The man's part in the art of love is, however, by no means easy. That is

not always realized by the women who complain of his lack of skill in

playing it. Although a man has not to cultivate the same natural duplicity

as a woman, it is necessary that he should possess a considerable power of

divination. He is not well prepared for that, because the traditional

masculine virtue is force rather than insight. The male's work in the

world, we are told, is domination, and it is by such domination that the

female is attracted. There is an element of truth in that doctrine, an

element of truth which may well lead astray the man who too exclusively

relies upon it in the art of love. Violence is bad in every art, and in

the erotic art the female desires to be won to love and not to be ordered

to love. That is fundamental. We sometimes see the matter so stated as if

the objection to force and domination in love constituted some quite new

and revolutionary demand of the "modern woman." That is, it need scarcely

be said, the result of ignorance. The art of love, being an art that

Nature makes, is the same now as in essentials it has always been,[407]

and it was well established before woman came into existence. That it has

not always been very skilfully played is another matter. And, so far as

the man is concerned, it is this very tradition of masculine predominance

which has contributed to the difficulty of playing it skilfully. The woman

admires the male's force; she even wishes herself to be forced to the

things that she altogether desires; and yet she revolts from any exertion

of force outside that narrow circle, either before the boundary of it is

reached or after the boundary is passed. Thus the man's position is really

more difficult than the women who complain of his awkwardness in love are

always ready to admit. He must cultivate force, not only in the world but

even for display in the erotic field; he must be able to divine the

moments when, in love, force is no longer force because his own will is

his partner's will; he must, at the same time, hold himself in complete

restraint lest he should fall into the fatal error of yielding to his own

impulse of domination; and all this at the very moment when his emotions

are least under control. We need scarcely be surprised that of the myriads

who embark on the sea of love, so few women, so very few men, come safely

into port.

It may still seem to some that in dwelling on the laws that guide the

erotic life, if that life is to be healthy and complete, we have wandered

away from the consideration of the sexual instinct in its relationship to

society. It may therefore be desirable to return to first principles and

to point out that we are still clinging to the fundamental facts of the

personal and social life. Marriage, as we have seen reason to believe, is

a great social institution; procreation, which is, on the public side, its

supreme function, is a great social end. But marriage and procreation are

both based on the erotic life. If the erotic life is not sound, then

marriage is broken up, practically if not always formally, and the process

of procreation is carried out under unfavorable conditions or not at all.

This social and personal importance of the erotic life, though, under the

influence of a false morality and an equally false modesty, it has

sometimes been allowed to fall into the background in stages of artificial

civilization, has always been clearly realized by those peoples who have

vitally grasped the relationships of life. Among most uncivilized races

there appear to be few or no "sexually frigid" women. It is little to the

credit of our own "civilization" that it should be possible for physicians

to-day to assert, even with the faintest plausibility, that there are some

25 per cent. of women who may thus be described.

The whole sexual structure of the world is built up on the general fact

that the intimate contact of the male and female who have chosen each

other is mutually pleasurable. Below this general fact is the more

specific fact that in the normal accomplishment of the act of sexual

consummation the two partners experience the acute gratification of

simultaneous orgasm. Herein, it has been said, lies the secret of love. It

is the very basis of love, the condition of the healthy exercise of the

sexual functions, and, in many cases, it seems probable, the condition

also of fertilization.

Even savages in a very low degree of culture are sometimes

patient and considerate in evoking and waiting for the signs of

sexual desire in their females. (I may refer to the significant

case of the Caroline Islanders, as described by Kubary in his

ethnographic study of that people and quoted in volume iv of

these _Studies_, "Sexual Selection in Man," Sect. III.) In

Catholic days theological influence worked wholesomely in the

same direction, although the theologians were so keen to detect

the mortal sin of lust. It is true that the Catholic insistence

on the desirability of simultaneous orgasm was largely due to the

mistaken notion that to secure conception it was necessary that

there should be "insemination" on the part of the wife as well as

of the husband, but that was not the sole source of the

theological view. Thus Zacchia discusses whether a man ought to

continue with his wife until she has the orgasm and feels

satisfied, and he decides that that is the husband's duty;

otherwise the wife falls into danger either of experiencing the

orgasm during sleep, or, more probably, by self-excitation, "for

many women, when their desires have not been satisfied by coitus,

place one thigh on the other, pressing and rubbing them together

until the orgasm occurs, in the belief that if they abstain from

using the hands they have committed no sin." Some theologians, he

adds, favor that belief, notably Hurtado de Mendoza and Sanchez,

and he further quotes the opinion of the latter that women who

have not been satisfied in coitus are liable to become hysterical

or melancholic (_Zacchiæ Quæstionum Medico-legalium Opus_, lib.

vii, tit. iii, quæst. VI). In the same spirit some theologians

seem to have permitted _irrumatio_ (without ejaculation), so long

as it is only the preliminary to the normal sexual act.

Nowadays physicians have fully confirmed the belief of Sanchez.

It is well recognized that women in whom, from whatever cause,

acute sexual excitement occurs with frequency without being

followed by the due natural relief of orgasm are liable to

various nervous and congestive symptoms which diminish their

vital effectiveness, and very possibly lead to a breakdown in

health. Kisch has described, as a cardiac neurosis of sexual

origin, a pathological tachycardia which is an exaggeration of

the physiological quick heart of sexual excitement. J. Inglis

Parsons (_British Medical Journal_, Oct. 22, 1904, p. 1062)

refers to the ovarian pain produced by strong unsatisfied sexual

excitement, often in vigorous unmarried women, and sometimes a

cause of great distress. An experienced Austrian gynæcologist

told Hirth (_Wege zur Heimat_, p. 613) that of every hundred

women who come to him with uterine troubles seventy suffered from

congestion of the womb, which he regarded as due to incomplete

coitus.

It is frequently stated that the evil of incomplete gratification

and absence of orgasm in women is chiefly due to male withdrawal,

that is to say _coitus interruptus_, in which the penis is

hastily withdrawn as soon as involuntary ejaculation is

impending; and it is sometimes said that the same widely

prevalent practice is also productive of slight or serious

results in the male (see, e.g., L.B. Bangs, _Transactions New

York Academy of Medicine_, vol. ix, 1893; D.S. Booth, "Coitus

Interruptus and Coitus Reservatus as Causes of Profound Neurosis

and Psychosis," _Alienist and Neurologist_, Nov., 1906; also,

_Alienist and Neurologist_, Oct., 1897, p. 588).

It is undoubtedly true that coitus interruptus, since it involves

sudden withdrawal on the part of the man without reference to the

stage of sexual excitation which his partner may have reached,

cannot fail to produce frequently an injurious nervous effect on

the woman, though the injurious effect on the man, who obtains

ejaculation, is little or none. But the practice is so widespread

that it cannot be regarded as necessarily involving this evil

result. There can, I am assured, be no doubt whatever that

Blumreich is justified in his statement (Senator and Kaminer,

_Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage_, vol. ii, p. 783)

that "interrupted coitus is injurious to the genital system of

those women only who are disturbed in their sensation of delight

by this form of cohabitation, in whom the orgasm is not produced,

and who continue for hours subsequently to be tormented by

feelings of an unsatisfied desire." Equally injurious effects

follow in normal coitus when the man's orgasm occurs too soon.

"These phenomena, therefore," he concludes, "are not

characteristic of interrupted coitus, but consequences of an

imperfectly concluded sexual cohabitation as such." Kisch,

likewise, in his elaborate and authoritative work on _The Sexual

Life of Woman_, also states that the question of the evil results

of _coitus interruptus_ in women is simply a question of whether

or not they receive sexual satisfaction. (Cf. also Fürbringer,

_Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, pp. 232 _et

seq._) This is clearly the most reasonable view to take

concerning what is the simplest, the most widespread, and

certainly the most ancient of the methods of preventing

conception. In the Book of Genesis we find it practiced by Onan,

and to come down to modern times, in the sixteenth century it

seems to have been familiar to French ladies, who, according to

Brantôme, enjoined it on their lovers.

Coitus reservatus,--in which intercourse is maintained even for

very long periods, during which the woman may have orgasm several

times while the man succeeds in holding back orgasm,--so far from

being injurious to the woman, is probably the form of coitus

which gives her the maximum of gratification and relief. For most

men, however, it seems probable that this self-control over the

processes leading to the involuntary act of detumescence is

difficult to acquire, while in weak, nervous, and erethic persons

it is impossible. It is, however, a desirable condition for

completely adequate coitus, and in the East this is fully

recognized, and the aptitude carefully cultivated. Thus W.D.

Sutherland states ("Einiges über das Alltagsleben und die

Volksmedizin unter den Bauern Britischostindiens," _Münchener

Medizinische Wochenschrift_, No. 12, 1906) that the Hindu smokes

and talks during intercourse in order to delay orgasm, and

sometimes applies an opium paste to the glans of the penis for

the same purpose. (See also vol. iii of these _Studies_, "The

Sexual Impulse in Women.") Some authorities have, indeed, stated

that the prolongation of the act of coitus is injurious in its

effect on the male. Thus R.W. Taylor (_Practical Treatise on

Sexual Disorders_, third ed., p. 121) states that it tends to

cause atonic impotence, and Löwenfeld (_Sexualleben und

Nervenleiden_, p. 74) thinks that the swift and unimpeded

culmination of the sexual act is necessary in order to preserve

the vigor of the reflex reactions. This is probably true of

extreme and often repeated cases of indefinite prolongation of

pronounced erection without detumescence, but it is not true

within fairly wide limits in the case of healthy persons.

Prolonged _coitus reservatus_ was a practice of the complex

marriage system of the Oneida community, and I was assured by the

late Noyes Miller, who had spent the greater part of his life in

the community, that the practice had no sort of evil result.

_Coitus reservatus_ was erected into a principle in the Oneida

community. Every man in the community was theoretically the

husband of every woman, but every man was not free to have

children with every woman. Sexual initiation took place soon

after puberty in the case of boys, some years later in the case

of girls, by a much older person of the opposite sex. In

intercourse the male inserted his penis into the vagina and

retained it there for even an hour without emission, though

orgasm took place in the woman. There was usually no emission in

the case of the man, even after withdrawal, and he felt no need

of emission. The social feeling of the community was a force on

the side of this practice, the careless, unskilful men being

avoided by women, while the general romantic sentiment of

affection for all the women in the community was also a force.

Masturbation was unknown, and no irregular relations took place

with persons outside the community. The practice was maintained

for thirty years, and was finally abandoned, not on its demerits,

but in deference to the opinions of the outside world. Mr. Miller

admitted that the practice became more difficult in ordinary

marriage, which favors a more mechanical habit of intercourse.

The information received from Mr. Miller is supplemented in a

pamphlet entitled _Male Continence_ (the name given to _coitus

reservatus_ in the community), written in 1872 by the founder,

John Humphrey Noyes. The practice is based, he says, on the fact

that sexual intercourse consists of two acts, a social and a

propagative, and that if propagation is to be scientific there

must be no confusion of these two acts, and procreation must

never be involuntary. It was in 1844, he states, that this idea

occurred to him as a result of a resolve to abstain from sexual

intercourse in consequence of his wife's delicate health and

inability to bear healthy children, and in his own case he found

the practice "a great deliverance. It made a happy household." He

points out that the chief members of the Oneida community

"belonged to the most respectable families in Vermont, had been

educated in the best schools of New England morality and

refinement, and were, by the ordinary standards, irreproachable

in their conduct so far as sexual matters are concerned, till

they deliberately commenced, in 1846, the experiment of a new

state of society, on principles which they had been long maturing

and were prepared to defend before the World." In relation to

male continence, therefore, Noyes thought the community might

fairly be considered "the Committee of Providence to test its

value in actual life." He states that a careful medical

comparison of the statistics of the community had shown that the

rate of nervous disease in the community was considerably below

the average outside, and that only two cases of nervous disorder

had occurred which could be traced with any probability to a

misuse of male continence. This has been confirmed by Van de

Warker, who studied forty-two women of the community without

finding any undue prevalence of reproductive diseases, nor could

he find any diseased condition attributable to the sexual habits

of the community (cf. C. Reed, _Text-Book of Gynecology_, 1901,

p. 9).

