enough countermotive to suppress the sensual desire.
But while the faint normal longing can well be balanced
by the trained respect for the mysterious unknown,
the strongly accentuated craving of the girl who knows
may ill be balanced by any thought of possible dis-
agreeable consequences. Still more important, how-
ever, is a second aspect. The girl to whom the world
sex is the great taboo is really held back from lascivious
life by an instinctive respect and anxiety. As soon
as girl and boy are knowers, all becomes a matter
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PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
of naked calculation. What they have learned from
their instruction in home and school and liter
ature and drama is that the unmarried woman must
avoid becoming a mother. Far from enforcing a less
sensuous life, this only teaches them to avoid the social
opprobrium by going skilfully to work. The old-
fashioned morality sermon kept the youth on the paths
of clean life; the new-fashioned sexual instruction
stimulates not only their sensual longings, but also
makes it entirely clear to the young that they have
nothing whatever to fear if they yield to their volup-
tuousness but make careful use of their new physiologi-
cal knowledge. From my psychotherapeutic activity, I
know too well how much vileness and perversity are
gently covered by the term flirtation nowadays in the
circle of those who have learned early to conceal the traces.
The French type of the demi-vierge is just beginning to
play its role in the new world. The new policy will bring
in the great day for her, and with it a moral poisoning
which must be felt in the whole social atmosphere.
Ill
We have not as yet stopped to examine whether at
least the propaganda for the girl's sexual education
starts rightly when it takes for granted that ignorance
[18]
SEX EDUCATION
is the chief source for the fall of women. The sociolog-
ical student cannot possibly admit this as a silent pre-
supposition. In many a pathetic confession we have
read as to the past of fallen girls that they were not
aware of the consequences. But it would be utterly
arbitrary to construe even such statements as proofs
that they were unaware of the limits which society
demanded from them. If a man breaks into a neigh-
bour's garden by night to steal, he may have been
ignorant of the fact that shooting traps were laid there
for thieves, but that does not make him worthy of the
pity which we may offer to him who suffers by ignor-
ance only. The melodramatic idea that a straight-
forward girl with honest intent is abducted by strangers
and held by physical force in places of degradation can
simply be dismissed from a discussion of the general
situation. The chances that any decent man or
woman will be killed by a burglar are a hundred times
larger than that a decent girl without fault of her own
will become the victim of a white slavery system which
depends upon physical force. Since the new policy of
antisilence has filled the newspapers with the most
filthy gossip about such imaginary horrors, it is not sur-
prising that frivolous girls who elope with their lovers
later invent stories of criminal detention, first by half
[19]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
poisoning and afterward by handcuffing. Of all the sys-
tematic, thorough investigations, that of the Vice Com-
mission of Philadelphia seems so far the most instructive
and most helpful. It shows the picture of a shameful
and scandalous social situation, and yet, in spite of years
of most insistent search by the best specialists, it says in
plain words that "no instances of actual physical slavery
have been specifically brought to our attention."
This does not contradict in the least the indubitable
fact that in all large cities white slavery exists in the
wider sense of the word that is, that many girls are
kept in a life of shame because the escape from it is
purposely made difficult to them. They are held con-
stantly in debt and are made to believe that their im-
munity from arrest depends upon their keeping on good
terms with the owners of disorderly houses. But the
decisive point for us is that while they are held back
at a time when they know too much, they are not
brought there by force at a time when they know
too little. The Philadelphia Vice Report analyzes
carefully the conditions and motives which have
brought the prostitutes to their life of shame. The
results of those hundreds of interviews point nowhere
to ignorance. The list of reasons for entering upon
such a life brings information like this: "She liked
[20]
SEX EDUCATION
the man," " Wanted to see what immoral life was like,"
" Sneaked out for pleasure, got into bad company,"
"Would not go to school, frequented picture shows,
got into bad company," "Thought she would have a
better time," "Envied girls with fine clothes and gay
time," ** Wanted to go to dances and theatres," "Went
with girls who drank, influenced by them," "Liked to go
to moving picture shows," "Did not care what hap-
pened when forbidden to marry." With these personal
reasons go the economic ones: " Heard immorality was
an easy way to make money, which she needed,"
" Decided that this was the easiest way of earning
money," "W T anted pretty clothes," "Never liked hard
work," "Tired of drudgery at home," "Could make
more money this way than in a factory." Only once is
it reported: "Chloroformed at a party, taken to man's
house and ruined by him." If that is true, we have
there simply a case of actual crime, against which no-
body can be protected by mere knowledge. In short,
a thorough study indicates clearly that the girl who
falls is not pushed passively into her misery.
