The Sexual Question Part 30

There are also married mistresses. The position of mistress to a married man is, on the whole, more delicate than that of mistress to a bachelor. We are only concerned here with paid mistresses. They seldom give themselves to married men except when the home life of the latter is more or less disorganized; when the husband is separated from the wife, or when he lives in open warfare with her. A married man, on the contrary, may secretly visit brothels or private prost.i.tutes, often even with his wife's knowledge, because the prost.i.tute can have no influence in family affairs. This reason has even been used for the defense of prost.i.tution. It is true that married men often have connection with other women, and the term mistress has been applied to the women who take part in this intercourse, whether they or their lover, or both of them, are already married. But in this case money is usually only a secondary consideration, when the households concerned are not broken up. It is often only the maneuver of an intriguer who tries to separate a husband from his wife to marry him herself and monopolize his fortune. It is sufficient to show how difficult it often is to distinguish the paid mistress from the woman who does not give herself from interest but from pa.s.sion, or from the intriguing adventuress who tries to make a good catch.

Lorettes, grisettes and paid mistresses seldom have children. These women are more rarely infected with venereal diseases than prost.i.tutes, but they are better acquainted with the methods of preventing conception.

The fate of the children of venal concubines is generally very sad.

They are not the fruits of love but of a s.e.xual union based on idleness and lewdness. If conception occurs in spite of all precautions, artificial abortion is attempted, or if this fails the child is sent to the "baby farmer," who gets rid of it. The women who dispose of their children in this way are often of the better cla.s.s; common prost.i.tutes often love and take care of their children, while the young ladies of society generally try and get rid of their illegitimate children, because they are much more compromised. Some married women even do not hesitate to perform abortion when a child inconveniences them.

We have only mentioned the fourth group of women with which we are concerned, because of its mercantile nature. Every union in which a human being gives love for money is unnatural. Venal love is not true love, but an improper contract between man and woman, with the object of satisfying the s.e.xual appet.i.te, without any regard to the higher object intended by nature. It sometimes happens that similar contracts are made in the inverse direction, when a nymphomaniacal woman purchases a fine young man, under some pretext or other. Inverts also pay boys to satisfy their perverted appet.i.tes.

However unsavory may be the contents of the present chapter, it was necessary to write it in order to give a clear idea of the subject.

Under the pretense of virtue venal love has too long been covered with a veil of hypocrisy. Prost.i.tution, marriage for money and venal concubinage are, each in its way, elements of corruption and decadence which, combined with alcohol, gambling, speculation, the greed for money and pleasure in general, threaten our modern culture with ruin.

Among these anomalies, the State organization of prost.i.tution being the most monstrous, it is necessary to begin with its suppression.

Among the ancients, the G.o.ddess Venus or Aphrodite was the symbol of beauty and love. Although somewhat sly, she was fecund, full of desire and charm, and embodied not only the natural aspirations of man, but also his artistic ideal. Nowadays, she is dragged in the mire by two false G.o.ds--Bacchus, who makes a gross and vulgar brute of her, and Mammon, who transforms her into a venal prost.i.tute--while a hypocritical religious asceticism, endeavors in vain to confine her in a strait-waistcoat. May the progress of science and culture find the power to deliver her from the tyranny of her two infamous companions, deified by human ignorance and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. Then only will the G.o.ddess of love appear in all her glory!

CHAPTER XI

THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON s.e.xUAL LIFE

However strong may be the hereditary s.e.xual instincts which an individual has inherited by phylogeny from his ancestors, and however violent their internal outbreaks in his ontogeny, it is necessary to recognize that an organism so complicated as that of man is capable of adapting itself to its environment to a remarkable and varied degree, and that consequently external influences react strongly on the s.e.xual appet.i.te. We will now examine these influences, so far as they are not dealt with in other chapters.