Noyes believed that "male continence" had never previously been a

definitely recognized practice based on theory, though there

might have been occasional approximation to it. This is probably

true if the coitus is _reservatus_ in the full sense, with

complete absence of emission. Prolonged coitus, however,

permitting the woman to have orgasm more than once, while the man

has none, has long been recognized. Thus in the seventeenth

century Zacchia discussed whether such a practice is legitimate

(_Zacchiæ Quæstionum Opus_, ed. of 1688, lib. vii, tit. iii,

quæst. VI). In modern times it is occasionally practiced, without

any theory, and is always appreciated by the woman, while it

appears to have no bad effect on the man. In such a case it will

happen that the act of coitus may last for an hour and a quarter

or even longer, the maximum of the woman's pleasure not being

reached until three-quarters of an hour have passed; during this

period the woman will experience orgasm some four or five times,

the man only at the end. It may occasionally happen that a little

later the woman again experiences desire, and intercourse begins

afresh in the same way. But after that she is satisfied, and

there is no recurrence of desire.

It may be desirable at this point to refer briefly to the chief

variations in the method of effecting coitus in their

relationship to the art of love and the attainment of adequate

and satisfying detumescence.

The primary and essential characteristic of the specifically

human method of coitus is the fact that it takes place face to

face. The fact that in what is usually considered the typically

normal method of coitus the woman lies supine and the man above

her is secondary. Psychically, this front-to-front attitude

represents a great advance over the quadrupedal method. The two

partners reveal to each other the most important, the most

beautiful, the most expressive sides of themselves, and thus

multiply the mutual pleasure and harmony of the intimate act of

union. Moreover, this face-to-face attitude possesses a great

significance, in the fact that it is the outward sign that the

human couple has outgrown the animal sexual attitude of the

hunter seizing his prey in the act of flight, and content to

enjoy it in that attitude, from behind. The human male may be

said to retain the same attitude, but the female has turned

round; she has faced her partner and approached him, and so

symbolizes her deliberate consent to the act of union.

The human variations in the exercise of coitus, both individual

and national, are, however, extremely numerous. "To be quite

frank," says Fürbringer (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease

in Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 213), "I can hardly think of

any combination which does not figure among my case-notes as

having been practiced by my patients." We must not too hastily

conclude that such variations are due to vicious training. That

is far from being the case. They often occur naturally and

spontaneously. Freud has properly pointed out (in the second

series of his _Beiträge zur Neurosenlehre_, "Bruchstück" etc.)

that we must not be too shocked even when the idea of _fellatio_

spontaneously presents itself to a woman, for that idea has a

harmless origin in the resemblance between the penis and the

nipple. Similarly, it may be added, the desire for

_cunnilinctus_, which seems to be much more often latently

present in women than is the desire for its performance in men,

has a natural analogy in the pleasure of suckling, a pleasure

which is itself indeed often erotically tinged (see vol. iv of

these _Studies_, "Sexual Selection in Man," Touch, Sect. III).

Every variation in this matter, remarks Remy de Gourmont

(_Physique de l'Amour_, p. 264) partakes of the sin of luxury,

and some of the theologians have indeed considered any position

in coitus but that which is usually called normal in Europe as a

mortal sin. Other theologians, however, regarded such variations

as only venial sins, provided ejaculation took place in the

vagina, just as some theologians would permit _irrumatio_ as a

preliminary to coitus, provided there was no ejaculation. Aquinas

took a serious view of the deviations from normal intercourse;

Sanchez was more indulgent, especially in view of his doctrine,

derived from the Greek and Arabic natural philosophers, that the

womb can attract the sperm, so that the natural end may be

attained even in unusual positions.

Whatever difference of opinion there may have been among ancient

theologians, it is well recognized by modern physicians that

variations from the ordinary method of coitus are desirable in

special cases. Thus Kisch points out (_Sterilität des Weibes_, p.

107) that in some cases it is only possible for the woman to

experience sexual excitement when coitus takes place in the

lateral position, or in the _a posteriori_ position, or when the

usual position is reversed; and in his _Sexual Life of Woman_,

also, Kisch recommends several variations of position for coitus.

Adler points out (op. cit., pp. 151, 186) the value of the same

positions in some cases, and remarks that such variations often

call forth latent sexual feelings as by a charm. Such cases are

indeed, by no means infrequent, the advantage of the unusual

position being due either to physical or psychic causes, and the

discovery of the right variation is sometimes found in a merely

playful attempt. It has occasionally happened, also, that when

intercourse has habitually taken place in an abnormal position,

no satisfaction is experienced by the woman until the normal

position is adopted. The only fairly common variation of coitus

which meets with unqualified disapproval is that in the erect

posture. (See e.g., Hammond, op. cit. pp. 257 et seq.)

Lucretius specially recommended the quadrupedal variation of

coitus (Bk. iv, 1258), and Ovid describes (end of Bk. iii of the

_Ars Amatoria_) what he regards as agreeable variations, giving

the preference, as the easiest and simplest method, to that in

which the woman lies half supine on her side. Perhaps, however,

the variation which is nearest to the normal attitude and which

has most often and most completely commended itself is that

apparently known to Arabic erotic writers as _dok el arz_, in

which the man is seated and his partner is astride his thighs,

embracing his body with her legs and his neck with her arms,

while he embraces her waist; this is stated in the Arabic

_Perfumed Garden_ to be the method preferred by most women.

The other most usual variation is the inverse normal position in

which the man is supine, and the woman adapts herself to this

position, which permits of several modifications obviously

advantageous, especially when the man is much larger than his

partner. The Christian as well as the Mahommedan theologians

appear, indeed, to have been generally opposed to this superior

position of the female, apparently, it would seem, because they

regarded the literal subjection of the male which it involves as

symbolic of a moral subjection. The testimony of many people

to-day, however, is decidedly in favor of this position, more

especially as regards the woman, since it enables her to obtain a

better adjustment and greater control of the process, and so

frequently to secure sexual satisfaction which she may find

difficult or impossible in the normal position.

The theologians seem to have been less unfavorably disposed to

the position normal among quadrupeds, _a posteriori_, though the

old Penitentials were inclined to treat it severely, the

Penitential of Angers prescribing forty days penance, and

Egbert's three years, if practiced habitually. (It is discussed

by J. Petermann, "Venus Aversa," _Sexual-Probleme_, Feb., 1909).

There are good reasons why in many cases this position should be

desirable, more especially from the point of view of women, who

indeed not infrequently prefer it. It must be always remembered,

as has already been pointed out, that in the progress from

anthropoid to man it is the female, not the male, whose method of

coitus has been revolutionized. While, however, the obverse human

position represents a psychic advance, there has never been a

complete physical readjustment of the female organs to the

obverse method. More especially, in Adler's opinion (op. cit.,

pp. 117-119), the position of the clitoris is such that, as a

rule, it is more easily excited by coitus from behind than from

in front. A more recent writer, Klotz, in his book, _Der Mensch

ein Vierfüssler_ (1908), even takes the too extreme position that

the quadrupedal method of coitus, being the only method that

insures due contact with the clitoris, is the natural human

method. It must, however, be admitted that the posterior mode of

coitus is not only a widespread, but a very important variation,

in either of its two most important forms: the Pompeiian method,

in which the woman bends forwards and the man approaches behind,

or the method described by Boccaccio, in which the man is supine

and the woman astride.

_Fellatio_ and _cunnilinctus_, while they are not strictly

methods of coitus, in so far as they do not involve the

penetration of the penis into the vagina, are very widespread as

preliminaries, or as vicarious forms of coitus, alike among

civilized and uncivilized peoples. Thus, in India, I am told that

_fellatio_ is almost universal in households, and regarded as a

natural duty towards the paterfamilias. As regards _cunnilinctus_

Max Dessoir has stated (_Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_,

1894, Heft 5) that the superior Berlin prostitutes say that about

a quarter of their clients desire to exercise this, and that in

France and Italy the proportion is higher; the number of women

who find _cunnilinctus_ agreeable is without doubt much greater.

Intercourse _per anum_ must also be regarded as a vicarious form

of coitus. It appears to be not uncommon, especially among the

lower social classes, and while most often due to the wish to

avoid conception, it is also sometimes practiced as a sexual

aberration, at the wish either of the man or the woman, the anus

being to some extent an erogenous zone.

The ethnic variations in method of coitus were briefly discussed

in volume v of these _Studies_, "The Mechanism of Detumescence,"

Section II. In all civilized countries, from the earliest times,

writers on the erotic art have formally and systematically set

forth the different positions for coitus. The earliest writing of

this kind now extant seems to be an Egyptian papyrus preserved at

Turin of the date B.C. 1300; in this, fourteen different

positions are represented. The Indians, according to Iwan Bloch,

recognize altogether forty-eight different positions; the _Ananga

Ranga_ describes thirty-two main forms. The Mohammedan _Perfumed

Garden_ describes forty forms, as well as six different kinds of

movement during coitus. The Eastern books of this kind are, on

the whole, superior to those that have been produced by the

Western world, not only by their greater thoroughness, but by the

higher spirit by which they have often been inspired.

The ancient Greek erotic writings, now all lost, in which the

modes of coitus were described, were nearly all attributed to

women. According to a legend recorded by Suidas, the earliest

writer of this kind was Astyanassa, the maid of Helen of Troy.

Elephantis, the poetess, is supposed to have enumerated nine

different postures. Numerous women of later date wrote on these

subjects, and one book is attributed to Polycrates, the sophist.

Aretino--who wrote after the influence of Christianity had

degraded erotic matters perilously near to that region of

pornography from which they are only to-day beginning to be

rescued--in his _Sonnetti Lussuriosi_ described twenty-six

different methods of coitus, each one accompanied by an

illustrative design by Giulio Romano, the chief among Raphael's

pupils. Veniero, in his _Puttana Errante_, described thirty-two

positions. More recently Forberg, the chief modern authority, has

enumerated ninety positions, but, it is said, only forty-eight

can, even on the most liberal estimate, be regarded as coming

within the range of normal variation.

The disgrace which has overtaken the sexual act, and rendered it

a deed of darkness, is doubtless largely responsible for the fact

that the chief time for its consummation among modern civilized

peoples is the darkness of the early night in stuffy bedrooms

when the fatigue of the day's labors is struggling with the

artificial stimulation produced by heavy meals and alcoholic

drinks. This habit is partly responsible for the indifference or

even disgust with which women sometimes view coitus.

Many more primitive peoples are wiser. The New Guinea Papuans of

Astrolabe Bay, according to Vahness (_Zeitschrift für

Ethnologie_, 1900, Heft 5, p. 414), though it must be remembered

that the association of the sexual act with darkness is much

older than Christianity, and connected with early religious

notions (cf. Hesiod, _Works and Days_, Bk. II), always have

sexual intercourse in the open air. The hard-working women of the

Gebvuka and Buru Islands, again, are too tired for coitus at

night; it is carried out in the day time under the trees, and the

Serang Islanders also have coitus in the woods (Ploss and

Bartels, Das _Weib_, Bk. i, Ch. XVII).

It is obviously impracticable to follow these examples in modern

cities, even if avocation and climate permitted. It is also

agreed that sexual intercourse should be followed by repose.

There seems to be little doubt, however, that the early morning

and the daylight are a more favorable time than the early night.

