The Repeal of Reticence

THERE is nothing new about the Seven Deadly Sins. They are as old as humanity. There is nothing mysterious about them. They are easier to understand than the Cardinal Virtues. Nor have they dwelt apart in secret places; but, on the contrary, have presented themselves, undisguised and unabashed, in every corner of the world, and in every epoch of recorded history. Why then do so many men and women talk and write as if they had just discovered these ancient associates of mankind? Why do they press upon our reluctant notice the result of their researches? Why this fresh enthusiasm in dealing with a foul subject? Why this relentless determination to make us intimately acquainted with matters of which a casual knowledge would suffice?

Above all, why should our self-appointed instructors assume that because we do not chatter about a thing, we have never heard of it? The wellordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge, which is now recommended as nourishing for childhood, strengthening for youth, and highly restorative for old age, falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion. Human experience is very, very old. It is our surest monitor, our safest guide. To ignore it crudely is the error of those ardent but uninstructed missionaries who have lightly undertaken the rebuilding of the social world.

Therefore it is that the public is being daily instructed concerning matters which it was once assumed to know, and which, as a matter of fact, it has always known. When ‘The Lure’ was being played at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York, the engaging Mrs. Pankhurst arose in Mrs. Belmont’s box, and, unsolicited, informed the audience that it was the truth which was being nakedly presented to them, and that as truth it should be taken to heart. Now, it is probable that the audience — adult men and women — knew as much about the situations developed in ‘The Lure’ as did Mrs. Pankhurst. It is possible that some of them knew more, and could have given her points. But whatever may be the standard of morality, the standard of taste (and taste is a guardian of morality) must be curiously lowered when a woman spectator at an indecent play commends its indecencies to the careful consideration of the audience. Even the absurdity of the proceeding fails to win pardon for its grossness.

It is not so much the nature of the information showered upon us to which we reasonably object, but the fact that a great deal of it is given in the wrong way by the wrong people. Who made the Pankhursts our nursery governesses, and put us in their hands for schooling? We might safely ignore the articles of Miss Christabel Pankhurst in the Suffragette — articles which are a happy blend of a vice-commissioner’s report and an amateur medical dictionary, — were it not that these effusions find their way into the hands of young women whose enthusiasm for the ‘cause’ lets down their natural barriers of defense. If Miss Pankhurst knows what she is writing about, —and let us hope she does n’t, — it should occur even to her that more legitimate and, on the whole, more enlightened avenues may be found for the communication of pathological facts.

A writer in Harper s Weekly assures us that Whittier would have approved of Miss Christabel’s revelations, and that he probably had something of the kind in mind when he wrote,—

Perhaps! It is a safe thing to say of a man who has been dead twenty-two years. But to most of us an alliance between Mr. Whittier and Miss Pankhurst sounds as desperately whimsical as the union recently suggested by a light-minded contributor to the Atlantic Monthly between John Halifax and Ann Veronica.

The ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ is broken. Of that no one can doubt. The phrase may be suffered to lapse into oblivion. In its day it was a menace, and few of us would now advocate the deliberate ignoring of things not to be denied. Few of us would care to see the rising generation as uninstructed in natural laws as we were, as adrift amid the unintelligible, or partly intelligible things of life. But surely the breaking of silence need not imply the opening of the floodgates of speech. It was never meant by those who first cautiously advised a clearer understanding of sexual relations and hygienic rules that everybody should chatter freely respecting these grave issues; that teachers, lecturers, novelists, storywriters, militants, dramatists, social workers, and magazine editors should copiously impart all they know, or assume they know, to the world. The lack of restraint, the lack of balance, the lack of soberness and common sense, were never more apparent than in the obsession of sex which has set us all a-babbling about matters once excluded from the amenities of conversation.

