Part 1 (1/2)

Men, Women, and G.o.d.

by A. Herbert Gray.

PREFACE

This book has been written at the request of the Student Christian Movement, and is addressed in the first place to men and women of the student age. I have undertaken the task with great gladness because my long and happy contact with men and women through the Student Movement has taught me how great is the need for a fuller understanding of the problems of s.e.x, and how possible it is that men and women should find help through the timely suggestion of right and wholesome thoughts.

My brother, Dr. Charles Gray of London, has contributed a very valuable appendix dealing with certain facts in a way which is only possible to a medical man, and I am very greatly indebted to him for thus enriching this volume.

It will be apparent to all who read it that I also owe a great deal to many who have shared with me their knowledge and experience. In particular I owe much grat.i.tude to a number of generous-hearted women who have enabled me to write the chapters which are more especially addressed to their s.e.x.

I have deliberately omitted from these pages any reference to disease.

I do that not because I am not impressed by the terrible penalties with which nature visits certain sins, but because I do not believe in the power of fear to deliver us. Though there were no such thing as venereal disease, immorality would still be a way of death, and morality would still be the way of life and joy. Till we perceive that we are not on the path of progress.

Books of this sort have generally been addressed specially either to men or to women. I write to both alike because I am quite sure that until men and women understand and help each other, there is going to be no happy solution to the problems of s.e.x. When they do so learn to co-operate I believe we shall as a race find our way out into that larger and happier life which can only be ours when we have accepted the facts of s.e.x and learnt to use them to the enrichment of human life and the glory of G.o.d.

A. HERBERT GRAY.

_Glasgow,_ 1922.

INTRODUCTION

In the following pages I propose to write simply and plainly about the social, personal, and bodily relations of men and women, and about the ways in which their common life may attain to happiness, harmony, and efficiency.

I shall deal with matters often handled only with much diffidence, and thought of with uncomfortable reserve. And I address myself to men and women alike.

I do it all on the basis of one a.s.sumption, namely, that a G.o.d of love in designing our human nature cannot have put into it anything which is incapable of a pure and happy exercise; and in particular that in making the s.e.x interest so central, permanent, and powerful in human beings He must have had some great and beautiful purpose. I start, in fact, with the faith that the s.e.xual elements in our humanity, once rightly understood and finely handled, make for the enrichment of human life, for the increase of our health and efficiency, and the heightening of our joy. I believe that nothing is more necessary for the world to-day than that we should trace out the ways in which this tremendous life force that is implanted in us all may be used to forward the higher aims of our common life, and to help the race on its upward march. And yet even as I write the word ”s.e.xual” I cannot but remember that the mere word will for many good people produce a sensation of distaste. Partly because they have a sincere pa.s.sion for purity, and partly because this whole subject has been defiled for them by the excesses and indecencies of mankind, they doubt whether it can be right or useful to think about it at all. They regard the facts of s.e.x with a mixture of fear, perplexity, and shame, and take themselves to task if still some curiosity about them lingers in their minds.

Therefore before I go any further I would like to ask such people to realize that they are denying my initial a.s.sumption. They have not yet come to believe that there is any divine and holy purpose enshrined in the s.e.xual side of life, although G.o.d is responsible for its place in our humanity; and I would beg them forthwith to think this matter out.

s.e.x is no accident in our humanity. The function of the s.e.xual elements in our physical frame is so central that unless they be truly managed health and strength are impossible. Their relation is no less vital to our mental and aesthetic life, and they appear to control almost absolutely our nervous stability. No man or woman attains to fullness and harmony of life if the s.e.xual nature be either neglected or mismanaged. No society is strong and happy unless this part of life is truly adjusted. It may even be said that the evils that come through the mismanagement of s.e.x relations have beaten every civilization up to the present. And no doubt it is natural enough to shudder over the abominations of prost.i.tution and s.e.x vice in general, and so to turn our minds away from the whole matter. But for all that our emotional energies would be better employed in trying to understand this t.i.tanic force, and in learning how it may be utilized for our upward progress.

Mere prohibitions have so utterly and entirely failed us that we ought now to realize that there is no hope in them alone. What we need is a positive constructive ideal for this part of life which will indicate the real value of the s.e.xual forces in us, and not leave young men and women partly perplexed, partly ashamed, and partly annoyed because they are as the Creator made them.

And so I repeat we must begin with the a.s.sumption that, though we have not yet spelt it out, G.o.d must have had some great purpose of love when He created men and women with a clamant s.e.x instinct at the center of their personalities.

Hebrew instinct declared that ”G.o.d saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.” Christian instinct must repeat the verdict with vastly increased conviction, for our humanity is such that the Son of G.o.d could wear it. He was not ashamed to call us brethren, and to be tempted like as we are. To suggest that in pa.s.sion and in its exercise at the bidding of love there need be anything that is not holy, is to arraign the Creator. s.e.x love abused and misunderstood has indeed strewn the world with tragedies and disease. But s.e.x love is going to remain. Not until we have learnt to make it an instrument for the perfection of life and the heightening of vitality can we hope to reach the life which the love of G.o.d designed for us; and to that we shall not attain until we have dared to acquire knowledge and through knowledge to attain to wisdom.

The ideal which still lingers in many minds, though it is seldom openly confessed, is that boys and girls, young men and women, should be kept in complete ignorance of the truth about their s.e.xual natures until they marry, and that then they should be left to learn all that they need to know from Mother Nature direct. That at least would seem to be a fair inference from the fact of the conspiracy of silence in which ninety per cent of parents have engaged towards the beings they love best.

Unfortunately in order to carry out the policy thus implied it would be necessary to keep children from a.s.sociating with other children, to forbid them to read the Bible, the great cla.s.sics of literature, and the daily papers--to keep them from the theatre, and from the study of nature--in fact to bring them up in a world which does not exist. For in all the ways I have suggested do boys and girls now collect garbled, half-true, and distorted notions about s.e.xual life. And even if it were possible to carry out the policy it would still not be desirable.

Marriage is not the simple and easy thing which the policy would imply.

Mother Nature does not teach young couples all that they need to know.

Often they make serious mistakes in the first few days. Often they mishandle and spoil the beautiful relations.h.i.+p on which they have entered to their own disgust and disappointment. Uncounted couples to-day have reason for the bitterness with which they complain that n.o.body ever taught or helped them. In fact the policy of silence is as cruel as its a.s.sumptions are untrue. Ignorance is an impossibility for the young. Our choice lies between garbled, distorted, and defiled knowledge and a knowledge that shall be clean, innocent, and helpful.

It has often happened that men and women brought up on the policy of silence have first learnt the facts about life through some contact with vice or sin, and those who know what horrible sufferings sudden discoveries of that sort may mean for sensitive natures cannot possibly have any doubts remaining on this point. There are few more cruel things possible than to bring a girl up in the ignorance which is mistaken for innocence and then to allow her to go out into the world to learn the truth by chance, or through some unclean mind.

That is why I gladly address myself to the task of this book, in which at least some of the truth is told.