a I B R.A FlY 
 
 OF THE 
 U N I VERS ITY 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 PRLSENTLD BY 
 Professor 
 Harold N. Hillebrand 
 1948 
 
 \T6 
 L6I 
 
The person charging this material is re- 
 sponsible for its return on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
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 University of Illinois Library 
 
 APR2 
 
 m 
 
 1977 
 
 L161 — 
 
 O-1096 
 
A LIBERAL CODE 
 OF 
 
 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 Ei. S. S. 
 
 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCVLATTON 
 SOLD BY SmSCRIPTION ONLY 
 
cj|l..n,|c.iitu.jHbiiLi5iiiyitis];Liij)li^|[fc]llg||ig]|^^ 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 Foreword by the Editor 
 Introduction 
 
 The Fundamental Basis of Moralitt 
 
 Masturbation 
 
 Illicit Sex Relations 
 
 Extramarital Relations 
 
 The Double Standard 
 
 Divorce 
 
 Alimony 
 
 Unnatural Methods op Coirut 
 Homosexual Relations 
 Incest 
 
 prevenceptiok 
 Abortion 
 Prostitution 
 Illegitimate Childrxw 
 The Home 
 Conclusion 
 
FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR 
 
 I sent out a questionnaire on Sexual 
 Ethics to a number of liberal-minded 
 people. I presented to them a number 
 of problems which confront the modern 
 man and woman and asked them to give 
 me their frank opinion as to how they 
 would solve them. I asked them to an- 
 swer frankly and honestly or not at all. 
 If for certain reasons they did not care to 
 write their honest thoughts under their 
 own names they could write pseudo- 
 nymously or anonymously. The best and 
 most complete essay that has been re- 
 ceived is the one that I take extreme 
 pleasure in publishing herewith. I be- 
 speak for it a careful reading. Those who 
 are not familiar with the liberal viewpoint 
 on many of our vexing sex problems will 
 find that viewpoint well presented in this 
 essay. 
 
vi FOREWORD BY THE EDITOR 
 
 I did not send the questionnaire to 
 reactionary theologians masquerading 
 under the guise of sexologists, nor to 
 those extremists who suffer from a sex 
 complex. Neither the former nor the lat- 
 ter can help us in solving the sex problems 
 which confront ninety per cent, of man* 
 kind. — W. J. R. 
 
A LIBERAL CODE OF SEXUAL 
 
 N any discussion one has always a 
 
 desire to know to what extent the 
 
 ^ ^ writer may have looked into his 
 subject and upon what study and experi- 
 ence he bases his conclusions. This is a 
 proper desire and it is unfortunate that 
 we have too great a tendency to accept 
 any plausible solution if only the pro- 
 ponent displays sufficient confidence in 
 his own opinions. There is also a tradi- 
 tion whereby we assume that if the writer 
 has a sufficiently wide reputation in some 
 branch of learning then his authority must 
 apply equally in a field to which he may 
 be even more of a stranger than his reader. 
 It is indeed to be regretted that we are 
 not more critical of our authorities. The 
 professor of mathematics may know a 
 
 ETHICS. 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 7 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 great deal about the industrial problem 
 provided he has made a fair and impreju- 
 diced examination of it, but his doctorate 
 in mathematics does not carry any weight 
 in reference to the industrial problem. It 
 is a common jest that the professor can 
 not add correctly and also his opinions on 
 labor may be merely those of a not too 
 humorous mortal preplexed by the prob- 
 lem of keeping a cook. 
 
 In a similar way physicians are sup^ 
 posed to know all about sexology. One 
 need confer with very few to discover that 
 their actual knowledge is usually confined 
 to obstettrics and in sexology they are 
 often as ignorant and as bigoted as a 
 fanatical clerg3nman. Neither has looked 
 up the literature which modern sexology 
 has produced and his opinions are little 
 mare if as important, as those of any 
 good natured policeman. 
 
 Not that I would insist that no one may 
 speak who has not studied his Havelock 
 Ellis, Ellen Key, Crete Meisel-Hess, 
 Bloch and Freud. "Out of the mouths 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 of babes and sucklings" one often gets, if 
 not an illuminated opinion, at least a 
 natural and often commonsense one. But 
 that occasional pat remark of the wholly 
 iminformed is hardly a sufficient reason 
 for accepting all such remarks as valid. 
 It seems unfair to make a presumption in 
 favor of ignorance or to assume knowl- 
 edge in this field merely because the 
 speaker is known to have a good training 
 in some other. It seems only just that 
 any one who chooses to write on sexual 
 problems should have studied at least the 
 writers mentioned above. And he will be 
 still far from justified in being dogmatical 
 even if he has supplemented his reading 
 with first hand sympathetic and humble 
 observations of his fellow men. Given a 
 sufficiently quick sympathy, some humil- 
 ity, and a not too easily nauseated deli- 
 cacy, he may if he can win the confidence 
 of his fellows learn much upon which he 
 may base some tentative conclusions. But 
 in the presence of almost any definite 
 problem, though he may be willing to sug- 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 gest, certainly he will never presume to 
 command. Nor will his judgments far 
 exceed in definiteness the Nazarene*s ref- 
 erence to the first stone. 
 
 The present writer makes no claim to 
 authority. He has studied his problem 
 over a good many years and has a fair 
 working knowledge of what has been dis- 
 covered by other students. He has had 
 some, perhaps unusual opportunities to 
 get at the motives and impulses of his fel- 
 low men. But in every case where he 
 writes "it is obvious/' or *'it is true'* the 
 reader is quite justified in supplying the 
 word "seems." All I can do is to bear 
 witness according as my study and oppor- 
 tunities in life have led me to some an- 
 swers. Whether this answer applies to 
 my neighbor's problem I can not say. To 
 me it would seem worth a trial, but in this 
 field there are no immutable laws, no pre- 
 cise rules everywhere applicable, and 
 Alasl no panacea. Nowhere do I find 
 any substitute for faith and charity. 
 
The Fundamental Basis of Morality. 
 
 "Virtue is the mean between the vice of excess 
 and the vice of deficiency." — Aristotle. 
 
 " . . . but so engrained in the human heart is 
 the desire to believe that some people really know 
 what they say they know and can thus save (us) 
 from the trouble of thinking for ourselves" . . . 
 "Indeed I can see no hope for the Erewhonians till 
 they have got to understand that reason uncor- 
 rected by instinct is as bad as instinct uncorrected 
 by reason." — Samuel Butler. 
 
 The Editor has submitted a series of 
 questions on sexual ethics with the request 
 that they be answered frankly, without 
 dodging any unpleasant issues. To this 
 discussion the writer is glad to contribute 
 those views which a somewhat liberal ex- 
 perience with the hearts of his fellows has 
 evoked. And not only does he wish to be 
 frank, he feels it a duty to write without 
 regard to his personal tastes or preju- 
 dices. Nor would it be fair to write 
 
 merely in accordance with what one be- 
 ll 
 
12 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 lieves to be ''proper reading" for his fel- 
 low mortals whom we in our vanity always 
 assume to be less developed spiritually, 
 less well self -controlled than our own un- 
 usual selves. Indeed one of the chief 
 reasons why most sex discussions are 
 futile is that we hypocritically assume 
 that we may allow ourselves a good deal 
 of leeway, not to say downright sin, but 
 that our neighbor must be carefully 
 watched and limited not only in his ac- 
 tions, but that even the facts of life must 
 be carefully censored before they are pre- 
 sented to him lest he draw too free con- 
 clusions and so go astray. As the Arabs 
 say when a shareef (a descendant of 
 Mohammed) is observed violating the tra- 
 dition: "such things may be all very well 
 for a saint, but they are not good for an 
 ordinary man." Few are really conscious 
 of this pose, but a little introspection will 
 discover it in the best of us. 
 
 Nor can one always be free from mere 
 covetousness. We may not like to admit 
 the fact but I fear that is the correct de- 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 13 
 
 scription. None can plead 'not guilty' to 
 Butler's jibe at those who: "Compound 
 for sins they are inclined to by damning 
 those they have no mind to." We do that 
 all the time and never so fervently as in 
 matters of sex. We refuse to see that 
 most of our moral indignation, our self- 
 righteousness, has no better foundation 
 than the determination to see that our 
 neighbor does not enjoy those pleasures 
 which we openly condemn, secretly covet, 
 but in which either our opportunities or 
 our moral cowardice prevent us from in- 
 dulging* Delude ourselves as we may, 
 the fact remains that we do covet every 
 bit of pleasure in this weary old world. 
 And when a man is struggling with an un- 
 satisfied libido — and which of us is not? — 
 he may be expected to resent any indica- 
 tion that others are more successful than 
 himself. So it comes about that nowhere 
 do we indulge in so many rationalizations, 
 so much self-deception as in problems of 
 8CX. Nowhere do we have so complete an 
 arsenal of pious disguises with which to 
 
14 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 conceal the malicious selfishness of our 
 dirty little hearts. 
 
 It is not my intention to try to lay down 
 a system of ethics. 
 
 No system of ethics has as yet been 
 developed which will do much more than 
 indicate a general direction towards which 
 its originator felt we should move in our 
 effort to increase the happiness of the race 
 and equally of the individual. In fact 
 ethical systems have usually satisfied no 
 one but the proponent and have been of 
 very little assistance in solving the con- 
 crete problems which we meet in daily life. 
 No matter how illuminated the author, his 
 system always fails to meet the require- 
 ments in practical application. Shaw's 
 remark about the Golden Rule is quite 
 sound. However right may be the idea of 
 doing to your neighbor as you would he 
 should do unto you, the literal interpreta- 
 tion usually placed upon that admonition 
 needs to be corrected for the case where 
 your neighbor's tastes are different from 
 your own. In other words the system 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 15 
 
 while useful as indicating a possible direc- 
 tion of advance is always to be modified 
 according to the requirements of the par- 
 ticular circumstances. 
 
 There is the further difficulty in ethical 
 discussions that the participants therein 
 seldom understand from what point the 
 discussion started or to what end it hopes 
 to proceed. With that in mind I wish to 
 indicate approximately the starting point 
 of my own notions. 
 
 I am unable to accept asceticism as an 
 end, as in any way desirable in itself. It 
 may at times be good discipline for such 
 as voltmtarily adopt it, though this is 
 often not the case. But that it has any 
 virtue in itself is denied. Let me illus- 
 trate: We often see a person who sacri- 
 fices his whole chance for happiness in life 
 in order to take care of his parents. 
 Sometimes his parents are worthy folk, 
 sometimes they are thoroughly worthless. 
 Tradition says a person should care for 
 his parents in their old age and it is cus- 
 tomary to praise highly those who make 
 
16 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 the great sacrifice sometimes demanded. 
 Now of two such cases one person goes 
 ahead living a sometimes horrible life and 
 yet grows spiritually, becomes more 
 kindly, more useful socially. As we say 
 he keeps sweet and happy through it all. 
 But in another similar case the victim 
 grows morose and bitter. He carries his 
 burden loyally but with a complete loss 
 of all the qualities which are desirable 
 either for himself or for society. Both 
 have been thru the same furnace, both 
 are supposed to receive the same reward, 
 at least at the hands of their neighbors, 
 and yet one was spiritual life and one 
 spiritual death and putrefaction. As I 
 understand it, the main difficulty lies in 
 the fact that the first person voluntarily 
 accepted his burden. His parents meant 
 so much more to him emotionally than 
 anything else the world had to offer that 
 his trials were accepted cheerfully. In 
 the second case the sacrifice was never 
 voluntary, however much self-deception 
 the victim may have indulged in in an 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 17 
 
 effort to reconcile himself to his erroneous 
 sense of duty. The result was corre* 
 spondingly bad. In other words, disci- 
 pline and self-denial are only permissible 
 when the object sought is emotionally a 
 sufficient object for the person in question. 
 Asceticism, self-denial, can be and fre- 
 quently is as unethical as uncontrolled 
 self-indulgence. Therefore we will not 
 consider in this place the deductions made 
 by the traditionists on the assumption of 
 divine or near-divine revelation. 
 
 I shall assume that man is an animal, 
 even a beast if you like, with all which that 
 assumption implies. I assume that he 
 needs to live the life of a good healthy 
 beast with probably a number of require- 
 ments which a good animal may get along 
 very well without. On the evidence of the 
 bio-chemists I must accept that a man*s 
 thoughts and emotions are determined 
 partly by his physico-chemical reactions, 
 by his metabolic level, as reacting on his 
 accidental environment. In doing this I 
 neither aflSrm nor deny the existence of 
 
18 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 what the traditionist calls the spirit. I 
 shall even speak of the spirit, using the 
 word in its popular sense without com- 
 mitting any one as to its exact meaning 
 and limitations. In time, no doubt, the 
 chemists will be able to write out the 
 physical and chemical reactions for my 
 views say on the First Cause, or the tariff. 
 When that day arrives we can adopt a 
 more precise nomenclature, but until then 
 it will suffice to use the old word without 
 implying any particular limitations. 
 
