PURITY
Nothing has worked so much detriment to the health of mankind for many
centuries as the habits that may be generalized under the term
impurity. Until recent years it has been the custom to suppress the
knowledge of the immense physical evil that was being worked to
humanity by the venereal diseases. A generation ago it was only
imperfectly known, but now we recognize that no set of diseases are
more important for the race and its health than those which usually
occur as the direct result of violations of the moral code. Their
ravages have increased just in proportion to the gradual diminution of
the influence of religion during the past few generations. They have
probably worked greater havoc on the better classes than on the poorer
classes. There are nations like the Irish, over whom religion has a
strong hold, in which the injury worked by these diseases has been
almost negligible. There have been classes of men like the clergymen,
deeply under the influence of religion, who have escaped almost
entirely the awful, destructive effects of these affections. We have
only just waked up to the realization of how much this element of
conduct, so profoundly influenced by religion, has meant for suffering
and death among men.
In spite of the fact that there was a conspiracy of silence with
regard to the venereal diseases, something of their {185} fearful
effectiveness in adding to mortality lists came to be known, at least
by those who were interested in the subject, a generation ago. Though
every possible excuse was taken not to list death as due to these
diseases during the twenty-five years before nineteen hundred, when,
just after the smug mid-Victorian period, the conspiracy of silence
was at its highest and was particularly hide-bound in England, no less
than sixty thousand deaths from venereal disease were registered by
the English registrar general. Nearly twenty-five thousand of these
were females. Over two thousand deaths a year is a pretty heavy toll,
but such statistics give only the very faintest hint of the awful
ravages of these diseases. It is not alone death that occurs as a
consequence of them but long years of suffering and crippling of
various kinds, the blinding of children and the birth of dead or
idiotic children, or of other poor little ones who grow up to be
epileptic or to become insane in early adult life, or to exhibit other
sad marks of the diseases of their parents.
Civil statistics of these diseases mean very little, especially in
English-speaking countries, because of our prudery with regard to
them. Army medical statistics, however, have had to be rigorously kept
because of the amount of military inefficiency due to these
affections. The statistics of the last generation in England show that
it was not an unusual thing for nearly one in four of the soldiers in
a regiment to be admitted to the hospital each year because of
venereal disease. Actually nearly one in five of the effective
strength of regiments was constantly in a hospital because of these
diseases. It is improbable that soldiers are notably more immoral than
civilians of the same class, except that perhaps there has been in the
army a tradition of greater contempt for these affections. So {186}
far as large cities are concerned, many good medical authorities are
convinced that the average young men of the population suffer to about
the same extent as soldiers. Actually something more than three out of
five in the English army suffered at some time from these diseases,
and as they are extremely difficult to cure and often continue to have
serious effects for years, as well as being contagious for others, we
get some idea of what an immense amount of harm has been worked by
them.
It might possibly be thought that conditions in America were better
than in Europe in this regard, but our experience during the war did
not justify any such optimism. Nearly six per cent of the men
mobilized for the army in the United States actually showed signs of
these diseases when they were admitted for examination on arrival in
camp. This percentage does not include those who had been cured prior
to their examination. From some of the cities of this country the
proportion of young men actually suffering at the time of their
enlistment from these diseases was more than one in ten, and from
certain of the southern cities it actually approached very close to
one in five. According to the statement of the Surgeon General of the
War Department, diseases due to impurity constituted the greatest
cause of disability in the army. When the physicians were given the
opportunity to make a more careful examination of the second million
of the draft than had been possible for the first, the percentage of
diseased men ran up notably, in spite of the fact that warnings in the
matter led a great many of those who were drafted to seek proper
treatment before presenting themselves at the camps.
