Vol. XXXIX.

Original Contributions

[EXCLUSIVELY for the MEDICAL HERALD.]

A MORALITY WHICH IS MORAL:
A CRITICISM OF A CRITICISM

VIRGINIA LE ROY, Streator, Ill. The debate between Dr. Edith H. Hooker and Dr. William J. Robinson on Venereal Prophylaxis and Prostitution which was published originally in the "Arbitrator" and republished in the December "Critic and Guide," offers plenty of material to illustrate the fact that superstition, bigotry, and negative values are still trying to function in a world which needs red-blooded, vital, affirmative concepts.

The subject matter as frankly designated would seem to call for a dispassionate, scientific analysis of the efficacy of venereal prophylaxis in eliminating the worst elements in prostitution which menace our public health. Dr. Robinson is clearly within his rights as a scientist and physician when he calls Dr. Hooker to account for having muddled two aspects of the problem, the ethical and the scientific, with the usual result of doing justice to neither.

And so far as a layman can judge he has presented a clear, strong case for venereal prophylaxis in its power to eliminate disease. if used intelligently and conscientiously, and has submitted valuable statistics of recent nature to prove his contention. Which is what he purposed to do. But it is not with this technical aspect of the problem I am so much concerned, since only further statistics and further advances in its propaganda and application can prove beyond peradventure of a doubt it will be to the world all its most ardent advocates claim for it. Enough has been accomplished to prove its possibilities, and that is all that science requires in order to further develop its resources. The interesting phase of this debate, and more exactly the criticism which Dr. Robinson offers of Dr. Hooker's propositions, interest me because his criticism of her position did not go far

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enough did not pierce the real heart of her fallacy. The real criticism of her propositions, as I see them, is that she neither proposed a real ethic nor a real scientific thesis. And I want to add further that in my opinion if she had outlined a real ethic, there would have been nothing confusing in the result, but rather it would have proved a clarifying solvent, and a convincing justification of all the fruits of science so far attained. The trouble with this age is that science has plunged ahead in the great adventure of mastering life's problems, while ethics and religion are still floundering amid the unrealities of myth and fetish, knocking down giants. of straw, with nothing to offer but musty platitudes. Until there is a sound, fruitful and inspiring ethic, supplementing a fearless science, there will be no rational, working concepts with which the average human soul can adequately envisage his universe and his relation to it. The day has gone by when we can, like the celebrated French Bishop, close the door of our oratory when we enter the door of our labora

tory.

Most of our moral and ethical codes have been negations of life, have taken on unwarranted sanction as ends in themselves, and instead of furthering and enriching life, which is their only justification at all, and the test of their validity, they have operated to impoverish the very sources of life, dilute its splendid possibilities, and have so narrowed their scope of influence as to almost nullify any vital result. Referring to the morality of a person usually means, has he refrained from any kind of illicit sexual contact. The whole wide range of relationships and experiences remains practically ignored and even regarding this most vital relation of the sexes, only negative precepts are formulated.

There is no such thing as a code of ethics which is more than merely a passing means to a more glorious fulfillment of life. It is good for nothing unless it is good for more life. Unless it liberates more beauty and power in human souls, it is a curse. Unless it interprets life in big affirmations, big and elastic as life itself, unless it calls freely on all science to perfect a

technique which shall utilize every ounce of power, which shall recognize every element in its positive value, which shall conserve every nuance of emotional beauty, in the realization of those great ideals which are rooted deep in our nature, it is both futile and dangerous.

Sex power is the dynamo which runs the world; it creates children of flesh and children of lights; its ecstacies are the stuff out of which immortal melodies are sung, great pictures painted, cold marble etched with beauty; its flaming passion keeps the sluggish pulse of life athrill; its generous ardors warm the heart of the world and keeps us kind; its rich fulfillments caress each sordid fact with glamour, until living takes on new meaning and new purpose. To have never known the ecstacy of surrender is to have never known the peace of fulfillment, and that peace is the germinating soil for all the great achievements of life. It is the divine miracle of resurgent life, its potencies boundless.

We have taken this power for granted and studied only its perversions. That is why we suffer today from a prurient consciousness which issues the mandates in terms of denial and forges only fetters of repression, poisoning the source of supply, starving the heart and stultifying the mind of mankind.

Inferentially you gather from Dr. Hooker's articles that she conceives of sex power only in terms of children born in wedlock; she calls any other experience of the sexual relation "antisocial on a par with other criminal acts of murder and theft." She decries any value of preventive relief from disease in commercial prostitution as a challenge for the whole world to indulge with impunity in sexual promiscuity, and would change the emphasis from prophylaxis to continence. She believes that with the proper legislation in a few years we would so have curbed our excess sexual desires, they would instinctively flow through the proper grooves of conventional marital expression and we would have what she and her kind would term a moral universe. This would mean the single standard for both sexes since the male born and trained

under these restraints would be as amenable to

this ideal as the woman.

The basic assumption underlying this conception is that conduct so regulated would result in a healthy and happy human race. But would it? Tradition, custom and the unwritten law have relegated women to this realm of circumscribed sexual experience and the tragedies of a debased, perverted and starved womanhood; her generous over-flowing stream of sexual potency intended to enrich her life and the world about her, dammed up at its source, reacting as dangerous poisons, rendering her not only sterile as to offspring, but sterile as to emotional power

and mental penetration, a creature of dangerous neurosis, of morbid humors, of insatiate thirst for meretricious excitements, the kind that fill the sanatoriums, the clinics, the waiting rooms of doctors' offices, who form that steadily growing class of female perverts who either flame up some time in life, or dry up ugly and futile, is part of the recoil.

There are countless women who obey rigidly the letter of the ten commandments, who violate

every healthy instinct of their bodies and deny every glowing aspiration of their hearts and souls. We may well ask, are men made for morals or morals for men? If we regard man as the law-giving animal, the imposer of restraint upon his own appetites and passions for the greater welfare of his kind, we can at once test the validity of all moral systems.

In the first place you cannot regulate anything intelligently and effectually until you know something of the thing you intend to regulate.

Our

All we know of sex power is that it is the miracle of unfolding life, that its potencies are wondrous, its possibilities infinite. It is the plus of life and the more we have of it, the more of life we have, both physical and spiritual. Therefore our duty and privilege toward it is all in the line of conservation, how to extract all of its rich potencies for the glory of mankind. ethics should be expressed affirmatively, and every regulation should be tested by its power to increase the beauty and power of sex consciousness; every regulation which reacts to impoverish its functions, to degrade its noble mission in life, should be repudiated as inimical to the health, sanity and spiritual growth of human beings.

Virtue as a negative proposition, commanding people not to do things, is a relic of the old superstition and dogmatism of bygone ages when everything conceived by the human mind was rigid and its finality unquestioned. Whatever the new virtue is it will be affirmative, telling people what to do, and how to do it. This takes brains, whereas the other only involves a reflex of the spinal column.

Sex power would never have been the commanding and irrisistible urge which it is, had its purpose not been transcendant in character. It is our business to affirm its glory and discipline its manifestations through constructive programmes which liberate its power while directing its embodiment. Many forces are going to contribute to the liberation of sex power and its rational expression, but of one thing we are certain. The old conspiracy of silence is criminal: the old notion that even its legalized relationship in marriage is more or less a vulgar concession to the need of populating the earth is debasing; the whole puritanical revolt against the beauty and sanctity of the human body and its normal pas