthfully fulfils its

object. For while it is undoubtedly, as we see even among animals, a

process by which sexual tumescence is accomplished,[115] it by no means

necessarily becomes focused in sexual detumescence but it may itself

become a detumescent discharge of accumulated energy. It was on this

account that, at all events in former days, the clergy in Spain, on moral

grounds, openly encouraged the national passion for dancing. Among

cultured people in modern times, the orgy tends to take on a purely

cerebral form, which is less wholesome because it fails to lead to

harmonious discharge along motor channels. In these comparatively passive

forms, however, the orgy tends to become more and more pronounced under

the conditions of civilization. Aristotle's famous statement concerning

the function of tragedy as "purgation" seems to be a recognition of the

beneficial effects of the orgy.[116] Wagner's music-dramas appeal

powerfully to this need; the theatre, now as ever, fulfils a great

function of the same kind, inherited from the ancient days when it was the

ordered expression of a sexual festival.[117] The theatre, indeed, tends

at the present time to assume a larger importance and to approximate to

the more serious dramatic performances of classic days by being

transferred to the day-time and the open-air. France has especially taken

the initiative in these performances, analogous to the Dionysiac festivals

of antiquity and the Mysteries and Moralities of the Middle Ages. The

movement began some years ago at Orange. In 1907 there were, in France, as

many as thirty open-air theatres ("Théâtres de la Nature," "Théâtres du

Soleil," etc.,) while it is in Marseilles that the first formal open-air

theatre has been erected since classic days.[118] In England, likewise,

there has been a great extension of popular interest in dramatic

performances, and the newly instituted Pageants, carried out and taken

part in by the population of the region commemorated in the Pageant, are

festivals of the same character. In England, however, at the present time,

the real popular orgiastic festivals are the Bank holidays, with which may

be associated the more occasional celebrations, "Maffekings," etc., often

called out by comparatively insignificant national events but still

adequate to arouse orgiastic emotions as genuine as those of antiquity,

though they are lacking in beauty and religious consecration. It is easy

indeed for the narrowly austere person to view such manifestations with a

supercilious smile, but in the eyes of the moralist and the philosopher

these orgiastic festivals exert a salutary and preservative function. In

every age of dull and monotonous routine--and all civilization involves

such routine--many natural impulses and functions tend to become

suppressed, atrophied, or perverted. They need these moments of joyous

exercise and expression, moments in which they may not necessarily attain

their full activity but in which they will at all events be able, as

Cyples expresses it, to rehearse their great possibilities.[119]

_II. The Origin and Development of Prostitution_.

The more refined forms of the orgy flourish in civilization, although on

account of their mainly cerebral character they are not the most

beneficent or the most effective. The more primitive and muscular forms of

the orgy tend, on the other hand, under the influence of civilization, to

fall into discredit and to be so far as possible suppressed altogether. It

is partly in this way that civilization encourages prostitution. For the

orgy in its primitive forms, forbidden to show itself openly and

reputably, seeks the darkness, and allying itself with a fundamental

instinct to which civilized society offers no complete legitimate

satisfaction, it firmly entrenches itself in the very centre of civilized

life, and thereby constitutes a problem of immense difficulty and

importance.[120]

It is commonly said that prostitution has existed always and everywhere.

That statement is far from correct. A kind of amateur prostitution is

occasionally found among savages, but usually it is only when barbarism is

fully developed and is already approaching the stage of civilization that

well developed prostitution is found. It exists in a systematic form in

every civilization.

What is prostitution? There has been considerable discussion as to the

correct definition of prostitution.[121] The Roman Ulpian said that a

prostitute was one who openly abandons her body to a number of men without

choice, for money.[122] Not all modern definitions have been so

satisfactory. It is sometimes said a prostitute is a woman who gives

herself to numerous men. To be sound, however, a definition must be

applicable to both sexes alike and we should certainly hesitate to

describe a man who had sexual intercourse with many women as a prostitute.

The idea of venality, the intention to sell the favors of the body, is

essential to the conception of prostitution. Thus Guyot defines a

prostitute as "any person for whom sexual relationships are subordinated

to gain."[123] It is not, however, adequate to define a prostitute simply

as a woman who sells her body. That is done every day by women who become

wives in order to gain a home and a livelihood, yet, immoral as this

conduct may be from any high ethical standpoint, it would be inconvenient

and even misleading to call it prostitution.[124] It is better, therefore,

to define a prostitute as a woman who temporarily sells her sexual favors

to various persons. Thus, according to Wharton's _Law-lexicon_ a

prostitute is "a woman who indiscriminately consorts with men for hire";

Bonger states that "those women are prostitutes who sell their bodies for

the exercise of sexual acts and make of this a profession";[125] Richard

again states that "a prostitute is a woman who publicly gives herself to

the first comer in return for a pecuniary remuneration."[126] As, finally,

the prevalence of homosexuality has led to the existence of male

prostitutes, the definition must be put in a form irrespective of sex, and

we may, therefore, say that a prostitute is a person who makes it a

profession to gratify the lust of various persons of the opposite sex or

the same sex.