We have waked up at last to something like the full significance of
these diseases in the destruction of the race. {187} The American
Social Hygiene Association in its Publication No. 250, "Conquering an
Old Enemy", dared to tell the story of these affections very
straightforwardly. There are many physicians connected with this
association and its opinions are thoroughly conservative and not at
all hysterical. We get a striking idea of the destructiveness of these
diseases from an early paragraph of the publication:
"In these United States and in this year of peace 1920, more lives
than the whole empire of Great Britain lost during any year of the
Great War will be flicked out by two diseases which are curable and
preventable diseases. Nor will the year 1920 stand alone. In the
four and a half years of intensive warfare between 1914 and 1918,
the fifteen civilized nations which fought at Armageddon gave to
these twin scourges a heavier toll than they did to bullets, shells,
gas, air-bombs, all the ghastly, wholesale killers of modern
battle."
The more important of these diseases is estimated by authorities to
kill annually in the United States more than 300,000 people. It is far
more deadly than tuberculosis and carries off every year nearly, if
not quite, as many lives as influenza at the height of its
epidemicity. France lost during the four years and four months of
Armageddon 1,350,000 lives in battle. We lost almost as many during
the same time from this affection which a few years ago we were
ostrich-like hiding from ourselves by refusing to look at it. The
other of these affections is probably responsible for more serious
suffering in women and female complaints that require operation as
well as blindness in children than any other single factor that we
have in modern life. There is no element that has so seriously
interfered with the simple joys of existence, the {188} raising of
children and family life in peace and happiness, as this affection.
When it is realized how many complications and sequelae may develop
from these diseases, but above all how much harm may be done to
innocent wives and children, some notion of the suffering that has
thus been inflicted on mankind will be obtained. The one significant
factor in the control of this source of ill health has been religion.
Just in proportion as religion has lost its hold over the rising
generation, there has been a marked increase in this particular mode
of ill health. The only effective brake on human passion has been
religious feeling, but above all religious training. If religion had
done nothing else than limit to a noteworthy extent the irregular
living consequent upon yielding to passion, that would be sufficient
of itself to make not only personal but community health greatly
indebted to religion. Other motives have at times been appealed to and
sometimes with apparently good results for the time being, but never
with any enduring effectiveness against the flood tide of feeling
which comes over those who have had no practice in self-repression and
who have not learned to appeal to the higher motives to help them in
this matter.
For a great many young men, "sowing their wild oats" has been sowing a
crop of seeds whose products have meant the ruination of their own
lives, but unfortunately also only too often of the lives of their
future wives and their unborn children. We know now that the great
majority of all the blind children in our blind asylums owe their
blindness to one of these venereal affections. Three out of five at
least of the imbeciles and epileptics in our institutions derive their
mental trouble from the other {189} of these diseases. We hear a good
deal about young folks "seeing life", but for many the process which
has been thus lightly glossed over should be described literally as
"seeing death."
Since the unfortunate breakdown of religion to a considerable extent
in the last few generations and its tendency to change into a mere
social influence at most, there has been a great increase in the
prevalence of these diseases. Some of this is undoubtedly due to our
modern city life and its temptations, but the individual attitude
toward life means more. St. Theresa said, "When the individual is well
grounded in faith, the temptation means little." An attempt has been
made to control the power of temptations and repress the passions of
men by other means. Above all, knowledge of the awful sex disease
dangers which they were running has been turned to as a hopeful remedy
in this matter. It was thought that young folks could be terrified by
the knowledge of the hideous possible consequences of their acts into
avoiding the lapses which occasion them.
In spite of the fact that practically all of our prominent
psychologists have opposed any such method as this, a great many
people who have very little right to an opinion have insisted that
this policy must be followed in our schools. There is probably nothing
that could do more harm than this. The diffusion of the knowledge of
the immense amount of serious, even fatal, disease consequent upon sex
irregularities suddenly thrust upon the world has made a great many
people a little hysterical and has tempted them to turn to remedies
which are not only not likely to be helpful but are almost sure to be
vicious in their consequences. It is like finding {190} that a child
has swallowed some poison and in the excitement administering another
with the vague hope that one may neutralize the other.