Surely it is alarming to read that last year in one
single large city of the Middle West two hundred school
girls have become mothers, but whoever studies the
real sociological material cannot doubt that every one
[21]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
of those two hundred knew very clearly that she was
doing something which she ought not to do. Every one
of them had knowledge enough, and if the knowledge
was often vague and dirty, the effect would not have
been improved by substituting for it more knowledge,
even if it were clearer and scientifically more correct.
What every one of those two hundred girls needed was
less knowledge that is, less familiarity of the mind with
this whole group of erotic ideas, and through this a
greater respect for and fear of the unknown. Nobody
who really understands the facts of the sexual world
with the insight of the physician will deny that never-
theless treacherous dangers and sources of misfortune
may be near to any girl, and that they might be avoided
if she knew the truth. But then it is no longer a ques-
tion of a general truth, which can be implanted by any
education, but a specific truth concerning the special
man. The husband whom she marries may be a
scoundrel who infects her with ruinous disease, but even
if she had read all the medical books beforehand it
would not have helped her.
IV
The situation of the boys seems hi many respects
different. They are on the aggressive side. There is
[22]
SEX EDUCATION
no danger that by their lack of knowledge they will be
lured into a life of humiliation, but the danger of their
ruin is more imminent and the risk which parents run
with them is far worse. Any hour of reckless fun may
bring them a life of cruel suffering. The havoc which
venereal diseases bring to the men of all social classes is
tremendous. The Report of the Surgeon-General of the
Army for 1911 states that with the mean strength of
about seventy -three thousand men in the army, the
admissions to the hospitals on account of venereal
diseases were over thirteen thousand. That is, of any
hundred men at least eighteen were ill from sexual in-
fection. The New York County Hospital Society
reports two hundred and forty-three thousand cases of
venereal disease treated in one year, as compared with
forty-one thousand five hundred and eighty-five cases
of all other communicable diseases. This horrible sap-
ping of the physical energies of the nation, with the
devastating results in the family, with the poisoning of
the germs for the next generation, and with the disas-
trous diseases of brain and spinal cord, is surely the
gravest material danger which exists. How small com-
pared with that the thousands of deaths from crime and
accidents and wrecks! how insignificant the harvest of
human life which any war may reap ! And all this can
[23]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
ultimately be avoided, not only by abstinence, but by
strict hygiene and rigorous social reorganization. At
this moment we have only to ask how much of a change
for the better can be expected from a mere sexual
education of the boys.
From a psychological point of view, this situation
appears much more difficult than that of the girls. All
psychological motives speak for a policy of silence in
the girls' cases. For the boys, on the other hand, the
importance of some hygienic instruction cannot be
denied. A knowledge of the disastrous consequences
of sexual diseases must have a certain influence for
good, and the grave difficulty lies only in the fact that
nevertheless all the arguments which speak against the
sexual education of the girls hold for the boys, too. The
harm to the youthful imagination, the starting of
erotic thoughts with sensual excitement in conse-
quence of any kind of sexual instruction must be still
greater for the young man than for the young woman,
as he is more easily able to satisfy his desires. We must
thus undoubtedly expect most evil consequences from
the instruction of the boys; and yet we cannot deny the
possible advantages. Their hygienic consciousness may
be enriched and their moral consciousness tainted by the
same hour of well-meant instruction. With the girls an
[24]
SEX EDUCATION
energetic no is the only sane answer; with the boys the
social reformer may well hesitate between the no and the
yes. The balance between fear and hope may be very
even there. Yet, however depressing such a decision may
be, the psychologist must acknowledge that even here
the loss by frank discussion is greater than the gain.