Conception should take place in the light, said Michelet

(_L'Amour_, p. 153); sexual intercourse in the darkness of night

is an act committed with a mere female animal; in the day-time it

is union with a loving and beloved individual person.

This has been widely recognized. The Greeks, as we gather from

Aristophanes in the _Archarnians_, regarded sunrise as the

appropriate time for coitus. The South Slavs also say that dawn

is the time for coitus. Many modern authorities have urged the

advantages of early morning coitus. Morning, said Roubaud

(_Traité de l'Impuissance_, pp. 151-3) is the time for coitus,

and even if desire is greater in the evening, pleasure is greater

in the morning. Osiander also advised early morning coitus, and

Venette, in an earlier century, discussing "at what hour a man

should amorously embrace his wife" (_La Génération de l'Homme_,

Part II, Ch. V), while thinking it is best to follow inclination,

remarks that "a beautiful woman looks better by sunlight than by

candlelight." A few authorities, like Burdach, have been content

to accept the custom of night coitus, and Busch (_Das

Geschlechtsleben des Weibes_, vol. i, p. 214) was inclined to

think the darkness of night the most "natural" time, while

Fürbringer (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in Relation

to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 217) thinks that early morning is

"occasionally" the best time.

To some, on the other hand, the exercise of sexual intercourse in

the sunlight and the open air seems so important that they are

inclined to elevate it to the rank of a religious exercise. I

quote from a communication on this point received from Australia:

"This shameful thing that must not be spoken of or done (except

in the dark) will some day, I believe, become the one religious

ceremony of the human race, in the spring. (Oh, what springs!)

People will have become very sane, well-bred, aristocratic (all

of them aristocrats), and on the whole opposed to rites and

superstitions, for they will have a perfect knowledge of the

past. The coition of lovers in the springtime will be the one

religious ceremony they will allow themselves. I have a vision

sometimes of the holy scene, but I am afraid it is too beautiful

to describe. 'The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is

ineffably beautiful, too fair to be remembered,' wrote the chaste

Thoreau. Verily human beauty, joy, and love will reach their

divinest height during those inaugural days of springtide

coupling. When the world is one Paradise, the consummation of the

lovers, the youngest and most beautiful, will take place in

certain sacred valleys in sight of thousands assembled to witness

it. For days it will take place in these valleys where the sun

will rise on a dream of passionate voices, of clinging human

forms, of flowers and waters, and the purple and gold of the

sunrise are reflected on hills illumined with pansies. [I know

not if the writer recalled George Chapman's "Enamelled pansies

used at nuptials still"], and repeated on golden human flesh and

human hair. In these sacred valleys the subtle perfume of the

pansies will mingle with the divine fragrance of healthy naked

young women and men in the spring coupling. You and I shall not

see that, but we may help to make it possible." This rhapsody (an

unconscious repetition of Saint-Lambert's at Mlle. Quinault's

table in the eighteenth century) serves to illustrate the revolt

which tends to take place against the unnatural and artificial

degradation of the sexual act.

In some parts of the world it has seemed perfectly natural and

reasonable that so great and significant an act as that of coitus

should be consecrated to the divinity, and hence arose the custom

of prayer before sexual intercourse. Thus Zoroaster ordained that

a married couple should pray before coitus, and after the act

they should say together: "O, Sapondomad, I trust this seed to

thee, preserve it for me, for it is a man." In the Gorong

Archipelago it is customary also for husband and wife to pray

together before the sexual act (Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_,

Bd. i, Ch. XVII). The civilized man, however, has come to regard

his stomach as the most important of his organs, and he utters

his conventional grace, not before love, but only before food.

Even the degraded ritual vestiges of the religious recognition of

coitus are difficult to find in Europe. We may perhaps detect it

among the Spaniards, with their tenacious instinct for ritual, in

the solemn etiquette with which, in the seventeenth century, it

was customary, according to Madame d'Aulnoy, for the King to

enter the bedchamber of the Queen: "He has on his slippers, his

black mantle over his shoulder, his shield on one arm, a bottle

hanging by a cord over the other arm (this bottle is not to drink

from, but for a quite opposite purpose, which you will guess).

With all this the King must also have his great sword in one hand

and a dark lantern in the other. In this way he must enter,

alone, the Queen's chamber" (Madame d'Aulnoy, _Relation du Voyage

d'Espagne_, 1692, vol. iii, p. 221).

In discussing the art of love it is necessary to give a primary place to

the central fact of coitus, on account of the ignorance that widely

prevails concerning it, and the unfortunate prejudices which in their

fungous broods flourish in the noisome obscurity around it. The traditions

of the Christian Church, which overspread the whole of Europe, and set up

for worship a Divine Virgin and her Divine Son, both of whom it

elaborately disengaged from personal contact with sexuality effectually

crushed any attempt to find a sacred and avowable ideal in married love.

Even the Church's own efforts to elevate matrimony were negatived by its

own ideals. That influence depresses our civilization even to-day. When

Walt Whitman wrote his "Children of Adam" he was giving imperfect

expression to conceptions of the religious nature of sexual love which

have existed wholesomely and naturally in all parts of the world, but had

not yet penetrated the darkness of Christendom where they still seemed

strange and new, if not terrible. And the refusal to recognize the

solemnity of sex had involved the placing of a pall of blackness and

disrepute on the supreme sexual act itself. It was shut out from the

sunshine and excluded from the sphere of worship.

The sexual act is important from the point of view of erotic art, not only

from the ignorance and prejudices which surround it, but also because it

has a real value even in regard to the psychic side of married life.

"These organs," according to the oft-quoted saying of the old French

physician, Ambrose Paré, "make peace in the household." How this comes

about we see illustrated from time to time in Pepys's Diary. At the same

time, it is scarcely necessary to say, after all that has gone before,

that this ancient source of domestic peace tends to be indefinitely

complicated by the infinite variety in erotic needs, which become ever

more pronounced with the growth of civilization.[408]

The art of love is, indeed, only beginning with the establishment of

sexual intercourse. In the adjustment of that relationship all the forces

of nature are so strongly engaged that under completely favorable

conditions--which indeed very rarely occur in our civilization--the

knowledge of the art and a possible skill in its exercise come almost of

themselves. The real test of the artist in love is in the skill to carry

it beyond the period when the interests of nature, having been really or

seemingly secured, begin to slacken. The whole art of love, it has been

well said, lies in forever finding something new in the same person. The

art of love is even more the art of retaining love than of arousing it.

Otherwise it tends to degenerate towards the Shakespearian lust,

"Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,

Past reason hated,"

though it must be remembered that even from the most strictly natural

point of view the transitions of passion are not normally towards

repulsion but towards affection.[409]

The young man and woman who are brought into the complete unrestraint of

marriage after a prolonged and unnatural separation, during which desire

and the satisfactions of desire have been artificially disconnected, are

certainly not under the best conditions for learning the art of love. They

are tempted by reckless and promiscuous indulgence in the intimacies of

marriage to fling carelessly aside all the reasons that make that art

worth learning. "There are married people," as Ellen Key remarks, "who

might have loved each other all their lives if they had not been

compelled, every day and all the year, to direct their habits, wills, and

inclinations towards each other."

All the tendencies of our civilized life are, in personal matters, towards

individualism; they involve the specialization, and they ensure the

sacredness, of personal habits and even peculiarities. This individualism

cannot be broken down suddenly at the arbitrary dictation of a tradition,

or even by the force of passion from which the restraints have been

removed. Out of deference to the conventions and prejudices of their

friends, or out of the reckless abandonment of young love, or merely out

of a fear of hurting each other's feelings, young couples have often

plunged prematurely into an unbroken intimacy which is even more

disastrous to the permanency of marriage than the failure ever to reach a

complete intimacy at all. That is one of the chief reasons why most

writers on the moral hygiene of marriage nowadays recommend separate beds

for the married couple, if possible separate bedrooms, and even sometimes,

with Ellen Key, see no objection to their living in separate houses.

Certainly the happiest marriages have often involved the closest and most

unbroken intimacy, in persons peculiarly fitted for such intimacy. It is

far from true that, as Bloch has affirmed, familiarity is fatal to love.

It is deadly to a love that has no roots, but it is the nourishment of the

deeply-rooted love. Yet it remains true that absence is needed to maintain

the keen freshness and fine idealism of love. "Absence," as Landor said,

"is the invisible and incorporeal mother of ideal beauty." The married

lovers who are only able to meet for comparatively brief periods between

long absences have often experienced in these meetings a life-long

succession of honeymoons.[410]

There can be no question that as presence has its risks for love, so also

has absence. Absence like presence, in the end, if too prolonged, effaces

the memory of love, and absence, further, by the multiplied points of

contact with the world which it frequently involves, introduces the

problem of jealousy, although, it must be added, it is difficult indeed to

secure a degree of association which excludes jealousy or even the

opportunities for motives of jealousy. The problem of jealousy is so

fundamental in the art of love that it is necessary at this point to

devote to it a brief discussion.

Jealousy is based on fundamental instincts which are visible at the

beginning of animal life. Descartes defined jealousy as "a kind of fear

related to a desire to preserve a possession." Every impulse of

acquisition in the animal world is stimulated into greater activity by the

presence of a rival who may snatch beforehand the coveted object. This

seems to be a fundamental fact in the animal world; it has been a

life-conserving tendency, for, it has been said, an animal that stood

aside while its fellows were gorging themselves with food, and experienced

nothing but pure satisfaction in the spectacle, would speedily perish. But

in this fact we have the natural basis of jealousy.[411]

It is in reference to food that this impulse appears first and most

conspicuously among animals. It is a well-known fact that association

with other animals induces an animal to eat much more than when kept by

himself. He ceases to eat from hunger but eats, as it has been put, in

order to preserve his food from rivals in the only strong box he knows.

The same feeling is transferred among animals to the field of sex. And

further in the relations of dogs and other domesticated animals to their

masters the emotion of jealousy is often very keenly marked.[412]

Jealousy is an emotion which is at its maximum among animals, among

savages,[413] among children,[414] in the senile, in the degenerate, and

very specially in chronic alcoholics.[415] It is worthy of note that the

supreme artists and masters of the human heart who have most consummately

represented the tragedy of jealousy clearly recognized that it is either

atavistic or pathological; Shakespeare made his Othello a barbarian, and

Tolstoy made the Pozdnischeff of his _Kreutzer Sonata_ a lunatic. It is an

anti-social emotion, though it has been maintained by some that it has

been the cause of chastity and fidelity. Gesell, for instance, while

admitting its anti-social character and accumulating quotations in

evidence of the torture and disaster it occasions, seems to think that it

still ought to be encouraged in order to foster sexual virtues. Very

decided opinions have been expressed in the opposite sense. Jealousy, like

other shadows, says Ellen Key, belongs only to the dawn and the setting of

love, and a man should feel that it is a miracle, and not his right, if

the sun stands still at the zenith.[416]

Even therefore if jealousy has been a beneficial influence at the

beginning of civilization, as well as among animals,--as may probably be

admitted, though on the whole it seems rather to be the by-product of a

beneficial influence than such an influence itself,--it is still by no

means clear that it therefore becomes a desirable emotion in more advanced

stages of civilization. There are many primitive emotions, like anger and

fear, which we do not think it desirable to encourage in complex civilized

societies but rather seek to restrain and control, and even if we are

inclined to attribute an original value to jealousy, it seems to be among

these emotions that it ought to be placed.

Miss Clapperton, in discussing this problem (_Scientific

Meliorism_, pp. 129-137), follows Darwin (_Descent of Man_, Part

I, Ch. IV) in thinking that jealousy led to "the inculcation of

female virtue," but she adds that it has also been a cause of

woman's subjection, and now needs to be eliminated. "To rid

ourselves as rapidly as may be of jealousy is essential;

otherwise the great movement in favor of equality of sex will

necessarily meet with checks and grave obstruction."