 In this discussion we are also assuming 
 the Freudian hypothesis as to the nature 
 of the mind and its reactions. However 
 incomplete that hypothesis may be it has 
 led to the establishment of a number of 
 vital facts in the matter of sex and its 
 manifestations. We assume with Freud 
 that the basis of all activities is the desire 
 for pleasure, and that speaking of "pur- 
 pose," divine or other, in relation to sex 
 is to miss the main source of action and 
 close the eyes to some most important 
 facts. It is immaterial for our purposes 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 19 
 
 whether we divide human instincts into 
 nutritional and sexual or whether we 
 lump them all as the libido. To me the 
 distinction seems difficult and not very 
 illuminating. The evolutionist neces- 
 sarily goes back to the elementary forms 
 of life in his study of behavior and 
 in its simplest manifestations it is quite 
 arbitrary to discriminate between the 
 various so-called instincts. For example: 
 does an amoeba eat in order to grow large 
 enough to reproduce, i. e., divide? Or 
 does it find its bulk interfering with its 
 nutrition or excretion and so divides, i. e., 
 reproduces, in order to be able to eat? In 
 passing one is reminded that perhaps the 
 amoeba runs away from some marauding 
 Vampyrella not more in response to the 
 ''instinct of self-preservation" than be- 
 cause it is unpleasant to have its toes 
 nibbled. In other words it is entirely pos- 
 sible to interpret the amoeba's behavior 
 on the basis of pleasure seeking without 
 making any assumptions or placing any 
 limitations on the amoeba's possible 
 
20 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 psyche. We have no proof that the lower 
 organisms are essentially different from 
 ourselves, tho we have indications that 
 they do not need some capacities which we 
 seem to possess. And the assumption that 
 man acts as he does because it is more 
 pleasant to do so is entirely in accord with 
 our observations on his primitive ances- 
 tors. 
 
 This point might seem irrelevant in dis- 
 cussing practical ethics, but as a matter 
 of fact the break between the traditionist 
 and the more or less scientific student of 
 ethics occurs usually at this point. To the 
 traditionist seeking a purpose, usually a 
 divine one, in all activities and with a 
 definite prejudice against pleasure, the 
 criteria of ethics rest upon certain con- 
 ventions, tribal or theological, and all 
 cases are judged by their approximation 
 to these conventions. Such a code is much 
 too inelastic to meet the daily require- 
 ments of mankind and a tremendous 
 amount of quite useless and imnecessary 
 suffering results. 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 21 
 
 From my viewpoint pain is a thing to 
 be obviated wherever possible. The ob- 
 ject of sound ethics would seem to be 
 rather to render mankind as happy as ma}^ 
 be possible, a procedure which implies 
 continuous compromise and reconciliation 
 of divergent interests. Whatever skill we 
 use in making the needful compromises 
 we can be sure that we will never attain 
 to a really just or reasonable solution. 
 One can but do his best with the facts as 
 he meets them. Of one thing we can be 
 sure and that is that in even our least suc- 
 cessful efforts in the way of consciously 
 adapting our instincts to the rights of 
 others, we will cause infinitely less harm 
 and suffering than we would by trying to 
 stretch each case to fit the Procrustean 
 bed of ascetic tradition. 
 
 As a legacy from the old ascetic dogma 
 we have in large measure not recovered 
 from the idea that sex was shameful, 
 filthy, and disgusting. This tradition 
 makes it difficult for many to realize that 
 for good physical and spiritual health a 
 
22 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 more or less regular exercise of the emo- 
 tional nature is necessary. The fact that 
 certain persons are alleged to have re- 
 mained chaste thruout a long and useful 
 life, — and a wise man accepts such state- 
 ments with several grains of salt, — should 
 not lead to the absurd inference that all 
 mankind can or even should undertake 
 any such regimen. It is far from estab- 
 lished that mankind as a whole would be 
 better or happier for any such procedure. 
 It may even be doubted whether mankind 
 would survive a generation of such color- 
 less and strained existence. We now have 
 ample proof that most of the nervous 
 wreckage is due to a faulty adaptation, 
 misunderstanding or denial of the sex life. 
 
 In the good old days it was usual to 
 attribute much nervousness to sexual 
 "excesses'* and the literature of even to- 
 day is full of much well meant rubbish 
 written on this erroneous basis. I do not 
 say that such writers were conscious hypo- 
 crites, but few were self -critical enough to 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 23 
 
 discover that they had mistaken their 
 personal tastes for the laws of nature. 
 None seems to have known himself or his 
 neighbor intimately enough to realize how 
 difficult it is to define excess. No one will 
 deny that excess of anything is or ought 
 to be injurious, but we now know that we 
 can not define excess except with refer- 
 ence to a particular case and even then a 
 wise man will not be dogmatic. When we 
 learn to discriminate between the results 
 of excesses and the disturbances which a 
 fear of such remits induces we may be 
 able to advance a little past our present 
 method which is purely one of trial and 
 error. Meanwhile one can not do better 
 than to urge a moderation which we very 
 wisely refuse to define. For example 
 Luther's "zweimal in der Woche" gives 
 us Luther's requirements, and they seem 
 about average, but that is all. It would 
 be bad ethics, since it would undoubtedly 
 lead to disaster, to advise a couple to fol- 
 low Luther when their actual require- 
 ments were three or five times as great. 
 
24 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 We shall assume in the discussion which 
 follows that force and deceit are ethically 
 inexcusable. The right of the individual 
 to the control over his own body is in these 
 matters not to be infringed. Nevertheless 
 it is worth noting that while one cheerfully 
 condenms coercion — which tradition al- 
 lows as ethical in the married state — there 
 are frequent cases where our condemna- 
 tion fails to hit the mark. One can not 
 approve seduction with its train of miser- 
 able consequences, neither can one be 
 dogmatic about it. 
 
 For example: many women like to be 
 physically dominated by the male, a few 
 like to be more or less tortured. A satis- 
 factory emotional release can not be 
 secured without it. It is of course recog- 
 nized that this quality is honestly inherited 
 from our animal ancestors. In these cases 
 the use of force is ethically sound because 
 it is desired. Probably many cases of 
 alleged rape originated in the inability of 
 the far from judicially minded male to 
 distinguish between a protest which is real 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 25 
 
 and one which is merely meant to heighten 
 the general necessary excitement. 
 
 Equally it is unwise to condemn off- 
 hand the aggressor in cases of seduction. 
 The phenomenon has to start somewhere 
 and usually both parties are more or less 
 responsible. If complaint is made it is 
 all too frequently not because the male 
 was impertinent but because when it came 
 to a show-down the woman lost her nerve. 
 The following case presents some food for 
 thought. A youth and his girl are carry- 
 ing on a commonplace flirtation which 
 ends in both losing their heads. Then 
 (most imusual) the lad lost his nerve (he 
 thought he had regained his moral con- 
 trol) and refused to carry the perform- 
 ance to its natural culmination. Now a 
 good girl should have admired the lad for 
 his fine strong moral character and his 
 care of her. Her intuition was, however, 
 sound for she recognized that it was a 
 case of "cold feet'* and she would have no 
 more to do with the poor boy. This same 
 lad who was very popular with the girls 
 
26 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 repeated this performance with another 
 girl with the same result. The girls were 
 not girls who were loose at all, but ap- 
 parently they were hot-blooded and once 
 having decided to let themselves go they 
 could not regard their squeamish partner 
 as any man at all. Well? 
 
 This case leads naturally to a very com- 
 mon problem of the adolescent. Is it 
 right to be first? It seems to be univer- 
 sally accepted among the conscientious 
 that there is no harm in "taking a slice off 
 a cut loaf.'* I have no answer for this 
 problem but submit a few points which 
 tho they be mere expedients may be 
 worth considering. It will be granted 
 that under present conditions, if a girl 
 can reach marriage with an intact hymen 
 (assuming that she had one to begin with) 
 she will be able to dodge some of the prob- 
 lems which her more robust sister must 
 solve. But where the girl is naturally hot- 
 blooded and can not "be good," the course 
 for a conscientious man would seem fairly 
 clear. He can, of course, organize his 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 27 
 
 will power and refuse to lead the willing 
 victim astray. But this merely leaves the 
 thing for some other less scrupulous man 
 to do. Would it be wise if the man met 
 the requirements and then saw to it that 
 the girl was properly instructed as to how 
 to care for herself, how to protect herself 
 against unscrupulous men? It is ad- 
 mitted that it is difficult, under present 
 conditions, for a woman "who has sinned'* 
 to keep her self-respect, to realize her right 
 to sexuality, and upon this fact the un- 
 scrupulous men play with great advantage 
 and for wholly selfish ends. For that rea- 
 son the solution suggested above has some 
 advantages since the alleged conscientious 
 man can and usually does see to it that 
 the girl is properly educated and sup- 
 ported morally until she can see herself 
 in proper perspective and feel sure of her- 
 self. Certainly if it were my daughter or 
 sister I would prefer her to be a self- 
 reliant and wise person rather than to 
 have her develop the infinite petty mean- 
 nesses which starved sexuality produces. 
 
28 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 or that brassy cynicism which is so com- 
 mon in the faces of the girl of loose 
 morals. There is no universal solution, 
 but the one offered seems likely to pro- 
 duce less degradation and sorrow than the 
 usual traditional ones. 
 
 To the Freudians more than any other 
 we owe the frank announcement of what 
 most people have dimly reahzed but have 
 lacked the courage to express in words; 
 namely, that the regular exercise of the 
 sexual impulse is essential to good moral 
 and physical health. We are just begin- 
 ning to understand that it is no mere 
 physical pleasure which is "all good enuf 
 in its way but not essential." We begin 
 to see that it is not a mere physical gratifi- 
 cation which is involved but that it lies 
 back of all we do and irradiates all of our 
 activities. For there is much more to it 
 than the physical side, absolutely neces- 
 sary as that is. Our whole mental life is 
 involved in the psychic disturbances of a 
 proper intercoiu'se and is refreshed and 
 invigorated precisely as are our bodies. 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 29 
 
 This school of psychiatrists have driven 
 home the fact that this impulse can not be 
 smothered, nor dammed back with im- 
 pimity. Much of it can be transferred to 
 so-called higher creative, as opposed to 
 procreative, cultural aims, but always 
 there remains an irreducible minimum 
 varying with each individual which must 
 have full satisfaction and in its own way 
 if disaster is to be avoided. For it is now 
 clear to any one who will look into the 
 evidence that our policy of suppression 
 merely deforms the impulse which then 
 appears in any of an infinite number of 
 anti-social forms. This deformed impulse 
 poisons not only the soul of the owner but 
 spreads its poison thruout the community. 
 
 The whole energies of some men and a 
 great many women are taken up in the 
 vain struggle to control or even suppress 
 altogether this, their strongest impulse. 
 Some may win a victory but at most it is 
 a barren one; at its worst it means lifelong 
 invalidism or even insanity; while for the 
 
30 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 less fanatic it produces envy, malice, and 
 a generally dyspeptic spiritual condition. 
 In all cases an unenlightened attempt to 
 control tends towards introversion, some 
 form of auto-erotism, which greatly weak- 
 ens the individual's attempt to develop 
 himself into a useful social animal, while 
 weakening the capacity for those strong 
 sane interdependencies which we so much 
 need to strengthen because without them 
 the stability of the home becomes seriously 
 endangered. Thus a person who has 
 learned to content himself with substitute 
 gratifications in this, his strongest impulse 
 — however desirable some of these substi- 
 tutes may be socially — ^may marry and 
 establish a home, but the tie is weak and 
 in the stress of even a good domestic life 
 may readily be broken, leaving the victim 
 to revert to his former methods of gratifi- 
 cation. 
 