A serious warning lies in the well-known fact that of all
professional students, the young medical men have the
worst reputation for their reckless indulgence in an erotic
life. They know most, and it is psychologically not sur-
prising that just on that account they are most reckless.
The instinctive fear of the half knower has left them;
they live in an illusory safety, the danger has become
familiar to them, and they deceive themselves with the
idea that the particular case is harmless. If the steps
to be taken were to be worked out at the writing desk
in cool mood and sober deliberation, the knowledge
would at least often be a certain help, but when the
passionate desire has taken hold of the mind and the
organic tension of the irritated body works on the mind,
there is no longer a fair fight with those sober reasons.
The action of the glands controls the psychophysical
reactions, so that the ideas which would lead to opposite
response are inhibited. Alcohol and the imitative
mood of social gayety may help to dull those hygienic
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PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
fears, but on the whole the mere sexual longing is suf-
ficient to break down the reminiscence of medical warn-
ing. The situation for the boy is then ultimately this:
A full knowledge of the chances of disease will start in
hours of sexual coolness on the one side a certain resolu-
tion to abstain from sexual intercourse, and on the
other side a certain intention to use protective means for
the prevention of venereal diseases. As soon as the
sexual desire awakes, the decision of the first kind will
become the less effective, and will be the more easily
overrun the more firmly the idea is fixed that such pre-
ventive means are at his disposal. At the same time
the discussion of all these sexual matters, even with
their gruesome background, will force on the mind a
stronger engagement with sexual thought than had
ever before occurred, and this will find its discharge in
an increased sexual tension. On the other hand, this
new knowledge of means of safety will greatly increase
the playing with danger. Of course it may be said
that the education ought not to refer only to sexual
hygiene, but that it ought to be a moral education.
That, however, is an entirely different story. We shall
speak about it; we shall put our faith in it, but at pres-
ent we are talking of that specific sexual education
which is the fad of the day.
[26]
SEX EDUCATION
V
Sexual education, to be sure, does not necessarily
mean education of young people only. The adults who
know, the married men and women of the community,
may not know enough to protect their sons and daugh-
ters. And the need for their full information may
stretch far beyond their personal family interests.
They are to form the public opinion which must stand
behind every real reform, their consciences must be
stirred, the hidden misery must be brought before them.
Thus they need sexual education as much as the young-
sters, only they need it in a form which appeals to them
and makes them willing to listen; and our reformers
have at last discovered the form. The public must be
taught from the stage of the theatre. The magazine
with its short stories on sex incidents, the newspaper
with its sensational court reports, may help to carry
the gruesome information to the masses, but the deep-
est impression will always be made when actual human
beings are shown on the stage in their appealing dis-
tress, as living accusations against the rotten founda-
tions of society. The stage is overcrowded with sexual
drama and the social community inundated with dis-
cussions about it.
It is not easy to find the right attitude toward this
[27]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
red-light literature. Many different interests are con-
cerned, and it is often extremely difficult to disentangle
them. Three such interests stand out very clearly : the
true aesthetic one, the purely commercial one, and the
sociological one. It would be wonderful if the aesthetic
culture of our community had reached a development
at which the aesthetic attitude toward a play would be
absolutely controlling. If we could trust this aesthetic
instinct, no other question would be admissible but the
one whether the play is a good work of art or not. The
social inquiry whether the human fates which the poet
shows us suggests legislative reforms or hygienic im-
provements would be entirely inhibited in the truly
artistic consciousness. It would make no difference to
the spectator whether the action played in Chicago or
Petersburg, whether it dealt with men and women of to-
day or of two thousand years ago. The human element
would absorb our interest, and as far as the joys and
the miseries of sexual life entered into the drama, they
would be accepted as a social background, just as the
landscape is the natural background. A community
which is aesthetically mature enough to appreciate
Ibsen does not leave "The Ghosts" with eugenic reform
ideas. The inherited paralysis on a luetic basis is
accepted there as a tragic element of human fate. On
[28]
SEX EDUCATION
the height of true art the question of decency or in-
decency has disappeared, too. The nude marble statue
is an inspiration, and not a possible stimulus to frivol-
ous sensuality, if the mind is aesthetically cultivated.