=Influence of Climate.=--Warm climates appear to excite the intensity of s.e.xual life; man matures more quickly and is more disposed to s.e.xual excess. I am not aware of other influences that can be attributed to climate. It is, moreover, possible that the direct influence of heat has been confounded with the indirect action it exerts in the conditions of human existence. In cold countries life is more laborious, and this diminishes the intensity of the s.e.xual appet.i.te. In warm countries man has not so much concern with dwellings, clothes and heating; life is greatly simplified, and this freedom from anxiety inclines him to greater s.e.xual activity.

=Town and Country. Isolation. Sociability. Life in Factories.=--The social relations of man exert a great influence on s.e.xual life.

Hermits and those who live on isolated farms are interesting in this respect. Solitude generally leads man to chronic melancholia and to abnormal peculiarities, unless he has a library in his hermitage, when he may live in the spirit of the intellectual sociability derived from the study of books.

It is quite otherwise with one who has no intellectual occupation, or one who has lived in solitude from infancy. In this case the hermit becomes a kind of savage, without any intellectual development, and reverts more or less to the state of primitive man.

An adult who establishes himself in solitude without providing himself with intellectual capital becomes strongly inclined to depressing psychoses. This is observed among the isolated farmers, according to Professor Seguin, of New York. The man who lives alone, or surrounded only by the members of his family becomes disposed to certain s.e.xual anomalies, such as incest, sodomy and masturbation.

It is among the agricultural population that we meet with the most normal s.e.xual relations and the best hygiene. The French Canadians form a good example, and it is the same generally where agriculture is practiced by independent peasants, not alcoholized, and having divided property. Agricultural families generally procreate more children and healthier ones than urban families. No doubt modern medical hygiene, both public and private, has made so much progress in towns that there may be, at a certain age, proportionally more living children than in the country; but the country children are of stronger const.i.tution and more healthy in every way.

I had the opportunity of confirming this opinion while I was superintendent of a lunatic asylum for many years. I found it was impossible to recruit from the town a good staff of nurses of either s.e.x.

The inhabitant of towns, it is true, learns his work more quickly, but he lacks patience, perseverance and character, and soon shows himself wanting in the accomplishment of his physical and moral duties. The countryman, on the contrary, is at first slow and clumsy, but soon becomes more capable and careful, and more amenable to education. This shows that, on the average, the hereditary dispositions of the country-bred child are better than those of the town-bred child. The latter develops more rapidly and more completely his natural dispositions, owing to social intercourse, while the country-bred child, although he appears at first sight less intelligent, is really better endowed on the average than the town child. The superficial observer is easily deceived, but country life acc.u.mulates more reserve force in the organism than urban life.

s.e.xual excesses in the country are more conformable to nature. Apart from marriage, we meet with concubinage, infidelity, and sometimes prost.i.tution, but these excesses are never widely spread in small places where every one knows each other. An extensive study of the alcohol question has shown me that hereditary degenerations and s.e.xual evils in the country are princ.i.p.ally due to alcoholism and its blastophthoria (vide Chapter I). But when factories, mining industries, etc., create unhealthy conditions in the country, the evil influences of urban life are implanted there, often in a still higher degree.

The society of large towns is made up of many different circles, who have little or no relations with each other, do not know each other, and seldom concern themselves about each other. The individual is only known in his own circle. This circ.u.mstance favors the increase of vice and depravity. In addition to this, the insanitary dwellings, the life of excitement and innumerable pleasures, all tend to produce a restless and unnatural existence. The best conditions of existence for man are contact with nature, air and light, sufficient physical exercise combined with steady work for the brain, which requires exercise as much as the other organs; this is just what is wanting among the poor, in the town and in the factory. Instead of this they are offered unhealthy nocturnal pleasures and a prost.i.tution which spreads itself everywhere with all the dangerous effects we have described. The result is that they become incapable of nouris.h.i.+ng and raising their children properly, often even of procreating them in healthy and natural love.

Such are the conditions of the lower cla.s.ses in large towns. Along with prost.i.tution, venereal disease and alcohol, the wretched dwellings in many places lead to infamous promiscuity. In factories and mines things are still worse. In these places there is a swarm of people continually engaged in most unhealthy occupations, and only leaving their work to indulge in the most repugnant s.e.xual excesses.