 On the other hand a conscious and un- 
 ashamed devotion to the proper exercise 
 of this impulse makes for a kindly, inde- 
 pendent and charitable life much more 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 31 
 
 free from the hideous and vulgar perversi- 
 ties of our current virtue. For a man or 
 a woman whose libido is properly under- 
 stood and gratified — and this means much 
 more than mere physical exercise — is free 
 to devote the rest of his energy not only 
 to the improvement of himself but also of 
 others. The properly developed person 
 is free as no one else can be to sublimate 
 the better part of his sex impulse for the 
 benefit of his kind. He is free from that 
 covetousness of which we have spoken and 
 can deal both honestly and charitably with 
 his less fortunate fellows. Whereas those 
 who are struggling with an uninformed 
 and unsatisfied impulse are responsible 
 for most of the misery in this world. One 
 living a complete and healthy life views 
 charitably all human folly. The deformed 
 see in the Biblical dictum that the sins of 
 the fathers shall be visited on the children, 
 an injunction to see to it that no innocent 
 child escapes. 
 
 All of this does not argue for an uncon- 
 trolled sexuality, for the morals of the 
 
32 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 barnyard — ^tho just where we get the 
 assurance to slur the morals of the animals 
 is not quite clear to me. Far from this 
 usual criticism, it argues for a fully con- 
 scious control of the sex impulse and a 
 shaping of it to meet natural ends, not the 
 artificial aims which certain ascetics have 
 promulgated out of their deformed and 
 tortured desires. At present we strive 
 half-heartedly for an unconscious control 
 without knowing what we are trying to 
 control or to what end. If we do follow 
 thru the logic of our code we ought in hon- 
 esty to admit that we do not desire any 
 such goal for ourselves. The usual result 
 of our efforts is a compromise according 
 to which we profess adherence to the code; 
 we are exceedingly cruel to any who may 
 be suspected of violating it; and we sneak 
 about in the darkness to secure whatever 
 compensations we think we can secure 
 without getting caught. Indeed there is a 
 distinction between setting our ideals some 
 distance beyond what we hope to achieve 
 and in not really believing in those ideals. 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 33 
 
 Nor can one hope to strive successfully for 
 ideals whose implications he does not un- 
 derstand and in which he does not whole- 
 heartedly believe. 
 
 Therefore we will assume with the 
 Freudians that the function of sex is not 
 even in major proportion a question of 
 procreation. Where procreation is de- 
 sired the ethical problems become rela- 
 tively simple, or can become so. The vast 
 majority of sex problems are those where 
 procreation is not the object, in fact be- 
 comes a disaster. Hence we shall be 
 speaking of sexual relations under the as- 
 sumption that suitable measures are taken 
 to prevent conception unless that is de- 
 sired. Our interest here is rather with 
 those other functions of the sexual impulse 
 whose neglect and denial has wrought and 
 is still wreaking such havoc with our civil- 
 ization. 
 
 Self-control: This is the stock reliance 
 of those who strive to repress or even to 
 eliminate the sex impulse, and that in de- 
 fiance of the plain indications of man's 
 
34 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 animal origin. To any suggestion as to 
 change or loosening the bonds such reply: 
 let him control himself. And indeed one 
 is even called upon to observe how splen- 
 didly and by inference easily the exhorter 
 controls all low desires. Somehow one 
 grows suspicious of a virtue which is given 
 to vainglory and boasting. One recalls 
 that the great moral leaders were as a class 
 rather humble. But this expression, self- 
 control, is bandied about as if it meant 
 something. I wonder just what it does 
 mean? 
 
 No doubt a case can be made out for this 
 much praised virtue. Nevertheless there 
 seems to be a side of the question which is 
 seldom mentioned and never discussed. 
 Looking back over what little we really 
 know of man's development we may 
 hastily deduce that his rise — if indeed it is 
 a rise — ^has been directly proportional to 
 his mastery over his primitive predatory 
 instincts. This idea is rather flattering to 
 one's vanity, since one finds himself here 
 at the peak of moral grandeur, a free, self- 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 35 
 
 controlled spirit and the universe is bid 
 bow down and admire. 
 
 A little critical introspection rather 
 shakes the foundations of this pride. A 
 man finds himself attracted by a pretty- 
 woman. If he is honest he recognizes the 
 temptation. Why then does he not yield? 
 If he resists he feels remarkably and child- 
 ishly virtuous and usually boasts much of 
 it. But really is it self-control? Candor 
 will force him to admit one of two expla- 
 nations of his conduct. Either he was 
 cowardly and feared the consequences, or 
 he had other sources of pleasure which 
 meant enuf more to him that he was 
 willing to forego this temporary liaison. 
 I suspect that had we any way to measure 
 the man's reactions quantitatively we 
 would find that "morals'* was the least im- 
 portant factor in determining his conduct. 
 I reach this inference from the fact that 
 if the temptation is really strong, or, which 
 amounts to the same thing, the sexual im- 
 pulse is strong, the man yields. This fact. 
 
36 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 this unfortunate lack of control is amply 
 attested by many a proverb. 
 
 When we seek the actual means where- 
 by men are controlled we get back to the 
 notion of pleasure seeking. We find that 
 above all precepts lies the determining fac- 
 tor that one does what he does because he 
 finds it more pleasant than otherwise. 
 And we see clearly that our developed 
 self-control is based largely on substitute 
 gratifications, sublimates or what not. We 
 have diverted these old impulses into other 
 and socially more useful channels and in 
 so far as we have succeeded in so diverting 
 them, we have acquired self-control. This 
 is precisely what happens in the training 
 — i. e., civilizing — a child. It is often folly 
 to spare the rod, but it is indeed a greater 
 foolishness to omit the development of a 
 system of rewards and substitute pleasures 
 which will make it worth the child's while 
 to act in a less antisocial manner. For if 
 law and force could civilize then would our 
 horrible prisons be even a more desirable 
 part of one's education than the school or 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 87 
 
 college. For in these one has to be good. 
 But we know very well, even if we decline 
 to admit it, that neither law, nor prisons, 
 nor military discipline have any civilizing 
 value per se. The victim will be good as 
 long as the master stands there with the 
 rod, and once relieved from fear of the 
 master he '^steals back'* as much pleasure 
 as he can. 
 
 Each of us is a prisoner in the social 
 organism, and our old primitive impulses 
 are prisoners in our hearts. We may seek 
 to dominate this prisoner by force as the 
 moralists would do, and we will fail miser- 
 ably as we always have done. The psy- 
 chiatrists appreciate now what suffering 
 and immorality result from this attempt 
 at blind forcible control. We also can 
 try to understand what the forces are 
 which we wish to control and the means 
 whereby such an overlordship can be ac- 
 quired. That mastery which is real, which 
 is serene, and not subject to tragic and 
 unexpected breakdowns is not built upon 
 ignorance and coercion. It results from a 
 
38 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 proper realization of the problem and a 
 conscious adaptation of the individual to 
 his requirements. It was a wise priest 
 who said that one could not hope to save 
 souls when the object's belly was empty. 
 Neither can we hope to adapt ourselves in- 
 telligently and successfully in the sexual 
 sphere unless we have satisfied that irre- 
 ducible minimum of the impulse which can 
 not be sublimated. This fact is patent to 
 most folks after the honeymoon. For the 
 traditional blindness of love is the mani- 
 acal delusion induced by sex hunger. 
 
 And so, as it seems to me, the problem 
 can not be solved by morals. It must be 
 attacked with full consciousness of what 
 it is we are trying to control, how far we 
 ought to control it, and how to sublimate 
 the major portion of it. We can not do 
 that in ignorance, nor can we lay down 
 laws for general use. It is always an in- 
 dividual's problem, to be solved by him. 
 We can help him by letting him have the 
 facts, by giving him living conditions 
 wherein there is a minimimi of unneces- 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 39 
 
 sary strain after bread and butter, and an 
 education which places the objects upon 
 which the impulse may be sublimated 
 within his reach. At present we do none 
 of these things. 
 
 If I make myself clear I mean that I 
 do not believe there is such a thing as self- 
 control in the sense in which the moralists 
 use it. It ranks with the delusion of free 
 will, a useful term but not a reality. And 
 instead of this purely negative and worth- 
 less attempt to compel obedience I desire 
 a conscious adaptation. I have no fear 
 but that the result will be an improvement. 
 
 Our assumptions seem to be : 
 
 1 . The fundamental criterion by which 
 all conduct is to be judged is its total out- 
 put of happiness. Unnecessary suffering 
 like unnecessary disease is a crime and 
 inunoral. 
 
 2. No hard and fast rules can be laid 
 down. Each case must be judged on its 
 merits. 
 
 3. The prime essential in all sex rela- 
 tions is that all parties thereto must know 
 
40 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 what they are doing and be willing so to 
 do. 
 
 4. Force and deceit are morally repre- 
 hensible and the community may properly 
 exercise control over such attempts. Much 
 discretion must be used in passing on such 
 incidents. 
 
 5. Sex IS neither filthy nor holy, it is 
 merely natural and essential. The impulse 
 is inunensely more than mere physical 
 gratification. Its complete satisfaction is 
 necessary for good mental and physical 
 health. To be properly satisfied the 
 nature and implications of the impulse 
 must be understood. 
 
 6. As far as concerns the individual, 
 procreation is a very minor incident in his 
 real sex life. Desirable as the experiences 
 of parenthood are for the development of 
 the individual, they yet constitute a pro- 
 portionately small part of his total sex life. 
 Whatever "purpose" sex may have in the 
 universe, to the individual it is a pleasure- 
 seeking which has most important effects 
 
BASIS OF MORALITY 41 
 
 upon the individual ; and it can not be sup- 
 pressed or crippled without most disas- 
 trous effects to all. What it needs is not 
 blind control but conscious direction. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 We will now take up the questions 
 posed by the Editor. 
 
 1. Masturbation. 
 
 It is usual to treat this subject with an 
 amount of moral indignation which should 
 put the speaker on guard lest he betray 
 himself. Our assumptions imply that 
 where the person does not injure himself 
 or his future offspring there is no ethical 
 problem involved. Any harmless pleasure 
 which one can achieve is his right. The 
 literature up to within the last ten years 
 was without exception delightfully violent 
 in discussing this subject. Indeed, so 
 heated does the lecturer become that one 
 suspects not only the zeal of the newly 
 converted, but even a transfer for energy 
 from other sources. In some ways it seems 
 about as apt for the well-married to rail 
 
 42 
 
MASTURBATION 48 
 
 against masturbation as for a New Eng- 
 land spinster to become frenzied over 
 cannibalism. In both cases it is a per- 
 fectly safe field in which to vent any 
 pent up emotions which one dares not re- 
 lease in connection with their real origins. 
 But is masturbation really injurious? 
 With as much care as I am capable of, I 
 have not been able to reach any definite 
 conclusion. That excessive indulgence 
 should be injurious is obvious, but what 
 is excessive? Anyone who can reach the 
 necessary degree of intimacy with his fel- 
 lows quickly learns that the German 
 sexologist was not far wrong when he as- 
 serted that "nine men masturbate and the 
 tenth man is a liar." Of course there are 
 exceptions, but most of these are hardly 
 men. And the practice begins with the 
 awakening of the sexual instinct, often 
 very early in life, and continues with a fre- 
 quency depending upon the libido of the 
 person until normal relations are estab- 
 lished. The oft repeated charge of un- 
 naturalness is voided by the fact now fully 
 
U SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 recognized that animals deprived of nor- 
 mal gratification mastm^bate. (We are 
 tempted to go astray in considering ani- 
 mals, due to the fact that most of the 
 observed animals retain their periodicity, 
 that is have stated periods of rutting, 
 whereas man has lost his and is in a con- 
 tinuous state of rutting.) This unfor- 
 tunate development of the human race — 
 and it is one which the domesticated ani- 
 mals have partly acquired — renders our 
 attempts to set "natural bounds" rather 
 futile. 
 
 We must also recognize the fact well 
 established by Stekel that even where the 
 individual does not consciously indulge in 
 this substitute gratification, he does do so 
 unconsciously. All of which being true, 
 what does it matter? Here again we must 
 judge by results and with great caution 
 not to mistake cause for effect. As a mat- 
 ter of fact, modern students are slowly 
 coming to regard the whole question as 
 relatively unimportant and where exces- 
 sive masturbation is noted to regard it as 
 
MASTURBATION 45 
 
 a symptom of more deep lying disturb- 
 ances. We no longer worry about the 
 loss of a "vital fluid" since this occurs both 
 in marriage and with emissions and it is 
 not "vital" anyhow. We do realize that 
 the exhaustion is a matter of nervous ex- 
 citement, and it is still undecided as to 
 whether masturbation or coitus is the more 
 exacting in this regard. 
 