Professor Foerster of the department of psychology and ethics at the
University of Munich does not hesitate to say that such teaching is
sure to do harm and not good. He has suggested that "in making use of
the intellect to restrain sex instincts there is every danger of the
intellect itself, through excessive familiarization with details of
such knowledge, being captured and employed in the service of the
enemy." He praises the older teachers, "The great educators of the
past who have all been instinctively aware of this truth and have
hence strongly insisted on the importance of cultivating a sense of
shame; for they have realized that the chief task of sexual education
is not to attract the attention of the young to sex matters, but as
far as possible to distract them from it."
Professor Muensterberg of Harvard University took very strong ground
against the teaching of sex hygiene in public schools and stated his
opinion quite as emphatically as Professor Foerster that such
teaching, even though it be given with the best of intentions, is sure
to do much more harm than good. He said: "The cleanest boy and girl
cannot give theoretical attention to the thoughts concerning sexuality
without the whole mechanism for reinforcement automatically entering
into action. We may instruct with the best intention to suppress, and
yet our instruction itself must become a source of stimulation which
unnecessarily creates a desire for improper conduct. The policy of
silence showed an instinctive understanding of this fundamental
situation. Even if that traditional policy had had no {191} positive
purpose, its negative function, its leaving at rest the explosive
sexual system of the youth, must be acknowledged as one of those
wonderful instinctive procedures by which society protects itself....
"A nation which tries to lift its sexual morality by dragging the
sexual problems to the street for the inspection of the crowd without
shyness and without shame, and which wilfully makes them objects of
gossip and stage entertainment is doing worse than Munchausen when he
tried to lift himself by his scalp."
It would be perfectly easy to give many other quotations from
prominent psychologists who agree with Foerster and Muensterberg in
this matter. What is forgotten is how large a role suggestion plays in
all matters relating to conduct, but particularly sex conduct. The
exhibition of such ordinary crimes as "second-story work", climbing
porches in order to steal while the family are at meals, the picking
of pockets and the like, on the reels of moving pictures has been
found to be followed over and over again by the occurrence of such
crimes among the boys and even the girls in the neighborhood where the
exhibition was given. Girls see a woman's reticule cleverly rifled in
a street car or on a crowded corner and, tempted by the cleverness of
it, they are led to imitate the action. In many cities the police
refuse to allow such reels to be exhibited unless the punishment for
the crime completes the picture. Even with this, however, it has been
found that such exhibitions prove criminally suggestive, for the young
folks remember the cleverness and think of the fun that one can have
with the money, while the punishment is, if not forgotten, at least so
pushed into the background of memory as to have comparatively little
deterrent effect.
{192}
If this is true with regard to indifferent actions of this kind, the
temptations to which are more or less artificial or but of
comparatively slight allurement, it is easy to understand how serious
and profound can be the suggestive power of sex knowledge for which
there is likely to be so prurient a curiosity and with regard to which
there are in the best-regulated healthy individuals, bodily stirrings
almost as soon as the mind begins to be occupied with them. For that
is the danger,--that even in the best of men the physical sex impulse
may be awakened. In those who for professional reasons are quite
familiar with sex matters, as for instance the physician, the dwelling
on sex subjects even in matters of disease may arouse physical
elements in the system, and these may react to deepen the attention
until other considerations may be quite pushed into the background of
consciousness. If this is true for older people, how much more so for
the young, who have not yet been disillusioned on sex subjects and
whose inhibitions are likely to be so much weaker. A great many of the
people who are so intent on sex education apparently do not realize
that their very tendency to occupy themselves with this subject so
much is due to unconscious physical stirrings within themselves,
consequent upon the preoccupation of mind with these subjects to the
exclusion of healthier considerations.
The imparting of knowledge often serves only to awaken sleeping
passions unsuspected before in the organism. Everyday experience shows
how little knowledge helps. The people whose sex divagations get most
frequently into our courts are those between thirty-five and fifty
years of age. There is no question at all that they know enough to
keep them right if knowledge made {193} for righteousness. I have said
elsewhere, and I know it to be true, that medical students, in spite
of their knowledge of the consequences of venery, are not better, but
on the average a little worse in these matters than other students in
the universities. Their knowledge, like all knowledge, acts as a
suggestion to evil much more than as a protection against vice. When
temptation comes they are likely to think of the possibility of
avoiding the worst evils and of the powers of medicine, and anyhow
youth always feels in the expressive French phrase. _On meurt! les
autres!_ People die! Oh, yes, other people.