It is essential that the act of prostitution should be habitually

performed with "various persons." A woman who gains her living by

being mistress to a man, to whom she is faithful, is not a

prostitute, although she often becomes one afterwards, and may

have been one before. The exact point at which a woman begins to

be a prostitute is a question of considerable importance in

countries in which prostitutes are subject to registration. Thus

in Berlin, not long ago, a girl who was mistress to a rich

cavalry officer and supported by him, during the illness of the

officer accidentally met a man whom she had formerly known, and

once or twice invited him to see her, receiving from him presents

in money. This somehow came to the knowledge of the police, and

she was arrested and sentenced to one day's imprisonment as an

unregistered prostitute. On appeal, however, the sentence was

annulled. Liszt, in his _Strafrecht_, lays it down that a girl

who obtains whole or part of her income from "fixed

relationships" is not practicing unchastity for gain in the sense

of the German law (_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Jahrgang 1,

Heft 9, p. 345).

It is not altogether easy to explain the origin of the systematized

professional prostitution with the existence of which we are familiar in

civilization. The amateur kind of prostitution which has sometimes been

noted among primitive peoples--the fact, that is, that a man may give a

woman a present in seeking to persuade her to allow him to have

intercourse with her--is really not prostitution as we understand it. The

present in such a case is merely part of a kind of courtship leading to a

temporary relationship. The woman more or less retains her social position

and is not forced to make an avocation of selling herself because

henceforth no other career is possible to her. When Cook came to New

Zealand his men found that the women were not impregnable, "but the terms

and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us,"

and according "to their notions the agreement was as innocent." The

consent of the woman's friends was necessary, and when the preliminaries

were settled it was also necessary to treat this "Juliet of a night" with

"the same delicacy as is here required with the wife for life, and the

lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this was violated was

sure to be disappointed."[127] In some of the Melanesian Islands, it is

said that women would sometimes become prostitutes, or on account of their

bad conduct be forced to become prostitutes for a time; they were not,

however, particularly despised, and when they had in this way accumulated

a certain amount of property they could marry well, after which it would

not be proper to refer to their former career.[128]

When prostitution first arises among a primitive people it sometimes

happens that little or no stigma is attached to it for the reason that the

community has not yet become accustomed to attach any special value to the

presence of virginity. Schurtz quotes from the old Arabic geographer

Al-Bekri some interesting remarks about the Slavs: "The women of the

Slavs, after they have married, are faithful to their husbands. If,

however, a young girl falls in love with a man she goes to him and

satisfies her passion. And if a man marries and finds his wife a virgin he

says to her: 'If you were worth anything men would have loved you, and you

would have chosen one who would have taken away your virginity.' Then he

drives her away and renounces her." It is a feeling of this kind which,

among some peoples, leads a girl to be proud of the presents she has

received from her lovers and to preserve them as a dowry for her marriage,

knowing that her value will thus be still further heightened. Even among

the Southern Slavs of modern Europe, who have preserved much of the

primitive sexual freedom, this freedom, as Krauss, who has minutely

studied the manners and customs of these peoples, declares, is

fundamentally different from vice, licentiousness, or immodesty.[129]

Prostitution tends to arise, as Schurtz has pointed out, in every society

in which early marriage is difficult and intercourse outside marriage is

socially disapproved. "Venal women everywhere appear as soon as the free

sexual intercourse of young people is repressed, without the necessary

consequences being impeded by unusually early marriages."[130] The

repression of sexual intimacies outside marriage is a phenomenon of

civilization, but it is not itself by any means a measure of a people's

general level, and may, therefore, begin to appear at an early period. But

it is important to remember that the primitive and rudimentary forms of

prostitution, when they occur, are merely temporary, and

frequently--though not invariably--involve no degrading influence on the

woman in public estimation, sometimes indeed increasing her value as a

wife. The woman who sells herself for money purely as a professional

matter, without any thought of love or passion, and who, by virtue of her

profession, belongs to a pariah class definitely and rigidly excluded from

the main body of her sex, is a phenomenon which can seldom be found except

in developed civilization. It is altogether incorrect to speak of

prostitutes as a mere survival from primitive times.