Ribot (_La Logique des Sentiments_, pp. 75 et seq.; _Essai sur

les Passions_, pp. 91, 175), while stating that subjectively the

estimate of jealousy must differ in accordance with the ideal of

life held, considers that objectively we must incline to an

unfavorable estimate "Even a brief passion is a rupture in the

normal life; it is an abnormal, if not a pathological state, an

excrescence, a parasitism."

Forel (_Die Sexuelle Frage_, Ch. V) speaks very strongly in the

same sense, and considers that it is necessary to eliminate

jealousy by non-procreation of the jealous. Jealousy is, he

declares, "the worst and unfortunately the most deeply-rooted of

the 'irradiations,' or, better, the 'contrast-reactions,' of

sexual love inherited from our animal ancestors. An old German

saying, 'Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft die mit Eifer sucht was

Leider schafft,' says by no means too much.... Jealousy is a

heritage of animality and barbarism; I would recall this to those

who, under the name of 'injured honor,' attempt to justify it and

place it on a high pedestal. An unfaithful husband is ten times

more to be wished for a woman than a jealous husband.... We often

hear of 'justifiable jealousy.' I believe, however, that there is

no justifiable jealousy; it is always atavistic or else

pathological; at the best it is nothing more than a brutal

animal stupidity. A man who, by nature, that is by his hereditary

constitution, is jealous is certain to poison his own life and

that of his wife. Such men ought on no account to marry. Both

education and selection should work together to eliminate

jealousy as far as possible from the human brain."

Eric Gillard in an article on "Jealousy" (_Free Review_, Sept.,

1896), in opposition to those who believe that jealousy "makes

the home," declares that, on the contrary, it is the chief force

that unmakes the home. "So long as egotism waters it with the

tears of sentiment and shields it from the cold blasts of

scientific inquiry, so long will it thrive. But the time will

come when it will be burned in the Garden of Love as a noxious

weed. Its mephitic influence in society is too palpable to be

overlooked. It turns homes that might be sanctuaries of love into

hells of discord and hate; it causes suicides, and it drives

thousands to drink, reckless excesses, and madness. Makes the

home! One of your married men friends sees a probable seducer in

every man who smiles at his wife; another is jealous of his

wife's women acquaintances; a third is wounded because his wife

shows so much attention to the children. Some of the women you

know display jealousy of every other woman, of their husband's

acquaintances, and some, of his very dog. You must be completely

monopolized or you do not thoroughly love. You must admire no one

but the person with whom you have immured yourself for life. Old

friendships must be dissolved, new friendships must not be

formed, for fear of invoking the beautiful emotion that 'makes

the home.'"

Even if jealousy in matters of sex could be admitted to be an emotion

working on the side of civilized progress, it must still be pointed out

that it merely acts externally; it can have little or no real influence;

the jealous person seldom makes himself more lovable by his jealousy and

frequently much less lovable. The main effect of his jealousy is to

increase, and not seldom to excite, the causes for jealousy, and at the

same time to encourage hypocrisy.

All the circumstances, accompaniments, and results of domestic

jealousy in their completely typical form, are well illustrated

by a very serious episode in the history of the Pepys household,

and have been fully and faithfully set down by the great diarist.

The offence--an embrace of his wife's lady-help, as she might now

be termed--was a slight one, but, as Pepys himself admits, quite

inexcusable. He is writing, being in his thirty-sixth year, on

the 25th of Oct., 1668 (Lord's Day). "After supper, to have my

hair combed by Deb, which occasioned the greatest sorrow to me

that ever I knew in this world, for my wife, coming up suddenly,

did find me embracing the girl.... I was at a wonderful loss upon

it, and the girl also, and I endeavored to put it off, but my

wife was struck mute and grew angry.... Heartily afflicted for

this folly of mine.... So ends this month," he writes a few days

later, "with some quiet to my mind, though not perfect, after the

greatest falling out with my poor wife, and through my folly with

the girl, that ever I had, and I have reason to be sorry and

ashamed of it, and more to be troubled for the poor girl's sake.

Sixth November. Up, and presently my wife up with me, which she

professedly now do every day to dress me, that I may not see

Willet [Deb], and do eye me, whether I cast my eye upon her, or

no, and do keep me from going into the room where she is. Ninth

November. Up, and I did, by a little note which I flung to Deb,

advise her that I did continue to deny that ever I kissed her,

and so she might govern herself. The truth is that I did

adventure upon God's pardoning me this lie, knowing how heavy a

thing it would be for me, to the ruin of the poor girl, and next

knowing that if my wife should know all it would be impossible

for her ever to be at peace with me again, and so our whole lives

would be uncomfortable. The girl read, and as I bid her returned

me the note, flinging it to me in passing by." Next day, however,

he is "mightily troubled," for his wife has obtained a confession

from the girl of the kissing. For some nights Mr. and Mrs. Pepys

are both sleepless, with much weeping on either side. Deb gets

another place, leaving on the 14th of November, and Pepys is

never able to see her before she leaves the house, his wife

keeping him always under her eye. It is evident that Pepys now

feels strongly attracted to Deb, though there is no evidence of

this before she became the subject of the quarrel. On the 13th of

November, hearing she was to leave next day, he writes: "The

truth is I have a good mind to have the maidenhead of this girl."

He was, however, the "more troubled to see how my wife is by this

means likely forever to have her hand over me, and that I shall

forever be a slave to her--that is to say, only in matters of

pleasure." At the same time his love for his wife was by no means

diminished, nor hers for him. "I must here remark," he says,

"that I have lain with my moher [i.e., _muger_, wife] as a

husband more times since this falling out than in, I believe,

twelve months before. And with more pleasure to her than in all

the time of our marriage before." The next day was Sunday. On

Monday Pepys at once begins to make inquiries which will put him

on the track of Deb. On the 18th he finds her. She gets up into

the coach with him, and he kisses her and takes liberties with

her, at the same time advising her "to have a care of her honor

and to fear God," allowing no one else to do what he has done; he

also tells her how she can find him if she desires. Pepys now

feels that everything is settled satisfactorily, and his heart

is full of joy. But his joy is short-lived, for Mrs. Pepys

discovers this interview with Deb on the following day. Pepys

denies it at first, then confesses, and there is a more furious

scene than ever. Pepys is now really alarmed, for his wife

threatens to leave him; he definitely abandons Deb, and with

prayers to God resolves never to do the like again. Mrs. Pepys is

not satisfied, however, till she makes her husband write a letter

to Deb, telling her that she is little better than a whore, and

that he hates her, though Deb is spared this, not by any

stratagem of Pepys, but by the considerateness of the friend to

whom the letter was entrusted for delivery. Moreover, Mrs. Pepys

arranges with her husband that, in future, whenever he goes

abroad he shall be accompanied everywhere by his clerk. We see

that Mrs. Pepys plays with what appears to be triumphant skill

and success the part of the jealous and avenging wife, and digs

her little French heels remorselessly into her prostrate husband

and her rival. Unfortunately, we do not know what the final

outcome was, for a little later, owing to trouble with his

eyesight, Pepys was compelled to bring his Diary to an end. It is

evident, however, when we survey the whole of this perhaps

typical episode, that neither husband nor wife were in the

slightest degree prepared for the commonplace position into which

they were thrown; that each of them appears in a painful,

undignified, and humiliating light; that as a result of it the

husband acquires almost a genuine and strong affection for the

girl who is the cause of the quarrel; and finally that, even

though he is compelled, for the time at all events, to yield to

his wife, he remains at the end exactly what he was at the

beginning. Nor had husband or wife the very slightest wish to

leave each other; the bond of marriage remained firm, but it had

been degraded by insincerity on one side and the jealous endeavor

on the other to secure fidelity by compulsion.

Apart altogether, however, from the question of its effectiveness, or even

of the misery that it causes to all concerned, it is evident that jealousy

is incompatible with all the tendencies of civilization. We have seen that

a certain degree of variation is involved in the sexual relationship, as

in all other relationships, and unless we are to continue to perpetuate

many evils and injustices, that fact has to be faced and recognized. We

have also seen that the line of our advance involves a constant increase

in moral responsibility and self-government, and that, in its turn,

implies not only a high degree of sincerity but also the recognition that

no person has any right, or indeed any power, to control the emotions and

actions of another person. If our sun of love stands still at midday,

according to Ellen Key's phrase, that is a miracle to be greeted with awe

and gratitude, and by no means a right to be demanded. The claim of

jealousy falls with the claim of conjugal rights.

It is quite possible, Bloch remarks (_The Sexual Life of Our

Time_, Ch. X), to love more than one person at the same time,

with nearly equal tenderness, and to be honestly able to assure

each of the passion felt for her or him. Bloch adds that the vast

psychic differentiation involved by modern civilization increases

the possibility of this double love, for it is difficult for

anyone to find his complement in a single person, and that this

applies to women as well as to men.

Georg Hirth likewise points out (_Wege zur Heimat_, pp. 543-552)

that it is important to remember that women, as well as men, can

love two persons at the same time. Men flatter themselves, he

remarks, with the prejudice that the female heart, or rather

brain, can only hold one man at a time, and that if there is a

second man it is by a kind of prostitution. Nearly all erotic

writers, poets, and novelists, even physicians and psychologists,

belong to this class, he says; they look on a woman as property,

and of course two men cannot "possess" a woman. (Regarding

novelists, however, the remark may be interpolated that there are

many exceptions, and Thomas Hardy, for instance, frequently

represents a woman as more or less in love with two men at the

same time.) As against this desire to depreciate women's psychic

capacity, Hirth maintains that a woman is not necessarily obliged

to be untrue to one man because she has conceived a passion for

another man. "Today," Hirth truly declares, "only love and

justice can count as honorable motives in marriage. The modern

man accords to the beloved wife and life-companion the same

freedom which he himself took before marriage, and perhaps still

takes in marriage. If she makes no use of it, as is to be

hoped--so much the better! But let there be no lies, no

deception; the indispensable foundation of modern marriage is

boundless sincerity and friendship, the deepest trust,

affectionate devotion, and consideration. This is the best

safeguard against adultery.... Let him, however, who is,

nevertheless, overtaken by the outbreak of it console himself

with the undoubted fact that of two real lovers the most

noble-minded and deep-seeing _friend_ will always have the

preference." These wise words cannot be too deeply meditated. The

policy of jealousy is only successful--when it is successful--in

the hands of the man who counts the external husk of love more

precious than the kernel.

It seems to some that the recognition of variations in sexual

relationships, of the tendency of the monogamic to overpass its

self-imposed bounds, is at best a sad necessity, and a lamentable fall

from a high ideal. That, however, is the reverse of the truth. The great

evil of monogamy, and its most seriously weak point, is its tendency to

self-concentration at the expense of the outer world. The devil always

comes to a man in the shape of his wife and children, said Hinton. The

family is a great social influence in so far as it is the best instrument

for creating children who will make the future citizens; but in a certain

sense the family is an anti-social influence, for it tends to absorb

unduly the energy that is needed for the invigoration of society. It is

possible, indeed, that that fact led to the modification of the monogamic

system in early developing periods of human history, when social expansion

and cohesion were the primary necessities. The family too often tends to

resemble, as someone has said, the secluded collection of grubs sometimes

revealed in their narrow home when we casually raise a flat stone in our

gardens. Great as are the problems of love, and great as should be our

attention to them, it must always be remembered that love is not a little

circle that is complete in itself. It is the nature of love to irradiate.