 The effect of early masturbation — ^by 
 which writers seem to mean that of early 
 adolescence — is still emphasized, but one 
 recalls that the pioneers, that superb stock, 
 married very young. Marriage at 16 to 
 18 years for men and often at 13 for girls, 
 yet they survived somehow and our young 
 men of today make out fairly well. One 
 injury I have seen clearly and that was the 
 injury due to the fear of injury. Once 
 that fear was allayed the individuals set- 
 tled down into steady and healthy citi- 
 zens, altho they did not diminish the 
 frequency of indulgence appreciably. 
 
 In the absence of any definitely ascer- 
 tainable injury we may dismiss the sub- 
 
48 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 ject as a matter of personal taste. It is 
 not a thing one would advise ordinarily, 
 and yet not without its usefulness when 
 we consider that the alternative is to make 
 normal intercourse possible. It is ethically 
 neither a crime nor a vice, — merely an 
 undesirable misfortune. Personally I am 
 unable to see the ethical beauty of keeping 
 a lad so exhausted physically by overwork 
 that he is sexually impotent. It may be 
 a wise solution, but in my experience the 
 victim usually makes up for it by an in- 
 sensate *'bust'* once he has a chance. 
 
 2. Illicit Sex Relations. 
 
 Procreation is not here involved. The 
 birth of a child is distinctly a concern of 
 the community, but it is very doubtful to 
 what extent the powers of the state should 
 be allowed to interfere seriously in a mat- 
 ter of such intimate nature. It follows 
 from our assumption that intercourse is 
 necessary and desirable, that ante-marital 
 intercourse is decidedly proper unless we 
 are prepared to arrange for very early 
 
ILLICIT SEX RELATIONS 47 
 
 marriages. This does not deny the possi- 
 bility of restraining the sexual impulse 
 somewhat during adolescence, neither does 
 it argue for promiscuity. The latter is a 
 product of the conflict between our ascetic 
 traditions and the uninformed, not to say 
 ignorant, healthy impulse. It has its 
 roots in deceit and hypocrisy, the economic 
 condition, and largely in the undeveloped 
 state of our emotions. Lacking any 
 proper appreciation of the real nature and 
 high values of sexual love we tend to drift 
 into a mere promiscuity, a mere physical 
 relief. 
 
 As far as men are concerned it is a con- 
 dition and not a theory which we have to 
 face. It can be safely assumed that prac- 
 tically all men have indulged in inter- 
 course long before they reached an eco- 
 nomic freedom which permitted the estab- 
 lishment of a home. It is true that there 
 are occasional exceptions, as very few men 
 do reach marriage in a state which in 
 females we designate as demi-vierge. But 
 even so conscientious a student as Robert 
 
48 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 Michels admits that while he would much 
 prefer that his daughter's husband might 
 come to the nuptial couch as pure as his 
 daughter, he has thus far met no chaste 
 man to whose gentle mercies he would care 
 to trust a dearly loved daughter. As 
 things stand at present in our social sys- 
 tem, a "chaste" man over twenty-five 
 years of age — and who can hope to marry 
 earlier than that? — is simply no man at 
 all. He will be appreciably inverted or 
 sexually impotent. Such chastity rests 
 not on great moral self-control, as the vic- 
 tim deludes himself into thinking, but 
 upon a distinctly deficient sexuality. That 
 does not mean that he may not be a nice 
 fellow, be quite refined, and even socially 
 useful, but as the pilot for so storm-tossed 
 a bark as the good ship matrimony, he is 
 not entitled to a pilot's license. Indeed, 
 it is doubtful whether he will be able to 
 pilot a dory on the calm waters of a mill 
 pond. And it is borne in upon every thot- 
 ful student that Freud was right when 
 he said that a man who will accept substi- 
 
ILLICIT SEX RELATIONS 49 
 
 tutes in this, his strongest, impulse will 
 accept substitutes in every other depart- 
 ment of life. That does not imply that a 
 second or third rater can be transformed 
 into a real man by indulging in promiscu- 
 ous intercourse, far from it, but he is 
 merely a sexual cripple, often very useful 
 in his sublimated activities but entitled to 
 no special honor for his great self-control 
 which really rests on the absence of any 
 compelling urge. Such a man may marry 
 and if he chances upon a wife equally in- 
 different he may establish a home, and the 
 result may be entirely satisfactory; but 
 should he marry a normal woman, there 
 will surely be much to regret for all con- 
 cerned. 
 
 These facts being true, or at least so 
 they seem to me, our ethical problem con- 
 cerns not intercourse but the probable un- 
 happiness which may result from the con- 
 flict between our traditions, laws, and the 
 natural expression of the individual. This 
 is all very "materialistic," but men are so 
 and we must make the best of it. Obvi- 
 
50 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 ausly couples indulging in illicit inter- 
 course must do so in such manner that the 
 future rights and possibilities for happi- 
 ness of either party are in no way injured. 
 At present it is very difficult to meet this 
 requirement, especially as regards the 
 woman. But if both parties are fully 
 aware that they have a right to this happi- 
 ness and enter into the relation with a 
 proper appreciation of the difficulties, if 
 both are satisfied as to their rights, it is 
 difficult to see wherein it is anybody's busi- 
 ness what they do. There is always a 
 possibility that the woman may become 
 strongly attached to her lover and dishke 
 the inevitable parting. But this also hap- 
 pens when intercourse is not involved, and 
 as far as I can see is merely an unpre- 
 ventable misfortune. When we find an 
 answer for the one case it will be equally 
 valid for the other. Unrequited love is 
 indeed a very sad occurrence; but that is 
 all we can say about it; love can not be 
 compelled nor can a pretense be long 
 
ILLICIT SEX RELATIONS 51 
 
 maintained which deceives any but the 
 neighbors. 
 
 One does not pretend to justify the 
 course of a man who flits from one woman 
 to another, leaving a train of broken- 
 hearted maidens behind him. Such con- 
 duct has been amply damned for mil- 
 lenniums, but where both parties are enter- 
 ing freely into such a relationship I see 
 no ethical grounds for objection, any more 
 than in any other relations between 
 friends. Of course, such a proposition will 
 offend those who worship in intentional 
 blindness of facts the ideal of one man for 
 one woman for all eternity — a rather long 
 period during which to maintain a com- 
 plete indifference to all one's fellow mor- 
 tals. It will offend those who preach a 
 strict monogamy without realizing what 
 a strict monogamy implies. Nevertheless, 
 it is a position which is biologically sound, 
 properly handled makes for spiritual 
 growth and that, too, on a firmer footing 
 than the conventional ideal which applies 
 perhaps to one couple in a thousand. To 
 
52 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 render this solution unnecessary involves 
 a change in our social system which few 
 are willing to undertake. It does involve 
 a frank recognition of what is now an es- 
 tablished fact, and a corresponding sani- 
 tary renovation of our age-long prejudices 
 and hypocrisy. 
 
 The chief difficulty lies in the unwilling- 
 ness of men to allow to their co-equals, 
 women, the same rights which they claim 
 for themselves. This in all justice we 
 must do. It is long past time when we 
 should try to maintain this age-old in- 
 iquity. Somehow it seems to me that the 
 traditional insistence on *'purity" in the 
 woman is based in practice on very de- 
 grading grounds. Of all men, those who 
 insist most stridently on marrying a virgin 
 are those who have been notoriously 
 profligate and wholly indifferent to the 
 sacrifice which they have compelled from 
 their victims. This attitude is inculcated 
 in the minds of all our boys. To me this 
 seems criminal. A woman may have all 
 the qualities which we admire in women, 
 
ILLICIT SEX RELATIONS 53 
 
 be equipped to maintain a splendid home, 
 but forsooth she has not an intact hymen 
 and so is to be treated as an outcast. If 
 however, she have an intact hymen, even 
 tho that be maintained on a basis of fri- 
 gidity or perhaps tribadism, then is she 
 perfect in the eyes of tradition and a suit- 
 able wife. I can not believe that the 
 modem woman will permit herself to re- 
 main long under such tawdry disabihties. 
 The only cheerful note in this situation, 
 and that is cheerful only in that it is such 
 excellent irony, is found in the case where 
 a notorious roue finding a woman whom 
 his seductive wiles will not warm up, 
 marries her and discovers that he has ob- 
 tained an iceberg. True, much unhappi- 
 ness follows, but in a way one gets a grim 
 smile out of old Mother Nature's little 
 joke. 
 
 I am not here pleading for promiscuity. 
 There is a world of difference between so- 
 called ilh'cit relations undertaken in re- 
 sponse to natural stimuli, and where all of 
 the qualities of friendship and comraderie 
 
54 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 are involved and the fly-by-night rela- 
 tionship which promiscuity implies. I am 
 unable to see why a couple who like each 
 other should not be free to learn by experi- 
 ment whether they care to unite for pur- 
 poses of procreation or otherwise. Nor 
 do I believe that this great freedom would 
 result in a greater looseness of morals. As 
 far as men are concerned I do not see how 
 they could well be more lax than they are, 
 but I can see how they might be cleaner 
 and nobler in their affairs. I can believe 
 that in a state of frankness those higher 
 qualities which rest on the sexual relation 
 might even develop to a point where we 
 would find ourselves in a better and kind- 
 lier world. Would it not mean a great 
 many more happy homes if a greater free- 
 dom of choice and more experience en- 
 tered into the foundation of them? And a 
 home that is not happy poisons everything 
 that comes in contact with it. 
 
 Under present conditions illicit inter- 
 course often carries in its train results 
 which are ethically bad because of the 
 
EXTRAMARITAL RELATIONS 55 
 
 failure of the parties concerned to meet the 
 situation frankly, but there are obvious 
 signs that this condition is about to pass; 
 and when it does, not only will men be 
 cleaner lived but they will also have to act 
 more like gentlemen if they are to receive 
 any attention at all from the emancipated 
 female. 
 
 3. Extramarital Relations. 
 
 This phase of the subject is to an even 
 greater degree than others complicated by 
 the clash between tradition and common 
 sense. If, as sometimes happens, both the 
 wife and husband can agree as to such a 
 relationship being established it is difficult 
 to see that any one else is called upon to 
 interest himself in it. Where such an 
 agreement can not be reached it is obvious 
 that divorce is the natural and proper 
 remedy. Of course where there are chil- 
 dren, and especially under present condi- 
 tions, proper provision must be made for 
 the deserted party. At the same time ex- 
 perience teaches that the deserted party is 
 
56 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 often consciously to blame for the situa* 
 tion and must pay the penalty. If the 
 wife suffers from a frigidity which the 
 best efforts of both can not overcome, then 
 in all reason she must regard herself as 
 incompetent and act accordingly. The 
 fact that it is physically possible for a wife 
 to produce children even though she has no 
 sexual life, does not seem to me to alter 
 the sound legal position which allows a 
 wife to secure a divorce if her husband is 
 impotent. It is merely carrying over into 
 the emotional sphere a principle which ap- 
 plies in the physical. One who knows 
 what a degraded emotional life is led by 
 wives who are congenitally unable to rise 
 to their husband's sexual requirements will 
 look with friendly eyes on a much greater 
 ease of divorce. Neither party has a right 
 to turn the other away merely because a 
 mutual mistake has been made. On the 
 other hand neither has the right to im- 
 prison his mate for life in the round of 
 petty meanness and quarreling which ill- 
 adapted sex relations produce. It is 
 
EXTRAMARITAL RELATIONS 67 
 
 always possible for a sensible woman to 
 decide whether she cares enough for her 
 husband to desire his happiness and so re- 
 lease him in those situations where she can 
 not serve without a feeling of moral deg- 
 radation. The same reasoning applies to 
 the man. If he can not so win his wife's 
 affections that no other man can exert an 
 overwhelming attraction upon her, he 
 must confess frankly that he is a failure. 
 It may be a severe wrench to his vanity, 
 but as a lover he has to decide whether he 
 will be content, with those qualities and 
 the corresponding quantities of affection 
 which his wife can give him, leaving her 
 free to fill the vacancies elsewhere, or he 
 can withdraw and set her free. As to chil- 
 dren, we will discuss their status when we 
 come to divorce; but I believe that we may 
 say that children have no place in an un- 
 happy household. 
 