Knowledge is the cry. Crude, undigested knowledge, without limit and without reserve. Give it to boys, give it to girls, give it to children. No other force is taken account of by the visionaries who — in defiance or in ignorance of history — believe that evil understood is evil conquered. ‘The menace of degradation and destruction can be checked only by the dissemination of knowledge on the subject of sex-physiology and hygiene,’writes an enthusiast in the Forum, calling our attention to the methods employed by some public schools, noticeably the Polytechnic High School of Los Angeles, for the instruction of students, and urging that similar lectures be given to boys and girls in the grammar schools. It is noticeable that, while a woman doctor was employed to lecture to the girl students of the Polytechnic, a ‘science man’ was chosen by preference for the boys. Doctors are proverbially reticent,— except, indeed, on the stage, where they prattle of all they know; — but a ‘science man’ — as distinct from a man of science — may be trusted, if he be young and ardent, to conceal little or nothing from his hearers. The lectures were obligatory for the boys, but optional for the girls, whose inquisitiveness could be relied upon. ‘The universal eagerness of underclassmen to reach the serene upper heights ’ (I quote the language of the Forum) ‘gave the younger girls increased interest in the advanced lectures, if, indeed, a girl’s natural curiosity regarding these vital facts needs any stimulus.'

Perhaps it does not, but I am disposed to think it receives a strong artificial stimulus from instructors whose minds are unduly engrossed with sexual problems, and that this artificial stimulus is a menace rather than a safeguard. We hear too much about the thirst for knowledge from people keen to quench it. Dr. Edward L. Keyes, president of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, advocates the teaching of sex-hygiene to children, because he thinks it is the kind of information that children are eagerly seeking. ‘What is this topic,’he asks, ‘that all these little ones are questioning over, mulling over, fidgeting over, imagining over, worrying over? Ask your own memories.'

I do ask my memory in vain for the answer Dr. Keyes anticipates. A child’s life is so full, and everything that enters it seems of supreme importance. I fidgeted over my hair which would not curl. I worried over my examples which never came out right. I mulled (though unacquainted with the word) over every piece of sewing put into my incapable fingers which could not be trained to hold a needle. I imagined I was stolen by brigands, and became — by virtue of beauty and intelligence — spouse of a patriotic outlaw in a frontierless land. I asked artless questions which brought me into discredit with my teachers, as, for example, who ‘massacred’ St. Bartholomew. But vital facts, the great laws of propagation, were matters of but casual concern, crowded out of my life, and out of my companions’ lives (in a convent boarding-school) by the more stirring happenings of every day. How could we fidget over obstetrics when we were learning to skate, and our very dreams were a medley of ice and bumps? How could we worry over ‘ natural laws ’ in the face of a tyrannical interdict which lessened our chances of breaking our necks by forbidding us to coast down a hill covered with trees? The children to be pitied, the children whose minds become infected with unwholesome curiosity are those who lack cheerful recreation, religious teaching, and the fine corrective of work. A playground or a swimming-pool will do more to keep them mentally and morally sound than scores of lectures upon sex-hygiene.

The point of view of the older generation was not altogether the futile thing it seems to the progressive of today. It assumed that children brought up in honor and goodness, children disciplined into some measure of selfrestraint, and taught very plainly the difference between right and wrong in matters childish and seasonable, were in no supreme danger from the gradual and somewhat haphazard expansion of knowledge. It unconsciously reversed the adage, ‘Forewarned, forearmed,’ into ‘Forearmed, forewarned,’ paying more heed to the arming than to the warning. ‘Trust in God, and keep your powder dry.’ It held that the workingman was able to rear his children in virtue and decency. The word degradation was not so frequently coupled with poverty as it is now. Nor was it anybody’s business in those simple days to impress upon the poor the wretchedness of their estate.

If knowledge alone could save us from sin, the salvation of the world would be easy work. If by demonstrating the injuriousness of evil we could insure the acceptance of good, a little logic would redeem mankind. But the laying of the foundation of law and order in the mind, the building up of character which will be strong enough to reject both folly and vice, — this is no facile task.