Just as family life exists mainly for the social end of breeding the

future race, so family love has its social ends in the extension of

sympathy and affection to those outside it, and even in ends that go

beyond love altogether.[417]

The question is debated from time to time as to how far it is possible for

men and women to have intimate friendships with each other outside the

erotic sphere.[418] There can be no doubt whatever that it is perfectly

possible for a man and a woman to experience for each other a friendship

which never intrudes into the sexual sphere. As a rule, however, this only

happens under special conditions, and those are generally conditions which

exclude the closest and most intimate friendship. If, as we have seen,

love may be defined as a synthesis of lust and friendship, friendship

inevitably enters into the erotic sphere. Just as sexual emotion tends to

merge into friendship, so friendship between persons of opposite sex, if

young, healthy, and attractive, tends to involve sexual emotion. The two

feelings are too closely allied for an artificial barrier to be

permanently placed between them without protest. Men who offer a woman

friendship usually find that it is not received with much satisfaction

except as the first installment of a warmer emotion, and women who offer

friendship to a man usually find that he responds with an offer of love;

very often the "friendship" is from the first simply love or flirtation

masquerading under another name.

"In the long run," a woman writes (in a letter published in

_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. i, Heft 7), "the senses become

discontented at their complete exclusion. And I believe that a

man can only come into the closest mutual association with a

woman by whom, consciously or unconsciously, he is physically

attracted. He cannot enter into the closest psychic intercourse

with a woman with whom he could not imagine himself in physical

intercourse. His prevailing wish is for the possession of a

woman, of the whole woman, her soul as well as her body. And a

woman also cannot imagine an intimate relation to a man in which

the heart and the body, as well as the mind, are not involved.

(Naturally I am thinking of people with sound nerves and healthy

blood.) Can a woman carry on a Platonic relation with a man from

year to year without the thought sometimes coming to her: 'Why

does he never kiss me? Have I no charm for him?' And in the most

concealed corner of her heart will it not happen that she uses

that word 'kiss' in the more comprehensive sense in which the

French sometimes employ it?" There is undoubtedly an element of

truth in this statement. The frontier between erotic love and

friendship is vague, and an intimate psychic intercourse that is

sternly debarred from ever manifesting itself in a caress, or

other physical manifestation of tender intimacy, tends to be

constrained, and arouses unspoken and unspeakable thoughts and

desires which are fatal to any complete friendship.

Undoubtedly the only perfect "Platonic friendships" are those which have

been reached through the portal of a preliminary erotic intimacy. In such

a case bad lovers, when they have resolutely traversed the erotic stage,

may become exceedingly good friends. A satisfactory friendship is

possible between brother and sister because they have been physically

intimate in childhood, and all erotic curiosities are absent. The most

admirable "Platonic friendship" may often be attained by husband and wife

in whom sympathy and affection and common interests have outlived passion.

In nearly all the most famous friendships of distinguished men and

women--as we know in some cases and divine in others--an hour's passion,

in Sainte-Beuve's words, has served as the golden key to unlock the most

precious and intimate secrets of friendship.[419]

The friendships that have been entered through the erotic portal possess

an intimacy and retain a spiritually erotic character which could not be

attained on the basis of a normal friendship between persons of the same

sex. This is true in a far higher degree of the ultimate relationship,

under fortunate circumstances, of husband and wife in the years after

passion has become impossible. They have ceased to be passionate lovers

but they have not become mere friends and comrades. More especially their

relationship takes on elements borrowed from the attitude of child to

parent, of parent to child. Everyone from his first years retains

something of the child which cannot be revealed to all the world; everyone

acquires something of the guardian paternal or maternal spirit. Husband

and wife are each child to the other, and are indeed parent and child by

turn. And here still the woman retains a certain erotic supremacy, for she

is to the last more of a child than it is ever easy for the man to be, and

much more essentially a mother than he is a father.

Groos (_Der Æsthetische Genuss_, p. 249) has pointed out that

"love" is really made up of both sexual instinct and parental

instinct.

"So-called happy marriages," says Professor W. Thomas (_Sex and

Society_, p. 246), "represent an equilibrium reached through an

extension of the maternal interest of the woman to the man,

whereby she looks after his personal needs as she does after

those of the children--cherishing him, in fact, as a child--or

in an extension to woman on the part of man of the nurture and

affection which is in his nature to give to pets and all helpless

(and preferably dumb) creatures."

"When the devotion in the tie between mother and son," a woman

writes, "is added to the relation of husband and wife, the union

of marriage is raised to the high and beautiful dignity it

deserves, and can attain in this world. It comprehends sympathy,

love, and perfect understanding, even of the faults and

weaknesses of both sides." "The foundation of every true woman's

love," another woman writes, "is a mother's tenderness. He whom

she loves is a child of larger growth, although she may at the

same time have a deep respect for him." (See also, for similar

opinion of another woman of distinguished intellectual ability,

footnote at beginning of "The Psychic State in Pregnancy" in

volume v of these _Studies_.)

It is on the basis of these elemental human facts that the

permanently seductive and inspiring relationships of sex are

developed, and not by the emergence of personalities who combine

impossibly exalted characteristics. "The task is extremely

difficult," says Kisch in his _Sexual Life of Woman_, "but a

clever and virtuous modern wife must endeavor to combine in her

single personality the sensuous attractiveness of an Aspasia, the

chastity of a Lucrece, and the intellectual greatness of a

Cornelia." And in an earlier century we are told in the novel of

_La Tia Fingida_, which has sometimes been attributed to

Cervantes, that "a woman should be an angel in the street, a

saint in church, beautiful at the window, honest in the house,

and a demon in bed." The demands made of men by women, on the

other hand, have been almost too lofty to bear definite

formulation at all. "Ninety-nine out of a hundred loving women,"

says Helene Stöcker, "certainly believe that if a thousand other

men have behaved ignobly, and forsaken, ill-used, and deceived

the woman they love, the man they love is an exception, marked

out from all other men; that is the reason they love him." It may

be doubted, however, if the great lovers have ever stood very far

above the ordinary level of humanity by their possession of

perfection. They have been human, and their art of love has not

always excluded the possession of human frailties; perfection,

indeed, even if it could be found, would furnish a bad soil for

love to strike deep roots in.

It is only when we realize the highly complex nature of the elements which

make up erotic love that we can understand how it is that that love can

constitute so tremendous a revelation and exert so profound an influence

even in men of the greatest genius and intellect and in the sphere of

their most spiritual activity. It is not merely passion, nor any conscious

skill in the erotic art,--important as these may be,--that would serve to

account for Goethe's relationship to Frau von Stein, or Wagner's to

Mathilde Wesendonck, or that of Robert and Elizabeth Browning to each

other.[420]

It may now be clear to the reader why it has been necessary in a

discussion of the sexual impulse in its relationship to society to deal

with the art of love. It is true that there is nothing so intimately

private and personal as the erotic affairs of the individual. Yet it is

equally true that these affairs lie at the basis of the social life, and

furnish the conditions--good or bad as the case may be--of that

procreative act which is a supreme concern of the State. It is because the

question of love is of such purely private interest that it tends to be

submerged in the question of breed. We have to realize, not only that the

question of love subserves the question of breed, but also that love has a

proper, a necessary, even a socially wholesome claim, to stand by itself

and to be regarded for its own worth.

In the profoundly suggestive study of love which the

distinguished sociologist Tarde left behind at his death

(_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, loc. cit.), there are

some interesting remarks on this point: "Society," he says, "has

been far more, and more intelligently, preoccupied with the

problem of answering the 'question of breed' than the 'question

of love.' The first problem fills all our civil and commercial

codes. The second problem has never been clearly stated, or

looked in the face, not even in antiquity, still less since the

coming of Christianity, for merely to offer the solutions of

marriage and prostitution is manifestly inadequate. Statesmen

have only seen the side on which it touches population. Hence

the marriage laws. Sterile love they profess to disdain. Yet it

is evident that, though born as the serf of generation, love

tends by civilization to be freed from it. In place of a simple

method of procreation it has become an end, it has created itself

a title, a royal title. Our gardens cultivate flowers that are

all the more charming because they are sterile; why is the double

corolla of love held more infamous than the sterilized flowers of

our gardens?" Tarde replies that the reason is that our

politicians are merely ambitious persons thirsting for power and

wealth, and even when they are lovers they are Don Juans rather

than Virgils. "The future," he continues, "is to the Virgilians,

because if the ambition of power, the regal wealth of American or

European millionarism, once seemed nobler, love now more and more

attracts to itself the best and highest parts of the soul, where

lies the hidden ferment of all that is greatest in science and

art, and more and more those studious and artist souls multiply

who, intent on their peaceful activities, hold in horror the

business men and the politicians, and will one day succeed in

driving them back. That assuredly will be the great and capital

revolution of humanity, an active psychological revolution: the

recognized preponderance of the meditative and contemplative, the

lover's side of the human soul, over the feverish, expansive,

rapacious, and ambitious side. And then it will be understood

that one of the greatest of social problems, perhaps the most

arduous of all, has been the problem of love."

FOOTNOTES:

[375] _Quæstionum Convivalium_, lib. iii, quæstio 6.

[376] E.D. Cope, "The Marriage Problem," _Open Court_, Nov. 1888.

[377] Columbus meeting of the American Medical Association, 1900.

[378] Ellen Key, _Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 24.

[379] In an admirable article on Friedrich Schlegel's _Lucinde_

(_Mutterschutz_, 1906, Heft 5), Heinrich Meyer-Benfey, in pointing out

that the Catholic sacramental conception of marriage licensed love, but

failed to elevate it, regards _Lucinde_, with all its defects, as the

first expression of the unity of the senses and the soul, and, as such,

the basis of the new ethics of love. It must, however, be said that four

hundred years earlier Pontano had expressed this same erotic unity far

more robustly and wholesomely than Schlegel, though the Latin verse in

which he wrote, fresh and vital as it is, remained without influence.

Pontano's _Carmina_, including the "De Amore Conjugali," have at length

been reprinted in a scholarly edition by Soldati.

[380] From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries Ovid was, in

reality, the most popular and influential classic poet. His works played a

large part in moulding Renaissance literature, not least in England, where

Marlowe translated his _Amores_, and Shakespeare, during the early years

of his literary activity, was greatly indebted to him (see, e.g., Sidney

Lee, "Ovid and Shakespeare's Sonnets," _Quarterly Review_, Ap., 1909).

[381] This has already been discussed in Chapter II.

[382] By the age of twenty-five, as G. Hirth remarks (_Wege zur Heimat_,

p. 541), an energetic and sexually disposed man in a large city has, for

the most part, already had relations with some twenty-five women, perhaps

even as many as fifty, while a well-bred and cultivated woman at that age

is still only beginning to realize the slowly summating excitations of

sex.

[383] In his study of "Conjugal Aversion" (_Journal Nervous and Mental

Disease_, Sept., 1892) Smith Baker points out the value of adequate sexual

knowledge before marriage in lessening the risks of such aversion.

[384] "It may be said to the honor of men," Adler truly remarks (op. cit.,

p. 182), "that it is perhaps not often their conscious brutality that is

at fault in this matter, but merely lack of skill and lack of

understanding. The husband who is not specially endowed by nature and

experience for psychic intercourse with women, is not likely, through his

earlier intercourse with Venus vulgivaga, to bring into marriage any

useful knowledge, psychic or physical."

[385] "The first night," writes a correspondent concerning his marriage,

"she found the act very painful and was frightened and surprised at the

size of my penis, and at my suddenly getting on her. We had talked very

openly about sex things before marriage, and it never occurred to me that

she was ignorant of the details of the act. I imagined it would disgust

her to talk about these things; but I now see I should have explained

things to her. Before marrying I had come to the conclusion that the

respect owed to one's wife was incompatible with any talk that might seem

indecent, and also I had made a resolve not to subject her to what I

thought then were dirty tricks, even to be naked and to have her naked. In

fact, I was the victim of mock modesty; it was an artificial reaction from

the life I had been living before marriage. Now it seems to me to be

natural, if you love a woman, to do whatever occurs to you and to her. If

I had not felt it wrong to encourage such acts between us, there might

have been established a sexual sympathy which would have bound me more

closely to her."