 It is usual to wink at transgression on 
 the part of the husband. This custom 
 originated with the men and for their own 
 convenience. On the other hand it is held 
 
58 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 that because of the legal and property 
 rights of her children the wife must re- 
 main true to her husband ''regardless/' 
 That seems a rather materialistic basis, 
 but in this case it is applied by the tradi- 
 tionist as a valid argument. With the 
 abolition of inheritance, a reform which is 
 now getting under way, this old shackle 
 will be broken to the very great advantage 
 of all concerned. It promises a great 
 ethical advance when the economic de- 
 pendence of woman shall have been abol- 
 ished and women are free to dictate the 
 terms under which they will live even as 
 men have always done. For the extreme 
 cases where either party is unable to main- 
 tain a monogamous relation, it seems to me 
 that if they can not make a satisfactory 
 compromise, they must part. I recall 
 cases where deception has been practiced 
 by one party or the other with a general 
 increase in happiness all around and that 
 social and spiritual gain which is an out- 
 growth of contentment, but one does not 
 feel called upon to formulate any rule for 
 
THE DOUBLE STANDARD 59 
 
 these extreme cases. One does very well 
 if he attends to his own problems and ex- 
 ercises much charity when examining the 
 solution which others find for theirs. 
 When one stops to consider how impos- 
 sible it is for him to realize the emotional 
 value which his neighbor sets upon the 
 different phases of the love life, it seems 
 foolhardy and cruel to try to establish 
 rules which all others must follow, 
 
 4. The Double Standard. 
 
 Should the standards be the same for 
 (a) boys and girls? (b) for adults? Un- 
 der present conditions the answer is a 
 much qualified No. As long as an intact 
 hymen is regarded as the chief essential of 
 a bride, it is expedient, though hardly a 
 matter of ethics, to endeavor to bring the 
 girl to nubile age in a state of physical 
 intactness. With that alleged third of 
 womankind who are congenital icebergs 
 this will present few difficulties and no 
 doubt the parents can feel quite proud and 
 happy about it. Some of us doubt the 
 
60 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 bridegroom will be quite so well pleased as 
 he had thought. It is said that a young 
 girl's love is a wonderful and beautiful 
 thing. I do not presume to deny it. If it 
 is beautiful to live in a kind of hypnoidal 
 state destitute of the criteria of reality, 
 then the point is conceded. As near as I 
 can ascertain, a girl's love is about as beau- 
 tiful as the new-fallen snow, about as 
 easily sullied and turned into slush, or, 
 what is worse, a whining self-pity when 
 the disillusionments of the honeymoon ar- 
 rive. Just how beautiful all that is re- 
 mains a matter of taste, but perhaps a 
 little less naivete would wear better. It 
 seems to be universally conceded that it is 
 a misfortune if the "girl love" is not re- 
 placed by "woman's" love by the end of 
 the first few months of married life. Of 
 course this peculiar psychic condition of 
 the bride is tremendously flattering to the 
 man's vanity, and under cover of it he is 
 able to dissemble a multitude of iniquities. 
 But would not a little clearer vision be 
 better for all concerned? Would it not 
 
THE DOUBLE STANDARD 61 
 
 facilitate the development of that sturdy 
 self-reliant candid affection without which 
 marriage easily degenerates into mere 
 habit? 
 
 Of one thing I feel quite certain and 
 that is that men would be better off for a 
 more candid view of the matter. Our 
 present tradition inculcates so firmly the 
 idea that a woman who gives her body has 
 also degraded it that men often experience 
 a feeling of disgust even with their brides. 
 One feels that the opposite view is not 
 only more expedient but also more just. 
 It would be better to teach our boys that 
 when a woman gives her body she has 
 given her greatest proof of confidence and 
 trust. Surely such trust should be repaid 
 by a heightened respect. 
 
 As to the boys, we have already noted 
 that we have to choose between masturba- 
 tion and fornication. Of the relative 
 healthfulness of the two, opinions will not 
 greatly differ. It would seem that where 
 the normal relation is developed naturally 
 out of the boy's "calf-love" it can lead only 
 
62 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 to better things. When we compare this 
 natural development with the tawdry in- 
 itiation which many lads receive I do not 
 see how one can decide in favor of the 
 latter. For it is well known that the first 
 intercourse always sticks in the back of 
 the mind and by it all subsequent experi- 
 ences are judged. If this first experience 
 was a tawdry, obscene, rather disgusting 
 affair, we may be sure that that vision will 
 always be pushing in between the man 
 and his beloved. To me, that seems un- 
 desirable ; but barring an extreme and, as 
 far as I have observed, infrequent self- 
 control, the choice lies as above. 
 
 (b) The standard for men and women 
 should be the same and quite free. They 
 should meet on a basis of equality and 
 self-respect. If they can not, and it is 
 usually the woman's misfortune that her 
 training has made it impossible, then she 
 may indulge in whatever expedients she 
 finds available to her case. I do not ig- 
 nore Freud's keen remark about some 
 neurotics: "that they would have been 
 
THE DOUBLE STANDARD 63 
 
 better had it been possible for them to have 
 been worse/' Many women of this gen- 
 eration are so bound by tradition that free- 
 dom is beyond them. Such will have to 
 conform, and if need be become bitter old 
 maids (or wives) : a general nuisance to 
 themselves and every one else. One hesi- 
 tates to call such moral. Nor do I doubt 
 that with the development of equality and 
 economic independence there will be less 
 promiscuity than at present. I believe 
 that once women are really emancipated, 
 men will have to improve both their man- 
 ners and their ideals if they are to have 
 companions. The immorality of the usual 
 code at present lies rather in the inability 
 of women to feel sure of themselves. They 
 accept all too readily the man-made notion 
 that in leading a natural sex life they have 
 degraded themselves. Men foster this 
 view for purely selfish reasons in that it 
 enables them to escape their full emotional 
 responsibility. The sooner we abolish that 
 the better. 
 
V 
 
 64 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 5. Divorce. 
 
 From what has preceded it is obvious 
 that divorce should be made as free as 
 possible. If it must be regulated other 
 than by public opinion, it would seem suf- 
 ficient that on the request of either party 
 a decree of separation should issue. After 
 a suitable and not too long interval, if the 
 plaintiff was still determined to separate, 
 then a final decree should be issued. And 
 it should be wholly unnecessary for either 
 party to prove that some blame or breach 
 of law had been perpetrated. It is absurd 
 to require two persons, presumably intel- 
 ligent persons, to live together in a state 
 of mutual hatred until one or the other is 
 willing to furnish "cause." I am unable 
 to see why people should live together if 
 they do not wish to do so. Nor can I be- 
 lieve that the State would suffer if they 
 separated. I am quite sure that the com- 
 munity would not. Nor can I see why 
 ^ "blame" needs be shown. It is familiar 
 to all of us that it is quite possible to keep 
 
DIVORCE 65 
 
 one's companion in a continuous homicidal 
 state of mind without violating any of the 
 laws or even conventional politenesses. 
 
 The usual objections to divorce other 
 than the theological claim that marriage 
 is a sacrament, are based upon a desire to 
 maintain the integrity of the home. It is 
 usually called sanctity but integrity is 
 what is really meant. And there is good 
 reason why we should desire that children 
 grow up in a good and complete home. 
 The analytic study of the child's mind 
 shows clearly how very important the first 
 four or five years are in determining the 
 future possibilities of the child. Equally 
 important are the years up to adolescence, 
 though in both periods the really impor- 
 tant things have been almost wholly left 
 to chance, so great is our disinclination to 
 face the actual facts of child development. 
 But analysis shows more. If it emphasizes 
 and confirms our opinions as to the impor- 
 tance of a good home, it also shows the 
 disastrous effects of a bad one. We have 
 gone on in the blissful delusion that the 
 
66 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 child did not understand and therefore 
 our numerous iniquities would not affect 
 its development if only we kept up a pre- 
 tense '*for the sake of the children.'* We 
 know better now. Not only does the child 
 sense the dishonesty of a divided house- 
 hold, it acquires extraordinary and per- 
 verse ideas of even our proper activities. 
 If the children's good is to be the deciding 
 factor in matters of divorce, then we must 
 unquestionably allow the separation of 
 those who can not live together and grow 
 together. Better half a household with 
 honesty and peace than any number of 
 homes full of strife. These late develop- 
 ments in analytical psychology confirm 
 what many of us had already observed: 
 that children who came from homes in 
 which dissension reigned always seemed 
 crippled in their emotional capacities. 
 They are never able to believe in those 
 finer loyalties upon which fine spirits de- 
 pend. It is not denied that children can 
 survive in a quarrelsome household, but 
 
DIVORCE 67 
 
 that does not prove that they should be 
 compelled to do so. 
 
 There are plenty who can say: "No, I 
 don't believe we had an ideal home, but we 
 made out somehow and I wouldn't give up 
 those experiences for anything." And to 
 all such one can extend that warm human 
 sympathy which goes out to the honest 
 effort, the honest confession of failure. 
 They tried faithfully according to their 
 capacities and one has only kind words for 
 their effort. We do not propose to break 
 up any homes, though occasions arise even 
 now where the state does feel justified in 
 so doing. But it is one thing to praise 
 these conscientious failures and another 
 thing to insist that persons without the 
 moral strength to see the thing through 
 shall be shackled together to act as a focus 
 of infection poisoning themselves, their 
 children, and the community. Give them 
 another chance: sooner or later they will 
 find suitable mates. In the second at- 
 tempt there will be less of that much 
 heralded "girl-love" and less "calf love," 
 
68 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 but there will also be a great deal more 
 common sense, and after all that is what is 
 required to pilot a family safely into port. 
 For those who never were meant to estab- 
 lish a home and rear children, the quicker 
 they perish from the racial stock the bet- 
 ter, perhaps. In any case all we need to 
 do to render them socially valuable — 
 whatever value they may possess — is to 
 give them their prevenceptives and leave 
 them alone. 
 
 6. Alimony, 
 
 It is difficult to imagine a fine spirited 
 woman asking for alimony without a feel- 
 ing of degradation as though she were 
 some indefinite sort of prostitute. On the 
 other hand the learned judges have de- 
 cided that marriage reduces a woman's 
 value, and limits her chance of securing 
 another husband — all this in spite of the 
 market quotation on grass-widows ! For- 
 tunately these same judges have properly 
 enough decided that in so far as a wife con- 
 tributes to the home work as essential 
 
ALIMONY 69 
 
 and often more exacting than that of the 
 man, she is entitled to some form of re- 
 muneration in case she finds it necessary 
 to withdraw from the firm. This decision, 
 doubtless reached at a time when the wife 
 was a producer as well as a wife, is funda- 
 mentally sound and under present condi- 
 tions must be accepted. But so great have 
 grown the abuses of this system, so blas- 
 phemous the extortion which certain kinds 
 of parasitic women indulge in, that one 
 feels the need of some radical change in 
 the basic conditions upon which the courts 
 shall proceed. At present the economic 
 and social dependence of women make the 
 solution very difficult. When we progress 
 far enough that the community takes over 
 as it should the support of mothers, a mar- 
 riage contract which looks to the protec- 
 tion of the children will probably suffice. 
 In the transition period we should arrange 
 for more discretion on the part of special 
 domestic courts where with all the facts 
 before them the judges, or commission, 
 can adjust the financial details with less 
 
 / 
 
70 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 regard to precedent and more to justice 
 in the particular case. If married couples 
 could be divorced promptly and without 
 the absurd necessity of proving "guilt" as 
 at present, I believe they would separate 
 before the accumulating hatreds and petty 
 spite made a reasonable division of the 
 estate impossible by agreement. Such 
 agreement confirmed by the Commission 
 should be final. Paradoxical as it may 
 seem I am convinced that free and easy 
 divorce would result in many more happy 
 homes and in many fewer divorces. Until 
 that time comes I suppose we must toler- 
 ate the parasitic wife and professional ex- 
 tortionist as we tolerate those upon whom 
 she preys. 
 
 7. Unnatural Methods of Coitus. 
 
 This subject really calls for no lengthy 
 discussion. As long as both parties to the 
 relation are content I can not see how it 
 is anybody's business just what procedure 
 they find most successful with them. It 
 is not a legal matter at all. Of course, if 
 
HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONS 71 
 
 the wife, for example, feels disgusted with 
 her partner's tastes, and he on his part can 
 not alter them, there is no reason why the 
 two should remain together. In fact I 
 doubt if any but a few ascetic theologues 
 have any particular interest in the matter. 
 We have to admit that some of the most 
 desirable citizens we know have what seem 
 to some rather weird notions of pleasure, 
 but where both are agi'eed, no psychic nor 
 physical harm is going to result. We have 
 also to admit that these so-called un- 
 natural methods are very common in the 
 stress of passion and doubtless quite use- 
 ful. If the end sought — the maximum 
 contrectation and complete and satisfying 
 detumescence — ^be achieved I see no rea- 
 son to limit the methods chosen as long as 
 both partners are willing and content. 
 
