The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations/Part 1/8. Morality
MORALITY.
Piety has nothing else to oppose to immorality as it has been sketched in the preceding chapter than unnatural restraints and hypocrisy. Reason has no part in this senseless undertaking; she recognizes the claims of nature and its needs openly and frankly, but tries to regulate its manifestations by reasonable and truly moral conditions.
It is the task of mankind to follow nature under the guidance of reason. To depart from nature and to return to nature along the path or in the form of civilization is the evolutionary process of humanity and the humane spirit. Mere nature is coarseness or dependence; to reproduce, as it were, nature through reason, with consciousness — that is civilization and liberty.
Let us begin with liberty itself. The savage is free: but his natural freedom is subjugated in order to return at a later period as cultivated liberty come to consciousness of itself. Just so with morals. The natural relation of the sexes is lost in immorality and hypocrisy, in order to return as free love in moral consciousness and form. Natural liberty in the process of civilization passes through the school of slavery to true freedom, and natural morality through the school of immorality to true morality.
Civilization and liberty make man a moral being. To recognize the natural laws by means of reason, and to execute them freely for the purpose of, or within the limits of, civilization — that is moral destiny, moral endeavor, moral life. Man is by means of reason lord of his nature, not for the sake of suppressing it, but that he may, as it were, renew it as his handiwork in ennobled. form.
Let us apply these principles of liberty and morality to natural needs. The animal is by nature limited in its desires; instinct directs it and binds it within definite tracks of needs, to step out of which it has neither the power nor the temptation, It does not eat in order to eat, or to enjoy itself by eating, but only to appease its hunger, and when it has eaten its fill it is also satisfied; it mates from a physical need in a definite measure and at definite times, and outside of these times the sexual instinct is of itself quiescent. Neither in appeasing its hunger nor in satisfying its sexual instinct can it impel itself beyond the measure fixed by nature, or, as it were, compose variations to the theme of nature. In a word, it is not free, but merely a slave of nature. Man, however, is free. To him no need is merely physically prescribed or measured out; he has rather the liberty than the instinct to overstep his mere need, to make the indulgence of it an "enjoyment" and to overdo the "enjoyment." Did he not have the liberty and the capacity to overstep the necessity of nature, neither would he have the liberty and the capacity to refrain from transgressing. That he refrains from reasonable motives, » that he regulates his impulse in accordance with reasonable aims, that he through his reason shows his liberty the measure of its use, that he consciously and voluntarily fulfils the aim of nature as the animal does unconsciously and involuntarily — that is his pride, that is morality.
To deny nature or to thwart the aims of nature, which in a manner furnish reason with the material for morality, can never be moral; it is rather just as immoral as on the other side a transgression of the natural limits and objects. An old maid (who purposely renounces her sexual nature) is therefore just as immoral as a courtesan, and a celibate just as immoral as a libertine.
The false ideas of morality with respect to sexual affairs show themselves in what we Commonly call the sense of shame.
What is the sense of shame? Generally speaking, it is the diffidence about exposing something, or the pain at having exposed something which may meet with the disapproval of others. Without this respect for others there would be no sense of shame. The-existence or the degree of shame, therefore, directly depends on the conception of the one feeling ashamed, and this conception depends on the real or supposed opinion of others towards whom this sense of shame shows itself. But the correctness or falseness of this opinion determines whether there is any occasion for shame or not.
If we think of mankind in a state of nature, we can hardly suppose that such a thing as sexual shame existed between man and woman. But if we follow up the progress of development the growth of shame can easily be explained from externals. The periodic indisposition of woman gradually began to impress the man disagreeablythe woman concealed it — she was ashamed. Pregnancy with its consequences disfigured feminine beauty: the woman draped herself — she was ashamed. In the course of propagation deformities and cripples arose: the deformed woman improved her shape with artificial means — she was ashamed. Children born outside of marriage, who were not supported by any pater familias, and whom the mother could not support, became the burden of others; pregnancy outside of marriage was therefore condemned: the woman made a secret of it — she was ashamed. The excesses of certain shameless periods brought about reactions which, with the immoderate practice, likewise condemned the moderate practice; therefore all sexual manifestations had to be avoided: people were ashamed. And since religion has even pressed the stamp of holiness on every suppression of nature, intimidated nature has become entirely shamefaced, and all the world is ashamed. But with regard to the very things on account of which it ought to be most ashamed it has become totally shameless.
There is therefore no absolute sense of shame, and the present sense of shame in sexual matters is not a spontaneous emotion rooted in nature and continuous with it, but, as above stated, dependent on the judgment of. others and a product of circumstances.[1]
If we measure the sense of shame by the standard of reason, it is justifiable only when it conforms to true morality, and is therefore the expression of the moral consciousness, and in this way we come to understand that the preachers of shame are sometimes the true preachers of immorality, of that immorality which would further morality by the suppression of nature and truth. It is surely not at all necessary to go about naked in order to show that one is free from false shame, nor is it necessary to love each other on the public thoroughfare in order to prove that one recognizes the claims of nature; but only a fool ora hypocrite will want to sacrifice the inner law to external considerations, and incorruptible nature to ridiculous prejudices.
Let us meet the hypocrites with straightforward language.
Is it immoral that the breast of the youth and the maiden is filled with the longing of love? No! Why then do you, priests, demand that they should be ashamed of it, when they have not asked your permission? You are the immoral ones.
Is it immoral that a woman should bear a child to her beloved? No! Why do you cast her out, then? You are the immoral ones, the barbarians. You will demand that the trees shall be ashamed to blossom and to bear fruit.