The justifiable reliance placed by our fathers upon religion and discipline has given place to a reliance upon understanding. It is assumed that youth will abstain from wrong-doing, if only the physical consequences of wrong-doing are made sufficiently clear. There are those who believe that a regard for future generations is a powerful deterrent from immorality, that boys and girls can be so interested in the quality of the baby to be born in 1990 that they will master their wayward impulses for its sake. What does not seem to occur to us is that this deep sense of obligation to ourselves and to our fellow creatures is the fruit of self-control. A course of lectures will not instill selfcontrol into the human heart. It is born of childish virtues acquired in childhood, youthful virtues acquired in youth, and a wholesome preoccupation with the activities of life which gives young people something to think about besides the sexual relations which are pressed so relentlessly upon their attention.

The world is wide, and a great deal is happening in it. I do not plead for ignorance, but for the gradual and harmonious broadening of the field of knowledge, and for a more careful consideration of ways and means. There are subjects which may be taught in class, and subjects which commend themselves to individual teaching. There are topics which admit of pleinair handling, and topics which civilized man, as apart from his artless brother of the j angles, has veiled with reticence. There are truths which may be, and should be, privately imparted by a father, a mother, a family doctor, or an experienced teacher; but which young people cannot advantageously acquire from the platform, the stage, the moving-picture gallery, the novel, or the ubiquitous monthly magazine.

Yet all these sources of information are competing with one another as to which shall tell us most. All of them have missions, and all the missions are alike. We are gravely assured that the drama has awakened to a high and holy duty, that it has a ‘serious call,’ in obedience to which it has turned the stage into a clinic for the diagnosing of disease, and into a self-authorized commission for the intimate study of vice. It advertises itself as ‘ battling with t he evils of the age,’ — which are the evils of every age, — and its method of warfare is to exploit the sins of the sensual for the edification of the virtuous, to rake up the dunghills with the avowed purpose of finding a jewel. The doors of the brothel have been flung hospitably open, and we have been invited to peer and peep (always in the interests of morality) into regions that were formerly closed to the uninitiated. Situations once the exclusive property of the police courts make valuable third acts, or become the central theme of curtain-lifters, unclean and undramatic, but which claim to ‘tell their story so clearly that the daring is lost in the splendid moral lesson conveyed.’ Familiarity with vice (which an old-fashioned but not inexperienced moralist like Pope held to be a perilous thing) is now advocated as a safeguard, especially for the young and ardent. The lowering of our standards of taste, the deadening of our finer sensibilities are matters of no moment to dramatist or to manager. They have other interests at stake.

For depravity is a valuable asset when presented to the consideration of the undepraved. It is coining money for the proprietors of moving-pictures, who are sending shows with lurid titles about ‘White Slaves’ and ‘Traffic in Souls’ all over the country. These shows claim to be dramatizations of Mr. Rockefeller’s vice-commission reports, or of United States Government investigations. ‘Original,’ ‘Authentic,’ ‘Authorized,’ are words freely used in their advertisements. The public is assured that ‘care has been taken to eliminate ail suggestiveness,’ which is in a measure true. When everything is told, there is no room left for suggestions. If you kick a man down stairs, and out of your door, you may candidly say that you never suggested that he should leave the house. One ‘Great New York Sensation’ is advertised as personally endorsed by Mrs. Belmont and Miss Inez Milholland; and again we are driven to ask why should these ladies assume an intimate knowledge of such alien matters, and why should they play the part of mentors to such an experienced Telemachus as the public?