The rapacity, frivolity and luxury of society lead to alcoholism, poverty, promiscuity and prost.i.tution among the lower cla.s.ses and cause complete degeneration of entire industrial populations.

In the Canton of Zurich I have had the opportunity of closely observing the physical and moral effects of this degeneration. The individuals most incapable as hospital attendants were always factory hands. These wretched beings were generally so atrophied in body and mind that they were no use for anything except the weaving of silk and cotton. In the large English towns, such as Liverpool, and among the population of certain mining districts in Belgium, I have met with even worse degeneration of the human species. Modesty, morality and health are destroyed in this swarming human ma.s.s--dirty, anaemic, tuberculous, rickety, imbecile, or hysterical--and there is no distinction between the factory girl and the prost.i.tute. In certain Belgian districts which are a prey to alcoholism, one sometimes sees human beings copulating in the streets like animals, or like the drunken Kaffirs in South Africa. What can we expect from the descendants of a population so completely degenerate? Marriage and even concubinage among peasants is golden in comparison!

I will now draw attention to a contemporary phenomenon of the greatest interest. The immense development of means of transport, combined with progress in the sanitation of dwellings, favors the transportation of town to country and country to town. This brings together the two modes of human life, and in this I see the dawn of salvation in the future. The modern towns of North America, thanks to the great extension of their territory, already resemble the country to a great extent, each house being surrounded by a garden. The electric tramways shorten distances and facilitate this manner of building towns. As means of communication become still more simplified and cheapened, the advantages of country life will be joined to those of the town without suffering from the promiscuity of the latter. The disadvantages of country life consist in atrophy of the intellectual dispositions from want of contact; improvement in means of transport will bring this contact to the country. The result of such distribution of the territory of a civilized state, such as I have in view, might be called an _Agropolis_--an urbanized country or a countrified town. It would then be possible to live a life more ideal in human sentiments, and healthier as regards material and s.e.xual matters.

The state of the countryman or peasant is advantageous for marriage, not only because it does not offer such a suitable soil for prost.i.tution, but because the danger of venereal disease is diminished, and the procreation of healthy offspring favors conjugal happiness and constancy in s.e.xual union. From the religious point of view, the freedom in s.e.xual intercourse which prevails among country people before marriage is looked upon as immoral; but this is a natural phenomenon similar to the "marriage by trial" of certain savage races, or the "hand-fasting" of the Scotch people, of which we have spoken in Chapter VI. People who tolerate and defend prost.i.tution should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and of the manner in which they distort morality, when in the same breath they reproach peasants with their natural but illegitimate unions.

It is needless to say that other causes of degeneration may exist in the country as well as in towns; for instance, certain endemic diseases, such as myxoedema and malaria, the brutish life of certain tribes, perpetuation of degeneracy by consanguineous unions, etc.

The worst state is certainly that of the proletariat of large towns, which is generally a.s.sociated with crime. In the community of pimps, criminals and decadents in general, is const.i.tuted a special social outlook, which regards the greatest scamp in the light of a hero. When a child shows a precocious criminal disposition it is looked upon in these circles as a child of much promise. Honest and virtuous children are considered in this society as imbeciles, or even as traitors and spies, and are consequently despised, hated and ill-treated. The deleterious influences we have mentioned do not act alone, but are often a.s.sociated with other factors in causing degeneration of the s.e.xual life. When other influences preponderate, we may sometimes observe depravity in the country, and on the contrary, healthy and normal conditions in certain towns. We must always avoid exaggerating the importance of a single factor in making generalizations. Certain country villages, the inhabitants of which have become alcoholized and degraded, may present a much more unhealthy s.e.xual life than certain sober and well-governed towns.

=Vagabondage.=--In the _Archiv fur Ra.s.sen und Gesellschafts biologie_ of 1905 (Archives of the biology of races and of society), Doctor Jorger relates the history of the descendants of a couple of vagabonds, which he carefully studied for several generations. Nearly all the members of this family became vagabonds, thieves, prost.i.tutes, and other society pests. Vain attempts were made to give a good education to some of them, but they ran away from school to lead the lives of vagabonds or criminals. In a few of them only, education gave some results, but not at all brilliant. In this family, alcoholism and its blastophthoria played a considerable part.