The human being who is ashamed of his nature is not worthy to be a human being. What reasonable ground can you preachers of morality find for shame which you, under the conditions which you have decreed, connect with sexual love and the act which causes the existence of man? You might with the same right subject. eating and drinking to your conditions and expose them to condemnation. If you are ashamed of the sentiment and the act which caused your existence, you ought also to be ashamed of your existence itself, for which you sometimes have sufficient reason.
There is no greater and more senseless barbarity than that "moral" passion for condemning which makes the pregnancy of woman a disgrace if nature has not been granted permission by priest or Justice of the peace to increase the race. The pregnant woman should under all conditions be "sacred," should stand under the protection and receive the sympathy of the entire community which she is about to increase with an at all events innocent member. Instead of that, it is made out a crime that she has found opportunity, without the aid ‘of the justice of the peace or the priest, to present the community with a new member, and the hatred and persecution of ignorance is incited against the unfortunate one, as if the intention actually were to make a suicide or an infanticide of her. Recently a poor woman hanged herself in Switzerland because she believed herself pregnant and her neighbors shared this belief and made her the target of their respectable vituperations and "moral" persecutions. When the suicide was examined, her pregnancy proved to have been only imagined! She died as a victim of nature-disdaining vulgarity, and her murderers were the pious, moralizing clergy. The corpses of unfortunate women which you take from the water, the remains of murdered children which you find in sewers, the bodies-of despairing mothers whom you drag to the gallows — these are the witnesses of your pious humanity that builds prisons instead of lying-in hospitals, and that would have hell make foundling-houses superfluous. In Paris foundlings are taken care of as "enfants de la patrie;" in New York, for instance, the "enfants de la patrie" are deposited in the gutters of the street. The rich seduce the girls, the priests curse the seduced girls, and the seduced girls murder the sharers of their poverty and the proofs of their imaginary shame. This is in three words the morality of our present hypocritical society in these matters.
When you have wedded your daughters to rich roués, you welcome their children with joy; if your family is increased by a poor lover, who is not able to "marry," then you heap reproaches on the mother. The reason for the disgrace which you create does not lie therefore in the act to which you try to attach it, but in the single miserable circumstance that you must support the children of your daughters. But if this is the reason of your anger, then why not have the courage to call it by its right name, and do not commit the hypocrisy of expressing a pecuniary consideration in the form of a condemnation of human nature in its most beautiful impulse. You will then reach the conclusion that it is not love that is to blame, but the unnatural conditions which hinder thousands, yes, millions, from living out their natural instincts in a moral relation.
How must a Héloïse, who, although surrounded by the piety of the Middle Ages, would rather be the lover than the legal wife of Abèlard — how must she appear to you, coarse fellows, who judge love only from the standpoint of priests, and motherhood from that of the shopkeeper! She was a great woman, one of the greatest women of history; and you, according to your ideas, you must classify her with the "immoral," because you are not human beings, but priests.
If you want to cultivate shame, then base it upon the strictest ideas of true morality; but do not look for this morality in the domain of your conventional stupidity, your inhuman unnaturalness, and your shameful hypocrisy.
It is not immoral if a man and-a woman, even "unmarried," give themselves up to true love; but it is immoral if an old roué marries a young girl whom he knowingly cannot make happy, merely for her physical charms.
It is not immoral if a man and a woman, even "unmarried," give themselves up to true love; but it is immoral if the man merely uses the woman for the satisfaction of his lust, without giving dignity to the relation by real affection or taking his share of the responsibility in the fate of the loving one.
It is not immoral if a woman unites herself with the man whom she loves against the wish of an other; but it is immoral if she becomes the wife of a man whom she does not love, because another wishes it.[2]
It is not immoral to get tired of a legal husband upon closer acquaintance and to conceive a new love for another man; but it is immoral to continue, or to be obliged to continue, the old relation notwithstanding this new love.
It is not immoral to consider "chastity" in itself just as much of a stupidity as starvation in itself; but it is immoral to carry "unchastity" to the point of excess.
It is not immoral to persuade a woman to yield herself, but it is immoral to offer her nothing as the prize of her devotion but a feigned love.
In short, it is immoral to disregard the equal rights of the other sex; to abuse it for selfish ends; to falsify or to confuse the ends of nature; to degrade the sexual relation simply to a meansfor frivolously satisfying the senses or for low speculations; to disfigure the beauty of sexual iove by priestly nonsense; to pollute true sentiment by coarse hypocrisy. Be ashamed of these immoralities and you will no longer need any other shame!
There is, indeed, another kind of shame, which ought, however, not to bear this name, since no moral flavor attaches to it. It is that delicate shyness which the virgin feels when she is to step
beyond the boundary of virginity, as well as that feminine reserve which strives to hide or to guard her charms. This "shame" is either a natural consequence of an emotional affection upon entering a new life, or it is the expression of an unconscious policy in love that is chary with its charms in order not to depreciate or to profane them. Or it may also be the unconscious expression of a feeling which tells a woman that nature has not given her the initiative of love. Finally, it may be the expression of modesty which fears that she cannot come up to the high expectations which the enthusiastic man has of the charms of his beloved.
This "shame," which has nothing to do with the consciousness or the fear of seeing something improper disclosed, is an ornament to every woman, and its absence is a proof of dulness and coarseness.
- ↑ Compare the festival of Priapus with Christian hypocrisy, and then ask wherein the essence of shame consists.
- ↑ How far "morality" can go astray in such cases where personal liberty and free inclination submit to a "higher will" is shown among other things in the "New Héloïse" by Rousseaux. Her chief virtue consisted in the disgusting and unpoetic immorality of marrying a man entirely indifferent to her from filial "duty," and of generating children with him under the very eyes of her lover, whom she sacrifices to "duty." Shame on this "moral" prostitution!