It is hard to estimate the harm done by this persistent and crude handling of sexual vice. The peculiar childishness inherent in all moving-picture shows may possibly lessen their hurtfulness. What if the millionaires and political bosses so depicted spend their existence in entrapping innocent young women? A single policeman of tender years, a single girl, inexperienced but resourceful, can defeat these fell conspirators, and bring them all to justice. Never were villains so helpless in a hard and virtuous world. But silliness is no sure safeguard, and to excite in youth a curiosity concerning brothels and their inmates, can hardly fail of mischief. To demonstrate graphically and publicly the value of girls in such places is to familiarize them dangerously with sin. I can but hope that the little children who sit stolidly by their mothers’ sides, and whom the authorities of every town should exclude from all shows dealing with prostitution, are saved from defilement by the invincible ignorance of childhood. As for the groups of boys and young men who compose the larger part of the audiences, and who snigger and whisper whenever the situations grow intense, nobody in his senses could assert that the pictures convey a ‘moral lesson’ to them.

Nor is it for the conveying of lessons that managers present these photo plays to the world. They are out to make money, and they are making it. While one reputable Philadelphia theatre was regaling the public with ‘whiteslave’ films, its next-door neighbor was elevating our moral tone with the listless dancing of Evelyn Thaw. We hear a great deal in these days about ‘commercialized vice.’ Miss Pankhurst has hinted that it stands responsible for the protests against her pseudo-surgical articles in the Suffragette. But if the engagement of Evelyn Thaw to exhibit herself to theatre-goers is not a commercialization of vice, what meaning is there in the phrase?

In one respect all the studies of seduction now presented so urgently to our regard are curiously alike. They all conspire to lift the burden of blame from the woman’s shoulders, to free her from any sense of human responsibility. It is assumed that she plays no part in her own undoing, that she is as passive as the animal bought for vivisection, as mute and helpless in the tormentors’ hands. The tissue of false sentiment woven about her has resulted in an extraordinary confusion of outlook, a perilous nullification of honesty and honor.

To illustrate this point, I quote some verses which appeared recently in a periodical devoted to social work, a periodical with high and serious aims. I quote them reluctantly (not deeming them fit for publication), and only because it is impossible to ignore the fact that their appearance in such a paper makes them doubly and trebly reprehensible. They are entitled ’The Cry to Christ of the Daughters of Shame.'

Now apart from the offense against religion in this easy comparison between the Saviour and the woman of the streets, and apart from the deplorable offense against good taste, which might repel even the irreligious, such unqualified acquittal stands forever in the way of reform, of the judgment and common sense which make for the betterment of the world. How is it possible to awaken any healthy emotion in the hearts of sinners so smothered in sentimentality? How is it possible to make girls and young women (as yet respectable) understand not only the possibility but the obligation of a decent life?

It might be well if some of these hysterical apologists would read the torrent of disagreeable truths which Judge Lindsey poured out upon the heads of those members of the ‘Woman’s Protective League ’ of Denver, who had accused him of undue leniency to male offenders. The law of Colorado defines rape as entering into sexual relations with any unmarried female under eighteen, even should she solicit the relation. This permits a young woman, deeply acquainted with evil, to prey upon the passions, or the curiosity of youth, and then charge her associate with a criminal offense,—a merry life to lead. Girls of sixteen boasted to Judge Lindsey of the snares they had laid, one of them gleefully asserting she had entrapped no less than twenty-five boys, of whom she knew little or nothing. It is probable that this girl lied, — lying is inevitable under these conditions, — but we can hardly plead that such a young prostitute is ‘atoning’ for the sins of the world.

There would be less discussion of meretricious subjects, either in print or in conversation, were it not for the morbid sensibility which has undermined our judgment and set our nerves a-quivering. Even a counsellor so sane and so experienced as the Reverend Hon. Edward Lyttelton, Headmaster of Eton, who has written an admirable volume on Training of the Young in Laws of Sex, drops his tone of wholesome austerity as soon as he turns from the safeguarding of lads to the pensive consideration of women. Boys and men he esteems to be captains of their souls, but the woman is adrift on the sea of life. He does not urge her to restraint; he pleads for her to the masters of her fate. ‘The unhappy partners of a rich man’s lust,’ he writes, ‘are beings born with the mighty power to love, and are endowed with deep and tender instincts of loyalty and motherhood. When these divine and lovely graces of character are utterly shattered and foully degraded, the man on whom all the treasure has been lavished tries to believe that he has made ample reparation by an annuity of fifty pounds.'