[386] Montaigne, _Essais_, Bk. iii, Ch. V. It is a significant fact that,

even in the matter of information, women, notwithstanding much ignorance

and inexperience, are often better equipped for marriage than men. As

Fürbringer remarks (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in Relation

to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 212), although the wife is usually more chaste at

marriage than the husband, yet "she is generally the better informed

partner in matters pertaining to the married state, in spite of occasional

astonishing confessions."

[387] "She never loses her self-respect nor my respect for her," a man

writes in a letter, "simply because we are desperately in love with one

another, and everything we do--some of which the lowest prostitute might

refuse to do--seems but one attempt after another to translate our passion

into action. I never realized before, not that to the pure all things are

pure, indeed, but that to the lover nothing is indecent. Yes, I have

always felt it, to love her is a liberal education." It is obviously only

the existence of such an attitude as this that can enable a pure woman to

be passionate.

[388] "To be really understood," as Rafford Pyke well says, "to say what

she likes, to utter her innermost thoughts in her own way, to cast aside

the traditional conventions that gall her and repress her, to have someone

near her with whom she can be quite frank, and yet to know that not a

syllable of what she says will be misinterpreted or mistaken, but rather

felt just as she feels it all--how wonderfully sweet is this to every

woman, and how few men are there who can give it to her!"

[389] In more recent times it has been discussed in relation to the

frequency of spontaneous nocturnal emissions. See "The Phenomena of Sexual

Periodicity," Sect. II, in volume i of these _Studies_, and cf. Mr.

Perry-Coste's remarks on "The Annual Rhythm," in Appendix B of the same

volume.

[390] See "The Sexual Impulse in Women," vol. iii of these _Studies_.

[391] Zenobia's practice is referred to by Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, ed.

Bury, vol. i, p. 302. The Queen of Aragon's decision is recorded by the

Montpellier jurist, Nicolas Bohier (Boerius) in his _Decisiones_, etc.,

ed. of 1579, p. 563; it is referred to by Montaigne, _Essais_, Bk. iii,

Ch. V.

[392] Haller, _Elementa Physiologiæ_, 1778, vol. vii, p. 57.

[393] Hammond, _Sexual Impotence_, p. 129.

[394] Fürbringer, Senator and Kaminer, _Health and Disease in Relation to

Marriage_, vol. i, p. 221.

[395] Forel, _Die Sexuelle Frage_, p. 80.

[396] Guyot, _Bréviaire de l'Amour Expérimental_, p. 144.

[397] Erb, Ziemssen's _Handbuch_, Bd. xi, ii, p. 148. Guttceit also

considered that the very wide variations found are congenital and natural.

It may be added that some believe that there are racial variations. Thus

it has been stated that the genital force of the Englishman is low, and

that of the Frenchman (especially Provençal, Languedocian, and Gascon)

high, while Löwenfeld believes that the Germanic race excels the French in

aptitude to repeat the sex act frequently. It is probable that little

weight attaches to these opinions, and that the chief differences are

individual rather than racial.

[398] Ribbing, _L'Hygiène Sexualle_, p. 75. Kisch, in his _Sexual Life of

Woman_, expresses the same opinion.

[399] Mohammed, who often displayed a consideration for women very rare in

the founders of religions, is an exception. His prescription of once a

week represented the right of the wife, quite independently of the number

of wives a man might possess.

[400] How fragile the claim of "conjugal rights" is, may be sufficiently

proved by the fact that it is now considered by many that the very term

"conjugal rights" arose merely by a mistake for "conjugal rites." Before

1733, when legal proceedings were in Latin, the term used was _obsequies_,

and "rights," instead of "rites," seems to have been merely a typesetter's

error (see _Notes and Queries_, May 16, 1891; May 6, 1899). This

explanation, it should be added, only applies to the consecrated term, for

there can be no doubt that the underlying idea has an existence quite

independent of the term.

[401] "In most marriages that are not happy," it is said in Rafford Pyke's

thoughtful paper on "Husbands and Wives" (_Cosmopolitan_, 1902), "it is

the wife rather than the husband who is oftenest disappointed."

[402] See "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," in vol. iii of these

_Studies_.

[403] It is well recognized by erotic writers, however, that women may

sometimes take a comparatively active part. Thus Vatsyayana says that

sometimes the woman may take the man's position, and with flowers in her

hair and smiles mixed with sighs and bent head, caressing him and pressing

her breasts against him, say: "You have been my conqueror; it is my turn

to make you cry for mercy."

[404] Thus among the Swahili it is on the third day after marriage that

the bridegroom is allowed, by custom, to complete defloration, according

to Zache, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1899, II-III, p. 84.

[405] _De l'Amour_, vol. ii, p. 57.

[406] Robert Michels, "Brautstandsmoral," _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_,

Jahrgang I, Heft 12.

[407] I may refer once more to the facts brought together in volume iii of

these _Studies_, "The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."

[408] This has been pointed out, for instance, by Rutgers, "Sexuelle

Differenzierung," _Die Neue Generation_, Dec., 1908.

[409] Thus, among the Eskimo, who practice temporary wife-exchange,

Rasmussen states that "a man generally discovers that his own wife is, in

spite of all, the best."

[410] "I have always held with the late Professor Laycock," remarks

Clouston (_Hygiene of Mind_, p. 214), "who was a very subtle student of

human nature, that a married couple need not be always together to be

happy, and that in fact reasonable absences and partings tend towards

ultimate and closer union." That the prolongation of passion is only

compatible with absence scarcely needs pointing out; as Mary

Wollstonecraft long since said (_Rights of Woman_, original ed., p. 61),

it is only in absence or in misfortune that passion is durable. It may be

added, however, that in her love-letters to Imlay she wrote: "I have ever

declared that two people who mean to live together ought not to be long

separated."

[411] "Viewed broadly," says Arnold L. Gesell, in his interesting study of

"Jealousy" (_American Journal of Psychology_, Oct., 1906), "jealousy seems

such a necessary psychological accompaniment to biological behavior,

amidst competitive struggle, that one is tempted to consider it

genetically among the oldest of the emotions, synonymous almost with the

will to live, and to make it scarcely less fundamental than fear or anger.

In fact, jealousy readily passes into anger, and is itself a brand of

fear.... In sociability and mutual aid we see the other side of the

shield; but jealousy, however anti-social it may be, retains a function in

zoölogical economy: viz., to conserve the individual as against the group.

It is Nature's great corrective for the purely social emotions."

[412] Many illustrations are brought together in Gesell's study of

"Jealousy."

[413] Jealousy among lower races may be disguised or modified by tribal

customs. Thus Rasmussen (_People of the Polar North_, p. 65) says in

reference to the Eskimo custom of wife-exchange: "A man once told me that

he only beat his wife when she would not receive other men. She would have

nothing to do with anyone but him--and that was her only failing!"

Rasmussen elsewhere shows that the Eskimo are capable of extreme jealousy.

[414] See, e.g., Moll, _Sexualleben des Kindes_, p. 158; cf., Gesell's

"Study of Jealousy."

[415] Jealousy is notoriously common among drunkards. As K. Birnbaum

points out ("Das Sexualleben der Alkokolisten," _Sexual-Probleme_, Jan.,

1909), this jealousy is, in most cases, more or less well-founded, for the

wife, disgusted with her husband, naturally seeks sympathy and

companionship elsewhere. Alcoholic jealousy, however, goes far beyond its

basis of support in fact, and is entangled with delusions and

hallucinations. (See e.g., G. Dumas, "La Logique d'un Dément," _Revue

Philosophique_, Feb., 1908; also Stefanowski, "Morbid Jealousy," _Alienist

and Neurologist_, July, 1893.)

[416] Ellen Key, _Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 335.

[417] Schrempf points out ("Von Stella zu Klärchen," _Mutterschutz_, 1906,

Heft 7, p. 264) that Goethe strove to show in _Egmont_ that a woman is

repelled by the love of a man who knows nothing beyond his love to her,

and that it is easy for her to devote herself to the man whose aims lie in

the larger world beyond herself. There is profound truth in this view.

[418] A discussion on "Platonic friendship" of this kind by several

writers, mostly women, whose opinions were nearly equally divided, may be

found, for instance, in the _Lady's Realm_, March, 1900.

[419] There are no doubt important exceptions. Thus Mérimée's famous

friendship with Mlle. Jenny Dacquin, enshrined in the _Lettres à une

Inconnue_, was perhaps Platonic throughout on Mérimée's side, Mlle.

Dacquin adapting herself to his attitude. Cf. A. Lefebvre, _La Célèbre

Inconnue de Mérimée_, 1908.

[420] The love-letters of all these distinguished persons have been

published. Rosa Mayreder (_Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit_, pp. 229 _et

seq._) discusses the question of the humble and absolute manner in which

even men of the most masculine and impetuous genius abandon themselves to

the inspiration of the beloved woman. The case of the Brownings, who have

been termed "the hero and heroine of the most wonderful love-story that

the world knows of," is specially notable; (Ellen Key has written of the

Brownings from this point of view in _Menschen_, and reference may be made

to an article on the Brownings' love-letters in the _Edinburgh Review_,

April, 1899). It is scarcely necessary to add that an erotic relationship

may mean very much to persons of high intellectual ability, even when its

issue is not happy; of Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the most intellectually

distinguished of women, it may be said that the letters which enshrine her

love to the worthless Imlay are among the most passionate and pathetic

love-letters in English.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SCIENCE OF PROCREATION.

The Relationship of the Science of Procreation to the Art of Love--Sexual

Desire and Sexual Pleasure as the Conditions of Conception--Reproduction

Formerly Left to Caprice and Lust--The Question of Procreation as a

Religious Question--The Creed of Eugenics--Ellen Key and Sir Francis

Galton--Our Debt to Posterity--The Problem of Replacing Natural

Selection--The Origin and Development of Eugenics--The General Acceptance

of Eugenical Principles To-day--The Two Channels by Which Eugenical

Principles are Becoming Embodied in Practice--The Sense of Sexual

Responsibility in Women--The Rejection of Compulsory Motherhood--The

Privilege of Voluntary Motherhood--Causes of the Degradation of

Motherhood--The Control of Conception--Now Practiced by the Majority of

the Population in Civilized Countries--The Fallacy of "Racial

Suicide"--Are Large Families a Stigma of Degeneration?--Procreative

Control the Outcome of Natural and Civilized Progress--The Growth of

Neo-Malthusian Beliefs and Practices--Facultative Sterility as Distinct

from Neo-Malthusianism--The Medical and Hygienic Necessity of Control of

Conception--Preventive Methods--Abortion--The New Doctrine of the Duty to

Practice Abortion--How Far is this Justifiable?--Castration as a Method of

Controlling Procreation--Negative Eugenics and Positive Eugenics--The

Question of Certificates for Marriage--The Inadequacy of Eugenics by Act

of Parliament--The Quickening of the Social Conscience in Regard to

Heredity--Limitations to the Endowment of Motherhood--The Conditions

Favorable to Procreation--Sterility--The Question of Artificial

Fecundation--The Best Age of Procreation--The Question of Early

Motherhood--The Best Time for Procreation--The Completion of the Divine

Cycle of Life.

We have seen that the art of love has an independent and amply justifiable

right to existence apart, altogether, from procreation. Even if we still

believed--as all men must once have believed and some Central Australians

yet believe[421]--that sexual intercourse has no essential connection with

the propagation of the race it would have full right to existence. In its

finer manifestations as an art it is required in civilization for the full

development of the individual, and it is equally required for that

stability of relationships which is nearly everywhere regarded as a demand

of social morality.