 8. Homosexual Relations. 
 
 Here again the word un-natural ob- 
 scures a relatively simple problem. As a 
 matter of fact the relation is unnatural 
 only in that it is not usual. The homo- 
 
72 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 sexual tendency is present in all and its 
 sublimations constitute some of the most 
 advanced spiritual activities of the race. 
 The gross physical facts are common to 
 animals as well as men. I seriously doubt 
 the Freudian explanation of the phe- 
 nomenon, that is, as a complete and suf- 
 ficient explanation. And I also doubt the 
 success of the reputed cures. I suspect 
 that this phenomenon rests primarily on 
 the physico-chemical balance of the indi- 
 vidual, and that while such a person may 
 be led to indulge in the so-called normal 
 relations, the cure is more a perversion of 
 a pervert than an actual deep-reaching 
 change. 
 
 Whatever the future may bring to light 
 in the matter of cause and cure — assum- 
 ing that a cure proves socially desirable — 
 the ethical problems do not seem unan- 
 swerable. Certainly with adults who may 
 choose to entertain such relationships I 
 can see no reason why others should con- 
 cern themselves about it. Nor do I feel 
 sufficiently sure of the facts to be dogmatic 
 
HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONS 73 
 
 where, as sometimes happens, the rela- 
 tionship is estabhshed between adults and 
 adolescents, nor that it is a matter which 
 can be wisely subjected to legislation. 
 
 It seems to me that better results will 
 be achieved by making it customary to 
 ask a mental examination of persons who 
 seem to be going on irregular pathways. 
 Only by such examinations can we hope 
 to find a solution which will do any prac- 
 tical good. To imprison a homosexual, 
 or a sadist, does not make any change in 
 his psyche, at least no change for the bet- 
 ter. The better grade homosexual is often 
 a highly useful citizen and can ill be 
 spared. The low grade are not to blame 
 for their tastes and often would be found 
 fit for some sort of restriction in their 
 movements. With the record of the old 
 comradeships of Greece and Japan before 
 us one may doubt whether our present 
 treatment of the subject does not suffer 
 quite as much under the theological tradi- 
 tion, and with as great wastage, as our 
 other sex conventions. From the evidence 
 
74 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 thus far, it seems a subject worthy of more 
 serious and open minded consideration 
 than it has yet received, in this country 
 at least. I can not see that as applied to 
 adults it is a community affair, since 
 homosexuals left to themselves do not 
 breed and thus eliminate themselves from 
 the stock. ForeFs comment on bestiality 
 might be applied here with some propri- 
 ety. He said, and it scandalized the unco 
 guid: that it was better for an idiot to 
 copulate with a cow, which would not in- 
 jure the cow than for him to copulate with 
 some girl and beget a family of idiots. It 
 seems certain that in the near future our 
 laws concerning all of these "queer" prac- 
 tices will have to be revised by a group of 
 open minded psychiatrists with the intent 
 that when any action is taken it shall have 
 some effect. At present no law even if 
 enforced makes other than a slight and 
 temporary change in conditions. 
 
 On the other hand I have wondered 
 whether the Freudian concept of fixation 
 might imply that a number of homosex- 
 
INCEST 
 
 75 
 
 uals, border line cases, do not have this 
 fixation confirmed in adolescence due to 
 their difficulty in securing opportunity for 
 "normal" intercourse, because of their lack 
 of "nerve." It is worth considering 
 whether these cases would not develop 
 more to our taste if they were rather aided 
 in their first faltering steps along the line 
 of normal development. 
 
 9, Incest. 
 
 This problem is traditionally ancient 
 and uniformly the answer is negative. 
 Both for psychic and biological reasons in- 
 cest seems wholly objectionable. But 
 these objections rest on the assumption 
 that children will be born of such unions. 
 In the absence of offspring it is difiicult 
 to take the problem very seriously. Of 
 course, in breeding animals we compel in- 
 cest in our efforts to obtain and fix certain 
 qualities which we deem desirable. And 
 while the result is usually an approach to 
 our ideal animal, it will be admitted that 
 it lacks vigor, it can not survive in open 
 
76 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 competition with less inbred stock. With 
 the human race we have the record of the 
 Pharaohs, the Incas, and the poljrnesian 
 royalty, where inbreeding mth a rigid 
 elimination of the unfit resulted in quite 
 superior personalities. With our more civ- 
 ilized ( !) tribes we are probably quite jus- 
 tified in making incest taboo, and that in 
 spite of the tradition of Lot and his daugh- 
 ters. As a practical problem, we have 
 seldom to deal with incest except in the 
 case of the definitely feeble-minded with 
 whom we were better to attack the prob- 
 lem from the angle of their mentality than 
 of their conduct. Incest, between mother 
 and son, father and daughter, or brother 
 and sister (a not uncommon case in child- 
 hood though seldom persisted in later), 
 where feeble-mindedness is not an issue, 
 should be handled by the psychiatrist, if 
 need be on orders from the court. But it 
 seems unwise to make it a legal olfense 
 punished by any such unhelpful penalty 
 as imprisonment. To make it a special 
 sort of crime and to invest it with all those 
 
PREVENCEPTION 77 
 
 immoral expressions of our own self -right- 
 eousness seems stupid and crueL Let the 
 indignant reader have the problem of 
 brother and sister presented to him as a 
 practical problem and one wonders 
 whether he will give any very helpful ad- 
 vice. It is easy, though futile, to insist 
 that the boy should leave all girls alone, 
 but it will require quite a bit of patience 
 to make clear the difference between the 
 boy's sister and his chum's sister. 
 
 10. Prevenception. 
 
 While one becomes doubtful in these 
 days of blind reaction, whether indeed 
 there are any rights of any kind, never- 
 theless, one may be pardoned for suggest- 
 ing that there probably are a few. And 
 among those few rights, or vestiges of 
 rights, I would predicate the right to the 
 sexual control of the individual's own 
 body. I admit that where procreation is 
 involved the community has a right to in- 
 tervene, but otherwise I believe even the 
 "state" has nothing to say about it. The 
 
78 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 fiction that the state can demand of women 
 that they bear children will not long stand 
 the test of either experience or logic. One 
 admits readily enough that the commu- 
 nity may properly require that the number 
 of children be limited, and one can ima- 
 gine the state urging that as many chil- 
 dren be borne as can be properly cared 
 for. But until the state sees to it that all 
 children born are properly reared, fed, 
 clothed, housed, and given equal chances 
 at whatever education they desire, I can 
 not imagine that the state has any right 
 to insist that they be born. A walk through 
 the slums and factories where children are 
 allowed to develop in the most abominable 
 surroundings is a sufficient reply to any 
 pretensions that the state may make in its 
 attempts to regulate these matters. The 
 child has a right not to be born as well as 
 to be well born. The mere fact that 
 women can conceive without any desire 
 to do so, is their anatomical misfortune. 
 Not even the present liberal governments 
 will undertake to require any male citizen 
 
ABORTION 79 
 
 to beget children against his will, and for 
 a most excellent reason. It is clear on our 
 assumptions that woman has the same 
 right even though she may not be pro- 
 tected by her anatomical construction as 
 is the male. From what has gone before 
 it is obvious that I regard the procreation 
 of children as wholly a question of the 
 woman's desire. Unless she so desires 
 there are to be no children. It is also ob- 
 vious from assumptions which regard the 
 gratification of the sexual impulse as es- 
 sential to healthy mental and physical 
 development, that prevenception is not 
 only desirable but a duty. With the lift- 
 ing of the absurd ban which now rests on 
 this subject we may expect the develop- 
 ment of safe, esthetic methods which will 
 make procreation truly voluntary and cor- 
 respondingly ennobled. 
 
 11. Abortion, 
 
 This is a misfortune, most undesirable, 
 but not a crime. Whether or not a woman 
 is to bear a child is her business and only 
 
80 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 in a most indefinite way the affair of 
 any one else. I can not recognize the right 
 of the community to compel a woman to 
 bear an unwelcome child. I do not see 
 that the charge of murder has any valid 
 application. Indeed the present stupid 
 laws allow the destruction of a child whose 
 further development would endanger the 
 life of the mother. Nor does the state 
 hesitate to slaughter adults who are 
 thought to be antisocial, or millions of 
 them, in war, and that without consulting 
 them as to what they think about it. In 
 the face of which it is difficult to see where- 
 in the community has any claims on the 
 unborn. I believe, therefore, that if the 
 woman so desires, she may properly de- 
 mand an abortion, and I shall not object. 
 
 On the other hand, I do not approve 
 abortion and would make it unnecessary. 
 It is clear that the abortion habit is unde- 
 sirable from any point of view and we 
 should make it the rare thing rather than 
 the present underhanded custom. To the 
 stock objection that prevenception and 
 
ABORTION 81 
 
 abortion lead to race suicide it seems a 
 sufficient answer that a race so given over 
 to self-indulgence that the mother instinct 
 is lost, or so miserable in its economic life 
 that children are a disaster, can not perish 
 too quickly from the face of the earth. The 
 place to begin reforming is not with these 
 poor maltreated women but with the eco- 
 nomic system. Certainly it is taking a 
 mean advantage of the helpless unborn to 
 compel their entrance into a society as 
 thoroughly rotten as these objections im- 
 ply. Those women who do not want chil- 
 dren will not rear a child properly, and 
 the quicker their stock is eliminated, why 
 — ^the better for those who adore the sanc- 
 tity of motherhood. As a matter of fact 
 we do not find many women in whom the 
 maternal instinct is weak and I see no rea- 
 son to worry about them. Since we can 
 hardly hope to establish the custom of exe- 
 cuting all childless women, say at the 
 spring rutting festival as less civilized 
 tribes might well do, it seems better to let 
 them perish naturally. 
 
82 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 12. Prostitution.* 
 
 This ancient plague will disappear by 
 becoming unnecessary, and in no other 
 way. I was tempted to risk a bit of cheap 
 cynicism and say — ^by becoming universal. 
 For while that is not at all my idea, nor 
 does it represent the probable develop- 
 ment, yet to the orthodox, the sexophobes, 
 those changes which will abolish prostitu- 
 tion will seem like the last days of Sodom 
 and Gomorra. Nevertheless any person 
 who takes the trouble to look up the his- 
 tory of this ancient profession, the vari- 
 ous attempts to abolish it, and then look 
 about him with sympathetic understand- 
 ing will reach very much the conclusion 
 offered above. As long as we try to con- 
 fine a far from monogamous animal to a 
 legal monogamy there will remain a sur- 
 plus of sexual urge which will find satis- 
 faction somewhere. Now j ust where is the 
 
 * It is quite an education for anyone to try to define 
 the words prostitute and prostitution. They have not yet 
 been defined in a satisfactory manner. I dodge the ques- 
 tion as to what is the essence of. prostitution. 
 
PROSTITUTION 83 
 
 point we had better start considering? 
 The solutions attempted thus far have 
 had only one purpose: to cripple and de* 
 stroy the sexual impulse. The result is a 
 deformed sexuality which whether we like 
 it or not finds itself prepared to offer 
 those inducements which produce commer- 
 cialized prostitution as well as the clande- 
 stine variety. Even a slight acquaintance 
 with Bloch's Die Prostitution will suffice 
 to convince any reasonable person that all 
 the effort, all the blood and cruelty which 
 were spent in chivyipg poor whores from 
 one jail to another, or from one slum to 
 another, have not in any way altered the 
 demand or the method of meeting it. One 
 learns from Bloch's careful book that the 
 profession has not changed appreciably 
 since the beginnings of historic times. 
 Even the slang is the same. The Romans 
 called the lowest prostitutes Denarias and 
 we call them Jitneys. The part of the 
 city where these persons settle has not 
 changed. And the difJ erence between an- 
 cient Rome and modern Gotham is mere- 
 
84 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 ly one of language. The Romans had 
 pimps, we have chauffeurs, and the reason 
 our chauffeurs pimp is not that they 
 prefer the occupation but because we pay 
 them well for doing it, pay them better 
 than for anything else they can do for us. 
 Suppression, then, does not seem to me a 
 hopeful way to proceed. 
 