We can hardly admit that the mnemic phenomena explained in Chapter I could have acted appreciably in two or three hundred years, a period much too short for the human species. No doubt the common ancestor of the above family of vagabonds descended from a family of vagabonds. I do not, however, think I am wrong in attributing to blastophthoria, superposed on the disastrous combinations of germs which is inevitable in the life of vagabonds, the princ.i.p.al cause of this typical degeneration of the family, a degeneration in which s.e.xual degradation strongly predominates. I recommend Doctor Jorger's work to any one interested in this question. It would be useful to draw up genealogical tables, with the medical and psychological descriptions of the whole population of a small town.

=Americanism.=--By this term I designate an unhealthy feature of s.e.xual life, common among the educated cla.s.ses of the United States, and apparently originating in the greed for dollars, which is more prevalent in North America than anywhere else. I refer to the unnatural life which Americans lead, and more especially to its s.e.xual aspect.

The true American citizen despises agricultural work and manual labor in general, especially for women. His aim is to centralize labor by means of machinery and commerce, so as to concern himself only with business, intellectual occupations and sport. American women consider muscular work and labor in the country as degrading to their s.e.x. This is a relic of the days of slavery, when all manual labor was left to negroes, and is so to a great extent at the present day.

Desirous of remaining young and fresh as long as possible, fearing the dangers and troubles of childbirth and the bringing-up of children, the American woman has an increasing aversion to pregnancy, childbirth, suckling and the rearing of large families.

Since the emanc.i.p.ation of negroes has caused domestic servants in the United States to become expensive luxuries, family life has been to a great extent replaced by life in hotels and boarding-houses, and this has furnished another reason for avoiding conception and large families.

It is evident that this form of emanc.i.p.ation of women is absolutely deleterious and that it leads to degeneration, if not to extinction of the race. The mixed Aryan (European) race of North America will diminish and become gradually extinguished, even without emigration, and will soon be replaced by Chinese or negroes. It is necessary for woman to labor as well as man, and she ought not to avoid the fulfillment of her natural position. Every race which does not understand this necessity ends in extinction. A woman's ideal ought not to consist in reading novels and lolling in rocking chairs, nor in working only in offices and shops, so as to preserve her delicate skin and graceful figure. She ought to develop herself strongly and healthily by working along with man in body and mind, and by procreating numerous children, when she is strong, robust and intelligent. But this does not nullify the advantage that may accrue from limiting the number of conceptions, when the bodily and mental qualities are wanting in the procreators.

=Saloons and Alcohol.=--I desire to draw attention once more to the evil influence of saloons and bars. The drink habit corrupts the whole of s.e.xual life. It is the origin of the most hideous forms of prost.i.tution and proxenetism, and leads to the seduction of girls. I must mention again the barmaids whose business it is to attract customers by exciting their s.e.xual desire, at the same time exploiting themselves by prost.i.tution. These saloons are dens of iniquity in which alcohol and prost.i.tution are inextricably confounded. In Germany they have become a veritable social plague.

Drink makes men and women not only gross and sensual, but also negligent, imprudent and irreflective. The saloon takes men from their homes, and drink directly diminishes the population. This is seen in Russia by comparing the abstainers with the drinkers, the former being much more fecund. The statistics of Doctor Bezzola show that a single drinking bout may have a blastophthoric effect. From this and from other causes result the deplorable consequences of coitus which takes place during drunkenness.[7]

=Wealth and Poverty.=--While in former civilizations the rich man regarded a multiplicity of wives and children as a condition or cause of his wealth and also as its result, in our modern civilization the number of children diminishes with the increase of prosperity.

Children have ceased to be as formerly a source of wealth; on the contrary, they occasion much expense for their education. Again, the higher the social position of woman the more she fears pregnancy. Her life of ease makes her weaker and more delicate, so that she becomes less fit for the procreation of children. This phenomenon is an unhealthy product of culture and reaches a truly pathological degree in America.

