CHAPTER XVII MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE TEMPERANCE in the indulgence of the appetites is a manifest necessity for health and efficiency-temperance in work and play, in eating and drinking, in novel reading and theater going, in whatever activity desire may suggest. But two appetites stand on a different footing from the others. and demand more than temperance. The love of alcohol and the other narcotics, being, as we have seen, a pathological and highly dangerous appetite, productive of scarcely any real good, must be rooted out of human nature, as it readily can be, to the great advantage of mankind. The other great appetite, that of sex, cannot be treated so cavalierly: to eradicate it or deny its fulfillment would be to put a speedy end to the human race. The solution of the problems of sex is therefore not so simple. On the one hand, we have to recognize the instinct as normal and necessary; on the other hand, we are confronted by the incalculable evils which it produces, and forced to admit the necessity of some strictly repressive code. Out of lust come the saddest tragedies disease and suffering, unwished childbirth, heartbreak and death. Desire sings a siren music in our ears; but the bones of those who have surrendered to the song lie bleaching on the rocks. There is no heavier sight than to see happy, heedless youth caught by the lure of this strange, mysterious thrill and drifting to their destruction "As a bird hasteth to the snare, And knoweth not that it is for his life." - So much is at stake here that we must be more than ordinarily sure that we are not biased, that we are not bind ing ourselves by needless restrictions. But after whatever doubts and wanderings, the man of mature experience comes back to the monogamous ideal with the conviction that in it lies not only our salvation but our truest happiness. Nothing, then, in the whole field of ethics is more important than for each generation, as it stands on the threshold of temptation and opportunity, to see clearly the basic reasons for this code. A reverence for authority, a deep-implanted sentiment, a recurrent emotional appeal, and a barrier of scruples and pledges may keep many within the lines of safety. But the morality of sentiment and authority must always be based on a morality of reason and experience. We must therefore begin by recapitulating the fundamental reasons for our monogamous ideal. What are the reasons for the ideal of monogamy? (1) The most glaring danger for a man in unchastity is disease. The venereal diseases are among the most terrible known to man; they are highly contagious and at present only very partially curable. Practically all prostitutes become infected before long; the chance of indulging in promiscuous intimacies without catching some form of infection is slight. The only sure way of escape from this imminent danger is by the exclusive love of one man and one woman. Moreover, these diseases are, in their effects, transmissible from husband to wife and from wife to children. Many women's diseases, a large part of their sterility, of miscarriages and infant deaths, a large proportion of the paralysis, insanity, and blindness in the world, are due to the sins of a husband or parent. Thus the penalty for a single misstep may be very grim; and the worst of it is that it must often be shared by the innocent.1 1 See Prince Morrow, Social Diseases and Marriage. W. L. Howard, Plain Facts on Sex Hygiene. (2) For a girl the danger of disease is not all. There is the additional danger of pregnancy, which means, and must mean, for her not only pain and risk of life, but lasting shame and disgrace. Even paid prostitutes, who are willing to employ dangerous methods to prevent conception, and soon become nearly sterile through disease or overindulgence, often have to resort to illegal operations, at the risk of their lives, and not infrequently come to childbirth. The hitherto moral girl who makes a single misstep is much more likely to conceive. (3) The most obvious reason why society cannot afford to be lenient with illegitimacy is that there is no proper provision for rearing children born out of wedlock. The woman and the child usually need the financial support of the man; they always need his love and care. If the man marries the girl he has wronged, there is not only the disgrace still attaching to her (and rightly to him, still more), but the fact of a hasty and unintended and probably more or less unhappy marriage. Certainly in every such case the girl has a right to demand that the man shall marry her; whether or no she will wish him to, or will prefer to bear her burden and disgrace alone, is for her to determine. But this is surethat any man who takes the chance of ruining a foolish and ignorant or oversusceptible girl-"and all for a bit of pleasure, as, if he had a man's heart in him, he'd ha' cut his hand off sooner than he'd ha' taken it" 1 ought to be despised and socially ostracized by his fellows. Except for the penalty of disease, women have always borne the brunt of sexual follies, though men have been the more to blame. It is high time that this injustice were remedied to such extent as law and public opinion can do it. (4) The employment of paid prostitutes for man's gratifi 1 George Eliot's Adam Bede, from which these words are taken, ought to be read by every boy and girl. cation keeps in existence the unhappiest and most degraded class in the world. Brutalized and worn by their abnormal life, treated with coarse indignities which they cannot resent, deprived of their birthright of genuine love, of wifehood and motherhood, stricken with disease and doomed to an early death, thousands of girls who ought to be bearing healthy children and rearing the future citizens of the State, now walk the streets painted and gaudily bedecked, seeking their miserable livelihood, and snaring the heedless and restless youth of the cities, the "young men void of understanding," to their common degradation. This human wastage is worse upon the race than war; and all the more pathetic because it consists of girls scarcely past the threshold of their maidenhood. When we consider further the indescribably horrible cruelty of the "white-slave trade," which the insatiable lust of men has brought into being, we may begin to realize to what the absence of restraint upon this appetite has led. It is quite conceivable that within the near future the venereal diseases will be rendered entirely curable by the progress of medicine. It is possible that some certain and harmless method of preventing conception will be found and become so universally known that the danger of unintentional childbirth will become practically non-existent. Such a situation would remove the most obvious reasons for chastity, and would insure a rapid growth of free-love sentiment. We must then go on with the argument and point out that even where these terrible results are escaped, the way of free love is not the happiest way. (5) Freedom from restraint in inter-sex relations inevitably leads, in the majority of men and women, to an overindulgence which seriously impairs health and efficiency. The one salient motive for the opposition of ancient codes to sex license was the necessity of preserving the virility of the young men for war. To-day athletes are enjoined to chastity. But, indeed, if a man would succeed in anything, he must check this so easily overdeveloped impulse. Promiscuity means a continually renewed stimulus; the passion, which quickly becomes normal and intermittent when it spends itself upon one object, is apt to become an abnormal and almost continuous craving when it is solicited by a succession of novel and piquant attractions. The advocates of free love assert that it is unnatural repression that creates an undue and morbid longing) that freedom to satisfy the instinct would tend to keep it in its properly subordinate place. But the contrary is, in reality, true. More usually, as Rabelais has it, "the appetite comes during the eating." The absence of temptation will leave an instinct dormant ✓ which free opportunity to indulge will develop into a dominant appetite. And nothing more quickly drafts strength or ambition than absorption in sex pleasures; we need to put our energies into something that instead of being inimical is forwarding to the rest of our interests. (6) Sexual intemperance coarsens, blunts delight in the less violent and more delicate emotions. The pleasures of sex, though of the keenest, are not lasting, like those of the intellect, of religion, art, and manly achievement. But if recklessly indulged in, they inevitably sap our interest in these other ideals. Except where they spring from and reinforce true affection, they are an opiate, taking us into a dream world that makes actual life stale and tasteless. "Hold off from sensuality," says Cicero; "for if you give yourself up to it, you will be unable to think of anything else." There is so much else that is worth while, life has so many possible values, that for our own final happiness, we cannot afford to let this instinct usurp too great a place. The vision of God is worth many hours of transient and |