When we now turn to the second great constitutional factor of marriage,

procreation, the first point we encounter is that the art of love here

also has its place. In ancient times the sexual congruence of any man with

any woman was supposed to be so much a matter of course that all questions

of love and of the art of love could be left out of consideration. The

propagative act might, it was thought, be performed as impersonally, as

perfunctorily, as the early Christian Fathers imagined it had been

performed in Paradise. That view is no longer acceptable. It fails to

commend itself to men, and still less to women. We know that in

civilization at all events--and it is often indeed the same among

savages--erethism is not always easy between two persons selected at

random, nor even when they are more specially selected. And we also know,

on the authority of very distinguished gynæcologists, that it is not in

very many cases sufficient even to effect coitus, it is also necessary to

excite orgasm, if conception is to be achieved.

Many primitive peoples, as well as the theologians of the Middle

Ages, have believed that sexual excitement on the woman's part is

necessary to conception, though they have sometimes mixed up that

belief with false science and mere superstition. The belief

itself is supported by some of the most cautious and experienced

modern gynæcologists. Thus, Matthews Duncan (in his lectures on

_Sterility in Women_) argued that the absence of sexual desire in

women, and the absence of pleasure in the sexual act, are

powerful influences making for sterility. He brought forward a

table based on his case-books, showing that of nearly four

hundred sterile women, only about one-fourth experienced sexual

desire, while less than half experienced pleasure in the sexual

act. In the absence, however, of a corresponding table concerning

fertile women, nothing is hereby absolutely proved, and, at most,

only a probability established.

Kisch, more recently (in his _Sexual Life of Woman_), has dealt

fully with this question, and reaches the conclusion that it is

"extremely probable" that the active erotic participation of the

woman in coitus is an important link in the chain of conditions

producing conception. It acts, he remarks, in either or both of

two ways, by causing reflex changes in the cervical secretions,

and so facilitating the passage of the spermatozoa, and by

causing reflex erectile changes in the cervix itself, with slight

descent of the uterus, so rendering the entrance of the semen

easier. Kisch refers to the analogous fact that the first

occurrence of menstruation is favored by sexual excitement.

Some authorities go so far as to assert that, until voluptuous

excitement occurs in women, no impregnation is possible. This

statement seems too extreme. It is true that the occurrence of

impregnation during sleep, or in anæsthesia, cannot be opposed to

it, for we know that the unconsciousness of these states by no

means prevents the occurrence of complete sexual excitement. We

cannot fail, however, to connect the fact that impregnation

frequently fails to occur for months and even years after

marriage, with the fact that sexual pleasure in coitus on the

wife's part also frequently fails to occur for a similar period.

"Of all human instincts," Pinard has said,[422] "that of reproduction is

the only one which remains in the primitive condition and has received no

education. We procreate to-day as they procreated in the Stone Age. The

most important act in the life of man, the sublimest of all acts since it

is that of his reproduction, man accomplishes to-day with as much

carelessness as in the age of the cave-man." And though Pinard himself, as

the founder of puericulture, has greatly contributed to call attention to

the vast destinies that hang on the act of procreation, there still

remains a lamentable amount of truth in this statement. "Future

generations," writes Westermarck in his great history of moral ideas,[423]

"will probably with a kind of horror look back at a period when the most

important, and in its consequences the most far-reaching, function which

has fallen to the lot of man was entirely left to individual caprice and

lust."

We are told in his _Table Talk_, that the great Luther was accustomed to

say that God's way of making man was very foolish ("sehr närrisch"), and

that if God had deigned to take him into His counsel he would have

strongly advised Him to make the whole human race, as He made Adam, "out

of earth." And certainly if applied to the careless and reckless manner in

which procreation in Luther's day, as still for the most part in our own,

was usually carried out there was sound common sense in the Reformer's

remarks. If that is the way procreation is to be carried on, it would be

better to create and mould every human being afresh out of the earth; in

that way we could at all events eliminate evil heredity. It was, however,

unjust to place the responsibility on God. It is men and women who breed

the people that make the world good or bad. They seek to put the evils of

society on to something outside themselves. They see how large a

proportion of human beings are defective, ill-conditioned, anti-social,

incapable of leading a whole and beautiful human life. In old theological

language it was often said that such were "children of the Devil," and

Luther himself was often ready enough to attribute the evil of the world

to the direct interposition of the Devil. Yet these ill-conditioned people

who clog the wheels of society are, after all, in reality the children of

Man. The only Devil whom we can justly invoke in this matter is Man.

The command "Be fruitful and multiply," which the ancient Hebrews put into

the mouth of their tribal God, was, as Crackanthorpe points out,[424] a

command supposed to have been uttered when there were only eight persons

in the world. If the time should ever again occur when the inhabitants of

the world could be counted on one's fingers, such an injunction, as

Crackanthorpe truly observes, would again be reasonable. But we have to

remember that to-day humanity has spawned itself over the world in

hundreds and even thousands of millions of creatures, a large proportion

of whom, as is but too obvious, ought never to have been born at all, and

the voice of Jehovah is now making itself heard through the leaders of

mankind in a very different sense.

It is not surprising that as this fact tends to become generally

recognized, the question of the procreation of the race should gain a new

significance, and even tend to take on the character of a new religious

movement. Mere morality can never lead us to concern ourselves with the

future of the race, and in the days of old, men used to protest against

the tendency to subordinate the interests of religion to the claims of

"mere morality." There was a sound natural instinct underlying that

protest, so often and so vigorously made by Christianity, and again

revived to-day in a more intelligent form. The claim of the race is the

claim of religion. We have to beware lest we subordinate that claim to our

moralities. Moralities are, indeed, an inevitable part of our social order

from which we cannot escape; every community must have its _mores_. But we

are not entitled to make a fetich of our morality, sacrificing to it the

highest interests entrusted to us. The nations which have done so have

already signed their own death-warrant.[425] From this point of view, the

whole of Christianity, rightly considered, with its profound conviction of

the necessity for forethought and preparation for the life hereafter, has

been a preparation for eugenics, a schoolmaster to discipline within us a

higher ideal than itself taught, and we cannot therefore be surprised at

the solidity of the basis on which eugenical conceptions of life are

developing.

The most distinguished pioneers of the new movement of devotion

to the creation of the race seem independently to have realized

its religious character. This attitude is equally marked in Ellen

Key and Francis Galton. In her _Century of the Child_ (English

translation, 1909), Ellen Key entirely identifies herself with

the eugenic movement. "It is only a question of time," she

elsewhere writes (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, p. 445), "when the

attitude of society towards a sexual union will depend not on the

form of the union, but on the value of the children created. Men

and women will then devote the same religious earnestness to the

psychic and physical perfectioning of this sexual task as

Christians have devoted to the salvation of their souls."

Sir Francis Galton, writing a few years later, but without doubt

independently, in 1905, on "Restrictions in Marriage," and

"Eugenics as a Factor in Religion" (_Sociological Papers_ of the

Sociological Society, vol. ii, pp. 13, 53), remarks: "Religious

precepts, founded on the ethics and practice of older days,

require to be reinterpreted, to make them conform to the needs of

progressive nations. Ours are already so far behind modern

requirements that much of our practice and our profession cannot

be reconciled without illegitimate casuistry. It seems to me

that few things are more needed by us in England than a revision

of our religion, to adapt it to the intelligence and needs of

this present time.... Evolution is a grand phantasmagoria, but it

assumes an infinitely more interesting aspect under the knowledge

that the intelligent action of the human will is, in some small

measure, capable of guiding its course. Man has the power of

doing this largely, so far as the evolution of humanity is

concerned; he has already affected the quality and distribution

of organic life so widely that the changes on the surface of the

earth, merely through his disforestings and agriculture, would be

recognizable from a distance as great as that of the moon.

Eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness, and appealing to

many of the noblest feelings of our nature."

As will always happen in every great movement, a few fanatics

have carried into absurdity the belief in the supreme religious

importance of procreation. Love, apart from procreation, writes

one of these fanatics, Vacher de Lapouge, in the spirit of some

of the early Christian Fathers (see _ante_ p. 509), is an

aberration comparable to sadism and sodomy. Procreation is the

only thing that matters, and it must become "a legally prescribed

social duty" only to be exercised by carefully selected persons,

and forbidden to others, who must, by necessity, be deprived of

the power of procreation, while abortion and infanticide must,

under some circumstances, become compulsory. Romantic love will

disappear by a process of selection, as also will all religion

except a new form of phallic worship (G. Vacher de Lapouge, "Die

Crisis der Sexuellen Moral," _Politisch Anthropologische Revue_,

No. 8, 1908). It is sufficient to point out that love is, and

always must be, the natural portal to generation. Such excesses

of procreative fanaticism cannot fail to occur, and they render

the more necessary the emphasis which has here been placed on the

art of love.

"What has posterity done for me that I should do anything for posterity?"

a cynic is said to have asked. The answer is very simple. The human race

has done everything for him. All that he is, and can be, is its creation;

all that he can do is the result of its laboriously accumulated

traditions. It is only by working towards the creation of a still better

posterity, that he can repay the good gifts which the human race has

brought him.[426] Just as, within the limits of this present life, many

who have received benefits and kindnesses they can never repay to the

actual givers, find a pleasure in vicariously repaying the like to

others, so the heritage we have received from our ascendents we can never

repay, save by handing it on in a better form to our descendants.

It is undoubtedly true that the growth of eugenical ideals has not been,

for the most part, due to religious feeling. It has been chiefly the

outcome of a very gradual, but very comprehensive, movement towards social

amelioration, which has been going on for more than a century, and which

has involved a progressive effort towards the betterment of all the

conditions of life. The ideals of this movement were proclaimed in the

eighteenth century, they began to find expression early in the nineteenth

century, in the initiation of the modern system of sanitation, in the

growth of factory legislation, in all the movements which have been borne

onwards by socialism hand in hand with individualism. The inevitable

tendency has been slowly towards the root of the matter; it began to be

seen that comparatively little can be effected by improving the conditions

of life of adults; attention began to be concentrated on the child, on the

infant, on the embryo in its mother's womb, and this resulted in the

fruitful movement of puericulture inspired by Pinard, and finally the

problem is brought to its source at the point of procreation, and the

regulation of sexual selection between stocks and between individuals as

the prime condition of life. Here we have the science of eugenics which

Sir Francis Galton has done so much to make a definite, vital, and

practical study, and which in its wider bearings he defines as "the

science which deals with those social eugenics that influence, mentally or

physically, the racial qualities of future generations." In its largest

aspect, eugenics is, as Galton has elsewhere said, man's attempt "to

replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and

not less effective."

In the last chapter of his _Memories of My Life_ (1908), on "Race

Improvement," Sir Francis Galton sets forth the origin and

development of his conception of the science of eugenics. The

term, "eugenics," he first used in 1884, in his _Human Faculty_,

but the conception dates from 1865, and even earlier. Galton has

more recently discussed the problems of eugenics in papers read

before the Sociological Society (_Sociological Papers_, vols. i

and ii, 1905), in the Herbert Spencer Lecture on "Probability the

Foundation of Eugenics," (1907), and elsewhere. Galton's numerous

memoirs on this subject have now been published in a collected

form by the Eugenics Education Society, which was established in

1907, to further and to popularize the eugenical attitude towards

social questions; _The Eugenics Review_ is published by this

Society. On the more strictly scientific side, eugenic studies

are carried on in the Eugenics Laboratory of the University of

London, established by Sir Francis Galton, and now working in

connection with Professor Karl Pearson's biometric laboratory, in

University College. Much of Professor Pearson's statistical work

in this and allied directions, is the elaboration of ideas and

suggestions thrown out by Galton. See, e.g., Karl Pearson's

Robert Boyle Lecture, "The Scope and Importance to the State of

the Science of National Eugenics" (1907). _Biometrika_, edited by

Karl Pearson in association with other workers, contains numerous

statistical memoirs on eugenics. In Germany, the _Archiv für

Rassen und Gesellschafts-biologie_, and the

_Politisch-Anthropologische Revue_, are largely occupied with

various aspects of such subjects, and in America, _The Popular

Science Monthly_ from time to time, publishes articles which have

a bearing on eugenics.