We have mentioned marriage for money, which is the prost.i.tution of the rich, and poverty, which is one of the causes of common prost.i.tution, and we have seen how money influences s.e.xual intercourse. We may now state the general principle that a mediocrity living in comfortable circ.u.mstances without immediate daily wants, under good hygienic conditions, but requiring a man to work for his living, const.i.tutes the best condition both for a healthy s.e.xual life and for health and happiness in general. This is the _aurea mediocritas_, or modest competence, the excellence of which was recognized by the ancients.

The s.e.xuality of the rich man degenerates by luxury, comfort, excess and idleness, and by the fact that he is already satiated in his youth. That of the poor man is no less degenerate, owing to bad food, unhealthy dwellings, neglected education, and by vicious example which at the opposite extreme, resembles in many points that of the rich man; the exploiter and the exploited meeting in the dens of vice. Such is the case with gambling h.e.l.ls, with dens for prost.i.tution and s.e.xual anomalies, where the poor blackmail the rich, while the latter in their capacity as social exploiters help to maintain poverty and prost.i.tution.

Money makes s.e.xual intercourse unnatural; in place of letting coitus take its natural course, it makes it an object of amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure, and also of speculation, and it debases the bodies of wretched girls by making them objects of commerce.

Unfortunately, the increasing facility of obtaining money without working for it, due to civilization, not only corrupts the s.e.xual life of the wealthy and the poverty stricken, but has the same effect on the middle cla.s.ses. A healthy and normal s.e.xual life must be a.s.sociated with honest and arduous work. We have already remarked that the solution of the s.e.xual question depends partly on the suppression of alcoholic drink. We may add that another side of the question depends on the extirpation of the greed for money. If human beings could work for the social welfare without private interest, s.e.xual relations would soon take their natural course. But it must be admitted that it is difficult to find a practical solution for the problem of social economy.

=Rank and Social Position.=--Cla.s.s distinction and social position have always played a part in s.e.xual life. This is especially the case where certain cla.s.s customs and prejudices prescribe a special code for marriage. The consanguinity of the n.o.bility and of royal families, who can only marry among themselves, has resulted in obvious degeneration. Originally there was the desire to preserve the purity of n.o.ble blood, and rules formulated with this object at first had some success; but in the long run the exclusiveness of such selection produces degeneration of the group which puts it into practice.

On the other hand, the severe rules which govern marriages among the n.o.bility have resulted in driving the latter to extra-nuptial s.e.xual intercourse. In their s.e.xual excesses, the n.o.bility, and even crowned heads, seldom amuse themselves with honest and virtuous girls of the working cla.s.ses, but more generally with actresses of loose morals, dancing girls, and hysterical sirens and adventuresses of all kinds, so long as they are pretty. Since the time of the feudal system, the n.o.bility, having lost its real reason for existence, only lives on its traditions. It remains in general in a state of idle depravity, faithful to its old traditions, except when it has succeeded in adapting itself to the work of modern life. It has, in fact, preserved the vices of its ancestors rather than their virtues.

The more than doubtful offspring of extra-nuptial intercourse among the n.o.bility have often been adopted or raised to the n.o.bility.

Moreover, kings and princes have often enn.o.bled unworthy persons who had succeeded in pandering to their follies or exciting their s.e.xual pa.s.sions. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if in the offspring of such unions, the blood of the highest n.o.bility is tainted with that of the worst kinds of heredity.

Another sign or effect of the degeneration of the n.o.bility is found in the marriages they so often contract with wealthy heiresses, often of mediocre quality, in order to repair their escutcheon. In the Middle Ages, the n.o.bility regarded it as degrading to work for their living, and this prejudice accelerated their degeneration; for nowadays the heroic and chivalrous deeds of the Middle Ages have little opportunity for their performance.

Other social cla.s.ses present certain s.e.xual peculiarities; for example the disastrous consequences of celibacy among the Catholic priests.

This excludes an important and intelligent portion of the species from reproduction, and also favors clandestine debauchery.

The army and navy also exert a detrimental action on s.e.xual life.