Sex and Common-Sense | Page 6

combination of folly and cruelty so long. You
would not ask them to accept or to suffer for a "standard" like that.
Again, this morality for which (it is affirmed) society is prepared to pay
so horrible a price--what is it? A physical condition! A state of body,
which any man can destroy! an "honour" which lies at the mercy of a

ruffian! A woman raped is a woman "dishonoured." Are her "morals"
then at the mercy of another person? Is "morality" not a state of mind
or of will, a spiritual passion for purity, but a material, physical thing
which is only hers as long as no one snatches it from her? How
senseless! How false!
When you ask a woman to-day to make the great sacrifice "in the
interests of morality," you must offer her a morality that is moral--a
morality whose justice and humanity move her to a response; not a
morality which offends every instinct of justice and reality the moment
the person to whom it is offered understands what it means. For what is
asked to-day is too often that women should sacrifice themselves for
the convenience of other people--of a hypocritical society which
preaches a morality as senseless as it is base.
When older people tell me that the young seem to have "no morals at
all," I ask myself whether the repudiation of much that has been called
morality was not, after all, a necessity, if we are to advance at all.
When I reflect on, for example, Lecky's "History of European Morals,"
and remember that it was not a profligate or a hedonist, but an
honourable and respectable member of a civilized society, who
proclaimed the prostitute the high priestess of humanity--the protectress
of the purity of a thousand homes[A]--I am prepared to say that to have
"no morals at all" is better than to accept such infamy and call it
"morals"; as it is better to be an agnostic or an atheist than to worship a
devil--to have no standard than to say: "Evil be thou my good."
[Footnote A: Lecky's "History of European Morals." Chap. V.]
And I believe that the tendency to reject all moral standards is largely
due to the refusal of an older generation to examine and to justify its
own standard. To refuse to discuss or defend it--to affirm that it is
beyond debate and not to be questioned without depravity is merely to
produce the impression that it is beyond defence and impossible to
justify. It is not surprising that people begin to say: "Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die. Let us experience all we desire. Let us act
like the normal healthy creatures that we are. Let us ignore the flimsy
barriers a corrupt and imbecile moral code would erect between us and

what we desire."
That is the point of view of many men and women to-day. That is what
the absence of a just and reasoned moral code has led to. And I am
prepared, in spite of all protests, to affirm that it is not a step backward,
but forward; that promiscuity is not as vile as prostitution--a
prostitution which has been accepted, which has been defended by
Christian people! It is less horrible for a human being to have the
morals of an animal than the morals of a devil. We have to begin by
rejecting the morality of fiends, and we begin, even if the immediate
effect is more terrifying to the moralist than the old hidden-up devilry
that lent itself to an easier disguise.
So I believe. And so the present chaos, though it has its elements of
anxiety and its obvious dangers, leaves me unafraid. I am utterly
persuaded that we shall win through to solid ground.
I believe that the long groping of humanity after a sex-relationship
which shall be stable, equal, passionate, disciplined, pure, is the
groping of a right instinct, the hunger of a real need; and that we
must--we shall--find its answer. With many failures, with many
reactions, it can, I think, be seen, as history unrolls its record and
civilizations rise and fall, that the movement of humanity has been
towards a more stable, a more responsible, a more disciplined, but not
less passionate form of relationship between men and women. Let us
not forget that great and pregnant fact when we reject the immoral
arguments, the cruelties and injustices, with which society has sought
either to justify its ideals or to conceal its horrible failures. For if we
can thus distinguish, and go forward, this generation will not have
suffered in vain. It will, on the contrary, make of its suffering the spur
which shall force us all onward and upward. It will by its courage and
its honesty give