 Admitting at once that I sincerely wish 
 there were no prostitutes needed, honesty 
 compels me to urge that we cease persecut- 
 ing them. Of all the methods of regula- 
 tion we have tried we have never tried 
 treating the prostitute as a human being. 
 We might try that. Give them the right 
 of any other human being to hve by his 
 labor, cease this hypocritical social ostra- 
 cism, and prostitution will change both 
 its habitat and its habits. If the exploi- 
 tation of these unfortunates which has its 
 origin in their legal and social disabilities 
 were eliminated the prostitute would 
 largely disappear as a focus of disease and 
 mother of the underworld. As far as I 
 can see the only interest the state has in 
 
PROSTITUTION 85 
 
 the prostitute is to see that she does not 
 spread disease; and the place to begin 
 work is not with the prostitute but with 
 her client. Free to live as other workers 
 do she could not afford to be diseased, and 
 she does not prefer to be so. As far as I 
 know, prostitutes regard themselves as 
 quite as honest laborers as their clients, 
 nor do they look upon their life as more 
 disreputable. That view has a good deal 
 to be said for it. It is delightfully as well 
 as tragically ironic to see the same men 
 for whom the prostitute exists, solemnly 
 making laws to abolish her. Nor does 
 the prostitute fail to see the humor of it, 
 painful as the results of such legislation 
 may be to her in her personal fortunes. 
 
 Under present conditions, every effort 
 is made to break down the prostitute's 
 self-respect, to put her at a social and legal 
 disadvantage for no other reason than that 
 under such disabilities she is easier ex- 
 ploited by her fellow citizens. The result 
 can only be degradation and an antisocial 
 grudge which makes her wholly unwilling 
 
86 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 to consider her social duties seriously. Give 
 her the right over her own body, protect 
 her from extortion and physical abuse and 
 the prostitute would lose most of the sinis- 
 ter qualities which make her the tragic fig- 
 ure she has always been. 
 
 Such suggestions may seem extreme to 
 those who have not considered the matter 
 in its historical or hirnian aspect. Never- 
 theless it is along some such path that we 
 must move if we are not to be overwhelmed 
 with the offal of our own iniquities. Sup- 
 pressive measures have been tried, even 
 the death penalty was invoked, and the re- 
 sult has been merely to make matters 
 worse. On the other hand, a loosening of 
 our too rigid limitations on the sex im- 
 pulse as suggested in the preceding para- 
 graphs will render the prostitute unneces- 
 sary and ultimately extinct, while there 
 will grow up a regime based on the frank 
 recognition of sexual necessity where men 
 and women meet on a basis of comraderie 
 and equality which leaves no need for the 
 professional prostitute, but substitutes for 
 
ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN 87 
 
 her the woman who gives freely when she 
 loves and not at all otherwise. I am con- 
 fident that in a generation of such freedom 
 we would see not only the disappearance 
 of the prostitute but the establishment of 
 infinitely more happy homes, happy be- 
 cause coercion has no place in them, happy 
 because they could only be maintained on 
 a basis of mutual respect and thoughtful- 
 ness. Meanwhile if you can do nothing 
 else, you can drop that dornick you have 
 concealed under the folds of your toga. 
 You have no right to throw it. Neither 
 have I. 
 
 18. Illegitimate Childeen. 
 
 One wonders at the limited understand- 
 ing of those who assert that there can be 
 anything holy or even serious about mar- 
 riage except the possible children. And 
 for folks to prate about their Christianity 
 and of brotherhood, and then tolerate, 
 nay, even defend our treatment of these 
 unfortunate children, puzzles one as well 
 as tempts to invective. I would not argue 
 
88 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 with the theologues, but I can not recall 
 in any version that the beautiful saying of 
 Jesus: "Suffer the little children to come 
 unto me'* had also the qualifying clause; 
 "that is, all who can show the duly certified 
 marriage license of their parents." And 
 indeed the church does not deny the possi- 
 bility that an illegitimate child might enter 
 into heaven even if it does tolerate con- 
 ventions which make the bastard's life on 
 earth very much like the other place. 
 
 There is a common notion that the 
 grounds for the distinction between legit- 
 imate and "natural" children are to be 
 found in religion. Everything to which 
 the stigma of "sin" can be attached is sup- 
 posed to originate in revelation, though 
 the distinction with which we are here con- 
 cerned has its origin and being in purely 
 economic causes. It is not to violated 
 sacraments, nor sin, but to economics that 
 we owe this most unreasonable of iniqui- 
 ties. Naturally the laws were made by 
 men for the usual purpose of escaping 
 from the responsibilities for their passions* 
 
ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN 89 
 
 And the women have aided and abetted 
 this crime because they feared inroads up- 
 on the perquisites of their own usually 
 legitimate offspring. I suppose the idea 
 that there is religious justification for 
 this persecution of the helpless arises from 
 the quite definite notion of most folks that 
 religion is chiefly concerned with persecu- 
 tion of one sort or another. 
 
 And of all the absurdities! It has even 
 been necessary to gather statistics to prove 
 that the illegitimate child was like any 
 legitimate child. Mentally and physically 
 they are like other children whether we 
 would have it so or not. Spiritually they 
 show in some measure, though really iu 
 surprisingly minor degree, rather less 
 warm social feelings than others. That 
 they are not violently anti-social is the 
 only astonishing thing about them. When 
 we consider the treatment which they re- 
 ceive one is amazed that they ever respond 
 to social requirements. To be constantly 
 shamed for what one can not help, to be 
 sneered at, whispered about, to be always 
 
90 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 the butt of those little social ostracisms 
 which humanity so delights to inflict, as 
 though one were somehow unclean: surely 
 there are grounds enough to excuse quite 
 a bit of resentment. And yet the statistics 
 do not show that these children are any 
 worse, judged by their court records, than 
 legitimate children of the same economic 
 environment. 
 
 Socially these poor kiddies are shown no 
 mercy. I can still hear my schoolmates 
 shrieking: "Bastard, bastard!" at a poor 
 little girl huddled against that high-board 
 school fence, crying her eyes out. Yes, 
 and the children learned that attitude from 
 the sneers of their elders! I further tes- 
 tify that that particular girl grew up, lived 
 a somewhat promiscuous life until she 
 married a saloonkeeper (she married 
 young) and became one of the most com- 
 petent mothers I have ever known. No, 
 she did not repent and "get religion," she 
 merely found some one whom she could 
 love. 
 
 And so one is tempted to approve of 
 
ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN 91 
 
 abortion, or even infanticide rather than 
 permit a poor little baby to grow up to 
 face the persecution which our Christian 
 civilization will inflict upon it. Is it not 
 strange that we do so cry out upon the 
 illegitimate child and yet penalize the cir- 
 culation of prevenceptive information? 
 And Americans are such practical persons 
 too. 
 
 I often wonder what folks mean when 
 they say motherhood is sacred. Is it? And 
 if it is what makes it so? For if the man 
 can be induced, or forced, to marry the 
 woman at any time before delivery, or 
 even after, then is the child legitimate and 
 everything is lovely. Does the sanctity of 
 motherhood depend on the signing of pa- 
 pers which vary with every nation, state, 
 and county? I have never known a County 
 Clerk who seemed to me to be a particu- 
 larly holy person, and I confess that ad- 
 ministering the "sacrament" to the unwil- 
 ling bridegroom at the point of a pistol 
 seems to me a rather odd bit of ritual. 
 
 There are some signs of improvement. 
 
92 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 The Scandinavian law which makes the 
 father responsible is a step in the right 
 direction. And the provision whereby in 
 the absence of positive proof as to the ac- 
 tual father, all possible fathers are taxed 
 pro rata is a wise way of eliminating that 
 iniquitous defence used by men. 
 
 The problem is not at all concerned with 
 the parents. The bastard is no worse off 
 than the son of a widow. The State may 
 well concentrate its attention on seeing to 
 it that every child born receives an equal 
 chance to develop into a healthy and wise 
 human being. That is a task which the 
 state can do something about. I am not 
 afraid that the endowment of motherhood 
 will be the signal for our women to plunge 
 into a saturnalia of vice and indiscrimi- 
 nate breeding headed straight for the ever- 
 lasting bonfire. The answer to that fear 
 — commonest among men and childless 
 women — ^is to hope that the timid objector 
 might somehow be so transformed that he 
 might bear just one child. 
 
 The only practical solution is the en- 
 
THE HOME «3 
 
 dowment of motherhood. The State 
 should see to it that every child born has 
 equal opportunities to develop into the 
 best possible citizen. For the rest we had 
 better examine our ideas about the sanc- 
 tity of motherhood and make sure that 
 they are concerned as they should be with 
 the environment of the mother and child 
 instead of with mere scraps of paper I 
 care not how many clerks' and ministers' 
 signatures, or how many revenue stamps 
 may be unon them, 
 
 14. The Home. 
 
 Whenever anyone goes about to sug- 
 gest improvements in the relations be- 
 tween the sexes some misguided person is 
 certain to reply that any change in our 
 conventions will destroy the home. Now 
 that would be a very real disaster if it 
 were true. But I can not but wonder 
 sometimes whether these champions of the 
 home have really any idea of what a home 
 is or what it ought to be. Certainly if 
 they would analyze the influences now 
 
94 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 working on the home, they would appear 
 as crusaders in fields quite removed from 
 sex. And I must also suspect that they 
 are none too clear as to just what they 
 are trying to save, nor perhaps always 
 disinterested in their motives. The woman 
 who is so deficient in self-respect that she 
 marries a man merely for a meal-ticket 
 and there are quite a few such, is naturally 
 going to be dismayed at the suggestion of 
 any change which would allow the mis- 
 guided male to rid himself of a parasite. 
 And there are several men who do not 
 seem to be much interested in the "sanc- 
 tity" of the home, if one may judge by 
 their conduct with clandestine and other 
 prostitutes, who develop a good deal of 
 heat in defending the home — even though 
 the thought is near that to such a man 
 home is a place to sleep and eat and where 
 he has one woman whom he need not treat 
 with respect because she can not get free 
 of him. I sometimes feel that the most 
 violent defenders of "the home" are those 
 who have little claim to have one. But all 
 
THE HOME 05 
 
 of us, yes, even those who can propound 
 any such doctrines as I have here sug- 
 gested, are quite seriously concerned about 
 the home, though not perhaps just the 
 kind of home our opponents have in mind. 
 
 One needs very little of the results of 
 study in child-psychology to see that the 
 home is indeed the most important factor 
 in a man*s life. And with that in view one 
 does not readily countenance the present 
 status of the home, nor the age-old abuses 
 which have crept into that hallowed insti- 
 tution. And the more one sees and studies 
 the problem the more dismal appears the 
 outlook for the institution as we cherish 
 it in memory. A visit to any vaudeville 
 house — and we have the very highest social 
 precedent for frequenting them! — or a 
 review of popular fiction or song should 
 convince anyone that the home is rapidly 
 falling into contempt. Not because rad- 
 icals are preaching pernicious doctrines, — 
 no worthy institution was ever hurt by an 
 opposition doctrine, — ^but because the 
 home has almost ceased to have any real 
 
96 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 function in our industrial world. It seems 
 to me that we are rapidly approaching, if 
 indeed we have not already arrived at, the 
 breakdown of the old ideals which we as- 
 sociated with the home. If this is true it 
 is not the fault of agitators but of the home 
 itself. And the forces which have brought 
 this about are not primarily sexual nor 
 will the cure be a matter of more stringent 
 sex laws. That was tried in Rome — with 
 what success we all know. It seems to me 
 time to quit screaming for the police and 
 take an inventory of the things which a 
 home should contain and then see how 
 much if any of these can be secured under 
 present social conditions. It may happen 
 that we will have to do our reforming with 
 the social system rather than our sexual 
 morality. It is not my intent to do more 
 than indicate a few of the defects of the 
 home and some reasons why I believe that 
 an improved code of sexual ethics will not 
 only not injure but will actually tend to 
 foster good homes. 
 
 However much we may delude our* 
 
THE HOME 97 
 
 selves as to the existence of homes in this 
 country, I venture to assert that except in 
 the rural district and in some villages the 
 institution we have in mind when we sing 
 *'Home Sweet Home'* has ceased to exist. 
 The cause closely parallels that other good 
 song, "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." With 
 the ideal of the latter song I am suffi- 
 ciently in agreement, but literally it is not 
 altogether applicable. "Land where my 
 fathers died;" well, no, not exactly. They 
 didn't die out in Indiana, but over in the 
 north of England and some perhaps lent 
 aid and comfort to the enemy that is, to 
 England during the Revolution. And 
 some perhaps were hung for sheep steal- 
 ing. I do not know this to be true, but it 
 is entirely possible. In any event the 
 phrase which is meant to awaken my pa- 
 triotic ardor by an appeal to my fathers 
 does not seem to fit the case. There must 
 be several other American citizens who 
 feel the same way about it. 
 