This kind of sentiment is out of place in everything save eighteenthcentury lyrics, which are not expected to be a guiding force in morals. A woman with ‘lovely graces of character’ does not usually become the mistress even of a rich man. After all, there is such a thing as triumphant virtue. It has an established place in the annals and traditions, the ballads and stories of every land.

It is like a breath of fresh air blowing away mists to hear t his gay and gallant militant assert the possibilities of resistance.

Forty years ago a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine commented upon the amazing fact that in Hogarth’s day (more than a century earlier) vignettes representing the ‘Rake’s Progress’ and the ‘Harlot’s Progress’ were painted upon fans carried by young women. ‘English girls,’ said this sober essayist, ‘were thus, by way of warning, made familiar with subjects now wisely withheld from their consideration.’

The pendulum has swung backward since 1874. Even Hogarth, who dealt for the most part with the robust simplicities of sin, would have little to teach the rising generation of 1914. Its sources of knowledge are manifold, and astoundingly explicit. Stories minutely describing houses of ill-fame, their furniture, their food, their barred windows, their perfumed air, and the men with melancholy eyes who visit them. Novels purporting to be candid and valuable studies of degeneracy and nymphomania. Plays and protests urging stock-farm methods of breeding the human race. Papers on venereal diseases scattered broadcast through the land. Comment, upon those unnatural relations which have preceded the ruin of cities and the downfall of nations, and veiled allusions to which have marked the deepest degradation of the French stage. All these horrors, which would have made honest old Hogarth turn uneasily in his grave, are offered for the defense of youth and the purifying of civilized society.

The lamentable lack of reserve is closely associated with a lamentable absence of humor. We should be saved from many evils if we could laugh at more absurdities. We could clearly estimate the value of reform, if we were not so befuddled with the serious sensationalism of reformers. It is touching to hear Mr. Percy Mackaye lament that ‘Mendelism has as yet hardly begun to influence art or popular feeling’; but he must not lose hope, — not, at least, so far as popular feeling is concerned. ‘ Pract ical eugenics ’ is a phrase as familiar in our ears as ‘intensive farming.’ ‘How can we make the desirable marry one another?’ asks Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, and answers his own question by affirming that every community should take a hand in the matter, giving the ‘support of public opinion,’ and the more emphatic support of ‘important and well-paid positions’ to a choice stock of men, provided always that, ‘in the interests of the race’ they marry and have offspring.

This is practical eugenics with a vengeance, but it is not practical business. Apart from the fact that most men and women regard marriage as a personal matter with which their neighbors have no concern, it does not follow that the admirable and athletic young husband possesses any peculiar ability. Little runts of men are sometimes the ablest of citizens. When nature is in a jesting mood, her best friends marvel at her blunders.

The connection between Mendelism and art is still a trifle strained. It is an alliance which Mendel himself— good abbot of Brünn working patiently in his cloister garden — failed to take into account. The field of economics is not art’s chosen playground; the imparting of scientific truths has never been her mission. Whether she deals with high and poignant emotions, or with the fears and the wreckage of life, she subdues these human elements into an austere accord with her own harmonious laws. She is as remote from the crudities of the honest but uninspired reformer who dabbles in fiction and the drama, as she is remote from t he crudities of the shameless camp-followers of reform, who use its passwords for their own base ends, and whose diversion it is to see how far they dare to go.

For this amiable purpose, no less than for our instruction and betterment, the Seven Deadly Sins have acquired their present regrettable popularity. Liberated from the unsympathetic atmosphere of the catechism, they are urged upon the weary attention of adults, embodied in the lessons of youth, and explained in words of one syllable to childhood. Yet Hogarth never designed his pictures to decorate the fans of women. Suetonius never related his ‘pleasant, atrocities’ to the boys and girls of Rome.