Sex and Common-Sense | Page 3

SEXES
II.--A SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE UNMARRIED
III.--CONSIDERATION OF OTHER SOLUTIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF THE DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES
IV.--THE TRUE BASIS OF MORALITY
V.--THE MORAL STANDARD OF THE FUTURE: WHAT SHOULD IT BE?
VI.--A PLEA FOR LIGHT
VII.--FRIENDSHIP
VIII.--MISUNDERSTANDINGS
IX.--FURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS: THE NEED FOR SEX CHIVALRY
X.--"THE SIN OF THE BRIDEGROOM"
XI.--COMMON-SENSE AND DIVORCE LAW REFORM

I
THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES
"There has arisen in society, a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the vilest of her sex, and doomed for the most part to disease and abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every eye as the perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man. Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair. She remains while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."
Lecky's History of European Morals, Chap. V.
One of the many problems which have been intensified by the war is the problem of the relations of the sexes. Difficult as it has always been, the difficulty inevitably becomes greater when there is a grave disproportion--an excess in numbers of one sex over the other. And in this country, whereas there was a disproportion of something like a million more women than men before the war broke out, there is now a disproportion of about one and three-quarter millions.
This accidental and (I believe) temporary difficulty--a difficulty not "natural" and necessary to human life, but artificial and peculiar to certain conditions which may be altered--does not, of course, create the problem we have to deal with: but it forces that problem on our attention by sheer force of suffering inflicted on so large a scale. It compels us to ask ourselves on what we base, and at what we value the moral standard which, if it is to be preserved, must mean a tremendous sacrifice on the part of so large a number of women as is involved in their acceptance of life-long celibacy.
There is no subject on which it is more difficult to find a common ground than this. To some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the question--on what are your moral standards based? To others what we call our "moral standards" are so obviously absurd and "unnatural" that the question has for them no meaning. And between these extremes there are so many varieties of opinion that one can take nothing as generally accepted by men and women.
I want, therefore, to leave aside the ordinary conventions--not because they are necessarily bad, but because they are not to my purpose, which is to discover whether there is a real morality which we can justify to ourselves without appeal to any authority however great, or to any tradition however highly esteemed: a morality which is based on the real needs, the real aspirations of humanity itself.
And I begin by calling your attention to the morality of Jesus of Nazareth, not because He is divine, but because He was a great master of the human heart, and more than others "knew what was in man."
You will notice at once the height of His morality--the depth of His mercy. He demands such purity of spirit, such loyalty of heart, that the most loyal of His disciples shrank appalled: "Whosoever shall look upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." ... "Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her." From such a standard Christ's disciples shrank--"If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry." And one evangelist almost certainly inserted in this absolute prohibition the exception--"Saving for the cause of fornication"--feeling that the Master could not have meant anything else. But, in fact, there is little doubt that Jesus did both say and mean that marriage demanded lifelong fidelity on either side; just as He really taught that a lustful thought was adultery in the sight of God.
But if Christendom has been staggered at the austerity of Christ's morality not less has it been shocked at the quality of His mercy. His gentleness to the sensual sinner has been compared, with amazement, to the sternness of His