At one time there was a tendency to scoff, or to laugh, at the eugenic

movement. It was regarded as an attempt to breed men as men breed animals,

and it was thought a sufficiently easy task to sweep away this new

movement with the remark that love laughs at bolts and bars. It is now

beginning to be better understood. None but fanatics dream of abolishing

love in order to effect pairing by rule. It is merely a question of

limiting the possible number of mates from whom each may select a partner,

and that, we must remember, has always been done even by savages, for, as

it has been said, "eugenics is the oldest of the sciences." The question

has merely been transformed. Instead of being limited mechanically by

caste, we begin to see that the choice of sexual mates must be limited

intelligently by actual fitness. Promiscuous marriages have never been the

rule; the possibility of choice has always been narrow, and the most

primitive peoples have exerted the most marked self-restraint. It is not

so merely among remote races but among our own European ancestors.

Throughout the whole period of Catholic supremacy the Canon law

multiplied the impediments to matrimony, as by ordaining that

consanguinity to the fourth degree (third cousins), as well as spiritual

relationship, is an impediment, and by such arbitrary prohibitions limited

the range of possible mates at least as much as it would be limited by the

more reasonable dictates of eugenic considerations.

At the present day it may be said that the principle of the voluntary

control of procreation, not for the selfish ends of the individual, but in

order to extinguish disease, to limit human misery, and to raise the

general level of humanity by substituting the ideal of quality for the

vulgar ideal of mere quantity, is now generally accepted, alike by medical

pathologists, embryologists and neurologists, and by sociologists and

moralists.

It would be easy to multiply quotations from distinguished

authorities on this point. Thus, Metchnikoff points out (_Essais

Optimistes_, p. 419) that orthobiosis seems to involve the

limitation of offspring in the fight against disease. Ballantyne

concludes his great treatise on _Antenanal Pathology_ with the

statement that "Eugenics" or well-begetting, is one of the

world's most pressing problems. Dr. Louise Robinovitch, the

editor of the _Journal of Mental Pathology_, in a brilliant and

thoughtful paper, read before the Rome Congress of Psychology in

1905, well spoke in the same sense: "Nations have not yet

elevated the energy of genesic function to the dignity of an

energy. Other energies known to us, even of the meanest grade,

have long since been wisely utilized, and their activities based

on the principle of the strictest possible economy. This economic

utilization has been brought about, not through any enforcement

of legislative restrictions, but through steadily progressive

human intelligence. Economic handling of genesic function will,

like the economic function of other energies, come about through

a steady and progressive intellectual development of nations."

"There are circumstances," says C.H. Hughes, ("Restricted

Procreation," _Alienist and Neurologist_, May, 1908), "under

which the propagation of a human life may be as gravely criminal

as the taking of a life already begun."

From the general biological, as well as from the sociological

side, the acceptance of the same standpoint is constantly

becoming more general, for it is recognized as the inevitable

outcome of movements which have long been in progress.

"Already," wrote Haycraft (_Darwinism and Race Progress_, p.

160), referring to the law for the prevention of cruelty to

children, "public opinion has expressed itself in the public

rule that a man and woman, in begetting a child, must take upon

themselves the obligation and responsibility of seeing that that

child is not subjected to cruelty and hardship. It is but one

step more to say that a man and a woman shall be under obligation

not to produce children, when it is certain that, from their want

of physique, they will have to undergo suffering, and will keep

up but an unequal struggle with their fellows." Professor J.

Arthur Thomson, in his volume on _Heredity_ (1908), vigorously

and temperately pleads (p. 528) for rational methods of eugenics,

as specially demanded in an age like our own, when the unfit have

been given a better chance of reproduction than they have ever

been given in any other age. Bateson, again, referring to the

growing knowledge of heredity, remarks (_Mendel's Principles of

Heredity_, 1909, p. 305): "Genetic knowledge must certainly lead

to new conceptions of justice, and it is by no means impossible

that, in the light of such knowledge, public opinion will welcome

measures likely to do more for the extinction of the criminal and

the degenerate than has been accomplished by ages of penal

enactment." Adolescent youths and girls, said Anton von Menger,

in his last book, the pregnant _Neue Sittenlehre_ (1905), must be

taught that the production of children, under certain

circumstances, is a crime; they must also be taught the voluntary

restraint of conception, even in health; such teaching, Menger

rightly added, is a necessary preliminary to any legislation in

this direction.

Of recent years, many books and articles have been devoted to the

advocacy of eugenic methods. Mention may be made, for instance,

of _Population and Progress_ (1907), by Montague Crackanthorpe,

President of the Eugenics Education Society. See also, Havelock

Ellis, "Eugenics and St. Valentine," _Nineteenth Century and

After_, May, 1906. It may be mentioned that nearly thirty years

ago, Miss J.H. Clapperton, in her _Scientific Meliorism_ (1885,

Ch. XVII), pointed out that the voluntary restraint of

procreation by Neo-Malthusian methods, apart from merely

prudential motives, there clearly recognized, is "a new key to

the social position," and a necessary condition for "national

regeneration." Professor Karl Pearson's _Groundwork of Eugenics_,

(1909) is, perhaps, the best brief introduction to the subject.

Mention may also be made of Dr. Saleeby's _Parenthood and Race

Culture_ (1909), written in a popular and enthusiastic manner.

How widely the general principles of eugenics are now accepted as

the sound method of raising the level of the human race, was well

shown at a meeting of the Sociological Society, in 1905, when,

after Sir Francis Galton had read papers on the question, the

meeting heard the opinions of numerous sociologists, economists,

biologists, and well-known thinkers in various lands, who were

present, or who had sent communications. Some twenty-one

expressed more or less unqualified approval, and only three or

four had objections to offer, mostly on matters of detail

(_Sociological Papers_, published by the Sociological Society,

vol. ii, 1905).

If we ask by what channels this impulse towards the control of procreation

for the elevation of the race is expressing itself in practical life, we

shall scarcely fail to find that there are at least two such channels: (1)

the growing sense of sexual responsibility among women as well as men, and

(2) the conquest of procreative control which has been achieved in recent

years, by the general adoption of methods for the prevention of

conception.

It has already been necessary in a previous chapter to discuss the

far-reaching significance of woman's personal responsibility as an element

in the modification of the sexual life of modern communities. Here it need

only be pointed out that the autonomous authority of a woman over her own

person, in the sexual sphere, involves on her part a consent to the act of

procreation which must be deliberate. We are apt to think that this is a

new and almost revolutionary demand; it is, however, undoubtedly a

natural, ancient, and recognized privilege of women that they should not

be mothers without their own consent. Even in the Islamic world of the

_Arabian Nights_, we find that high praise is accorded to the "virtue and

courage" of the woman who, having been ravished in her sleep, exposed, and

abandoned on the highway, the infant that was the fruit of this

involuntary union, "not wishing," she said, "to take the responsibility

before Allah of a child that had been born without my consent."[427] The

approval with which this story is narrated clearly shows that to the

public of Islam it seemed entirely just and humane that a woman should not

have a child, except by her own deliberate will. We have been accustomed

to say in later days that the State needs children, and that it is the

business and the duty of women to supply them. But the State has no more

right than the individual to ravish a woman against her will. We are

beginning to realize that if the State wants children it must make it

agreeable to women to produce them, as under natural and equitable

conditions it cannot fail to be. "The women will solve the question of

mankind," said Ibsen in one of his rare and pregnant private utterances,

"and they will do it as mothers." But it is unthinkable that any question

should ever be solved by a helpless, unwilling, and involuntary act which

has not even attained to the dignity of animal joy.

It is sometimes supposed, and even assumed, that the demand of

women that motherhood must never be compulsory, means that they

are unwilling to be mothers on any terms. In a few cases that may

be so, but it is certainly not the case as regards the majority

of sane and healthy women in any country. On the contrary, this

demand is usually associated with the desire to glorify

motherhood, if not, indeed, even with the thought of extending

motherhood to many who are to-day shut out from it. "It seems to

me," wrote Lady Henry Somerset, some years ago ("The Welcome

Child," _Arena_, April, 1895), "that life will be dearer and

nobler the more we recognize that there is no indelicacy in the

climax and crown of creative power, but, rather, that it is the

highest glory of the race. But if voluntary motherhood is the

crown of the race, involuntary compulsory motherhood is the very

opposite.... Only when both man and woman have learned that the

most sacred of all functions given to women must be exercised by

the free will alone, can children be born into the world who have

in them the joyous desire to live, who claim that sweetest

privilege of childhood, the certainty that they can expand in the

sunshine of the love which is their due." Ellen Key, similarly,

while pointing out (_Ueber Liebe und Ehe_, pp. 14, 265) that the

tyranny of the old Protestant religious spirit which enjoined on

women unlimited submission to joyless motherhood within "the

whited sepulchre of marriage" is now being broken, exalts the

privileges of voluntary motherhood, while admitting that there

may be a few exceptional cases in which women may withdraw

themselves from motherhood for the sake of the other demands of

their personality, though, "as a general rule, the woman who

refuses motherhood in order to serve humanity, is like a soldier

who prepares himself on the eve of battle for the forthcoming

struggle by opening his veins." Helene Stöcker, likewise, reckons

motherhood as one of the demands, one of the growing demands

indeed, which women now make. "If, to-day," she says (in the

Preface to _Liebe und die Frauen_, 1906), "all the good things of

life are claimed even for women--intellectual training, pecuniary

independence, a happy vocation in life, a respected social

position--and at the same time, as equally matter-of-course, and

equally necessary, marriage and child, that demand no longer

sounds, as it sounded a few years ago, the voice of a preacher in

the wilderness."

The degradation to which motherhood has, in the eyes of many,

fallen, is due partly to the tendency to deprive women of any

voice in the question, and partly to what H.G. Wells calls

(_Socialism and the Family_, 1906) "the monstrous absurdity of

women discharging their supreme social function, bearing and

rearing children, in their spare time, as it were, while they

'earn their living' by contributing some half mechanical element

to some trivial industrial product." It would be impracticable,

and even undesirable, to insist that married women should not be

allowed to work, for a work in the world is good for all. It is

estimated that over thirty per cent. of the women workers in

England are married or widows (James Haslam, _Englishwoman_,

June, 1909), and in Lancashire factories alone, in 1901, there

were 120,000 married women employed. But it would be easily

possible for the State to arrange, in its own interests, that a

woman's work at a trade should always give way to her work as a

mother. It is the more undesirable that married women should be

prohibited from working at a profession, since there are some

professions for which a married woman, or, rather, a mother, is

better equipped than an unmarried woman. This is notably the case

as regards teaching, and it would be a good policy to allow

married women teachers special privileges in the shape of

increased free time and leave of absence. While in many fields of

knowledge an unmarried woman may be a most excellent teacher, it

is highly undesirable that children, and especially girls, should

be brought exclusively under the educational influence of

unmarried teachers.

The second great channel through which the impulse towards the control of

procreation for the elevation of the race is entering into practical life

is by the general adoption, by the educated classes of all countries--and

it must be remembered that, in this matter at all events, all classes are

gradually beginning to become educated--of methods for the prevention of

conception except when conception is deliberately desired. It is no longer

permissible to discuss the validity of this control, for it is an

accomplished fact and has become a part of our modern morality. "If a

course of conduct is habitually and deliberately pursued by vast

multitudes of otherwise well-conducted people, forming probably a majority

of the whole educated class of the nation," as Sidney Webb rightly puts

it, "we must assume that it does not conflict with their actual code of

morality."[428]