Sex and Common-Sense.pdf

SEX AND COMMON-SENSE

A. MAUDE ROYDEN

ASSISTANT PREACHER AT THE CITY TEMPLE, LONDON

1918-1920

To MY FRIENDS A.J.S. AND W.H.S.

PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION

THE NOBILITY OF THE SEX PROBLEM

Of all the problems which the alert and curious mind of modern man is

considering, none occupies him more than that of the relations of the

sexes. This is natural. It touches us all and we have made rather a mess

of it! We want to know why, and we want to do better. We resent being the

sport of circumstance and perhaps we are beginning to understand that this

instinct of sex which has been so great a cause of suffering and shame and

has been treated as a subject fit only for furtive whispers or silly jokes,

is in fact one of the greatest powers in human nature, and that its misuse

is indeed "the expense of spirit in a waste of shame."

It is not the abnormal or the bizarre that interests most of us to-day. It

is not into the by-ways of vice that we seek to penetrate. It is the normal

exercise of a normal instinct by normal people that interests us: and it is

of this that I have tried to write and speak. The curiosities of depravity

are for the physician and the psychologist to discuss and cure. Ordinary

men and women want first to know how to live ordinary human lives on

a higher level and after a nobler pattern than before. They want, I

think,--and I want,--to grow up, but to grow rightly, beautifully,

humanely.

And I believe the first essential is to realize that the sex-problem, as it

is called, is the problem of something noble, not something base. It is

not a "disagreeable duty" to know our own natures and understand our own

instincts: it is a joy. The sex-instinct is not "the Fall of Man"; neither

is it an instance of divine wisdom on which moralists could, if they had

only been consulted in time, greatly have improved. It is a thing noble in

essence. It is the development of the higher, not the lower, creation. It

is the asexual which is the lower, and the sexually differentiated which is

the higher organism.

In the humbler ranks of being there is no sex, and in a sense no death. The

organism is immortal because--strange paradox--it is not yet alive enough

to die. But as we pass from the lower to the higher, we pass from the less

individual to the more individual; from asexual to sexual. And with this

change comes that great rhythm by which life and death succeed each other,

and death is the _cost_ of life, and to bring life into the world means

sacrifice; and--as we rise higher still--to sustain life means prolonged

and altruistic love. This is the history of sex and of procreation, a

history associated with the rising of humanity in the scale of being, a

history not so much of his physical as of his spiritual growth.

By what an irony have we come to associate the instinct of sex with all

that is bestial and shameful!

It has happened because the corruption of the best is the worst. I always

want to remind people of this truism when they have _first_ come into

contact with sex in some horrible and shameful way. That is one of the

greatest misfortunes that can happen to any of us, and unfortunately it

happens to many. Boys and girls are allowed to grow up in ignorance. The

girls perhaps know nothing till they have to know all. The boys learn

from grimy sources. I was speaking on this subject at one of our great

universities the other day, and afterwards many of the men came and talked

to me privately. With hardly a single exception they said to me--"Our

parents told us nothing. We have never heard sex spoken of except in a

dirty way."

It is difficult for us, in such a case, to realize that sex is not a

dirty thing. It _can_ only be realized, I think, by remembering that

the corruption of the best is the worst, and that we can measure by the

hideousness of debased and depraved sexuality, the greatness and the wonder

of sex love.

This is to me the great teaching of Christ about sex. Other great

religious teachers--some of them very great indeed--have thought and taught

contemptuously of our animal nature. "He spake of the temple of His

body." That is sublime! That is the whole secret. And that is why vice is

horrible: because it is the desecration, not of a hovel or a shop, of a

marketplace or a place of business: but of a temple.

Christ, I am told, told us nothing about sex. He did not need to tell us

anything but "Your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit."

It is my belief that in appealing to an American public I shall be

appealing to those who are ready to face the subject of the relations

of the sexes with perfect frankness and with courage. America is still a

country of experiments--a country adventurous enough to make experiments,

and to risk making mistakes. That is the only spirit in which it is

possible to make anything at all; and though the mistakes we may make in a

matter which so deeply and tragically affects human life must be serious,

and we must with corresponding seriousness weigh every word we say, and

take the trouble to think harder and more honestly than we have perhaps

ever thought before; yet I believe that we must above all have courage.

Human nature is sound and men and women do, on the whole, want to do what

is right. The great impulse of sex is part of our very being, and it is not

base. Passion is essentially noble and those who are incapable of it are

the weaker, not the stronger. If then we have light to direct our course,

we shall learn to direct it wisely, for indeed this is our desire.

Such is my creed. My prayer is for "more light." And my desire to take my

part in spreading it.

A. MAUDE ROYDEN.

April, 1922.

PREFACE TO THIRD ENGLISH EDITION

In the first editions of this book a certain passage on our Lord's humanity

(see p. 40) has, I find, been misunderstood by some. They have supposed

it to imply a suggestion that our Lord was not only "tempted in all things

like as we are"--which I firmly believe--but that He fell--which is to

me unthinkable. I hope I have made this perfectly clear in the present

edition.

Beyond this there are few alterations except the correction of some very

abominable errors of style. The book still bears the impress of the speaker

rather than the writer, and as such I must leave it.

With regard to the chapter called "Common-Sense and Divorce Law Reform,"

which now has been added to this edition, I wish to express my indebtedness

to Dr. Jane Walker and the group of "inquirers" over which she presided,

for the memorandum on Divorce which they drew up and published in the

_Challenge_, of July, 1918. I am not in complete agreement with their views

on all points, but readers of their memorandum will easily see whence I

derived my view as a whole.

A.M.R.

_January_, 1922.

FOREWORD

Chapters I. to VII. of this book were originally given in the form of

addresses, in the Kensington Town Hall, on successive Sunday evenings in

1921. They were taken down _verbatim_, but have been revised and even to

some extent rewritten. I do not like reports in print of things spoken, for

speaking and writing are two different arts, and what is right when it is

spoken is almost inevitably wrong when it is written. (I refer, of course,

to style, not matter.) If I had had time, I should have re-shaped what I

have said, though it would have been the manner only and not the substance

that would have been changed. This has been impossible, and I can therefore

only explain that the defective form and the occasional repetition which

the reader cannot fail to mark were forced upon me by the fact that I was

speaking--not writing--and that I felt bound to make each address, as far

as possible, complete and comprehensible in itself.

Chapters VIII., IX., and X. were added later to meet various difficulties,

questions, or criticisms evoked by the addresses which form the earlier

part of the book.

I desire to record my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sladen, but for

whose active help and encouragement I should hardly have proceeded with the

book: to Miss Irene Taylor, 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"

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