The nakedness of erotic passion in the drama of high
aesthetic intent before a truly educated audience has
not the slightest similarity to the half -draped chorus of
sensual operetta before a gallery which wants to be
tickled. But who would claim that the dramatic litera-
ture of the sexual problems with which the last seasons
have filled the theatres from the orchestra to the second
balcony has that sublime aesthetic intent, or that it was
brought to a public which even posed in an aesthetic
attitude! As far as any high aim was involved, it was
the antisesthetic moral value. The plays presented
themselves as appeals to the social conscience, and
yet this idealistic interpretation would falsify the true
motives on both sides. The crowd went because it
found the satisfaction of sexual curiosity and erotic
tension through the unveiled discussion of social per-
versities. And the managers produced the plays be-
cause the lurid subjects with their appeal to the low
instincts, and therefore with their sure commercial
success, could here escape the condemnation of police
and decent public as they were covered by the pre-
[29]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
tence of social reform. How far the writers of the play
of prostitution prostituted art in order to share the
commercial profits in this wave of sexual reform may
better remain undiscussed.
What do these plays really teach us? I think I have
seen almost all of them, and the composite picture in
my mind is one of an absurdly distorted, exaggerated,
and misleading view of actual social surroundings,
suggesting wrong problems, wrong complaints, and
wrong remedies. When I studied the reports of the
vice commissions of the large American and European
cities, the combined image in my consciousness was
surely a stirring and alarming one, but it had no similar-
ity with the character of those melodramatic vagaries .
Even the best and most famous of these fabrications
throw wrong sidelights on the social problems, and
by a false emphasis inhibit the feeling for the pro-
portions of life. If in "The Fight" the father, a senator,
visits a disorderly house, unlocks the room in which the
freshest fruit is promised him, and finds there his young
daughter who has just been abducted by force, the facts
themselves are just as absurd as the following scenes, in
which this father shows that the little episode did not
make the slightest impression on him. He coolly con-
tinues to fight against those politicians who want to
[30]
SEX EDUCATION
remove such places from the town. In "Bought and
Paid For " marriage itself is presented as white slavery.
The woman has to tolerate the caresses of her husband,
even when he has drunk more champagne than is wise
for him. The play makes us believe that she must
suffer his love because she was poor before she married
and he has paid her with a life of luxury. Where are
we to end if such logic in questions of sexual intercourse
is to benumb common sense? England brought us
"The Blindness of Virtue," the story of a boy and a girl
whom we are to believe to be constantly in grave danger
because they are ignorant, while in reality nothing
happens, and everything suggests that the moral danger
for this particular girl would have been much greater
if she had known how to enjoy love without conse-
quences.
The most sensational specimen of the group was
"The Lure." It would be absurd to face this produc-
tion from any aesthetic point of view. It would be un-
thinkable that a work of such crudeness could satisfy
a metropolitan public, even if some of the most marked
faults of construction were acknowledged as the results
of the forceful expurgation of the police. Nevertheless,
the only significance of the play lies outside of its
artistic sphere, and belongs entirely to its effort to help
[31]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
in this great social reform. The only strong applause,
which probably repeats itself every evening, broke out
when the old, good-natured physician said that as soon
as women have the vote the white slavers will be sent
to the electric chair. But it is worth while to examine
the sermon which a play of this type really preaches,
and to become aware of the illusions with which the
thoughtless public receives this message. All which we
see there on the stage is taken by the masses as a re-
monstrance against the old, cowardly policy of silence,
and the play is to work as a great proof that complete
frankness and clear insight can help the daughters of
the community.
