It prevents them from putting forth that energy that will enable them to become conscious of themselves, to think about the strange world around them and to achieve civilization; but as they are unaware of the fact, they don’t mind. Not so with civilized and self-conscious men and women. Of such people it cannot be said that ‘they know not what they do.’ They know only too well—know exactly what they are doing and exactly what they are losing in the process. For them the addiction is a real possession. The demon that inhabits them compels them to do what they know will harm them and what, with the best part of their being, they do not want to do. The nature of this demoniac possession was described, with incomparable power, by Baudelaire in the Fleurs du Mal.
Une nuit que j’étais près d’une affreuse Juive,
Comme au long d’un cadavre un cadavre étendu . . .
Addiction persists—a true possession by a devil that malignantly wills the unhappiness of its victim—even when all physical pleasure has been lost, even in the teeth of disgust and loathing. Like virtue, it is its own reward; and the reward it brings is misery and the torment of body and mind.
Jamais vous ne pourrez assouvir votre rage,
Et votre châtiment naîtra de vos plaisirs.
Jamais un rayon frais n’éclaira vos cavernes;
Par les fentes des murs des miasmes fiévreux
Filent en s’enflammant ainsi que des lanternes
Et pénètrent vos corps de leurs parfums affreux.
L’âpre stérilité de votre jouissance
Altère votre soif et roidit votre peau,
Et le vent furibond de la concupiscence
Fait claquer votre chair ainsi qu’un vieux drapeau.
Loin des peuples vivants, errantes, condamnées,
A travers les déserts courez comme des loups;
Faites votre destin, âmes désordonnées,
Et fuyez l’infini que vous portez en vous.
The last line irresistibly recalls Royce’s phrase to the effect that ‘finite beings are always such as they are by virtue of an inattention which at present blinds them to their actual relations to God and to one another.’ The addict is blinded by his addiction to ‘the infinite that he carries within him,’ to ‘his actual relations to God’ and other beings. At the same time, he is generally aware, if only by a kind of nostalgia, by a hopeless longing for what he lacks, that ‘the infinite’ exists within him and that his ‘actual relations to God’ are those of a part to its proper whole. He is aware of the fact and he suffers from it; and at the same time the demon he has conjured up, that it may possess him, deliberately increases his suffering by forcing him ‘to fly from the infinite within him,’ to refuse, consciously and deliberately, to pay attention to ‘his actual relations with God.’
It is not only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber’s craving for position and social distinction. Love—and this is true not only of sexual, but also of maternal love—may be merely a device for imposing the lover’s will upon the beloved. Between the Marquis de Sade, with his whips and penknives, and the doting but tyrannous mother, who slaves for her son in order that she may the more effectively dominate him, there are obvious differences in method and degree, but not a fundamental difference in kind. In such cases, the active party, by insisting on the right to bully, command and direct, thereby insists upon his or her separateness. At the same time, by refusing to respect the other’s personality, the domineering lover makes it impossible for the beloved victim to pay attention to that ‘infini que vous portez en vous.’ Addiction degrades only the addict. The lust for power harms not only the person who lusts, but also the person or persons at whose expense the lust is satisfied. Non-attachment becomes impossible for both parties.
Sex as a means for satisfying social vanity is only less evil than sex as a means for satisfying the lust for power. There are people who marry, not a person, but money, a title, social influence. Sex here is the instrument of avarice and ambition, passions that are in the highest degree separative and reality-obscuring. There are others who marry beauty or distinction for the sole purpose of flaunting their exclusive possession of it before the eyes of an envying world. This is a special form of the lust for ownership, an avarice whose object is, not money, but a human being and that human being’s socially valuable qualities. Such lust for ownership is as blinding and as separative as ordinary avarice, and can do almost as much harm to the owned person as the maternally or sexually conditioned lust for power can do to its much loved and much tormented victim.
Sex is not always addiction, is not always used as an instrument of domination or as a means for expressing vanity and snobbishness. It is also and at least as frequently the method whereby unpossessive and unselfish individuals achieve union with one another and indirectly with the world about them. ‘All the world loves a lover’; and, conversely, a lover loves all the world. ‘That violence whereby sometimes a man doteth upon one creature is but a little spark of that love, even towards all, which lurketh in his nature. When we dote upon the perfections and beauties of some one creature, we do not love that too much, but other things too little.
Never was anything in this world loved too much, but many things have been loved in a false way, and all in too short a measure.’ Traherne might have added (what many poets and novelists have remarked) that, when ‘we dote upon the perfections and beauties of some one creature,’ we frequently find ourselves moved to love other creatures. Moreover, to be in love is, in many cases, to have achieved a state of being, in which it becomes possible to have direct intuition of the essentially lovely nature of ultimate reality. ‘What a world would this be, were everything beloved as it ought to be!’ For many people, everything is beloved as it ought to be, only when they are in love with ‘some one creature.’ The cynical wisdom of the folk affirms that love is blind. But in reality, perhaps, the blind are those who are not in love and who therefore fail to perceive how beautiful the world is and how adorable.
We must now consider very briefly the relation of sexual activity to mental activity in individuals and to the cultural condition of society. This subject was discussed by the late Dr. J. D. Unwin, whose monumental Sex and Culture is a work of the highest importance. Unwin’s conclusions, which are based upon an enormous wealth of carefully sifted evidence, may be summed up as follows. All human societies are in one or another of four cultural conditions: zoistic, manistic, deistic, rationalistic. Of these societies the zoistic displays the least amount of mental and social energy, the rationalistic the most. Investigation shows that the societies exhibiting the least amount of energy are those where pre-nuptial continence is not imposed and where the opportunities for sexual indulgence after marriage are greatest. The cultural condition of a society rises in exact proportion as it imposes pre-nuptial and post-nuptial restraints upon sexual opportunity.
‘All the deistic societies insisted on pre-nuptial chastity; conversely all the societies which insisted on pre-nuptial chastity were in the deistic condition.
‘Is there any causal relationship between the compulsory continence and the thought, reflection and energy which produced the change from one cultural condition to another?
‘One thing is certain: if a causal relation exists, the continence must have caused the thought, not the thought the continence.’
Again, ‘the power of thought is inherent; similarly the power to display social energy is inherent; but neither mental nor social energy can be manifested except under certain conditions.’ These conditions arise when sexual opportunity is reduced to a minimum. Civilized societies may be divided into different strata, representing every type of cultural condition from zoistic to rationalistic. ‘The group within the society which suffers the greatest continence displays the greatest energy and dominates the society.’ The dominating group determines the behaviour of the society as a whole. So long as at least one stratum of a society imposes pre-nuptial continence upon its members and limits post-nuptial sexual opportunity by means of strict monogamy, the society as a whole will behave as a civilized society.
The energy produced by sexual continence starts as ‘expansive energy’ and results in the society becoming aggressive, conquering its less energetic neighbours, sending out colonies, developing its commerce and the like. But ‘when the rigorous tradition (of sexual restraint) is inherited by a number of generations, the energy becomes productive.’ Productive energy does not spend itself exclusively in expansion; it also goes into science, speculation, art, social reform. Where productive energy persists for some time, a factor which Dr. Unwin calls ‘human entropy’ comes into play. Human entropy is the inherent tendency, manifested as soon as the suitable social conditions are created, towards increased refinement and accuracy. ‘No society can display productive social energy