The one factor in life that will give the most precious aid in the
protection of humanity against sexual temptations is religion. All the
higher religions have emphasized the virtue of purity, that is, of
freedom from sex vice, as of the greatest importance. For Christianity
this has been a corner stone of the spiritual life without which
righteousness, to use the good old-fashioned word which indicated that
a man went "right" in life, was impossible. We are a little afraid of
these old-fashioned religious words in our time, and we use such
expressions as "go straight", somewhat as during the war the soldiers
used the expression "go west" in order not to have to mention the
solemn word death, but the old-fashioned words express exactly the
meaning that we want, and they often carry valuable suggestion with
them. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ held out His highest rewards
in heaven for those who practiced purity. He insisted, however, not on
purity of body alone, but on purity of mind and heart when He said,
"Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God."
The head master of Harrow, the great public school {194} in England,
proclaimed a very great truth that we all know, but need to be
reminded of, when he said to his young men at Harrow that "The Bible
does not so much speak as thunder against impurity, and it is no
injustice to a secularistic morality to say that purity received from
the lips of Jesus Christ a dignity, nay, a paramount authority which
it cannot receive from human lips. Nor is personal chastity the same
thing if it be taken to be a sanitary, or conventional, or moral
practice, as if it be a duty resulting from the sanctity of the body
as the temple of the indwelling Spirit of God."
Doctor Norman Porritt, in his book on "Religion and Health", does not
hesitate to say that religion is the only factor that can be helpful
in this extremely important matter of the prophylaxis of sex disease.
He goes so far as to say that "Give to the tempted the reinforcement
of religion, and you place him in a position well-nigh impregnable."
It has been well said that if the man who first wrote "honesty is the
best policy" meant that people should be honest because that was sure
to rebound to their own benefit in the end, he was a rascal at heart.
In something the same way Doctor Porritt suggests that to teach that
purity is the best policy is to take an extremely low motive for the
purpose of combating one of the most alluring temptations that man
has. He says very emphatically and yet surely with a great deal of
common sense: "And what is to be the remedy for the scourge which is
incapacitating and crippling a fifth part of the nation's manhood,
checking the natural expansion of population and sweeping unknown
thousands to untimely graves? There are many remedies. We may look to
the creation of a public sentiment which shall regard immorality as a
disgraceful thing, to be {195} ashamed of rather than proud of; we may
learn to point the finger of scorn at the tempter as readily as we
spurn his victim; we may prove, both by precept and our own example,
that chastity is compatible with health, and that impurity--even when
no gross disease follows--tends to deterioration and disorder; that
the reasoning which gives a sanatory sanction to immorality and vice
is a subtle sophistry. We may cultivate the manly exercises and stamp
out impurity by wholesome books, elevating amusements, and noble
ambitions; we may endeavour to check the spread of these diseases by
legislative restrictions; we may inculcate teetotalism and banish
enervating habits and too stimulating foods. Each of these measures
may do something. Some of them may do much. But all of them have one
fatal defect. They are all tarred with the brush of expediency.
Expediency, and not wrong-doing, is the danger signal they show. And
when the hot blood surges through young veins in the struggle with an
imminent temptation, what becomes of expediency?"
Many people are ready to declare that the conspiracy of silence which
has characterized the old-fashioned attitude of mind with regard to
sex matters generally is due to the Church more than to any other
agency. I think that from what we have said the Church's insistence on
reticence with regard to sex subjects as the policy most likely to do
good in the long run is now recognized by psychologists as being
founded on motives that are the basis of natural defense by human
nature in an extremely thorny matter. Ignorance is not innocence, but
a saving lack of knowledge may spare a great many evil suggestions
that would otherwise work harm. You cannot neutralize sex temptations
by the {196} provision of knowledge, you cannot even minimize them,
and you may tactlessly add not a little to their danger.