The whole play contains the sad story of two girls.
There is Nell. What happened to her? She is the
daughter of a respectable banker in a small town. A
scoundrel, a commercial white slaver, a typical Broad-
way "cadet" with luring manners, goes to the small
town, finds access to the church parlours, is introduced
to the girl, and after some courtship he elopes with her
and makes her believe that they are correctly married.
After the fraudulent marriage with a falsified license
he brings her into a metropolitan disorderly house and
holds her there by force. Of course this is brutal stage
exaggeration, but even if this impossibility were true,
[32]
SEX EDUCATION
what conclusion are we to draw, and what advice are
we to give? Does it mean that in future a young girl
who meets a nice chap in the church socials of her native
town ought to keep away from him, because she ought
all the time to think that he might be a delegate of a
Broadway brothel? To fill a girl with suspicions in a
case like that of Nell would be no wiser than to tell the
ordinary man that he ought not to deposit his earnings
in any bank, because the cashier might run away with
it. To be sure, it would have been better if Nell had
not eloped, but is there any knowledge of sexual
questions which would have helped her to a wiser
decision? On the contrary, she said she did elope be-
cause her life in the small town was so uninteresting,
and she felt so lonely and was longing for the life of love.
She knew all which was to be known then, and if there
had been any power to hold her back from the foolish
elopement it could have been only a kind of instinctive
respect for the traditional demands of society, that kind
of respect which grows up from the policy of silence and
is trampled to the ground by the policy of loud talk.
The other girl in the play is Sylvia. Her fate is very
different. She needs melodramatic money for her sick
mother. Her earnings in the department store are not
enough. The sly owner of a treacherous employment
[33]
PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL SANITY
agency has given her a card over the counter, advising
her to come there, when she needs extra employment.
The agency keeps open in the evening. She tells her
mother that she will seek some extra work there. The
mother warns her that there are so many traps for decent
girls, and she answers that she is not afraid and that
she will be on the lookout. She goes there, and the skil-
ful owner of the agency shows her how miserable the
pay would be for any decent evening work, and how
easily she can earn all the money she needs for her
mother if she is willing to be paid by men. At first she
refuses with pathos, but under the suggestive pressure
of luring arguments she slowly weakens, and finally con-
sents to exchange her street gown for a fantastic cos-
tume of half-nakedness. The feelings of the audience
are saved by the detective who breaks in at the decisive
moment, but the arguments of the advocates of sexual
education cannot possibly be saved after that volun-
tary yielding. Sylvia knows what she has to expect,
and no more intense perusal of literature on the subject
of prostitution would have changed her mind. What
else in the world could have helped her in such an hour
but a still stronger feeling of instinctive repugnance?
If Sylvia was actually to put her fate on a mere calcula-
tion, with a full knowledge of all the sociological facts
[34]
SEX EDUCATION
involved, she probably reasoned wrongly in dealing with
this particular employment agency, but was on the
whole not so wrong in deciding that a frivolous life
would be the most reasonable way out of her financial
difficulties, as her sexual education would include, of
course, a sufficient knowledge of all which is needed to
avoid conception and infection. She would therefore
know that after a little while of serving the lust of men
she would be just as intact and just as attractive. If
society has the wish to force Sylvia to a decision in the
opposite direction, only one way is open: to make the
belief in the sacred value of virtue so deep and powerful
that any mere reasoning and calculation loses its
strength. But that is possible only through an educa-
tion which relies on the instinctive respect and mystical
belief. Only a policy of silence could have saved
Sylvia, because that alone would have implanted in her
mind an ineffable idea of unknown horrors which would
await her when she broke the sacred ring of chastity.