Sex and Common-Sense | Page 3

who, out of personal friendship for
me, took down, Sunday after Sunday, all that I said, with an accuracy
which, with a considerable experience of reporters, I have only once
known equalled and never surpassed: and to my congregation, whose
questions and speeches during the discussion that followed each
address greatly helped my work.
A. MAUDE ROYDEN.
September, 1921.

CONTENTS
I.--THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE
DISPROPORTION OF THE 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