There is a prudery which is not proper reticence that is cultivated by
some people who happen incidentally to be religiously inclined. They
would not call a spade a spade for the world. They would not hint at
the fact that conjugation is always the origin of life for worlds.
They would not use certain plain words that must be used in order to
express very definite ideas without the feeling that they had smirched
themselves by saying such things. If they had gone through Europe in
the old days and seen the public comfort arrangements, they would have
collapsed then and there. All this is sheer prudery and when applied
to sex matters represents really a neurosis of excessive precaution
and inhibition with regard to some of the most natural things in the
world.
Any one who understands even a little of the religious attitude toward
marriage will appreciate readily that such a state of mind is as far
as possible from being that of the Church. Marriage is termed holy and
blessed, and the ministers of the sacrament are the married persons
themselves. Only those who fail to comprehend religious teaching in
these matters have suggested that religious reticence with its
conservation of that supreme reverence which even the great pagan
teacher Quintilian recognized as due to youth represented an
unfortunate cultivation of harmful ignorance. On the contrary, it is a
part of that great tradition of age-long reticence which represents
the highest wisdom of humanity. Hence the reversion to that mode of
dealing with the question which has characterized the teaching of
conservative psychologists in the last few years.
{197}
The greatest safeguard of purity with all that it means for the
preservation of health and strength is the practice of self-denial
with regard to the luxuries of life. No element in life has emphasized
that and encouraged its practice so much or so constantly, and so
persistently tried to train her children in it from youth as religion.
It is almost impossible, for young people particularly, to keep right
in this matter if they constantly indulge in luxuries. The very word
luxury has come to be defined as "lust and lasciviousness and
indulgence in lust", because there is such an almost inevitable
connection between the exuberance of animal spirits which develops in
connection with indulgence in luxuries of various kinds that the two
words have almost necessarily come to have an intimate association.
The word is applied to the friskiness or wantonness of animals, and it
is very easy to understand its application. Men as well as animals who
take more food than their occupations in life enable them to dispose
of properly become similarly wanton or out of control. In Scriptural
words they "wax fat and kick."
Religion has encouraged innocent enjoyment of every worthy sort as a
distraction of mind and an outlet for youthful energy, but has
discouraged in every way possible that complete gratification of the
senses or of bodily desires which is so likely to be fatal to such
strength of will as will enable people to control themselves. Clarke
says, "Luxury does not consist in the innocent enjoyment of any of the
good things which God has created to be received with thankfulness,
but in the wasteful abuse of them to vicious purposes in ways
inconsistent with sobriety, justice or charity."
Professor Foerster, whose books on the subject of the {198} training
of youth and especially on sex matters in youth attracted so much
attention shortly before the war, faced frankly this problem of the
necessity for the practice of mortification, or as he did not hesitate
to call it, genuine asceticism, the exercise of the virtues of
self-control and self-denial as the most important factor for the
protection of youth. He said: "All solutions of the sex problem which
tend to emancipate sex feeling from the control of moral and spiritual
law (instead of making it the chief aim to place the spirit in a
position of mastery over the sex nature) are essentially hostile, not
only to our whole social evolution and to the development of
individual character, but to actual physical health in the sphere of
sex. To secure the mastery of man's higher self over the whole world
of animal desire is a task, however, which demands a more systematic
development of will-power and the cultivation of a deeper faith in the
spiritual destiny of humanity than are to be found in the superficial
intellectualistic civilization of to-day. To achieve such a result it
will be necessary not only to have recourse to new methods and new
ideals, but to make sure that we do not allow what is valuable and in
any way worthy of imitation, in the old, to be forgotten. The ascetic
principle in particular is to-day in danger of being undervalued."