 Now in a quite similar way Home Sweet 
 Home refers to the family homestead, the 
 
98 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 old place which has always been the seat 
 of the family, and not by any stretch of 
 imagination to apartment 666 in the Fly- 
 bynight Apartment House; or was it a 
 few rooms over a feed store which you, 
 gentle reader, are expected to enthuse 
 over? In other words, the home in the 
 sense that it gives an idea of permanence, 
 a place where the individual has roots 
 firmly inbedded in the soil, is no longer 
 extant and has not been for some time. 
 Ownership and permanence are funda- 
 mental to the homing instinct. This fact 
 is curiously borne out by Healy's studies 
 of delinquent children, where frequent 
 change of residence is an appreciable fac- 
 tor in so breaking up the child's emotional 
 roots as to leave him really a wanderer. 
 And for ourselves, not yet delinquent per- 
 haps, there is no place to which we can look 
 back with any great affection. We may 
 have been very happy in our parents, but 
 that is the only tie. We did not grow up 
 naturally among friends, we shifted our 
 friends with each remove and ultimately 
 
THE HOME 99 
 
 came to rely mostly upon ourselves since 
 the ties which long friendship establishes 
 had no opportunity to form. 
 
 Then too, there are other directions in 
 which our economic system has broken 
 down that group of associations which are 
 a part of the "home/* There was a time 
 when mother and the girls wove the cloth 
 from wool from my sheep and made it into 
 my Sunday suit. I do not desire to revert 
 to homespun, but please note that there is 
 a difference between such a suit and one 
 purchased at a bargain sale. And it mat- 
 ters quite a bit whether mother prepared 
 that special dish of which I was so child- 
 ishly fond, or whether the hired girl made 
 it. And in how many modern homes, es- 
 pecially in the city, is a child turned over 
 to a negro nurse (not infrequently syphil- 
 ized at that), while mother attends her 
 social duties? Or, if mother works, the 
 children must be farmed out at a day nur- 
 sery or on the street. Now I am far from 
 asserting that the more primitive and 
 therefore presumably more natural negro 
 
100 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 girl is not as good a nurse as many 
 mothers, but the fact is that the child's ear- 
 liest associations and by far the most im- 
 portant ones are developed around a girl 
 of alien race. 
 
 Every school teacher knows that she is 
 expected to teach not only the three Rs, 
 but also etiquette, morals, and keep the 
 children herded out of mother's way. And 
 in return the teacher receives perhaps less 
 than janitor's wages! As one teacher 
 shrewdly remarked after a meeting of the 
 "Home and School Association:" ''It does 
 not seem to occur to any of these people 
 that the home also has duties." It is amaz- 
 ing what proposals are brought before 
 these meetings. And so one might go on 
 to show the innumerable ways in which 
 our vicious economic system has disinte- 
 grated the home. It will be found that it 
 is not laxity of morals, nor irreverence, but 
 mere economic necessity which has taken 
 everything out of the home but the par- 
 ents, and in the case of the less successful 
 both parents and children are dragged out 
 
THE HOME 101 
 
 and chained to the wheels of industry. The 
 levity which so alarms the pious is not a 
 cause but a symptom and if they would 
 sincerely undertake to improve matters 
 they would do better to worry less about 
 their neighbor's peccadilloes and more 
 about their own unearned incomes. For 
 the wife who does not work, but has a maid 
 do it all, is in a rather weak position in 
 such an argument, quite as is the man who 
 produces nothing but grafts his living off 
 exchange in one form or another. 
 
 It seems improbable that any good can 
 come from a panic stricken flight towards 
 the old Puritan household. Nor can we 
 expect repressive legislation to help. If 
 we really wish to do anything about it we 
 will have to decide what constitutes a 
 home, and how much of that can be ob- 
 tained from men and women who are poli- 
 tically and economically equals and free. 
 For the future belongs to just such per- 
 sons and force will help us not a bit. We 
 face the questions: What is a proper 
 home? How can we best secure such? 
 
102 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 How can we maintain them once they are 
 established? 
 
 As to the last question, we have so far 
 followed the ancient error in supposing 
 that if the parents were definitely chained 
 together a home would result. Unfortu- 
 nately it is more often a hell. It should be 
 clear that the direction of progress — some 
 will call it degeneration, but for all that it 
 is the direction we are going and will con- 
 tinue to go — ^lies toward complete freedom 
 of the pair to separate. We are going to 
 cease requiring that people who merely 
 desire each other's society must chain 
 themselves permanently together. We 
 are going to cease leaving the question of 
 children entirely to chance and ignorance. 
 We will insist, that unless the pair in ques- 
 tion wish children they shall not have them. 
 It is the undesired child which is deserted; 
 where children are desired the parents will 
 stand by without compulsion. 
 
 And so the answer to the second ques- 
 tion seems to me to lie in allowing much 
 greater freedom of choice than is now pos- 
 
THE HOME 103 
 
 sible and more opportunity for attend- 
 ance at the only school in which we mor- 
 tals ever learn anything — that of trial and 
 error and trial again. First let us be sure 
 the pair can really tolerate each other. 
 Then if they desire children let the com- 
 munity see to it that such children have a 
 real chance to survive. That means that 
 food, shelter, and opportunities for both 
 education and play must be assured to 
 each person in the community. The result 
 will be happy homes, the goal sought. 
 
 One hears a good deal about the unwil- 
 lingness of the modern woman to bear 
 children. Such talk is rank nonsense. 
 There are women who do not wish chil- 
 dren, and we put a premium on them by 
 giving them rewards which the maternal 
 type of woman is denied. But because 
 such childless women are always rather 
 noisily "among those present" does not 
 mean that the maternal instinct has died 
 out. And we ought to realize that the 
 present economic system by making chil- 
 dren a disaster rather than an asset is cer- 
 
104 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 tainly not encouraging parenthood in 
 either sex. Any physician knows that the 
 urge toward motherhood is the most vig- 
 orous and awe-inspiring impulse with 
 which he comes in contact. When we see 
 to what lengths women will go, what tor- 
 tures they will endure in order to have 
 children of their own, a real man steps 
 reverently aside and allows the woman to 
 decide whether, when, and to whom she 
 shall bear children. There is nothing like 
 it in the male psyche and those who have 
 any realization of the actual facts are not 
 worried about the decay of the mother in- 
 stinct. What does worry him is the fact 
 that children born have so little chance of 
 a healthy rearing. 
 
 And it is also probably true of those re- 
 latively rare women who ''hate children" 
 that it is our own fault they are so de- 
 formed. In our panicky efforts to keep 
 our girls "pure" until marriage and that 
 at an age far beyond that which nature 
 carelessly set for the event, we instill into 
 the girl's mind the blasphemous ideas that 
 
THE HOME 105 
 
 sex is filthy, nasty, unfit for a girl to know 
 about. And in extreme pathological cases 
 even the baby is hated because it is asso- 
 ciated with ^'horrid sex" practices. That 
 may be purity, but if so : "Come down and 
 redeem us from virtue!" And even in the 
 average case our miseducation makes it al- 
 most impossible for the woman to view sex 
 naturally and reverently, to be approached 
 with joyous enthusiasm. Would it per- 
 haps be better if we taught our children 
 of both sexes to look upon the impulse nat- 
 urally, for what it is, and to exercise it 
 with the same honest enthusiasm with 
 which we take food? 
 
 Of course, when we look about us at the 
 cynical sensual faces of our fellows we 
 wonder just how much capacity and un- 
 derstanding they may have for the ideals 
 and beauties of this tremendous impulse. 
 And we invariably conclude that while we 
 ourselves would do very well, any change 
 in our present restrictive code would evoke 
 a saturnalia of vice. I believe this conclu- 
 sion is fundamentally false. No man will 
 
106 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 abandon a mate who meets his require* 
 ments, nor will a woman desert a compe* 
 tent husband. If we are degraded it is 
 because we have tried to kill, not to edu- 
 cate this impulse. Every normal man 
 wants a mate, home, and children, and is 
 indeed driven to try for them even under 
 the present conditions. But how we can 
 expect this to take place successfully un- 
 der our present laws which stake all upon 
 a chance meeting is beyond my under- 
 standing. Neither partner knows exactly 
 what he wants until afterwards and we, 
 as if to make sure of failure, carefully 
 miseducate both parties. It may be a very 
 shocking idea, perhaps, but one wonders if 
 it would improve matters if we made ado- 
 lescence, what it naturally is, the time for 
 trying out mates and for finding one's 
 self. Given proper prevenceptive meth- 
 ods, and an education which emphasized 
 the nobility of the sex impulse, it is not 
 impossible that such a try-out period 
 would result in an enormously greater 
 number of happy homes, not because the 
 
THE HOME 107 
 
 laws chained them together, but because 
 they loved one another — a rather stronger 
 bond. In fact a similar condition did ob- 
 tain among our more primitive ancestors, 
 and vestiges of it are still to be found in 
 Great Britain and less "civilized" parts of 
 Europe. Not that I would counsel any- 
 fond parent to put this idea into practice 
 just now, since the girl would be ostracized 
 and subjected to a continuous process of 
 degradation by her. more virtuous (mas- 
 turbating?) sisters. And why will she be 
 thus cast out and degraded? Because she 
 has sinned? Certainly not. The reason 
 is simply that if her self-respect can be 
 broken down men can easily exploit her 
 necessities for the benefit of their selfish 
 lusts, avoiding thereby any responsibility. 
 And the women will foolishly abet them 
 in this hideous cruelty. But it should be 
 remembered that this cruelty results from 
 quite other reasons than the total depra- 
 vity of the human heart. Among others 
 it rests upon the attempt to make men 
 monogamous by law rather than by love. 
 
108 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 However, whether such a mating season 
 will come back again is rather beyond our 
 present possible actions, and yet is worth 
 several thoughts while we are looking for 
 methods of saving the home. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Looking over what I have written I 
 fear I will be suspected of advocating an 
 utterly anarchic sexual life; yet that is 
 not my idea at all. I do feel that we are 
 much too bound by convention and not 
 half enough guided by conscious knowl- 
 edge. It seems that a great deal more 
 experience and freedom to experiment is 
 needed if we are ever to approach our 
 ideal of a sane healthy love life and of a 
 real home fit for children to be bom into. 
 We have so long been blundering around 
 in the valley of ignorance dragging the 
 shackles of a perverted eroticism, instead 
 of educating it, that I feel that a great 
 deal more freedom will be needed before 
 any improvement can occur. I really be* 
 lieve in a home finer than any we have jret 
 
CONCLUSION 109 
 
 achieved because it will be based upon a 
 conscious and illuminated love life. I can 
 not believe these ideals can be achieved 
 under conventions which rest upon an as- 
 cetic defiance of the natural laws, upon 
 property rights, and upon the malice and 
 meannesses which our ignorance stimu- 
 lates. 
 
 I believe these things which we desire 
 can be had only in a state of complete free- 
 dom and equality of both sexes, not only 
 socially but psychically. I demand a rela- 
 tion where each cherishes the other because 
 he wishes to and where impertinence and 
 imposition are impossible. And if this is 
 to be attempted, we must elevate — or de- 
 grade, if you prefer — our standards of 
 judgment so that mere physical contacts 
 are not the sole criteria of excellence. We 
 should teach the young of both sexes to 
 respect this impulse, instead of smirching 
 it. And then we should set them free to 
 make their lives as nearly worthy as they 
 may be able. 
 
 As to the law, the State: I believe that 
 
110 SEXUAL ETHICS 
 
 the less it meddles with emotional matters 
 the better. It will be doing very well if it 
 concerns itself with the unsolved problem 
 of economic justice. The spirit will do its 
 part if the living conditions are not made 
 the intolerable cut-throat game we now 
 tolerate. 
 
 Nor do I fear that removing the present 
 restrictive laws will initiate an orgy of 
 licentiousness which will destroy our civ- 
 ihzation. Parenthetically I must ask 
 whether any one is so very sure our civili- 
 zation is really worth preserving. I am 
 open on this point, but I confess that I 
 would rather not have to defend the afRr- 
 mative thesis. What does concern us is 
 that strait jacket methods have not pro- 
 duced anything worthy or beautiful unless 
 we are to assume that stoning prophets 
 is the most desirable form of spiritual pro- 
 paganda. For the ideals we seek grow 
 from within outward in response to the 
 warm spiritual rays of the sun of love. 
 They can not be implanted or cultivated 
 
CONCLUSION 111 
 
 by force and coercion. For as long as we 
 are hungry, as long as we are envious, 
 these ideals can exist only as mocking 
 shadows. 
 
 THE END