On the whole, while among savages sexual relationships are sometimes free

before marriage, as well as on the occasion of special festivals, they are

rarely truly promiscuous and still more rarely venal. When savage women

nowadays sell themselves, or are sold by their husbands, it has usually

been found that we are concerned with the contamination of European

civilization.

The definite ways in which professional prostitution may arise are no

doubt many.[131] We may assent to the general principle, laid down by

Schurtz, that whenever the free union of young people is impeded under

conditions in which early marriage is also difficult prostitution must

certainly arise. There are, however, different ways in which this

principle may take shape. So far as our western civilization is

concerned--the civilization, that is to say, which has its cradle in the

Mediterranean basin--it would seem that the origin of prostitution is to

be found primarily in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver of

social traditions, preserving in a transformed shape a primitive freedom

that was passing out of general social life.[132] The typical example is

that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the

temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every woman once in her

life had to come and give herself to the first stranger who threw a coin

in her lap, in worship of the goddess. The money could not be refused,

however small the amount, but it was given as an offertory to the temple,

and the woman, having followed the man and thus made oblation to Mylitta,

returned home and lived chastely ever afterwards.[133] Very similar

customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus

and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece, where

the Temple of Aphrodite on the fort at Corinth possessed over a thousand

hierodules, dedicated to the service of the goddess, from time to time, as

Strabo states, by those who desired to make thank-offering for mercies

vouchsafed to them. Pindar refers to the hospitable young Corinthian women

ministrants whose thoughts often turn towards Ourania Aphrodite[134] in

whose temple they burned incense; and Athenæus mentions the importance

that was attached to the prayers of the Corinthian prostitutes in any

national calamity.[135]

We seem here to be in the presence, not merely of a religiously preserved

survival of a greater sexual freedom formerly existing,[136] but of a

specialized and ritualized development of that primitive cult of the

generative forces of Nature which involves the belief that all natural

fruitfulness is associated with, and promoted by, acts of human sexual

intercourse which thus acquire a religious significance. At a later stage

acts of sexual intercourse having a religious significance become

specialized and localized in temples, and by a rational transition of

ideas it becomes believed that such acts of sexual intercourse in the

service of the god, or with persons devoted to the god's service, brought

benefits to the individual who performed them, more especially, if a

woman, by insuring her fertility. Among primitive peoples generally this

conception is embodied mainly in seasonal festivals, but among the peoples

of Western Asia who had ceased to be primitive, and among whom traditional

priestly and hieratic influences had acquired very great influence, the

earlier generative cult had thus, it seems probable, naturally changed

its form in becoming attached to the temples.[137]

The theory that religious prostitution developed, as a general

rule, out of the belief that the generative activity of human

beings possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting

the fertility of Nature generally seems to have been first set

forth by Mannhardt in his _Antike Wald- und Feldkulte_ (pp. 283

et seq.). It is supported by Dr. F.S. Krauss ("Beischlafausübung

als Kulthandlung," _Anthropophyteia_, vol. iii, p. 20), who

refers to the significant fact that in Baruch's time, at a period

long anterior to Herodotus, sacred prostitution took place under

the trees. Dr. J.G. Frazer has more especially developed this

conception of the origin of sacred prostitution in his _Adonis,

Attis, Osiris_. He thus summarizes his lengthy discussion: "We

may conclude that a great Mother Goddess, the personification of

all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under

different names, but with a substantial similarity of myth and

ritual by many peoples of western Asia; that associated with her

was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with

whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed

essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their

several kind; and further, that the fabulous union of the divine

pair was simulated, and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the

real, though temporary, union of the human sexes at the sanctuary

of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness

of the ground and the increase of man and beast. In course of

time, as the institution of individual marriage grew in favor,

and the old communism fell more and more into discredit, the

revival of the ancient practice, even for a single occasion in a

woman's life, became ever more repugnant to the moral sense of

the people, and accordingly they resorted to various expedients

for evading in practice the obligation which they still

acknowledged in theory.... But while the majority of women thus

contrived to observe the form of religion without sacrificing

their virtue, it was still thought necessary to the general

welfare that a certain number of them should discharge the old

obligation in the old way. These became prostitutes, either for

life or for a term of years, at one of the temples: dedicated to

the service of religion, they were invested with a sacred

character, and their vocation, far from being deemed infamous,

was probably long regarded by the laity as an exercise of more

than common virtue, and rewarded with a tribute of mixed wonder,

reverence, and pity, not unlike that which in some parts of the

world is still paid to women who seek to honor their Creator in a

different way by renouncing the natural functions of their sex

and the tenderest relations of humanity" (J.G. Frazer, _Adonis,

Attis, Osiris_, 1907, pp. 23 et seq.).