The cult of the body which has become so much the occupation of the
present generation, which refuses to make the necessary effort of mind
to secure intellectual pleasures, has always been the special
deprecation of the Church. A great many of the words in the language
show the effect of that religious attitude very clearly. Sensuousness,
while its original meaning is only anything connected with the senses,
has come to mean the quality {199} of being particularly alive to the
pleasure that is received through the senses and therefore by
implication, at least, not particularly intellectual. The _Edinburgh
Quarterly_ reviewer long ago, in the famous article which Byron
suggested as having snuffed out the "fiery particle" of Keats' soul,
hurt him most by suggesting his lack of intellectuality and declaring
that he was "too soft and sensuous by nature to be exhilarated by the
conflict of modern opinions", hence "he found an opiate for his
despondency in the old tales of Greek mythology." Sensuality even more
than sensuousness has come to mean under the sway of the senses and
the bodily desires rather than of the mind. Pope spoke of men
"sensualized by pleasure" like those who were "changed into brutes by
Circe."
There is probably no epithet that a man of intelligence resents more
than to be called a sensualist. Goldsmith summed it up when he spoke
of "the vulgar satisfaction of soliciting happiness from sensual
enjoyment alone." Religion has particularly emphasized the danger and
the actual degradation of human nature which this brought about.
Bishop Atterbury declared that "No small part of virtue consists in
abstaining from that in which sensual men place their felicity."
Longer ago Shakespeare summed up the degeneration of the sensualist
when he said
"Those pampered animals
That rage in savage sensuality."
This is quite literal degeneracy, for as man is both animal and
rational, overindulgence in the pleasures of the senses drags him down
toward his animal nature, that is, toward the _genus_ below the _genus
homo_ to which man belongs. No wonder men resent the epithet
"degenerate."
{200}
As the result of the influence of religion other words such as carnal,
worldly, have come to be stamped with a meaning which makes people
understand much better than would otherwise be the case the real
significance of indulgence in bodily or mere earthly pleasure. The
words are no longer fashionable, but that is because the deeds which
they represent have become quite fashionable, and those who affect
them do not want to have the innuendo of decadence and wrongful
indulgence which necessarily goes with them applied to their acts.
Religion has thus created a state of the public mind that has been
extremely helpful against sensual pleasures and their power to ruin
health, so long of course as religion held its place of influence over
men.
Above all religion has insisted, and it is almost the only agency
which continues to do so, that there can be no purity with its power
for good for the health of both mind and body if the excitants of
sensuality are indulged in. There must not only be no doing of evil,
but there must be, as far as possible, no thinking about it, and
especially there must be no dwelling on sensual pleasure, for bodily
cravings will almost surely be aroused that make temptation almost
insuperable. To think of delicate viands when one is hungry causes a
flow of saliva, making the mouth water, but we know now that it causes
a flow of what are called the appetite juices in the stomach which
adds materially to the feeling of hunger and would make it very hard
to resist taking food if it were placed before one, even though there
might be some rather serious dangers connected with its taking. The
thirsty soldier finds it extremely difficult to obey military laws
with regard to not drinking any water that has not been examined and
declared wholesome by the medical regime {201} of the army, and if he
should dwell much on his thirst it would make it ever so much harder
to restrain if water from outside military sources should be offered
to him.
Other pleasures of sense are even more likely to become the subject of
almost insuperable temptations if the objects of them are dwelt on.
Religion therefore has insisted, and is still insisting, on the
necessity of avoiding attendance at such theaters as quite inevitably
set up sensual excitation.
Fashion, which is another word for the world--and religion has always
pointed out that the three great enemies of the development of the
spirit of man are the world, the flesh, and the devil--has always set
itself in opposition to religion in the approval of sensual
gratification. That conflict is unending. A great many people declare
that they would rather be out of the world than out of fashion, and it
is surprising what insensate things fashion leads people to. The
present fashion for the slow dance with the partners closely wrapped
in one another's arms, for that is of course the essence of all the
modern dances, no matter what their varying names may be, is only
another development of the unending opposition between fashion and
religion. Here once more, as with regard to the theater, religion
presents the only serious protest. Dame Fashion insists that she sees
no harm in it, but that is of course only a fashion of speech. It is
quite impossible for a physician to watch the dancing without becoming
convinced that human passions must be aroused by such close contact of
human bodies of opposite sexes.
In this, however, as in so many other phases of life, only religion
can interfere or protest with any hope of success. Her protest remains
often unheard; fashion {202} may be almost all powerful even against
the higher calls of duty as well as against common sense. Certainly
religious influence has had more to do with keeping a great many women
from following the dictates of fashion in emphasizing their sex and
therefore exciting the men with whom they come in contact than any
other single factor. It has not been entirely successful, it never
will be; the conflict will go on and worldliness will constantly come
to the surface in some form or other, often to the detriment of
health; and religion when properly vital will continue to be the most
important factor in keeping evil from gaining such ascendancy as would
be seriously detrimental to the healthy mind in a healthy body.
Religion is the only agency in the modern time that tries to regulate
the reading of young folks and indeed of others in this dangerous
matter of sex excitation. A great many books seem to be written at the
present time for no other purpose than to excite sex feeling,--and
thereby to make money. They depend for their sale entirely on the fact
that for a great many people there is a distinct physical pleasure in
reading about sex subjects. This is particularly true of women. A
great many of them, and especially those who have not very much else
to do and who therefore have no proper outlet for animal spirits and
for the energies that tend to accumulate in them because they feed
well and sleep long, are prone to indulge in this sort of luxury. Most
of them would resent the suggestion that it was wrong for them to
indulge their feelings in this way, but religion has always taken a
decided stand and insisted that the fomenting of desire and the toying
with alluring thoughts and the inviting of temptation are of
themselves actually sinful. As John Boyle O'Reilly said,
{203}
"Temptation waits for all, and ills will come;
But some go out and ask the devil home."
Physicians have always insisted that the sexual erethism which is
excited by the reading of books on sex subjects, the attending of sex
problem plays and of shows of various kinds is the worst possible
background for healthy living. Such frequent titillation of delicate
nervous mechanisms plays sad havoc with general nervous control.
Unfortunately just those who are indoors a great deal, who take very
little exercise, and who live on dainties are most likely to indulge
in these habits of life with regard to reading and the theater and
dancing and the like which are most harmful for them. They are
irritable in the nervous sense and excitable, and this erethism
increases their nervous instability which responds by craving further
excitement. A vicious circle is formed which very often leads to
nervous breakdown. Just now we are hearing much about sexual
repression as the cause of nervous disorders, but sexual repression is
as almost nothing in its tendency to produce neurotic or
psycho-neurotic affections compared to the partial tantalizing, sexual
indulgence which comes from sensual reading or lascivious shows. The
plays that are seen, the jokes that are heard, the sex problems that
are dwelt on, the stories that are read must get more and more spicy
and contain more and more sex "pep" to afford any satisfaction, and
the consequence is a disturbance of delicate parts of the nervous
system which react more or less seriously to lessen the control over
the whole nervous mechanism of the body.
When Doctor S. Weir Mitchell pointed out two generations ago that not
only headache, but rather serious nervous disturbance involving often
the gastro-intestinal {204} tract and sometimes other large organs
like the brain itself, as well as even mental operations, might come
from so small a cause as disturbance of accommodation in the eye, most
physicians refused to believe that such far-reaching symptoms could
come from what was apparently so trivial a factor. The accommodation
mechanism of the eye is extremely delicate, however, and requires such
nice adjustment that any interference with it causes a waste of
nervous energy that is likely to make itself felt at almost any part
of the nervous system. In our day disturbances of the eye are
confessed by all to be extremely important. In something of the same
way disturbances of the sexual system of the body are reflected
throughout the whole nervous system.
Religion has counseled, commanded and thundered against any practices,
however simple they might seem in themselves, that would serve as
excitants for the sex feelings. Without her influence even more harm
would have been done than has been. It is the waning of religious
power over public morality and public opinion that has led to the orgy
of indulgence in sexual excitation, which has had such bad effects and
which unfortunately so often leads to sexual acts which are fraught
with the hideous dangers of venereal disease, because passion excited
will find its satisfaction. Society heedlessly arouses passion but
apparently cares not what happens afterwards.
{205}